Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (15 page)

Alsibeth drew a deep breath and closed her eyes, letting her head fall back. Her dark hair pooled around her, and her earrings chimed softly with the movement. “Everywhere. It was felt everywhere. In Donderath, in Meroven, in Tarrant and Vellanaj, and in the Lesser Kingdoms.”

“What caused it?”

Alsibeth opened her eyes and leaned forward. She reached toward the semicircle of burning candles that surrounded her and chose the indigo one. Carefully, she lifted it and held it above the wide, shallow bowl of water, then tipped it until liquid wax puddled around the wick and dripped into the water. The hot wax cooled instantly into fragile, twisted threads that hung suspended in the clear water. Alsibeth inhaled deeply, breathing in the candle smoke and the scent of burning sage and then replaced the indigo candle with a murmured incantation and focused her attention on the bowl.

“The flicker was not natural,” Alsibeth said, studying the tracery of the hot wax. “It was caused by the hand of men, but not by their design.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Powerful magic is at work. Men seek to affect the course of the war. They toy with power they cannot fully control. Such unintended consequences will grow more unstable—and more dangerous. They risk far more than they can hope to gain.”

“What of the war itself? Can you see the outcome? Will Donderath win?”

Alsibeth stared at the candles. Connor could see the flicker of the flames reflected in her eyes. For a moment, she said nothing, but it seemed to Connor that she listened intently to something
he could not hear. “I’m sorry,” she said after another pause. “I see nothing but fire.” She frowned. “But I hear a name. Valtyr.”

Connor startled. Alsibeth smiled. “The name is known to you.”

“Yes. But only recently so. It’s not a name many would recognize.”

“I have heard it before, but not in many years.” Alsibeth’s voice was soft, pitched only for Connor’s ears. Again, he wondered about her age and whether her knowledge was of a name or the man himself.

“Did you know him?”

Alsibeth’s laugh was as beautiful as the sound of her bells. “No. Only the stories. Heed the warning you’ve received. Valtyr’s map was created for such times as these. There is no time to waste. You must find what has been hidden.” She frowned and tilted her head as if listening to something only she could hear.

“Look to the exiled man.”

“M’lady?”

“When the fires come and night falls, look to the exiled man.”

“I don’t understand.”

Alsibeth seemed to come back to herself. Her smile was sad. “I’m sorry. I often don’t know the full meaning of the messages I receive.”

“Will you read the smoke for me?”

Alsibeth nodded. Her hands gestured gracefully, stirring the smoke from the sage smudge and the scented candle. Connor kept his eye on the bell tree. No part of Alsibeth’s body touched the table, and yet the delicate bells that hung from the tree began to quiver although the water in the bowl remained utterly still. He had scarcely taken a breath when the entire bell tree had begun to shake. Suddenly, Connor heard a dull ringing, and realized that the patron’s goblets and even the half-filled
bottles behind the bar had begun to vibrate. The tavern grew silent. Alsibeth’s eyes remained closed. Outside, the city bells began to ring, clanging and clattering as if pulled by a madman. Connor glanced up at the marked candle on the mantle to assure himself it was not yet the hour, not the time for the bells to ring.

As suddenly as the ringing began, it stopped. Everyone in the tavern was staring at them. Alsibeth opened her eyes and met Connor’s gaze, paying no attention to the onlookers.

“Don’t delay your search. Find the map and keep it with you, no matter what happens.” She reached out to take his hand. “I’ve never feared my own readings, but right now… hurry back to Garnoc, and tell him what you’ve learned. Time is running out.”

B
LAINE SHUFFLED TO THE FIREPLACE AND FILLED
a bowl with gruel. He poured some hot water into a cup to make the weak tea that was all there was to be had in Edgeland, a brew of native leaves and dried berries that tasted nothing like the tea from home. “Where’s Dawe?”

“He went down to the Bay to do a little more shopping,” Kestel said, looking up from where she was plucking a chicken. “Don’t be shy eating the gruel. I need that pot to stew the chicken and I don’t like to waste.”

Blaine grinned. “As you wish, m’lady. But you’ll be chipping it out of the pot. It’s thick as tar.”

Kestel shrugged. “Convicts can’t be choosy.”

Blaine sighed. “Maybe someday colonists can be.” He sipped the tea and made a face at its bitter aftertaste. “If we didn’t have Prokief’s guards at the gates, do you think anyone would choose to stay in Edgeland?”

Kestel set aside the cleaned chicken and wiped off her hands. She picked up her own cup and wandered back toward the table. “Good question. Maybe. There are a lot of folks up here who might not have liked being forced to come, but the truth
is, they didn’t leave much behind. Fresh start up here. Land, a decent house if you put your back into building it, enough food to get by.” She shrugged again. “Dunno. The weather’s not to my liking, but it doesn’t seem to bother some people.”

“Would you go home, if you could?”

Kestel thought for a moment, staring down at her tea. “I understood the role I played back in Donderath. Power, money, and secrets were my trade. There’s not a market for those things on the same scale up here.” She gave a bitter smile. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but the sex was only ever a small part of it. My patrons wanted me to listen to them, to adore them, to absolve them. They unburdened themselves to me. That was as much of a release.”

“And there’s nobody as interesting up here?” Blaine replied with a grin.

“Just you, m’lord, and you’ve only got one secret,” Kestel teased. She grew serious. “Would you go back?”

Blaine studied his empty bowl for a while without speaking. “I can’t go back to Donderath, not with Merrill on the throne. And even if he pardoned me, I’ve lost everything. Perhaps if I were willing to go somewhere besides Donderath, but where would that be, and for what end? If I’m to be a beggar, better at least in my own kingdom than in a strange land.” He let out a long breath.

“There’s no such thing as a fresh start in Donderath. No one would hire a murderer to learn a trade. I can starve here just as well as there. At least here, I’ve got a way to earn a living and a roof over my head that’s partly mine. So long as Prokief keeps his distance, it’s tolerable.”

Kestel nodded. “I won’t say I don’t miss the luxuries of court, or the food, or the social life. On the other hand, I haven’t had to kill anyone for a long time. That’s restful.”

“Restful?”

She grinned. “I always found it… distasteful. More so than any of the sex. Messier, too,” she said, her grin widening as color stole into Blaine’s cheeks. “On the other hand, it’s so much less complicated here. Minding the sheep and the rabbits and the chickens. I actually like weaving and spinning—who’d have guessed? It’s satisfying to see a skein of yarn I’ve made myself.”

The front door slammed open and Verran stood panting in the entrance. His face was red and his hair clung sweat-soaked to his scalp. “They’ve taken Dawe to Velant.”

“Why?” Blaine motioned for Verran to take the seat he had just vacated, while Kestel went to pour him a cup of tea. Verran paused as he caught his breath, and sipped the tea to steady himself.

“Prokief’s got soldiers all over the Bay. Warden-mages, too. The soothsayers in town have been claiming all kinds of omens, from the shape of the clouds to rumblings from Estendall, that volcano out off the fishing waters. Predicting fire and death and blood and darkness.”

Blaine grimaced. “Predicting darkness doesn’t take much skill. The long dark is about to start. Happens every year.”

“Why did they take Dawe?” Kestel pressed.

Verran drained his cup and set it aside. “We were on our way to the cooper to pick up some barrels. Dawe was also going to check to see if the cooper had any more work for him. Two of Prokief’s guards stopped us and demanded our papers.”

“Dawe hates that,” Kestel murmured.

“We would have been all right, except that the guards decided to search us for weapons.”

“Prokief’s got to be on edge if he doesn’t have anything better for his soldiers to do,” Blaine muttered.

“We didn’t have anything on us larger than hunting knives, but the guard found Dawe’s bag of coins. He started making noises about how Dawe must have stolen it, and he and his friend started to push us around, trying to make Dawe confess.”

“Because the bastards wanted his money,” Kestel said.

“Right.” Verran wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and Blaine saw that one cheekbone was beginning to purple from a fresh bruise. “Now, when I’d seen the guards coming our way, I dropped my share of the coins behind a barrel, so they didn’t find anything when they searched me. Dawe wasn’t close to anything, so they got his. But you know how that kind of thing sets him off.”

Blaine grimaced. Dawe Killick was one of the most even-tempered men Blaine had ever met. He seemed to accept nearly everything—bad weather, lost bets, even his own reversal of fortune that landed him at Velant—with unusual calm, but one thing raised his ire. The bullying of the Velant guards could send him into a rage. He’d had a couple of run-ins with the guards while they were both inside Velant, and a few near-misses since gaining his Ticket of Leave. “Yeah, I know.”

“It doesn’t surprise me when the guards try to shake me down for some coins,” Verran said. “I always have a couple in my pocket for them to find, and use my magic fingers to hide the rest,” he said, sliding his thumb along his fingertips, alluding to the pickpocket skills that had helped earn him his conviction. “But when Dawe realized they meant to steal his money outright, he started yelling at the guards. They yelled back, and next thing I knew, there were more guards coming.”

He fidgeted nervously. “I’m better at running than fighting, Blaine, you know that. So I gave one of the guards a good shove, and hoped I could drag Dawe free, but the other one had too tight a grip. Before I knew it, four of them were all over
him, punching and kicking until Dawe stopped fighting back. I couldn’t get him away from them, so I ran before they thought to grab me.” He reached beneath his jacket and dropped a pouch on the table.

“Not that it does Dawe much good, but I got his coins back when I shoved the guard. If he would have kept his temper, we could have nipped them back later and none of this would have had to happen,” Verran said miserably. “I hung around, out of sight, hoping they’d just leave him on the street and I could get him to a healer. But they took him.”

Blaine swore. “Of all the stupid, worthless reasons to get picked up—” He kicked at a chair and sent it skidding across the room.

“We’ve got to do something,” Kestel said.

“Where’s Piran?” Blaine asked, looking around.

“He went out to check the traps first thing this morning. He should be back before long,” Kestel replied.

Blaine sighed. “He and I can go into town and see what we hear. With luck, Prokief’s just trying to intimidate everyone and he’ll send Dawe back a little bloody but still in one piece.”

“Do you think they’ll keep him? Rescind his Ticket?” Kestel asked. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, gathering her shawl closer.

Blaine shrugged. “Prokief doesn’t have the space or the guards to start locking up every colonist who steps out of line. He can rough us up, push us around, hope that intimidates us into knowing our place, but the truth is there are more of us than there are of his guards. He’s got to realize that if he pushes too hard, without reinforcements from Donderath, he can’t fight all of us.”

“He doesn’t have to lock him up,” Verran said miserably.
“Throwing back a body once in a while sends a message quite well.”

Blaine chewed his lip as he thought. Verran had spoken aloud what had gone through his own mind. “We won’t know until we see what’s being said in town. As soon as Piran gets back, he and I can head down to the Bay.”

“I’m going with you,” Verran said.

“You’ve already had one close scrape with the guards. Don’t push your luck.”

Verran shook his head, a determined look on his face. “I feel awful about running. I thought they’d just get in a few punches and be gone. If I’d have known they were going to take him to Velant, I’d have fought.”

“And ended up in Velant with him,” Kestel said. “Mick’s right. There’s nothing you could have done differently.”

“Maybe not,” Verran acknowledged grudgingly. “But I’m not going to run away now. I can identify the guards who took him. If we spot them in a tavern, I can use my music and my magic to make sure the ale hits them harder than usual. That should make it easier to get information out of them.” He glared at Blaine. “Admit it. Unless you and Piran plan to pound the truth out of the guards, you need me.”

“I’d rather have someone stay here with Kestel, especially after the attack.”

“Like I need a nursemaid?” Kestel replied. Blaine had not seen her hand move, but a thin steel blade was suddenly in her good hand. “You boys go find out what’s going on. I’m quite all right by myself for the evening.”