Worldsoul

Forty-Three

Mercy Fane had been confined to a secure room in the heart of the House of the Court: windowless and warded. Deed could have put her back in the dungeons with the devil-monkey, but it amused him to keep Mercy off balance. He suspected that she knew exactly what he was doing, but for now, it would do. He didn’t want to have her killed, not just yet. She was too useful as a bargaining chip. The initial homunculus had disappeared, probably going to ground, rat-like, when Mercy had been captured but he had fresh blood with which to make another if the need arose.

He spent a peaceful night and rose at dawn to prepare a letter. This was on official Court parchment, with the identification sigils prominently displayed around its crest. It gave a brief account of recent events, more in sorrow than anger, and invited two of the Elders of the Library to visit their recalcitrant employee. Once that was done, Deed wrote in his letter, they could begin to discuss terms. Phrases like:… long association between our two institutions… a pity if anything were to damage our hitherto excellent relationship… city as a whole taking a dim view of internecine rivalries at a time of crisis… all rolled fluently from the tip of Deed’s quill.

When he had finished the letter, he rolled it up, sealed it with the Court’s usual method of bloodwax, and dispatched it by golem across the square. Then he sat back to wait.

He did not have to wait long. Mid-morning, a golem trundled back again. It thrust a sealed letter at Deed and waited, staring at him from incurious eyes.

“You may go,” Deed told it and perused the reply. The tone of the reply pleased Deed. It read as if it had been written by someone unnerved, and Deed liked unnerved, particularly in an adversary. The Elders would, he read, meet with him as soon as they had received his reply confirming a time.

Deed cast a small astrological divination and discovered that, given the planetary alignments, two o’clock would do very well. He duly inscribed the appointed time in a second letter, summoned the golem, gave it the missive, tucked an instruction slip between its ridged jaws, and sent it on its way.

He then went down to visit his captive. “I hope you spent a comfortable night?”

“Yes,” the Librarian said blandly. “Thank you for providing me with a book.”

She was sitting in an armchair, with the book in question spread open on her lap. It was the official history of the Court.

“What’s your professional opinion?”

“Of the book? Bit of a hagiography, isn’t it? I didn’t find any mention of that regrettable episode in the nineties when a small castle got flattened by accident.”

Deed laughed. “It’s an edited version.”

“Heavily edited, I’d say.”

“You can’t expect us to betray trade secrets.”

It was, apparently, Mercy’s turn to laugh. “I didn’t think there were any left. What with disgruntled magicians heading off in a sulk to tell everyone else what your methods are, and the fact that most of your magic is grimoire-based anyway and therefore accessible to anyone who can read… ”

She had a point, but Deed kept smiling.

“Most of our magic. Not all.”

“No,” Mercy said, giving him a considering look. “Not all.”

“Did they bring you breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you. I don’t think Persephone and I have much in common, and I was hungry, so I ate it. They’ve taken away the tray.” She held up a cup. “I still have tea.”

Deed studied her. The sigil marks which were a part of her craft had not been renewed, and they had taken her weapons from her. Interrogating the sword had not proved successful; the thing had clammed up and refused to speak even under geas. Up close, Deed could see those betraying traces of ancestry in Fane’s face: the wax-pale skin and the elegant bones that seemed to be a trait of the wolf clans when they bred out into human. But the black hair and blacker eyes were more reminiscent of southern Europe. He would not be surprised to learn that there were traces of Spanish in her ancestry.

“Ever been far north?” he asked.

“Once.” Her eyes were wary. “Visiting relatives.”

“Wolves?”

“Perhaps.”

“The old clanholds and fortresses still stand, I believe. An interesting heritage.”

“And your own?”

Deed smiled at her. “Me? Oh, I come from a long line of accountants.”

Once he had made sure that the door to Mercy’s chamber was securely locked, he went back down to the laboratory. The homunculi were coming on nicely: three of them, which was all that the blood could produce, growing like mandrakes in jars of black earth and fluid. Even with fresh blood, the process was not limitless; the most anyone had ever been able to make was seven and the last had been too sickly to really count. Deed’s other alchemical preparations were proceeding well enough. In the furthest crucible, red lion was devouring white eagle, the symbolic representations of the magical chemicals writhing above the apparatus. Deed watched the process for a while, then checked on the spying eye that looked into Mercy’s chamber. She was sitting in the chair, looking at the history of the Court. Satisfied, Deed went down to the atrium to await the arrival of the Elders.

He had taken care to select the two most conservative members of the Library: Elder Vande, and Elder Egrim. Both, Deed knew from his enquiries, were old, querulous, and wanting a quiet life, which they were unlikely to achieve any time soon. They looked at him with palpable anxiety.

“Naturally, we are eager to avoid any unpleasantness,” Vande quavered. “This is most embarrassing.”

“Young people will be young people,” Deed said, sententiously. “I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing. However… ”

“Can’t imagine why she didn’t go through official channels,” Egrim lamented, clutching her reticule.

“Doubtless she had her reasons. I suggest you confirm her presence here-I called you in because these things can be falsified, as I’m sure you’re aware-and then,” Deed paused. “Then we can begin to discuss terms.”

It was possible, of course, that the Library might simply decide to hang Mercy out to dry. But in that case, Deed would declare open war, and he was counting on the Elders’ timidity and caution. The disappearance of the city’s masters had hit them hard, much harder than the Court, which had, after all, sensibly put a number of contingency measures in place after a prophecy, which, though at the time unlikely, one would have to have been a fool to ignore.

On Earth, a prophecy was a prediction, and quite often false. In the Liminality, with its different ontological basis and the shifty temporal underpinnings of the nevergone, a prophecy could be something quite different, not a prediction at all but a fact which had slipped backwards down a storyway and lodged in the past, or a possibility from an alternate timestream which had flaked free of its rightful place and drifted through the overlight.

“You’ll want to install your own disciplinary measures,” Deed said, sorrowfully. “She hasn’t been ill treated, although regrettably she did have an unfortunate encounter with an entity… ” He watched the two elderly faces grow pale, and inwardly smiled. “She’ll tell you herself that we’ve put her in comfortable quarters.”

“Thank you for your restraint,” Egrim said.

“We have to work together,” Deed replied, with a degree of piousness. He led them down the winding passages of the Court, making sure that a maze-spell was in place just in case his two guests were a bit more clued-in than they appeared, and were able to trace where they’d been. When they reached the door of the incarceration chamber, Deed said, “Here she is,” and opened the door with a flourish.

The room, however, was empty.