1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (11 page)

 The boundary dividing the dockside from the rest of the City was nothing more than a very wide boulevard, but it was patrolled by regular City Guards, who questioned anyone who crossed that particular street quite closely, and turned back anyone going in either direction if he didn't seem to have appropriate business where he was going. And "I'm just going to look around" was not considered to be appropriate business.

 However, there were other places the guards didn't bother to check; one of them was a section of large warehouses that, rebuilt after a great fire a hundred years ago, had spread across the boulevard into the City. There was always so much coming and going there, wains being loaded and unloaded, men and boys heaving bales and barrels of goods about, that the guards couldn't have questioned everyone, and didn't bother trying. Kellen slipped across the border there, along with a gang of men and an empty wain; once on the dockside, he separated from the group and headed for the wharves.

 He knew by now how to move out of the way of the stevedores and stay out of the way, and before too very long, he was perched on a piling in a disused slip, with the salt breeze blowing his hair away from his face, looking out at the harbor and the sea beyond.

 If he squinted into the sunlight, it was possible to see a sort of shimmer across the mouth of the harbor—if he had used the spell that allowed him to see magick in action, he'd have seen what that shimmer really was. A curtain of power hung across the mouth of the harbor, the result of a spell that protected the harbor from the waves and winds and storms—but could also be "tightened" to keep everything, including ships, out… or in.

 It could have been made completely invisible, of course, but the Mages of the City didn't want that. They wanted the foreign captains and their sailors to see that faint shimmer, to feel a little tingle as they crossed it, and know that while it protected them, it could also exclude them if they became too troublesome. The City was a huge, voracious creature. It devoured entire cargoes, disgorging in return other goods and minted gold coins so pure and so exact in weight that they were the standard against which all other currencies everywhere in the world were measured. The square Golden Suns of Armethalieh were accepted everywhere, for thanks to the special magicks worked at the City Mint, they could not be melted down, debased, shaved, or otherwise adulterated—unless another Mage broke the spell, at which point they lost their stampings and ceased to be Golden Suns, becoming only blank shapes of gold.

 The foreign ships were in, and Kellen watched the pre-approved cargoes being unloaded. The wharf was full, every mooring place taken, and the masts of all the ships formed a kind of leafless forest, stripped of the sails that had carried them all this way. In their holds were things that would never be allowed to leave the confines of the ships; perhaps perfectly ordinary things, perhaps wonderful things. Kellen would never know, for he would never be permitted to see them. No one except the Mages of the Council would ever be permitted to see them. He could only wonder what might be there.

 Still, even to be close to so much freedom made him feel better. He took a seat on a piling, out of the way, and watched the sailors of the ship nearest him unloading their cargo. Are there things in that hold that Wild Magic made? he wondered. Or things that Wild Magic has touched? He wouldn't be able to tell, not from here, not with the aura of High Magick everywhere, overwhelming anything subtle. And Wild Magic was nothing if not subtle. Did anyone outside of the City know about Wild Magic/ Surely they must.

 High Magick—the Mages were more disciplined than the soldiers of the Council's Army, and they imposed their will upon the cosmos to the exclusion of any other possibility with the iron of that discipline. There was no room for error, for creativity, even for much experimentation in High Magick. A Mage could work for years, decades, just to develop a single variant in an existing spell, and even when he had spent his life upon it, it still might not be approved by the Council.

 Kellen was supposed to feel comforted by this; the fact that nothing changed, nothing would change, was supposed to make people feel secure. But he wasn't—

 The slip next to the one that Kellen sat beside held a slim little trading vessel of the sort that specialized in speed rather than bulk to make a profit. It rode high in the water, and was in the process of being loaded with small casks—probably distilled spirits—and wooden boxes—which would be spices, incense, and medicines, particular specialties of Armethalieh. The ship's master himself was at hand, helping to load the cargo; a vessel like this, Kellen had learned, seldom had a crew larger than ten, with perhaps a passenger, and since it dealt in cargoes of small valuable objects easy to steal, the crew never allowed anyone to load or unload but themselves.

 The Dock Patrol—a detachment of the City Guard that regularly worked the dock area—came down the pier, eyed the ship and her crew, then cast a glance over at Kellen. But Kellen was prepared for them. He had a stick and a string he'd picked up from the rubbish waiting for the trash collectors, and the moment he'd taken his seat on the piling, he'd tossed the string into the water. It looked enough like a fishing-rod at a distance to fool the guards, and anyone could come down to the docks to augment his dinner with a little fish, if he chose.

 It was odd, considering how much trouble the regular City Guard went to to keep citizens away from the docks, that the Dock Patrols so rarely chased people away from the wharves, but Kellen had found, to his surprise, that it was true. But perhaps it wasn't so odd after all. Only the poorest of Armethalieh's citizens would risk the social stigma of coming here—no one with any money at all would stoop to gleaning "trash" fish from the harbor for their suppers—and there was always the possibility of being "contaminated" by alien ways that would keep any Armethaliehan with a pretense of respectability far from the foreigners. Perhaps the Dock Patrol thought it was easier to keep an eye on the usual visitors to the docks than to simply try to keep them all out. Perhaps they relied on the fact that the regular City Guard, or the Constables of the Watch (who generally patrolled only the residential districts of Armethalieh), would turn back any really suspicious characters before they reached their patrol area. For whatever reason, the Dock Patrol favored Kellen with no more than a single glance before turning away to resume their patrol of the wharf.

 He was just as glad that he'd worn his oldest clothes beneath his Student robes today. He'd found out a long time ago that nobody at the College cared what you wore beneath the stiff, bulky, light blue Student robes that covered the Students—Student-Apprentices, Apprentices, Entered Apprentices, and Student Mages—from neck to ankle, and Kellen took great advantage of that freedom. Once he'd pulled off his robe and stuffed it into his locker, his clothing didn't mark him out—at least not too much—from anyone else in the City. Anyone who wasn't a Mage, at least.

 It was only when the Dock Patrol was well out of sight that a newcomer slipped out of the cover of an alley, and hastened over to the captain of the trader. Kellen was careful not to turn, careful not to draw attention to himself. Another "respectable" citizen of the City—here! One who was neither an Inspector nor a merchant, nor—from his dress—a member of the lowest classes. What could he be doing here?

 The newcomer was a young man, perhaps a year or two older than Kellen. His clothing was of good quality; he carried a bag and wore a harried expression.

 He did not seem particularly well-to-do, although he was perhaps a cut or two above a common laborer—perhaps a tradesman. He was a little older than Kellen, but the look of stifled, sullen dissatisfaction on his face was—oh, that was very familiar. It was the one Kellen saw in his own mirror nearly every day.

 The ship's captain spotted the young man on the dock as he stood looking up at the ship with mingled hope and doubt. Mutual recognition appeared on both their faces, and relief as well on the young man's as the captain hurried down the gangplank to meet him.

 Kellen remained very still, willing them to ignore him.

 It seemed to work.

 The captain reached out his hand, and clasped the one the newcomer extended to him. "I'm pleased that you haven't changed your mind," he said. "I was afraid that you might. Many do. When the time comes to leave the City forever, they find it isn't worth the sacrifice."

 "Not me," the young man said, his chin thrust forward stubbornly. "I can't go back in any event. I've been thrown out by my father, disowned by my mother—"

 "Ah," the captain said. "Your mother—that's different, then. Mothers forgive nearly everything, but when your mother disowns you, there's no going back."

 "Hmph." The young man shook his head. "They don't forgive it when you've besmirched their social standing by insulting the most important person they've ever managed to lure to the dinner table, I can tell you that."

 Since Kellen had wanted to do just that, and more than once, his admiration for the young man soared. But the captain was most concerned with the reactions of the man's parents, it seemed.

 "So what did they say exactly?" the captain persisted.

 "That I was to leave and never return, never use their name, never intimate that I even know them, much less am related to them. It was more than just saying it," he continued bitterly. "They made quite a production of it, gathered all the servants and my brother and sister, and threw me out with what I'm carrying."

 All this only made the captain more cheerful. "Ah, good!" he exclaimed. "Then there won't be any problem!"

 "Problem?" The young man seemed confused.

 So was Kellen. The captain, apparently, was in a mood to explain.

 "Here, take a seat." The captain took his own invitation, and perched himself on a nearby piling. "It's like this—the way things are, here in this City of yours, your Council wants everybody happy with the way things are, so that everything runs smooth as fine sailing. So they go out of their way to keep everybody happy. Now, a lot of times, young fellows like you get itchy feet, get the idea of traveling outside the City walls, maybe even have a bit of a to-do with their parents and decide they'd be better off somewhere else. Well, that may be so, but their parents aren't any too pleased if they find 'em gone, and it could be they've got skills or they're doing a job that needs doing here. So"—the captain shrugged—"when someone like me takes 'em aboard, sometimes there's trouble. Sometimes there's a search before we leave the dock, sometimes before we leave the harbor, and sometimes, if the lad's got an important enough family, those magick barriers that keep the storms out keep us in until we've handed the lad over."

 I knew it! I knew it! Kellen thought. I knew the Mages were keeping people from leaving, somehow —

 But there went any hope he had of escaping. Not with Lycaelon as a father. If he went missing, well—Lycaelon would probably keep anything larger than an ant from getting out of the City until Kellen was found and brought back.

 "But for you," the captain continued, looking positively gleeful, "well, your parents have done it, haven't they? And the Council knows that tryin' to keep their paws on a restless lad like you, cast out of his own family and liable to cause trouble, even if he doesn't mean it, well, that's not going to make for a peaceful City. Bet you've been doin' a bit of tavern brawling, hmm? Been in trouble with the Watch, just a bit?"

 The young man flushed. "And if I have?" he demanded.

 "Now, don't come all over toplofty on me!" the captain remonstrated. "Really, it's all to your good! Council knows they're better off lettin' you go! And you aren't the only one, not by a stretch! There's a steady leak of young fellows like you, and a few older ones too, all heading for the Out Isles like you, or the Selken Holds, or maybe through the gates for the farms, I don't know. Not a lot of you, maybe, but it lets the steam out, so to speak. Council knows they've got to do that, or face trouble, later."

 The young man took a deep breath, then let it out, his anger going with it. "All right for me, then, I suppose. I shouldn't take it amiss. And I won't." His expression cleared. "No, I won't! It's a gift, and I'll take it." He stood up, and slung his bag over his shoulder. "Mind if I come aboard, then?"

 "Be my guest," the captain replied genially. "We sail in an hour— that's half a bell to you—our cargo has already gotten its inspection, and there won't be anyone by to look at it before we leave," the captain said. "We'll be under way as soon as we get this lot loaded."

 The two of them went up the gangplank, still oblivious to Kellen. He might not have even been there.

 Or had it been the Wild Magic helping him? It could have been, easily enough, even though he hadn't actually done anything with it. The Book of Sun said that it might act on its own, through him or on him, when it wanted something done. It might have wanted him to know that escape was possible. It might also have wanted him to know that he would not be able to get out as easily as the young man he'd just seen.

 Suddenly Kellen lost his taste for the docks, and for gazing out at a freedom he could not have.

 There was money in his pocket, and a tavern nearby. Not that he was going to get drunk… No, but if he bought a round of drinks, he'd soon find someone willing to tell him tales of their travels in return for more drinks. Perhaps he could steer the conversation in the direction of magick, if he was very careful. He might even learn something more about the Wild Magic that way.