The Sleeping Life (Eferum Book 2) Read online

  "You're not starting that this morning," Kendall said, firmly, taking the empty glass. "We'll read to you if you can't sleep."

  Rennyn's eyelashes lowered ominously, and it was hard for Kendall not to think of Samarin talking of Thought Mages as a threat. Rennyn Claire, thin, tired and drawn, could still kill annoyances with less effort than it took her to get out of bed. Kendall glowered back at her, not budging an inch.

  With a sigh, Rennyn gave in. "Lieutenant Meniar and Illidian are being tiresome. But it's not worth arguing about." Adding a faint grimace of apology, she rearranged her covers and closed her eyes.

  It was a sham. Kendall could see from the set of her shoulders, the way one thin hand gripped the sheet, that Lady Once-Powerful was going to lie there and stew in her frustration for a while. There was no help for it, so Kendall soft-footed her way back to the window to practice drawing sigils and wonder what the world would be like when Thought Mages with nastier tempers than Rennyn's were roaming about being cranky with people. Kendall started to wonder if she'd end up able to kill people as soon as glower at them. And whether she would.

  She thought about that all day, while they hunted for the hidden library, and when Rennyn eventually came down and opened the door the Pest finally found concealed in the cellar, and after Lieutenant Meniar cast the focus detection.

  And the divination pointed east.

  oOo

  After much excitement, Rennyn settled the question of whether her Wicked Uncle was in the city by travelling to an inn at Koletor's eastern edge and having Lieutenant Meniar cast the focus detection again. When it continued to point east, they could at least rule out imminent threat, although Illidian accepted Dezart Samarin's offer of extra guards without even a small hesitation.

  "Do you think you have the strength to cast the variation immediately?" Rennyn asked.

  Lieutenant Meniar shrugged. "So long as no-one minds me sleeping the rest of the day." He paused. "And needing to be carried back to the house."

  No-one objected, so Lieutenant Meniar re-chalked the divination, and added north to their east before sitting down heavily on a chair.

  "Will this change your plans?" Dezart Samarin said.

  "Until the other Sentene arrive, pursuit is not wise," Illidian said. "After that, the simplest thing to do would be to continue to divine the direction as we travel to Aurai's Rest, since it is both north and a short way east of here."

  "Combined with the last divination that indicated west, we've now narrowed the location to this band through Kole, Semarrak, Alisar or Fye," Rennyn said, marking the map Illidian had brought along. "Which is the most progress we've made since my Wicked Uncle left Asentyr."

  "I'll request reports on unexplained deaths in that region," Dezart Samarin said. "And arrange for the extra security. I can also arrange for transport north, if you wish it."

  He pulled down his mask before leaving, and Rennyn already knew Kole well enough to recognise that this simple adjustment would guarantee that there would be no interference from the more-than-suspicious owner of the inn, who had been most dubious about the use they were making of his best parlour.

  "A useful addition," she said, a little amused to have found another person inclined to organise everything around her. "I very much hope our interests continue to run in the same direction."

  "His concern regarding the missing mages seems genuine," Illidian said, erasing the few remaining traces of the Sigillic from the floor. "And Prince Helecho too great a potential threat to ignore. The whole of Kole's strength might be needed."

  As they replaced furniture shuffled aside to allow Lieutenant Meniar to mark out his circle, Rennyn wondered if their search would truly lead to an all-out battle. If her Wicked Uncle did intend to lead an Eferum-Get army to conquer this world, would he start with Kole? Perhaps he was in those two northern kingdoms—Alisar or Fye—where… Rennyn knew nothing about them, except the likelihood that the places would be cold. At some point her over-protective escorts would start suggesting the hunt would have to wait until after winter. Her Wicked Uncle had already been allowed far too much time to set his schemes in motion.

  "Should we worry about the chance he's waiting for us at Aurai's Rest?" Lieutenant Meniar asked, hauling himself reluctantly out of his chair.

  "That would be an extremely dangerous place for him," Illidian replied. Then he added reluctantly: "Though a tactically well-chosen one."

  For there were few defending mages at the Rest, and the Kellian were weak to magic. While her Wicked Uncle could not command them as Solace had, the Kellian were an extremely dangerous force, and a mage of Helecho Montjuste-Surclere's skill would have a wide range of bindings and enslavement castings to choose from.

  Rennyn could not avoid the memory of a net closing around her, a cage of words, and a wash of pain and gloating violation. She forced herself not to turn her thoughts away. This instinctive flinching could be her undoing if she was unfortunate enough to meet her Wicked Uncle again.

  Breathing deeply, Rennyn allowed herself once again to admit that he was likely a better mage than she, and that she was afraid. But she would not turn him into her own personal horror, would not accept this paralysis. If she met him again, she would act.

  Illidian's hand on her shoulder came as silent reminder that, unlike Solace, this was not a battle she had to face alone. Although there were times when she felt that her increasing collection of friends and allies only gave her more people to worry about.

  She smiled up at her husband, then asked: "Shall we allow our Imperial representative to wave his mask and conjure up transport?"

  "There is no reason not to make use of him," Illidian said, as Keste Faral solved the problem of an exhausted mage companion by lifting him into her arms.

  Lieutenant Meniar, brown skin darkening for several different reasons, said: "I'd like him if I dared trust him. But a gift horse that talented has to have a nasty kick. I don't imagine you get to wear that mask just by smiling all the time."

  Keste, who was one of the least talkative Kellian of Rennyn's acquaintance, spoke then, her voice soft and contemplative.

  "And yet he wears it as if he hates it."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sights, scents and sounds of a sprawling Kolan market would have had Kendall trying to look in every direction at once, except that Sukata was angry. Kendall wasn't entirely certain if the Kellian girl was so furious because of Rennyn, or perhaps Kendall, but she sure made it hard to pay attention to anything else. Angry Kellian were like chained lightning, and a little pool of startled silence followed them wherever they went. It didn't help that Sukata had left behind the hat she usually wore on sunny days, and was lit up like a candle: hair, eyes, and pointed nails all vivid flames announcing that here was something different, dangerous. Even the Pest, who had started out nearly as upset as Sukata, couldn't take his eyes off her.

  Nor could his high-and-mightiness Samarin, who had spotted them leaving and followed like a hound on blood scent. He at least had stowed his mask in a big inner pocket of his cloak before prowling along behind them, but he still acted like he thought that the world was there to entertain him, and that Sukata was as good as a play. Kendall hadn't learned nearly enough Kolan to understand what people were murmuring as they passed, but Sukata was getting more attention than Kendall thought smart. And they'd be here all afternoon if she kept stalking past everything without even looking.

  Rennyn hadn't even explained why she suddenly wanted musical instruments. Small ones and different from each other was all she would say, gazing off into the distance. And then suddenly Sukata and Fallon were being all white and agonised and tiresome. All over stupid magic lessons too.

  Kendall lagged behind, trying to at least look for instruments. The market filled a broad square paved with sandstone. The only permanent structure was a central knee-high pool tiled with shiny blue and green, which looked to Kendall like an outsize Kolan bath in the wrong place. The rest of the space was a m
aze of bulging tents, light wooden stalls with wheels on one side, and blankets spread between them, so you couldn't let your feet wander without risking tramping over glassware or piles of clothes. Everything was so close-packed there was barely room for the heaving crowd.

  A jangle of notes cut through the noise. Kendall peered about, and oriented on a pair of boys being chased off from a stall hidden down a narrow corridor formed by the backs of two rows of tents. "Let's try down there," she said, but Sukata was still too busy being angry, disappearing into the crowd ahead.

  With an irritated shrug, Kendall let her go. Sukata might be carrying the purse Rennyn had given them, but Kendall had enough Kolan coin to make at least small purchases, and would have no problem finding her way back to the house. Some time alone to think would be a good thing.

  You saw a lot more of what a person was like when they lost their temper. Sukata would assuredly get over her snit and go back to acting the way she usually did, but having seen her like this, Kendall had to seriously wonder how much of the way Sukata usually behaved was Sukata. Almost every Sentene mage Kendall had talked to had been obsessed with living up to their Kellian partners, and they'd all in some way or other said that Kellian were very proud, and that while they were extremely polite, they rarely had a high opinion of people. Sukata acted all quiet and obliging, but right now Kendall could easily believe that she thought people who weren't Kellian were little more than bugs.

  That was probably the wrong way to look at it. But it was worth thinking about some more. Kendall put it aside for later as she reached the stall, pleased to spot a set of pipes among a mix of scraps of silk and cheap jewellery. And there was a line of fine-cast bells. The stall-keeper, a lanky carrot-top, eyed her like he expected her to act like the kids he'd chased off, so she pointed at the second-smallest bell and said "How much?" in Kolan.

  The gabble in response was stupidly fast, but Kendall managed to pick out the price, and countered with something more reasonable. Carrot-top shook his head, but smilingly produced a cowbell from beneath the display-top and clanked it as if it was worth listening to. Kendall firmly pointed back at her first choice, and offered a tiny bit more. She wasn't—

  A hand, reeking of perfume, clapped over her mouth. Pulled back against a man where there should only be tent wall, arms trapped, Kendall was lifted and turned so that her lashing boot missed the stall. She tried biting, working to find flesh, but Smelly had his hand cupped and already they were out of the sun, slipping through draping canvas.

  Dim space. A second man, stubbled face beneath a tight-tied green scarf. People, girls, on the floor, lying unmoving. Chained to the centre pole.

  Green Scarf lifted a chain ending in a cuff. Worked power itched at Kendall even before she spotted the sigils up and down the pole, and she wriggled frantically, then remembered that she was the student of someone who could kill people at a glance, and no-one to be messed with.

  But her attempt to push her captors away with Thought was as successful as holding back a river with bare hands. This was bigger than bowls, and it felt as if all the energy she put against them melted away. Kendall tried again, straining to stop Green Scarf coming any nearer. He didn't budge, but the chain could be worked on, springing from his hands to clatter back against the centre pole.

  The hand over Kendall's mouth lifted long enough for Smelly to clip her smartly across the ear. He was quick to replace his hand before she could yell, but even with her head reeling, Kendall managed to sink her teeth into flesh and dug in with vicious satisfaction as he grunted and stifled a yell. But the distraction had given Green Scarf time to retrieve his cuff and before she'd more than felt the grip on her foot he'd clapped it around her ankle.

  Green Scarf had to hold the cuff closed, fumbling to thread through a bulky padlock, and Kendall kicked again, trying to jam his fingers. The etched Sigillic was active, and filled her legs with jelly while a sheep came to sit on her head. Green Scarf dug his fingers in, clicking the padlock home, then said something in a gabble that didn't sound Kolan. Smelly let Kendall go, and she plonked down on her behind, struggling not to pass out because she really needed to yell, not just sit and let them win.

  Smelly moved forward, a barrel of a man grimacing at a hand dripping blood but still looking far too pleased with himself. Kendall longed to wipe the self-satisfied expression off his face, and was astonished when her anger was immediately rewarded, as Smelly glanced at the back wall of the tent and froze, jaw sagging.

  It was too much work for Kendall to look. She needed everything she had left to stay awake. It was only after Smelly and Green Scarf had dashed through a second tent flap that she had a glimpse of what they'd seen: a charcoal mask. But by that time Kendall's whole world had tilted and she was preoccupied with the scratchy feel of matting against her cheek. A booted foot came down next to her nose, then went past, and that was it for Kendall until a tugging at her ankle revived her drive to escape and she kicked feebly.

  "Not helping."

  Kendall cracked her eyelids, and found she was now facing stretched canvas instead of matting. Same tent, same central pole with its chains, but one of the plates holding chain to wood had been pried free. Her feet were propped up on something that shifted beneath them, and fingers…

  Opening her eyes properly, Kendall found Samarin sitting on the mat with his mask pushed back and her feet in his lap, wiggling a bit of metal in the padlock holding the cuff in place. It didn't seem to suit, so he reached down to a strip of cloth laid out beside him and exchanged it for another.

  "Why do you have all those…keys?" she asked, only just resisting the impulse to kick again. At least until he had the cuff off.

  "My role is to go to the places the Emperor cannot, and meddle. I've met a lot of inconvenient locks over the years." He laughed. "This isn't even the first attached to a girl."

  So full of himself he was overflowing. And worse, he'd obviously rescued her, though she couldn't quite work out how. The other three—no, two girls and a boy—also lying on the floor didn't stir at all.

  "Why did they run away? Did you have the Guard with you?"

  He touched the mask covering his hair. "They may have thought I'd a small army right behind me, but even obviously alone, this is often more than enough. The attention of the Emperor. Justice that bribery or threats won't turn aside. And trying to dispose of me would only bring a harsh demonstration of the might of the Kolan throne, since the mask will make the Emperor aware of my death."

  His wide mouth twisted, as if he thought all that a bitter joke, then he tried another bit of metal.

  "If people are getting snatched right in the middle of the capital's markets, then the might of the Kolan throne isn't all that much."

  "Certainly not infallible: someone's being lazy, or deliberately looking the other way. Though I know of no system that will change the nature of those who see a pretty child and covet her."

  "I'm not a child."

  "No? You look about twelve."

  "Twelve! I'm sixteen!" she snapped. Then, after a reluctant beat, added: "Nearly."

  He lifted his brows, then abruptly pulled on her leg, so that it was no longer her foot sitting in his lap, but most of Kendall. Bending over so that his nose was in danger of poking into hers, he gave her the most obnoxious smirk and said: "Still a child."

  Straightening, he dumped her back on the tent's floor and lifted her ankle again. Kendall longed to kick him, but she wanted the chain off more, so she swallowed hard and said instead:

  "Better that than a creepy old man pretending he's not even twenty." She hadn't missed that 'over the years' he'd tossed off earlier.

  "Oh, I was quite the prodigal," he said, unperturbed. "Indeed, I expect I'm even younger than you think. So what set your tall friend off?"

  "None of your business."

  "No? Well, I expect she'll tell me herself."

  He would ask Sukata too, the scut. And knew Kendall would answer rather than see Sukata be made to ta
lk about a thing that had so severely upset her—particularly now Kendall had figured out the why of it herself.

  "It was our latest Sigillic exercise," Kendall said, reluctantly. "Rennyn's not just showing us how Thought Magic works: she trying to teach us to be devising mages, and she keeps telling us to write Sigillics to do the same thing as whatever she's most recently Thought-cast. Not that she's been casting much at all lately, but the last thing she did was make an apple fall into segments.

  "The Sigillic I wrote was just something short, and it was no good—likely to make the entire room fall into segments, according to Herself. The Sigillics Sukata and the Pe—and Fallon wrote worked. But even though they were really long, they were identical. The Pe—Fallon said that of course they were the same, because Fan-Fen…"

  "Falzenar's Division and Miktok's Restriction," Samarin said. "The most logical combination of Sigillics to use there."

  "That's it," Kendall said, eyeing him doubtfully. "And we could all see that Rennyn was expecting us—them—to realise something, but then she sighed, and made a couple of changes to mine, and told Fallon to cast it, and it worked too. Then she told us to go buy instruments."

  "Ah, I see. Your Sukata's upset because, flawed or not, you produced the superior Sigillic."

  "No," Kendall said irritably, though this was exactly what she'd thought at first. But Sukata wasn't like that. "Sukata really loves magic. She wants to understand it properly, to be a devising mage, and a Thought Mage, and to use Symbolic properly. And yet for every one of these Sigillic writing exercises, she's done just what she did today—stitched together a couple of existing Sigillics that someone else had come up with. Because that's how she's been taught to do it. Rennyn's never come right out and said Sukata and the Pest aren't doing what she asked them to, but she made it kind of obvious today. Sukata's angry at herself."

  "Huh." Samarin picked up another bit of metal. "You can't stand to see her criticised, can you?"