Irons in the Fire (30 page)

He wanted to shout, to make his presence known to whoever was hiding in this strange place. Then he realised he was mute, as if he'd never learned to speak. As if he had never known that speech was even possible. Most peculiarly of all, none of this was the least bit frightening. That realisation intrigued him more than anything else.

"Thank you." Branca's voice was inside his mind, soft and unimaginably remote.

At the same time, his ears were hearing her say the same thing an arm's length away. Aremil snatched his hand back, shaken but consumed with curiosity. "Well?"

"I won't be able to talk to your friend. I don't know him and he's no adept. But I should be able to see what he's doing." Branca stared fixedly ahead. Her eyes grew distant and unfocused as she whispered something lyrical in its urgency.

Aremil sat motionless, feeling tension threaten him with cramp in his legs. It occurred to him to wonder what some passer-by might make of the two of them sitting here, him watching while Branca muttered to herself. Would some interfering apothecary come bustling up with a potion to calm such a sadly deranged girl? Half-amused, half-concerned, he was relieved to see Branca smile a few moments later.

She tried to curb her amusement, intent on the charm she was repeating. For a few moments, she didn't falter. Then she stumbled over a syllable and half-laughed, half-gasped. The vagueness in her eyes vanishing, she shook her head ruefully.

"Your friend is well, I can tell you that much. He's travelling with three other men," she said with calm certainty. "Sorgrad and Gren and Evord."

Proof if any was needed of Artifice's potential. Aremil hadn't told her about any of those men. He looked forward to challenging Master Gruit's scepticism with that.

"They're all in excellent spirits," she went on, "which is no bad thing, because Tathrin is trying to learn how not to be killed in a battle. He is quite determined to improve his skills with a sword." She looked quizzically at Aremil. "But he thinks Sorgrad suspects he has no aptitude for it. Sorgrad is the Mountain Man you mentioned earlier?"

"He is." Aremil nodded. "Where are they?"

"In the pine forests in the northern reaches of Solura," Branca said thoughtfully, "heading into the foothills. They're going to skirt the northern fringes of the Great Forest and come back to Ensaimin by way of the lakes and the Ferring Gap."

That was hardly a well-travelled route. Aremil could only hope this man Evord or Sorgrad knew what they were about. The uplands should be safe enough at this time of year, shouldn't they? He reached for his crutches. "Thank you for that reassurance. If you'd be so good as to help me to find a chair, I should go home."

"Not so fast." Branca twisted her hair into a coil, tucking it up as she put her linen cap back on. "Who are Failla, Derenna and Reniack?"

"Why do you want to know?" Aremil asked with suspicion. Just how much had she seen in Tathrin's mind? Or his own? "What do you already know?"

"I know that they're travelling and Tathrin is concerned that you have no easy way of contacting them." She re-pinned her wrap decorously across her shapely chest. "So you need at least three Artificers, don't you? Besides yourself."

"You think I could learn these enchantments?" Aremil asked before he could restrain himself. He quickly set that aside. "So you are going to help us? To find more adepts willing to help us? They must be utterly trustworthy."

Branca held up a hand to silence him. "I know that." She frowned, though not at Aremil. "I can think of a few scholars we could approach, but don't get your hopes up."

"No." He tried to curb the eagerness rising within him. "Please, do you think I could use Artifice?"

"I think it's worth making the attempt to teach you." She leaned back, looking at him with new interest. "Why don't we hire a gig and go to the lower town? I can cover the cost, and buy us lunch, as long as you can pay me back. I take it your mother-mastiff keeps some coin in the house for daily bread and firewood?"

"I believe so." There was no way he would eat or drink with her but Aremil didn't want to risk her newfound cooperation by refusing. It would undoubtedly cost him aches and pains, but he had tinctures for those.

Branca smiled. "There's a tavern where many of us who see our Lescari blood as an irrelevance gather. You should talk to them before you go trying to convince them otherwise."

"Very well, then." Aremil nodded, even though he knew full well Reniack had addressed himself to this question. The rabble-rouser had left a stock of broadsheets with Master Gruit before setting out on the road to Lescar.

Branca tilted her head. "Now, are you going to ask me to loosen your collar for you or do you want to stay stewing in your own juices?"

Aremil caught his breath. "I thought you weren't going to intrude into my thoughts any deeper than you had to."

"I can see you're sweating like a cheese without using Artifice." Branca shook her head. "If you learned to accept help with what you cannot manage, and set your mind to making the most of what you can do, you'd find your life a great deal fuller."

"Did your father tell you that?" Aremil asked crossly.

"No, I worked it out for myself." She was quite relaxed. "Just as I realised I'd make precious little of myself if I allowed myself to be beaten down by the fact that my sisters and I had to share a single pair of shoes some winters. If I let threadbare pride stop me from accepting the charity that meant I could learn to read and write. So I sat at the feet of Maewelin's statue with orphans and paupers and practised my letters on my slate. I scrubbed the university's dining halls in the evenings so I could spend my days in the libraries and didn't let myself notice there were laundry maids there with better gowns than my own."

If she hadn't noticed, why did she mention it? Aremil thought. "Tathrin worked as a scholars' servant so he could study."

Branca nodded. "I look forward to meeting him." She made no move to rise from the seat. "So, are you going to bend that stiff neck of yours so you can be more comfortable?"

"Very well. Thank you," Aremil managed to say with distant courtesy as she unbuttoned his collar with deft fingers.

This was not a price he'd imagined paying when he'd wondered what inducements might secure an aetheric adept's assistance.

Chapter Nineteen

Faila

Viscot Crossroads, in the Lescari Dukedom of Carluse,

Summer Solstice Festival, Day One, Night

"You can see the stars so clearly." Reniack gazed upwards.

"Get off the road before someone sees you." As Derenna snapped, her horse flattened its ears.

"There are plenty of people still travelling home for festival." Failla soothed her own mount, stroking its neck. She was heartily sick of trying to keep the peace between Reniack and the noblewoman.

"Precious few will be lurking round gibbets at midnight," Derenna said waspishly.

Reniack was unconcerned. "What do you suppose that poor bastard's crime was?"

Failla had been trying not to look at the gruesome shape hanging from the post by the mile-marker. Fortunately there was scarcely any wind to set the chain squeaking as the body swung. Better yet, the dead man, felon or merely unfortunate, had been dipped in pitch before a smith encased his corpse in the iron lattice, so they were spared the reek of decomposing flesh.

She could sympathise with Derenna's weary ill-humour. Thirty days' travelling, near enough, and only two spent on mundane matters such as washing their linen and brushing dust from their skirts and cloaks. At least Reniack rinsed out his own shirts and drawers, even if the two women were masquerading as his wife and daughter.

How safe were they now? On Charoleia's advice they had shunned the high road since Duryea, still five days' journey inside Caladhria, because there just might be some boot-boy or maidservant who'd fled the uncertainties of Lescar for safer servitude at a Caladhrian inn, and who just might recall seeing Duke Garnot's whore.

Failla's gaze was drawn to the hanged felon. Would this be her fate, if Duke Garnot caught her? Forbidden a funeral pyre and the sanctity of a shrine for her ashes? Her body left to rot as her spirit lingered amid the torment of Poldrion's demons? When long-delayed dissolution of her remains freed her to cross the river of the dead, would Saedrin grant her rebirth into the Otherworld?

"The Aldabreshi read all manner of prophecies in the skies." Reniack made no effort to move his horse from the crossroads. "Foretelling births and deaths and charting the fates of their children."

"Does anything up there suggest when these friends of Charoleia's might arrive?" Derenna asked tartly.

Failla shivered despite the balmy summer night. Catching the draught of Poldrion's cloak, that's what her mother called it. According to her grandam, one of the Eldritch Kin in the Otherworld had stepped on the spot where your shadow lay in this world. She looked down to see her shady outline cast on the beaten earth by the unclouded light of the Lesser Moon. Then she heard hoofbeats.

"Reniack?" Derenna stiffened.

"I know." He wheeled his horse around, drawing his newly donned sword, too incongruous to be worn by a meek tutor travelling in Caladhria. No one looked twice at an armed man in Lescar.

Failla encouraged her darkly dappled horse into the shadow of a holly thicket and saw Derenna edge her mount behind a flourishing birch tree. If these men proved to be mercenaries or worse, Derenna would break for the north while Failla fled to the west. On their way to this rendezvous, Reniack had indicated a deserted farmstead that would serve as a refuge in such a crisis.

Failla watched, tense, as he waited in the road, sword hanging loosely, hidden from the riders approaching on his other side.

"Fair festival and Saedrin's blessings on you and yours." The younger man rode a grey horse so pale it shone in the moonlight.

"It's late to be travelling, friend," his older companion observed.

Reniack shrugged. "I'd rather have two moons to guide me, but the Lesser's sufficient on its own at the full."

The second man nodded. "As long as there are no clouds."

"So Charoleia says." Reniack sheathed his sword, gleaming steel vanishing into the dark scabbard. "I'll have your names, friends, just to be sure."

"I'm Welgren, and he's Nath." The second man encouraged his horse towards the gibbet. "You're Reniack, I assume. Who's our friend here?"

"Are you talking about the felon or me?" Derenna emerged from hiding.

The man made a graceful half-bow, sweeping off his hat to show a balding crown surrounded by sparse white hair. "My lady."

"Derenna will suffice." She walked her horse out into the moonlight.

"You haven't got time to cut him down and cut him up." The younger man sounded apprehensive.

Reniack turned his head to stare at the older man. "I thought you were an apothecary."

"I am," the older man confirmed, "but one of the nicer things about Lescar is that no one asks to see your Physicians' Guild credentials before you anatomise a corpse. Don't worry, Nath. He's been tarred to keep the crows off, so he's no use to me."

"You're the map-maker?" Reniack turned to the younger man. "You sound like a man of Tormalin."

"I'm Tormalin born and bred but my father was a weaver born in Draximal," Nath said firmly. "That blood is all that counts as far as Tormalin's princes are concerned. If we can have peace in Lescar, I'll bring my sons and daughter home to a land where they won't be so unjustly despised."

"You escaped being tied to a weaver's loom. Who do you make maps for?" Derenna asked bluntly.

"In Tormalin, I work for merchants who have won themselves a fortune without being beholden to any noble family. They like to buy land and build grand houses, so I chart streams and measure hills and advise on clearing trees and digging lakes." Nath smiled engagingly. "In Lescar, I survey boundaries to make sure no one is claiming a finger's width more land than they're entitled to. I look for ores or quarrying stone, and if a vassal lord pays me enough, I won't tell whichever duke would claim the greater share for himself. As I travel, I chart the roads and I sell those maps to whichever printer pays best for accurate maps in his almanac."

"And you sell Charoleia whatever secrets you glean on the way?" Derenna was unmoved by his charm.

Nath's face hardened "I have children to feed, a wife and a widowed mother to support. I have no claim on any Tormalin noble family; no such fealty will save me and mine from starving by the roadside."

Reniack broke in before Derenna could respond. "What about you, Master Welgren?"

"Why do I correspond with Charoleia?" The older man looked mildly at him. "Or why do I want to see peace in Lescar?" He answered his own questions briskly. "I correspond with Charoleia because that's the price of her sending me news of advances in physic and surgery that I'd never hear about otherwise. I don't go out of my way to ferret out secrets. I just tell her things I've observed."

He shook his head slowly. "I have always longed to understand the mysteries of anatomy and of all the marvellous processes of vitality. But if Saedrin himself were to offer to explain it all, as a boon, I'd ask him to end this wicked waste of life in Lescar instead. In return for such a gift, I'd lay my scalpels and potions on his altar and never probe another wound or visit a sickbed again."