The Dagger of Trust Read online

  For what seemed a long, lurid moment, Gideon could not even understand what he was seeing. It was as though the man, quivering and gurgling, had suddenly extruded a length of steel from his neck. In the next moment Gideon understood, and was looking over his shoulder for the assailant who'd just impaled the man with a thrown dagger.

  But he saw only a dark figure ducking out the pesh den's veiled doorway.

  Turning back to the man with one ear, Gideon saw his informant was already dead. It shouldn't have happened so fast. Even with such a wound as this there was a narrow path for survival. Someone was determined to close off even that.

  "Poison," he gasped to the master of the house and his companions, who had rushed to his side.

  "Leave now, and don't return!" said the master. "You bring trouble!"

  Gideon and the others left without a word, Viridia surging ahead. She'd grown up beside genuine wilderness, the Whistling Plains beyond Stavian's Hold, and she alone among them was a true runner. They struggled to catch up with her.

  Soon they had second thoughts about that. For they found Viridia crouched in an alley with dagger drawn, confronting not one but three men in gray.

  "It seemed unwise to kill you all in front of so many witnesses," said one of the men, and he did indeed bear a Chelish accent. He stepped forward, a smile growing like a fresh gash upon his heavily scarred face. "Thank you for solving that problem."

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  The Dagger of Trust © 2013 Paizo Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

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  Cover art by Lucas Graciano.

  Cover design by Emily Crowell.

  Map by Robert Lazzaretti.

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  ISBN 978-1-60125-614-0 (mass market paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-60125-615-7 (ebook)

  Publisher's Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Willrich, Chris, 1967-

  The dagger of trust / Chris Willrich.

  p. ; cm. — (Pathfinder tales)

  Set in the world of the role-playing game, Pathfinder.

  Issued also as an ebook.

  ISBN: 978-1-60125-614-0

  1. Bards and bardism—Fiction. 2. Spies—Fiction. 3. Imaginary places—Fiction. 4. Good and evil—Fiction. 5. Pathfinder (Game)—Fiction. 6. Fantasy fiction. 7. Adventure stories. I. Title. II. Series: Pathfinder tales library.

  PS3623.I57775 D34 2013

  813/.6

  First printing December 2013.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For Susan, my first comrade in dice.

  Prelude in Fog

  The frothers were gaining.

  Corvine and her friends' feet pounded the alley mud, raising echoes throughout the clammy dawn air, echoes she imagined could be heard all the way across the river in Andoran.

  Or so she wished. For their footfalls sounded just around the corner behind, like a chorus of spasming heartbeats. And there were rather more of them.

  At least I know the rumors are true, she thought with a chilly laugh. Next time, Corvine Gale, you should welcome a little more mystery in your life.

  "What's so funny?" gasped Alaric behind her.

  "To think I was once afraid," Corvine panted, "to go ruin-delving with Nicolaus..."

  "That is funny," said Thea, bringing up the rear. "If they eat you first, I'll laugh."

  Beside Corvine, Nicolaus said, "I'll tease
you later. Keep running..."

  In the dark of this morning, even the Admiral's Fen district of Cassomir was quiet, and the mists from the harbor ahead and the swamp behind obscured shadowy buildings looming up from the muddy ground. The lamplight was irregular, the moon had set, and the stars shone with indifferent brilliance upon lovers, dreamers, and people about to be torn to pieces.

  The four scrambled onto one of the plank lanes that made walking this mucky region tolerable. It was less useful as a racetrack, but they did their best.

  She glanced over her shoulder, checking that the other musicians were still with her: Thea with her fantasia of auburn hair, fidgety Alaric, cocky Nicolaus. And herself, of course—proud Corvine Gale, the only true bard among them, her usual impressive display of black tresses pulled back to a simple ponytail for this adventure.

  Of course, her friends weren't the only ones back there.

  More than half a dozen dimly glimpsed human figures burst from the alley and onto the planks. A strange fog accompanied them, its billowing cloud dimly lit from within as though by sickly hued green lanterns. It was almost as though the figures were merely solidified extensions of that vapor.

  Spotting the fleeing musicians, the shapes let out a roar composed of slurred, threatening fragments of speech.

  Rich brats

  Uptowners

  Teach 'em manners

  Teach 'em with a rock

  Laughing at us

  But there had been no laughing, except when the musicians had joked among themselves. Corvine and her friends had simply skulked around Admiral's Fen, daring each other into investigating tales of citizens transformed into raving lunatics. The worst they'd done was interrupt a warehouse card game.

  Then the fog had slithered in like coils of surf, and the gamblers had suddenly become as terrifying as any walking dead.

  If only Gideon could see me now ...

  It was at times like these that she most missed her fellow musician, the man who'd left a trouble-sized hole in her heart. It was she who'd sent him away, so he could get the true bardic training he deserved.

  But then, she was a bard, too. It was time she acted like one.

  Still running, Corvine let her mind's eye open on a sunlit, many-windowed conservatory filled with a symphony's worth of instruments and sheets dotted with notes from a stirring theme in The Elopement of the Dowager Princess. She felt the magic keyed to the image build inside her.

  But the frothers snarled close behind. If she were to stop now to cast a spell, she'd be overrun. She needed help from the terrain. They raced into the shipyards, with the wooden skeletons of Shipwright Baler's latest experiments rising all around them.

  "Where're the navy guards when you need them?" Nicolaus wheezed.

  Thea bent nearly double, sucking wind. "Can we hide in a ship?"

  "I'm a poor climber..." Alaric managed to say.

  "I'll help you up," Corvine said. "Keep moving."

  They zigged and zagged around unfinished ship hulls. Though the snarls of the frothers remained close at hand, at least the maniacs were no longer within sight. Corvine scrambled up a hull and assisted the others aboard.

  Within the hollow frame, Cassomir's usual wet odors of salt and swamp gave way to the warm scent of wood. The frothers passed by below, their maddened voices growing dimmer.

  The friends collapsed, taking care to avoid the shipwrights' chisels and hammers.

  "How?" Alaric whispered after a time. "How can the authorities deny the fog's real?"

  "Stories say the possessed return to normal," Corvine said, her heartbeats finally slowing. "They remember nothing. And only poor folk have been killed so far."

  "What fog?" Thea said.

  Corvine shot her an irritated look.

  "No, I'm serious," Thea pressed. "All I saw was a bunch of crazy people."

  Corvine frowned. "You didn't see the fog? The way it moved with them?"

  "That was just the usual mist."

  Nicolaus had risen, and was staring out a porthole.

  "What about you, Nicolaus?" Corvine asked.

  "You're not better than me! So-called bard—you'll stop laughing when I've wrung your neck!"

  Nicolaus turned, and his eyes were filled with greenish fog.

  He leapt toward her, but Corvine had already rolled to her feet. Her heart racing again, she got between him and the others, raised her hands. "It's okay, Nicolaus, we're not laughing, we're your friends..."

  Thea and Alaric, no combatants, huddled against each other. "It's contagious?" Thea asked.

  "None of them touched him—" Alaric said.

  "It must be the fog!" Thea said. "Maybe it's seen only if it chooses—"

  "A little help here?" Corvine asked. Nicolaus had seized a saw and was swinging it like a wobbly sword.

  Not exactly military-grade, Corvine thought, but it could still maim. She ducked, and Thea and Alaric grabbed Nicolaus's arms. He seemed to possess the strength of anger, or drunkenness, and threw them aside like dolls. He prepared to bring the saw down upon Alaric's neck.

  But Corvine had her moment. She crouched within the hull, but she also stood in her imaginary conservatory, conductor's baton in hand, while sprightly musicians of light and shadow played to her direction. In her mind's ear she heard the moment in the opera when the princess decides to elope, breaking free of all her family's constraints—and the music unlocked arcane formulae in her memory.

  I must break this palace mirror

  To see my true self...

  Her spell washed over Nicolaus, breaking the enchantment. He shivered, dropped the saw, and crouched. When he raised his head, his eyes were clear.

  "What just happened?" he asked.

  "You don't remember, do you?" Corvine said.

  Nicolaus rubbed his forehead. "No."

  "We'll speak of it later. For now...well, friends, this is all worrisome indeed. If the authorities don't believe it, I'll need to do something."

  "Like leave town?" Alaric said.

  "Maybe..." Nicolaus said.

  "Like writing to Oppara for help," Corvine said.

  Thea shook her head. "You're going to ask Gideon to come back, aren't you?"

  "It's crossed my mind."

  "You remember that corsair who got Gideon into the Rhapsodic College in Oppara?" Thea asked. "What was his name?"

  "Sebastian Tambour," Corvine said, knowing very well that Thea hadn't forgotten. "And he's more than a corsair. I think he's some manner of government agent." They'd met a year ago, the time Gideon had uncovered a Chelish spy operating in Cassomir.

  "Whatever he is, I think he fancied you."

  Corvine raised her eyebrow. "I think I fancied him a little in return. We've been in touch. Just like I've been in touch with Gideon."

  Thea laughed. "Keeping two birds in hand, Corvine? Risky."

  "Women make my head hurt," Alaric muttered to Nicolaus.

  Nicolaus was still rubbing his temples. "That's not what's making my head hurt."

  "Gulls are scavengers," Thea continued. "They'll peck at anything. Don't stick with him just because you pity him, Corvine. The other one, he's a raptor. He might be more help."

  Corvine's first glimpse of Sebastian had been of a dashing man of action, hunting Taldor's enemies. By contrast, she'd first discovered Gideon in a gutter. She'd told people they'd met in a tavern, the most disreputable she could think of, because their concerns on that score she could manage. She'd had enough of friends labeling her a martyr.

  But they'd not heard him singing to the stars.

  No, I'm not a woman burning herself as a sacrifice to lost causes. Let a thousand other drunks lie where they fall. But not him. Because his voice had proved that he, too, heard the music.

  And thus, he might be a man who could actually understand her.

  "Don't keep us in suspense," Thea said. "Which of them will you write to?"

  "Which will I write to? Why, Thea, you underestimate me." She smiled. "I'll send for t
hem both."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Chapter One

  Overture for Voice and Poisoned Blade

  The day of the murder dawned bright and rosy upon the Gilded City. At that hour Gideon Gull, having roused, stretched, and performed his morning exertions in the crisp wintry air of the conservatory roof, had no idea a killer stalked even now within his vision's reach. The brightly painted rooftops of Oppara stretched all around like spots on some ornate octopus, sprawling from the Black Cliffs to the lowlands upstream along the Mighty Porthmos, while the Grand Bridge lashed south across the great river like an arm snatching at some morsel worthy of imperial Taldor's ancient hunger. You could smell the sea to the west, chimneys and cookfires to the east, and a tang unique to the maritime district around the college, a scent that suggested sewage and sweat and sex and spirits, and which swaggered its way to Gideon's nose. All seemed cheerfully decadent as ever. You could write a song about it. Perhaps he would.

  All he had to worry about was this morning's debate. And, of course, the assassination.

  His acrobatics and shadowboxing done, Gideon sat cross-legged and pulled out his harp, a rugged and compact traveler's instrument carved by the gnomes up in Wispil. A good bodyguard needed his spells, so he plucked at the metal strings, finding the melodies he'd come to associate with particular magical effects.

  The spell for throwing his voice he linked to a rafter-shaking aria from the opera The Winter of White Roses. The spell for curing fear he connected with the backwoods song "Ain't No Devil's Gonna Move Me." The one for making a rope move on its own? The sea shanty "Haul Away for Arcadia." The one for inducing uncontrollable laughter was simply background strums, fit for a tavern jester. The music itself didn't convey the magic, per se, but the bardic college had taught Gideon to coach his memory with such associations.

  Arcane formulae crackled through his brain as he prepared spell after spell, ready for casting at need.

  As he let the pattern of a final spell pass into his head on a wave of shimmering notes, something like a cacophony of brass horns assaulted his mind.

  "Ah!" Gideon clutched at his skull, losing the spell. He could still see the stones of the college roof, but it was as if a writhing fog had obscured his vision. The air felt chill. He had the sensation of some cold, cruel intellect appraising him, and a voice sliced through the brass, feminine and cruel. He couldn't quite make out the words. But something about it was familiar...