The Gambler's Fortune

I learned this song as a young bride, when my husband’s cohort was stationed in defense of Selerima. Small groups would gather in the islands in the river at equinox and solstice, unmistakably descendants of the People of the Plains. This song makes it clear that Arimelin has been granting her gift of dreams to all races for uncounted generations

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, Second Day of the Spring Pair, Morning

I don’t think they’re coming.” Usara stalked over to the window to look down at the street for the third time since the second chime of the day. Below Selerimans were walking off last night’s excesses or setting off to haggle at the fairground.

I helped myself to fine white bread and lavender-scented honey cleared of every speck of comb. This wasn’t a morning for anything greased or spicy. “Sorgrad’ll keep his word,” I said stickily. “Even if he’s decided against helping us.”

Usara picked up a tankard of small beer and set it down again untasted. “You don’t think they will?”

“I have no idea,” I replied, exasperated. “I reckon the chances are better than even but Sorgrad will have a sight more questions before he agrees to work for wizards.”

“Sorgrad does the thinking for both of them?” asked Usara with a faint sneer.

“You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head,” I warned. “Mountain Men are no more stone-skulled cave dwellers in bearskins than Forest Folk are heedless songsters living off nuts and berries. Relax and eat your breakfast; they’ll have had a late night last night.”

“I’m still not convinced we need involve them,” said Usara testily. “Be careful how much you tell them; you know Planir and D’Olbriot are agreed we need to keep word of the Elietimm very close, until we have a definite means of countering their enchantments.”

“You can swear every mage and esquire to secrecy on pain of death, but you won’t stop word getting out. I spend more time around backstairs than you do, wizard, and rumors were running around the kitchen yards of Toremal last winter.” I waved the honey spoon at him. “I’ll tell Sorgrad what he needs to know. I don’t think you realize I need the pair of them a cursed sight more than I need you, just at present. They know people and places and all manner of useful things besides the Mountain tongue. You may have your magic but that’s precious little value most of the time.”

“I think you found it useful enough yesterday.” Usara’s words were clipped and haughty.

“Fair comment.” I sweetened my tone. “It’s just that it’s important you get on with them. You have to understand how Sorgrad and Sorgren think. It’s very straightforward; the world is divided into people they are for and the rest. If they decide to call you friend, they’ll take a dagger in the ribs before they’ll let you come to harm. If you don’t measure up, they won’t piss on you if you’re on fire in the street. Can you understand?”

Usara opened his mouth, changed his mind about what he was going to say and turned to look down along the high road. I continued my meal and wondered about a few things. Hopefully Vadim hadn’t been stupid enough to catch up with ’Gren this morning. I’d yet to see anyone get the better of ’Gren and wasn’t about to wager a Lescar cut-piece that I ever would. Countless men had thought they could take on some scrawny son of a fatherless goat and ended up mixing blood with their wine. I wiped my fingers on my napkin. If there had been any trouble, Sorgrad had the wit to keep out of it and send word to me. If worst had come to worst, Reza knew where we were lodging; he was a bright lad.

A maid knocked and opened the door of our private parlor, bobbing a curtsey. “Beg pardon, but there are two gentlemen to see you.” She covered her breath of hesitation over the word gentlemen with creditable aplomb.

“Fair festival to you.” ’Gren breezed cheerily in while Sorgrad swept the maidservant a courteous bow and sent her on her way with a silver penny to tuck into her bodice.

He was dressed in willow green today, another expensively tailored display of understated elegance.

“Good morning.” Usara’s nod mixed welcome with a nicely calculated hint of his rank in relation to theirs.

“It will be when I’ve eaten,” ’Gren took a seat and reached for the last soft roll. “My throat’s full of cobwebs.” Doubtless wakeful until nigh on the last chime of the night, he looked remarkably lively, washed and brushed in clean linen and plain leather.

Sorgrad settled himself on the window seat, speaking without preamble. “So, who’s this, Livak?”

“Usara?” I spread an inviting hand.

“I’m here to represent the Archmage’s interests.” The wizard drank small beer with an expressionless face. “I am a mage with a principal talent over the earth beneath us and skills with the other elements supporting it. I have the honor to be pupil to Planir the Black.”

“Pupil? Cloak carrier, bag man, something like that?” Sorgrad’s skepticism was a shade the polite side of insulting.

“I have been privy to the Archmage’s councils for some years.” Usara looked down his nose with an air of condescension.

“Not much experience of the world beyond your halls and courts then?” Sorgrad tilted his head on one side.

“If you lot were hounds, I’d expect to wait around while you all sniffed around and cocked a leg on the fence posts,” I commented idly. “Since you’re not, could we just get on?”

Sorgrad and ’Gren laughed and after a moment Usara’s severe countenance lightened with a rather sheepish grin.

“You always give peasants something to look at while you’re busy with your other hand, don’t you?” I pulled my gaudy ring out and waved it at Sorgrad. “Planir keeps everyone trying to follow his fancy footwork while Usara here does the business, no one any the wiser.”

The brothers looked at the mage with the first faint stirring of respect.

“That’s probably about right,” Usara nodded, neck less stiff.

“So now we can all be friends. Are you two going to help out or not?” I demanded briskly.

’Gren looked at Sorgrad, who swung his highly polished boots up into the window seat. “I think we might come along if you’re going to the Great Forest for a while. Even Niello had heard talk about the Draximal pay-chest and he barely listens to anything beyond people admiring his wonderful performances.”

“And if your retainer that keeps you in this kind of style, we could just about suffer it along with you.” ’Gren reached for a plump bottled cherry, dripping juice staining the snowy cloth.

“Good.” I saw a degree of relief on Usara’s face that reminded me the wizard wasn’t stupid. Good, indeed; if he knew his own limitations, he’d be less likely to drop us all in some privy pit.

A clangor of bells outside was echoed within by an elegant silver timepiece on the mantel. The narrow pointer halted on its progress down the engraved scale, newly turned for the longer days after Equinox. A costly piece, I noted absently, separate faces for every season, not just different scales on the same one.

“Third chime of the morning?” ’Gren looked up from the cherries with dismay.

“Is there some problem?” Caught unawares, Usara betrayed some consternation.

“Second day of a fair is always the horse races.”

’Gren grabbed his cloak. “If I’m going to turn some coin, I need to see the beasts showing their paces.”

Usara frowned. “Isn’t that a waste of time? Surely we should—”

“Horse racing is never a waste of time, as far as ’Gren’s concerned.” I caught Usara’s attention with a stern look. “I don’t know how you wizards do things, but when we work together, we all make time for each other’s priorities.”

“You go on,” Sorgrad spoke up from the window seat. “Me and Livak need to talk.”

I dismissed Usara with a gesture. “Go with him. We’ll catch you up.”

’Gren was waiting impatiently by the stairs, so after a last, faintly suspicious look at me, the wizard found his fur-trimmed cloak and followed.

“Do you think they can keep out of trouble, the pair of them?” I wondered aloud.

“If we don’t give them too long.” Sorgrad came to join me at the table. “So, where’s this book of yours?”

I went to my bedchamber and took the closely wrapped bundle from the bottom of my traveling bag. Laying it on the table, careful to avoid any spills, I untied the silken cord securing the layers of linen. Sorgrad ran a delicate finger over the embossed leather covering the boards of the cover, the original creamy hide yellowed by time. I opened the book carefully, using fingertips to turn the pages, their edges dark with use and age. The neat script was faded and brown but the illustrations down each margin and bordering top and bottom were bright and vibrant with color, even hints of gold leaf defying nigh on twenty-five generations. Animal heads peered from precise leaves and hedgerows, birds soared above delicate vistas and small figures worked diligently at their trades in little oval panels.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” remarked Sorgrad absently. He peered at the sweeping script and frowned. “Cursed hard to read though, even if it wasn’t so faded. You want Charoleia for this; she’s the best I know for the Old High Tormalin.”

I slid a sheet of parchment over the tablecloth, which bore Charoleia’s distinctive Lescari hand in new, black ink. “That’s why we came by way of Relshaz. I wanted a second opinion, given the scholars were apt to bicker over who had the right of it.”

Sorgrad laughed. “What about these wizards? They’re supposed to have powers over all the elements. Couldn’t they do anything to bring up the writing more clearly?”

“According to Casuel, he had far more important things to do, beyond telling me the ink had faded because it was made with oak gall and iron, that is.”

Sorgrad looked up at the sarcasm in my tone. “He sounds like a real prize.”

I didn’t want to discuss Casuel. “Can you read any of this?” I turned the pages carefully to a leaf decorated with a mountain peak, the angular script below a harsh contrast to the smooth regularity of the Tormalin.

Sorgrad bent over it. “I can’t read it all but I can make out enough to recognize the tale. It’s the saga of Misaen and the wyrms. I can tell you the version I know.”

“I want to read that version.” I tapped the book. “The Tormalin songs in there differ quite a lot from the ones I learned as a child. Curiosity gets Amit into the Empress’s bedchamber all the same but he doesn’t end up hanged, he makes himself invisible and sneaks out again.”

“Can’t Planir’s wizards do that?” Sorgrad leaned back in his seat. “What’s to say that’s aetheric magic?”

“That’s what Casuel said.” I shook my head.

“I presume something besides determination to prove him wrong brought you here?” asked Sorgrad dryly.

“The colonists tell us it was aetheric magic held the Empire together.” I turned to the book’s preface. “Look here; Nemith the Wily was six generations before Nemith the Last. No one had ever heard of elemental magic, the kind that Planir’s wizards use. That only emerged after the Chaos and anyway, if there’s magic in the Forest or the Mountain songs, it has to be Artifice, surely? No mage-born from either race has ever come to Hadrumal.”

Sorgrad grunted. “If we’re coming in with you, what’s our next step?” he demanded abruptly.

“I wanted to be sure of you two before I started planning. The first thing to decide is whether we go to the Forest first or the mountains.” I knew what I intended but wasn’t about to ride roughshod over Sorgrad this early on.

“We start with the Forest, that’s obvious,” he replied firmly. “Once the fair ends, there’ll be plenty of people going out along the western high road, heading through the Forest for Solura or back to villages along the edge of the wildwood. We can hook up with someone who knows where to find a band of the Folk at this time of year.”

“I was thinking of asking a Forest minstrel who’s come in for the fair,” I suggested. “For a start, someone like that might be able to read the songs for us and then, if they vouch for us, we’ll get more cooperation once we’re in the wildwood.”

Sorgrad pursed his lips. “Assuming you find someone with ancient lore, why should they trust you with hidden secrets?”

“How many men won’t trust me, if I put my mind to charming them?” I gazed at him with wide-open eyes.

“Me, for one,” he said tartly.

“Apart from you? No, it’s a good question. I was thinking it might be easier if I had some lore to trade.” The best way to get Sorgrad to do what I want is to show him a logical reason. “Isn’t it better to try the uplands first? You’re Mountain blood so anyone with something to tell will be more likely to speak to you. We take what we learn down to the Forest after that.” I tried to read his mood; Sorgrad’s one of the few people who ever takes my coin over a game of Raven.

“You can play that rune reversed,” countered Sorgrad. “You’re Forest blood, that’s your introduction to the Folk.”

“Half-blood,” I reminded him, “born and raised outside the Forest as well. I barely even speak the tongue.” Besides, I had just about made up my mind that the benefits of success to Ryshad and me outweighed the hazards of claiming kinship with my long lost father but I still wasn’t about to risk it, if I could find another way of hitting my mark. “You’re full blood and Mountain bred and we can reach the mountains sooner than the wildwoods, if we go north from here.”

Sorgrad looked at me for a long moment, his bright blue eyes as unrevealing as the surface of a sunlit lake. He took a stick of charcoal in a silver holder from a pocket and uncapped it, turning Charoleia’s parchment over. “Yes, the mountains are closer to the north, but do you want to walk into endless rows over mining rights and grazing? You’ve got Wrede over here, Tanoker, Dunsel and then Grynth.” He sketched lightly as he spoke. “When were you last up this way? Not since that business with Cordainer? A lot’s happened since to leave ill feeling brewing on all sides, ready to bubble right up into trouble. The lowlanders are pushing farther into the foothills each season, with wool prices going so high in the south. The smithing guilds from Wrede are taking over any mine they can claim a sniff of a title to and sinking new shafts all over. If the locals object, the liverymen hire ruffians out of the gutters to break heads and shut mouths.”

“That’s what working for wizards does for you,” I muttered, annoyed. “Messing around with quests and mysteries, you lose track of what’s really important. How bad is it?”

Sorgrad shrugged. “Worse than any time in the last ten years, maybe fifteen. There’s always been bad dealing up that way, on both sides. Add in the old rows over who exactly owns what in the Ferring Gap and the usual quarrels over just where Mandarkin territory starts and ends. I wouldn’t travel up there without hired swords at my back. Any Mountain Man up there will most likely throw rocks at you before you can ask the way to the nearest well.”

I looked doubtfully at his precise map. “Are we going to have to go right over to the east? I know the Gidestans aim to keep things peaceable but it’s a cursed long hike on lousy roads. And it’ll take us just about as far from the Forest as it’s possible to get!”

“We should try the mountains between Solura and Mandarkin.” Sorgrad drew in the westerly road and the edge of the Great Forest. “The Solurans leave the Mountain Men alone, keeping them sweet so any Mandarkin thrust south runs backward off a cliff edge, helped along by an axe. West of the Ferring Gap, the Mountain Men keep pretty much to themselves. If anyone has old lore, they’ll be your best bet. Anyatimm in Gidesta have pretty much abandoned the old ways, marrying out and settling in the villages with the lowlanders.”

I looked at the map and then up at Sorgrad. It was unusual to hear him using the Mountain name for his people, Anyatimm. Besides teaching me Mountain script and a few words like the ones for “horse.” “gate” and “sunset,” so we could pass messages between ourselves, he’d never shown any link to his origins. “So where exactly do you two come from? I don’t recall you ever saying.”

“That’s not important.” He tapped the map. “Look at the lay of the land. We go to the Forest first, find out what we can and head over into the fringes of Solura. We can avoid the Gap completely if we make our way up the Pasfall and reach the sokes, the valleys that is, that way.” He looked up. “It was Soluran mystics healed Halice’s leg, wasn’t it, with lots of mumbling and incense?”

“Planir’s sent his own men to make inquiries there,” I said absently. “It’s a cursed long way around, ’Grad. It’ll take half the season.”

“How long could a run-in between lowlanders and easterlings delay us?” Sorgrad demanded.

“That’s hard country,” I said doubtfully. “I’ve heard stories and they can’t all be fireside fantasies.”

“Another reason why we should go to the Forest first and wait for better weather. Spring down here can still be winter in the uplands.” Sorgrad had the air of a man laying the winning rune in a spread.

Make a living out of gambling and you learn when to lay your pieces and when to hold them in your hand. I still wanted to take the mountains first, reckoning Sorgrad and Sorgren’s blood and breeding were better bones for a winning hand than my uncertain birth. Perhaps we should trust to luck; every rune falls with two faces uppermost, after all. “Why don’t I take a turn around the taverns and see if I can get a promising tune out of some minstrel. You and ’Gren see if you can find anyone who might let us travel north with them. When we know what our options are, we can decide.”

“Good enough,” Sorgrad nodded. “Now what about this wizard of yours? You don’t think we might do better without him?” He looked sideways at me. “He’d be easy enough to lose with the city so full for the festival. Won’t he be passing any information straight to his Archmage? You’ll get more value for any learning if you keep it to yourself, until you know who it’s worth most to.”

“Messire D’Olbriot made the deal with Planir.” I shrugged. “He agreed a wizard should come to send any news back straightaway. If we find aetheric magic, Messire wants it fast enough to be some use if Elietimm boats turn .up now the winter storms are over. Getting letters back, even by courier, would take half a season. Pay a merchant to carry it, he’ll like as not forget it; hire a messenger and he’ll either get lost or hit on the head for his satchel. No, Planir knows he’s beholden to D’Olbriot on this and D’Olbriot knows he’s beholden to me.”

Sorgrad was patently curious. “So what do you get out of this?”

“You know that one deal, the one that sets you up for life?” I drew a teasing breath. “This could be it, ’Grad, this could just be it.”

Sorgrad laughed. “Like Cordainer’s offer? Like I don’t know how many other schemes Charoleia’s suggested over the years? You don’t take lead coin any more than I do!”

“We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” I laughed. “There’s got to be profit to be made from holding a marker with a Tormalin prince’s name on it.”

Sorgrad nodded and I was satisfied. As long as he thought I was just playing a speculation, I wouldn’t have to explain myself. Time enough for that when I claimed my pay-off from Messire. How best to make sure that debt would be a sizeable one was my current concern. “Let’s not waste daylight.” I stood up. “I’ll see you all back here at noon?”

“As long as ’Gren and that wizard haven’t landed themselves in too much trouble,” grinned Sorgrad. “No, this is a bit too rich for ’Gren’s blood. We’ll meet at the Swan in the Moon.”

I stifled a qualm as I followed him down the stairs. ’Gren could take care of himself and if Usara made a misstep Planir could bail him out.

I decided to start with the market square. There was no indication of last night’s bounty from the guilds now; all had been swept clean and men and women waited in long patient lines. The women were chatting, swapping opinions on erstwhile employers and comparing rates of pay; housemaids with their mops, weavers with the distaff no one uses these days if there’s the chance of a spinning wheel, dairymaids whose stools at least offered a seat to save their legs. Fresh-faced girls with hopeful smiles stood next to others with harder faces and wary eyes, those who’d made a bad bargain for their fastening penny the year before. The men weren’t talking so freely, eyeing up potential competition. Carters stood with a twist of whipcord pinned to their jerkins, grooms carried a hay wisp, shepherds had wool tucked in buttonholes and hatbands, a tuft of brindled hair for cowmen.

I made my way to the Swan in the Moon, wondering about enlisting Niello’s aid. Minstrels would be contacting him, looking for a hire to take them east across the Old Empire, traveling through the spring and summer seasons. Then it would be back to Col to squander their earnings at the autumn fair, one last celebration before heading back to the Forest with the songs and little luxuries they had gathered. I’d heard the same hopeful patter from three such on the road from Relshaz, all eager for a patron to pay their way but unable to shed light on my tantalizing song book.

I looked idly at the maidservants waiting for some offer of a fastening penny and, with luck, an advance on their wages for some festival fun. The older housemaids were about my own age, hopefully clutching their feather dusters. Who knows, if my mother had let me prove my independence by taking a stand at the summer fair of my fifteenth year, it is just about possible I might still be in Vanam. I could have been diligently saving my wages for linen and plate, sewing neat seams for a well-filled dowry chest, waiting for some tradesman at the servants’ door to woo me away to a respectable match that even my grandmother couldn’t scorn.

I laughed out loud. Only if I hadn’t taken to my heels with some glib charmer like Niello, after a few seasons polishing up fire irons and blackleading grates had driven me demented with boredom. I stuck my head through the gate of the courtyard and realized none of the masqueraders were around; doubtless all still abed and likely to be so for a good while. I’d come back later.

Music drew me into the tap room of the Fleet Hound but all I found was an impromptu gathering of local lads doing their best to impress their sweethearts. They were all fresh-faced girls; hair modestly braided and skirts decorously hiding the tops of their boots. One looked askance at my breeches and I grinned at her. The winter past had cured me of any lingering notion Drianon ever meant me for domesticity.

I had tried my best in Ryshad’s Zyoutessela home. I’d smiled politely at his mother, taken an interest in the doings of her sewing circle and changed the subject every time she mentioned the neighbors whose daughter would be laying a wedding plait on Drianon’s altar come Solstice. I had even spent more time in skirts than in breeches for the first time since I’d left home, until desperation had driven me out to hang around the D’Olbriot citadel in hopes of seeing Ryshad and curiosity had lead me to the vast, echoing library, the shelves of books reaching so high they had their own ladders attached.

At least my own mother had never smothered me with the suffocating, uncritical affection of Mistress Tathel. She’d taught me to read and reckon, encouraged me to think for myself, to acquire skills to offset the disadvantage of my birth, though she’d been thinking more of clerking rather than honing my talents with a bag full of runes. I’d grown fond enough of Ryshad’s mother but she reminded me of the white-banded eaves-birds I could see building nests under the gable of the inns that ringed the square. They always return to the spot they’d used the year before and the year before that. My sympathies lay with the ring-necked hawk I could see scanning the roadside, ready to stoop on any prey flushed out by a passing wagon, taking whatever Talagrin sent it.

A wain trundled past, rumbling over the cobbles, leather creaking as the harness horse strained against his collar. I hadn’t been the only squeaky wheel on the wagon that winter. Ryshad soon realized there would be no going back to his father’s trade. His brothers were doing well; an ordinance the previous year banning wooden porches as a fire hazard had given them all the work they could wish for, and they adorned all the fashionable houses with smart stone pilasters and canopies. But now that work had largely dried up, three stonemasons in the family business was as much as the trade would bear. His elder brothers made it quite clear.

I hadn’t taken to Hansey or Ridner and the feeling had been mutual. Both expected demure obedience and home-embroidered linen from decent girls. Each was courting a tedious lass with wooing so lackluster any woman with a pennyweight of spirit would have been looking for a better offer. I’d said as much one evening, patronized beyond endurance.

I sighed, missing Ryshad, his ready wits, his certainty, his strong arms around me and the warmth of his loving. What we needed was some way of keeping ourselves in coin that we could both accept. His sense of honor wouldn’t stand for living off the profits I could turn with a rune and I couldn’t settle with him taking up some tedious trade, living in a neat little row house three streets from his mother and dining with the family every market-day evening.

A troop of dancers came out of the Bag of Nails. I waved to one. “What musicians have you got playing for you? I’m looking for a Forest minstrel.”

The girl shrugged. “Keep looking then. All we have are a couple of halfwits from Peorle.” She went on her way, a dancer’s grace in her steps for all her sensible shoes and warm cape.

Winter Solstice had brought Martel, Ryshad’s next eldest brother, to Zyoutessela. Home from his law studies in Toremal, he’d had a curvaceous masquerade dancer on his arm wearing less in the depths of winter than Mistress Tathel did at the height of the southern summer. Poor Mistress Tathel had desperately sought to be welcoming, imperfectly concealing her hopes that this lass’s lustrous locks would stay uncropped. Hansey and Ridner were torn between disapproval and envy and under the cover of the ensuing uproar Ryshad and I had found time to examine our prospects for the new year upon us.

D’Olbriot had offered Ryshad the title of chosen man, an undeniable honor. A sworn man making the step to chosen man and then rendering sound service could justifiably hope for a later commission to watch over D’Olbriot lands and tenants in some city or province. A stewardship, its stipend, independence to live our lives as we chose; it sounded promising. Ryshad saw it as the soundest foundation for our life together but I wasn’t about to sit on my hands for the next fifteen years waiting for that apple to fall in my lap. We needed some way of putting Messire D’Olbriot so deep in our debt that his gratitude favored Ryshad at once.

What were the patron’s pressing concerns? Firstly, securing the Archmage’s assistance without being obligated to Hadrumal. Secondly, ensuring the House of D’Olbriot retained its position as the sole conduit of influence with the colony of Kel Ar’Ayen, or Kellarin as more modern inflexions had it. Which is why I was here in Selerima working on the former while Ryshad was busy in the temporary service of Messire’s nephew Camarl, securing the latter. I still missed him though. Had I talked myself into a pointless quest when I might just as well have stayed at his side? I heaved a sigh.

No. If you don’t throw the runes, you can’t win the wager. What did ’Gren say about a seemingly impossible task? “You eat an elk one bite at a time,” usually adding, “and you start with its balls if it’s fighting back.”

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, Second Day of the Spring Fair, Afternoon

“I hardly think you are in a position to be making demands!” Eirys folded her arms and her indignation echoed around the bare white walls of the little room.

“I don’t think I should have to be asking,” Jeirran replied icily. He emptied his purse onto a dresser with chipped paint and a crooked hanging door. “A wife shouldn’t need reminding of her duties in bed or out of it.”

Eirys sniffed crossly. “If you had any consideration, you’d think of the consequences. What if I were to catch down here, in this rancid air? The babe would probably slip before we were halfway home.” She ran an unconscious hand over her slim waist.

“Aren’t you making a rather big assumption?” Jeirran turned with a sneer. “It’s been the best part of half a year since we were shackled over Misaen’s anvil. When’s Maewelin going to give you sons to work your land with me? Perhaps you should try and find a holy place if these profane lowlanders have such a thing, ask for her blessing.”

“Perhaps she’s waiting until you’ve proved yourself able to provide for me,” Eirys retorted acidly. “All your great plans have come to naught so far. All you’ve managed is disgracing my brother by getting yourselves locked up. I don’t know what Mother will say!”

“She won’t say a thing because you won’t tell her.” Jeirran raised a warning hand and Eirys took a hurried step to put the narrow bedstead between them.

“She’ll ask how we prospered,” she insisted nervously. “When we’ve been away so long, when you promised—” She fell silent as Jeirran took a pace forward.

“You go out shopping today,” he forced a smile. “Buy yourself a couple of nice dress lengths, some of the fripperies and fancies. Get your mother some Caladhrian lace, that should please her.” His tone hardened a little as he filled a small pouch with copper coin. “Find something that’ll have her well enough satisfied to keep her nose out of my business.” He tossed the purse onto the bed.

Eirys nodded, a smile brightening her face as she tied the purse at her waist. She picked up a warm embroidered shawl from the tattered counterpane, tucking it around her as she made for the door. Jeirran caught her with a powerful hand. “You needn’t hurry, sweetest.” He brushed a wisp of golden hair from her cheek and kissed her, lightly at first, then with more force, an insistent hand at the back of her head.

“It’s already late.” Eirys pushed ineffectually at his broad chest and twisted her face away coquettishly. “The best goods are to be had in the mornings—”

“And the best bargains are to be had in the evenings.” Jeirran’s forceful embrace startled a faint exclamation from Eirys but she yielded to his kisses readily enough. Jeirran’s murmurs of satisfaction were answered by her stifled giggles, his breath coming faster and one hand untucking the blouse from her waistband before an abrupt knock startled them both.

“Tidy yourself up,” Jeirran snapped, adjusting the set of his trews. “Who is it?”

“Us,” came the tart reply through the rough wooden door. Jeirran untied the latchstring to let Keisyl and Teiriol enter. Teiriol gave Eirys a sharp look seeing the high color in her face but she shook her head minutely, silent appeal in her cornflower eyes.

“What have you two been doing this morning?” asked Jeirran with a creditable assumption of ease. “The maid said you’d gone out at first light.”

“We thought we’d try our luck at the races,” Keisyl shot Jeirran a meaningful glare. “See if we could find another way to turn up some profit on this trip.”

“You should have woken me. What’s the horseflesh like down here?” Jeirran demanded with genuine interest.

“Bigger,” answered Teiriol with a bark of laughter. “Faster, sleeker, they race like dogs after a hare.”

“Lovely to watch but no earthly good on a steep track or for packing more than Eirys’ weight.” Admiration gave the lie to Keisyl’s contempt.

“You must have got their measure easily enough.” Jeirran looked hopefully at them both.

“After handling hill ponies all my life?” Keisyl snorted. “I could have told you which were the likely winners before the grooms got them saddled—”

“—but none of the touts would take our coin,” Teiriol burst out. “Apparently they’d heard about the likes of us. Mountain folk aren’t to be trusted, so they tell us!”

“You’re saying they wouldn’t even hold your stake?” Confusion drove the optimism from Jeirran’s eyes and a dark scowl settled on his brow.

“Not one of them,” confirmed Keisyl with cold anger. “No explanation, no apology, just thinly veiled hints that we were somehow going to cheat them.”

“I don’t understand these people,” Jeirran shook his head in wonder. “How can they be so wrapped up in their own conceits?”

“It’s because there are so many of them, just as we heard on the way down here.” Teiriol crossed the little room in two paces and peered down out of the clouded and ill-fitting window. “Look at them, busy as beetles in a muckheap. They have their own kind to buy from and sell to and that’s all they need. Drefial was right. If two of them cut each other’s throats over a deal, ten more step up to take advantage before the blood stops flowing—”

“All right, Teir, enough.” Keisyl nodded sourly.

“I need some fresh air.” Jeirran heaved a sigh “Keisyl, you take Eirys shopping. Teiriol and me will see if we can find someone from these all powerful guilds willing to give us the nod today.”

Keisyl looked doubtfully at Jeirran. “Shouldn’t I come with you?”

“It’s your turn to chaperone Eirys,” protested Teiriol. “I did spend all yesterday looking at beads and buttons,” he explained with an apologetic glance at his sister.

Eirys looked uncertainly at the men. “I could just stay here.”

“No, come on,” Keisyl offered her his arm. “We’ve got to make sure you’re looked after.”

Eirys gave Jeirran a quick peck on the cheek. “See you later, my love.” Before he could respond she was out of the door, her stout leather boots echoing on the bare wood of the stairs.

“I’ll bring her back at sunset,” Keisyl called back over his shoulder.

“We’ll give them a few moments to get clear and then we can be off,” said Jeirran quietly to Teiriol.

“What’s the point of trailing around after more guildsmen, cap in hand and begging their indulgence?” demanded Teiriol. “I’ve had enough of that, thanks all the same.”

“That was just to keep Eirys quiet,” said Jeirran scornfully, watching from the window to see his wife reach street level. “You don’t suppose everyone pays up for these trade tokens do you? No lowlander’s more honest than a peddler’s dog, if they think they can get away with it. There’ll be someone willing to save the cost of a guildsman’s bribe by buying direct from us.”

“You could be right, at that.” Teiriol nodded slowly. “So where do we start looking?”

“Degran Lackhand and his cronies always want a cockfight, don’t they?” Jeirran slung his cloak over one shoulder. “You were saying you’d like to see a real cock-pit for a change, birds reared for sport instead of the dunghill. There was talk yesterday in the tap room about a bull-baiting.”

“No wonder you didn’t want Keisyl along. All right Jeirran, I’m your man. I’d like to see a baiting,” said Teiriol avidly.

“I knew I could rely on you.” Jeirran slapped the youth on the shoulder in a show of good fellowship but contempt shadowed his eyes as he followed him down the narrow stair.

“So where do we go?” Teiriol halted on the step, turning to look expectantly at Jeirran.

“This way.” Jeirran walked around a corner to a wooden barn with an array of discarded horseshoes nailed on its wall. “I thought we’d ask in here.”

A wiry man, clothes dusty with chaff, was holding the head of a fretful pony while a well-built girl carefully picked inside a hoof resting in the lap of her calico apron.

“Good day,” the man said cordially. “Your mules are keeping well. Are you here to check on them or maybe looking for a day’s hire? We’ve two well-rested saddle horses ready for work.”

“No.” Jeirran waved a dismissive hand. “We want to know where to go for the bull-baiting.”

“All that goes on down by the Southgate. The baiting will be at the slaughter yards and the best bird-pit is at the Hooded Crow, just by the gate-house,” answered the horse trader readily enough. “Fair festival to you,” he called out but Jeirran and Teiriol had already turned their backs on him. The girl looked up to share a resigned glance with her father.

Jeirran strode out with a confident step. Teiriol followed rather more slowly, looking all around at the gaudy effigies set above the shopfronts.

“I can understand a cobbler hanging out a boot,” he said, amused by a vast, gaudily stenciled and improbably high-heeled offering, “but what under the sun is that supposed to tell anyone?” He pointed out a brazen eagle frozen in mid-stoop.

“Who cares,” said Jeirran, eyes fixed on the middle distance. He kept up the same brisk pace all the way down through the city, unwavering even when a clash of shoulders sent some passer-by stumbling into the gutter with an outraged oath. Neither was showing any sign of exertion when Jeirran finally halted. They looked up at the forbidding redstone bulk of the gate to the southern road. It loomed over the ramshackle houses run up against the city walls on either side, a vast three-story affair, parapets and embrasures alert in all directions, the gates below of black and ancient wood bound with straps and bolts of hammered iron. In the gloomy maw of the entrance, the sharp teeth of a portcullis showed like a hound’s warning snarl. An ill-defined space opened before it, patches of cobbles here and there, a crumbling wall all that remained of a fallen building, all useful bricks looted. From the empty niches still visible, it looked to have once been a shrine.

The bustle of the city was drowned out by a rising discord of bloodlust. Jeirran and Teiriol tried in vain to see past taller men as the commotion rose to a new pitch of excitement. Sharp yelps rose above vicious growls and the lower bellows of an enraged bull. The last agonized roar of the tormented animal was lost beneath a great cheer and the comparative silence fell, broken only by the frantic whimpering of an injured dog. The men drifted away in small groups, exchanging opinions, settling wagers, heading for ale at the rough and ready taverns doing a brisk trade all around the long rank-smelling lines of slaughtering sheds.

“We missed it,” lamented Teiriol, crestfallen.

A grim-faced man was unbuckling the studded collar of a brindled mastiff. The dog struggled vainly to rise, hind legs limp and useless in the foul mire of blood and dung. Its owner rubbed a roughly tender hand over its ears before lifting its muzzle. The dog’s eyes were trusting and warm, the man’s red and squinting as he slit its throat with one swift stroke of his belt-knife and stepped back from its final throes.

“Good day to you,” said Jeirran, raising his voice above the frenzied snarls of the rest of the pack, now ripping into gory hunks of their late adversary. “Will there be another baiting today?”

The man looked up, brutish face doleful. “No, not today, well, not with my dogs, anyway.” He looked over at the powerfully built animals, tan, black and brindled, tearing into their meat, and his expression lightened a little. “Artel! Show them the lash or you’re going to lose a hand. Talagrin’s teeth, don’t you know anything?”

He moved rapidly to snatch a dog whip from a nervous-looking lad who was only too happy to step back from the insistent demands of the mastiffs. The dogs crowded around their master, bloodied all over their blunt faces and down to their massive shoulders.

“Those are impressive hounds,” commented Teiriol, tucking his hands through his belt. One of the mastiffs caught his eye and rambled menacingly deep in its throat.

“Which drinking house is the Crow?” Jeirran asked.

“Yonder,” the lad replied. “I could show you, if you like—” He looked uncertainly at his master.

“You go on.” The man brought an errant dog back with a sharp whistle and growled a command that had all the heavily jowled heads looking up obediently.

“Come on,” said the boy Artel. He led them toward a tavern with an open frontage of rough-sawn deal, none too recently painted over with pitch. Pushing the men drinking idly around the threshold, he left Jeirran and Teiriol to pick their own way to the counter past broken stools and tables, the sawdust on the earthen floor many days old and clumped with spills of beer and blood.

“Two, here,” Jeirran raised a hand to an overworked tapster by the row of casks behind the trestle. “We were told this was the place for a cockfight?”

A leather flagon and two horn beakers were shoved toward him. “Out the back, that’s three copper.” The man didn’t even look at Jeirran’s face, taking his coin and turning to the next thirsty customer.

“Come on,” Teiriol tried to keep from slopping the ale down his shirt as he was jostled. “We should see some sport here, shouldn’t we?”

The rear door opened onto a deafening scene of heated anticipation, shouted conversation and a powerful smell of ale, sweat and chicken coops. Men and women crowded around the broad wooden steps rising all around the sunken round of the cock-pit, eyes bright. Newcomers waited for their chance at a place as those who’d already cheered themselves hoarse went in search of ale or wine.

Jeirran leaned forward to hiss insistently in Teiriol’s ear. “We’ve got to sell those pelts or your mother will be flaying the both of us.”

The thrill in Teiriol’s eyes dimmed a little and he sipped his ale. “This isn’t half bad,” he said with some surprise.

“So you can addle your wits till you can’t tell a cock from a hen,” Jeirran told him scornfully, drinking deep from his own cup nevertheless. “The innkeeper takes a margin on the betting, I’ll warrant.”

“Shall we have a wager?” Teiriol stepped forward eagerly as two birds were being readied for the pit. Jeirran pushed his way through to the rail. A strutting cock with scarred wattles and glossy copper plumage was already coming up to scratch while its smaller speckled opponent was still having brightly polished spurs fixed to its scaly legs.

Jeirran smoothed a reluctant hand over his beard. “Better not. If we lose any more money, Eirys’ll save your mother the bother and skin us herself!”

Teiriol gave Jeirran a sharp look but the two birds were released to fly at each other in a flurry of dust and feathers. Boastful crowing shrilled above the rising murmur of the onlookers and the fight was joined. The speckled bird made up for its lack of size with startling ferocity, launching itself upward, wings flapping and spurs raking forward at its opponent’s head and eyes. The bigger cock was driven backward, its handler hurriedly getting clear, but it crowed defiantly before charging back into the fray, wings wide and baiting as it clawed and pecked. The little cock, feathers ruffed around its neck, moved nimbly to avoid the copper cock’s vicious beak. It darted in to stab its head forward and scatter orange feathers beaded with scarlet drops of blood onto the raked sand. Not so deft on its feet and heavier in build, the bigger bird was soon on the defensive, vainly trying to protect itself from increasingly frenzied assaults.

Jeirran looked on as the smaller cock, comb proud and defiant, left its opponent crestfallen and dragging one crippled wing in the scuffed and bloodstained circle. People laughed as it went strutting and crowing its triumph before its handler could retrieve it. The defeated bird was carefully examined before being swathed in a soft cloth bag and taken away by its scowling owner.

“That speckle won’t amount to much if it doesn’t learn to go in for the kill,” Jeirran observed to Teiriol.

“There wasn’t much blood,” complained Teiriol, dissatisfied. Movement on the far side caught his eye. “Look there, Jeir, those two are Mountain blood or I’m a lowlander. Mother can’t say it’s only the muddy feet who like this kind of thing, can she?”

“They’re dressed like lowlanders.” Jeirran frowned.

“They could be easterners, three-parts true blood maybe, from some kin that had a daughter marry out.” He stared and got a challenging gaze back from the shorter of the two.

“I’d rather deal with our own, even with mixed blood,” said Teiriol urgently. “Would they take our pelts?”

“Depends what they’re trading for,” Jeirran replied slowly.

“Where did they go?” Teiriol looked around but the moment had passed. The two were gone.

“No matter.” Jeirran surveyed the room. His eyes returned to a handful of men on cushioned chairs set against the far wall. A small but respectful distance held steady between them and the close-packed crowd. Jeirran ignored the noisy contest beneath him as a couple of newcomers spoke to one of the seated men, handing over coin to receive a folded and sealed parchment, departing without so much as a glance in the direction of the cock-pit. “We want to fall into conversation over that way.” Jeirran nodded his head meaningfully.

He stepped back from the rail and Teiriol reluctantly followed him, looking backward as he did so. Jeirran stopped abruptly and Teiriol trod heavily on his heels. “What is it?”

“See that fat son of his grandfather over there?” Jeirran’s lip curled. “That’s the pig’s pizzle who took up me and Keisyl at the fairground yesterday.”

Teiriol looked at the man whose back was turned toward them. “And the others?”

Jeirran looked casually around before nodding slowly. “Yes, they’re all here, wasting our coin on birds better off in the pot.”

Teiriol laid a warning hand on Jeirran’s arm. “If we’re going to replace that coin, we need to sell those pelts, for all that we owe those scum a debt,” he pointed out reluctantly.

“True enough,” Jeirran turned his attention again to the hard-faced men sitting against the far wall and then to the heavy-set entourage drinking their ale with watchful faces by the way out. “Let’s see what that cloak carrier has to say for himself.”

The man in question, burly arms folded over a substantial gut, looked at the two Mountain Men with an unspoken question as they halted in front of him.

“Will you share a drink with us?” Jeirran offered his flagon. The man wordlessly held out a battered pewter tankard and Jeirran poured a generous measure. “Where might we find an honest businessman hereabouts?”

The big man looked contemptuously down at the pair of them.

“A man who prefers to deal direct, none of this nonsense over guild considerations and fair fees,” Jeirran explained genially. “We don’t do things that way in the uplands, you see.”

“What’s your business?” Interest sparked in the man’s hard eyes.

“Furs, pelts, better than half the stock on the stalls at the fair,” Jeirran raised his chin in unconscious defiance.

“Talk to Harquas, that gentleman.”

A heavy-set, silver-haired man with a crooked nose and sharp eyes turned his head toward them. “You want me for something?”

Jeirran stepped forward boldly, Teiriol rather more hesitant at his shoulder. “Good day to you. Your colleague suggests that you might be interested in mountain pelts.”

“I might, at that.” The man Harquas relaxed but his eyes were acute beneath bushy brows. He wore slate gray broadcloth, conservatively cut, bulk suggesting muscles relaxing into fat as he left enforcement of his dealings to younger men. “Are you looking for a regular trade or a one-off deal?”

“For the moment, just the one transaction,” replied Jeirran cautiously.

Harquas pursed narrow lips thoughtfully. “You’d be the two Mountain Men I’ve heard tell of, then, trying to sell your goods at the fair without paying your dues?” He nodded to someone.

“Where we come from, men only take a profit from work they’ve had a share in,” Jeirran said stiffly.

A mirthless smile curved Harquas’ bloodless mouth. He turned his head slightly as a potman came and whispered in his ear. “Excuse me.” Harquas leaned sideways in his chair to the man next to him, another thick-set type missing the forefinger on his near side hand and with a wicked scar running the length of his jawbone, as if some attempt to cut his throat had come in just a little too high. Harquas hid his words behind a raised hand. Jeirran folded his arms with a cold air of confidence. Teiriol’s attempt to copy this was rather less successful, as he realized he now had three villainous-looking men breathing heavily down his neck, all topping him by more than head and shoulders. Harquas nodded as his companion murmured something, shooting Jeirran a suspicious glance. “Well, friend,” Harquas smiled at Jeirran with all the warmth of a pig on a butcher’s hook. “I’m in something of a fix here. You seem like an honest man to me but Lehrer tells me you got taken up by the Southgate Watch at the fair. I can see for myself that Vigo and a couple of other nailers have been wasting their coin on these cocks since just after midday. If I were a suspicious man, I could think you getting taken up to the assize were just a ploy. Suppose I strike a deal with you, am I going to find guildsmen kicking in the door to my warehouse and you identifying the furs you sold me to some nosy Justiciar?”

The three men at Teiriol’s rear stirred with a creak of leather and the soft rasp of metal as one rubbed at a brass-knuckled glove.

“If that’s what you think, we won’t waste any more of your time.” Jeirran was unmoved. “There’ll be other people I can trade with in a city this size. I’m not interested in your guilds and your rules and your Watchmen,” he continued, not concealing his contempt. “I just want to sell my furs for a decent price and get back to my own affairs in the uplands.”

Harquas raised an eyebrow. “That’s very plain talk for a man outnumbered and out of his way. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“I don’t give a donkey’s hangdown if you’re impressed or not.” Jeirran shrugged. “Are you buying?”

Harquas exchanged a glance with his neighbor, who in turn looked beyond Jeirran for some signal. Whatever he saw satisfied Lehrer, his scarred face nodding to Harquas.

“If you’re prepared to do something to establish your good faith, I’ll buy from you,” said Harquas slowly. “If some misfortune lands on Vigo and his little gang, then I can be sure they’re not nosing around my business, do you see? If you were to be that mishap, then I’d know you weren’t hand in glove with them, wouldn’t I?”

“Why should we do your dirty work for you?” Jeirran ignored the rumble of annoyance behind him.

“Do you want to sell your furs or not?” inquired Harquas with silky menace.

“You want us to kill them?” asked Jeirran baldly.

Harquas frowned. “A dead Watchman gets the Justiciary unduly stirred up, in my experience. But they have to accept that every so often a nailer takes on a man just that bit too strong in his drink and gets a beating.”

“That’s the price of doing business with you?”

Harquas nodded. “Tell me where you’re lodging and if I hear the right word I’ll send someone to look over your stock at noon tomorrow.”

Jeirran shook his head. “We’ll meet at the market square, by the fountain.” He turned and glared up at the bull-necked man blocking his way.

“Let our friend pass, Teg,” said Harquas smoothly. “We’ll talk tomorrow, Jeirran.”

Teiriol followed Jeirran out of the cock-pit and back to the rowdy tavern. Jeirran’s eyes flickered from side to side until he saw Vigo, the Watchman, plump red face glistening with uncomplicated delight as he cradled a tangle-haired girl on his knee. Her unlaced bodice showed off heavy breasts to any who cared to look while Vigo hitched up her skirts to reveal bare and grubby legs beneath her tattered petticoats.

Jeirran pushed Teiriol into a gloomy corner and shook his head in disgust as the Watchman’s hand slid up and around the girl’s thigh. “Lowlanders. No more sense of fitness than dogs rutting in the street.”

“Never mind that,” Teiriol dragged his wide eyes away reluctantly. “How did that Harquas know your name?”

“How do you think?” replied Jeirran scornfully. “He’ll have men all over this city, won’t he? If he got word of our arrest, he’ll have had our names from the assize, maybe even our lodging.” He glowered darkly. “If his brutes come near Eirys, I’ll gut them, assize or no assize.”

“What are we going to do about these Watchmen?” Teiriol looked back at Vigo, whose head was now cradled in the girl’s arms, her wriggles feigning pleasure but her face bored.

“I can’t see him tupping that whore in full view. They’ll want a back alley at very least,” said Jeirran thoughtfully.

“We catch him with his trews around his boots?” Teiriol laughed a little nervously.

“Fair recompense for the way he nailed me and Keisyl yesterday,” answered Jeirran with cruel satisfaction. “Come on.”

Outside, the afternoon light was softening and a handful of wrestling bouts were being contested inside roughly marked-out circles of sand. Teiriol looked toward them regretfully but followed Jeirran obediently to a dark corner behind a gibbet. The wood was blackened with old blood and noisome corpses of rats dangled.

“Watch for him and for the others,” Jeirran ordered. They did not have long to wait. Vigo soon appeared with the whore hanging on his arm, Rif and Neth trailing after with expressions of eager anticipation.

“Are they all going to do her?” Teiriol wondered, startled.

“Like I said, they rut like dogs.” Jeirran moved cautiously as the Watchmen headed for the narrow entry between two dilapidated houses. “And they’re stupid enough to take their bitch down a blind alley,” he added with satisfaction, taking a pair of gloves from his belt and nodding to Teiriol to do the same. “Careful. We don’t want to start a fight anywhere we’ll be seen.”

Teiriol loosened his knife in its sheath as they crossed the open ground but Jeirran shook his head. “We’re not looking to kill them. We don’t use knives, not unless we have to.” He paused to pick up a stave from a broken barrel dumped outside a doorway and peered down the alley. “She’s taking them into that stable. We’ll give the fat one a few moments to get busy stuffing her. The other two will probably have their tools in their hands by then, so we can drop them before their boss gets himself unknotted.” Jeirran’s eyes were hard with a savage anticipation. Teiriol ran his own barrel stave through his hands, hefting the wood with a grin.

“Leave your cape here and tie something around your face.” Jeirran untucked his shirt and tore a wide strip of linen from the hem, suiting his actions to his words. “All they can claim is Mountain Men did for them, and if anyone comes looking at us we swear blind it was those other two we saw. When we get in, you bar the door.”

The alley was not long but gloomy in the double shadow of the city wall and the houses looming on either side. Refuse was piled high, discarded sacks, boxes and household rubbish mingled with old bones, nameless peelings and moldering muck, a fetid ooze seeping along a rough drain scraped into the bare earth. Teiriol and Jeirran moved silently forward, eyes fixed on the stable door dragged ajar on broken hinges. Jeirran brought his barrel stave up and back, nodding to Teiriol, who did the same. They paused, one each side of the doorway, but Vigo’s groans of pleasure and the whore’s practiced responses were enough to drown any footsteps.

Jeirran rushed inside, Teiriol a pace behind him, kicking the door shut with an ominous thud. Neth turned, face flushed, eager expression changing to startled horror. Jeirran’s stave scythed in to catch him under one ear. The impact sent him staggering into Rif, who clutched at him in confusion. Teiriol jumped forward and brought his club into Rif’s unprotected flank. Mountain-hardened muscles landed the blow squarely in the man’s kidney, forcing a yell of agony from him. Neth was still dazed but Rif threw him off and turned to rush at Teiriol. It was an unwise move. The Mountain Man sent him reeling back with a merciless jab to the gut.

Jeirran swung at Neth again, landing a vicious strike on the outside of his knee. The Watchman went stumbling sideways. Jeirran discarded his club and moved forward, gloved hands hammering face, ribs, gut and groin with a flurry of punishing blows, blood from the gash in his head soon coating the Watchman’s shirt and jerkin.

“What the shit—” Vigo had abandoned the whore and was scrambling to his feet. The Mountain Men ignored his impotent curses as he clutched at the breeches hampering his feet.

Rif had a stall to his back now, rocking from foot to foot, clenching his fists. Teiriol sneered at him and feinted with his stave, first to one side, then to the other. Rif was forced back against the splintered wood, painful blows punishing shoulders and thighs. He hunched in a vain attempt to protect himself, spat at Teiriol and snatched for a hanging harness strap. Teiriol brought the age-hardened stave up in a swift move to smash his forearm.

Rif’s yell of agony mingled with the crack of bone. His cry was drowned out by Vigo’s howl of outrage as he threw himself on Jeirran’s back, Neth lying limp and helpless in a mire of blood. The Watchman tried to get his broad hands around the Mountain Man’s thick neck but Jeirran was too quick, ducking his chin to his chest and hunching his shoulders. Jeirran stepped forward and sideways in one fluid move, dropping one shoulder and sending the unsuspecting Vigo clean over his head to land him into the slime of the stable drain.

Vigo was gasping at Teiriol’s feet, all breath knocked out of him. Teiriol used his boots, heavy leather reinforced with metal and nails going in hard to leave studded prints on Vigo’s shirt, his half-laced breeches, stamping on his hands and ankles, ripping open one cheek with a sweeping kick. The Watchman could only roll and twist in the muck, vainly trying to get away from the torment, curling around a blow in the stomach only to have his back arch in the agony of a boot to the base of his spine.

Rif tried vainly to intervene, one arm dangling uselessly. Jeirran dropped him with one iron hard punch to the short ribs and grabbed Teiriol’s arm. The younger man’s breath was coming quick and harsh through the cloth around his face, his kicks ever harder and more cruel.

“That’s enough. You don’t want to kill him, just make him useless for work. Didn’t your father teach you anything about fighting?”

Teiriol struggled for a reply, gave up, and bent down to spit full in Vigo’s face, now a mask of blood and filth.

Jeirran nodded with satisfaction. Rif was hunched on his knees, choking as he struggled for breath. Neth’s tears thinned the blood dripping down his broken and oozing nose as he slumped in a corner.

“What about her?” Teiriol gestured at the whore crouched in a terrified huddle of petticoats on a heap of musty hay. Daring warred with distaste in his face and he licked his lips uncertainly.

The girl tried for a smile but could only summon a ghastly grimace, ashen with fear. “You can take your pleasure for free, just don’t hurt me,” she begged, opening her blouse in a parody of seductiveness, hands trembling.

Jeirran wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t touch a festering trull like you with a stick of firewood!” He picked up his barrel stave and took a menacing step forward. “Or maybe I’ll come and find you, give you some of this, if I find anyone coming after us. You’re the only one to have seen, so you’re the only one can tell tales. You do and I’ll be back to spoil your looks, you hear me?”

The girl whimpered incoherent promises of silence.

“Come on!” Jeirran dragged the stable door open. He shoved Teiriol through then wedged it shut with his stave. Stuffing his stained gloves into a pocket, he put on his cape, securing the front to conceal the blood on his shirt. He looked cautiously out from the mouth of the alley. “We need to get clear and quickly.”

Teiriol caught up his own cape, pausing to splash his boots through water gathered where some cobbles had been dug up. “That should show our man Harquas we mean business,” he observed with satisfaction. “And I can tell Keisyl I’ve settled his debts in full.”

“You’ll say nothing of the kind, not a word to him nor to Eirys,” snapped Jeirran. “Anyway, it was hardly a fight to boast of, was it? They call these Watchmen tough? They wouldn’t last three days in a mining camp!” His eyes rested briefly on the wrestling matches still being hotly contested. “We leave swiftly but calmly and we don’t look back. We came to watch the wrestling, we found nothing to interest us and now we’re going back to our lodgings. That’s what we tell Eirys and Keis and anyone else who comes asking. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Teiriol couldn’t resist one glance over his shoulder as they left the slaughter yards behind them. “So what now?”

“We clean ourselves up before the others return. We eat whatever that thief of a landlady claims is a four-Mark dinner and then you and Keisyl take yourselves off for whatever entertainment you fancy. Eirys and I deserve a quiet evening in, just the two of us,” announced Jeirran, eyes bright with anticipation. “I think it’s about time she showed me some appreciation.”

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, Second Day of the Spring Fair, Evening

The runes finally rolled my way when I reached the Crackwillow, a tidily kept eating-house on the corner of the Audit Way. The resonant song of a lute floated out through an open shutter. Childhood recollection stirred to Forest rhythms and I pushed open the door to find a neatly furnished room where respectable worthies were entertaining wives and daughters over sumptuous pastries and expensive wines. It was several breaths before the servitors noticed me, all eyes turned to the minstrel sat by the stairs, his own closed as he lost himself in the melody.

He was no new traveler, fresh from the Forest and eager to taste adventure. This man had been pacing the roads that knit together the Old Empire for nigh on a generation, if I were any judge. Of a little less than common height, his angular face was weathered, hair no longer the red of autumn leaves but faded amber streaked with white, receding at temples and crown and cropped close. His long-fingered hand on the frets of his lute was bony, the other plucking the strings in the Forest manner was deft with the thickened nails and calloused tips of a lifetime’s playing. His voice had the rich timbre of a double-reeded flute and the depth of a thousand leagues’ experience. His clothes, unremarkable in color or cut and showing signs of wear at knees and elbows, had once cost good coin paid to a master tailor. He was unmistakably of the Folk but old enough to be wise and spend winters traveling where inns offered warm beds and hot food, returning only when the woods were green, the living easy in the fruitful days of summer. A heavy gold chain around his neck was threaded through a handful of rings and each ear was pierced several times, gems catching the candlelight. Forest Folk, like pied crows, have a taste for such things.

“Can I be of service?” A youth in a spotless apron hovered politely at my elbow.

“I wish to speak to the singer.” I rolled the Forest cadence off my tongue, my father’s accents vivid in my memory.

“He takes his break in the back yard.” The boy looked uncertain. “Would you care to wait there?”

“Thank you.” I hardly expected the usual dumping ground for broken crocks and empty casks, given the good order of the house, but the yard still came as a welcome surprise. The gray paving was swept clean and pots of herbs were ranged around the walls, warm in the late sun and sweetening the air as I brushed against them. A bower seat’s roses were scarcely more than bare stems at this season but still made a pleasant place to sit and wait and admire a carved statue of Halcarion. The goddess gazed at her own reflection, combing her hair over a broad marble basin. I recalled I’d wanted to find a shrine for an offering.

“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” The minstrel’s voice sent a thrill of recognition through me as he stood silhouetted against the early lamps behind him. I recalled a garret bedroom, my father halting on the threshold after singing me to sleep with songs of a heritage so long lost to me. But this man was not my father, so I got myself in hand at once.

“If you see the Maiden tending her hair and biding her time until Drianon calls her to motherhood. For myself, I prefer the tales where she makes men and moons alike dance to her tune.” I realized I was gabbling and shut my mouth.

“That’ll be your blood talking, given the color of your hair.” The minstrel said something else in the fluid tongue of the Forest, the stresses suggesting some proverb or truism but the words meant nothing to me.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” I shook my head in apology.

The minstrel leaned against the flecked and crumbling orange brick of the wall and raised an eyebrow. “You have all the pieces, and if you want to talk to me, I assume you want to play, but you don’t know the rules?”

“That depends on the game,” I countered. I can do this kind of banter readily enough but wondered what his point was.

“Life is the game, my dear, the whole round of it.” He smiled at me and this time a light that I recognized well enough lit his copper-colored eyes. “So if you’re not of the Folk, how do you come to have all the pieces that make a Forest maid, and such a very fine set at that?” He looked me up and down with that slow intensity many women find flattering.

“My father left me the outer shell.” I tried to convey polite disinterest. Luckily another concern diverted my companion.

“Where and when were you born?” he asked, a faint worry wrinkling his brow.

“In Vanam, in the Aft of Autumn twenty-seven years past, to a servant girl called Aniss,” I replied, my smile broadening.

He evidently ran rapidly through his memories of travel and conquest and his expression soon cleared to share my amusement. “In that year, at the relevant season, I was in Col, my dear,” he said with a formal bow. “If you are seeking a lost father, I am afraid I do not have that honor.”

“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, don’t worry.” The door opened with a timely interruption as the lad came out with a tray of fancy pastries and an etched glass jug of golden wine, moisture beading the sides as it carried the chill of an ice cellar.

“Here’s to our common blood in any case.” The minstrel poured me a glass and raised his own in salute. “What is your name?”

“I’m Livak.” I toasted him in turn.

“And I am Frue,” he responded. “Your father left you with a fine Forest name, at very least,” he observed before hungrily biting into a flaky shell crammed with spiced apple.

I accepted his mute offer of an apricot tart, curiously remembering how my mother had resisted every blandishment and threat my grandmother could summon in her various attempts to rename me after my father’s periodic visits ceased. “His name was Jihol,” I volunteered, surprised by my own unbidden words.

“Of what kin?” Frue cocked his head to one side. “Do you know?”

“Of the Deer, I think.” I drank some wine and cast around for some means of ending this fruitless conversation.

Frae’s stillness was broken with an abrupt shake of his head. “No, don’t know him, not to my knowledge.”

“It’s not important,” I said with relief. In fact, I’d probably take some pains to avoid my long absent parent, if the breezes brought any scent of him. I had enough uncertainties to juggle in my life at present.

“So what are you looking for?” Frue devoured a second pastry and I waved away his offer of another, realizing this was likely part of the payment for his music.

“I have a book of old songs, collected by a Tormalin noblewoman in the latter days of the Empire. They are from all the ancient races, Mountain, Plains and Forest. I’m trying to find people who can translate them for me.”

Frue looked up, clearly interested. “I’ll take a look for you, willingly.”

That had been a certain bet, hadn’t it? Old songs could offer a minstrel something new for his repertoire without all the effort of composing it himself. “I’d welcome your thoughts, certainly. The thing is, I’m traveling with a scholar and he’s bound to want more than one opinion, so I’d really like to show them to more Folk of the true blood as well. Are you returning to the Forest? May we travel with you?” I refilled Frue’s glass.

“I am heading back to my kin, as it happens,” said Frue with caution, wiping his fingers on a well-darned napkin. “You and your scholar would be welcome to take the road with me.”

“We have two other companions, old friends, men of the mountains.” I hoped Frue hadn’t heard the faint hesitation in my voice.

“What do uplanders want in the wildwood?” Frue seemed more curious than concerned, which was a relief.

“They travel, like me, playing the runes and White Raven where it’s offered. Raven was a game of the Folk long before it traveled east and north, so I think they are hoping to find some trick or strategy to give them an added edge.” I made a mental note to warn Sorgrad of his new interest.

“You play White Raven?” Frue was looking at me with interest again.

“My father taught me as a girl,” I replied.

“Then you know that the game relies on the balance between the protection of the woods and the strength of the birds, as they try to drive the Raven away.” Frue’s eyes were bright. He came to sit beside me under the bare thorns of the bower and leaned close. “Every exchange must be even-handed between the Folk. What have you to offer me, in exchange for escort and introductions?” His voice was soft and caressing, fingers brushing lightly on my breeched knee.

“Songs that no one has heard since the days when the greenwood reached to the very gates of Selerima?” I delicately lifted his hand from my leg. “A romp for a night is all very well, but a good song lasts forever. When they’re heard anew, it’ll be your name associated with them.”

“If they are truly unknown. You’d be surprised how far back down the Tree of Years some of our songs reach.” He laughed and I realized with relief that part of the game was done, with no ill feeling on either side.

“What’s amusing you out here, Frue?” The door to the yard flung open to reveal a well-rounded lass in grass green draperies glaring at me with ill-disguised suspicion. She had a childlike face, round and soft with a turned-up nose and pretty eyes but with a sulky downturn to the corners of her full-lipped mouth. “Tris said you were out here.” Her silent question was unmissable.

“Zenela, this is Livak,” Frue smiled with a hint of lasciviousness. “She’s been tempting me with the prospect of an intriguing lay.”

That set Zenela’s nostril’s flaring. “That’s lay as in music, not as in bed. For the moment,” I added, giving Frue a flirtatious smile to shake her a little.

“Bring your song book over tomorrow morning and I’ll see how I can help you.” He pulled Zenela close as her outraged breath threatened the low neckline of her dress. “Let’s sing for our supper, sweetest.” Frue sauntered through the door and, after shooting me a look sharp with warning, Zenela hurried after him.

Chuckling, I took the tray back to the kitchen. “Can I listen from here?” I asked the broad-hipped woman everyone was deferring to, her snowy apron smudged with honey syrup and face flushed beneath a no-nonsense cap.

She lifted a tray of pastries from a vast range that wouldn’t have disgraced Messire’s kitchens. “Just keep out of the way.” She busied herself with powdered sugar and crystalized fruits.

I found a quiet corner by the door and made myself useful passing empty plates to the lank-haired youth up to his elbows in the vast wooden sink. The bustle of the kitchen stilled momentarily as Frue struck up a lively roundelay. He finished with a flourish and then Zenela began to sing, the soft chords of the lute underscoring her melody. I moved closer to the door for a better view.

Her voice was pure in the higher notes, rich and resonant in the lower. Thrilling with emotion over a song everyone must have heard a double handful of times, she made it sound as fresh as the first time of hearing. Standing beneath a double branch of candles, her bright auburn hair owed more to herbal rinses than Forest blood and her eyes reflected the green of her dress and the subtle cosmetics on her lashes. I wondered idly what her story was. She was maybe a handful of years younger than me and looked still to have a number of lessons to learn. I watched as she sang of love and loss and let myself be caught up in the glorious harmony of voice and lute.

An idea was slowly forming in the back of my mind. What if I offered Frue a new story as well as the old songs, something never yet set to music, a tale of recent events that stirred the highest powers of Tormalin and set girding their arms for a challenge not seen since the fall of the Old Empire? Minstrels spend their lives looking to be the first to weave tale and melody into new enchantment and this was festival time, when every tuppenny ha’penny warbler churns out the same old tunes just when people are looking for new diversions. The threat from mysterious islands in the ocean, the discovery of the lost colony and its sleeping survivors, all that would make a ballad to seize the attention and grip it till it cried for mercy.

The ten chimes marking sunset and the end of the day floated in through the back door and I chided myself for self-indulgence. “Tell Frue I’ll call back tomorrow,” I caught the serving lad’s arm and slipped him a couple of copper for his trouble. Back at the Swan in the Moon, I found Sorgrad sharing a companionable meal with Usara in the tap room.

“Where’s ’Gren?” I pulled up a stool.

“Giving Kelty some color in her cheeks before the masquerade starts.” Sorgrad poured me a drink. “How did you get on at the races?” I asked Sorgrad.

“Well enough,” he grinned. “None of the tally-touts knew your man here so he was able to play the innocent abroad. We were laying bets at good long odds and taking their coin.” Usara smiled modestly.

“Where did you get the tips? Did you meet someone we know?” There was no way the brothers could know the current word on the local breeders, not when they’d been in Col all winter.

Sorgrad smiled sunnily. “Our good friend here was able to tell us all about the state of the earth beneath the grass when the horses were showing their paces and when they were running. Once we had the measure of that and ’Gren could tell which beasts liked the wet side or the dry, we had an edge to shave the odds off the risk.”

’Gren’s always had this theory he can tell what a horse is thinking, just from its expression. As far as I’m concerned, a face that long, hairy and inflexible can’t have an expression beyond putting its ears back because it’s about to kick you.

I narrowed my eyes at Usara. “The Archmage would approve of that, would he?”

“Planir appreciates I may have to use my talents in somewhat unorthodox ways, to further our researches.” He smiled blandly as he reached for more bread.

That was a different song to the one he’d sung yesterday.

“How did you get on?”

“I’ve found a minstrel who could be able to make some useful introductions,” I let myself sound a little dubious. “How about you?”

Sorgrad shook his head. “Not a trace of a scent. There were a couple of Mountain Men at the cock-pits but they were with Harquas.”

I grimaced as I helped myself to some of Sorgrad’s bread and scooped a piece of the seared fish he was carefully easing away from its bones. “What were you doing at the cockpits?”

“Sandy there said he wanted to take a turn around the guild halls again and told us to go and amuse ourselves.” Sorgrad smiled at Usara but the wizard didn’t rise to the new nickname. There was definitely something awry there.

“Is this Harquas someone significant?” Usara looked at us each in turn.

“He’s one of the biggest villains in this city,” I explained. “Anyone working with him will be as false as a pawnbroker’s welcome, not someone we want to travel with.”

“Order your food at the kitchen door, my girl,” said Sorgrad as he moved his plate out of my reach. “No, this pair looked fresh off their donkeys, all dressed up and sticking out like a cut finger.”

“Then Harquas will have them stuffed like squabs from a dovecote before the festival’s out.” I munched on some cress filched from Sorgrad’s plate.

“Are there likely to be other Mountain Men in the city?” inquired Usara.

Sorgrad shook his head. “Very few. It’s only the bigger valleys, the kindreds with labor to spare can afford to send their goods all this way. For all the profit you can make, you lose so much time on the trip—”

Movement by the door silenced him. I looked over to see Reza hurrying toward us. “Niello said to give you this, soon as you come in.” The lad pulled a twice-folded and sealed note out of his overlarge and shabby jerkin.

I signaled to the potboy before cracking the wax. “Sit down, Rez, have a drink.”

He smiled at me, exposing the toothless side of his mouth, permanent legacy of the hunger and beatings that had been his lot before Niello picked him out of the gutters. I winked at him but my good humor faded as I read Niello’s unpracticed scrawl gracing the back of some ancient masquerade dialogue.

“What’s the problem?” Sorgrad was reading my face as closely as I was studying the parchment.

“Did you and ’Gren run into any bother this afternoon?” I asked casually.

Sorgrad shook his head, unconcerned. “No.”

“And was ’Gren with you all the time?” I inquired.

“Until we got back here and he spotted Kelty adjusting her garters at him,” he grinned. “He’s never one to find fault with a fat goose.”

I nodded slowly. “According to Niello, they had the Watch in here asking questions earlier. Seems they want to talk to a pair of Mountain Men on account of a beating they gave some nailers.”

Usara opened his mouth and if I could have I’d have kicked him under the table to shut it. “Is this likely to be a problem?” His tone was both courteous and conciliatory.

I tried not to show my relief he hadn’t implied doubt in Sorgrad’s word. “Yes, to be honest. Niello wouldn’t have bothered straining his wits with this,” I waved the note, “if he hadn’t reckoned it was serious.”

“They cursed near tore the stage apart, in case anyone was hiding under it,” supplied Reza. “Emptied out all the costume baskets.”

I laid my hands on the table in front of me. “If their own have taken a hammering, the Watch will be pulling in anyone who fits the cry and like as not giving them a kicking for good measure. That’s the way of it here, the same as anywhere else. At any other time of year, we could find ourselves an advocate and argue the case in the courts, get a few witnesses to swear for us. Kelty for instance, she’d be good for convincing a judge ’Gren never left her bed.” I shook my head. “Not at a festival. The assize will father the bastard on the first face through the door and that will be that.”

“I don’t think we want to come to the attention of the Watch, do we?” I saw the face of Arle Cordainer reflected in Sorgrad’s eyes. Another consideration to add to the balance.

“Niello says Vadim took one of the nailers off into a corner,” I said to Sorgrad, ignoring the others. “Close as a miser and his money.”

“We can shut his mouth for him,” shrugged Sorgrad.

“If he turns up dead before the end of festival, that’ll just cause more trouble,” I warned.

“He won’t turn up,” Sorgrad grinned evilly.

“Why don’t we just leave?” asked Usara in some alarm.

“Because no minstrel is going to hit the road until the very last moment of the fair.” I hid my annoyance. There’s no point in trying to buck the run of the luck so I had to play these runes as best I could. “You could play the second clown, couldn’t you Rez?” The lad nodded hopefully.

“Then Niello can tell Vadim to take his coin and be on his way or we’ll use it to buy his ashes a niche in a shrine,” I said firmly. “He won’t argue. His type are all bark and no bite.”

“Who plays the dog?” asked Sorgrad.

“ ’Gren?” I suggested. There’d be no holding him back.

“So we’re going to the Forest, not the Mountains?” asked Usara, looking from me to Sorgrad and back again. “At the end of the festival?”

I nodded. “Do you have any problem with that?”

“No, none at all,” Usara spread his palms in a placating gesture. “I am bound to follow your lead.” He smiled with self-deprecating modesty.

I wasn’t fooled; he’d used magic to bespeak Planir in Hadrumal some time during the afternoon. It was a safe bet he’d been told to chain up his dog and make himself agreeable. That was all very well—at least he’d be likely to get along with ’Gren and Sorgrad—but I wasn’t about to trust a wizard, not completely, not even when he sat eating his supper, demure as an old whore at a wedding.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Sorgrad asked. “The shrine confraternities will be playing at piety in the morning but the tumblers and animal trainers will get their place in the sun after noon.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to see this minstrel about a song or two.” And not just about the ancient songs. Usara could keep his secrets and I’d keep mine. I’d been thinking about songs, their power and their persistence. Learning the secrets of old aetheric magic was all very well but perhaps I could make more prosaic use of a good tune and rousing words. If Frue could set some song doing the rounds that warned people about the Elietimm threat, word would spread faster than fire in a thatch. If I was careful to tell the tale so I didn’t feature at all, no one would be able to trace it back to me, either.

Kehannasekke, Islands of the Elietimm, Spring Equinox

He was so absorbed in distant contemplation that he did not register his father’s soft-footed entrance, not until a breath stirred the hairs on the nape of his neck with a question. “Eresken?”

Startled, he could not prevent a sharp intake of breath, his shoulders tensing involuntarily beneath his unadorned tunic of undyed wool.

“How do you fare?” The question was genial enough; the older man was in a good humor and Eresken breathed more easily.

“Badly, sire,” he admitted frankly. “I have spent night and day in the search and might as well be wandering lost in fog. I had hoped the stasis of Equinox might aid me, but so far I’ve felt no advantage.”

The white-haired man snorted and crossed to the narrow window, where iron bars laid black stripes of shadow across his plain dun garb. The pale sunlight forced its way past, only to be reflected back from the bare white walls and floorboards scrubbed to the color of straw. He looked down into the courtyard four stories below, where black-liveried men-at-arms moved with set purpose and servants in drab cloaks hurried out of their path. “Perhaps we should make an example of some wrongdoer, kill a bantam to cow the rest of the flock.” He glanced sharply at his son. “What do you think?”

“I don’t feel the problem is a lack of commitment among our people,” Eresken replied carefully. “I sense their strength well enough and the focus of the stones is as strong as ever. It is rather that Tren Ar’Dryen is somehow shielded, barriers ranged against us. Even with the clarity of the balance, I cannot penetrate the deceptions.”

Admitting failure was risky but he had no option. If anyone could pierce the unholy miasma defeating him, it would be his father. Then he would show Eresken how it was done.

“You are correct,” his father nodded slowly. “How do you account for this?”

Eresken took a moment to think; that was allowed. He was careful not to show he realized he was being put to the test; that was not permitted, on pain of punishment or worse, dismissal from his father’s counsels and instruction. “In reviving the hidden ones of Kel Ar’Ayen, the false magicians of Hadrumal will most likely have found practitioners of true enchantment,” he began cautiously. “If Planir has suborned these to his own ends, he may be using their skills to deny us.”

“Good,” said his father approvingly. “You are correct again.”

Emboldened, Eresken leaned back in his chair, hands relaxing on the parchment-strewn table. “Perhaps Kramisak—”

“Kramisak is not your concern,” snapped his father. “Kel Ar’Ayen is not your concern. If I feel you straying from your allotted duties, I will chastise you in no uncertain measure, do you understand me?” His anger came and went with all the instant violence of winter lightning but the cold threat lingering in his voice was infinitely chilling.

“Of course, sire.” Eresken slowly laced his hands together, stopping them from shaking. “My task is to work around these obstructions. I will apply myself more diligently.”

“What have you been doing today?” The white-haired man crossed from the window to begin leafing through Eresken’s parchments, frowning at notations in margins and neat additions to the bottom of texts written in several different hands, the oldest lines blurred where the ink had rubbed away. A few bright lines of illumination here and there were the only specks of color to disturb the neutrality of the stark room.

“I have been looking for priests.” Eresken spoke with more confidence.

“Explain your reasoning,” his father demanded curtly.

“Equinox comes for the lands of the west as well as for us and some of their traditions reach back to the days before the Exile. I looked for those cities that hold religious gatherings to mark the quarter-year.” Eresken turned his notes to a relevant page and proffered it. “We know their priests hold the last remnants of true enchantment in the lands of the west; that’s why we were killing them. Now I think they might be more use to us alive than dead. I hope to find one with some vestige of piety turned to their gods that will leave his mind open to mine. It has always been easier to contact a mind with some training than an unwilling one.”

“A sound enough argument,” noted the old man. “What progress have you made thus far?”

“At the moment, it’s like trying to hear a single voice shouting in a storm.” Eresken could not disguise his chagrin. “Luckily, the strongest barriers are set in the east, so I have been following a chain of recollection and anticipation woven from the unguarded thoughts of merchants and the like traveling west. There is a great fair in this city, Selerima, and there must surely be some shrine where the devout will gather, even if it is only to pay duty to their lesser gods or goddesses.”

His father studied a map. “At such a vast distance, you cannot hope to influence a mind that is not actively cooperating with you.”

“I will do my utmost,” said Eresken stoutly. “With the strength that abides in the stones, I believe it will be possible.”

The white-haired man threw the parchment down on the table. “You should be searching for wizards at their false conniving. We know that leaves them vulnerable as newborn babes to us.”

The old man must be tired, Eresken thought discreetly. This was too obvious a snare to step into. “Planir knows that too, none better. The mages are the most closely shielded of all. I am not even attempting to touch them, not until they grow idle from lack of threat and relax their vigilance. Even then, while killing the mages is gratifying, it would be a shortsighted act, merely enraging the Archmage. I am looking for means to attack on a wider front.”

A half-smile quirked the corner of the old man’s mouth. “And what of those whose minds you have already touched? The redheaded bitch, the swordsman? Have you sought them?”

“I have, but on no more than a superficial level,” said Eresken slowly. “Anything more would risk alerting them to our continued interest in their downfall.”

“You’re afraid, that’s plain enough,” his father said softly. He leaned forward, hands on the table, and stared deep into Eresken’s grass green eyes.

Denial was useless and Eresken hastily emptied his mind of any thought he wished to keep to himself as his father’s opaque brown eyes held his own in unbreakable thrall. Eresken forced himself to concentrate on the face before him, to stop unbidden feelings or opinions intruding themselves. His father’s face was lean and taut, crowned with dead white hair, faint lines showing the scour of wind and years and the few scars mute testimony to lessons learned from rare mistakes. Eresken forced his breathing to a slow and even pace and laid his mind open. It was better this way, less painful. He’d learned that lesson long ago and now passed it on with the same merciless sting when opportunity presented itself.

The old man laughed but not unkindly. “They humiliated you, didn’t they? Jumped you, knocked you senseless and hauled you away like a seal trussed from the hunt. You don’t want to risk that happening again. Well, I can understand that. You’re not alone, boy. The slut held her own against me with no more than inborn defiance and a flood of doggerel.”

Eresken gaped. “I had no idea—”

“No, neither did I.” The white-haired man’s laughter rang unexpectedly light against the whitewashed walls of the room furnished only with a single table and chair. “It’s one more of the ironies of our present situation that some ignorant bitch could light upon a pattern of half-remembered song and gibberish that could disrupt our practiced incantations so thoroughly! One is prepared for challenge from an equal, not from some misbegotten sneak-thief.”

“They were none of them worthy foes,” spat Eresken with rising anger. “All they had was brute strength and savagery, too stupid to recognize their fate and submit!”

“Do not give way to your frustrations,” warned his father, speaking softly. “Emotion will restrict you, limit your effectiveness. But on the other hand,” he turned away abruptly, “you need to feel that anger, that outrage, that spur to set you looking beyond the confines of these islands, when so many others are content to see no farther than the horizon. That vision is what marks you as my son and makes you worthy of my time and trouble. You must learn to recognize such contradictions and master them.”

“But why—” Eresken spoke before he could stop himself.

“A child who simply asks ‘why’ shows an aptitude for training. A man who does the same is mistaking trust shown him for license to dissent.”

“I meant no disrespect,” insisted Eresken. Never that, not so long as he could reap the rewards of his sire’s favor. The truth of his words and his thoughts hung in the tense silence.

“You should be able to answer such questions for yourself, as I have done. All these things are tests set for us, to prove us worthy of reclaiming our lost lands and more besides. As we master one challenge, another arises, paradoxes that make no sense testing our resolve. I am the richest man on these islands, my revenues the sum of any five others you could name, yet I am a pauper against the meanest lordling of the Tormalin.” He began pacing, speaking as much to himself as to his son. “With sacrifice and discipline, we finally raise our enchantments to a pitch that allows safe crossing of the ocean currents. We find Tren Ar’Dryen is a land overrun by the feeble of body and of intellect, morally corrupt and wholly contemptible. But these dross have a strength in numbers that we cannot match, we who have been refined in the crucible of these islands, tempered in the harsh cold. How can we be stronger, yet weaker? We find these people have lost nigh on all true magic, so should be open to our attack, yet that lack has meant false magicians meddling with the visible and tangible have flourished, even reaching an arrogance that encourages them to challenge us. How can this be so?”

Eresken knew better than to answer; his role as passive audience while his father rehearsed a speech was well understood. These words would be used to turn the thoughts of the lesser folk more closely to their allegiance, loyalty focused through the prism of the stones so that the power of the men who ruled them would burn ever brighter, ever more fierce.

“So we decide to turn our attention south, to Kel Ar’Ayen, the land so nearly held yet let slip by our forefathers’ forefathers. But somehow, our interest alerts the villains of Hadrumal and they are able to snatch that prize from our open hand.” The white-haired man broke off to narrow his eyes. “For the present, at least.

“So now we must answer paradox with paradox. We fight by not fighting; we make haste to our goals with painstaking slowness. We have the enchantments to carry us over open ocean yet we keep our boats safe in harbor. We bide our time, and because of that our victory will come all the swifter and be all the more complete.”

The door slammed as he left without a backward glance. Eresken sat for a moment, looking at the disarray of parchments on his table. Sorting them methodically, he restored his original piles, each aligned precisely with the edges of the table and equally spaced from the next. The growl of his hungry belly sounded loud against the muted rustle of documents, but Eresken ignored it. A passing desire for water to freshen his stale mouth diverted him for a moment, but he thrust the idle thought hastily aside. It was many seasons since he’d had proof that his sire observed him from afar but the punishments for idleness were not something he was anxious to experience again.

There would be no respite until his father took some refreshment. As hard as Eresken was applying himself, sequestered in this lofty room, devoid of anything to distract the eye or the mind, his father was working three times as hard, thrice as long, Eresken knew that. He asked nothing of his son that he did not demand of himself in triple measure.

His sire was a great man. The whole of the great, square keep knew that, down to the lowliest scullion. The grim-faced men who paced the parapets and guarded the sanctuary of the harbor knew of their lord’s commitment to their advancement. Those wresting food and necessities from this grudging land and sheltering in their meager villages beneath the ever vigilant watchtowers knew they owed him loyalty to their last breath for his defense of their pitiful lives. Beyond, past the bleak gray ridges of rock and ice, down the length of the cold sea strands, across the inlets and boundary cairns, those who enviously watched his success knew it too and gnawed their nails as they tried to outguess and outmaneuver him.

Eresken’s duty and privilege was to support and assist his sire. That knowledge warmed and soothed him. His lips moved in soundless incantation as he ran through disciplines drilled into him through endless repetition and fear of failure. Few had the stamina, the commitment, the wit to reach his mastery of these arcane truths. He owed it to those who could not to use his strength to their ultimate advantage. The common flock owed him the unquestioning loyalty that underpinned his supremacy. Determination smoothed his face into a pitiless mask.

Eresken spun his mind into the maelstrom, violence wrought to bend the external world to his will that thrilled the blood to the edge of ecstasy. Seizing the heart of the vortex, he refined silence in the midst of fury, reveling in sublime consciousness that freed him from the tyranny of the visible and tangible. From that transcendent awareness, it was a comparatively simple task to concentrate the chilling assault, the unstoppable sweeping domination that paralyzed the lucid mind and stripped naked the innermost secrets of the unconscious. The next step was the greatest challenge, the discipline that eluded all but the most adept. Eresken did not falter. He melted ice into gossamer mist, a whisper of unobtrusive charm that warmed the chill of terror into the caress of seduction. No mind would recoil from this touch, few would even note its passing, those that did would find soothing release from cares and worries ample recompense for the knowledge unwittingly exchanged.

Eresken reached for his parchments, green eyes distant and unblinking, hardly glancing at the map beneath his hands. He ran light fingertips along the length of the road running west, his mind’s eye seeing sights unknown to the lesser people of his barren homeland. He listened to the hubbub of humdrum minds, searching this way and that. Patience was what was called for. If he had to spend days in this room, seasons, mark the cycle of one year’s sun to the next with these labors, he would find a foothold in the minds of Tren Ar’Dryen. Once he had that foothold, he would make a bridgehead. Once he had a bridgehead, the invasion would begin.