Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  ‘That seems a little simplistic’ Velindre sniffed. ‘Like your rationalisation of slavery.’

  Risala looked at her. ‘Perhaps we had better buy you some books of philosophy as well as some history.’

  ‘Why not?’ Velindre agreed. ‘I shall need something to focus my mind on or I will go mad, thanks to your cursed poisons!’

  The white-bearded scholar looked up again, scowling.

  ‘Keep quiet.’ Risala drew the magewoman further back. We’ve a long voyage ahead of us and you don’t want to draw attention to yourself.’

  ‘How long?’ Velindre demanded with low urgency.

  ‘It’s thirty days or so till the rains should break. After that, perhaps another ten days, if the storms don’t delay us too badly.’ Risala looked away to the south, face tightening with apprehension. ‘I only hope we’re not too late.’

  Velindre could not have spoken even if she’d had anything to say, the choking sensation in her throat was so vile. She pressed her hands to her face, shaking, fighting to control her horror at the prospect of such a long voyage deprived of her magic.

  Chapter Eighteen

  You could find something to read.’ Kheda looked up from the much-amended star chart he was annotating further. He studied Dev across the books and charts piled on the table in the middle of the observatory. The mage was staring into the lamp in the centre of the table without blinking, without moving, even when the wind rattled the windows with slews of rain. Kheda paused to listen for any sound down in the rooms below.

  If anyone comes up here wondering what we’re doing, we’ll have to say we’re just about to retire for the night. Or say that something woke me, if it gets much later.

  ‘What?’ The mage dragged his eyes away from the flame.

  ‘Find something to read,’ Kheda repeated. ‘To take your mind off . . . everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ mocked Dev, his gaze sliding back to the lamp. ‘Piss on that. All I want to read is the word that Velle and your would-be concubine are finally in Chazen waters.’ He tore himself away from the flame reluctantly to look accusingly at Kheda. Didn’t the courier doves bring any word from Risala? You got plenty of messages today. What did they all say?’

  ‘There was nothing new, which is at least good news of sorts.’ Kheda moved a book whose open pages detailed potentially significant conjunctions of the lesser constellations. Slips of paper fine as onion skin curled beneath his fingers. ‘There’s been no sign of any wild men since the first of the rains.’

  ‘So are they finally all dead or just hiding from the wet?’ asked Dev sarcastically. ‘Has the dragon eaten them all? Has it shown itself anywhere? Or has it flown off before its fires are damped by some storm?’ The mage reached for a ceramic cup and drank deeply. ‘Or maybe one of your swordsmen finally skewered the bastard wizard summoning it.’

  No one’s seen it.’ Kheda rubbed one of the slippery messages between finger and thumb. ‘But Shipmaster Mezai sent word that the last two caches of gems he left have been plundered.’

  ‘By savages or the dragon?’ Dev didn’t sound that interested, staring at the golden flame imprisoned in the glass of the lamp again.

  ‘Hard to say.’ Kheda flicked the scrap of paper away. ‘Does it matter as long as the gems are keeping the beast sated?’

  ‘How long before Mezai has to come back for more gems?’ Dev demanded. ‘Have you got any to give him? Have you got something to throw at it here, when it comes to smash these towers into rubble?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kheda retorted. ‘And there’s no reason to expect it will come here. We wouldn’t have returned if I thought there was a chance of that. We waited till we’d passed a full ten days without seeing it, didn’t we?’

  ‘I suppose it could be something to do with the rains breaking, with the antipathy between fire and water.’ Dev thrust himself away from the table, sending insecure books and papers sliding perilously close to the edge ‘But it’s just waiting for another sniff of my magic, sure as curses.’ He stared out into the dark, clouded night, aims folded tight, shoulders hunched. ‘Unless it’s got Velle’s scent and sent her and the Green Turtle to the bottom of the sea.’

  ‘Don’t even say such things,’ said Kheda sharply. ‘And we’d have heard if anything like that had happened to the ship. Besides, you said yourself it might be that the beast only pursued you because of your affinity with fire.’ He stumbled reluctantly over the words. ‘It may well be that your magewoman is safe, if her ties are to the air.’

  ‘So how long before Velle brings me some magic to make the bastard creature sorry it ever flew into these waters?’ Dev murmured viciously, leaning on the windowsill, staring out into the night.

  ‘Soon, I hope,’ Kheda said curtly. He found his hand straying to his thigh beneath the table, to the pocket in his black trousers.

  It’s your imagination. You cannot feel such an insubstantial piece of paper. What are you going to do with it? Burn it? Keep it for a talisman, some token of hope to cling to, until its promise is fulfilled? Risala wrote that she should arrive today. Today is nearly past. What could have held her up, besides the weather? What if she doesn’t arrive today or tomorrow or the next day? How many days before Dev refuses to drink the decoction to stifle his magic? How long before someone discovers him drunk and raises an uproar? What do I do then, when the least punishment he should expect is a flogging and the loss of his sword hand, so no one is ever tempted to trust him with their life again?

  Kheda watched without comment as Dev refilled his cup from a small blue glass bottle. Dev drank greedily, desperately, spilling a few colourless drops on to the plain brown tunic he wore, little different from Kheda’s own.

  The barbarian looked at him belligerently. Do you want to try some?

  Kheda shoved aside the chart he had been altering and reached for a wide brass star circle instead. A few turns of the star net over the base plate of the heavens told him what he already knew: the positions of the heavenly jewels and constellations in the compass changed nothing.

  Both moons are together in the arc of foes. Opal and Pearl are both talisman against dragons. Why? Is Dev right to suspect that the beasts prefer the four stones he tells me that barbarians associate with the perversions of magic? Does that mean I should be wary of any conjunction involving Ruby or Sapphire or Emerald? But there’s no amber in the sky and he says that’s one of their elemental jewels. How could barbarian beliefs affect our reading of the heavens anyway?

  We still haven’t seen the dragon, so that’s some reassurance that I was right to see protection in these two days in the entire year that the moons meet in this reach of the sky. None of the men would have followed me back here if I hadn’t been able to point to that. And the Sailfish is there in the same arc, and that’s a good omen when it rides with either moon. And the shoals of squid have come with the rains, to spawn in the moonlight and feed islanders, beasts and birds alike. That’s surely a good omen that the natural order is unshaken by the dragon’s magic.

  But where is any portent to encourage me to believe that we can defeat this creature? Both moons are waning. If we could see beyond the clouds, the Greater would be little more than a shaving of gold and the Lesser has passed its full. Will our success or failure depend on Velindre arriving before the conjunction of these talismans loses its potency?

  Kheda stared at the star circle and did his best to ignore the repeated clink of the bottle against the rim of Dev’s cup.

  What of the rest of the heavenly compass? The Ruby is at the quarter turn from both moons in the arc of travel, talisman against fire set among the stars of the Winged Snake. Does this mean that the beast has already left us? Are we finally free of its unnatural fires? No one’s seen it for days on end now. Well, we’ll find out when Velindre arrives. We’ll let Dev recover his magic and see if the beast comes down on us again. As long as she’s some hope of killing it when it does.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the jewels dotted aro
und the star circle’s net.

  The Amethyst lies directly across from the Ruby, where the Mirror Bird spreads its wings protectively over those as close as kin. Can I believe that the Mirror Bird’s fabled ability to turn aside magic will protect Risala? And Itrac? The Mirror Bird promises clear sight of the future, but the Amethyst warns against arrogance. And it’s a jewel to promote true visions through dreams. Should I have agreed when Itrac offered to sleep beneath the tower of silence, to see if the wisdom of the past might show her some insight into the future?

  Kheda’s head jerked up and he stared out into the black night, towards the unseen tower where the most worthy dead of Chazen were laid so that their substance might be carried across the whole domain, rather than confined to the isle where they were buried.

  ‘How long are you going to be shuffling paper?’ Dev scowled at him from the other side of the observatory. ‘Aren’t you tired?’

  ‘Are you?’ Kheda traced the pierced brass of the star net with a thoughtful finger.

  ‘I might be,’ grunted Dev, ‘if I drink enough of this.’ He reached for the blue bottle again.

  Do you think I’m staying wakeful out of sympathy, because you’re tormented by your surrender to the potion that dulls your magic? Or because I find I still don’t wholly trust you, even if you’re a wizard in name only at the moment. I wish I knew which it was.

  ‘I’ll bet Itrac’s lying awake down below warming her quilts for you. Don’t you think you’d find more fun between her thighs?’ Dev sneered unpleasantly. ‘Or if you want to keep staring up at the stars, I’m sure she could get on her knees—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Kheda turned his attention resolutely back to the star circle. ‘The liquor’s making a fool of you again:

  Dev slumped back on his stool. He leaned forward and rested his chin on his folded forearms, staring silently at the lamp once more.

  Kheda rubbed at the crease between his brows as he studied the patterns in the pierced and engraved brass.

  If this was going to be a truly significant conjunction, the Diamond would make the fourth point of a square. It doesn’t. If it were just one step back around the compass, the warlord’s gem, in the arc of duty, would be showing me that the may forward is to attack. But that conjunction’s impossible. None of the other jewels could be in their present arcs with the Diamond in that reach of the sky. It’s caught in the meshes of the Net, in the arc of marriage. And I am husband in flesh as well as in name to Itrac now. We are bound together. Does the Net, symbol of unity, join with the Diamond’s aspect as talisman of fidelity to tell me our union is essential to support the domain? What does that mean for me and Risala, when I desire her like no other woman I’ve ever known?

  He surveyed the piles of books, some still crisp-paged, their leather stiff, embossed gilt gleaming in the lamplight. Many were much older, reduced to limp decrepitude. Some were so worn that even daylight couldn’t reveal whether they’d originally been bound in black or blue. Kheda sighed and reached for one whose pages were edged with grime, the leather flap that should fold over to secure the precious wisdom with engraved brass clasps entirely missing.

  ‘Let’s see if Chazen Sari’s great-great-grandsire saw anything in the earthly compass at this same moment in the heavens’ dance. Then we’ll go to bed.’

  ‘What?’ Dev looked up as a rattle of wind-tossed drops against the window panes covered Kheda’s last words. The mage managed a wry half-intoxicated smile. ‘At least your rains came in good time. Isn’t that a positive omen?’

  ‘It is,’ Kheda agreed slowly. ‘And there were none of the usual quarrels towards the end of the dry season.

  ‘You don’t think folk had more on their minds than bickering over vegetable plots or wood-cutting shares?’ Dev’s mood hovered precariously between amusement and contempt.

  The shocking slam of a heavy door in the silence of the sleeping halls below cut off his next words. Footsteps and voices sounded on the stairs.

  ‘That’s Tasu,’ Dev said, gathering up his cup and bottle to hide them below the table.

  ‘It’s Risala.’ Kheda stood up, kicking his stool away. His hand went to his thigh, to the message slip hidden in his pocket.

  Dev’s eyes narrowed. ‘You were expecting her.’

  Kheda didn’t answer, moving to open the door. ‘It’s all right, Tasu.’ He smiled at the sleep-fuddled servant clad only in a hastily clutched wrap. ‘Go back to bed.’

  Risala appeared behind the old man. ‘We didn’t mean to wake you,’ she apologised softly, but we saw the light in the observatory and we have news for our lord that cannot wait.’

  News and books, so I see,’ Tasu said thickly. ‘Let me dress—’

  ‘The books can wait till the morning, Tasu,’ Kheda inten-upted.

  ‘If you’re sure, my lord.’ The old man did his best to cover a yawn with one hand, the other clutching the length of cotton around his wrinkled, sagging belly. ‘I am,’ said Kheda firmly. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Good night, my lord.’ The old man turned reluctantly to ease past Risala and, further down the stairs, someone Kheda did not recognise at first.

  He looked at Dev and, at the wizard’s nod of confirmation, studied the newcomer more closely. She looked much the same age as him and Dev. Her face had lost the smoothness of youth and lines of age and experience traced faintly around her eyes and mouth. They would deepen with laughter or anger, he realised, not yet fixed and immutable as they would be ten or fifteen years hence.

  The magewoman he had glimpsed in Dev’s indistinct spells had certainly changed. Voyaging the length of the Archipelago through the dry season’s fiercest heat had tanned her pale skin to a golden brown and bleached her hair to the whitest blonde. Tall for a barbarian woman, she was easily the height of most Aldabreshin men, and with her angular features, cropped head and masculine garb in dark-grey cotton, her appearance was far from feminine. She still looked exotic but her brown eyes should reassure most people that she had some Archipelagan blood.

  ‘You were right.’ Kheda smiled at Risala. ‘A good few among the household will take her for zamorin without being told. They’ll spread the word among servants who’ve never encountered such an unusual slave.’

  ‘Such slaves that are coveted by many warlords.’ The woman startled him by speaking in slow, careful Aldabreshin as she set down the armful of books she carried. ‘What do you intend to do if you get an impressive offer for me?’

  Kheda found himself retreating back behind his table as the magewoman studied him with equally frank appraisal. ‘I will decline, with thanks,’ he said with calm precision.

  ‘You’re looking very well.’ Dev strolled slowly around behind Velindre. ‘And very fine, in those trousers,’ he added, running his tongue along his upper lip as he brushed a hand across her rump.

  She rebuffed him with a blow from the leather bag she had slung over one shoulder and set a hand on the dagger hilt at her belt. ‘Lay another finger on me, Dev, and I’ll cut it off’ She sounded more bored than angry as she switched to their barbarian tongue.

  Kheda noted that the barbarian woman’s voice was naturally pitched quite low.

  Further strengthening the illusion of this disguise. Is that an omen in our favour, that she can play this part so convincingly?

  Dev stepped back, hands raised in mock apology. ‘You can’t blame a man for being tempted.’

  ‘He says she’s looking well.’ Risala translated tactfully as she crossed the room to stand close to Kheda. She deposited her burden of books and let her own bag fall to the floor.

  ‘I know.’ Kheda saw that she had found time on her travels to have the infant shark’s teeth mounted in silver and made into a necklace. She was wearing the ivory dragon’s tail as well and he felt his heart miss a beat. ‘Dev’s been teaching me their barbarian tongue while we’ve been waiting. Though she looks tired to me, and so do you.’

  Risala’s dark skin didn’t show the same weariness bruising Velindre’s
eyes but her face looked as washed out as her old blue tunic and trousers.

  ‘You should see the Green Turtle’s oarsmen.’ She tried to make a joke of it. ‘We wanted to get back as soon as possible.’

  ‘Your Aldabreshin’s coming along, Velle.’ The bald mage closed the door and leaned against it.

  ‘And I’ve been learning a good deal about Archipelagan customs and beliefs.’ She leaned towards Dev and sniffed. ‘Including the many good reasons why they despise indul—

  gence in alcohol. I didn’t expect to find you three parts drunk’

  ‘You just be grateful I haven’t soused myself insensible,’ the bald mage retorted. ‘All the while you’ve been dallying your way down here, I’ve had to take their poison to dull my magic’ He flung an accusing hand at Kheda.

  ‘As have I,’ snapped Velindre. ‘But I found more constructive uses for my time—’

  ‘We can use this barbarian tongue among ourselves,’ Kheda inten-upted, but elsewhere you should speak Aldabreshin as best you can. Your accent is unusual but so is your presence here, as a northern-born zamorin.”

  ‘I told the shipmaster she was a little hard of hearing,’ Risala broke in, ‘to explain her hesitancy in speaking and to cover some misunderstandings.’

  Kheda nodded. ‘Dev can tell Jevin the same.’

  ‘What’s one more slight after so many?’ commented Velindre acerbically.

  ‘You’re the one who wanted to come here,’ Dev taunted her.