Spellbreaker (40 page)

“Thank you for the advice,” Nicodemus said while suppressing a smile. “I hope you like it here, Lolo. I'm sure we'll find a wonderful place for you in the Ixonian pantheon.”

The boy nodded solemnly again.

Nicodemus stood and looked with curiosity at the druids. Tam explained about how Francesca had dunked the boy in the bay to provoke his transformation. The druid seemed ready to say more, but with a sigh Nicodemus told him to wait. He would need Francesca to explain her thinking. In the meantime he had enough to do, start another metaspell for example. He invited the druids to join him for dinner but they requested a tray be brought up so they could better look after Lolo.

Nicodemus left the room and was about to head back to the pavilion when, for no reason that he could fathom, he thought of Roslyn. Quietly he stole through the hallways to her room. He tapped gently on the door but got no response. He thought he could hear faint snoring so he slid the door back to peer in.

The old nurse, who had cared so diligently for Leandra, was lying on her bed. Nicodemus was again surprised to see how skeletal her face had become, how her lips clung to the teeth she had left. A plate of untouched curry sat on a side table. Despite snoring with a volume surprising for such a small woman, Roslyn seemed peaceful.

Nostalgia and regret churned in Nicodemus as he marveled that time should pass with deliberation in the moment but then speed itself faster and faster into memory. It seemed only days ago that a sickly young Leandra had been sitting in a younger Roslyn's lap. Now there wasn't much time left for Nurse Roslyn before whatever came after life came after her.

Nicodemus slid the door closed and to his surprise found John waiting in the hall. “I came to see if there was anything I could do for the druids.” He looked at the door behind Nicodemus. “She okay?”

“I think so. At least she's sleeping well. Thank you, old friend. Maybe you could see if Doria could use any help.”

“You know she hates it when you have people check in on her because you think she's a little old lady.”

Nicodemus absently scratched the keloid on his back. “I know, but she is a little old lady. Humor me.”

John gave him a doubtful look before nodding. “How about you, Nico? You all right?”

“As right as I can expect to be.” He chewed his lip. “There is a lot riding on tonight, and all I can do is wait.”

“Francesca or Leandra?”

“Both.”

“Of course it's both.” John smiled. “Did you ever think that we'd be having these problems?”

“Never in a hundred thousand years. So, will you check on Doria?”

John said that he would and that they'd both come down to the kitchen soon. So Nicodemus went back down to the pavilion and happily found the banquet table put away and every face shining with relief. One of the servants showed him to a small room that abutted the kitchen. Somewhere they had found a Southern-style table and chairs. Rory and Sir Claude sat side by side. Their backs were to the door and they hadn't noticed him.

Rory was leaning forward, his right elbow propped at a right angle on the table so that he could rest his forehead upon his hand. His expression was slack with fatigue. Sir Claude sat next to him. The knight's posture was, as usual, dignified, but he was leaning slightly forward so that he could comfortably reach out and hold Rory's other hand. Sir Claude was staring at a space somewhere above Rory's head. Together they became an icon of exhaustion finding comfort in company.

Nicodemus paused for a moment, the sight both accentuating and relieving his own fatigue. It made him think of the past thirty years, of the others who had joined his service. There had been Neha, the fiery hydromancer who had preceded Doria. A rebellious angel of lightning had killed her during the Tonatus Uprising. Then there had been old Sir Robert, the highsmith assassinated by a neodemon of darkness in Bearsleton. Others had died in his service, too many others, and Nicodemus was ashamed that he couldn't recall all of their names.

Nicodemus was not aware of making any sound, but Sir Claude withdrew his hand from Rory's and calmly said, “Good evening, my lord.” Rory sat up straight and looked at Nicodemus.

They both started to stand but Nicodemus waved them down. “No, no, please don't mind me.” He sat at the head of the table.

As ever, Sir Claude seemed composed and a little distant, but Rory looked first at Nicodemus then at Sir Claude with a haggard expression.

“Please,” Nicodemus said, “don't be any different than you were.”

After a short silence, Sir Claude said, “This, apparently, is how we were. Which…” He looked at Rory and gave him a brief smile. “Which will do for now.”

Rory's expression relaxed.

Nicodemus was searching for something else to say when a flash of blue silk appeared in the doorway. “Everyone breathe easy,” Doria announced as she walked into the room, “the old bat hasn't died yet. Thank you, Lord Warden, for sending the hospitality squad to go get her.” She nodded back at John who was standing in the doorway and giving Nicodemus his best I-told-you-so smile.

Nicodemus and the two other men stood. “Doria,” he said, “I'm sorry for setting John on you; I didn't want you to miss dinner.”

“No chance of that while my heart still has blood in it,” the old hydromancer said as she pulled up a chair. John moved beside her.

When Nicodemus motioned for them to do so, they all sat. A few moments later, the cook and his assistant entered with a steaming tureen. The party fell silent in expectation as the soup was ladled out. They drank it from the bowl in Ixonian fashion. It was rich with chicken and coconut milk, flavored with ginger and lemongrass. Nicodemus could feel its warmth fill him.

When the cook took the soup away, hunger's spell of silence broke and they lapsed into easy conversation, directed mostly by Doria. Nicodemus tried not to study Rory and Sir Claude, but on the few occasions he glanced over they seemed at ease. In fact, they even managed to stir up one of their usual teasing matches.

An air of relaxation came over the party, seemed to come welling up out of them. They had after all brought down the River Thief. The omens of war and Disjunction, they were problems for another day.

This was, Nicodemus reasoned, how every mortal lived: The certainty of death put aside for the comfort of a hot bowl of soup, a vivid blue sky, a friend's laugh. So it was that when the chef returned with rice and curry, the party was filling the small room with laughter and raucous conversation.

Even so Nicodemus found himself lapsing into silence and memories of dinners past, companions now dead. Then he remembered the young pyromancer he had captured on Feather Island. She would be in the infirmary now. He wondered if the physicians had operated on her hand yet to close the skin. He wondered if she were, at that precise moment, in pain or a drugged stupor. She had lost her fingers just that morning. Had there been a way he could have prevented that? Any way?

Suddenly Nicodemus realized that the chef was standing beside him, asking if he should like a shot of kava or rice wine. Nicodemus chose the kava and then waited until everyone else had been served before raising his voice. “A toast.” He lifted his cup. “To victory and confusion to the Disjunction.” These were his usual words and they sponsored the usual sincere cheers.

But after they drank, he raised his cup again. “These are unusual times—”

“Even more so than usually,” Doria interrupted.

“Yes, more than usually,” Nicodemus agreed, “and there are darker days ahead, but I cannot imagine finer spellwrights with whom to face them. So here is to you: my companions, my friends.” They cheered just as loudly for this but drank deeper.

When Nicodemus sat back down, they followed and the conversation and laughter resumed. He motioned for the cook to take away the wine and kava. A few toasts would keep up morale, but hangovers tomorrow would tempt disaster.

After saying a quick prayer to the Creator that his wife and daughter were safe, Nicodemus turned his attention back to his friends. John and Doria, Rory and Sir Claude, their faces were bright with happiness and what youthful vitality was left to them. Their world was a beautiful one, and he hoped that they would all find enough of it.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“So Thaddeus was the one?” Dhrun asked as they walked toward the Jacaranda Steps. “He was the loved one you had to murder?”

Leandra glanced back. Dhrun was looking at her with concern, Holokai with incomprehension. “I could have kept Thaddeus alive,” Leandra said. “But that would have required unacceptable risk.”

Dhrun was silent for a moment and then asked, “Meaning, you might still have to murder someone you love?”

“Loved,” she corrected.

“Someone you loved?”

“I might.”

Dhrun's expression did not change. “That is a pity.”

“It is. Is something wrong, Dhrun?”

“The tetrodotoxin kills because the victim can't breathe, but sailors give rescue breaths to men rescued from drowning. What if someone breaths for Thaddeus?”

“They would have had to discover him already and would have to breathe for him for ten hours.”

“Then we're safe?”

“Very safe. Even if his heart still beats as we speak, he's dead.”

“It's funny to think about. But I guess I'm not mortal.”

“Part of you is.”

“Yes, but it's a very cocky part.”

“I suppose the common thinking is to assume that death is a state. Some place you are put. But really, death is any state from which someone cannot return … Oh!” A sudden half-grasped realization flashed through Leandra's mind. She stopped.

“What is it?” Holokai asked, lowering his leimako.

“Nothing dangerous,” she said and started walking. “Just an idea about how to escape…” Her voice trailed off as her stream of thoughts flowed backward and forward in time. She realized that an hour ago she had sensed through the prophetic godspell a flush of surprise and danger. At the time, she had attributed it to her encounter with Thaddeus. But now she knew an opportunity to alter her futures was approaching.

A faint sound then, low then high and keening. Leandra held her hand up for Holokai and Dhrun. “There's … something…”

Dhrun pointed down the street. Out from between two houses shambled something human in shape but with a massive rotating head. A sallow aura lined his silhouette. On the evening breeze came a low, haunting wail. The figure lurched toward them. Holokai stepped in front of Leandra while Dhrun prowled to the right.

Leandra studied the stranger. Though the loveless spell had dramatically sharpened her vision in Thaddeus's room, that effect had lessened. Though still superhuman, her vision was no longer the wonder she had previously known. As such, at their present distance, Leandra distinguished only a few of the newcomer's features as he hobbled toward them. He had seven arms—one of them a stump above the elbow, the uppermost left entirely missing as if the limb had been plucked off.

The figure lurched, seemed to slip, fell. His arms went flailing and there came a howl. When he struggled back to his feet, Leandra saw that one of its lower left arms had snapped off like a twig. He was carrying the lost stump in one hand. The face on his cylindrical head was that of a praying mantis. “It's all right,” Leandra said. “It's only Baruvalman.”

Holokai relaxed. “Baru don't look good.”

Baru lurched toward them with his head spinning, now an infant's, now a scared warrior's. His wailing changed from an infantile shriek to an adult moan. “Lady,” he was crying, “lady, help me!”

Leandra looked around, saw nothing but the muddy streets and dilapidated buildings of the Naukaa. No ambush. Even so she said, “Be alert.”

As Baru limped toward them, the arm he had been holding broke apart. The fingers fell to the ground and then burned with crimson light. By the time the pitiful divinity complex stood before Leandra, the fractured limb had crumbled into nothing. Surprise swirled through Leandra. She had never seen a deity deconstruct on its own.

Baruvalman was looking at her with the face of a wrinkled crone, eyes wide, slack mouth, few teeth. “Great lady, help me. They say you were doing battle on this terrace. I knew I had to come to you. I knew. You must help me. There has been a mistake.” The divinity reached out two hands toward Leandra, but in the next instant Holokai stepped between them.

Baru stumbled backward, his head swiveling around to show the old warrior's. He fell to his knees, all remaining hands pressed together in supplication. “Please, great circle maker, take pity! Your agents have mistaken poor Baruvalman, but this humble god is your servant. He is worth saving from the godly sickness. Cure me!” Tears ran down his cheeks.

Leandra frowned. “Baru, what are you talking about?”

“It was your people. They said they were going to pray for me. They did say that. They very much did say that. I was begging and they said they would, but when I showed them…” His head spun to the child's and he pressed his forehead to ground while blubbering.

“Come now, Baru, it can't be as bad as that,” Leandra said. He was a divinity complex and should heal quickly. “Whoever approached you, they were no officers of mine.”

He began wailing louder.

“Pull it together, Baru. I'll do what I can. Who was it that approached you?”

“A man and a woman, both in new longvests. They said they had just come in from the Outer Island Chain and needed a divine guide. They said they would pray for me if I would show them around. I agreed and led them to a warehouse they said they wanted to see. Yes, very faithfully I did. But behind the warehouse, something happened. They were spellwrights of some kind.” He sat up and his head began to spin, all his faces wide-eyed as if searching the street.