Chapter 13
SINAN
F atigue hit Sinan hard when he came out of the shadows.
His control had weakened to the point that he had only moved himself several hundred paces from the Synod meeting room.
At least he was outside the Noviodunam walls, but he was exhausted, dizzy, and an obvious target.
He didn’t even have his sword, since he could have hardly shown up armed to a formal ball while disguised as a merchant from Diustic.
He leaned against the stuccoed wall of a two-story house and blinked to clear his vision.
The corner he stood in was dark, but the nearby street was lit by gaslights, and there was a fair amount of foot traffic going by.
A shout went out behind him, and he whirled around to see an infuriated barmaid shoving an inebriated man into a puddle of water on the cobblestone streets.
She added several colorful insults and an admonition to keep his hands to himself before re-entering a decrepit building and slamming the door shut behind her.
Sinan squinted at a battered wooden sign swaying from a post on the building.
He had come out within spitting distance of La Pissotte, the tavern the two Tomb Fighters had insisted on as a meeting spot.
Its dirty windows blazed with light, and he could hear shouts and off-key drunken singing even at this distance.
Lovely. He would provoke a bar brawl merely by walking inside, even if he made an attempt to disguise his appearance. He needed at least an hour to regain his strength before their meeting.
Focusing on the map of the city he had memorized, he began to move in the direction of the City of the Dead, the vast urban cemetery which held a reserve of necromantic power deep enough to refresh him and allow him to summon his mother as a corporeal spirit for her advice.
It would be a long walk, but it was the safest place nearby.
Xiaolian’s promise of protection might not be enough to restrain those of her subjects who hated and feared the Blessed—and that category included everyone in the city.
As he trudged along, hood pulled down to cover his face, he took stock of all that had happened, obsessing over his mistakes and errors in judgment, rather than celebrating his successes.
He had survived the evening and stopped the imminent threat of war with Soissons, but at a cost. Gallmau and Meri had neatly manipulated him into flaunting the Synod’s restrictions on the rescue parties, putting himself in the absurd position of working with two dangerous enemies while trying to kill a third.
The fog of self-doubt and internal criticism only stopped when he realized he was being followed. His fatigue had weakened his senses but not eliminated them. Careful not to give any sign he had noticed his pursuer, he bowed his head further, as if in exhaustion, and reached out to find death.
A block went by before a flash of necromantic energy attracted his attention.
It wasn’t much—a small animal, perhaps. He spotted a carriage rumbling away and heard faint squeaks.
As he drew closer he could make out the flailing shape of a large rat lying in the street, its forelegs struggling as its lower body remained paralyzed.
Next to it was another rodent, this one fully crushed by the passing wheel and the source of the death energy.
He reached down to pick up the wounded rat and silenced its cries of agony by breaking its neck.
The direct involvement in the shift from the order of life to the expanding chaos of death gave him a rush of power.
He was nowhere near his full strength, but he should be able to work some ghost magic.
Phasmancy didn’t take anywhere near the power that shadow work did.
Too bad he was terrible at it.
Sinan’s powers to manipulate shadow were the most powerful of any of the Blessed in centuries.
That wasn’t a mere boast—Sinan had been told this by members of the Council of the Dead who had died hundreds of years ago and had a basis for comparison.
Ghost magic, on the other hand, had never come easy to him, when it had come at all.
He used a spoken spell to bind the animal’s soul before it could escape into the Holy Void of Chaos.
A novice at ghost magic would have done it better, but when he rested the furry body on the ground and rubbed his hands clean on his trousers, the rat stirred.
The rodent rose to its feet, its movements jerky.
An unnatural blue light emanated from the animal’s tiny eyes, illuminating the filthy cobblestones under Sinan’s feet.
Excellent. Sinan had a good idea of who was following him, and a Noviodunam-trained mage—especially one with access to the secrets of the benandanti—would be tracking death magic, not trying to keep visual contact with him.
“Go.” Sinan pointed along the street. It wasn’t typical to use verbal commands with an undead animal, especially such a small one.
A corpus animatum should be easily controlled by the mind alone, according to his instructors in Karakoncolos.
But his teachers weren’t here to pick apart his spellwork, and Sinan wanted to confront the pursuer on his own terms. “You are bound to my commands and must obey.”
The rat rose unsteadily onto his hind legs. Its body was now powered by magic, and it had none of the reflexes or speed of a living animal. It was little more than a meat puppet. Still, all he needed the creature to do was stagger down the road and act as a decoy.
The rat sniffed the air, and its eyes brightened, the blue light increasing in intensity.
Sinan frowned. Granted, he hadn’t used this spell before, but as far as he could remember, the undead animal shouldn’t be acting this way.
With a waddling motion totally unlike a normal rodent, the rat staggered closer to Sinan, then jerked forward. Sinan jumped back, a curse escaping his lips. The rat, for its part, ignored him as it bit into a moldy baguette lying on the ground.
“You couldn’t possibly eat something that big.” Sinan grabbed the end of the bread, but the animal hung on, its eyes blazing as it was lifted into the air. “Even if you were alive, which you’re not. You’re dead. Start acting like it.”
The rat released the baguette, which was covered in a green mold and stank like an open sewer. Sinan resorted to pointing and tried another command spell. After twitching a few times, the rat gave him a wounded look and began to stomp away.
Sinan tossed the bread on the ground and drew shadow around himself. He stood, blending in with the night, until a cloaked figure passed his hiding spot. The traveler moved with caution, not speed, and Sinan could sense the magic around him.
After a moment’s hesitation as he reached Sinan’s position, the man took off again.
The rat made a more consistent target, since a corpus animatum was as obvious as death magic could get, and within a few minutes Sinan was trailing after the man stalking him.
He waited until the street traffic thinned before mentally directing the rat to take a quick turn, and the animal cooperated this time.
A temple to the Three Prophets loomed on one side of the street, a handy landmark on the maps Sinan had pored over, and he was confident his decoy was leading the mage into a blind cul-de-sac.
His pursuer paused at the entrance to the alley, scanned the street around him, then strode toward the undead rat. Sinan walked out of his enveloping cloak of shadows after him.
The man summoned a ball of fire and sent it floating up into the air. The narrow space between the two buildings ended in a high wall, as the maps had predicted it would, and nothing more than a pile of refuse was illuminated by the light.
In a rattle and clank of debris, the rat backed out of the mass of garbage, dragging half a croissant with its teeth. The undead animal dropped the bread as the unnatural light of fire magic filled the space and turned to snarl at the mage, its glowing eyes still visible.
Sinan chose that moment to send streamers of his power through the space, and the incensor whirled around, finally understanding the trap he had walked into.
“There is no shadow without light, and no light without shadow.” Sinan stepped into view, his hands at his sides in preparation for battle.
In truth, he was in no shape for a fight, but if he was going to bluff he wanted it to be convincing.
“I’d have thought you wouldn’t be interested in another duel with me, Jacques, considering how our last one turned out. ”
Jacques Collins de Plancy slapped his hands together into the pose of non-violence with alacrity. He shook his head, and his hood fell back, revealing his face. “I didn’t come to fight you.”
“You’ve been stalking me through the streets with a benandanti spell.” Sinan pushed back his hood as well and gave his old enemy a grim smile. “I’d hardly consider that non-threatening behavior.”
“I wanted to speak to you privately.” Jacques broke off as the rat dragged the croissant past him, the animal pausing long enough to growl at him, even with its mouth full. “By the Saints, what is that thing?”
“A corpus animatum.” Sinan was tired, irritated, and in no mood to explain the basics of death magic to Jacques. “Did Odart of Dol not teach you about them in your lessons?”
“I didn’t accede to my father’s request to join the benandanti, and I don’t regret the decision.” Jacques took a deep breath. “Look, I had no choice but to follow you. The Shields are in an absolute frenzy, and they would never let me talk to you alone.”