The Guild (13 page)

“I’m glad he’s making himself useful,” Alonnen allowed.

“Yes, but it’s barely an hour past breakfast, and only a handful of cities have relayed their requests. There’s bound to be more. Many more, Master Tall. If we can cram four and five to a room, or even sleep them in shifts, eight hundred
might
be enough . . .”

“
Enough?
No.
I’ve
had enough, that’s what.” He started to say more, but someone rapped on the door.

Crossing to it, he pressed his palm to the metal plate above the handle. A section of the door turned transparent, like a window. Rexei Longshanks stood there, clad in the fresh clothes he had brought into his bedroom from his sitting room this morning, but still looking more male than female. Opening the door, he gestured her inside.

“In you get,” he ordered. She stepped inside, lean and lanky and looking like a nervous young man not yet old enough to shave. Her brown eyes widened when they alighted on Gabria’s face at his desk. About to introduce them, Alonnen hesitated, then leaned in close and whispered, “Which would you prefer to be introduced as, a lad all the time, or a lass while you’re here and a young man while you’re out beyond the dam?”

She blinked and gave him a startled look. Cheeks warming to a charming shade of pink, she ducked her head a little. “I . . . don’t know?”

He patted one of the arms holding his book of tales to her chest. “It’s okay. We have lots of girls running around with boy names and boy clothes, but they are safe here, and they know it. Nobody’s going to blink if you announce three weeks from now that you’re not actually a lad . . . and a few will guess it outright, but they won’t tell. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” Nudging her inside, he shut the door and led Rexei over to his desk. “Gabria, this is Rexei Longshanks. Rexei, Gabria Springreaver. Longshanks is a journeyman in the Gearmen’s Guild. Springreaver is a master in the Guild Which Is Usually Not Named . . . but which is giving me a bloody headache this morning.”

Gabria smiled shyly. “Hello. I think I’ve heard of you. Something about a . . . melody-chant . . . to hide energy traces?”

Rexei . . . acted like a boy, the kind who was mildly interested in Springreaver as a person but not as a potential flirtation candidate. She looked over the other woman, who was clad in felted gray trousers, a cream and gray knitted sweater—without any breast bindings—and a couple of long pins skewering her golden curls in a knot at the back of her head. Rexei then shrugged diffidently and dipped her own dark, short-haired head. “Yeah. Just something my mum taught me.”

“Well, the more you can teach the trick of it to, the more we’ll all be grateful,” Gabria said, and gave Longshanks a warm smile.

Alonnen felt odd. That half-shy smile was almost flirtatious. Not quite, but it irritated him to think of one of his assistants flirting with the lad . . . who was a lass. The talker-box squawked again. Shaking the feeling off, Alonnen focused on what his guild needed and not on what he was feeling. “Right. Call them all back and cancel the shipments.”

Gabria blinked, shocked. “What?”

“We’re not taking them.”

“But, sir . . .” she tried to protest, flabbergasted.

“We are not taking them in, because we
cannot
take them in. It doesn’t matter if I craft eight hundred rooms or eight thousand, Springreaver,” Alonnen told her. “We cannot
feed
four hundred, never mind eight hundred or eight thousand, we cannot
clothe
them, and we cannot
tend
to them. Particularly as most will be suffering from various physical, mental, and emotional traumas. A few, we can manage, but not hundreds and thousands.

“Not to mention it’s bloody winter. Nobody travels far in winter. If everyone tried to ship them all here, even if they
didn’t
freeze to death in transit—which is a chance I’m not willing to take—the priests would know
exactly
where they’re headed, and come looking
for the Vortex. Two or eight or twenty, we can hide—barely for the latter—but four hundred we cannot, and I
will not
compromise the safety of this place.”

Longshanks looked between the two and lifted her chin, looking less like a callow youth and more like a young but mature man. Or a young but mature woman. “He’s right,” she stated, her low voice somewhere between a tenor and contralto. “There’s not much travel in winter. Even the Messenger Guild doesn’t go far from a particular town in deep winter, unless it’s truly urgent.”

“Well, they can’t keep the . . . ah, victims . . . where they are,” Gabria argued.

“Why not?” Rexei challenged her. “Every single one of those victims came from a guild, or was the child of a guildmember, and it is
that
guild’s responsibility to help care for its members and their immediate family members when they are injured beyond their capacity to contribute. That’s
why
everyone pays guild dues in the first place. Just because most of these guildmembers haven’t been free in years is no excuse for their parent guilds to shirk their oathbound duty to those members.”

Her words triggered a memory. Alonnen hurried over to one of the cabinets and started rummaging through it. “If I remember correctly . . . the agreement one of my predecessors . . . no, not this cupboard . . . The agreement one of my predecessors wrested out of the other guilds . . . no, no . . . ah,
this
cabinet . . . was to send a tithe of goods, foods, and coins to
this
Guild in exchange for taking in their mage-born members. And in exchange, we would train them to hide their powers and . . . here it is! It’s getting old. We’ll have to make a copy of it . . .”

“Train them to hide their powers, and . . . ?” Rexei asked, curiosity in her searching gaze. Both she and Gabria watched Alonnen unroll the parchment farther, crinkling the material as he searched for the exact words he wanted.

“And how to help shelter and protect the others . . . within their original guilds. There! Right there, inked and ratified by a quorum of Guild Masters,” he stated, tapping the middle of the scroll he had found and untied. “The assertion that . . . ‘the parent guilds shall
remain
responsible for the upkeep of their mage-empowered members.’ Right there, plain as can be. Just as a Gearman receives both an income from his current or highest-ranked guild
and
a stipend from the Consulate to which he or she is currently attached, so shall mages be granted all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges due to them by their original guilds as well as this one. Only even more so, as the Consulates do receive a tithe from all guilds within a given jurisdiction, because they act openly, but the Mages Guild
cannot
be acknowledged openly, so the other guilds must take up the slack.

“At least, until now,” he said. “Relax, I am
not
going to make the decision to expose ourselves anytime soon,” Alonnen added firmly as both Gabria and Rexei flinched. “Gabria, get on the talker-box to everyone and send out a message to hold those shipments in each town for now and to watch over them carefully. Phrase it, oh . . . that they are to be tended carefully so that they’ll be in excellent shape for
later
transport at some point after winter has ended. Emphasize that we have
no room
available to store any such shipments, and that they are
required
by guild charter to hold on to and care for that cargo until we send for it.”

“And if they ask when, exactly, the ‘items’ in question can be shipped?” Gabria asked him.

“Stall,” he ordered her flatly. “Don’t give any exact dates, just point out that shipping anything in the depths of winter has too many hazards at this point in time.”

“Don’t forget to emphasize how awful early spring weather is, too—wet and cold, with threats of sudden ice storms,” Longshanks offered. “Plus muddy conditions if the local Roadworks Guild hasn’t
been keeping up with repairs, the constant threat of floods . . . all manner of troubles. The only really good season for traveling is summer, and even then, broiling heat and thunderstorms are always a hazard.”

Springreaver blinked, then nodded. “Right. I can do that. Thank you for the ideas, Miss Longshanks.”

Rexei started and blinked. She looked between Alonnen and the other young woman, visibly taken aback.

Gabria had the grace to blush. Ducking her head, she apologized. “Sorry. I’m used to spotting all the females running around in male clothes. This is the one place where we’re safe to
be
females. I don’t wear skirts often, but I like to wear them here, sometimes.”

“I told you, Longshanks, we have a
lot
of women who try to hide their gender in this guild. Speaking of which,” Alonnen added, snapping his fingers and pointing at his assistant, “Springreaver, have you got room for one more in your quarters here? Longshanks could use a spot.”

The blonde shook her head. “Sorry. In fact, it’s now crammed with seven others, and we’re all now on rotation for sharing the bed and the couch. We had forty more from the local lot show up this morning. If you didn’t need me in here and if I hadn’t already given up my middle-circle quarters, I’d be headed back to the
un
shielded Hydraulics tenements on the north shore. They’re probably being filled up, though.”

Sighing heavily, Alonnen rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Gods . . . I may have to have you do that anyway. Right.
First
thing, Miss Springreaver, is to get on the talker-box to the Consulate in Heiastowne. Tell them there’s going to be an emergency meeting of
all
Heias Guild representatives this evening at sundown. Consuls, Sub-Consuls, grandmasters, and whatever Guild Masters can show up at the Consulate Hall from our nearest neighbors. There are a lot of them around, the Gods know . . .

“Then—politely—request Captain Torhammer to loan us his leftenant as well, since what will be discussed involves the governance of Heiastowne in the wake of the dissolution of Mekha, so-called God of Engineering and
false
Patron of Mekhana.”

“I’ll pass it along through my friend Marta, sir,” Gabria agreed.

Alonnen looked around, but there weren’t any actual seats in his office, other than the one Springreaver was currently occupying. He folded his arms across his chest and muttered a curse. Gabria blinked, but Rexei took it in stride. He shrugged and gestured at the chamber. “
This
place isn’t exactly set up to be the heart of a new government . . . and it
cannot
become the new heart. But we
are
going to remind all the other guilds that we do still have a government of sorts. And now that the priesthood isn’t being backed by the power of an unholy, un-dead God, we—the guilds, all of them—need to step up and take over.”

He looked at Rexei, who was slowly nodding, her gaze fixed on something beyond the walls of his study. “The guilds must take the lead. They’ve been our strength all along.”

Nodding as well, Alonnen unfolded his arm and draped one around the young woman’s shoulders for a brief, comforting squeeze. As much as she needed protecting, he knew he was going to have to ask a lot of her. Alonnen had never prayed to Mekha for help—no one in the kingdom had for generations, save for the priesthood—but he did have a sense for when someone had been tapped to be an instrument of the Threefold God of Fate. “Come on, let’s go back to my sitting room, since it’s the only place with more than one seat and more than enough privacy to start talking about this idea you had, about a Patron Goddess of Guilds.

“At least, I
hope
it still has some privacy left,” he added, guiding both of them out of his study. “For all I know, my chief housekeeper has shoved my entire family into my quarters by this point, trying to find room for everyone. If I’m not lucky, I’ll not only be stuck
sleeping with my younger brother and his motorhorse-loud snores, but my father and maybe an uncle or a cousin as well, all crammed into my bed—you did sleep alright, didn’t you? Last I saw, you were curled up in an odd position.”

She blushed but nodded. “Most of me was warm. And, um, not too uncomfortable.”

“Good.” He patted her on the back as they reached the fourth floor. Voices could be heard from behind the first three or four doors. “I’d take you to a workroom, but not at this time of the morning. It’ll have to be my sitting room. A lot of my workrooms are being used for painstaking experimentation.”

“Experimentation?” she asked.

“We sometimes get mage-tomes shipped in from outkingdom, but since we daren’t get any living mages for instructors, we have to work out not only the translations for those tomes, but also what their actual meaning is. The inner circle of the Vortex is the only safe place to practice such magics openly, but they still require wardings to contain any accidental explosions or upsets in the aether.” Catching a hint of wistfulness in her gaze as they passed one of those doors, Alonnen reassured her. “Don’t worry; if you’re going to be here for a while, you’ll have a chance to enroll in classes as a student-apprentice. In we go . . . and excellent, no one is sleeping in here. Have a seat.”

Briefly glancing at him, she studied the collection of leather-padded furniture, then picked an armchair. It was clear she didn’t want to sit on the sofa, though Alonnen couldn’t be sure if that was because it would have allowed him to sit next to her or because his brother Dolon had lain on it last night.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do anything that’ll make her shy and bolt like a scared, half-tamed horse.

After all, Rexei Longshanks was not the first fearful, gender-hiding apprentice to enter the Mages Guild. Alonnen was fairly
confident he could win her trust, even if it had been a few years since he had last gentled and soothed a nervous apprentice. He meant what he had told his mother last night, of course; Rexei Longshanks hadn’t nearly enough magic to be apprenticed directly to the Guild Master. But she was still important enough to need handling by him personally. He needed her to trust him.

That meant picking an armchair across from hers rather than the sofa. He went a step further and arranged himself with his back tucked into the corner of the chair and his leg hooked over the opposite arm. Not exactly the most Guild Master-ish of postures, but it did make her relax a bit. Bracing an elbow on the unoccupied armrest, he gestured at her.