The Traitor Queen (The Traitor Spy Trilogy #3)(88)

“What do they think of me?”

Gol shrugged. “They think you’re dead.”

“And if they knew I was hiding?”

“I suggested it, and a few said they hoped so. They said they hoped you were working out a way to get rid of Skellin.”

“No one thought I’d abandoned my workers?”

“No one said as much to me. Interesting thing is, in one bolhouse the people I got chatting to had an argument about whether you were hiding in the Guild or not. The one who doubted it said you couldn’t be, because the Guild is working with Skellin.”

Cery frowned. “That could just be a rumour.”

“One that would help keep people scared of Skellin.”

“If they knew it wasn’t true, they wouldn’t be as scared.”

Gol shook his head. “They’d still be too scared to do anything.”

Hooking his fingers around the edge of his seat, Cery drummed his fingers on the underside. “What about the supplier?”

“Saski’s still there. Still got the minefire. He’s been trying to sell a new tool that uses it. Some sort of blowpipe that people warned me was as likely to blow up as work. His most popular product is little packets that people throw into the fire to make a bang and a flash of light. People liked the bangers, but they couldn’t see much other use for minefire when magicians can do the same things it can do.”

“They don’t see that it could let ordinary people do things magicians can do?”

“Not the sort of things they want to do, like Heal or levitate or move things at a distance. Who needs to explode things here in the city? And Saski puts customers off with all his warnings about how dangerous and unpredictable it is. Magic sounds a lot safer.”

Cery nodded. “It does. It’s not just that minefire might explode when we don’t want it to, but that it might not when we need it to. Are you sure this trap will work?”

“Mostly. Before, when I got friendly with Saski, he often described how minefire was used in the mines of the far north. We’ll be using the same method.”

“How are we going to buy it? Could we get a street kid to buy some of these bangers for us?”

Gol nodded. “That’d be wise. Saski doesn’t seem the type to run off and sell us to Skellin, but who knows? It’d be tempting. He can’t be making much money.”

“But we do need Skellin to find out where we are.”

“Not through Saski. Then Skellin would know that we’d bought minefire, and wonder what we were up to down here. Wouldn’t take much thinking to work out we were setting a trap.”

“True.” Cery looked around the room. “Well, you’re going to have to set things up here without Anyi suspecting something odd is going on.”

“Once I get the tubes into the walls, they won’t be all that noticeable, especially if we put them in the holes and hollows in the mortar.”

“But you’ll have to do it while she’s not here.”

“You don’t want to wait until they’re sure the plants are roet? Once we have the trap set up, there’s always going to be a danger it’ll go off before we’re ready.”

Cery shook his head. “Not after what Lilia said about the Higher Magicians being prepared to let us live in the Guild in the meantime. Anyi was too keen to do it. Too ready to argue with me about it.” He shook his head. “Something tells me her patience is running out. Or that she knows something that we don’t.”

“Like that the plants aren’t roet?”

“Maybe.”

Gol shrugged. “She’s right though. There’s no need for us to be uncomfortable or risk getting Lilia into trouble for hiding us here.”

“But if the rumours you heard were right and someone in the Guild is working with Skellin we could put ourselves right in their hands. They’ll make sure the Guild doesn’t work with us to catch Skellin, or make sure something goes wrong and we’re all killed. Otherwise we may expose their dirty little secret.”

Gol looked up at the roof. “Well, if Anyi is right and we’re under the gardens between the University and Magicians’ Quarters, our trap will definitely expose Skellin to the Guild.”

Cery smiled. “Yes. But let’s make sure it doesn’t kill us all in the process.”





CHAPTER 20


FIRST ENCOUNTER


From high above, the sun poured heat and brightness down onto the wasteland, which threw it back up again in protest. Assailed from the sky and ground, Lorkin trudged along with the Traitors and tried not to imagine facing an Ashaki in battle.

Instead, he thought about the gemstone in his pocket. He had tried last night, after everyone was asleep or on watch, to see if he could sense other stones buried in the area, but his mental search had detected nothing. Yet that was no proof his mother was wrong. She had said he would only find them because he knew black magic, and there had been nothing of black magic in his method of searching.

I should have asked her to explain. But he’d only had one last moment with her, the morning of the previous day, and he’d used the opportunity to question her about another magical puzzle. Her gaze had grown keener as he’d asked if she’d heard of magicians able to read surface thoughts.