Agents of Artifice

CHAPTER TWO

A light rain was falling by the time Kallist opened his eyes. It was a slow, soaking drizzle, good for the swamp fungus and sewer slime and not much else, the sort of precipitation that managed to soak everything without forming into actual drops. It ran from the sloped roof, flowing around the broken and missing shingles, to pour in sporadic rivulets past the windows. The mosquitoes, Kallist thought, are going to be murder tomorrow, holiday or no holiday.

That was his first thought. His second was, Why am I stuck to the table?

He winced in pain, and more than a little embarrassment, as he peeled his unshaven face from the wood, recognizing the gluey sensation of his own drool. At least, he realized, glancing around at the familiar surroundings, he had made it home before passing out completely.

He stood up, his back protesting at the slumped position he'd apparently held for quite a few hours. Bleary-eyed, but without the pounding headache he'd expected, Kallist staggered across the room. It was a small dwelling: two interior rooms, one of which included the kitchen, and a separate bathhouse for cleaning and other necessary relief. It was tiny compared to what he'd known elsewhere in Ravnica, but by the standards of Avaric, it was almost palatial.

Rather than trudge out to the bathhouse where their well was located, which would have required getting soaked to the skin, Kallist simply cut out the middleman, threw open the shutters, and caught some of the ambient rain in his hands. The first palm-full went to quench his burning thirst, the second to scrub the sticky residue from the side of his face.

And only then, as he truly began to wake up and as the expected pounding slowly seeped into his skull, like faint hoofbeats from a distance, did Kallist wonder what had awakened him.

He froze, hands still held out the window, and tried to remember how to think. It couldn't have been thunder, but this was a gentle shower, not a storm. Someone's door slamming? Possibly. But someone would've had to give their door a blow sufficient to fell a tree for it to have awakened Kallist from his drunken slumber. It didn't seem likely.

Yet he was certain, in retrospect, that some sort of crash had roused him, a crash that could have been inside the house.

Kallist's mind finally shrugged off enough lassitude to start working at something approaching normal capacity, at roughly the same time he heard the faintest whisper of cloth against wood in the kitchen doorway.

At the best of times, Kallist wasn't a fraction of the mage Liliana was; he'd had training, yes, but his skills had always leaned more toward the sword than the spell. And now, with more than a little alcohol still flowing through his blood, anything approaching a complex incantation was beyond him. Nevertheless, spurred on by a sudden burst of fear, a swift whisper allowed Kallist to cloak himself in the thinnest, flimsiest of illusions. It wasn't much-but it made him appear as though he still held both hands outside, cupped to catch the rain, when in fact one had dropped to the hilt of the dagger he wore strapped to his right thigh. It felt awfully light in his hand, and he had a moment to wish that he'd chosen the window nearer the bed, where his broadsword rested in easy reach.

And then he felt the hot breath of the intruder on the back of his neck, and the time for wishes and regrets had passed.

Kallist spun, bringing the heavy pommel of the dirk up into the chin of the man lurking behind him. He caught a brief glimpse of unshaven cheeks and weak, watery eyes before the fellow staggered back, clutching his broken jaw. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth, flowing from the teeth marks he'd left in his own tongue. The intruder's weapon, a heavy wooden cudgel, landed between them with a thump.

Unsure if his attacker was alone, Kallist dropped into a knife-fighter's stance, blade held underhand and down at his side, left hand outstretched to grab or parry. It was an expert posture, yet somehow it felt wrong; off, just a bit. As though his mind knew what it needed to do, but his muscles weren't sure how to follow.

I really, thought Kallist, have to get in more practice.

Or maybe just less drinking.

Keeping a sliver of attention on the man who'd collapsed to the floor, just in case he might catch his second wind, Kallist maneuvered through the room in a careful series of cross-steps that kept him on balance, ready to spring any which way. He tried for a moment to cast out with his senses, emulating a spell he'd learned to see around corners, but his faculty with such magic was iffy at the best of times. He succeeded only in blurring his vision and causing his head to pound that much harder.

By the time his sight cleared, and he realized that part of that pounding was not in his head at all, but was in fact someone who had clambered through the open window and was charging across the floor, there was no time left to react. Kallist thought he saw the edge of a face, and then his head hurt a lot more than it had. Then everything went black, and nothing hurt at all.

When Kallist finally awoke once more, he succumbed to the urge he'd been fighting since staggering away from the Bitter End, and emptied the contents of his stomach across the floor.

Well, he aimed for the floor, anyway. He discovered in the midst of his second convulsion that he was firmly tied to a chair, so a revolting amount of what had once been leathery steak, fried tubers, and irrimberry wine instead ended up in his lap.

"You know something, Rhoka? That's really disgusting."

Kallist forced his head up to glare at the man across the chamber. "Semner."

"You know me. I'm flattered."

"I've heard a lot about you, usually from people trying to explain why they felt the need to take half a dozen baths in a row. What brings you to the ass end of Ravnica?"

The other man smiled an ugly, yellow-toothed grin. "Just following the crap, of course. Today, that'd be you."

Semner was, in every imaginable way, ugly. His features were squat and broad, his straw-yellow hair thin and greasy, his clothes rumpled and stained with old beer and older blood. He stank of sweat and an utter disregard for dental hygiene.

Yet his exterior belied a still uglier core. Semner was a thug, a leg-breaker, and a murderer-for-hire so vile he gave mercenaries a bad name. In the days when the League of Wojek still enforced the laws across Ravnica, he and his ilk were nothing. Now they were still nothing, but there were a lot more of them.

Kallist nodded. It was practically the only motion he could make, so tightly bound. "So who wants me dead this time?"

"I've got an idea." Semner moved to crouch in front of the chair. "How about you shut up and let me ask the questions?"

Despite the heavy ropes, Kallist couldn't help but smile. "If you were a mage, you could make me."

Semner's face turned apple red, and Kallist's smile grew wider still. They'd never worked together, but Kallist knew people who had fought or killed alongside the mercenary. Semner, he'd been told, was in awe of the magics many of his partners wielded, and had made more than one failed attempt at learning such things for himself.

"How about," Semner growled, "I knock your teeth through the back of your throat, and make you shut up that way? Would that work for you?"

Kallist shut up. His mind, however, was racing like a tempest drake with its tail on fire. Semner was a lot of things, but subtle had never been one of them. Semner's idea of "stealth" was to kill anyone who noticed him. If Kallist was still alive, it meant that Semner wanted something from him-or whoever had hired Semner did. Kallist wasn't sure which notion was more frightening.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Semner said, once Kallist had remained silent for a full minute. The thug pulled up a second chair and slumped down, pointing a blade at Kallist's face. He held the melodramatic pose for a moment, then leaned forward and lashed out. Kallist couldn't help but gasp as the dagger severed a splinter of wood from the chair beside his face. "If you're thinking of trying to toss any more of your little phantasms, you'd do well to forget it right now. Or I'll bleed you so badly you can't say the word 'spell,' let alone cast one."

"This is all very intimidating," Kallist told him. "But I'd really like the chance to wash these pants before the stain sets. So if you could just get to the point…?"

"Fine." Semner leaned in farther still and jabbed the point of the dagger into the seat of the chair, mere inches from Kallist's crotch. "Simple question, then, Rhoka. Answer it right, maybe you actually walk away from this.

"Where do I find Jace Beleren?"

Kallist felt the breath catch in his chest, his fingers clench into fists. Anger washed over him in a wave, and he felt an almost insurmountable temptation to just give Semner exactly what he asked for. Would serve the bastard right…

But he wasn't certain Liliana would understand.

So instead he said, "Last time I talked to Beleren, I told him pretty clearly to pick a hell of his choice, and go. So maybe if you start there-"

Anything else he might have added was lost in the impact of Semner's fist against his face. Kallist choked back a cry as his lips split and one of his teeth turned loose in its socket. The chair teetered a moment before tumbling over backward, sending a second surge of pain through him as his aching skull bounced off the floor. For several long breaths, Kallist could only stare at the ceiling, trying hard to gather his wits.

Semner rose, placed one foot on the crossbar between the legs of the chair, and shoved downward. The entire room tilted yet again as Kallist found himself flung upright once more-to find Semner's fist waiting to meet his face this time, rather than the other way around. Blood poured from his nose to mesh with that beading up from his lip.

"What I heard," Semner said, wiping the blood off his hand on Kallist's shirt, "was you and Beleren aren't exactly friends anymore." He began to pace, spinning the blade between his fingers. "So why not save yourself a whole lot of pain and point me in the right direction?"

Kallist probed the loosened tooth with his tongue, spat a mouthful of blood to the floor, and said nothing.

"Much as I'd love to spend an evening pounding you into jerky," Semner grumbled, "I'm on a schedule. So we'll do this the easy way. Boys!"

The front door slammed open, and Kallist practically pulled a muscle twisting around so he might see. Two men and a woman, looking about as disreputable as their leader, pushed through the open doorway, manhandling someone between them.

Several more thugs-Kallist couldn't get an accurate count-leered from the rainy night beyond. The bag they'd placed over the captive's head did nothing to prevent Kallist from recognizing her; when they pulled it off, revealing Liliana's face, it was almost anticlimactic.

"You bastards!" he hissed at them. How had a nobody like Semner even managed to take her, anyway?

She didn't appear wounded, at least. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, her dress to her body. Under other circumstances, it would've been alluring.

"I'm sorry, Kallist." And damn if she didn't sound like she meant it.

Semner gestured, and the bravos holding Liliana released her-only so they could make a point of leveling their crossbows at her unprotected back.

"Now," Semner said, turning back toward his beaten prisoner, "we'll do this exactly one more time.

"Where is Jace Beleren?"