The Emperor's Mask (Magebreakers Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  About the Author

  THE EMPEROR’S MASK

  By Ben S. Dobson

  Copyright © 2018 Ben S. Dobson

  Cover by dleoblack

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for the purpose of articles or reviews.

  For more information, visit bensdobson.com or join my facebook page at facebook.com/bensdobson. To be notified when a new novel is released, sign up for my mailing list.

  Magebreakers Novels

  _____

  The Flaw in All Magic

  The Emperor’s Mask

  Chapter One

  _____

  TANE CARVER SPRINTED along the busy Porthaven waterfront, breaking through the linked hands of a goblin couple as he shoved his way past. He ignored the indignant cries behind him, only glancing over his shoulder to see if he’d lost his pursuer.

  The dwarf was closing in on him.

  Thorick Irondriver stood out even among the eclectic Porthaven rabble of gnomes and dwarves and sprites and ogren and more. He was no more than four and a half feet in height—average for a dwarf—but his shoulders looked near as broad across as he was tall, and the biceps beneath were as big as Tane’s head and covered in ugly black tattoos of iron spikes and wire. The tattoos stretched across his chest, too, exposed beneath a stained leather vest. Above a thick black beard and a twisted scowl of a face, his bald head was inked in the same pattern. He charged down the street in a straight line without regard for the people in front of him, and he didn’t need to shove them aside like Tane did—most got one look at the furious rail-engine of a dwarf bearing down on them, and cleared the way.

  Tane gripped the stolen artifact tighter in his hand and pushed himself faster, weaving among the people on the street for cover. Irondriver was a mage, which meant giving him a clear sightline could only lead to pain. Not that he needs magic to break me in half. Spellfire, this had better work. It wasn’t the best plan he’d ever had, but stealing something—and making sure he was seen doing it—had been the easiest way to lure Irondriver out of his heavily warded black market workshop.

  The alley he and Kadka had agreed on was just ahead on his left, a narrow path between low warehouses. Tane tried to shoulder past a lovely nine-foot ogren woman, and the impact shook his teeth like he’d collided with a stone pillar at speed. He bounced off, gripping his arm, and stumbled toward the mouth of the alley.

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” the woman said in a melodious voice—just like an ogren to apologize to him for running into her—but Tane didn’t have time to answer. The heavy thud of Irondriver’s feet was close behind as he darted into the alley. It went perhaps forty feet back before turning sharply to the left, just a narrow space out of the way of the crowd. If things went badly, it was best not to have bystanders around.

  Halfway down, Tane slowed and turned, holding up his hands. “Wait. I’ll give it back.”

  The scowl across Irondriver’s thick jaw rose into a cruel smile. “Too late for that, thief. Shouldn’t have robbed me if you don’t want to pay the price.” He advanced on Tane, and pulled a short blade from behind his back. Mage or no, apparently he preferred to hurt people the old fashioned way.

  Tane backed away slowly, and slipped two fingers into his waistcoat pocket to rub the battered brass watch case there. An old nervous habit. “For a man selling faulty artifacts to people who can’t tell the difference,” he said, “you’re surprisingly passionate about criminal justice.” He glanced down at the artifact he’d stolen: a brass tube just wide enough to fit a rolled charm, sealed on one end with a small button on the side. A flash-tube, devised to launch colorful flash-charms into the air—though it could be used with more dangerous charms as well. Illegal without a license, but hardly worth so much trouble. “I wonder: if I press the button, do you think this thing would work, or explode?” He pointed the open end at the dwarf.

  Irondriver hesitated, flinching, and then narrowed his eyes. “It ain’t even loaded.” He furrowed his heavy brow. “Who are you, then? Someone send you after me?”

  “A client didn’t care for your work on her stove. Specifically, the fact that you overlooked some common safety glyphs. She was burned quite badly.” If Tane backed off much further, he’d be against the wall where the alley turned. He was far enough from the street now. This was the place. “I’m really hoping that this is the part where you swear to change your ways and make things right with Miss Eutrice.”

  “Bitch shouldn’t have tried to buy cheap. The price I offer, they ain’t all going to be perfect.” Irondriver shrugged his massive shoulders. “Should have paid someone bigger to come after me, too. Talking’s done, thief.” Tossing his knife from hand to hand, he started forward once more.

  This time, Tane didn’t retreat. Instead, he reached into his pocket and crushed the seal on the charm inside.

  A translucent dome shimmered to life around Tane and Irondriver, glowing a faint silver-blue.

  Irondriver glanced back at the silvery barrier just behind his shoulder, and laughed. “Too late to keep me out now.”

  And finally, Tane allowed himself the smile he’d been holding back. “Oh, it’s not meant to keep you out.”

  _____

  Kadka crouched atop the low brick warehouse on the south side of the alleyway, waiting for Carver to give the signal. As usual, he was talking too much. Which was often amusing, but there was a mage to fight, and waiting on a rooftop was almost as boring as watching closed doors at the University. There was a reason she wasn’t a guard anymore.

  The tattooed dwarf advanced, tossing his knife back and forth.

  A shimmer of silver, then, and the shield was up.

  There it was. The signal.

  Kadka backed off a few steps, launched herself into a run, and vaulted over the side of the roof, snarling for effect.

  Irondriver looked up at the sound, saw her falling. His eyes widened, and he started to turn. Too late. She passed easily through the shield and hit him hard from near twenty feet up, sending him sprawling to the ground on his back. His knife flew free of his hand, skittered across the ground, and struck the inside of the shield with a silver flash.

  Even with the dwarf to break the momentum of her fall, the impact still knocked Kadka to her hands and knees. She and Irondriver both gained their feet at the same time.

  Kadka flashed Irondriver a sharp-toothed grin. “Should have sent someone bigger, you said?”

  He stared at her bared teeth. “Half-orc,” he spat, somewhere between disgust and fear. His eyes went to Carver, and then back to Kadka again. “You… you’re the Magebreakers, ain’t you?”

  “I hate that name,” muttered Carver.


  “Is not wrong, though,” said Kadka, still grinning. She took a single step toward the dwarf.

  Irondriver turned and ran.

  Or tried to.

  He hadn’t gone more than two feet before he struck the translucent barrier. A flash of silver sent him stumbling back. Carver had scribed the charm and commissioned it from Bastian—a reversed shield, made to keep things in rather than out. Kadka never understood much when he talked about magical theory, but he’d been clear enough that it wouldn’t last long.

  Which was fine by her. A time limit made things more interesting.

  Irondriver broke right, going for the knife he’d dropped. She moved to intercept, kicking the blade away and tackling him against the shield. He grabbed her arms, pried them off with an angry grunt. He was stronger than she was used to—ogren aside, there weren’t many in Thaless who could grapple with her.

  A pleasant surprise. She laughed as he shoved her back.

  Taking advantage of the space he’d created, Irondriver started to chant in the magical language Carver called the lingua. He was already raising a hand. Kadka regained her balance and charged. A fist to the throat usually stopped a spell, but she could already tell she wasn’t going to make it.

  “Hey!” Carver’s voice, and then a brass tube struck Irondriver in the side of the face. The dwarf’s head snapped to the side, and a wave of silver force surged high from his outstretched hand, striking the ceiling of the shield-dome over Kadka’s head. The artifact Carver had thrown clattered to the ground.

  Kadka was on Irondriver before he could open his mouth again. She wrapped her leg behind his and shoved him hard; he toppled backward to the cobblestones. Following him down, she landed with her forearm across his throat, cutting off his breath and his voice. With her free hand, she pinned one of his heavily muscled arms to the ground. Irondriver clawed at her eyes with the other, his face flushed red beneath the iron-black tattoos on his scalp.

  A moment later Carver was beside her, putting his full body weight against the grasping hand to hold it down. “Inside his vest, right side. I saw him tuck it away when he was showing me his wares.”

  Kadka nodded. “No spells,” she said to Irondriver, and lifted her arm from his throat.

  “Bitch,” Irondriver croaked, and immediately began to mutter in the lingua.

  She grinned. She’d been hoping he’d do that.

  She slammed her forehead against his face, and felt something crunch. Blood gushed from Irondriver’s broken nose; he kept chanting in a choked, gurgling voice. Kadka headbutted him again, and this time his eyes rolled back and he went still.

  A moment later, the shield flickered out of existence.

  She glanced at Carver with a grin. “Told you: is more time than I need.”

  “Can’t argue with results.” Carver’s eyes went to her forehead, and he made a face. “A bit… messy, though.”

  Kadka rubbed her brow, and her fingers found blood, warm and sticky. But not her blood, which was the only thing that mattered. She wiped an arm across her face to clean the rest away, staining the white fur on the back of her hand red. “Messy is what works, sometimes,” she said. With her other hand, she dug inside Irondriver’s vest until she found a coin-sized badge etched with glyphs, and held it up for Carver to see. “This will get us into workshop?”

  “It should,” said Carver, rising to his feet. “And the artifacts inside will be all the evidence the bluecaps need to arrest him. Fraud, negligence, illegal artifice.” He glanced down at Irondriver’s bloodied face and broken nose. “Better roll him onto his side, or he’ll choke on the blood before they get the chance.”

  “Or we could just take him now.” A woman’s voice, and one Kadka knew. She stood and turned to see a slim brown-skinned half-elf entering the alley, dressed in a charcoal topcoat and trousers, black hair bound back from her face in a simple bun. Constable Inspector Indree Lovial. Even out of uniform, she had the air of a bluecap, a certain self-assured authority over the situation despite only now walking into it. A half-dozen others of various races and sizes flanked her, all in plainclothes, but Kadka knew a constable when she saw one.

  “Ree,” said Carver. “How did you find us?”

  “Finding people is my job,” said Indree. “And as usual, you left a trail of angry people behind you.” She glanced at the bloody fur on Kadka’s hand, and then tipped her head at the motionless dwarf sprawled on the ground. “Is it too much to hope that you had some reason for beating this man senseless?”

  Carver spread his hands indignantly. “You say that like we don’t always have a reason.”

  Indree cocked an eyebrow. “What about last month, when you broke into that artificer’s house? She hadn’t done anything.”

  “Was easy mistake,” Kadka said mildly. Carver and Indree could squabble for hours if she didn’t mediate. “Her sister sells dangerous spells with her name. We find one because we chase other first. You know this.”

  “I know it,” Indree allowed. “But that didn’t make it any easier to keep you out of a cell.”

  “This is different,” said Carver, “Nobody’s framing Irondriver. If you come with us to his workshop, there’s proof—”

  “You can explain later,” Indree interrupted, and motioned for two constables to see to the unconscious dwarf. Kadka stepped aside to give them room. “Right now, you two are coming with me.”

  “Now?” Kadka liked Indree, but this felt wrong—it would have been far easier to summon them with a sending. Tracking them down like this implied she wanted to catch them off their guard. “Why?”

  Indree let out a heavy sigh and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Because,” she said, “you might be murder suspects.”

  Chapter Two

  _____

  TANE FOLLOWED INDREE through the streets of the Gryphon’s Roost, surrounded by an escort of four plainclothes constables—two humans, a three-foot-something gnomish man, and a towering ogren woman guarding the rear. Kadka walked at his side, eagerly examining the opulent homes of the Roost.

  Elaborate magelight lamps lined the road—unlit in the afternoon sunlight—and high gates loomed all along both sides. In front of every gate a pair of hired guards stood watch in expensive uniforms; behind every one was a massive estate, all open grass and elaborate hedges and elegant statuary. Each estate had an enormous manor house at the center, all of them unique in architecture and design—and yet somehow the same as all the others, in a fundamental way that Tane recognized but couldn’t explain. Horse-drawn carriages waited at the ready by most houses, or expensive ancryst carts with loud, ponderous engines. This place was so far removed from the cramped streets and joined brick-front homes of Porthaven that it might as well have been a different world.

  “You’re obviously not taking us to Stooketon Yard,” said Tane, “so we must be going to the crime scene. Someone was murdered in the Roost? I can’t remember the last time that happened.” There was no district in Thaless more secure than the Gryphon’s Roost. The constabulary responded far more diligently to any hint of criminal activity here than they did in places like Porthaven or Greenstone, and every manor had hired guards and thorough wards. “What’s going on, Ree?”

  “You’ll see when we get there,” said Indree, and increased her pace.

  She was hiding something—he could tell. “You can’t really think we killed someone.”

  “If I did, you’d be chained up in a cell right now. I only talked Chief Durren out of having you arrested by convincing him I’d learn more from your reactions to the scene, and those won’t matter much if you already know what you’re going to see.”

  Tane raised an eyebrow. “Why does our reaction matter at all? Why would either of us have anything to do with a murder in the Gryphon’s Roost? We don’t exactly spend much time here.”

  “Orcs are not so welcome in fancy houses,” said Kadka, peering through the bars of the nearest gate at the elaborate hedge sculptures beyond. She glanced at Indree then, with
a slight frown. “Is this why? You think killer is orc?”

  “Like I said, I can’t tell you anything yet.” A familiar exasperation crept into Indree’s voice. “I need to do this the way I’ve been ordered to do it. No special treatment. It hasn’t exactly helped my career bailing the Magebreakers out of trouble every other week.”

  “Don’t call us that,” Tane protested reflexively. “‘Magebreakers’ sounds like a penny dreadful from some basement ancryst press.”

  Indree rolled her eyes. “Good luck stopping it. It’s already all over Thaless. My point is, you two haven’t been at this more than six weeks and most of the constabulary already thinks you’re a public menace. Half of Findel Avenue is still caved in from your little adventure underneath the bank last month.”

  “That wasn’t our fault,” Tane protested. “We didn’t dig the tunnel. We were just trying to get Mrs. Dookle’s husband back for her. Which we did, by the way.”

  “Yes, you did.” Indree’s scowl softened at the corners. “You usually manage to help someone underneath all the chaos. That’s why I keep defending you. But I won’t be able to do that if I’m demoted back to patrol constable.”

  That was hard to argue with, and Tane knew how much Indree cared about her position in the bluecaps. “Fair enough,” he said. “No more questions. Lead the way.”

  She pointed up the street to the next estate. “Come on. It’s just here.”

  She led them to a huge wrought-iron gate that towered over even Kadka by her height again—large even compared to the ones that had come before. There was no family name on the gateposts, only a number—21—but a pair of guardsmen stood outside in uniforms of deep red and green that Tane recognized immediately.

  House Rosepetal. The only sprite house with a seat in the Senate.

  “Someone was killed here?” Tane peered through the iron bars at the vast grounds beyond. “The Rosepetals are a great house of the Senate! Who would—”

  Indree turned a glare on him that he knew all too well.

  “Right,” he said. “No more questions.”