The Mages of Bennamore

by Pauline M. Ross

  “What is the point of any of us being there, if we are not allowed to speak?” he said petulantly.

  It was the lawyer who answered. “The point is to ensure that the Holder follows the law properly, I suppose.”

  I had to smile at that. “No, it is a courtesy, no more, so that you know what happened. The Holder is the law. That is why your appeals to the treaty will fail, because it effectively leaves full autonomy with the Holders.”

  “Then perhaps it is time to alert the Drashon to this omission,” Losh said grimly. “The idea of an army upriver has merit, Fen.”

  My heart ran cold. “That is not the answer!”

  They were all talking at once again, and I rapped on the table for silence.

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” I said. “But I can and will advise you. I think there is nothing to be gained from pursuing the question of Gret’s death, or Hestaria’s disappearance. They are in the past now, and today’s events show what harm can come from relentless pursuit of nothing more than sea-mist. Gret’s death is a tragic accident, Hestaria left the Hold freely, and no one can prove otherwise. Anything else is just speculation. Let it go, before the uneasy accord between our two countries curdles to something far worse.”

  “But Fen, you are asking us to accept a lie—” Losh began, but Mal interrupted him by speaking loud enough to drown him out.

  “Fen’s right,” he bellowed, and everyone looked at him, eyes wide. In the silence, his voice dropped to a lower level. “Losh, we weren’t sent here to stir up trouble and cause another war. We’re here as part of the peace settlement, to create goodwill and encourage interaction. There’s nothing more to find out about Hesta. Maybe she was held in that tower, and maybe she wasn’t, but I doubt we’ll ever get to the truth. I’ve tried, Fen’s tried, and the Gods know that Gret tried. She’s gone, that’s all. Don’t let it fester.”

  His voice wobbled a little at the end, and I wondered whether he had a personal motivation for getting things on an even keel again. If he had a lover at the Hold, that might influence him. Then I was ashamed of myself for supposing he was driven by self-interest. That was unworthy of me. Mal was many things I disliked, but he was not a selfish man.

  “But this inquiry—”

  “Let them have their inquiry, and not interfere. The Holder seems a fair man, if a little…” A flick of the eyes towards me. “Strict on protocol. Then, when we’ve all had time to think things through, you can decide what you want to do. Whether you want to stir up another war over this.”

  Losh chewed his lip. “But I do not believe that they really understand how strongly we feel about this, Mal. They have not given due regard to our wishes in these matters. We have been dismissed and treated contemptibly the whole way through. Yet they make no apology, they persist in treating us as hostile. Drawing swords on poor Gret!”

  “I would have done the same. Any guard would. And I think they would say much the same things of us, of our hostility.”

  “I have a suggestion,” I said.

  Losh’s face lit up at once. “Fen, you are a treasure. You always concoct such clever schemes.”

  I wasn’t sure such praise was warranted, but I’d had some training in diplomacy, after all, and surely we wanted to avoid another war at all costs? Bennamore must hope for that as much as the Port Holdings. We’d all got off lightly last year, the next time could be worse for everyone.

  “There’s a gulf in understanding between the two sides at the moment. Those at the Hold are suspicious of all Bennamorians, and you in turn are uneasy with those at the Hold. But I’m not in either camp. I can talk to the Holder privately, and convey your concerns to him directly, without the hostility there is at present.” And without all this posturing and injured pride, too. Just a quiet chat, and a warning that the mages were contemplating raising the army.

  “Hmm.” Losh tapped his fingers on the table. “You think that would work? It would have some effect?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Before we tip two countries into war? I can go tomorrow, if you wish.”

  Losh grunted, then shrugged indifferently. “I suppose it can do no harm.”

  ~~~~~

  No one ate much at evening table, and we separated early. Mal disappeared, and returned long after midnight, his stealthy movements waking me up. It was odd, but however late he came in, I always woke, although I pretended not to. This time he smelled of ale and the pungent smoke of cheap whale oil lamps. Consoling himself in a bar, then.

  He surprised me the next morning by being up and dressed when I woke. He had brew ready for me.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he said without preamble, sitting on the edge of the bed while I sipped the brew gratefully.

  “Do what, go and see Ish? I’d hardly offer if I didn’t want to.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, it’s better if I go alone. Less formal, just old friends, chatting amicably. Nothing threatening.”

  “I wouldn’t threaten him. I’ll just tuck myself in a corner, out of the way.”

  I had to smile at the idea of a man as large as Mal tucking himself anywhere. He’d be an imposing sight, just standing there. “No, better not.”

  “I don’t like you seeing him alone. I don’t trust him, and after he got you in such a state that time…”

  “Ish would never hurt me, and I’ll have my jade necklace to keep me safe from magic. I’ll be fine.”

  He frowned, lips sticking out mulishly. “I suppose. Are you going to talk to him about what happened yesterday?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s not the reason for going, but it might come up.”

  “I spent last night in the Hold barracks. Just drinking with them, chatting, in case there was any talk about Gret. Something we didn’t know.”

  “And was there?”

  He shook his head. “Everything was as we heard. Just an accident. I thought you’d want to know, before you talk to him. Fen – will he even see you? Don’t you need to get an appointment or something?”

  I smiled, shaking my head. “Not if I go early. His first meeting is with his advisors. I can interrupt that – former wife’s privilege.”

  “That’s in the rules, is it? A former wife can just barge in, whenever she likes?”

  “Only at certain times, but yes, that’s it, basically.”

  “Part of the protocol, I suppose.”

  “It is. We may seem like savages here, but there is regularity and system hidden amongst the anarchy.”

  He didn’t smile at my little joke. He fell silent, plucking at the edge of the bed cover with his broad fingers. I had a sudden image of those fingers stroking my breast and then working their way down to other places, and had to focus hard on my brew to clear my head.

  “Fen…” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “The thing is…” My heart always sinks when someone begins a sentence with those words. It always means trouble. “The thing is… I need to talk to you.”

  “Now’s a good time.”

  “No. No, not here. Somewhere away from here. Can I take you out for noon board when you get back from seeing your Holder? A new place, maybe, somewhere quiet, where we can talk.”

  He wasn’t looking me in the eye, and that was worrying. Mal wasn’t a complicated man, and it wasn’t like him to be evasive. Still, a meal was always acceptable.

  “That would be very nice.”

  “Good. I’ll make arrangements. We’ll go whenever you get back.”

  “I’ll be back well before noon.”

  ~~~~~

  It was one of those hot summer days that begin with haze, clear to perfect sunshine by mid-morning and end the day with a thunderstorm, as often as not. I was sticky with sweat before I was out of sight of the house. I’d put on one of the new skirts Mal had bought me, and my best summer blouse, and a fine straw hat on top of my cap. With my waistcoat, I needed no coat. Beneath the bib of m
y blouse the jade pendant was hidden from view, but I was aware of it, filling me with an indefinable sense of well-being.

  The streets were heavy with the smells of rotting fish and overheated workers who didn’t bother to wash much. It was market day, and the small square outside the Hold’s southern gates was a mass of wagons and handcarts, farmers selling their vegetables, cottagers offering eggs, and a clutter of small children and chickens underfoot.

  Along one side the puppeteers had their stalls, and I was immediately distracted and stopped to watch. As a child, I’d been enchanted by the little plays, excitedly spotting my father or one of my brothers or sisters in miniature. Once I even saw myself. As I grew up, I’d realised that the overt intention of telling the news stories of the day disguised any number of hidden messages.

  Today it didn’t take long to see Ish’s puppet appear, accompanied by several I knew only slightly. To my surprise, Commander Kestimar was one of them, and I recognised Ish’s wife, too. In the play, Ish consulted his advisors and made a decision, then his wife and Kestimar came onstage and told him to change it, and he did. The audience all jeered at him. Later the mages appeared, whirling coloured streamers around and accompanied by loud bangs and flashes, and all the other puppets screamed and ran away. It seemed that foreigners were not very popular here. It was unsettling, and I didn’t linger.

  At the Hold gate, my request for admittance caused a stir. It was not usual, it appeared, for the former husband or wife of an Honourable of Dristomar to turn up and claim the right of address. The Hold hadn’t always been so orderly. Ish had told me that his father was plagued by his former wife for many years, and two of his former husbands turned up quite regularly too. Today a grizzled old Captain was eventually found who knew the protocol, and led me, his breath rasping and huffing, through the formal galleries to the Great Tower and the doors to the planning room.

  I’d never been here before, but Ish had told me so much about it, with its great wooden doors carved into the hideous shapes of sea monsters and serpents, mouths filled with teeth still sharp as a broken shell, and eyes bulging. Those doors had given him nightmares as a child.

  Guards stood watchfully outside the closed doors, eyeing me impassively as I approached with my wheezing guide. I recognised one of them.

  “Good morning, Commander Kestimar,” I said coolly.

  Instead of saluting me, as was proper, he slapped his chest with his balled fist and inclined his head the slightest fraction. I guess that passed for a salute in whatever barbarous part of the plains he came from.

  The Captain puffed out my request for the right of address, and Kestimar narrowed his eyes, looking to one of the others for a lead. Being foreign, I daresay he wasn’t familiar with the custom. Fortunately, one of the other Commanders knew the protocol. He saluted me – properly, this time – and reached for the door handle.

  “You may enter, Mistress.”

  Then he waited, glaring at Kestimar, until he reached for the handle on his side, and in smoothly matched motion, they swung the two doors wide to admit me.

  I took a deep breath. For all my bravado, I was quaking inside, my legs turned to water. Meeting Ish was always like this, a horrible mixture of excitement and terror. I adored being with him, but I never knew when I might fall at his feet in a weeping puddle of desperation, or be fired with inexplicable lust. I reminded myself of the jade pendant, feeling its reassuring tingle of magic.

  As the doors opened before me, I lifted my chin and swept into the room.

  At once I was aware of raised voices, several men in the middle of an argument. As I entered, the racket subsided and they all turned to face me, some standing, some sitting, the anger on their faces too fierce to disguise, even for politeness’ sake.

  Even with such an interesting scene before me, the room took my breath away. It was a quarter segment of the tower, and almost filled by a polished wooden table of the same shape, open in the centre like a ring table. Two hundred people could take their seats around it, so Ish had told me. The walls were carved like the door, but with gentler scenes of the Sea Sprites, the Goddess and her maids, their hair afloat around their heads, attended by a thousand different sea creatures and the spirits of the dead. Far above, near the ceiling, was the roiling surface of the ocean, and the ships of fishers and whalers tossed about.

  I tore my eyes away from the images I’d longed to see for so many years, and turned to Ish. His face was grey and drawn. My heart caught in my throat. My poor Ish! I wanted nothing more than to run to him and kiss away all his troubles. I couldn’t bear to see him so distressed.

  I made my bow hastily before I melted into jabbering incoherence.

  “May the Goddess protect you, Very Honourable Dristomar. I beg you in your charity to grant me the right of address, as one who once enjoyed the shelter of this family.”

  Was my voice steady? Not quite, perhaps, but I hoped it would do.

  When I rose from my bow, there was a different Ish before me, his face suffused with pleasure.

  “Fen! Goddess, but it is good to see you! You have no idea!”

  And to my astonishment, he raced around the table and swept me into a fierce embrace, hugging me so tightly I could barely breathe. For a long moment I stood, wrapped in his arms, not knowing what to do or say, wondering whether he expected me to hug him back. I couldn’t do it, though. However much my arms wanted to creep round his back and hold him as tightly as he held me, years of protocol held me captive. Such a display in the middle of a meeting! It was unthinkable. I couldn’t see them, but I imagined his advisors shuffling with embarrassment, eyes averted.

  After an interminable time, he let me go and turned to the others in the room. “Why are you still here? Go! Can you not see that I must talk to Fen?”

  They straggled out, exchanging glances with each other. An odd group, most younger than Ish, not the array of family elders I’d expect. And all men. Surely Tarn should be here, and perhaps one or other of her daughters, who were all proved? But perhaps that was the way of it here.

  The door clicked softly shut, and Ish turned to me again. “I am so happy you have come! Oh, but… this is not more bad news, is it? Nothing else has happened?”

  “No, I just thought we should talk – without the Bennamorians.”

  “This is such a dreadful business. Appalling. Everything is in pieces, and I have no idea what to do for the best. Goddess knows, I have needed your wisdom, your common sense, these last few days and moons. If only things had worked out for us, then none of this would have happened.”

  Even in my pleasure at his company, that struck me as a peculiar thing to say. I could have had a dozen children, and the Bennamorians would still have descended on us last year, would still have defeated us and would still have sent these troublesome mages to stir us up. But I said nothing. He was so distraught, he barely knew what he was saying. He rattled on, not waiting for my wisdom or common sense today.

  “But I had no idea,” he went on. “You must believe me, I had not the slightest idea that anything was amiss. I knew she was here, of course, but I thought she was safely in the Bell Tower, being looked after. Treated well. I insisted on that, she had to be treated with respect. So I was quite easy about it, everything would be for the best in the end, I was sure of it. I had no idea…”

  It dawned on me only slowly that he was talking about Hestaria. He was actually admitting that she had been imprisoned there, that he’d known all about it. I could hardly breathe.

  “So what happened?” I asked tentatively, unwilling to disrupt the flow of confessions but desperate to know. “Where is she now?”

  “That is just what I am telling you, I have no idea! I thought she was safe, but she must have escaped, somehow. Well, she is a mage, I suppose she used magic, although we took away her – what do you call it? Her magic device?”

  “Vessel.”

  “Yes, her vessel. We took that away from her, of course. But she must have found some other
way, because one day she was gone. And I have no idea where. Truly, Fen, I do not know.”

  I believed him. The sincerity in his eyes was obvious. I recalled the disorder in the tower room, the signs of a struggle, and wondered whether Hestaria had indeed escaped, or had simply been taken somewhere else. Or disposed of. It would be so easy. The escape tunnel to the harbour, onto a boat and away, her body washing up unrecognisably on some distant shore moons or years from now. I shivered.

  But there was another, more important question, I had to ask.

  “But why, Ish? Why did you hold her in the first place?”

  He looked at me as if I’d asked why we lit fires in winter.

  “For her magic, of course. We needed her magic.”

  “But why keep her prisoner? The mages will do what you want.”

  We were still standing barely a pace apart, too wound up to sit. Ish reached out abruptly to take my hands, the distress on his face fading. “So many questions, Fen! Let me just look at you for a moment, savour your beauty.”

  My beauty? When had he ever thought me beautiful? He’d told me once he loved me despite my looks, which was honest to a fault. But not painful. I’d come to terms with my own indifferent features long before. So while I enjoyed the feel of his soft hands on my rougher ones, I wondered quite what was going on in his head, to make him so sentimental at this late stage.

  “Ah, Fen! If only…” He lifted his hands to gently cup my face, and even though I knew what he was going to do, and the logical part of mind resisted, my body was powerless in his hands. He kissed me, the long, slow kiss of a lover, and I gave myself to that kiss without hesitation.

  I don’t know how long we were entwined. He was the first to pull away, and I realised I had my arms around him, one hand casually resting on his buttocks as if I owned him, as if we were just off to bed together. I was breathing heavily, my heart pounding in my chest, my thighs aching for him. He laughed softly, and kissed my forehead, a kiss as delicate as butterfly’s wings.