Chapter Thirteen
Rae led them through the backstreets and alleyways of Hammerwall Bastion. The air was tinged with the stink of burning gunpowder and the otherworldly, static tension of bound spirits being dragged into the material plane. The dark skies overhead pressed close to the eight towers, stirring in lazy corkscrews over each of the spinning wards. Justicars stalked among the more mundane guards on the walls, their spiritblades drawn and bound elements swirling around their shoulders like burning mantles. None of them looked like the man who had come to their house looking for a diabolist. The agents dispatched by Fulcrum to hunt fiendbinders were a zealous crowd. Rae caught occasional glimpses of the central spire between the buildings of Hammerwall. The top of the spire was lost in the clouds.
Whenever they passed across the higher roofs of the town, Rae took a moment to pause and look out over the surrounding countryside. It was nearly unrecognizable.
The grounds around the Bastion were churned into mud. The little cannon the Dwehlling mob had brought to the fight sat in a hay cart, attended by a dirty mob of workers, twice as many as were needed to load and fire a single gun. Whatever semblance of organization the mob once had had disintegrated under the musket fire from the walls, and the few crowds of asylum seekers remaining outside had long since scattered into the forests. The walls prevented Rae from seeing most of the Dwehlling mob, but from the general frenetic activity on the ramparts, it seemed they were trying to scale the walls. As long as the wards were spinning, that would be impossible, but they were probably too desperate to care. The gunfire continued its steady rhythm. In all directions, the horizon was slate gray and churning, as if the Bastion was in the eye of a rapidly collapsing hurricane.
“Madness,” Rae muttered. “They’ll kill us all, rather than face the breach alone.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Mahk asked. “Drowning men sink rafts, after all.”
“It’s uncivilized,” La said quietly. “There’s room enough in here. If only they hadn’t come with weapons, the guards probably would have let them in.”
“Would they have? The justicars haven’t gone out of their way to help the people of Dwehlling in the past. Why start now?” Mahk said bitterly.
“Come on, we need to keep moving,” Rae said as he turned away from the carnage, picking out a narrow crosswalk that led deeper into the Bastion. “If I know my man, he’ll be getting out of here as soon as possible. Sooner, if he can manage it.”
They could just make out the last windship that had landed before the storm set in, bobbing delicately against the docking tower at the center of the Bastion square. As they watched, the ’ship’s conical propsails deployed, quickly filling with wind from the bound elementals belowdecks. It tore free of the tower, clipping a string of warding flags as it lifted out of the square. A roar rose from the crowd waiting to board. A smattering of shots went up, followed by puffs of smoke from discharged flintlocks and lesser weapons, both from inside and outside the Bastion. The windship turned and hurtled south, staying low to the tree line.
“That was the last one,” Mahk said grimly.
“There’ll be more,” Rae said. “There have to be more.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” La asked. “Even if another windship lands, it’s not like we’re going to be able to get aboard. It’ll be mobbed as soon as it arrives.”
“We’ll worry about getting out later,” Rae said. “First I need to figure out why someone would kill for this sword.”
“Getting out seems pretty important to me,” La said. “Could we maybe do that first?”
“I’m with her,” Mahk said. “No good solving your little mystery if we’re dead.”
“No good getting out of the Bastion if that damned high mage is still chasing us,” Rae countered. “We solve that, the rest of this will fall into place. I’m sure of it.”
La and Mahk exchanged worried grimaces, but when Rae pressed on, they followed.
The narrow causeway outside of Indrit’s little shop was much changed. Most of the tent stalls were gone, folded up and stowed as soon as the breach siren went off, or torn apart by looters when their owners fled for the safety of the windship dock. Why do people think they’ll be safer in view of the warding antenna? Rae wondered. It made no sense to him. If the wards hold, we’re all fine. If they fall, nowhere is safe.
Indrit had not yet fled. He stood at the end of the wobbling plank walkway, large canvas pack at his side, finishing the last preparations for his departure. Miraculously, it seemed as though his entire shop fit into that pack. The dented brass chimney pipe from his stove stuck out the top, while the discarded cinders hissed angrily on the walkway, charring the wood. As they approached, he scooped up a few of the hottest coals and shoveled them into a firepouch, then cinched it off and hung it from the pack. He did this with his fingers, handling the glowing coals like marbles, rolling them in his palm to test the heat. Rae stopped a few feet away and cleared his throat.
Indrit looked up and smiled. “Well, if it isn’t my unexpectedly rich patron. Come for another scrying? I’m afraid we’re closed for the foreseeable future,” he said. “Doomsday, you understand. Cast a bit of a pall over the day.”
“Someone’s trying to kill me,” Rae said. “They’ve already killed my parents. And I think your scrying had something to do with it.”
“Are you sure it’s not because someone discovered the money you stole to pay for your scrying, and came to collect it?” Indrit’s eyes went from Rae to his companions, lingering on Mahk’s muscular bulk. He sniffed, then hefted the canvas pack onto his shoulders. It was nearly as big as him, and threatened to topple him backward. He squinted at Rae as he adjusted the straps on his shoulders. “That seems a much more likely explanation.”
“No, you don’t understand. It was a high mage.”
“A high mage now, is it?” Indrit said with some amusement. “Well, then you’re a dead man. Glad you paid me when you did. Damned hard to collect payment off a corpse.”
“I’m serious! There’s a high mage in Hammerwall, and he killed my parents!”
“Son, there’s not a high mage in Hammerwall, or Anvilheim, or any of the outer steadings. They spend their time in Fulcrum, or tucked deep in one of the other planes. I’m sorry someone killed your parents, but it was probably just another—”
“Listen to me!” Rae snapped, drawing the translucent sword from under his coat. In wielding the blade, he also drew the storm mote out of his soul, though inadvertently. A cloud of electric energy surrounded him, gusting his coattails and tousling his hair. A spark of lightning traveled the length of the blade to ground dramatically in the wooden gangplank. Indrit’s brows went up.
“Well, I did say you have potential,” Indrit said quietly. “How about you calm down and tell me what happened? Preferably not in the middle of the street, yes?”
Rae glared at him for a long moment, then nodded and pulled the zephyr back into his soul. The light faded from the cracked sword.
“Well, whatever it is you need to talk about, we can’t do it here,” Indrit said. “Follow me. We can discuss this in the safety of my rooms.”
The overburdened bondwright led the trio back down the walkway, down the stairs, and into the street. The militias let him go with a wave of the hand, scowling at the three scrubs in his wake, but not stopping them. Indrit paid his bribes, apparently. They wound their way through the crowds, until they reached a narrow tenement on the edge of the market square. The mob churning around the empty windship spire was growing by the minute. Many carried weapons, from clubs to ornate hunting rifles, to one man who had apparently donned an entire suit of vintage armor, shield and all. Indrit paid them no mind. He shouldered his way into the tenement and trudged up the stairs to the third floor, unlocking staircase gates at each level, nodding to neighbors who were too busy packing their lives into boxes to return the courtesy.
Finally they came to his flat. Indrit had to duck to get the pack through the door, awkwardly dropping it on the floor before grinding his knuckles into his back. He motioned them inside, then closed and bolted the door. The apartment was nearly empty, except for a stripped-down bed, a table with two sturdy wooden chairs, and a chest of drawers that looked like it had been dragged all the way across the Ordered World. None of the furnishings were extravagant. Other than the sparse decor, it was a very nice apartment, and very large; the main room opened onto a kitchen that rivaled Rae’s memories of the private accommodations in Hadroy’s manor house. A hallway led to two bedrooms, both of which stood empty, and a drawing room. Space near the market was at a premium, and housing there was always the most costly. How did he afford this? Rae wondered. Especially if he just leaves it empty?
“Right,” Indrit said once they were inside and the door was secure. “Now what’s all this about a high mage, and why do you think he’s trying to kill you?”
Rae related the tale as quickly as possible, leaving out any mention of his criminal activities of the night before, which meant omitting Mister Button and his attempted kidnapping. Indrit listened patiently. When Rae described the mage in the isolation suit emerging from the root cellar, and the sort of magic the man had employed, Indrit pinched his glasses off his face and rubbed his eyes in long, slow circles, but otherwise he seemed unfazed by Rae’s tale of dead parents and burning homes. When Rae was done, Indrit nodded once, then motioned to the sword.
“And this?” he said. “I don’t care how talented you are, a feral mage does not forge a spiritblade out of gumption and hope. Where did you get it?”
“I found it,” Rae said stubbornly. “It was among my father’s things.”
“Well, that gives us something. The blade has been shattered, which means the spiritbinder who forged it is dead, or perhaps seared.” Searing was a process that prevented a mage’s soul from anchoring an elemental, effectively stripping them of their power. “Your father was a stormbinder?”
“Yes. In the service of a lord,” Rae said. He glanced at Lalette, who had watched this entire exchange with growing nervousness. “There was an accident. He was discharged.”
“Which lord?”
“I—” Rae paused, unsure how to proceed. La saved him.
“Felthan,” she said quickly. “The earl’s brat daughter accused my father of theft, and the old fool believed him.”
“Felthan?” Indrit asked, the doubt clear in his voice. “Well, it’s a pity you didn’t plan your lies ahead of time, my girl. Because, as your brother well knows, I served at Whiteflame Bastion, which is the hereditary march of House Felthan. A safe enough lie, considering how far we are from the place, but also precisely why I came here when I was discharged. So . . .” He turned to Rae and crossed his arms. “The true story, please.”
“Hadroy,” Rae said. “At the time of the heresy.”
“Mother of Planes,” Indrit said, his shoulders slumping. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have . . . Never mind. Done is done. And if there’s a high mage on your trail, I want less to do with you. I was led to believe that all the mages of House Hadroy died in the Heretic’s Eye, when Chaos tore through Hadroy’s estate. So how did you end up in Hammerwall?”
“We ran, before the justicars arrived,” Rae said. “My sister was too young to remember, but that’s what happened.”
“Criminals run,” Mahk said quietly. “I mean, from personal experience.”
“Yes,” Indrit said thoughtfully. “But rarely do they get away. Especially if the High Justicar himself is after them. Are you sure this wasn’t your father’s blade?”
“We found our father’s sword next to his body,” Rae said. He dug the shard of black metal out of his pocket and set it on the table. “He fought back, and lost.”
“So then . . . to whom does this blade belong?” Indrit asked. “And why is someone trying to kill you to retrieve it?”
“The owner was a man named Rassek Brant. At least that’s what my father told me. As to why it’s worth killing someone to retrieve . . . I was hoping you could tell us,” Rae said.
“Out of the generosity of my heart?” Indrit asked.
“We have nothing to pay you with,” Rae said. “We’ve lost everything.”
“I knew this was a fool’s errand,” La muttered. “We should be running, not wasting our time with this fool. Come on, Rae!”
“I could probably convince him,” Mahk said darkly.
“Children, please, I’m standing right here,” Indrit said lightly. “This particular bit of the world is ending, and I’m getting out of here. But the next windship hasn’t arrived yet, and you’ve piqued my interest. It might be possible to salvage some bit of wisdom from this chapter of my life. At the very least, I can probably determine if you were responsible for all this.”
“The breach, you mean? You think Rae had something to do with this?” La asked.
“Anything is possible. So . . . the sword?”
Reluctantly, Rae laid it on the empty table in the center of the room. Indrit scrutinized it from a distance before carefully lifting the hilt, holding it in two massive fingers protected by a silk kerchief. A spirit stirred through the ground, and the sword lit up, much like when Rae first attempted his binding. Arcs of light projected from the blade, displaying the soul inscribed in its depths. Indrit stared at it for a long time, turning it back and forth, bringing different parts of the scrying into focus on the scuffed surface of the table. Finally, he let out a long sigh and raised a brow at Raelle.
“I suspect your father was hiding from a great deal more than shame,” Indrit mused. “But however he came into possession of this blade, it gave him more than enough reason to run for his life.”
“So you know whose sword this is?” Rae asked.
“Order, no. But I can tell you what made him the sort of person you might run away from.” Indrit cleared his throat, then produced a piece of chalk from his shirt pocket. He held it like a street magician, drawing their attention to his hand. Rae watched attentively. His heart was nearly jumping out of his chest.
“Observe,” Indrit said. He set the chalk on the table, tracing the lines of light projecting out from the sword. The chalk scratched dry against the battered wood. He followed one of the lines that made up the intricate tapestry. “Every soul has these lines. Like fingerprints. Distinct for each person. This is only a poor representation of the true complexity involved, of course, but you get the idea. It serves for our purposes.” His voice carried authority. The scratch of chalk on wood accompanied his words. “The same is true of planar spirits. Individual, but distinct. Recognizable. You can look at the tapestry of a soul and see that it is mortal, or elemental, or arcane. You can even get a sense of what kind of spirit it is.”
“Where is this going?” Rae asked. Indrit glanced at him irritably, then waved at the sigils that surrounded the soul.
“These are clear enough. Motes of the plane of Air, bending toward the border with fire. A true stormbinder, not just a master of breezes and soft rain. I suppose you could have mistaken this for your father, if you didn’t know any better. But there is too much power here for a simple baron’s servant. Your father was employed in bending storms away from the crops, yes? This mage could have torn Fulcrum out at the root.” Indrit continued tracing. “And here, at the center of the soul, is where the bound spirits reside. There is an air elemental there, for certain. But a soul can hold more than one spirit. Tricky business, but it can be done, as long as the spirits are complementary. Air can reside with Water, or Fire, or any of the arcane spirits. Including this one.” He gestured at the symbol he had traced out of the center. The line ended sharply near the edge, though Rae’s eye could follow the lines that Indrit had not marked. “Considering our current circumstances, I dare not trace the whole pattern.”
“Current circumstances?” La asked. “What do you mean by current circumstances?”
“He means the breach,” Rae said confidently. “Sketching a spirit’s full sigil so close to Chaotic ground could corrupt it. Yes?”
“Your father trained you some, and you had tutors. You know your planar forms,” Indrit said. “What do you see in the chalk? Can you fill in the gaps I dare not draw?”
Rae squinted, unsure what Indrit was getting at. He peered at the scrying. It was a tight pattern, but nearly formless, meandering through the tapestry of the mortal soul like a loose thread in the fabric. Rae followed the lines with his finger, seeing where Indrit had stopped, the lines he’d skipped but that were still part of the pattern. He followed them, filling in the symbol in his mind. It was familiar, somehow. This was not a spirit of the plane of Air, that was certain. It couldn’t be earth . . . opposite poles of the eight-fold world couldn’t be held in the same soul, not without destroying it. That left fire or water, but it didn’t match those either. Not an elemental spirit at all. Arcane? Perhaps fae, or an angel. Or . . .
He looked up at Indrit in shock. The man nodded.
“What is it?” La asked, pushed forward. “What do you see?”
“It can’t . . .” Rae’s voice trailed off.
“Yes, my friend. It can. And it is,” Indrit said. “The binder from whom your father doubtless stole this sword served a much more dangerous master.”
“Chaos,” Rae said quietly. “He had a demon bound to his soul.”