Shadow Games (The Collector Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  It had helped her understand her parents better when she played as them. It had helped her understand her instructors better and know what they needed from her and the way that she could best serve. Understanding her opponent through Tsatsun had allowed her to find a way to halt the destruction of the Hjan.

  “That’s why you want me to play. You want me to understand you?”

  Carth shrugged. “I would have no problem if you understood me better,” she said. “But this is more about what I need than what you need.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m hoping that you can master the game enough that you can attempt to play as me. That would allow me to play as the Collector.”

  “Didn’t you tell us that you used to play against yourself?”

  “When I was learning, that was how I first came to Tsatsun. I would play each side, but there is something about playing that way that is limiting.”

  “And that is?”

  “I’m restricted to the extent of my creativity. In order to figure out what the Collector might do, I need to get into his head and play as him, but I need you to be able to play as me.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  “If you can’t, then I have one other possibility to understanding him, but it’s one that I dislike.”

  He frowned at her and once more, Carth could see his mind working. “You would use Linsay, wouldn’t you?”

  Carth sighed and looked away. “Not if I don’t have to,” she said. But it might come to that. She knew that it might come to that, and there was nothing that she could do to avoid it. Stopping the Collector would require everything that she could think of, and maybe she did need to see what Linsay might know.

  And if she did, wouldn’t she be able to better understand the Collector? If he had trained Linsay at Tsatsun, and if Carth could somehow encourage Linsay to play his style rather than a neutered form of it, it was possible that she could get to know him better. Maybe she could understand his tendencies and could use that to know how to counter him. She didn’t know how much time they had remaining, but she didn’t think that she could waste much.

  “I don’t know that you have much of a choice,” Boiyn said. “I know that you would protect her, even after everything that she’s done to you, but this might be the one time where you can’t do that.”

  Carth smiled at him. “Did you come up with that by playing Tsatsun?”

  Boiyn wrinkled his nose as he frowned. “No. I came up with that because I know you, Carthenne.”

  Carth sat back, playing the game again, trying to come up with another solution, but none came to her. She hated that it would come to this and that she would be forced to involve Linsay in this way, but perhaps that was only fitting.

  11

  Carth moved carefully along the charred remains of the street. Buildings were blackened from soot and char, the remnants of her flame magic that had burned through here. She was impressed that more of the buildings had not burned, but most were a combination of wood and stone, and the stone didn’t burn. It only crumbled.

  Alayna prowled alongside Carth, moving silently, her head swiveling as she searched the streets as if fearful that they might come across the constables and be thrown back into the elevated cells. So far, they had not seen any sign of the constables since they had escaped the prison. Carth didn’t know whether she should be troubled by that fact or not. Something told her that she should be more bothered by it than she was, but she had enough to worry about.

  “I can’t believe you did all this,” Alayna said. Her voice was hushed, but even that seemed to carry.

  Carth was tempted to wrap the shadows around them, but doing so would obscure Alayna’s ability to see clearly, and she needed her friend—and her ability—to help her know where they might find Linsay. Carth wasn’t certain that they would. It was possible that the Collector had sent Linsay out of the city, thinking to protect her from retaliation, but there had been no word of movement along the docks, nothing that would make it seem as if she had been sent away.

  “I only added to what had happened here. This wasn’t only my magic,” Carth said. She probably could have destroyed a building, maybe two, but more than that would have been beyond her capacity.

  “Do we know why she was willing to destroy this part of the city?”

  Carth shook her head. “The building where I’d found her was empty. There should be no reason for her to have wanted to destroy this. There was nothing here.”

  Though Carth remembered Talia telling her that this had once been a more prominent section of the city. There had been a time when this had been shops, and that was what bothered Talia more than anything. She hated the fact that the Collector had changed the city, buying out shops and using them for… what?

  There had to be a reason that the Collector wanted those shops, even if she didn’t know what it was. Could there be a connection between the shops and what he was searching for?

  Carth frowned, looking at the area around her with a renewed interest. If he had wanted to use these shops as some way of concealing his activity, it would make more sense that Talia had destroyed them—unless she had destroyed them only to draw Carth in. Carth still wasn’t convinced that the Collector hadn’t intended for Talia to do exactly as she had.

  But was that right? She kept crediting him with knowledge that might not be accurate. Every player playing Tsatsun had setbacks. Even a skilled player had limitations to their game. When Carth played Tsatsun, she inevitably lost pieces. Could this have been a piece that the Collector had not anticipated losing?

  “Carth?”

  Carth shook away the thoughts. “Yes?”

  “You’re just standing there. I thought that maybe there was something I overlooked, but you have this strange expression on your face that tells me you’re lost in thought.”

  Carth smiled. “My expression tells you that I’m lost in thought?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been around you enough to recognize the way that you get when you’re trying to think through things. I don’t have to be a master Tsatsun player to know that about you.”

  Carth chuckled. “No, I suppose you don’t.” She looked around, surveying the street. “I’m trying to determine whether he knew that Talia would destroy this part of the city.”

  “And did you come up with anything?”

  “He didn’t,” a voice behind her said.

  Carth spun, unsheathing her sword as she did, and found Talia standing near a confluence of shadows. She barely reacted when Carth flashed her sword toward her.

  “He didn’t know. And he doesn’t know that I’m the one who freed you from the cells. He’s blaming another.”

  Carth frowned. “Who?” Even as she spoke, she thought that she knew. Were she in the Collector’s position, she would blame the person tasked with getting close to her. He would blame Linsay, thinking that she had gotten too close to Carth and that she had come back to rescue Carth, to free her and her friends before the tribunal could make a decision about their death.

  Talia shrugged. “I don’t know, but I suspect it’s this other that you would like to protect.”

  Carth sighed. “If it’s this other, she’s the reason that we were brought here in the first place.”

  Talia studied her, and Carth could almost see the question that she longed to ask, the one that begged the question about why Carth wasn’t willing to go and help Linsay. She said nothing about it. “He blames you for this part of the city being destroyed.”

  Interesting. If the Collector believed that Carth had done it—and not Talia—then perhaps he thought that she already knew what was here.

  That would explain his forthrightness with her.

  “What did he want here?”

  Talia shrugged. “I don’t know. He asked me to wander through here periodically and report if anyone else came through, but there was never anyone before you came. Why would there be? These buildings were all empty and there’s n
o value to them. No value to anything here, especially as it’s entirely emptied.”

  “There has to be some value, otherwise the Collector wouldn’t have asked you to come through here,” Carth said.

  Talia nodded. “I thought the same, but I’ve never been able to find anything.”

  “But you’re from Keyall.”

  Talia frowned. “I am.”

  “Are there any stories—rumors—of anything about this part of the city?”

  Talia glanced around, her eyes falling, and she took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “This was the oldest section of the city. It has been here for hundreds of years. Long enough that even the earliest settlers of the city left their remains here.” Talia pointed along the street. “The shops there used to be those earliest settlers’ homes. Over there was a temple, though whatever god they worshiped is long forgotten. And here was their access to the water.”

  Carth looked around, trying to envision the way Keyall would have looked long ago. “A temple?” she asked, opening her eyes. “And where was that again?”

  Talia guided her along the street. As she did, Carth kept her connection to the shadows wrapped around her and Alayna, now wanting to be more careful about their movements. If they were not, they ran the risk of the constables seeing her, and then she would be confronted with a different challenge.

  Talia stopped on an elevated section of the remains of the city. “Here. This was the temple, though it might have had a different name at that time. As I said, the earliest settlers would have worshiped a different god.”

  The stones that remained were heavily blackened, and Carth ran her fingers along them before realizing that they were not blackened by soot; they were made from a black stone.

  She frowned to herself and pressed her connection to the flame into the stone, curious whether it was a similar rock to what had formed her cell. The stone didn’t take on the heat, practically ignoring it. She combined the shadows and the flame, pushing it out through her palm, and sent a burst of that power into the rock. Nothing happened.

  “What are you doing?” Alayna asked.

  Carth glanced from Alayna to Talia. Talia had been watching her with a strange expression. Was she aware of what Carth had been doing? Did she have some talent to detect the magic that Carth was able to manipulate? She’d proven adept at ignoring the shadows Carth used.

  “My magic failed me when I was in the cell. I wasn’t able to use it to escape. The tribunal knew that I wouldn’t be able to. That was the reason they had chosen that location to trap me.”

  Alayna glanced at the stone. “And this is the same?”

  Carth shrugged. “I think so. I tried using a combination of my magic against it, and nothing happened. I think it’s the same as what makes up the entire cliff itself.”

  Talia nodded. “A few buildings are made of that stone, Carth.”

  “How?”

  “There are some deposits found, and always in sheets. The stone can be cleaved, but not easily broken.”

  Carth frowned and looked at the stone. She changed her approach, placing her hand on top of the wall. As she pressed her magic through it, the rock cracked with a sharp explosion and a section of it peeled away, falling off.

  “See? It can be cleaved, but otherwise it’s impervious. If you don’t have any way of reaching for the top of the cleavage plane, you won’t be able to damage it. None have found anything capable of so much as cracking it.”

  Carth found that interesting and tested it again, pressing her hand up to the top of the wall and sending a surge of magic through her hand, where it split the stone.

  “All I would’ve had to do was find a cleavage plane to escape the cell?”

  “It’s not quite that easy,” Talia said. “Those cells where they had you held did not have a natural cleavage plane. That’s why they’ve been so effective at holding prisoners over the years. There are other cells that aren’t quite as stoutly made. Those are not used for anyone suspected of having any power.”

  “Where are those cells located?”

  “Those are more traditional. The constabulary has a location outside of the city. It’s well-defended, practically a barracks.”

  Carth meandered around the remains of the temple. Would there be anything here that the Collector might have wanted? Could she find something here that he would have been after?

  There were the strange sheets of black stone that had made up the walls, but there was nothing else that she could identify as something that might have interested the Collector.

  “I don’t see anything here,” she said to Alayna.

  Alayna shook her head. “I don’t detect anything, either.”

  It wouldn’t be anything quite so simple as that, Carth knew, but she had to hope that perhaps she could come across what the Collector might have been after. There was nothing here, no sign of anything that would explain anything about the temple.

  She couldn’t remain here indefinitely. She had come hoping to see if she could discover something about Linsay, and she had, only it wasn’t quite what she had expected. Could the Collector have gotten angry with her? If so, Carth struggled to feel bad about it after what she believed Linsay to have done.

  “We should—”

  Carth didn’t get a chance to finish. There was movement at the end of the street and she looked up to see one of the constables making their way toward her. She doubted it was a coincidence that they had come while she was here or that the patrol had just happened to come this way.

  She glanced over at Talia. “Was this because of you?”

  Talia shook her head. “When will you believe that I’m not trying to work against you?”

  Carth shrugged. “Maybe I can’t. With everything that you’ve done so far, it’s possible that I won’t be able to move past it.”

  She turned away from the constables who were making their way toward her. She couldn’t linger for long, but she had to wonder whether she was overlooking something. Carth turned her attention back to the temple and scanned the remains, wondering if there might be something that would explain what the Collector might be after, but she saw nothing that made sense.

  “Carth?” Alayna asked.

  With a sigh, Carth turned away and started down the street. She wrapped shadows around her as she went, determined to sneak away before the constables reached her, though she knew they wouldn’t conceal her completely. The constables had some way of seeing beyond her shadows. If she could put distance between them…

  When they made it to a busier section of the city, she glanced over at Talia, who had stayed with her. “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Show me where the Collector might have been keeping Linsay.”

  12

  The edge of the city was dark and Carth crept slowly, not holding on to a connection to the shadows, not wanting to draw attention to herself. If the Collector knew that she was here, if he had some way of detecting her use of the shadows, she wanted to be careful that she didn’t reveal their presence, not while she searched for where he might be keeping Linsay.

  If this was some secret compound of the Collector, she needed to be especially careful. She wasn’t certain whether it was his compound and only had Talia’s word for it, but there was security around it that made her think that it might be. She noticed a pair of guards attempting to blend into the background on the other side of the wall.

  “Is this it?” Carth asked.

  Talia nodded. “I don’t think you should be trying to sneak in by yourself,” she said.

  “If you come with me, you will have revealed your deception to him. If another comes with me—and we’re caught—they are in danger. This way, it’s only me who is placed in danger. Besides, I can move quietly and in ways that others cannot match.”

  Carth studied the squat building on the other side. There were lights flickering in windows, but they were dim. Occasionally, a figure moved in front of one of the
windows before disappearing. Carth watched, keeping track of how many distinct forms she saw, and noted only a few different ones. There would be more—there always were—but maybe she would be lucky and not need to fight her way through the building. Besides, she needed to get in and out quietly and make it seem as if Linsay had gone of her own accord. If she could create that appearance, it would cast doubt in the Collector’s mind, making him wonder whether Linsay had truly betrayed him or not.

  “I will stay,” Talia said.

  Carth had debated whether she should allow Talia to remain, not knowing whether she could trust the woman, but decided that she probably had need of a spotter. She wasn’t sure whether Talia could be trusted—and suspected that she could not—but she was too far along now to change her mind about whether she would allow the woman to remain with her when she ventured into the Collector’s building.

  “You don’t think he will be here?” Carth asked. She had asked the question before and doubted that the answer would have changed, but she felt a need to repeat the question. He had managed to anticipate everything that she might do all too well, and she worried that he would do the same now. If he did, and if he captured her, what would he require from her?

  “He won’t be here. This isn’t the place that he likes to stay.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded to Talia. “Watch the front door.”

  “You plan on coming out the front door?”

  “It won’t be me coming out the front door.”

  Carth hurried around to the back side of the building. It was difficult to reach, but she had scouted ahead and found a narrow alley that she could squeeze along, and she managed to make her way to the back wall. With a surge of shadows, she leaped to the top and kicked over, landing just inside the grounds.