Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

‘That won’t be necessary.’ Jilseth dropped it into the water and faint threads of ink dissolved in an emerald flash.

  She let the magelight brighten until green radiance coloured the whole ceiling with an unearthly hue. Emerald reflections flickered in Zurenne’s eyes, though she maintained a fair pretence of composure. The maidservant was awestruck, her mouth slackly open.

  Which would be more impressive? To draw out this display or to reveal Starrid in an instant? She could do either. Jilseth hid her own relief at finding the scoundrel so readily. That said, someone would need to identify the tavern where the villain was slumped over an outside table.

  She passed a hand over the bowl, subduing the florid magelight. A vision floated on the water’s surface. ‘Do you know where this is?’

  ‘Raselle?’ Zurenne studied the scene within the bowl. ‘Do you know of a tavern called The Four Songs?’

  The tavern’s painted sign depicted Trimon and Talagrin, Halcarion and Larasion. From the bulge in Talagrin’s breeches and the revealing gowns of the opulently-bosomed goddesses, the upper rooms offered more than a bed for the night.

  They saw Starrid spring up from his bench to approach a passing man. The erstwhile steward stretched out a grimy palm only to cower away as the man warned him off with a thorn cudgel.

  ‘He’s begging.’ Zurenne’s voice tightened with desperation. ‘But if he hasn’t got the coin, he must know where it’s hidden. Raselle, fetch Captain Arigo. One of the troopers must know this place.’

  Before the maid could obey, before Jilseth could tell them Planir would deliver Starrid bound and gagged, they heard a commotion in the courtyard below. Hooves stamped, harnesses rattled and voices shouted orders cutting across each other.

  ‘Lord Licanin.’ If Zurenne had been pale before, now she was ashen.

  Ilysh reappeared in the doorway. ‘Mama?’ That single word held as much challenge as appeal. She saw the green radiance in the bowl of water and gasped. ‘Have you—?’

  ‘Go to your room,’ Zurenne snapped. ‘No. Fetch Neeny here.’

  ‘If you want me to help, you have to explain,’ Jilseth said swiftly. ‘What have you done?’

  Zurenne shook her head, her eloquent expression warning Raselle to stand mute.

  Exasperated, Jilseth stifled the scrying magic, reducing the magelight to a pinprick in the depths of the bowl.

  Ilysh barely managed to return with her sister ahead of Lord Licanin and a handful of his servants. Esnina rushed to hide her face in her mother’s skirts. ‘Mama!’

  ‘Hush.’ Zurenne silenced the child’s sobs with a firm hand on her shoulder. ‘My Lord Licanin.’

  ‘Lady Zurenne.’ Licanin threw himself into a chair, the dust of the road coating his boots and cloak. ‘What has been going on here?’ he growled.

  Zurenne’s eyes widened, all innocence. ‘My lord—’

  ‘Don’t waste my time.’ He stabbed a finger towards the side table. ‘You’ve had my letters. I want your answers, madam.’

  Jilseth had thought he looked weary in Ferl. Now he looked exhausted. Lord or not, it had been an arduous journey for a man of his years.

  ‘On whose authority has Captain Corrain made alliances with Halferan’s neighbours? No, not alliances. Underhand pacts with their household troops without any lord’s seal of approval,’ the baron demanded with growing ire. ‘Where is he? They told me at the gatehouse that he hasn’t been here since the start of For-Summer!’

  ‘We do not answer to you.’

  ‘Lysha! Silence!’

  Jilseth couldn’t decide which shocked the gathering more; Ilysh’s defiant words or seeing Zurenne so provoked that she actually raised a hand to her daughter. To no avail.

  ‘I don’t answer to you, mother,’ Ilysh boldly declared. ‘Only to my husband.’

  ‘What?’ Wrath propelled Licanin to his feet.

  ‘Lysha?’ Esnina looked up at her mother, no sign of tears on her red cheeks. As Zurenne stood obstinately silent, the little girl turned her head to gape at her sister. ‘Lysha has a husband?’

  Defiant, Ilysh blushed scarlet. ‘Captain Corrain is now Lord of Halferan by right of marriage.’

  ‘Marriage?’ Licanin’s bellow was loud enough to silence the noise in the courtyard below the window.

  ‘We don’t need you telling us what to do,’ Ilysh shouted back. ‘We won’t need your coin once the lady wizard finds my father’s fortune!’

  The baron ignored her, narrowing his eyes at Raselle. At his gesture, a Licanin swordsman seized her arm. ‘You, girl, what do you know?’

  ‘Leave her alone.’ Zurenne took a step forward, fending off Esnina’s clinging hands.

  ‘Well?’ At Licanin’s nod, the swordsman gave the maidservant a menacing shake.

  ‘My lady Ilysh is truly married.’ Raselle shot Zurenne a look of desperate appeal. ‘In the shrine. I saw it.’

  Licanin crossed the room with swift strides. He caught Ilysh by the chin and stared at her intently. Everyone saw the girl trembling, tears welling in her eyes. The baron released her with more gentleness than Jilseth expected.

  ‘Wedded, I dare say, but not bedded.’ He shook his head, somewhat calmer. ‘You wouldn’t let it go so far, my lady, whatever that man might offer you. I take it she was his price? For a few sunken galleys and some dead corsairs? You sell your daughter and her birthright cheaply, and to such a man.’ His disgust was palpable.

  ‘At least he was my choice,’ Zurenne retorted. ‘Who would you have handed me to, and my daughters, for the sake of Licanin’s trade or to secure some favour among the parliament’s cliques? At least Corrain is defending Halferan. He undertook to catch and kill the raiders instead of abandoning the coast to them!’

  ‘I have abandoned nothing!’ Her attack rekindled Licanin’s anger. ‘I have a grant of guardianship sealed by the barons’ parliament. I will have this masquerade marriage set aside, and since this is how you safeguard your children, I’ll see you set aside as well. They’ll be raised in my own household—’

  ‘You can do nothing until Equinox.’ Zurenne defied him. ‘Even then, don’t wager that you’ll succeed. Ilysh was married with every rite and legality well before any grant of guardianship. My lady Jilseth, you’ll stand as my witness?’

  As she held out a shaking hand, Lord Licanin rounded on Jilseth.

  ‘You were privy to this marriage?’ He was appalled. ‘We have Hadrumal to thank for this outrage?’

  ‘You do not,’ she snapped, ‘and I knew nothing of this till today.’

  She wasn’t convinced this was all that Zurenne was hiding. The noblewoman hadn’t answered Licanin’s question about Corrain’s whereabouts.

  ‘Then why are you here, madam mage?’ Licanin gestured at the bowl on the table. ‘To work more sorcery for the Archmage’s ends?’

  ‘No.’ Jilseth dipped her hands in the water to wash them. Once she’d hidden the brass cylinder of the pen knife with an invisible touch of magic, she calmly rinsed her face. ‘As I’m sure they can tell you at the gatehouse, I’ve not long arrived myself.’ That was stretching the truth but patting her face dry with the towel hid her expression as well as muffling her words. ‘The summer’s heat on the road is punishing, isn’t it?’

  She would keep Zurenne’s search for Starrid a secret, if only to drive the noblewoman deeper into her debt. But she could not let Lord Licanin’s accusation go unchallenged. Any suspicion that Hadrumal had some underhand part in this scandalous marriage would run from barony to barony across Caladhria as quick as a rat chased by a cat.

  ‘I can stand witness to today’s events,’ she said quickly as Licanin rounded on Zurenne, ‘as my lady of Halferan doubtless meant, since I have no ties or obligations to this barony or any other. So I suggest we test these claims of a marriage.’

  Perhaps hearing what had gone on would give her some inkling to Zurenne’s motives. Before that, Jilseth urgently wanted some privacy, a candle stub and a spoon to bespeak Planir. To get those she must bre
ak the deadlock now paralysing the room.

  An urgent voice called down the hallway from the door to the stairs. ‘My lady Zurenne? My lord Licanin?’

  ‘Captain Arigo?’ The baron jerked his head at one of his men. ‘Bring him here.’

  ‘He knows nothing,’ Zurenne said quickly. ‘No one does, but those here in this room. I will see anyone spreading gossip flogged.’ She warned Licanin’s troopers with a ferocious glare.

  Jilseth reckoned she had as much hope of silencing them as of serving soup in a basket.

  ‘My lady. My lord.’ The portly captain Arigo puffed as he entered the room. ‘There’s smoke on the wind.’

  ‘How much? Where from?’ Licanin hurried to the window.

  Everyone looked worried. Jilseth understood their concern. At the height of summer, with the standing crops ripe in the fields, an unchecked blaze could leave ten dead of winter hunger for every victim of the actual flames. Not that Hadrumal’s yeoman had to fear such disasters with mages on hand to stifle any spark.

  ‘Let me help.’ She didn’t wait for an answer from Licanin or Zurenne. ‘Open that casement,’ she ordered the trooper standing closest.

  He was the one holding Raselle in a painfully tight grip. As he released her, the maid fled to stand beside her mistress. The trooper forced the window open with a squeal of hinges.

  ‘The wind’s coming from the sea,’ Arigo was explaining. ‘Something’s well alight towards the marshes.’

  As the casement swung away from the mullion, it didn’t take a wizard to smell the burning on the evening air. A broad swath of the westerly sky was feverish red and soiled with charcoal streaks.

  ‘That’s some blaze,’ Licanin said uneasily.

  Jilseth could taste the smoke. It was making her eyes water. She ignored such petty discomforts, concentrating with her wizardly senses instead. Air and earth might be opposed but fire and earth had no such quarrel. The burning carried on the breeze gave her the grasp she needed on the elusive element.

  Jilseth closed her eyes, the better to follow the threads of the wind back to the marshes. Her magesight skipped along the fragments of ash carried aloft by the heat, each one with an elemental speck at its heart.

  Whatever mages like Canfor or even Nolyen might claim for their own magic, every living thing was ultimately born of the earth, sharing its essence with the dazzle of diamonds and the humbleness of coal. Jilseth knew it was no coincidence that more Stone Masters and Mistresses had become Archmage of Hadrumal than wizards of any other affinity.

  ‘The saltings dry out so at this season.’ Arigo was wringing his hands. ‘Only a spark and they’ll be alight.’

  ‘It’ll burn itself out,’ someone said, complacent, ‘and the tides are springing high these next few days. That’ll douse any embers.’

  ‘Listen!’ Jilseth’s magic filled the room with noise, silencing them all.

  She might have no hope of working clairaudience through water as Planir had but she could bend this ash-tainted breeze to the air-based spell readily enough.

  The din that filled the room wasn’t the commotion of distant peasants fighting to save a cornfield, nor even the lamentation of some villager losing a house to such cursed misfortune.

  Wherever that fire was burning, dying men were spending their last breath on curses. Women wailed and begged before screams tore at their throats as viciously as their ravagers tore at their clothing. The uncomprehending bawling of terrified children was mercilessly cut short by the slick of unseen blades. Harsh laughter echoed through the horror.

  ‘Stand aside!’ Jilseth flung a skein of smoke at the mirror hung over the hearth. The image only lasted a heartbeat but that was sufficient to show a corsair raiding party laying waste to a hamlet. There could be no mistaking the Archipelagan’s haphazard mix of finely wrought chainmail and crude leather armour, the men armed with curved swords.

  ‘That’s not the marshes,’ Arigo quavered.

  ‘Corrain said they come with the highest tides.’ Zurenne murmured as the nightmare vision dissipated. ‘That’s how he knew when to find them in the creeks where they take on water.’

  ‘How far inland are they?’ Lord Licanin seized Jilseth’s shoulder.

  She shook him off. ‘One moment.’ As she took the measure of the spell, the gooseflesh that rose on her neck owed nothing to the breeze through the window. ‘They’re less than three leagues away.’

  ‘Are they coming here?’ Zurenne’s voice rose in panic.

  Lord Licanin jabbed a finger at Captain Arigo. ‘Find me boys to ride the fastest horses in your stables. Not troopers. We’ll need their swords. Lads who know the back roads to Karpis and Tallat. Make haste!’

  Jilseth hurried to the table and scooped the penknife out of the water. Starrid could wait. She needed to scry for those corsairs to see which way they might be headed. But should she bespeak Planir now or later?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Halferan, Caladhria

  10th of Aft-Summer

  ZURENNE HAD THOUGHT the longest, most desperate night of her life had followed that dreadful day when she’d learned that her husband was dead. Huddled in her bedchamber’s window seat, she watched the sky pale in the east while that evil red glowed undimmed in the west. She was too exhausted to decide if this was worse. All she knew was that this was different.

  Before, she’d been trapped alone between disbelief and grief while stunned silence stifled the manor. Now she was assailed by noise and terror on all sides. The first of those fleeing the raiders had appeared while Licanin’s men were hammering on doors around Halferan village to raise the alarm. That had broken up the arguments in the manor’s courtyard as Arigo’s men decided who should be riding inland, or north, or south, to spread word further afield.

  The lady wizard’s scrying had shown them this was no mere raid. A veritable army of corsairs was heading inland, burning and killing as they advanced.

  Spurred to action by these panic-stricken arrivals, the Halferans had gone to recall the Licanin troopers from the village. They urged the demesne men to hurry to the farms where they laboured, to fetch hay carts and hurdles to block the roads, along with scythes, billhooks and pitchforks to make a stand along the hedgerows, to fend off attack through the fields.

  Through the night, fleeing folk from the barony had arrived in successive waves of commotion. The demesne’s defenders herded them towards the manor. Wagons had already been dragged into the courtyard, laden with sacks and barrels salvaged from the tithe barns that flanked the village beyond the brook. With the new arrivals bringing whatever they had snatched up before they ran, the compound was soon crammed to overflowing.

  The men departed as swiftly as they arrived. With bread and beer thrust in their hands, they were immediately drafted to the outlying defences.

  That left their women and children wailing and shrieking below Zurenne’s windows from nightfall to first light. Their lamentations were only drowned out whenever urgent horses arrived or departed with the great gate slamming as they came and went.

  Zurenne’s head ached fit to split in two. Though she’d retired to her bedchamber, she’d abandoned any hope of sleep. She still wore the gown which she’d donned yesterday, when she’d thought her greatest challenge would be facing down Lord Licanin’s displeasure.

  The baron had written daily as he travelled from Ferl with that guardianship decree in his hand. Each letter had been more irate, commanding her to send her reply forthwith by his own messenger. Those bold young men had been forced to ride back empty handed. They could no more compel her to put pen to paper than Licanin’s hectoring could.

  Then Jilseth had arrived, offering that tantalising hope of recovering Halferan’s gold and silver. With coin in the strong room, perhaps Zurenne would have been bold enough to defy Licanin. So much for that.

  She heard a stealthy footfall outside her bedroom door. Raselle? Zurenne realised she was viciously thirsty, the jug of spring water by her bed long since emp
tied. She had no notion how long ago. No matter. Perhaps a tisane and some food would soothe her throbbing head.

  The soft knock didn’t come. Those careful steps retreated. Zurenne slid her feet to the floor. She stared disbelieving at the door before hurrying to pull it open. ‘My lady wizard?’

  Stood in the hallway, the wizard woman looked fit to drop, her eyes sunk in bruises of weariness. She spoke before Zurenne could ask what she wanted. ‘We need message slips and cylinders.’

  ‘For courier doves?’ Zurenne rebuked herself. What else would they be for? ‘Yes, I have some in my writing box.’

  The night’s incessant mumble from the Great Hall grew momentarily louder. Then someone shut the door below on those who’d arrived bruised or with broken bones, trampled in some rush of panic to escape the corsairs. Belated terror had struck down several greybeards and crones with apoplexy on the road while other families had arrived with invalids and ailing children already loaded onto handcarts.

  Zurenne was stricken with guilt. She should go downstairs and make certain that her orders had been heeded. She’d decreed that suckling babes and their mothers couldn’t be left to the chaos in the courtyard. They must have the dais while the rest of the hall was given over to the injured. The clutch of pregnant women was to be bedded down in the shrine. Drianon, Saedrin, Ostrin and every other deity must surely pity those most vulnerable and innocent of all.

  ‘What courier doves do you have in your lofts?’ Lord Licanin appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘What lords will they fly to?’

  ‘No barony has seen fit to send doves here since the turn of For-Summer.’ Zurenne rallied to accuse him. ‘Any dealings they have with Halferan have surely been referred to you.’

  Licanin waved her away, appealing instead to Jilseth. ‘Can you—?’

  She cut him short with a leaden shake of her head. ‘I can only bespeak another wizard.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to the Archmage?’ Once again Zurenne could have slapped herself for a fool. Of course Jilseth would have done that. Then why was the lady wizard looking so apprehensive? ‘Surely he is sending help?’