Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Read online

  “Shadow take bloody Niko van Amstel,” Fynn groused.

  A bloody Niko van Amstel formed the gist of Carian’s dreams most nights.

  Bloody Niko van Amstel…

  Carian could do things with the Pattern of the World that many ringed Espials only dreamed of—he’d gained his skills through trial and error and years of bold adventuring, learning how to travel and manipulate the ley lines of the world’s magnetic grid with a weather eye and an ample helping of luck—yet bloody Niko van Amstel thought to keep him from traveling the nodes! Him and hundreds of others without formal sanction, said ‘permission’ coming by way of a gold Sormitáge ring, or for the weaker-willed or leaner-pocketed—who couldn’t afford Sormitáge training—one’s name on an ‘approved list,’ granted for the very low price of one’s immortal soul sold to Niko.

  By Tethys, if Carian had his way, Niko would’ve already known the sharp end of his steel, but the Great Master had forbidden him to seek vengeance in his name. Carian knew Dagmar had his reasons, even if he sure as silver couldn’t see any good ones.

  “Bloody Niko van Amstel,” Fynn grumbled again. “Would that his mother had seen fit to drown him at birth. Women can be so shortsighted.”

  Carian grunted his fervent agreement. Especially that birdie—speaking of women who lacked vision. If the Avieth had enough to amount to Carian’s little finger, she’d see what a catch he was. But Gwynnleth was still refusing to return to Alorin with him, despite the fact that he’d given up his lizard lover.

  Carian puffed on his smoke discontentedly while inventing several new curses about obstinate, myopic Avieths.

  Fynn gave a dramatic sigh. “Tuesday will be over by the time we get wherever you’re taking us, vran Lea, and then I’ll be of no help to you, because it will be Wednesday. In fact, I’m sure somewhere in the realm it’s already Wednesday. Why don’t we just give up on this doomed-from-the-first-moment-Gannon-bloody-came-up-with-it effort, and I’ll buy you a drink back at the good old homestead.”

  “First of all, you’re never the one buying.” Carian skewered him with an agate eye. “Secondly, our node is just around the corner, and third and most importantly, Balaji’s wine is too damned sweet.” Carian hitched up his britches. “You’re free to walk away from all of this, Fynnlar, just as soon as you pay me the money you owe me.”

  Fynn gave an indignant sniff. “You know perfectly well I make a point of never paying anyone the money I owe them—especially my friends. Without binding and contentious financial ties, what motivation would any of us have to talk to each other?”

  Carian clapped him on the shoulder by way of agreement. “You are the gooey layer beneath our collective shoes, Fynnlar.”

  “I’ll bet someone could compose a fine song about my altruism.”

  “Tell your altruism to get its blades ready. The blokes guarding this node ain’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they know how to aim the pointy end of their swords well enough.”

  They were approaching a building with the kind of self-important edifice that shouted its desire to get robbed. In another life, Carian might’ve answered that call, but he felt duty binding him to their cause now as surely as being measured for his chains. Belloth’s salty balls, every nodefinder in Alorin would be strung up in gibbet cages if Niko had his way.

  Carian pushed through a pair of iron gates and led Fynn along a corridor. Like so many of the ‘public’ nodes, this one had been established in better days, when Nodefinder brethren were free to travel the grid, regardless of rank or Guild standing. The passage leading to the court was wide enough for two wagons and tall enough for coaches to pass beneath the arched roof without knocking the coachman from his seat.

  Nodefinders and Espials alike made their living as facilitators of transport for anyone who could pay their fee. If Niko had his way, those fees would all channel through the Guild, giving them reign over the entire realm’s commerce. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why the Guild had voted Niko into his current position of authority.

  The passage opened onto a wide courtyard framed by arches, out of which a dozen or so guards descended in rapid fashion.

  “You again!” The foremost of the guards came stalking towards Carian with his hand gripping his sword hilt.

  “Again.” Fynn turned Carian a flat look. “I said no more free-repeaters.”

  “I told you before,” the leader growled as he neared, “this node is closed.”

  Carian exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke towards him. “It’s a node, mate. It can’t be closed.”

  “It’s closed to you, pirate,” sneered a second bloke, whose nose jutted out from his face like the Dheanainn peninsula. Carian could hardly focus on the man’s words for the massive distraction of his nose.

  He blew smoke dubiously in his direction. “I’ve traveled this node a hundred times. It’s never been closed before.”

  “Well, it is now,” growled the leader, “like it was last week, like it will be for you tomorrow and every day thereafter.”

  Several of the other guards began closing the circle around Carian and Fynn. One of them, who had a deep cleft in his chin, looked particularly itchy to draw his sword.

  Carian arched a bushy black eyebrow at him. “Draw that blade, mate, and I’ll be showing you a whole new way to kiss the gunner’s daughter.”

  The man’s expression darkened.

  The leader tightened his hand on his weapon. “Your kind aren’t welcome here.”

  “My kind…” Carian blew smoke at him, “you mean the Jamaiian kind?”

  The man gave a humorless sneer. “I mean the kind without Sormitáge rings, Guild sanction, or balls to account for their stupidity.”

  Carian puffed out three smoke rings in quick succession as he considered the mouthy leader. “This node belongs to the realm, and I mean to travel it. Now, you and your bilge rats can stand aside, or get intimate with Humiliated and Really Damned Sorry here,” and he laid his hands on the hilts of his cutlasses.

  The leader shifted his gaze around his twelve-against-two odds and smirked. “We’ll take our chances.”

  Fynn exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “You’re really making me regret Tuesdays, vran Lea—which is a grave injustice, if you must know. It was the last truly tolerable day of the week.”

  “You take arse-face there,” Carian nodded towards the man with the cleft chin. “I’ll handle the rest of them.” Then he drew both of his cutlasses in a cross-handed swoop, sang a rebellious, “All hands ho!” and made for the leader.

  Two men darted into his path.

  Carian clenched his smoke in his teeth and performed his favorite Mujindar maneuver, Gannet Plunging for Fish, which entailed spinning while slashing, twirling like the bird as it plunged into the sea, his blades as very deadly wings. The men fell.

  Behind him, Fynn cursed and danced back from arse-face’s descending blade. He fingered a slash in his sleeve and glared at the man. “This was my fourth-favorite jacket to wear on Tuesdays!”

  Carian grinned around the smoke clenched in his teeth. “Cleave him to the brisket, Fynnlar.” He advanced towards the leader again.

  The latter motioned at his men, and four others rushed at Carian, placing themselves aggravatingly once more between himself and his target.

  Carian punched one man in the jaw and kicked another away with a hearty blow. Then he swung his right-hand blade at the third man, who he dubbed Duck Lips, while parrying Peninsula Nose’s descending blade with the sword in his left.

  He fought the both of them for a bit while he tossed the hair out of his eyes. Then he finished off Duck Lips with a spooling circle and a stab, and Peninsula Nose with two slashes and a jab.

  The two who’d taken his fist and his boot got wise, picked up their blades and ran off.

  Carian looked to the leader.

  He blanched.

  Fynn finished off arse-face while the last few guards scattered. Then he joined Carian’s side, still muttering about his
jacket.

  The leader darted a wide-eyed look between Carian and Fynn and started backing away, as though he wanted to follow his mates to safety.

  “So…” Carian sheathed Really Damned Sorry while keeping Humiliated aimed at the leader’s throat. “I’ve a message for you and your scallywag of a boss, the one as calls himself a vestal.”

  The man backed himself into a statue and jerked abruptly, whereupon Carian stuck the point of his cutlass beneath his chin and exhaled a cloud of smoke in his face.

  “Pay attention now.” Carian plugged the fingers holding his smoke into the man’s chest while he kept his blade against his throat. “This is our shot across the bow. You tell Niko van Amstel that we won’t be letting him hornswaggle the realm into his private coffer. You tell him that for every node he claims, the rebellion will claim two—like we claimed this one today, like we’ll claim another tomorrow.”

  The leader’s eyes were watering from the smoke filtering up around his face.

  Carian looked him up and down. “You got all that?”

  He nodded fervently.

  Carian sucked on a tooth and considered him for a moment longer. Then with a few well-placed flicks, he sliced through the laces of the man’s pants. They collapsed around his knees.

  Carian spun on his heel. “Ahoy, Fynnlar. We’re weighing anchor out of here.” As he walked to the center of the court, Carian cast a look over his shoulder and pointed with his cutlass at the leader, who was grabbing for his britches. “Just you remember who had you bent over with your pants around your knees, poppet. The next time I come calling, you don’t want to be here.”

  Whereupon he wrapped a companionable arm around Fynn’s shoulder and escorted him across the node.

  The Pattern of the World welcomed him with open arms, an instant cajoling, enticing, roaring river of kinetic life. For a moment, Carian stood with his head thrown back and eyes closed, his smoke hanging forgotten between his lips, while elae surged around him.

  Come…follow, the wanton river urged. Claim us, use us, we are yours…

  Carian had taken many lovers in his life. None had ever been as tormenting, as attractive or as tempestuous as the Pattern of the World. She was every Nodefinder’s siren call and Carian’s lifelong addiction, his greatest passion, his most irresistible, untamable first love.

  “How long are you just going to stand there, vran Lea?” Fynn clenched Carian’s shoulder by way of emphasizing his discomfort. Carian had almost forgotten Fynn was with him, such was the intoxicating lure of the Pattern.

  Ah! Carian lowered his head to view the Pattern with a spark of humor and two shakes of suspicion glinting in his wily gaze. You wanton strumpet! You’d pin me to your bosom for an unbroken moon with—

  “Vran Lea, this isn’t the most pleasant experience for normal people.”

  Carian glanced over his shoulder at Fynn. The royal cousin stood with his face scrunched in a painful grimace and his dark hair floating in a halo around his head, unruly waves enlivened by the Pattern’s static charge. Even the hairs on his unkempt goatee were standing on end. Carian grinned and turned forward again. “Unbunch your royal nappies. I’m just preparing the way.”

  To his Nodefinder’s eyes, the Pattern spread in nearly infinite pathways before him; yet he knew those magnetically charged routes like the lines on his palm, as certain of their connections as the razor edges of Humiliated and Really Damned Sorry.

  He found and grabbed the two ley lines he needed and began binding them to one nodepoint. This was somewhat like trying to take two streams of lightning and direct them to the same metal rod, only harder.

  Carian finally got the node fixed in his mind and darted a look at Fynn. “Ready?”

  Fynn tugged uncomfortably at the seat of his britches. “Just get us off this damned Pattern before all of the hairs on my arse are standing on end.”

  Carian released the grounding anchor he’d placed upon the node. Energy pulsed, and the Pattern’s magnetic induction pulled them along the ley lines he’d bound together. They flew a lightning bolt’s jagged path, crossing thousands of miles in a heartbeat.

  An instantaneous charge filled Carian but then rapidly drained away, the moment reaching its climax too soon. The Pattern only ever gave her lovers a taste of her, and it was never, ever enough.

  Oh, my sweet, how you make me crave you…

  Fynn’s hand felt like a claw on his shoulder. Carian stepped off the node onto a grassy hillside beneath a sky just clearing from a storm.

  “About damned time.” Fynn headed off down the hill, tugging at the seat of his britches.

  In the distance, a collection of cerulean tents nestled in the bosom of three hills. Their bright color stood out vividly against the misty mountains and overcast sky. This valley adjoining the First Lord’s sa’reyth had become home base for the Nodefinder Rebellion.

  Carian knew how to find the place because the Great Master Dagmar Ranneskjöld had shown him how to bind two ley lines together to make it appear—kind of like using a witching rod to dowse for water. But for all intents and purposes—that is, as far as the Greater Reticulation was concerned, such being the official name of Alorin’s magnetic grid—the place didn’t exist.

  Pondering this mystery for probably the millionth time, Carian took a last draw on his smoke, flicked it off into the wet grass, and set off down the hill after Fynn.

  The royal cousin’s mood had sobered, or at least his blood had—the quality of Fynnlar’s disposition much depended on his level of dissipation. As Carian loped up beside him, Fynn was fingering the tear in his coat sleeve. “How many is that they’ve taken over now?”

  “Twelve nodes so far in the Cairs.”

  Fynn rubbed at his nose. “It’s only going to get worse. They’ll just keep claiming more nodes, and putting more guards on the ones they know we need to use.”

  “That’s why we need Cassius. With his network, we can travel the length and breadth of the Middle Kingdoms and never touch a Guild node. The man’s practically a guild unto himself.” He cast Fynn a sidelong eye. “When is Cassius joining us?”

  Fynn glowered sullenly. “Remind me again why you can’t meet with him?”

  “Well…you may recall hearing that someone was using Cassius’s nodes to ferry stolen contraband—which he never would’ve known about but for Guild investigators showing up at his door.”

  Fynn stared at him. “You were using Cassius of Rogue’s nodes for illicit transport and not even paying him for the privilege?”

  “Can’t say he took too kindly to it.” Carian flashed a culpable grin. “So when are you meeting with him?”

  Fynn scowled. “I told you, he has stipulations.”

  “Gannon’s going to want details.”

  Fynn scowled even harder. “I despise that kilted Hallovian truthreader. He has no respect for other people’s privacy. I’m sure it must violate some fourth-strand Adept law, the way he goes around eavesdropping on everyone’s thoughts.”

  “He’s unorthodox, but you can’t deny Gannon’s usefulness.” Carian elbowed Fynn with a grin. “Who are we to talk about orthodox, eh?” He chuckled to himself.

  Fynn looked him over sootily. “I like you less right now than I did a minute ago.”

  They made their way to the central pavilion, which was serving as the rebellion’s command center. Carian pushed through the heavy drapes but then just stood there with his hands bracing the poles and a grin on his face, admiring the product of his early efforts.

  Fynn ducked beneath his arm and moseyed on over to the wine cupboard, but Carian only had eyes for the massive globe that dominated the center of the pavilion. The planetary grid comprised thousands of silver lines, each connecting through starry points on the sphere’s surface. Up close, the ley lines were infinitely complex, branching and crisscrossing in a dizzying display. The thickness of the ley line indicated whether it connected to a weld, a node or a leis, which points appeared respectively as dots of varying widt
hs and brightness on the globe. Touch a point on the grid, and the globe would zoom in or out on specific welds and nodes, allowing a Nodefinder to study the Pattern of the World in three dimensions and minute detail.

  The sphere was an illusion, of course, but one that every true son of the second strand should have the blessing to look upon at least once in his life. A weldmap sourced the illusion—Carian’s weldmap—by way of a map generator, which harnessed elae’s fourth strand specifically for this purpose.

  Once, weldmaps and generators were in use throughout Alorin. Now, just the maps themselves were as rare as Tethys’ mercy when she was in a fury. Now, a Nodefinder had to extrapolate his own map, building it in his head through extensive travel and trial and error, or else attend the Sormitáge and spend his first decade memorizing the Greater Reticulation.

  Carian’s weldmap might’ve been the last one in use in all of Alorin. Oh, if that old woman Yara had only known what a treasure she’d possessed! Carian would’ve stolen the entire Kandori fortune for it.

  Smirking over this contemplation, Carian headed across the pavilion towards two men who were conferring over a canvas map, the primary minds behind the rebellion: the truthreader Gannon Bair and the Nodefinder Devangshu Vita.

  Devangshu straightened as Carian neared. “Well?” He looked up under his severe black brows. “Did they get the message this time?”

  Fynn joined them with his nose in a goblet of wine. “Oh, they got it.”

  Carian hooked a leg over the edge of the table opposite Devangshu and rolled himself another smoke. “We’ll have trouble again the next time we go back.”

  “What?” Fynn protested. “After the beating we gave them?”

  Carian licked the wrapper to seal it and lit the roll from a nearby lamp, eying as he did so the carved marble pieces that dotted Devangshu’s canvas map—markers for nodes occupied, targeted or claimed.

  “Yeah…” he exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke. “That spineless mollusk is descended from a special subspecies of stupidity. Mayhap his self-preservation got the message, but I guarantee his ego didn’t.”