Stonemaster

by C. E. Murphy

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61317-159-2

  Copyright © 2019 by C.E. Murphy

  All Rights Reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, mizkitink@gmail.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Editor: K.B. Spangler

  Cover Artist: Aleksandar Sotirovski

  Cover & Book Design: Miz Kit Productions

  Chapter One

  "Get up, Sunbaby. Sunsquirt. Sun..." Desimi al Ilialio's sneer appeared over Rasim's berth. "...burn! Sunburn, except you're never going to get a sunburn because everybody knows you can't learn to use more than one magic—"

  Rasim groaned and pulled his pillow over his head. Desimi's insults had lacked an edge for weeks, ever since he'd helped saved the king's life. He'd been given the mark of the King's Guard in thanks, and wore the pearl-embedded silver necklace under his shirt all the time. No doubt his pride would eventually fade and his usual mean streak would return. Until then, Desimi's insults were so uninspired that even Rasim had been trying to come up with better ones, even though he'd get stuck with them.

  "Sunstar," Desimi tried, but he sounded as though he knew it wasn't any good. "Get up, sunsquirt."

  "Firestarter," Rasim suggested from the depths of his pillow.

  "Scorchmaster." No one in the Seamasters' Guild had ever been really insulting about the other guilds. They each had their own separate domain—water, earth, air and fire—and their rivalries

  tended to be friendly. Rasim had never heard any genuinely cruel teasing from other guilds.

  Then again, no one had ever crossed from one guild into another, either. Not until Rasim, anyway. Not until the king had informed Rasim that he didn't get a pearl necklace for his part in the king's rescue. No, Rasim had, to quote King Taishm, "slain a sea serpent, befriended pirates, discovered treachery, rescued a kidnapped girl, been imprisoned, and saved his home city of Ilyara."

  And for some reason, King Taishm thought a boy who had become that entangled with politics ought to have some diplomatic training. He'd made Rasim the first journeyman to ever study with a second guild, and because nobody had ever done that before, they didn't have names for them. But by the goddess Siliaria, Desimi was determined to find one.

  Maybe if Rasim just ignored him hard enough, Desimi would go away. It hadn't worked in the thirteen years they'd grown up together, but it couldn't hurt to keep trying. He said,

  "Scorchmark," beneath his breath, and tried to go back to sleep.

  Desimi yanked the pillow off Rasim's head, holding it out of reach. "Didn't you hear me say it was time to get up, Sunburn?"

  "Really? Sunburn? Is that the best you can do?" Rasim made a hopeless grab for his pillow, then sat up to rub his eyes. "What bell is it?"

  "Half sixth." Desimi threw Rasim's pillow back into his face.

  Rasim barely knocked it away in time, squinting at the bigger boy. "What are you even doing up, then? It's not bakery day until tomorrow." He reached for his shirt, dragging it on and feeling the two bars on its sleeveless shoulders bump over his cheek. The sea-blue marks were as important to Rasim as the pearl necklace was to Desimi. They symbolized everything he'd ever wanted: becoming a seafaring journeyman, able to sail and see the world.

  He was the weakest witch in the guild, though, and it had never seemed likely that he would earn those sea-colored bars.

  Desimi waited until Rasim could see him before announcing,

  "Everybody's up early except you, Sunburn Stay-In-Bed. You've been so busy with the Sunmasters ," he sneered the word, "that you're the only one who doesn't know."

  "Doesn't know what? " Rasim scrambled for his trousers and tried to keep a wary eye on Desimi at the same time. For once, though, Desimi was so smug about knowing something Rasim didn't, that he stopped teasing.

  "Asindo's being made Guildmaster."

  Rasim fumbled his clothes through fingers suddenly gone cold. His heart began to beat wildly, making his face hot even when his hands were icy. He didn't even try to pick his trousers up again, just stared at Desimi. "Is Guildmaster Isidri...?"

  "Nah." The necklace and the king's regard really had changed Desimi. Six weeks ago he'd have refused to answer right away.

  He'd have enjoyed letting Rasim think the venerable Guildmaster had died. She nearly had , after pouring out an incredible amount of magic to thaw their half-frozen harbor. For weeks, the Seamasters had been waiting in unspoken fear for word to come that Isidri was dead. Asindo, captain of the fleet's flagship, had been the acting Guildmaster during her illness. It would have been easy—it would have been expected— for Desimi to let Rasim assume the worst for as long as possible.

  Relieved, Rasim sat hard into his berth, but misjudged and hit the hammock's edge. It rolled and dumped him on the floor. Desimi shouted with laughter, but Rasim didn't care. It was almost inconceivable that Isidri would step down as Guildmaster, but her death would have ripped a hole through everything Rasim had ever known. She'd guided the Seamasters for at least a generation.

  Anyone might deserve a quiet retirement after that. Rasim tried to make himself laugh at the idea, but it still took two tries to pick his trousers up again because his hands trembled so hard with relief he could hardly control them. His tongue felt too thick to make words. "What time is she stepping down?"

  "Seventh bell. And we're all supposed to be washed and in our finest."

  Which Desimi was , Rasim finally realized. He wore loose, undyed linen trousers and a tunic mostly like Rasim's. Desimi's, though, was vibrant blue, and Rasim's had been washed so many times it wasn't any particular color at all. Desimi's thick, tight curls were growing out, just as Rasim's black waves were, but Desimi's shone with water that toweling hadn't been able to absorb. It would be at least a year before either of them had hair long enough to start braiding into the tight que that marked an adult Seamaster. Still, even with his hair unkempt, Desimi looked mature, like the man he was growing into. And less angry than the man he'd been growing into: the king's notice really had made a difference.

  Rasim, befuddled, said, "How are you bathed and dressed already?

  And—" It started to settle on him that the sleeping hall was empty save himself and Desimi. "Where is everyone?"

  "The bells rang at five and half five to get us all up. Kisia rattled you until your teeth clattered but you wouldn't wake. I said I'd get you after we washed." Desimi gave Rasim a grin that was more like his old one: toothy and not especially nice. "You should just make it, if you hurry. Sunburn."

  "Sunburn, really? " Rasim dropped the trousers he'd been trying to put on and dug into the small box beside his berth, searching for his own finer clothes. "How did I sleep through two bells?"

  "Hm, well, let me think. Who's been working the docks and studying on the ships every morning, then running across the whole city to work on his sunburn into the evening? It hasn't been me , that's for sure."

  Rasim tipped his head in weary acknowledgment. The hard physical labor of the mornings followed by the hot afternoons in the Sunmasters' ascetic stone halls, reading and hearing stories of diplomatic ingenuity, wore Rasim down until he barely remembered getting home every night. He was only certain that he was eating breakfast because Kisia always thrust a bread bowl of warm fish stew into his hands every day. He supposed he had to be eating at other times, too, but his memories of doing so were sketchy.

  It didn't matter now. Rasim found his good tunic, the blue one that matched Desimi's, and his own unb
leached linen trousers, and ran for the hall door with them clutched against his chest. Just before he left the hall, a thought occurred to him and he slid to a halt. "Desimi?"

  The bigger boy, ambling along behind him, had a satisfied smirk.

  "What?"

  "Thanks. For letting me sleep in and still waking me up in time to get bathed and dressed before the ceremony."

  Desimi's smirk faltered and he looked across the room before meeting Rasim's eyes a little uncomfortably. "Sure. Whatever.

  Sunburn."

  Rasim grinned hugely and ran for the baths.

  ~

  Everyone , it seemed, was not only awake, dressed, and ready for the day, but also ready for Rasim to be running late. He skidded into the bath houses, and dropped his clothes in a lump beside the first bathing room. He jumped in, splashing water everywhere, and came up with a gasp. The baths were usually warm to hot, but this one was cold as sea water in winter.

  Masira, the bathhouse mistress, appeared to bark a laugh as he stood up streaming with cold water. "That'll teach you to be late. This one's been drained and refilled, and I've not had time to warm it yet. Nor am I going to, young man. Get washed and get out before I turn it to ice on you."

  Rasim gulped and splashed back under the water, scrubbing his fingers through his hair and catching a palmful of grit from the bath floor to rub briskly over his skin. He'd never seen Masira

  turn water to ice. That was a rare talent, and the only person Rasim knew for sure could do it was Guildmaster Isidri. But he didn't know anybody else who could heat the large baths as fast as Masira, either, and if she could heat water, he saw no reason she couldn't freeze it. He clambered out, skin red from washing, and discovered Masira had left him a towel, a comb, and his clothes neatly folded on a bench where they wouldn't get wet.

  "Thank you!" Rasim's shout echoed through the empty bath house, ringing off stone walls and making him feel unusually alone. No one was ever alone in the guilds. There were always people around the corner, underfoot, in the way, and there to help. He dried off as fast as he could, pulled the comb through his hair, and scrambled into his clothes before sliding wet-footed across the smooth stone floors back toward the entrance. Normally Masira would have his—or anyone's—ears for leaving the floor dangerously wet, but just this once, when he was clearly the last person in or out of the baths, he thought it was safe. And fun. A wild grin smeared across his face again as he ran from the bath house.

  Kisia, holding a bowl and a chunk of bread, waited for him just outside the bath house doors. Rasim nearly crashed into her and she lashed a hand out, catching his upper arm and saving him from, but sending the bread to, a spill on the sandy earth. Once she was sure he was steady, she let go and thrust the bowl, full of fish stew, into his hands, then bent and collected the hunk of bread from the ground. She brushed it a few times, getting sand off its thick crust, then plunked it into the stew, where it steamed with its own warmth. "My mother says you're too skinny,"

  Kisia announced. "She sent bread for you. If you spill on your tunic, I'll cut a pair of gills in your throat myself."

  Instead of laughing, Rasim swirled the bread in the stew and lifted a huge sopping mouthful to his lips. "Oh, tides, that's good."

  "Of course it is." Kisia's family were bakers, but Kisia had—for the first time anyone could remember in Ilyaran history—given up her family name and trade to join a guild. It hadn't taken her long to learn the threats and curses the Seamasters used, and she was learning the magic just as quickly.

  Rasim, splitting his time between guilds, knew that not just the Seamasters were talking about that. Orphans brought to the guilds began studying magic practically as infants, and everyone believed that only children could learn magic. But Kisia was fourteen, nearly an adult, and was taking to it like—well, like a fish to water. Some people thought that changed everything, but if Kisia herself thought so, she was keeping it to herself. She herded Rasim back to the guildhall like he was the apprentice and she the master, and he didn't complain. Kisia leading meant he could concentrate on eating.

  "Hurry up," she muttered to him. "Desimi's waiting at the door."

  Rasim glanced up as he gobbled the last bites of bread and stew.

  Desimi, looking superior and impatient, leaned against doors leading into the courtyard where both daily work and important gatherings happened. "Took you long enough, Sunburn."

  Kisia wrinkled her nose. "'Sunburn,' Desimi? Really?"

  Desimi shrugged and Rasim grinned again, turning his attention back to Kisia. "That was really good, Kees. Thank you. And hey, you look nice."

  She did, too, with her loosely curling black hair cropped apprentice-short. It made her brown eyes look large and her cheekbones more prominent. The Seamaster blue of her tunic—a journeyman's tunic like Rasim's, even though she was really just an apprentice—was exactly the right shade for her dark skin, and showed off arms made strong by baking and stronger by hauling ropes. She had callouses on her hands where she hadn't before, and her feet, exposed by the calf-length trousers like those they all wore, were starting to get the spread-toed look that so many of the sailors shared.

  "Wait." Rasim's gaze jerked back up to her sea-colored tunic.

  "Wait, Kisia, you're wearing a journeyman's tunic!"

  Kisia, who was never nervous, gave him a nervous smile.

  "Guildmaster Isidri told me to. I don't really know what's going on, Rasim. Isidri's stepping down, but there's something else too, something—"

  As one, the three of them swung open the guildhall gates to reveal a courtyard packed with Seamasters young and old. The youngest were still babes in arms, new orphans brought by the river, and the oldest—well, Guildmaster Isidri was the oldest by far, more than a hundred years old. She sat in an enormous chair, almost a throne, reserved for the Guildmaster alone. The chair, in turn, sat on a raised platform big enough to hold a whole ship. It had a ship's worth of people on it, too: Guildmaster Isidri, dwarfed by the Guildmaster's seat, and Captain Asindo, and dozens of other Seamasters as well.

  But also, unexpectedly, there were masters from the other guilds as well: red-coated Sunmasters looking serene as white-robed Skymasters flitted around the stage greeting people, and Stonemasters whose pale yellow clothes blended with the city's pale yellow stone walls. Although they couldn't have all been waiting on Rasim, Kisia and Desimi, they all turned as the doors opened, fixing their gazes on the three late-comers. The whole gathering in the courtyard turned too, curious to see what had drawn the masters' attention.

  Under the weight of hundreds of pairs of eyes, all three of them slowed self-consciously. Rasim gulped and finished Kisia's thought in a whisper: "Something big. "

  Chapter Two

  Sick or not, Guildmaster Isidri's voice carried clear and sharp over the enormous gathering: "I see our young friends have decided to join us after all. Kisia, Desimi." Isidri paused long enough for everyone to notice before finally saying, "Rasim."

  Rasim swallowed hard as the Guildmaster beckoned for the three of them to come forward. The crowd parted and Rasim glanced at Desimi, who looked as nervous as Rasim felt. Strangely, that made Rasim less nervous. He peeked at Kisia, too. She held her jaw thrust out with defiance, just like she did when she'd been caught stealing extra honey bread for her friends. That usually meant she was scared too, but was trying not to show it. Rasim wondered if it would make her feel better if he took her hand. He was sure it would make him feel better.

  Instead of taking his hand, though, Kisia looked at him. So did Desimi, which made Rasim realize they expected him to take the lead. Some of the apprentices nearest them grinned, sensing their nervousness. If they waited much longer, everyone would start to laugh. That would be worse than facing whatever Isidri had planned. Rasim nodded like he, Kisia, and Desimi were sharing some kind of signal, and they fell into step together as they approached the stage.

  The Waifia 's handsome first mate, Hassin, stepped out of the crowd on the platf
orm, a reassuring sight. Hassin was well-liked, and Rasim had the implicit belief that nothing too awful would happen to them if Hassin was on hand. The first mate winked and tipped his head sideways, indicating a short block of stairs at the stage's far end. People moved out of the way as Rasim led the other two up the steps, and they crowded behind Hassin once they were on the stage. For once, Rasim was grateful to be small. He was almost hidden from the gathering as he whispered, "What's going on?" to Hassin.

  "Masters, apprentices, and journeymen!" Isidri's voice cut through any answer Hassin might have given. Everybody, including Captain Asindo, came to attention. Isidri hadn't lost an ounce of her command, even if Rasim could see that she was slighter than she'd been, and that her color wasn't as good as it used to be.

  She still looked fierce and uncompromising, though, with blue bands of rank woven into her wrist-thick white braid. It swung over her shoulder as she rose from the Guildmaster's seat, first glowering ferociously out at the gathered guild in the courtyard, then at the smaller crowd on the platform itself. "I've been Guildmaster for forty-seven years," she said. "Most of you haven't been alive that long, never mind in charge of something, and frankly, most of you never will be in charge of anything but your own lives for that length of time. It's a blessing," she informed the gathering. "By and large, it's a blessing to not have to worry so much about others, but having to gives you a

  certain perspective. Mostly that perspective is people are all the same, silly and smart, foolish and fearless. Mostly they're good. A few are mostly bad, and nobody is all of one or the other. And once in a while somebody who is mostly bad makes a terrible mess of things for everybody else, which is why we're here today."

  A low chuckle ran through the gathering, though Rasim didn't think it was exactly funny. Roscord, the Islander prince who had bought the loyalties of five ships' worth of Northerners, had indeed been mostly bad, and Ilyara had nearly fallen to him.

  Isidri's unparalleled magic had saved the city—there was a reason she had been Guildmaster for nearly half a century—and so it was