Read Online A Discourse in Steel by Paul S. Kemp - Free Book Online Page A

breath.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    Nix waved it off. “In theory, then, dangerous how?”
    She put her hand on Egil’s. “A dying person’s mind…explodes. Things can get jumbled.”
    Nix had some experience with the sisters’ mindmagic. “Jumbled? Thoughts get mixed up?”
    She nodded. “Thoughts, memories, feelings. Everything. It can overwhelm because it all comes at once. You can become…not yourself.”
    Nix flashed on Egil’s words earlier about the sum of past moments making people who they were in the present. Rose had just inherited moments that weren’t her own. What would that do to her? To Mere, he said, “Maybe you could use your mindmagic to help her? Remove what’s not hers?”
    Mere shook her head and looked back at the door to Rose’s room. “I can’t. It would take a real mindmage. I can do what I can do because of…lineage.”
    “The only real mindmages are in Oremal,” Egil said. “And we’re a long way from there.”
    “We are,” Nix agreed. He knew of another mindmage, though, or at least the rumor of one. But he had no desire to walk that path unless absolutely necessary.
    “It could fix itself,” Mere said, a flash of hope in her eyes. “I think we just need to let her rest.”
    “Aye,” Nix said, nodding slowly as his thoughts turned. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
    “I will.”
    She turned to go back into the room and tend to Rusilla, but Egil first asked her, “How’d he die? The man she was reading.”
    “He was shot. Veraal—”
    “Veraal was shot?” Nix said, thinking of their old friend.
    “No,” she said.
    “Veraal shot someone?”
    “No,” she said. “Veraal said the dead man was shot through the throat. A professional job, he said.”
    “Uncle Veraal,” Nix said, shaking his head and smiling. He hadn’t had dealings with Veraal in years. “What’s he doing there? In the Bazaar.”
    “He sells smoke leaf. Next to our tent. He said he knew you two, but he didn’t say he was your uncle.”
    “He’s not,” Egil said. “An uncle is…He was our fence for a long time.”
    “Oh.” She looked surprised, her lips pursing. “Well, he was nice.”
    “He’s all right,” Nix said.
    “Selling leaf?” Egil said, and looked to Nix and both of them said at the same time, “Cover for his coin.”
    Mere looked confused. “What?”
    “The leaf stall is just cover for his fencing operation,” Nix said. “It covers his coin, should the Lord Mayor’s taxman come knocking.”
    “She doesn’t need to know all this,” Egil said.
    “I’m not a child, Egil,” she said, hands on her hips.
    Egil’s ears colored under her reprimand. He ran his palm over his head. “That’s not what I meant, Mere.”
    “Yes it is.”
    Nix changed the subject. “Tell me more about the dead man. If Veraal said it was a pro click, then it was a pro click. Maybe someone we knew.”
    “I didn’t see. I wasn’t in the tent and don’t know any more about him. Rose was babbling in the wagon on the way from the Bazaar. She was talking about coin and clicks and naming places. A committee. And eight of something? And she said something about a tattoo, blades and a circle.”
    Nix looked sharply at Egil. “Committee?”
    “Describe the tattoo in detail,” Egil said.
    “Was it on the back of his hand?” Nix asked.
    “Doesn’t have to be there,” Egil said. “They move around, I hear.”
    Mere looked from one to the other, trying to follow their conversation. When they stopped, she said, “Rose said it was an eight-pointed figure. Like a compass rose you’d see on a map. That’s what she said. Like a rose, like her name.”
    “Shite,” Nix said, disbelieving. “You’re sure she said that? Eight points?”
    Mere nodded, a question in her eyes.
    “And it had a circle in the center?” Nix pressed. “Like a coin?”
    “She just said a circle and I didn’t see it so—”
    “Shite,” Egil said, and ran his hand over Ebenor’s eye. “Gotta