Lyin guys, p.7
Lyin' Guys, page 7
The body crackled and snapped. Mort could only guess that Giannis had been alive to hear Mort’s sendoff. Gore couldn’t escape the corpse’s gravity. When Mort released his grasp on the gravity stone, a tiny planet of blood and flesh and powdered bone lazily took up orbit.
Mort allowed the glob to maintain cohesion as he fled the scene. Eventually, some poor clod would come along and poke it.
Loreth rubbed a finger back and forth beneath his chin, elbow resting on the table between himself and his interviewee. This would be so much easier without ethics. Yet without dumping the intestines of this young woman across the table and reading the secrets of her life in the smoke as he burned them, he found the game a challenge.
“Imagine a field of wildflowers,” he instructed.
Swallowing a lump in her throat, the woman nodded. Her manner, her aura, her every twitch and gesture told a story of nerves and fear. Loreth knew she was a Capricorn without asking. She’d been born to a loving couple, but the love had died when she was young. Poisoned. Jealousy? The parents had competed for her affections and taught her that love was a currency.
How much of that story was a lie?
“What kind of flowers?” the woman asked.
“What are your favorites, Jessica?” Loreth hadn’t inquired about her name. She just exuded Jessicaness. He pursed his lips and felt her answer. “Daffodils. Lovely. Picture those.”
“All right,” Jessica replied, plainly unsettled. She shut her eyes. “I see them.”
“Now imagine a fire.”
“What!”
“The flowers are burning. You turn to run, but the flames are faster. They surround you.”
“No! Make it stop.”
“You make it stop,” Loreth countered. “Quickly. The flames are circling in.”
Jessica screamed.
With a wave of his hand, Loreth snapped her from the reverie. “You’re free to go. Tell them to send in the next in line.”
“Must you do that?” Twosret asked. She leaned against the wall at the side of the room, sword belted at her hip, and a spear and shield propped beside her. He’d offered to have the crew supply a third chair for her benefit, but the warrior had declined.
“My alternatives are less palatable, I assure you. The images are a product of pure imagination, no more lasting than a bad dream. The ones who get as far as Azrael won’t be so fortunate.”
A quiet lingered between them. All Loreth was doing was provoking a soul-deep reaction, the kind of reflexive response that only a wizard might experience. A soldier might attempt to charge through the flames. A scientist might imagine themselves a gadget. But only a wizard would seek to bargain with the fire. An adept of the Order of Prometheus would hardly be able to contain the impulse to master the fire.
Unlike the librarian, Loreth was merely nudging the subjects’ imagination and reading the aura as they experienced the sudden shift from bliss to terror. Azrael would march around their skulls with a hammer and axe, chopping and hacking through mental barriers to find inner truth.
The door opened. A middle-aged man shuffled in, holding an Old-Earth bowler hat in both hands as if he’d taken it off just for the occasion. “Hello.”
Loreth’s guts clenched. There was a joke that had been running around the Convocation since Wizard Mordecai’s elevation to guardian. Though it took various forms throughout its life, the gist was that Mordecai had been born a middle-aged man and would die as one. It would have been an easier jest to blow off had it not been for its origin with one of Loreth’s colleagues in the Order of Delphi.
This fellow, however, lacked the gravity of presence that a wizard of such standing would carry like a royal cloak about his shoulders. The knot of fear in his belly was because that was just the sort of ruse he’d expect of the Guardian of the Plundered Tomes.
From the corner, out of sight of the technologist, Twosret scowled spear tips at him. Putting the tips of her index fingers together in front of her mouth, she sketched a smile.
Remembering himself, Loreth forced a friendly grin. “Welcome. Please have a seat, John.”
John hesitated a fraction, then settled into his chair.
Ten minutes and a mild panic attack later, John left with a clean bill of wizardry.
Before the next suspect came into the room, something different tickled the deep parts of Loreth’s mind.
“Death…”
“What?” Twosret snapped. Her hand went instantly to the hilt of her sword. Without seeking clarification, she interposed herself between Loreth and the door.
“Didn’t you feel it?” Loreth gulped. Twosret shook her head without looking back at him. “Stay your hand. It wasn’t close. I’m… not sure quite where. But I think we’re better served finding it than continuing this exercise.”
“This isn’t just boredom?”
The oracle rolled his eyes as he got up. “I won’t deny the tedium of this charade. I can’t imagine the real Mordecai Brown sitting still while I poke his inner demons with a stick.”
Twosret led the way out of the interrogation room, nearly bowling over a navy soldier. “Hold the line. We have a matter to attend. With haste.”
“Does this mean—?” a crewman with a datapad called after them. He’d been the one managing the checklist of potential wizards and civilians seeking permission to transfer to the navy ship.
“It means nothing,” Twosret barked, cowing the man.
They were off, like hounds on a fox hunt.
“Where did it happen?” Twosret demanded as they swept through the ship, Loreth taking the lead as his sense of the event faded with each moment.
“I can’t say for certain. Somewhere near the gravity stone. Whoever killed there must have known the stone would drown out their magic traces. But they overestimated the cover even such a huge ship’s gravity stone might provide.”
“Could we be rushing headlong into a trap?”
“Not if they thought the stone’s shielding would keep their murderous ways hidden. Not everyone could have detected the anomalous aura. You didn’t.”
Twosret didn’t have a pithy response for that. The Order of Delphi fell often beneath a veil of scorn because they weren’t actually predictors of the future. They were unravelers of the past and present, seers and revisionist historians who dissected established lies. Peepers into private lives. They dredged the polite muck from highborn and lowborn alike and exposed secrets many preferred to bury or conceal.
But no one had the sensitivity to the galaxy around them like a seer.
Loreth pulled up short. “Wait.”
“What?” his bodyguard asked as she skidded to a halt just shy of barreling into him.
Allowing his eyes to unfocus, he let his senses listen to the fabric of the universe around him.
Where are you? Whom did I just feel?
Loreth backtracked to a nearby intersection. “This way.”
“But the gravity stone…”
“If our murderer stood around admiring their handiwork, that would be our destination. But I don’t think they did. I sense wobbles.”
“Wobbles?”
Gritted teeth and clenched fists came without Loreth meaning to. How frustrating, attempting to explain the foibles of his art to the personification of brute force in magic? “Tiny variations. Wizards produce them all the time. You notice them if you look, if you’re around few enough wizards that the waves and ripples can show you a point of origin. Pause a few seconds and just feel.”
Jutting her jaw, Twosret relented, shutting her eyes and taking a few deep breaths. “I feel nothing,” she declared. “Just the gravity stone. Us.”
Loreth’s eyes flicked back and forth in their sockets. “That’s a good point. I feel us, too. And… Tom. And Azrael. And… and…”
“Mordecai?”
“Just our quarry. I can’t say where Giannis is.”
“Hidden by one of his charms, no doubt,” Twosret assured him. “Who knows what all he has for tricks in that stinking satchel of his.”
“Let’s keep moving. The wobbles are stationary for now. Maybe we can catch whoever it is unaware.”
They started off again, this time at a more measured pace. He couldn’t explain why, even to himself, but it felt like undue haste might alert their target.
Scenery drifted past. In less hectic times, the ship might have been a floating architectural gem. After the mission, Loreth might have enjoyed some time to peruse the ship at leisure. It simultaneously evoked Vatican Rome and Shakespearean London, a feat Loreth would have doubted had an architect of starships boasted of it over whiskey.
The wobble led them to a nearby residential zone of the ship. A hideout? Perhaps. More likely, someone had commandeered a room as a temporary shelter during Azrael’s inquisition.
A door.
Their destination.
Twosret mouthed something. Loreth’s lip-reading came up with either “words” or “wards.” Loreth stretched his fingers toward the door. Nothing… nothing… his fingertips touched. He winced in anticipation of his senses being deceived and receiving a lethal surprise.
Nothing.
He gave a good, old-fashioned thumbs-up.
Twosret shouldered him aside. Making a claw with the fingers of her non-sword hand—and gripping the weapon’s hilt in her other—she made an imperious gesture that wrenched the door wide.
A woman screamed.
Loreth’s skin prickled.
This was his wizard. Their quarry.
A woman in her thirties, hair uncoifed, clad in a modest frock but wearing no shoes, propped up on one elbow in her bed. She held a hand to ward away the intruders. Red-rimmed eyes regarded them in horror.
Twosret had drawn her blade and burst inside. The sword clattered to the floor. “Child, I’m so sorry! It’s OK. It’s OK.” She rushed over and wrapped the woman in a hug.
“Sorry,” Loreth said. He chuckled nervously. “Mistook you for Mordecai The Brown, if you can believe it.”
Mort’s eyes hunted the halls of the Nazareth. Blood that oozed through sluggish veins during the tedium of captivity, nights in front of the holo-projector, and staring out starship windows at the puddle-thin shallows of the astral now roared with the thunder of his heartbeat.
So, they’d sent that crazy bastard Giannis out to cook Mort’s goose? Fine. But Giannis was no wizard-hunter. That meant there were others around somewhere, and Mort meant to find them. Laying a quick trap here or there was one thing, but Mort was no fisherman to laze on the shore awaiting a bite on his hook.
Haste didn’t befit a wizard on the prowl.
Mort kept a steady pace, but it was his mind that searched. Eyes that kept him from running into walls and blundering into pedestrians were tasked with little else. If forced to describe the nature of his probing to the uninitiated, he’d have likened it to tracing the origin of an odd smell in a drafty old house. Maybe you didn’t know what you were looking for, but once you caught a whiff, it was a matter of some undignified sniffing and searching likely spots until you discovered it.
Convocation wizards weren’t often the subtlest. Some thought they were such sly, sneaky bastards while living on Earth only to discover that without the cover of the teeming masses and the concentrations of wizards at the old-world sites, their little magics of convenience stood tall in the meadow.
Once he was away from the gravity stone, Mort ceased all magic.
He didn’t steady the force on his feet where the Nazareth’s ill-tended stone drifted slightly under 1 g.
He didn’t peer around corners before he reached them.
… didn’t alter his features.
… didn’t force doors open.
For all the rest of the ship’s inhabitants knew, Mort was one of them. Only Mort and the universe knew better. Well, other than Father Laszlo, Natasha, the Ramseys, and a few dozen witnesses to his slaughters of pirates who damn well better have kept their traps shut about it.
Fine. Plenty of people knew. But so long as he kept his magic in his pants, he felt confident he could sneak up on the bastards—whoever they were.
As he strode through the ship, he started to wonder. Were these wizards better than he’d given them credit for? By now, he expected to have felt something.
Admittedly, Giannis had been easy to track. That bag of magical junk, while undoubtedly deadly and useful, had painted a bullseye on his skull. And while he was in an admitting mood, this wasn’t his normal cup of tea. Most often, he was sent to hunt dark wizards who’d been reckless enough to get spotted by random brethren throughout the cosmos. Plenty were still out there that operated beneath notice.
Mort needed to make use of other resources.
“Hey, got a minute, sailor?” Mort called out to a passing security soldier from the Nairobi. It would have been keen luck if he’d stumbled onto Jamie Ramsey, but the face distorted behind the glare of a clear visor bore no resemblance. Taller, lighter of complexion, and freckle-faced, he positively exuded an ‘aw shucks’ earnestness that Mort appreciated in the moment.
“What’s the problem?”
Mort pulled out his Convocation medallion. Hubris alone kept him wearing it, sandwiched between his Sigma Slasher sweatshirt and the “Welcome to Orion” t-shirt beneath. He held it up for inspection. “One of the wizards left this at the coffee shop. I want to return it, but damned if those fuckers aren’t faster than those scrawny legs make ’em look.”
The soldier held out a gloved hand. “I can take it.”
Mort pulled the medallion back before Mr. Earnest made a grab for it. “Might be a reward in it. And no, I didn’t steal it. I can see that suspicion in your eyes.”
“I don’t think you stole it.”
“Easy to say now. Just point me toward them. I’ll take it from there.”
The kid rattled off directions to a wing of the residential quarters, not far from where the Ramseys had been assigned when they were nominally staying shipboard. Mort had been cruising the permanent residences on the other side of the ship on the assumption that whoever Boston Prime had sent out would have commandeered the best living quarters, whether available or not.
“Thanks, pal,” Mort told the lad before whisking his way toward his destination.
As he drew nearer, he caught his first whiff of the other wizards.
Puffs.
Flickers.
Whatever you wanted to call them, someone was attempting to use magic without letting on, and the traces became Mort’s beacon.
Closer and closer he drew.
When he came to a warded door, he knew he’d found the right place. Wary of drawing attention, the ward itself was little better than a string of bells to alert the occupant of someone barging through. If they thought it could impede Mordecai The Brown, they were in for a rude surprise.
Just as he was about to shatter the ward, Mort felt a tingle behind him.
The room across the hall.
Mort smirked.
Indeed, that pathetic ward was just a bell. Oh, this was going to be more interesting than he’d expected.
Stepping clear of the line of fire, Mort snapped his fingers. Unravel. The universe yawned as it obeyed the simple request.
Mere seconds later, the door across the hall flew from its sliding track, borne on a wash of reddish-purple flame. When the torrent subsided, Mort leaned in and found his would-be murderer.
“Hi, Tom. They decided to let you take another stab?”
Tom Ping backed toward the closet of his assigned room, visible by the fires devouring the bedspread. Whether the weasel had a bolt-hole to escape that way or not, Mort didn’t plan to let the dark wizard out of his sight.
Mort stepped into the room, relaxing only slightly. There was still the chance that Tom’s acting had improved, and he had backup ready to swoop in. At the least, the vulgar display of arcane might would alert any allies aboard. But just Tom? Mort didn’t need to worry.
“Nothing personal,” Tom assured him with a painted-on grin. He bumped into the closet door, hand fumbling for the controls as the lights flickered back to normal.
“Oh, I doubt it’s anything but personal. Now’s about the time you—”
“Let’s make a deal,” the panicked wizard blurted on cue.
“See? I know you. I studied you. And we had a deal. You explained your astral research; I let them lock you up instead of incinerating you.”
Tom raised his hands and tried to press himself through the closed closet door to no avail. “I kept my end!”
Mort took a step closer. “And yet, here you are.”
“I have information. I know the plan. I can tell you everything.”
Rubbing his chin, Mort considered. Tom was stalling. That much was clear. Not that anyone could blame him. There was no other hope for victory here. His attack would have been a signal flare for his comrades if nothing else.
Time was precious.
“Much as I’d love to hear it all, I think your friends would interrupt all too soon.”
“Your friends, not mine.”
Just as Mort was preparing himself to consume Tom Ping in Promethean Fire, he stopped short. “My friends?”
“Azrael Copperfield put the team together.”
Mort cocked his head. “They sent that quill-licking weenie to take me down?”
“Not by himself. Obviously. And he assembled a multi-disciplinary strike team to—”
“Quit yammering,” Mort snapped as he closed the final distance between himself and Tom. He knew he couldn’t make a habit of this, or he’d go mad, but there were worse resources to consume than Tom Ping.
“What are you—AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The scream cut short as Mort’s fingers finished driving through Tom’s skull and drank the mind inside.
Terrified, disembodied, and utterly at the mercy of his captor, Tom spilled his no-longer-corporeal guts the instant he understood his new circumstances. In the accelerated time within Mort’s head, the exchange took mere seconds of outside time.
“Shit,” Mort grumbled. They had an oracle. While that didn’t concern him for his own safety, there was another wizard aboard the Nazareth who was in no condition to be caught up in an inquisition.
