The Art of Deception, page 1
The Art of Deception
Stephanie Burgis
Five Fathoms Press
Contents
Dedication
The Art of Deception
Acknowledgments
Masks and Shadows
Congress of Secrets
About the Author
Copyright
For my brother David, who asked for a story full of swordfighting, banter, and a twisty plot. Here it is!
The Art of Deception
There are three moves every true swordsman should know. First, the Shagomir Defense, as taught by every minor proponent of the art; second, the whistling attack, suitable for advanced students only; and third, the Hrabanic Deception, a lethally difficult move which turns a seeming defense into the neatest of stabs, clean into your opponent’s chest, piercing the heart in an instant. The Hrabanic Deception is always fatal.
Considering that Niko Hrabanic had invented the move, he should have been more prepared when it was used against him. But he had never been as gifted in the art of verbal swordplay as he was with the blade; and at any rate, he was attacked at an inopportune moment.
“What do you mean, ‘useless’?” It’s hard to carry off any semblance of dignity while naked, but Hrabanic did his best, pulling the sheet up to his chest and directing an outraged glare at his bed partner, who also happened to be his landlady.
She sat up in bed, disregarding the sheet, and crossed her arms. Her dark hair tumbled invitingly across her shoulders; her jutting elbows emphatically refuted the invitation. “Useless: lacking in use, ineffectual, unable to accomplish that which—”
“All right, all right! We all know you were raised in a library.” Hrabanic set his teeth. “I’ve never heard you complain before.”
“I never had to leave anyone else in charge of you before.”
“I will pay my rent. Soon! All I need is a few more students, and then—”
“You’ve been saying that for the past nine months.”
“Don’t I make myself useful in other ways?” He dropped his sheet.
She snorted. “Well, you aren’t going to be doing that with the friend who’s taking over for me.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You think not? If you find me so useless, then perhaps—”
“It’s my friend Miriam. The one with the husband who won five wrestling championships.”
“Oh.” He pulled the sheet back up. “Well. There’s still the matter of everything else I do around here. I stop fights from breaking out at the bar every night, I take care of all the heavy lifting for you—”
“I’m fairly certain Miriam’s husband can deal with those matters himself.”
“I also have a reputation, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“You did, once.”
Hrabanic let out a growl. “That’s low, Julia. Even for you.”
She shrugged. “You used to be the most famous swordsman in Plötz, yes. But you’ve been hiding out in a rundown tavern in a little backwater town nobody’s ever heard of, ever since the Archduke fired you.”
“I was not fired. I was—”
“You were fired,” Julia said. “So you ran away to lick your wounds, and like the soft-hearted fool I am, I took you in. But now Miriam and her husband are doing me the kindest of favours by taking over while I’m gone, and I can’t leave them with a tenant who’s useless to them, just because he’s afraid to go back out into the wider world.”
“Why do you have to leave at all? You still haven’t explained that part.”
Julia’s eyes, for the first time, slid away. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Ha.” Hrabanic pushed himself up to a sitting position. “You’re the one running away, aren’t you? Maybe the tavern’s not doing as well as you say. Maybe you’re afraid of how you feel about me. Maybe—”
“I have to go home for a while,” Julia said.
“To the White Library?” He blinked. “What are you meant to do there? That’s—”
“I’ve been called back, and I can’t ignore the summons. But it’s dangerous. I don’t know how long it’ll take—or even if I’ll be coming back at all. So I have to set things in order here, first.”
“Nonsense. Just don’t go.”
“I have to. If I don’t…” She took a deep breath. “They’ll send their minions to come and get me. And that would be much, much worse.”
“The White Librarians can send as many of their creatures as they like after you. Do you truly think I’d let them past the front door?” Hrabanic had never seen vulnerability on his landlady’s face before. He reached out awkwardly and pulled her into his arms, speaking into her soft, tousled hair. “Come now, Julia. You know that none of them could get past me.”
“Really?” Her voice was muffled against his chest. “You could protect me, even from them?”
“Of course,” he said. “With me around, you don’t need to be afraid of them. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
“Perfect.” Her voice was as smooth and rich as cream. Or, more like, a cat who’d just swallowed a whole pitcher-full. Hrabanic stiffened as she tipped back her head and smiled. “Well, then,” she said. “That’s settled. Miriam and her husband will take over the tavern, and you’ll come along with me to keep me safe at the White Library.”
“But—what—?” Hrabanic took a hold of himself. “Look,” he said. “I don’t leave this town anymore. You know that. I don’t like going out into—”
“You promised you would keep me safe,” Julia said. “And so you shall. I feel much better, now.” She gave him a quick kiss, which he barely felt, and slid down under the covers beside him. “You’d better go to sleep now, Hrabanic. We’ll be leaving in two days, and you have a lot of packing to do before then.”
The Hrabanic Deception is always fatal.
He was still reeling at dawn two mornings later, when he and Julia set off from the tavern with little Miriam and her hulking husband waving their cheerful farewells from the doorway. Julia, of course, looked as coolly confident as if she were preparing for an ordinary morning of bartering with the local butcher, rather than setting off on foot for the near-mythical building about which a thousand children’s cautionary tales were told, of unnatural creatures and strange powers at work behind the fabric of the world. Five miles down the road, though, she startled Hrabanic once again.
There were no other travelers in sight along the dusty road that stretched up through the hills, into the mountains. Only hill farmers and their goats picked a living out of the dry, rocky outcroppings to the side of the road, and even they were nowhere to be seen under the pale blue sky that morning. Julia looked around, set down her pack, and loosened the fastenings of her cloak.
“Too much for you?” Hrabanic said. “We can still turn around, you know. Or—auugh!”
With one pass of her fingers across her face, Julia’s whole appearance had changed. The hawk nose—so arresting and oddly attractive in her own face—remained, but the curving cheeks had hollowed, the face turned from an oval into a rectangle, and, worst of all, a light spattering of hair covered it all, that of a man who’d forgotten to shave that morning. Another pass of her hand across her chest, and…
“We are not sleeping in the same bed tonight!” said Hrabanic.
“Oh, don’t be a ninny.” A man’s voice came out of her mouth, deeper and fuller, but still quintessentially Julia’s in its authority. “It’s barely one thin layer of illusion, and it’s for both our sakes.”
“Not mine,” Hrabanic said, eyeing the newly-straight form beneath her cloak. “Trust me. If we have to walk all across Plötz together, I would much rather—”
“Why fight more battles than you need?” Julia said. “This way, you won’t have to worry about fighting any drunken louts over me in the inns we stop at, and I won’t have to deal with innkeepers thinking they can take advantage when I negotiate our rates.”
“Ha. Little do they know. Poor fellows.” Hrabanic looked mournfully at her/him, as she/he undid the familiar, thick, dark hair and retied it in a simple man’s queue. “How long have you been able to do this, anyway?”
“I told you where I was raised.” Julia swung the pack over her shoulder. “I haven’t done this for nearly twenty years, because I didn’t want to take the risk of attracting their attention. But now that I’ve been summoned anyway…” She shrugged. “You can’t grow up in the White Library without learning how to perform a simple illusion or two.”
“Huh.” Hrabanic narrowed his eyes at her. “So, you really think you need my protection there, do you, Madame Illusionist?”
“I can deal with illusions,” Julia said. “But they’re not the only dangers at the White Library. I might be able to fool a man’s eyes into thinking I was wearing armor, but I couldn’t stop his blade from piercing my skin.”
“What a pleasant homecoming you’ve invited me along for.” Hrabanic sighed. “Just tell me one thing. All those stories whispered about the White Library—how many of them are true, exactly?”
“Oh, only about half of them,” Julia said cheerfully, and strode forward, her newly-masculine boots scuffing up with dust. “Most of the really bad secrets don’t ever leave the Library. They’re very careful about that.”
“Hmm,” Hrabanic said, as he fell into step beside her. “But you left.”
“So I did,” Julia said, and re-settled the pack against her back. “A fine day for a walk, isn’t it?”
“Hmm,” Hrabanic repeated though
Only two assassination attempts enlivened the rest of the journey. One of them was aimed at him, by a young blade who recognised him in the main room of an inn they’d stopped at, and wanted to prove himself to the swordfighting world through Hrabanic’s death; that, Hrabanic had expected and didn’t mind, beyond the loss of the wine he’d spilled when the youth had jostled his arm. But the second attempt, in the middle of the night, was aimed straight at Julia, sleeping in the bed beside him in her own true form.
Hrabanic woke at the sound of the opening window. His sword was in his hand a moment later. The Shagomir Defense blocked the man’s first blow and sent his sword spinning across the room. The rest wasn’t even worth opening his eyes for.
“So,” Hrabanic said, as he pushed the limp body out the window. “They’re expecting you, are they?”
“Apparently.” Still sitting in bed, Julia turned over the seal they’d found in the assassin’s cloak—a glittering white star. It glowed in the darkness, casting a pale light up onto her face.
“Why did they bother to summon you, if they only wanted to kill you? Why not send an assassin in the first place?”
“There’s more than one White Librarian,” Julia said. “They don’t all want the same things.” Her voice was as cool as ever, but by the light of the assassin’s seal, Hrabanic could see the unaccustomed strain on her face. “Layers of illusion, Hrabanic. Remember?”
“Right,” he said. “Well, your particular illusion doesn’t seem to have worked on them. They knew exactly where to find you.”
She shrugged, tracing the star on the seal with the tip of one finger, as gently as if she feared to rub it off. “The illusion was only meant for our fellow travelers.”
“I see.” Hrabanic closed the window. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me before we arrive there tomorrow?”
Julia shook her head, still staring at the seal. “No,” she said. “No. Right now…” She tore her gaze away from the seal and looked up at him. “Right now, I think I’d like to sleep. To save my strength.”
Hrabanic looked at her shadowed eyes and sighed. “All right,” he said, and crossed the room to take the seal out of her hand. It tingled against his fingers; he dropped it face-down onto the floor beside the bed to hide its glow, then gathered Julia into his arms. “You sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep a look-out. I could do with some time to think, anyway.”
Hrabanic had expected a large building—and an impressively large, white building, at that. What he hadn’t expected was an impossibility.
The White Library climbed all the way up the side of a mountain, like the shining white carapace of a monstrous snail, curving round and round itself. Its higher regions disappeared behind the mist at the very top of the mountain. Hrabanic was not a man given much to fancy, but when he tipped his head back to peer through the cloaking mist, he found himself wondering if the Library itself had any top, any limit to its vastness, or if it truly spiraled into the heavens forever.
Illusions, he reminded himself, and shook his head sharply. But he found himself breathing quickly, as winded as if he’d just fought a hard battle. When he looked down, he saw Julia returned to her own appearance and neatly plaiting her dark hair into a crown around her head.
“So,” he said. “The illusion’s ended, then?”
“Hardly,” she said. “Come along.” She pinned the last braid into place. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer.”
“Did you tell them a particular time we’d arrive?”
“No,” she said. “But they’ll have been watching us for at least the past hour. If they think we’re dawdling, they’ll see it as a sign of weakness.”
“Ah,” Hrabanic said. “Um. An hour ago or more—”
“Not while you were naked,” Julia said, and rolled her eyes. “They only watch this last stretch of road, to prepare for visitors.”
“Very sensible,” Hrabanic said, and frowned at the impenetrable white, curving walls, which were—yes, he’d remembered correctly—completely free of windows.
Ah, damn.
“Well, then,” he said, “we’d better hurry.”
Half an hour later, and only twenty feet away from the shining snail-shell, there was still no opening to be seen. But Hrabanic had long practice training his expression to confidence even when he didn’t feel it, and he matched Julia step for step as she strode straight toward the white wall. The closer they came to it, the less Hrabanic liked it. No stone or any other building material he knew could be fitted together so smoothly, without a single join, nor would it gleam so, untouched by any of the swirling dust from the road that led up to it.
Julia swung her hand out at the last moment, just before her arrogant hawk nose would have smashed into the wall, and turned her fingers in the air as if turning a door handle. With a groan, the snail-shell surface opened before them, revealing a hallway that glowed with unnatural, almost blinding white light, and a white-cloaked figure standing in the center of it. Tears stung Hrabanic’s eyes; he had to squint to make out the cloak, but no amount of squinting could catch him any glimpse of the face beneath the hood. The voice that spoke from underneath it was a woman’s, cold and clear.
“I see you haven’t forgotten all your training, after all.”
Hrabanic kept his mouth shut. Julia’s chin lifted. “You’d be surprised at how much I remember,” she said. “Good morning, Lafka. Do you think you might tone down the light a bit? My companion would like to be allowed to see.”
“Julia. Polite as always.” The light dimmed, revealing a corridor full of elegant, curving white arches and pale gold lattice-work, and Hrabanic saw a narrow face beneath the Librarian’s hood, remotely beautiful as a mountain sunset. The large, gem-like green eyes blinked slowly. “And Niko Hrabanic. You will be welcomed here.”
Hrabanic bowed and restrained the impulse to set one hand on the hilt of his sword. “I am honoured that you know me, Madam.”
“Oh, I am not the one who knows you,” Lafka said. “But we have—shall we say, an old friend of yours here. And her husband.”
Hrabanic’s jaw clenched. He saw her narrow, pale-pink lips curve into a satisfied smile.
“Yes, the Archduke and Archduchess are also guests here,” said Lafka. “We can all hardly wait to witness your happy reunion.”
Don’t pull out the sword. Don’t pull out the sword.
“Julia?” Hrabanic said, through gritted teeth.
“A delightful surprise indeed,” Julia murmured, and set one hand on Hrabanic’s arm. It might have looked, in this temple of illusion, like a ladylike gesture of support, but he felt the strength of her warning pinch, and winced. “Show us to our rooms,” she said. “Now.”
With an enormous effort of willpower, Hrabanic managed to wait until Lafka closed the door of their suite of rooms behind him before he spoke again.
“How long have you known?”
“Hrabanic…”
“I said…” He lowered his voice to a hiss. For all he knew, every one of the gilded mirrors that lined the apricot-and-gold walls of their front bedroom might serve a double function as window and listening station. “How—long—have—you—known?”
“That the Archduke and Archduchess would be here?” Julia shrugged and set down her pack on the double bed. “I didn’t know it. Not for certain.”
“You suspected.”
“It made sense, given the circumstances.”
“It made sense,” Hrabanic repeated. “It made—!” He whirled around, swinging back his cloak. His sword, released at last, slashed through the crimson covers of the bed. Stuffing exploded out of them, inadequate replacement for the blood and guts he would have preferred. “It made gods-damned sense?”
“Control yourself!” Julia’s voice was nearly as cold as Lafka’s had been. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“You’ve never trapped me with the bloody Archduke and that harpy!”
“That’s not a kind way to speak of a past lover. If I were an insecure woman—”
He lowered his sword, breathing hard. “I wouldn’t say one more word about that, if I were you.”
