by Melanie Rawn
The nine of them were just inside the woods when another rider came up—one of Rillan’s grooms, who consulted in whispers with Fa and then withdrew to wait. Mikel arched a brow, and his father shrugged.
To the rest, he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ride back. Slegin Web business.”
Mikel knew at once that he was lying.
“Nothing dire, I hope?” asked the Captal. Mikel blinked at realizing she knew it, too.
“Nothing I can’t handle. Trouble is, I’m the only one who’s authorized to handle it.”
Glenin said smoothly, “Your Lady allows you extensive control over her holdings, Lord Collan. I see her trust is not misplaced. To forgo your own pleasure in favor of work—not many men would be so conscientious. No wonder you have scant time for singing.”
Mikel saw his father’s mouth stretch in a rather sour smile. With a respectful half-bow to the Captal that pointedly did not include Lady Glenin, he gestured for Mikel to ride with him a little ways. When they were out of hearing range, he said, “Minstrelsy report—about time, too.”
“I thought that might be it.”
“Maybe now we’ll know for sure what’s happened around Lenfell. What the surviving Mages had to say wasn’t much political help.”
“That’s what the Minstrelsy’s for.”
“Right. I’ll meet the courier away from Ryka Court. Don’t look for me anytime before dark. Tell your mother when you get back.”
“I will, Fa.”
With a brisk nod, he started to rein his horse around, then turned back again. “Keep an eye on your sister—and the Captal, too.”
“And both eyes on Glenin Feiran.”
“Smart boy.”
Mikel shrugged, mouth quirking. “Your son.”
Collan grinned, slapped his shoulder fondly, and rode away.
7
“I came to give warning, Sarra, and what help I can. I’m genuinely interested in your charming Taigan, of course, and it will please me to bring a favorable report back to Alinar. I must congratulate you and your husband, by the way. Taigan is everything she ought to be—and in time she will become an accomplished Mage Guardian.”
“Thank you,” Sarra said automatically.
“It is no accident that she is the last young woman of the Liwellan Name. You are, in short, being manipulated.”
“Glenin Feiran,” she heard herself say.
The Lady nodded her elegant white head. “Her Malerrisi were responsible for the deaths of Alinar’s granddaughter and her children. There is but one strong young Liwellan Thread now: Taigan. I strongly suspect that Glenin Feiran knows she is not a Liwellan at all.”
“She does,” Sarra confirmed without elaborating.
“So?” Her eyes sparked with fascination, quickly disciplined. “When Alinar dies, you will rule not only the Slegin Web but the Liwellan—which, by the way, owns land on which a rather interesting event occurred this winter. Few have heard of the discovery of gold in a very obscure stream that runs into the River Rine—”
“From Domburronshir?”
Another nod. “Vellerin Dombur is one of the few who know. Alinar received an offer—Saints, an insult! When she refused, the only surviving Liwellan women met with ‘accidental’ deaths. The Domburs are notoriously unsubtle.”
Instincts howling, Sarra exclaimed, “Glenin wouldn’t dare try to throw suspicion onto me for those deaths!”
“Would she not?”
“With the Slegin Web, I’m so rich that not even the biggest gold mine on Lenfell could make a difference!”
“Ah, but ‘gold’ is a word that carries much magic. Who would believe anyone indifferent to such wealth?”
Sarra thought that over. “Mirya Witte’s appeal, now this—Glenin has a mountain of so-called evidence all ready to shovel onto me, doesn’t she?”
“Indeed she does. It’s all of a piece. Think long and hard, my dear,” she said earnestly. “What are her reasons for wishing to discredit you? What does she want? It is not what Vellerin Dombur wants. She’s only Glenin’s tool.”
“Obviously. And what she wants is power. But how does she plan to attain it? The people don’t trust the Malerrisi.”
“And with good reason,” the Lady said. “As I myself know well.”
8
THEY left their horses a half-mile into the forest, reins tied to fallen logs, and proceeded on foot. Taigan, as eager to see a real live triplehorn as her brother, concentrated on making no noise whatsoever, and by and large succeeded. A few feet away from her Jored slid silently through the underbrush; just beyond him was Josselin, who moved almost as quietly. Chava Allard was ten feet away, showing a surprising knack for stalking prey in the forest as well as in the courtroom. Taigan hadn’t attended the appeal, but she’d heard all about it.
To her left, Mikel had broken twigs at an alarming rate when they’d started out on foot. Then the Captal took him aside, murmuring a few words. After that he made no more sound than a slight breeze—and Taigan realized he’d Warded himself. She wished she’d had the foresight to ask the Captal how, but she wasn’t very good at Wardings yet. Maybe if she just let it happen, trusted to her magic and the way it felt—
No good. She sighed and resigned herself to the application of woodcraft rules learned on childhood visits to Sleginhold. The woods here were very different, being mainly oak and brambles, lacking the majestic redwoods of Sheve Dark, but the principles were the same.
At least Gery Canzallis had managed to keep them well away from the marshes. Not even Mikel’s Warding or Allard’s skills would silence the squelch of muddy boots.
She couldn’t see either Domna Feiran or Councillor Isidir, though she could occasionally hear the latter, over to her far right. The seven of them had fanned out, well within calling distance of each other, to sneak a slow mile or two toward a glade marked on Domna Canzallis’s map and shown to the Captal before they split from the other groups. Taigan hoped the rest of the field was far enough away so their own stalk would be undisturbed; she very much wanted to see at least one of those deer in the wild.
And there they were—more than a dozen of them. Eight does almost ready to birth their fawns were guarded by a stag whose three spiraling horns were three feet long, ridged in places where they’d grown back after breakage in combat. Two immature males hovered anxious and resentful on the edges of the herd; lacking anything more impressive than bony ridges where next year their horns would grow, they could not challenge the stag. Four females too young to be bred cropped grass and swished their short black tails contemptuously at the junior stags. None of the animals was under six feet tall at the shoulder.
Triplehorn deer were in that small category of creatures known for certain to have been altered by the results of The Waste War. Wall frescoes and tile mosaics in several shrines confirmed that once they had been very much smaller, nearly the size of galazhi, with cloven hooves like horses’ and only two horns, which moreover branched into four or more points. A Scholar Mage—Taigan forgot his name—had concluded after much study that those dainty deer had been transformed into what she saw before her now: single-hoofed, three-horned, but with the same white bellies and golden-brown backs, the same faces, the same social organization, the same diet, the same everything, with one other exception: few predators dared approach.
And scant wonder: those spiraling spikes were poisonous. The stag, catching scent or sound of the intruders, trilled low in his throat. Reaction was instantaneous and disciplined: the females all garnered in the center of the clearing, and the two young males took up positions on either side. At another signal from the stag, the does swerved to form a tight circle of deadly horns. The stag strode the perimeter, muscles rippling beneath his sleek hide, making sure their defenses were in order, snapping at one doe who broke the silence with a frightened bleat. He then planted his hooves in the dirt, threw back his gorgeous head, and let
out a cry that sent ice down Taigan’s backbone.
9
COLLAN got directions from the groom and told him to ride back to Ryka Court. He met the Minstrelsy courier outside a little domed shrine about four miles from the forest. He wanted badly to pace the cobbled court—though Cailet could protect the twins better than he could, who knew what Glenin Feiran would be up to?—but limited his nervousness to rubbing the nape of his neck where a by-now unfamiliar coif had tugged his hair the wrong way. He’d taken the damned thing off on leaving the forest; no need for its bright blue color that warned hunters to point their arrows in another direction.
“This is certain,” he said to the courier.
“Yes, Lord Collan,” Savachel Maklyn replied. “The residue of magical energy around the known Ladder at Malerris Castle indicates it was used quite a bit the week before St. Maidil’s Day. Tiron Mossen investigated with three others, and they all agree on the amount of activity and the timing. At least two hundred Malerrisi are gone from the Castle.”
This was a new one to him; Cai had never bothered to inform him that a Mage could tell when someone had recently gone through a Ladder. There was probably a Scholarly formula for calculating the length of time since a Ladder’s use and how many had used it. Something complex, taking into account the magic needed to transfer someone the specific distance of the Ladders involved, how much residue would be left by ten or twenty or a hundred, the rate of decrease over time—the part of his mind that loved playing with numbers nattered away, and he wished he could indulge it. There was something comfortingly definitive about mathematics; you always got an answer. Of course, what answer you got depended on the accuracy of the numbers themselves and your own skill in working out the equation.
“And it’s certain that no Malerrisi have come back?” he asked Sava.
The young man shrugged. “We’ve kept the Ladder under constant watch.” He smiled slightly. “Warding themselves as rocks. I didn’t know they were there until one of them stood up right in front of me.”
Again Collan felt the need to pace. Again he restrained himself. This Malerrisi equation did not add up. Other than those killed at Mage Hall, sixty-three Mage Guardians had died at twenty-one locations across Lenfell. It didn’t take two hundred Malerrisi to murder sixty-three Mages. One was enough in each place—as amply demonstrated at Mage Hall.
“Sava, how current is this information?”
“About two hours old. One of the Mages brought me back through the Ladder to Captal Bekke’s Tower, then to Ryka. I sent the groom to find you, and here we are. Nobody saw me or suspects me of being here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Why were you in Seinshir? Your patrol is Dindenshir.”
“My grandmother Vasha’s Birthingday is coming up. She sent me a note weeks ago telling me to come to Ryka Court by way of Seinshir and see what I could see at the Castle. I got there yesterday morning, walked up to the waterfall, and the rest you know.”
“Before your grandmother knows it?” he asked wryly.
Savachel didn’t see the humor. Stiffly, he replied, “Yes. I’m part of the Minstrelsy. Whatever and whomever else you suspect, my Lord, you can’t possibly suspect Councillor Vasha Maklyn!”
“Geridon’s Stones, of course not! She’s one of our best friends on the Council.”
“Then what are you getting at?”
“I’m not sure.” Nothing odd about Vasha Maklyn’s request to her grandson—Sarra had said she knew about the Minstrelsy. But this time he did pace, the heels of his riding boots digging into the soft earth between cobblestones. Something was wrong here besides the discrepancy of Malerrisi to Mage deaths, but he couldn’t figure out what.
Collan went on pacing, right hand clenched around the gold sigil pin that had fastened his coif. The crossed daggers of the Rosvenirs were barely an inch long, but their points dug into his palm almost as sharply as the real things. Another reason he hated the damned coif—whenever he looked down, the pin dug into his neck.
Where had all those Malerrisi gone to? And why so many from that Ladder?
Suddenly he swung around. “They’re watching the Ladder east of the waterfall, right?”
“Yes. The western side is the one to Captal Bekke’s Tower. The Mages found a good spot a little ways up the trail where you can see over to the other side quite clearly.”
“But why that Ladder? It goes to a shrine in the hills above Havenport—miles from anywhere.” Twenty years ago he’d played every version he knew of “The Ladder Song” for Alin Ostin, who’d postulated that there were three great hubs: Ryka Court, the Mage Academy, and Malerris Castle. Extrapolating from events before and during the Rising, there had to be at least ten Ladders at the Castle. So why had two hundred Malerrisi used that particular one?
“Does it have something to do with the shrine?” asked Savachel. Then, cheeks suddenly flushed, he exclaimed, “No—it’s near Havenport! They could disperse by ship as anything from passengers to hired-on crew. They wouldn’t even have to use magic. Why bother? A third of Lenfell’s shipping goes through Havenport. They could be anywhere by now!”
“And probably are,” he replied grimly. For it finally fit together, neatly as one of Cai’s magic puzzles that became a different picture every time you worked it. Start with Vellerin Dombur’s piece, and only South Lenfell showed in the final scene. Start with Glenin Feiran, and you got Ambrai. But pick the Havenport piece, and the result was a map of the world with cutpieces all over it. Third-largest shipping center, fourth-largest banking center. In the Slegin Web’s dealings with the Dombur Web over the last few years, all the drafts had been drawn on the St. Tirreiz Mercantile Bank of Havenport. When Col-Ian attempted to buy into it—to make transfer of funds simpler and untaxed—he was politely informed that no new investors were being considered. The Minstrelsy had nosed around at his request and come up with nothing very substantial, except that the Domburs and their surrogates owned about half the shares in the St. Tirreiz. But add this to the accounts opened all over Lenfell, discovered by the Rennes and used to buy up pieces of Domburronshir for Vellerin Dombur—
Now that the purchases were completed, the accounts would be used another way.
He fixed a narrow gaze on Savachel. “What happens when a lot of money is withdrawn from a bank in a short period of time?”
“How should I know? I’m a singer, not an accountant.”
“The education of young men,” Collan said severely, “is criminally deficient in practical matters. What happens is that word gets out, people think there’s a reason not to keep money in that bank, so they withdraw their cash as well. The bank starts to run short on coin—nobody keeps more sacks of cutpieces and eagles than are necessary for normal business, the rest of it’s on paper. They begin to borrow from other banks to cover the shortfall—which lets the other banks know there’s something wrong. They won’t lend the cash. Depositors want their money in coin, the bank shuts its doors before it runs out of coin, the depositors panic, the bank’s investors want out, there’s not enough money in cash or on paper to cover their investments—and the bank is doomed.”
“So?” Savachel said, impatient with this lecture.
“So two hundred people withdrawing two hundred cutpieces each equals forty thousand cutpieces—”
“Four hundred gold eagles,” the young man whispered, awed. “You could buy a house on the best street in Firrense for that!”
“Add in a hundred or so who want their savings in cash—some of them having considerably more than two hundred cutpieces. . . .” He shrugged. “There are at least fifty banks across Lenfell that’ve been set up to fall.”
The excited color faded from Savachel’s sharp cheekbones. “But what for?”
Collan sighed. What did they teach in schools these days? Taguare had taught him better at Scraller’s Fief. “To unbalance the banking system, that’s what for. Not severely, she doe
sn’t want to wreck it, but enough to make people nervous. What do you want to bet that over the next few days word starts coming in from all over Lenfell that there’s been a run on such-and-such a bank—everywhere but Domburronshir, of course,” he finished dourly.
“Because Vellerin Dombur has such a wonderful grasp of finance and regulates her Shir’s banks to perfection.”
“You’re getting the idea. But next comes the really fun part. The bank failures will bite into quite a few Webs. The Dombur Web won’t be exempt. Vellerin will lose money, too, poor thing. But in her generosity and goodness, she’ll buy up the remaining shares from frightened investors—and pretty cheap, too—”
“—and end up with half the banks on Lenfell doing her bidding!”
“Not that many—not to begin with, anyway. But the important thing in immediate terms is that the people will hail her as their financial savior.”
Sava thought this over, then shook his head. “That’s an awfully big leap of conjecture.”
Col grinned tightly. “It’s called ‘gut-jumping’ and I learned it from an expert. Sava, go back to Ryka Court. Find Telomir Renne. Tell him what you’ve told me and as much as you can remember of what I’ve told you. Tell him as well to get the word out by Ladder to as many Mages as he can that the Malerrisi are out and intend to set themselves up in every city and village on Lenfell.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, use your brains, boy! Why else would Glenin Feiran lend Vellerin Dombur her Malerrisi to start runs on selected banks all over the world unless they get to keep the money as start-up funds for entering general society?”
“Oh!” Another blink of big blue eyes, then another.
