The Thief's Gamble

by Juliet E. McKenna

  'There's a D'Isellion's Annals with an appendix I haven't seen before.' Geris handed him another volume and Conall looked momentarily distressed, like an ass between two bales of hay.

  'Could you have a look at this one first.' Shiv passed over a thin blue-bound volume, its pages darkened by age. I peered across the table but could barely make out the script, let alone read it. Conall frowned and took an enlarging-glass out of his pocket, humming softly as he studied the book.

  He looked up with an expression of wonder. ' The Mysteries of Misaen?’

  Shiv nodded. 'It seems to be a journal of some sort, an initiate's work, I think.'

  Geris produced a sheaf of parchment from somewhere and began searching through it.

  'There's a lot here on the farseeing,' Conall breathed. He looked up at Shiv. 'Am I reading this right? Does it say they could hear as well as see?'

  'I think so. Look at the next page.'

  'Here!' Geris pulled a sheet out of his notes. 'There's a reference to D'Oxire's Navigation. What do you think? Is it the one we found last winter?'

  He and Conall bent over the table while Shiv and Darni watched patiently.

  'Would anyone care to tell me what this is all about?' I asked acidly.

  Darni opened his mouth but Shiv got in first. 'I think we can trust you.'

  'Oh, yes,' Geris chimed in with a fond gaze that I found somehow disquieting.

  'You see, there's rather more to this than strange dreams that might tell us more about the fall of the Tormalin Empire.'

  'That's important though.' Conall raised a peremptory finger. 'We're only just beginning to piece together what really happened. So much knowledge has been lost.'

  'True, and not only historical knowledge.' Shiv hesitated.

  'I'm listening,' I prompted him.

  'We did a lot of work in Hadrumal trying to find out why certain items were making people have these odd dreams. We don't have a spell that would command this sort of effect nowadays, but we've always known the Old Tormalins could do much that we've yet to find out how to duplicate. This looked like a good chance to do some serious investigation. We had plenty of material.'

  Shiv rubbed a hand through his hair. 'I shan't bore you with the details…'

  'Thank you so much,' I murmured. 'Sorry, do go on.'

  'It's starting to look as if this is a whole new - or rather, ancient - form of magic.' His expression was that of a man who had just lost his inheritance on the wrong runes.

  'I don't follow.'

  'It's completely different from all that we nowadays know as magic. It's not based on the elements at all.'

  'I'm sorry but I'm not with you.'

  Shiv clicked his tongue in exasperation. 'You know magic relies on manipulating the constituent—'

  'Not really, no.'

  They all stared at me and I felt very uncomfortable. 'Look, I've never had anything to do with wizards,' I said defensively.

  'Air, earth, fire and water.' Darni spoke up from the corner of the room. 'Wizards are born with an innate ability to comprehend and manipulate one of the elements. With training they can learn to manage the others. That's magic.'

  'Well, there's more to it than that but basically, yes, that's how it works.' Shiv fixed me with a serious eye. 'But the magic surrounding these things has nothing to do with the elements at all.'

  'So what is it?'

  'If I knew that, I'd be in line for the Archmage's chair.'

  'We know it draws on some kind of power.' Geris spoke up eagerly. 'It's stronger in some places than others, but we haven't been able to find any common factors. We're calling it aether, the source of the power, I mean. I've got a reference here…' He shuffled his notes.

  Aether. A nice, impressive scholarly word meaning, if I remembered right,'thin air'. I suppose plain language would not instil the same kind of confidence.

  'So what do you really know?'

  'The only clues we have are fragments in Old Tormalin writings and the garbled traditions of the mystery cults.' Conall leaned forward earnestly. 'That's where I come in. I'm an initiate of Poldrion. It's a family priesthood, the shrine's on our land and the older people round here are quite devout so we've kept it up. I broke an arm last year and it festered, so I was laid up for nearly a season; I amused myself by collating all the records.'

  Some people certainly know how to have a good time, I thought.

  'I came across some instructions on what the priests called miracles, and I found I could actually make things happen by following them.'

  'I know that sounds incredible—'

  I waved a hand to silence Geris' interruption. 'No, not really. Most religion's a sham as far as I'm concerned but I've seen a few priests do things I couldn't explain. Go on, Conall.'

  'Let me show you.'

  The old boy was clearly dying to do his festival trick. 'Go ahead.'

  He placed a candle in the centre of the table and recited a complex mouthful of gibberish. I frowned as the candle-wick began to smoulder.

  'Talmia megrala eldrin fres.' He repeated himself and the flame jumped into life. I stared as it died.

  'But what's to say Conall's not really mageborn and just hasn't realised it before?' I looked up at Shiv.

  'You can't hide magebirth; it usually comes out in childhood.'

  'You find yourself setting fire to your bedclothes or making the well overflow,' said Darni, his lack of emotion remarkable in the circumstances.

  Shiv nodded. 'It'll come out somehow, even when people do their best to suppress it. Some talents appear later but the oldest age of emergence on record was still only seventeen. Conall's more than fifty. Anyway, I could tell if this was elemental. I'd feel it.'

  I stared at the thin trail of smoke winding up from the candle. Something was tugging at the back of my memory.

  'Do it again.'

  Conall obliged and I found my lips moving along with him.

  'What is it?' Geris was watching me intently.

  'The rhythm,' I said slowly. 'Can't you hear it?'

  I picked up a quill and tapped it out. 'One two-three, one two-three, one-two, one.'

  'What are you getting at?'

  I repeated the nonsense words, stressing the metre, wondering why no one else was getting it. I've always had a good ear for rhythm, having the harp in my lucky runes. The quill I was holding burst into flames.

  'Shit!' I dropped it and we all gaped stupidly for a moment as it burned a scar into Harna's polished table.

  'Shit!' Shiv quenched it with a brief green flash and we all began to cough on the acrid smoke of burned feather until Darni opened the window.

  'All right, I'm convinced,' I said a little shakily.

  'What was so important about the rhythm?' Geris was looking more than a little piqued.

  'I'm not sure,' Conall said slowly, eyes narrowed in thought. 'We'd better look into it. What made you pick up on it?'

  'My father was a bard,' I said reluctantly. 'I suppose I've got his ear. Anyway, a lot of the old elegies he used to sing me to sleep with had that kind of lilt.'

  'Did they?' Conall was rummaging through his parchments to find a clean page and began making notes. 'What were they? Can you remember the titles?'

  I shrugged. 'I've no idea. They were old Forest songs that he used to sing to me.'

  Conall looked at me as if he were noticing my red hair and green eyes for the first time. 'You're Forest blood?'

  'Half-blood. My father was a minstrel who came to Vanam, where he met my mother.'

  'Where can we find him?' Conall poised his pen eagerly.

  'Not in Vanam, that's for sure,' I said shortly. 'He stayed for a while, then went back on the road. He came back from time to time but less and less frequently. I haven't seen him since the Equinox I was nine.'

  'What was his name?'

  'What is this? Why do you want to know?' You learn to live without a father; this was not something I wanted to get into.

  'We know so little,
almost anything could be significant,' Shiv said calmly. 'We should follow this up. Forest Folk travel widely but their traditions are kept very close. They could have something the rest of us have lost over the generations.'

  'If we knew your father's name, we could identify his kindred at very least.'

  'Jihol,' I said curtly.

  'Jihol?' Conall looked at me expectantly. 'And his epithet?'

  'Sorry?'

  'The descriptive part of his name. It's important if we're to find him.'

  I stared at him and something stirred in the depths of my memory. 'Deer-shanks,' I said slowly. 'That's what my grandmother called him.'

  Well, spat would be a more accurate description. I squashed the recollection of her contempt breaking into a rare family afternoon in the sun.

  Conall was busily writing things down. Geris frowned and then smiled.

  'That would make you…' He paused. 'If you're half-blood, that would make you Livak Doe-daughter.' He said this as if he was announcing my right to a Lescari throne.

  'It makes me nothing of the kind,' I snapped, disliking the way this conversation was exposing my ignorance of what I suppose you could call my heritage. He looked hurt but I had no time to waste on his romantic notions.

  'Let's get back to the game, Shiv. So you've found a different sort of magic, what's so important?'

  'I don't know.' He spread his hands. 'It could be just a curiosity, or it could be potentially earth-shattering. We just don't know what we're dealing with and ignorance can kill.'

  'What you mean is, you wizards don't like the idea of other people using magic, do you?' I sniffed. 'What's the problem? You still seem to know more about all this than anyone else.'

  'But wizards can't do this sort of magic.'

  'Geris!' Shiv and Darni spoke together in a rare moment of unity and Geris blushed.

  'They can't?' That was an interesting throw of the bones. I looked enquiringly at Conall.

  'Um, no. Even people with minimal elemental talent have proved absolutely unable to work the few things we've discovered.'

  I laughed until I saw Darni's expression. They had found a new type of magic but his useless mage talents were still enough to bar him from it; what a kick in the stones. I suppose he had some excuse for acting like a dog with a sore arse at times.

  'But other people can? Who can and who can't?' I was getting interested in this.

  'We don't know. We can't find any common trait.' They all looked solemn and fell silent.

  A question that had been nagging at the back of my mind popped its head up again.

  'Does this have anything to do with why you couldn't get that ink-horn for yourselves?'

  'Pardon?' Shiv was singularly unconvincing as he tried to look blank.

  'You said you could get things by magic if you had seen them and knew where they were, Shiv. You and Geris had visited the old man, so why did you need me?'

  'You said she was sharp!' Conall laughed and I threw him a quick grin.

  'There does seem to be a conflict with the two sorts of magic,' Shiv admitted. 'It's not always the case, but certainly, over really strongly enchanted items like the ink-horn, I can have real problems.'

  Geris opened his mouth to elaborate but I waved him to silence.

  'So now I know all this, how about telling me where we're going and what we're doing? The more I know, the more I can help.'

  Darni looked as if he was going to object but decided to go with the run of the runes. He pulled out a map from Geris' now chaotic heap of parchment and spread it on the table.

  'We're going through Eyhorne and up the high road to Dalasor. There's a man I need to see in Hanchet; he may have some information we can follow up. What we do next depends on how that goes. I certainly want to head for Inglis before winter. There's a merchant from there who outbid us on a piece we're particularly interested in, and I want it back. That's where you come in.'

  I looked at the map and estimated the distance involved and the time it would take.

  'Are you serious?' I asked incredulously.

  'Absolutely.' Darni's tone was flat and hard.

  So no chance of the Autumn Fair at Col this year. Oh well, if this was important enough for the Archmage to send people clear across the Old Empire, who was I to argue? I could keep quiet and wait for my coin. I wondered about trying to negotiate a daily rate.

  I looked at the map again. 'What about Caladhria? There must be plenty of nobles with nice trinkets in there?' Caladhria was a lot closer and has nice things like real roads and inns and baths which Dalasor is notoriously short on.

  'That's in hand,' Conall assured me. 'I've been working as an enclosure commissioner there for some years and I've got plenty of contacts.'

  I'd bet he had, given the Caladhrian love of bureaucracy. A ruling council made up of the top five hundred nobles keeps ink- and parchment-makers in luxury there. It's always amazed me they ever managed to come up with the idea of enclosing the land but then, when you realise how much it's done to improve their stock-breeding, it becomes clearer. Have you ever known an aristocrat miss a chance to make more coin?

  'So we're off to the delights of Dalasor; as much grass as you can eat and sheep as far as the eye can see.' Shiv clearly welcomed the prospect as much as me.

  'Conall, it's market day in Eyhorne, isn't it?' Darni looked at me with a measuring eye. 'We'd better try and get you your own horse. I don't want to waste too much time crossing Dalasor, so we'll buy some remounts as well. Come on.'

  We left Geris and Conall to peer excitedly at blurred ink, and Shiv to his efforts to restore Harna's table-top. Muttered curses were an essential part of both processes.

  Eyhorne was not a long ride and the market was in full swing when we arrived. When it came to bargaining, Darni's 'cross me and I'll rip your arms and legs off expression proved a real bonus and we soon picked up a sturdy-looking mule, cooking gear, blankets and tents. Darni clearly knew exactly what he was looking for, as much an expert in his field, literally in this case, as I am in mine. I relaxed and amused myself watching the local pickpockets at work.

  'So what do you like in a horse?' Darni led the way confidently to the pens.

  'No teeth and an inability to kick?'

  He looked at me curiously. 'You do ride?'

  'Hire-horses, as and when necessary.'

  'So we needn't bid for that?' He pointed to a pen where a black and white brute seemed to be doing its best to eat the auctioneer's assistants.

  'Not on my account,' I said fervently.

  Darni looked at the vicious beast with faint longing. 'Shame; I'd like to get my hands on one of those Gidestan types.'

  For my personal horse we eventually settled on a nicely behaved gelding with a coppery coat and kind eyes. We also found remounts for all of us and a spare carriage horse. The final price made me blink, but Darni paid up without visible pain.

  'Time of year,' he commented as we saddled up and prepared to leave the town. 'It's a sellers' market at the moment.'

  'Is he part of my payment or what?' I rubbed the horse's silky shoulder.

  Darni shook his head. 'Call it a bonus. Planir can afford it.'

  I started to wonder again about a longer-term association with the Archmage's agents.

  We left the next morning and headed north. Darni set a brisk pace and I found myself enjoying riding a well-bred, well-schooled horse for a change.

  'So, what are you calling him?' Geris asked as we waited our turn at a ford.

  'What? Oh, I don't know.'

  'He's got a noble head; how about Kycir?'

  I laughed. 'Geris, it's a horse! You sit on it and it gets you places faster than walking. Anyway, why should I land it with a name like that?'

  'What's wrong with it? He was the last undisputed King of Lescar.'

  'He was also a complete plank!'

  'He was a hero!'

  'He died in a duel defending his wife's honour and when they went to tell her they found her
in bed with his brother!'

  'Kycir died believing in her!'

  'He was the last one who did. That heroic tale left Lescar ten generations of civil war!'

  We bickered away happily and, when we finally worked our way back to the horse, we settled on Russet as a name.

  We travelled on for several days without incident to that stretch of heath between Eyhorne and Hanchet which runs up against the Caladhrian border. There was a slightly awkward moment when Darni realised Geris was planning to share my tent and hauled him off into the trees, supposedly to collect firewood.

  'I'll get some water.' I casually picked up the kettle.

  'Of course you will.' Shiv did not look up from the meat he was spitting.

  I grinned at Shiv and moved quietly into the woods. Darni was ringing the curfew over Geris and no mistake.

  'And how is she going to be climbing into attics with a two-season belly on her? Had you thought of that?' he hissed.

  Geris mumbled something indistinct. Should I tell Darni I had thought of just such an event and taken appropriate action? No, it was none of his business. Let him ask me himself if he had the stones for it.

  His voice rose in exasperation. 'Look, I don't care if you two are playing stuff the chicken ten times a night—'

  I winced at the smack of fist on flesh and judged it time to leave. Darni and Geris appeared a little while later, carrying a good supply of firewood, which was something of a surprise. Nothing was said, I didn't ask and the evening continued in good enough humour so I suppose they must have sorted themselves out. I sighed a regret for the simple life of working with other women.

  We made Hanchet a couple of days after that, just as the lesser moon passed the full and the greater waxed to three quarters. I for one was looking forward to a real bed and a bath. Unfortunately, Hanchet proved a disappointment in more ways than one. It's low-lying so most of the houses are wooden-framed withy and daub; the recent rain made the whole place thick with mud and stagnant-smelling. The bridge up the road had been washed out in an earlier storm and the town was full of travellers and traders waiting for it to be repaired. Even the Archmage's coin could not get us rooms anywhere decent and I was forced to renew my acquaintance with the various wildlife that thrive in cheap hostel beds. Our inn had no baths and, given the tension in the town, I didn't fancy the wash-house over the way, which had far too many 'laundresses' hanging round it. Hanchet's current ruler is a dry old maid who inherited unexpectedly and who has a particularly censorious attitude towards commercial sex. All the brothels had been cleared, but her ladyship had not yet caught on to the reason for the sudden boom in places to get your clothes and your body washed, if you get my drift.