Chapter 50 – Angles of Attack

The tavern was always nearly empty in these early morning hours. Only at the bar sat two old men over their first ales, silent and seemingly lost in thought. They were probably there every morning. The innkeeper was polishing mugs and nodded wordlessly to Valentina as she entered.

She didn’t have to look for him at all. Hobkin was sitting in a corner, his feet propped up on the bench across from him, and was relishing bread with cheese and pickled onions. When he saw Valentina, his face began to form his usual grin, but the movement died before it reached his eyes. He put his feet on the floor and sat up straight.

“What happened?”

Valentina sat down across from him, placed her hands flat on the table, and told him what she had seen. As she spoke, Hobkin grew very quiet.

For a long time he said nothing at all, just sat there staring at a point somewhere beyond her, and in the silence Valentina heard one of the old men at the bar set down his mug and ask for another ale.

“Describe him to me in detail,” he said then, and his voice was flat and cautious, and all lightness had vanished, and he seemed much older and harder than usual. “Were all his fingers broken? Every single one?”

“Yes, multiple times, in fact. And… and the nails were torn out.”

Hobkin grimaced.

“Hobkin, could this be connected to our business?”

He rubbed his lower lip with his thumb and thought about it, and she realized that he was taking the question seriously and wasn’t trying to brush her off with a quick answer.

“Hoager carried messages for at least a dozen different people,” he said finally. “People who are far more dangerous than you and I. Debt collectors, fences, including one or two guys you’d be better off not talking about out loud in this town. One way or another the boy had his fingers in more dirt than the river harbor master has during high water.” He shook his head. “I can’t rule it out, but my gut tells me it was more likely one of his other entanglements.”

“But you can’t say for sure.”

“No.” He looked her straight in the eye. “But even if it’s somehow connected to that, you have to remember that the whole system works so that the courier doesn’t know who’s picking up what. Hoager knew where to deliver the message, but he didn’t know what you were buying or why.”

Valentina wanted to believe him. It was a reasonable explanation, logical and reassuring, and part of her clung to it.

Hobkin leaned forward. “Should I look for other sources, bring in other people?”

“Not right now. I need to think first.”

“Take care of yourself,” Hobkin said quietly. “And come see me if you need anything.”

On her way to the university, she conversed in thoughts with Vyxara. “He’s right that Hoager was involved in a lot of dangerous stuff.”

“Hobkins’ assessment is reasonable,” Vyxara replied. “But incomplete. He doesn’t know that someone in Bridgewater is actively searching for the Eye of Deceit and he knows nothing about the attack on Dolorosa. He doesn’t have the full picture.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer, then, to just get rid of the Eye? Bury it somewhere where no one will find it, and hope the trail goes cold?”

“No.” Vyxara’s voice was unyielding. “If someone is already after the Eye and has already picked up your trail, then discarding the artifact won’t free you from his interest. On top of everything else, the Eye is also a weapon, little Weaver, one you’re only just beginning to understand and which, in a pinch, gives you a far better chance than anything else at your disposal.”

Valentina was silent for a moment as she passed the small chapel by the river, whose Ember swept the steps and gave her a friendly nod.

“We must continue to be vigilant,” Vyxara continued. “Keep an eye out for the cloaked figure and anything else that suggests you’re being watched or followed. And we must never leave the house without enough Distilled Essence to defend ourselves in case something happens.”

“Understood,” Valentina said quietly.

“I wish we could be more proactive. I hate not knowing which direction the attack will come from.”

“I feel exactly the same way.”

~

Over the next few days, Valentina forced herself back into the rhythm of lectures and seminars, and she managed it better than she’d dared hope, because the work on her master’s project actually absorbed her. Late in the evening, as she sat poring over her calculations and the numbers and geometries formed into three-dimensional structures in her mind, she could forget for an hour or two what she had seen in that alley.

Sometimes.

In Veilford’s seminar, Crispin sat three rows ahead and on the other side of the aisle. He greeted her politely when their eyes met and even held the door open for her as she left the lecture hall after him, but he kept a deliberate distance that hurt more than Valentina wanted to admit.

Innogen, who noticed that Valentina wasn’t doing well and tried several times to find out why, stopped asking questions when Valentina told her that a boy she knew from the street had been found dead. Instead, she simply held her close, and Valentina was once again very grateful to have Innogen in her life.

On Thursday afternoon, she met Professor Whitehall in the Tower of Healing.

“I’ve looked over your preliminary calculations,” said Whitehall as she pulled the parchment from a stack buried beneath a withered sprig of rosemary. “The boundary condition method for the coupled constraints is a very elegant approach, and the initial results for the two outer rings are promising.”

“But?” asked Valentina.

“No ‘buts.’ Whitehall smiled her warm, intelligent smile. “You’re on the right track, Valentina. Keep at it.”

~

In Von Agrippin’s lecture that afternoon, Valentina sat next to Innogen in the fourth row and took notes while Johann derived the geometric operators on the slate that described the transition between Ard and Luvt.

He was wearing his burgundy doublet and had rolled up his sleeves to his elbows so as not to ruin them with chalk, which gave him a somewhat artisanal air, as if the scholarly art were more akin to physical labor than theorizing and talking. Every now and then he turned around, posed a question to the room, and waited patiently with his arms crossed until someone felt confident enough to answer.

When the lecture ended and the students stood up and packed their things, Valentina remained seated, organizing her notes, while Innogen said goodbye with a wink. “I still have to go to the library and look for something for the essay that’s due in two days, before Veilford skins me alive.”

“See you tomorrow then?”

“At the latest,” said Innogen, briefly squeezing her hand.

The small cluster of students around Johann thinned out after a few minutes, and then he came over to her.

“How’s the stability analysis going?” he asked without beating around the bush.

“Good, actually. The boundary condition method works for the outer rings, and I’m in the process of extending it to the third ring. The fault estimation gets more complicated there, but the principle holds.”

He nodded. “I expected nothing less. Someone with your understanding of the geometric relationships was bound to see the application.”

“Thanks for the nudge, though,” said Valentina. “Without your idea, I’d probably have been fiddling with the problem for weeks.”

“Then I’m glad to have been of use.” He smiled and casually brushed a bit of chalk off the sleeve of his doublet. “I promised to invite you to my town lodgings. I assume you’re free tonight? The food will be significantly better than last time, the walls are considerably thicker, and the bed is big enough that your feet won’t hang over the edge.”

The way he said it, casually and with the matter-of-fact assumption that of course she would want to come, made Valentina smile involuntarily.

“I’d love to,” she said.

“Good. The three-story house with the red door on Midriver Row in the merchant district. Around eight?”

“I’ll be there.”

He tilted his head slightly, a hint of that old-fashioned courtesy he sometimes let show, and then walked down the steps and out of the lecture hall, and Valentina watched him go, feeling the familiar, warm anticipation in her stomach.

“This time he didn’t even pretend it was just an academic meeting,” Vyxara remarked.

“Why should he? We both know what it is.”

“Still, you should see what you can get out of him. He might share things in a relaxed, private setting that he wouldn’t mention in the lecture hall.”

Valentina rolled her eyes inwardly. “Vyxara, not everything has to be strategy.”

“Of course not.” The demon’s reply dripped with amusement. “Go, have fun, enjoy the wine and the man and the food and whatever else he has to offer as dessert. I’m the last to complain about that.”

~

Back at the house on Pinfeather Lane, Valentina went straight to her study and activated the Sight.

The protective structures on the walls were still solid and untouched, both the normal and the demonic configurations. Beneath the floorboards rested the iron box containing the Eye of Deceit, and in the locked cabinet lay the small box with the sealed Corrupted Essence.

Everything was dampened, and everything was just as she had left it.

She deactivated the Sight, walked over to her bedroom, and opened the narrow wardrobe. After a moment’s thought, she chose a dark green dress with tight sleeves that accentuated her figure and took on a warm hue even in the nightlight of candles or essence lamps, a shade that complemented her chestnut-brown hair perfectly. She braided her hair into a loose plait and examined herself in the mirror.

“Beautiful as always.”

“You know there’s no need for you to flatter me, Vyxara?”

“That’s why I don’t.”

As she locked the front door behind her and activated the protective barriers, it was already nearing eight o’clock, and the streets of Bridgewater lay still and cold beneath a cloudy winter sky. Her breath hung in little wisps before her face as she walked down Pinfeather Lane and turned toward the old merchant district, where Johann’s city apartment was located.

In the pocket of her cloak, the bottle of Distilled Essence she now always carried with her clinked softly.