"Or the price of revenge upon your father, for discarding you," hazarded Gruit. "Or upon your brother for taking your rightful place as heir?"
"I did not bring you here to insult my friend." Tathrin was on his feet, indignant.
"No, it's a fair question." Aremil raised an unsteady hand. "Master Gruit, the mentors of Vanam's university halls teach rigorous logic that encourages a philosophical attitude. I could never have ruled Draximal. Even at peace, there's always the threat of warfare. A duke must be able to ride a horse and command an army. I could never have done either. As my father's heir, I could only have brought disaster on Draximal, as our neighbours of Sharlac or Parnilesse invaded to take advantage of my weakness. I'd rather the commonalty were spared such grief, just as I'm happy to be spared responsibility for their deaths."
"So why torment yourself with Lescar's tribulations?" Gruit wondered. "Live here in comfort and pay no heed."
"Wilful ignorance isn't so easy." Aremil swallowed. "The scholars of Vanam entertain themselves picking over the sorry history of our beleaguered land. Every summer brings broadsheets detailing the atrocities of warfare. The streets fill with beggars fleeing each new wave of fighting."
"You hear their pleas all the way up here in the upper town?" Gruit shook his head regretfully. "I don't mean to insult you, but you sit here with your books and games of strategy for which everyone knows and agrees the rules." He gestured at the white raven pieces. "In the confusion of the real world, this business of denying the dukes their funds could never work. Set aside the difficulties of finding every exile, you would never persuade them to stop sending coin. Their families scrimped and saved and lied to reeves and bailiffs to gather the coin that bought them their passage out of danger. These are not debts of silver but of honour."
But Gruit couldn't contain his frustration, pacing between the hearth and the window. "Even if you could cut off the flow of coin from every Lescari exile, it would make no difference. Some cabal of bankers or merchants, or even mercenary captains, would back one of our noble dukes, regardless of his impoverished state, on seeing that none of the other dukedoms could mount a challenge as long as their coffers remained empty." His voice thickened with contempt. "They would support whoever promised them first pick of the plunder once he was crowned High King."
He reached absently for the bottle of wine that Tathrin had left on the small sideboard. "How long would that peace last? Seeing their families with Sharlac boots on their necks would soon prompt your Draximal brethren to send coin home again. Your fellows would soon refill His Grace of Carluse's war chests." He gestured towards Tathrin and then realised he held nothing to pour the wine into.
At Aremil's nod, the younger man silently handed the merchant his glass. Gruit filled it.
"Forgive me. I honour your desire to do something for our unhappy countrymen. But these days, it takes too much wine to make me hope for peace in my lifetime."
"I refuse to believe that we are condemned to wretchedness," Tathrin said forcefully. "I will not accept the lies the Caladhrians tell of us, or our ridiculous reputation in Tormalin. I will not acknowledge the disdain of even our friends here in Vanam. I know every man of Lescar can be as true and as valiant as any born elsewhere."
"Saedrin make it so." Gruit raised his glass to the god and drained it. "With your determination, you may yet achieve something. Try something less ambitious. Found a new charitable fraternity at one of the shrines, something to help those unfortunates who will be caught in the fighting between Draximal and Parnilesse this summer, if those rumours are true."
Aremil shook his head. "Such charities are like cowardly doctors merely seeking to alleviate symptoms instead of addressing the cause of a sickness."
"You don't believe that some ailments cannot be cured but must simply be endured?" Gruit reddened and he set his glass down. "I beg your pardon. That was appallingly ill-mannered of me."
"But you are quite correct," Aremil retorted with biting politeness. "Nevertheless, I am certain Lescar's suffering can be eased, even if my own cannot."
"It has been a pleasure to meet you, but I think it's time I took my leave." Gruit bowed to Aremil and then to Tathrin. "Don't trouble your servant. I can see myself out."
Aremil saw the mortification in Tathrin's face as he closed the door behind the merchant.
"I'm sorry."
"You need not apologise." Aremil leaned back and didn't try to hide the tremors shaking his limbs. "It was an education meeting Master Gruit."
"As the mentors always tell us, no education is ever wasted." Tathrin poured himself another glass of the Ferl River vintage. "Is he right?"
Aremil sighed. "He argues a powerful case."
"So what can we do now?" Tathrin sat down on the settle, staring into the fire.
"First, if you'd be so kind, I'll take a glass of wine with a spoonful of the green tincture." Aremil winced as cramp bit deeply into his legs.
"I'm still making a list." Tathrin prepared the medicine and held the glass to Aremil's lips. "Of the men and women most deeply affected by Gruit's outburst."
"We had better ready some arguments to counter the objections that Gruit just raised before we approach anyone else." Aremil drank and turned his head to wipe a trickle of wine away on the shoulder of his doublet. "I will see if I can get Mentor Tonin to explain the specifics of aetheric magic to me, rather than the generality."
"It's like those logic puzzles they tested us with when we first came here." Tathrin put the glass down beside Aremil and looked out of the window towards the forbidding towers of the university's halls. "How can you have an egg without a bird? How can you have a bird without an egg?"
Aremil felt the insidious sweetness of the drug relax him. "How are you finding life in Master Wyess's employ?"
"Interesting." Tathrin turned away from the window. "Challenging. Confusing. Everything's turned upside down at the moment. I'll get a better feel for the intricacies of his trade once festival's over, and for the lower town, come to that."
"Good." Aremil hoped Tathrin saw that he truly was pleased for him. "Why don't you stay for dinner? Tell me about life in the lower town. Master Gruit was right to say my vision of wider issues is limited by these four walls."
Tathrin was sliding his scholar's ring around on his finger. "Thank you."
Aremil heard the reservation in his voice. "If you have some other engagement, don't let me detain you."
"I won't stay to dine. I do need to write a letter to my father and buy some presents for my mother and sisters." Tathrin sat across the game table from him. "We have time for a round of white raven, though. Do you want to play the raven or the forest birds?"
"The forest birds."
"Let me see if I can finally build a thicket to baffle you." Tathrin picked up the agate trees and considered their placement. His forehead creased.
Aremil hoped it was only concern for the game prompting that frown. He knew Tathrin's father had never approved of him serving a Draximal master. Even one who was apparently a noble of lowest rank and a cripple at that, never likely to play any part in the poisonous politics of the dukedoms. How would the innkeeper react if he discovered his son was really serving Duke Secaris's own son, even a son so comprehensively discarded and disinherited? Aremil didn't want to be the cause of any rift in Tathrin's family.
Someone with Tathrin's intelligence and integrity deserved a better future than dancing attendance on an invalid. Or a pointless death clutching a pike in Duke Garnot's militia. That was something Aremil and Tathrin's distant father must surely agree on. Hopefully this apprenticeship with Master Wyess would lead to a secure and wealthy future for the younger man.
Tathrin looked up from the game board, a glint in his eye. "Where do you want these?" He took up the horned owl figurine and the pied crow.
"Put the owl by the holly tree and the crow behind the second oak from the right." Aremil focused his attention on the challenge of the game. Tathrin had clearly been t
hinking how to arrange the trees and shrubs to offer most shelter to the solitary white raven. Well, it was his task to see that the rest of the birds drove the mythical bird out of the forest, regardless. "Put the swordwing in front of the sour apple."
Chapter Six
Tathrin
Master Wyess's Counting-House, in the City of Vanam,
Spring Equinox Festival, Fifth Day, Morning
"Master Gruit is in the courtyard." Eclan stuck his head around the partition separating Tathrin's bed from the next one. Senior clerks warranted a little more privacy than the open dormitory the younger boys shared. "He wants your seal on a letter he's sending to your father."
"Oh, right." Tathrin covered his confusion by gathering up the ribbons and lace spread across his blanket.
"Master Wyess has no duties for us today. Will you be coming to the hangings?" Eclan grinned. "Or are those for one of last night's dancers? That red-headed beauty was smiling at you and you know what they say about Forest girls. The pick of those pretties should win you a feel of her frills. This isn't your birth festival, is it? Give yourself a proper treat if it is!"
"I was born in For-Winter, and these are for my sisters." Tathrin dragged his private chest out from under the bed and swept the fripperies into it. "No, I won't be at the hangings. I want to buy a book of maps."
Then he'd visit Aremil, to make up for leaving him alone last night while he enjoyed himself at the playhouse.
"We'll see a merry midwinter," Eclan mused as they walked down the stairs. "There's more than half the senior clerks born between the Autumn Equinox and the Solstice, and Master Wyess puts up a gold crown for every one of us celebrating at each festival." They reached the half-landing and continued down the next flight. "Anyway, that's three of us this time round, so we'll be drinking Master Wyess's health at the Star in the Thorn after the last villain swings and there'll be high-stakes rune games if that takes your fancy."
"Maybe," Tathrin temporised.
He had little enough coin he could afford to lose, and anyway, gambling for high or low stakes held no attraction for him. He'd grown up playing the usual childish rune games and when he'd begun fetching and carrying in his father's taproom, he'd seen how a single cast of three could throw gamblers into ecstasy or despair. One quiet evening he'd sat down with a set of the nine three-sided bone tokens and a slate and worked through some calculations.
The heavenly rune had the Sun, the Greater and the Lesser Moon on its three sides. All the rest were different, carved with three symbols taken from the traditional sets of four: plants, animals, earthly domains, instruments, winds and elements.
That was one of the first things Tathrin had wondered about. Granted, the Wolf, the Pine and the Mountain went together naturally enough. So did the Deer, the Oak and the Forest. But the Drum, the Calm and Earth? The Harp, the South Wind and Water? Who had decided which three symbols should share a rune, why and when? Who had decreed that two runes from every set of four should be weak and two should be strong? That the Sun should be strong while both Greater and Lesser Moon were weak?
Nine bones and each gambler threw three. Each rune had three faces, one landing flat on the table, one face showing an upright rune, the other with its rune upside down. Tathrin began calculating the likelihood of each symbol turning up. He added in the uncertainty of the heaven symbols, since those had no up or down. Then he took account of the occasions when a strong upright rune would override a weak one.
By the time he had filled the slate with sums, wiped it clean, filled it again, cleaned it and filled it a third time, he had concluded that turning to rune games in hopes of making a fortune was as much folly as using the rune bones for telling fortunes, as the Forest Folk were supposed to do.
His father, seeing Tathrin working steadily, had come over to find out what was fascinating his son. He'd been relieved to learn that the boy wasn't succumbing to the lure of the bones. Then he'd paid a thoughtful visit to the shrine of Misaen on the Losand Road. The second son of Lord Camador, who had inherited that particular priesthood tied to the family's lands, had once studied at Vanam and earned the university's seal of scholarship. He had agreed with Tathrin's father that the lad's aptitude for calculation deserved more challenges than running an inn could provide.
They reached the ground floor and Eclan clapped Tathrin on the shoulder. "I'll see you later," he said cheerfully, disappearing into one of the strongrooms.
Tathrin watched him go. The senior clerks spent a great deal of their leisure time together. His father had told him not to hold himself aloof. If he was going to make a success of this apprenticeship, he didn't want the other clerks thinking he scorned them for not being scholars. But if he was going to go drinking with Eclan and the rest, Tathrin wondered how he would visit Aremil as often as he might like without causing comment.
Emerging into the sunshine of the counting-house courtyard, he saw Master Gruit chatting to Wyess's wagonmaster.
"Good morning, Tathrin. Let's seal that deal on your father's wine." Gruit swept his mantle back, tucking his hands into his brown tunic's pockets.
Tathrin walked with him towards the gate. "I don't recall telling you anything about my father."
"Jerich Sayron, whose family has owned the Ring of Birches Inn on the Losand Road for five generations. The house has a sound reputation for good food and clean beds. It's a safe place to house goods, and they say any guard your father recommends can almost always be trusted." Gruit slid him a grin. "You satisfied the mentors of your scholarship inside two years when the talented sons of Vanam's rich and idle usually take three or four years to earn the university's seal ring. Your friend Master Aremil isn't the only one who can find things out."
Tathrin wasn't about to be flattered. "What do you want with me this morning?"
"I want you to meet a couple of people." Gruit lengthened his stride. "You may also care to know that no one is particularly interested in the pitiable Lord Aremil for whom you fetched and carried while you studied."
"Master Aremil," Tathrin corrected him. "He sees no merit in unearned titles."
Gruit waved an airy hand. "Quiet as a dormouse and twice as dull, apparently. There's some curiosity over what will become of his house when he dies, since he's hardly likely to have an heir of his own body. He has no testament of bequests deposited at Raeponin's shrine, so it's assumed it'll be a simple sale." He looked more sharply at Tathrin. "How robust is his health? If he sinks into a decline, someone might go looking for his relatives, in hopes of making a pre-emptive bid on the property. If he doesn't want his birth to be discovered, he should think on that."
"Drianon be thanked, he is usually quite well." Tathrin tried not to scowl. Master Gruit clearly had excellent sources of information.
"Though often in pain," Gruit observed. "What befell him? Childhood illness or accident?" The merchant took the road leading up the spreading flanks of the Grastan Hill, where the pig hunters had caused such chaos the evening before last.
Tathrin hesitated. Was this his tale to tell? Doing so would save Aremil the awkward task. He knew how much his friend disliked discussing his infirmity.
"His mother laboured in childbed so long that they were both despaired of. Though they survived, he remained a weakly baby. As the duchess did her duty and bore more children, it became apparent that Aremil was not learning to crawl or to use his hands like any other infant. Fortunately, before he could be condemned as an imbecile, he was babbling and then talking."
Gruit glanced at him. "His noble birth presumably saved him from being dumped in some shrine to Ostrin?"
"He lived secluded with his nurse in a remote manor house," Tathrin said briefly. "Never mentioned, to avoid embarrassing his lady mother, and to deny his noble father's enemies the opportunity of arguing that his firstborn's afflictions were proof of the gods' displeasure with Draximal." He grinned despite himself. "Only no one thought to tell Lyrlen her nurseling was supposed to waste quietly away and oblige everyone b
y dying. She cherished him and taught him to read and write."
"So Duke Secaris found he had a crippled scholar on his hands and decided Vanam was the best place for him." Gruit looked thoughtful. "My opinion of His Grace has gone up somewhat."
They passed the house front where Tathrin had been crushed by the crowd. At the top of the street, the angular façade of the shrine to Misaen dominated a square crowded with booths and stalls piled high with books, new and old. The weathered bronze figure of the smith-god looked sternly down, the sun in one hand, the hammer he"d used to make it in the other.
"Almanac, Master?" A huckster waved a smudgily printed booklet at him. "Know the turn of every season, in every city from Selerima to Toremal?"
Tathrin ignored him. The calendar bequeathed by the Old Tormalin Empire had always irritated him. Why did almanacs printed in different cities give different dates for the turn from season to season? Worse still, when the calendar slid out of phase with the sun's year, each city's priests decided for themselves where extra days would be added to summer or winter festivals. Since coming to Vanam and learning how simple calculations could avoid all such confusion, the outdated system infuriated him still more.
"Master Gruit, I need a book of maps." He wondered if he had enough money with him.
"Later." Gruit pushed through the crowd to a stall where a narrow-eyed merchant stood guard over gold-embossed books bound in gleaming leather.
"I'll take this." A tall woman in a crimson gown handed one to the merchant.
Her hair was dressed tight to her head in a style that did nothing to soften her severe features. Tathrin knew his sisters would condemn her dress as hopelessly outdated and he was surprised to see someone of his mother's generation out without a shawl for modesty's sake, never mind the cold wind coming up off the lake.
"Lady Derenna." Gruit tapped her familiarly on one shoulder.
A noblewoman. Which explained the Tormalin cut of her gown, for all that her accent was clearly Lescari. Though Tathrin would never have expected to see a noblewoman shopping without any attendants.
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