Spinner of Lies

Madri might be telling the truth. “All right, let’s not get distracted by my shortcomings. Believe me, I’m well acquainted with them. Tell me more about why you were working with Kalkan. You’re claiming you were, what, brought back into the world by the rakshasa? Kalkan called forth your spirit to do his bidding?”

She shrugged. The tension went out of her shoulders and face. “Something like that. Because of our connected past, and because you killed me, we share a psychic connection-maintained or at least influenced by Exorcessum. The first time you changed its configuration, I felt it. The … mental shackles Kalkan used to chain my spirit fell away. I became myself again. That’s when I decided it was time to do things my own way.”

“Was that before or after you stole the Necromancer from the Norjah gallery?”

She gestured to the house. “Come find out.”

“Burning dominions,” said Demascus. What should he do? He didn’t seem to have much of a choice. Shaking his head at his own gullibility, he followed her up the walk to the entrance. One of the two massive oaken doors was ajar.

Madri said, “I normally don’t enter this way-I can flicker in and out of the cellar with a thought. But I’m pretty sure that this door is usually closed.”

Gouges around the lock showed where the door had been forced. “Someone’s broken in,” he said, pointing out the marks. “Recently.”

Madri flickered and was gone.

Demascus charged through the door, hyperaware of the possibility of an ambush as he crossed the threshold. The last time he’d been there, he’d followed Riltana up the grand stairs to a second-floor suite. They’d found evidence of Kalkan’s crimes laid out in maddening detail in a collage of sketches, skinned genasi corpses, and a magical gate to a secret mausoleum, which proved to be Demascus’s own grave. Exorcessum had waited there for him, too. And ultimately, Kalkan himself, who’d crowed about leading the deva around by the nose through a series of incarnations.

Demascus had killed the bastard rakshasa, even as Kalkan Swordbreaker laughed about how everything was all going according to plan.

Kalkan should still be dead. But … with the Necromancer in play, all bets about death, reincarnation, and the circle of life for mortals, devas, and rakshasas alike were up in the air.

Nothing attacked him. The house remained quiet as a grave. Where to? The suite upstairs had been thoroughly cleaned by peacemakers months ago, and the portal stones removed and stored in his own domicile. And Madri had mentioned a cellar.

He hustled through a series of mostly empty rooms on the ground floor until he found the door to the basement. He thudded down the stairs. Below, things were even more abandoned looking. But calling the series of rooms a “cellar” would be a stretch.

Then Demascus saw a door-shaped hole in one foundation wall. Flinders of broken wood littered the floor around it. A maul lay discarded to one side. He crept to the opening. Crooked stairs plunged down a narrow shaft. A sour smell wrinkled his nose. Down he went, taking the steps three at a time.

Madri was in the lantern-lit chamber at the bottom. But so was …

“Jaul?” said Demascus.

The youth stood at the edge of a pile of damp earth. A painting draped with red velvet was clamped under one armpit. In his free hand he held a burned and half-broken mask.

“Demascus!” said Jaul.

“By all that’s holy and sovereign, what’re you doing here?” said Demascus.

“You gotta help me!” Jaul pleaded.

The deva looked at Madri. Confusion made his tongue feel thick.

“He’s trying to make off with the very thing I was going to show you, the thing that could tell you how you’ve been duped! And that dirt pile your friend is standing on … is dangerous. It’s strung round with defensive wards. I’m surprised the little idiot hasn’t already triggered one.”

Jaul looked from Madri to Demascus with fearful eyes. His arm clamped tighter on the painting under his arm. “The painting isn’t hers-she stole it first!”

Tensions in the low-ceilinged chamber were too high for Demascus. He sheathed his sword. “Everyone calm down. Let’s not rush into anything one of us might regret later. I just want a few answers. Starting with you, Madri. The kid’s got a point. You stole that painting from House Norjah.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t really care about the painting, only its knowledge. It knows things things you need to hear, Demascus.”

“Such as?”

“Such as what happened to me, and to you, when I was alive.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

“You need to hear it directly from the Necromancer’s lips. That’s why I asked you here. And now this thief is trying to make off with the painting.”

“Well, we did agree to return it to House Norjah,” Demascus admitted. Though he was still confused how Jaul had managed to track down the painting so quickly. It didn’t make any sense.

“How’d you find this place, Jaul?”

Jaul swallowed and glanced around the room as if looking for another exit. An odd reaction, to be sure.

“Jaul, where’s Chant? Is he part of this?”

“ ‘Part of this?’ ” repeated Jaul. The young man’s eyes darted between Demascus and the exit.

“Yeah, returning the Necromancer to Kasdrian. I can’t figure how you beat the rest of us to the painting, but I assume that’s why you’re down here?” He let the question dangle, like a fishing line.

“Right! Right. I was … I just thought I’d get a jump on things, you know?”

The scroll charm braided into Demascus’s hair shivered. Great-a lie. Why was the kid telling tales? They’d already caught him red-handed. Maybe that was all it was-Jaul was worried he’d be reprimanded for acting on his own. It didn’t seem like a nicety the kid would care about, but he’d underestimated Jaul in the past.

“He’s not taking the painting anywhere,” Madri said. “At least … not until the Necromancer tells you what it knows, Demascus.”

“You’ll allow us to take the painting? If I agree to talk to it first?”

Madri slowly nodded. Demascus was surprised. He wondered if the Necromancer itself was a trap Madri had prepared for him. Maybe she’d primed the entity trapped in the canvas to cast a death spell or steal his soul with a whisper. Who knew what was possible for a demigod? Certainly Madri had reason enough to get revenge. It could even be why she’d saved him from the mine collapse-so she could deliver him to her true retribution here in this hidden cellar, in the very house where Kalkan once plotted against him.

“And it’s going to tell me what?” Demascus asked.

“It’s going to tell you how your precious office has been manipulated. How fate itself was denied-altered-for the selfish gain of an evil entity. And how you were the instrument of that alteration.”

Goose bumps swept his arms. That was a considerable claim. “Someone manipulated me? Who? Just tell me!”

“You won’t believe me.” She folded her arms.

Demascus realized he wasn’t going to escape the cellar without speaking to the painting. It might be a setup, sure. But he had to know.

He looked around to Jaul. “Well, how’s that sound? Are you willing to let me have a look at that thing before you cart it back to House Norjah?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course!” Palpable relief loosened the muscles of the young man’s face. He began to set the painting down.

“Get down from that first, why don’t you?” said Madri. “It’s dangerous.” She pointed at the small hillock.

Jaul sidled forward, leaving a clear boot print in the dirt. Demascus wondered what had Madri so spooked about heap of soil. She wasn’t telling him something. Which was worrying. Maybe he’d ask the Necromancer about that, too. A bonus question.

Jaul leaned the painting against the cellar wall. He played with the broken mask in his hands, nervously transferring it from hand to hand. Madri raised a hand and opened her mouth as if to tell Jaul something, but Demascus was already uncovering the canvas. The portrait was made up of disparate scenes stitched together with embalming thread. Each pane was a tiny vista of undeath, agony, and sundered sanity. And the scenes made up a