prodigious skill could offer. Yet for all my practice this newest round of supplication choked me on its way out. “I need your help.”
His face tensed up, a fair reaction to a plea for aid from a man he hadn’t spoken to in half a decade, particularly one on the wrong side of the law. “And what services do you require?”
“I found Little Tara,” I said, “and I need to know if you’d picked up anything on her from your channels. If there’s a divination you think might be helpful, I’d ask you to do that as well, and without alerting Black House or the appropriate ministry.”
I suppose he had assumed I was there for money or for something illicit. The discovery that I was not evoked the return of his natural demeanor, amiable and slightly mischievous. “It seems I was confused about the full range of your new duties.”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning,” I said, though of course I did.
“Let me be clearer, then. How exactly does finding the murderer of a child fit into your current purview?”
“How does aiding a criminal fall into the purview of a First Sorcerer of the Realm?”
“Hah! First Sorcerer!” He coughed into his hand, a wet and unpleasant sound. “I haven’t been to court since the Queen’s Jubilee. I don’t even know where my robes are.”
“The ones trimmed with gold thread and worth half the docks?”
“Damnable things itched my throat.” The Crane’s laughter was forced, and after it was over the afternoon light fell on an old and tired man. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not sure there’s anything I can offer. Yesterday evening, when I heard of the offense, I ran a message to a contact in the Bureau of Magical Affairs. They said they put a scryer on it but came up with nothing. If they couldn’t pick up anything, I don’t imagine I would have any more luck.”
“How is that possible?” I asked. “Was the scrying blocked?”
“It would take an artist of exceptional ability to completely cover any trace of his presence. There aren’t two dozen practitioners in all Rigus capable of such intricate work, and I don’t imagine any of them would resort to so vile an undertaking.”
“Power is no guarantee of decency, more often the opposite-but I’ll grant you a mage of such ability would have easier means of satisfying his desires should they incline in that direction.” I could feel the old muscles working again, stretching off their torpor after years of neglect. It had been a long time since I’d investigated anything. “Apart from magic, what else would work against your scrying?”
He took a decanter of vile-looking green liquid from above the mantel, then poured it into the tumbler that sat next to it. “Medicine, for my throat,” he explained, before downing the fluid in one quick gulp. “If her body had been cleaned very thoroughly or sanitized with some kind of chemical. If the clothing she was wearing had only been in contact with her a short time, that might do it as well. It’s not my specialty-I’m not really certain.”
The odor I had smelled on the girl’s body could have been a cleaning agent. It could have been a dozen other things as well, but this gave me something to go on.
“That’s a start at least.” Having gathered the nerve to return I found myself reluctant to leave. Part of me wanted to sit down in his soft blue chair and let it envelop me, to share a cup of tea with my old mentor and speak of days past. “I appreciate your help. And I appreciate you receiving me. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“I hope you find the person who did this, and I hope this isn’t the last time you visit. I’ve missed you, and the trouble you track to my door-like a stray cat with a dead pigeon.”
I returned his smile and made a move for the exit, but his voice stopped me, suddenly stern. “Celia wants to see you before you leave.” I tried not to flinch at her name but suspect I failed. “She’s in the conservatory. You still remember the way.” It was not a question.
“How is she?”
“She’s up to be commissioned to First Rank in a few weeks. It’s quite an honor.”
Sorcerer First Rank was the highest grade a practitioner could receive, held by perhaps twenty artists in the realm, all of whom had performed noble services in the interests of the country-or had done the right favors for the right people. The Crane was entirely correct: it was quite an honor, especially at Celia’s age. It was also not at all what I had been asking. “And how is she?”
The Crane’s eyes fluttered away and I had the only answer I needed. “Fine,” he said. “She’s… fine.”
I made my way back down the steps, stopping in front of a clouded glass door a level beneath the summit. I resisted the temptation to reach into my coat for a sniff of breath. Better to do this quick, and sober.
The conservatory was beautiful, like everything in the Aerie. Cultivated plants from across the Thirteen Lands thrived in its sultry environs, flowering in a spectrum of colors that complemented the blue stone of the walls. Bright violet strands of queen’s fingers jutted out against vines of orange drake’s skin; fierce blossoms of Daeva’s posies cast their scent throughout the room; and stranger things still thrived in the damp hothouse heat.
She heard me come in but didn’t stop what she was doing, tending a small fern in the corner with a decanter of filigreed silver. A blue dress pulled tight across the bottom of her back and stopped just below the thigh, though as she stood straight it eased its way down to her knee. She turned to meet me and I caught a first glimpse of her face, familiar despite the time apart, soft brown hair above dark almond eyes. Hugging the curves of her honey- colored neck was a cheap necklace, a lacquered wooden medallion with a strand of twine running through it, Kiren characters emblazoned on the front.
“You’re returned.” It wasn’t clear from her tone how she felt about it. “Let me look at you.” She brought her hands up near my face, as if to caress or slap me. Either would have been appropriate. “You’ve aged,” she said finally, opting for the former, running her fingers over my calloused hide.
“They say time does that,” though whereas the years had withered my features and scored my face, for her the effects had been nothing but positive.
“That’s what they say.” As she smiled I saw something of the girl she had been in the open and friendly way she looked at me, in the speed with which she forgave my absence, in the light she radiated instinctively and without deliberation. “I visited the Earl every day for a month after you left Black House. Adolphus said you were out. He kept saying it. After a while I stopped coming.”
I didn’t respond, neither to amend her belief as to how I’d left the Crown’s service or to explain my absence.
“You leave us for five years, disappear completely without a message, without a word.” She didn’t seem angry, or sad even, the wound no longer tender but still visible. “And now you can’t even offer an explanation?”
“I had my reasons.”
“They were bad ones.”
“They might have been. I make a lot of bad decisions.”
“I won’t argue that.” It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was enough. “It’s very good to see you,” she said, laboring over each word as if she wanted to say more.
I stared at my boots. They didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. “I hear you’re to be commissioned Sorcerer First Rank. Congratulations.”
“It is an honor I’m not sure that I deserve. Certainly the Master’s word went far in smoothing my ascension.”
“This means you get free rein to destroy any stray bit of architecture you find objectionable and turn misbehaving servants into rodents?”
Her face assumed the strained pose I’d often see her adopt as a child when she didn’t get a joke. “I have trained myself to follow in the footsteps of the Master, and thus studied the specialties he has perfected-alchemy, spells of warding and healing. The Master never saw fit to learn the patterns by which a practitioner does evil to his fellows, and I would not think to pursue avenues he has determined to ignore. It requires a certain kind of person even to practice the darker shades of the Art. Neither of us is capable of it.”
Anyone is capable of anything, I thought, but didn’t say it.
“He’s extraordinary. I don’t think we ever quite realized it as children. To be given the honor of learning at his feet…” She held her tiny hands to her chest and shook her head. “Do you understand what his spell of warding means to this city? To this country? How many died from the plague? How many would have died if his safeguards didn’t still protect us to this day? Before his working, they needed to run the crematorium twenty-four hours a day in the summer just to keep up-and that was when the plague was at its ebb. When the Red Fever hit, there wasn’t even anyone left to dispose of the bodies.”
