Spy, Spy Again Read online

  So he was all alone in the Great Council room, which was a bit gloomy, what with two layers of horn between him and the outside sunlight.

  “I should have thought you’d have opened the lanterns, Father,” she said, peering at the Banner Bearer’s chair through the shadows. “You’re sitting back there like an old Mage afraid too much sun will sap his mystery.”

  “It’s restful, which is more than I could say for the meeting of Elders this morning,” he replied. “You’d have heard them wrangling if you hadn’t gone shopping.”

  “Wrangling?” That seemed—odd. “Over what?”

  “We have an unprecedented surplus, because some bright thing realized that there was a Crown bounty in Ruvan on the heads of Karsite demon-priests. So I sent someone out to the ambush site and had him collect enough bones from your burn pit for seven very handsome rewards. That, in addition to our other commissions, has led to a surfeit of actual money.” He sounded more amused than annoyed. “And each of the Elders has a different idea of what to do with it.”

  “We’re saving it, of course. . . .” She let her voice trail off, because while saving coin seemed like a very good idea, it might not be the best idea.

  “Most of it. But I pointed out that you were responsible for all of those kills, and thus you were due the Sleepgiver’s portion, and I allocated that on your behalf.” She walked over to the seat and could finally see his amused expression. “I trust I am assuming correctly that all you really wanted for yourself was that colossal sheepskin and the black bearskin for your bed that you’ve been talking about every time you go to the second-level market?”

  Now she knew why they had been missing! She’d noted their absence and felt a pang of jealousy of whoever had gotten them! And it turned out to be her! “I get cold,” she said. “And I really like bearskin. But no, I cannot think of anything else I want or need.”

  “Good, because the Sleepgiver’s Portion was enough to buy us a full grove of those drought-hardy jujube trees and another of cactus pears.” He grinned, his teeth showing whitely in the gloom, and why not? This had been a goal of his for as long as she could remember, and there had never been enough money to accomplish it. “We’ll have fruit from the cactus pears in a year or two at most, and from the trees soon enough. It’s just the right time of year to transplant them, too. Plus, once they start to really spread, cactus-pear pads are very good roasted, so we get a vegetable and fruit out of them.”

  “Since I am going to get the benefit of cactus-pear jam, I fully approve of this,” she agreed happily. She didn’t bother to ask where he was going to have them planted or who he was going to hire to tend them; that had been settled long ago. It had only required the money to be able to purchase the saplings and rooted cuttings.

  “And when the Elders heard what I planned for your money, they graciously allotted enough for several hives of bees to be bought in the spring to be placed in the new orchards.” He looked very well satisfied with himself, and so he should be.

  “Well, now, that brings me to a question of my own,” she said. “Assuming those wretched Karsites will at least stop sending priests for the winter.”

  She explained about the odd Talismans and took off the necklace to give him to examine while she went on with her request to consult with other Mages about them. He handed the necklace back to her, nodding. “I’ll consider it,” he said. “My only concern is that you’ve never been outside of Ruvan; in fact, you haven’t been many places inside Ruvan. It’s a strange old world out there, with stranger people in it.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  He got up from his seat, pulled out the longer of his two daggers, and smirked at her. “Knife practice.”

  She nodded; she knew very well what this meant. It was part of standard Sleepgiver training; fight all-out while discussing something. Real weapons, not wooden practice ones; a Sleepgiver at her level—or her father’s—had to be able to pull his blow so accurately that you could barely get a hair between the blade’s edge and the target’s skin.

  She pulled her own long dagger, and they began to circle each other. “You know about the Karsites already,” he said, avoiding her jab at his gut as she dodged his cut at her wrist. “Theocracy. That’s perilous stuff.” She lunged, he jumped up backward onto the stone table to avoid it. “I don’t know if their god ever did speak to them directly, but he doesn’t now. My little birds tell me all the ‘Appearances’ are pure magic.”

  She followed him up onto the table and sucked in her gut to avoid his lunge. “So they make sure all the Mageborn get pulled into the priesthood?”

  He saluted her with his knife, then turned it into a neck strike, which she parried. “Or declared heretics and burned. That’s what they do to everyone with Mind-magic, too. Not just people that manifest it and can’t control or hide it.”

  Her eyes widened, as at the same time she slashed for his wrist. “Everyone? But that means—” She parried a double-feint strike. “—they’re burning children as soon as the power manifests at all!”

  “Exactly.” He rolled off the table. But she was not taken in by the fact that he seemed to be retreating. “Another good reason to hate them, if we didn’t already have one. If—” she took an oblique jump off the table, putting her several arm’s-lengths away from him “—oh, good move! If I’d been in charge when they made that contract offer, I’d have done plenty of investigating before I took it.” He was forced to come to her, as she took an advantageous position where he could only come at her directly. “But your great-uncle didn’t, and no one has his memories, so we’ll never know why.”

  “That’s probably why he ordered no Talismans made of him at the end,” she suggested, parrying his quick succession of cuts easily. “He was ashamed. He’d made a terrible mistake, it got worse when we broke the contract, and in the end, he lost his grandson anyway.”

  “Reasonable assumption.” He dodged as she made a dive-roll, slashing at the backs of his legs as she passed. “And that brings us to Cousin Mags and those crazy Valdemarans. They’re ruled by horses—” He went for her as she rolled to her feet, but she had the momentum to easily evade him. “—well, sort of. I got to know two of them. The horses, I mean, not the Valdemarans. I got to know several of them besides Mags. They’re not really horses. Not sure what they are. Spirits incarnated, I would guess, maybe ancestral ones.”

  She went for his eyes and he parried at literally the last second before she was going to pull. “There are worse things,” she said after she had thought about it for a while.

  “There are,” he agreed, “But anyway, no one can be King or Queen who isn’t partnered with one of them. And they overrule their riders all the time. So . . .”

  She spun out of the way of the next strike. “So, ruled by horses. You’ve told me what else the riders do, which all seems sensible enough.”

  “They don’t allow magic either, which is how our Sleepgivers ran into trouble,” This time he shoulder-rolled right over the table to give himself some breathing space. “Somehow—and don’t ask me how—they’ve tamed an entire country full of air spirits to find and surround every Mage that passes the border and stare at him.”

  She held up both hands, signaling a brief halt, so she could give him a look of utter incredulity. “Stare? Just stare? How is that supposed to keep a Mage out?”

  “Think about it, you’re a Mage,” he countered. “You’ve got dozens, maybe a hundred of these things, surrounding you at all times. Staring at you. You can see them. You can sense them even with your eyes closed. Sleeping or waking, they’re there. You can’t chase them away. You can’t wall them out. You can’t persuade them to leave. You can’t destroy them.” He waited while she thought about it.

  She tried to imagine it for herself, and after letting her imagination run for a while, found herself shuddering. “See?” he said. “That interfered with the old-style Ta
lismans the Sleepgivers wore, making those personality fragments even more unhinged than they were before, and that in turn affected the Sleepgivers wearing the Talismans. Game on?”

  She nodded, and he slid across the table at her.

  “But you weren’t wearing one of those,” she pointed out, going for him instead of trying to dodge, which sent him in turn writhing out of the way.

  “I was not. So that’s why I could see what had to be done. And, regrettably, had to end a few of our own people in the process.” He rushed her, she stepped aside at the last moment and scored his back with the flat of her blade. “Ah, good one! Point to you! To be honest, by that point they’d all been inside Valdemar long enough that they weren’t capable of thinking at all anymore, and the personality fragments had completely taken over.”

  “Mercy kills,” she agreed, and started to feel the beginnings of an ache in her side. “Do you want to continue this and get your point back?”

  He sheathed his knife. “No. Let’s get some water.”

  She sheathed hers as well, and followed him into the home, where there was always a terracotta jar of fresh water waiting beside the door. “So, the Valdemarans are ruled, or co-ruled anyway, by spirit horses, and Mages can’t get in there. What happens to people born Mages?”

  He dipped out a pottery cup of water for her and then one for himself. “As far as Mags could tell me, they’re fine as long as they don’t actually do any magic. It’s active use of magic that brings the tormentors out to play. And there’s no one to teach them, so I suppose it lies dormant.” He shrugged. “Not my business, nor that of the Nation.”

  She nodded. That was eminently sensible. Let the Nation tend to the Nation’s business; Cousin Mags was no part of it, so let him and his kingdom do what they liked. But that made her think of something else.

  “What do we do if someone else offers a contract to us to go into Valdemar?” she asked. “I doubt Cousin Mags will sit back and allow that to happen.”

  Her father shrugged and sat down on a sculpted bench, patting the feather-stuffed cushions beside him. She took the offered seat. “Well, I’m not going to tell him about it, obviously. And he doesn’t have a Mind-magic ability to see the future, nor to see anything at a distance. So I’d just take care that we operated in such a way that he never found out. And I’d just send the best of the best—without Talismans. It’s not as if Sleepgivers now can’t work just as well without them as with them. How often do you use yours?”

  “Not often,” she admitted.

  “So, problem solved.” He set down his cup out of the way, on the stone ledge behind the bench. “Besides, the only people likely to want contracts against the Valdemaran leaders are Karsites. That’s likely to be the only people Cousin Mags would really care about. No one else could afford us.”

  And then, astonishingly, he started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Oh, there was one lackwit who sent an inquiry a while ago. Some idiot merchant who’d gotten himself exiled. Rump? Grump? Ah, I remember. Remp. It never got farther than our broker in Menmellith, because he wouldn’t agree to pay the fee up front. Kept insisting that’s not how you do business. Our broker kindly informed him that was how we did business, and if he didn’t like it, he could find someone else.” Her father wiped his eyes, he had been laughing so hard. “And then the dolt had a full-blown temper tantrum and got himself thrown into the street for his pains.”

  She found herself staring at him with incredulity. “When is the last time that happened?”

  “A century at least.” He shook his head. “Last I heard of him, he was trying to hire a mercenary army ‘to be paid on victory.’ You can imagine how well that’s going.”

  “Less well than dealing with our broker,” she suggested, knowing that mercenary captains not only did not suffer fools gladly, they did not suffer them at all.

  “Remind me to tell you another time about all the bickering among the Great Clans of Rethwellan,” he said, getting up. “It makes for some interesting contracts. In the meantime . . . I’ve thought about it, and yes, I think you should consult with other Mages about those trinkets of yours. If they’re as old as you think, they could be both powerful and dangerous. If there’s a mystical catastrophe, I’d rather it happened somewhere other than the Mountain.”

  All her spent energy came back at that. Not that she was worried about some sort of ‘catastrophe’—but if her speculations were right, and there was some kind of elemental spirit confined to these Talismans, it had been a very long time since they had first been bound, and if they were released, they were likely to be disoriented and possibly annoyed. It would be better to have Mages about who were more acquainted with handling such spirits than the ones here in the Mountain were.

  “How long before I can leave?” she asked eagerly.

  He grinned. “As soon as you can persuade your mother.”

  She sighed. “This is going to take a lot of whiles.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The school, or more properly, the enclave of Amber Moon Mages lay to the west and north, in the finger of Rethwellan that stretched into Menmellith. It was closer to Karse than Sira liked, but then, White Winds was nearly twice as far away to the south, and she would still have to go nearer to Karse than she liked. Amber Moon seemed like a much better choice, and her father and, reluctantly, her mother, agreed.

  She did not take her beloved partner Aku as a mount. The Nation’s horses had a very distinct look about them, and riding one would give her away to anyone who knew what a Sleepgiver was.

  She did ride out on Aku, but only as far as the nearest horse dealer, where she got a serviceable desert pony and sent Aku back home without his saddle, saddlebags, and bridle. These she transferred to her unlovely but decent-tempered new mount and went on her way.

  She did not bother with any manner of disguise, other than not carrying her Sleepgiver wrappings with her. The baggy trews, wide-sleeved tunic, and waist-wrappings (so useful for concealing so many things!) were not so distinct from the sort of things that most of the people of Ruvan outside the Nation wore that she thought there would be any problems. Indeed, the trews were so baggy that unless she was riding, they could pass for skirts, so she very much doubted she was going to outrage any sensibilities about a female’s “proper” attire.

  This was still dry country, most of it given over to herds of goats allowed to roam free, so she camped every night. That was really her preferred option; there was no shortage of desert hares, and by noon she had usually bagged at least one, which took care of dinner that night as well as breakfast and lunch the next day. Her only complaint was that the pony was ploddingly slow. Except for the few small villages she passed through, she saw almost nothing.

  This was, in fact, the most boring journey she had ever taken.

  The only thing that bothered her was that this was flat land; there wasn’t anywhere to sleep at night that was as hidden as she would have liked, and there was no one to share a night watch with. It occurred to her more than once that she should have brought one of her siblings along . . . but it was too late now.

  So she compromised by making “camp” at sunset, staying in place just long enough to cook her supper and eat it, douse the fire, and pretend to go to bed. Then she’d pack everything up and slip back to a spot with better cover (much to the discontent of the nameless pony), and go bed down there, usually at the base of bushes that would disguise the outline of the pony and provide a momentary deterrent if a red wolf or desert cat made a try for her.

  Tonight, however, had been the exception to that.

  Just at sunset, when she stopped for her false camp, she saw a storm on the horizon. She had just enough time to hurriedly build a fire and cook her hare when it swept in.

  She was no stranger to desert storms and knew their power. She ma
de sure the pony was tied securely to a stout bush, then she wrapped herself up and threw her oiled groundcloth over herself and her gear literally the moment that the first drops turned into a deluge.

  Without even the scant shelter of a bush, the ground under her was soaked in moments, and she huddled beneath her inadequate shelter, rain literally pounding her. This was probably the most miserable she had ever been in her life; her hands, nose, and rump froze, the rest of her was cold, and all she could do was sit there and endure it.

  When the storm finally passed, she was too numb for a moment to realize that the constant pounding on her head and back were gone. She shook her head to clear it, threw off her groundcloth and—

  —froze—

  She was, literally, surrounded by Karsite demons, all too easy to see because they glowed an ugly, sickly yellow.

  She leaped to her feet, allowing rage to fill her, and determined to kill as many of the unholy things as she could before they dragged her down.

  6

  After a day, Tory’s initial alarm had passed. He went on about his business while Kee made sure none of his relatives were the ones that had given them that alarming gut punch, and they met, as usual in this weather (which was much too nasty for a wall-run), after supper in the Royal Library.

  Drizzle pattered on the library window as they entered; Tory had waited for Kee after spotting him hurrying up the hall toward the door.

  It was a fine room to lounge in; almost no one ever came there, and there was always a good fire burning. It smelled of applewood smoke, old leather, and the unique scent of old paper. “I’ve got nothing,” Kee told Tory, as Tory settled into a comfortable chair next to the fire. “I just came back from talking with Father. We’ve had Heralds check on every last distant cousin we can find, and no one’s hurt, no one’s been attacked, and the only thing I can think of is the obvious.”