In the time between my mother deciding I would never have the power to succeed her as high mage and my leaving her court for good, I had spent a year at Agatos University. There were, after all, more ways to be useful to the blessed Countess than raw magical power, and being of use mattered very much to my mother. Far more than family.
It hadn’t gone well.
I had grown up in the Warrens. The Warrens run deep, they always said, and it was true. I had hated it there and loved it, and it was carved into my bones. I had been seventeen years old when my mother had finally left the service of the Wren, claimed the mantle of High Mage, changed her name from Solone Thorn to Anatase Coldrock, moved the whole family – me, Mica, and herself – to her new palace on Horn Hill, and arranged election to the Senate. Mica had managed the move seamlessly. The street brat had become an elegant young lady in a single, smooth step. It had been too late for me, and I hadn’t fitted in any better at Agatos University than I had as my mother’s junior mage on Horn Hill.
Agatos University catered to the children of the wealthy and powerful of Agatos. The children of merchants, politicians, and the old families of the city. My mother might have been ‘the Countess,’ a high mage, and a senator, but I was still a child of the Warrens. I did not belong. Their effortlessly superior goat shit itched like a bed full of hot gravel. I’d had two choices: avoid them or unleash my fury and contempt on them. Wealthy and lofty they might have been, but none of them were trained mages. For a year, I had kept myself to myself, following my own interests in the university library. For a whole year.
I deserved credit for that, at least.
A year.
The blood, bruises, and broken bones I had inflicted on the students of Paupers’ College when I finally stood up to their bullying of the staff had been entirely their own fault. The university scholars hadn’t seen it that way when they threw me out. I hadn’t objected. I had already decided to leave, and I hadn’t held back on telling them what I thought.
I’d never imagined that one day I would come back looking for a favour, but earlier this year, I’d needed information about the ghost of the beast god, Ah’té, that had been terrorising the city. Their refusal to help had been a lesson, and it was why I hadn’t come empty-handed this time.
The university had been closed to students over the hottest part of the summer. Not because of the heat. The heavy, old university buildings were cooler than most parts of the city, being shaded by trees and surrounded by gardens. But the wealthiest and most powerful families escaped the city’s heat in the summer, retreating to the foothills of Carn’s Break, and if they weren’t going to be there, everyone else would have to wait for them to return. Now that the heat had broken, the university had re-opened and the students were back. The wide avenue of ancient cypresses leading to the entrance of Paupers’ College was busy with groups of young men and women and the occasional robed scholar. I had been out of the university long enough that none of the students would recognise me, but I couldn’t say the same for the scholars. Words had been exchanged when I’d left, and not many of them had been complimentary. I didn’t exactly hurry as I made my way to the college entrance, but I didn’t hang around, either.
The mill of students and scholars continued in the large lobby. I had made the mistake when I’d first come here of assuming that my fellow students were here to learn, but I’d been disabused of that early on. With few exceptions, attendance at Agatos University was part of the ritual of rule in the city, where future politicians, merchants, and family heads made the connections and alliances that ensured power stayed exactly where it always had been: in their hands. No doubt my mother had fantasised about my participation in those rituals, cementing her place in the city’s political aristocracy. It just went to show how little she knew me.
Attendance at lectures and tutorials was seen as a distinctly optional activity, which was a good thing, because based on the lectures I had attended on theoretical magic, they were the biggest pile of bollocks this side of a sausage shop.
I wasn’t here for advice on magic. I was here to find out if any among the scholars had taken their theoretical arguments on how gods might be killed into more practical realms.
I strode up to the green-cloaked scholar seated at the far side of the lobby and rapped on his desk, making him jump. “Scholar Longstream. Where is he?”
I didn’t recognise this man, and he didn’t seem to recognise me, but he recognised the black cloak and straightened. “Scholar Longstream is giving a lecture, Mystery. You will have to wait.”
I felt immediate sympathy for any poor sod trapped in the auditorium with him. “Excellent. I’ll wait in his rooms.” I pushed away from the desk and headed for the hallway leading to the scholars’ quarters.
“You can’t go in there,” the scholar called after me.
“I think you’ll find I can,” I said without looking back.
Longstream’s study was locked when I reached it, but a quick spell dealt with that, and I let myself in. I didn’t know Longstream well. I’d had a single lecture course with him on the history of religions in the Erastes Valley. We hadn’t hit it off. His study was the same mess of haphazard books and papers that I remembered. We had that much in common. The difference was that the college employed cleaners for the scholars’ rooms, whereas my apartment only ever got tidied when I had something else really important to do.
His books on theology and the history of religion weren’t much interest to me, nor were the artifacts on his shelves, but maybe I would find something in his personal correspondence or notes. If, as he had claimed, the topic of how a god might be killed was a matter of debate among scholars, he might have letters or records of arguments. I had come prepared with my bribe, but anything I could get without having to use it would be a bonus. I settled behind his desk and sorted through his papers.
By my estimation, it took me a good five minutes before I had completely lost the will to live and was suffering from flashbacks to Longstream’s interminable classes. His papers were full of notes on his lectures, and while it should have been impossible to write in a monotone, Longstream managed it. Certainly, there was nothing about killing gods. The most exciting thing in his desk was a heavily drafted and redrafted complaint to the senior scholars about the number of students he had been assigned (too many) and the attendance at his lectures (too few). I slid the drawer in and sat back. His door might have been locked, but he wouldn’t be the only one with a key. The cleaners and college staff would have access, students were notorious for getting where they shouldn’t, and there was always the matter of an interfering mage to whom locks were no barrier. If he really thought his ideas were important or original, maybe he wouldn’t keep them where they might be found.
I glanced around. His notes could be hidden in one of the many books, inside an artifact, in his private rooms beyond… Or maybe there weren’t any notes at all. Maybe he kept it all safely in his brain. Contrary to what some people believed, no mage could read another person’s mind. There were ways to extract information: compulsions, even torture if you were that kind of mage, but pulling thoughts from someone’s brain? Nope. I didn’t believe even high mages could do that. I hoped not.
The sound of keys in the door interrupted my thoughts. I just had time to scoot around the desk and settle into the visitor’s chair when the door opened and Scholar Longstream strode in. He had taken a moment to compose himself, but his face was still flushed. He must have hurried straight out of his lecture when he’d been told I was here. At least I’d saved whichever students had actually turned up half an hour of tedium.
“Mystery Thorn.” Longstream rounded his desk and settled in the seat I had occupied moments earlier. If he noticed the warmth of the seat, he didn’t show it. “This is becoming a habit. I have sent for the porters. I will take great pleasure in seeing you thrown out if you are still here when they arrive.” His scrawny shoulders were trembling. Anger? Or something else?
“I missed you, too. We’d better get down to business.”
“I have no business with you.”
I smacked the stolen book on his desk on a pile of papers. A satisfying puff of dust rose around it. “Do you know what this is?”
“It is called a book, Mystery Thorn. You may not be familiar with them.”
Smug twat. He knew I came from the Warrens, and he’d never let me forget it. He also knew I was the Countess’s son, so he hadn’t been able to refuse to teach me, but his opinion of me had never been high. That was fine by me, because my opinion of him was even lower.
“It’s one of the few remaining copies of The Silver Oak. I have it on good authority that the university doesn’t own one.”
Longstream’s eyes widened, and he reached for the book. I pulled it back and wagged my finger at him. “Uh-uh.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Do you care?”
I could see his mind working. The guy should never gamble, because his thoughts were written as clear as a banner across his face. “Is it genuine?”
“As genuine as it gets.” Like I would know. But I trusted Kehsereen. “Ready to talk now?”
His eyes hadn’t left the book. “What do you want?”
Now wasn’t this better? “I want information, that’s all. When we met earlier in the summer, you told me that there was debate among the scholars as to how gods could be killed. You’re going to tell me all of the theories, and you’re going to give me a list of the scholars who’ve been involved in that debate. Every one of them.”
Longstream’s thin fingers opened and closed like he was trying to grasp the book. I didn’t think he even knew he was doing it. His tongue darted across his lips. “No.”
“What?” This time I was the one who couldn’t keep the incredulity from my face. No? After all I’d been through to get this, robbing a senator, being caught in the act and attacked by a mage, breaking my fucking wrist. Kehsereen’s nose had been smashed into the cobbles.
“No. I have already told you the price for my help. It has not changed.”
“Are you serious?” Bannaur’s broken balls! I fought the urge to pin him down with magic and rip the information out in blood. Now was not the time to get locked up by the Ash Guard. But fuck me, I needed this. I had promised Benny. I’d wasted so much time and effort getting this book and bringing it here, time I could have spent chasing other clues.
What other clues? I pushed the thought away. I conjured a flame between my finger and thumb and held the book up to it. “You know I could burn this right here and now?”
Longstream’s eyes flicked nervously between the book and the flame. Then his expression hardened, and I knew I had lost. “You can. But my price remains. Raise the corpse of Agate Blackspear so he can tell me exactly how he managed to kill Sien, the Lady of Dreams Descending. Then I will tell you everything you want to know.”
I let the flame die. “You’re crazy.”
“Perhaps.” A smirk touched his lips. “But I will be at the Godkiller’s tomb at two in the morning if you change your mind.”
When I’d set up in business as a freelance mage, I’d lain down three very clear lines that I would not cross, and even though I’d pressed up close to them, I’d never stepped across. Firstly, I would never lay a curse on another person. Break a curse? Of course. All the time. It made up a good chunk of my business. Secondly, you couldn’t hire me to hurt someone. People might, and did, get hurt in some jobs, but I wouldn’t take a job to do so deliberately. And, finally, I would never raise the dead. I had done it once, during my training, and I had encountered the risen dead in my work, but the feeling of wrongness about them was like salt on a slug. Bringing back the dead always ended badly.
I left the university, passing through the University District – an area not so different in wealth to the better parts of the Middle City, but without that bustle of commerce and business that drove most of the rest of the city – then across the river to join the Royal Highway down past Horn Hill.
What Longstream was asking went against every principle and instinct I had. There had to be another way. There was always another way.
And what is it? I had felt the despair and anger in the air near the Warrens. People there knew something was wrong, and we wouldn’t be able to keep the Lady of the Grove’s death a secret forever. Things like that got out. Without hope, the Warrens would explode. People would get hurt. People would die. If I did do this for Longstream and we found out exactly how Blackspear had killed the goddess, then Longstream should be able to tell me who had proposed or championed that theory.
That was a lot of ifs.
“I’ll make another way,” I muttered.
It wasn’t that I was a stranger to failure. Depths, I was a twenty-nine-year-old mage scrabbling to pay my rent in a city that made mages rich. I had fucked up jobs, I had fucked up relationships, and I had fucked up friendships. But this was different. This was my one chance to prove to Benny I wasn’t the selfish cunt he thought I was.
Yeah? Aren’t you making this all about you right now?
I didn’t have an answer to that.
And while I was on the topic of making everything about me, I had done next to fuck all to discover who had set up the priest, Ard Ethemattian, to be beaten to death by his own congregation. I had to do a quick mental calculation to figure out he only had three days left. That wouldn’t be long to uncover the truth, even if I didn’t have the Lady’s murder to worry about.
Not long to live when you know you’re going to die, either.
I took a diversion on my way back from the university to check in on Kehsereen. I could say I wanted to make sure he was all right after our escapade and his face-plant yesterday – and I did – but I also needed the information he had promised about the Brythanii religion.
Selfish.
Kehsereen looked like shit when he answered the door, so I let him know that. His nose and mouth were swollen and raw, and he was limping.
“Not all of us heal like mages.”
“I could try to…” I gestured vaguely at his face.
“No. Thank you.”
Good choice. A skilled and powerful mage could help with wounds, but it was a dicey game to play, and there was a non-zero chance I would do more harm than good.
“Does it hurt?” Stupid question. Of course it hurt.
“I’ve had worse.” His hands moved seemingly subconsciously to his arms. He kept the raw scars beneath his sleeves and bandages covered, but they looked almost like acid burns. Should I have asked about them the first time I’d seen them? Was that what normal people did?
Too late now.
I dropped into one of his chairs and watched him lower himself gingerly opposite. His normal restless movement seemed suppressed.
“Is everything all right? Apart from that?”
He nodded. “I went to see Asarian at the Ash Guard fortress.”
“Not good?” His nephew had been tortured for months by the insanity of Enabgal, the god of nightmares.
“He is calmer, but … listless. He doesn’t respond. I know he needs the Ash to remain safe, but it takes so much from him.”
Mages, even natural mages, didn’t realise how much we sustained ourselves through raw magic. Only when we came into contact with Ash, as I had done too often recently, did we feel how draining that absence was. Asarian was a natural high mage. He had sustained himself on raw magic alone in the grasp of Enabgal. It was unheard of. The impact of having that snatched away must have been brutal.
At least he’s alive. Without the constraining Ash, the Guard would have killed him to protect Agatos.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “I will find a solution. I am meeting with the cult of Sharshak later. I have some ideas about Ash.”
“You need me along?”
“No. I don’t believe they are dangerous.”
They were a religion – or a cult; there wasn’t much difference. That made them dangerous by definition. But Kehsereen could look after himself, and I was the one who had almost got him killed yesterday.
“I don’t suppose you want a book?” I dropped The Silver Oak on his table.
His eyes went to it. “I cannot say I am not interested, but I am not sure it would be wise to be found in possession of this book right now.”
That thought had entered my head as well. I had thought that Longstream would take the bribe and no more would be said of it. But Senator Greenfield knew he had been robbed – another fuck up – and when he discovered what was missing, well, word would get around, and Longstream would have another lever to turn against me.
Kehsereen looked thoughtful – although it was hard to tell under the bruises. “I was sure he would want this book.”
“Yeah, well. He did. He just wanted something else more.” At the tilt of Kehsereen’s head, I added, “He wants me to raise the remains of Agate Blackspear.”
“Can you?”
“In theory. It’s been centuries, but that’s not the problem. I’m not sure how much of him would be left to raise, and I doubt he’d be able to communicate. But more to the point, it’s not something I do. You raise a dead person, they come back with their memories, but there’s something else missing, something that doesn’t come back. It always goes wrong, and Blackspear was a high mage. Think how wrong that could go. Think what could happen to the city.”
“And that is the reason? The threat to the city?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Of course.”
Ah, and it was bollocks. Of course I cared what happened to Agatos, but I also knew that Captain Gale and the Ash Guard wouldn’t let the resurrected corpse of a dead high mage wreak havoc on the city. They would step in before things got too out of hand. “You have to have lines. You have to have principles. If you don’t…”
“Then you would not know how or where to stop.”
“Yeah. This job… People need things. Desperately. They need answers, they need their problems fixed, their lives repaired. Without lines, how far is too far? When does doing good cross into doing harm?”
He spread his hands.
“Fuck.”
“I met with my Brythanii contact.”
“I hope it went better than my meeting.”
“Perhaps. We talked about the Choosing ceremony and about the time leading up to the ritual murder.”
“And?”
“It would be difficult to enter another person into the Choosing. Entries require the candidates to put themselves forward both in person and in writing. They are delivered to a senior priest – a Most Cursed, they call them – in the Sanctum.”
“Unless this Most Cursed is the one behind it. Maybe my client pissed them off.” He had certainly pissed off his brother, and while having your own family furious with you didn’t necessarily mean you were an arsehole, my own family were often pissed off with me, and I wouldn’t want a vote taken on whether I was an arsehole or not.
“Perhaps. But the Most Cursed who draws the name is not the same one who accepts the entries, and the draw takes place in the Sanctum in the presence of the entire priesthood.”
Right. So, it would need two of them at least – one to fake the entry and attest to its authenticity, and one to ensure Ethemattian’s name was drawn. A conspiracy like that was unlikely. There were easier ways to kill someone. But it wasn’t impossible, and I didn’t have a lot of leads. “I think I’m going to need to talk to this Most Cursed.”
“His name is Most Cursed Coyd Keffen.”
Keffen. I had heard that name somewhere before. Where? “I assume it’s not easy to access the temple to poke around?”
“You are right. Only Brythanii are allowed in, and even they are not allowed into the Sanctum unless they are priests or temple servants and guards. But I am told many come veiled in the period of the Choosing so as not to favour the god with their faces.”
“I’m guessing they’re still not allowed in the priests’ private quarters.”
“No. The priests have rooms behind the temple, but ordinary Brythanii cannot access those. Just the priests, servants, and guards, again.”
‘Cannot’ was an interesting word. A lot of people used it when they meant ‘not allowed to’. They would be surprised at how often those weren’t the same things. Ordinary Brythanii and non-Brythanii might not be allowed there, but with the right robes, a veil, and an outwards display of confidence, we would see.
I stood. “Thank you. And, you know.” I nodded at his bruises. “Sorry again about that.”
I spent the walk back to my apartment in thought. I would have to start talking to the priests. Ethemattian’s brother might hate him, but with no access to the private parts of the temple, I couldn’t see how he would have had the opportunity to arrange something so complex. The brothers didn’t even look that much alike, so he couldn’t have pretended to be Ard to submit a fake entry. The veiling in the days leading up to the ceremony – the murder – was an unexpected bonus, but the Brythanii were a pale-skinned, white-haired people, and I was … not. I would have to ask Ethemattian to find me clothes and a veil that would fit in and would cover me convincingly. Maybe even priests’ robes. Then, somehow, I would have to make this Most Cursed spill his secrets. Most people wouldn’t come out and admit they had set someone up to be murdered, and I wouldn’t know how to lean on the man until I met him.
“Wing it again, eh, Nik?” I muttered.
“It’s worked for me so far,” I said in reply. Within certain definitions of the word ‘worked’.
When I reached my office, the door was unlocked. I had locked it behind me, of course, but that didn’t seem to deter most people. For a moment, I wondered if Fria had figured out how to pick locks. It would explain his ability to escape every time he was left. Then I pulled in magic and shouldered the door open.
Benny was in the chair in front of my desk, turned towards the door. He didn’t look happy, even for Benny. His arms were tight across his chest, his shoulders hunched, and his dried-meat face fixed in a scowl. Sereh was there, too, sitting cross-legged on my desk, expressionless and unmoving. Somehow, that was even more terrifying. If she ever did decide to kill me, I would get no hint of it from her, and I wouldn’t get time to defend myself.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Benny demanded.
“Finding out about killing gods. Like I promised.”
“Yeah? You know who did it?”
“No.”
“You know how?”
“No.”
“Any suspects?”
“Not yet. But—”
“Fucking typical. Don’t know what I expected.”
I thought about edging around him to reach my seat behind the desk, but I wasn’t sure I would make it in one piece, and I would be disconcertingly close to Sereh, so I settled on the couch near the door. “Look, it takes time, all right? People who go around killing gods don’t tell everyone.”
“Well, there ain’t time. You been to the Warrens recently?”
“Last night.”
“Things are going to shit down there. People know. They don’t know they know, but they know. People are angry.”
I had felt that, too. A building fury. One spark, that would be all it took. It had been a while since there had been a good riot, and it was overdue.
“The person who’s got the information I need isn’t talking yet.” Yet. Not talking at all, more like, but I wasn’t ready to admit that.
Sereh’s head tilted, and those clear, still eyes met mine. “Why don’t I ask him, Uncle Nik? People like to talk to me.” Her knife had appeared. I hadn’t seen her hand move. I shuddered.
“No! I mean, not yet. There’s more things I can try.”
Her eyes didn’t move. I sat there, frozen, for several seconds. Then her knife was gone. “All right.”
Fuck.
“There’s no time for you to piss around like normal,” Benny said. “You remember Jirra Lane’s little bakery? The one in the alley behind Rulend’s house?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, well, it ain’t a bakery anymore. Jirra disappeared a couple of weeks back, and now there’s something going on there that’s got people nervous. Not Warrens’ stuff. Outside stuff. People don’t need to be nervous right now. You should look into it.”
“I said I could find out what’s going on,” Sereh protested. “No one would see me.”
“Yeah, and I said you’re not. Nik can risk his neck if anyone’s going to.”
“I’ll do it.” I reckoned I was going to be risking my neck a whole lot before Benny ever thought of forgiving me. “Did you do what I said?”
“I always do. Apple tree wood and volcanic glass. Wasn’t easy, but no one asked questions.”
It would do for now, as long as no one got too close to the god’s body. I would need a better solution eventually.
Benny got to his feet, heading to the door. “Don’t waste any more time. Anything that happens, it’s on you.”
Sereh followed him, stopping to peer up at me with those terrifying eyes. “I took your dog for a walk, Uncle Nik. You should do it more. He gets bored.”
I stared at her. I’d locked Fria in the private part of my house, behind my wards. I could see them there, still, unbroken. “How did you get through the wards?” I hadn’t given her or Benny passes when I had rebuilt them last. I had thought about it in the hope they might come and visit, but I had quashed that.
She smiled. “There are no wards in the shadows, Uncle Nik.”
I shivered as she danced down the steps to the street. Why had that sounded so much like a threat?