The Seer - eARC

by Sonia Lyris

  The War of the Bridges, it was called. House Helata built most of the bridges, the one she stood on being the first, and built them high enough to allow their oceangoing ships to sail to the governor’s port. Then the other Houses had built bridges, not high enough to allow Helata’s tall ships to pass. These new bridges mysteriously fell in, in one case taking some forty people into the canal as it collapsed. Helata took them over. As more and more of the bridges had become green or blue, House Helata’s ships, large and small, took over the canals.

  In front of her the flow of people began again, the tight crowd carrying her forward.

  A hand on her arm yanking her off the green stone steps into a carriage, a hood over her head.

  Vision took over. She followed instructions, dropping to a crouch, and half-crawled her way through the forest of legs to the far side of the bridge, where the flow of feet took her in the opposite direction, expelling her again into the Ocher Market. A dash left to the Fishermen’s Inn, a pause, then it was over, the danger past.

  She exhaled a laugh, walked easily through the crowds and over another bridge, passing the Key Market, named for its shape: long and thin, booths on both sides ending in a circular area with a public well at the center. Frying bread and vegetables and meat made her mouth water. She slowed, wondering how much of today’s coins she could spare.

  None, she told herself again sternly.

  A man stumbled across her path, smelling of smoke and drink. He would lurch left, then right, then drop drunkenly into the shadows of the alleyway beyond.

  Instead he stopped in front of her, stared at her curiously, his future shifting as she watched.

  He had stopped, she realized, because she had stopped. She herself had changed the moment, and that had changed his attention, thus his future. This was why she must adopt a plan, any plan, and stay with it until vision’s alarm. Otherwise it was like trying to catch a spilled bag of beans before they all touched the pavement. Too much, too many, too fast.

  Like the night a handful of men had surrounded her, each one a glimpsed spray of possibilities, too many to sort through. In a near panic she ran, vision a confusing and mumbling advisor. Only when she had begun to run in earnest, dashing down into a basement stairwell, hiding in a tight corner, did vision give her a clear sense of direction: stay and wait. A mouse in the dark. They had gone right by her, inches from where she hid.

  There was no reason to tell Dirina about that escape. Nor the many others.

  She backed away from the drunk man, turned down another alley.

  “Coin’s good,” came a woman’s thick, slurred voice, heavy with a Munasee accent. Amarta realized she was the target of the comment. “You have the face for it.” The woman’s long features were deeply lined, eyes wide and unfocused. Amarta felt no alarm, so she did not try to see more. Nor did she want to; the woman’s desolation clung to her like a stink. “I give half. Not many do anymore, you know.”

  This was what Dirina would turn into, if she whored here in Munasee. Amarta did not slow, as if she had not heard.

  A boy, perhaps five, cut across her path, turning as he ran to look behind, then dashing away. He’d stolen something, something small from the sound of the half-hearted cursing that preceded a man wielding a large wooden spoon like a club. He looked around, then, having lost the boy, retreated the way he’d come.

  The boy looked a bit like Pas might in a couple of years. If he didn’t get better at stealing, someone was going to take him to a magistrate and chop a finger off. More, if he took something expensive.

  No, she saw suddenly, the boy would not lose any fingers. He would not live long enough. By autumn he would be dead, beaten to death. She saw his his body, twisted, head half-pulped like rotten fruit.

  She had stopped again, hunched over. She felt as if she had eaten dirt.

  To stop suddenly in the city, to seem unsure for even a second, was to attract attention. Eyes were on her now, suspicious and calculating. An old woman hobbling across the alley. A man carrying a sack. A young man giving her a thoughtful look. She turned abruptly, summoning the certainty of step and posture that she’d lost in that moment.

  As vision came over her, the world went bright. Forward momentum changed to a turn. Her inhale seemed to take a very long time. Plenty of time to continue the turn, to look at what vision wanted her to see.

  Her destination was a brick wall. The turn complete, she fell into a sprint toward the inviting wall, wondering she would do when she got there. As her palms hit the sooty, gritty red brick, she glanced up the street. A tarp-covered carriage was barreling toward her.

  The old woman threw herself backwards out of the path of the oncoming wheels. She landed on the ground with a cry. The boy flattened himself against the wall.

  From the carriage a crossbow poked out, then another below it, pointed at her.

  Deep in vision now, she felt the nudge to move to the side, but only slightly, and she did. A bolt hissed by her ear, hit hard brick, fell to the ground.

  A small step to the side and forward, just so. Little more than a twitch. Another bolt went by.

  She counted steps as she ran—one and two and three and—freeze. Another bolt and then another. It seemed too many, surely, which meant—what? That the hunter had help?

  It didn’t matter; she didn’t need to understand. Vision knew. She only needed to follow where it led.

  Rounding the brick corner she pounded down steps, then saw a small window, hidden from the street, open. She wriggled into it, dropping a couple of feet into a basement. Hooves and wagon wheels slammed loudly past, horses chuffing. Someone yelled to stop. Footfalls on the street behind her.

  Run. Down a dark hallway, toward daylight at other the end.

  Out, vision urged. She dashed out into the day, again in the Key Market. At vision’s direction she slowed, snaked her way through the thick crowd, came out the other side. An alleyway invited, so she took it, finding herself now by a stone fountain. A fast dash, then a cross-step to change her direction. She was under the awning of a cloth shop closing their doors for the day.

  All at once the pressure faded. The world sped up. She was breathing hard, pulse pounding.

  She had escaped. Even though she trembled with the exertion, she felt elated, a giddy joy. She almost enjoyed these threats that she could now slip through.

  Two years since she had faced him in the woods of Nesmar. A lifetime ago. She no longer had to flee the hunter—she was safe, right here in Munasee. He could not, would not, lay hands on her, not when she could move through the city like a snake in the grass, a fish in the canal.

  This was a game she knew how to play and could win.

  The evening sun dipped down behind tall gray stone and red brick buildings. She touched the pouch at her chest to make sure the coins were still there.

  They were.

  “You’re going out again?” Dirina had her arms crossed in the light of the tallow lamp. Her tone said so much more than her words.

  How late it was. How dangerous to be on the streets at night.

  Amarta sighed. Through the spring and long summer, despite the raise in pay from Magrit, it had not gotten easier to afford food. She was working all hours of the day. Then the rent had been raised.

  That they had tallow at all was due to Amarta, so if she decided to stay up late, or to work all night—or really, whatever she wanted to do—Dirina had no business giving her trouble about it.

  “For a little,” she said, as evenly as she could, tugging her feet into her turnshoes, lacing them loosely. At least it wasn’t raining this spring night. She hated having her feet wet for hours, the shoes no longer watertight.

  “What kind of work is this?”

  “I’ll know when I get there.”

  At this Dirina looked even more upset. All the more reason to leave.

  “Magrit didn’t tell you?”

  The trader had asked her to meet with someone to talk about a new job. Who or what the jo
b might be, Magrit didn’t seem to know. More unusual yet were the falcons Magrit had given Amarta in advance, just to show up.

  “There’s coin in this,” Magrit had said. “For both of us. Don’t be late.”

  And coin meant food. Tallow. Maybe meat. If it was enough, she could even dream of a new pair of shoes.

  “Where?” Dirina demanded. “Where are you going? What kind of work is it, this late?”

  Of all the times for Dirina to insist on details.

  “I’ll tell you when I get back.”

  “You’ll tell me now.”

  Amarta reached into her pocket, brought out the handful of silver falcons, put them into her sister’s hands, wrapping her fingers around them, enjoying her shocked expression.

  “Ama, how did you get these? You had better not be—”

  “Going with the men? Taking my clothes off?” she asked mockingly. At this her sister looked even more aghast. “Diri, no, it’s not that. It’s—” She didn’t know. “Courier work.” Sound confident, she reminded herself.

  “He could still be out there,” her sister said softly.

  “Who?” If she pretended not to know, maybe Dirina would think the hunter gone.

  “Who?” her sister echoed in outrage. “Why did we leave Kusan? Because he was after us, you said. We never saw him, but you said, and I believed you. Now you ask me who?”

  Her sister was breathing heavily, furious, and Amarta felt her face go hot.

  “Mama,” Pas said, wrapping his arms around her leg. “Not so loud.”

  Dirina was visibly controlling her temper now, a hand on Pas’s head. “Did we leave Kusan for nothing, Amarta?”

  Tell her sister of the narrow escapes she’d had these last months? Or let her resent Amarta for taking them away from Kusan, from Kosal? There was no good answer.

  “I’ll be late, Diri. But there’s coin in this. A lot.” Magrit had said so.

  Dirina took Amarta by the shoulders and searched her eyes. “Ama,” she said, “if anything happened to you—”

  “I’ll be careful, Diri. I promise. I’ll be fine.”

  Dirina wanted to say more. Maybe a lot more.

  “I must leave now, Diri.”

  Her sister pressed her lips together and nodded reluctantly.

  Amarta’s visions would keep her safe, and she would keep her sister and nephew safe.

  The meeting was up-city, at the Ox-bow Inn, near the twist in the canal where the governor’s mansion squatted across the huge waterway. The houses here were huge, bright in House colors and wrought iron.

  She stood across the street in this warm night of late summer. The inn was gray stone with pale trim and many windows. A high and heavy wooden door, ornately carved. A place of money. Not the sort of place she usually went to, not to deliver messages for Magrit, not for any reason.

  For a time she simply stared. She told herself she was giving vision a chance to warn, but in truth she felt awkward, unsure how to act, to speak, certain that anything she did would be out of place.

  Now she truly was late. She went to the door, took the metal knocker—an iron wolf head, she realized, once it was in her hand—and let it fall. The sound resonated, not entirely unlike a bell.

  The door opened. An expensively dressed woman opened it, saw her, and stood aside to invite her inside. “You are expected. Will you follow me?”

  The woman led her down a long hallway. Amarta tried not to gape at the inlaid floors, deep brown velvet-cushioned chairs, walls painted with images of forests in such detail she could see birds and the buds of spring among the green leaves.

  The woman opened a door, then stood aside, gesturing Amarta inside. Lamps flickered from the walls. A man sat at the far end of a wooden table. There was an empty chair close to the door.

  “Please come in,” he said, smiling warmly. The door shut behind her. “There is tea for you, if you like.”

  “Thank you,” Amarta said, sitting down. She wrapped her hands around the mug and inhaled. Fruits and spices. It smelled expensive. She took a small sip, astonished at how rich and sweet it was.

  She was sure she did not know this man, yet there was something familiar about him. His voice, perhaps. Maybe she had spoken to him in the market. Or delivered a message to him once.

  Vision was not warning of any danger. Still, the voice—she peered at him again in the lamplight. She felt certain she should remember where she had met him.

  Something about him. Something—

  Memory fell into place, like large stones falling from a great height, hitting the earth with such force they shook the ground.

  Flickering maple leaves. The scent of rotting leaves. A knife at her throat.

  She was standing now, though she could not remember having left her seat, the back of the chair clutched tight in her sweating hand. A step backward to the door, and another, her eyes glued to him.

  “No premonitions?” he asked.

  Had she passed him on the street she would not have looked twice, bearded as he was now, dressed so finely. Now that she looked again, though, she knew his eyes.

  Her hunter had light brown eyes.

  But vision had not warned her. All the times she’d escaped him and here he stood, mere feet away. Where was vision? Her heart pounded in her ears.

  “The door is unlocked,” he said. “You can leave if you like. I won’t stop you.”

  “What do you want?” she whispered.

  “I am here on behalf of the Lord Commander of the Arunkel Empire to offer you a contract with the crown.”

  He was speaking words, but she could not seem to make sense of them. “The what?”

  “Do you know the name Cern esse Arunkel?”

  Of course. Who did not?

  “The queen’s Royal Consort, Innel sev Cern esse Arunkel, has sent me here to offer you employment. A position on his staff.”

  She should leave, she thought. Now, while she still could. Her fingers groped for the door handle behind her. “Doesn’t he already have messengers?”

  “Not as a messenger. As an advisor.”

  She felt foolish. Of course. He would want her for her visions.

  And where were those visions now to warn her? Was there truly no risk here?

  She could dimly sense future danger coming out of this moment, but it was distant, complicated, the sort that was more direction and shadow than flash, that would take hours or days to unravel, if she could manage it at all. She only had a sense that whatever she did here tonight would be of consequence.

  “You’re shaking, Amarta. Please, sit a while. Your foresight should tell you no harm will come to you from having tea with me. Surely you trust your vision that far, at least?”

  Of course she did. Was he was trying to make her doubt herself? That would not work. Not on her. Not anymore.

  With that thought, she came around the chair and sat resolutely, swallowing, facing him. She was not afraid of him. She could leave anytime she wanted. Vision would protect her. “I don’t think I should believe anything you say.”

  His mouth twitched as if considering a smile. “You can believe the message I deliver. Tonight I am a courier, like you. I would never work again if I gave a false offer from the crown. You don’t have to trust me to trust the offer I convey.”

  She didn’t move, barely breathed, hands clenched into fists. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “You want a name?”

  “Yes.”

  He made a thoughtful sound. “If you have a name for me, it will change the way you think of me. Are you sure you want that?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, not at all sure.

  “Tayre,” he said. “And yours?”

  “You know my name,” she snapped.

  “I know what others call you. What do you choose to be called?”

  “Nothing by you. You are no friend.”

  “No, I am not, Seer.”

  The title sent a shock through her, from head to toes and back, an ech
o backward and forward in time. She sat back in her chair as if hit.

  “On this night, I am here in peace, and bring you no threat. The crown wants your attention, and asks you to consider this offer.”

  With that, he put on the table a coin. A huge coin. It was gold and palm-wide. Amarta’s mouth fell open. She had never seen a souver touch before, though she had heard of them. Ten times the worth of a gold souver.

  “The offer is genuine and generous, Seer.” He slowly pushed the coin toward her on the table until it was close enough to take. “There’s more than this, if you agree.”

  More? She put her fingertips on the wide disk of gold, tracing the outline of the overlaid moon, star, pickaxe, and sword at the center of the coin.

  “You’ve been running from me a long while, Seer. Are you not tired of this chase?”

  Resentment stirred inside her. “No. Are you?”

  “When I’m tired, I sleep. No one comes for me in the night.”

  The anger stayed, along with a fear she refused to feel. “I could have killed you,” she said. “Right there in the forest. With your own bow. With your own knife.”

  He clasped his hands in front of him. “But you didn’t. It didn’t even occur to you until you were far, far away. Am I right?”

  How could he know that?

  “Amarta, end this hunt, right now. Take the crown’s protection.”

  “I’m fine where I am. I escape you every time you come for me. Day or night.”

  “Ah. You think it’s been me after you, all these months here in Munasee.” He grinned a little, shook his head. “I’ve only been watching. Has it not occurred to you to wonder why your pursuers all seem so inept?”

  At that, doubt crept into her mind. She shook her head, tried to push it away.

  “Sooner or later someone will find a way around your magic,” he said.

  “It’s not magic.”

  “As you say. What about Dirina and Pas?”

  He knew their names. She suppressed a shiver. “Who?”

  A small tilt of his head. “You courier for the trader Magrit. Your sister and nephew eat by your work, when they eat at all. I know the room in which the three of you sleep.”