The Warrior's Bond

Preface to the Chronicle of the House,

As Given by Sieur Loedain D’Olbriot,

Winter Solstice of the 50th Year of

Bezaemar the Canny

It has fallen to few Sieurs of this House to record any Emperor completing a second full generation on the throne, but I find myself thus honoured. Indeed, as I look over the Imperial Rote, I see we have been blessed with more long-lived rulers over the last handful of generations than at any time since the Chaos. The world is a very different place since the days of Decabral, when the Eager, the Nervous and the Merciful all died by the sword. I wonder if Bezaemar the Canny will equal Aleonne the Gallant’s fifty-six years of rule; he has certainly faithfully followed the wise man’s example in using diplomacy to bring us peace instead of the warfare that once so often drained our resources of coin and youth.

As Tormalin fares, naturally so does D’Olbriot. How stands Tormalin at the end of so momentous a year? I can declare without hesitation that concord extends clear across the traditional domains of our Old Empire. We are seen again as the natural leaders of all lands bordered by mountains, forest and sea. Even the distant kingdom of Solura bows to our supremacy. Tormalin culture reaches once more to the very gates of Selerima. Our fashions are worn as far afield as the streets of Col, and learning from the antiquarian scholarship of Vanam enriches our libraries, restoring much that was lost in the Chaos. With accredited ambassadors in every Dukedom of Lescar and sitting as honoured observers in the Caladhrian Parliament, we are no longer at risk of unheeded anger boiling up into unexpected attack. Gold once spent like water to service the cohorts and galleys that guarded borders and coasts now enriches our dwellings with paintings and sculpture, ceramics and furniture. As noble wealth supports our craftsmen, so our traders carry their goods ever further along the peaceable high roads, even to the Great Forest and beyond. Long seasons of patient negotiation mean the Archipelago is no longer a source of fear and danger but a ready supplier of muslins for the poor and silks for the wealthy.

As ceremonial rivalry replaces contests of arms, D’Olbriot stands as of right in the first order of nobility. The niceties of rank are ever more finely codified to guide those visiting from lesser lands, and D’Olbriot reputation grows with every year that passes. I have extended D’Olbriot patronage beyond our own tenantry to those lesser Houses whose distance from Toremal or lack of resources hamper them in this race for status. Our daughters are eagerly courted and our sons are received with hopeful civility wherever they pay their addresses to a lady. D’Olbriot lands and enterprises flourish from the Ast Marsh to the Cape of Winds and our tenantry benefit daily from the enhanced position we have secured for all beholden to our Name.

So why do I not rejoice? Is it simply that I too am an old man, tired of bearing my own burden? I am in truth weary and let this document thus record my own decision to step down at this close of the year, bidding my Designate, my grand-nephew Chajere, take up the oath of the Sieur. But wisdom is a blessing of age, and it may be that I see within with clearer eyes, for all the webs clouding my outer vision. As Bezaemar has celebrated the longevity of his rule with lavish pomp, precious few of the commonalty have seen him do so and none too many of the nobility at whose pleasure he supposedly rules. Even Esquires of my own Name find themselves endlessly delayed in anterooms where tedious games of precedence are played out before they are admitted to the Imperial presence. Bezaemar has always been noted for his intelligence, but how can even the wisest of men make sound judgements when all his information comes from so small and so limited a circle of advisors? I am minded of a pond, peaceful and still, thus pleasant to look at but after time smelling rank with decay. After so long without anything to stir us, does not Tormalin risk similar stagnation?

Perhaps I am unduly pessimistic. The recent celebrations have naturally prompted renewed speculation as to who might succeed Bezaemar the Canny and those old Sieurs supporting him will soon be replaced in their turn by younger men looking to make a mark on their House. The Tor Bezaemar grandson most often mentioned is a lively, good-humoured lad, well known and liked among all who will vote on the question and with a wide circle of friends among the junior Esquires of our Houses. If I am spared, I pray that I might see such a man take up the mantle of the Emperor with new vitality.

The D’Olbriot Residence Gatehouse, Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Morning

I woke to one of those moments when your cares haven’t raised their heads and you can savour a comfortable bed, crisp linen and the promise of the new day. All that was missing was Livak curled close beside me and waking to my kiss. That fancy lasted about as long as it took me to fling aside the single coverlet that was all these sultry summer nights needed. Washed, shaved and out of the gatehouse before the early sun had risen a hair’s breadth higher over the roof tiles, I found the day outside still cool. Hedges lining the walks of the grounds cast long shadows still glistening with dew as I hurried to the barracks to see if any news had turned up while I slept.

Stolley was lounging on a bench by the barracks door. “Morning, Rysh, I’ve some messages for you.”

“Thanks.” I took two letters from Stolley. “Did anything else I should know about turn up last night?”

“Maitresse Tor Kanselin sent a bowl of crystal berries from her personal hot-house.” Stolley shrugged. “A lad from Tor Bezaemar came offering their Sieur’s personal physician. Sirnis Den Viorel sent him a tisane casket this morning.”

“Anything else?” I persisted.

Stolley sucked air through the gap where he’d lost three teeth in a fistfight. “You’re expecting some growling rough with a nail-studded club asking for a private audience, are you?”

“Or a mysterious beauty claiming to be an old friend, maybe some down-on-his-luck musician begging for a hearing?” I nodded, mock serious. All these characters and more were dusted off each year for puppet shows to tempt our Festival pennies. “How about the genial old man just looking for an honest game of Raven? I could do with winning a few crowns.”

“Don’t go looking in the barracks,” Stolley warned me. “All the new blood has been warned about you.”

“Spoilsport.” So nothing out of the ordinary had caught Stolley’s eye.

“Did you get any scent last night then?” Stoll was as keen as me and everyone else in the barracks to see whoever had stabbed Temar strung up from a gibbet.

“Nothing, and I checked in with every sergeant between the hills and the sea.” I shook my head. “I’d best get some breakfast and start calling back on them.”

“It’s the lower hall for upper servants,” Stoll reminded me with a pointed nod at the main house.

I groaned. “Why do housemaids have to be so cursed shrill in the morning?” But I crossed the grounds to the main house, mindful of Esquire Camarl’s rebuke. A hall servant I knew slightly was sweeping briskly around the door as I took the steps at the run.

“Ryshad, good morning!”

“And to you, Dass.” Not inclined to stop and chat, I took the backstairs down to the whitewashed lower hall, a long basement with shallow windows high in the walls bringing light from outside. Heavy, scarred tables with backless benches were crowded with ladies’ maids, housemaids, valets and lackeys, all talking at once and all trying to make themselves heard by speaking louder than their neighbour. The babble echoed back and forth from the limewashed stone, battering my ears. I knocked at the servery built between two massive pillars that once supported the undercroft of a D’Olbriot residence built and demolished generations since.

“What can I get you?” A freckle-faced child tucked a wisp of chestnut hair back behind her ear, wiping hands on her coarse apron.

“Bread, ham, whatever fruit’s left and a tisane with plenty of white amella.” I smiled at the lass.

“Something to keep you awake?” she chuckled as she assembled my meal from the plates and baskets to hand.

“Fifth chime of midnight was sounding as I got back last night,” I admitted.

“I hope she was worth it,” she teased, suddenly older than her years.

“And Fair Festival to you,” I retorted

She laughed. “It will be once I’ve served my turn today and fetched my dancing slippers.”

Sipping my tisane with a smile puckered by its bitterness, I found a seat at the very end of a table. A few of the maids and footmen spared me a glance but were more interested in sharing their gossip with the visiting servants. I knew most faces, even if I couldn’t put a name to them, and the few newcomers were visibly escorted by resident servants. Messire’s steward wasn’t about to have the smooth running of his household disrupted by some valet not knowing where to go for hot water or how to find the laundry.

The first note was another from Mistal, wanting to know where I’d got to yesterday, so I ignored it in favour of the salt richness of dark dry-cured ham against soft white bread still warm from the oven. The second simply had my given name scrawled clumsily on the outside. I cracked the misshapen blob of unmarked wax and unfolded the single sheet as I savoured the perfumed sweetness of a ripe plum.

“What in Dast’s name is this?” I was so startled I spoke out loud.

“Sorry?” The girl beside me turned from discussing southern fashions with a maid from Lequesine. “Did you want something, Ryshad?”

“No, sorry, but Fair Festival to you anyway, Mernis.” I smiled up at her with all the charm I could muster after shock on top of a late night. “Do you know if the breakfast trays have gone upstairs yet?”

“The hall lackeys were taking them up as I was coming down.” Mernis nodded. “You’re supposed to be shepherding the young D’Alsennin, aren’t you? Didn’t do too well yesterday, from what I hear?” She wasn’t being offensive, just curious, but I wasn’t about to give any gossip to share with her friends inside the House and beyond.

“Is he awake, do you know?” I wiped my sticky hands on a neatly darned napkin before tucking the letters inside my jerkin.

“I saw the Demoiselle Tor Arrial going in to him,” volunteered a lad some way down the table, the tailor’s apprentice as I recalled.

“Many thanks.” Everyone at this end of the long table was paying keen attention now, so I gave them all a bland smile and took the backstairs to the upper floors. I took them two at a time, varnished oaken boards underfoot softened only by a strip of woven matting and limewashed walls an unadorned yellow. There was no page outside Temar’s door this morning, but a newly sworn man, sufficiently flattered by the assignment not to pine for festivities he’d be missing.

“Verd.” I nodded a greeting. “Has anyone asked after D’Alsennin?”

“A few of the maids,” he shrugged. “Always after any excuse to dally.”

“Or flirt.” I grinned. “If anyone does come sniffing around, don’t set their hackles up, but I’ll be interested to know their names.”

Verd’s pouchy eyes were shrewd. “And what do I tell them?”

“Just shake your head and look dubious,” I suggested. “See if they look like that’s good news or bad.”

I knocked and hearing a muffled summons, opened the gilt-latched door. Temar was sitting up in the massive bed, an old-fashioned piece but still monumentally impressive. Hung with valance and curtains of scarlet and ivory damask, the ornately carved posts were matched by a deeply incised headboard. Temar sat against a bank of pillows looking uncomfortably self-conscious, a tray with the remnants of a good breakfast by his knees.

“When can I get dressed?” he grimaced in frustration, looking faintly ridiculous in a frilled nightshirt.

“When I am satisfied you are fit to do so.” This crisp response came from the Demoiselle Tor Arrial, who was sitting over by the window, hair confined in a silver filigree net this morning, a touch of elegance to offset her austere mauve gown.

“Ryshad, tell them to let me out of bed,” Temar appealed. I noted the appalling bruise had faded to a purplish smear and dark stains under one eye.

“How is he?” I turned to Avila. This healing was her handiwork so she was the best judge.

“Well enough,” she allowed after a pause.

“Can I get up?” demanded Temar.

“You lost entirely too much blood for my peace of mind,” said Avila repressively. “You must not do anything strenuous for at least another full day.”

“Getting out of bed is hardly strenuous,” the youth objected. “And I cannot spend half the Festival sat here. Inside a handful of days, the leading Names will leave for country properties with cleaner water and cooler air. There are people I need to see!”

“If you overreach yourself today you risk lying flat on your back for another three.” Avila met Temar’s challenge with equal force. “How will that help us recover the missing artefacts?”

“Talagrin’s haste is Poldrion’s bounty.” Temar and Avila both looked blankly at me. “Hurrying now risks more delay in the long run? Never mind. You feel fit enough sat in your bed, Temar, but you can’t rush a head injury. I’ve seen enough novices knocked senseless on the sparring floor to know that. What about your wound? You must be feeling that cut every time you breathe?”

“Avila healed it with Artifice,” said Temar scornfully. “She took the stitches out just now.”

“Oh.” There wasn’t much I could say to that.

“But we do not want another blade wasting my efforts,” Avila said waspishly. “Were you able to run any assailant to earth last night, Ryshad?”

“Not a one.” I shook my head. “Every man sworn to D’Olbriot and every other Name that owes us will be picking up the hunt, but until we get some scent you really shouldn’t go beyond the walls of the residence, Temar, not today certainly.”

“Have you found any hint of Elietimm within the city?” Avila demanded.

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “And Dastennin be my witness, I’ve looked. Have you felt anyone else working Artifice?”

“Not a trace,” she replied. “But I will continue to search.”

Temar looked as if he were about to speak, his thin face sulky, but he quailed beneath Avila’s steely gaze.

I pulled a letter out of my jerkin. “This morning’s bad news is someone wants to put a knife in me next. Whoever’s behind this, Temar’s not their only target.”

Avila recovered first from her astonishment. “Explain yourself

“This is a declaration of challenge.” I unfolded the anonymous note I’d received and read the crisply printed pronouncement aloud. “Be it known to all men duly sworn to the service of a Prince of Toremal that Ryshad Tathel, lately sworn to D’Olbriot and newly chosen to honour that Name, stands ready to prove his merit with sword, staff and dagger. According to custom, he will meet all comers in formal combat at the noon of Solstice on the practice ground of the D’Olbriot Cohort.” I folded the sheet carefully along its creases. “All quite according to form, as you see. The only problem is, I didn’t declare for trial.”

“I am sorry but I do not understand,” said Avila testily.

“Raising a Cohort was an uncommon event in your day, wasn’t it? Tenants were called up to serve for some specific emergency?” They both nodded slowly. “Well, during the Chaos the nobility needed standing troops to defend their people and their property. That’s when the first men were sworn, as soldiery to the Houses. By the end of the Kanselin era the formal structure we use today had developed. Recognised men are the bottom rung; they wear the livery of the House and if they show themselves trustworthy the Sieur offers them his oath and they swear to him in turn. Sworn men wear the amulet to symbolise those oaths. For those who make a mark, there’s promotion to chosen man, and then proven are at the top of the ladder, those few most highly regarded by the Sieur and his Designate.”

“And this business of challenge?” Avila gestured at the paper I held.

I looked at it. “There’s not so much need for warriors these days, but sworn men serve as bodyguards when nobility travel. Each House takes its turn supplying the Cohort keeping Toremal’s peace in the Emperor’s name, season by season and festival by festival, so we all have to be useful in a fight. Only a handful of Houses still maintain sword schools.” I ticked off the names on my fingers. “D’Olbriot, Tor Kanselin, Den Haurient, Tor Bezaemar and D’Istrac, but they all take men from the other Houses and train them up.

“When a recognised man comes to take his oath, he must prove he’s a competent fighter, so he issues a challenge with letters like this posted on all the sword school doors and sent to every House’s Sergeant-at-Arms. He has to fight everyone who turns up—any sworn man that is, not just ruffians off the streets—or he forfeits the honour of being offered an oath.”

“A test of endurance as well of skill.” Temar was looking interested. “You are also supposed to do this?”

“A sworn man elevated to chosen or a chosen man raised to proven always used to issue a challenge. Those already holding the rank would test his worth for promotion.” I rubbed a hand over my chin. “But it’s seldom done these days, only if the sword school wants to put on an extra display at the end of the recognition bouts or to honour a noted swordsman.” I shook my head. “And in any case, I didn’t issue the challenge. But now it’s posted I’m honour bound to answer anyone who turns up to meet it.”

“What is the person responsible hoping to achieve?” Avila wondered.

“Beyond killing Ryshad, if they get the chance,” commented Temar with a faint grin.

I smiled humourlessly back at him. “They won’t get that chance, but humiliating me out on the sand would be a major embarrassment for D’Olbriot.” Just as injuring Temar had humiliated the Name.

“If this challenge is nothing to do with you, why take the risk?” objected Avila.

“It is a question of honour,” Temar retorted swiftly.

I was glad he’d said that. “I’ll go down to the sword school this morning, shed a little sweat getting my eye in. It’s been a season or more since I did any serious training. I can ask a few questions while I’m there.”

“I had best take up the work you were doing yesterday.” Temar threw aside the coverlet, very nearly upsetting his breakfast tray.

I looked at Avila and saw my own doubts reflected in the Demoiselle’s eyes. “You really should stay within the walls today. Until we know more, we can’t risk you.”

“You need at least a day’s more rest, my lad,” Avila told him with a quelling look. “If someone truly wishes you dead, they will not send a man to face you with an honourable blade but with a dagger to hide in the shadows again. What am I to tell Guinalle if all I return to her is your ashes in an urn?”

I looked at my boots. That was a low blow from Avila, playing on the lad’s hopeless devotion for Guinalle. I happened to know she’d been keeping company with Usara, pupil and friend of the Archmage. His scholarship and intellect were far more to her tastes than Temar’s exuberance these days. Which reminded me—I still had to ask Casuel to use his wizardry to bespeak Usara to find out what Livak was up to. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that those brothers she was so fond of might lead her astray again.

“What am I supposed to do then?” Temar demanded crossly.

I hastily concentrated on the matter in hand. “There must be useful records in the library here. Not as many as at the archive, but the Sieur’s personal clerk will be free to help you. Messire will be at the Imperial Palace all day.”

Temar was still looking mutinous.

“At least you can get dressed,” I told him with a grin.

“I am invited to gossip over tisanes with Lady Channis and Dirindal Tor Bezaemar this morning,” announced Avila, a determined glint in her eye. “We can compare what we learn at lunch.”

Temar subsided on to his pillows. “I suppose so.”

“Please excuse me.” I bowed out of the room and caught up with a pageboy delivering carafes of spring water to the bedrooms along the corridor. “Do you know if Esquire Camarl has risen yet?”

The child shook his head. “He’s still in his bed, master, not even sent down for hot water or a tisane.”

Which meant Camarl’s fiercely devoted valet wouldn’t let anyone disturb him. I wasn’t surprised; when I’d reported my lack of progress to Camarl last night it had been well past midnight and the Esquire had still been working in the library, surrounded by parchments and ledgers. Better to go and see if anyone at the sword school could shed any light on this fake challenge, I decided. Then I could report to Camarl with more than half a tale.

I headed for the gatehouse, where I made sure Stolley knew not to let Temar go out without firstly getting Camarl’s express permission and secondly surrounding the lad with a ring of swords. A heavy wagon bearing the D’Olbriot chevron on its sides was lumbering past as I walked out on to the highway and I swung myself up on the back, nodding to the lugubrious carter.

“Chosen man, now is it?” He gave my armring a perfunctory glance and spat into the road. “You should know better than come borrowing a ride from me.”

“Where’s the harm, this once?” I protested with a grin. “Everyone does it, surely?”

“Everyone sworn, maybe.” He turned to his team of sturdy mules with a dour chirrup.

I swung my legs idly as the cart ambled round the long arc of the highway little faster than walking pace, but I was content to save my energies for the exertions a morning at the D’Olbriot sword school promised. The mules needed no prompting to take an eventual turn towards the sprawl of warehouses, chandleries and miscellaneous yards that sell everything and anything brought in from the towns and estates of the Empire or ferried from overseas in the capacious galleys that ply their way along the coasts from Ensaimin and beyond. As the carter began a series of stops to fill his wagon with sacks and barrels to supply D’Olbriot’s festivities I got off and waved my thanks.

It wasn’t far to the sword school, a rough and ready cluster of buildings inside a paling fence. It’s an old joke that our Sieur’s sacks of grain are housed in more luxury than the men who’ll defend his barns. But these austere barracks are where recognised men have their mettle and commitment tested; newer accommodations up at the residence reward those sworn to the Name with more comfortable lodging. I walked inside the weathered and gaping fence, a boundary more for show than defence. If anyone was foolish enough to think there was anything here worth stealing, he’d soon find fifty swords on either hand ready to explain his mistake.

But the sandy compound was empty today. All those who usually spent their days here training and sweating were either in attendance on the Names who’d recognised them or were off taking advantage of all the distractions Festival could offer. Those who drank themselves senseless would regret it soon enough when the first day of Aft-Summer had them back on the practice ground.

I headed for the simple circular building dominating the compound, rough wooden walls built on a waist-high foundation of stone and holding a shingled roof twice the height of a man. The wide doors stood open to welcome in any breeze that might relieve the summer sun, even for a moment. Squinting in the gloom I went in, grateful for the shade, even though the full heat of the day was yet to come.

A shove sent me stumbling forward, barely keeping my feet. I broke into a run, partly to save myself from falling, partly to get away from whomever was behind me. I whirled round, drawing my sword all in one smooth move, blade arcing round to gut anyone trying for a second blow.

My sword met the blade of the man attacking me in a harsh clash of metal. My blade slid down his and the guards locked tight. Our eyes met, his gaze on a level with mine. I threw my assailant away with a sudden heave, my sword ready for his next move.

The tip of his blade hovered a scant hand’s width from mine. He moved with unexpected fury, brilliant steel flashing down to cleave my head like a melon waiting for the knife. But I wasn’t waiting. As soon as his shoulders tightened I brought my own sword up, with a sliding step to the off hand to take me out of danger. I swept my blade down on his, forcing it away, the same movement taking my own sword up and into his face, threatening to slice his throat to the spine. He stepped back, balanced on light feet, raising his sword first to protect himself and then slashing up and round to scythe into my upper body. I ducked, moved and would have had the point of my sword into his guts but he changed his strike to a downward smash. Our swords caught fast again, both of us leaning all our strength into the blades, muscles taut.

“So what was she like, your Aldabreshin whore?” He tried to spit in my face but his mouth was too dry.

“Better than your mother ever was.” I blinked away sweat stinging my eyes and running down my nose to drip on the sand. “You’re getting old, Fyle.”

“I’ll be old when you’ll be dead,” he sneered. “You can stake your stones on that.”

“First time I heard that I laughed so much I fell out of my crib.” I shook my head. “A lot of dogs have died since you were whelped, Fyle.”

We broke apart and moved in a slow circle, swords low and ready. I looked him in the eyes, seeing implacable determination. In the instant he brought up his blade I stepped in, rolling my hands to lift my sword up under his arms, the edge biting into his shirt sleeves. As he flinched, retreated and recovered to continue his downward stroke, all inside a breath, I stepped out and around, bringing a sweeping cut in from behind to hack off his head.

I rested my blade gently on his corded neck, between grizzled, close-cropped hair and his sweat-soaked collar. “Yield?”

He dropped his sword but only so he could rub the tender skin above each elbow. “That cursed hurt, Rysh.”

“Good enough?” I persisted, turning my face vainly for a cool breeze but the air was heavy and warm inside the rough wooden circle.

Fyle nodded, easing broad shoulders in a familiar gesture. “Good enough, unless someone unexpected turns up to answer the challenge.”

“So you’ve heard about that.” I sheathed my own sword and picked up Fyle’s blade, returning it to him with a bow of respect. “Any notion who might be interested?

“In taking you down a peg or two? His laughter rang up to the crudely shaped rafters. “They’ll be lining up!”

“Anyone I know in particular?” I wiped sweat from my face with my shirt sleeve.

Fyle paused, shirt open at the neck, breeches patched and sweat stained. He had more than half a generation on me, the chest hair tangling in the laces of his shirt greying, but he was still impressively muscled. “It was D’Istrac men you got into that fight with, you and Aiten.”

I sat on a plain wooden bench to ease the laces on one boot but looked up at his words. “Which fight?”

“Well, there were so many, weren’t there?” Sarcasm rasped in Fyle’s voice.

“Not so many,” I protested. “And we didn’t always start them.”

“You started that one with D’Istrac’s men though.” Fyle shook his head at me. “When you were ringing a bell about the way men raised to chosen and proven should take their turn at challenge, same as the rest, same as it always had been done. Debasing the metal of the amulet, wasn’t it?”

“But that was ten years ago,” I said slowly.

“You’d forgotten?” Fyle laughed. “Well, throw shit in the sea on the ebb and the stink’ll come back on the flow, you know that.”

“Can’t a man say stupid things when he’s young, drunk and stupid?” I pleaded, shucking my jerkin and hanging it on a peg.

“Of course,” Fyle assured me. “But older, wise and sober, you admit your mistakes.” He looked at me sternly, the scant space between his bushy eyebrows disappearing. “That’s what I reckoned when I saw that challenge posted. If you’d come to me to get my warrant, I’d have told you to forget it and just buy enough wine to sink the insult if you felt that bad about it.”

“But it’s not my challenge,” I told him. “That’s what I came to see you about. Who might have posted it in my name?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Fyle, voice muffled as he scrubbed at his face with a coarse towel.

“What about the other sword provosts?” I persisted. “Maybe someone came to them looking for a warrant?”

“No, and I went asking, ready to take a piece out of anyone’s hide who thought he could give warrant for a D’Olbriot challenge.” Fyle shook his head.

I managed a rueful grin. “So D’Istrac will be sending every chosen man they can muster, will they?”

“All those who don’t mind risking a bloody nose or a few stitches to put a crimp in their Festival rutting.” Fyle shoved wide bare feet into loose shoes. “You’ve a face like the southern end of a northbound mule! There’s no malice in it, Ryshad, but you’ve done well for yourself, got the Sieur’s ear these last few years, been sent off on Raeponin knows what duty. So you got chosen when men you trained with are still polishing up their scabbards in the barracks, and the higher a cat climbs a tree the more people want to tweak its tail.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll get us something to wash the dust out of our throats and you can tell me all about that Aldabreshin woman of yours. I’ve been wanting to hear the full story.”

Fyle went to the open door and whistled. An eager lad appeared; there are always a few hanging round any sword school, watching, learning and hoping one day to be recognised.

Fyle gave the boy coin and he ran off to fetch wine from one of the many nearby inns and taverns making their money by quenching swordsmen’s thirsts.

Young men drinking deep on empty stomachs say some brainless things. Was it that simple? Were my own foolish words coming back to mock me? Dast be my witness, I’d completely forgotten that quarrel so long past. I couldn’t even recall exactly where or when I’d been laying down the ancient law of the sword schools, intoxicated with all the vigour of youth and not a little wine. I didn’t relish explaining this to the Sieur or Camarl, admitting this challenge wasn’t some ploy to deprive the House or D’Alsennin of a valued defender but just muck trailed in from the days I’d been too dimwitted not to foul my own doorstep.

Who else would have remembered that evening? Who would care enough, after all this time to want to set me up for a fall? Why now? I’d spent a lot of time away from Toremal these last few years, but there’d been other Solstices for anyone wanting to settle that score to set their little game in play.

Aiten would have laughed, I thought gloomily. If he’d been here, he’d have been the first I’d have suspected of posting the challenge. He’d have thought it a glorious prank and then would have trained with me every waking moment so I’d walk off the sand as victor at the end of the day. But he was two years dead, all but a season and a half. Dead at Livak’s hand, but his death was owed to Elietimm malice. I knew she still fretted about the appalling choice she’d made, to kill my friend to save my life and hers when his wits had been taken from him by foul enchantment. I only hoped this distance between us wouldn’t have her doubting my assurance that I never blamed her.

Fyle returned swinging leather beakers in one hand and a blackened flagon in the other. “We’ll drink to your success tomorrow, shall we?”

“I hope there’s plenty of water in that,” I commented, taking a drink. Aiten was dead, Livak was away and I had to deal with the here and now. Someone had set a challenge and I had to meet it. If I was paying debts run up in my foolish youth, so be it. If someone planned to leave me bleeding on the sand, I’d make sure he was the one needing the surgeon. Then I’d want to know whose coin had bought his blade in defiance of every tenet of oath-bound tradition.

“We’ll lift the good stuff tomorrow,” Fyle promised, seeing my expression as I sipped. “When you’ve seen off whatever dogs come yapping round your heels.”

“You think I’ll do?” If he didn’t, Fyle would soon tell me.

“You’re the equal of any sworn man I’ve had here in the last five years,” he said slowly. “You’re young for a chosen, so you’ll face men with more experience than you, but on the other side of that coin they’ll be older, slower.” He smiled at me, the creases around his dark eyes deepening. “You were a loud-mouthed lad, but you were saying nothing we sword provosts don’t mutter among ourselves over a late night flagon. Too many chosen and proven polish up their armring and let their swords rust.”

Like Glannar, I thought sternly. “So you’ll be putting down coin to back me, will you?”

“You know I’m no man for a wager.” Fyle shook his head. “I only take risks I can’t avoid, like any sensible soldier.”

We both drank deep, thirst gripping us by the throat.

“I’d have thought you’d have had a few more tricks up your sleeve,” remarked Fyle as he refilled our beakers with the well watered wine. “Didn’t you learn anything in those god-cursed islands down south?”

“You’re not going to let that go, are you?” I laughed.

“One of our own gets sold into slavery by those worthless Relshazri, taken off into the Archipelago, where even honest traders say disease takes three men for every two the Aldabreshi kill. He fights his way out with wizards behind him and then turns up on the far side of the ocean, unearthing Nemith the Last’s lost colony, untouched by time?” Fyle looked at me, mock incredulous. “You don’t suppose I’m going to swallow that, do you? What really happened?”

I let go a long breath as I thought how best to answer him. “I was arrested in Relshaz after a misunderstanding with a trader.”

“And they claim to have a law code equal to ours,” scoffed Fyle.

I shrugged. I could hardly claim the trader was being unreasonable when he’d objected to Temar taking over my hands and wits to steal that unholy armring. “Raeponin must have been looking the other way. Some mischief loaded the scales so I got bought by an Elietimm warlord looking for a body slave for his youngest wife.” Elietimm mischief had been behind it but I wasn’t about to try explaining that to Fyle. “I did my duty by her for a season or so, jumped ship, and headed north when I got the chance.” A chance offered me by the warlord, since I’d done him the favour of exposing the treachery of another of his wives, a vicious stupid bitch being played for a fool by those cursed Elietimm. “I got caught up with the Archmage and his search for Kellarin when I took a ride on a ship to Hadrumal.” I shrugged again. “After that, I was just looking out for the Sieur’s interests.” Discovering he’d sacrifice me for the greater good of the Name without too much grief.

Fyle leaned back against some cloak left hanging on a peg. “So what kind of service does a warlord’s wife want?” From the way he loaded the word, he meant it in the stableyard sense.

I laughed. “Oh, you’ve heard the stories, Fyle.” As had I and every other man in Tormalin. The Archipelago was ruled by vicious savages who used their women in common, slaking blood lust and the other kind in orgies of cruelty and debauchery. Crudely copied chapbooks with lurid illustrations periodically circulated round the sword schools, those who could read entertaining their fellows with the titillating details. When one particularly unpleasant example had come to light in a provost’s inspection, Fyle’s predecessor had made a fire of every bit of paper in the barracks.

“Well?” Fyle demanded. “Come on! Half the lads here were expecting you to float up dead on the summer storms and the rest thought you’d be cut two stones lighter if we ever saw you alive again!”

“Luckily eunuchs have gone out of fashion in this generation.”

Fyle laughed, thinking I was joking. I leaned over to him, keeping my voice low. “Fyle, you haven’t heard the half of it.”

“Master Provost?” A shout from the far door saved me from any more questions. It was the Barracks Steward, a thick ledger under his arm.

“Duty calls.” Fyle groaned. “But I’ll have the truth out of you, Rysh, if I have to get you drunk to do it.” He pointed a blunt, emphatic finger at me.

“You can buy the brandy to celebrate my success tomorrow,” I offered.

Fyle laughed as he left. “Yes, Master Steward, what can I do for you?”

I wandered out of the far door, squinting in the bright sunlight. A few lads sat in the dust, playing a game of runes with a battered wooden set discarded by some man at arms. White Raven’s more my game; I never have that much luck with runes, unlike Livak. But then, she makes her own luck if needs be. I wandered past the long, low-roofed barracks where narrow windows shed scant light on the cramped bunks inside. The shrine was at the far end of the sword school compound, a small round building in the same pale sandy stone, ochre tiles spotted with lichen on an old-fashioned conical roof.

I went inside and sneezed, old incense hanging in the air having its usual effect. The ancient icon of Ostrin had a fresh Festival garland around its neck and the bowl in front of the plinth was filled with the ash of more than one incense stick recently burned in supplication. Fyle took his duties as nominal priest of the place more seriously than Serial, sword provost through my early training. He’d left the place to dust and cobwebs that made a greybeard out of the youthful Ostrin, holly staff in one hand and jug in the other.

I looked up at the statue, carved in some smooth soft grey stone I’d never been able to identify, much to my father’s amusement. Ostrin has many aspects endearing him to fighting men: god of hospitality, legends tell of him rewarding faithful servants and even taking up arms to defend dutiful folk being abused by the unworthy. When taking up arms leads to bloodshed, then we can beseech the god’s healing grace. These days I’d be more likely to see what Artifice could do for me, I thought irreverently.

Taking incense, steel and flint from the drawer in the plinth, I lit a casual offering in remembrance of Aiten. I’d failed to bring his body back, to be burned on the pyre ground behind this little shrine. I hadn’t even returned with his ashes, purified in some distant fire and safe in an urn to join in the serried ranks lining the curved walls, mute remembrance of all those men who’d died in D’Olbriot service and now took their ease in the Otherworld. I hadn’t even brought back his sword or his dagger, to lay in one of the dusty chests tucked behind the altar. But I had his amulet, sewn in my sword-belt, the token in earnest of our oaths. I’d lay that to rest here, I decided, when I’d taken suitable revenge, some day, somehow, when I’d won a price in blood with all the interest accrued out of some worthless Elietimm hide. Ostrin, Dastennin and any other god who cared to listen could be my witness, the Elietimm wouldn’t lay hands on Kellarin, not while I was still breathing.

Would Ostrin care for Laio Shek, the warlord’s wife? I smiled. What did the gods think of those who never even acknowledged them? But Laio had looked after me, according to her peculiar customs. No, Fyle hadn’t heard the half of life in the Archipelago. I couldn’t speak for every warlord, but Shek Kul wasn’t merely a barbarian. An astute man, he walked a difficult path in a dangerous world of shifting alliances and armed truce. He was capable of unholy cruelty; I’d seen that when he’d executed his errant wife, but by the stars of the Archipelago that had been justice. His other wives were no mere ornaments subject to his lusts and abuse either, but intelligent women who managed more commerce and underlings than the Sieurs of many a minor House.

But trying to convince the assembled swordsmen of Tormalin that everything they’d always believed was false would be as pointless as shouting defiance to Dastennin in the teeth of a gale. Fyle and some of the others might listen if I told them a few new truths along with a circumscribed tale confirming the Archipelagan reputation for erotic expertise was no exaggeration. Aldabreshin women certainly took many men besides their husbands to their beds, but that was their choice, not some dictate of brutal masters. Not that I’d sully the memory of my intimate dealings with Laio by laying every detail bare to salacious view.

I smiled. Next time I accompanied my mother to Halcarion’s shrine, on her market day visits to polish up my sister Kitria’s urn, I’d light another scrap of incense in hopes that the Moon Maiden would look favourably on little Laio.

I frowned. I’d have to watch my tongue if Fyle did ply me with white brandy. Laio had sent me on my way with enough gold to buy a sizeable tract of the upper city. Truth be told, I still wasn’t certain if she’d meant that as payment for services rendered.

Enough of this self-indulgence; I had more important things to occupy me without wasting time in idle reverie. I turned my back on the feathery wisps of blue smoke and walked briskly back to the sword school, remembering I’d left my jerkin by the door.

When I entered the echoing building I saw someone going through my pockets. I caught him by surprise and had him face down on the ground before he could draw breath. “Turned thief, have you?”

“Get off, Rysh!” My brother Mistal spat out a mouthful of dust.

“Not earning a living at the law, so you come picking my pocket?” I had his arms behind him and a knee in the small of his back. “Come on, get up. A soft lot, you lawyers.”

He struggled ineffectually. “Let me up and say that, you bastard.”

“Now that’s really worth a slapping, sullying our mother’s honour.” I let him go and stood, ready for his move.

He didn’t make one, brushing pale sand from the dull grey of his law court robes with one hand and waving two crumpled notes at me. “Is there any pissing point sending you letters?”

I was surprised at his anger. “I’ve been busy, Mist. You know what Festival’s like. I’ve no time to go admiring masquerade dancers with you.”

“This isn’t about god-cursed dancers!” Mistal thrust a letter at me. “Nor’s this one. I needed to see you!”

“Chain up your dog.” My pleasure at seeing my brother was fading fast. “I’ll write a reply while the wax is still warm on your letter next time, good enough? Dastennin help you if all you want is to show me is some curly lass who’s been flirting her skirts at you.”

Mistal opened his mouth then shut it with a sheepish grin. “Fair enough. But this is serious, Rysh.”

I was starting to realise it must be for him to leave the court precincts during daylight. If Mistal just wanted to enjoy the Festival’s entertainments with me, he’d have waited until the tenth chime of day ended all business with sunset.

“Not here.” A sword school is no place for a confidential discussion.

“Let’s take some air on the rope walk.” Mistal reached into his pocket for chewing leaf. I waved away his offer.

The sword school’s not far from the docks and we took a short cut through an alley lined with brothels doing good business with both seafarers and men-at-arms. Not that combining such trades was without its hazards; Stolley had lost those teeth of his somewhere hereabouts.

“What are you doing down here?” Mistal asked. “Shouldn’t you be dancing attendance on your Sieur instead of sparring with your friends?”

I smiled without humour. “Someone thought it a good joke to post a challenge in my name. Given young D’Alsennin nearly had his skull cracked like an egg yesterday, we think someone’s out for D’Olbriot heads to hang from their walls.”

Mistal looked sharply at me before scowling blackly in thought.

We came out on to a broad quayside, a few galleys tied up but quiet decks empty of all but a solitary watch. All their goods had been unloaded days earlier in good time for Festival buying sprees. This stretch of the sea front was owned by D’Olbriot, bollards and warehouse doors marked with the lynx for a good distance in either direction. Some whores were enjoying a brief respite on the paved walkways, plenty of room for them to stroll while the ropemakers were away enjoying their Festival along with everyone else. They’d be back on the first of Aft-Summer, stringing hemp between frames and posts, walking up and down as they turned handles twisting yarn into cables strong enough to hold the broad galleys secure in this wide anchorage and ropes for every lesser task. But for now we had space to walk and talk and not be overheard.

Mistal was looking with interest at a fetching little slattern with improbably auburn plaits. She was glancing back from beneath her painted eyelashes. He’s a handsome man, much my height and colouring but with the finer features our mother has given him, whereas I have inherited our father’s forthright jaw. But his looks would be of less interest to the whore than his dress; advocates are noted for their heavy purses. I nudged Mistal. “You had something important to say? Or do you want to try a rush up her frills?”

“She can wait.” He gripped the fronts of his robe in a pose lawyers seem to learn in their first season around the courts. “It’s this colony of yours, the one D’Olbriot’s mixed up in. Some people are looking very greedily out over the ocean.”

“Lescari mercenaries.” I nodded. “I’ve heard those rumours.”

“Lescari mercenaries?” Mistal looked incredulous. “They don’t know sheep shit from dried grapes. Rysh, your Sieur is going to walk into a hailstorm of law suits tomorrow and I don’t think he knows a thing about it.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Who’s bringing suit?”

“Tor Priminale for one.” Mistal raised one finger then a second. “Den Rannion for another. They’re claiming rights in this Kellarin colony on account of ancestral due.”

“How so?” We started walking again.

“As the Houses who originally backed the colony. They claim a share of the land, the minerals, timber, animals. Whatever’s been turned into coin already, they want a penny in the Mark paid up prompt.”

“Can they do that?” I wondered.

“They can make an argument for it,” Mistal said grimly. “I don’t know how strong, but regardless, it’ll tie your Sieur up in parchment tapes until Winter Solstice.”

“How do you know all this?” Lawyers are bound by oaths they hold no less dear than we swordsmen, oaths of confidentiality and good faith, sworn to Raeponin and enforced with crippling penalties if respect for the God of Justice doesn’t keep them honest.

“I was asked to submit a reading on the question,” replied Mistal scornfully. “Along with every other advocate who’s ever argued a case on rights in property. Not because they wanted my opinion but to make sure that if D’Olbriot came looking for my services I’d have to cry off on account of prior interest.” He laughed without humour. “Not that a Name like D’Olbriot is ever going to come looking for representation in the stalls where lowly advocates like me ply our trade.”

“But whoever’s behind this didn’t want to leave any rabbit hole unnetted before he sent in his ferrets.” I was getting the measure of this now. “Tor Priminale is bringing suit? But the Demoiselle Guinalle is still alive, over in Kellarin. If the Name has any rights over there, she’d be their holder. Den Fellaemion was her uncle, and I’m sure he’d have willed his portion to her.” I’d have to ask Temar about that.

“Who’s to say it’s really her?” Mistal demanded. “Who’s to say she’s still in her right mind after Saedrin knows how long under some cursed enchantment? I’ll bet my robes against Mother’s ragbag that someone’s drawing up arguments like that to set aside her claims.”

“D’Olbriot can bring any number of witnesses to vouch for her wits,” I said scornfully.

“D’Olbriot witnesses?” queried Mistal. “Anyone impartial? Wizards, perhaps? Mercenaries?”

“She’d have to present herself, wouldn’t she?” I said slowly. “Stand up in a court she’s never seen, subject to laws she knows nothing of, harried with questions she’ll struggle to understand. If she does answer, that ancient accent’ll make her sound half-witted regardless.”

“She might well prove herself competent,” Mistal allowed, “but she’ll be spending Aft-Summer and both halves of Autumn in court to do it.”

“When she’s one of the only two people with any real authority in Kellarin. How are they supposed to manage without her? I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I should have come to see you.”

“I could have made myself clearer,” said Mistal in some regret. “But I didn’t dare put this down on paper.” He looked round but there was no one within earshot. Even the pretty little whore had found some other amusement.

“I’ll keep your name out of it when I tell the Sieur,” I promised soberly. If word of this got out no one would ever trust Mistal again and that would be the end of the legal career he’s spent so many years pursuing.

“There’s more.” Mistal sighed. “Even allowing for Justiciary oaths, there are whispers in the wind. If Tor Priminale or Den Rannion get so much as a hearing, Den Muret will bring suit at Autumn Equinox and probably Den Domesin as well.”

I gaped at him. “Both of them?”

He nodded firmly. “And you were saying your Demoiselle Tor Priminale’s so important to Kellarin? I take it Esquire D’Alsennin’s just as significant?”

“Temar?” I stopped again, boot heels rapping on the stone.

“Tor Alder are bringing suit to have the D’Alsennin Name declared extinct,” said Mistal flatly. “Apparently your Temar’s mother married some Tor Alder back in the last days of the Old Empire. She bore him two sons and when the old Sieur ’Alsennin died he left what remained of his holdings to that Tor Alder line, in trust against Temar or his sons ever coming back.”

“All signed and sealed and locked in a deed box for generations?” I almost laughed at the irony.

“You know what those ancient Houses are like,” Mistal nodded. “They save every inky scribble down from the days of Correl the Potent. It’s been Tor Alder’s title to some of the best lands around Ast and a tidy stretch of property on the south side yonder.”

I looked out over the wide bay of Toremal, iridescent sea sparkling in the sunlight, ruffed here and there with white foam. The shore came sweeping round from distant northern headlands to the far-flung sandy stretches of the southern reaches, arms spread wide to welcome ships into a safe embrace. I’d no idea what land over there had been worth in Temar’s era but nowadays the rents would likely pay for a fleet of ships to serve Kellarin and all the supplies he could load on them.

“How can they declare the Name extinct?” I demanded. “Temar’s still alive.”

“Only just, from what I heard yesterday in the tisane houses,” Mistal pointed out. “And even if some dark sorcery brought him back from the brink of death—”

“Sadrin’s stones!” I objected.

“That’s what they’re saying,” insisted Mistal. “Anyway, even if he is alive with all his wits under his hat, there’s only the one of him, an Esquire, no Sieur, no badge, no nothing as far as law codes written after the Chaos are concerned.”

“Anything else?” I hoped for a shake of Mistal’s head.

He smiled. “Just Den Thasnet arguing that D’Olbriot Land Tax should be assessed against the entire extent of Kellarin henceforth, given that House is the only beneficiary of all those resources.”

“They can go piss up a rope,” I said before I could stop myself.

“Quite possibly a case to argue.” Mistal struck a lawyerly pose on the clean-swept cobbles. “The sons of that House have been splashing their inheritance all over their boots since they could stand straight enough to hold out their pizzles, my lord Justiciar.”

I laughed briefly. “Shit, Mist, this is serious.”

“It is,” he agreed, letting his grey robe fall back on his shoulders. “And clever, because if Den Thasnet’s argument is dismissed, that just strengthens Tor Priminale and the rest.”

“If Den Thasnet’s upheld?” Was there some legal point to counter the obvious conclusion?

“Then D’Olbriot has the choice of bankrupting the House to pay the taxes or acknowledging Tor Priminale and all the others in a counter suit.” Mistal confirmed my worst suspicions.

We’d reached the far end of the quay by now, where a collection of little boats had been left high and dry by the tide. We turned back, both walking in silence, arms folded and brows knotted in thought, strides matching pace for pace.

“ ‘Clever’ and ‘Den Thasnet’ aren’t words you often use in the same breath,” I said after a long pause.

“Indeed not.” Mistal looked down at his hands, twisting the ring that signified his pledge to the Emperor’s justice. “They’re puppets in this, I’ll lay my oath on that.”

“So who’s pulling their strings?” I demanded angrily. “This stinks worse than cracked shellfish.”

“Which is why I wanted to warn you,” said Mistal grimly. “My oath’s supposed to protect those dealing with good faith, not shield someone using the law as a stalking horse for their own malice.”

“How long have you known about this?” I asked.

“I was asked to draw up an opinion on Festival Eve,” Mistal answered. “Which is what made me suspicious. There’s no way anyone could come up with a winning argument in that time. It had to be a tactic to spoil the spoor for anyone else.”

“But someone’s willing to pay sound coin to do that,” I pointed out. “If you’re saying every clerk and advocate got the same retainer, that’s a fair sack of gold someone’s spending.”

“And they don’t mind risking word leaking out, not at this stage,” Mistal commented. “They’re sure of themselves, which means someone’s had archivists and advocates working on this for some while.”

“Lawyers won’t break a confidence, but where do archivists and clerks go to wash library dust out of their throats?” I wondered.

“Who put the notion of a legal challenge in the Sieur Tor Priminale’s head?” queried Mistal. “And Den Rannion, Den Domesin and Den Muret, all at one and the same time? One bright clerk coming up with the idea, I could believe. Two? Perhaps in closely allied Houses, but the last time Tor Priminale and Den Rannion worked together on anything must have been your cursed colony. Four Names all going to law at the same time, every clerk in the town sent scurrying round the archives and every advocate retained? You’d need that gambler girl of yours to work out the odds against that being happenstance.”

I felt a pang at Mistal’s dismissive reference to Livak. I’d expected our older brothers Hansey and Ridner to take against her, but I’d hoped Mist would like her. I looked at him. “You say word of this will be getting out?”

“That D’Olbriot’s going to be hip deep in horseshit tomorrow? You know what this town is like, Rysh.” Mistal shrugged. “Some clerk, some advocate’s runner will reckon that’s too ripe a morsel to keep to himself.”

“Dast’s teeth,” I cursed. “I owe you for this, Mist, and so does the Sieur. Will I see you round the courts tomorrow?”

He hesitated. “I can be seen with my brother but only if you’re alone. Whoever’s behind this won’t waste a breath before accusing me of bad faith if I’m seen talking to anyone representing D’Olbriot without good reason.”

I nodded. “Then you can walk back to safer streets with me. I can’t leave you here in your nice clean robes for any passing footpad to club.”

“Just remember who’s the oldest here,” Mistal warned me.

“Just remember what Mother said the last time she found a cure for the scald in with your dirty linen. I’m not leaving you near all these brothels.”

We bickered amiably enough all the way back to the lower end of the Graceway, where Mistal turned off to head back to the warren of crumbling stone and worm-ridden wood that makes up the Imperial Courts of Law. I hailed a hireling gig and told the driver to get me back to D’Olbriot’s residence as fast as his whip could manage.

The Library, D’Olbriot Residence, Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Noon

And we may find something of interest here, Esquire.” An eager young man deposited yet another stack of dusty parchments in front of Temar.

“Thank you, Master Kuse.” Temar managed to sound grateful.

“Call me Dolsan,” said the saturnine youth as he leafed intently through the pile.

“Then you must call me Temar,” he said with feeling. “Esquire D’Alsennin is over formal.”

“The Sieur likes formality.” The clerk brushed a cobweb from the front of his jerkin. “Come to that, shouldn’t you be the Sieur D’Alsennin by now?”

Temar sat back in his round-armed chair. “Should I?”

Dolsan continued sorting documents. “You’re the elder male of the Name, so you’re entitled to propose yourself in the absence of any others.”

Temar managed a shaky laugh. “As far as I’m concerned my grandsire will always be the Sieur.”

“But what about everyone else’s concerns?” Dolsan asked, head on one side.

“What has it to do with everyone else?” demanded Temar.

Dolsan raised hands to deflect the irritation in Temar’s words. “It’s such an unusual occurrence, a Name reduced to one man. We’ve been trying to find precedent in the archives.”

“We?” Temar queried.

“The Sieur and myself,” Dolsan explained. “And clerks from other Houses have commented in passing. We meet at the law courts, at archives and so on, sometimes share a few bottles of wine after a long day.”

Conversation over those cups must be mind-numbingly boring, thought Temar. But then again, perhaps not. “Have you friends in other Houses who might help us trace these people on my list?”

“Almost certainly,” Dolsan nodded. “But it’ll be easier if we can pinpoint the era and Name we’re interested in.”

“Of course.” Temar bent over the creased and dingy parchment he’d been studying and Dolsan turned over tattered leaves he’d fetched from a dusty chest. Their soft fall was the only sound to disturb the graceful room. The walls were shelved from floor to ceiling, with only lavishly embroidered curtains hung at long windows to soften the all-encompassing severity of the thick leather tomes. A carpet richly patterned in gold and green carried a wide table polished to a glorious sheen surrounded by stylish chairs with cushions in D’Olbriot colours and several lamp stands stood ready to shed illumination if needed. A black marble fireplace with a gold-framed mirror over the mantel claimed the only expanse of wall not given over to books, fresh summer flowers bright instead of flames in the grate. The only incongruous note in all this sophistication was the stack of dark, dusty record chests inconveniencing anyone wanting to move around.

“We may have something here,” Temar said after a while. “This inventory of the Maitresse Odalie’s jewels mentions a silver brooch set with malachite. It came to her as part of an inheritance from a Tor Priminale aunt who died childless. We are missing a brooch like that and the woman it belonged to was from a family owing duty to Den Fellaemion.”

“Who were subsumed into Tor Priminale during the Chaos,” agreed Dolsan. “The fact you can read archaic script makes this so much easier, you know.” He reached for a vast sheet of parchment covered in fine writing. “Here we are, marriages under Kanselin the Droll. Odalie had four daughters, two of whom married within the Name, one married into D’Istrac, and the youngest married into Den Breval.”

Temar glanced up. “Do you know anyone serving either Name?”

Dolsan leaned on his elbows, cupping his face in his hands.

“I know a couple of clerks working for D’Istrac, but Den Breval’s a northern House; their archive’s in Ast. I know Den Breval had to defend in an argument over grazing rights a few years back. They’d have hired Toremal help for that and I might find someone who knows something, at least where any copies of Den Breval records might be lodged. Remote Names often leave things in the Toremal archives of allied Houses.”

“Ryshad was right when he said you were the man for this job.” Temar shook his head. Would he ever get all these Names and their relations straight? It was doubtless all very well if you imbibed such things with mother’s milk but this flood of information all at once threatened to choke him. “But I admit I expected a sober old man with a long grey beard.”

Dolsan smiled as he returned to his ancient records. “That sounds like my grandsire.”

“He was a clerk? You followed his trade?” Temar nodded; of course that would be the way of it.

Dolsan looked up. “Oh, no, he just had the beard. He was a cobbler, and my father after him. But we’re D’Olbriot tenants and that means the chance of better schooling than most. My teachers said I had a talent for words and recommended me to the Sieur’s Archivist.”

“Do you enjoy your work?” asked Temar curiously.

“Very much,” laughed Dolsan. “And anything’s better than spending the days pricking my thumbs with a leather needle.”

“You must meet the scholars we have in Kel Ar’Ayen.” They shared this bizarre, intense determination to tease the truth of history from faded records and partial accounts, Temar recalled.

“Perhaps, one day,” Dolsan said politely.

A tap on the door made them both turn their heads. “Enter,” called Dolsan when it was clear Temar wasn’t about to respond.

“Good day to you, Esquire, Master Clerk.” Allin slid into the room, closing the door behind her. “ I was looking for Demoiselle Tor Arrial?”

“Avila?” Temar shook his head. “She has gone out with Lady Channis.”

“Oh.” Allin looked uncertain. “Oh dear.”

“Why did you want her?” Temar seized this welcome distraction from the documents stacked before him.

“It wasn’t anything important,” said Allin in unconvincing tones. “Don’t let me disturb you.”

The gatehouse struck the five chimes of noon and Dolsan let slip a sigh of relief. “My lady, I think we’ve earned a break, so you’re not interrupting us.” He got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, Esquire, I’ll go and eat. How soon would you like me back here?”

“Take your time, have a decent meal and some fresh air.” Temar turned to Allin. “May I escort you to the upper hall?”

“Oh, no, thank you but it’s not really—” stammered Allin.

Temar looked at her pink cheeks. “Dolse, would you do us a small service?”

The clerk turned on the threshold. “Esquire?”

“Could you send word to the kitchens. We’ll eat in here, nothing too elaborate.” Temar turned to Allin with a faint smile. “I am hardly in the mood for formality either.”

Dolsan hesitated. “You won’t get food or drink near any documents?”

“Of course not.” The door closed behind the clerk and Temar began folding parchments along their dusty creases. “Please, do be seated. So, why did you want Demoiselle Tor Arrial?”

Allin took a chair, reached for a skein of faded ribbon and began tying documents into neat bundles. “Oh, nothing important.” She blushed when she saw Temar’s raised brows. “Well, Velindre said it wasn’t.”

“May I be the judge of that?” Temar didn’t see why Allin should always have other people telling her what to do and what not to do, even he must.

Allin fumbled in the pocket of her skirt. “Velindre’s come to the Festival to find out what the Tormalins think of magic these days.” She unfolded coarse paper. “So we’ve been picking up handbills, to see if any wizards are earning money from magical displays.”

Temar read the blocky letters aloud. “ ‘Saedrin locks the door to the Otherworld to mortals but a few favoured ones may listen at the keyhole. Poldrion charges mortals the ferry fee he judges his due but brings visions back across the river of death without charge. Many questions may be answered by those with the sight to see them. Seek your answers from Mistress Maedura at the Fetterlock Inn, from sunset on every day of Festival. Suitable payment for services rendered must be made in Tormalin coin.’ The style falls off a little at the end, I think?” He looked at Allin. “You suspect this is some magical charade?”

Allin shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Velindre thinks it’s just some confidence play to trick gullible Lescaris out of their coin.”

“Why Lescaris?” Temar was puzzled.

Allin sighed. “Trying to see something of the Otherworld, it’s rather a Lescari obsession. Everyone’s lost so many friends, families get split up, sons go off to fight and never return. People use all manner of divinations to try and find out what happened to loved ones; rune-telling, Soluran prediction, Aldabreshin omens.”

“I am confused.” Temar rubbed a hand over his hair. “What has this to do with Demoiselle Tor Arrial?”

“I wondered if it might be aetheric enchantment if it wasn’t elemental magic.” The plump girl set her jaw, giving an unexpected strength to her round face. “I wondered if the Demoiselle might come with me?” Allin raised hopeful eyes to Temar.

He didn’t think it fair to tell her the scathing response she’d probably get. “Will Velindre not accompany you?”

“She has a dinner engagement,” said Allin regretfully. “Tormalin mages gather for Festival like everyone else and there are wizards she wants to ask about the status of magic hereabouts.”

Temar was diverted by sudden curiosity. “What do wizards do in Tormalin?”

Allin looked at him with faint surprise. “They earn a living, same as everywhere else. Those with fire affinity help metalworkers and foundries, those linked to water find work with shipbuilders or something like that. But there’s still a lingering suspicion of wizards in Tormalin, so they’re only ever given short-term work, for a specific project usually.”

“The mages in Kel Ar’Ayen are none too ready to lend magical aid to such mundane tasks. They always make it out to be some great favour.” Temar shook his head. “But why are mages so suspect on this side of the ocean?”

“After the Chaos?” Allin looked puzzled. “Hasn’t anyone told you this?”

Temar smiled appealingly at her. “We are generally too busy with the day-to-day business of living in Kel Ar’Ayen for idle chatter.”

“Oh.” Allin looked round the room for a moment before visibly making a decision. “I don’t suppose it reflects very well on wizardry, so that’s probably why no one’s mentioned it. Some warfare in the Chaos was backed with elemental magic. Fire and flood, lightning, they were all used on battlefields. Other magic was wrought against encampments, armies found themselves mired in bogs where they’d been riding through pasture, that kind of thing.”

“So Houses backed by wizards had a significant advantage,” nodded Temar with interest.

Allin grimaced. “Magic’s a powerful ally in the short term, but in the longer term it’s not that crucial. You can drive an army off a battlefield with waves of flame but magic won’t help you hold the land you win. A single spellcaster soon exhausts himself; Cloud-Master Otrick makes sure every apprentice mage learns that. In any case, there were never that many wizards willing to turn their talents to warfare and once other Houses started banishing any mage-born — or doing worse—there were even fewer. But prejudice against magic in Tormalin persists.”

“But Artifice held the Empire together.” Temar frowned. “Adepts in aetheric magic were highly respected. Everyone acknowledged that their work served the greater good.”

“And the magic went away and everything fell into Chaos?” Allin raised her eyebrows. “Who do you suppose they blamed?”

“If what Guinalle says is true, they were right to do so.” Temar bit his lip. “It seems the struggles of the Kel Ar’Ayen Adepts against the ancient Elietimm somehow undermined the whole aetheric balance underpinning Artifice.”

“I heard some scholars visiting Hadrumal from Vanam arguing about that,” Allin nodded. “Wizardry did some truly dreadful things, before Trydek brought the mage-born under his rule, and the tales are still told, doubtless exaggerated with each repeating. It’s small wonder all most people believe is magic is magic and it’s suspect, whatever its hue or origin. There are precious few people outside Hadrumal who even know about aetheric magic and its role in the Old Empire. The world has moved on, more than you know.”

“More than I am allowed to know, it would seem,” said Temar lightly, but anger sparked a gleam in his eye.

Allin looked at her hands. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I will not tell anyone you did.” Temar looked thoughtfully at Allin. “The wizards I know mostly want to live in Hadrumal pursuing their scholarship. You are not much like them.”

Allin hesitated. “Scholarship’s important. Velindre spends her life trying to understand the work of the winds, what happens to air when it is warmed by fire or cooled over water. The more she understands, the more precise her magic can be, the more exact her control over the element of her affinity. It takes little more than instinct to raise a gale if you’re mage-born, but to use air to cool a sick child’s fever, to carry a word across a thousand leagues, that takes a depth of understanding that only study can give. That’s the whole reason for Hadrumal’s existence.”

“But such study is not for you?” guessed Temar.

Allin blushed. “I want to learn enough to make my magic useful, but I’m no scholar.”

“Then what will you do with your useful magecraft?” asked Temar, teasing a little.

“I’d like to go home but magic’s even more suspect in Lescar than anywhere else.” A hint of tears shone faintly in Allin’s eyes. “Each Duke’s afraid someone else will enlist a wizard to fight on their side.”

“Which might at least bring all that sorry warfare to an end,” said Temar curtly. He waited a moment for the girl to regain her composure. “Forgive me. So, if you can not go home, what would you do?”

“There are Lescari in exile all over what you knew as the Empire, mostly in Caladhria or Tormalin.” Allin looked at the paper lying on the table. “Some do very well for themselves, settle and grow rich, but others struggle. There must be some way to use magecraft to earn a living from the wealthy and to help the weak better themselves.”

Temar studied the handbill himself, the silence in the room like a held breath.

“But Velindre dislikes you associating with other Lescari?” He set his jaw.

“Oh, no,” said Allin, flustered. “She just doesn’t think this is worth pursuing, and in any case she has other calls on her time.”

Temar looked at the handbill again and clicked his tongue absently against his teeth. “This could be Artifice, used to read minds, tell people what they want to hear. There would be a value in determining that.”

“Whoever’s doing this might have some way to find people, maybe even people sleeping in an enchanted artefact,” suggested Allin tentatively.

Temar looked searchingly at the girl. “Are there not people you wish to find?”

Allin knotted her hands on the table before her. “I’m luckier than most,” she said determinedly. “I know where my parents are, my brothers and sisters. When the fighting finally rolled our way at least we managed to stay together. But I had uncles, aunts, cousins in and around Carluse. They were scattered to the four winds when our new Duke decided it was his turn to claim the Lescari throne and his Grace of Sharlac slapped him down.” She cleared her throat but said nothing further.

Temar felt a pang at the thought of his own family, long lost to him beyond Saedrin’s door. “What if this person can really contact the dead?” he wondered aloud. “What if I could speak to Vahil? To Elsire?” What if he could speak to his mother, his grandsire, ask their advice once again?

“Vahil was the Sieur Den Rannion that came back from the colony?” Allin leaned forward.

Temar laid his long-fingered hands flat to stop them trembling. “What if I could ask him where the artefacts were sent, who got the pieces we are missing? It will take an army of clerks a full round of seasons to worm such secrets out of these archives. What if Vahil could save us all that work?”

“So you’ll speak to the Demoiselle?” Allin laid an unthinking hand on Temar’s.

“We do not need her.” Temar gave Allin’s fingers an encouraging squeeze. “You said you were no scholar. Well, neither am I, but I have learned enough of Artifice to know if someone is working it in the same room. I will come with you. If we learn something to our advantage then we can share the pleasure of telling Velindre she was wrong. If it turns out we are looking for wool in a goat shed, then no one need ever know.” He hesitated. “Except Ryshad, he had best come with us. Meet me at the gatehouse at sunset and we can all go together.”

As Allin nodded, the door opened. A curious lackey moved to one side to let two maids carry trays into the room. Allin blushed scarlet and pulled her hands free of Temar’s.

Temar looked at the maids with a fair approximation of the blank aloofness he found so irritating in these latter-day nobles. All three servants kept their eyes lowered, but as the door shut behind them Temar clearly heard a giggle overlaying a murmur of hushed speculation. Both were hastily cut short by a curt enquiry in a familiar voice.

“Master Devoir,” Temar greeted Casuel courteously as the wizard stuck a suspicious face round the door. “We were just about to have some lunch.”

“Allin? What are you doing here?” Casuel came in carrying two tall stacks of books carefully secured with leather straps, cloth padding protecting the covers against any injury to the binding. “Esquire D’Alsennin isn’t supposed to have any visitors today.”

“Oh, you were hurt, weren’t you?” Allin’s eyes were wide with concern. “Are you all right? But I did send word from the gate, to ask the Sieur’s permission.”

“Thanks to the Demoiselle’s Artifice, I am fully healed.” Temar smiled at her. “So, Casuel, what have you there?”

“More clues for your search, if you can tease them out,” said the mage loftily.

“Velindre was saying you must have a source of information second to none,” said Allin unexpectedly.

Casuel smiled a little uncertainly as he began unstrapping the books. “There are few wizards in Tormalin in these rational days and fewer who are also antiquarians.”

“She was talking about your brother?” Allin looked innocently at him. “Velindre says he must hear all manner of news and opinion.”

Casuel’s smile turned sickly. “I hardly think he’ll have anything useful to contribute.”

Temar looked from Allin to Casuel, carefully hiding a smile. “Pardon me, but I did not know you had a brother, Casuel.”

“Amalin Devoir is a noted musician, a composer of considerable skill and innovation,” Allin explained with artless admiration. “His works are played right across Lescar and Caladhria.”

“Another talented member of your family.” Temar smiled as Casuel inclined his head with ill grace. “Surely it could not hurt to see if he could help us?”

“I could call on him, I suppose,” the wizard said reluctantly. “But I think we’ll get far more out of these books. So, if you’ll excuse us, Allin, we’ve important work to do.”

“Allin is staying for some lunch,” Temar said firmly. With his face turned he could wink at her without Casuel seeing, and she bit her lower lip to hide a smile, cheeks pink as she studied a parchment in front of her with hasty intensity.

Esquire Camarl’s Study, the D’Olbriot Residence, Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Afternoon

I came straight here to warn you.” I concluded my explanation of Mistal’s news and waited for the Esquire’s reaction, hands behind my back and feet a quarter-span apart. The calm stance belied my inner agitation, my desire to be out running rumour and suspicion to ground.

Camarl was sitting by the window, a small table at his side piled high with correspondence. He turned a carved ivory paper knife slowly in his hands. “This is certainly ominous news, as is this business of someone posting a challenge in your name. You should have told me about that this morning, before going off to the sword school.” He looked up at me, raising the ivory knife even though I’d made no move to speak. “I’m not going to bandy words with you. Chosen or not, Ryshad, you have to keep me informed. Is there any other news, anything about the attack on D’Alsennin?”

I sighed. “Last night I went round every barracks where I’ve friends, every Cohort I’ve shared duty with, asked every watchman hired for Festival that I could find. If any of them knew anything or even suspected, they’d have told me by now. I’ll wager my oath fee there are no Elietimm in the city, but I can’t swear any more than that. I’ve still got a few people to check back with, but I don’t think they’ll have anything different to tell.”

“You can send one of the sworn from the barracks to fetch and carry messages. I want your help looking for answers in different places.” Camarl smiled to take any rebuke out of his words. “I’m going to a meeting of my art society this afternoon.” Camarl indicated the discreet elegance of his sober clothing with a hand bearing a solitary silver band enamelled with the D’Olbriot lynx. “I meet men of all ranks there and I’ll hear a certain amount of the gossip about D’Alsennin, Kellarin and the rest, but everyone knows my Name, so most will guard their tongues. I think you should come with me, Ryshad. No one knows you, so you might catch some indiscretion.”

“If I ask the right questions,” I agreed slowly. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d kept eyes and ears open for the House’s benefit. There was far more to being a sworn man in this day and age than simply swinging a sword. “But are you sure I won’t be recognised?” I spent a good few years serving in Toremal before the Sieur sent me out on his various commissions to ride the vast D’Olbriot estates.

“No one looks at a sworn man’s face,” Camarl said carelessly. “You’ll just have been another nameless body in livery.”

“Am I dressed for the part?” I was in plain breeches and a nondescript jerkin, good-quality cloth and well cut but nothing special.

“Quite appropriate, for a mason from Zyoutessela, wouldn’t you say?” said Camarl with an approving smile. “There’ll be other artisans there, as well as traders and nobles. It’s one of the reasons I joined, to widen my acquaintance beyond my own rank.”

“What does the Sieur think of that?” I asked.

Camarl wrinkled his nose. “He agrees it’s a regrettable necessity of this era.”

I laughed, hearing the Sieur’s dry wit in the words.

“I have letters that need an answer.” Camarl nodded to his personal scrivener, who was sitting patiently in a corner of the room. “I’ll see you at the gatehouse shortly, Ryshad. Get something to eat if you need it.”

The lower hall was full of kitchen maids and scullions now, drab in washed-out gowns and shirts shapeless with repeated boiling. They gossiped idly, enjoying some respite before embarking on the myriad preparations for a series of private dinners in the smaller salons and the more ceremonial banquet that the Sieur would host that evening. Lady Channis always made sure no formal lunches were planned for days when the House entertained in the evening. The pot-washers and vegetable-peelers cast envious glances at the cooks, everyone plainly ranked by their chapped hands. The lowest slaveys from the scullery were scarlet to the wrist; the premier pastrycooks and the Master of the Kitchens could afford discreet lace at their cuffs and scrupulously manicured nails.

I took bread and cheese from platters on a table and went out to the gatehouse, where I knew I could cadge a glass of wine from Stoll. We had scant moments to wait before Camarl’s personal gig arrived, and the Esquire wasn’t long in coming.

The groom jumped down and swung himself up on the back step as the Esquire took the reins. As Camarl drove us down to the lower city with habitual competence, I turned to the groom on the perch behind us. He was staring ahead, face as impassive as the carved cats’ masks on the side panels, and he wouldn’t meet my eye. I really was going to have to get used to being one of those served rather than serving.

The bright sunlight was touched with the faintest hint of salt on a breeze from the distant harbour as Camarl turned off the encircling road down the main highway that runs clear across the lower city to the bay. The ancient walls of Toremal soon appeared between the rooftops, once mighty bastions in their day but now hemmed in all around with buildings nearly as high. Camarl got his horse in hand as we went beneath the sturdy arch of the Spring Gate and we emerged into the sunshine gilding the Graceway. Great mansions had been packed close within the old city walls in the uncertain days of earlier generations and the Names had guarded their privileges jealously. Nowadays the iron gates, with their badges of gilded bronze high above the heads of the crowd, stand open but rank still counts for something. It’s only those with a genuine amulet bearing recognised insignia that may use the wide, well-made street marching straight to the sea. I saw a woman trying to saunter past the duty guard with a beribboned basket held high in her arms and smiled as she was turned back to take the longer route through the tangle of lesser roads spreading ever wider beyond the walls. We were passed with a curt nod from the Den Janaquel man standing sentry, pike butt resting by one hobnailed boot.

“Do you know anyone sworn to Den Janaquel?” Camarl asked as we whipped the horse to a trot in the comparatively empty road. “They’re providing the Duty Cohort for the Festival, so they’ll hear more news than anyone else.”

“I’ve never had dealings with the House but I’ll see if I can get an introduction through the sword school.” Stoll probably knew someone, or if he didn’t Fyle would. Fyle knew everyone.

Out of long habit I noted changes to the buildings lining the Graceway. What had once been a Den Bradile mansion was being refaced with pale new marble; trim, rational lines replacing the curlicues of an earlier age. The handful of shops now sharing the façade were getting broad new windows with deep sills for the better display of elegant trinkets for ladies, costly feathers and expensive lace. Further along a seamstress who’d been a tenant of Den Thasnet since before I’d come to Toremal had given up her lease to be replaced by some hopeful new tailor owing duty to the Name. His frontage was brightly decked to attract both year-round residents and those eager to buy the latest fashions on their once-yearly trip to this hub of sophistication.

This wasn’t Bremilayne, where I had little local knowledge and few contacts. This wasn’t chasing backwoods rumour in a fruitless quest for Elietimm sneaking into Dalasor to rob and maim. Whoever had attacked Temar had stepped on my ground. They had to have left tracks. Someone would get a scent, sooner or later.

“And here we are.” Camarl’s words broke into my thoughts. We were outside a tisane house, once a wing of some long-vanished residence. Now it boasted a brightly painted sign telling all and sundry that Master Lediard could supply the finest aromatics and spices and the most luxurious premises in which to enjoy them.

Camarl handed the reins to his groom. “Call for me at eighth chime.” He pressed a negligent silver Mark into the man’s palm but all I could offer was a smile so I hurried after the Esquire. I prefer wine to tisanes as a rule but I could get used to drinking them in these surroundings. This was no futile attempt to drag a failing tavern up the social scale by offering hot water and stale herbs in place of ale.

Comfortable chairs ringed sturdy tables set just far enough apart to stop people hearing other conversations. Most tables were spread with parchments, ledgers and counting frames, since tisanes have always been popular with men of business, who might lose more than the cost of the flagon if they let wine blunt their acuity. Some men bent solitary over their documents, some sat in twos and threes deep in talk, others relaxed with one of the latest broadsheets, plentiful copies racked by the door. A baize-covered panel beside it was crisscrossed with leather straps holding letters tucked securely beneath. A lad was emptying folded and sealed sheets out of a box below it. The nobility have the Imperial Despatch to carry their letters but the middle ranks have to rely on these more informal arrangements between tisane houses and inns.

I overhead a snatch of intense discussion as Camarl let a lass in a dull blue gown slip past with a tray laden with little bowls of spice.

“I’ll take a fifth share in the cargo, against covering you if the ship’s lost.”

“Toremal value or Relshaz value?”

“Relshaz value at Equinox’s best prices.”

“But what if they’re delayed by bad weather? Prices could be falling by the time they arrive.”

“That’s your risk, friend. Mine’s the ship sinking.”

The man beside us selected some ivory tags from a shallow tray in the middle of his table. He handed them to a girl who took them to a sharp-eyed woman behind a long counter.

“We’re upstairs,” said Camarl back over his shoulder.

As I followed him, I noticed the woman spooning the required herbs from the vast array of canisters on the shelves at her back. As the maid delivered the tisane ingredients to her waiting customer, another arrived with cups, tisane balls and a jug of steaming water, carried carefully from the far end of the room where a red-faced man tended an array of kettles on a vast range that greedily consumed the coal shovelled into its open maw by an ash-stained lad.

I followed the Esquire up a panelled staircase to find the whole first floor of the building was opened into a single room. Tables and chairs ranged around the walls were largely ignored by the busy crowd all talking at once in the middle. Plain coats, everyday jerkins and practical boots were the order of dress, though the discerning eye would see Camarl’s clothes were a cut above the rest in both cloth and tailoring.

“D’Olbriot!” A burly man in an ochre coat strained at the buttons waved at Camarl.

“Fair Festival, Master Sistrin,” he replied cheerfully.

“Let’s hope so.” Sistrin planted hands on hips as he jutted his chin at a younger man wearing the brooch of a minor House on his jerkin. “What does D’Olbriot think of some of us traders setting up our own academy with our own funds?”

“Endowing schools has always been the honour and duty of the nobility,” the young man said politely. I managed to place the badge; a cadet line of Den Hefeken.

“But we have more sons wanting places than the established colleges can supply,” commented a third man, accents of the merchant class ringing in his voice. “Learning letters and reckoning in a dame-school may have been enough for our fathers and forefathers, but times have changed.”

“If we endow a school, we have a say in what they teach.” Sistrin jabbed an emphatic finger at Den Hefeken. “Rhetoric and precedence in Convocation and what House holds which priesthood aren’t much use to my boy. He needs mathematics, geography, drawing up a contract and knowing which law codes back it up. Come to that, we’ve daughters who’d do well to learn more than sewing a seam or playing a pretty spinet.”

“With all D’Olbriot’s mining interests, you could do worse than teach your Esquires some natural science,” sniffed the third man.

“I quite agree, Palbere,” Camarl nodded. “Our tutors having been doing just that since the turn of the year, assisted by some newcomers from Hadrumal.”

“Wizards?” Sistrin laughed heartily. “That’d be unnatural science, then would it?”

Did I feel an unusual disapproval chill the air at the mention of wizards? Den Hefeken’s face was a well-bred blank but Palbere was scowling

Camarl continued, unconcerned. “I’d prefer my cousins learned their lessons alongside your nephews, Sistrin, rather than see schools divided by rank or trade. They’ll pick up some understanding of your glass trade, and shared knowledge is always a road to common prosperity.”

Palbere sipped at a steaming tisane. “Talking of roads, is it true D’Olbriot plans on digging a canal to cut the loop of the Nyme around Feverad? Will you be bringing wizards in to do the work of honest labourers there?”

“Feverad merchants first mooted the plan,” said Camarl cautiously. “They’ve suggested D’Olbriot might care to back the project and magical assistance makes such tasks considerably faster and safer.”

“So you’ll be taking the revenues off the rest of us when it’s built?” Den Hefeken asked with careful neutrality.

“If it’s built, and surely we’d be entitled to recoup our outlay?” Camarl looked at each man in turn. “Of course, those costs would be considerably reduced by employing wizards’ skills.”

Sistrin drew breath on some further argument but Camarl raised an apologetic hand. “Forgive me gentlemen, I have a guest with me today. May I make known Ryshad Tathel, stone mason of Zyoutessela.”

Several nearby heads turned away from their conversations to note my name and I smiled as benignly as I could.

“Are you sponsoring him to the society?” Sistrin asked belligerently.

“If he decides it’s for him,” smiled Camarl before drawing me politely away.

“That’s one man won’t leave you wondering about his opinions,” I commented in a low voice.

“Which makes him very useful, because what he says ten men more discreet are thinking,” agreed Camarl. “And he’s usually first with any hint of scandal, while Palbere has a nose for business second to none.”

“Do you do anything even vaguely connected to art here?” I grinned.

“Over here.” Camarl kept pausing to greet people but we finally edged our way through to the far end of the room, where tables in the better light under the windows were covered with books of engravings and single sheets of inked and coloured paper. “Boudoir art is over there,” indicated Camarl with a smile, “next to the satires and lampoons. We pride ourselves on being an open-minded society.”

Both artwork and model would doubtless be a considerable improvement on the grubby woodcuts that circulated round the barracks but neither interested me when all I had to do was shut my eyes and think of Livak. I picked up a small portfolio. “Plants of the Dalasor Grasslands?” I opened it on a beautifully detailed painting of a yellow heather.

“Several of our members are natural philosophers,” nodded Camarl. “And as a mason, you might be interested in the architectural drawings over there.”

“Esquire, might I have a word?” A long-faced elder with depressed dewlaps framing a downturned mouth appeared at Camarl’s shoulder. “Master Ganalt, of course.”

I noted the old man wore the silver-leaf collar of a shrine fraternity, something you don’t see so often these days.

“It’s the shrine to Talagrin on the Solland road,” Ganalt began after a hesitant glance at me. “It’s on Den Bradile land and the priesthood’s in their family, naturally, but the local people have always been faithful to the Hunter—” The old man fell silent.

“Is there some problem?” prompted Camarl.

“There’s rumour Den Bradile intend making it a private cinerarium, even planning to removing urns already consecrated there unless they’re linked to the Name in some way.” He lifted an unconscious hand to his silver rowan leaves, emblem of the Lord of the Forest. “We might use our funds to build another shrine, but we’re pledged to helping the poor…” He broke off with another dubious look at me.

“Excuse me, Esquire, I’d like to look at some of those plans you mentioned.” I nodded as much of a bow as I could in the confined space and slid past two men chuckling over a vivid satire. The architectural drawings included a series of maze designs, something increasingly fashionable in recent years, and I studied them with interest.

“The trick is matching suitable mathematical complexity with the tenets of Rationalism,” commented a man coming to stand next to me.

“And finding shrubs that grow fast enough to make a maze worth having before the whole thing goes out of fashion?” I suggested.

“There’s that,” he agreed. “Which is why this year’s innovation is patterns laid out in bricks between little raised banks. I believe a Den Haurient gardener suggested it but the Rationalists will tell you it’s so the logic of the whole can be better appreciated by seeing the whole design.”

I laughed, picking up an interesting perspective on new alterations to an old frontage.

“I hear you’re a mason?” remarked my new companion. “From the south?”

“Zyoutessela,” I kept my tone as casual as his.

“Is there plenty of work?” he asked with interest.

“The city’s thrice the size it was in my grandsire’s day,” I nodded. “He hired himself from site to site with little more than a bag of tools and rock-hard determination to better himself. When he died, he left my father a sizeable yard and me and now my brothers work three sites.”

“They say a good block of stone rings like a bell,” remarked my would-be acquaintance with studied idleness.

“If you strike it right, and there’s a tang to fine stone, like rotten eggs.” Hansey and Ridner were welcome to all the smells, the dust, the noise and headaches that went with the trade.

“Redvar Harl, Master Carpenter.” He bowed and I returned the courtesy. “I saw you arrive with Esquire Camarl? Are you D’Olbriot tenants?”

He was very interested in me for a complete stranger but I didn’t think he was about to stab me in an entire room of witnesses. “We are.”

“There must be all manner of opportunities in the south, what with D’Olbriot sponsoring this colony overseas,” my new friend mused.

“It offers some intriguing possibilities,” I said in neutral tones.

My companion stared out of the window. “D’Olbriot will want to do the best for their tenants, but if this land’s as big as rumour has it Esquire Camarl might do well to think in rather broader terms.”

I nodded silent encouragement.

“I’m from Solland. I take it you’ve heard about the fighting in Parnilesse, after the old Duke’s death?”

It wasn’t hard to see my next step in this dance. “Down in the south, we don’t hear that much about border matters.”

“D’Olbriot has holdings around Solland, so the Sieur will be fully aware of the Lescari land question.” Master Harl turned to look intently at me. “The Lescari still cling to their foolish system of all land going to the eldest born. Then they breed like the rabbits that infest their hills, whelping useless younger sons left landless and looking for a quarrel. Poldrion knows how much grief could be saved if those surplus spawn could be shipped across the ocean, to make their way in a new land by their own efforts.”

“That’s an interesting notion,” I said slowly. “I’d be interested to know what Esquire Camarl might make of it.” I could guess Temar’s reaction.

Master Harl’s eyes shifted to a point behind my shoulder.

“Excuse me, there’s someone I must wish a Fair Festival.”

I turned to see whom he meant but Camarl stepped into my line of sight, a carefully constructed expression of amusement on his face. “Now, Ryshad, what do you make of this?”

He handed me a crisp sheet of paper printed with a hand-coloured satire. A wedding carriage was being drawn through the streets of Toremal by the D’Olbriot lynx on the one hand and the Tor Tadriol bull on the other. This wasn’t the robust “ animal of the Emperor’s badge but a sickly calf with a foolish expression and comical spotted hide. The high-stepping lynx topped it by a head, looking down with avid eyes and sharp teeth exposed in a hungry smile. The Emperor himself was in the carriage, an unexceptional portrait but plainly recognisable. I tapped the face of the girl beside him, a vapid beauty with an unfeasibly large bosom. “Is this anyone I should know?”

“No one in particular.” Camarl shook his head, fixed smile still not reaching his eyes. “But I’ve a full handful of cousins of an age and breeding to make a good match for Tadriol. Most are here for Festival, naturally enough.”

I studied a capering fool in the foreground throwing handfuls of fire and lightning up into the air, stunning a few thatch birds in the process. The onlookers were barely sketched in but a few eloquent lines deftly conveyed expressions of contempt, ridicule and dissatisfaction. “Do you reckon that’s Casuel?”

The Esquire’s smile widened and did reach his eyes. “He’d hardly be flattered to think so. But few people know him and those that do find him inoffensive to the point of tedium. That’s one of the reasons we agreed to him being Planir’s liaison; no one could possibly see him as a threat.”

“Whoever drew this certainly doesn’t like the idea of magic’ I pointed to a hooded figure in sooty robes stalking behind the carriage, people drawing back from his ominous shadow. “Would that be Planir the Black, do you suppose?”

“The name’s a gift to satirists, isn’t it?” muttered Camarl with irritation.

“An apprentice joke, as I understand it,” I explained, “on account of him being a coal miner’s son.”

“We all have to take jokes in good part, don’t we?” Camarl’s eyes were cold and calculating once again. “Why don’t you see what other people here make of the jest?”

I weighed the paper in my hand and studied the detail of the picture. Engraving a plate to that standard was no overnight task. “There’s coin backing this artist.” I looked for a signature but couldn’t find one.

“An unusually retiring satirist, now there’s a novelty.” Camarl was clearly on the same scent as me. “Why don’t I see if someone can point me in his direction? After all, a talent like that deserves encouragement.”

“I’d say he’s already got some noble patron,” I observed.

“Quite likely,” agreed Camarl. “And perhaps he’ll be prepared to say who, in return for a commission to create as handsome a joke at their expense, along with some D’Olbriot gold.”

Several heads close by turned at the Esquire’s words, expressions eager. Genteel dispute between two great Houses would certainly liven up Festival, with scurrilous pictures to snigger over for a few coppers and discreet hints of scandal spicing up the usually stodgy fare of the broadsheets.

I’d track down the printer, I decided. There was no hope of stopping such things circulating: with books so costly, printers with mouths to feed need every copper they can tempt folk to spare on a sheet of gossip or a lewdly entertaining picture. But a few crowns might buy me some clue as to this tidbit’s origin.

“Let’s see what we can find out,” I said softly. I wasn’t about to forget the Elietimm but I reckoned we had more serious concerns now, enemies closer at hand, enemies who knew how to use oath-bound ritual, the law courts and the thriving social networks of the city against us. And they weren’t above knives in the back either, I reminded myself.

“Have you seen this?” I tapped a stranger on the arm in friendly fashion, introduced myself and we shared a chuckle over the satire. He offered an unsubtle depiction of some recent excesses by the younger Esquires Den Thasnet, which prompted his companion, a linen draper, to warn me against working for that House, claiming they were notorious bad debtors.

By the time I’d worked my way round the gathering and drunk more tisane than I usually do in a season, I was well up to date with the latest scandals, intrigues, births, deaths and marriages of Houses from the highest to the most lowly. I also shared in plenty of conversations where the nobility barely warranted a mention, an unaccustomed reminder of the life I’d known before I’d sworn myself to D’Olbriot, when the Name was merely a faceless rent office and a vague promise of help should some crisis strike our family. It was an interesting way of spending an afternoon but what I didn’t hear was any particular malice directed at D’Olbriot, D’Alsennin or Kellarin. There was plenty of speculation, but most of these solid men of business were more interested in debating the potential opportunities and hazards of a new trading partner on the far side of the ocean.

Esquire Camarl signalled to me from the far side of the room and I made my excuses to an apothecary who’d been displaying considerable if completely ill-informed interest in Artifice.

“I have to go, I’m expected at Den Haurient for some discussions and then dinner.” Camarl was looking just a trifle exasperated. “I have to go back to dress.”

“I’ve not heard anything significant,” I told him with regret.

He let out a slow breath. “Stay for a while longer. People may let some indiscretion slip if I’m not here.”

“I’ll keep my ears pricked,” I promised.

But the Esquire wasn’t the only one engaged to dine elsewhere and his departure prompted a growing number to make their excuses. The determined core who remained began pulling chairs into comradely circles and called for wine rather than tisanes from Master Lediard’s obliging maidservants.

I was going to look conspicuous if I tried to inveigle myself into those tight groups of long-standing friends, I decided.

These men might not realise I was one of D’Olbriot’s chosen, but they knew at very least I was a tenant of the House. The casual atmosphere where someone might let slip a hint by accident or design had evaporated.

I made brief farewells to a few of my new acquaintances and left. Standing out on the flagway, I wondered what to do next as leisurely couples went strolling past arm in arm now the heat of the day had faded and the rich and elegant came out to admire each other in all their Festival finery.

I could go back and kick my heels in the gatehouse, waiting to tell Camarl I’d learned nothing new, I thought, or I could do something more useful with my time. It was all very well the Esquire telling me to send sworn and recognised about my errands but I could hardly expect them to explain all the complexities of Temar’s search for his lost artefacts, could I? I had enough trouble making that tale sound convincing, and I’d been part of it.

I made up my mind and turned down the Graceway. Revellers were spilling out of taverns and inns with their goblets and beakers of wine and ale, so I stepped into the roadway. There was little enough traffic and, armring or not, most people hereabouts looked for me to step aside for them. I worked my way down to the heart of the old city. Here the Graceway crosses the Primeway, the ancient highway running parallel with the shore and leaving Toremal by the gates that guard the highroads to north and south. A fountain stands in the centre of the vast square formed by the crossroads, Saedrin looking to the east, Poldrion to the west and Raeponin with hands stretched to north and south, eyes raised to the skies. Years ago, word was, it had been a shrine dedicated by some long-dead Emperor in the days before the Chaos, now it was merely an inviting display of cool water where people could meet. Open coaches circulated round it, moving slowly for the better display of Festival finery.

The Popinjay is one of the bigger inns on the edge of this square, dominating the corner to the north and east. The ninth chime of the day was sounding from a variety of bell towers as I forced my way past the exuberant youths heedlessly blocking the doors. That earned me some hard looks but no one was bold or drunk enough to try taking me on. A glance at my armring was enough to make most clear my path.

“Banch!” I yelled over the clamour of people trying to catch a potman’s eye or a maidservant’s apron. “Banch!”

The burly tapster surveying the tumult with the calm eye of long experience turned his head. He waved a hand the size of a shovel at me and I pushed my way through to the counter. “Ryshad.” He handed over a tall flagon of ale, tucking the silver in a pocketed apron belted below his barrel of a gut.

“Have you seen Yane? Sworn to Den Cotise? I was here with him yesterday.” I leaned over the scored and puddled wood, lowering my voice to a muted bellow. Yane would be on duty again tonight, as soon as the first chime of night sounded, but he’d said he’d be meeting his sweetheart here and her mistress was usually done with her by the last chime of the day. She was the dresser to Tor Sylarre, who’d found the whole tale of Temar’s quest so romantic.

“Out the back with Ezinna.” Anger darkened Banch’s pocked moon of a face and he slammed up the counter top to come out and grab a couple of lads by the scruffs of their expensive coats. I don’t know where people found the room but everyone stepped aside as he threw the two offenders out into the gutter. One started to argue so I left Banch to explain the error of his ways and ducked through a far door.

Even with pot lids clanging, knives and cleavers hitting boards and the dog turning the roasting spit yelping in its treadmill, the kitchen was still quieter than the taproom. A handful of girls were busy on all sides, a pause for more than a breath earning them new instructions from the stout woman ruling her domain with a gesturing iron spoon.

“Cut more bread and then baste that beef before it dries out!” Ezinna cuffed a pinch-faced lass lightly round the ear to emphasise her orders. I stepped hastily aside as the gawky girl yelped, burning her fingers on the ladle resting in the dripping tray beneath the meat, splashing hot fat as she dropped it.

“Where’s Yane?” I asked Ezinna.

She tucked a wisp of hair dyed raven black behind one ear, the rest drawn back with a spotted kerchief that might once have been yellow to match her faded dress. Grey showed at the roots. “Out in the scullery.” Ezinna’s habitual smile vanished.

“What’s happened?” I frowned.

“It’s Credilla.” Ezinna shook her head in resignation. “Go on with you, you’re in the way. Have you eaten?” Ezinna grabbed a crumbling slice of bread from one girl’s passing basket and wrapped it round a thick slice of beef. She sent me on my way with a shove before turning to give the hapless bread girl a lesson in how many a loaf was supposed to serve if the inn wasn’t to be ruined by the baker’s bills.

Soiled crockery was stacked high in the scullery, waiting for two little girls standing on rough boxes by deep stone sinks. Neither was working very fast, round eyes in round faces gawping at Credilla sobbing into Yane’s shoulder.

“Credie, flower, Credie.” He looked over her head at me with a mixture of relief and stifled rage.

“What’s happened?”

Credilla’s sobs shuddered into a whimper and she turned around, chestnut hair tangled over her pretty face. It didn’t hide the ugly bruise disfiguring her, a great welt of purple and black high on one cheekbone, swelling half closing her eye and blood crusted around a cut that must have come from a ring.

“What happened?” I repeated, handing the bread and meat to a scullery girl who was eyeing it hopefully.

“Demoiselle Lida Tor Sylarre.” Yane managed to get a rein on himself, but he still looked like a man desperate for someone to hit and plainly fancying me as a target. “The Maitresse came in just after noon, all fired up, ordering all the daughters to turn out their coffers, checking every casket against every inventory and deed of bequest.” He shook his head, baffled. “The Maitresse starts taking pieces, telling Lida to hold her noise when she says she’ll need some necklace or other for her dress tonight.”

“She was in quite a rage,” Credilla managed to quaver. “I didn’t say anything, not really.”

“But you recognised the pieces the Maitresse was taking?” I guessed.

“Demoiselle Lida saw I was surprised.” Credilla clutched the tear-sodden front of Yane’s jerkin. “She wanted to know why. All I said was I’d met a D’Olbriot man who’s interested in old jewellery but Lida said there must be more to it for her mother to be so fussed. When I couldn’t tell her anything, she hit me.”

Yane folded protective arms around her as the recollection prompted fresh weeping. “You keep your head down when there’s a storm brewing, Credie, you knows that.”

I nodded. Volunteering knowledge is never wise for a servant; it only leads to questions and then more questions about where you got the answers you give.

“I’m sorry I mixed you up in this, petal. Can you go back?” If she’d been turned out by Tor Sylarre, I’d have to find another place for her. Not with D’Olbriot though; that would just confirm whatever suspicions Tor Sylarre might be nursing.

Credilla nodded, dabbing her battered cheek with a scrap of damp muslin. “Maitresse would lock Lida in her bedchamber till the end of Festival if she knew what she’d done. She gave me three gold Marks to keep my mouth shut and said I’ve got to work with the seamstresses until my face’s better.”

“That’s something at least.” I bit down on curses the little girls shouldn’t be hearing.

“What’s it all about, Rysh?” Yane looked up from brushing hair away from Credilla’s tear-stained face.

“Just keep your head down, both of you,” I advised. “There’s a storm brewing, but I don’t know where it’s going to break.” I hesitated as I turned to go. “Artifice, the healing magic from Kellarin could do something for that bruise.” Demoiselle Avila could surely repeat whatever she’d done for Temar.

Yane shook his head. “Best you can do is leave us well alone.” He didn’t mean it unkindly and worse; he was probably right.

The sun was sinking with its accustomed rapidity as I left the Popinjay, the fading gold of the skies darkening to rich blue dusk over the rise of the land ahead. The Graceway was bright with lighted windows, tradesmen returning to the homes above their shops for their own entertainments now while private parties celebrated Festival in the upper rooms of inns and tisane houses. Linkboys had their candle lanterns already lit and bobbing on poles to show people their footing for a few coppers.

Once out of the Spring Gate I waved down a hireling gig and pondered Credilla’s unexpected suffering. So Tor Sylarre had somehow got wind of Temar’s search for those ancient jewels and treasures that might restore his people, and the Maitresse was none too pleased. Did that mean the Name was somehow involved in these connivances against D’Olbriot? It was certainly an ancient House, dating well back into the Old Empire. I frowned. Hadn’t Demoiselle Avila been betrothed to some long-dead scion of the Name, some lad who’d died in the Crusted Pox? Had Tor Sylarre had anything to do with Kellarin’s first colony?

The gig was turning up the long incline back to the residence. Temar would be able to answer some of my questions, but I tapped the driver on the shoulder with a new request.

“Den Haurient, quick as you can, friend.”

I’d best report this new finding to Esquire Camarl before I did anything else. He might find himself facing some Tor Sylarre over the dinner table, or forewarned might be able to see some significance in an otherwise innocuous remark. Temar could wait, after all.

The D’Olbriot Residence Gatehouse, Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Evening

Temar drummed impatient fingers against the scabbard of his sword.

“So where’s Ryshad?” Allin asked from the concealing shadow of the hedge.

“I certainly expected him to be back by now.” Having to concede Ryshad wasn’t with the latest flurry of arrivals at the gate, he took a pace back.

Allin hunched her shoulders inside a light cloak. “Perhaps we should just forget it.”

“You wanted to go,” said Temar firmly. “It may be nothing, true enough, but if it is something I will have that something to show for today.”

“But can we go without Ryshad?” enquired Allin meekly. “It’s not too far. I’ve directions if you’re able to walk.”

Temar looked at her with some indignation. “My lady mage, I could walk from the springs to the sea inside a chime when I was last in Toremal. Granted, though, half this city was fields back then.”

“But you were wounded,” faltered Allin.

“I am fully recovered, and I am certainly not one of these lately come Esquires who cannot walk the length of a street lest they muddy their shoes.” Temar resolutely ignored the tender pull of the scar on his back and the ache lurking behind his eyes. “All we need is some means of getting out of here unremarked. We can hardly keep this little adventure quiet if we call up a carriage to take us, and the gate ward this afternoon said he’d orders not to let me leave unaccompanied.”

“Unseen?” Allin bit her lip nervously. “I could do that.”

“You know a back gate?” Temar turned to look back past the shadowy bulk of the residence towards the stables.

“No, but I could hide you?” Allin offered.

Temar looked at her. “With your magecraft, you mean?”

“Velindre’s been telling me I need to learn to take some initiative.” The quaver in Allin’s voice rather gainsaid her bold words.

“Is it safe?” Temar shook his head. “Forgive me, I do not mean to insult you.” He resolutely thrust away the freezing fear of submitting to any form of enchantment.

“I wouldn’t dream of trying if it wasn’t,” said Allin hastily.

They stood, hedged round with silence, faint noises from gatehouse and residence floating past on the cooling evening air.

“By all means weave your magic,” Temar said abruptly. He took a deep breath as Allin closed her soft hands tight around a faint spark of unearthly blue light, an expression of utmost concentration dignifying her round face.

Magecraft is a practical art, Temar reminded himself, well-understood means of manipulating the stuff of creation that generations of wizards have studied and codified. Casuel had told him all about it. Temar didn’t have to understand, it was sufficient that these wizards did. It’s not Artifice, he thought, gritting his teeth. It’s no enchantment wrought inside a man’s head and working its will, holding him helpless to resist.

“There,” Allin breathed.

Temar opened his eyes. “Everything looks much the same,” he said for want of anything better.

“What about your hands?” giggled Allin.

Temar raised one, seeing only a dim outline of his fingers. He looked down and the rest of his body was no more than a faint suggestion in the gathering dusk. Gripping his sword hilt hastily, he was relieved to feel that as hard and reassuring as ever. He realised Allin was looking him straight in the eye. “You can see me thus?” He’d be hard pressed to sneak through the gatehouse if he were no more than an Eldritch-man’s shade.

“You look like a shadow to me, and to any other mage, I’m afraid, but no one not mage-born will see anything.” Allin looked a little downcast. “It’s the best I can do.”

Temar nodded decisively. “It is a marvel, my lady wizard.”

Allin ducked her head to hide a pleased smile. “Stay close behind me, and hope we don’t run into Casuel.”

Temar laughed. “He went out to invite himself to some gathering of mages. It is wherever Velindre is going, I believe.”

“Be quiet,” Allin hushed him as they stepped out on to the empty sweep in front of the gatehouse.

Temar chewed at the inside of his cheek, carefully matching his steps to Allin’s, especially when they reached flagstones where his hard boots could make far more noise than her soft shoes.

“Good evening, my lady,” called the Sergeant reading his broadsheet in the lodge.

Startled, Allin stopped. Temar promptly bumped into her. Allin managed to stifle her exclamation, but as she moved her cloak pulled her up short. Temar realised he was standing on the hem and hastily lifted his foot.

“Fair Festival, my lady,” said one of the recognised men guarding the postern. Temar found his sly suggestiveness faintly offensive.

Allin nodded curtly to the two youths. Temar pressed close to her, holding his breath and keeping arms and elbows close, lest he nudge someone.

As he stepped through the postern his sword caught against the wood and dragged round. Balancing it on his hip took Temar a moment and he caught a brief exchange on the inside of the door.

“Been visiting the young D’Alsennin, hasn’t she?”

“What’s he see in that dumpling? He’s got his pick of the Demoiselles.”

“To marry maybe, but what about a little Festival jig? I’ll bet a wizard wouldn’t have cold hands for your fiddlestick.”

Temar strode hastily after Allin, feeling his cheeks burning with a colour every bit as fiery as her habitual blush.

She had halted to look vaguely at a gig trotting round a distant corner. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

“Quite, yes.” Temar gratefully realised the invisibility hid his embarrassment.

“You’d better stay behind me,” she murmured as she walked slowly down the long slope towards the conduit house.

Temar did as he was bid, careful he didn’t step on Allin’s cloak again. At least there were precious few people out walking and those mostly looked to be liveried servants intent on their own tasks. The last daylight was fading now, and the dusk beneath the shade trees made Temar’s feet even more indistinct to his straining eyes. He stopped, rubbing his eyes, taking a deep breath then hurrying after Allin.

Turning at the conduit house, she headed north and west along the circular road. Coaches swept past them, but hardly anyone else was on foot. Allin strode on, ignoring superior glances from passing carriages until she finally turned down into a busy thoroughfare. The air was cooling now but the stone buildings all around were casting the remembered heat of the day back into the night sky along with the exuberant clamour of the crowd.

Temar had to press close behind Allin, their progress increasingly awkward, Temar looking up and down at every other step, searching for his feet no darker than wisps of smoke. The lesser moon rose over the rooftops, golden circle all but full and unchallenged by the merest arc raised by her greater sister. But Temar had no time for such fancies as the moonlight cast queasy shadows through the hazy darkness that was all he could see of himself. Something in the back of his mind was protesting ever louder that what his eyes were telling him couldn’t possibly be the truth.

He caught Allin’s elbow, steering her irresistibly into a noisome alley. “You have to undo the magic, else I will be sick.” He swallowed hard on nausea thickening his throat.

Allin immediately spread her hands in a decisive gesture. Sapphire light came and went at the edge of Temar’s vision like a jewelled memory of the day and he could see his hands again. “My thanks,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.

“If you’re done, move on, will you?” A man about Temar’s age shifted impatiently from one foot to the other at the entrance to the alley, a slightly older woman on his arm, eyes cynical in her painted face.

“Did they see anything?” whispered Allin.

“There’s nothing I’ve not seen, blossom,” said the woman with a coarse chuckle.

Temar drew a mortified breath, uncertain how to respond. Allin giggled and slid her arm inside his. “We’re nearly there.”

As the road forked either side of an ancient shrine, Allin led Temar up an avenue of lime trees spreading a moist green scent. Mismatched buildings jostled a run of tall, narrow houses with proudly precise gables looking down on the six-sided chimneys of lower dwellings with narrow leaded windows and uneven rooflines.

“It should be down there,” said Allin uncertainly. Bright lights beckoned at the bottom of a small entry, too short to be a street, too wide to be an alley. Lively chatter lilting with unmistakably Lescari accents echoed from an open window.

“Yes, look.” Allin pointed with relief at the great half-circle lock hanging from a sturdy chain above the door. It was all that distinguished the building from its neighbours, each with irregular windows beneath a dishevelled roof of stone slates, oaken beams set for no readily apparent reason in walls crumbling with age and inattention.

Temar drew his arm close to his side to shield Allin with his greater height. “I have not spent any great time in taverns,” he said cautiously. Not this side of the ocean, not since waking from enchantment, he amended silently to himself. Riotous evenings carousing with Vahil so long ago, not a care between them, counted for nothing now.

But they’d never have come to such a sober house, little changed from the dwelling it had once been. Two casks of ale were set on trestles in a parlour furnished with cast-offs from people who could have had precious little to start with. There were no potmen or maids that Temar could see, just an unhurried matron filling a steady flow of jugs brought by men and women in sombre, well-worn clothes who either sat near by or disappeared into the back of the building.

Four newcomers pressed past Temar and Allin as they hesitated on the threshold. Greeting the mistress of the house in Toremal-accented Lescari, two lads took tankards from a rack beside one door for their ale while the others helped themselves to glasses and a flat-bottomed greenish bottle, dropping silver and copper coin into an open box. A crone sewing a slow seam by the table nodded, her smile shrunken around toothless gums.

“Can I help you?” The woman drawing the ale looked over at Allin, polite but cool. Her clipped words carried echoes of the mercenaries Temar knew in Kel Ar’Ayen.

Allin fumbled beneath her cloak for the handbill. “I was looking for Mistress Maedura?” Her own accent was stronger than Temar had ever heard it.

The woman nodded, indifferent. “Out the back.”

Allin smiled uncertainly. “May we see her?”

The woman glanced, incurious, at Temar. “Please yourself, lass.”

“Come on,” he encouraged Allin, doing his best to sound like the Lescari mercenaries he knew back home. Digging a few coins from the purse tied to his belt, he pointed at a bottle of wine inky dark inside emerald glass. “How much?”

The old woman chuckled, revealing a baby pink tongue, and said something Temar didn’t understand. Allin held out some silver of her own, talking hastily in Lescari.

“She says we should wait our turn through here,” she said tightly to Temar.

He picked up a bottle and two thick glasses with uneven rims. “What did I do?” He was used to struggling with the indecipherable mysteries of female disapproval from Guinalle and Avila, but had thought he’d made a fresh start with Allin.

“Tried to pay her about ten times what that wine’s worth.” A faint smile was tugging at the corners of Allin’s mouth. “I said you thought she was taking money for the seer.”

People were waiting on chairs beneath an unshuttered window and by a door opening on to a small yard. A second door, cut through the wall to give access to some afterthought of an outbuilding, was firmly closed, though faint sounds of conversation filtered through to the expectant room. Everyone looked at Allin and Temar, some curious, a few defensive, but all with unspoken determination to protect their place in the line.

“We have some time in hand.” Temar rattled the coins in his hand absently.

“Don’t do that,” Allin reproved him. “Hasn’t anyone told you what an Empire Crown buys?” She moved two rickety chairs to a small table with a dull, much wiped surface.

“No.” Temar looked at the thick white-gold coin. “Camarl only gave me a purse today. I remembered what that handbill says, so I asked.”

“Did he ask why you wanted it?” Allin looked like a child caught in mischief.

Temar grinned. “I said it was because Tor Kanselin’s surgeon said I probably only took that knife yesterday by way of payback for having nothing to steal.”

Allin frowned. “Don’t you use coin in Kellarin?”

“Odd copper and silver, but the mercenaries brought most of the coin, so it comes from all manner of places.” Temar set down the glasses and wondered how he was supposed to get the cork out of the bottle. “They only seem to use coin for gambling anyway. We mostly deal between ourselves by swapping work on a man’s barn for a share in his corn, half a sheep for a side of beef and suchlike.”

Allin took a small knife from her purse and chipped at the wax sealing the wine. “Camarl doubtless thinks an Old Empire Crown is a trivial enough sum, but round here three of those would feed a family for a week and leave table scraps to fatten the pig.” She worked the cork out of the bottle with the point of her knife. “Get Ryshad or someone to change those Crowns for some common coin if you don’t want everyone eyeing your purse.”

“How does common coin differ?” Temar took the bottle from Allin and poured them each a measure of wine.

“I’m not surprised they don’t want you going out on your own.” Allin narrowed her eyes. “Old Empire coin is noble coin, purer metal than anything minted these days, less of it to be had. Common coin is what we commoners use, what the various cities and powers mint for themselves.”

Temar fell silent for a moment. There was still so much he didn’t know, wasn’t there? “Why would Camarl give me Old Empire money?”

“I don’t suppose he thought you’d be spending it in places like this.” Allin was unconcerned. “And you’re a noble, aren’t you? If you can get it, it’s the best coin to carry.”

“Four copper pennies still make a bronze?” Temar looked for some reassurance. “Ten bronze pennies to a silver and four of those make a silver Mark?”

Allin shook her head. “No one’s used bronze pennies since the Chaos. Ten copper to a silver penny and when six silver Marks make a gold Crown that’s an end to it. Only the Old Empire used gold Marks.” She smiled but this time without humour. “Don’t take Lescari Marks off anyone. If any of the Dukes mint a coffer of coin, they add enough lead to roof a moot hall.”

She paused as a young woman carrying a baby on her hip came out of the far door, her expression half hopeful, half puzzled. The low murmur of conversation stopped and all eyes turned to the girl. The only one not looking was an old man in much mended homespun who hurried in, heavy boots clattering on the floorboards. The girl lifted her chin, hoisted the child more securely inside her shawl and strode out of the room.

“She looks as if she got something for her coin,” commented Temar in low tones.

“I don’t think she’s quite sure what she’s gained though.” Allin drank her wine. Silence hung heavy between them for quite some moments.

Temar rolled a sip round his mouth thoughtfully. “This is far from—”

A cry from the seer’s room silenced him, a hoarse sob hastily stifled. The old man came stumbling out, one shaking hand hiding his eyes, the other groping blindly in front of him. Four of those waiting jumped to their feet, a sturdy woman in serviceable maroon offering resolute comfort in fast, unintelligible words. A gaunt man with one empty sleeve to his coat reached his good arm round the old man’s shaking shoulders, while a pretty girl with haunted eyes supported an elderly female in rusty black, whose face had gone as white as her shabby lace cap. At brisk words from the stout woman, the family walked out with fragile dignity.

Everyone avoided everyone else’s eyes as an apprehensive youth walked slowly through the door.

“What are we going to say to this seer, whoever she is?” Allin turned beseeching eyes to Temar.

“Have you some question you already know the answer to?” asked Temar thoughtfully.

“I could ask about someone still alive.” Allin nodded reluctantly. “If she gets that right, I ask about someone I know to be dead?”

Temar looked at her in some concern. “Does this distress you?”

Allin looked down, her hands knotted in her lap. “We’d best find out, now we’ve come all this way.”

New arrivals prompted Allin to move hastily to one of the vacated seats, to claim their place in the queue. Temar grabbed the wine and moved after her. Hemmed in on either side, they exchanged silent glances over their glasses. The second chime of night was sounding by the time the portly man who’d been before them came back out, face dark with stubborn resentment.

Allin stood up, brushing decisively at her skirts. “Let’s see what’s to see.”

Clutching the wine bottle for lack of anywhere to put it, Temar followed the mage girl into a bare room. All they saw was an iron-bound chest set on an unwieldy table in the middle of a rug woven from strips of threadbare cloth, two females sitting on stools beyond it. Tallow candles in sconces lit damp stained walls, smoky flames briefly fluttering to add more soot to the dirty lath ceiling.

Allin said something courteous and the older woman stood up. Her white hair was all but invisible beneath a pale blue kerchief, and she wore a full, shapeless skirt and sleeveless bodice of the same material laced over a loose linen blouse. No one in Tormalin dressed like this though Temar had seen some of the mercenary women in Kel Ar’Ayen wearing such garb. Poldrion’s touch had whitened this woman’s hair unduly early, he decided. Her firm face suggested she was still in her middle years but the lines that furrowed her brow hinted those years had been hard.

“Mistress Maedura.” Allin gestured to Temar. “My companion, Natyr.”

“All who seek answers are welcome,” said the woman in passable Tormalin. Her shrewd eyes rather unexpectedly lacked the hard calculation Temar expected from a trickster. They were also the colour of a rain-washed sky and he realised how seldom he’d seen anyone with light eyes since arriving here.

“Your questions?” Mistress Maedura prompted.

“Of course,” said Allin nervously.

Temar looked at the younger woman sitting silent beside Mistress Maedura. She had the same pale eyes but hers were as empty as a summer noon, staring fixedly at the wall behind Temar. She was dressed in a soft green weave, skirt spotted with spilled food, and her sparse dull hair was cut short in a ragged crop. The laces of her bodice pulled unevenly over a mature figure yet her face had the unlined vacancy of a child.

“My daughter was caught between the realms of life as a babe,” said Maedura without emotion. “Lennarda’s mind wanders the shades, but from time to time she encounters those crossing the river with Poldrion. When Saedrin opens the door to admit them to the Otherworld, she glimpses what lies beyond and hears some small snatches of lost voices.” Despite her rehearsed words Temar nevertheless felt she genuinely believed what she said.

Maedura gave Allin a handful of three-sided bones and gestured her to the single stool facing the chest. “Set out your birth signs on the lid.” Allin fumbled through the bones, finally picking out three separate runes.

Temar took a step closer, recognising the Deer, the Broom and the Mountain. “You draw three separate bones?”

Allin shot him a piercing look of rebuke. “But your father would have insisted on the Tormalin way, wouldn’t he, just the one bone?” She turned to Maedura, speaking in rapid, offhand Lescari. Temar would have preferred to know what was being said about him but whatever yarn Allin was spinning, the suspicion flaring in Maedura’s eyes faded to an ever present watchfulness.

Allin turned to Temar again. “Your grandmother favoured the runes, didn’t she? She swore there was art to casting them.”

Temar nodded hastily. Holding his wine glass up to shield his mouth, he began whispering under his breath, reciting one of the few charms Guinalle had managed to drill into him. If Artifice was being worked here, it would echo in his hearing with unmistakable resonance. He forced himself to concentrate despite the faint dizziness aggravating his lurking headache, reluctantly realising he wasn’t as recovered as he’d boasted.

“Ask your question,” Maedura commanded.

“Where’s my cousin Chel?” Allin demanded abruptly. Temar could see the tips of her ears going scarlet.

Maedura took her daughter’s hands and laid them on the runes. Aversion flitted momentarily over Lennarda’s blank face then her shoulders sagged, head drooping to show a scabbed and sore scalp. Temar nearly lost the rhythm of the enchantment he was attempting as he realised someone had been pulling the girl’s hair out in handfuls.

“I see a river.” Lennarda sat bolt upright, startling Allin into a muted squeak. Temar’s fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle.

“I see a river curving over a plain.” The girl’s voice was deep, firm and assured. “A big river, wide-mouthed as it enters the sea. The water is brown, bringing goodness down from the high land. Then this will be fertile ground. There are marshes, saltings full of white birds. No birds I ever saw before, but we should try bringing down a few, to see if they make good eating. See, there is a fair landing yonder, open grass above the tide line. We can build a wharf along the bank. There is plenty of timber for shelter too, goodly stands of trees.”

Lennarda stopped dead, pulling away from the coffer and folding her arms awkwardly against her chest. She hunched over, rocking back and forth with incoherent whimpers.

Allin turned to Temar, her face an eloquent mix of embarrassment and disappointment. “Shall we go?”

“Your payment?” Mistress Maedura held her daughter’s hands down as they hooked into impotent claws.

“Your fee?” asked Allin icily. She stood and pulled her cape around her.

“Whatever you think the information is worth.” Maedura got to her feet as Lennarda subsided into her earlier vacant stillness.

“Not very much, to be truthful.” Allin drew a resolute breath.

“No, wait,” Temar broke in, blood pulsing behind his eyes. “Allin, ask again, about anyone.”

Allin looked doubtfully at him and Maedura laid a protective hand on her daughter’s uncaring shoulder. Temar held up one of the Tormalin Empire Crowns. “My payment in advance.”

“If this is your question, you must set out your runes,” said Maedura in some confusion.

“Here.” Temar pushed at the single bone bearing the Salmon, the Reed and the Sea. “I was born under the greater moon, does that make any difference?”

Maedura shook her head as she lifted her daughter’s hands with their chewed, split fingernails towards the rune and Temar hastily withdrew, flesh crawling at the thought of touching the unfortunate.

“I seek a little girl.” He coughed and forced his voice to stay level. “A little girl wearing a yellow dress with red flowers sewn around the hem. I do not know her name but she has an older brother and a sister. They all sleep together wrapped in a brown cloak.” His throat closed with emotion and he couldn’t say any more.

Lennarda’s low, unintelligible noises of distress were abruptly cut off as she slumped forward. Even forewarned, Temar still jumped as Lennarda suddenly reared up again. Allin clutched at his arm and he reached for her, grateful for her hand warming his fingers, which felt suddenly chilled to the bone.

“Where am I?” This time Lennarda’s voice was light and wondering. She looked around, hands held to her cheeks in a parody of childishness. “Where am I? It’s all dark. Where am I? Mama?”

As she lifted her eager, searching face to him, Temar felt his heart miss a beat. For an instant Lennarda’s empty eyes shone a vibrant grassy green in the candlelight. “Can you hear me? Mama? Is it all right now?”

After a moment of utter silence, Lennarda began an ugly keening, empty face crumpling, rocking backwards and forwards again but faster this time, with a growing violence. Her hands clawed and she began tearing at her own head.

“Hush, hush.” Maedura tried to gather her child in her arms, fending off the raking nails with difficulty.

“Let’s just go.” Allin tugged at Temar’s arm.

He resisted. “How many questions does that gold buy me?” he demanded roughly.

Maedura’s expression was a turmoil of desperation and self-loathing. “As many as you need to ask, what do you think? But only for tonight.”

“I will be outside,” said Temar with sudden decision. “When you are done with everyone else, we will speak further.” He pulled Allin out of the room so fast she nearly stumbled on top of him.

Ignoring the covert curiosity of the people waiting, Temar strode rapidly into the front room. “Do you have spirits? Strong liquor?” he asked the serving woman curtly.

“White brandy, if you have it,” Allin shoved Temar towards the inglenook by the fire. His knees gave out as he reached the low bench so he waited while Allin brought over a black bottle and two small glasses fetched from the cupboard behind the crone’s chair. She watched the pair of them with considerable interest in her watery old eyes.

“What was that all about?” demanded Allin, handing Temar as large a measure as she could safely pour. “Aetheric magic?”

Temar swallowed the colourless liquor in one breath, gasping as it jolted him out of the shock numbing his wits. “Not being worked in the room,” he said hoarsely. “Neither of them have any notion of enchantments.”

“That girl doesn’t look as if she’s a notion in her head,” commented Allin with pity, sipping cautiously.

“Not unless she catches some echo from some other mind;’ said Temar slowly.

Allin looked confused. “But she didn’t know anything about Chel. I know for a fact he’s alive and well and trading leather from Dalasor to Duryea. I had a letter from his mother at Equinox and you can’t get much further away from the sea than that.”

“What she saw was Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar leaned forward intently.

“A big river, a wide empty plain? Couldn’t that be, oh, I don’t know, anywhere from Inglis to Bremilayne?” said Allin doubtfully. “And I suppose Chel might have gone travelling.”

“What she saw, what she thought, we all thought the same when we made landfall in Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar laid his hand on Allin’s in unconscious emphasis. “I remember looking at that river, wondering if the land would be fertile, picking out the best place to build and noting timber we might build with. Believe me, Allin, for Saedrin’s sake!”

“Then how does that unfortunate know?” She extricated her hand, flexing her fingers with a slight grimace. “Could it be something to do with the runes? Isn’t Ryshad’s friend Livak looking for an aetheric tradition hidden in old rune lore in the Great Forest?”

Temar shook his head crossly, regretting it instantly as pain lanced through his temples. “No Artifice is being worked here. I can detect that much with the charms I know.” He looked up at Allin. “I would give all the gold Camarl can spare me to look inside that chest.”

“They’ve got an artefact?” Allin nodded slowly. “And that unfortunate child has somehow become linked with it, like Ryshad and your sword?”

“More than one,” said Temar with rising certainty. “That second voice, that was a girl I saw Guinalle lay beneath the enchantments. I saw the child’s green eyes, eyes from the northern hill country, I saw them reflected in the imbecile’s face.”

Allin frowned. “Where did that woman get a chest full of Kellarin artefacts?”

“Cannot such questions wait?” Temar demanded impatiently. “We must secure that chest!”

“How?” countered Allin. “Fraud or folly, that masquerade’s their only means of earning bread. The woman at least must know the coffer’s vital to the girl’s supposed powers. They’re hardly going to give it up to you.”

Temar chewed at his lower lip. “What if we offered her the weight of the chest in gold?”

A startled laugh escaped Allin. “Are you serious?”

“Entirely.” Temar kept his voice low, face grim. “I would pay that to bring only one back from enchantment. I would pay the same time and again to bring every single sleeper back to themselves.”

Allin sipped her brandy with a faint shudder. “So the rumours of Kellarin gold are true, are they?”

“For now, Camarl can advance me the coin,” Temar said with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “There are riches to be had over the ocean in time and we can repay him then. Perhaps I should pursue those claims the Relict Tor Bezaemar mentioned as well,” he added thoughtfully. “That would at least give me means to buy any other artefact we find.”

“First we have to look in that chest and make sure there are artefacts in it.” Allin shifted to look through to the back room and the outbuilding beyond. “Then we have to make some deal with the woman tonight. Otherwise she’ll take to her heels, coffer and all. I would like to know just how this business of linking to an artefact works.”

It was Temar’s turn to laugh. “Do you always have to have the answers?”

“First, I’m Lescari, and secondly, I’m a mage.” Allin smiled a little guiltily. “Both mean you never take a thing on trust. You ask all the questions you can think of and only go on when you’ve all the answers.”

Temar glanced into the far room still full with hopeful suppliants. “What’s it like, being mage-born? No wizard I have met will ever spare time to talk about it.”

“We’re not encouraged to, not once we’ve been to Hadrumal.” Allin coloured slightly. “I told you, there’s a lot of mistrust.”

Temar shook his head. “Granted, it is sorcery of some different nature, but I grew up with aetheric enchantments. All right,” he amended hastily, “perhaps not used every day, but everyone knew Artifice was there, for healing and truth-saying, for sending urgent word across the provinces. So what is it, Allin, to be mage-born?”

“Oh, I don’t know how to explain it.” She blushed pink. “Imagine oil spilled on water but you’re the only one who can see the rainbow when the light strikes it. Imagine hearing some counterpoint to music that everyone else is deaf to. You touch something and you can sense the element within it, like feeling the vibration in a table when a timepiece strikes the chimes. You can sense it, you can feel how it affects things around it. Then you realise you can change it, you can shade that rainbow to light or dark, you can mute that note or make it sound twice as loud.” Allin’s face was animated in a way Temar had never seen before.

The slam of the outer door shattered the calm of the room.

“Where’s this charlatan hiding out?” A thickset man in everyday Tormalin garb marched into the centre of the room. “Seer she calls herself? I’ll teach the bitch to take honest coin off a stupid girl!” He glared at everyone, sharp-featured and furious.

“Well? What’s the fakery?” A younger man, unmistakably slurring his words through drink came in to the tavern. He was dragging a struggling girl, fingers biting into her arm as he forced her along. A frown gave his angled black brows a predatory air.

“Let me go! It’s no business of yours!”

The second man gave the girl a vicious shake. “Shut your mouth, you stupid slut.” She tried to hang on to the doorjamb and he slapped her hand away with a brutal oath. More men crowded round the doorway, some intent and indignant, others brought along by casual malice or idle curiosity. Many still had wine flagons in their hands.

Temar realised the girl was the one they had seen earlier carrying a baby.

“Masters, this is a quiet house.” The woman minding the ale casks stood a prudent distance from the thickset man. “We want no trouble.”

“You get trouble when you let some trickster use your place,” spat the man, taking a step forward to shove the woman back with one broad, calloused hand. “Where’s this seer?”

“It’s an insult to all rational thinking,” piped up someone from the back of the crowd at the door. An ominous murmur of assent backed his spite.

“Superstition. Falsehoods. Preying on an idiot girl’s folly.” The man emphasised each assertion with another shove, backing the woman hard up against her ale casks. “Taking her coin and telling her to go off Saedrin knows where after some feckless Lescari tinker we thought we were rid of?”

“Well rid,” the younger man panted, still struggling with the girl, who was trying to kick him, her face contorted with tears. “Until her belly swelled. Got his irons hot in your hearth, didn’t he, you whore?”

“I loved him,” screamed the girl in hopeless rage.

As the man gave her another vicious shake, she stumbled over a chair. Stretching her free hand out to save herself, she encountered a jug of ale. In one swift move, she smashed it on her tormenter’s head.

The crash of breaking crockery acted like a war horn on the mob outside. Men surged through the door, shoving tables and chairs aside.

“You Lescari are all the same, cheats!”

“Never set to and earn honest coin if you can steal it!”

“Go swallow yourself, you dripping pizzle!” A man who’d been sitting quietly over his ale stood up. Others braced themselves, ready resentments rearing their heads.

“Rational men have a duty to combat pernicious superstition,” one voice from the back of the mob rose in a sanctimonious bleat.

“Rationalists are soft in the head,” an incensed Lescari voice called out to considerable agreement.

“Soft as shit and twice as nasty,” shouted someone from the back room.

The rapid accents of latterday Toremal and sharp Lescari lilts left Temar struggling to understand but the mood of mutual hostility needed no explanation. He realised Allin was clutching his arm, trembling with fear. With a spreading mêlée at the outer door and indignant Lescari pushing through from the inner room, getting through the throng was going to be no easy task. Temar tucked Allin close behind him, keeping firm hold of her hand.

“Is there a way out through the yard, do you think?” she asked nervously.

Temar used elbows and boots to force a way into the back room, ignoring the protests of those few still seated. “There will be no more answers from the lady tonight,” he told them as he pushed Allin through into the outbuilding.

He looked at the door doubtfully. It wouldn’t take much to break down that single thickness of warped plank. The first sound of splintering furniture came from the front of the tavern, a startled yell and someone crying out in pain. Temar pulled the latchstring through, tying it as tight as he could.

“What’s going on?” Mistress Maedura was white and frightened but trying to calm Lennarda, who was rocking on her stool, moaning like an animal in pain.

“You saw some girl earlier, with a child,” Allin told her curtly. “Whatever you told her, it’s got her relatives all fired up.”

Maedura spread helpless hands. “It’s just what Lennarda sees and hears, echoes from the Otherworld.”

“You really do believe that, don’t you?” Temar paused on his way to look out of each window. Maedura stared at him in confusion.

“Never mind that,” Allin snapped, voice taut with anxiety. An outraged scream cut through the rising turmoil beyond the door and made Lennarda wail in confusion.

“We will help you leave here.” Temar strode to the door in the far corner of the room but opening it only revealed a large closet, two strides wide and less deep. His jaw dropped before the thud of something heavy against the painted planks of the door brought him swinging round. The noise outside sounded like a full-blown riot. Temar drew his sword, wondering what to do with growing unease.

Lennarda began shrieking, eyes wide and staring at the silvery steel. She backed into the corner, grabbing at her ragged hair.

“Put the blade away, you fool!” Maedura had tears on her cheeks. “She thinks you’re going to hurt her.”

“Into the closet, all of you—and that chest.” Allin ordered suddenly. She tried to lift the heavy coffer from the table.

Temar stepped forward to take the other rope handle. “Get her inside,” he yelled at Maedura, who was struggling with the frantic Lennarda. Once he had Allin and the chest inside he dragged the frenzied imbecile bodily towards the closet, Maedura following, nearly as hysterical as her daughter.

As the door to the outbuilding splintered and broke, Temar pushed the closet door shut, doing his best to brace himself against the frame. Barely a glimmer of light made its way through the cracks around the door and Temar felt the breath tightening in his chest. Was the darkness deepening, pressing in on him, threatening to steal away all sensation, as it had done before?

“You wanted us in here, Allin,” he panted. “Now what?”

“Now this.” She brought her hands together on a flash of incandescent scarlet that changed in a heartbeat to azure flame that danced around the four of them like a silken veil. Maedura’s mouth was a silent gape of terror but Lennarda’s pitiful cries stopped, to Temar’s inexpressible relief. The unfortunate girl put forward one bitten finger to touch the radiance but the teasing light retreated from her groping hand.

There was a crash as the table in the room outside was thrown over, stools clattering in its wake. “As quick as you can, Allin.” Temar struggled to hold the door closed as someone gave it an insistent shove.

Allin took a deep breath. The intensity of the blue light all around grew rapidly more intense, reflecting back from the whitewashed walls. Maedura and Lennarda faded into nothingness before Temar’s astounded eyes. Everything faded, vanishing into the brilliant flare of power. Heat enveloped him, the dry warmth of a furnace hearth. The light flashed incandescent and he had to shut his eyes but the radiance still beat against them, printing the pattern of the blood vessels against the back of his eyelids. His face began to sting under the searing ferocity of the heat and just as Temar thought he could not stand it an instant longer the light dimmed as suddenly as it had arisen. He shivered and coughed on an acrid smell of burned wool.

“What the—”

Temar opened his eyes as Ryshad remembered his manners and swallowed whatever barracks obscenity he’d nearly let slip.

“Hello, Ryshad.” Temar couldn’t help an idiotic grin. They were in the D’Olbriot library he realised, carried right into the heart of the residence by Allin’s magic. The chest was cooling gently beside his feet as it seared a black mark into the costly carpet. Ryshad sat at the table with the Sieur D’Olbriot, an array of papers in front of him, a penknife in one hand and a half-mended quill in the other. The Sieur was leaning back in his chair, his expression quizzical.

“My compliments, my lady mage!” Temar turned to Allin and swept a low bow, unable to stop himself laughing.

“What in the name of all that’s holy do you think you are doing, girl?” Casuel was standing on the far side of the mantel, a book open in his hands. His savage question overrode Allin’s nervous giggle and Temar saw all the delight in her achievement instantly wiped from her face.

“How dare you intrude like this—and how can you have been so stupid as to try such a translocation unsupervised?” Casuel strode forward. “Raeponin only knows what saved you from your folly. Planir will hear of this, my girl! This is the care Velindre takes of her pupils?”

Temar wanted quite simply to hit the wizard. “Allin has distinguished herself this evening by leading me to a vital collection of lost Kel Ar’Ayen artefacts.” Temar spared a breath for a fervent prayer to Saedrin that the chest did indeed contain something of real value. “Please do inform the Archmage of that, with my sincerest compliments.” At least he had the satisfaction of seeing his words strike the mage like blows. “When some mob of Rationalists attacked the place, she brought us all safely here.”

“May I ask who your companions are?” As Casuel subsided in confusion, the Sieur D’Olbriot sat forward, pushing a counting frame to one side, an inkstand to the other. Dolsan Kuse hovered at his elbow, clutching a roll of tape-tied parchments.

“My pardon, Messire.” Temar bowed low. “Forgive the intrusion; it was a matter of some urgency.”

“Doubtless,” said the Sieur drily. His faded eyes were shrewd in his plump face. “My lady mage, we meet again. An unexpected pleasure, in every sense.” Dapper despite his informal shirt and breeches, he smiled at Allin, who managed a curtsey of more elegance than Temar might have expected.

“You’re looking well, Messire,” she replied politely.

D’Olbriot ran a hand over his receding grey hair. “For a fat old man, my child.”

“Oh you’re hardly that, Messire,” fawned Casuel.

D’Olbriot ignored him. “And who are these other two?”

“Mistress Maedura and her daughter, a natural simpleton.” Temar shot a hasty glance over his shoulder but Lennarda seemed in some stupor within her mother’s protective embrace. Maedura was all but frozen with apprehension. “They had Kel Ar’Ayen artefacts in their possession, all unknowing,” Temar added hastily. “We had to rescue them, else they would have been beaten or worse.”

The Sieur D’Olbriot raised a hand. “Beyond question a complicated tale. Tell it tomorrow, D’Alsennin.” He snapped his fingers and Dolsan moved instantly to tug a bell pull hanging by the chimney breast. “Ryshad,” the Sieur continued. “See these women comfortably lodged and Temar may tell you his tale. Report to me before I retire.”

Ryshad was on his feet at once, shepherding them all towards the door. Maedura made a futile move towards the chest but Ryshad shook his head. “It’ll be safe enough there.”

Casuel touched a hand to it and hissed with surprised pain. “You really must work harder on controlling your elemental affinity,” he said spitefully to Allin, words indistinct as he sucked burned fingers. “There’s far too much fire in your working. Who’s been teaching you anyway? Velindre?”

“And Kalion,” retorted Allin with some spirit. “I’m sure the Hearth-Master will be delighted to hear your criticisms of his technique.”

“Enough.” Ryshad ushered them all into a small withdrawing room across the hall from the library, where a page was hastily lighting lamps. “The Sieur requests the Demoiselle Tor Arrial join us here,” he ordered the lad. “Now, Temar, explain yourself.”

“Allin and Velindre have come to the Festival to see what Toremal makes of magic’ Temar spoke rapidly, ignoring Casuel’s suspicious gaze. “They have been looking for hints of magic in any entertainment offered and Allin came across mention of this woman.” He indicated the still overawed Maedura. “She was claiming to have some means of contacting the Otherworld, getting word from the dead.” Temar hesitated. This was all starting to sound ridiculously implausible. “We wondered firstly if somehow it might be Artifice and I know you are interested in lost lore. Beyond that, if it proved true, I thought it might give us means to contact Vahil, Esquire Den Rannion that was.”

“I remember him,” Ryshad said softly, eyes dark in the golden lamplight.

Recalling how Ryshad had shared his life in dreams prompted by Artifice knocked Temar off his stride. “There was no enchantment,” he said simply. “But they have this chest and I’ll swear by Poldrion’s demons it has artefacts within it. The girl, the natural, hears echoes of the sleepers.”

“Where did you get the chest?” Ryshad demanded grimly.

Maedura clutched Lennarda to her. “A shrine to Maewelin, on an island in the Drax. The goddess looks kindly on the simple. They said it was a miracle, the priestesses, when my girl spoke. She’d never said a word before, not one.”

“And you repaid their kindness by stealing that coffer?” sneered Casuel.

“Mercenaries went raiding into Dalasor from Draximal,” Maedura said bitterly. “They sacked the shrine and everything for leagues around. Lennarda wouldn’t leave the chest, wouldn’t leave her voices, so I had to take it with me.”

“No one is calling you to answer for anything,” said Temar with a scowl at Casuel.

Maedura ignored him, her fear and fury fastening on Casuel. “You’d have had us stay to be raped and murdered? If the goddess chooses to speak through my poor child, who am I to deny her? Maewelin was a mother; she’d never grudge me earning coin to buy bread. We never took more than folk were willing to pay. We never feigned or deceived or—” She broke into dry, angry sobs that set Lennarda whimpering.

Temar looked helplessly at Ryshad, who clapped his hands together. “Cas, you see Allin home. Go on, lass, we’ll untangle this coil.” The swordsman gave Allin a kindly smile before turned a stern look on Casuel.

“Oh, very well.” The mage stalked crossly to the door. “We’ll call for a coach, shall we? A safer way to travel in your company, I think.”

Temar caught Allin’s arm as she meekly followed Casuel. “I am deep in your debt, my lady mage.”

She managed a faint smile before Casuel snapped an insistent summons over his shoulder.

Ryshad beckoned in two doubtful maids hovering outside in the hall. “See these two settled for the night in a garret room. They’re guests, but they’re not to leave the residence without my say-so, do you understand? Send word to Sergeant Stolley.”

“What’s all this?” Temar turned to see Avila rolling up the sleeves of her elegant gown as she appeared at the turn of the corridor. He raised his voice above the anguish of the two women now locked in desperate embrace. “They had artefacts—”

Avila snorted. “Some other time, my lad.” She laid a gentle hand on Maedura’s skewed kerchief. “Come with me. I can offer some respite from your grief.”

As Maedura looked up, wondering, Avila took Lennarda’s hand with irresistible gentleness. Gathering up the maids with an imperious glance, she led everyone out of the anteroom and Temar shut the door gratefully on the fading commotion.

“Remind me about that the next time I find Avila’s self-importance intolerable, will you?” he asked Ryshad lightly.

His high spirits sank beneath the stern look in Ryshad’s eyes. “If I even so much as suspect you’re thinking about going off on your own again, after something like this, I’ll chain you to your bedposts myself. Are we clear on that?”

Temar braced himself. “I wanted your help. I waited for you by the gates as late as I could. You did not return and this was too important to ignore.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Ryshad said bluntly. “Not then, when you’d no idea if this was all moonshine in a mustard pot.”

“It is the second day of Festival and I have achieved all but nothing,” Temar retorted. “I will try raking moonshine if there is any chance of finding gold. Anyway, I came to no harm.”

“Thanks to little Allin,” Ryshad pointed out.

Temar opened his mouth to deny this but thought better of it. “Thanks to Allin,” he agreed stiffly.

“I’d still rather you’d had a swordsman at your back.” A reluctant smile finally cracked Ryshad’s severity. “There’s no doubt you were born under the greater moon, my lad. Halcarion certainly polishes up your luck nice and bright.”

Temar grinned. “As the mercenaries keep saying, he who plays the longest odds wins most. Shall we take a look in that coffer?”

“We won’t disturb the Sieur, not if we don’t want to feel the sharp edge of his tongue,” said Ryshad with feeling. “We’ll have to make time in the morning, and that’s going to be plenty busy enough to satisfy you, believe me. Someone’s setting up D’Olbriot and D’Alsennin both for a whole new game, and if you’re not to lose your boots and breeches you need to know all the other moves played out today.”