The gig was turning up the long incline back to the residence. Temar would be able to answer some of my questions, but I tapped the driver on the shoulder with a new request.
“Den Haurient, quick as you can, friend.”
I’d best report this new finding to Esquire Camarl before I did anything else. He might find himself facing some Tor Sylarre over the dinner table, or forewarned might be able to see some significance in an otherwise innocuous remark. Temar could wait, after all.
The D’Olbriot Residence Gatehouse,
Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Evening
Temar drummed impatient fingers against the scabbard of his sword.
“So where’s Ryshad?” Allin asked from the concealing shadow of the hedge.
“I certainly expected him to be back by now.” Having to concede Ryshad wasn’t with the latest flurry of arrivals at the gate, he took a pace back.
Allin hunched her shoulders inside a light cloak. “Perhaps we should just forget it.”
“You wanted to go,” said Temar firmly. “It may be nothing, true enough, but if it is something I will have that something to show for today.”
“But can we go without Ryshad?” enquired Allin meekly. “It’s not too far. I’ve directions if you’re able to walk.”
Temar looked at her with some indignation. “My lady mage, I could walk from the springs to the sea inside a chime when I was last in Toremal. Granted, though, half this city was fields back then.”
“But you were wounded,” faltered Allin.
“I am fully recovered, and I am certainly not one of these lately come Esquires who cannot walk the length of a street lest they muddy their shoes.” Temar resolutely ignored the tender pull of the scar on his back and the ache lurking behind his eyes. “All we need is some means of getting out of here unremarked. We can hardly keep this little adventure quiet if we call up a carriage to take us, and the gate ward this afternoon said he’d orders not to let me leave unaccompanied.”
“Unseen?” Allin bit her lip nervously. “I could do that.”
“You know a back gate?” Temar turned to look back past the shadowy bulk of the residence towards the stables.
“No, but I could hide you?” Allin offered.
Temar looked at her. “With your magecraft, you mean?”
“Velindre’s been telling me I need to learn to take some initiative.” The quaver in Allin’s voice rather gainsaid her bold words.
“Is it safe?” Temar shook his head. “Forgive me, I do not mean to insult you.” He resolutely thrust away the freezing fear of submitting to any form of enchantment.
“I wouldn’t dream of trying if it wasn’t,” said Allin hastily.
They stood, hedged round with silence, faint noises from gatehouse and residence floating past on the cooling evening air.
“By all means weave your magic,” Temar said abruptly. He took a deep breath as Allin closed her soft hands tight around a faint spark of unearthly blue light, an expression of utmost concentration dignifying her round face.
Magecraft is a practical art, Temar reminded himself, well-understood means of manipulating the stuff of creation that generations of wizards have studied and codified. Casuel had told him all about it. Temar didn’t have to understand, it was sufficient that these wizards did. It’s not Artifice, he thought, gritting his teeth. It’s no enchantment wrought inside a man’s head and working its will, holding him helpless to resist.
“There,” Allin breathed.
Temar opened his eyes. “Everything looks much the same,” he said for want of anything better.
“What about your hands?” giggled Allin.
Temar raised one, seeing only a dim outline of his fingers. He looked down and the rest of his body was no more than a faint suggestion in the gathering dusk. Gripping his sword hilt hastily, he was relieved to feel that as hard and reassuring as ever. He realised Allin was looking him straight in the eye. “You can see me thus?” He’d be hard pressed to sneak through the gatehouse if he were no more than an Eldritch-man’s shade.
“You look like a shadow to me, and to any other mage, I’m afraid, but no one not mage-born will see anything.” Allin looked a little downcast. “It’s the best I can do.”
Temar nodded decisively. “It is a marvel, my lady wizard.”
Allin ducked her head to hide a pleased smile. “Stay close behind me, and hope we don’t run into Casuel.”
Temar laughed. “He went out to invite himself to some gathering of mages. It is wherever Velindre is going, I believe.”
“Be quiet,” Allin hushed him as they stepped out on to the empty sweep in front of the gatehouse.
Temar chewed at the inside of his cheek, carefully matching his steps to Allin’s, especially when they reached flagstones where his hard boots could make far more noise than her soft shoes.
“Good evening, my lady,” called the Sergeant reading his broadsheet in the lodge.
Startled, Allin stopped. Temar promptly bumped into her. Allin managed to stifle her exclamation, but as she moved her cloak pulled her up short. Temar realised he was standing on the hem and hastily lifted his foot.
“Fair Festival, my lady,” said one of the recognised men guarding the postern. Temar found his sly suggestiveness faintly offensive.
Allin nodded curtly to the two youths. Temar pressed close to her, holding his breath and keeping arms and elbows close, lest he nudge someone.
As he stepped through the postern his sword caught against the wood and dragged round. Balancing it on his hip took Temar a moment and he caught a brief exchange on the inside of the door.
“Been visiting the young D’Alsennin, hasn’t she?”
“What’s he see in that dumpling? He’s got his pick of the Demoiselles.”
“To marry maybe, but what about a little Festival jig? I’ll bet a wizard wouldn’t have cold hands for your fiddlestick.”
Temar strode hastily after Allin, feeling his cheeks burning with a colour every bit as fiery as her habitual blush.
She had halted to look vaguely at a gig trotting round a distant corner. “Are you all right?” she whispered.
“Quite, yes.” Temar gratefully realised the invisibility hid his embarrassment.
“You’d better stay behind me,” she murmured as she walked slowly down the long slope towards the conduit house.
Temar did as he was bid, careful he didn’t step on Allin’s cloak again. At least there were precious few people out walking and those mostly looked to be liveried servants intent on their own tasks. The last daylight was fading now, and the dusk beneath the shade trees made Temar’s feet even more indistinct to his straining eyes. He stopped, rubbing his eyes, taking a deep breath then hurrying after Allin.
Turning at the conduit house, she headed north and west along the circular road. Coaches swept past them, but hardly anyone else was on foot. Allin strode on, ignoring superior glances from passing carriages until she finally turned down into a busy thoroughfare. The air was cooling now but the stone buildings all around were casting the remembered heat of the day back into the night sky along with the exuberant clamour of the crowd.
Temar had to press close behind Allin, their progress increasingly awkward, Temar looking up and down at every other step, searching for his feet no darker than wisps of smoke. The lesser moon rose over the rooftops, golden circle all but full and unchallenged by the merest arc raised by her greater sister. But Temar had no time for such fancies as the moonlight cast queasy shadows through the hazy darkness that was all he could see of himself. Something in the back of his mind was protesting ever louder that what his eyes were telling him couldn’t possibly be the truth.
He caught Allin’s elbow, steering her irresistibly into a noisome alley. “You have to undo the magic, else I will be sick.” He swallowed hard on nausea thickening his throat.
Allin immediately spread her hands in a decisive gesture. Sapphire light came and went at the edge of Temar’s vision like
a jewelled memory of the day and he could see his hands again. “My thanks,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.
“If you’re done, move on, will you?” A man about Temar’s age shifted impatiently from one foot to the other at the entrance to the alley, a slightly older woman on his arm, eyes cynical in her painted face.
“Did they see anything?” whispered Allin.
“There’s nothing I’ve not seen, blossom,” said the woman with a coarse chuckle.
Temar drew a mortified breath, uncertain how to respond. Allin giggled and slid her arm inside his. “We’re nearly there.”
As the road forked either side of an ancient shrine, Allin led Temar up an avenue of lime trees spreading a moist green scent. Mismatched buildings jostled a run of tall, narrow houses with proudly precise gables looking down on the six-sided chimneys of lower dwellings with narrow leaded windows and uneven rooflines.
“It should be down there,” said Allin uncertainly. Bright lights beckoned at the bottom of a small entry, too short to be a street, too wide to be an alley. Lively chatter lilting with unmistakably Lescari accents echoed from an open window.
“Yes, look.” Allin pointed with relief at the great half-circle lock hanging from a sturdy chain above the door. It was all that distinguished the building from its neighbours, each with irregular windows beneath a dishevelled roof of stone slates, oaken beams set for no readily apparent reason in walls crumbling with age and inattention.
Temar drew his arm close to his side to shield Allin with his greater height. “I have not spent any great time in taverns,” he said cautiously. Not this side of the ocean, not since waking from enchantment, he amended silently to himself. Riotous evenings carousing with Vahil so long ago, not a care between them, counted for nothing now.
But they’d never have come to such a sober house, little changed from the dwelling it had once been. Two casks of ale were set on trestles in a parlour furnished with cast-offs from people who could have had precious little to start with. There were no potmen or maids that Temar could see, just an unhurried matron filling a steady flow of jugs brought by men and women in sombre, well-worn clothes who either sat near by or disappeared into the back of the building.
Four newcomers pressed past Temar and Allin as they hesitated on the threshold. Greeting the mistress of the house in Toremal-accented Lescari, two lads took tankards from a rack beside one door for their ale while the others helped themselves to glasses and a flat-bottomed greenish bottle, dropping silver and copper coin into an open box. A crone sewing a slow seam by the table nodded, her smile shrunken around toothless gums.
“Can I help you?” The woman drawing the ale looked over at Allin, polite but cool. Her clipped words carried echoes of the mercenaries Temar knew in Kel Ar’Ayen.
Allin fumbled beneath her cloak for the handbill. “I was looking for Mistress Maedura?” Her own accent was stronger than Temar had ever heard it.
The woman nodded, indifferent. “Out the back.”
Allin smiled uncertainly. “May we see her?”
The woman glanced, incurious, at Temar. “Please yourself, lass.”
“Come on,” he encouraged Allin, doing his best to sound like the Lescari mercenaries he knew back home. Digging a few coins from the purse tied to his belt, he pointed at a bottle of wine inky dark inside emerald glass. “How much?”
The old woman chuckled, revealing a baby pink tongue, and said something Temar didn’t understand. Allin held out some silver of her own, talking hastily in Lescari.
“She says we should wait our turn through here,” she said tightly to Temar.
He picked up a bottle and two thick glasses with uneven rims. “What did I do?” He was used to struggling with the indecipherable mysteries of female disapproval from Guinalle and Avila, but had thought he’d made a fresh start with Allin.
“Tried to pay her about ten times what that wine’s worth.” A faint smile was tugging at the corners of Allin’s mouth. “I said you thought she was taking money for the seer.”
People were waiting on chairs beneath an unshuttered window and by a door opening on to a small yard. A second door, cut through the wall to give access to some afterthought of an outbuilding, was firmly closed, though faint sounds of conversation filtered through to the expectant room. Everyone looked at Allin and Temar, some curious, a few defensive, but all with unspoken determination to protect their place in the line.
“We have some time in hand.” Temar rattled the coins in his hand absently.
“Don’t do that,” Allin reproved him. “Hasn’t anyone told you what an Empire Crown buys?” She moved two rickety chairs to a small table with a dull, much wiped surface.
“No.” Temar looked at the thick white-gold coin. “Camarl only gave me a purse today. I remembered what that handbill says, so I asked.”
“Did he ask why you wanted it?” Allin looked like a child caught in mischief.
Temar grinned. “I said it was because Tor Kanselin’s surgeon said I probably only took that knife yesterday by way of payback for having nothing to steal.”
Allin frowned. “Don’t you use coin in Kellarin?”
“Odd copper and silver, but the mercenaries brought most of the coin, so it comes from all manner of places.” Temar set down the glasses and wondered how he was supposed to get the cork out of the bottle. “They only seem to use coin for gambling anyway. We mostly deal between ourselves by swapping work on a man’s barn for a share in his corn, half a sheep for a side of beef and suchlike.”
Allin took a small knife from her purse and chipped at the wax sealing the wine. “Camarl doubtless thinks an Old Empire Crown is a trivial enough sum, but round here three of those would feed a family for a week and leave table scraps to fatten the pig.” She worked the cork out of the bottle with the point of her knife. “Get Ryshad or someone to change those Crowns for some common coin if you don’t want everyone eyeing your purse.”
“How does common coin differ?” Temar took the bottle from Allin and poured them each a measure of wine.
“I’m not surprised they don’t want you going out on your own.” Allin narrowed her eyes. “Old Empire coin is noble coin, purer metal than anything minted these days, less of it to be had. Common coin is what we commoners use, what the various cities and powers mint for themselves.”
Temar fell silent for a moment. There was still so much he didn’t know, wasn’t there? “Why would Camarl give me Old Empire money?”
“I don’t suppose he thought you’d be spending it in places like this.” Allin was unconcerned. “And you’re a noble, aren’t you? If you can get it, it’s the best coin to carry.”
“Four copper pennies still make a bronze?” Temar looked for some reassurance. “Ten bronze pennies to a silver and four of those make a silver Mark?”
Allin shook her head. “No one’s used bronze pennies since the Chaos. Ten copper to a silver penny and when six silver Marks make a gold Crown that’s an end to it. Only the Old Empire used gold Marks.” She smiled but this time without humour. “Don’t take Lescari Marks off anyone. If any of the Dukes mint a coffer of coin, they add enough lead to roof a moot hall.”
She paused as a young woman carrying a baby on her hip came out of the far door, her expression half hopeful, half puzzled. The low murmur of conversation stopped and all eyes turned to the girl. The only one not looking was an old man in much mended homespun who hurried in, heavy boots clattering on the floorboards. The girl lifted her chin, hoisted the child more securely inside her shawl and strode out of the room.
“She looks as if she got something for her coin,” commented Temar in low tones.
“I don’t think she’s quite sure what she’s gained though.” Allin drank her wine. Silence hung heavy between them for quite some moments.
Temar rolled a sip round his mouth thoughtfully. “This is far from—”
A cry from the seer’s room silenced him, a hoarse sob hastily stifled. The old man came stumbling out, one s
haking hand hiding his eyes, the other groping blindly in front of him. Four of those waiting jumped to their feet, a sturdy woman in serviceable maroon offering resolute comfort in fast, unintelligible words. A gaunt man with one empty sleeve to his coat reached his good arm round the old man’s shaking shoulders, while a pretty girl with haunted eyes supported an elderly female in rusty black, whose face had gone as white as her shabby lace cap. At brisk words from the stout woman, the family walked out with fragile dignity.
Everyone avoided everyone else’s eyes as an apprehensive youth walked slowly through the door.
“What are we going to say to this seer, whoever she is?” Allin turned beseeching eyes to Temar.
“Have you some question you already know the answer to?” asked Temar thoughtfully.
“I could ask about someone still alive.” Allin nodded reluctantly. “If she gets that right, I ask about someone I know to be dead?”
Temar looked at her in some concern. “Does this distress you?”
Allin looked down, her hands knotted in her lap. “We’d best find out, now we’ve come all this way.”
New arrivals prompted Allin to move hastily to one of the vacated seats, to claim their place in the queue. Temar grabbed the wine and moved after her. Hemmed in on either side, they exchanged silent glances over their glasses. The second chime of night was sounding by the time the portly man who’d been before them came back out, face dark with stubborn resentment.
Allin stood up, brushing decisively at her skirts. “Let’s see what’s to see.”
Clutching the wine bottle for lack of anywhere to put it, Temar followed the mage girl into a bare room. All they saw was an iron-bound chest set on an unwieldy table in the middle of a rug woven from strips of threadbare cloth, two females sitting on stools beyond it. Tallow candles in sconces lit damp stained walls, smoky flames briefly fluttering to add more soot to the dirty lath ceiling.
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