‘If the inland baronies won’t countenance paying a levy so we can raise a coastal army, what makes you think they will open up their coffers for the sake of buying off these accursed corsairs?’ Lord Saldiray demanded.
‘Warfare is one thing. This is commerce.’ Baron Taine sounded disgusted.
Whatever his quarrel was, Jilseth saw it wasn’t with Lord Saldiray.
‘Fair festival, my lords.’ She smiled at them both.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lord Saldiray was brusque to the point of rudeness.
Baron Taine overstepped that mark by a long stride. ‘Don’t imagine that you are welcome.’
What prompted this hostility? Jilseth wondered for an instant if the parliament had learned the full extent of Minelas’s treachery. But surely that scandal would have been on every baron’s lips, not this Lord Prysen’s proposal, whatever that might be.
‘Then forgive me, my lords.’ She took a step backwards, ready to walk away.
‘Not so fast, madam mage!’ To her utter astonishment, Lord Saldiray seized her wrist.
Jilseth was so taken aback that she couldn’t even translocate herself. All her instincts reached for earth and stone rather than the elemental air. Then the spell came rushing back to her. Let him find his hand as empty as a winter nutshell—
‘What has the Archmage promised Halferan?’
The desperation in Saldiray’s voice gave Jilseth pause. She let the swirl of enchanted air dissipate.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.
‘Besides guiding them to these victories over the corsairs,’ Baron Taine said impatiently. ‘Have you any notion how foolish we looked in there?’ he asked with mounting wrath.
‘My lord, I have no notion what you’re talking about,’ Jilseth assured him with increasing unease.
Lord Saldiray stared at her, uncomprehending. ‘The corsair galleys which the men of Halferan, Tallat and Myrist have captured and burned over this past half season. The Archmage told Halferan’s captain where they would make landfall.’
‘He most definitely did not,’ Jilseth assured him. ‘Nor any other mage.’
It was inconceivable in the current circumstances that any renegade mage, however well-meaning, could possibly escape the Archmage’s vigilance, or Hearth Master Kalion’s.
Baron Taine spun around with a comical flounce of his lightweight cloak. Jilseth could have smiled if she hadn’t felt such dire misgivings.
‘Lord Licanin!’ Baron Taine’s hail turned heads clear across the market place. ‘If you please?’ he added belatedly.
Lord Licanin had turned aside as soon as he left the Merchants’ Exchange, heading for a side street rather than any revelry. Jilseth thought he might keep on walking until Baron Saldiray added his own plea.
‘A word, by your leave?’
Visibly heaving a sigh, Lord Licanin crossed the market place. He nodded to Taine and to Saldiray. ‘My lords. Madam mage.’
His antagonism was cold enough to drive off the evening’s midges.
Jilseth offered her warmest smile. ‘Fair festival, Lord Licanin.’
‘So what have you to say for yourself?’ Lord Licanin wasted no time on courtesy. ‘Come to that, why are you here?’
‘I came in case you might need my testimony that Master Minelas is dead,’ she said carefully. ‘In support of your proposed guardianship of Halferan.’
That was as good a reason as any for her presence, with the added virtue of being true. Even if it was not the whole truth.
As well as looking to find out what Lord Licanin knew of Corrain’s westward voyage, Jilseth had come to listen to the idle conversation around the inns and taverns. She’d been profoundly relieved to hear no whisper of scandal hanging around Halferan, no rumour of any unknown wizard’s malfeasance.
Not that she’d doubted Lady Zurenne’s word, but Jilseth reckoned Corrain was about as trustworthy as a Lescari silver mark and no one had to be a mage to know those were almost entirely made out of lead.
‘Halferan.’ Lord Licanin looked wearily at her. ‘Please, madam mage, what purpose has been served by keeping us in ignorance? Did you think we would object to burning corsair galleys? Is the Archmage entertained to see us congratulated by our peers and made to look utter fools when we know nothing of such things? When we have already told them time and again that Hadrumal offers no aid to the mainland?’
‘Believe me, my lords, I don’t understand what you’re accusing the Archmage of doing.’ Jilseth hoped she could convince them. ‘We know that Halferan men and others have been burning corsair galleys but they’ve had no help from any wizard of Hadrumal.’
‘You expect us to believe that?’ Baron Taine looked at her with outright accusation. ‘When Baron Tallat is openly hinting of more help to come?’
‘If you are not involved, how do you even know that these galleys have been burned?’ Lord Saldiray asked suspiciously.
Jilseth was wishing she’d never spoken. What was it they said in Caladhria about unwise words? When one pig gets through the hedge, there’ll be no stopping the rest.
‘We have been scrying along the Caladhrian coasts.’ She tried for the dignity befitting an envoy of Hadrumal. ‘It behoves us to know what’s afoot on the mainland.’
‘Does it?’ Baron Taine’s chin jutted aggressively. ‘So you can feel safer on your magic-swathed island, knowing that the corsairs have sated their appetites by ravishing innocents and looting their humble homes?’
Jilseth wasn’t about to answer that. She addressed Lord Saldiray. ‘We have seen Halferan’s men riding regular patrols through the salt marshes, along with troops from Tallat and Myrist. Whatever they’ve learned of corsair habits, which has enabled them to lay in waitsnares—’ she spread helpless hands, ‘—they’ve done so without magical aid. Lord Licanin, I expected to be congratulating you on your Halferan captain’s initiative.’
‘Which captain?’ He asked at once. ‘Who is hunting corsairs so effectively? What is his secret?’
‘I don’t know that.’ She could only apologise. ‘But it was Captain Corrain who first rallied Halferan and Tallat to capture a galley.’
He looked at her blankly. ‘The reprobate who escaped the corsairs?’
‘Could he know some secret that makes them vulnerable?’ Lord Saldiray wondered, uncertain.
‘Why have we had no word of this?’ Baron Taine sought a target for his ill-temper. He turned on Licanin. ‘Has Halferan’s widow said nothing in her letters?’
‘Not beyond detailing the affairs of her children and household,’ Lord Licanin retorted. ‘As is entirely right and proper. Does your lady wife converse with your guard captains?’
Baron Taine bridled, outraged. ‘My captains know full well I’d see them birched for such insolence!’
‘My lords.’ Lord Saldiray stepped forward to intervene. ‘There’s no quarrel to be had here. A noblewoman has no business dealing with guardsmen; we’re agreed on that. This man Corrain must be acting on his own initiative. However irregular that might be, any successes must be welcomed.’
‘Even when they have caused so much commotion?’ Lord Licanin plainly wasn’t convinced. ‘Well, the man can answer for himself when I reach Halferan. That’s where I will be going as soon as this parliament is concluded.’
Before Jilseth could find out what “commotion” Licanin was referring to, Baron Taine turned to her.
‘Baron Tallat’s hints of magical aid to come? There is no substance to that?’
‘None,’ Jilseth said crisply. ‘And I would welcome an introduction, my lords, so I might ask him to explain such hints himself, to me or to the Archmage.’
The silence between them was filled with the chinking of glassware and laughter amid the rattle of rune bones and the chink of carelessly wagered coin.
Lord Saldiray grunted. ‘He’s over there.’
Jilseth followed his pointing hand and saw the dark-haired lord who’d been talking to the hook-nosed baron
. ‘Thank you, my lord.’
She hid her own annoyance, with Baron Tallat and with these other noble lords, who evidently had no idea what Corrain might be doing. They didn’t even know that he had taken a galley and left Caladhria, if Licanin was expecting to find him in Halferan.
Baron Taine was hardly placated. ‘It’s high time you asserted your authority,’ he told Lord Licanin.
‘I will do so as soon as I have the parliament’s grant of guardianship.’ Lord Licanin glared at him. ‘If we can be done with this nonsense of Lord Prysen’s and proceed to some other business!’
‘Excuse me, my lords,’ Jilseth broke in, ‘what is Lord Prysen’s proposal?’
Baron Taine was too irate for discretion. ‘It seems these accursed corsairs offered Lord Halferan a bargain fit for Poldrion’s demons. If he would pay them half of his revenues, they would leave his lands untouched. When he refused, as you know full well, madam mage, they murdered him.’
‘That scoundrel steward, Starrid, knew of this offer.’ Licanin’s face twisted with contempt. ‘He told Baron Karpis when he was under his protection, in case Karpis might like to defend his barony in such a craven fashion.’
‘Why Karpis was fool enough to tell Lord Prysen—’ Lord Saldiray shook his head, appalled. ‘Now Lord Prysen proposes a levy from all the baronies, to pay these corsairs to sail away to plague the southern reaches of the Archipelago and leave our sea lanes safe so that merchants may ship their goods from Col to Relshaz unmolested.’
‘The inland lords are not inclined to congratulate us for burning corsair galleys,’ Baron Taine said acidly. ‘Rather we coastal lords are being rebuked for inciting corsair violence against the merchants.’
‘There’s no chance anyone will vote for this proposal.’ Lord Licanin was adamant. ‘We know the corsair demands would grow with each passing year until we were all beggared.’
‘I’m very sorry for your troubles,’ Jilseth said sincerely. So much for any hope of Caladhria returning to its usual peaceful torpor this side of winter solstice.
‘Your sympathies are worth as much as anything else we’ve had from Hadrumal,’ Baron Taine snapped. ‘Precisely nothing.’
Jilseth hoped her face didn’t betray her dismay. Hearth Master Kalion’s apprehensions seemed increasingly justified. It didn’t even need Corrain spreading the poisonous truth of Lord Halferan’s fate for Caladhrian resentment towards Hadrumal to fester.
‘Excuse me, my lords.’ She smiled tightly. ‘I will leave you to your evening’s entertainments.’
But before she went back to Hadrumal, there were two things she could do. She could find out why this Baron Tallat was spreading rumours of the Archmage’s promised aid and she could make him rue the day he’d first opened his mouth.
She walked briskly across the market place to the tavern where the dark-haired lord was dining with a handful of others around a table beneath an awning.
‘My lord Tallat?’ She stood in front of him to demand his attention.
‘Whatever it is you’re selling, beyond the obvious—’ he looked her up and down with some perplexity, his smeared knife poised in the air ‘—I’m not in the market. Nor for the obvious, either.’
One of his companions chuckled. ‘Oh, she looks clean enough and doubtless cheap.’
It took Jilseth a moment to realise what he meant. They thought she was a whore.
The chair which Lord Tallat was sitting on vanished in a flash of amber magelight. As he sprawled on the ground, the table followed suit, along with his companions.
Jilseth heard the startled lords exclaiming on the far side of the market place where they had just arrived, drenched in spilled wine and covered in food. Let them go bleating to Hearth Master Kalion and see if he thought she should have swallowed this insult.
‘I am not selling anything,’ she said, with quiet menace. ‘But I would like to know why you have been peddling lies about the Archmage of Hadrumal.’
‘What?’ Lord Tallat looked up at her, aghast. ‘No, I never would.’
‘You have told your friends that Hadrumal will save your barony from the corsairs.’ Jilseth took a step forward. With him flat on his back, she could loom over him most satisfactorily.
‘I never said Hadrumal,’ he insisted in a strangled whisper. ‘I never said the Archmage.’ His eyes darted frantically from side to side. ‘I know it’s a secret.’
He was telling the truth, Jilseth realised. He was also more afraid of this conversation betraying whatever it was that he thought he knew than he was of her.
She summoned up a veil of silence. Azure magelight flickered as the elemental air escaped her control. Sending those sniggering lords all the way across the market place had taken more effort than she realised. These mainlanders might gaze, wide-eyed and amazed, at the very thought of magic, never mind their astonishment at seeing actual wizardry, but none of them ever appreciated how draining the most dramatic spells could be.
She wrapped the magic tighter. ‘Listen to that silence? No one can hear us now. Tell me what you know,’ she ordered.
Lord Tallat sat up, looking at her like a rabbit in front of a stoat. ‘Captain Corrain of Halferan,’ he said nervously. ‘He told my own Captain Mersed, that’s to say, he didn’t tell Mersed in so many words, and he told Mersed not to tell me, only the man is loyal as he should be, and he told me alone. But we know there is help coming. No one will ever know where it comes from,’ he insisted, agonised.
So in fact, he knew nothing, Jilseth concluded. Except that he had helped spread whatever rumour had started with Corrain, spawning even more outlandish stories as it passed from hand to hand.
She would have been tempted to dismiss it as nonsense. Only Corrain was definitely up to something, taking charge of that galley and somehow persuading those erstwhile slaves to row away towards Solura.
‘Whatever you have heard, you have been misinformed,’ she said tartly. ‘Hadrumal’s position remains the same. Caladhria can expect no aid against the corsairs from the Archmage or any other wizard. We will look to you to correct this misunderstanding among your fellow barons before this parliament is concluded.’
She stooped, reaching forward. He scooted back over the cobbles on heels, hands and backside. That didn’t stop her snagging a brass button from his doublet with a flare of scarlet magic. She closed her fist around it. ‘We will know if you don’t, thanks to this token.’
If he didn’t, she wasn’t at all sure what would she do. But Lord Tallat was nodding frantically, struck dumb without any need for magic.
Jilseth let the silence fall away, to realise that she could probably have heard a rat scampering across the far side of the market square, if not on the other side of the town. Everyone was looking at her, awestruck, from lofty lords to beggar children.
There would be courier doves on the wing from Kevil well before the late-falling summer dusk turned to night. No baron would have come to this gathering without home-reared birds to be let fly to their nests with any vital news. How soon before Hearth Master Kalion learned of Jilseth’s latest folly?
Not before she could go and confess her day’s work to Planir. She had the advantage over these lords and their doves. A mage could travel from place to place faster than even the swiftest hawk.
Never mind Hearth Master Kalion’s rebukes. She must also tell Planir what she’d learned of the pestilential Corrain’s antics. The sooner they caught up with him, the better.
‘Good day to you, my lord of Tallat.’ Jilseth inclined her head and vanished between one breath and the next.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Nadrua Town, Pastamar Province, in the Kingdom of Solura
9th of Slekinar (Soluran calendar)
CORRAIN HAD NO idea what Kusint was saying to the sailing barge’s captain. More and more, the Forest youth had to be reminded to speak in Tormalin. It wasn’t as if he only spoke in Soluran. He slipped as readily into the Forest tongue whenever they encountered one of his own fol
k, and the further they travelled upstream, the more of the Folk they met. Which was doubtless very nice for Kusint but Corrain was getting sick and tired of not knowing what was being said around him.
Kusint’s conversation continued and Corrain itched with frustration. Thankfully that was the only thing causing him irritation. Solurans might live in thatched wooden buildings that looked more like barns than houses but they kept their homes and themselves scrupulously clean. Every cabin’s floor on this sailing barge was freshly strewn with rushes, each footfall stirring fleabane and other unknown herbs mingled with the long leaves.
Corrain longed for the familiar smell of meadowsweet. How much longer before he could go back home? What would he find there? The stench of burning after a season of corsair raids?
It should be Aldabreshin galleys burning, for as long as their masters were fool enough to go looking for water along the Caladhrian coast. If fat old Arigo’s resolve held firm without Corrain to give him some backbone. If Captain Mersed of Tallat had the wits and the troopers to set more such traps and successfully spring them. If he managed to persuade other captains in neighbouring baronies to adopt such tactics.
Or would Corrain return to find more Halferan villages looted and smouldering? To meet with accusing stares, before everyone from Lady Zurenne down looked past him, searching for the help he had promised to bring.
He broke into a pause in the exchanges between Kusint and the sail barge captain. ‘So where are we, and what happens now?’
‘This is Nadrua,’ Kusint said, unnecessarily, to Corrain’s mind. He’d already told him that morning that they’d be stopping at this town to offload the barge’s cargo of grain before loading up with marten pelts, deer horn, pine resin and other such Forest goods destined for the Soluran coast.
‘The Mare’s Tail joins the main flow of the Great River here,’ the Forest youth continued.
‘The Mare’s Tail?’ Corrain interrupted.
Kusint grinned. ‘That’s the name of the waterfall up in the mountains where Solura’s kings yield their claim on the land. The river that bears the same name cuts almost due south and since Resdonar and Pastamar provinces were settled, it’s been the easternmost border of Solura in these reaches. It’s navigable up to—’
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