CHAPTER TWENTY

 

THE SHOP OF Messrs Catt and Fisher was located in Cinquetann Riverport. It was in the wrong direction for the rest of the party but Tricky was able to get them there in double quick time, using Pond Hopper’s Drop, a trinket that the Kinslayer had never missed and which had served her admirably well since she’d found it in a shipment of valuables looted out of some Grennish place or other. She’d been in charge of the museum and the
armoury at the time, an oversight of the kind anyone only made once, but once was enough.

The Drop was a phial of murky green water and persuading Ralas to take a drop of it was more than she could have stomached what with all the questions that were bound to flow and then the even worse lengthy explanations of how you could move from any watery stop to any other watery stop. Being a Guardian, or demi-Guardian probably helped, she figured, as the phial itself had been wrapped in an alchemist’s vellum containing many painstaking notes that ended with a volley of epithets and damnations about its inefficacy so virulent that they had made her eyes water. For her it had worked a treat, however. She had a way with making things work.

So instead of telling him, she’d gone to some great lengths making mint tea at their rest stop and popped a drop in there. From then on all she had to do was be sure to hold his hand. That had proved harder to engineer, so she’d had to add some wine into the mix. After that it had been a doddle to encourage him to think of some roistering old marching tunes and then sing along as they went. The day was damp and rainy and sure enough within an hour she’d found a muddy puddle of suitable size. From there on it had been a simple matter to be sure to grip his hand and swing his arm in time to the music in such a way that he simply followed her as she jumped into it.

Then they fell through the world and came out with a massive explosion of water, weeds, mud and leaves from a little fishing hole just the eastern side of the riverport town.

Both of them were quite dry, although Tricky had to remove a medium-sized trout from her hood. She watched Ralas closely as he spluttered with surprise, standing in a braced position as if he expected the world to tip him off it when he wasn’t vigilant. He was still mostly drunk and she wondered if she could pass off the entire thing as a wine-induced hallucination rather than magery when he turned and threw up suddenly into the long grass beside the pond.

Across the water she saw an old man, Cheriveni by dress with his regular blue tunic and matching trousers, his neat and ever-so pragmatic wide hems and edged pockets: but he was much too ragged for public consumption at any civilised spot. He sat watching them, fishing pole in hand, his jaw slack.

“What ho, squire!” she called merrily in her best weaving voice, meant to mend any social break. “Sorry, sorry!”

She tossed him the trout, which flapped vigorously in objection, but it merely slapped him around the cheeks and then dropped back into the grass at his feet before flipping itself into the dark water.

“Useless old duffer,” she muttered, angry that her effort was wasted. People were terrible fools most of the time, in her experience, and while this could be made amusing it was now only annoying. She grabbed Ralas’ hand most firmly as his retching stopped and hauled him with her as fast as she could make him go. He felt like skin and bones in her grip, something only a few days short of being scrying material, and she had to bite down on the surge of guilt that came with that comparison. A dead brother who deserved it was one thing, but Ralas hadn’t deserved what had happened to him. Fortunately there were bushes close by into which she made sure they disappeared before the old man could get his wits about him. The painful slap of brambles across the face had her saying sharply to Ralas. “Snap out of it, man.” And she was herself snapped out of it.

“What. What,” Ralas was saying and she began to regret everything she had ever said or done that had brought her to this point.

“You’re a terrible soak,” she said, covering her lies with more lies which were completely irrelevant as the magic that held him outside death and beyond healing had no effect on regular alcohol intake. She hoped her bluster would act as a smokescreen as well as annoy him out of putting two and two together and figuring she’d conned him. “Drinking all the way. I expect you’ve even forgotten what day it is and now I have to fish you out of a pond because you can’t even walk straight. And you call yourself a friend.”

“But, but…” Ralas staggered a little, trying to tug himself free of her but in a way that suggested his heart wasn’t really in it.

“There must have been something in the wine,” she added, wondering if he really was going to fall for it. “You can’t trust anything the clans trade, they’re always thinking they can get one over on you. That Forinthi woman definitely looked suspicious to me.”

“Forin… do you mean Celestaine? She’s the last person to trade… actually she’s the last person to have wine. Also, I don’t drink. I was only pretending to so that you’d stop pestering me.”

He was too sober and in a minute, he was going to start asking questions and then they’d never get on. She took a leap out of logic and sailed far beyond it. “I’ll forgive you the terrible things you said about my mother, but you need to make more of an effort. Honestly, you’re a burden. Don’t you want them to succeed? Who knows what terrors they’re already facing if this really is the Kinslayer’s unfinished business?” And with that medley she had given it her best obfuscating shot. “There’s an inn up the way here. We need to clean up and get organised. This is Cheriveni territory and we need to get in and get out quick. They write everything down, the little pests.”

“Anyarrgh,” he seemed to be saying, holding his head as if holding it together. “You… can’t go there.”

She hauled on his arm, setting off at a smart pace so he had to spend all his focus on staying upright. “Don’t worry, so sweet of you to think of it but really I have all the right paperwork. Let’s just keep going so we can get changed. We’ve nearly made it. And you could apologise. It was all very hurtful.”

The magic of the phial, or the pond water perhaps, had not agreed with him and he was unable to muster a response other than to stumble along with her. His bony arm felt too much like a stick in her hand so she let go of it and went for sleeve instead, of which there was far more than she expected. Nonetheless she was able to keep up a good degree of fishwifery all the way to the small inn, at which point she turned rapidly very convivial and comforting for the benefit of the family who owned it and to whom she was known as a regular, friendly little travelling tailor. They were so pleased to see her that the oddness of her companion and his starveling condition didn’t bother them in the slightest once she had explained his bruised face and hobble as the result of single-handedly fighting off a gang of ruffians in the woods and the prospect of a musical evening even had them offering the best room and a hot bath.

Tricky arranged for Ralas to get the bath first and sent for new clothes for him while she chatted and mended a few items here and there which the family had put by in case of her return. When he came to find her at the fireside of the small receiving room he found her changed into a small, neat red-headed young woman with a freckled face and a snub nose, one hand thrust into a large woollen sock, the other darning neatly across the wooden shape of the egg she held in place. Two others of similar age were close by, folding laundry or forgetting to whilst she regaled them with some story about Rezmire, the southern limit of the known world which may or may not still exist depending on how the war had gone.

To Ralas she didn’t look the same, she didn’t sound the same, but it was indisputably her, just as the dark seductress, the rogue and the drunken singer were all her. She gave him a look that told him to play along or else, and then introduced him as her cousin and said they were off to the Riverport to look for new buttons and for him, a wife. That gave rise to a lot of giggling and, standing there with his hair wet and in his newly acquired clothing, with a body that would never be healthy, he felt quite foolish for a moment. He was an idiot for even going this far with the burden of his condition which he could never put down and certainly would never impose on someone else. But then, someone like her couldn’t possibly be serious about someone like him and clearly she was only using him for some reason that had yet to clarify.

That noted he pulled himself together. Two could play any game. He straightened up and made an affable grin of the kind he offered at the start of every ham performance, said, “She’s having you on. It’s we who are to be wed.”

Her face in that moment was priceless in its genuine surprise, perhaps a hint of respect, that quirky eyebrow she had lifting so far up her forehead it was almost in her hairline, and he felt his heart lift and soar with a streak of sweetness in its wake that boded very ill for him indeed. He almost forgot to add, “Isn’t that right, darling?” and to smile at her with a smile that was filled with what he found to be genuine adoration. The thought came to him that he was a dead man who could only lose this fresh stupidity, and the irony made him laugh.

The innkeeper’s girls took it for lightness of heart and immediately began a flurry of nuptial chatter that swept all the rest of the day’s business temporarily out the window. They didn’t escape the excitement of preparations for a celebration dinner for another two hours. By the time they were on the way to the town they had fabricated two not entirely separate histories in which they met in the war, were battlefield sweethearts, attempted to be married but were thwarted by an invasion and had recently met again after months of searching. As neither of them had living relatives they were to wed in the nearest place where they could find a suitable minister. That had been a mistake, Tricky reluctantly thought, as the innkeeper’s wife had been only too happy to inform them that the Gracious One Hospice had lately reopened itself as a place of ministry and healing both and as her niece was an understudy there, she would be delighted to make all the arrangements.

Ralas limped along at Tricky’s side as they walked in an embattled silence. “I never insulted your mother.”

“You insulted someone’s mother.” Tricky waved him off. “At some point. It’s certain.”

“What magic was that which you…” He had to pause and smile as they came around a corner and found themselves face to face with a woman coming the other way, a knapsack on her back and a heavy bag in her hand. Behind her the town gates rose, scaffolded but steady, against the sky. Guards were patrolling along the parts of the wall which had been restored.

“It was one of the lesser charms of Luciba the Lazy,” Tricky said as though these were common knowledge and of no account. “She never looked the same twice. Bad gambling habit and a terrible loser but she was never arrested and had six husbands all in the same town. Now look. I’m going to do the talking. You stretch your repertoire and do the standing around looking like a tough guy.”

Ralas was taken aback. “A cripple with a lute?”

“Any musician that plays like you do has to be pretty tough.” She shrugged with a careless manner that made her seem winsomely vulnerable beneath a hard-won streetwise exterior.

“Plays like… what do you mean?” He felt insulted to the core, even as he noted her acting abilities were a little on the nose somehow, as if she had something genuine to hide.

“You know. All sincere ballads and things. Glory songs. Nothing funny. You need more… funny in your act. Like the Far… like bawdy songs. Songs for the common folk.”

“What would you know about my ‘act’?” For a second he’d been sure she was going to name the ‘Farmers of Doubty’, the song he had sung to the Kinslayer just before he was killed for the first time, but she couldn’t know about that. Bawdy hadn’t really done well for him.

She tutted. “Do you know ‘Cenella the Vampire’s Paramour’?”

“I… is that a drinking song?” He would have bet a day without pain on the fact that he knew mostly every song that was hummed and bowdlerized and badly remembered between any two points on the map but this one didn’t ring a bell.

“It’s more of a post-drinking song. He lived to suck blood and she lived to… The point is it’s very funny.”

“You’ll have to teach me. But bawdy and roisterous,” he said, annoyed with how much he was trying to impress her, “I can do that.”

“Good. Find ones with happy endings. People want to feel there’s some hope left.” She was fiddling with things in her pockets, he could see, looking preoccupied.

As they neared the gate the number of people increased and the road became hemmed in with huts and shelters that had been built in the last few months as refugees gathered at the portside, hoping for news and lingering, still too fearful to attempt returning to wherever they had come from and finding comfort in numbers.

They joined the group of people gathering for entry, and Tricky took out a small scroll from one pocket and undid the ribbon. She kept her travelling hood up, pushed back enough to show her face but also to keep it shaded.

Ralas, in his sensible blue blending-in attire, felt nervous. The Cheriveni were sticklers for protocol, something which set his teeth on edge. In his youth he’d been had up by their magistrates for a failure to present the correct licences for performance within the city limits. Those were days when he’d thought it was a fine life to carry on as a street entertainer, before the war had got close enough to him that he could ignore it no longer. Being here was the strangest sensation for those days seemed very close but also untouchably far away. Memory was like that, it comforted, reliving old feelings, and then it hurt as the present compared to them and fell down flat on its face. In every person nearby he saw the same, resigned expression of expected disappointment, though this could have had something to do with the pedantry of the gate watch, whose lips moved steadily as they read everyone’s papers.

One woman caught his eye unintentionally and was captured by the shocking bruising of his face, lingering with a moment of alarm that sent her looking all around and down the road for potential attackers even though she was next in line and the wall was policed by a steadily marching patrol who showed no care. He passed a few moments looking at all the Oerni faces around him from various trading families, thinking of Bukham and wondering how he was getting along.

Meanwhile Tricky shuffled around and attempted some information-gathering small talk. When she turned back to him she opened her gloved palm and showed him some worn leather thongs with wooden rings on, a charm made from a mouse’s foot and two copper scits. She shook her head in disgust.

“These people have nothing.”

A moment and a few gliding moves later and she had replaced the treasures in their allocated pouches and pockets, or at least that was what he assumed she was doing. Then it was their turn at the gate and the guard poring over their scroll, holding it three inches from her face.

Behind him he heard a muttering of surprises, quickly suppressed to levels below official eavesdropping, but he distinctly caught a woman whispering, “Look it I found inna pocket! A polly.” A flurry of “me too” followed and the air of despond was replaced by a subtle, silent mixture of glee and alarm, the luck astonishment and happiness vying with terror at the inexplicability of it all.

Tricky, eyes fixed on the guards, had a curl to her mouth that was full of satisfaction. She caught him staring at her as they were pushed through the wicket gate and sent on to the open road into the town. “Polly pockets. It’s a good game, hm?”

He nodded, genuinely surprised and briefly feeling something he could hardly name because it had been so long since he felt it: “It’s a great game.” Joy.

The broad, muddy road led from the gate and then rapidly branched out. Tricky took them past the Hospice. “Let’s get the state of play, eh?” she said, as they neared the structure. Ruined by Heart Taker white fire, the stonework of the original building was still silvered and shattered, but within it a more modest wooden structure had been erected and painted in white and gold. The Gracious One Hospice was back in business. Ralas wondered what they’d make of him, was tempted to go ask, just in case there was someone who could offer him hope—but then again, it was more likely to get him killed if they discovered he was without remedy. They passed it, moving through places where much hard labour had made homes nearly grand again, the colours of the footmen and servants washed and bright against the awnings and bustle of the market streets. A terrible aching clawed at his heart and the lute banged his bony spine. As if she read his mind he found Tricky touching his arm in a conspiratorial fashion.

They passed a man playing spoons and a woman twanging a simple harp made from a broom and a barrel. They were doing a fair version of ‘All The Fair Lads of Kheri’, and he longed to pitch up and join in, but his broken feet and his sore face told him it wasn’t a good idea.

They passed food stalls and alcoves filled with tiny tea stands where people of all sizes and shapes bent close to each other to hear business and make deals under the guard of the general hubbub. Rats scampered through the rubbish and they were nearly barged over by a gang of children, each with two sticks—one sharp and pointed, the other heavy and bearing dangling rat bodies tied by the tails—as they chased these down with single-minded lust.

“Good to see the nippers doing something fun and productive,” he ventured.

“Indeed,” she said and turned into a much less crowded street where scaffolding was up against one in three buildings. Their destination was a small but tidy and notably whole house near the middle. He looked up and read the freshly painted lettering on the sign. Catt & Fisher, apothecaries, physicians, notaries of law, layers of note, dealers in the unusual.

“I’ll do the talking,” she said. “You just keep an eye on everything and let me know if you see anything untoward.”

“I know them,” he said. “Untoward is their middle name.”

She cocked her head. “You know them?”

“Met them at…”

“Not now.” She put her finger to his lips. “Haven’t got time and don’t want to get caught talking here. Thing is that Fishy and I have a little bit of history and I need you there to act as a bodyguard.”

“Me? You need someone like Nedlam, surely?”

“No no. She’s a violence lodestone. Bringing her would be like asking for it. But you, they’ll never do anything to you. I mean, look at you. You just stay quiet and pay attention and if I should happen to hand you anything while we’re in there keep hold of it.”

“Aw, you’re not going to steal—”

She had her finger up against his mouth again. “Not now,” she said, and opened the door.

A bell tinkled as they came into a room that managed to be both cluttered and dim, making him pause to adjust for safety’s sake amid low hanging bunches of herbage while Tricky slipped onwards like a smoothly sailing boat towards a glass countertop. Behind it a tall, old man with a face made grizzly by black stubble that contrasted nicely with his greying hair was fiddling with something laid out in bits on a cloth. All around him shelves were full of objects so diverse Ralas could not have said what most of them were. In spite of the shabbiness of most of them, there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.

The old man looked up, his long face lengthening as his chin dropped briefly. An air of caution made him straighten up and widen his eyes as his hands quickly rolled up the mat and its knickknacks and stowed them quickly out of sight beneath the counter. His gaze never wavered from Tricky’s face and he swallowed a couple of times. “Ah. It’s you.”

“Delighted to see you too, Fishy,” she said as the man sidled out swiftly and went to the door, sticking his head out to check the street before closing it, shooting the bolt and putting his back to it. “Catt about? I’ve got some interesting items I need an appraisal on. And by some I mean one.”

Ralas put his scarf down from his face and peered more closely through the glass counter. “Is that an Oerni whistling pipe?”

“Indeed it is, young man,” Fisher said. “Wait. I know your face. That black eye is most distinct—you’re the Slayer’s bard.” He peered at Ralas as though inspecting something for value. “How did you come to be in her—” he nodded at Tricky, “—possession?”

“I’m not actually a possession,” Ralas began but was interrupted.

“Fishy.” Tricky tapped her nails on the counter-top impatiently as Fisher came back from the door and began to slide the window blinds down one at a time. “I’ve brought him to ensure fair play. You’ve met him and clearly you trust him. I need a disinterested man of judgement involved. Such is the quality of the item.”

“Such is the risk of it, you mean,” Fisher said. “And not forgetting the fact I vowed to kill you next time I saw you. So more of a witness. Though who he’s going to tattle to I don’t know. The Slayer, perhaps?” He gave her a withering look and Ralas felt queasy. During this talk Fisher had been moving towards to the back of the shop where another door was ajar to a dark hallway. He called through this with an effort not to sound urgent. “Catt! Catty! She’s ba-ack.”

“Who?”

“Yer mother!” Tricky called loudly enough to be heard on the street and laughed. “Favourite aunt. Love of your life. Bringer of all the lovely gifties. Director of Treasure Central.”

There was a brief silence. Fisher looked up through a thick bush of eyebrow, his broad nostrils flaring. He glared at Tricky. “You’re only on remand because I can smell what you’ve got.”

“Proof positive, I think, that there need be no bad blood over the loss of that special item.”

His gaze became darker and Ralas thought the counter and various of the loose objects around the room shook slightly. “Only if you’re giving it away and I doubt that.” There was a brief pause. “Do you still have it?”

Tricky grinned. “You’re not having it and neither is anyone else.”

Some of the tension between them seemed to lessen. At that moment footsteps shuffled behind the door and it opened to reveal a second old man, slightly shorter and more rounded than the first, his jeweller’s lenses set high on his forehead holding back a shock of near white hair, his expression as affably concerned as Fisher’s was acid with disapproval.

He glanced at them and then held out his arms in a dramatic display of welcome. “Oh, madam mischief, what fell wind has blown you back into our fortunate lives? And Ralas, the singer of fate, nightingale of Nydarrow. A rare privilege indeed, I feel. How very unusual to see the two of you conspiring together in our humble domicile, I do hope that you were not followed here by unkind men keen on pressing home their lawsuits against your light-fingered appreciation of certain heirlooms as per your last visit?” And with this he cast a meaningful look at Tricky, who was standing with her hand on her hip, grinning at him.

“Hey Catty,” she said. “How’s the old hock shop?”

“Let’s do this in the back,” Fisher said and made a gesture at Catt to shoo him back and usher them both through at once.

The room at the back was smaller and curated with exacting care. It was quite full from floor to ceiling with labelled boxes and shelves groaning with the clutter of a huge number of small objects. Strings and pulleys held rolls of cloth and bulging sacks up close to the rafters. Bits of taxidermy in various states of repair twirled idly in the draft as the door was closed. Dry and warped, a stuffed parac bared its huge rodent teeth in a yellow rictus, defiantly resistant to any semblance of life but determined to carry on regardless. Ralas knew how it felt.

He heard Fisher muttering about artefacts of making as Catt returned to his carved throne—a seat with eagle talon feet which twitched as he and Tricky made their entrance, and then reached out covetously to grip the rug the chair was set upon, as though they fully expected it to be stolen out from under them.

“I know you’re sore about the thing,” Tricky said, taking a long breath as both the Doctors eyed her with deep suspicion from their position side by side. “I know I promised it to you, Fu-Fisher. But this thing I’ve got now is just as good. Well, nearly. It’s probably as good. It definitely held something that’s just as good. But it needs expert eyes on it to be sure. And in return for your esteemed and very valuable help here I’m willing to part with it. By my honour.”

“Ha!” Fisher barked. “Let’s see it and believe it later once you’re long gone.”

“Now then,” Catt put out a hand and gently touched Fisher on the arm. “Patience. Although, my dear, you do owe us a very large sum of money for the destruction of property, trespass with violence and representation of your good self in the Cherivell Court system by the esteemed lawyers you see before you.” He reached over to the table at his side where inkwells, pens and papers were scattered in vast piles and, with delicate precision, used thumb and forefinger to extract a leaf of paper from near the bottom of one pile. It was long and filled with rows of numbers and lines of minute writing. “Your bill, if I may.” He presented it to her with a little flourish of pride in his work. “Oh, and here at the bottom, the extra for the laundering of Fisher’s second best pair of trews. I’m not charging you for the smashed Egg of Foreboding Visions although I think you’ll find there’s precedent for that. It did break after you left but it was definitely stressed beyond endurance by events surrounding your presence and I would think it deeply generous if you would consider making an offer for, let’s say, half its value in the current market.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Tricky snatched the paper, screwed it up one-handed and stuffed it down the front of her shirt. “So.” She pushed her hood back and withdrew from her cloak a tiny bundle of unpleasant looking sackcloth. “Get your multifarious whatsits in order, and put up some wards,” she said. “I’ve got artefact stuff to unload.”

Catt was leaning so far forwards he was nearly tumbling out of his chair. “Isn’t that the Wrap of…”

“It is. So push the furniture back as well, because this thing is big.” She backed up and Ralas went with her, right to the bookshelf behind him.

“Wait, wait good lady!” Dr Catt exclaimed, holding out a hand to forestall her undoing the parcel. “I must admit a slight sense of unease at what may be about to transpire. We have, it is true, held several objects of considerable power at our shop before but…”

“But me no buts,” she said, although she stayed her hand as Dr Fisher worked hard to push the huge chair back to the wall, dragging the rug with it, Catt still in position. “I know very well what you’ve got squirreled away and as a fellow collector of antiquities and interests I’m telling you that you have to see this and you have to see it now. As a gesture of goodwill just for taking a looksie, I will be paying you a substantial sum, to whit—” and she slipped from her glove a large ruby which Ralas recognised as being from the dress of Lysandra. It had been on the bodice, over the heart, and aside from its remarkable size it shone with an inner fire that twisted and twirled idly, strong enough to lend a scarlet glow to the lower angles of both their faces.

Dr Catt was out of the throne like a shot, his self-satisfied face suddenly there over her hand, his lenses flapping down as he flicked them into place. “I didn’t think there were any of these left in existence. See, Fishy! A serpent’s eye.”

“A serpent’s eye indeed,” Fisher said, reaching out and then pausing to look up at Tricky. They shared a glance that spoke volumes and Ralas didn’t need to know the details to see that the death wish was off the table now and something reluctant and allegiant had taken its place.

“May I?” Dr Catt asked, looking plaintively up at Tricky without lifting his head, eyes at their maximum swivel as though he couldn’t bear to remove himself from the jewel’s allure.

“At your own risk,” she nodded.

Dr Catt held out a hand towards Fisher. “Glove.”

“Is that a good thing ruby or a bad thing ruby?” Ralas asked, not certain he wanted the answer but feeling left out.

“It’s an eye from the time before men, when creatures made of gemstones ruled the under-crust of the world and dragons fought over whatever was left on top,” Fisher said, using both hands to fit a kidskin glove precisely over the fingers and thumb of Dr Catt’s outstretched hand. Then he cast his gaze more circumspectly over Ralas and a slight twitch betrayed his unease.

“What does it do?” Ralas asked as Dr Catt held the stone between thumb and forefinger and leant back. He held it up to the light from a brightly glowing sphere which lit the room and which Ralas had assumed to be a lamp, but which was now revealed to be simply a ball of light without a tether.

“Watches,” Fisher and Tricky said at the same time, then glanced at each other with a lift of the nose. Fisher continued. “It watches until a time is right, and then it makes the way for something to happen.” He held up his hand and waggled it like a fish swimming or a snake slithering. “Depends on how it’s used and who by.”

Catt slowly brought the stone down and pushed his lenses back until they sat high on his brow. He looked solemnly at Tricky. “Where did you find this?”

“Charm’s gone, huh?”

“Whatever it was set to look for it has seen done. Nothing left in it. It’s ready for another spell, should one ever find a mage capable and willing to risk their neck on it.” His nose twitched at the end and he folded the stone carefully into his fist. “This is really just the fee?”

“If you can do some reading for me.”

“So—you have…”

Tricky held up her hand to forestall him and fixed him with a direct stare. “I have the whole damn snake.”

“A moment, if you would.” Dr Catt beckoned to Fisher and they went into a huddle as far away as they could get, which wasn’t far. Tricky made a big show of looking in any other direction, tapping her foot and changing her weight from one leg to the other. Ralas could not even hear them whispering, only see their cramped gestures and emphatic head motions. After a minute or two they straightened up and turned.

“Gentlemen,” she said and then with a flourish threw the object in her hand forward, allowing it to unwrap its own bindings on the way. They both had to step back smartly, flattening themselves to the wall, as most of the remaining floor space was suddenly taken up by the black, ugly shape of the lidless coffin. Whatever they’d been discussing died into the silent moment that followed.

Ralas stared. Magic was always there in so many places, small and great, but seeing this scale of it at work robbed him of words. He was almost frightened of Tricky in that moment. She was so casual with it.

“We need the help of Zivalah,” Catt said after a while had passed. “Go get her, would you, Fishy?”

Dr Fisher showed no inclination to move, but he cleared his throat and a few seconds later he slid past the box and hurried out of the door. The latch clicked and the key turned at his back. Dr Catt fumbled behind him along his workbench and there was an audible click. A hum filled the air, quiet but insistent and he relaxed, reaching out his gloved fingers to run them over the box’s rim and then over some of its heavily embossed carving. “My my. This is true ebony, hardened in dragonfire.”

“I want to know what it all means,” Tricky said, pointedly ignoring any reverence that might have been going around. “Every word, glyph and pictogram.”

“Old Tzarkish,” Catt said, confident. “The written form that goes back to the first humans. That’s why we’ve gone for the local expert. Zivalah does tattoos now but she was apparently quite a matriarch back in the day.”

Tricky balled up the old scrap of sackcloth and tucked it in one of her pockets. “How long is it going to take?”

Catt stood back, lips pursed forwards in a universal gesture of assessment on a task of great difficulty. “I don’t know.” Then he glanced up. “I thought you knew Tzarkish?”

“I know enough of it not to want to risk reading something that’s not meant for my eyes,” she said, tapping the box with one finger. “They have a way with traps and mind bombs that I don’t care to risk my sanity over.”

“But we do?” Catt put his heavy hand over his heart. “I’m affronted. I thought we were friends.”

“The whole snake,” Tricky said, unmoved. “Hm?”

“I’d have to see it, of course,” Dr Catt said.

Ralas realised that the serpent’s eye was gone from Catt’s hand. He must have put it away, he thought.

Tricky nodded, and then they heard the return of footsteps outside, in a great hurry. The latch popped at the same moment as the key turned in the lock and Fisher burst into the room, breathless, a look of surprise and concern in his face. “She’s gone. Left town.”

“What? When did this happen?” Catt frowned, his hands clenching into fists.

“Just now, apparently,” Fisher said, looking at the box and then at Tricky with clear misgiving. “Where did you get that?”

“Hathel Vale,” she said. “Where the fire has gone out. Now, are you going to read this or am I going to take my snake elsewhere?”

“As if there was an elsewhere,” Dr Catt said, drawing himself up to his full height and looking faintly green with the effort. “We shall read it. Come back later.”

“No, thanks,” she said. “We have a lot of appointments far away very soon. Come on, I know you can read it, traps or no.”

“Meaning you think these traps are for…”

“Sure, whatever,” she breezed on, waving a hand in the manner of a queen dismissing a minion. “Don’t say the word and don’t think the thought. You, as ordinary men of Cherivell,” she gave Fisher a long, significant look and a pause, “well-educated but so far without any divine intervention, you’re going to be all right with it. Probably. For a Guardian it would be dangerous. But it’d be pretty unlikely the Remaker of Bones and the Gravewife have much of an interest in small-town market lawyers. Apothecaries. Bankers. I forget, what is it exactly that you do?”

Ralas couldn’t miss the condescension of the last part but although he didn’t feel what threat it might hold something had impressed the doctors: they gave each other a nod and Catt began to slowly circle the box, head to the side, studying. Fisher stood back, surveying with what looked like one eye half shut and the other fully shut. Tricky took out a tiny dagger the size of a finger from her sleeve and removed her gloves, carefully using the point to clean her nails.

“Here’s the start, Catty,” Fisher said after about a minute. Catt moved around the box to join him and they fussed with their lenses, moving, studying, conferring and moving on at very brief intervals. “You do the reading. I’ll write it down.”

Fisher wrote Catt’s pontifications down on a slate, adding alternatives and interpretations, rubbing them out with the ball of his thumb very thoroughly once each one was puzzled through. Ralas and Tricky watched them work. Talking seemed sacrilegious so Ralas said nothing. After a while Tricky went out and returned with teas and griddlecakes. Ralas would have dozed off if not for the constant aching of his bones. At last the two men stopped, exhausted and pale with effort.

Catt cleared his throat and patted his chest gently. “The casket you see before you is the holding maze of the greatest creation of the Tzarkomen necromancers, into which they have poured, literally, their heart’s blood.”

“Ten thousand women, girls and babies, slain and raised in one form. Almost an entire people sacrificed to create a single being of unsurpassed capacities,” Fisher said quietly, head down, hands composed, rubbing his chalky fingertips together.

Catt nodded eagerly, his enthusiasm for potency overrunning. “A creature intended for a great purpose beyond the realms of…”

Tricky held up her hand. “Just the facts, gentlemen please.”

“The being in this box was charmed with the serpent jewels to become bound to him and to serve his purposes—whatever they were. There is a sub-clause, of a kind, which prevents it from turning on its people of origin hidden right down at the bottom of the head end and disguised as a prayer. At least they had some circumspection.”

“Godly puppet,” Fisher said, looking grey with fatigue. “But… why on earth would they give him such a…”

“To get him to leave them alone,” Ralas suggested. “Because not even death can stop him.” He looked at Tricky. “It can stop him, can’t it. If he’s the one who’s dead?”

Dr Catt broke in. “Where is she? Did you get this from her?” He held up the red gem.

“Don’t know and yes.”

“So then she’s bound to someone already.” Catt sighed, deflating somewhat, pushing away his scrying lens so that he could rub his sore eyes. “If not him, then who?”

“Don’t know, doesn’t matter,” Tricky said briskly. “Good job. Here’s your snake.” She was suddenly brandishing a beautiful jewelled strap composed of a good number of the scintillating stones from Lysandra’s dress, twined together with the golden wire that had bound them in their original positions. As she modelled it for them, draping it across her own arm, it moved of its own accord in a soft, unmistakable ripple as though a long-lost memory was attempting to reconnect it with the world of the living.

Catt leaped backwards, or tried to. Instead he crashed heavily against the bench, gasping for air. “Can’t stand snakes!”

She tore it in two and put the halves on the workbench where they twitched but otherwise remained suitably mineralised. “Only to prove the puissance,” she said. “Thanks. See you later.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Fisher asked, working a handkerchief across his brow. He gestured vaguely at the box. “Take it with you. Please.” There was more than appeal in his gaze as he looked at her. Ralas read there something much more important.

“Pleasure, darling,” Tricky said, “I have to see some Tzarkomen about a dog anyway.” She reached out with her scrap of rag as though she were going to use it to take a hot iron from a fire. A second later she was wrapping the thimble-sized black casket up and a second after that it had vanished about her person somewhere. For the life of him Ralas could not have said what she’d done with it but the look of relief on Fisher’s face was matched only by the wistful sadness in Catt’s.

“We could put it in a Vat of Holding, Fishy,” he began but a look from his friend quieted him. “Ah, no. Maybe not. Perhaps it’s best that way as you say.”

Within moments Ralas and Tricky were both outside in the street again. The bell tinkled merrily at their backs. In its aftermath they could just hear Catt’s voice complaining about snakes and devious vixens from the nether pits of hell. He sounded very pleased with himself.

“Mission accomplished. Family feud laid to rest. I think it’s time to get a commemorative tattoo,” Tricky said, straightening her cloak and tossing her head so that her dark red hair flowed out into the breeze. “This way.”

“Wait. What?” Ralas set off after her, struggling to keep up as she set off to the markets at a pace. He wasn’t sure what he’d witnessed. He recalled a vague notion that Doctor Fisher was not a Cheriveni antiquities dealer or a lawyer, but the Guardian Fury, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d picked that up from. It was as though some veil was drawn over it. As soon as it occurred to him it darted away again and he was filled with doubt.