Spy, Spy Again Read online

  “The only message passing was between people planning on going to bed with someone they weren’t married to,” Kee said, with such chagrin in his voice that Tory figured he must have discovered this himself, in a particularly awkward way. “At least, they found excuses to meet at an empty hay tent. I didn’t stick around to discover anything else.”

  “Wise. Person could end up with a broken nose otherwise.” The wine was gone, but the spicy cup was still edible, so he finished it. “Don’t ask me how I found that out.”

  “I don’t have to, because I know,” Kee teased. One of the horses ambled over to them, looking interested. “Think this’d hurt a horse?”

  “It’s a cookie. I wouldn’t feed these things to a horse on a regular basis, but it can’t be worse for him than a lump of sugar.”

  Kee held out the remains of the cup on the flat of his hand. The horse sniffed it over, appeared satisfied, and lipped it off gently, then wandered away, making crunching sounds.

  “Well. The walk isn’t getting any shorter by waiting,” Tory said finally.

  And then something practically drove him to his knees, hitting his mind with bruising force.

  Rage! Pain. Focusfocusfocus . . .

  “What the—” Tory gasped, clutching the top railing of the corral in an attempt to stay upright.

  “You’re getting it too?” Kee choked.

  RAGE! He went down to one knee.

  Then—as abruptly as it had come—nothing.

  “What in the hell was that? Never mind,” Tory amended. “We’ve got to check on the others, now!”

  They clasped wrists, because when they were dropping into their “Farsight” trance unexpectedly, that seemed to help. Tory braced himself against the wood of the corral, and opened his mind.

  Sofia and Rafi—

  In bed. Sofia was asleep, Rafi was sneaking in some bedtime reading by the night candle.

  Mags— Strolling up the High Street with Kat, Perry, and Larral.

  Mother— In conference with the King.

  He sensed Kee checking on his brothers and they both satisfied themselves that they were safe; he sent his own mind questing after Abi, and found her sound asleep in her far-off bed, with a “scholar’s mistress” of books and papers piled on the side she wasn’t in and the covers pulled over her head.

  He let go of Kee’s wrist and shook his head to clear it. “I checked on our grandfathers and they’re telling old stories over wine with my grandmother,” the Prince said. He sounded utterly bewildered.

  “We need to catch up with Father and the others,” Tory replied. “That’s all I can think right now.”

  Kee nodded, and they both turned to sprint around—not through—the Fair. It was much faster to go around the sprawl of tents. Not to mention that anyone running through the aisles right now would bring the attention of Constables, Fair wardens, or both.

  They stopped once to make sure of the route the others were taking back, then sprinted again. They caught the group about halfway through Haven, in a neighborhood of middling prosperity and mingled shops and homes.

  At that point, the two of them slowed to a fast walk, so as not to alarm the others by running at them—which would certainly be the signal for a display of weapons from all four. Fog like this brought out thugs and footpads who took advantage of it to knock their victims unconscious before robbing them right there in the street.

  “Father!” Tory called out, as soon as they were within earshot.

  The shadows in the fog ahead of them stopped and turned as one.

  They were still panting as they caught up, and Mags’ keen ears caught it before Tory could say anything. “You two all right?” the Herald asked with concern.

  “We were just standing there, and we got—hit with something. Not a vision, for me at least it was all emotion and a little thought. Mostly anger. But it was out of the blue, and it hit us both like a cudgel.” Tory looked over at Kee.

  “I got flashes of fighting,” Kee added. “Then it all just cut off. We checked on everyone in the family, and they’re all fine. But—what could it have been?”

  “That—” Mags replied, his voice colored with astonishment. “—is a very good question!”

  5

  Fall and spring were the two best seasons on the Mountain: neither blistering hot nor freezing cold. And morning, for the household of the Banner Bearer, meant going down to the nearest market to buy perishables. Since it was her turn to shop, Sira returned from the midlevel Mountain market with four string bags of pots of jam she could not resist, plus meat for tonight and produce for the next couple of days packed into a bundle on her back.

  The beehive on their terrace still had some activity, but her mother had taken the honey harvest from it a fortnight ago, leaving plenty for the hive to use in the spring to get themselves started. Almost everyone had hives; honey was the main source of sweet things besides fruit.

  She unloaded her bags into the kitchen, where the cook, one of the three servants they had, took it from her. Not many people on the Mountain had servants; those were more common out on the farms. All three of the family servants had been liberated from slave trains as children and had elected to stay with the Nation, but they had not been suitable for Sleepgiver training. At that point, being Foundlings and without a place and family of their own, their choices had been to learn a trade and serve a seven-year unpaid apprenticeship, move out to the farms and work as servants, laborers, or herders there, or become servants to one of the families on the Mountain that could afford to pay a servant’s wages. There was enough prosperity that some families had servants, mostly the craftspeople and Elders, and the designation of “servant” did not have quite the same negative connation among those of the Nation that it did in other lands.

  “Thank you, Nilda,” Sira said politely to the cook, who had been with the family for as long as Sira could remember. For that matter, so had Seteen and Lharosh, who shared the household duties that Sira or one of her siblings didn’t do. Shopping was one of the duties that the siblings took turns with; Bey might be respected and the (so far) unchallenged Banner Bearer—but he ruled over a people who were the best assassins in the world, and all it would take would be for one disgruntled soul to decided he didn’t want to take the traditional way of challenging the Banner Bearer, and . . . well, all Sleepgivers had access to poisons and knew how to use them. So all shopping was done by the seven children. All cooking was done by Nilda under Anhita’s strict supervision, and all food was tested before anyone ate it.

  I’m sure everything about us would seem odd to anyone outside the Nation, but one of the oddest is probably that my father is essentially a King and has only three servants and no guards.

  Then again . . . Bey didn’t need guards, and neither did his wife and children. Sleepgivers didn’t have ranks as such, but everyone knew that the entire family was certainly in the top tenth—and they knew how to fight as a team. It would be suicide to go up against them. Plus, they had a Healer. No . . . a direct confrontation was never going to happen, so there was no need of guards.

  And as for the normal servants, when you lived in a simple dwelling like theirs, where even most of the furniture was stone, there wasn’t a great deal of cleaning to be done. None of them had elaborate wardrobes, and the only people in the entire family who had the sort of luxurious clothing one would associate with a ruler were Bey, his wife, and his eldest—that was just two outfits apiece, one for warm weather, and one for cold.

  Besides . . . that wasn’t how the Nation worked.

  The Nation had been born under austerity, and even if these days things were no longer “austere,” no one ever forgot that, and simplicity was part of their culture.

  So was sharing, for one of the tenets of life in the Nation was, “For the Nation to be strong, all must prosper.” The fees the Sleepgivers got for their missions b
elonged to the Nation, after a deduction of what the Elders decided was the proper amount went to the individual Sleepgiver who had taken the mission. The shared monies went to purchase all the things the Nation could not produce itself, and these were held in common stores. Farmers and herdsmen could determine whether to trade their surpluses for stores or sell or trade them at a market—for that matter, so could anyone who had extra from their terrace gardens. It was a little complicated, but not much, and the system meant that although no one got rich, no one starved either. And although food was simple, these days it was abundant and varied.

  She had brought up some bones from the butcher for Windhover as well, and she put them in storage for his evening visit. Then she went out to the terrace garden to harvest whatever late produce was still ripening. There were still love apples, and a squash was ready, and there was always kala leaf, right up until the frost and sometimes past it. Gathering it didn’t take long.

  The Karsites had been suspiciously quiet in these last few fortnights, which, while giving Sira a twinge of unease, at least allowed her to spend her time looking at those strange Talismans the Mages had found.

  And once she brought her harvest to the kitchen, that was what she intended to go back to doing.

  The Mages had been right; these Talismans were very different from the ones that had held the memories of Sleepgivers, and very much different from the ones that had held fragmented personalities of Sleepgivers. They didn’t even look the same. All of these Talismans were bronze disks, cast, she thought, but probably lost wax rather than a multiuse mold. They were no bigger than her thumbnail, where the Talisman she wore that held her mother’s memories was a quarter of the size of her palm and carved from the fire agate found here in the Mountain. All the Talismans she had ever seen before were carved from fire agate and roughly that size. There were, in fact, three craftsmen who did nothing but carve them.

  There seemed to be . . . something living in these odd bronze pieces. Not merely memories. Not personality fragments. Some sort of spirit.

  Were they the souls of dead Sleepgivers? Earlier today her delicate probing had convinced her that no, whatever was in there, it wasn’t ghosts. The other Mages hadn’t managed to muster up the courage to look as deeply as she had, but they tentatively agreed with her.

  She retired to her bed niche to ponder them further. It was warmer back there—the family hadn’t yet gotten around to putting up the horn windowplates and doors on the home itself, though they were already on the Great Chamber.

  The bed niches—in her parents’ case, an entire small room—were all along a narrow stone hall entered through the kitchen so that the sleeping areas were in the deepest part of their home. There was a niche for each member of the family and each of the servants. Each niche had a sliding three-panel “door” made of a frame of metal covered in padded fabric that could be pulled tightly shut for privacy. Each niche was much longer than the platform for the bed, with a storage area at the foot, mostly used for clothing, and shelves cut into the stone of the rear for storing things you wanted immediately at hand. There was a lamp holder set into the stone at the head of the bed; in that lamp was a copper ball with a spell on it. When you opened the lamp, the ball glowed, making enough light to read by. When you closed it, the spell stopped—spells being processes, as Sira’s teachers had told her, repeatedly, not things. And if you set them correctly, you could stop and start them at a signal even a non-Mage could use. When the copper ball was consumed, that ended the spell. These lamps might have seemed a waste of magic . . . but this actually was nothing of the sort. Within the Nation, wood was a precious resource, and you used it only where nothing else would serve. Oil, fat, and wax for lanterns, lamps, and candles were also precious resources. And there was the question of safety—within the bed niches, having an oil lamp or any source of open flame was an invitation to disaster, burns, or even a painful death if you overset it while it was lit.

  The Mages of the Nation used their abilities in the most practical ways possible, and for the benefit of the most people. Which was one reason why the only magical object a Sleepgiver ever had on his or her person was the Talisman. Employing magic to do what a Sleepgiver could be trained to do naturally was a terrible waste of resources.

  It occurred to Sira—as it had, more than once—that if there was any principle the Nation was built on, it was “Waste nothing, and do nothing wastefully.”

  She jumped up into her niche and closed the panels, opening the lamp without needing to see where it was. Once she had plenty of light, she pulled the pouch of Talismans off her belt and poured them out onto the bed; she picked one up at random and held it so that any markings on it would cast a good shadow.

  As before, she noted the hole, so they were definitely meant to be strung on a cord or a chain and worn on the person. They were all so old and worn that their markings were blurred and hard to make out, so while she had been shopping, she had decided to try the shadow technique to see if she could make anything out. She held one face up and flat so that the worn marks on it cast the longest possible shadows, and she frowned with concentration as she tried to make something out.

  On one side . . . well, it was definitely a pattern, rather than an object or a face. Waves? Possibly. Regularly spaced wavy lines, at any rate. And on the other side . . . definitely script and completely illegible even if it was a script anyone here would have been able to read. She picked up the next; it was like the first, so she put them both to the side, together, in their own little depression that she punched into the feather comforter with a finger. The third had wavy lines, but they ended in curls. The fourth had wavy triangles. The fifth and sixth, straight triangles. The seventh was like the third.

  It occurred to her that these could represent something very simple, like elements. Water, wind, fire, and mountains? Earth, maybe?

  So if these represented the four elements, what was bound to them? There were definitely binding spells there, but nothing coercive. No, the bindings seemed to be more like an anchor to the Talisman itself. Which would make sense, if you were somehow binding some form of the elements to the Talisman, but how in the name of the Bright and Dark would element-based magic help a Sleepgiver? Plus . . . there definitely was a different presence associated with each of these things.

  Could these Talismans date all the way back to the Beginning? To when the Nation had first settled on the Mountain? Or maybe even before?

  Could they even be Talismans as she understood the term?

  We never waste anything, she reminded herself. We never throw anything away. This might represent some form of magic that dates to before the escape, to the Mages we were sworn to protect, rather than our own!

  In which case . . . these probably were not meant to infuse a new Sleepgiver with memories of an experienced one, but for something else entirely.

  This was both exciting and alarming.

  By all rights, she ought to give them right back to the Mages who lived on the lowest level of the Mountain, deep in the labyrinthine passages that led to storerooms and libraries and workrooms, all protected from the vagaries of wind and weather. She should do that . . .

  Except they had no more idea what these things were for than she had. And all she had was a theory.

  No, I want to hang on to these for a while. If those cursed Karsites ever stop sending their cursed priests, perhaps I can persuade Father to let me go talk to the White Winds or Amber Moon Mages and see if they have any ideas what these things could be. The Nation had a mutually beneficial and amicable relationship with both magic schools, based on certain favors exchanged in the past and a recent contract to supply them with guards and guard trainers who elected not to become Sleepgivers.

  The Mages of the Mountain were reclusive souls; it was difficult enough to persuade them to come out as far as the outer caves to get a little sun, and they really preferred not to have to speak to
anyone who wasn’t also a Mage. The suggestion that one of them should travel somewhere would probably be enough of a shock to send half of them to their beds for a week. So if anyone went to talk to other Mages, it would have to be her.

  She rummaged in her mending supplies for some waxed sinew, and it didn’t take too long before she had in her hands a neat little braided necklace with each of the bronze Talismans spaced evenly across the front. She held it onto her neck for several long moments—just to be certain that skin-to-bronze contact for a prolonged period wasn’t going to trigger something. But nothing happened, and she tied it on so that it hung at the level of her collarbone, just above the leather thong that held her own Talisman.

  Once again, she waited, alert to any changes, but the only thing that happened was that the seven bronze disks warmed to the temperature of her skin. Finally, she nodded. If I go on a mission, I’ll take them off if I need to, but right now they’re safer where they are. And all anyone will think is that I’ve got a new necklace. Good thing they look nothing at all like our Talismans. She fingered one, finding the soft, well-worn bronze pleasing to the touch. Interesting. I wonder if these were actually worn as jewelry for a while after people forgot what they were for? Ah, no, the Mages had them in storage, so probably not.

  She pulled back the panels of the screen, closed the lantern, and decided to go talk to her father about that possible trip, assuming he was alone.

  He was, which was not extraordinary. He was considered one of the best Banner Bearers of recent generations, if all of Sira’s information sources were telling the truth (and they had no reason to lie). There had been some skepticism about whether or not he was going to have the stomach for the job, especially when he started talking about parting Sleepgivers from their Talismans, but by this point, because his assertions had been proven to be correct and because he was not inclined to issue edicts unless he absolutely had to and there was no other way to solve a situation, people respected him, respected his authority, and didn’t bring him problems they knew he would only tell them to sort out among themselves.