The Assassin's Edge (Einarinn 5) (22 page)

Shiv didn’t reply. Larissa was studying her hands again so Pered and Usara exchanged a shrug and sat in silence.

The horses leaned into their collars to pull the carriage up the road that snaked ever higher towards the pass cutting a deep cleft in the saw-edged mountains north and south of the isthmus. Houses became smaller and more closely packed and the cobbles gave way to hard-packed earth. Each frontage showed three or four rows of windows and garret rooms besides beneath the brown and ochre tiles. Hurrying out from behind a loaded dray, a girl with a scarlet fan startled a saddle horse, which whinnied its indignation as it shied away and startled their coach’s team. The driver’s rebukes and the girl’s defiance added sharp notes to the murmur and bustle all around. Within the carriage, the silence persisted.

“Here we are,” Pered announced with determined cheerfulness when the coach drew to a halt. He paid off the driver as Usara got out and offered Larissa a courteous hand. She waved it away with a tight smile.

“So where are we?” Shiv surveyed the broad square that had been hacked out of the rock to flatten the crest of the pass. On either side jagged cliffs fell back towards the ocean, broken by uncertain slabs and screes, doughty herbs and flowers scrabbling to maintain a foothold on the sparse, sun-scorched soil.

“The princes who built the road joining the two harbours made sure that the Emperor granted them the dues in perpetuity. This is where they collect them.” Pered nodded towards several heavy wagons plodding across the flagstoned expanse, just arrived up the wide road that led to the unseen port of the city’s larger, older half that faced the calmer waters of Caladhrian Gulf rather than the uncertain currents of the ocean. Galleys looking little larger than a child’s playthings dotted brilliant blue waters that reached to the horizon.

Usara watched a liveried man wearing the badge of some Tormalin princes stroll up to a laden cart’s driver. He produced an amulet that won him a nod but those that followed were waved towards a long row of water troughs beneath wind-tossed shade trees. “It must be worth the cost, to avoid the time and risks of a voyage around the cape.”

“Mind your backs!” Pered pulled Larissa aside as toiling horses snorted behind her, sides heaving as their driver slackened their reins. “Ferd, get that manifest to Den Rannion’s clerk! Jump to it, lad!” A child leapt from the back of the cart and ran off as the driver urged his reluctant team towards a space beside a gang of men dividing the cargo they had just carried up here between two wagons waiting impatiently for goods from Caladhria, Lescar and countries beyond.

Shiv surveyed the constant activity all around. “They must have paid for the road ten times over by now”

“More like a hundred times,” Pered opined. “But a Sieur can always find a use for more coin.” He nodded at the detachment of armed men relaxing around the base of a massive statue of Dastennin. Crowned with seaweed, the god of the sea’s robe broke into roiling foam around his feet, his weathered bronze hands green with age, outstretched in benediction towards both seas.

Larissa closed her eyes and turned her face to the steady breeze, face rapt. “I feel I could touch the sky up here.”

“It’s a splendid place to work with the air,” agreed Usara with hopeful anticipation. “Even I can feel that.”

Shiv turned to Pered. “Working magic in the open isn’t exactly against the Emperor’s writ but I don’t relish debating the point with Den Rannion’s sworn men. You said there were more private places up here?”

“This way.” Pered led them towards a mighty tower on the southerly side of the square. With its flared base of tightly fitted stones seamlessly married to the rock beneath, it looked like some marvellous tree grown of living stone.

“Wasn’t the Sieur Den Rannion one of the original patrons of the Kellarin colony?” Larissa queried, nodding towards the men with silver eagle’s head badges bright on their copper-coloured jerkins who shielded the tower’s door with crossed pikes.

“That was his brother, Messire Ancel.” Shiv glanced up at the broad balcony circling the slender waist of the tower. “The present Sieur is no friend to Temar.”

Excited voices floated out across the great square, exclaiming over the views. Above, where the tower was capped with a sturdily built watch-room, sworn men kept vigil to east and west. A great eagle spread vast bronze wings over them, poised eternally on the moment of flight.

Larissa tilted her head to one side. “If you can get mages with the right affinities working together, we could well bring ships safely around the Cape of Winds. Then D’Alsennin wouldn’t have to pay for the privilege of this rigmarole of portage across the isthmus.”

“I’m not sure Temar would want to put the Emperor’s nose out of joint like that.” Shiv waved away a hopeful lad offering a tray of sweetmeats.

“Where are we going?” Larissa looked uncertain as Pered led Usara towards the queue of well-dressed merchant folk and comfortably humble townspeople waiting to gain access to the fabled tower and its balcony with letters of introduction or the simpler expedient of a few well-chosen coins. Smiling lackeys offered them wine and tisanes beneath an awning fluttering in the constant wind.

“I’m not sure.” Shiv picked up his pace and Larissa hurried with him.

“I can’t imagine anyone building a greater monument than Den Rannion’s,” Pered was saying to Usara. “But that doesn’t stop them trying.” He waved a hand at the miscellany of commemorative stone and metalwork planted haphazard in an irregular space between the mighty tower and the ragged, fissured mountainside beyond.

Shiv raised an eyebrow at the blatant panegyric to some long-dead Tor Leoril engraved on a massive marble urn. “You said we could find a discreet corner?”

“This way.” Pered led the mages through monuments ranging from the blandly functional to the frankly bizarre. They passed a granite bull, big as life and pawing ferociously at its plinth, and reached a mighty bronze dragon leprous with verdigris and fighting against chains that ran from a collar to metal posts embedded in the ground. Its bating wings cast a deep shadow over a creature half fish, half hound that lounged unconcerned on a high drift of scallop shells carved from a single slab of marble. Behind, an empty space was effectively blocked from passing view and any curious eyes on the tower’s balcony.

Shiv nodded approvingly. “We’d still better work fast.”

“I’ll stand guard.” Pered took himself off to sit apparently idly some way beyond the dragon, digging charcoal and parchment out of one pocket. Usara stifled a smile.

Shiv raised questioning brows at Larissa who braced herself and held out hands that betrayed her tension with a faint tremor. Usara completed the triangle and all three mages concentrated on the empty air between them. The only sound was the stealthy scrape of Pered’s sketching.

“Dear heart,” Shiv said conversationally. “This would be easier without distractions.”

“Sorry.” There was an apologetic rustle and then silence from Pered.

Larissa’s gaze hadn’t wavered. She focused on a shimmer of blue at the very mid-point between them. The strand of magelight was barely a hair’s thickness but startling in its sapphire intensity. A faint smile curved Larissa’s full lips as the magic split, doubling and redoubling, threads blurring and fluttering in the curious wind coiling around the mages. “Usara?” she invited.

Usara was painstakingly summoning a grey-blue haze from the rock beneath them. It hovered on the very edge of sight like a memory of mist. Ever more dense as it drew closer to Larissa’s cerulean sorcery, the cold colour was drawn into her spell like smoke up a chimney, brightening to a vivid blue. “We can do this, Shiv,” he breathed, exultant.

Turquoise light pooled below the dancing tendrils of light, ripples edged with radiance. Aquamarine waves leapt to join Larissa’s magic, colliding with the sun-burnished blue. Flourishes of white light bleached the green hue of Shiv’s working to that same sapphire clarity. The breezes playing around the monuments danced around the wizards’ linked hands, any that ventured too close swept into the sorcery.

With a suddenness that startled an oath from Pered, two figures tore through the impossibly narrow line of the spell. The magic blew away on the wind like fragments of a dream.

“It’s me!” Pered backed hastily away from the naked dagger in Sorgrad’s hand.

Sorgren had somehow tripped as he came through the spell. He rolled like a fairground tumbler, back on his feet in an instant. “Ouch.” He grinned as he sheathed his own blade. “You really have to learn that spell, ’Grad.”

Pered looked past him to Shiv, wide-eyed. “That was incredible.” He shook his head. “How could I ever paint those colours?”

Sorgrad tossed his knife up high, catching it as it tumbled. He halted to survey Larissa. “My lady.”; His voice was warm with admiration.

“This is Larissa.” Usara wondered how best to introduce her. “Planir’s—”

“—pupil.” Larissa offered her hand. Sorgrad bowed deep and brushed it with his lips.

’Gren contented himself with grinning at her in blatant appreciation. He tugged at his collar to settle his crumpled shirt and something chinked in a pocket of his tattered jerkin.

“What were you running from?” Shiv frowned at the younger Mountain Man.

“Watchmen.” Sorgrad held two backpacks in his off hand and tossed one to his younger brother. By contrast with ’Gren’s dishevelled appearance, his shirt was clean, the silver buttons on his jerkin polished and his boots well oiled. ’Gren’s hair was long and tied back all anyhow with a scrap of leather. Sorgrad’s was neatly trimmed and brushed back with a touch of expensive oil.

“What did the Watch want?” Usara asked before he could stop himself.

“There was this goldsmith,” began ’Gren with a happy smile.

“We don’t all have Planir’s bottomless bags of gold.” Sorgrad took a handful of silver chains out of one pocket and stowed them in his pack. He looked blandly at Shiv.

“Does Planir earn his coin or does he make it?” ’Gren was next to Larissa, pale against her darker colouring, azure eyes engaging. “Alchemists go to Hadrumal, don’t they? Everyone says they’re looking for magical help to turn base metals precious.”

“Shall we get on our way?” Pered suggested, offering Larissa his arm. ’Gren sauntered along on her other side. The others followed some paces behind.

“So let’s go look for a ship,” said Sorgrad. “No sense in delaying, not if there’s a fight in the offing.”

“We’ve tried the harbour master and all the various princes’ factors,” Usara said gloomily.

“I’ll find someone who sees the sense of taking your coin.” Sorgrad’s confidence was laced with a hint of menace.

Pered looked back, shading his eyes with a hand. “Are we all going down to the docks?”

Sorgrad shook his head. “I only need these two to sit still, look rich and keep their mouths shut.”

“You’re lodged at a decent inn?” ’Gren smiled obligingly at Larissa. ”Let’s wait for them there.”

“Larissa’s rather more than just Planir’s pupil,” Shiv murmured to Sorgrad.

“I don’t see him hereabouts.” The Mountain Man shrugged. “Your choice: risk ’Gren cutting a slice off Planir’s loaf or taking him down to a dockside after your magic just spoiled his hopes of a good fight.”

“Pered will keep things decorous,” Usara offered.

“As long as he doesn’t go off trying to work out how to paint a spell,” frowned Shiv. “All right, let’s find two coaches.”

Pered was already whistling them up and ’Gren ushered Larissa inside the first with exquisite courtesy at odds with his grimy clothes.

“Somewhere near the pilot academy, if you please.” Stifling his qualms, Usara followed Sorgrad and Shiv into the second vehicle and the coachman whipped up his horse. Once down from the heights, they rattled through streets thronged with people intent on the buying and selling that kept both halves of Zyoutessela rich.

After some distance, Usara cleared his throat. “Sorgrad, how did you get on in Solura?”

The carriage swayed round a corner before Sorgrad shook his head with disgust. “Everything Gilmarten told me was true. Every mageborn must be apprenticed to some other wizard and every master mage is under vow to some baron or other. The best I found were earnest do-gooders desperate to sign me up with someone in their circle. The worst were pig-headed bastards who locked me up and called for the local headsman to brand me as an untrained mage.”

“You escaped, obviously.” Shiv looked at him speculatively. “Using magic?”

“Picklocks and ’Gren’s talent for breaking heads,” Sorgrad said without humour.

“We could share a few things with you,” Usara said with studied casualness.

“Just so you can help out Livak and Halice,” added Shiv.

“Good of you to offer.” Sorgrad smiled, this time with satisfaction. “That was going to be a condition of my cooperation.”

“I thought we’d already agreed your price,” said Shiv with mild indignation.

“That was ’Gren’s price,” Sorgrad assured him earnestly.

Usara laughed. “It’s not far now. What do we do when we get to the docks?”

“We find a likely tavern where you two sit still, look rich and don’t so much as clear your nose like a wizard. In the kind of tavern we want, that’ll mean knives coming your way.” Sorgrad’s tone was simply matter-of-fact.

“So we’re looking for our own crew of pirates?” guessed Shiv.

Sorgrad smiled. “No, we’re looking for a ship. I’ll go looking for crew after dark and I’ll take ’Gren because I probably will be dealing with freetraders. If it takes a fight, I’d rather have him at my back, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We can get ourselves out of trouble,” protested Shiv.

“You won’t see how to keep yourselves out of it in the first place,” countered Sorgrad.

“If we’re caught using magic in some brawl, the word will get back to D’Olbriot quicker than bees to honey,” Usara pointed out to Shiv.

“What’s D’Olbriot’s stake in this game?” Sorgrad looked from Usara to Shiv and back again. “I think it’s time you told me what’s going on. Let’s start with why you two are playing truant from Hadrumal?”