After the Cyclopean Walls, Magwitch’s drainpipe was a cinch. At the top, Shadrak rolled lightly to the flat roof.
The mad mage had his back to him, over by the lone chimney, struggling to untie the rope that held his air-raft tethered. The air-raft swayed and bobbed in the breeze coming in from the Sea of Insanity a few score miles to the east of the city. It was little more than a door-sized sheet of scarolite impregnated with witchery and controlled, apparently, by Magwitch’s thoughts. Shadrak had ridden it once, when he’d fled New Londdyr after killing the First Senator. Never again.
There were sacks and satchels, boxes and crates piled around the base of the chimney. Clearly Magwitch was going somewhere. No doubt he’d seen Shadrak noticing the wizard eye and put two and two together. Thing was, what did he think he had to fear from Shadrak? It was common knowledge Magwitch was the main supplier of arcane surveillance and security in the city, and the guilds under Shadrak had used him all the time. Maybe something else had spooked him. Maybe something about the ring. Or perhaps he’d booked a vacation, and this was just a coincidence.
Shadrak inched toward the mage in a lizard crawl.
Magwitch was muttering ten to the dozen, irritable, scared out of his wits. He let out an explosive curse and gave up trying to unknot the tether. When he reached into his pocket, Shadrak drew still. With wizards you could never be too careful.
Magwitch’s frustration grew as his hand got caught in his pocket, then, with a litany of cussing, he wrenched it free. Dark beads sprayed across the rooftop, the tattered remains of a paper bag all that remained in the mage’s hand. His cursing turned into panicked whimpers as he got down on his hands and knees and started to gather the beads up, shoving them in his pocket, popping the odd one in his mouth and chewing ravenously.
Not beads, then. Chocolate truffles. It was a longstanding addiction.
Shadrak came up into a crouch then sprinted straight at him. Magwitch turned, eyes agape, mouth crammed full of truffles. Before he could react, he was on his back, Shadrak on top of him, the keen edge of a knife covering his throat.
“Grrrmph,” Magwitch said amid a brown spray, jaw working overtime to clear enough room to speak.
Shadrak hit him in the face with an elbow, a glancing blow to get his attention. Next one would break his glasses, crush his nose. Magwitch went rigid, not even daring to breathe. They’d played this game a hundred times, and he might have been a lunatic, but he was no fool.
“You saw me, didn’t you?” Shadrak said. “At the city gates. That eye in the sky, that was you.”
Magwitch blinked, chewed once, and returned to staring dumbly back at Shadrak.
“That why you’re packed up and ready to go?”
Another chew. Chocolate oozed from the side of Magwitch’s mouth, streaking his white beard brown.
“Get up.” Shadrak climbed off of the mage and made him stand. “Spit that crap out.”
Magwitch gave a hapless shrug, chewed harder, then swallowed with a gulp. He began to choke, thumped his chest, grunted and belched. But it was all a sham, a diversion. At his side, his hand was starting to glow. Before he could waggle his fingers or gesture or whatever it was wizards had to do to cast a spell, Shadrak jumped to get the height and delivered that second elbow with a crunching impact. Magwitch reeled away, blood gushing from his broken nose, glasses clattering to the rooftop, frames twisted, lenses cracked.
“It was a cleaning spell,” Magwitch whined. “My hands were sticky with chocolate.”
“Course,” Shadrak said. “And mine was an anti-bullshit elbow.”
Magwitch cupped his hands around his bloody nose. “Hitting me like that, it’s unconscious-able.”
And there it was: the first malapropism of the day. Shadrak would have laughed if the stakes weren’t so high, if some scut-shogging Stygian in Portis wasn’t going to suck on his liver for losing the Witch Queen’s ring.
“So, you leaving because Nils Fargin’s knocking at your door?”
Magwitch blinked again. “Nils, yes, that’s right.” His voice came out muffled through his cupped hands. “Says I owe him for that.” He glanced up at the air-raft. “The idea! It’s abstentious. I paid his father what we agreed, and now Fargin junior has decided it wasn’t enough.”
“Bollocks,” Shadrak said, grabbing Magwitch by the coat collar and pulling a dagger, aiming its point at the mage’s crotch. “You telling me you just happened to have all this crap packed and ready to go?”
“Uhm…”
“It was me, wasn’t it? Like I said, you saw me outside the city through that eye in the sky.”
Magwitch lowered his blood-soaked hands from his ruined nose. He was still blinking, but Shadrak realized that was because he couldn’t see clearly without his glasses.
“I take it that’s a yes,” Shadrak said. “Problem is, why would you be afraid of me returning to New Londdyr? What’s it got to do with you? Unless…” He prodded with the dagger, and Magwitch winced.
“She made me do it!” Magwitch blurted out.
“The bitch?”
“What bitch?”
“Ilesa,” Shadrak said. “Ilesa Fana.”
Magwitch gave a miserable nod. No doubt he’d been threatened with what would happen if he gave her secrets away. That was normal, though. Shadrak would have done the same.
“Who else?”
Magwitch shrugged. “What do you mean?”
“You telling me that wizard eye is just for her benefit? Who else you spying for?”
“No one.”
Shadrak pressed the dagger a little harder.
“What’s going on up there?” Nils hollered from below. “Is someone gonna let me in. I’ve had it up to here with this shogging door!”
Shadrak spun Magwitch around and shoved him toward the trapdoor in the roof. The mage put his hands out in front of him, feeling about like a blind man.
“You got spare glasses?”
“Inside,” Magwitch said. “Old design. The lenses are much thicker, but I suppose they’ll do.”
“Put these on for now,” Shadrak said, handing him the goggles.
Magwitch slipped them over his head, cried out as they pressed on his nose. Shadrak showed him how to rotate the lenses to focus them, and the mage’s demeanor went from crestfallen to awed in an instant.
“I say! Now where on Aethir did you get these? This is Ancient tech, is it not? A reliquary or arty-fad of the rarest aquaciousness.”
Shadrak followed the mage down the stepladder into a back room of the house, where the floor was strewn with discarded clothing and junk, shelves ransacked, drawers open and emptied of their contents.
“My, you were in a hurry,” Shadrak said. “I still can’t figure why you’d be running from me. There something you want to tell me?”
Magwitch shook his head.
“Let me put it another way,” Shadrak said, but before he could finish the threat there came a terrific banging and clanging from the front door.
“Get that,” Shadrak said, and followed the mage out of the room and down the hall.
The interior had been altered since Shadrak had last been here; the vestibule housing the door was wider, deeper, one wall set with complex gears and levers that Magwitch pulled in sequence to set the door grinding open. Shadrak had seen something similar on Urddynoor, at the Tower of Glass, the Ancient-world building his original guild, the Sicarii, used for their headquarters. They’d had a steel chamber they used for stashing the guild’s most valuable assets, and it had a door setup just like this. Magwitch had a whole library of Ancient-world books that had somehow survived the Reckoning on Urddynoor and made the journey to Aethir along with the first settlers. Apparently, he’d been putting the knowledge to good use.
As the door inched open outwards, Shadrak could hear the wizard mouth complaining that Nils had kicked it. As soon as the gap was wide enough, Nils squeezed through, nursing a limp.
“Shogging piece of shite,” he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. “Is it deaf or just stupid?”
“Admission granted,” Magwitch called to the door.
“Ah,” the voice of the mouth replied, “then allow me to present Mr. Mills Farting—have I got that right, or would you like to spell it for me again?”