Chapter 27: In Which There Is A Highly Motivated Killer

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Dear Rat,

Please destroy this letter after you read it, it is meant for your eyes alone. Chance is not what enabled Wenward to find you. Your presence in the palace plays a key part in the events that will be set into motion on the night of my death.

I have planted this letter here for you to find when you will go out seeking answers to the questions that torment you. I ask you as a close friend, the closest most trusted friend you will ever have, please stop your search. Allow things to unfold as they must. Sit back and watch. I promise you, everything will be clear to you in time, you will understand.

You must hate me right now, as I know I would hate myself in your place, but every action I have taken was for the sake of a future better than the one presently set before us. You have endured much before you came here. Find it in your heart to forgive me.

I know my requests demand a high price, but if you are reading this now, I have made the ultimate sacrifice and successfully killed myself for the sake of this endeavour. I hope for everyone's sake that when you grow, you will be a better man than I was. Be patient, dear Rat, in due time, you will find your true self.

With love and devotion,

Yours, only yours,

Harlock Cooper

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I read through it once, stumbling over the words, and then I read it again, my heart slamming against my ribs. A letter from Harlock Cooper to me, the ghost words of a dead man, planted here for me to find when I went out looking. I stared at the white page, the words turning into black blots. I looked at the book, tucked underneath my arm. My Wielder sight came effortlessly to me these days. There was no trace of magic upon the book, none on the letter either – because then there would be a chance that a Wielder beside me would find it.

So how had he known I'd find it? Had he planted the spell within my own mind? Had I known Harlock Cooper my entire life without ever realising it? He was the most powerful magician in the world; how easy it would be for him to mask himself as someone else and plant knowledge in the mind of an unsuspecting boy.

I crumpled the letter into a ball and shut it inside my fist. Briefly, shadows danced over my fingers – then the letter was no more. We had not studied Unmaking yet, but it came naturally to me, it was exactly like creating, just done from left to right instead of from right to left.

I reluctantly put the book back onto the shelf. I felt dizzy and light, as if my feet were floating a few inches above the ground. If anything, I wanted to search for more answers, I was more curious about things around me, hungrier than I ever was to know everything.

A rat scurried out from underneath one of the bookcases, its brown fur grey in the dim light. "Yo," he greeted me; he was a young buck, an admiring friend. I sat on the floor, welcoming the distraction.

"Hullo," I said.

"City rats have no sense!" he complained. "but in tail-end, they understood, and caught sight of your enemies."

"You found him?" a shiver of excitement went up my spine.

"Him we found!" my rat friend said cheerfully. "But they sent me to warn you."

"Warn me?"

"A large, nasty Human Buck wants to kill you."

I nodded, understanding. Gorn was still out there, looking for me, hoping to kill me a few more times before he'd find his own death. The rat ground his teeth together briefly before continuing. "He's come here, he's in the palace."

"What?" I leapt to my feet in alarm, startling my little friend who ran to hide behind the bookcase and after a moment came back to me.

"Hide?" he suggested and then he ran away again.

***

A swollen-eyed Grand Master greeted me from his bed when I barged in a few minutes later. I pulled all the curtains open, letting in the grey autumn morning light. "There's something I need to tell you," I said, I didn't wait for him to ask me what. "There's a man who wants to kill me. I mean, he already did me in at least twice, with a knife and then an axe, but then, I think he also broke my neck and put poison in the water I was given to drink."

"You mentioned being killed four times when I found you in the street that day." Murmured the old man in a raspy voice. I was too alarmed and too angry to give him credit for such an observant memory. He rubbed his bald head.

"He's managed to somehow get into the palace grounds," I said, nervously.

"You've seen him?" he asked and I glared at his question, I didn't have to see him.

"My spies have informed me." I hesitated before spilling the beans. "And they've also found Quintoxe's whereabouts, he's still in the city."

"Where is your man, then?"

"I don't know, he's wandering the grounds. Rats don't wander the grounds in open daylight."

"Neither do murderers," The Grand Master pointed out. "Why are you so anxious?"

"Because three times seems a lot less than seven when it's a matter of life or death."

"Go wash your face," he said with a smile, "we'll talk about this when you are calm."

I stood there and glowered at him while he was laughing at me. And if I had paused for a moment to think it over, he had good reason to. With my Wielder senses now properly developed, it would be hard enough to kill me once – three times would be impossible.

But my heart screamed in urgency and fear. Sometimes a person's intuition could be wrong.

But not if you're a Wielder.

The sound of shattering glass. The cold autumn wind blew in through the window, something sharp and powerful hit me in the back with a force that made me stumble one step forward. It pierced through me; I felt the sharpness of it cut through my insides right to my beating heart.

That went on beating despite the warm blood that trickled down my back. I turned to look out the broken window. Gorn should have been on the tree by the window; while I knew he was there, I couldn't see him.

The Grand Master reached out and pulled the crossbow bolt out of my back. I gasped in pain, but it was gone in an instant. He rose out of bed like a hurricane. Although thin, he was large and overbearing. He shielded me from the open window, rays of light gathered around us and a moment later we stood in the gloom of the library.

The old man turned to look at me; his expression was grim, his blood-shot eyes burning with rage. "That," he said with his face growing decidedly red, "is one very motivated killer. What magician in his right mind would provide him with a talisman?"

A talisman? So there were ways to even render magicians blind? And out of all the rooms in the palace, how did he know I would be in the Grand Master's bedroom? Someone with magic had helped him in this as well.

I spat the name, "Quintoxe."