I dropped Sereh off at Benny’s house. She wanted to come with me, but I managed to fob her off. Having her hovering in the corner of my vision wasn’t doing anything for my ability to think calmly.
And I did need to think. I had no idea what my next move should be. Somehow I had believed this would be easy. Find a lead, follow it to the next, then the next and the next until I found the fucker pulling all the strings. It hadn’t worked out like that. I needed space to sit and think right now more than I needed a homicidal adolescent stalking my shadow.
The mid-afternoon sun drenched the streets in an inferno-like heat. The mountains, stepping higher and higher, shimmered in the distance. On top of Horn Hill, black flags hung limp from the Senate. The White City always retreated back behind its shutters at this time of day in the summer. I would have loved to have done the same thing. But I could feel time dripping away like wine from a cracked glass. Every minute I wasted chasing the wrong leads or getting rebuffed was a minute I’d never see again.
Imela Rush owed the Wren. I knew that. And Silkstar had been growing uneasy about … something. Someone — a mage, or someone sent by a mage — had been poking around, looking into Imela Rush’s background. I knew people were being killed, and I knew for sure that Benny and I weren’t behind it.
It wasn’t enough. The clues were like dots on a map, except I couldn’t see which map it was, how the dots joined up, or if all they would spell out when they did join up was a big ‘you failed’.
I needed information, and I wasn’t going to get it bouncing back-and-forth across Agatos like a confused moth. There was, however, one place where I might find out what I wanted. It just happened to be the last place any mage in my position should even consider. Then again, I had never been good at common sense.
So, I went up to the Ash Guard fortress and knocked on the front door.
It took a couple of minutes for Captain Meroi Gale to emerge, and when she did, she looked dressed for action, sword and pistol at her belt and skin smeared with Ash. It was more than a little off-putting, and I took a step back, certain for a moment that she was about to arrest me or execute me on the spot. I swallowed, tried not to look nervous, and gave it up as a bad job.
“Can I talk to you?”
“I don’t suppose you’re here to turn yourself in?”
“No.”
“A pity. Is anyone about to die horribly?”
“Apart from me?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll be fine.”
Well, thanks. “I just need to talk.”
“All right.” She glanced up at the sky. “Shall we say six o’clock?”
That was two or three hours off. I had thought that she would be working on my case full-time. What could be more important than a magical murder in a high mage’s house? I had a deadline here — possibly literally. I didn’t know exactly when it would fall, but I knew that when it did, it would be too soon.
“You’re busy?” I sounded petulant.
She flashed a one-sided smile. “I’ve got to see a man about a god.”
I gave her a look, which she returned far more effectively. Having a face smeared with magic-deadening Ash gave you an unfair advantage.
“Dumonoc’s bar,” she said. “All right? That’s where you like to hang out, isn’t it?”
I must have let my surprise show, because she snorted in amusement.
“I told you we have a file on you. We do our job properly in the Ash Guard. Now.” She glanced up at the sky again. “I really do have to go.”
I clenched my teeth. This was a delay I didn’t need. But I didn’t have the power here. Captain Gale did.
“All right,” I said. “Six o’clock.”
I stood, watching her re-enter the Ash Guard fortress, until the doors closed behind her. Then I swore creatively.
Another dead end, or a delayed one, at least. A sewage-filled flood on the street of progress.
I was out of ideas. I could wait, and waste the next few hours, or I could get another set of eyes on it. I had been avoiding visiting Benny again. I was going to have to tell him about Uwin Bone and my failure to find answers. Maybe Benny would have some insight or contacts I could approach.
For a man who had spent the last day and a half locked up in a noisy jail cell, Benny was looking remarkably rested and refreshed, certainly more than I was.
Maybe I should try it sometime.
The mage who had been waiting outside the cell last time I had visited was gone. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. It either meant that he had decided Benny had nothing useful, or he had decided he had everything he needed. Or it meant he had been caught short and was now holed up in the less-than-fragrant City Watch toilets.
I still checked the cell for any sign of magical eavesdropping, but if anyone was in the metaphorical eaves, I couldn’t detect them. I would have to take the risk.
“Thought you weren’t coming,” Benny said.
I shrugged. “Yeah, well. I’ve been kind of busy.”
He gave me the once over, taking in my dirty, battered clothing and my bruises. “I noticed. You find out who framed us yet?”
I lowered myself into the chair opposite to delay the inevitable answer.
“Yeah. About that. I’ve got some bad news. Uwin Bone is dead.”
Benny blinked. “He’s what? Lady of the Grove! What happened?”
I sighed and rubbed a hand across my face. I really didn’t want to think about this again.
“I went there when you said, but he wasn’t waiting, so I let myself into the warehouse—”
“Pity, mate! That’s one of the Wren’s warehouses.”
“I know that now.” I was obscurely irritated that he hadn’t warned me, even though there had been no reason for him to think I would go breaking in. “He was dead, Benny. Murdered, in just the same way as the Master Servant.”
Benny swore.
“It happened earlier in the day, maybe not long after the stuff up at Thousand Walls.”
Benny’s wrinkled brow furrowed even more. “You reckon someone’s cleaning house?”
I nodded. “They set us up for this, and they don’t want anyone around who can contradict that narrative.”
“Just tell me no one saw you at the warehouse.”
I winced.
“Have you thought about just throwing yourself off the Leap? It might be less painful.”
“I did discover some stuff,” I protested. I told him about the favour Imela Rush owed to the Wren and my suspicions that Silkstar might have found out. “I was wondering if you’d heard anything that might be relevant. You keep your ears open with all that dodgy shit.”
He looked offended, then he shrugged. “Sorry, mate. The Wren doesn’t share that kind of information. That man has so many Cepra-damned secrets he should be drowning in them.”
“Anyone else who might know? Squint wasn’t sharing.”
“He wouldn’t know something like that. Nah. You’d have to ask the man himself.”
Not a chance. I was keeping as far away from the Wren as possible until I had cleared our names.
“Have you told the Ash Guard?” Benny said.
“You’re telling me to go the authorities? You?”
He kept his gaze steady on me.
“Fine. Not yet, no. I don’t have any proof. You sure you haven’t heard anything?”
“Mate. Leave it to the professionals. It’s not your problem.”
“It is if I end up in an Ash Guard cell for the rest of my life.”
He snorted. “You’re fine. If they had anything on you, you wouldn’t be walking around free getting the shit kicked out of you. And they’re not going to get anything, because we didn’t do it.”
“You have a touching faith in the justice system for someone who’s managed to wriggle out of crimes so often. Anyway, in case you’ve forgotten, someone’s been working like buggery to frame us.”
“Yeah, but it’s not that, is it?”
I stared at him in bemusement. “What do you mean, ‘It’s not that’? It’s about as that as it gets.” Benny was my oldest friend. I had been hoping he might be concerned about my future.
“Nah. You’re just on one of your crusades because there are high mages involved. Nik Thorn, champion of the common man, standing up against the evil high mages. I’ll tell you what. The common man couldn’t give a tit. Except this common man who, in case you had forgotten, they’ve got bang to rights for burglary.” He held up his hands. “See these? They’ll fucking chop them off. One, two, gone. You might not use your hands for anything other than a quick wank in the morning, but I rely on mine. You can’t pick a lock with your toes.”
“I haven’t forgotten. But if I find out who’s behind this, I can get you out. I know I can. I can prove we were framed.”
“Yeah?” Benny threw himself back in his chair. “And when’s that going to happen? Today? By nightfall?”
I stared at him. “No…”
“No! Which means it’s no fucking good. My trial starts at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” That made no sense. The bureaucracy in Agatos never moved that fast. Everything took weeks, sometimes months.
Except when a high mage is involved. Silkstar must have pushed this through. The fucker. How dare he? How dare he abuse his power like that? He had no right. Except that, in this city, he did have the power, and that gave him almost any right he chose. The question was, was he doing this out of revenge or because we were his fall guys, and the sooner he was rid of us the better? It all depended on whether Silkstar was behind the murders, and on that matter, I still couldn’t be sure.
Benny watched the realisation dawn on my face.
“Yeah,” he said. “So none of that stuff about who owes the Wren what favours or what Silkstar might have done is going to do me a bloody bit of good. I’m out of time, mate.”
“I’m sorry,” I managed. My mind played back all the time I had wasted. Could I have been more focused? Had I missed something? “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well.” Benny sounded mollified. “We need to come up with a story. Something that’s going to convince the magistrates. You’re my only witness.”
I dropped my voice. “You were actually trying to steal the ledger.”
“Nah. We were carrying a message from the Countess, remember? That’s what you told the Master Servant, and that’s what we’re sticking with, because that’s what she’ll have told Silkstar. We can’t change that now. We were looking for Silkstar when everything went to shit.” His jaw tightened. “If I tell them that, they’ll never believe me, but they’ll believe you. The magistrates aren’t going to know you’re not one of the Countess’s acolytes anymore. You’re a mage.”
As plans went, I had to be honest, it was crap.
“And what if they ask her?” I objected. “She’s hardly going to back us up, is she? Depths, she’d happily see you in a cell. She’s not exactly a fan of yours.”
Benny shook his head. “What, you think the high and mighty Countess is going to drag herself down to the lower court for a burglary case? Anyway, she doesn’t have to know. We don’t say any of this until we’re in court. Then, they have to decide if it’s worth sending some poor sod to demand the Countess gets right down there and gives evidence. There’s no magistrate in the city brave enough for that.”
He had a point. No one fucked around a high mage, particularly the one who effectively controlled the Senate — no one except the Ash Guard, anyway, and this wasn’t an Ash Guard case.
“It’s a gamble.”
Benny shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve got a lot of options.” He leaned forwards across the table to meet my eyes like he used to when we were kids and he had been dead serious about something. “I’m relying on you, mate. I’ll owe you.”
I answered him equally seriously. “Of course.” I would make them believe me. You don’t let friends down.
Benny sat back with a grin. “So. What’s going on with you?”
I let out the tension that had been building in my chest.
“Well. I lost my ghost-hunting job.”
Benny grunted.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gave me a look. “Have you ever kept a client for more than three days?”
That wasn’t fair. “Most of my work isn’t that kind—”
“You’re too honest, mate. That’s your problem. No one wants that. You need to lie more often. People don’t want to hear the truth. Tell them the lie they want to hear.”
I glared at him. I wasn’t in the mood to take business advice from the man locked up in a cell. “Is that what you do to me? Tell me the lies I want to hear?” I knew Benny lied as easily as he breathed, but the idea that he would lie to me offended me.
“Nah. We’ve known each other too long. We’re pretty much brothers. You can’t get rid of your brother, anyway, no matter how much you might want to. Just ask your sister. She’s been trying to pretend she doesn’t know you for years, but if you walk into her home and ask for help, she will help you.” He looked at me critically again. “And you do need help.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t think he expected me to. I had left the path he was suggesting years ago, and I had no intention of finding my way back to it.
“Yeah, well. Take care, mate, if not for yourself then for me. I need you in that court.”
“I said I’d be there,” I said, more sharply than I’d meant. I was still stinging from his comments. Benny never believed in pulling his punches.
I wasn’t the kind of accomplished liar that Benny was. I could front up to unreasonable clients or make excuses for my failures. I could lie to get out of trouble or out of things I didn’t want to do. I could even blurt out the kind of single, simple, direct lie I had told Imela Rush in Thousand Walls. But none of that was the same as standing there in a court and convincingly telling the type of lies on which my friend’s health — even life — depended.
Don’t let it overwhelm you. I couldn’t allow anxiety to undermine my performance.
I left Benny in the cell and headed out of the Watch into the heat of the afternoon.
I had never been great under this kind of pressure. Now I had to be.
I did have a connection to the Countess. I could invoke it if I had to, or invoke Mica and ask her to back me up. Mica would lie for me — I hoped — and no one would question her; she mattered in Agatos. But once I had played on those connections, they would become real again. I could not go back to that. I didn’t have it in me. My time as a trainee mage under the Countess had left me a wreck. If there was no other way, maybe. But I thought it would be the end of me.
I would have to convince the magistrates myself. I would have to be the mage I had never wanted to be. I would have to bring the black cloak, the entitlement, and the arrogance, as though nothing an ordinary citizen thought or wanted mattered, and hope it didn’t choke me.
The longer I dwelled on it, the harder it would become. I needed a distraction. I needed alcohol. Maybe a bottle of Dumonoc’s undrinkable wine would dull my nerves. Maybe I would be better with a hangover.
Head ducked down to avoid the glare of the sun, I trudged back towards the Grey City and the cool dimness of Dumonoc’s bar.
Which was when a large man stepped out of a doorway and punched me straight in the face.