The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (27 page)

With Kiril Engashta’s servant child as our guide and Allian’s new clothes, we had no trouble getting a spot on the sky carriages to cross back to the western harbor. As we stepped down from the mageglass box, I yanked Allian out of range of the servant and muttered, “Are you certain this is wise? This man is a stranger. Why would he invite us into his home? I don’t trust him.”

“This is our only chance to enter Ricknagel’s sphere,” Allian replied. “We must take it.”

I frowned, though I knew he was right.

“He’s a fat dilettante,” Allian said scornfully as we hurried towards the harbor, the child a few steps behind. “And by all appearances, he’s mostly interested in getting in my breeches, the lech. Don’t you think if it came to it, I would win any fight between us? I won’t let him hurt you. Do not fear.”

Despite his words, I worried. Physical violence was not the only way to hurt a person.

By the time we reached the steps to Kiril Engashta’s townhouse, even Miki looked exhausted. A servant awaited us in the hall to take our cloaks.

Kiril called down the stairs, “You made it! Come in, come in. We’ve so much to do in such a short time!” Kiril gestured us deeper into his house. “I’ve spent the afternoon sorting out costumes for you. I do hope you like them. Here now, follow the maids upstairs. They’ll show you what I have arranged.”

Kiril’s house passed by in a blur as we were hurried to the upstairs rooms. The maids showed us in and then departed, leaving Allian and Miki in one and me in the neighboring one. I wondered briefly what reason Kiril made for Allian having two servants.

Miki flew through the door, brandishing a fluffy white thing. He snorted and threw it on the bed. “This is ridiculous.”

“Is that your costume?” I stifled a smile. “Just put it on. We need you to come to the masque. You’ll be another set of ears, and Allian’s right. People speak more freely around children.”

“It looks like something Costas would wear,” he complained.

“It could be worse,” I said. “Look at mine.”

As Miki trudged behind the dressing screen with his armful of clothing, I sighed and donned my scant costume, a long skirt and a brief corset-like top made from metal that dug horribly into my ribcage. Apparently eastern dancers suffered great discomfort in the name of their art. I would suffer, too, if it meant I moved a step closer to finding Costas and Tiriq.

“Come, come, you all!” Kiril called from the hall. “We’re already fashionably late!”

T
iny
magelight lanterns
in every color lined the walkway leading to the Duke of Engashta’s mansion. Dusk had fallen; only the lanterns lit our way. Servants welcomed us into a spacious hall with polished wood floors, a small dais at one end, and a wall made of mirrors.

“Kiril, you’re late, as usual!” called a tall, barrel-chested man. Lord Kiril, despite a black-feathered mask upon his face, was easily recognized with his rotund belly and his impish servant skipping at his heels.

“Did you bring guests?” the man who greeted Kiril inquired.

“My new friends. Cousin, meet Allian Kersin of Amar. Doesn’t he look fine dressed an Eastern Emperor?”

The barrel-chested man gave a shallow smile. “Well met, Mr. Kersin.” He offered a courteous hand to Allian, and we entered the bustling party.

Kiril made introductions that did not stick in my head. Allian was swarmed by Kiril’s many friends, so I headed off to acquire flutes of akavit, the favored drink of Lethemians.

I towed Miki with me. “If you can,” I whispered, “go explore the house. See whatever you can of Xander Ricknagel’s accommodations. Perhaps you can find correspondence, something that might lead us to Costas or Tiriq. If you get caught you can pretend you got lost.”

Miki nodded and slipped away. I returned to Allian and Kiril Engashta with the akavit.

“Excuse me.” Kiril gestured to the ballroom’s entrance. “I must go greet Xander Ricknagel.” He did not invite us to join him, no doubt considering us too insignificant to greet Lord Ricknagel—or King Ricknagel, if you asked Kiril.

Ricknagel was buried beneath a blue silk cape, and his mask obscured most of his face, revealing only his bold, square jaw and solid neck. He carried a fierce-looking spear like a sceptre or a staff.

Allian gave a sharp intake of air and muttered, “Ricknagel is dressed as another Vhimsantese Emperor! That’s damned bold, considering Mydon Galatien suspected he was treaty with the east in secret.” He leaned close to me. “This is our best chance to learn of Costas’s whereabouts. We must not waste it.”

I nodded. “And Ricknagel is the best mark for accurate information.”

Xander Ricknagel had seen us; amusement flashed on his mouth as he recognized Allian’s costume, but greeting important people kept him too busy to pay us more than an ironic bow. Eventually Ricknagel ascended the dais with a tall woman dressed in grey and a young man with a face better suited to an artist’s masterpiece than real life.

A commotion preceded a young woman across the ballroom floor. Gold ribbons and pale curls cascaded from her head, and she clasped, white-knuckled, a gold and blue fan. I recognized her even with the mask: Sterling Ricknagel. Ghilene and her brother had nicknamed her Splotch-face because of the birthmark on her cheek. Her golden mask hid the mark, but her hair was distinctive.

Xander Ricknagel announced the betrothal between his daughter and Erich Talata, the beautiful young man on the dais, in an almost hurried manner. Erich Talata and Sterling Ricknagel held hands in front of us, officially engaged in a ceremony that replicated the one between Costas and Stesichore Ricknagel at the Brokering.

The party resumed. Allian struck up a conversation with a gentleman dressed all in black.

“Which is your home province?” asked the man in black.

“Amar,” replied Allian. He shifted guiltily—he was nearly as bad a liar as I.

“But Amar was allied with House Galatien.”

“The Galatiens are defeated,” Allian said, hastily trying to steer the conversation. “Ricknagel is King. We all adapt. What do you think of Xander Ricknagel?”

“He’s a strong leader.” The man lowered his voice.

“Have you heard any news of what befell Costas Galatien?” Allian asked, unable to control the tension in his face. “Is he dead or captured?”

“Are you a fool? This is hardly the place for such talk. Watch what you say.”

Allian clenched his jaw and waited a moment before saying, “I beg your pardon, sir. I spoke idly. I meant nothing by it.”

“I know that, and you know that, but other ears will not. Take care.” The man swirled his black cloak and walked away from us.

“Amatos be damned!” Allian whispered. “He feared to talk. There must be something he and others know. No one’s willing to talk. Gods, what if he’s dead?” Allian gave me a stricken look. Miki had told me that Costas had picked all his Dragonnaires up from the streets of the High City when they were children, so Allian’s loyalty came as no surprise. Costas had trained him, pushed him, and demanded that the street boy reach further than he had ever dreamed. Like a sculptor, Costas had seen the grain in him and made it shine. I could see how it was. The Dragonnaires’ loyalties ran as deep as blood ties.

“He’s alive. I can still feel him,” I said. The living heat of our ung-aneraq remained taut and vital. Had I the training, I might have been able to follow the cord itself like a Lethemian mage to track him.

“Then we’ve got to find him,” Allian said. “Where’s Miki?”

“I sent him to search the house.”

“I thought he could dance with the Ricknagel girl, Sterling. She looks so forlorn, standing alone.” He pointed her out, surreptitiously. “I think her betrothed has abandoned her. A sad, lonely girl might just make a revealing confession to a friendly boy. Too bad Miki’s so much shorter than she is.”

Couples were forming throughout the room as the musicians tuned their instruments.

“I’ll get him to do it when he returns.”

Allian looked across the room at Xander Ricknagel where he stood, not far from the dais. “There’s one man here who surely knows where Costas is being held. If only we could—”

“I’m going to try to speak with him,” I announced. He wouldn’t know me. I’d been only a servant at the Brokering, beneath his notice.

“Be careful,” Allian murmured as I set off in Ricknagel’s direction.

I bumped Xander Ricknagel gracelessly but purposefully, grabbing his arm to prevent my fall.

He laughed. “I do believe it’s my rival emperor’s own navel-dancer,” he said, helping to right me.

I played along. “Oh yes, you are the
other
emperor.”

“Tell your master I’ll steal his navel-dancer if he’s not careful.”

I pulled my arm from Ricknagel’s grasp. Was he
flirting
with me? He gestured to the dance floor in invitation.

I blinked in horror—I couldn’t dance with him. He’d feel my magic! I blushed and stammered a vague refusal as I retreated with hurried steps back to Allian’s side. That had not gone well. I should have known better.

“Anything?” Allian asked.

I shook my head, feeling like a complete fool.

Allian groaned.

“Have you seen Miki?” I asked.

“Over there.” Allian jerked his head towards the ballroom entrance. Miki stood in the doorway, scanning the room with an anxious expression frozen on his face. I hurried through the crowd towards him.

“Miki! What is it?”

“I found him.”

“C—Costas?” I couldn’t believe it.
He was here in the mansion?

Miki grabbed my wrist, tugging me out of the ballroom. He guided me up a flight of stairs and through a hallway where dense red velvet crept up the walls and lined the floors. The jangling anklets Kiril Engashta had lent me for my costume rubbed on my thin nerves.

“I picked the lock with hairpins,” Miki said.

“You know how to pick a lock? Where did you get hairpins?”

“Laith showed me how to pick, and I begged the hairpins off a handmaiden.”

We approached a door, slightly open.

“I don’t think he can see us or hear us. They’ve got him magicked up so that I don’t know how we’ll get him out,” Miki explained.

We checked the hall and then slipped beyond the door, letting it latch behind us. A figure sat utterly motionless in a cushioned chair at the far side of the dim room. He faced us, sitting trapped within some kind of glass box. Mageglass. The night sky shimmered through windows behind him.

I stepped across the deep carpet to get a better look. Yes, the dark shadow behind the glass was definitely Costas. “Is he enchanted?” I asked, breathless with fear and hope.

“He doesn’t move, not at all. It’s unnatural.” Miki lit the candelabrum that stood on a table by the door. “I think the glass itself is enchanted, too.”

Miki approached the mageglass box with the light. My ankle bells rang like weeping as I moved around the mageglass to examine it.

I turned to Costas. A taut thrum on the ung-aneraq told me he could see me, but he remained as if cut from ice, staring without moving even an eyelid.

I rapped my fingers on the greenish glass. I didn’t understand how the Lethemian mages made mageglass, but it
seemed
like hardened bloodlight.

“Costas?” I murmured. His body remained paralyzed. I had once seen a man in Gante who had fallen while climbing an ice face and smashed his spine. Only his eyes could move as he lay dying, and they had expressed only terror. Costas’s amber eyes glowed similarly in the light from Miki’s candle.

What if they had damaged Costas irreparably? I was glad the light could catch no more than a glint from his eyes. I didn’t want to see what they reflected.

“Miki.” I beckoned him to my side. “I’m going to try to get him out.” I had the Cedna’s ulio stashed in the waist of my costume. I pulled it free and carefully recut my arm on the same line as the last time I had entered Yaqi.

Time stretched as I slowly spun down into the world of bloodlights.

As Yaqi
materialized in glittering splendor around me, I gasped. A thousand threads had been pulled from Costas’s own gold and black bloodlight, each knotted around a lattice to form a cage entrapping him. He sat, a spider caught hopelessly in his own web, the cords of bloodlight drawn so tightly that he could not move. The thickest cord of all, the one that stretched the short distance between us, our ung-aneraq, remained untouched. It pulsed thickly, almost as though it kept him alive.

“He’s laced in an enchantment like a fly in spider’s silk, and his own bloodlight is the web.” I reported slowly to Miki—it was difficult to talk while in the trance of magic. “It’s going to be a long, delicate task to get him out. I cannot use the ulio. Too much of his bloodlight is involved.” My hands itched to begin. “I think I can unknot it, Miki, but you have to stand guard. Can the door be locked from within?”

As Miki scurried to check the door, I considered the job ahead of me. My hands knew knotting. By necessity, they also knew unknotting.
The making goes easier than the unmaking—
so old Nautien, who’d taught me to weave, had been fond of saying, especially when things had gone awry in my net. Her words had been a jest and truth of magic, too. The Lethemian mages exploited this rule; what a mage sowed with a few twists of a magestone could only be undone with slow, painstaking unknotting.

“It’s got a bolt,” Miki announced from the doorway. “I’ve locked it. We’ll hear if anyone approaches.”

“I’m going to begin. I’ll go as fast as I can.” It had to be an agony for Costas to have his bloodlight stretched and pulled. I worried also that someone—the mage who made this web, perhaps—would come to check on him, or worse, feel my unraveling of the spell.

As I reached into it, Costas burning bloodlight hit me like a fever. Bloodlight was as tender as flesh. It distressed me to see his so mishandled. Freeing him would only be the first challenge ahead. How would he heal from such abuse?

Yaqi’s signature airlessness clamped down on my lungs. Though only a phantasm of the mind, the tight, breathless pain in my chest tricked me into thinking I could not inhale. I unwound at least a hundred knots before I had to come up for air. Two more such cycles passed; I’d made a dent in the trappings when something tore me roughly up from my trance.

I slammed into the mageglass wall that separated me from Costas. The mageglass didn’t shiver with a single crack, but my body screamed at the impact. I crumpled to the floor. Miki huddled in a posture similar to mine, but he struggled to his feet and launched himself at the figure towering over us.

Ricknagel was a big man, muscular and hard, a veteran warrior. The flick of his arms was almost casual as he threw Miki against the wall again. Miki squeaked like an injured puppy and this time stayed curled on the floor.

Xander Ricknagel walked to the wall, lighting a sconce that better illuminated the room. “Two
children
,” he said. “Is that all Costas Galatien has left to defend him? Children who don’t know any better?” He turned a cold blue gaze on me, his mask abandoned. His face was sterner than I would have expected after his flirtation in the ballroom, lined and grim. He did not acknowledge that we had spoken earlier, that he’d gazed at me then like I was a bit more than a child.

“We—we were here for the party,” I faltered hopelessly. “We got lost.”

“You didn’t seem lost when I found you. More like you were in a trance. Like you were seeing the Aethers. Doing spellwork. Trying to free him.”

Ricknagel loomed. My body ached where it had struck the mageglass. He yanked my green costume veil forcibly from my face, catching a stray wisp of hair in the action. I yelped in surprise and pushed myself against the glass.

Ricknagel twisted my head to the right. My neck bones popped, but the crack offered relief from the tension that had gathered as I unwound knots.

It felt so good, I sighed.

“Amatos be damned!” He dropped me as if I were made of hot coals. “I remember you. From the Brokering. Are you the one he turned to after my daughter? I know he likes to hurt his women. My daughter told me what he did to her.”

“Hurt his women?” I echoed in confusion.

“He was cruel to my Stesichore; she told me all about his deviant ways.” He pointed towards where Miki lay. “Get up and step aside.”

Taking the opening, I darted to Miki’s side. “Are you all right?” I whispered to him in Gantean.

Miki nodded and squeezed my hand. Ricknagel leaned into the mageglass box to study Costas.

Door hinges creaked. A new voice cut the tension in the room. “Hello?”