“Wait here,” the Master Servant said.
Benny and I lowered ourselves onto the perfectly upholstered chairs. I thought the Master Servant did a wonderful job of not shuddering as we settled our dirty, sweaty, ragged selves onto cushions that were used to far more refined backsides than ours.
“This is a bit of all right,” Benny whispered loudly.
This time, the Master Servant’s jaw did tighten.
“I will see if Master Silkstar is available.” With a sharp nod, she turned and strode off, not hurrying exactly, but certainly not hanging around.
“How long do you reckon we’ve got?” Benny said when the Master Servant was gone.
“Not sure.” It wouldn’t take long for her to reach the central courtyard; unlike us, she knew where she was going. “Five minutes? You can’t hurry religion, but Silkstar’s going to want to know what was so important the Countess would interrupt him during the Feast of Parata.”
“That one’s all on you, mate.”
“I didn’t notice you jumping forwards with any great ideas.” I squeezed my thumb and forefinger into my eyes to push away the tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm me. “You’d better know exactly where we’re going.”
“Not a clue, mate. His personal library, that’s what I was told.”
“Great.” I thought for a moment. “Silkstar is probably going to see us in his office, right?”
Benny shrugged. I decided to take that as agreement.
“His private library won’t be too far from that, and the Master Servant will have left us near the office.”
“Makes sense. Doesn’t mean it’s right, but it makes sense.”
“You’re all encouragement,” I said. “If you were to choose a door that looked like you really shouldn’t go through it, which would it be?”
Benny had an almost supernatural sense of things he wasn’t supposed to do and places he wasn’t supposed to go. There were three doors into the sitting room, including the one we had come through, but it only took Benny a second to point at a door upholstered in green leather.
“That one. No one wants me in there. I can feel it.”
“Then let’s do it.” I eased myself up, wiping my sweaty hands on the expensive cushions.
Benny was right. The door led to a long, wide room with desks down both sides, carpeted in the same green colour as the door. Silkstar’s clerks must have worked here, when they weren’t standing around watching him be religious. The double doors at the far end were closed and probably locked, but Benny went through locks like I went through a plate of cheese and olives after a long night’s ghost hunting. Or, my stomach reminded me, the way I would have if Benny hadn’t dragged me away before I had had a chance for breakfast.
A large desk stood in front of the double doors, facing down between the rows of smaller desks, so that anyone entering would be forced to approach Carnelian Silkstar like a supplicant in a temple. Maybe he just had a thing for altars.
Neat papers, pens, inks, and blotters decorated the clerks’ desks like little votive offerings to their master.
“Come on.” We crossed the office, and I waited while Benny made short work of the lock.
“Too easy,” Benny said. “Some people don’t even try to make it difficult.”
I pushed the doors open. Beyond was a short hallway with only a single example of Mycedan-tat half-blocking the way through. The walls on either side were solid marble. An inlaid cedar door opened off one side. I peeked through into a room with four comfortable chairs and a low table between them. Somewhere for more private meetings. Double doors had been thrown open to another small, private courtyard. I had to squeeze my nose so the smell of honeysuckle didn’t make me sneeze. I could hear the constant hum of bees.
“That’s not very secure,” Benny observed, nodding towards the open courtyard doors. “That’s just asking for someone to let themselves in.”
“Which might have been useful if we’d known about it before we started all this creeping around.” I shook my head. “Focus on the job.”
“What? I’m just making notes for next time.”
The only other door was at the end of the hallway. It opened into a library, and I felt a surge of elation for the first time. We had found it, and there was still no sign of Silkstar turning up to rip our skins from our backs and use them to cover his books. Maybe this plan really was going to work.
A desk stood in the middle of a rug on the marble floor, heaped with papers and worn books. A vase, holding freshly cut lavender, sat incongruously on one side. More fucking lavender. I didn’t normally get bad allergies, but this was place was a full-on pollen assault.
Red-painted shelves covered every wall except for a single barred, shuttered window, making the whole place look like a disused brothel. I was starting to doubt Carnelian Silkstar’s taste, or possibly his eyesight. An armchair sat beneath a morgue-lamp in one corner. The room smelled dry and old, with a hint of dust and crumpled paper and the taste of warm wood.
Half the shelves were filled with ledgers.
“Great,” I said. “So, which one is it?”
Benny scratched behind an ear. “I was hoping you could tell me that.”
At this point, nothing was going to surprise me.
That was what they called ‘famous last words’, right?
“You might want to hurry, too,” Benny added, helpfully.
I waved him into silence.
One of the first things a mage learned was to sense magic. If you couldn’t sense the magic around you, you couldn’t draw it to yourself and cast spells. Most mages could sense magic long before they started training, even if they weren’t sure what they were sensing.
I let my eyes unfocus and slipped into the semi-trance that allowed me to see magic.
Colours rose around me. Tendrils of green lifted from the floor like smoke. That was the raw, natural magic every mage drew on. The morgue-lamp was green, too, but focused and bright. Silkstar’s deactivated wards permeated every wall, the ceiling above us, and the floor below, seething heavily in unsettling black and red patterns. I shuddered. A single word from Silkstar would bring them to ominous life, and that would be the end of me and Benny. I forced myself to ignore them, along with the green mist and the morgue-lamp.
Magic didn’t have colours, of course. That was just the way I visualised it. I knew a couple of mages who sensed it as music, and even one who tasted it, although I had no idea how that could actually work. I did know it would have put me completely off my dinner.
I saw curses as white strands, enfolding objects like a dolphin caught in a net.
I turned slowly, letting my senses drift across the room. There was something cursed in the desk, but it was the wrong shape. A dagger, perhaps. I moved past it.
“That’s the one.” I pointed to a heavy ledger just to the left of where Carnelian Silkstar would sit. It was buried beneath a pile of papers.
“Go on, then.”
I shot Benny an annoyed look. A bit of appreciation wouldn’t have gone amiss. I wasn’t saying I was the only one who could have found the right book so quickly, but I was the only one whom Benny could persuade to do something this stupid for him. I swept off the pile of papers and dumped them into Benny’s hands.