Read Online The Archon's Assassin by D. P. Prior - Free Book Online Page B

things: alembics, retorts, dishes of different colored powders, candlesticks, a knotted tangle of tubes, lengths of metal wire, and what looked like toe clippings. The ceiling was plastered with creased and brown-stained paper covered in strange symbols and letters.
    Suddenly, the room brightened considerably, and the inside of the great helm burst with the light of a furnace. Nameless blinked until his eyes adjusted, then he turned back for an explanation.
    Magwitch’s sores and flakes stood out in stark reds and whites. Either the fellow needed a good scrub with a rough cloth, or he should be banished to one of those colonies on the border with Qlippoth—the ones the untouchables were sent to on account of their incurable diseases.
    “Now look what you’ve instimulated!” Magwitch yelled at Shadrak. “You’ve ratcheted my opus.”
    Magwitch stormed into the room and started sweeping everything from the table.
    “Weeks and weeks of experimentation ruinated because you didn’t have the brains or the courtesan to knock!”
    “What happened?” Nameless asked, as the contents of the table crashed and clattered to the floor.
    “Him, that’s what!” Magwitch pointed a grimy finger at Shadrak. “Stealthy Stan over there. Blows up my blooming door. Only takes a minute or two of daylight, and poof goes the dimminuting spell!”
    “Which was needed for what?” asked Shadrak, taking in the mess with a sweep of his eyes.
    “Imagos, picturesques. Things you simians couldn’t possibly compenetrate.”
    Nameless perched on the edge of the table and looked up at the ceiling. He recognized some of the writing, but most of the symbols meant nothing to him.
    “What’s with the Latin? Thought only the Senate used it. Well, them and an old friend of mine back at Arx Gravis.” Just the thought of Thumil made his guts ache. He refused to think about what he’d almost done to his oldest friend. Would have, if it weren’t for Thumil’s incomparable wife, Cordy.
    “Oaf!” Magwitch said. He shoved Nameless off the table. “It’s not just the presbyopia of the Senate, you know. It is the linguae aeternitae . Them’s words of great precision; the only ones fit for the task.”
    Magwitch plonked himself where Nameless had sat and raised a finger.
    “There is an orderliness to Latin, a logistical, a harmonica that befits it to the quintessential arts of my craft. You have heard of the Eternal City?”
    “Arnoch?” Nameless said. “Mythical” was the word he’d have chosen.
    At the same time, Shadrak said, “Aeterna? On Earth?”
    Magwitch rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. “The real Eternal City.”
    “Which is?” Nameless asked.
    Shadrak drew a pistol and jammed it against Magwitch’s forehead. “Cut the crap, Magwitch. We were talking about psychers, remember?”
    “I was simply explicating…”
    Shadrak cocked the trigger.
    Magwitch licked his lips. “Gun.”
    “Your point?” Shadrak said.
    “A vile word, no doubt Verusian, but quite apposite.”
    “Verusia?” Shadrak said.
    Magwitch pushed the barrel away from his head with a finger. “Earth, too. Realm of the Liche Lord. See, a wizard is cognominate of many things. I also know what that dark country used to be called in the time of the Ancients, if you’re interested.”
    Shadrak lowed the pistol, and Magwitch tracked it with his eyes.
    “A weapon consisting of a metal tube from which missiles are projected by explosive force. Geriatrically, a gun, but a pistol, if we’re to be more exactitudinally precocious. Indeed, a flintlock, by design.”
    “You’ve seen the like before?” Shadrak re-holstered the pistol.
    “They’ve been a hobbling of mine, ever since Bark Donan’s water-bloated corpus showed up with a hole straight through the center of his craniota. I assume that was you? There are footprints of Earth’s Ancients omniwhere, if you have eyes to see.” He tapped the side of his nose, then seemed to realize the action didn’t