Void's Tale by Christopher Nuttall (ebook reader wifi txt) 📕

Chapter Six

I spent the rest of the morning moving from shop to shop, asking a handful of questions and confirming my suspicions.  The kidnapped people didn’t have any known blood relatives, at least not within the town.  The youngest had actually been adopted by a friend of his father, from what I was able to determine.  They didn’t have a blood tie.  And none of them had been particularly popular.  Mistress Layla had been respected, but she’d been so standoffish she had no friends amongst the cityfolk and none of them cared enough to look for her.  The remainder were much the same.

Which suggests the kidnapper is picking his targets very carefully, I thought.  He hadn’t shown so much care in choosing his mundane targets, but he hadn’t needed to take so many precautions.  There was no hope of tracking those victims down through magic.  And that means he’s a member of the community.

I paced the streets, gathering intelligence.  There were always gossips willing to talk, with or without magical inducements, although not everything they said was true.  I asked questions, listened carefully to the answers ... and drew a blank.  There were a number of magicians who could have kidnapped the missing people, but none of them seemed to have any real motive.  The victims were just too diverse.  My imagination suggested a number of possibilities, from the disgusting and vile to so dark that no one in their right mind would even consider them, but none seemed to quite make sense.  And there were just too many victims.

And everyone is on their guard now, I thought.  The shops and magical houses were even more heavily warded.  It felt as if the entire city was under siege.  The kidnappers might have just decided to wait for everyone to relax before starting operations again.

I didn’t like the idea, I decided as I made my way back to the marketplace.  A necromancer needed an endless supply of victims, if he wanted to remain alive.  I’d yet to encounter one who didn’t.  If there was a necromancer close by, he’d have to keep searching for victims to sacrifice even if it did mean attracting attention.  Someone else ... they could have simply pulled in their horns to wait or moved on.  They could have teleported halfway around the world, if they wished.  The people on the other side of the continent wouldn’t have any idea of what was happening in Yolanda.  The world had gotten a lot bigger since the empire collapsed and the kingdoms started to emerge.

There were fewer people browsing the stalls than I’d expected, I noted.  The travellers looked thoroughly displeased.  They were the freest people in the world, they claimed, and yet even they needed to make a profit.  Half of them were already packing up their stores, preparing to resume the journey.  The remainder looked inclined to join them, rather than waiting one more day.  I understood, all too well.  The risk of being attacked by an angry mob was growing by the hour.  The guardsmen weren’t going to put themselves at risk to save the travellers.

“Someone was probing the wards, last night,” Juliana said, as I reached her stall.  Gabby was nowhere to be seen.  “They poked and prodded, then backed off.”

“Interesting,” I said.  A frisson of alarm shot through me.  “Where’s Gabby?”

“In the caravan,” Juliana said.  She jerked a finger towards the door.  “She’s got to practice her numbers.”

I nodded in amusement.  Commoners were generally discouraged from learning to read, write and do sums.  The guilds did their level best to crack down on everyone who tried to learn on their own, even though there simply weren’t enough scribes and accountants to go around.  It had always struck me as pointless.  Merchants needed to do basic accounting in their heads.  They certainly couldn’t join the guilds, let alone study for years before they could call themselves accountants.  And they didn’t need to spend years studying to know that two plus two equalled four.

But the more advanced the sums, the harder it is to do them without tablet and chalk, I reminded myself.  And ...

A thought struck me.  What if I set a trap?  What if ...?

I looked at Juliana.  “Are you going to be staying overnight?”

“One more night, then we’re leaving,” Juliana said.  She waved a hand at the stall.  Normally, she should have sold everything within a few hours.  Her charms were very simple - and some were borderline frauds - but there was never any shortage of demand.  I’d known students at Whitehall who’d supplemented their monthly allowances by selling enchanted artefacts to passing customers.  Now, half her trade goods were still clearly visible.  “We’re just not bringing anything like enough money.”

She looked at me.  “Will you be staying with us?”

“One more night,” I said, echoing her.  My mind was elsewhere.  “I’ll leave you tomorrow.”

Juliana nodded.  I saw a hint of relief in her eyes.  I wasn’t exactly a welcome guest.  I’d be a great deal less welcome if she knew I wasn’t even a distant relative.  It was possible - my father had been vague on precisely where he’d found my mother - but there was no way to be sure.  I certainly couldn’t start testing our blood to determine if we were actually relatives, not without giving her a way to break out of the mental maze.  Once she started questioning the charm, it would break.

And if you knew what I had in mind, I thought, you’d order me to leave at once.

The plan came together as I helped her prepare lunch.  Juliana and Gabby were ideal targets for the mystery kidnapper.  They had magic, but not much magic.  They had no close relatives within the travellers ... hell, they were clearly slightly unwelcome within the convoy, as they’d been placed on the edge of the marketplace.  And half the convoy