Book 2, Chapter 58

Rouri, as it turned out, wasn’t a great source of information. She knew where her fellow cabal-mates lived and worked, and she was willing to point them out when I used Swarm’s scrying orb to scan the inner city—now that I knew what kinds of wards the walls had on them, I was able to slip past them without triggering anything—but her working knowledge of their mastery of the various magical disciplines was sparse, as were her reports of what kind of artifacts of power they might be wielding.

That wasn’t to say I got no useful information at all, of course. I now knew that Velvet had a hypnotic tool in the form of a false tooth that he activated when he smiled at people. Rouri insisted it was powerful enough to charm anyone with a dormant core outright. Weaver had a room that allowed him to brand runes directly onto any object—over a thousand, according to my new source. That just sounded like a lesser version of my own crucible, probably a portable setup comprised of various panels.

I also learned that Keeper was the mage responsible for the cabal’s secret vaults and was in possession of a sphere that stored memories. That was interesting to me, but not necessarily relevant, depending on whose memories were in there. Unless it contained information on how a group of rogue mages had enslaved a moon core to their will, or how my wayward apprentice managed to break the world core fighting back, I didn’t suspect the magical secrets inside that sphere would be valuable to me.

Finally, I learned about Monarch, who had taught everyone else everything they knew. Her expertise spanned every discipline, though some careful probing led me to believe she was merely at the level of what I would have considered a well-rounded mage with them, possibly a master mage in divinations. Also, she was apparently untouchable, possessing a torque that served as the basis of the inferior shield ward belts I’d sometimes encountered on various cabal members. Attempts at replicating its rune structures in full had all met with failure.

Rouri had eyed up my own amulet when she’d told me that, an unspoken question in the air that I ignored. Satisfying her curiosity wasn’t the point of our deal. She’d keep her life and her weapon, though I did have some hesitancies about returning that to her, and we arranged a dead drop for her potion once I’d finished it. It was safe to assume neither of us wanted to see the other ever again.

What I didn’t tell her was that, while we were discussing her knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the cabal, I was tinkering with the enchantment on her vanishing knife. It was so complex that I doubted anyone but me would ever even notice the change I made to it. Functionally, it was exactly the same as before I got it, except that it would need to be charged slightly more often due to the fact that I now possessed an awareness of where the knife was.

The range was limited, about five hundred feet or so, but there was no way I was giving an assassin who’d tried to kill me a weapon that could cut through my defenses without putting some safeguards on it. She wouldn’t be able to sneak up on me while wielding it anymore, not unless she ran the enchantment on it completely dry and broke it completely, at which point it would just be an ordinary knife and no longer a threat anyway.

Finally, we talked about Sibilant. There wasn’t much to say. Rouri had never met the man, wasn’t even sure he was a man. Orders were delivered telepathically or relayed via Velvet. There were never any letters or notes, nothing that could be intercepted, and Rouri didn’t report her success to anyone. I was apparently the first target who’d ever managed to beat her.

Sibilant might not even be a real person. It was entirely possible the whole persona was just a fabrication of Monarch’s, another layer of obfuscation to confuse enemies trying to follow trails of information. I couldn’t dismiss it as a possibility, but I didn’t consider it very likely. Someone had to be doing all that work, and if Monarch was busy being in charge, that meant it wasn’t her. It was still possible that Sibilant was an alter ego of someone else in the cabal rather than an actual person in his own right, though.

“And that’s everyone important,” Rouri said after we were done. “Time to let me go.”

“One more thing,” I said. “Who’s Hangman?”

Despite being tightly bound to the wall, she somehow managed to shudder. “I don’t know if he’s even a person. Monarch’s personal bodyguard. Almost seven feet tall, skeletally thin. Never speaks, rarely seen. Dresses kind of like me, actually. The working theory among the cabal is that he’s some sort of construct Freak built for her, but nobody can confirm it. He’s creepy, I’ll tell you that, but ultimately irrelevant if you’re strong enough to beat everyone else.”

I didn’t love that she hadn’t volunteered the information, but if she was right, I could think of Hangman as more of a security measure than an adversary. No, that was a dangerous assumption. Whether he was a person or construct, he could still move independently. Just because Rouri said he was Monarch’s bodyguard didn’t make it so.

The simple fact of the matter was that I didn’t trust the assassin. Nobody sane would. It was tempting to weave a scrying beacon into her knife, too, but I’d used up my available time with my first modification, and I considered that to be more important. I did not want that knife coming anywhere near me without my knowledge, and besides, I already knew where to scry now.

“I think I’ve got everything I need,” I announced, my mind hard at work concocting counters for everything I’d learned in the last hour.

“Great. Let me go.”

“Assuming you’ve told me the truth, at least.”

“I have. Let me go.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “No, I don’t think you’ve lied outright, but you’re happy to omit details that I might find important.”

“If you have other questions, ask them. Otherwise, let. Me. Go.”

I was already low enough on mana that I wouldn’t be able to do the teleportation until the evening, and only then if no other emergencies came up. I didn’t like being that low. It left me vulnerable. A mage lived and died by how much mana he had available to him when it came time to fight. I needed to retreat and recover.

I glanced at Rouri, then placed the knife at her feet. “Our deal was to give you back your knife and provide you with a potion in exchange for information. I didn’t say anything about freeing you.”

“What! You little—”

“You’ll get yourself free in another hour or two, I’m sure. And I’ll be long gone by then,” I told her. “Good luck with wherever you go next. I don’t really care so long as you stay away from me.”

Then I left her bound in stone, her mana core slowly generating what she needed to cast the spell that would free her. Maybe a few hours to reflect on her life would do her some good, but somehow, I doubted it.

*

Maintaining an anti-scrying invocation while I found a new place to hide put me on a clock, so I focused more on just moving farther away from the building I’d set my trap in than on finding the perfect new chunk of ruins to settle in. Once I’d selected one that was so dusty I suspected nobody had been through it in a while, I set up a new set of screening wards—properly this time—and released the invocation.

I had a few hours left before I needed to check on the scrying beacon I’d given Juby, time which I spent wisely in the form of a much-needed nap. This new body wasn’t nearly as strong as an adult’s, and I covered for that weakness with a lot of mana shaped into invocations to give me more endurance. It was nice to relax all of those and just drift off to sleep.

By the time I woke back up, the sun was high in the sky. I’d overslept by at least two hours. Part of me felt guilty, but I’d needed the rest. After taking a few minutes for my own business, I cast a scrying spell focused on the shielded beacon I’d given Juby.

I still wasn’t sure if he was going to take me up on my offer, and I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if he’d just left it lying in a street somewhere. He hadn’t done that. It was sitting on a pile of rubble in the corner of a building with six kids inside. All of them were injured in some way; at first glance, I would say they’d been blasted with stone shrapnel, leaving most of them with painful but ultimately minor lacerations. One of them had a broken arm, and another a broken leg.

The other four were healthy enough that they’d recover on their own over the coming weeks, assuming nothing else went wrong and they were able to get plenty of food and rest. Since that wasn’t a guarantee for them in Derro by any means, I suspected there was a lot of concentrated misery in that one little room.

I didn’t see Juby, but I had no doubt he was nearby. He’d kept the scry beacon and gathered up the orphans, so I assumed there was some interest in my offer. Now all I had to do was finish generating the mana I needed while I found them. My scrying spell had enough flexibility that I could pull it back from the beacon to get a look around, though that wasn’t much help since I didn’t actually recognize the streets.

I did know that it was somewhere north of me by almost two miles. I debated on casting my anti-scrying invocations again, but that had really only been necessary to keep the Wolf Pack from following me from my last known location. Now that I was back out of sight, it would be pure dumb luck for them to find me by scrying random streets. It wasn’t worth the mana cost, not when I was already short on what I needed.

I was awake and on the move. It was better to save the mana for if they managed to find me than to use it to hide. I broke down my wards, scavenged what little mana I could from them, and started walking in the right direction. Occasionally, I had to check with my beacon to correct my course, but after an hour or so, I started noticing familiar looking streets and buildings.

I approached the building my scrying beacon was inside and saw two kids sitting outside. Both of them watched me warily while pretending to pay no attention at all, but as I approached, one of them shifted in place and grabbed hold of what I expected was a stone shiv.

“I’m looking for Juby,” I said.

“Not here,” the older of the two kids, probably eight or so, told me.

“I know. When will he be back?”

“None of your business.”

“Wait, aren’t you the magic kid?” the younger one asked me.

“Yup. That’s me.”

“You’re the reason that mage tried to kill us,” the older one said. “He was looking for you.”

I shrugged. “I guess you could think of it that way. I don’t really feel like it was my fault. I certainly never asked him to come after me or anyone else.”

“Get out of here. You’ve caused enough problems.”

I wasn’t really surprised by the attitude, but I also wasn’t going to let it stop me. “I’m going inside to wait for Juby to get back. Once everyone’s here, I’ll explain my offer and you can decide for yourselves if you want my help.”

“I said to leave!”

Both of them had sharpened stone shards in their hands now, but they couldn’t get through my shield ward that way. I just walked past them, letting the ward bump them aside, and stepped into the cool darkness. Those broken bones should be tended, if nothing else. I’d take care of that first while I waited.

Mentally, I pushed the teleportation back another few hours at least. Who knew what else could go wrong between now and then?