I felt like she’d dumped a bucket of icy water over my head.
Think it through, Nik, I told myself. Logically. I knew I hadn’t murdered the Master Servant, and I didn’t think it was a coincidence that a magical murder had happened at exactly the time I was setting off the booby trap.
I wasn’t talking my way out of this. I would have to gamble and hope the Ash Guard had bigger things to worry over than a bout of thievery.
I raised my hands. “All right, all right. Benny and I were there to steal a ledger from Carnelian Silkstar, but the ledger was booby-trapped, and I didn’t see the trap until it was too late. That’s all I know.”
Captain Gale leaned forwards. “We’ve spoken to Carnelian Silkstar. He told us that there was a curse on a ledger, but all it would have done was to give you a bad case of the shits. It certainly wasn’t booby-trapped. Unless you had a particularly explosive case of the shits, something else caused the damage.”
My jaw dropped.
“I felt it trigger,” I said. “It was booby-trapped. I know what I felt.”
She tilted her head to one side, inquisitively. “You’re saying someone snuck into Silkstar’s library and set a booby trap without him noticing? A high mage’s library.”
“Or he lied,” I muttered.
It sounded weak, even to me, and I still didn’t understand how the Master Servant had died.
All hints of humour had deserted the captain now.
“Shall I tell you what I think? I think you murdered Master Servant Rush, but I think you made a mess of it. I think the blow-back from a badly cast spell almost took you out, too, and wrecked the library.”
I was already shaking my head. There had been a booby trap tied to that curse. I wasn’t wrong. Why, though? Why booby-trap that ledger? Whoever had done it could hardly have been after Silkstar. The explosion had nearly taken me out, but a high mage would have brushed it off like stray dandruff.
Someone had hired Benny to go after this very ledger. They had warned him about the curse. They must have known of his association with me and known Benny would come to me for help. When I broke the curse, the booby trap would explode and I would be dead.
Someone tried to kill you! Not by accident, not in the heat of the moment. It had been deliberate, careful, planned.
The thought made my whole body flush cold, despite the heat pouring in through the glass ceiling. My hands shivered uncontrollably. I quickly clasped them beneath the table. I felt sweat spring up on my cold skin. My lips were dry.
Dead. Why would anyone want me dead? The enormity of it sent my mind flailing for a moment before I could bring it under control. I knew I pissed people off, but this was extreme and dangerous, and if they got it wrong, they would have a high mage after them.
No. Stop. Calm down. It didn’t have to be personal. Maybe they just (just!) wanted to frame someone for the Master Servant’s murder. Maybe anyone would have done as long as that person could take the blame. It would be so much easier to frame someone who wasn’t around to protest their innocence. A shredded body caught in the act. The perfect patsy. Maybe they had set the booby trap, given Benny a deadline, and waited for us to spring it. Then, they had magically murdered the Master Servant and made themselves scarce, leaving people to draw the wrong conclusions from the scene.
Like the captain had.
Except we hadn’t died. We had got lucky — really lucky — and we had survived. Then the Ash Guard had turned up. They had been there fast. The explosion had knocked me out cold, but if I had been unconscious for more than a couple of minutes, Benny would have dragged me out of there. It had taken half an hour for the Ash Guard to march me back from Thousand Walls to their fortress, most of that downhill. Getting there would have taken almost as long, particularly uphill. The Ash Guard didn’t routinely patrol wearing Ash, because Ash destroyed all magic, good, bad, or harmless, that it came close to. Too much of the city relied on magic for that to be an option. Someone must have tipped them off that something was going to happen nearby, and the Ash Guard must have been waiting. Whoever had planned this had been thorough. When we didn’t die, the fallback plan had been waiting, smeared in Ash and brutal judgement.
Captain Gale must have seen something in my expression, because she suddenly leaned back in her chair with a sigh. She slapped a palm on the file in front of her.
“Our assessment is that you don’t have the power to pull something like this off.”
I perked up. That was … unexpectedly good news. “So I can go?”
“Our assessments have been wrong before.”
I slumped back. “Great.”
“But you can go for now.”
Bet you didn’t plan for that, you bastard! I thought. Whoever had set me up had made a mistake.
As if she were reading my mind, Captain Gale shook her head. “You may not have had the power for this, but you are involved, somehow. I hope for your sake that your involvement is entirely innocent and accidental. If not, we will discover who you were working with and we will come for you.”
That wasn’t the most reassuring thing anyone had said to me today. I shivered all over again.
No, I told myself. They couldn’t get anything on me, because I didn’t have anything to do with it. If you’re not involved, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Which was a pile of steaming goat shit, because someone had worked really hard to make it look like Benny and I were involved.
I pushed my chair back and headed for the door. Maybe this hadn’t been personal, but someone had tried to kill me and Benny, and they had tried to frame us. I was going to find out who, and they were going to pay.
“Your friend,” Captain Gale said.
I turned. “Benny?”
“We don’t have him. He’s not a mage, so he’s not our jurisdiction. He’s in the custody of the City Watch.” Was that sympathy in the captain’s voice? Why sympathy? “You should know that he will be found guilty, no matter the evidence.”
I wasn’t naïve, but that still took me aback. How could they just find him guilty? And of what?
“Mr. Field has pushed his luck too far this time. You can’t rob a high mage and walk away from it. Carnelian Silkstar may have no influence in here” — she gestured at the Ash Guard fortress around us — “but the magistrates and the City Watch know on which side of their face the sun shines. You did try to steal from him.”
Benny had been caught red-handed, or as close to red-handed as he could be. What did I think was going to happen? What a fucking idiot I had been. I should never have got into this.
Goat shit, I told myself. This is not your fault. Benny got you into this, not the other way around.
Except I knew I wasn’t going to abandon him.
You don’t let your friends down. You don’t cut them loose. I might not know much, but I knew that. You just didn’t.
My legs were shaking as two Ash Guard men led me out of the chamber. I had a sudden wobble going through the door and almost bumped into the doorjamb. I did a little dance to make it look like I’d meant to do it, which only made the whole thing more obvious.
The truth was, I hadn’t been sure I would be walking out of the Ash Guard fortress at all. There was nothing quite so pathetic as a mage without his powers. I had acted confident, and I knew I was innocent (kind of innocent), but the Ash Guard answered to no one except their own strict laws, and if they had decided I was staying, stay I would.