CHAPTER FOUR
Harvin relinquished his last name years ago, when he was tapped for work more important than loading his family’s coffers. Still, every time the cliff face curved away and the buildings of Broadside resolved on the horizon, he felt like he’d returned to his city.
The water sloshed dark and deep against the dark hull of the Nevia, as the ship hugged the curve of the harbor and avoided the quarantine markers. Lamp light, warm and uniformly yellow from this distance, spilled from the upper levels of the Heights and the elevated structures of Muckers, and Harvin let his eyes unfocus rather than be distracted by the few details.
Three quick flashes of brighter light emerged from the bluffs under the Heights, and he uncovered the signal fire, angled the glass, and returned it with the all-clear pattern they’d set before he left. Two, pause, two, pause, one.
After covering the fire again, he signaled to Oscan, who issued orders to the small crew in the powerful, low voice that rose over the waves but wouldn’t carry to any of the boats moored in—or anchored outside of—Broadside’s harbor.
In the depths of night, it was hard to watch for the change in the water’s color, from the endless indigo of the drop to the brighter clear blue of the harbor itself, but he rocked with the boat, judged his moment, and crossed the deck to deliver Linver to the sea.
The job had been nearly done, and Linver had been slow. Too slow—and by the time he realized, the time he turned to Harvin to ask for help, Harvin’s hand had closed around his arm, and that was that.
Harvin placed his hand on the man’s wrapped head, and though he knew not a single soul on the Nevia spared more than a glance his way, he stood straight and faced away from them, into the wind, toward the open sea.
“You protected Broadside, until you could do so no longer. You have set down your watch. I will carry it for you.” The next time the Nevia dipped between waves, Harvin lifted the rigid body enough to slide it over the side of the waist high rail.
Linver’s last splash was lost in the sound of the waves, but the faint light of the setting moons were enough to show the weights had done their work—Linver went home to the bottom of the sea, in reach of their city.
Harvin stood at the edge of the deck until they docked, but he didn’t look back again.
Harvin left Oscan and the crew to settle the Nevia, and Broadside settled around him like a cloak. The streets were quiet in the late hour, and though he strolled unhurried, his eyes roved every shadowed doorway and crossing.
The coffer he carried in the pack slung across his chest remained quiescent—it hadn’t affected the men he’d left behind on the ship, nor would it infect any he passed on his way through Hiane’s waterfront.
The faintest scuff of booted heel against smoothed road ahead indicated his quiet solitude was at an end, but he didn’t change his pace until the man came into view at the next crossing. He was about a foot shorter than Harvin, nearly as broadly built, with a nose that had been broken more than once. Like Harvin’s overgrown beard, the other man’s nose served to help him blend in amongst many of Broadside’s less peaceable inhabitants.
“You’re invited home,” Wernoc said, falling in to step with him seamlessly. “The Smeaton is awake and would like your report personally.”
Harvin liked Wernoc as much as he liked any of his colleagues, and was reminded why when the other man didn’t ask about Linver. “I was aimed that direction.” He didn’t gesture at the bag across his midsection, but noted the fighter at his side hadn’t missed it.
“Excellent. I’ll walk with you.”
“Nothing of concern, I hope.” Harvin let his voice lighten as though it were a friendly conversation, though he felt a flash of irritation.
The other man chuckled and shoved his hands in the pockets of his nondescript short coat. “With you? And your—the Smeaton? Doubtful. Just I’ve been out tonight, saw the Watch patrols, and no need to embarrass them if they think to stop you.”
The Eye and the Watch, though both charged with the safety of the city, did not overlap in any meaningful way. At times it led to a bit of entertaining attempted competition, but best not to let their priorities overlap.
“Thoughtful.” He meant it, on some level, though Harvin wouldn’t have been disappointed to have a brief confrontation. There was a great deal of leashed energy he should like to expend, and had since Linver’s lack of attention had led to the younger man’s death. Better not to do it with the coffer on him, though.
Their walk remained unremarkable, and they looped the Council Square once. A declaimer shouted the news of the day despite the late hour. Harvin tuned him out after a note about restless masses and the need to check poor behavior devolved into moralizing instead of any helpful information. Out of the declaimer’s sight, Harvin and Wernoc entered the small outbuilding at the end of the far alley from the Council House. Ferad, thin and sharp as a blade, lounged at the table inside the inner door, laying out a spread of painted cards in no pattern Harvin could decipher.
“The Smeaton is in,” he drawled without lifting his head. “You can go directly to her.”
Harvin grunted a reply, and continued through. Wernoc stopped to talk, but his easy laugh registered more as a continuation of a conversation they’d already been in the midst of. Harvin wondered, with a vague interest, if Ferad had also been at the signal tower. Someone was always there to set the challenge flashes, record the response, and signal as needed to update the Council guard and arrange the proper welcome for returning members of the Eye—either to greet or for reinforcements to greet with prejudice. Ferad, a weapon likely to rust if he didn’t move, rarely pulled Council duty. He was, however, fleet of foot and could ghost through the city like a thief, meaning he could easily have registered Harvin’s code and decided to meet him here. He had done stranger things to bring himself to Harvin’s attention, though Harvin had yet to tap the man for any of his missions abroad.
Perhaps Harvin should reconsider for the next—clearly Linver hadn’t been ready to leave Broadside, and the man had paid for his lack of preparation with his life. Ferad, at least, would take more than a few with him. Linver had only blinked dumbly when the situation turned against them.
Harvin set the matter aside—he might receive another hunt tomorrow, or in a month, and it did little good to make such decisions before he had any details.
Instead he left the other two men behind without further thought and opened the hidden door that led to the narrow passageway to the basement of the Council House. His build always made this particular approach less than pleasant. The breadth of his shoulders skimmed each unfinished wall and the lack of light meant no matter how well he ducked the low bracers, he forever walked through at least one trailing cobweb.
Three, on this passage, and he brushed himself clean as he stepped into the long, underground space that shouldn’t exist, not at the edge of Hiane and the Terraces, still so close to the water. The basement was older than the Council, an artifact of Broadside’s life before the Cataclysm. While it was no longer magical in and of itself, its construction had involved the solidification of a great deal of magic, and kept the foundation of the Council building secure and dry even during the season of storms.
The walls, ordinary stone to all appearances, no longer emitted their own soft light as records said they once had. Instead sconces had been placed every few feet, the closer ones set low to help new arrivals adjust their eyesight before approaching the blocked off section in the middle of the otherwise open space. What indulgence the former inhabitants of his city had, to use magic to sink lighting into their otherwise unblemished walls.
Harvin scanned the area, but there were no people in the main chamber. Six desks, all covered in papers and various pieces of projects and dissembled items of less urgent investigations, but no one on duty at this hour.
The item in Harvin’s pack would likely find its way to one of these desks, but first, it needed to be observed in the Smeaton’s inner sanctum. He approached the Box, a freestanding stone cube built in the middle of the basement. Without further delay he pressed his hand in the middle of the faint outline that passed for a door.
This stone, a dark slate gray, warmed and then cooled almost as quickly under his touch. After a slow count of five, something clunked deep within it, and he stepped through the revealed opening. Once he was clear, it resolved again behind him with a muffled thwunk.
Nuret Smeaton, her gray-lined dark hair pinned with at least three deadly instruments, stood behind a long worktable with her arms crossed. “What have you brought me, Harvin?”
That was always the Smeaton’s priority—what object had caused the trouble, and what would need to be done with it. The report and the aftermath could follow as needed, but first, always first: the artifacts. She had trained him well, long before he’d known he’d join the Eye.
Harvin lifted the pack over his head and crossed the windowless space, unfastening the bag’s straps as he moved. Nuret did not shift nor gesture, but he couldn’t miss the one clear spot in the chaos of her tall table, and he flipped the bag open and slid the coffer out into his hand, then placed it carefully in the open space.
She did not take her eyes from his, though her fingers twitched the moment he released the item. “It’s not the box itself,” she murmured, and he ensured his grunt was one of agreement. Nuret closed her eyes, and the skin over her forehead and the bridge of her nose tightened as she concentrated.
“No particular flavor.” Her head tilted, first to the left, then the right, and she uncrossed her arms. Pulling one of the pointed sticks from her hair, she poked the chest, and its lid sprung open. “Oh. The lining?”
“It was a blanket, or some item of clothing.” Harvin had had some time to trace the history of the object while Linver gained access to the merchant’s inner circle and determined everyone the man had come into contact with.
“Embedded it in the chest to avoid detection. And likely lessened its effects, so that it took some time to register. I see.” Nuret examined the chest more closely, then ran her stick over the corners of the crimson-bright fabric. “Hm. Having it closed off like this could keep it from sparking entirely, except when the merchant opened it. Which I imagine he only did when he required the magic. I imagine it gave him quite a boost in determining prosperous deals and directions. Ingenious.”
The merchant had been quite clever. He’d inherited the chest along with his aunt’s deed of trade with Encaulo, one of Broadside’s three main commerce partners. A minor member of the Ilirod family, he’d had enough access and connections that when he doubled his profit in the first three years, it only raised some small jealousies. When his fortunes continued to rise, however, he had attracted more targeted concern. Drawing the Eye of the Council was rarely comfortable, but when he’d fled, leaving three of his household dead, Nuret had tasked Harvin with hunting him down and confirming whether the source of his extraordinary results was luck or skill.
Broadside had stamped out magic to save itself three hundred and seventy years ago, and even Council families were forbidden from using magic to further their aims. Only a Council Seat, and then only when the need was too pressing to avoid, was permitted to step into the protected and sealed walls of this basement and touch the remnants of the elemental forces that had once animated the world. In that way they did not risk spreading the taint of magic, chance the return of a time when none could trust the air they breathed or the ground they walked on. The method had been carved out of blood and loss over decades, and did not risk carrying any of magic’s chaos into the careful order of the world as it was now. As it had to remain for them to survive.
The five Councilors, who could insulate against or erase the magic itself, and the few Eyes like Harvin, who had the natural talents and training to fold magic into themselves and sever its connection to the outer world, were the only ones allowed any contact with magic. Their skills and precautions ensured none of the energy used in the protected basement could spill into the unprotected population, and was used only for the betterment of the city and the good of its people.
Still, artifacts appeared now and then. From old storehouses, inherited objects, the very occasional mistaken import. Even more rarely: an animal of some kind, though of those there were more rumors than evidence. Stories of the type sailors in Muckers told over too many drinks. Tales of talking fish or birds dressed in rainbows for feathers.
Harvin and his fellows in the Eye moved mostly unnoticed through the city, ending the resulting spread with the effectiveness and thoroughness required. For the good of the city and its people.
“Not enough. One of his assistants caught on that he used something in the chest before big deals, and determined to steal it.”
“Did the merchant keep objects in there?” Nuret prodded the fabric with her hair stick again, keeping her hands clear.
“He did.” Harvin kept his eyes locked either on her forehead or the red-lined chest, sure to display zero interest in the various items scattered through the Box. “They were only vaguely imbued, but it was enough that we removed both the merchant’s assistants.”
“Interesting.” Nuret hummed thoughtfully and poked at his bag with her stick. “The items are not here.”
“They were cleaned.” Harvin paused. This was closer to the report she didn’t want yet, but connected. When she didn’t interrupt, he continued, “A letter opener sized more like a stiletto and a deck prism—decorative, I believe, not one from an actual ship.” He clasped his hands behind his back and straightened his posture out of its usual blend-in slouch to that of a member of the Watch reporting to a superior. “Linver did not take proper precautions, and the magic stored within the prism shifted to him. It overloaded his nullifying power, and the moment I felt the change, I severed him.”
She didn’t react for a long moment, peered inside the bag as though to be sure, and then her mouth and eyebrows turned briefly downward. “I am disappointed to hear it. I would have been interested to see if the prism or the letter opener was more inclined to re-imbue with purposeful effort, after its demonstrated ability to accidentally absorb magic. And doing so at a level to infect one of our Eyes. Hm.”
“Linver—” Harvin had trained the younger man himself, and thought to speak in his defense. Better that than arguing her over-explanation of magic.
“I’m sure you did what you needed to do.” Nuret waved a hand and pulled her stick out of the pack, sliding it back through the gray-streaked hair looped at the top of her head. “He was never the fastest of you. While he could nullify appropriately, I believe the shape of his talent was better suited to tracking than severing.” She sighed and leaned closer to the fabric-lined coffer. “Why didn’t you bring the pieces back?”
“They were clean,” Harvin replied promptly. “And I used them among the wrappings to ensure Linver’s body sank.”
“A waste,” she said thoughtfully, but he’d worked with her long enough to know she meant the letter opener and the deck prism, not the Eye. He and his colleagues were valuable so long as they were successful in their jobs, no matter the station of their births. Any individual who lost themselves to magic was equally lost to the Eye, and therefore of no use to the Council. Nuret had been a Councilor for nearly forty years, and had been a part of several far more difficult Council decisions. The loss of one man who couldn’t keep himself safe was of little note to her. “Not sentimental, were you Harvin?”
“Not usually, madam,” he replied, eyes focused on her forehead again. Harvin did not leave space for any emotions that might threaten to meet her tone. “They were only secondary, temporary containers, and judging from the speed the prism’s contents emptied into Linver, they were not stable or powerful enough to pose a true threat for the spread of magic. Once cleaned, they were better to be disposed of.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She clucked her tongue and refolded her arms, a combination that threatened to make him feel fifteen again. “I do not have a mission for you at this time. You may stay on site in quarters, or repair to the city to renew your connections.”
“Very well. I will sleep here tonight, and return to the city proper tomorrow night.” He held his comfortable, alert stance several moments longer, but she neither reacted nor held her arm out for him to test. “The coffer, madam?”
“No, don’t wipe it yet.” She hmm’d again, face close to the carved surface of its side, and flipped the lid closed. “It’s possible we can adapt it for our use.” Without straightening, she twisted her head and stared up at him. “Do you believe there is any danger posed in that?”
With a deep breath through his nose, Harvin turned his focus inward and considered. There was no surge in his veins toward the coffer, which meant it was too contained to spill over. In the enclosed safety of the Box, fully under the earth, it should remain perfectly safe.
“Not at this time, madam councilor.” Taking great care to study her without appearing to look at her at all, Harvin sought any evidence of infection in the Smeaton Seat. Such infection was entirely unlikely—Councilors were chosen for their family’s position for one specific reason above all—but such scrutiny was necessary at all times. The Smeatons always spent more time down here than any other Seat, and while it was not common for them to fall as Linver had, it was not beyond the realm of possibility.
“Very well, Harvin. See yourself out.” She’d already dismissed him from her attention, but he held another few seconds to be sure, then did as she said.
Nuret remained unmarked. He would not need to effect that particular—and thorny—portion of his purview yet.