Shadows of Asphodel (32 page)

Konstantin smoothed back his hair and looked toward his overflowing bookshelves.

“If we hurry,” he said.

~

Magic remained a mystery to Ardis. She tried her hardest to decipher the thick books on curses and countercurses, but after half an hour, the symbols swam through her head in a soup of nonsense and impossibilities.

“Sorry,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I’m better with swords than sorcery.”

Konstantin leaned back on the couch and stretched so that his spine cracked.

“You look exhausted,” he said, as if he weren’t himself. “I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I didn’t offer you the bedroom.”

Konstantin’s bedroom? Her cheeks warmed.

He held up his hand. “Please, I insist. There shouldn’t be too many books on the bed.”

She smiled and shoved her chair from the table.

“Good night,” she said.

Wendel glanced sideways at her, and she could see the unspoken words in his eyes. She wondered what he wanted to say. She waved at them both, then wandered down the hall to Konstantin’s bedroom. The archmage wasn’t joking about the books on his bed. Ardis had to haul away several hefty textbooks on technomancy. She unbuckled her sword, kicked off her boots, and stretched out on the bed.

With a sigh, she shut her eyes and let herself sink into sleep.

Darkness invaded her dreams. She was chained to the wall in the coffin factory. Blood slicked her mouth and spilled from her wrists. She snapped her chains, but Hieronymus and the faceless Grandmaster blocked her way. Time tortured her with its slowness, favoring her enemies, and left her helpless as they advanced.

Ardis jolted awake, disoriented, and thrashed against the sheets tangled around her legs.

Then she remembered where she was—the archmage’s apartment. Konstantin’s words murmured through the wall.

“You don’t need to keep suffering in silence,” he said.

Konstantin sounded bland, almost clinical, but there was a strange rasp to his voice.

Barefoot, Ardis crept from the bedroom and peered around the corner of the hall. Konstantin and Wendel sat together on the couch, nearly close enough to touch, but she saw the tension in their shoulders.

“I could give you laudanum for the pain,” Konstantin said.

Wendel cocked an eyebrow, then shook his head.

“But not temporal magic.” Konstantin bit his lip. “They hurt you with it, didn’t they?”

Wendel’s jaw hardened, and he scribbled his reply on a piece of paper. Konstantin read it, then locked gazes with Wendel.

“You know why I care,” he whispered.

Wendel wrote quickly. He leaned across to press the paper into Konstantin’s hand.

Konstantin stared at the paper, then clenched it in his fist.

“Why?” he said. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

Wendel looked down, his eyelashes shadowing his cheeks. He ran his tongue over his lip and leaned closer to Konstantin, as if whispering a secret, but of course he could only be silent. His eyes glimmered in the lamplight.

Ardis leaned against the wall, holding her breath, and couldn’t look away.

When Konstantin tilted his face, Wendel met him halfway. Their lips crashed together. Ardis stifled her gasp with a hand pressed hard to her mouth. Wendel kissed Konstantin with breathtaking fierceness, backing him down against the couch, his fingers twisted tight in his curls. A startled noise escaped from Konstantin’s throat. Trembling, Konstantin traced his fingertips along Wendel’s sharp cheekbones.

Then, abruptly, Wendel retreated.

Konstantin staggered to his feet, and Wendel stood watching him. They stared at each other, both of them breathing hard.

It felt like the bottom dropped out of Ardis’s stomach. She had to be dreaming.

“Wendel,” Konstantin said huskily.

Without a backward glance, Wendel walked to the door. His hand closed on the doorknob.

“Don’t go,” Konstantin said. “Please.”

Wendel strode out of the apartment and let the door slam behind him.

Numb, Ardis backed into the bedroom. She tugged on her boots, buckled her scabbard to her belt, then returned to face the archmage.

“Konstantin,” she said. “What happened between you and Wendel?”

He smoothed back his hair with shaking hands, his face remarkably pale.

“We—we had an argument,” he stammered.

“About?”

Konstantin wouldn’t say.

Ardis started toward the papers on the table, the ones Wendel had written on, but Konstantin beat her to it and snatched them up. With shaking hands, he tore them into tiny pieces and let them drift into the fireplace.

Ardis forced herself to take a calming breath. Her pulse pounded in her temples.

“Konstantin,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

Glassy-eyed, he lit a match and dropped it onto the shredded papers. Wendel’s words curled and blackened into ashes.

“Then why are you
burning
the papers?” she said.

“Nothing. Happened.”

Ardis closed her eyes for a moment. “I saw you kissing.”

Konstantin flinched. He licked his lips, then spoke in a remarkably level voice.

“A mistake,” he said.

“And before that?” she said.

Konstantin looked into her eyes, breathing a bit too hard, and shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said.

Wendel had promised to help him for three days, but what had happened those three nights? Konstantin could never openly admit to being with him. In most countries, a man convicted of sodomy would face death.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll ask Wendel myself.”

Her heartbeat thundering in her ears, she stormed out of the apartment.

“Ardis.” Konstantin followed at her heels. “Wait!”

She stopped, her hands clenched in fists, and bared her teeth.

“I’m tired of waiting for the truth,” she said.

Konstantin stood outside the door, rummaging through his pockets. He patted down his coat, looking increasingly panicked.

“Where are my keys?” he said. “I can’t find my keys. Damn it,
he
took them.”

Wendel had picked the archmage’s pockets. Ardis felt a flicker of relief. The kiss could have been a distraction, nothing more.

“Why would Wendel want your keys?” she said.

Konstantin sucked in his breath.

“Because now he has the key to the laboratory,” he said.

“But why…?”

Wendel’s argument against Project Lazarus.
An army of metal men. You don’t intend to give your enemies a fighting chance.

They shared a glance, then started running down the hall.

Through the thickening snow, they ran from the apartment to the Academy of Technomancy. Arms swinging, legs pumping, Ardis gulped air as she ran, nearly sprinting to keep up with Konstantin’s long strides.

They jogged to a stop in the alleyway, and Konstantin rattled the door.

“Locked,” he said.

“Maybe he isn’t here yet,” Ardis said.

Konstantin’s breath steamed the air. “Maybe he locked it behind him.” He waved her onward. “The service elevator. Quickly.”

They dashed down the alleyway and turned the corner. Konstantin jabbed the call button.

“God,” he said, panting, “I hope—he didn’t—lock the laboratory door.”

Ardis sucked in a breath. “What do we do then?”

He shook his head.

The elevator doors clunked open. They jumped inside. When the doors shut, Konstantin stared at the ceiling, his cheeks pink. Ardis was still breathing hard, and she wasn’t sure it was entirely from the exertion.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “About the kiss.”

He kept staring at the ceiling. “You won’t?”

“I’m half-Chinese. My mother and my father broke the law to be together.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ardis, it never went that far. On my honor. There was one kiss, before, when we both had too much to drink. We wanted to celebrate finishing the automaton’s control systems. Halfway through the bottle, I thought he might be flirting with me. I kissed him, and he kissed me back.”

She rubbed her forehead as if this would help her brain digest these thoughts faster.

“Just kissing?” she said.

“Yes.” He sighed. “I thought he would never be with a woman. I was wrong.”

“We were both wrong.”

He glanced sideways at her. “I’m sorry. I never would have done it, if I had known. Clearly he chose to be with you.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Wendel is the bastard here. As usual.”

It was easier to joke about it, and pretend that her throat didn’t ache with anger.

The elevator shuddered to a stop. Before the doors opened halfway, Ardis and Konstantin bolted through and ran toward the laboratory. Konstantin leaned against the door to the laboratory, and it swung open under his touch.

The battered automaton they had taken out that night lay on the trolley. A panel on the front had been pried off, and a thick fistful of wires trailed from the automaton’s insides like it had been disemboweled.

“No,” Konstantin said, and it became a chant. “No, no, no.”

Deeper in the laboratory, the screech of bent metal echoed off the walls.

Ardis held her finger to her lips. “He’s still here.”

Konstantin bared his teeth, then grabbed a monkey wrench. He sprinted toward the sound of the dying automaton.

The automaton stood against the wall like a silent metal man. Wendel leaned across the automaton, reached into its guts, and clutched a fistful of wiring. He yanked it savagely and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he stabbed a screwdriver inside the automaton and pried out a piece of technomancy machinery.

A strangled sound escaped Konstantin. “The control systems.”

Wendel hefted the piece of technomancy machinery, then hurled it on the floor and smashed it beneath his boot.

“No!”

Konstantin lunged and swung the monkey wrench at the necromancer’s head. Wendel stepped into the attack, gripped Konstantin’s arm, and threw him on the concrete. Konstantin landed hard on his back. That knocked the wind out of him. Wendel twisted the wrench from his grasp and hurled it out of reach.

“Stop,” Ardis commanded. “Step away from him.”

Wendel tossed the stolen keys onto Konstantin, then slipped his hand into his pocket and vanished into the shadows.

“God, I hate that dagger.” She clenched her fists. “Wendel!”

His footsteps echoed down the length of the laboratory. She chased him to the stairwell and sprinted upstairs. His boots hammered the steps, echoing off the concrete, and he flung open the door. She skidded on the snowy cobblestones and searched the darkness, her breath clouding the air, but she had lost him to the shadows.

“Wendel!” she shouted.

Silence. Ardis swore under her breath. All he had to do was hide.

Footsteps crunched the snow. She whirled around. Warm fingers touched the back of her wrist, then pressed a scrap of paper into her hand. Her heart thumping, she backed against the wall and stared at the paper.

A tram ticket? It had been punched already.

“Wendel?”

The falling snow erased his footsteps. He was gone.

Ardis clenched her hands into fists and returned to the laboratory. Konstantin crawled on his hands and knees, picking up the scattered pieces of broken machinery. He had bloodshot eyes and utterly untamed hair.

“I can’t believe he did that,” he rasped. “I can’t believe it.”

“Konstantin,” she said.

“Is he gone?”

A droplet splashed on the floor, and she realized it was a tear. She stiffened, not sure what to say to the archmage.

“Gone,” she said. “How bad is it?”

Konstantin kept his head down. He concentrated on some especially tiny fragments.

“Bad,” he said. “I don’t know if I can fix it.”

Ardis knelt and helped him pick up the pieces of the automaton. He cleared his throat and rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. She thought about offering him her handkerchief, but she wasn’t sure if that would insult him.

“Damn.” He dried a tear from a technomancy component. “Corrosion.”

Ardis touched his arm. “Konstantin.”

He glanced at her and smiled miserably. “Yes?”

She handed the tram ticket to him. His smile faded.

“The 71 tramline,” he said. “But it’s an old ticket.”

“Wendel gave it to me.”

His glanced sharply at her. “Did he?”

“Yes.”

Konstantin sat back on his heels and studied the ticket.

“Ardis,” he said. “Have you heard anyone talk about taking the 71?”

She shook her head.

“It’s a euphemism for death,” he said. “The 71 line has a terminus in the Zentralfriedhof. The grandest cemetery in Vienna.”

Ardis’s blood chilled. So the ticket could be a threat or a promise.

“Then that’s where I’m looking for Wendel,” she said.

Konstantin’s face tightened with a curious mix of hope and despair.

“Ardis,” he said. “I won’t stop you, but I must warn you—Wendel has made an enemy of the archmages. And if you side with him, I can’t guarantee your safety. So consider that carefully before you do anything regrettable.”

Faced with his honesty, her heartbeat stumbled.