The Hissing Man waited for Ordren’s footsteps to fade, then held up the letter he’d written. Gaul, the scourge most often assigned to watch over him in the catacombs, stepped forward and took it.
“Take it to our man in the woods,” the Hissing Man rasped.
Gaul bowed his head and left. The sepulcher door closed behind him with an echoing boom.
The letter was a simple message to Llorn Bloodhaven, coded in case it was intercepted, demanding he come to Ancris so the two of them could speak in person. Llorn had reported trouble in the Holt. His brother Aarik had apparently gotten wind of their endeavors in the Deepwood Fens. It was troubling but hardly surprising—Aarik was going to find out sooner or later—but it presented them with problems. They needed to decide what to do about it, and soon.
That meeting would be several days in the making. He had other matters to deal with in the meantime, such as the somewhat alarming information Ordren had just dropped into his lap. The Hissing Man would deal with the old inquisitor and his research on his own. The expedition to Tortoise Peak would require a lighter hand, and that meant reaching out to Illustra Azariah, a long-time ally in the Hissing Man’s quest to see the Church rise to its rightful place atop the empire.
From the shelf behind him, he fetched a lacquered wooden case and a brass pedestal with a circle of dragonbones mounted on it and set both on the desk in front of him. He opened the case. It had two compartments: one filled with a fine white powder, the other with black.
Many people thought the Hissing Man’s bandages an affectation. They couldn’t know he’d gone through the same ceremony the Church’s illustrae had, nor could they know he’d been granted second sight, the ability to see in any direction, even things above or below him, which allowed him to see in complete darkness, as well, via the traces of aura and umbra that all things gave off. By and large, second sight was colorless, a canvas of white, black, and shades of gray. There were exceptions, however. The wisplight on his desk glowed silvery blue, much as he remembered them from his youth. The white powder, auris, shimmered chromatically, like the scales of the indurium dragon it had been ground from. The black powder, umbris, had been harvested from an onyx dragon. It shimmered, too, but in a deep violet, dim and brooding as Nox staring down from the heavens.
The Hissing Man took a modest pinch of the rosemary-scented white powder, held it to his nose, and sniffed. His nose burned, and he suddenly felt lighter. His breathing and the rush of blood in his ears sounded louder, and the coldness of the sepulcher deepened ever so slightly. He closed the case, feeling the increase in his potency, and turned his attention to the brass pedestal and its circle of dragonbones. A translucent membrane was stretched between the bones. Made from the silverskin of the heart of the dragon kit that had provided the mirror’s bones, the membrane shimmered in his second sight. And little wonder. It had been ritually treated with blood, the Hissing Man’s own and that of the man he needed to speak to.
Drawing upon the power of aura, the Hissing Man reached through the silverskin. He felt a surge of discomfort, akin to vertigo. The silverskin brightened, and the face of Azariah Andrinus III appeared. He was head of the Alran Church in Ancris, a middle-aged man, square-jawed with full lips, and clouded eyes, a result of the acid that had been dripped onto them when he’d become an illustra.
“This couldn’t have waited?” His voice was hoarse, likely from having just awoken.
“It’s important,” the Hissing Man snapped.
“It better be,” Azariah said.
The Hissing Man relayed everything Ordren had told him about the Tortoise Peak expedition. When he was done, the illustra looked even more weary. “Will the complications never cease?”
The Hissing Man laughed a long wheeze. “We’re nearing the end of our long road. Our ‘complications’ will only multiply.”
“I’m aware. It’s only—”
Speaking through the silverskin was a linking of the minds, which could also allow a troubling memory or pressing concern to pass from one to the other. So it was that the Hissing Man knew why Azariah had stopped talking. He’d had a vision of his son, Cassian, a handsome young man with curly blond hair, and in the vision Cassian was lying motionless on an inlaid marble floor, a knife sticking out of the chest of his black priest’s habit, blood pooling beneath him. Azariah’s son had vanished more than a decade ago, and the investigation that had followed had found no clues as to where he might have gone or who might have taken him. The questions around his son’s death had plagued Azariah for years. They plagued him still.
“Our worst fears have a way of manifesting,” the Hissing Man said quickly, “especially in difficult times.”
“But it felt so real . . .”
“As do dreams while you’re sleeping. You’re fatigued, Your Radiance. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard. What you saw was a nightmare.”
Necessary lies, especially at this stage of the game. Their ultimate goal was to free their mighty lord, Faedryn, from the prison he’d been placed in at the end of the last age, and they could only do that if they woke one of Faedryn’s most powerful servants, Strages, from the spell he was under. The Hissing Man believed Azariah was committed to their cause, but the man became intractable when he focused too much on his lost son. It was precisely why Faedryn had given the Hissing Man the power to manipulate his memories, but Azariah had power of his own, and the manipulations never seemed to last.
So, as he’d done many times since Cassian’s disappearance, the Hissing Man used a bit of the aura within him to will away Azariah’s worries. “Your son’s disappearance was tragic. It haunts you, and justifiably so. The vision was merely your mind trying to make sense of it.”
Azariah pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his cloudy white eyes. “I suppose you’re right.” When he opened them again, he seemed calmer. “Very well. The expedition should be simple enough to deal with. A quick word with the quintarch’s wife, and it will be quashed. You’ll deal with the inquisitor?”
The Hissing Man had made no mention of Inquisitor Kellen, but just as the Hissing Man could sense Azariah’s thoughts, Azariah could sense his. “Of course.”
“Then tell me of Llorn. Has the meeting been arranged?”
“Nearly. He’ll come to Ancris. I’ll speak to him in the dragonworks. Aarik will be dealt with, one way or the other.”
“Very well, if there’s nothing else . . . ?”
The Hissing Man sneered. “So eager to return to your comfortable bed while I do all the work from the shadows.”
“That was our arrangement. That has always been our arrangement.”
“Because I’m foul to look upon, unpleasant to be near . . .”
“You are feared, and rightfully so. Right now, it’s better for our enemies to wonder where you are and when you’ll strike next.” Azariah paused. “But fear not—”
“I don’t fear. I grow tired of this hole in the ground.”
“Either way, when this is done, you’ll walk beneath the bright sun as my equal. And I’ll visit the catacombs soon. I have a box of the tea that helps with your gout. And a bottle of syris from the Holt.”
The Hissing Man hated asking for such things—it felt too much like weakness—but it pleased him that Azariah had remembered them. “After Llorn comes. It would be better to speak of his plans in person in any case.”
“Very well,” Azariah said.
The vision faded, and the silverskin returned to its normal, translucent form.
Wanting his own tasks to be done as soon as possible so that he, too, could find rest, the Hissing Man dipped his fingers into the wooden case again and took a much healthier pinch of the black powder. He held it to his nose, smelled its lush, fecund scent, and sniffed it, then rubbed the remains over his gums.
In many ways, aura and umbra were two sides of the same coin. The former was of the mind, the latter of the body—animi, corporis, in the empire’s elder tongue. Instead of vertigo, the umbris made his muscles burn, and his joints ache. It worsened his gout, but he accepted the pain as yet another price to pay to see Faedryn freed from his prison.
The Hissing Man left his office and limped down the stone corridor—slide THUMP, slide THUMP, slide THUMP—traversed the catacombs’ tunnels and entered the sewers. The stink made the air heavy. It was pitch dark, but his second sight guided him. With the power of umbra, he collected shadows, gathered them around him like a cloak, then crawled through an iron grate like a rat to the street.
Overhead, Nox stared down, a glaring, violet eye as the Hissing Man made his way, silent as a wolf, toward Old Town. Each of the empire’s five capital cities had a quadrata, a square that marked the center of the original settlement. Ancris’s was surrounded by stone buildings bunched shoulder to shoulder. The largest of them was a three-story library with a clock tower.
Masking his movement with the shadows, he stole up the stairs to the front entrance. It was locked, so he continued around the side and tried the delivery entrance, but it, too, was locked. He considered shattering the lock with the aura’s power, but quelled the urge. Maintaining the spell of shadows was making his limbs burn, and that in turn was pushing him toward rashness. Keeping his purpose hidden was as important as the mission itself.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he limped around the rear of the library, found a window ajar, pushed it open, and climbed inside. Then he let the shadows go and took a moment to breathe, to let the pain ebb. When he’d recovered, he climbed the main stairwell to the third floor, the one set aside for research. He shuffled along a hallway to a room with a writing desk and a table laden with scrolls, books, and stone tablets—Kellen’s research.
Though words written in mundane ink were often dim in his second sight, the Hissing Man could read them well enough given time. He skimmed Kellen’s journal for mention of the chalice. Notes were pinned to a corkboard on the opposite wall. He scanned those as well. He rifled through the books, pausing to read the odd note on a scrap of paper pinched between the pages. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that it was unlikely the missing chalice meant anything more to Kellen than a link to a bygone age. He likely didn’t understand its significance to the Hissing Man and his plans.
He returned to the hallway, vowing to have Ordren keep an eye out, even ask Azariah to send a shepherd by to pretend to be interested in Kellen’s work—try to learn more that way. But beyond that, it seemed unlikely Kellen would seek out the chalice.
He was just preparing to descend the stairs to the ground floor when he spotted a potbellied man in stained work clothes standing next to the door to the clock tower, wiping his hands with a rag. A lantern hung from the crook of his elbow. He stared wide-eyed at the Hissing Man, his mouth gaping. Likely he’d just come from greasing the gears, perhaps resetting the clock tower’s weights. He’d seen where the Hissing Man had been snooping. Word of it would surely reach Kellen. The Hissing Man couldn’t allow that.
“Can I help you?” the workman said stupidly.
The Hissing Man rushed him. The man retreated, stumbled and fell hard into the door, knocking it open. The sound of ticking gears grew loud.
The Hissing Man lunged and grabbed him by the throat. “Bloody fool, you brought this upon yourself,” he hissed. He pulled the clock tender to his feet, pushed him into the clock tower—a maze of clattering gears, ropes, pulleys, and chains hanging over an empty shaft—and pinned him to the landing rail. The clock tender choked and wheezed and flailed desperately as the Hissing Man pressed him against the railing. He used the railing to shove the Hissing Man back, but the umbris-fueled Hissing Man pushed him back harder, bending the man’s shoulders over the rail. Arms and shoulders burning with power, the Hissing man bit back a howl of pain and heaved the fat clock keeper over the railing. The man screamed and landed two stories down with a sharp crunch. The Hissing Man staggered down the tower stairs. At the ground floor, he crouched beside the clock tender. The man’s mouth worked slowly. His eyes stared up vacantly. Then, his head turned and he went still. The Hissing Man drew his knife and cut a five-tailed scourge, the sign of the Chosen, a mark of unforgivable sins, into the man’s forehead.
It was unfortunate business, but a necessary distraction. Whoever discovered the clock tender would be drawn to the sign, would think the man wicked, or at the very least that he’d been judged to be wicked, and not that he’d witnessed the Hissing Man prowling in the library. Content that the man’s death would receive little scrutiny, the Hissing Man clambered back out the window of the library, gathered shadows around him, and returned to the catacombs below the city.