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“The mind that made this was lethal,” said Finian grimly.
“Dyer had a genius,” Red croaked.
Nobles in robes, dropping to their knees. Various sketches showed this. A man, a crowned king, wore a cape in one drawing. The bottom half of him was slowly fading out, disappearing. It looked as if the ink was fading, or as if water had been accidentally mixed with the ink and the image was washed out. But the whole thing was far too intentional for that.
“What is this?” Finian murmured.
“What does it look like?” Red’s words were quiet, his eyes closed. But he seemed to know exactly what Finian was looking at.
“It looks like a man disappearing.”
“Or being made invisible.”
Finian looked up sharply. “That’s madness.”
Slowly, Red pushed himself up a bit and stuck his hand inside his leather gambeson. He pulled something out and extended his hand as if handing something over, but Finian couldn’t make out what he was seeing.
He blinked and looked closer. Some kind of shimmering was on Red’s upturned palm, like faraway butterfly wings over water. He reached out, touched Red’s palm, and then he felt it. He was touching something he could hardly see.
Each time he tried to focus on it, it shifted, emitted that shimmering effect. But Red was holding something very solid, very definite in his hand.
“Take it,” he rasped weakly.
Finian did, lifting the nothing-that-was-something. “What is this?”
“This is that.” Red pointed to the image of the disappearing figure in the dye manual. “See what it can do.”
“Madness,” Finian said again, as precious time flowed away. But he had to understand. “As a powder, they’re explosive. As a dye, ’tis the royal indigo shade—”
“And true-dyed onto a certain type of wool, in a certain weave, it can do that.”
He could feel the wool’s weave, sitting lightly in his hand, its draped edges ruffling down over the edge of his palm
, but he could not see it. Not truly. And the more he tried to focus on it, the harder it became to detect.
“It appears some parts are there,” Red rasped. “As if little specks of the fabric are visible—”
“But all the surrounding spots are not.”
“As if one point in ten is showing.”
“’Tis almost as if…it’s picking up—”
Finian shook the fabric into the air, held it by his fingertips with the dun-colored wall behind it. For a brief second, it was visible as just what it was, a piece of pale weave, the size and shape of a child’s tunic, not indigo alone, but with a slighter, redder hue.
Then, before his eyes, it seemed to disappear again, blending in with the wall behind it except for those few little spots of distinctive, steady color that made the shimmering so disorienting.
“’Tis magic,” the spy said.
But Finian’s concerns were much less enchanted. “And that manual tells how to do this?” he demanded.
Red nodded his head once, an effortful move. “Aye.”
“But how? The secret of the Wishmés has been lost for hundreds of years.” Finian held up the shimmering, vanishing fabric, evidence that someone, somewhere, had known how to conjure this dangerous magic.
Red met his gaze. “The manual in your hand is not a thousand years old.”
“No, ’tis not. God save us,” Finian said, his mind already integrating the information and finding the ramifications bone chilling.
