Tempest

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Maybe we could get someone to figure out the ingredients for us,” Hektor said, holding a bottle up to the light from his office window.

  “Who?” Aiden asked.

  “I dunno, an alchemist or an artificer? Maybe Daedrus knows someone.”

  “I don’t think they do that sort of thing, but Daedrus does know the Cap’n. Maybe he can talk to ’im an’ get ’im to leave Haver alone.”

  “S’worth a try, ’cause I can’t think of anything else to do. I’ll send Paddy up to see ’im now.”

  • • •

  Their youngest brother returned before shift change. “‘Daedrus says not to worry, it’s all in hand,” he puffed.

  “’E’s gonna talk to the Cap’n?”

  “Uh, not exactly. ’E says to leave it to Haver; ’e knows what to do, an’ we should all go on home to supper.”

  “Haver knows what to do?”

  “Yup.”

  Hektor gave him an exasperated look, then threw his hands up. “Well, all right, then. I guess we all go home to supper.”

  • • •

  The next morning dawned overcast and cold. Haver was standing before the watchhouse, fussing with Toby’s harness, his cart packed and ready, when Hektor arrived.

  “Ah, good morning, Sergeant,” the merchant called out with a smile.

  “S’all sorted, then?” Hektor asked.

  “All sorted.”

  “You headin’ back to the market?”

  Haver shook his head. “Oh, no, all my business here is completed, thanks to your brother, Padreic. He’d make a fine traveling merchant. You let me know if he ever tires of the family business and wants a change. I’d take him on as an apprentice in a snap.”

  “I’ll tell ’im. But you could stay a little longer.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I’m due in Snake Bends tomorrow, and I need to beat the storm. Oh, and I almost forgot . . .” Haver dug into his pocket and emerged with a small bottle of hair tonic.

  “Would you pass this on to Daedrus for me with my compliments? I didn’t like to say last night, but I noticed he was getting a bit thin on top. It works wonders, you know.”

  Hektor accepted it. “Is it really made from . . . ?” He paused as Haver held one finger up with a smile. “I know, a craftsman never reveals his secrets.”

  “You’re learning, Sergeant. Now, you be sure to give the captains my regards,” Haver added as he finished tightening a strap across Toby’s withers.

  “Both of ’em?”

  “Of course, both of them. Life’s all about making connections, Sergeant, building bridges from one person to another. But then, you know all about that. You and your brothers know the name and situation of every person in Iron Street, just as your father and your granther did before you. You care about them and their families, and they know it. That’s what builds a community. Captain Elbert’s part of your community now. And I’m sure that once my morning-after cure has had a chance to take effect, he’ll feel much better about things. There now, all ready and just in time, as I think I just felt a drop of rain. I must make haste. See you in the spring, Sergeant.”

  Haver headed off, calling out good-byes and accepting orders for next season from passersby, Toby clopping obediently along beside him.

  Hektor watched him go for a few moments, then headed into the watchhouse, which seemed somehow disappointingly quiet now.

  • • •

  “Did you get ’im drunk?”

  Sitting in Daedrus’ overcrowded kitchen later that day, Hektor eyed the retired artificer with what he hoped was a stern frown as the old man puttered about making a pot of tea.

  Daedrus waved a distracted hand at him. “Hm? What? Have you seen the kettle? Oh, there it is, behind the clock.” He turned. “Dear me, Sergeant, you’re soaking wet. Would you like something stronger than tea?”

  “No, thank you, I’d like you to answer my question. Did you get Captain Elbert drunk?”

  Daedrus passed him two delicately wrought teacups, the sugar bowl, a spoon, a small pitcher of milk, and a book on navigation before answering. “Of course I didn’t. Captain Torrell and I simply took him to dinner at The White Lily with several of my friends from the Healers’ Collegium. We ate, we talked, we remembered those who had passed out of our lives too soon, and we polished off several bottles of very fine wine. As a result, his head was a bit worse for wear this morning, not to mention his stomach, so I imposed upon one of our company to make him up a posset. Have a biscuit, Sergeant. They’re fresh today.”

  Hektor accepted the plate with a resigned expression. “One of your company?” he pressed.

  “Oh, yes, as I said, we went to dinner with several of my friends from the Healers’ Collegium: my niece, Adele, Lord Markus Indram—you remember him from the first time we met when I’d suffered that minor brow injury—and a few of his colleagues including his brother, Halvar Indram, whom I believe you know as Haver Hearthstone.” Daedrus chuckled at Hektor’s stunned expression.

  “Haver is . . . ?”

  “One of the finest Botanical Healers in Valdemar and a powerful Empath. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, I thought he was just a traveling merchant.”

  “He’s that, too.”

  “But how? If he’s a nobleman . . . ?”

  “Yes, well, Markus always said he was eccentric. He hates to stay in one place. Apparently his gift is better suited to the open road. As I understand it, Empathy can be very draining if it’s surrounded by too many people for too long. At any rate, he made Willan up a posset, and they had a nice, long chat. It’s all sorted out now. Halvar’s good at that.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “And now that Willan has made some acquaintances here,” Daedrus continued, “he’ll settle in just fine. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see Halvar again when he drops by this spring. I know I will. I’ve ordered some particularly strong twine and twelve bottles of blue ink from him.” Daedrus set the book down on top of the biscuit tin, before turning to Hektor with a smile. “It’s all about making connections, Sergeant.”

  “Building bridges between people?”

  “Exactly. Now, as for this . . .” Daedrus lifted the bottle of hair tonic with a haughty air. “Give it to someone who requires it, please. Thinning on top indeed, the nerve of the man.”

  • • •

  The rain lasted for two days, after which the weather turned warm and sunny. As Hektor and Aiden headed for the watchhouse, they passed the Polls sitting on the steps of their tenement house together. Jez gave them a cheerful wave, and even Holly unbent long enough to nod at them as they passed.

  Hektor glanced at Aiden. “Did his hair seem thicker to you?” he asked.

  Aiden nodded. “Haver’s tonic works wonders, apparently.”

  “Apparently. Do you s’pose it really is made with . . .”

  Aiden shot his brother a look of amused disbelief. “Of course it’s not, fool. Bill an’ Sue March, the herbalists in Fivepenny Street, ’ave been makin’ it for ’im for years.”

  Hektor rocked to a halt. “When’d you learn that?” he demanded.

  Aiden snickered at him. “Yesterday. Paddy tol’ me.”

  “How’d he know?”

  “Ask him.”

  Hektor made to speak, then just laughed. “No point. A craftsman never reveals his secrets.”

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.” He looked up the street to where Ken and Peggi were walking, arm and arm, past Benj’s shop. “You figure Haver’s magic’s gonna last until ’e gets back in the spring?” he asked.

  Aiden snorted. “Nope.”

  “You figure it’ll last the week?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “Thought if things stayed quiet, I might get you to help me finish up those reports.”


  “Definitely not then.”

  “I could order you to help me.”

  “You could try, and you could die, little brother.”

  “That’s Sergeant little brother to you, Corporal.”

  “You mean that’s do-your-own-paperwork-Sergeant little brother to me, don’t you?”

  “Jerk.”

  “Whiner.”

  As the two brothers bounded up the watchhouse steps, a small messenger pigeon took to the air above them, wheeled about, then headed off across the city toward the distant plains.

  Unraveling the Truth

  Dayle A. Dermatis

  The Valleyford Town Hall was too hot.

  The whitewashed plaster walls seemed to press in on Syrriah, even though the space was wide, with a high, peaked ceiling crossed with dark wooden beams.

  Part of the problem was the noise: voices raised, everyone talking, no one listening, each individual certain that if they could just make their argument heard (mainly by being louder), everyone else would listen and capitulate and agree.

  Outside, winter was just as stubborn, not yet ready to release its grip and relinquish the world to spring. The ground was still too hard to plant, the temperature still dipping low enough at night to sparkle the ground with frost when the sun rose. But each season, while as intractable as a person with an opinion, eventually gave way to the next. Spring would come soon, and it would be time for planting the fields.

  Inside, you’d never know the final grip of winter clenched the land outside. A fire on the broad stone hearth took the edge off, and the thick walls, covered with tapestries, clung to that warmth, but it was the press of bodies—bodies of men and women in heated discussion—that made the room tip to fever-hot.

  Or perhaps the conflagration came from within Syrriah herself. She’d felt the sudden flush of internal fire before she’d even stepped inside, and now she felt the perspiration spring out on her brow and knew the flush stained her cheeks.

  Yesterday afternoon, when she and her Companion, Cefylla, had arrived, she’d wondered briefly if she were coming down with the illness that had forced her to leave her Senior Herald, Joral, at their last stop.

  “It’s just an ague,” he’d insisted. “A few days’ rest, and I’ll catch up to you. You’ll be fine. It’s a simple property dispute. Study the records, talk to the town elders—they’ll remember things that never got written down.”

  Syrriah now knew her symptoms weren’t an illness, but that didn’t make them any easier.

  And she absolutely couldn’t take one more minute of this mayhem.

  Putting the strength behind her words, learned from years of shouting at four small children before they got into too much trouble, she bellowed, “Enough!”

  The sound boomed through the room, the wave of it startling everyone into silence. Syrriah took advantage of the lull to thread her way through the crowd to the low platform at one end of the room. She was of middling height, and it gave her just enough more to project authority.

  That, and the Herald’s Whites she wore, which commanded respect.

  It didn’t even hurt that she was only an intern Herald; she’d been in her midforties when a Companion named Cefylla had come to her manor house and Chosen her. Syrriah hadn’t told anyone here that she was the intern; a year into her internship Circuit, she and Joral had shifted to having more of an equal partnership. What little she might still lack in hands-on training, she made up for with her experience as a former lady of a manor.

  Diplomacy was one of the skills she’d honed in that position.

  Still projecting her voice over the heads of the throng, she said, “I understand you all have things to say, and I promise I will hear from all of you in due course. I ask that everyone maintain your composure and be patient.”

  She wanted to add impolite, un-Herald-like words, which wasn’t like her at all. She felt as though she had simply lost patience with everyone already. She gritted her teeth, pushing down the surge of annoyance that licked within her like flames.

  A simple property dispute, Joral had said.

  As if property disputes were ever simple.

  • • •

  There were two petitioners, second cousins. However, they weren’t trying to claim each other’s land—they were petitioning together to claim a third party’s land. Pretending to be reasonable, they were even willing to split that land, they said, and to give the third party a parcel of the same size, taken from their current holdings.

  Claiming another’s land didn’t seem reasonable at all to Syrriah, but her opinions had no weight against the facts, and the facts were what she needed to tease out of all the parties.

  As an Empath, she could tell they both felt justified in their petition. There was no subterfuge; she could sense little animosity.

  Syrriah asked that anyone who had no business bearing directly on the matter at hand to kindly leave, and if she had questions for them, she would request they return or seek them out.

  At least half of the people left grumbling. She asked the mayor, a woman about her own age, to interview those left and determine whether they truly did have a stake in the proceedings—or just had an opinion.

  The departures meant the main hall cooled some, but to have privacy while conducting the interviews, Syrriah chose to use the mayor’s office, which was well-appointed but stuffy and close, thanks to another cheerful fire. At least it was quiet, save for the sizzle and pop of the flames. She cracked the window open and moved her chair in front of it.

  The chairs were made of dark wood, with finely turned legs and backs carved in a wheat pattern. Syrriah placed a soft pillow the color of currants on hers. Heraldic training kept her fit, but there were some aches that came from long riding that she never could fully escape.

  She reviewed her notes and sipped some tea, oversweet with honey, before asking the first petitioner to join her.

  Thus far, she wasn’t terribly impressed with either of them. They reminded her of spoiled children arguing over whether they had an equal number of cookies, ignoring the fact that they’d stolen the cookies in the first place.

  Both had inherited from Arnath Cormier, their great-uncle. When Arnath, who had no direct heirs, had died, his land had been divided equally between his sister’s son and his brother’s daughter. However, before he died, he’d given one much smaller farm, which wasn’t as fertile or well-situated as the other two, to someone else.

  But over the past hundred years or so, the wide river that meandered through this broad valley had changed its course . . . and now the smaller farm was on the banks of the river, its soil enriched and easily watered.

  In fact, it now had the longest riverfront of the three properties.

  “Great-Uncle Arnath obviously intended for his family to have the prime farmland,” insisted Bellia Shase.

  She was a handsome woman with fine features, perhaps ten years older than Syrriah. Her jet-black hair was pulled back in a formal bun, exposing wings of white on the sides. Her features and mannerisms struck Syrriah as similar to a hawk’s: intelligent, sharp-seeing, missing nothing.

  She was accompanied by several of her children, there to see what would become of their inheritance. Her husband, Syrriah was given to understand, was traveling on business.

  “Certainly he must have,” Syrriah agreed, “for that is what he knew would go to his niece and nephew based on inheritance law. However, when the land was divided between them, normally the law sees those boundaries as fixed. My job is to determine which takes precedence under these circumstances.”

  She asked if Bellia had any papers—correspondence, notes, a journal—in Arnath’s hand that spoke to the deeding of the land. Bellia said she’d look. Anything, Syrriah told her, would be helpful. Even a letter about something else, signed by him, would help authenticate other documents.

 
; Syrriah felt another rush of heat from within, another prickling of sweat on her brow, and she knew her face flushed. She sipped some cooling tea and found a small book with which to fan herself.

  Bellia smiled then, in sympathy. “You’re in that stage of life, then. I could brew you a tisane, a mixture I found useful during that time.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but to accept might imply favor,” Syrriah said. “I may consult with the local apothecary, if you think she is skilled.”

  Bellia assured her that the town’s apothecary was among the best, implying that of course their town would have one of the best. She smiled as she left, giving Syrriah the impression that Bellia was confident they’d had a bonding moment.

  Syrriah heard Bellia and her cousin, Rogett Cran, separately, but Rogett gave an almost identical argument. Not surprising, given that they were banding together in this.

  Rogett was of his cousin’s age, with a craggy face and shrewd, piercing blue gaze. He reminded Syrriah of a great serpent: seemingly still, but aware of everything around him and always ready to strike if necessary.

  He, too, was accompanied by his family: his wife, children, and several grandchildren. They crowded into the office, arranging themselves behind his chair.

  He didn’t try to placate her, offer her anything. He stated his case emphatically and sat back, secure—perhaps overly sure of himself—that she would agree with him. She suspected that most people did agree with him . . . because it was easier that way.

  She had to wait until he’d said his piece, several times in several ways, before she could get a word in edgewise.

  When she asked about correspondence from Arnath, his wife produced a sheaf of papers. Syrriah thanked her. The wife nodded once and put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. She wanted this as much as he did.

  Syrriah asked Rogett, as she had asked Bellia, “And what of Jasson and Marna Ford’s great-grandparents, to whom Arnath bequeathed the smaller farm? Do you have any notion of his reasoning there?”