Spellbreaker (23 page)

Thaddeus's handsome features were relaxed and almost angelic in sleep. His skin was light brown, his wild hair salt-and-pepper, matching the four-day stubble on his face. He wore a wrinkled tan longvest.

A squat table beside the sleeping pallet held an ornate tray of opium paraphernalia. Leandra frowned at the slender pipe and the squat lamp. Strong memories then—tropical nights under a mosquito net, she and Thaddeus entwined, humid darkness, vivid dreams.

“You want me to wake him?” Holokai asked.

Leandra shook her head. “You won't be able to. He's a wizard. Well, used to be one. Before sleeping he likes to cast Numinous spells onto his brain to give himself quaternary cognition and intensify his opium dreams. He'll have cast some rather viscous protective texts about himself.”

She walked to his bedside. “Given how fast he's breathing, I'd guess opium's mostly worn off.” Beside the opium tray she found a folded piece of paper. In his familiar looping scrawl, Thaddeus had written “In Emergency, tear above my head.”

Leandra moved the mosquito net and then picked up the sheet and unceremoniously tore it in half over Thaddeus's forehead. She hoped whatever spell was written on the paper was unlocking his brain from its far wandering dreams. After a few moments, his lids began to flutter.

So she poked him in the ribs, hard. “Good morning, Sunshine.”

Clumsily, Thaddeus tried to push her away. She poked him again. “Time to rise and commune with the mysteries of the universe.”

Thaddeus groaned. His eyelids opened slowly, revealing pinpoint pupils. He seemed to focus. Then he snapped awake and jerked away from Leandra as if she were a cobra. “Gah! Ah, ah,” he spluttered. “Gah! Lea?”

“Probably not. Probably you're hallucinating.” Using her foot, she tilted his bedside table until his opium paraphernalia crashed to the floor. Pretending at primness, she sat on the low table and then with false cheeriness asked, “So, how are things?”

Thaddeus was still breathing hard. He looked from her to Dhrun to his four arms back to her again. “When you said you wanted a man who would always lend you a hand, I thought you just meant two of them.” He paused for a laugh that was not forthcoming. “No wonder it didn't work out between us.”

“That wasn't the only way you were physically disappointing.”

“If he physically surpasses me in some other way,” Thaddeus added, “I don't want to see it.”

“Not to worry. Unlike you, his most remarkable physical feats don't involve scratching himself in public.”

Thaddeus hauled himself into a sitting position. “I'm not hallucinating then; only you could be so caustic.”

Leandra bowed if he had just complimented her.

“Well,” Thaddeus said, “maybe your mother could have done better.”

Leandra frowned. “You always know how to say the exact wrong thing.”

“Call it a gift.”

“I called it everything else already, guess we'll go with gift.”

“So why do I have the, ahem, pleasure of your sudden and ominous company? Not to mention the sudden and ominous company of your—” He looked from Dhrun to Holokai. “Would you say goons?”

“I would say goons.”

He cracked a lopsided smile. Still handsome, she had to give him that. Bastard. “Very well, why have I been graced with the company of the Warden of Ixos and her goons?”

“Before I answer, tell me what you know of the fight on Cowry Street last night or of the recent attacks on city deities.”

“There was violence?”

“A brawl on Cowry Street. Since then small groups of men, some of them spellwrights, have been attacking minor deities throughout the city. What are people saying about this?”

“Lea … last night I was…”

“Oblivious to the world because you were smoking opium with halfhearted intentions of unlocking the secrets of your mind that then predictably devolved into satisfying the pathetic wants of your addiction?”

“You make it sound so negative.”

“Last night I got my hands on a godspell from the empire.”

“You don't say.”

“At the cost of a disease flare, I had a particularly strong bit of prophecy.”

“Were you able to perceive time as a landscape?” During their years of experimentation, Thaddeus had tried to write for her a Numinous spell that would give her the same glimpses into prophecy that her mother had. Most of his experiments had done nothing, a few had made her spectacularly intoxicated, and one caused her to vomit—violently but not without satisfaction—into Thaddeus's lap.

“No,” Leandra said patiently. “Nothing like that. The godspell allows me to feel forward into time. I have enough experience with it now to know that it's accurate. Normally, it allows me to feel only an hour forward. But during a disease flare, it allowed me to feel a day forward. I felt beyond any doubt that sometime in the dark hours of this coming morning I will have to choose between murdering someone I love and dying.”

Thaddeus was leaning forward, all slackness of sleep and intoxication gone from his expression. “Fascinating.”

“So now I have to ask you, Thad, why might I need to murder you?”

He only blinked. “But you don't lov—”

“Don't,” she interrupted firmly, “make stupid observations or I will have Holokai jam a few shark's teeth into your ass.”

He looked confused. “But after that, ahem, trouble with that other woman—”

“Three other women.”

“Three other women, you couldn't lov—”

“Holokai.” She gestured. “His ass and the shark's teeth, if you would be so kind.”

“No, no, wait!” Thaddeus blurted. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yes, well … I am sorry about that. Truly contrite.”

“I don't doubt it,” she said in a voice that communicated just how much she doubted it. “However, you haven't answered the question. Why might I need to kill you in just a few hours?”

“Other than the three other women?”

“Wanting to kill you, Thad, and needing to kill you are different things. Why might I need to kill you?”

He blinked. “I can't think of anything.”

“Neither can I.” Leandra sighed. “Which is too bad, because if I have to kill anyone on my list of possible victims, I would choose you.”

“What happens if you just run away from the city?”

“The prophecy assures me that everyone I know and love will die. So I can't just run or hide or smoke enough opium to fog my brain into oblivion.”

“I see,” he was absently biting his thumbnail, as he often did when thinking.

“It is too bad I can't stop myself from loving.”

“I'll say it is. That would solve everything.”

“It is too bad that you can't cast a spell on my mind that would stop me from loving.”

“You mean like that time I tried to write a spell that could stop someone from feeling hatred? The one we talked about—” He looked at her. “Oh.”

“So we come to the second reason for my little visit,” she said. “Do you still have the drafts?”

He looked past her to the bookshelves. “Somewhere. But I never got past casting it on monkeys and then dunking them in water.”

“It wasn't your most compassionate moment, but if I remember, none of the monkeys died.”

“No and they didn't bite me afterward either. But, you can't mean you want me to…”

“I want you to.”

A sudden wide smile broke across his handsome face. “No one's ever done anything like that before.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Ever?”

“Two famous linguists have written about the theory behind such a text. The first was Magister Agwu Shannon, your father's former teacher. And the second was Magister Lotannu Akomma, your aunt's confidant and the current Dean of Astrophell. I met him when I was training at Astrophell, you know.”

Leandra frowned as an idea tickled her brain. Something about the name bothered her. “What does Akomma look like?”

“Tall, very dark skin, long dreadlocks going to gray. Doesn't talk much. Well, doesn't talk much for an academic. Why?”

Leandra shook her head. “Never mind. You were saying?”

“Maybe Lotannu Akomma could write a spell that could stop someone from loving, or someone like him, but I couldn't. I'm…” He gestured to the opium paraphernalia now scattered on the floor. “I'm me.”

“It is quite the handicap,” she said. “But I want your best effort and I want it tonight.”

“But—”

“You owe me,” she said in a voice suddenly low and vicious.

Thaddeus held still for a moment but then nodded. “All right, tonight I'll try to stop you from being able to love.”

“You tried to do that to me years ago without magic and failed.” Leandra stood. “So this time, you'd better succeed.”

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Belowdecks, Nicodemus stepped into the cabin and found the pyromancer asleep in her hammock. Sir Claude had bound her ankles and wrists with metal. Doria had bandaged her amputated right palm.

Nicodemus sat on a stool and pulled a brown vial from his belt purse. In his other hand, he held a small cloth bundle he hoped he would not have to unwrap.

The years had given him occasion to interrogate prisoners. At times he had been harsh, even cruel, but never yet a torturer—not because he was a good man, but because he was a lucky one. There had always been alternative methods of motivating prisoners. Maybe one day his luck would wear out. Maybe that day was today.

Nicodemus looked up from the brown vial and saw that the pyromancer had opened her eyes and was studying him. Though her expression was neutral, the tension around her mouth betrayed her pain. She hid it well.

“You know who I am?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Magistra Doria Kokalas has explained about your hand? We cut out the canker curse in time to save your life. You understand about my touch and the canker curse?”

Again, a nod.

“I told Magistra to withhold pain medication until after we talked. I need clearheaded answers. So I propose a trade.” He held up the brown vial. “The alcoholic tincture of opium.”

The pyromancer's eyes fixed on the vial.

“My wife tells me that physicians who fail to give the proper pain medication after surgery are guilty of torture.”

“How convenient for you,” the pyromancer said between stiff lips.

“It's good that you have a quick wit. This will go faster. So then, perhaps you can start by telling me your name.”

She only glared at him.

Nicodemus looked at the brown vile. “It is a bit of a strange thought, to torture by withholding. Say the word ‘torture' and the mind jumps to the clichés—thumbscrews, hot irons, that sort of thing. But if you think about it, this leaves fewer scars, less mess on the floor. It's perfectly justifiable until you've given clear answers.”

“Whatever your justification, you know it's monstrous,” the pyromancer blurted. “You know you, your wife, and the league are all monsters. Your intermingling of humanity and divinity is an abomination to the Creator.”

“So we get down to business. We in the league worship the Creator as well, you know.”

“You place your petty gods before the Creator.”

“That's the new teaching in the empire? Your rivals are inhuman, so it's permissible or maybe even necessary to destroy them? Hardly original thinking. But then what—other than something monstrous—is original?”

“You'll not get another word from me.”

“Not even your name?”

She looked away.

The barge rocked and set her hammock swaying. “Torture by withholding,” Nicodemus said slowly. “Maybe it shouldn't be all that surprising; after all, what is more painful than kindness or love withheld? What's more harmful than a lie by omission?”

She said nothing.

“Very well, perhaps not your name. But perhaps you can tell me why imperial spellwrights are brutalizing small villages on the Bay of Standing Islands? Why kill all those innocent villagers?”

Her face twisted with hatred. “We d-din't—” she stuttered in rage but then pursed her lips.

“Go on.”

She closed her eyes.

“Let me guess: You were ordered not to talk if you were captured.”

“Ordered not to be captured,” she growled. “It was only because that bitch cast that hydromancer spell on me and I was confused. If I had been clearheaded, I wouldn't have attacked you. I would have cut my own throat.”

“That's your preferred method? Is that why you drove the villagers into a madness in which they did the same?”

“We didn't cause that madness.”

“You really shouldn't tease me like this. We've only an hour more until we reach Chandralu.” He paused to consider the vial. “You will be taken, under guard of course, to the infirmary. Magistra Kokalas explained to me that amputations are more complicated than one might think. Taking off a limb is not so simple as sawing off a heel of bread. They will have to revise our crude field operation, take out some of the bones and meat in your palm so that there will be enough slack in the skin so they can sew the skin together. Does that make sense?”

She didn't move or speak.

“I would like to tell them that you have been cooperative and to be generous with the pain medication. I would hate to say that you have yet to explain the imperial presence in Ixos and that therefore they would have to use … what was it Doria said … the minimum necessary anesthetic, I believe.”

The pyromancer was pressing her lips together so tightly they blanched.

Nicodemus sighed. “Talking to you like this … It makes me think back to when I was a disabled boy—always afraid of others, of punishment, of powerlessness. Sometimes I wonder how I became so ruthless. Sometimes I wonder if I could have been anything but ruthless. Sometimes I wish I could go back to being that disabled boy again. He would have pitied you. But being who I am now and knowing the part you played in brutalizing the village of Feather Island, I don't feel much pity.”