Ward Against Death Part 15

"But Celia, I think-"

"You stick out like a sore thumb."

He glanced around. "Oh." Then he slouched, hung his head, and swayed a little.

They stumbled a few steps forward, b.u.mping into a woman who turned and giggled before she danced away.

The blonde woman didn't seem to have noticed them and was now almost at Solartti's table, but they were only a quarter of the way around. If she saw them they'd have to run, and running with Solartti's dead weight didn't appeal to Celia.

She tried to move faster, hoping Ward would take her lead. They were almost at the front door when someone grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. She clenched her fists. Ward grunted as he took all of Solartti's weight. Before her stood a squat man, as wide as he was tall, swaying back and forth. His pupils were uneven, a sure sign he too partook of charlatous laced with zephnyr oil.

"Dance with me." A thick globule of drool rolled over his bottom lip, down his chin, and dropped onto his ma.s.sive chest.

"I'm on my way out." She turned to the door, but the man grabbed her wrist and spun her again.

From the corner of her eye she could see Ward s.h.i.+ft from one foot to the other, and on the other side of the fat man the blonde woman headed in their direction. She needed to do something, fast.

"Sure. I'll dance with you. Just let me see my friends off and I'll meet you on the dance floor."

The fat man smiled. "Now."

She hated men who couldn't see reason. Please don't let him be as far gone as he seemed. She grabbed the man's hands and sashayed him toward the blonde woman. She twirled around her, knocking over a table and a few people in the process, and handed over the fat man. He clung to the startled blonde woman, pulling her along the balcony toward the back of the dance hall.

Celia spun on her heel and danced back to Ward as fast as she could, a huge grin plastered on her face. She whisked him and Solartti out of the dance hall.

They dragged the a.s.sa.s.sin's limp form down the street and stepped into the shadows of an alley to catch their breath.

"So what was so important?" she asked.

Ward leaned back, gasping for air. "I think he's dead."

EIGHTEEN.

Karysa extracted herself from the drunk man's grasp and returned to the a.s.sa.s.sin's table. Celia and that boy necromancer had dragged the dead a.s.sa.s.sin out of the dance hall and she couldn't stop them. But never mind. The essence-seeking spell that hadn't worked for Celia would work for her a.s.sa.s.sin friend-even if she had given him ibria with his charlatous and zephnyr oil. It might have destroyed his soul, but she could still follow his body.

They would take him someplace safe, hopefully wherever they were hiding, and the boy would try to wake him. She wished she could see the look on his face when his spell failed.

A smile pulled at her lips. How many times would he try before giving up? He didn't look like he had much of a magical const.i.tution and would probably be exhausted after a second attempt.

A tremor swept through her, drawing a low moan. The blood-magic lure was glorious. She could only imagine the concentration and meditations that boy had to go through to avoid it. Such a fool.

Another tremor stirred heat low in her gut. Her breath hitched in her throat and she gasped. A man at the table across from her gave her a curious look. She ran the tip of her tongue slowly over her lips, leveling her gaze on him. He flushed, but no energy danced under his skin. How disappointing. There just weren't enough magical people in this princ.i.p.ality.

And, really, she shouldn't be wasting time. She had to find her chosen one. She traced the rim of the a.s.sa.s.sin's cup with her finger. She didn't need a lot of a person's essence to find his body. No more than a drop of saliva.

"How could you not know he was dead?" Celia paced the bedchamber where they had placed Solartti's body. "You're a necromancer."

Ward crossed his arms and leaned against the back wall. "And you're an a.s.sa.s.sin." And that woman in the dance hall had been an Innecroestri, likely the only one he'd ever heard Grandfather talking about. Karysa. He s.h.i.+vered at the thought.

"I just..." She sat at the foot of the bed and placed a hand on Solartti's leg.

Ward pushed off from the wall, suddenly aware that she had lost a friend. He shouldn't just stand here. He was usually more sensitive. "I should give you a moment."

"And then what?"

"That's up to you."

She looked at him, her eyes hard. "I suppose you mean we carry on."

Could she not see the obvious? He sighed and reminded himself that the grief from a sudden death, or even an expected one, could rattle the most practical of people. "Would you like me to wake him?"

"Like me?"

He rubbed his bandaged wrist. "For fifteen minutes. You can talk to him, see what he found out. Say goodbye."

"But not longer?"

"Celia." Ward knelt at her feet. His voice caught in his throat and he coughed to clear it. She looked so fierce and yet so fragile. All he really wanted was to say something comforting, but she wouldn't appreciate false solace. There was no possibility for a romance between them, but was there a chance at friends.h.i.+p? "To be honest, I'm surprised the Jam de'U is still active."

She nodded, and Ward took that as consent, running his hands down the front of his s.h.i.+rt. Finally something within the realm of normality.

He sat on the side of the bed and unsheathed his knife, contemplating which finger he should p.r.i.c.k. His ring finger was just starting to feel normal again from when he'd woken Celia in the sewers. The thought left a bad taste in his mouth. Just a little blood and his life had been turned upside down and set on fire for good measure. He jabbed the knife into the finger. No, he didn't want to think about it.

Blood swelled into a bead, and he drew a G.o.ddess-eye on Solartti's forehead and pressed his palm against it. He placed his other hand over Solartti's heart, closed his eyes, and focused on stilling his thoughts and his being. He called on knowledge from the Light Son, power over death from the Dark Son, and grace and well-being from the G.o.ddess. In his mind, he envisioned the veil opening and Solartti's spirit racing back to his body.

He listened for the sudden inhalation as the deceased breathed once again, but nothing happened.

He pictured the veil opening further, and with his mind he called to Solartti.

Still nothing.

Ward pursed his lips. He'd never had a problem like this before. As much as he was a bad necromancer in every other respect, he'd never before had an unsuccessful wake.

Celia grabbed his shoulder, and he jumped. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know."

"Why isn't he awake?"

Ward rubbed his hands together. His fingers were cold, also uncommon during a wake. "I don't know." If he were a normal necromancer, he'd be able to feel the power, the life force that emanated from all things, and he might have a clue. But he couldn't and therefore he didn't. Unless Karysa had something to do with Solartti's death.

He stepped into the corridor. To his right, two chambers down, he could see the gallery, bright in comparison to the low lighting of the bedchamber. To his left, more doorways.

Even if only half of the rumors about Karysa were true, she wasn't someone he wanted to encounter. He could only pray to the G.o.ddess and her two Sons she wasn't involved in Celia's murder, although he doubted he'd be so lucky. Karysa toyed with human life and the veil without concern. No one knew where she'd learned her dark spells, the soul stealing and the false resurrections, but eyewitness accounts proved she had the abilities. Even with a village-worth of murders on her hands in the Princ.i.p.ality of Worben, the Necromancer Council of Elders were withholding the warrant on her death in hopes of finding her soul jars and freeing those she'd imprisoned.

Was that what she'd done to Solartti? But if that was the case, Solartti should have a G.o.ddess-eye painted on his forehead, and Ward hadn't noticed blood on his face or his hands.

Gentle fingers brushed his arm-Celia's fingers, uncertain and tender-but he didn't look at her.

"If you can't wake him, we'll need to get rid of him."

"I want to keep him for a couple of days. Maybe tomorrow I'll have better luck."

"He'll begin to smell."

"I know." Exhaustion weighed on him. He hadn't slept in days, and he still had to sneak out of the cavern and perform a surgery. He rubbed his face. The earthy scent of charlatous clung to his hands, and his index finger and thumb were still sticky from the zephnyr oil.

"Let's move him down to one of the lower levels. As far from our living quarters as possible. I just want another try."

After helping Ward wrap Solartti in a cloak, carry him to the second-last level, and place him on the floor of an empty chamber, Celia went to her study. Thankfully, Ward didn't follow. She knew he was going to ask what was next, and to that she had no idea. She couldn't think straight, couldn't wrap her mind around Solartti's death. Sure, everyone knew an excessive dose of zephnyr oil could put a person in a catatonic state, essentially killing his mind, but his body still lived. Except Solartti wasn't catatonic. He was dead. So dead he was beyond Ward's ability to call him back.

She eased into her chair. For some reason all of her pinp.r.i.c.k cuts had begun to ache.

What killed a man beyond a necromancer's ability to call him back? She would have to ask Ward, but not now. Now, she needed to be alone. Why hadn't she killed him yet? She couldn't seem to find the right moment to seduce him and that made him a liability.

As for the theory that she needed him in case his spell failed... she wasn't certain he could repeat the process. Perhaps he couldn't wake Solartti because he wasn't powerful enough, although she'd been so sure she'd sensed something back at the Guild's records room. Perhaps she'd been mistaken and waking her had been an accident. If his spell suddenly failed, would he even try to bring her back?

She flipped a page in the open book before her, but didn't look at the text. Now she was being ridiculous. Ward's abilities as a necromancer were not in question. She knew he'd woken Cooper Smith two weeks before her own wake, and he'd woken her once in her bedroom and once in the sewer before doing whatever he had done to her last.

And he had been helpful. There was no denying that. She wouldn't have been able to get the Keeper's key without his help, nor get out of the Keeper's house. She wouldn't have been able to pull all that crystal out of her rear without him, let alone with such gentle precision. Ward would have made a good physician. Why wasn't he practicing? Admittedly, he was young, but she'd met junior physicians their age working in established practices.

She ran her hand across the page, smoothing the brittle parchment under her fingers. What made someone skilled, even gifted, turn away from that to do something he was less skilled at, and would make him less profit? She knew it wasn't for the love of it. She could tell he didn't enjoy necromancy.

Her gaze dropped to the book and she stared at the clean, black lines without focusing on the words.

Someone cleared his throat. It had to be Ward. It couldn't be Solartti. Her time to be quiet and think was over.

As she looked up to acknowledge him, her eyes stopped at the b.l.o.o.d.y parchment, which she had stolen from the Keeper's safe.

"Thoughts?" Ward asked from the doorway.

"Many." She reached for the parchment and ran her finger over the hard, uneven wax that had sealed the note shut. It belonged to the Guild, which made it official, and the black ink in the wax hadn't bled into the parchment, which meant it had been opened soon after it was sealed. "One of them being, what was an a.s.sa.s.sination a.s.signment for a simple scholar doing in that safe?"

She unfolded the parchment. No, she hadn't read it wrong in her bedchamber while waiting for Ward to return. It was an a.s.signment to kill the scholar Allyan Nicco and burn his research. But she had been given that a.s.signment and she always destroyed her notes after reading them.

Heat rushed to her face. The a.s.signment had been four years ago and she still felt guilty. She'd made a serious mistake reading that page on Nicco's desk. Perhaps if she hadn't kept the scholar's research, hadn't been caught up in the Ancients' mysteries, her life would have taken a different path.

She pushed the thought away. She wasn't killed over Nicco's research. No one knew she had it. Unless this a.s.signment meant the Master hadn't trusted her to do the job and had given another a.s.sa.s.sin the a.s.signment as well? Which still didn't explain why it was in the Keeper's safe.

"Maybe the Master likes to collect unique a.s.signments," Ward said.

She turned her attention to him. He still stood in the doorway, his arms crossed, his eyes half open. "You look awful."

"Thank you. And right back at you."

She sighed and pointed to the chair across from her. "Have a seat and help me think about this. Perhaps together our two tired minds will equal one not-so-tired mind."

He paused, as if uncertain, then shuffled over to the chair and sat in it sideways, his legs hanging over one of the arms. "All right. How about the Master likes to collect unique a.s.signments?"

"Not likely." Since the Guild didn't work that way and it wasn't the Master's safe. It was ridiculous of her to have a.s.sumed the Master would have it. He would never be foolish enough to keep proof of activities that could be linked to him. "There was only one a.s.signment in there for a scholar."

"And I'm sure that many more interesting people have been a.s.sa.s.sinated under his watch," Ward said. "Why would someone not want the a.s.signment to be available for public knowledge?"

"They're not public knowledge."

He raised an eyebrow. "It seemed pretty common knowledge that you and Solartti rummaged through the records room on a regular basis."

"Point." Perhaps she should tell Ward this had been her a.s.signment-her first, actually. That was likely why she hadn't burned the man's research. If it wasn't for that, she would never have found the Ancients' cavern. She supposed she could also go into a detailed description of how the a.s.sa.s.sins' Guild worked and what information was really in an a.s.signment, but that would take time and he'd ask a lot of questions and she just couldn't muster the energy to deal with either.

Ward swung his feet, bouncing them off the obsidian frame. Crammed into the chair like that, elbows and knees jutting from his body at sharp angles, he looked like he had grown too big for a child-sized chair. And yet, for once, he seemed entirely at ease with himself. As if she'd glimpsed the future and seen the self-a.s.sured man he'd become... if she didn't kill him first.

"All right. If the scholar wasn't an important person, maybe the person who wanted the a.s.signment done was, and wanted the a.s.signment to be kept a secret."

Perhaps she should bother to explain a few things. "The Guild doesn't take names." She flipped the parchment over. There was no name on the outside. Not like she expected one, but it was worth a try. If she had the nom de mort of the a.s.sa.s.sin given the a.s.signment, she might be able to track him or her down.

"Then what were you doing in the records room?"

"That's not the point."

"Well, what is?"

"We should talk to Nicco's widow. Perhaps she'll know why someone bought an a.s.signment for his life, and why the... why it was hidden."

"Is everyone in this town so familiar with the Guild?"

"Hardly. But people, particularly those who've had time to think, speculate as to why their loved one was a.s.sa.s.sinated."

"All right. Though I don't see what the a.s.sa.s.sination of Allyan Nicco has to do with anything."

"It does because I say it does." And while it was a very loose connection to her murder, it was still a connection.

"Fine." He pushed out of the chair, as if the very act required a momentous feat of strength. "First, I sleep. You should probably think about getting some of that yourself. Then, I guess, we go visit the Widow Nicco."

Ward left Celia in the study and headed down the corridor. Although exhaustion pulled at him, he couldn't go to bed yet. He had a surgery to perform, even if spending more time with the Tracker-Thalonist or not-didn't bode well. The man didn't need a warrant for an arrest and sentencing-his word was enough for the Grewdian Council.

And now he'd have proof.