14 Hourglass #3
It could be a coincidence. What was it Telmar had said about True Illusionists? Magi with Errigalese parentage who could alter their features and mimic everything down to one’s voice and mannerisms. Perhaps among them was a man who’d wanted to look like Kadra.
It all rang flat.
Closing her eyes, she focused on the feeling of her perpetually shaking hands pressed against the farmer’s head. Flickers of pressure met her palms, and she grit her teeth, controlling her flow of magic to pull free of the memory.
The burning marketplace crumbled, replaced by the barn of the farmer’s memories.
The swinging door to the altered memory lay stationary now.
Both the door and its latch were different from the others lining both sides of the barn.
Whatever Noceo had done to this man, it hadn’t wiped the truth from his head but blotted it over, the camouflage invisible to the mind but not to a Petitor.
Foreboding and recognition gripped her, a weak signpost in her head telling her to look deeper. She couldn’t glance in that direction or bring herself to speak what she had already put together. She needed to sit, to panic. She could do neither in front of Ythras.
Reaching for the memory he had wanted Materialized, she pulled it loose. Reality returned in a slow rush. The cramped cell, officers, Ythras’s mouth half open in a tirade over how long she was taking. It fell shut as a translucent landscape bloomed, playing out the farmer’s memory through his eyes.
Ythras backed away at the sight of the swarm, eyes growing huge. “Eastern fields!” He roared to his vigiles, who fled upstairs. “Take no chances! Burn them all down!”
She waited for them to depart before speaking. “Did lightning strike a market here some weeks ago?” Was that really her voice? Hoarse and ragged around the edges?
Ythras’s face darkened. “Yes, a few Guild magi. They’d escaped before I was informed. Five dead, but those are paltry numbers to the Tetrarchy.”
No, they aren’t. “Does the name Noceo mean anything to you?” She went motionless when the same fear bloomed on Ythras’s features as during Kadra’s questions yesterday. Something in her crumpled.
He swallowed. “As I indicated to the Magus Supreme, we only deal with the Clanlord of Clan Kader in one sense.”
Clanlord. A high-pitch ringing began in her ears, drowning out his next words.
Clan Kader. Her pulse throbbed furiously at her temples.
Ruler of the land’s underworld and drug maker.
Mysteriously vanished. Mysteriously. A lightning strike supposed to have split their manor in two.
Whitesleep across the country. Patches of memory she hadn’t been able to recall for months.
Goose bumps rippled across her skin. “We only deal with Noceo in one sense?” she repeated. “We?”
“This is none of your concern,” Ythras muttered. “The Tetrarchy’s never cared about the north, so we had to consider alternate—”
She stopped halfway up the staircase. “You sit here as the Tetrarchy’s representative to govern this city. You answer to them, and that means you answer to me.”
He wasn’t cowed. “Only because you’re sleeping with Magus Supreme Kadra.”
Sarai stilled. This close to the landing, she caught the silence that fell over the northern vigiles there, could practically see their ears prick in interest. She continued up the stairs, each step slow, purposeful. “Did word reach this city of who killed Aelius?”
She heard a gulp behind her.
“So, you heard.” Another step. “Former Magus Supreme of Ur Dinyé, and he died like a stuck pig roasted over flame at my hand. Didn’t you wonder why I didn’t mind coming alone and left my guards behind?
” Anger leaked into her voice despite her attempt at nonchalance.
“Of the Tetrarchy and its Petitors, I’m the one with the most patience.
” She reached the top step and turned to face him, still frozen below. “Do you want to keep testing it?”
Ythras’s mouth moved faster than a beetle swarm. “I was referring to the coalition of northern Praetors. The Clanlord pays most of us for our cooperation.”
Realization and horror crashed through her, twin tidal waves. We’ve been played for fools. The north had silently but fully seceded from the Tetrarchy’s grasp.
As a Bridger, Dalvia could send every able-bodied northern vigile outside Edessa’s gates in a heartbeat. And Noceo could make every lightning magus on Edessa’s city walls raze it to the ground.
Ruin’s breath, Kadra. No wonder you sprinted home. Thinking of him brought Noceo to mind. She suppressed a flinch. She couldn’t think about what that eerily similar face meant yet.
Chilled to the bone, she allowed herself to be led out to the city walls where the other vigiles and Méherre waited. Wide-lipped braziers perched atop the pavement on either side of the road into Komis, burning as bright as day in an attempt to deter the beetles.
A Coercer, Telmar had said weeks ago. A magus who could make anyone do anything. That’s one mystery solved. She didn’t have to wonder at the blank spots in her mind anymore. Noceo had painted over them. They must have met. Was Edessa’s madness-struck tied to him, too?
Then, there was the final mystery. The one that had warned her that everything was about to go wrong. Because Kadra never lied to her. But he’d always kept his secrets close.
Everyone in Edessa and out knew of his story. An extraordinarily powerful street child adopted by Tetrarch Othus. A brilliant student at the Academaie who’d graduated early. Iudex. Tetrarch. And almost five years later, Magus Supreme.
His supporters adored him almost as much as she did, because they knew he understood.
That he’d seen the ugliest corners of humanity and fought ruthlessly to blot them out.
He’d chosen her, a northern street rat-turned-Petitor without formal training and tossed her into the crucible of politics while silently serving as her shield.
Given her his life, his body, his heart.
But had he given her the truth?
She barely heard Méherre’s worried questions. Forcing out a polite goodnight, she trudged to her room in the inn. And when she slipped into an uneasy sleep, she found fractured memories, screams and fire, and a single devastating question.
When does an omission become a lie?