Irons in the Fire (10 page)

Aremil felt the insidious sweetness of the drug relax him. "How are you finding life in Master Wyess's employ?"

"Interesting." Tathrin turned away from the window. "Challenging. Confusing. Everything's turned upside down at the moment. I'll get a better feel for the intricacies of his trade once festival's over, and for the lower town, come to that."

"Good." Aremil hoped Tathrin saw that he truly was pleased for him. "Why don't you stay for dinner? Tell me about life in the lower town. Master Gruit was right to say my vision of wider issues is limited by these four walls."

Tathrin was sliding his scholar's ring around on his finger. "Thank you."

Aremil heard the reservation in his voice. "If you have some other engagement, don't let me detain you."

"I won't stay to dine. I do need to write a letter to my father and buy some presents for my mother and sisters." Tathrin sat across the game table from him. "We have time for a round of white raven, though. Do you want to play the raven or the forest birds?"

"The forest birds."

"Let me see if I can finally build a thicket to baffle you." Tathrin picked up the agate trees and considered their placement. His forehead creased.

Aremil hoped it was only concern for the game prompting that frown. He knew Tathrin's father had never approved of him serving a Draximal master. Even one who was apparently a noble of lowest rank and a cripple at that, never likely to play any part in the poisonous politics of the dukedoms. How would the innkeeper react if he discovered his son was really serving Duke Secaris's own son, even a son so comprehensively discarded and disinherited? Aremil didn't want to be the cause of any rift in Tathrin's family.

Someone with Tathrin's intelligence and integrity deserved a better future than dancing attendance on an invalid. Or a pointless death clutching a pike in Duke Garnot's militia. That was something Aremil and Tathrin's distant father must surely agree on. Hopefully this apprenticeship with Master Wyess would lead to a secure and wealthy future for the younger man.

Tathrin looked up from the game board, a glint in his eye. "Where do you want these?" He took up the horned owl figurine and the pied crow.

"Put the owl by the holly tree and the crow behind the second oak from the right." Aremil focused his attention on the challenge of the game. Tathrin had clearly been thinking how to arrange the trees and shrubs to offer most shelter to the solitary white raven. Well, it was his task to see that the rest of the birds drove the mythical bird out of the forest, regardless. "Put the swordwing in front of the sour apple."

Chapter Six

Tathrin

Master Wyess's Counting-House, in the City of Vanam,

Spring Equinox Festival, Fifth Day, Morning

"Master Gruit is in the courtyard." Eclan stuck his head around the partition separating Tathrin's bed from the next one. Senior clerks warranted a little more privacy than the open dormitory the younger boys shared. "He wants your seal on a letter he's sending to your father."

"Oh, right." Tathrin covered his confusion by gathering up the ribbons and lace spread across his blanket.

"Master Wyess has no duties for us today. Will you be coming to the hangings?" Eclan grinned. "Or are those for one of last night's dancers? That red-headed beauty was smiling at you and you know what they say about Forest girls. The pick of those pretties should win you a feel of her frills. This isn't your birth festival, is it? Give yourself a proper treat if it is!"

"I was born in For-Winter, and these are for my sisters." Tathrin dragged his private chest out from under the bed and swept the fripperies into it. "No, I won't be at the hangings. I want to buy a book of maps."

Then he'd visit Aremil, to make up for leaving him alone last night while he enjoyed himself at the playhouse.

"We'll see a merry midwinter," Eclan mused as they walked down the stairs. "There's more than half the senior clerks born between the Autumn Equinox and the Solstice, and Master Wyess puts up a gold crown for every one of us celebrating at each festival." They reached the half-landing and continued down the next flight. "Anyway, that's three of us this time round, so we'll be drinking Master Wyess's health at the Star in the Thorn after the last villain swings and there'll be high-stakes rune games if that takes your fancy."

"Maybe," Tathrin temporised.

He had little enough coin he could afford to lose, and anyway, gambling for high or low stakes held no attraction for him. He'd grown up playing the usual childish rune games and when he'd begun fetching and carrying in his father's taproom, he'd seen how a single cast of three could throw gamblers into ecstasy or despair. One quiet evening he'd sat down with a set of the nine three-sided bone tokens and a slate and worked through some calculations.

The heavenly rune had the Sun, the Greater and the Lesser Moon on its three sides. All the rest were different, carved with three symbols taken from the traditional sets of four: plants, animals, earthly domains, instruments, winds and elements.

That was one of the first things Tathrin had wondered about. Granted, the Wolf, the Pine and the Mountain went together naturally enough. So did the Deer, the Oak and the Forest. But the Drum, the Calm and Earth? The Harp, the South Wind and Water? Who had decided which three symbols should share a rune, why and when? Who had decreed that two runes from every set of four should be weak and two should be strong? That the Sun should be strong while both Greater and Lesser Moon were weak?

Nine bones and each gambler threw three. Each rune had three faces, one landing flat on the table, one face showing an upright rune, the other with its rune upside down. Tathrin began calculating the likelihood of each symbol turning up. He added in the uncertainty of the heaven symbols, since those had no up or down. Then he took account of the occasions when a strong upright rune would override a weak one.

By the time he had filled the slate with sums, wiped it clean, filled it again, cleaned it and filled it a third time, he had concluded that turning to rune games in hopes of making a fortune was as much folly as using the rune bones for telling fortunes, as the Forest Folk were supposed to do.

His father, seeing Tathrin working steadily, had come over to find out what was fascinating his son. He'd been relieved to learn that the boy wasn't succumbing to the lure of the bones. Then he'd paid a thoughtful visit to the shrine of Misaen on the Losand Road. The second son of Lord Camador, who had inherited that particular priesthood tied to the family's lands, had once studied at Vanam and earned the university's seal of scholarship. He had agreed with Tathrin's father that the lad's aptitude for calculation deserved more challenges than running an inn could provide.

They reached the ground floor and Eclan clapped Tathrin on the shoulder. "I'll see you later," he said cheerfully, disappearing into one of the strongrooms.

Tathrin watched him go. The senior clerks spent a great deal of their leisure time together. His father had told him not to hold himself aloof. If he was going to make a success of this apprenticeship, he didn't want the other clerks thinking he scorned them for not being scholars. But if he was going to go drinking with Eclan and the rest, Tathrin wondered how he would visit Aremil as often as he might like without causing comment.

Emerging into the sunshine of the counting-house courtyard, he saw Master Gruit chatting to Wyess's wagonmaster.

"Good morning, Tathrin. Let's seal that deal on your father's wine." Gruit swept his mantle back, tucking his hands into his brown tunic's pockets.

Tathrin walked with him towards the gate. "I don't recall telling you anything about my father."

"Jerich Sayron, whose family has owned the Ring of Birches Inn on the Losand Road for five generations. The house has a sound reputation for good food and clean beds. It's a safe place to house goods, and they say any guard your father recommends can almost always be trusted." Gruit slid him a grin. "You satisfied the mentors of your scholarship inside two years when the talented sons of Vanam's rich and idle usually take three or four years to earn the university's seal ring. Your friend Master Aremil isn't the only one who can find things out."

Tathrin wasn't about to be flattered. "What do you want with me this morning?"

"I want you to meet a couple of people." Gruit lengthened his stride. "You may also care to know that no one is particularly interested in the pitiable Lord Aremil for whom you fetched and carried while you studied."

"Master Aremil," Tathrin corrected him. "He sees no merit in unearned titles."

Gruit waved an airy hand. "Quiet as a dormouse and twice as dull, apparently. There's some curiosity over what will become of his house when he dies, since he's hardly likely to have an heir of his own body. He has no testament of bequests deposited at Raeponin's shrine, so it's assumed it'll be a simple sale." He looked more sharply at Tathrin. "How robust is his health? If he sinks into a decline, someone might go looking for his relatives, in hopes of making a pre-emptive bid on the property. If he doesn't want his birth to be discovered, he should think on that."

"Drianon be thanked, he is usually quite well." Tathrin tried not to scowl. Master Gruit clearly had excellent sources of information.

"Though often in pain," Gruit observed. "What befell him? Childhood illness or accident?" The merchant took the road leading up the spreading flanks of the Grastan Hill, where the pig hunters had caused such chaos the evening before last.

Tathrin hesitated. Was this his tale to tell? Doing so would save Aremil the awkward task. He knew how much his friend disliked discussing his infirmity.

"His mother laboured in childbed so long that they were both despaired of. Though they survived, he remained a weakly baby. As the duchess did her duty and bore more children, it became apparent that Aremil was not learning to crawl or to use his hands like any other infant. Fortunately, before he could be condemned as an imbecile, he was babbling and then talking."

Gruit glanced at him. "His noble birth presumably saved him from being dumped in some shrine to Ostrin?"

"He lived secluded with his nurse in a remote manor house," Tathrin said briefly. "Never mentioned, to avoid embarrassing his lady mother, and to deny his noble father's enemies the opportunity of arguing that his firstborn's afflictions were proof of the gods' displeasure with Draximal." He grinned despite himself. "Only no one thought to tell Lyrlen her nurseling was supposed to waste quietly away and oblige everyone by dying. She cherished him and taught him to read and write."

"So Duke Secaris found he had a crippled scholar on his hands and decided Vanam was the best place for him." Gruit looked thoughtful. "My opinion of His Grace has gone up somewhat."

They passed the house front where Tathrin had been crushed by the crowd. At the top of the street, the angular façade of the shrine to Misaen dominated a square crowded with booths and stalls piled high with books, new and old. The weathered bronze figure of the smith-god looked sternly down, the sun in one hand, the hammer he"d used to make it in the other.

"Almanac, Master?" A huckster waved a smudgily printed booklet at him. "Know the turn of every season, in every city from Selerima to Toremal?"

Tathrin ignored him. The calendar bequeathed by the Old Tormalin Empire had always irritated him. Why did almanacs printed in different cities give different dates for the turn from season to season? Worse still, when the calendar slid out of phase with the sun's year, each city's priests decided for themselves where extra days would be added to summer or winter festivals. Since coming to Vanam and learning how simple calculations could avoid all such confusion, the outdated system infuriated him still more.

"Master Gruit, I need a book of maps." He wondered if he had enough money with him.

"Later." Gruit pushed through the crowd to a stall where a narrow-eyed merchant stood guard over gold-embossed books bound in gleaming leather.

"I'll take this." A tall woman in a crimson gown handed one to the merchant.

Her hair was dressed tight to her head in a style that did nothing to soften her severe features. Tathrin knew his sisters would condemn her dress as hopelessly outdated and he was surprised to see someone of his mother's generation out without a shawl for modesty's sake, never mind the cold wind coming up off the lake.

"Lady Derenna." Gruit tapped her familiarly on one shoulder.

A noblewoman. Which explained the Tormalin cut of her gown, for all that her accent was clearly Lescari. Though Tathrin would never have expected to see a noblewoman shopping without any attendants.

"Master Gruit, a moment." She turned back to the bookseller. "With the Kaddisoke Alchemy and that Aldabreshin treatise on higher calculus, I'll pay you fifteen silver marks."

Her manner reminded Tathrin of the inn's least welcome visitors. But nobility could hardly be turned away and his father always said arrogance didn't stick to the coin.

"Lescari silver?" The bookseller was sucking his teeth dubiously.

"Do I look like a lead merchant?" the woman asked acidly. "Caladhrian marks."

"Eighteen marks and you have a deal, my lady." The bookseller began wrapping the books in a ragged woollen cloth. "You're at the same address as before?"