8
Felix escorted Miss Rosara to the Althion Hotel and settled her into her lodgings.
She turned in soon after dark. He took the chance to lay a shop-bought vigilantus charm along the corridor, then headed for the Magisterium.
With any luck, they’d have her trace. He could set up a tracking charm tomorrow morning.
For all the use it’s likely to be.
The torrent of Carintheum surged up around him—the roar of arcanic engines, the music of the distant opera and the hawking of the night traders. He set out at his fastest pace, right at the edge of the road, where phaetons shot by in flashes of lamplit steel.
The Magisterium was still abustle when he arrived. He went to the registry desk and showed his prefecture badge to the motherly-looking clerk behind it.
“Good evening, ma’am. I was hoping to draw a file. Name of Donna Rosara.”
“I’ll take a look,” she said, turning to an arcanic screen in the nook of her desk. Her fingers danced across it. Then, she cocked her head and frowned.
“I’m sorry, sir. The file’s sealed.”
Sealed? That couldn’t be right.
“That’s curious,” said Felix, leaning over. “Does it give the grounds?”
“No, sir. A juvenile record, perhaps.”
Juvenile? If Miss Rosara was younger than twenty-five, he’d eat his uniform.
“You could apply to the magister for an order to release the file,” the woman added. “The listing time’s about three weeks. A week for urgent ones, but you’d need an affidavit to explain the hurry.”
Damn. He suspected a magister would look askance at his motives—I don’t want to wait four hours outside another bathhouse, Your Honor. But why would they seal the records? A minor jewelry theft, Regis had said, and she, an unwitting party to it.
Curious, though, came a voice in his head. The very first place she went, you couldn’t follow. Then, on Carysium Street . . . she talked to a man you never saw and walked away with enough money for rooms at the Althion.
“Would you like the application form?” the clerk asked, reaching for a stack of papers. His mind tensed, seized with an idea.
Reason told him to dismiss it. The world didn’t serve up mysteries for the amusement of bored men.
Goodness knew, he’d probably want a four-hour bath and a Carysium Street spree after three years in jail.
All the same, something pricked him on—that same perverse little instinct that made him stare at phaeton crashes and read the news.
“Oh, no, thank you, ma’am,” he said. “She was released today, that’s all, so we’re closing the file. I found some exhibits of evidence to return to the victim, but some ingenia spilled coffee over the address for service.”
He finished it off with a self-deprecating smile, and it seemed to do the trick. The woman looked at him with shrewd amusement, then turned back to her screen.
“I can find it for you . . . here. Aurium Gemwork. Thirty-one Amadis Lane.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, etching the address in his memory. “Good night.”
It was too late to visit the jeweler, so Felix returned to his lodgings. He lay awake for hours in his usual restless daze, until, from nowhere, morning was upon him.
He woke to the rattle of his postal tube. His arcana lashed hard, and adrenaline shot him to his feet. He careered into the opposite wall, then regained his balance and shook himself with irritation. His powers were keener to be awake than the rest of him.
Blinking away sleep, Felix checked the vigilantus dial in his pocket. Judging by the therical hieroglyphs, Miss Rosara hadn’t wandered out during the night.
He took the copper tube from its slot in the wall and unscrewed it to retrieve the message. You didn’t pick up the gauntlets, you splitwit, it read. Come and get them, or I’ll start charging rent. Lots of love, Diana.
He fumbled a pen from his desk and scribbled a reply. Spent four hours waiting outside the Seraph’s Rest (for official purposes, I swear). Will come as soon as I can. Beg forgiveness.
He rolled the note, thrust it into the tube and turned the dial. The missive went hissing off to his sister’s chambers at the university.
As he dressed, the strangeness of the last night’s discovery simmered in his mind. He had a notion that they could seal Magisterium records in the national interest—matters of security or special sensitivity, or to protect informers—but none of those seemed likely.
His bored mind urged him to untangle it. He’d have liked to pay a visit to Amadis Lane right away, but no jeweler would be open at that hour of the morning.
In the meantime, better find the woman before she wanders out in front of another phaeton, he thought. Duty calls.
He reached the Althion by seven, where he found Miss Rosara dressed and waiting. The moment he arrived, she took him by the arm and marched him out into Carintheum.
She’d made inquiries last evening, she said. It transpired that there were societies of virtuous ladies devoted to lending their light to the dimness, and there were few places dimmer than a Carinth prison. By mid-morning, Miss Rosara had joined the ranks.
They set off for the first jail with the starched cotton army, all elderly ladies smelling of powdery rose and fearsome spinsters striding to war against the vice of Carintheum. Nonetheless, his charge chattered merrily away to anyone with an ear, and seemed content to be chattered at in return.
Felix followed them through half a dozen lesser jails, restless energy crackling up his nerves. His mind scampered like a squirrel, and his body longed to run.
But when the fourth hour struck, his wits came back to him. The leader of the venerable rank ushered them off the omnibus and brandished her parasol at the black hulk shadowing the east.
Haideum Castle.
“Empire’s grace. I didn’t think they’d let you in there,” he said, slipping to Miss Rosara’s side. She took his arm, looking a little cowed.
“Only to the dominius cells, I think,” she whispered. “Strictly speaking, they’re not criminals.”
Ten minutes more, and they stood in the lee of the great dark edifice—that ancient dungeon where a millennium’s worth of traitors, murderers and would-be imperators had rotted to death.
The black stone walls were cracked and weathered by a thousand years of wickedness. The air seemed grimmer in its shadow.
Patrium curses crushed in close around him the moment he passed through the gates. His next step felt like a pace through sand. Tracking furies cut about his heels like living smoke, tasting him for danger. Just as well he didn’t have his powers, or he fancied they’d have taken a bite.
They dogged him all the way to the watchhouse.
There, a warden met the party from behind a translucent shield.
Felix sized the fellow up. When he’d visited the castle as a schoolboy, a fearsome man in full arcanic armor had controlled a gate of black flame.
Now, the patrium spell parted at the pull of the dull-faced warden’s lever.
Therical protections, he thought with a flash of disgust.
“Ladies,” said the warden, nodding them past.
They were soon trailing through the forbidding inner halls. Silence crushed in close between the plunks of dripping water. Miss Rosara kept to his side, seeming anxious in the dark. When they reached the dominius cells, though, she went timidly forward to greet the prisoners.
Felix stood back as the ladies began their rounds.
The warden took a place beside him, bobbing on the balls of his feet.
He was no arcani, and a glance each way revealed no other guards.
Nonetheless, Felix could feel the weight of the patrium curses all around, stifling the erratic energy in his blood.
He had to allow, not even the centurion could’ve cracked spells that strong.
“This place has changed,” he remarked.
“Mmm. That’s Copperchaser for you,” said the warden, then grinned. “Praetor Cendrius, sorry.”
Ah. Cendrius. That explains a lot. The Praetor for Imperial Revenue had earned his nickname.
“I thought Haideum was administered by the military.”
“Used to be,” the man said with a shrug. “’Bout three years ago, though, the boss decided it cost too much to pay the top arcani. Replaced ’em with therical machinery.”
“Economical, I suppose,” said Felix, trying not to grit his teeth.
“Free, near as. We get most of the arcana from those devils in the eternity cells.”
“Enough to run the entire castle? I wouldn’t have thought they were that powerful.”
“Oh, we’ve got some good ’uns, in there,” said the warden, brightening. “Martix the Scourger, Glante of Hjelvak . . . even that Xanthian bloke from the Elysius job, though he swore to the Pantheon he was under a dominius curse.”
“They often do.”
“Didn’t do him much good. Served that lot right, getting ratted on by one of their own. Still . . . never found the treasures, did they?”
“I believe not,” Felix said noncommittally, deciding that conversation mightn’t have been such a good idea. The warden had the look of a man with no few tales of ’orrible murder up his sleeve.
The dominius wing was small, and the ladies finished their work within the hour. They lingered in the courtyard, though, talking eagerly. Felix checked his watch as the minutes dragged by. Amadis Lane would soon be closed.
Unfortunately, Miss Rosara had other ideas. Another ten minutes went down the drain when the night soil cart came rolling in and she ended up in conversation with the driver. Then, as they were heading for the gates, she spied a delivery girl struggling with her load and stopped to help.
“Afternoon, there. Rest for the wicked?” she asked, plucking a box from the top of the girl’s pile. A flushed creature in a cloth cap appeared behind it—no more than sixteen, with the reddish hair and pale skin of Celadonius Magna.
“Oh. Thanks, mate. Wouldn’t say no.”
Miss Rosara beamed and turned to Felix. “Sir, perhaps you’d assist us,” she said. He smiled his automatic smile and obliged, taking two of the boxes. The stench of salt and peat bog assaulted him at once.