“I don’t understand. What do you mean, trying to find her? If it’s all the way in Shirrokaru…”
“I don’t know, Kefier. Jarche spoke about the agan, and I don’t know anything about that at all, only the way she explained it, it seems like the creature is trying to reach Rosha through her dreams. So far, that’s the worst it’s done, but we don’t know if it’s capable of doing more…if it can actually pull itself through the agan and get her.”
Kefier swore. “I should’ve killed that thing the moment I first saw it.”
“I don’t know if anyone who can. Jarche told me even Enosh had his hands full. But even then…”
“This is the part that’s supposed to make me angry, right?”
She touched his arm. “Jarche told me he lives. That he is hiding from Yn Garr. But if we can somehow find him, he’ll be able to rein the creature in, and perhaps help Rosha…”
“We find him?”
“Well, yes,” she said. She glanced away. “Unless you don’t want to?”
His eyes darted to the window and then back. “And you want him back in your life? In Rosha’s?”
“You’re not listening to me. We need to find him because of this agan thing. Neither of us know anything about it, Kefier; but Rosha is supposed to have as much of an aptitude towards it as her father. He will know how to help her.”
“Right. I see.”
“I told you not to get mad.”
“I didn’t say I agreed with you.” Kefier sighed. “You said Jarche was here. Who’s caring for Rosha?”
“Your Sir Yn Garr’s servants assured me she’ll be fine, and Jarche will be returning to her soon.” She made a soft sound in her throat. “Rosha didn’t want me to leave, but when I told her I was going to see you, she all but insisted. She thinks something bad may have happened to you.”
“I don’t blame her. I promised her I would return soon. That was months ago.” He picked up his trousers. She looked away as he got dressed, and then wondered why; she had lived with him for years. Hadn’t she seen him dress a thousand times before?
“Let’s eat,” Kefier said, unaware of her discomfort. “I’m hungry.”
“Whose fault is that, I wonder?”
He laughed, and she followed. They were good at that, laughing once the clouds of doubt had formed over them. It was probably why they hadn’t killed each other yet.
Jarche had found the mess hall before them, her face bent over a bowl of stew, a loaf of bread in her hand. “Where were you?” she asked, looking up at Sume.
Sume coughed. “Catching up.”
“All night?”
“How are you, Jarche?” Kefier asked, taking the chair across her. “I don’t think I’ve seen you like this before.”
“Oh. I get hungry after a spell like that. Tired and hungry, and I have to do it again in the next day. I’m not looking forward to it. Has Sume told you everything?”
“She did. You want to send us to Dageis to find that man. I have one question. What makes you think he’s in Dageis?”
She rubbed one ear. “We know he is.”
“You have to give me more than that.”
“I’ll be opening a portal through the agan for you, a thing not easily done and which most mages this side of the continent won’t even attempt. Don’t you think that’s enough?” She placed the loaf down and took a sip of water. She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “I was told he was headed for the Dageian Plateau. Perhaps he is seeking refuge from the mages in Dageis.”
“Why would he think that was a good idea?”
“I admit, I’m a bit of a loss about that, too. But that’s what our sources say, and that’s where you and Sume are going to go. Count yourselves lucky you don’t have a speck of agan-skill on you.” She tapped a leather satchel on the bench beside her. “I have papers claiming you’re tourists from Jin-Sayeng. Which is true, and as long as you’re careful not to lie outright when you’re asked, triggering their alarms, you should be able to pass all checkpoints.”
Kefier placed his hands over his head.
“What’s the matter, Kefier? You don’t look happy about this. Dageis is a wonderful country. Especially the east, where you’re going. Lovely views. When you find him, make your way to the nearest docks and board the first ship to Baidh. You can connect to Cael from there.”
“If we find him,” Kefier said, “what makes you think he’ll go with us at all?”
“I’d have thought that if he knew his daughter’s life was at stake, he’d understand.” She pushed her plate away and regarded him curiously. “He does know about her, doesn’t he?”
“I’ll cancel my trip to Jin-Sayeng and start getting ready,” he murmured. He withdrew from them. Sume didn’t meet his eyes on the way out and he realized, with a pang of grief, that this was how they were always going to be. Passion in the dark, passing glances in daylight. She didn’t love him. But last night, she had kissed him so deeply that he thought it would drive him mad. Perhaps it was enough. Given where they were, what they were, it had to be.
Chapter Sixteen
Daro caught him staring at the wagon and said, “You know that particular escape plan requires having to actually ride horseback, right?”
“Right,” Enosh said. “I’m still working on that part.”
“You do that. I’d love to catch you a fifth time. I could put a leg iron on you then. Mahe doesn’t want me to—thinks it’s too much trouble keeping them clean by the end of the day—but I think it would be amusing to watch you trip and fall on your face every so often.”
“What makes you think there’ll be a fifth time? It could work. I could finally be free of you.”
“You know I’m a glass-full kind of fellow.”
“How nice. I happen to be one as well. Now maybe you can do me a favour and loosen my chains a little.”
Daro grinned. “Why, of course. I’m sure that after failed attempt number two, you’d know better than to try smashing my head in again.”
“It is,” Enosh agreed, “a very hard head.”
He lifted his wrists and watched as Daro tapped the edges. The soldier had no skill in the agan, as he had said often enough, but the strong enchantment on the spells responded to him as accurately as a hound would its master. The manacles slackened, though not enough for him to slip his entire hands through. Daro, for all his pretences, was more intelligent and perceptive than most people Enosh had met. Enosh was almost sure that part of the reason he had been unable to escape was that it was difficult to dislike the soldier so much.
The man remained an enigma. He distrusted mages, it was true, and—as he liked to explain as often as he could—was why he insisted Enosh and Sapphire remain in chains for the rest of their journey to the Dageian Plateau. But the effort he took to ensure their comfort was almost touching. He hired a wagon and a driver so that they wouldn’t have to walk and made sure their chains were loose enough to eat and attend to their needs when they were at camp.
“I know that mountain range,” Sapphire said, as soon as Daro rode away from them. She leaned over the other side of the wagon. “We’re not far from the plateau.”
Enosh followed her gaze across the snow-capped mountains, marbled with emerald and grey. “You didn’t tell me you’ve been there before.”
Sapphire shrugged. “It was a long time ago, when Moon and I were still young. Osog, Bannal’s father, took us.”
“Did all the mages go?”
“No, it was just the three of us. Bannal was a young man then, and refused to travel with us. By the time we got to the capital he had gone on ahead, joining a group of young merchants who must’ve found his skills amusing.” She tapped her irons with a fingernail. “He didn’t take things as seriously, then.”
“You must have found Dageis overwhelming.”
An echo of a smile flitted across her face. “It was...interesting. I had been looking forward to going to a place where skill in the agan wasn’t demonized—where someone, wa
tching you manipulate agan, might actually go up to you and say, No, you’re doing it wrong. This is how you shift the wind where you want it.”
“How do you shift the wind? I’ve tried before.”
Sapphire snorted. “As if I could show you now. Working with the elements is one of the harder skills to learn, and if you have the raw talent for it, it makes it a particularly volatile experience. You’d have to start young. These are the children who, in places of ignorance like Jin-Sayeng or even parts of Gaspar, would have been stabbed in the fields for setting somebody’s goat on fire. What you were taught—glamour and enchantment, we call it—could be easily chalked up to a charming personality.”
“What makes you think it isn’t my charming personality in the first place?” He grinned.
They passed by an icy-blue lake, sandwiched between two halves of the mountain range and the mouth of a river. Layers of silt and sand swathed the edges of the shoreline.
“We might even be closer than I figured,” Sapphire murmured. “Do you see that settlement in the distance?”
He squinted. “I think so.”
“That’s what used to be the village of Bay-at-dan. A Gasparian village, but the culture was uniquely Dageian, with a touch of Kag. A strange little world, or so the history books say. It was destroyed in the war that tore Naijwa and Raggnar apart—the war that also, incidentally, put a stop to all of Dageis and Gaspar’s friendly relations. Now we do not remember a time when they were anything but enemies.”
“I’ve read that it’s a Gasparian outpost now.”
“It protects the Gasparian border from Dageis. Three hundred mandraagars, on top of the soldiers, and the ability to call out more reinforcement should Dageis ever decide to peer across the wall. It would be interesting to see how Prefect As’ondaro plans to sneak us through there.”
“Maybe he’ll use the agan,” Enosh said. Sapphire, hearing his joke, didn’t smile.
When Daro returned from scouting the settlement, he was livid. “They’re looking for you. I went in, asked if they were having any problems, and that was the first thing the soldier said: the mage who killed the king is at large.”
“We knew it was only a matter of time before they discovered our ruse,” Sapphire said.
Daro shook his head. “I was almost sure they’d have forgotten it by now.”
“Clearly you are not as acquainted with Gasparian tenacity as I have been the last few years,” Enosh said. He laughed. “Maybe it’s time to let me go. Sorry—” he added, to Sapphire’s barbed look. “Both of us go. You’re so close to home. I can’t see why you’d risk staying here any further just because we can’t come along.”
“If you think that, then you, sir, are just as unacquainted with my sort of tenacity. I’d sooner let rats crawl out of my ass.”
“Actually, maybe I’ll stay,” Enosh said. “That might prove amusing.”
Daro grinned. “Maybe you have any bright ideas in that head of yours. Or is it only good for witty remarks?”
“I’m glad you think they’re witty,” Enosh said with a bow. “But as it happens, I’m not in any particular hurry to remove one hangman’s noose off my neck for another.”
Daro turned to Sapphire. “What about you?”
“I could burn down a building or two,” she said. “Don’t know how much good that’ll do you.”
“Maybe as a distraction…” Daro murmured, rubbing his jaw.
Mahe watched him; she wasn’t smiling, but there was a thoughtful look on her face. After a moment, she said, “If the plan was to not attract attention towards us, these ideas would do the exact opposite.”
“You be quiet,” he said, but there was no strength in his tone.
Enosh glanced at her first, then at Daro. “Maybe the lady has a point,” he said.
“Lady?” Mahe asked.
“You be quiet, too,” Daro snapped at Enosh.
Sapphire raised her eyebrows, but didn’t comment.
Mahe got up. “I was just about to say that we should just go. We have all their paperwork ready, and ours, and we’re here. They’ve seen us. The driver we dismissed an hour ago could attest to our presence, that we told him we were planning to cross the border and that’s that. It won’t look good if we turn back now.”
“You’re probably right. But I told you, Mahe, they’re still looking for the mage who…”
“They’re looking for a mage,” Mahe said. She turned to Enosh and Sapphire. “Now, supposing I had the faintest sense of agan-skill, and I was tasked with detecting this same sort of skill because I’m trying to find a mage…”
“By Dorsin’s shiny beard!” Daro exclaimed. “You’ve the makings of a scholar, Mahe!”
She didn’t say anything and returned to their belongings. Enosh glanced at the manacles around his wrists. “She’s right, of course. These things that stop us from tapping into the agan would make it seem like we’re as blind to it as a common Jin. But have you any intention of marching with us in chains? You’ll be questioned.”
Daro smiled at him, which made him uncomfortable. He’d already figured it out. He left the chains on them, and they waited under the shadow of a tree, watching people march along the road while pretending to eat lunch. A little before noon, the number of people increased, and a line began to form behind the gates. He got up then, wiping his trousers, and they walked to the end of the line. As soon as more people arrived behind them, he reached over and discreetly tapped each chain.
The links fell from the manacles, which remained clasped around Enosh’s wrists. Everything happened so quickly that Enosh didn’t have time to blink. He glanced to his left and noticed Mahe sheathing a dagger. It must’ve been a hair’s breadth away from his side a moment ago.
The line moved. He took one step. Both to his left and right lay freedom.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Daro murmured.
“You really have to stop that,” Enosh said. “It’s very irritating.”
Daro smirked. “You’re thinking of making a break for it. You’re thinking that the guards won’t see you, or maybe they won’t care, and living with those irons, without agan, for the rest of your life would be fine.”
“That’s not true.” But it was, and he fell silent thereafter. Another step, and then he grunted, “I could find someone who could take them out for me.”
“You could. It would be hard. You’d have to hang around Dageis to find someone...at least someone who wouldn’t accidentally hack your hands off by mistake. In Dageis, where I can just as easily find you.”
“You’re such a humourless man, Daro.”
“You shouldn’t say that. I’m hurt. I’m always full of humour.”
Three more steps, and then another. The heat made Enosh’s head swim.
“And anyway,” Daro was saying, as if these things didn’t bother him. “I thought we made the decision to travel together. You both need to get to the Plateau and I’m your best chance of getting there.”
“No, you’re not.” Enosh didn’t even try to hide the contempt in his voice. “You’re a tyrant and a bully, and quite likely you’ll knife me in the back before this is all over.”
Daro didn’t blink. “Again,” he said. “I’m hurt.” He barely sounded like he was.
It took well over another hour for them to reach the gates, which was enough for Enosh to start wanting to escape again, if only to throw himself into the lake. Sweat covered his shirt and collar like a noose. Daro had timed their crossing well; there would be less people working the middle of a shift—as midday often was—which meant a backup of travellers, which would mean at least one full-time guard on the watchtower making sure everything was in order. Enosh had no choice but to comply with each step, signing papers and repeating Daro’s story; they met in Gaspar, and he and Sapphire were accompanying Daro and Mahe back home. The story passed the mandraagar truth-check; it was not exactly a lie.
They were escorted past the converted buildings and crumbling h
ouses, and allowed through the gates. A bored-looking guard signed the last of their papers.
“Welcome to Dageis,” he mumbled. “Please note that Gaspar will not be held liable for any injuries, bodily harm, or death, and will not be able to offer assistance should you be rightfully or wrongfully imprisoned. Have a good day.”
The gates were slid shut. The tension drained from Daro’s face. He started to say something, but Mahe touched his arm briefly before walking on ahead.
“Dageis does not guard the border,” Enosh murmured.
“They don’t need to,” Sapphire replied. “There is a checkpoint three days’ march from here, but you can consider the lands around the Plateau and the Plateau itself a sort of no-man's-land. Here, you answer to the mages, and the mages alone. The thought of that is enough to deter Gaspar from marching north.”
“Is it?” he mused. He regarded Daro, casually strolling ahead. He recognized that they were at an impasse; they must walk, as they had walked through the gates, with the guard’s tower still so obvious in the distance. Once they had put a sufficient distance between the border settlement and themselves, it was clear that Daro intended to turn around and put the chains back on them.
He glanced at his wrists. He suddenly decided that he rather liked sleeping without those horrible dreams, and that maybe he really was getting by on charm and personality, anyway. Anything was better than being forced to do something against his will. Yn Garr and his own father knew it well.
The watchtowers were still in sight, but rapidly becoming strands in the distance. Enosh waited until he was as far from the soldier as he dared, and then he sprang to his right and started running. Behind him, he heard Daro cry out, a question ringing in the air, followed by footsteps. Mahe, predictably, was going after him. She was a fast runner, but if he could get to the woodland before her, he thought he had a chance. He had seen the land angling down sharply past the thorn bushes and intended to disappear behind it, if even for just a few moments. Enough time to figure something else out and work with Daro’s confusion. Maybe Mahe could continue following him and roll off the cliff, which would be even better.
An Elegy of Heroes Page 68
