Dangerous Waters

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Corrain glanced at the scrawny Mandarkin. Seeing the man’s eyes were already glazed with effort, he decided against asking if the mage had any spell to cover their tracks. Better to find that hollow stump and prove his good faith. What might happen after that? Corrain couldn’t begin to guess.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Halferan, Caladhria

  10th of Aft-Summer

  RASELLE FINALLY RETURNED as Zurenne was beginning to worry that some misfortune had befallen her. Or Ilysh. Or that the kitchen had been so thoroughly emptied by all those needing food and drink that the maidservant had gone foraging in the guard hall or the steward’s house in hopes of overlooked stores.

  ‘There’s fruit rolls, my lady, that Doratine put by for you,’ Raselle said breathlessly, ‘and cheese and cold bacon.’ She clutched a makeshift bag knotted from kitchen muslin. ‘And small beer.’ Anxious, she offered a leather flagon with a matching cup for a top tied to the handle by plaited thong, such as a horseman might take on the road. ‘Let me set breakfast for you here and I’ll go aloft—’

  ‘I’ll go.’ As Esnina whined and buried her face in her mother’s lap, Zurenne resolutely removed the child’s clinging hands from her waist. ‘You must be good and brave, Neeny.’

  She clenched her jaw against the tremor in her words as she raised the little girl’s chin with a firm finger, to look deep in her eyes. ‘I must help the lady wizard who’s keeping us safe.’ She had to put her trust in Jilseth. The only alternative was utter despair.

  ‘While I do that, you must help Raselle to pack up our clothes and—’ Words failed her.

  What should they take or choose to abandon? What of her costly festival gowns? The heirloom Halferan silver and the rich hangings on these walls? The elegant furnishings of her withdrawing room and their bedchambers? Their precious clavichord brought here with so much care at such expense?

  What of the barony’s records and ledgers down in the muniment room? The archives of grants and strictures, the annals of tenants rewarded and punished? What of the statues in the manor’s shrine, worthless in terms of coin but priceless for being so revered?

  ‘Gather up our plainest, most hardwearing gowns and boots for travelling,’ Zurenne resolutely ordered Raselle. ‘My jewellery, my writing box and—’ she looked distractedly around the room ‘—whatever you can find of most value to fill a single pair of saddlebags each. We’ll decide what else to take when we know how we’re to travel. Neeny, do as you are told!’

  Zurenne forced herself up from the window seat, holding Esnina at arm’s length. Raselle set the muslin bundle on the table and came to stop the child seizing hold of her mother once more. Esnina began to grizzle.

  ‘Eat some bread.’ Zurenne delved into the depths of the cloth and pulled out a hastily shaped plum roll. She left it on the table without looking at Esnina. If she did, she knew her courage would fail her.

  Fumbling with her keys, she slipped the knotted muslin over one wrist. She held the leather flagon between her elbow and breast as she unlocked the door. Thankfully the square of pale blue sky up above offered sufficient illumination now that the magelight had gone.

  Her haste nearly betrayed her as she climbed. Head-high up the ladder, she trod on the hem of her gown. Her foot slipped from the rung and if her toe hadn’t caught the next by pure chance, she would have fallen all the way down to the unforgiving floor. As it was, small ale soaked the side of her gown, forced up out of the flagon as it was crushed between her body and the ladder.

  Zurenne closed her eyes until her heart’s pounding slowed and the stinging pain in her shin subsided. Since hitching up her skirts was impossible at this point, she climbed slowly and more carefully. Kicking her slippers forward made sure of no more missteps.

  As her head emerged from the trapdoor, she saw no one by the southern parapet. Foolish as it was, Zurenne couldn’t curb her alarm. However the rest might flee, a wizard could step a thousand leagues in an eye blink. She’d seen that for herself, when Planir had vanished from the dais. ‘Jilseth?’

  ‘Over here.’ The magewoman stood in the opposite corner, looking down from the roof.

  Zurenne paused to put down the muslin, freeing her hand from its loop and setting the flagon of ale carefully on the roof leading. Her gown smelled like a taproom floor but there was no hope for that. Once she was safely clear of the ladder, she found some plum bread for herself. For some reason, that near-mishap had provoked her own empty stomach to famished grumbles.

  ‘Here.’ She handed another sweetly fruited roll to Jilseth.

  ‘Thank you.’ The magewoman ate without looking at what she held, concentrating on the gatehouse.

  All around the manor’s walls, Zurenne could hear the corsairs howling, bestial and threatening. Their ranks were now thick enough for her to see the rearmost over the walls. They were wrestling with each other for a chance to get closer to victory and richer spoils than any village could offer.

  Attackers clustered especially thickly around the gatehouse. Even several layers of iron-bound planking must be more vulnerable than a full armspan of mortared brick. How long before the raiders began battering down the gates?

  Zurenne discovered the folly of a sharp intake of breath along with a mouthful of bread. She coughed until her eyes watered as she sought to clear her windpipe of crumbs.

  Because the metal studding the inside of the gates was glowing more brightly than the rising sun. If the bracing on the far side was as hot, no wonder the raiders dared not approach. Wizardry. Zurenne could smell the smoke from the corsairs’ fire-raising but the weather-aged oak of the gates was untouched by the scorching iron. ‘I can’t sustain this for much longer,’ Jilseth said dispassionately through her mouthful.

  ‘How will we get out?’ Zurenne managed to reply calmly, more or less.

  ‘That’s a very good question,’ Jilseth said with a cryptic smile.

  Before Zurenne could ask what she meant, a surge of corsair yelling shook them both.

  Zurenne swallowed with difficulty. ‘Ladders.’

  Crude affairs, lashed together from green wood and stolen rope, appeared at several points along the enclosing wall’s tiled coping. More followed, taller, stronger, seized from barns by raiders taking the long view of their pillaging rather than revelling in wanton destruction.

  The first corsairs appeared. A man reached for the ridged tile, preparing to swing his leg over, to sit astride the wall. He had a rope looped over one shoulder, ready to fix its grapnel and slide down inside the manor. More heads appeared, surely the vanguard of a swarm.

  Down in the courtyard, Captain Arigo appeared with a motley assemblage of bowmen. He bellowed a command, his clenched fist slamming downwards. The flurry of arrows which resulted did little to deter the corsairs. A few disappeared, perhaps struck by a lucky shot or more likely betrayed by their own flinching. Most of the shafts went wildly astray, loosed by such panicked and inexpert hands.

  Zurenne looked back to that first raider. She saw the tile crumble under his hands. He grabbed at another. It broke into shards that slashed his palms to the bone. His ladder shuddered. The top of the wall was rippling. Men began falling away all along the curve; their yells a sharp counterpoint to the unceasing menacing din.

  What use was this magic? If the walls crumbled, they were lost! Before Zurenne could utter any such panicked reproach, she saw that she was underestimating Jilseth’s abilities.

  Once a ladder fell, the wall stilled. The tiles were remaking themselves with newly formed spikes to mock the corsairs beneath. Was that a note of uncertainty tainting their hateful roar?

  ‘What else is there to eat?’ Jilseth was walking towards the trap door with renewed energy in her stride.

  ‘Meat and cheese.’ As the lady wizard searched the muslin, Zurenne poured a cupful of the ale. She drank it down, grateful for the moisture if not for the taste.

  ‘You must see to your children.’ Jilseth ate quickly. ‘Summon your carriage. Have Lo
rd Licanin marshal everyone into a column no more than half the width of the road.’ She reached for the ale flagon.

  Zurenne ate the food left in the bundle, desperately protesting nevertheless. ‘We’ll be cut to pieces if we open the gates. We won’t even get clear of the courtyard!’

  ‘We won’t risk it without Planir’s assurance.’ Abandoning the empty ale flagon, Jilseth began climbing down the ladder before Zurenne could ask what she meant by that.

  Was this the courage of intoxication? Hardly. Small beer was brewed to refresh, not to intoxicate.

  Zurenne took a moment to hitch up her skirts before following the lady wizard. Before she could catch up with Jilseth in the hallway below, Raselle appeared in the bedchamber doorway. The unmistakable sound of Esnina in a temper won out over everything else.

  ‘Neeny!’ Zurenne’s irate shout startled the child to silence. Raselle stood stock still, wide-eyed.

  ‘Go and find Ilysh,’ Zurenne ordered her. ‘Tell her I command her presence here at once. Tell her she will prove herself a grown lady of Halferan by doing her duty as her father would wish. Then make your way to the stables and see that our carriage is made ready for travel. Tell Master Rauffe to send up our small travelling chests, the ones that go inside the carriage. He is to pack the barony’s most vital documents on the roof and rear stowage.’

  What else had Jilseth told her to do? Zurenne couldn’t remember and the lady wizard had already vanished into the withdrawing room. She hid her uncertainty behind swift words.

  ‘Present my compliments to Lord Licanin and ask him to join myself and Lady Jilseth.’ That would surely suffice.

  ‘My lady.’ Raselle bobbed a curtsey before running down the stairs.

  ‘Esnina?’ Zurenne walked swiftly into the bedchamber. She saw at once that Raselle had already made three heaps of dresses and shawls, one for each of them. Esnina was dressed for travel too. ‘Fetch linen for us all, chemises and stockings.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Quickly!’

  Before the little girl could think to argue, Zurenne hurried to the withdrawing room. What was Jilseth going to do to save them?

  For all that she was alone in the room, the lady wizard was talking to a swirling circle of scarlet magic. She held a candle stub in front of a polished metal mirror.

  ‘I believe so.’ Jilseth didn’t sound wholly certain.

  As Zurenne pushed the door wider to enter, a veil of sparkling blue light swept across the threshold. Zurenne stepped back, startled. She realised she could no longer hear what Jilseth was saying. The magewoman was evidently speaking, her lips moving as her eyes darted from the spinning wizardry to Zurenne and back again. Then the door swung shut though Jilseth had made no gesture.

  Zurenne could take a hint. She should also be indignant but in the midst of this crisis, she couldn’t waste time and effort on inessentials.

  Back in the girls’ bedchamber, she was heartened to find Esnina doing as she had been told, as well as she could. ‘Good girl.’

  Zurenne thrust all thoughts of Jilseth and Planir resolutely from her mind. She must concentrate on salvaging what she could if her family must truly abandon Halferan. As soon as Jilseth left the withdrawing room, she could collect her writing box and letters. Meantime she could gather up her jewellery. She hurried to her own bedchamber.

  ‘Mama?’ Ilysh rushed in, her hair escaping from childish plaits and her gown smeared with blood and muck which Zurenne preferred not to contemplate. ‘Raselle says we are to flee?’ Her voice rose in disbelief verging on hysteria. ‘But what about Captain Corrain?’

  ‘Corrain?’ Zurenne realised she hadn’t given a thought to the trooper since Jilseth had first shown them the approaching corsairs. So much for his promises of bringing Soluran magic to their aid. After all that had been done and argued, it was the wizards of Hadrumal who were helping them, even if the Archmage’s hand had been forced by Jilseth being trapped with them.

  ‘We must look to our own resources,’ Zurenne said firmly to her daughter. ‘Captain Corrain isn’t here and we’ve no time to waste.’

  ‘But he promised.’ Ilysh wailed, her cheeks reddening.

  ‘So he did, but for all we know he could be dead.’ Zurenne regretted her words as soon as she saw the desolation on Lysha’s face. She tried to recover. ‘There’s no way to know, Lysha. We can hope not. But we cannot delay. Do you want him to come home and find us dead?’

  Now Ilysh was weeping. Zurenne longed to fold her in her arms but knew she could not succumb. Time taken to comfort her daughter’s distress could see them all lost. ‘The lady wizard—’

  ‘Madam mage?’ Tear-stained, Ilysh ran out of the room, calling for Jilseth.

  Zurenne heard the withdrawing room door open. As she went into the hallway, Jilseth was answering Ilysh. ‘We have a plan and the Archmage’s approval.’

  ‘What is it?’ Licanin was coming up the stairs. ‘Why did you summon me?’ His voice was ragged with anxiety.

  ‘Your men must get everyone ready to leave.’ Jilseth repeated the instructions which Zurenne had forgotten.

  ‘But the corsairs cannot get in as long as we don’t open the gates.’ Licanin sounded as petulant as Esnina.

  ‘I can only ward them off for so long. My magic isn’t limitless.’ Jilseth’s fatigue was apparent to them all.

  Licanin stared at her, truculent. ‘Then what—’

  ‘Why can you not do as she asks?’ Zurenne attacked him with the fury she couldn’t direct at these foes besieging her home and threatening her children, causing her to be so harsh towards her daughters. ‘She’s proved herself time and again this past night and day. Why must you risk all our lives by arguing? This isn’t some debate in your lordships’ parliament or some wretched game of white raven!’

  ‘The Archmage has promised us the shelter of a nexus weaving quintessential invisibility.’ Jilseth’s calmness drew the sting from Licanin’s fury as he rounded on Zurenne. ‘If we wait much longer, I cannot be certain that I’ll have the strength to play my part.’

  After a scowl that promised Zurenne a thorough scolding in due course, Licanin nodded. ‘Very well,’ he growled.

  As if he had any more idea what a nexus might be than she did. If their situation wasn’t so perilous, Zurenne could have laughed at the absurdity.

  No matter. Licanin was already half way down the stairs. They could hear him shouting orders. His tone brooked no dispute or delay and Zurenne was honestly grateful for that. She doubted she could have commanded such immediate action without Jilseth backing her with magic as she had done against Lord Karpis.

  How much magecraft did the lady wizard have in her? ‘You must sit and rest while we make ready.’ She urged Jilseth back into the withdrawing room. ‘Girls, as quick as you like. Neeny, show Lysha what you’re doing.’

  To her relief, Zurenne heard Raselle and two other servants bringing their travelling coffers up the stairs. A glimpse through the window showed her their carriage with the horses being harnessed. She breathed a prayer of gratitude to whatever god had seen those beasts spared when every other mount had surely been pressed into battle.

  Then she saw Master Rauffe gathering up the reins, his wife beside him on the driving seat. Doubtless she had him to thank. She could hardly blame him for hoping to save his neck along with hers. Or perhaps he was ready to risk himself saving her and her children? He wasn’t Starrid, after all.

  ‘My lady?’ Raselle’s hesitant appeal recalled Zurenne to her immediate tasks.

  They were ready to depart sooner than she thought possible. Sending Raselle on ahead with the two girls, she ordered the lackeys to take the travelling chests down to the carriage.

  Coming downstairs, Zurenne paused on the dais for one last look around the great hall. The vast building stood silent and emptied but for soiled linens, and whatever paltry treasures had been abandoned amid the crumpled blankets and scattered benches. She looked up at the hanging flags, the tangible history of Halferan, so far beyond reach, n
ow far beyond saving.

  ‘My lady?’ Jora hovered by the outer door. ‘May I go with my mother? It’ll leave you more room in the carriage—’

  ‘As you wish.’ Zurenne was no longer interested in the woman’s failings or excuses. Besides, she should be with her family in such desperate times. ‘Are the sickest and most needy taken care of?’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ Jora said with fervent relief.

  ‘Very well.’ Zurenne dismissed her and turned to enter the shrine through the door from the dais.

  The pregnant women had already gone to whatever wagon had been found to carry them. Lamps improvised from saucers of oil with floating linen wicks flickered in front of every god and goddess. The statues looked down, their painted plaster faces unmoved.

  Zurenne looked over at her husband’s ashes, at his father’s and mother’s, their forebears behind them silently ranked in their funeral urns. Even the unceasing roar of the corsairs’ attack seemed muted in here.

  ‘I must see to the living.’

  She didn’t know whether she spoke to her dead husband or to any deity who might be sparing this little shrine some attention amidst the death and destruction sweeping along the coast.

  ‘My lady Zurenne!’

  That was Lord Licanin’s shout outside in the courtyard, summoning her with as much restraint as he could manage in the face of so many onlookers.

  With a pain that was nigh on physical, Zurenne tore herself away from the quiet sanctuary. Opening the shrine’s door to the courtyard, the noise outside struck her with the force of a fist.

  Raselle already had the girls in the carriage, their anxious faces at the window. Zurenne realised with a shock of shame that she hadn’t asked after the maidservant’s family. How distant was their farm? Could the girl hope that her parents had already fled the raiders? Her brothers and sisters? How many did she have? Zurenne couldn’t recall. Would some warning have reached them in time? Would Raselle have had any news from those arriving during the night?