Void's Tale Read online

  Unless she had something she wanted to hide, I thought. It wasn’t uncommon. Mistress Layla might easily have gotten bored and started to experiment, pushing the limits to see how far she could go. Or someone in town might have been spying on her. That wasn’t uncommon, either. She might have cloaked the real protections behind half-assed wards.

  I put the thought aside for later consideration as we reached one of the few shops that were still open and stepped inside. Gabby cheered up the moment the door closed behind us, running to the jars of sweets the owner had conveniently placed by the counter. I smiled, then turned my attention to the shelves. The general store had everything a caravan could need, from camping gear to basic magical supplies. Gabby collected everything we needed, then shot me a beseeching look. I smiled again and ordered her a bag of local sweets. Her mother wouldn’t mind.

  “We’re new in town,” I said, as I paid for our supplies. “What’s been happening recently?”

  The shopkeeper paled, then frantically shook his head. I sighed, realising he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I could have made him talk - his wards weren’t strong enough to stop me - but that would have been far too revealing. I had no idea what was going on. Instead, I took the bag and headed to the door. Gabby joined me as we stepped outside. The sky was shading to dusk. It wouldn’t be long before it was completely dark.

  A pair of shapes stepped out of the alleyway, blocking our way. “What do you have in that bag?”

  Gabby shrank back against me. I frowned as the two guards approached. They looked professional, but also ... scared? It was hard to be sure. They weren’t frightened of me, but ...

  “Open the bag,” the leader ordered. Behind him, the street cleared rapidly. “Now.”

  Cold logic told me I should do as they said, to maintain my cover. I ignored it. Guards couldn’t be allowed to harass magicians on the streets. It set a terrible precedent. I reached out with my mind, assessing their defences. Someone had given them charmed armour. It wasn’t a bad design, but it wasn’t anything like as effective as they thought. I could have done a better job in my sleep. They’d left so much of their skin exposed, it would’ve been easy to kill them.

  Instead, I cast a compulsion charm. “You have searched our bags and found nothing,” I told them. Their eyes went dull as the charm took effect. I could have made them say or do or believe anything. The temptation to cast an incontinence charm was almost overwhelming. I resisted it, somehow. “And now you will let us go.”

  They looked stunned as I caught Gabby’s hand and led her past the guards, casting a second charm to scramble their memories on the way. I wasn’t concerned about a small army of guardsmen showing up to arrest me - I doubted they’d try to arrest a traveller, not for something as minor as charming a guard - but I didn’t want to attract attention. By the time the guards worked out what had happened, their memories of the last few minutes would be so thoroughly scrambled they wouldn’t recognise me if I walked up and punched them in the face. There’d be no way they could point a finger at us.

  Gabby held out the bag as we reached the caravan. “Mum? You want one?”

  Juliana took a sweet, then glanced at me. “Will you be joining us for dinner?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. It was tempting, but I had work to do. Somehow, I doubted the convoy would be staying much longer. I’d have to ditch them if they left early, which would make maintaining my cover a little more problematic. “I need to go have a night on the town.”

  Chapter Three

  I was mildly surprised, as night fell over the town, to discover there wasn’t a curfew. They were rare in magical settlements - there were rites that could only be conducted at midnight - but quite common in mundane towns. Anyone caught outside after nightfall was just asking for trouble, as far as the authorities were concerned. I’d expected to have to sneak my way into the taverns. Instead, the streets became more alive after dark. And yet, the stench of fear hung in the air. There were very few women on the streets and almost all were escorted by grim-faced men.

  The tavern on the edge of the magical quarter had clearly seen better days. It was a single-story stone building, crammed with people. The stench of alcohol assaulted my nostrils. I wrapped a simple glamour around myself as I entered, tuning the spell to make sure I fitted in without drawing too much attention. The patrons were all men, drinking beer and talking in low voices. They looked ... common, their hard-worn clothes and harder faces suggesting they were miners, rather than merchants or magicians or aristocrats. Some of them were smoking, the smell wafting across the room and making my nostrils twitch; I tried not to cough as I breathed the foggy air. It wasn’t regular tobacco.

  I sidled up to the counter and ordered a pint, then allowed my eyes to wander across the room. Alcohol had a tendency to loosen tongues. It was normally easy to convince people to talk, when they’d had a few drinks before I started asking questions. My eyes swept from face to face, wondering who would be the best person to ask. The miners? The loadsmen? Or ... I smiled, inwardly, as I spotted a man in a cubicle drinking alone. He looked downcast. If I was any judge, he wanted - needed - to talk.

  The crowd parted as I made my way around the room and stepped up to the cubicle. The man looked up, eyes darkening. His unshaven face and alcohol-sodden shirt made him look dangerous, his fists clenching as if he thought he could take a swing at me. I tightened the glamour, pushing it towards him. His mind would do the rest, convincing him that I was a relative or a friend who would provide a sympathetic ear. The alcohol would help with that, too. I swapped one of his empty glasses for mine, then cast an illusion to make it look as though I was drinking with him. I doubted anyone would notice. They had too many problems of their own.

  “She’s gone,” he said. He swallowed half the pint in one gulp, then belched. “She’s gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” I leaned forward, casting a handful of charms to encourage him to talk. She? Mistress Layla? I found it hard to believe she’d been associating with the man in front of me. “Who’s missing?”

  “My daughter,” the man said. “She’s gone!”

  “Tell me about her,” I said. I waved to the bartender, quietly ordering more drinks for my new friend. “What happened?”

  The story bubbled out, accompanied by gulps and half-sobs and all the sounds of a man on the edge of snapping. He’d had a daughter - Fran - who’d been the light of his life, the apple of his eye and various other things he listed in great detail, a daughter who’d gone out one day and never returned. She’d been too young to run away, he insisted; she’d been too young to fall in love with a boy or set out to seek her fortune or do something - anything - on her own. And no one gave much of a damn about her. The guardsmen had beaten him up for daring to report her disappearance.

  “She’s not the only one,” he said. His voice was raw with pain, his eyes wet with unshed tears. “Thousands of people have vanished, and the prince does nothing!”

  I asked a handful of questions, trying to draw sense out of his increasingly-drunken ramblings. I’d known a handful of magicians had gone missing, but commoners too? It made no sense. I was fairly sure it couldn’t be more than a hundred at most - I couldn’t believe thousands of people had vanished, not in a fairly small town - but ... what was going on? Missing commoners as well as magicians? Perhaps there was a necromancer after all.

  If there was a necromancer in the area, we’d know about it, I told myself. What else could it be?

  My friend continued to ramble, while I thought hard. There was nothing to be gained by kidnapping magicians ... nothing good, in any case. They could be being held for ransom somewhere, but who would pay? None of them had ties - overt ones, anyway - to wealthy and powerful families. And commoners? It was possible they were being sold into slavery - or worse - but I found it hard to believe a kidnapping ring could operate for so long in a small town without being uncovered. There weren’t many cities so big that strangers could remain unnoticed. After the f
irst couple of people had vanished, the remainder of the population would’ve been on their guard. The kidnappers would be sure of facing some rough justice if - when - they were caught in the act.

  “You reported it to the guardsmen,” I said. “What happened?”

  “They said the prince didn’t give a shit about us,” the drunkard said. He was swaying now, face blotchy with tears. “He fills the city with statues of himself, but ... what about us?”

  He seemed to stagger, as if someone had hit him, then fell forward and crashed onto the wooden table, out like a lightspell. I moved him slightly to make sure he could breathe, then cleared away the empty glasses. His memories would be scrambled when he woke up, leaving him uncertain of just what he’d said ... and to who. The hangover wouldn’t help. I muttered a quick spell to ensure he didn’t have a bad one, despite the vast amounts of alcohol in his bloodstream. He’d have to go to the toilet quickly, when he woke, but it was a small price to pay. And it was the least I could do.

  A fight broke out on the floor. I watched dispassionately as big men exchanged blows, punching and kicking each other over ... over what? The bartender didn’t seem concerned, even as they crashed into stools and smashed tables ... I had the feeling fistfights were a regular thing here. I waved at the bartender, summoning him, then passed him a gold coin. His eyes widened with surprise. He bit the coin, then pocketed it.

  “No one can hear us,” I said. I cast a complex privacy ward to make sure that was actually true. Anyone trying to spy on the bar would hear the fight and nothing more, but there was no point in taking chances. “Tell me about the prince.”

  The bartender hesitated, seemingly torn between answering my questions and returning my coin. I was astonished. Gold coins were rare, outside the big cities. I’d just given him more money than his regular patrons were likely to give him in a week. And yet, he clearly wasn’t sure if he wanted to take the money. It was hard to believe. What could scare an entire town?

  “He’s a good man,” the bartender said, carefully. He had to be wondering if I was one of the prince’s men. “We all adore him.”

  I tried not to snort. There were too many aristocrats who’d take that at face value, who made the mistake of assuming the people cheering in the streets truly loved them. It wasn’t true. The crowds would cheer just as eagerly for a usurper, if he took the throne by force. They knew better than to oppose the man with the soldiers, not openly. They’d keep their real thoughts to themselves.

  “And the truth?” I pushed magic into my voice, urging him to talk. “What do you really think?”

  “He’s done nothing about the vanishings,” the bartender said. His hands twisted in his lap, suggesting he was deeply uncomfortable. “He puts up statues to his own glory, but does nothing about the missing people.”

  I asked him a handful of other questions, pulling out fragments of information the bartender hadn’t known he had. There had been around seventy disappearances in all, as far as he knew, all commoners. I mentally added the commoner and magical disappearances together and got eighty-two ... at least. There might very well be more. People had simply been vanishing, from the streets, from their beds, from their shops ... too many to explain away. And the prince was doing nothing besides putting more guards on the streets. It hadn’t done anything to help.

  The bartender kept talking. I listened, thinking hard. By tradition, such as it was, a Crown Prince controlled Low and Middle Justice, anything below crimes against the state itself. It was his responsibility to handle the criminal investigation, even if that meant - in practice - delegating the task to someone who knew what he was doing. Putting troops on the streets might not have seemed a bad idea, and it was certainly a good way to make a show of doing something, but it had clearly been ineffective. People were still vanishing. And there seemed to be no rhyme or reason.

  I dismissed the bartender with a nod and sat back to consider what I’d been told. Seventy commoners, perhaps more, had vanished. They had little else in common. They’d been young and old, the youngest around five and the oldest around sixty; they’d been from all walks of life. I could understand kidnapping young women or strong men, but why a random selection? It made no sense. If they’d all been taken off the streets, I would have thought the kidnappers were just picking targets of opportunity ... I shook my head in frustration. Some of the victims had been taken from their beds.

  Which is interesting, I thought. Either the entire house was emptied or the kidnappers used powerful magic.

  My heart sank. Or perhaps not. My brothers and I had grown up on my family’s estate. We might have been regarded with scorn and suspicion, but we’d been family. We’d slept inside bedrooms protected by powerful wards, our needs tended by servants magically bound to the family. A commoner, on the other hand, wouldn’t have anything like so many protections. A kidnapper could climb through an open window, pour a sleeping potion into the victim’s mouth and then carry them back outside. There’d be no need to do anything more complex. The kidnappers wouldn’t have to bypass wards if there were none ...

  I kept my thoughts to myself as I moved from tavern to tavern, asking questions and getting increasingly disturbing answers. No one really knew what was going on, which didn’t help. There were rumours of everything from slave traders to cannibals, from vampires to werewolves to things that went bump in the night. I saw commoners carrying weapons, even though it was flatly illegal; I saw guardsmen patrolling the streets in large groups, unwilling to move on their own. The fear was ever-present, but I also felt rage. It was just a matter of time before everything exploded. And who knew what would happen then?

  “Hey, handsome,” a female voice called. “You want your pipe cleaned?”

  I turned and saw a prostitute leaning against the wall. She looked dreadful. The streets had taken a toll. Her skin was pale, almost translucent; her hair was stringy, her half-exposed breasts saggy. I knew she was younger than she looked. She’d covered her face with make-up, but it wasn’t enough to hide the bruise on her cheek. I saw a shadowy figure lurking in the distance ... her pimp, probably. He would take most of what she earned, leaving her almost nothing; he’d beat her if she failed to bring in enough to satisfy him. I felt a sudden surge of anger. It would be easy, so easy, to turn him into a slug and step on him, but where would that leave her? She needed protection, or she’d be robbed. She’d need to find another pimp, quickly. My heart clenched. In a just world, someone would protect the weak from the strong. But the strong did as they liked and the weak had to bend over and take it.

  “No, thank you.” I held out a coin. “But I would like to ask you some questions.”

  She gaped at me, then took the coin. I had to smile. Questions were the last thing a whore would expect to hear from a client. But whores did have eyes and they tended to be good judges of men ... I leaned forward, casting a privacy charm. The pimp kept his distance. I was relieved. I didn’t want to scare the poor girl by openly using magic.

  “What’s been going on?” The question hung in the air. “Why have so many shops been closed?”

  “They’re leaving,” the whore said. She sounded too tired and old to be scared. “Things are just ... creepy.”

  “How so?” I sensed the pimp moving forward and cursed under my breath. Perhaps I’d misread him. The whore could be the bait, drawing me in so he could knock me out, cut my throat and steal my possessions. He was in for a nasty surprise if he tried. My wards were strong. He’d be a toad - or dead - before he realised what happened. “What’s been happening?”

  “The guardsmen,” the whore said. “They don’t come demanding freebies any longer.”

  “What do you mean?” It meant nothing to me. “Freebies?”

  The whore gestured at her breasts, then laughed bitterly. “They want free samples, or else. We have to give them what they want. But now ... now they’re just patrolling the streets. It’s like they’ve been unmanned.”

  I had to smile. “Is that a bad th
ing?”

  “They’re driving us off it,” the whore said. “There are fewer customers, fewer chances to earn money” - she looked towards the pimp, a shadow of fear on her face - “and better odds of ending up in the workhouse. So yes, it is a bad thing.”

  “I suppose,” I agreed. I’d never been a guardsman, but I’d heard stories. They were poorly paid, poorly led and almost completely unmotivated to do much of anything. The only competent guardsmen were the ones in towns and cities that ran themselves, rather than taking orders from the nearest aristocrat. The remainder enjoyed the perks of their job and did as little actual crime-fighting as possible. “That’s an interesting point.”

  I asked her a handful of other questions - it seemed that no whores had vanished, although it was impossible to be sure - and then gave her a second coin, before casting a brief stasis spell. She froze, thoughts locked in place. She would be unaware of the passage of time, unaware that anything had happened between the moment I cast the spell and the moment it finally snapped.