The Vondish Ambassador

Chapter Four

Emmis had never greatly concerned himself with ethical issues. Unloading freighters generally did not present a lot of difficult moral choices.

One of the rules he and the other dockworkers lived by, though, was that you finished the job you were on before you took another one, even if the new employer offered higher pay. Walking off one job to start the next meant you weren’t trustworthy, weren’t reliable.

And you didn’t steal from the people who hired you. That was even worse. A thief who got caught would never work on the waterfront again.

But if the captain left you sitting on the dock while he got the paperwork done or dickered with a buyer, there was no rule that said you couldn’t answer a few questions for interested merchants, or that they couldn’t give a hard-working young man a copper bit or two in exchange for telling them just how many planks of planed hickory, or crates of tarragon, you and your fellows had really hauled out of the hold, even if it didn’t match what the owner claimed he had available.

It wasn’t as if Lar had told him anything important, after all. In fact, Lar had specifically refused to tell him just what the actual purpose of his stay in Ethshar was, and if Lar was keeping that secret, then presumably anything Lar had told him was not secret.

So why not pick up a little extra money while he waited for the ambassador to come back from wherever he had gone? That was what Emmis told himself while Annis and the three Lumethans argued in Trader’s Tongue.

He kept an eye on the front door as they bickered; if Lar should walk in just then, Emmis wanted to be ready to put some distance between himself and the four foreigners. He also listened, though, while trying not to let on that he could understand about one word in five of the debate.

The Lumethans seemed to find his willingness to talk to them suspicious, while Annis appeared to be arguing that it was plain old Ethsharitic greed, that Ethsharites would sell their own children if the price was right. They also seemed to disagree as to whether the costs should be split two ways or four, by country or by individual.

And there was the question of how much to offer him, up front or in installments — Emmis did know all the numbers in Trader’s Tongue, and was reasonably pleased by what he heard.

Finally, Annis turned back to him and said, “Two rounds for what he’s told you so far, and another round for every new item you bring us.”

“Silver?”

Annis looked genuinely shocked. “Gods, no!” she said. “Just copper!”

Emmis turned up a palm. “It was worth asking.” It hadn’t really been, as far as any honest doubt might be concerned, but it did make plain to these four that while Ethsharites might be greedy, they weren’t cheap. He had also understood enough of the Trader’s Tongue to know that two rounds was the opening bid, not a final offer — for one thing, he was fairly certain that they had compromised on a three-way split, and eight bits didn’t divide by three. “Perhaps half a dozen rounds?”

“For a litle conversation?”

“Four rounds, then?”

“We’ll meet you halfway. Three rounds to start, a dozen bits for each additional item.”

That was what he had expected. “Good enough,” he said. “Though perhaps some items might be worth more? After all, isn’t your entire kingdom at stake?”

“They might be,” Annis conceded.

“Buy me a beer, then, to moisten my throat while we speak, and you have a deal.”

Annis beckoned to Gita, mimed gulping beer, and pointed at Emmis. Gita nodded, and bustled away.

That done, Annis folded her hands on the table and leaned forward. “Now, lad, tell us about the Vondishman.”

“Until my beer gets here and your money’s in my hand, tell me first what you already know, so I won’t waste your time. How did you know to talk to me? How did you know he was here at all?”

Annis smiled, and reached down to her purse as she said, “Our governments keep an eye on things in the Vondish ports, of course, and your man didn’t make any secret of his departure, or where he was going, so Prince Sammel invested in the services of a magician, who located the Vondishman, and the Prince sent word to me that I’d find him here at the Crooked Candle.” She dumped a handful of copper on the table, and began counting out eight bits. “I came here and waited, and sure enough, there he was at breakfast this morning, and there you were with him, and that was when I decided I wanted to talk to you, and paid Gita here...” She nodded toward the serving girl, who was just then lowering a tray of well-filled beer mugs over Emmis’s shoulder. “...paid her to bring you to me.” She pushed the little pile of coins across the table, and Emmis began counting them into his own purse.

“And them?” Emmis paused in his counting and gestured at the Lumethans, who were digging into their own purses for their share.

“Oh, they showed up later this morning, and started asking everyone stupid questions in Trader’s Tongue or Lumethan or Gajamorish, and I’m sure you can guess how helpful that was. You’d think Lumeth could have found someone who spoke Ethsharitic! Anyway, I talked them into joining me so that they wouldn’t alert the entire city with their babbling.”

Emmis nodded, and watched the Lumethans push forward a stack of coins.

“So how did you meet the Vondishman, and why did he hire you?”

Emmis took a swig of beer, and began describing how he had met Lar Samber’s son, and what had happened thereafter.

It didn’t take long, since after all, most of their time together had been spent in Emmis teaching Lar a few things about Ethshar, rather than Lar saying or doing anything that would interest the Prince of Ashthasa, or that might concern whoever was in charge of things in Lumeth of the Towers. He had barely finished his first beer when he ran out of things to say.

He glanced at the Lumethans, who had listened to all this without giving any indication they understood a word of it. They were being very patient, Emmis thought. They probably trusted Annis to relay the important parts after Emmis had left.

“Ambassador,” Annis said, leaning back in her chair and staring at him.

“Yes,” Emmis said. “Ambassador plenipotentiary.”

“But he’s interested in magicians.”

“Warlocks in particular.”

“How do warlocks concern an ambassador?”

“I have no idea. Didn’t you say, though, that the Empire of Vond was created by a warlock?”

“It was. By Vond the Great. That’s where the name comes from.”

“What happened to him? Is he still running things?”

Annis shook her head. “No. He flew away to the north and never came back — but he might return someday, which is why the empire has a regent instead of an emperor.”

“Flew off to?.. Oh.” Suddenly the history of the Empire of Vond made sense.

Emmis didn’t know much about magic, and what he did know mostly came from idle conversation with sailors and dockworkers, so he knew more about wind elementals and propulsion spells than he did about love charms or any of the more usual enchantments — not that he could be sure any of what he knew was accurate; seafarers’ gossip was not exactly famous for its reliability. He knew sailors didn’t think witchcraft was good for anything but healing, that wizardry was the best way to help a vessel cross the sea, that ships passing near the Pirate Towns often carried demonologists to defend themselves.

He knew that sometimes warlocks would take ship heading south, bound for anywhere in the World that was farther away from Aldagmor.

There was something in the mountains of Aldagmor, sixty leagues north of Ethshar, that gave warlocks their power — and after they had used a certain amount of that power, demanded they pay for it with their lives. The warlocks named it the Calling, and any warlock who heard it felt an irresistible compulsion to go to Aldagmor. Some walked, some rode, but most flew. Nothing could hold them, once they heard the Calling; they would use their magic to shatter locks or chains, burst any bonds, in their desperation to make that journey to Aldagmor.

And none of them ever came back.

No one knew what was out there in the mountains; no one had ever come back from there, not since the Night of Madness when warlockry first appeared, a few months before Emmis was born.

Sane warlocks resisted the Calling as long as they could, and the farther they were from Aldagmor, the longer they could hold out. Every old sailor had a tale or two about warlocks who had fled to the Small Kingdoms or the western coasts, trying to put more distance between himself and whatever it was that was summoning them.

The Empire of Vond, if Emmis understood the geography correctly, was at the far end of the Small Kingdoms, on the southern edge of the World and the edge of the Great Eastern Desert. It was, in fact, as far from Aldagmor as it was possible to get in that direction.

This Vond the Great Warlock must have gone there trying to escape the Calling, and built himself an empire for some reason, perhaps just as a distraction, but then the Calling had gotten him anyway. He had gone to Aldagmor, and would never come back — but the people he left in charge of his empire didn’t want to admit that, so this Sterren of Semma person called himself “regent” instead of “emperor.”

Annis didn’t seem to realize that. She had said that Vond might return someday, but as Emmis understood it, that wasn’t going to happen. Warlocks didn’t come back.

“If the ambassador is looking for warlocks here in Ethshar, do you think it might be Vond himself that he’s looking for?” Annis asked. “Could the Great Warlock be hiding in the Wizards’ Quarter?”

“Um?” Emmis had been lost in his own thoughts, and had to think a moment to realize what the Ashthasan was asking him. “Oh. No, I don’t think so.”

“He was from Ethshar.”

“Yes, but I don’t think he came back here.” If she didn’t know about the Calling, or thought it was reversible, he didn’t see any reason to explain it to her. It wasn’t any great secret in Ethshar, and if the news had never reached Ashthasa — well, in that case they clearly didn’t have any warlocks there, so she didn’t need to know.

But Emmis now had an idea what Lar’s secret mission might be. If the Empire of Vond had been created by a warlock, and that warlock was gone, maybe the ambassador was here looking for a new warlock. There were certainly plenty of them in the city, and any who had reached the nightmare threshold, the point when the Calling had started to trouble their dreams but had not yet affected them when they were awake, would probably be very interested in a trip to the southern edge of the World.

What did the empire need a warlock for, really?

Annis had apparently followed a similar line of reasoning, because at that point in his thoughts she said, “Do you think the Vondishman might be looking for another warlock?”

“I don’t know,” Emmis said. “He might be. Is there some important magic that they need done?”

Annis turned up both palms. “Who knows?” she said. “The Imperial Council does not exactly send bulletins to all its neighbors.”

One of the Lumethans asked her a question in Trader’s Tongue before Emmis could think of anything more to say. Annis replied, giving Emmis time to mull over his theory.

If the empire had sent Lar to fetch them a new warlock because Vond had been Called, they presumably had some use for a warlock. Their first, Vond himself, had apparently used his magic to conquer the seventeen kingdoms that now made up the empire named for him.

So did this mean they wanted a new warlock so they could expand the empire further? That was probably what Annis and the Lumethans would think; they were already worried about a new wave of Vondish conquest.

Emmis thought that if he were going to embark on a career of magical conquest, he wouldn’t use a warlock. Yes, the Calling meant that eventually he would go away and you would have the empire to yourself, but what happened if the Calling got to him in the middle of a battle? Your magical support might suddenly fly away on you, which would probably not do anything to increase your chances of living a long and happy life as emperor.

Witches weren’t powerful enough to be conquerors, and generally had fairly strict rules about what they would and wouldn’t do, in any case. Theurgists couldn’t do anything the gods considered evil, and while the gods’ standards sometimes seemed arbitrary, conquering other countries would almost certainly involve violating them. Demonologists — well, demonologists were scary. You couldn’t trust demonologists, or the demons they more or less controlled. A demonologist might decide that he’d make a better emperor without you, or one of the demons might decide you looked tasty. Scientists and herbalists and ritual dancers and all the other minor schools of magic — well, people considered them “minor” for a reason.

No, if Emmis were going to take up conquest, he would hire wizards. Wizards didn’t have to argue with gods or demons, they had all the magical power one could want, but the Wizards’ Guild wouldn’t let them be rulers themselves, so you didn’t need to worry about being deposed by your magicians. And if they got out of hand in some lesser way and the Guild wouldn’t intervene, you could cut off the supply of the ingredients they needed for their spells — a wizard without his bottles of dragon’s blood and boxes of mummified toads wasn’t any more of a threat than a witch.

Of course, the Guild might not allow them to take the job in the first place.

Emmis glanced around the room to see if there were any wizards around; he didn’t seriously intend to ask about Guild rules, but he was just wondering...

And there was Lar in the door, heading for the stairs. The hat was unmistakable.

Emmis got to his feet so quickly he almost knocked over his chair. “Time to go,” he said. “My money?”

Annis pushed over the remaining coins, and Emmis snatched them up before hurrying after his employer.

“Your excellency!” he called, shoving the coins into his purse.

Lar turned at the foot of the stairs. “Oh, there you are!” he said.

“I’ve been waiting here for some time,” Emmis said.

“Oh? I went out to see the city. I went to the market, and to the docks to see the ships. I’m sorry if you were worried.”

“Oh, I wasn’t worried,” Emmis said. “Just eager to get on with things. I found you a house to rent, over near Arena Street.”

Lar smiled, and started up the stairs. “Good,” he said over his shoulder. “And a meeting with the overlord?”

“Well, that’s a little more difficult,” Emmis said, following Lar up the stairs. “I have to go back tomorrow and talk to the guard at the palace again.”

Lar glanced back at him, and Emmis quickly added, “But I’m sure we’ll manage something.”

“I am the representative of an empire,” Lar said. “I know it isn’t much of an empire compared with the Hegemony of Ethshar, but still, it would be reasonable for the overlord to see me.”

“I know, I know!” Emmis said. “And he will, I’m sure. It just may take a while to arrange.”

“But you have a house?”

“Yes. We can move you in this afternoon, if you want, though of course you’ll have to pay a month’s rent first.”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t hire a wagon for your things because I thought you might want to see it first,” Emmis added. “I mean, you weren’t very specific in your instructions, so you may not find it suitable.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will be reasonable,” Lar said.

“I’d be happier if you looked it over before bringing everything.”

“If you want.” They had reached the top floor, and the ambassador was reaching for the key on his belt.

“By the way,” Emmis said, glancing back down the stairs, “I thought you might want to know — there are some other foreigners here asking about you.”

Lar stopped, key in hand, and turned to look at Emmis. He cocked his head to one side, and his hat tipped, looking as if it was about to fall off.

“Are there?”

“Yes,” Emmis said. “I talked to them while I was waiting for you.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“That you are the Vondish ambassador, and you hired me to find you a house to rent.”

“You said nothing of warlocks?”

“What is there to say? You haven’t told me why you want to meet warlocks.”

“These foreigners — do you know where they are from?”

“Lumeth of the Towers and Ashthasa, they told me.”

“Ah. G’dye zas.” He turned his attention back to the door, sliding the key into the lock. A moment later he had it open and had stepped inside; he gestured for Emmis to follow him.

Emmis obeyed.

The ambassador looked up at him, then leaned back out the door, looked both ways, and closed it, gently but firmly. He tossed his hat on the bed, then turned back to Emmis.

“How much,” he asked, “are they paying you to spy on me?”