The Sultan's Spy

Chapter 17: Answers

Eliska stalked around the first floor sitting room, reaching the far wall and turning on her heel to head back the other way. Tariq sat and followed her movement with his eyes, hands loosely folded between his legs. Neither one of them was smiling.

"I don't understand," she said, continuing to pace. "How is it that we can't find any information on these slavers! I've been in almost every hamam in the city, have checked every marketplace, have been to the slave markets and docks a dozen times, and still nothing. It doesn't make sense! No group is this tight-lipped! Someone has to know something."

Tariq sighed. "None of my contacts have heard anything. With the amount of money they have to have coming in, there should be some sign. No one in the underground has heard anything either. It's like we're chasing ghosts."

Eliska snorted but didn't stop moving. "Ghosts don't exist and it's like these slavers don't either!"

He went still for a moment before turning his head slowly to stare at her. "What if they don't exist? What if this is just a rash of disappearances with another cause? We don't even know all of them are connected. There could be two or more sets even."

She frowned. "The simplest explanation is that all the disappearances are linked. And honestly, who would take people that different? It's like they don't care who they get, just so long as they get someone-"

Eliska stopped abruptly, mouth working as the rest of her words died on her lips. Slowly her eyes went wide as her face went pale. There was only one answer she could see, one answer that made a terrible kind of sense, the answer she should have seen when she was first given her job.

Tariq stood and crossed the room so he stood in front of her. "What is it?" he asked, reaching out to grab her elbows in a gentle grip. "What's wrong? Do you know something?"

"The blood mage," she whispered as a cold hand grabbed her stomach in sent tendrils of ice outwards. "If it's the blood mage who took them, then it would make sense why they wouldn't care about how old they were. That person would just want living bodies."

Tariq's hands tightened on her. "Blood mage? What is a blood mage? Why would he want bodies?"

Eliska shook her head. "This isn't good. This is really not good. If people find out... For the love of everything holy, they'll go after all the mages, kill them, force the others into hiding. There might even be riots. Light of my soul, this is bad."

He shook her gently until she met his eyes. "What is a blood mage?" Tariq demanded.

She swallowed hard, mouth gone suddenly dry. "A blood mage is the worst kind of abomination, the antithesis to a real mage. Instead of completing rituals, of reinforcing what they want on the natural world, they take what they see as a shortcut. They don't draw power from themselves, but rather from others."

Tariq frowned, but didn't say anything. A small part of her was grateful for that as the rest of her forged on, stomach twisting. "Blood mages use the deaths of others to fuel their spells. They sacrifice other people rather than disciplining themselves. They are twisted, lazy, cowards without regard for others. They are everything people fear of mages and have to be taken out as quickly as possible to save lives and to avoid retaliation from the general public against ordinary mages."

He stared at her, lips twisted, eyes wide. "H-how can these people exist? How do you stop them?"

"You kill them," she said. "And you go through everything they have and burn anything that might have even the slightest relation to their sick craft. They are a disease that can't be reasoned with, and scourge that needs to be burned out root and branch."

"This has happened before then?"

"Not since I've been alive. The last one was nearly forty years ago. The family wipes them out as soon as we can, to protect the people."

Tariq stared down at her. "But you knew there was a blood mage. You said there's one."

Eliska bit her lip. "I was sent to investigate the slavers and the possibility of a blood mage existing. There's been hints around, nothing concrete, but a faint scent of corruption. A true mage can't abide being near a blood mage. They just feel wrong to us. No one has been able to confirm anything, so we weren't sure. I was to make us sure. With no slavers though, the only possibility that seems logical to me is..."

"Blood mage," Tariq finished for her. "I'll help. I was hired to find out what happened to the boy, no matter what. And if this blood mage is responsible for it, then I'll be in line to carve a chunk out of him. If he's not...I'll still happily string him up. Anyone who kills others for gain, who does so when they could achieve the same results with hard work... They don't deserve to live."

She nodded, relieved that Tariq wasn't going to run off now that he knew slavers weren't involved. And doubly so that he wouldn't be spreading word of the blood mage all over the city. She wasn't sure her spell would cover that, as it wasn't exactly one of her secrets. He had far more contacts in the underground than she did, and while she would never admit it, she liked having him around. It was nice to have someone to talk to while on job. She hadn't really realized how lonely she'd been on previous jobs with no one who knew her, no one to trust. Now...

Eliska shook herself. This was far more important than any other job she'd had before and she needed to focus herself completely on it. "Now that we're not dealing with slavers, we'll have to change out tactics. There's not much point in hanging around the docks anymore," she said.

Glancing down, she realized that Tariq still hadn't released her arms. She looked down then up at him. He met her gaze steadily. She flicked her eyes down to her elbows then back up at his face before raising her eyebrows. He got the message and released her slowly, though his face remained serious. "Now that I have a better idea of what we're looking for, I can ask my contacts what they know."

"They can't know anything about the blood mage. That kind of rumour will spread like wildfire."

He nodded. "I can ask about disappearances and people looking to buy other people. With the questions I have been asking, it won't seem like a big leap. Where will you go?"

"I'll need to speak to the mages in the city. See if any of them know anything, if they've sense anything. If the blood mage is here, they'll be the first to notice."

"Then we'll need to make an early night of it. I want to get this monster caught as soon as we can."

"I couldn't agree more," Eliska replied, smiling wolfishly at Tariq. He returned her predatory smile. With two of them hunting, it was only a matter of time before they had the blood mage dead.