Winter Be My Shield (38 page)

Delphine trudged through the snow back towards the Collegium quarter. The lantern dangling from her fist was enough for the soldiers to recognise her as a mage and step aside to let her pass, but Delphine barely noticed them.

Visiting the slave camps always left her depressed. Back in Akhara when she'd first put her name in for this expedition she'd never imagined just how bad it would be. She simply couldn't shake the thought that until a few days ago these folk had been living happy and free and had probably never spared the empire a moment's thought.

Slaves were the lifeblood of the empire. Without them the crops would go unplanted, the grain would not be cut, no quarries would be dug, no roads built, no ore hauled from the mines or smelted into metal. Without slaves, the empire would collapse and all five million souls who lived within her borders would be defenceless against the barbarians who envied their rich lands and their wealth.

The problem with slaves was that the empire needed a constant supply. A certain number could be bred at home, of course, and those house-born slaves, raised to know their place, were always in demand. But for the most part, raising a worker from infancy to a useful age was simply too expensive to be feasible, so slaves had to be brought in from elsewhere. Unpleasant, yes; regrettable, certainly; but it was a necessary fact of life.

Delphine simply couldn't shake the feeling that it was
all her fault.

It's not as though I could have stopped it
, she told herself. Five years ago when a group of students looking for a research project had found Barranecour's old log and brought it to show her, it wouldn't have mattered if she'd sent them away. If she hadn't shoved aside the stack of papers she was supposed to be grading to open the musty, mouldering tome, someone
else would have. When the world turns everyone on this earth moves with it. Only a fool believes he can hold back the forces of history.

Back then all she knew about Ricalan was that it lay in the north and was buried under snow for six months of each year. But that book had changed everything. Her utter absorption in it had ultimately led to her divorce, the scandal of which had nearly ruined her career. It had driven her to stake everything she valued on a theory and had brought her out here to this Gods-forsaken wilderness of ice and cold.

And now, after all that work, it was looking like a gamble she was going to lose.

Nearly a hundred years ago a man called Caltoreas Barranecour had launched an expedition to Ricalan. At the time it had been regarded as a fool's errand, a waste of time and money. The fact that Ricalan had powerful mages was widely known at that time. Akhara had contributed most of them due to the laws that required any mage trained by the empire to repay the debt of his or her education. Some ornery-minded folk insisted such an arrangement was no different than slavery and rather than submit to it they fled the empire's borders to seek their fortune elsewhere.

There were only a handful of places they could go. Mesentreia did not tolerate mages. Five centuries earlier they had driven all their mages out, an action that was singularly responsible for Akhara's founding, as a handful of land-starved nobles had gone with them and established a colony on the continent west of the Mesentreian Islands. In modern times there were now other nations on the continent further west again, where such disenfranchised mages could try to carve a life for themselves, but they were primitive places and Blood-Mages were common there. That left Ricalan, which at least had the benefit of being close enough for some trade with Akhara and Mesentreia, and where the savage natives could be impressed by the trappings of civilisation — or so the exiled mages believed.

The reality wasn't quite so neat. Ricalan had society and mages of its own and they had become accustomed to Akharian exiles trespassing on to their lands, fully expecting to be treated like Gods. Many of them were no doubt killed, but a few were able to carve places for themselves in Ricalani society and once a toehold was established it was a small matter for newcomers to buy places there for themselves.

And then in a fit of madness, the Ricalani people had turned on their mages in a long and bloody war. One of these Akharian exiles, deciding he preferred life and service in civilisation to death in the snow, had somehow got word to his cousin Barranecour, and told him there was profit to be had in the north. Barranecour raised the money and sailed there only to learn his relative had been killed shortly after the message had left Ricalan. The native clans were burning every book and record of mage-craft they could find and slaughtering any mage unlucky enough to fall into their hands. Faced with the prospect of returning home empty-handed, Barranecour set about collecting every piece of mage-lore he could get his hands on, in an attempt to preserve the knowledge before it was lost forever.

While this was an interesting footnote of history for an academic, a century on it was all of very minor importance. It would have remained buried and forgotten if it weren't for Barranecour's log, which had been unearthed by her students one rainy afternoon in Akhara. At the same time as Barranecour was attempting to collect the dying knowledge, a Ricalani mage was succeeding. This was the man who came to be known in Ricalan as the Last Great Mage, or to his enemies as the Demon Vasant.

The scholars of the Collegium, along with the Battle-Mages who served in the empire's army, had long scoffed at the idea that the empire had anything to learn from the mages of a barbarian country, until Mesentreian ships began raiding the Akharian coast. Ricalanis had kept the Mesentreian Raiders away for centuries and, although no one alive today knew quite how they achieved it, there was no doubt they'd had some method of defence — one that didn't rely on having a battle-trained mage at hand.

When she got right down to it, Delphine could only say she was to blame. Most likely the invasion would have happened regardless; the only way they could halt the raids was by sacking and burning the harbours that sheltered the raiding ships. But while the main Akharian force was concentrating on that goal, General Boreas was leading two legions into the peaceful tribal lands to the east, pillaging and enslaving villagers who were barely even aware of the empire's existence, so the Collegium could find the hidden treasure of books and knowledge hidden by the Last Great Mage.

The other mages on the expedition were certain Barranecour's records were all they needed and that his maps and directions would be enough to lead them to the hoards. If Akharian mages were among the scholars who assembled the libraries, they argued, then the texts must surely be written in Akharian, as theirs was the language of scholarship, and the mages of the Collegium the world's pre-eminent. If barbarian mage-craft had achieved even a fraction of the greatness implied by the tales, then it must have been Akharian mages who drove the progress.

Delphine doubted the fates would be so kind to them. Every record she found indicated that the Ricalani mages distrusted the Akharian exiles and regarded them as troublemakers. She could see no reason why they would have let a foreign tongue dominate their craft in the face of their own long history of scholarship. All the books Barranecour had collected were in Ricalani and he must have been able to read the language, because he'd left notes here and there in the margins. There wasn't one person in Akhara, however, who knew the language. Delphine had tracked down the descendants of slaves taken from the northern lands but not one of them had ever been taught the barbarian tongue. What use was it here in a civilised society?

The solution seemed a simple one. After every raid, once the reality of their situation had descended upon the captives, Delphine took one of her books through the slave tents with their miserable, chained occupants, searching for anyone who could read the text and speak enough Akharian or Mesentreian to serve as a translator.

So far she'd had no success. There was no doubt that she'd found folk who could read Ricalani but none of them spoke more than a smattering of Mesentreian and couldn't read any at all. She had found slaves who could speak and read Mesentreian, mostly merchants who had ventured here from the south, but none of them knew more than a few words of Ricalani. Perhaps in the south they would have more success, but reaching it and subduing the coastal towns would take months, and the treasure they sought wasn't down on the coast, but here in the northern foothills. It could take years.

It had grown dark by the time Delphine gave up the search and returned to the Collegium quarter. The next day they would be on the march again and the slaves would be shuffled around in their camps, so she had made an effort to question all of them today. They had taken a
temple this time and she had hopes for the priests, but once again her search had been fruitless. Delphine was thinking only of her warm tent and a bowl of tea when a tall figure loomed in front of her. ‘Delphine! Where in the hells have you been? I've been looking for you for hours!'

He had his hood pulled forward far enough to hide his face but Delphine recognised the voice. ‘I've been in the slave camps, Torren. Didn't my girls tell you?' Her two students had offered to help but they were too young to be subjected to the suffering of the new captives.

Torren swept his hood back to glare at her. ‘I don't like the idea of you traipsing around among the barbarians on your own, Delphi.'

‘Oh really, Torren, I'm still a mage — I can deal with chained and terrified barbarians. If I took a guard along with me I doubt they'd speak to me at all.'

‘Find anything useful?' Torren asked.

Delphine frowned. Torren didn't usually ask after her work. In fact, ever since her divorce he treated everything she did as a mortal embarrassment. ‘No,' she said, abruptly. ‘Even the priests don't speak more than a smattering of Mesentreian. Why?' She narrowed her eyes. ‘Is this about that slave I picked out? Are you finally going to let me talk to him?'

‘Well …' Torren said, and fumbled around in his sash. ‘As a matter of fact something did turn up …' He pulled out a little slip of parchment and handed it to her.

It was a ragged little offcut, the sort left over after the hides have been trimmed into pages. In the gloom all Delphine could see on it was a dark smear of ink until she held it up to her lantern; she bit her lip.

‘That's Ricalani script, isn't it?' Torren said.

‘Torren, you son of a bitch! How long have you had this?'

‘Delphi!' he snapped, shocked. ‘Watch your language! I only found it a few hours ago, I swear —'

‘A few
hours
!'

‘The slave was carrying it in his clothes. I didn't even notice it at the time. One of the clerks recording the interrogation found it and showed it to me and I've been looking for you ever since!'

‘So are you finally going to let me question him?' Delphine said.

‘Well … there's been something of a problem.'

She followed Torren to the Battle-Mages' quarter. The military mages were far too important to do their own cooking and laundry, or even
heat their own water. There were servants scattered through the quarter, supplied with tents where they did the work and stored their goods. The tents were kept warm to dry the laundry: it was in one of these, isolated behind a stack of boxes and crates, that the prisoner was being kept.

Delphine could feel him long before she saw him. ‘What in the hells has been going on here, Torren?' The slave ached all over. She could feel it like pins and needles tingling right through her limbs.

‘He tried to kill himself,' Torren admitted. ‘Damn near succeeded, too. What's cursed odd is how we found out about it. Someone flooded him with power. We all sensed it and came running just in time to stop him.'

‘Someone? Who in the hells could …
Oh
.'

‘Right,' Torren said. ‘It wasn't anyone around here. It had to be one of the Blood-Mages.'

Delphine peered around the edge of the crates, raising her lantern to lift the shadows.

The prisoner was slumped with his back against the crates and his arms bound outstretched to either side of him. A rough bandage had been tied around his throat and he hung limply in his bonds with his head bowed and his chin on his chest.

‘So why have you brought me here?' Delphine said. ‘Blood-Mages are your department, Torren, not mine. I'm just a scholar.'

‘He won't eat,' Torren said. ‘He won't drink. We tried holding his nose and forcing him but he just spits it out again. The physician says he's got a fever. He's willing himself to die, Delphi, and … well, I thought of your father and I thought that if anyone had an idea of how to stop it, you would.'

Delphine just stared at him. ‘You want me to play nursemaid to a barbarian slave? You, Torren? You're the one always going on about propriety and fit behaviour for a lady of my station.'

‘Delphi, please! I need your help! Presarius assigned the slave to me and you know what he's like. If the slave dies I'll take the blame and I can kiss any chance of a promotion goodbye. I know Ballenar lost the will to live after his friend was killed. You nursed him right up till the end, Delphi, and all the Gods know you've got a knack for getting people to do what you want.'

Delphine sighed. He just had to bring her father into this.

Her mother, Jasenia, and Torren's father had been siblings. Jasenia had run away from her noble home rather than enter an arranged marriage and had chosen a hiding place so infamous it ensured her family would never force her to return to them. She'd hidden in the Sympath's Palace as a pleasure-girl, where she'd met Delphine's father Ballenar and fallen pregnant by him.

Delphine had always regretted that she'd never had a chance to know her mother. Jasenia sounded like the sort of woman she would have liked to meet, but she had died in childbirth and her family had never acknowledged their grandchild. Ballenar had been her only kin for most of her life, until Torren became head of the family and made contact with her again. Bringing her back into the family had been his idea, but the results had proved contrary to both their expectations. Delphine had been raised as a Collegium brat and her ideas and attitudes were vastly different from those of the noble family her mother had fled.