A year of living in the capital city of Darome had afforded Reichis the opportunity to expand his list of unhealthy addictions, which currently consisted of butter biscuits, overpriced amber pazione liqueur, several vintages of Gitabrian wines – the expensive ones, naturally – and, of course, human flesh.
‘Did you remember to bring me the mage’s eyeballs?’ he inquired.
‘He wasn’t dead.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
This is where having a squirrel cat perched on your shoulder perilously close to your soft, tasty human ears gets dangerous. See, squirrel cats, with their tubby feline bodies, big bushy tails, coats that change colour depending on their mood and furry flaps that stretch between their front and back limbs enabling them to glide from the treetops (or ‘fly as well as any gods-damned falcon’ as Reichis would insist), can – if you stare at them, squinty-eyed, from a distance and preferably through a drunken haze – look almost cute. They’re not. Puppy dogs are cute. Bunny rabbits are cute. Poisonous Berabesq sand rattlers are cute to somebody. Squirrel cats, though? Not cute. Evil.
‘Reichis …’ I began.
His breath is surprisingly warm when it’s less than an inch from your earlobe. ‘Go on, say it.’
Ancestors, I thought, noting in the periphery of my vision that Reichis’s shadowblack markings were swirling. Just over a year ago he’d wound up with the same twisting black lines around his left eye as I have around mine. Unlike me, though, the possibility of one day becoming a rampaging demon terrorising the entire continent didn’t trouble him in the least. The prospect frankly delighted him.
Rescue from possibly fatal squirrel cat gnawing came in the form of a half-dozen pairs of heavy boots clomping up behind me, followed soon thereafter by the tell-tale click of a crossbow’s safety catch being released. ‘Kellen Argos, by order of Lieutenant Libri of the queen’s marshals service, you are under arrest.’
I sighed. ‘This again?’
The first tentative rasp of the crossbow’s trigger grinding against its iron housing. ‘Get those hands up high, spellslinger.’
I hadn’t even noticed that my fingers had drifted to the powder holsters at my sides. Reflex, I guess, though by now you’d figure I’d’ve gotten used to being arrested on an almost weekly basis.
I raised my arms and slowly turned to find the marshals wearing their customary broad hats and long grey coats, armed with the usual assortment of short-hafted maces and crossbows – all trained on me. ‘Would you like me to read the warrant?’ Sergeant Faustus Cobb asked. Short, scrawny, narrow-shouldered and years past his prime, you’d think he’d appear comical next to his younger and more vigorous subordinates. But my experience with the Queen’s Marshals had taught me that age does nothing to diminish how dangerous they are – only how ornery they become when you resist.
Me? I was eighteen, wearier than my years ought to allow. My shirt was still soaked from the booze I’d used to disguise myself as a drunk back at the saloon, and I was feeling more than a little crabby myself. ‘What’s the charge this time?’
Cobb made a show of reading out the warrant. ‘Conspiracy to commit assault upon the person of a foreign emissary enjoying the protections afforded diplomatic representatives …’
Yep, that’s right: the old man who’d come to kill me, being a Jan’Tep lord magus, held ambassadorial status in Darome.
Cobb went on. ‘Grievous physical abuse …’
Not nearly grievous enough.
‘Theft …’
Knew I shouldn’t have kept any of the coins.
‘Acting against the vital interests of the Daroman Crown and the people it serves …’
That one they throw into almost every warrant. Spit on the sidewalk and you’ve technically ‘acted against the interests’ of the crown.
Cobb paused. ‘And there’s something here about “unlawfully being an irritating, half-witted spellslinging card sharp who doesn’t do what he’s told”, but I’m not sure that’s an actual crime.’
And yet, I was pretty sure it was the only crime Torian was concerned about. ‘Funny how she had that warrant already drawn up before anyone found the mage,’ I pointed out.
Cobb grinned. ‘Guess the lieutenant’s got you pegged pretty good by now, Kellen.’
I was really starting to dislike Lieutenant Torian Libri. While there were no end of people in the Daroman capital intent on making my life hell, few displayed her raw determination and consistently lousy sense of humour. ‘You do realise that under imperial law my rank as queen’s tutor prevents you from prosecuting me for any crime without four-fifths of the court first revoking my status, don’t you?’
One of the younger deputies gave an amiable chuckle. I’d let him beat me at cards last week in the vain hope I might win over some of the marshals to my side. ‘Don’t say nothin’ about you bein’ arrested though.’
‘Let’s go, spellslinger,’ Cobb ordered, motioning for me to walk ahead of him.
Reichis gave a low growl. ‘You gonna take this crap, Kellen? Again? Let’s murder these skinbags. You owe me three eyeballs and this here’s an opportunity for you to pay up.’
‘Three? How many eyeballs do you think that mage had?’ I asked.
One of the marshals stared at me quizzically. She must’ve been new – the others were accustomed to hearing me talk to Reichis.
‘Who can tell with humans?’ the squirrel cat grumbled. ‘Your faces are all so ugly that every time I start counting, I lose track on account of needing to puke. Besides, two eyeballs was what you owed me an hour ago. The third is interest.’
Perfect. In addition to being a thief, a blackmailer and a murderer, Reichis now wanted to add loan shark to his list of criminal enterprises.
‘Let’s pick up the pace,’ Cobb said. ‘You know how the lieutenant gets when you keep her waiting.’
Several of the deputies laughed at that – not that any of them would dare cross her. Reluctantly, I trudged along the wide flagstone street en route to my thirteenth jailing since becoming the queen’s tutor of cards.
‘Hey, what’s that?’ Reichis asked, his nose nodding in the direction of something small and flat floating on the breeze towards us, low to the ground. A playing card settled at my feet.
‘Keep walking,’ Cobb ordered.
I stayed where I was, staring down at the elaborate artwork on the card depicting a magnificent city on the top half. The bottom was a sort of mirror image, distorted as if reflected by a dark, shifting pool of black water.
‘You drop that?’ he asked, finally noticing the card.
‘Sergeant Cobb,’ I began. ‘Before this goes any further, I need to clarify a couple of things.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
‘First, I had nothing to do with this card suddenly turning up.’
‘So what? It’s a playing card. Not like you’re the only gambler in the capital.’
As if to contest his banal explanation, a second card drifted down to land next to the first one. Then another and another, each one rotated a little more than the previous, gradually encircling me.