Despite his headache and injuries, Doranei smiled. A moment of interest, then he was dismissed. That was the Beyn he knew, aloof, insufferable at times, but always aware of his duty. Doranei crossed the room to the door. A dim glow spilled out from the hallway as he opened it and he looked back to see Beyn sitting with a crossbow cocked and pointing at the street door. They exchanged nods and he left in search of the king.
The nondescript house was large enough for the thirty members of the Brotherhood and the handful of others King Emin had brought along. It was surprisingly well built, for only a quiet murmur reached his ears from the other end of the corridor. Doranei thought of the house's owner, a locally renowned artist called Pirlo Cetess. It would be good to see him again – if he was still alive, of course. There were none of the usual decorations one would expect from a household in mourning, so perhaps their assumptions had been wrong when their messages had gone unanswered. He could only hope so.
'Doranei, so good of you to join us,' King Emin commented as Doranei entered the main reception room. The king's head never rose from the papers strewn over a large mahogany table. By the light of a torch Sebe was shaving another's face. That was the way in the Brotherhood: they would trust none but each other to put a blade to their throats. That had been a little harder after Ilumene had gone on His killing spree, slashing some of the king's closest friends to bloody ribbons and carving his name into the queen's belly. But trust there must be, and certainly there could be no mirrors allowed in the house. A reflection lacked substance; it was too close to a shadow to be safe.
The king was dressed in grey tunic and breeches. Black braiding differentiated him from his men, but not from the shadows. Are you hurt?' he asked.
'Not badly, but it'll be a week before my left arm is useful for much.'
'Haven't been trying to feed guard dogs again, have you?' He chuckled grimly.
Veil, the man with the shaving bowl perched precariously on his lap, smirked and Sebe paused in his labours to push hack his own tangled hair and grin at Doranei, his scarred cheeks crinkling as he did so. Doranei just blinked at the king and shrugged. When he had been five, Doranei had tried to pat a dog through the bars of a gate. The guard dog has taken half of his little finger and a piece of his childhood innocence, but the lesson had been learned. It hadn't been mentioned in Doranei's presence for years, yet the king remembered.
'I went to the theatre, your Majesty.' That made King Emin look up, Doranei noted with satisfaction. 'In the company of Zhia Vukotic'
The king went so far as to raise his eyebrows. 'Well now, that is an interesting turn of events. I wonder how you managed to hurt yourself at the theatre.' The king straightened and gestured towards a small stairway beside the fireplace, normally hidden by a bookcase. 'Come and have a look at this.'
Doranei followed the king up the narrow stairs into Cetess' private study, where the artist hid those academic interests that coincided with the king's. It was a small, windowless room, carefully removed from the eyes of the city, and Cetess' patrons, when they visited. The room was in complete disorder, papers and books scattered everywhere. A sense of dread twisted in his gut.
'Where is Cetess?'
'A good question,' the king replied, gesturing towards the far wall. 'So far we've not been able to find out exactly what happened, but there are more than a few worrying details.' He pointed at a blank tablet, identical to those overlooking the king's bedroom, hanging on the wall. 'Look.'
It took Doranei a moment to work out what was wrong. The tablet, a smooth piece of purple Narkang slate cut from the same slab as its pair, was completely blank – and that was the problem; what hap¬pened to one happened to the other. They were delicate creations and easily damaged, but this hadn't been hurt. Only a thin wisp of chalk dust marred its dark purple surface.
'I might not know much about magic, but isn't that impossible?'
'I know quite a lot about magic,' Emin replied, 'as do Endine and Cetarn. We all agree that it is impossible. Neither of our learned col¬leagues have an answer.'
And you?' All the Brotherhood were in awe of King Emin's re¬markable ability at problem solving.
'Perhaps the sheer impossibility is reason in itself? Magic is a fickle beast, and the advantage oi n‹›t being a mage is that I do not pretend
to be its master. Mages assume they understand the nature of that beast, but when one observes magic, it squirms through your grip.'
'I don't understand, your Majesty.'
'Neither do I,' Emin said with a smile. 'But this thing has been done; a thing we know to be impossible. Therefore what if the only way it could be accomplished is if we could easily recognise it as im¬possible? That the clandestine deed could only succeed if its secrets were betrayed.'
'That was an explanation?'
The king laughed at Doranei's bemused expression. 'Hah! Not quite, merely my thoughts on the subject. The message on the tablet in my room was not written by conventional means, else it would still be here. You cannot erase such a message once the tablet is broken. So the message was done by unconventional means, as a way to lure us here. The fickle nature of magic means that it can only be accomp¬lished if the task fails.'
'But we are here,' Doranei objected.
The king raised a finger. 'Here, and yet aware that we have been lured here, and thus forewarned of any ambush in the making; per¬haps even protected until we have the opportunity to realise the trap exists.' He shrugged, one long finger sweeping away an errant strand of chestnut hair. 'It is only the makings of a theory, nothing more. I have yet to make sense of the idea.'
'I wish you luck. Have you been able to find out what happened to Cetess? Was it – him?' Doranei was hesitant to speak Ilumene's name in King Emin's presence, the Brotherhood's only traitor, and loved as a son by his king.
Emin shook his head. 'No, nothing certain. The servants tell of voices in the night, laughter echoing through the walls and shadows in empty rooms. There is little sense to be made of it, yet it is reminis-cent of Azaer's deeds in Narkang.' Emin bit his lip thoughtfully. 'All we know for sure is that every single member of his staff swears that Ceess locked up the house as usual and retired to bed. When they awakened, the house was still locked, but he was gone. He hadn't slept in his bed. There was no sign of violence, no body, no keys.'
'So what do we do now?'
Emin raised an eyebrow. 'I think I should hear about your evening.' He sat at the small desk protruding out into the centre of the room and fixed his piercing blue eyes on Doranei, who eased his pack off his shoulders as gently as his injured arm would allow and let it fall to the floor with a metallic thud. He did likewise with his leather tunic, eager to be rid of its steel-strengthened weight, and dropped into the other chair in the room.
He cradled his left wrist. 'My night at the theatre,' he muttered with a rueful smile, 'came about because of the good aim of a Farlan agent.'
'Now you're just teasing me,' the king said.
Doranei held up his hands. 'We're not the only ones interested in Scree, not by a long way. Here's what happened…'
King Emin and Doranei spent more than an hour, going over the faces in the crowd, the actors – and the vampire Zhia Vukotic. Doranei hadn't been able to concentrate much on the play itself – a tragedy of mistaken identity centred around three princes all falsely claiming to be the Saviour – as his pain grew throughout the evening, but he tried to recall every detail. He watched a grim resolve fall over Emin's face as he suggested, a little nervously, that one of the masked actors could have been Ilumene.
'But you could not swear to it?'
'No, his role was small.' Doranei grimaced as he tried to clarity his suspicions. 'There was something about the man's poise. He over shadowed the lead actors without having to speak a word.'