LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Are they all the same color?”

      “In theory, yes.”

      “I’ll go with the practical—you were never very good with theory, anyway.”

      “You know how I said the top three were purple?”

      “Top three being the ones you saw first?”

      Kaylin nodded. “I think I was wrong. They’re purple now. But I think, if I’d been here during or immediately after the spell was triggered, they would have been the blue I’m used to seeing. Does that match what you’re seeing at all?” Teela had never fully explained the paradigm through which she detected magic.

      “I’m uncertain. When you say you think they would have been blue, are you detecting a change?”

      “...Yes. No.”

      “Which is it?”

      Kaylin pointed up the stairs. “The ones toward that end are much redder. They’re distinctly aftereffect, at least to my eyes. I don’t think they’re indicators of active contingency spells, but the last one is Dragon-eye red.”

      “The one before it?”

      “Red as well, at least compared to the first sigil.”

      “They’re distinct marks?”

      “There are more than six marks,” Kaylin replied, frowning as she stared up and down the wall. “But there are six distinct sigils.”

      “You believe the casters repeated spells?”

      “You’re seeing a pattern, too?”

      “A possible pattern.”

      Gavin took this moment to clear his throat. Loudly. Mages did not often discuss their evaluations while making them, though they might compare notes after the fact. Kaylin thought that was garbage. Discussing her observations allowed her to focus on what she was seeing in a slightly different way. But then again, she wasn’t an Imperial mage.

      She went back to the first sigil and carefully made her way down the steps again. “I’m going to need to sketch these,” she murmured.

      “I’m not certain it will be helpful,” Teela replied. Kaylin was not a very good artist.

      * * *

      The sigils did repeat. They did not repeat in an immediately obvious sequence. “I don’t think the mages involved were working in concert.”

      “Because of the different saturation of red?”

      “Partially, yes. But there’s also some overlap. If the placement of the sigils are any indication, these stairs probably appeared when the last of them was laid down. Teela—”

      “On it,” the Hawk replied. “If you’re about to say these marks weren’t placed on these walls.” Teela frowned and gestured. She didn’t add to the pattern in any way; the detection spells of the mages were cast upon their own eyes.

      “I think you’re onto something,” Teela finally said. “If we imagine that the spells were cast when the casters were standing on level ground with low—very low—ceilings, they would not overlap in the way they appear to overlap now.”

      “The red worries me.”

      “It worries me, as well. I don’t see red,” she clarified. “But I see some indication of...contamination.”

      “Is it possible that six different people were trying to cast the same spell at different times?”

      “It’s possible, yes. Which introduces a host of other questions, none of which are comforting.”

      “No.” Kaylin glanced at the small dragon, who lifted a wing in silence, staring at the walls as if he could see, more clearly, what was written there. “Wing view is the same. There’s no new information.” Kaylin exhaled. “Shall we go view the bodies?”

      * * *

      The bodies were in the room the stairs led into. It was not a small room, and given the depth to which the stairs descended, Kaylin wasn’t surprised to find that there was standing room here. The ceilings were tall and appeared to be made of the same rock as the stairs and the floor. There was no way this room and the second set of stairs had been carved in just three days. Not without a lot of magic. And noise, for that matter.

      Kaylin had not asked the familiar to lower his wing, and he hadn’t folded it across his back on his own, so she assumed he intended for her to see something. She entered the room, wondering—not for the first time—how he actually saw the world. Did he see what his wing exposed? Did he see more? Was everything just a jumble of possibilities and probabilities, without concrete reality to hold it in place?

      “Gavin,” Kaylin said, lifting a hand and immediately regretting it as cloth chafed her already-sensitive skin, “where exactly did you say the bodies were?”

      Teela turned to look at her in open disbelief. Gavin was probably drilling the side of her face as well, given Teela’s expression.

      “Tell the familiar to lower his wing,” Teela told her.

      The familiar in question squawked.

      “I’m sorry,” Teela replied, with zero actual regret in her voice, “but we need Kaylin to see what’s actually here. You can play the part of slightly detached mask again afterward.”

      The small dragon lowered his wing.

      * * *

      The moment it was gone, the bodies appeared. Nothing else looked different to Kaylin—the room was still far too large and the ceiling too high. The bodies, however, were a significant addition. There were, as Gavin had said, three. They were, on first glance, all male and approximately Kaylin’s age.

      They were also lying in a kind of sleeping repose and had been arranged in a neat row, their feet even with one another. They wore nondescript clothing of the type that a carpenter or gardener would wear. They did not appear to have expired of specific injuries; there was no visible blood.

      “Have the bodies been moved at all?” Teela asked.

      Gavin replied in a tight voice, “I have been at this job for longer than most of the Barrani. Beyond what was required to ascertain that they were not alive, they have not been touched.”

      Teela nodded thoughtfully. If she’d noticed Gavin was offended—and since she was Barrani, there was a chance she hadn’t—she clearly didn’t care. “So we have neatly lined up bodies of slightly different sizes—all apparently mortal—that Kaylin can’t see when she’s looking through her familiar’s wing. This is not looking promising.”

      “Should we send the bodies to Red?” Gavin asked.

      “I think,” Kaylin replied, before Teela could, “that we should bring Red to the bodies. I’m not liking the idea of bodies that can’t be seen—”

      “By you.”

      “—being deposited in the morgue. The protections we have in the Halls are for the regular magical criminality, and this clearly isn’t it.”

      Gavin hesitated for a fraction of a second, as if taking any advice from someone so junior and from such questionable roots was against his every fiber. He was, however, practical, and his nature forced an end to that hesitation. “I’ll mirror it in. Head to the Halls and make sure the Hawklord sits on the Imperial Order—we’ll want those reports as soon as possible.” He glanced at the bodies. “His parents aren’t going to be happy.”

      “Which one is the son?”

      “The one on the left. Neither of the parents recognized the other two, so I’ve sent a request to Records for any information about previous criminal activities or any missing-persons reports that might involve them.” He handed Teela the portable

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