The Cunning Man, page 36
The door burst open. Adam looked up. Master Dagon had crashed into the room, shoving the door open so hard it bounced back and crashed shut behind him. Adam blanched, bracing himself to duck. He hadn’t seen anyone so angry since ... since ever. Master Dagon looked so angry Adam fought the urge to duck. Had he caught Arnold and Taffy? Had they blamed him? Or ... or what?
“You!” Master Dagon’s face purpled. “What did you think you were doing?”
Adam kept his face impassive, somehow. Master Dagon was pissed. Adam tried to remember where he’d put the vial of durian gas ... he could grab the vial and throw it before he was hexed or cursed or ...
“What did you think you were doing?” Master Dagon’s eyes bored into his. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam managed. It wasn’t wise to pretend complete ignorance, but ... he didn’t know what was going on. “I think ...”
“You gave gas to” - Master Dagon’s mouth worked incoherently for a long moment - “people in town! And they’re using it! There’s a riot underway right now!”
Adam blinked. “Gas?”
“Gas!” Master Dagon glared. “Did it occur to you, ever, that releasing the details of how to make gas, any sort of gas, could have caused trouble? People are dying down there!”
Adam stared at him in confusion. Master Dagon wasn’t talking about Arnold’s plans? A riot, in town? Why? The king’s troops hadn’t arrived yet, had they? Surely, he’d have heard something. Maybe it was his messengers. Or maybe it was ...
“You made the gas for them,” Master Dagon said. “And now people are being hurt.”
“I didn’t,” Adam protested. “I haven’t ...”
Master Dagon waved a hand. Adam froze, helplessly. He struggled against the spell, to no avail. He knew how it worked and yet ... he didn’t have the power to overcome it. His body was utterly unmoving. He wasn’t even sure if he was still breathing. He guessed he knew, now, who’d taught Lilith that spell.
“You came here and suddenly the world is turned upside down again, because you are too irresponsible to think before you tell everyone what you’ve done and how you did it,” Master Dagon snarled. “You will stay here while we put a stop to the riot, in a way that makes sure there won’t be a second riot, and then you will be expelled, like any other student who put his fellows in deadly danger.”
He turned and stomped out of the room, slamming the door closed behind him. Adam stood there, utterly unable to move, utterly confused. He hadn’t made any more gas, not since he’d started work on the windmill; he certainly hadn’t supplied it to the townspeople. And yet ... someone had. There’d been durian gas orbs thrown during the windmill riot and they hadn’t had anything to do with him. But why was that a surprise? The technique was out and spreading. By now, people on the far side of the world probably knew how to make it.
And there are so many craftsmen and their apprentices in Heart’s Ease that it would be more of a surprise if they weren’t making it, he thought. All hell could be breaking loose right now.
His body remained unmoving. He was all too aware he was frozen, yet achingly aware of the passage of time. Master Landis was going to kill him, perhaps literally, for not preparing the ingredients. And then ... Adam tried to understand why Master Dagon had blamed him for the gas. Had he assumed Adam was the only one who could make it? It was absurd. No charms master could believe there was a unique spell. Or ... or what? Perhaps he simply hoped to blame Adam for the riot and the deaths that came in its wake. It would make a certain amount of sense. He had, after all, been the one who’d devised the gas.
If I get expelled, I can go elsewhere, he told himself. He hated the thought of leaving the university, but he might have no choice. He had a little money saved and he knew enough to earn more. Find somewhere that needs a basic alchemist and herbalist, then set up shop well away from the rest of the world.
The door opened. Lilith stepped inside. Her eyes widened with shock as she saw him. Adam knew, without being quite sure how he knew, Lilith hadn’t known what to expect. She hadn’t known what her father had done. She hadn’t ... she moved her hand in a familiar pattern and the spell broke, sending Adam tumbling to the floor. His muscles ached as he hit the cold stone below him. She’d freed him and ...
“Adam,” Lilith said. She reached for him, trying to help him to his feet. “Who did this to you?”
Adam hesitated, unsure what to say. If he told her the truth ... what would she say? He was all too aware of his own vulnerability. If she sided with her father, as everyone would expect her to do, she might freeze him again or worse. And yet ... he swallowed, hard, as he looked into her green eyes. He thought he saw compassion and understanding and ... his heart churned, caught between a multitude of contradictory emotions. If he gambled ...
“Your father,” he said, finally. He staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth against the pain. “He froze me.”
Lilith’s eyes widened. “Why? What did you say to him?”
“I barely got out a word,” Adam said. A thought struck him. “We think he’s trying to destroy the university.”
Lilith looked as conflicted as Adam himself. “Why?”
Adam explained, quickly. Lilith stared at him when he’d finished. “My father can be an ass at times,” she managed, “but ... but he wouldn’t try to destroy the university.”
“Even to restore the school?” Adam braced himself, unsure what was about to happen. “If he tried ...”
Lilith shook her head, but it wasn’t very convincing. “He swore an oath.”
“We think he might have found a way to get around the oath,” Adam said. It didn’t sound very convincing. Lilith had her rough edges, it was true, but she wasn’t a complete monster. “And ...”
“And what?” Lilith’s voice hardened. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Arnold was planning to search your father’s rooms,” Adam said. “He’s probably trapped there now.”
A sudden rush of unease shot through him. The timing was weird. A riot had started at just the right time to get Master Dagon and most of the senior staff out of the university and that meant ... what? Adam frowned. If that was a coincidence ...
“Right.” Lilith straightened. “We’re going to go there. We’re going to get him out of the trap and then we are going straight to Mistress Irene, who can be relied upon to take our concerns seriously. She can contact Lady Emily and arrange for my father to be ... tested. And then you will have to spend the rest of your life making up for it.”
Adam swallowed. “And if the investigation reveals he really is to blame?”
“My father can be an ass, like I said,” Lilith snapped. “But you know what? He is a scion of a powerful family and the last thing they would tolerate is a man who either breaks his word, or makes a show of cunningly evading the intent of the word even as he keeps the letter. He accepted obligations when he accepted the post and even if he doesn’t break the oath, he will certainly refuse to honour his obligations. Now” - she caught his arm - “come with me.”
Adam tried not to wince as she half-dragged him through the door, along the corridors and up the stairs. Lilith looked just like his elder sister, when she’d discovered an atrocity committed by her younger siblings ... he wondered, numbly, if he’d just destroyed their quasi-friendship beyond all hope of repair. He’d practically accused her father of planning a real atrocity ... no, there was no practically about it. Magicians took their oaths seriously. No one would trust an oathbreaker ever again ...
He frowned. “Where is everyone?”
“Town, probably.” Lilith didn’t slack her pace, even as they passed through a door and headed further up the stairs. “There were a bunch of people chatting outside the library about the king and everything else and ...”
Adam swallowed, hard. If the entire student body had decamped to town ... why?
Lilith slowed, slightly, as she reached the top of the stairs, then stopped. “My father’s wards are gone.”
“Impossible,” Adam said. He’d designed the tiles himself. He knew they couldn’t have taken down the entire network. Master Dagon was no fool. And besides, he knew what had happened to the ward outside Jasper’s dorm. “That’s just not possible.”
“I can’t sense the wards at all,” Lilith said. She didn’t let go of his hand. “Stay behind me.”
She inched down the corridor and peered through the door. Adam followed, interested despite a churning sensation in his stomach. Master Dagon’s antechamber was surprisingly tasteful; one wall was lined with ornaments, two more with books, a fourth covered with portraits of a redheaded woman who might well have been Lilith’s mother. His chair and sofa, fairly common in magical households, were neither elaborate nor on the verge of falling apart. Master Pittwater had always sworn old cushions were the best. Adam wondered, now, if that had been a lie to save face. He was wealthy enough to buy the very best, but he wouldn’t have wanted to keep it in a shop he didn’t truly own.
“All the wards are gone.” Lilith sounded spooked. “All of them.”
Adam followed her as she moved into a small office. Master Dagon had covered his desk with papers. Adam stared at them, sucking in his breath. They outlined a plan to take over the university, to take control in the name of something called the Hierarchy ... Adam stared, confused. Arnold had been insistent Master Dagon would never expect his rooms to be searched, and yet ...
“Impossible,” Lilith breathed. “Father wouldn’t ...”
Adam knew a thing or two about things fathers did, things no one wanted to believe possible, but this ... he shook his head. It was a little too pat. What sort of idiot, and Master Dagon was no idiot, would write the entire plan down and leave it on the desk? Master Dagon had had people coming and going at all hours of the day, people who would feel no obligation to keep their mouths closed if they saw the papers. One look around the office was enough to tell him it was for meetings, not private work. It was absurd.
He found his voice. “What is the Hierarchy?”
“A legend,” Lilith said. “They’re supposed to be a quarrel of really evil magicians. The worst of the worst. And yet, they don’t really exist. They were the big bogeyman until the Levellers came along and displaced them. You could blame anything on them.”
Adam frowned, putting the matter aside for later consideration. “I don’t think your father would have written his evil plan down and left it lying around,” he said. “It makes no sense ...”
“No,” Lilith agreed. “Do you think someone was trying to frame him?”
Adam wasn’t sure. The papers were in an odd place, if the goal was to make them public. There was no point in trying to blackmail someone when he could simply take an oath the papers were false. Sure, they might be found by a guest ... but it was unlikely. It made no sense. Had they been left for Arnold and Taffy? Or ... or what?
He stepped back out of the office and looked around. Where were Arnold and Taffy? If they’d taken down the wards ... how could they take down the wards? It was impossible and yet ... somehow, it had happened. They’d been and gone and ... if so, why had they left the papers? They were proof they’d been right, weren’t they? Or ... his eyes narrowed as he eyed the shelves of ornaments. He’d heard stories of magicians who’d turned children into ornaments and put them on the mantelpiece, laughing at parents as they searched fruitlessly for their kids. Would Master Dagon do that? It would be well within his rights to treat intruders as he pleased. He wondered if he should ask Lilith to check.
Something nagged at his mind. He was missing something. But what?
Lilith followed him back into the antechamber. “Lady Emily did something once, at Cockatrice, that squashed every protective ward and spell in the room,” she said. “I don’t know how, but she did it.”
Adam glanced at her. “Did that really happen? Or was it ...?”
“I was there.” Lilith’s voice discouraged further questions. “If something like that happened here ...”
Her voice trailed off. “Hang on,” she said, heading towards a door. “I need to check something.”
Adam’s mind was elsewhere. Lady Emily had done something that wiped out all the wards in the room. Arnold was from Cockatrice. If he’d been there too ... if he’d somehow found a way to use runes to duplicate the spell ...
Lilith swore. “Your friends stole his key,” she snapped, as she hurried back into the room and slammed the door behind her. “The key to the nexus point!”
“I ...” Adam swallowed. If Arnold had planned the riot, and everything else, just to get the staff out of the way ... it meant ... he didn’t want to think about it. “We have to get down there right away!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
He’d been tricked.
Adam’s heart twisted as he followed Lilith down empty stairs, his thoughts unwilling to come to terms with what had happened. Arnold had been a friend ... hadn’t he? He’d reached out to Adam when he’d arrived, offered a sympathetic ear ... and it had all been a lie. Hadn’t it? He didn’t know ... he cursed under his breath as he remembered a boy he’d known who’d gotten himself into a poisonous friendship with an older boy, one that had been little more than the younger boy serving the older. Adam had told himself, at the time, that he would never fall into such a trap.
And yet, he had.
His mind churned as he recalled everything Arnold had done, from befriending him to setting off a prank war and nearly starting a real war. In hindsight ... Adam kicked himself. Arnold had been too insistent, too pushy ... he should have suspected Arnold was trying to rush him into doing things without thinking. He should have suspected ... and yet, it had been hard to think of Arnold as an enemy. It was still hard. The idea of someone actually treating him as an equal ... he shook his head in dismay. Arnold had been right at the top of the social hierarchy. Adam should have suspected something when Arnold had spent so much time with him. Everything he’d done took on a new and sinister hue. Had he been the one who’d told Taffy’s family where to find her?
And if he did, Arnold asked himself, why? What was the point?
Lilith kept running, down a flight of stairs that grew narrower the further they went. “There are five keys in all,” she said, between gasps. “Lady Emily created them. Father told me you need at least two keys to get into the nexus chamber and three to make any changes to the spellware. If he’s got a key ...”
Adam frowned, eyeing her back. “Did he take the other keys as well?”
“I don’t know.” Lilith shook her head, red hair rippling down her back. “But he committed himself the moment he raided my father’s room.”
Adam nodded, although he had a nasty feeling they were missing something. If Arnold had set off the riot to create a diversion, to draw the senior staff out of the university ... had he and Taffy had enough time to steal three keys? Or was it all a complicated plan to obtain a key, while framing Master Dagon and then ... and then what? What did a key actually do? What did it look like? It didn’t have to be shaped like a real key. If one was missing ... he shook his head. They really were missing something. And he had no idea what.
They reached the bottom of the stairs. The corridor was unnaturally cold, the air weirdly clammy in a way that chilled him to the bone. The only light came from crystals embedded in the ceiling, flickering and fading as if they were torches caught in a draft. Adam tensed, suddenly very aware they might be plunged into darkness at any second. Lilith could cast a spell to lighten the air, but ... somehow, the thought wasn’t reassuring. He’d been told, as a child, never to enter the catacombs below the city. He had the uneasy feeling, as the corridor started to widen, that he was on the verge of doing something just as dumb.
Lilith sucked in her breath. “Oh ...”
Adam followed her gaze as the corridor widened into a room. A statue stood in front of them, looking towards a giant stone door. Lilith held up a hand, motioning for him to stay back, then glided towards the statue. Adam wondered if it would move, the moment they looked away, as she touched it lightly. Nothing happened. Her eyes narrowed in the dim light as she saw the statue’s face. It was hard to tell - her face was already pale - but she seemed to pale still further.
She beckoned him forward. Adam obeyed. From the back, the statue looked like any statue. From the front ... Taffy’s face stared out, her mouth a rictus of horror. Adam swallowed, hard, as he stared. It wasn’t a statue. It was Taffy. She’d been turned to stone and ... he reached out to touch her nose, then stopped himself. She might be alive in there, alive and unmoving and trapped in stone, utterly unable to speak. If she was ... he wanted to think it wasn’t true, but ... the statue was just too perfect. It was far too good to be anything but a real person turned to stone.
He looked at Lilith, pleadingly. “Can you do something?”
Lilith ran her fingers over the statue’s cheeks. “There’s a place called the Garden of the Stoned Philosophers,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “The statues are dark wizards and sorcerers, forever trapped in stone, their souls eroded until the statues become ... just statues. The spells are unbreakable.”
Adam felt a flash of panic. “Can you not free her?”
“No,” Lilith said. “This isn’t a conventional petrification spell.”
A clattering sound echoed through the air, as if a craftsman had dropped a metal tool on a stone floor. Adam looked at the door, realising - a moment too late - that it might be a dreadful mistake. An unconventional petrification spell ... the Gorgon? Had she turned Taffy into stone? If so, why? It was difficult to believe she had turned on the university, although she was the only magician Arnold had ever spoken well of. In hindsight, everything Arnold had said about Lilith had been designed to make the relationship worse. If he’d praised the Gorgon ...
She can’t have turned against the university, Adam told himself. If she had, she would never have needed to petrify Taffy.
He nodded towards the door, bracing himself. Lilith nodded back. Adam inched forward, wondering if every step would be his last. He’d been turned into things before, but ... he’d heard all sorts of horror stories about Gorgons. Their gifts - or curses - were supposed to be extremely difficult to undo, even for experienced sorcerers. If they didn’t want to let their victims go ... he hoped Lilith would have the sense to stay back, as he peered through the door. She might - might - be able to undo the spell. He had his tiles, but he had no idea how they’d react with Gorgon magic. He might not be able to free her ...
