Ileoni’s family home was a small house on a terrace near the foot of Giuffria’s Spear. It was well maintained, with clean whitewash on the walls, a blue painted door and shutters, a couple of small olive trees in pots on either side of the entrance, and honeysuckle spreading across a trellis above it. We were close enough to the Ash Guard fortress here that, with a little magical boost, I could have hit it with a thrown rock. Of course, throwing stones at the Ash Guard was rarely recommended. Not that I hadn’t been tempted from time-to-time. The edge of the Warrens was only a couple of hundred yards further south, but the contrast was stark. The poverty and desperation that haunted the Warrens was absent here. This wasn’t a rich part of the city, but it was the kind of place where most people would be happy to live.
Not today, though. The unease, fear, and anger that now permeated the Warrens were nearly tangible here, too. Emotions like that spread quicker than cholera and could be just as lethal.
“I want you to show me where this thing was,” I said, “then I want you well away from here.” Her brow knitted, but I ploughed on before she could object. “I don’t know what I’m dealing with. I can’t worry about keeping you safe.” Sometimes all you could do was try to survive. Ileoni wasn’t like Benny or Sereh or Captain Gale who could look after themselves when shit came raining down. And that was a good thing. That was how it should be for almost everyone. That was why I was here, and why the Ash Guard existed. So ordinary people didn’t have to deal with things like this. Depths, if you were wealthy and privileged, it was why the City Watch were there, too.
“Fine. Just don’t go in my room.”
“I…” My jaw worked. “I wouldn’t.”
“I’m joking. But don’t. Come on. I’ll show you the cellar.”
I didn’t see much of the house as she led me through. The last light was fading fast from the sky, and the valley itself had sunk into darkness. Ileoni didn’t stop to light candles or lamps but led me confidently through. From what I could see, the house was neat and clean, even if the furniture and wall-hangings were old. When we reached the cellar door, she unlocked it with a key that hung beside the door then unhooked a lamp. I conjured a mage light before she could pick up the matches.
She glanced at me. “See? You’re good for something.” From anyone else, it might have been an insult, but the smile that accompanied it took away any sting. “Do you need anything? Food? A drink?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be all right.”
I sent the mage light drifting down the cellar stairs. Tidy shelves filled with jars and small sacks lined the side walls. A chest sat against bare stone at the far end.
“It was here,” she said. “I didn’t see it, but I heard it, and…” She shuddered. “Anyway, I’ll wait with my family in the house at the far end of the terrace. They’re friends. Will that be far enough?”
“It had better be.” If it wasn’t, I was getting myself in far too deep. Again. “If anything goes wrong, head for the Ash Guard. Ask for Captain Gale and tell her what’s happening. You’ll be safe there.”
I waited until Ileoni had left then grabbed the lantern and matches and slowly descended the stairs, feeling step-by-step with my feet, my eyes unfocused. There were traces of magic here, definitely, and not just from my mage light. Something supernatural had been here, but what, I couldn’t tell. Powerful, though, to have left traces for so long.
I scoured the cellar. Ileoni hadn’t been exaggerating about the scratches on the flagstones. There were dozens, all at different angles, deep and sharp. I doubted I could have made them with a knife. There were no magical sources or artifacts here, though, no unusual levels of raw magic.
The tattered remnants of whatever magic had been here last night were concentrated on the back wall. I dragged the chest away, hearing crockery rattle inside.
There was no hidden gap in the wall nor a secret door. Not even a drain. I moved the chest over to near the stairs and settled on it to watch. What was behind that wall? Another cellar? A sewer? The remains of an older, collapsed building now buried by time? The ground beneath Agatos was riddled with the ruins of previous generations of the city, as I had discovered to my cost.
Maybe there was just earth behind it.
I doubted Ileoni’s family would be happy if I started dismantling their wall, and until I knew what was going on, that would be premature.
I lit the lantern then let my spell fade. The presence of magic might put off whatever had been here – although that would be an easy solution if it did.
As I sat here in the flickering light, I couldn’t help but remember the cellar in the Sunstone house where I had gone to exorcise ghosts only to encounter the dead god, Ah’té.
Ah’té is gone. The magic that summoned its ghost is gone. Benny had swallowed the fucking claw that acted as a source of power and a link for the summoning. Ah’té wasn’t coming back.
Still, maybe I should have brought silver, charcoal, and arevena flowers in case this was a ghost.
“It’s not a ghost,” I said out loud. “Ghosts don’t leave traces of magic. They leave ectoplasm – ghost-trail – and that would be gone in minutes.”
My voice echoed hollowly around the cellar.
“And don’t fucking talk to yourself.”
Waiting was something I could do. Maybe when people hired me, they had a vision of chases through the city, me flinging spells in every direction, dispatching bad guys – or, more realistically, tracking down lost pets and spying on cheating lovers – but what they were really paying me to do was wait. Sometimes it came down to magic, if we were dealing with a curse or a ghost or there was no other way to spy on someone, but mostly it was about standing in the shadows until something eventually happened. Or didn’t. It wasn’t what I’d imagined either when I’d set up for hire, but I’d learned to appreciate the calm over the last few months. Far better to be bored than running from an insane or dead god. It gave me time to think, and right now I needed that.
I wasn’t making progress on Ethemattian’s impending murder nor on the death of the Lady of the Grove, and I was almost out of time on both.
Ethemattian had to have been set up by someone in his temple. Access was too difficult otherwise, and there was the matter of him having to put himself forward in person and in writing to the Most Cursed, Coyd Keffen. So, the Most Cursed was either in on it – bribed, maybe? – or couldn’t tell Ethemattian from a beached dolphin. Magic was also a possibility, either to prevent Keffen paying attention to an imposter or disguising that imposter as Ethemattian. Either way would take a Depths of a lot of magic. There were far easier ways to kill someone. A knife in the kidney or a bashed-in skull were always popular alternatives.
And there was the matter of the selection of Ethemattian as the sacrifice. There had been five volunteers. How could anyone be sure that Ethemattian would be the one picked? Again, magic might nudge the choice, but if not, that meant another conspirator at least. From what Kehsereen had told me, this was a ceremony that took place in front of the entire Brythanii priesthood and was carried out by a second Most Cursed. What could Ethemattian have possibly done to piss off so many powerful priests?
I was going to have to squeeze Keffen, and the sooner the better.
Then there was the Lady of the Grove. If anything, I had made less progress there. I didn’t know how a god could be killed. I didn’t even know the theories. Ash could usually suppress a god’s power, and I knew for certain that the Guard had at least one god buried in Ash and helpless somewhere beneath their fortress. Maybe you could kill a god trapped in Ash, but there had been no trace of Ash near the Lady’s body, and the Guard kept a brutal rein on the possession of it. In any case, the body was just the god’s puppet.
And just suppose I could find out how the murder had been achieved? Would that actually take me to whoever was behind this or just to another bunch of scholars who never left their colleges?
I was going to have to get Scholar Longstream to squeal, one way or another.
I couldn’t keep my eyes unfocused all night without giving myself a splitting headache. I let myself fall into a pattern of checking every ten minutes or so while I tried to figure my way through my problems, and I almost missed it when it emerged.
The first hint I had was the stench, like a sewer leaking into the cellar. When I let my eyes lose focus, the magic was seeping through the back wall, and by then a shape was already emerging from shadows, becoming like solid smoke. That was the best way I could put it. A shifting, fluid form that sprang momentarily into fixed, hard structures before billowing into new forms. I glimpsed claws in the shadow-smoke, teeth, hints of spikes and matted fur, eyes that blinked like stars between torn clouds and then were gone again. Hulking, bent, then tall and skeletal. The foul sewer smell made me choke.
My first instinct was that it was a tormented ghost. I had seen them like that before, ghosts of the bitter and the angry and the scared, but this wasn’t made from ectoplasm. There was magic to this, and solidity drawn from the surroundings. But it wasn’t a spell. It was something intrinsic. Not a god, either. The power was wrong.
And while I was busy wondering what in the unholy Depths it was, I had let it finish forming. The last of the magic seeped through the wall and coalesced, then the thing came for me. I threw up a shield, and the shadow-smoke shattered momentarily against it. The impact threw me back off the chest. My head bounced from the stairs, and I saw stars.
Somehow, I kept the shield up, which was a good thing, because moments later, the thing reformed and came after me again.
I had been unfeasibly lucky the shield had stopped it. There were a dozen things that could have passed right through, but this was solid enough – real enough – to bounce right off.
The shadow-smoke pushed against my shield. I felt it driving me down, like I was trying to hold up a collapsing ceiling. Anger rolled off the thing. And now it was spreading across my shield, as though feeling for the edges.
“Fuck’s sake!”
What would happen when it found its way around? I wasn’t keen to find out. I reshaped my shield into a half-sphere around myself. Still the shadow-smoke spread, squeezing, teeth and claws striking against the shield and then dissipating back into smoke. And, shit, I had been wrong. The shield had held against the first impact, but shadow-smoke was seeping through. Just wisps, but it was coming.
I gathered more raw magic, my body flaring in pain, shaped it into a blade, and slashed through the thing.
The blow didn’t kill it. It didn’t even hurt it. But for a second, the shadow-smoke parted, and I saw it.
“I know you.”
Tendrils of shadow-smoke formed inside the shield. They scratched over my skin like needles, like a hundred paper cuts. I gritted my teeth against the pain.
This thing wasn’t a ghost, but I had seen inside it, and it wasn’t so different. If you couldn’t destroy the source that linked a ghost to a place, you could still unpick the knots that held it together and dismiss it, at least for a while. I had seen the same type of knots anchoring this thing.
I sent my own tendrils of magic into it, searching for the knots of magic and ripping them apart. I wasn’t gentle.
The shadow-smoke wasn’t gentle, either. Its tendrils tore and stabbed at my skin. But I had it now.
Suddenly, it burst. The smoke dispersed into shadows, which faded in the light of the lamp.
The last of the thing’s magic faded. I forced myself up. My hands, my face, and my neck felt like I’d been in a fight with a hundred angry kittens. My skin was criss-crossed with thin, shallow cuts and was coated in blood. Every part of it stung. I cursed creatively. At least it hadn’t got my eyes, and at least most of it had been held out by the shield. This could have gone much worse, which made it a victory in my books.
My body didn’t agree with me. I was going to have a Depths of a big bump on the back of my head.
I didn’t know if this thing would be able to form again like a ghost – a ghost had its source that it was tied to and sustained by – but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I let myself settle and my breath slow, then I wiped the blood from my face with a sleeve and set about weaving wards around the cellar and the house that would keep the thing out.
It took me an hour, and I was bone-tired as I struggled up and out of the house, even with my mage-enhanced constitution.
The street outside wasn’t busy, but even so, I drew a few frightened glances as I made my way to the last house of the terrace and hammered on the door.
Ileoni must have been waiting just inside because the door slammed open and she stood there, staring.
“Pity, Nik! What happened?”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry. It’s superficial. A couple of hours’ sleep will sort it out.”
“Depths. So, there was something?”
“You weren’t imagining it. And it’s a Cepra-damned good thing you didn’t go down there again.” I hated to think what might have happened to an unprotected person.
“We need to get you cleaned up. Is it safe?”
“Yeah. It’s gone, and I’ve protected the place so it doesn’t come back. As long as the Ash Guard don’t come visiting and wreck my wards, you’ll be fine. And if they do, I’ll set it up again.”
I let her lead me back to her place. I was too beaten up and bloodied to object, even when she insisted on wiping my stinging skin with a wet cloth. I realised as I sat there, wincing, that despite my intentions, I wasn’t going to make it to Holera and Elosyn’s for dinner tonight after all.
You always let someone down.
They would understand. An uneasy voice in the back of my head whispered that maybe this would be the time when they wouldn’t, that I would have pushed it too far, like I had pushed Benny too far, like I pushed everyone too far.
But I couldn’t go like this. I wouldn’t make it. I would have to apologise, beg forgiveness.
Fuck.
“You should borrow one of my brother’s shirts,” Ileoni said. “Either that or start buying red shirts, because this one is wrecked.”
Wasn’t that always the way with my shirts? Bloodied and torn and ruined in days. “Your brother’s six inches shorter than me,” I said. “It would look ridiculous.” I tugged the mage’s cloak around me. “This hides it well enough.”
She didn’t look convinced, but she let it go. “How about the neighbours? Are they going to be safe, too?”
“They’ll be fine. These things are linked to locations. They can’t go far. You just had the bad luck to be in the wrong place.”
She let out a sigh and sat in the chair opposite me. “So, what was it?”
“They’re called Manifestations. They’re similar to ghosts, but they’re magic-based creatures, not the remnants of a dead person. They’re shaped by strong emotions. Fear, fury, even happiness, although this one wasn’t manifested by happiness, I can tell you that.” Not unless someone had a really strange idea of happiness.
“There’s not been anything like that in this house. I would know. It’s been normal. We have arguments sometimes, but nothing much.”
“It’s not you. It’s the Warrens. Things are getting out of control there. People are angry. More than that. Furious and terrified, and it’s spilling out of there. If I were you, I would keep well away from the Warrens for the next week or so.” I levered myself up. Everything hurt, and it was just going to get worse sitting here. I needed to go home and sleep, even if just for a short while. “I have to get back.”
She stood. “I owe you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She eyed me for a moment. “Still, you know you’ve got me to talk to if you need. About what we said earlier?”
I nodded, although the movement was more of a jerk. I couldn’t think about that right now. I didn’t have it left in me. I raised a hand, then headed back to my apartment for the sleep I so desperately needed.
I should be so lucky.
When I reached home, a figure stepped out of the cover of the steps.
I had seen him already, despite his best attempts to hide, so I didn’t meet him with a blast of magic that would have knocked him senseless. I also resisted the urge to turn around and sneak in the back. My visitor’s pale skin looked ghostly under his hood.
“Mr. Ethemattian,” I said.
“Cursed Ethemattian.”
I forced a smile. It made the scratches on my face sting. “Come inside.”
I needed a better way of running my business. I was always coming home to people hanging around my door. Maybe I needed an assistant. How I would pay an assistant, and who would be crazy enough to work for me, well, best not think about that.
I opened the door and let Ethemattian precede me.
“I saw you outside the temple,” he said.
“I hoped you would.” It hadn’t even crossed my mind, but one thing I had learned was never to turn down the chance to look good to a client. The perception of competence paid better than actual competence. “I want to bring you up-to-date with the investigation, and I need to ask you some questions.”
He nodded, but he couldn’t stop glancing around, starting at the sound of Fria scratching at the inner door. I had left Fria home too long again. At least he hadn’t escaped this time. Maybe he was finally settling in.
“Is everything all right?” I said.
He flicked a look at the door, then his shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to be seen here. If whoever set me up knows I’m onto them…” He trailed off.
Whoever was behind this must know he wasn’t going to take this lying down. He hadn’t put his name forward for the Choosing. It was only natural he would be trying to find out who had. But he was right that my involvement would be better kept a secret for as long as possible.
“Where then?”
“There’s a bar I go to when I don’t want to be seen.”
That was no surprise. Everyone had secrets, from the lowest beggar to the highest emperor, and priests were worse than most. It was all that training in being mysterious.
“It had better not be Dumonoc’s,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind. You don’t think your colleagues know about it?”
“Of course they do.” He smiled. It didn’t look natural on his face. “It’s called the art of diversion. You let them think they know what you’re trying to hide. Then, when you do want to hide something, they’re looking in the wrong place.”
Smart. Sneaky, but smart. I would have to remember that trick.
“I’m not the only one,” he continued. “I could tell you shameful secrets about every priest in the temple.”
Well. That could be unexpectedly useful. “How about Keffen?” If I could get dirt on the priest in charge of the Choosing, I could squeeze him.
Ethemattian tipped his head to one side. “Which one?”
“The Most Cursed— Wait, what do you mean, which one?”
“There’s Menatha Keffen as well.”
There! Now I remembered exactly where I had heard that name before. She was one of the other candidates for their Choosing. If I hadn’t been so distracted by all this stuff with the Lady and Benny, I would have figured it out far quicker.
“Are they related?”
“Uncle and niece.”
I clenched my fists so I wouldn’t tear my own hair out. “The priest in charge of the Choosing is the uncle of one of the other candidates, the one you had a fight with just a week ago. And you didn’t think it was worth telling me?”
He shrugged helplessly. “It was nothing… She wouldn’t…”
Fuck me sideways. How much time had he wasted?
“Please,” he said. “I really don’t want to be seen here.”
“Fine.” It would give me time to compose myself and not tear the stupid bastard’s head off and shove it up his own arse. “Where?”
He named a bar in Dockside. “Come in five minutes.” He glanced up at me. “Maybe without the cloak?”
When he was gone, I let a furiously enthusiastic Fria out of the apartment. He jumped up, wagging with enough force to stun a bull.
“All right, boy, all right.” I should have got a dog a long time ago. No one had ever been this happy to see me. “Wanna go to the bar? We can drink our sorrows away.” Maybe alcohol would dull the pain of my injuries. If not, well, I wouldn’t look so out of place among the Dockside drunks. “We’ll call it a wake for Mr. Inles.”