“Reapers?” Justinius asked.
I looked at him in surprise.
“I know what’s going on in my own citadel, girl,” he said with a trace of a smile. “You’ve been working with Vidor Kalta. Find out anything?”
Kalta was a nachtmagus. He was human, and a great guy for someone who worked with dead people for a living. A nachtmagus could control the dead—in all of their forms. Communicating with the dead was the least of what they could do. I’d heard that given enough time, money, and motivation they could raise the dead. Reapers weren’t dead, but like Vidor Kalta, they worked closely with them.
“Through my link to the Saghred, I’m also connected to the souls trapped inside,” I told him. “And since I’m also a conduit for the rock’s power, I can serve the same function for its inmates. Reapers calm panic. If I were dying on a battlefield, I could see where a cool, soothing calm would be a good thing. The souls they’ve already drawn out of me wanted to leave the rock. Too bad for me it felt like someone was dragging my insides out through my chest. Multiply that a couple thousand times . . . if it didn’t kill me, I’d be wishing that someone would.”
“Is that all he could tell you?” Justinius asked.
“No, but none of the rest of it does anything to help me.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “He’s sent out some carefully worded queries to a few colleagues that he trusts. Some of them specialize in Reapers and their behavior—a few of them are actually still alive and didn’t get eaten by their own homework.” I looked at Mychael. “How much time do we have until that Gate’s ready?”
“Judging from what Chigaru’s spies said, we have about five days. It’ll be enough time to get the students off the island—and anyone else who wants to leave.” He paused. “I want you to be one of them.”
“We’ve had this discussion; I’ve given you my answer and it’s still the same one. If anyone needs to leave, it’s you. I’m not the one who got shot at this morning.”
Justinius raised one bushy, white eyebrow. “Now that I didn’t know. Care to fill me in, son?”
Mychael did, but left out any mention of my relation to said killer.
“That tells me who, what, and when,” Justinius said when Mychael finished. “But why did he pick you for a target?”
I spoke right up. “I can answer that one, sir.” No use trying to hide it. I laid it out for him, simply and directly.
The old man whistled. “Damn, girl. And here I was thinking that your knack for finding trouble started with the Saghred.”
I sighed. “No, sir. Unfortunately, trouble is what I find best. Always has been.”
“You do a fine job of it.”
“Thank you, sir.” I tossed back the rest of my drink. “Though I’m working on something that could take care of Rache’s itchy trigger finger and suck the wind out of Carnades’s sails at the same time.”
“We believe that Rache Kai was paid by Taltek Balmorlan to assassinate the prince,” Mychael said.
Justinius glowered. “Balmorlan also wants to get his hands on our girl here.” If Balmorlan had been in the room right now, I had no doubt that the old man would have turned him into the cockroach that he really was and then stomped on him. I had to really resist the urge to kiss the old guy.
“And Carnades is Balmorlan’s newest best friend—and investor,” I told him.
“You have proof?” Justinius asked.
“Let’s just say that I know someone at Balmorlan’s bank.”
Justinius smiled slowly. “Is this someone willing to help?”
I grinned. “Willing and eager.”
“You know that Carnades isn’t going to wait until he gets the votes he needs.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Neither am I.”
Chapter 6
Carnades had tossed down the gauntlet, and I was only too happy to pick it up.
Either I cooperated or my family would pay the price. It wasn’t the first time a Benares had been threatened like that, and the family had several favored forms of retaliation.
I was about to set one of those in motion. I’d be doing what a Benares does best.
Scheme and scam. Or in my case, con and conjure.
Time to find Mago.
Setting up Phaelan and paying Rache to kill Chigaru and Mychael took money. A lot of money. I knew for a fact that Rache wouldn’t kill a fly without being paid, and Carnades’s lackeys wouldn’t go after Phaelan without having their pockets well lined. The best way to stop them would be to stop their money, then see what I could do about taking every coin they already had.
Prince Chigaru hadn’t reserved the entire hotel, but he’d come close. There were goblins at every opening that could even remotely be considered a way in or out. I’d been taught since childhood how to get around virtually any obstacle an opponent could throw at me.
It wasn’t easy, but I got into the hotel without anyone seeing me. No goblin in this hotel knew that Prince Chigaru’s personal banker was a Benares, and there was no reason why I would know Mago Perrone.
So, I snuck in.
Almost as difficult as getting into the hotel undetected was convincing Vegard to wait for me at a bar across the street. In no way could a big, blond Guardian blend in with a hotel full of goblins. I was small and fit through openings Vegard couldn’t get his head into, let alone those shoulders of his. I thought about telling Tam and Imala about my little trick, but decided against it for now. I might need to sneak back in before all this was over.
I couldn’t exactly walk up to the front desk and ask where Mago Perrone’s suite was. I mean I could, but it would be ill-advised. Hotel staff generally wanted to know personal details that are best not shared in my kind of situation, like your name and what business did you have with the hotel guest in question. Then they would oh so politely offer to send a bellboy up with a message. Pretty much everyone knew who I was, and having me connected in any way, shape, or form with Mago would have scuttled our plan before we got a chance to break even one law.
Over the years, we’d worked out a sign in our family for letting another family member know where we were. For an inn or hotel, the tip of a handkerchief discreetly visible in the upper right corner of the door said that a Benares was in residence. To keep me from wandering suspiciously from floor to floor looking for his door merely took a little deductive reasoning. Mago never stayed on the ground floor, to prevent anyone from breaking in. Someone stealing from Mago would be the ultimate irony. My cousin also never stayed on floors too high up to prevent him from easily getting out. Escape was a good option for a Benares. He always carried a ladder woven out of Caesolian silk; it was light, fit neatly in his luggage, and could be pulled down quickly after him. That ladder had seen a lot of use over the years. It would reach three stories, no more. Chigaru was on the fifth floor—naturally the top floor—that would put Mago on the third. He’d want to be close to the prince, but close enough to the ground so that his getaway ladder would reach.
Unlike Prince Chigaru’s floor, there were no guards on Mago’s hall; in fact, there was no one in the hall except for me. The golden glow from recessed lightglobes set into the walls at regular intervals revealed a faint gleam at each end of the hall. Sentry beacons. Sometimes magic was a major inconvenience. Hotel security could see everything going on in every hall. Though one of the first spells I learned as a seeker was for disabling any magical device that let anyone see me when I didn’t want to be seen.
Focus, a touch of will, and a muttered spell later, all the security guard downstairs would see was a lot of empty hall. There would be no record that I’d been here.
I found the tip of a pale blue handkerchief peeking out of the door of the suite closest to the stairs—another prudent Mago precaution. I used the knock that would tell him it was me, and my cousin answered the door a few moments later, drink in hand, color back in his face.