The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) Read online

The man sniffed and turned his head away. “I won’t.”

  What, was he a child? It was this erratic behavior that she found so annoying. With a mental renewal of her promise to reward herself after all of this was over, she managed to get a stranglehold on her patience. Waving Sarsen down, she put her hand through the man’s elbow. Really, if letting him escort her would get them in motion, she’d put up with it.

  A brilliant smile lit up his face and he started for the main door with a bounce in his stride. “Excellent. Edwin! Form up my guards!”

  Sevana reflected as they waited for the guards to arrive that it was better overall that Master hadn’t come with her and instead gone to Kindin. If he ever saw how de Luca reacted to her, the count really would have been fish bait by now.

  A four-man guard met them at the front doors and escorted them off the compound. The count had been very careful when he situated the black market. It was on property he owned, but something he had gained by a defaulted loan. It was a sketchy gray area that the law couldn’t quite figure out how to deal with, or so he had explained once to her. The land was kitty-corner to the compound, within easy reach of him, and it gave him perfect access while also giving him a perfect excuse to ignore it, if the law ever came knocking.

  Sevana couldn’t help but feel that if this was Windamere, and not Belen, de Luca would never have gotten by with that legal loophole. Bel would have still found a way to shut the man down. A smile tweaked the corners of her mouth at the thought.

  He noticed her smile and asked, “What amuses you, my dear?”

  She shot him a quick glance, but didn’t dare do more than that for fear of bumping into the narrow passageway in between estates. Why were they taking this alley route, anyway? It felt cramped and cold in here. “I was just thinking that if this was Windamere, and not Belen, my prince would have shut you down by now.”

  “Prince Bellomi? Ah, that’s right, you lived with him for several months.” He sighed as if upset. “I was truly jealous when I heard of that, you know. I was afraid you would fall for him.”

  “Romano.” She gave him a flat stare. “He was eight.”

  “He was in his twenties and looked as if he were eight,” he corrected, meeting her stare for stare. “And I understand he’s both handsome and charming.”

  “You weren’t there while he was learning how to be charming. I swear it was just like dealing with an eight year old.”

  “Your Princess Hana didn’t think so.”

  “You didn’t get to see that awkward courtship either,” she retorted, although she laughed as she said that as it brought back memories. “Ohhh, if I ever wanted to make an easy million, I’d write a book about him staying with me. Parts of it were downright entertaining.”

  He quirked his brows at her, smiling at her smile. “Oh? Well, we have something of a walk ahead of us. Why don’t you regale me with the story?”

  If it kept him from sweet-talking her, gladly. She started from the beginning, what she knew of it, and weaved the story for him. Truly, though, she didn’t pay a great deal of attention to what she said. What lay ahead of them took up most of her interest. She hadn’t seen the market in four years, and in that time, it had grown significantly.

  A good indication of the state of the world was the black and gray markets. The more unrest, upheaval and disorder there was, the more these two markets thrived as people were forced to go outside the law to buy the basic necessities. If this market was anything to go by, then Belen’s economy was in very bad shape indeed. Four years ago, the various tents, booths, and vendors took up a city block or so. For a black market, it was sizable and it thrived with sound and activity as people went about their business. But it didn’t compare to this. Now, Sevana would say it had grown five times over and covered at least three or four acres. The sounds of humans conversing, work being done, and goods being traded created such a din of noise that she had to raise her own voice to hear herself. But more than that was the smell. With this press of unwashed bodies and ill-prepared food, it stank to high heaven. She instinctively flinched.

  “Oh, I have grown so accustomed to it, I nearly forgot.” From a breast pocket, de Luca pulled out a vial and passed it to her. “Extract of orange. Place a dab under your nose otherwise you’ll faint from the vapors.”

  She whispered a quick revealing spell as she accepted the vial, but nothing reacted, so it was indeed what he said it was. (Not that he had ever tried to drug her, but since she trusted the man about as far as she could throw him.…) She dabbed a significant quantity under her nose before passing the vial back to Sarsen, who took it gratefully.

  “I’ve tried putting some regulations in here to help with the smell,” de Luca sighed in true aggravation. “But it’s mostly the people here who are the problem, and what can I do? Say they must bathe properly before entering? I feel like an overbearing parent.”

  “They obviously need one.” Sevana could still smell some of the stench past the orange extract although it helped significantly. It made her nose want to revolt and her stomach churn. Orange-scented rotting fish is what it reminded her of. How charming.

  The tents lined up on either side, crammed together to take up as little space as possible, and were huddled so close together that there wasn’t much of a path in between them. A crowd of people shifted through, literally shuffling along as it was impossible to make any real headway, with absolutely no breathing room whatsoever. Even with the guards around them, they were pressed together tightly, although the people who noticed the count’s guards tried to move out of the way as best they could. Really, anyone that had issues with either enclosed spaces or crowds would have had a fit just looking at this place.

  It seemed like they didn’t make any progress at all, but soon enough de Luca turned toward a particularly garish tent of red and gold stripes and hailed the burly man working there with an upraised hand. “Master Yawas!”

  The man looked up from the customer he was helping and his prominent eyes flew wide as he recognized who called to him. He instantly ducked into a respectful bow. “My lord! You honor me.”

  The guards forcibly shifted people aside so that she and de Luca could approach the table and stand directly in front of it. Sevana took in her first deep breath since entering this madness.

  Extending a hand to her, de Luca purred out the introduction. “My fiancée, Artifactor Sevana Warran, has come to make an inquiry of you.”

  For that, she stomped firmly on his foot with the heel of her boot. He made a squeaking noise in the back of his throat in pain, teeth gritted. Her eyes shot to him in warning. “Make that introduction one more time, and I shall surely cut off all ties with you.”

  This threat panicked him more than anything else she had said before, and he put a hand to his heart and half-bowed in apology. “Take my words as nothing more than meaningless wind.”

  “I shall do so,” she assured him coolly. To the waiting merchant—who, judging from his expression, seemed impressed by how she handled the count—she said simply, “I am looking for a magical artifact. We are told you have something in your possession that resembles it. It stands roughly this tall, is seemingly made of gray porcelain, and has white engravings on it?”

  He bobbed his head in recognition. “Yes, my lady Artifactor, I know what you’re describing. I received it this morning.” He turned and rummaged in a box off to the side. “I wasn’t quite sure I should put it out yet, as I didn’t know the value of it, but I paid a pretty penny for it. My nephew’s a magician trainee, and he said it had strong magic attached to it.”

  Well, that sounded promising, or it would if there weren’t spells that could fake ‘strong magic’ just to rook people with. She waited with baited breath as he pulled out a wooden box and unwrapped the blue cloth to expose the item.

  As soon as the top was revealed, she let out the breath she held in disappointment. While it was tall, and gray, it was nothing more than a cylindrical vase with pretty white lines in a swirl
ing pattern painted on it.

  De Luca waited anxiously for her reaction, but when she did nothing more than stare at it, he seemed to know without her saying anything. “That’s not it.”

  “It’s not,” she admitted. Reaching out, she plucked the vase out of the box entirely and gave it a good, thorough look. “Master…Yawas, was it?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “I hope you didn’t pay too much for this, because if you have, you’ve been rooked.”

  Yawas’ brows slammed together. “What is it?”

  “It’s a disappearing vase,” she answered, studying the bottom of it, looking for a maker’s mark. “It’s used in magic shows, usually. You drop something in this vase, and it’ll come out in its twin. I’m afraid that one is entirely useless without the other.”

  Yawas looked ready to murder someone right there. “And the magic my nephew sensed?”

  “Oh, that’s there,” she assured him. “He wasn’t wrong about that. There’s nothing wrong with this vase. In fact, I’m sure it would function perfectly if you had the full set. But without its pair, it’s only good for vanishing things into the great unknown.”

  “You bought this from an unknown supplier?” de Luca inquired.

  “Yes, my lord,” Yawas confirmed unhappily. “He left me with a name, which I bet now is fake.”

  “Make a report about him anyway and give a description,” de Luca ordered. To Sevana he explained, “If I let bad dealers come in like this, then the level of goods will drop and the market will suffer terribly. It’s hard to catch men like this, as they seem to only appear once and make off with what they can, but when I do catch them I make them pay dearly.”

  For good reason. Sevana approved of his methods although not particularly his reasons. She handed the vase back to Yawas and waved a hand. “Let’s go to the next.”

  Sevana went through two more fakes in the next hour, each one better and more convincing than the last. The disappearing vase could very well be dismissed as a coincidence simply because it matched the description she gave and nothing more. But the next two had obviously been made to look like the gadgick. They had the right shape to them, the right color, but the designs weren’t right. In fact, they weren’t anywhere near right. It reminded her of an illiterate child trying to copy an adult’s handwriting. They could more or less reproduce the same letters but it would come out sloppy and barely legible. The same could be applied to the fakes—the designs carved into the sides were beautiful but completely useless as far as magic went. Only a skilled magician would be able to tell the difference.

  These fakes served as a magnificent red herring and annoyed her no end. They would, of course, be on opposite ends of the market as well. After so much walking, she felt a little footsore and the dabs of orange scent under her nose had ceased to work a good hour ago. In sheer self-defense, her nose shut down completely. She felt further aggravated that they had to go from one side and then trek all the way to the other just for another forgery. But as irritated as she felt, it did give her hope. For the forgeries to be this good, this accurate, the real gadgick had to have come through this market. If any luck were with her at all, it wouldn’t have sold yet either.

  With them in the center of the market like this, new information came through Sarsen’s Caller via the magician that served de Luca. Sevana saw absolutely no point in trudging all the way back to the house only to have to wade through these crowds again later. Still, night had fallen hard over the land, and the only lights came from the bright moon overhead and the multitude of lanterns strung up to light the way. She well understood that the black market did more business at night than during the day, but actually seeing it in action was something else entirely.

  She was jostled on one side—although the guard did his best to shield her—and slammed her shoulder into de Luca’s. The count, having decent reflexes, caught her and steadied her about the shoulders. “Are you well, my dear?”

  “Someone jostled me,” she explained while straightening. “Is it my imagination or is this place becoming busier?”

  “We’re at the rush hour now,” he responded cheerfully, the businessman in him glowing with greedy anticipation. “It’ll be like this for some hours yet before it wanes again. Sometime around the pre-dawn hours it’ll be much more peaceful.”

  Sevana felt particularly glad that she’d slept most of the way here. What was it about this job that came hand in hand with sleep deprivation? Even with Bel and a mountain full of guests, she’d had more than a nodding acquaintance with her bed!

  Abruptly she realized that while she might have slept, Sarsen hadn’t. She turned sharply to look up at him over her shoulder. Uh-oh. Far from being tired, he looked around with glassy eyes, an unnatural grin on his face, and did he just bounce on his toes? “Sarsen…”

  He beamed down at her. “Hmmm?”

  “You’re dry-drunk, aren’t you?” she meant that to sound accusing, but in truth she was nervous. Sarsen had a history of doing remarkably stupid and reckless things while in this state.

  “No, no, I’m just strangely alert,” he assured her.

  That’s what I meant by dry-drunk! She wailed internally. Her first instinct was to send him back to de Luca’s and force him to sleep, but she honestly couldn’t afford to. Who knew what kind of move the count would make with the pesky chaperone out of the way? She gripped her wand through the sleeve in reassurance. It was fine. This whole situation was fine, really. Nothing had gotten out of hand. If Sarsen started something, well, she’d freeze the whole place and get him out of here before anything truly serious happened. Yes, alright. That was a good plan.

  “Oooh, that looks fun.” Sarsen went up on tiptoe to see over the crowd better. “Hey, while we’re waiting for word of another prospect, I’m going to go try my hand at that.”

  That? She grabbed his arm with an iron grip before he could move an inch in any direction. “What’s that?” she demanded.

  “That,” he said again while pointing somewhere off to the right. With this wall of people, she couldn’t begin to figure out what he meant. “That person swallowing swords. I want to learn how to do that.”

  Her grip tightened. “No.”

  He blinked down at her like a child denied a treat. “But it looks fun!”

  “No,” she maintained firmly. Sweet mercy and miracles, he thought swallowing a sword looked fun? What would he think of next?

  “Then what about the other one? He’s blowing fire out of his mouth.”

  She’d just had to ask, didn’t she? “No, Sarsen. And if there’s anyone over there sticking their head in a lion’s mouth, you’re not doing that either.”

  “Oh, you can see that?” he asked her ingeniously. “It’s a beautiful lion but it looks very tame.”

  She slapped a hand to her head. “Listen to me. Thou shalt not leave my side. Your job is to be here as a chaperone, remember? You can’t wander off.”

  He snapped his fingers in remembrance, acting for all the world as if for a moment he truly had forgotten his role here. “Oh, right. Right, right. Well, leastways I can watch, eh?”

  Sevana breathed out a prayer of thanks. As off-kilter as he might be, he still retained enough sense to listen to reason, eh? Good, good.

  De Luca took his eyes off of her long enough to truly study Sarsen. In a stage whisper he said next to her ear, “I’ve never seen him act like this before.”

  “None of us have gotten proper rest while on this job,” she whispered back. “He’s sleep deprived, and that’s a very worrying state. He loses all sense of danger when he’s like this.” She said this in warning and hoped de Luca would take it that way. Earlier, with the sword fight, Sarsen had taken it easy on him and it had still almost ended disastrously. Right now, if challenged, she had no way to predict how Sarsen would respond.

  Her warning did not have the effect she intended it to. The count seemed intrigued by this information and she could see the wheels turning in his mind. In
an effort to distract him, she turned the conversation to an entirely different topic. “Why forgeries?”

  He blinked, mentally switching tracks, and looked back at her. “Pardon?”

  “Why forgeries?” she repeated, glad her hook worked. “I understand that forgeries are good for making money and that there are some who make a full career out of it. But wouldn’t it be considered foolish to have multiple forgeries of the same thing in the market at the same time?”

  “Ahh, I see your point.” In an effort to keep them from blocking the road and thereby becoming squashed, he urged the group back into motion as he spoke. “You see, my dear, money is only part of the reason. I haven’t made a study of it but I have spoken to many forgers during my time, and it seems to me that their motivation is resentment.”

  She had just broached the subject to distract him, but that last sentence intrigued her. “Resentment?” she parroted, surprised. “What do they resent?”

  “On that, the list seems endless. They resent others’ wealth, their abilities or training, the fact that these people once possessed the genuine article of whatever they are forging, the fact that their skills can only create forgeries, etcetera.” Pleased to have her genuine attention for once, he preened a little under her eyes. “In truth, they tend to be people that are simply unhappy with life and resent everything. But they also conversely take pride in making a forgery so exact, so skillful, that even an expert eye can be fooled.” He let out a soft chuckle, expression smug. “Although they certainly haven’t been able to fool you.”

  “It would take a master magician to make a forgery that would even stand a chance against me,” she informed him dryly. “No matter how excellent their skills, these things have no magic in them and can’t be imbued with it at all.”

  “Oh? Is that why it only takes you a glance to tell?”

  “That’s why.”

  From behind her, she heard the muttered voice of de Luca’s magician coming through Sarsen’s Caller. She half-turned, as much as she could, and tried to listen as the report came through. The Callers had never been particularly loud in volume, which was a feature that she hadn’t thought to change until now. Usually she used them in fairly quiet areas, after all. But in this noisy, crowded place she could only catch about half of what was said even though she stood barely a foot away.