Irons in the Fire (24 page)

"As long as you pay him with gold coin," Gren pointed out, "not Lescar's lead-laced excuse for silver."

"You would leave us with anarchy." Derenna shook her head, exasperated.

"There are a great many systems of government, real and imagined." Sorgrad's cold blue gaze challenged her. "Scholars and philosophers debate them endlessly by their comfortable firesides. Are you saying that all you educated and scholarly Lescari wouldn't be able to come up with a way forward between you?"

"Whatever's decided, it won't be the nobles laying down the laws," Reniack asserted. "The poorest folk can finally have a voice if we can get rid of the dukes."

"All shouting at once," Derenna scoffed.

"You'd deny them their right to speak?" Reniack's chin jutted belligerently.

"That would hardly be rational." Sorgrad smiled.

"This whole notion is irrational," Derenna said stubbornly. "If mercenaries attack one duke, or even two, as soon as the rest realise that the same threat extends to them, they'll unite to fight out of simple self-preservation. Quite rationally," she said acidly.

"So we attack them all." Gren clearly didn't see the problem.

Sorgrad smiled. "Get everyone in the right places before the first blood's spilled and it could be a very short campaign."

"How?" Derenna demanded. "How could you possibly bring everyone you needed into such a plot and hope to keep it a secret? How could you send word to all the people you needed to act without being discovered?"

Something on the game board caught her eye and she frowned before swiftly moving the white raven again.

Reniack laughed with harsh amusement. "How do you think I've escaped Duke Orlin's hangman with no more than torn ears? There are plenty of ways of spreading news as well as gathering it. I don't suppose you have much to do with men in the travelling trades, my lady, but thatchers and chimney sweeps, ox-handlers and slaughtermen, candlemakers and charcoal burners--they all carry bundles of my pamphlets and broadsheets around Parnilesse without anyone being the wiser." He looked from Tathrin to Gruit. "You have all those same trades in Carluse and Marlier?"

"Quite so." Gruit smiled slowly. "And I know any number of merchants who carry discreet letters from place to place. You know that yourself, my lady."

"Tavern musicians carry letters for the guildmasters in Carluse," Failla volunteered.

"Troupes of players and musicians travel between vassal lords' manor houses." Charoleia smiled. "As do tutors and painters and map-makers and doctors. Many such people are well known to me, and most owe me favours."

Aremil had wondered just how she came about the information she traded. He'd guessed she must buy it from servants and the like. He hadn't thought about the humbler trades who cooperated with Reniack, though. The pamphleteer's words were more coin tipping the balance in favour of this plan.

"Every one of these unknown people becomes another link to us," Derenna cried with exasperation. "How long do you think it will be before we're loaded down with chains?"

"Stay out of Lescar and no duke can seize you." Gren shrugged.

"Then our families will pay the penalty," she said bitingly.

Sorgrad was unconcerned. "Mostly folk will just need to know one thing, one place to be at a certain time. If no one but ourselves knows the whole story, any thread a duke's spy pulls on will snap before it leads to us."

He moved a pied crow that had been shielding a trio of mistle thrushes clustered round an oak tree. Derenna instantly shifted the white raven and put them to flight off the edge of the board.

"I must go back to Parnilesse." Reniack looked grim. "The people we'll need there have felt the lash of Duke Orlin's whip too often to trust anyone but me."

"I'll be going back to Carluse," Failla said quickly. "I'm the only one the guildmasters will believe, and as far as Duke Garnot is concerned, I'm dead anyway."

"How in Poldrion's name did you manage that?" Gruit asked with misgiving.

"It would be a cursed sight easier if you people buried your ancestors like decent folk instead of throwing them on bonfires," Gren said cheerfully, "but there's always some unclaimed dead on a Lescari battlefield. So we found the site of some old fighting and dug around a bit."

Aremil saw Failla pale at the recollection while Tathrin looked anxious.

"Duke Garnot got her clothes and some bones back, half-burned but still recognisable enough to convince him." Sorgrad moved a russet owl figurine with a soft click.

The Mountain Men had played that trick before, Aremil was convinced of it.

"So we're to achieve all this when we have to send letters all the way from Vanam to Reniack in Parnilesse and to her while she's skulking around Carluse's back roads?" Derenna flung a hand towards Failla. "It took the boy nearly a whole season to get to Draximal and back. How can you hope to manage this business with such delays? How long before something unexpected makes a mockery of whatever you have planned?"

Aremil decided it was time for him to speak. "We won't send letters. We will use magic to communicate with each other."

"Of all the follies I've heard today, that's quite the most ludicrous." Derenna looked scornfully at him.

"Please hear Master Aremil out," Tathrin said tightly.

"If you think for one moment we could get away with involving wizards in this madness, you should send that scholar's ring back to your mentor," Derenna retorted with rising anger.

"Don't bite the lad's head off."

Aremil was slightly alarmed to see Gren take a step away from the fireplace, his face hardening.

"I don't mean magecraft," Aremil said hastily. "You must have heard of aetheric magic?"

"Tricks and charlatanry." Derenna's lips narrowed.

Charoleia looked at her with mild surprise. "You must be aware that Vanam's university leads the study of such ancient enchantments?"

"You lowlanders forgot all about the old magics when your empires fell into ruin." Sorgrad took up his untouched glass of wine and studied it. "Then you found you had mageborn among you who could manipulate earth and stone, fire and water, even the wind and rain. Wizardry became the only magic that mattered. You've never paid much attention to what goes on in the uplands, not beyond convincing yourselves there's no harm in stealing our land to graze your sheep on. If you had, you'd know that what you call 'aetheric magic' had never been lost."

He paused, contemplative. "There are learned men and women in the remote mountain valleys well versed in more than sharing their thoughts. They can pluck the very memories out of your head if they see fit, or see your innermost intent, and you'll never know they've done it. They travel from settlement to settlement to give judgement and counsel, to heal the sick, to greet the newly born, to comfort the dying. No one sees them on the road. They come and go as suits their own purposes. They spread news and carry appeals for aid or alliance from one settlement to another. As long as they believe those in need deserve help," he qualified. "If they don't, one lone traveller becomes ten or twenty stepping out of the shadows. No one will enter a valley the
sheltya
have declared closed. They also do whatever's needed to curb a pestilence or to find the truth of some crime against innocent blood."

"And then?" Tathrin broke the uncertain silence.

"Sometimes the settlements are found empty, all their people gone."

Even Gren's cheerful demeanour was subdued, Aremil noticed.

"Or the folk still there have had their minds emptied of any recollection of what's gone on," Sorgrad concluded.

"I don't know about the remote mountains, nor Vanam's scholars, come to that," Reniack said with uncharacteristic caution, "but I've heard rumours coming out of Tormalin. Whatever you make of these tales of lost lands rediscovered across the Eastern Ocean, the Emperor and all the princes are searching their archives and libraries for hints and fragments of the lore that underpinned the Old Empire. Artifice, they call it. They say it's a magic that can get inside a man's head, to find out all his secrets or convince him some illusion is solid reality."

"It's all the same magic," Gren agreed. "But if Artifice gets inside your head, you can always--"

Sorgrad silenced him with a word of what Aremil assumed was the Mountain tongue.

Wondering just what had been said, Aremil continued, "My lady Derenna, I am acquainted with a mentor of unimpeachable reputation among the university's scholars who's travelled extensively in search of such lore. He has told me that those adept in the more complex enchantments can communicate with each other over hundreds of leagues, if not thousands."

"But none of us are adept," Derenna countered, "nor likely to become so any time soon."

"These Mountain adepts, would they help us?" Gruit asked, hope and apprehension following each other across his face.

"No." Sorgrad was still studying his glass of wine. "They haven't involved themselves in the scholarship here, though thanks to curious scholars like Master Aremil's friend, they know all about it. So with luck, they won't step out of some shadow to chastise us if we communicate through aetheric magic instead of letters."

Gruit's brow creased in thought. "Do adepts of Artifice have to be born to this magic, like wizards?"

"I'm told Artifice can be learned by anyone with sufficient self-discipline and application," Charoleia remarked. "Musicians find it easier than most, apparently."

"I will write to Mentor Tonin, the scholar I'm acquainted with. I shall ask him to introduce me to those of his pupils who are Lescari born or have Lescari blood." Aremil felt nothing was to be gained by saying he'd already sent such a letter and had been waiting for a reply since before the Spring Festival. "We need only find a handful we can trust. If one such adept travels with Reniack, and another with Failla, we can send them whatever instructions we need to and learn all that they have discovered without anyone setting pen to paper."

"There'd be no delay, nor any risk that some duke's spy might intercept a letter," Tathrin said confidently.

"Might there be some way to use these enchantments to rid ourselves of the dukes without any bloodshed at all?" Failla looked at him hopefully.

All Tathrin could do was look at Aremil.

"I have no way of knowing," he had to admit. "Not yet."

"Aetheric enchantment is still magic, though, isn't it?" Derenna objected reluctantly. "Won't the Archmage be watching whoever uses it as closely as he watches his wizards?"

"He's made no objection to the Tormalin Emperor's men and women using the enchantments they have discovered," Charoleia assured her. "Though I suspect he might, if aetheric magic were used for open violence," she added.

"People seem to think Archmage Planir's omniscient and omnipotent." Sorgrad twirled his glass around. The sunlight struck ruby glints deep in the wine. "He isn't. I've met him, and played white raven against him, which I have to say he plays remarkably well." He glanced down at the board. "As do you, my lady, although--my apologies--you've lost this game."

Derenna stared at the board. "That's not--"

She bit down on the word but everyone in the room knew she'd been about to say "fair".

"I was distracted." Spots of furious colour blossomed on her cheekbones.

"You kept playing," Sorgrad pointed out.

He looked around the room. "If we're going to try winning this particular game instead of just talking about it, we should start by finding Captain-General Evord in Solura and rounding up an army for him. Gren and I can work on that. The rest of you should start thinking about getting all the other pieces we'll need into play so we can win the game before the dukes even realise they're playing."

"You say this mercenary captain Evord lives in Solura?" Derenna snapped. "Clear across Ensaimin and all the way on the other side of the Great Forest besides? We're already into For-Summer. By the time you've travelled all that way, even assuming you can persuade him, and brought back an army ready to fight, Winter Solstice will have come and gone!"

"I don't know about that, but we'll be lucky to see you back before Aft-Autumn." Gruit's enthusiasm wilted.

"I can get me, Gren and the long lad there to Evord's doorstep before nightfall." Sorgrad smiled as the wine in his glass boiled into a pink mist, filling the room with its fragrant bouquet. "Though leaving tomorrow morning would suit me better. I have a dinner engagement this evening."

Aremil saw that Tathrin was as dumbfounded as he was, along with everyone else. No, not everyone. Gren was just grinning. Of course he'd know. Charoleia also looked entirely composed. She would also have known something as momentous as that.

"You're a wizard?" he finally managed to say.

"Not a wizard." Sorgrad pulled at the glass, as malleable as soft wax in his hands. It sparkled with the unmistakable crimson of magelight. "Mageborn, if you like, but I've never studied in Hadrumal's halls. I've sworn no loyalty to Archmage Planir the Black. Which is how I know he has no secret means of keeping track of everyone using elemental magic."

"They say a wizard can only use magic to travel somewhere he's already been," Aremil said slowly. "Then you've visited Solura before?"