The Dragon Machine (Magebreakers Book 3) Read online

  After the third or fourth such exchange, Tane felt compelled to comment. “I don’t mean to offend, but you’re not exactly what I expect of a bondsman. They’re usually a bit more…”

  “Intolerant?” Laeris suggested, weaving his way down a narrow aisle between rows of makeshift tents. “I am aware that many of my brethren dislike the so called ‘lesser races’, or have ideas about magical superiority. But to deny the Astral bond of any living soul is wilful blindness. We are all children of the Astra, and as such we all deserve kindness and compassion. These people need it more than most. Most of our donations go to providing meals for the camp.”

  Kadka cocked her head. “Is good thought, but does not cause trouble with other halls?”

  “What happens at other Halls of the Astra has no bearing on this one,” Laeris said, calm but firm. “By your accent you are Svernan, so I assume you have travelled. Perhaps you have encountered Estian provosts or the like. Bondsmen and women are not that sort of clergy. We run our halls as a service, but our calling does not put us above any man or woman, and we are not bound by the rule of any greater body. Each of us communes with the Astra as best we can, and that is guidance enough.”

  “Except it guides some people to terrorize the non-magical.” Tane had never cared much for the Astralite religion, even if Laeris practiced a benevolent version. “How can your idea of what the Astra wants come from the same place as that?”

  “Perhaps their interpretation is faulty. Or, perhaps the Astra has a path in mind for them that differs from mine. I can only answer for myself, Mister Carver.” He had that blithe confidence in his faith in common with other Astralites Tane had met, at least. It was hard to counter, especially in the face of a man who was doing more to help people in need than Tane ever had.

  “Anyway, we don’t come here to argue religions, Carver,” Kadka said. “Bondsman, this person you bring us to, what does she look like?”

  “A kobold woman. Siska. She has blue scales, if you happen to catch a glimpse. She claims she saw the person who took a friend of hers, not long before Tinga and Cestra went missing.” Laeris led them around the corner to the back side of the hall as he spoke.

  “That one?” Kadka jabbed a finger toward a small fire where several people were huddled for warmth. A blue-scaled kobold woman squatted beside it, her hands over the flames. Tane saw the woman start when she noticed Kadka pointing.

  Laeris nodded. “Yes, that’s—”

  The kobold leapt to her feet and bolted.

  Kadka was already moving, shouldering through the disheveled residents of the camp in pursuit. There was no point following—Tane couldn’t match her speed. But the layout of the tents would force them back toward the hall at an angle he might be able to intercept, and the woman only seemed to have noticed Kadka pointing. She might not be expecting him.

  Tane spun to his left and ducked low under an improvised lean-to erected against the hall. A dwarven man lying beneath sat up grumbling at the disturbance, but Tane was already through. He skirted around another small fire, attracting several confused glances from those sitting around it, and cut behind a row of tents. If he’d judged his speed and position correctly…

  Skidding to a stop behind the last tent in the row, he jutted his foot out into the narrow path on the other side.

  Something hit his leg hard. A voice cried out in surprise, and a blue-scaled kobold woman tumbled to the ground in front of him. A pair of small vestigial wings fluttered at her back, doing nothing to arrest her fall as she caught herself on her hands and knees.

  An instant later, Kadka was standing over the fallen kobold. The woman rolled onto her back and held up her arms defensively, slitted reptilian eyes wide with fear.

  “Please, please, I didn’t see nothin’, I promise!” Her ‘s’ sounds hissed heavily in her panic.

  Tane knelt beside her. “Siska, right? Bondsman Laeris was just bringing us to see you. I don’t know who you think we are, but we’re not here to hurt you.” Whatever she saw, it scared her.

  Kadka squatted down, holding out empty hands, and offered a smile, obviously trying to hide her teeth. The effort only made it worse. “Is fine, see? Just want to talk.”

  Neither of their attempts did much to calm Siska. Trembling, she tried to scoot back on her hands. “Help! Don’t let ‘em take me!”

  That drew attention. “Leave her alone!” someone shouted, and a dozen people started in their direction. A pair of goblin men in clothes too short for their lanky limbs and a stout dwarf with a tangled white beard were closest, with others not far behind. And they looked like they were ready for a fight.

  They stick together here, at least. That helps Tinga’s odds. But I don’t like ours just now. Tane raised his hands. “Hey, we aren’t taking anyone.”

  “Best get outta here fast then,” one of the goblin men said, and cracked his knuckles. He and his friends kept coming.

  “Enough.” Laeris’s voice, calm and soft, from behind Kadka. The sound of it halted the dwarf and the goblins where they stood. “Siska, there is nothing to fear.”

  “You vouching for them, Bondsman Laeris?” the dwarf asked, checking his stride. “They were chasing Siska.”

  “A misunderstanding.” Laeris drew alongside the fallen kobold woman and offered her a hand. “These two are friends of the Silver Dawn. I’m sorry to have alarmed you all.”

  His word seemed to be enough—Siska’s would-be protectors began to disperse.

  Siska blinked at Laeris, and then shakily took his hand and climbed to her feet. “Didn’t see you with ‘em. Thought it was…” She dusted herself off and glanced over either shoulder. “Them.”

  “Them?” Tane asked. “We aren’t, but I’d like to know who is.”

  Siska shot him a suspicious glance. “You sure about these ones, bondsman? They’re looking for me, you know. Saw something I shouldn’t, can’t have that.”

  “I’m quite certain, Siska,” Laeris said. “This is Tane, and his large friend is Kadka.”

  “Tane and Kadka?” Siska perked up at that, and squinted at their faces. “The Magebreakers?”

  “Is us,” Kadka confirmed, flashing Tane a grin when he rolled his eyes.

  Siska’s face brightened. “Well why didn’t you start with that? You two ain’t with them for sure!”

  “Ah,” Laeris said, and flicked a glance back to Tane and Kadka, reappraising them. “That does explain some things. I thought the names sounded familiar.”

  “Sorry I didn’t mention it, bondsman,” said Tane. “We were hoping to go unnoticed.” He looked to Siska. “But now that you know we aren’t ‘them’, can you tell us more?” He already had a sneaking suspicion, based on her reaction to their names.

  Siska leaned closer and hissed in an exaggerated whisper, “The Knights of the Emperor. They want me for what I seen.”

  Which was exactly what Tane had thought she would say, and wished she wouldn’t. “Are you sure? What is it you saw?”

  “Some nights back,” Siska said. “Week, maybe more. Saw ‘em take Regnar.”

  Tane glanced at Laeris with a raised eyebrow.

  “A dwarven man who sleeps here sometimes,” the bondsman clarified.

  “My friend,” said Siska. “We was sleepin’ over there.” She pointed to a shadowed corner where the perimeter wall was still somewhat intact. “Heard a little noise, and I roll over to see someone bent over Regnar, with a wand. Already dazed him. Looked like maybe a human, but big, muscled like. Then he just grabs Regnar and jumps up onto the wall. One jump. And Regnar ain’t exactly a little guy.”

  “Strong, then,” Kadka said, and shared a glance with Tane. He could tell she was thinking the same thing he was.

  Strong, fast, and able to clear that much height in one jump. Who does that remind me of? Tane reached two fingers into his waist pocket to rub his watch case. “You said it was the Knights of the Emperor. Is there any specific reason you think it was them?”

  Siska bobbed her h
ead up and down. “So, when I see him jump, I let out a little gasp. Quiet, like, but he looks right down at me. I swear on the Astra, his eyes glowed blue. I scrambled off fast as I could, shoutin’. When I look back, he’s gone. But the eyes, that’s just like they say about the Mask, right?”

  Just what Tane had been thinking, but it didn’t quite make sense. Or maybe he just didn’t want it to. “The Mask was the size of an ogren, and didn’t have much use for wands,” he said. “And the new wards and detections around the city would have caught another automaton like that walking around.” Unless Endo found a way around them. Tane had helped design those wards, and he trusted them, but Endo was brilliant. It was possible. But she could be making things up, too, or seeing things. Tales of the Mask had spread rapidly across Thaless, and hysteria tended to make people see what they feared most.

  “Well, who else, then?” Siska spread her hands.

  Tane didn’t have a good answer for her. “I’m… not sure yet.”

  “Oh, it’s them, I’m tellin’ you. They’re up to somethin’. Won’t be happy to know the Magebreakers are pokin’ around, either.” She grinned conspiratorially at him. “But that won’t stop you two getting’ over on ‘em again, will it?”

  Spellfire, I hope we don’t have to. But best let her keep believing it. “We’ll see what we can turn up,” Tane said. “Can you bring us to where it happened?”

  “Right. This way.” Siska headed toward the back corner of the grounds at a rapid pace, and Tane and Kadka followed with Bondsman Laeris hurrying behind.

  In the shadow of the wall, a few mounds of rags and papers had been lumped into makeshift beds. “This is it,” Siska said. “Ain’t slept here since. Everyone’s keepin’ together, out of corners and shadows. That one was his.” She pointed to a particular mound, indistinguishable from the others.

  Tane knelt beside it. If there had been any kind of struggle, it was impossible to tell—the rags and crumbled newsprint that made up the bedding were filthy and torn either way. But he did see something interesting, and snatched it up between two fingers.

  “Find something, Carver?” Kadka asked, bending over with interest.

  He held up a tangle of reddish hair. “A divination focus, maybe.” He showed it to Siska. “Does this look like Regnar’s?”

  She squinted her eyes, and nodded. “It’s his. Had a real copper-top. Beard too.”

  Tane slipped the hair into a pocket and looked up at Kadka. “We’ll have Greymond check it along with Tinga’s. Hopefully she finds them both, and this all ends well.”

  “And if not?” Kadka raised a bushy white eyebrow.

  “Then we have a case. Because there’s only two reasons she doesn’t find them: either they’re masked, or they’re dead.”

  Chapter Four

  _____

  THE DOOR TO the chancellor’s office swung open before Tane could knock.

  “Come in, please. I don’t have long.” Chancellor Liana Greymond was a human woman of some fifty years, bent over a long list of figures that sat on her desk. She beckoned for Tane and Kadka to enter without looking up. Formerly the University’s dean of divination, she’d always had the uncanny ability to anticipate events—like a knock on the door—a split second before they took place. At least, she had for as long as Tane had known her, since she’d mentored him during his time at the University of Thaless.

  “Is that how you say hello to old friends?” Tane strode across the room and pulled a nearby chair up to her desk. Kadka did the same. “I’m hurt, Liana.” She’d redecorated the chancellor’s office, in a manner of speaking: Nieris’ various historic artifacts and art pieces had been removed, but nothing had replaced them. Nothing, at least, beyond the piles of papers and books stacked atop each other in various corners of the room. “They must be—”

  “Of course they’re ‘keeping me busy’, Tane. I am the chancellor of the largest university in the Protectorate.” Greymond sighed in exasperation and raised her head. She had lines on her face and grey in her short dark hair that hadn’t been there just a few months ago. “Which, I must admit, sometimes requires more budgetary meetings than I would prefer.”

  Kadka cringed. “Dying is better. Or standing guard all day.”

  “Some days, I am inclined to agree, Kadka.” Greymond put aside the paper she’d been looking at, adding it to a pile at the right side of her desk. “But it isn’t all bad. The new term begins soon, and we have some promising students entering our new program for those without magic.” She offered Tane a rare smile, little more than a slight lift at one corner of her mouth. “Something you can be proud of your hand in. I had been meaning to ask if you might like to say something at the welcoming ceremony.”

  Tane rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Liana,” he said. “There are still a lot of people here who don’t think very highly of me. And as much as it means to me that this is finally happening, I’m just starting to repair some of the damage I did chasing it. I think my part is done. Let this new class take it from here.”

  “Surprisingly mature, Tane,” Greymond said, a wry tone in her voice. “Although I’m not convinced that fighting automatons and crashing airships isn’t just another form of the same obsession. Lecturing here would certainly be safer.”

  “But less exciting,” Kadka pointed out, grinning.

  “I’ll think about it, Liana,” Tane said. He doubted she needed divination to sense that he didn’t really mean that.

  But Liana Greymond wasn’t one to push—she’d told him once that people had to be free to make their own choices for divinations to work properly. “The decision is yours, of course. But I do value your thoughts on this particular subject, you know. If anything comes to mind, my door is open.” She arched an eyebrow slightly. “With a proper appointment, next time, preferably. As I said, I haven’t much time just now, and I had to rearrange my schedule to fit you in. I hope you can give me a good reason.”

  “Right.” Tane fished in his pocket for the hair the Vreegs had given him. “We need—”

  “Help with a case,” Greymond finished. “As I suspected. A missing goblin girl. Tinga Vreeg? And others too. Shouldn’t the constabulary be the ones doing this? Miss Lovial, perhaps?”

  “You’re about three steps ahead of my explanation already,” said Tane. “But look, the bluecaps aren’t going to bother with this. A goblin girl, people missing from a homeless camp? Indree might get a few of them looking, but even then they’re too blunt a tool for the job. No one they need to talk to is going to trust them, and they won’t exactly blend in.”

  Kadka nodded her shaggy head. “Is not trusting place for outsiders. Worse for bluecaps, I think.”

  Greymond eyed them both for a moment, and then shrugged. “Give me the focus and I will see what I find. But if there is any sign that this girl or anyone else is in danger, I’m going to have to insist that the authorities be notified.”

  “I understand.” Tane slid Tinga’s hair across the desk, and then the tangle of dwarven hair they’d found in Regnar’s bed at the Nest. “I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.”

  Greymond took Tinga’s hair in one hand and Regnar’s in the other. Her eyes glazed a moment with that faraway diviner’s look. “Nothing,” she said. “Or… no, it’s just hazy. Masked.” Her eyes sharpened again. “Both signatures are being hidden, but they’re alive, and in the city unless I miss my guess.”

  Spellfire, that isn’t what I wanted to hear. Which was a strange thing to think, when the news was that Tinga was alive.

  Kadka looked at him. “Masked. You say before, this means—”

  “That someone is hiding them,” Greymond finished. “These people have been taken by someone. We need to bring this to the constabulary.” Again, her eyes started to lose focus.

  She’s sending them. That can’t happen. Tane leaned over her desk and snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Liana, wait.”

  Greymond’s attention returned to him, and her eyes n
arrowed. “I told you what I would do, Tane, if there was any indication that they’re in danger. This is something of an indication.”

  “And we will tell Indree, I promise,” said Tane. “But let’s think about this. We know someone is taking people, and we know a bit about their methods. I’d wager they’re pulling victims from the Nest specifically because they want people with no connections, people no one will come after. They don’t know yet that Tinga was an exception, which means they don’t know that anyone is investigating the disappearances. They still think they can keep plucking people from the same place.”

  “What point are you making, Tane?” Greymond asked with a frown. “That we should let them?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, “but if… whoever is doing this sees any hint of bluecaps, they’ll know, and they’ll change their pattern. Give us one night to watch the Nest. Kadka’s got better night vision than anyone I know—if someone shows up, she’ll see them. If that doesn’t work—”

  “Then someone else gets taken because you didn’t tell Miss Lovial soon enough.” Greymond shook her head. “I can’t agree to that.”

  “Will still find someone to take if we send bluecaps,” Kadka said. “Just from somewhere else. Is more than one place to find homeless in Thaless. This is what Carver means.”

  “And the bluecaps wouldn’t go about this the right way,” Tane said. “They’re going to focus on trying to use spells, unravel the masking. Maybe it works eventually, but it won’t be fast. They won’t devote men to actually working the streets for a case like this, and if they do they won’t ask the right people the right questions. Please, Liana, just one night. We promised Tinga’s parents we’d find her, and we have a chance to do that here.”

  Tane knew that Liana Greymond wasn’t given to blind trust, but with her talents, she didn’t need to be. She considered him in silence a moment, drumming her fingers on her desk, and then her eyes glazed. Consulting her divinations or sending the constabulary? If it was the latter, he couldn’t do anything about it now, but he thought he might have swayed her toward the former. She wouldn’t be able to get a clear view of the future—that kind of truly prophetic magic was a myth—but she would get impressions, inklings of where things might go. What that would tell her, he had no idea.