The Seer - eARC (41 page)

“I want to see the birds,” said Pas.

Amarta would need to find another Magrit in Kelerre, another trader she could convince to give her work.

“You’ll stand out like falcons in bright sun,” Maris said, as if tracking her reasoning.

“We will find a way,” Amarta said, not wanting to confide in this woman, who might yet send her back to her pursuers.

But Maris was right; even vision could not make her invisible.

As they approached Kelerre, Amarta waited for vision to warn her. Nothing came. She watched Maris to see if she could tell if the mage were doing something to block her visions. But what might that look like? She had no idea.

As Kelerre came into view, Pas dashed from side to side, poking between the legs of those standing at the crowded railing, somehow making them laugh rather than be annoyed. The next time he ran by, Dirina grabbed for him, but he slipped from her grasp. Maris reached out a hand, took hold of his shirt, and swung him up into her arms, where he wrapped his arms around her, bouncing with energy.

Pas was not the only one excited. Perripin passengers also bounced where they stood, waving and yelling toward the shore, where answering calls came from those on the nearing dock. Seagulls cried overhead. Amarta followed one with her eyes, envying it its freedom.

She looked at Maris, holding Pas. It made her uneasy, how close the two of them had become.

“Mama, look!” Pas pointed to the shore, where tall silver towers stretched to the sky.

“What color, sweet one?” Dirina asked him.

“Metal,” he said, rubbing his head against his mother’s face as she tried to kiss his forehead.

Dirina did not seem worried. Counting on Amarta to make everything right, she thought sourly. She would not confide her uncertainties in her sister, either.

“It looks less crowded than Munasee,” Amarta said, thinking of what they would do after they disembarked.

“Kelerre and Free Port are two ends of a stretched city. Though you’re right: not as many people as your packed Arun cities. We would say this is because we are more clever than Arunkin and live better, not so tight together. A Perripin saying holds that the farther south you go, the smarter people are. Think of how far north Yarpin is, yes?” She chuckled.

Amarta remembered the Emendi and their pale hair and skin and eyes.

Darad. An ache went through her, too fast to prevent.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“No,” Maris said. “People everywhere, in every possible color of skin and hair, are fools.”

“Then you are not so smart?” Pas asked with a grin.

“Smart enough, little one,” she said, bouncing him, smiling.

Sailors called back and forth to dock hands, ropes were thrown, pulled, knotted on shore. Passengers loaded up knapsacks and lifted belongings.

“We are grateful for all you’ve given us, Maris,” Dirina said politely.

Amarta held out her arms for Pas, but both the boy and Maris frowned at this, if anything clutching each other more tightly. Amarta did not lower her arms, silently insisting. Finally Maris let him down, and Amarta took his hand firmly.

“Come with me,” Maris said suddenly.

Amarta shook her head. “We have business in Kelerre.”

“Can’t we do it in Shenter—the name?” Pas asked her. “With Maris?”

Maris made a low sound in her throat. “While I’m tempted to stay in Kelerre to see how it is you make coin, Amarta, I think you will attract far more attention than you realize. Let me help you get farther away. I’ll buy your passage to Shentarat.”

A good offer. Surely too good. Her sister gave her a familiar questioning look. But could she trust vision, with this mage so close? She closed her eyes and sought the future beyond this docking.

Nothing and more nothing. She glared at Maris, who returned a confused, not-quite annoyed look.

Again, she tried.

Pas’s small hand tugging on Maris’s larger, darker one, demanding she come. A many-colored frog, he said. It would not wait.

She opened her eyes, shaken by this sweet moment, this flash without threat. Dropping her head in a silent, furious sob, she shook her head. No. They would not again be drawn to people and places that seemed so welcoming, only to be forced to leave again. They had each other. They would rely on no one else.

Seeing her expression, her sister said, “Thank you, but no.”

“Yes.” Amarta found herself saying.

Maris looked between them.

“Ah—” Dirina said uncertainly. “Then—yes?”

If Maris intended to take them captive and send them back to Yarpin as soon as they left the ship, surely she could do so, whatever they said now. This might all be pretense with betrayal soon to come, but there was no reason not to agree.

“Yes,” she said again.

“So be it,” Maris said, taking Pas’s hand again.

As the ramp to shore was lowered with a bang, she considered that with all Maris had done for them, she might be sincere.

As if that mattered; Amarta had sincerely cared for Nidem, yet put her own cloak on the girl. Betrayal had many mothers.

“We’ll walk to Free Port,” Maris said, gesturing at the city. “From there get a boat to Dasae Port.”

“Is there no way from the ocean to the Mundaran Sea?” Dirina asked.

“Oh, there is. Around the reef, right there.” She pointed with her free hand. “But it’s littered with the corpses of boats that have tried, no thanks to your selfish, short-sighted, half-witted Arun monarchs.”

Amarta drew in breath sharply, glancing to see if anyone had heard this dangerous talk.

“We need a canal, you see. Right there.” Maris gestured sharply, as if she could almost make one with her hand. “Kelerre and all the Perripin states want it. They’ve been ready to start on it for forty years.”

“Then—why?” Dirina asked.

“Your king demanded an obscene share of the tolls, claiming a transport tax so high that no one could afford to build the damned thing. So the canal remains undug and we must walk to Free Port. Perfectly senseless. Perfectly Arun
kel.
”

Again Amarta looked around to see who might be listening. If anyone was, they didn’t show it.

As they walked down the ramp onto solid ground, Amarta watched those around them, wondering who might be in the Lord Commander’s employ, half expecting them to be somehow captured at this very moment. She watched Maris, wondering what the mage would do with her magic.

But all that happened next was that they walked for a couple of hours to get to the other side of the reef and Free Port, which did not seem much different than Kelerre.

This was a strange land, from the bright green trees that dripped with thick vines to the birds trilling and squawking and flapping across the road. Buildings were bright in bewildering splashes that clearly had nothing to do with the Great Houses’ dual tones. Flowing clothes, wide-brimmed hats, foreign words, and curious tones.

Long stares at the four of them.

When they arrived at the docks, Maris had them wait as she walked the piers, stopping people who seemed to know her to clasp hands, to laugh, gesture, and talk. Arranging their passage, supposedly. Or perhaps instead arranging to send them back north to the Lord Commander.

Surely if Maris meant to betray them, she would have done it by now? Still Amarta moved close to Dirina, took Pas’s hand tightly in her own.

They were beyond poor now: they had nothing. No money, no food. No words in this strange place. They were good and truly lost.

If they were so lost, might they also be hard to find?

Maris motioned them over to a boat far smaller than the ship before. Not large enough to travel back all the way to the capital, surely.

Or maybe she was taking them elsewhere for the Lord Commander.

Then again, maybe she only meant them well. Still vision refused to even hint at danger.

But that meant nothing, only that someone had indeed found a way around her visions.

Despite her suspicion of Maris, a day on the boat began to relax Amarta. The Perripin sailors were friendly and warm, eager to answer Pas’s questions, happy to tell him the Perripin words for anything at which he pointed.

She could almost forget that they were running, that Maris might yet betray them. Here on the warm Mundaran Sea, with water all around them and the hunter so far away, she could almost imagine that they were free in the world, going where winds and whimsy might take them. She felt her spirits lift, played with Pas, listened to the Perripin sailors tell tales at night, understanding little of the words but somehow gleaning the stories themselves.

When, on the fourth day, they came to the Shentarat coast and Dasae Port, she sobered. In the distance a line of blue-gray mountains overlapped a paler range. Distant clouds seemed made of the same blue-gray stuff as the mountains, as if they had been formed from sky itself.

Dasae was a small town with flat-roofed buildings and a harbor full of fishing boats. Thick bushes and vines threatened to engulf everything from walkways to piers.

So much green everywhere. Perhaps they could simply hide in the underbrush. Flee into rabbit warrens.

“Surely he will not come this far to find me,” she said to Maris as they watched at the railing, looking sidelong at the other woman for any hint of duplicity.

“Why not? I think you can assume Innel sev Cern esse Arunkel will continue to commit his queen’s extensive resources to finding you.”

Of course he would.

“Did he pay you a lot, to find me? Does he still?”

At this, Maris’s expression went oddly flat. Despite the warm breezes, Amarta felt a chill.

For a time there was silence between them. Amarta felt herself flush, regretted her words. What was she thinking, to risk angering the one person they knew here, who had thus far treated them so well? And a mage, whatever ill-fortune that might also bring.

“When we disembark,” Maris said at last, as if Amarta’s questions had not been asked, “what will you do?”

“We’ll find something.”

Perhaps when she was far enough away from Maris’s magic, vision would return more fully to guide them.

“He will send people here to search for you. The deeper into Perripur you go, the more you’ll stand out. My countrymen are no fools; they’ll know you’re on the run. Some of them will gladly turn you in for the money he’ll be offering.”

Or already had.

“What do you suggest, then?”

“My house in the Shentarat Mountains is remote. It should be as safe as anywhere, even when I’m not there.”

Dirina and Pas had just joined them.

“We go to the mountains with Maris!” Pas said happily.

Amarta turned her back on the town, fully facing the mage. “Why?”

“Why?” Maris laughed a little, expression turning sober. “You’ve no money, you speak no Perripin, and the most powerful man in Arun is after you.”

“That’s why for us. Why for you? You are strangely generous for someone so recently employed to hunt me down.”

“Amarta,” Dirina said with shocked reproach.

“And you’re awfully suspicious for someone who can supposedly see into the future. Why don’t you tell me what I’m going to do?”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Not exactly, anyway. People changed their minds, and the future altered.

But she had looked, and vision would not name Maris as a threat. Or could not.
A way around your magic.

“I see,” Maris said with an odd tone. “Perhaps I want help cleaning a house I haven’t seen in years. Perhaps . . .” Her gaze went to Pas, hung there a moment. “Perhaps it seems to me that Innel has too many advantages in this, and I want the contest closer to fair.”

“Fair is what you take,” Amarta said sharply.

At this Maris’s eyebrows raised. “Then take my strangely generous offer, Amarta.”

Could it be that Maris was offering only what she seemed to be offering? If so, it was even more important that they refuse.

“No.”

“No?” Maris’s laugh seemed more astonished than amused.

“Ama,” Dirina said. “Do you see something?”

So many had paid dearly to take them in. If Maris only meant them well, then—

They were the last ones on the boat now, a few of the crew remaining to coil ropes and take down sails. One Perripin sailor approached, looking as if he were about to speak, perhaps to shoo them off the boat. Maris held up a hand and he nodded, backing away.

“Those who help me come to harm. Or worse,” Amarta said softly.

“You are concerned for my welfare?”

Amarta nodded.

Maris looked at her a moment. “That’s quite . . .” She seemed to search for the right word. “Unnecessary. I don’t need your protection.”

“Everyone tells me that. Everyone. And then they—”

“You know little of mages and the work we do, do you?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m a little harder to hurt than those who’ve helped you before. I will take my own risks. Come with me.”

Amarta looked at Dirina and Pas, and nodded. “We will come.”

“We will help you clean,” Dirina said.

“Me, too,” Pas said, nodding enthusiastically.

“It will be good, to have help,” Maris said, smiling down at him.

“Maris,” Amarta said, again regretting her hard words earlier, “you’ve been so kind and generous and I—”

“No.” Maris said, cutting her off curtly. “Don’t say that.”

They walked through the town of Dasae, a small city of wide houses with low roofs—some, Amarta noticed, with only roofs, no walls at all. Here they attracted long stares and even lengthy whispered discussions. Maris was right; there would have been no hiding here.

They walked the road out of town, through farms of thick green bushes, orchards of bright fruit, pastures of goat and spindly creatures who made trilling sounds as they passed.

If all this walking were indeed a ruse to convince them they were safe, only to turn them over to someone who would take them back to Arunkel, well, it seemed too elaborate. Maybe vision showed her no threat from the mage because there truly was none.

As the mountains grew closer, they passed tall fields of canes. They walked over rises of thickly tangled trees. When the land went flat again, they began to approach what distantly seemed an enormous dark gray seashore.