The Ambassador's Mission

Chapter 16

Hunter

Holding the soiled bandages in the air with magic, Sonea sent a flash of heat toward them. They burst into flame and quickly shrivelled into ash. The smell of burnt cloth, mixed with a sickly cooked meat scent, tainted the air. She let the ashes fall into a bucket kept in the room for the purpose, then heated a little scented oil in a dish with magic until the tangy smell covered the less pleasant ones. The clean-up from the last patient finished, she willed the door to the examination room open.

The man who stepped inside was middle-aged, short, and familiar. She felt her heart skip a beat as she recognised him.

“Cery!” she hissed. She cast a quick look around the room, even though she knew nobody was there but her. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged and sat down in one of the chairs for patients and their families. “I tried your rooms in the Guild, but you weren’t there.”

“You could have come back tomorrow night,” she said. If he was recognised, and someone reported his visit back to the Guild, everyone would know she’d been associating with a Thief. Though that’s not against any rules now. But it would be seen as suspicious, so soon after she’d pushed to have the rule changed. If it looked as if she was using the hospice as a place to meet Thieves it could endanger all she had achieved here.

Ironically, he was in greater danger of being recognised at the hospice than at the Guild. Sonea doubted that any magicians other than Rothen would remember Cery after all these years, but some of the patients in the hospice might have had dealings with Cery, and they might tell one of the helpers or Healers who she was meeting.

“It’s too important to wait,” Cery told her.

He met her gaze levelly. His serious expression made him look so different to the young street urchin she had hung out with as a child. He looked haggard and sad, and she felt a fresh pang of sympathy. He was still grieving for his family. She drew in a deep breath and let it out again slowly and quietly.

“How are you getting on?”

His shoulders rose again. “Well enough. Keeping myself occupied finding a rogue magician in the city.”

She blinked, then couldn’t help smiling. “A rogue, eh?”

“Yes.”

Yes, that is too important to wait. She leaned back in her chair. “Go on then. Start from the beginning.”

He nodded. “Well, it all began when my lockmaker claimed the locks to my hideout were opened with magic.”

As he continued, she watched him closely. At any mention of his family he winced as if in pain, and his eyes grew haunted. But each time he spoke of the Thief Hunter his eyes gleamed and his jaw hardened. This search is as much a way to distract himself from the loss as it is a hunt for revenge.

Finally he told her, triumphantly, of watching the foreign woman using magic to open the safebox.

“A woman,” he repeated. “With dark skin like a Lonmar, and straight black hair. From her voice I’d say she was old, but she didn’t move like an elderly person. And her accent was foreign, but not one I’ve heard before. I’d wager she’s not from any of the Allied Lands.”

“Sachakan?”

“No. I’d have known that one.”

Sonea considered his story. There’s nobody of that description in the Guild. Cery might have been mistaken, and the woman was a Lonmar. The Lonmars were dark-skinned, and kept their women hidden away, so a Lonmar woman might be so unusual a sight as to seem like she was of a different race. The Lonmars didn’t allow their women to be taught magic, however. If she was a natural, and her power had developed spontaneously, the Lonmars would have been forced to teach her to control it. But after that... we’re not sure what the Lonmars do with female magicians. We assume they simply forbid the woman to use magic, but it’s possible they block her powers. This rogue might have run away in order to escape that fate.

If that was true, it was strange that she had come to Imardin. Surely she knew that the Guild was bound by the terms of alliance to respect Lonmar’s laws regarding female magicians. If they found her they had to send her home.

But perhaps Cery had guessed why she had: books. If she had run away in order to be free to learn and use magic, then Imardin was the place she’d most likely get hold of magical information. But books on magic can’t be cheap. Is she stealing money from the Thieves she kills, or hiring herself out as a killer of Thieves?

Yet while Cery had said the lock to his hideout was opened with magic, he had not said that his family were killed with it. Perhaps she was only offering magical services, not those of an assassin. Sonea frowned. “How can you be sure this woman and the Thief Hunter are the same person?”

“Either she is, or she’s working for the Thief Hunter, or there are two rogues out there. Once you catch her you can read her mind and find out.”

“Did you question the seller afterwards?”

He shook his head. “We need him and his shop for another trap.” His eyes gleamed. “Only next time you’ll be with me and we’ll catch ourselves a rogue.”

Sonea frowned. “I wish that were possible, but I’m not free to go running around the city these days, Cery. I must ask permission, if I am not going to the hospices.”

His shoulders sagged in almost childlike disappointment. He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps if I lured her here somehow.”

“I doubt she’ll go anywhere near Guild magicians, and hospices are always full of them.”

“Unless you arrange for everyone to leave one night, and we put about a rumour that there are books on Healing lying around here.”

“I’d have to tell them why, and if I do that I may as well just tell the Guild about the rogue and leave it to them to find her.”

“Can’t you come up with another reason?”

Sonea sighed. She doubted that Cery cared if he wasn’t credited with finding a rogue and helping the Guild to catch her. He only wanted revenge – and no doubt to save himself from being the Thief Hunter’s next victim.

I’d like to help him. But the Guild will expect me to pass news about the rogue on to them, and if it is discovered that I didn’t it’ll be yet another reason for people to distrust me. Her flawless record of trustworthiness since the Ichani Invasion would be tainted by the lie, and people were already so touchy about her past and knowledge of black magic. They would curb her freedom to run the hospices. They’d restrict her to the Guild grounds.

I’m better off passing the information on to the Higher Magicians and letting them deal with it. It doesn’t matter if it’s me or someone else who finds the rogue, only that she is found. Either way, Cery will have both revenge and safety.

“Do you know where the woman is now?” she asked.

Cery shook his head. “But I know what she looks like, and her appearance is strange enough that I can set others looking for her too.”

“Don’t let anyone approach her,” she warned. “She’s clearly in control of her powers, and old enough to have some skill in using them.”

“Oh, she’s nothing like you were,” Cery agreed, his lips stretching into a humourless grin. “You might’ve wanted to kill a Thief or two all those years ago, but you never got to the point of hunting them down and... or...” He looked away, his expression suddenly grim.

... or killing their families, she finished silently, feeling a pang of sympathy. “I need to think about this, but I’ll probably have to tell the Guild and leave the hunt to them.”

“No!” he protested. “They’ll just bungle it like they did with you.”