“Damn you!” he bellowed as the startled girl realized what she had done and tried to clean up. “Get out of here, or I’ll have you flogged and given the guards!”
Crying in terror, she jumped to her feet and fled down the hall.
“And get the chief artificer at once!”
Wilhelm tore off his sodden robes and crawled through the door into the sitting room.
17.
Johannes sat at his desk going over the University’s fall social events with Sigrid. Walther had asked that the girls’ coming out be integrated into it somehow if possible, since he had no residence in the city and insufficient funds to rent a large enough home for such an event. Walther had taught at the University with Johannes years ago when they were younger, and still contributed research to the School of Artificers, so it was not an unreasonable request.
For a mage, the process of seeking a mate was both social and magical. Strictly speaking, the characteristics of one’s flow determined the match, but in practice it was not quite so simple. Most mages were not willing to leave such an important decision to pure chance.
Whether or not it was possible to influence a potential match was a hotly debated point in magely academia. It was mostly accepted that there could not possibly be only one match for each mage in all the world, or mages would marry at far lower rates than they actually did. So that had to mean there must be a range of possible options somehow. The dispute was whether this range was fixed or could be affected by deliberate actions or desires. The problems inherent in studying something so sensitive and private made research in this area all the more difficult. Thus, as with most such gaps in scientific knowledge, rumor and guesswork filled in the rest.
One generally accepted feeling was that, given a potential range of matches, it was incumbent on mages who wanted to find tolerable mates to carefully control the process of finding them, lest they randomly match with the first compatible mage they came across. Conversely, those mages who felt their prospects of marrying well were low (for whatever reasons) sought to throw open the process as widely as possible. Thus, there was a natural tension between mages who wanted to be selective and those who felt they could not be.
Ariel and Astrid would be some of the most eligible female mages to arrive in Köln in quite some time. And that meant they could not simply be thrown to the wolves.
So Johannes and Sigrid were trying to decide how best to handle it. Walther had hoped he would arrive in two weeks, as they were coming by wagon and some of the terrain they needed to cross was a bit rugged. They would need some time to get situated (and Johannes needed some time to get Franz alone with the girls before anyone else got a chance with them) so the soonest that he thought they might be able to present Walther’s daughters to magely society would be about a month from now. Unfortunately, that was proving difficult.
“The most auspicious time would be around St. Martin’s Day,” Sigrid said. “There are a number of events planned.”
“That is too far off, I am afraid.” So long a delay ran the risk that the bored girls would take the process into their own hands.
“Yes, I thought it would be. There is the Equinox Ball. Would that be too soon?”
“When is that, again?”
“The 21st of September.”
Johannes groaned. It was an ideal event, except for being barely two weeks away. But there would not be another suitable occasion for at least a month. A month in which word of Ariel and Astrid’s presence would spread around the city and eager mages would come calling on Walther.
“I suppose that will have to do. Hopefully they will get here in time.” Franz would simply need to work quickly.
Sigrid nodded. “I will let the staff know. It should not be a problem. We will just need to make room in the evening’s schedule and add some verbiage to the announcement.”
“Thank you.”
Their discussion then shifted to matters of spending and staffing, and Sigrid left about half an hour later.
When she was gone, Johannes whistled and called the weasel over to him. The creature jumped into his lap and poked its head under his hand, seeking attention. Johannes idly scratched behind its ears as he thought. The animal’s proximity would help clear his thoughts.
Not all mages took familiars, as there were some tradeoffs in doing so, but Johannes on the whole found it beneficial. The right familiar helped a mage better channel the Flow, in addition to being able to perform simple tasks like delivering messages. The process of acquiring one was not unlike getting married, except that animal flows—unlike human flows—were mostly malleable, so a mage who wanted a familiar could essentially force the animal he wanted to match him.
It was even possible, in extremely rare circumstances, to take a human as a familiar. The problem, of course, was that a human familiar could not be made to match the mage; he or she had to be a match as is. As a result, this sort of thing almost always happened accidentally. It was also not viewed positively; most mages regarded a human familiar as something little better than a slave.
The only drawback of having a familiar was that the relationship went in both directions: though the animal’s intelligence was increased, the mage’s personality was often affected. Johannes had felt himself becoming more short-tempered since acquiring his weasel, but it was a trade he was willing to make.
Johannes finally lifted the weasel off his lap. “Fetch Franz.”
The weasel bounded out of his office and down the stairs. A few minutes later, it returned with his son.
“Father?”
Johannes explained what he had worked out with Sigrid.
“This means you will have only a few days to get to know the girls before the ball. You must be on your best behavior. Get yourself some new robes and a haircut. You will also need formal clothes for the dance. From what Walther has told me, the girls’ talents lean toward elemental magic, which is hardly surprising given their lineage. Between now and then, I want you to do some reading on the latest work on the subject. Be prepared to impress them.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And for God’s sake, bathe before you meet them the first time. They have been living in that town their entire lives and are surely ready for some civilized society.”
♦ ♦
Giancarlo Attendolo sat in the corner of the tavern outside Wilhelm’s castle watching his men in revelry amongst the barmaids. They were drunkenly singing an old Italian mercenary song and butchering it badly, but he did not mind. Those who remained had earned the diversion by staying with him despite the lack of pay; others had deserted him. His band was down to eight, and he had decided to divide the absent ones’ back pay amongst the ones who were left when he returned from his meeting with Wilhelm. This had been an unexpected boon, thus his men were uncommonly jolly.
Giancarlo fully expected that every whore in the tavern would be walking bow-legged by dawn, but that too was to be expected. There were only so many of them to go around, and his men had been denied for too long.
He himself did not indulge in such things. He had a wife at home in Firenze (though they had not seen each other in nearly two years) and was faithful to her. He was a pious man and took the Sixth Commandment seriously. (Though the Fifth was a different matter—business was business.)
The thought of his wife made Giancarlo homesick. He had been gone much too long. This job for Wilhelm had taken far longer than he had planned, but at least the end appeared in sight. Giancarlo had been a condottiere long enough not to give much thought to his employers’ motivations—only their coin—but he had felt for quite some time that Wilhelm’s obsession was not healthy. The man’s brother had been gone for a decade, and for all Giancarlo knew, no longer gave much thought to his past. This Erich struck him as the sort of freesword he knew well: a landless noble moving from job to job, earning his living on the martial training his background had given him.
When they finally caught up with him, Giancarlo would do his be
st to take him unharmed, not just because Wilhelm had requested it but because he understood the life Erich lived. When you made your living by the sword, sooner or later your luck would turn sour. Giancarlo would respect that, because he knew one day his turn would come as well.
Giancarlo had been a bit coy with Wilhelm. He was in fact nearly certain he knew where Erich had ended up, because the whore in Limburg had told him as much. Erich was about to flee the place in hopes of hiding out in another town further to the northeast. Though he had instead spent a month in the town jail awaiting trial, Giancarlo was sure he had gone forward with his plan. The whore had at least seen him heading in that direction.
So it was there his band was heading. They would need to pass through Köln on the way, but the route from there was fairly straight. From what he knew it passed through some difficult areas, but his band was well armed and armored, and could surely handle a few highwaymen or random ogres. They had swift horses, and with luck could reach the town in perhaps a week.
A crescendo of shouting and laughter drew Giancarlo out of his reverie. Across the tavern, two of his men had pulled down the bodices of the whores on their laps to expose their breasts, and were making a show of drinking ale from between their teats. The women were laughing and screaming as well, no thought whatsoever of their modesty.
Giancarlo closed his eyes and thought of his wife.
18.
The trip to Köln had not begun well. The evening they left, just as they reached the next town and found an inn to stay at, the skies opened up with a barrage of thunder and lighting. They ducked into the inn just as the rain began to fall. Walther secured two rooms, one for the girls and one for himself and Erich.
When they rose the next morning, the rain was still coming down, often in torrents. Ariel and Astrid remained in their room reading, while Walther and Erich sat in the ground floor tavern nursing tankards of ale and waiting for the weather to let up.
But the storm did not break, and Erich was reduced to querying others in the inn about the road to Köln. Most had not been that direction recently, some never. But two men he talked to repeated the story he had heard about the ogres. One was a caravan guard and reported they had driven the beasts off with crossbows. The other was a hunter who claimed to have spoken to another merchant in a town further up the road who had lost most of his goods when the ogres attacked his wagons.
The next day was much the same. The girls had grown bored and quarrelsome, and Erich did his best to stay out of their way. He and Walther discussed setting out despite the weather, but the artificer refused.
“I have lost one woman I loved to fever,” he said. “I will not risk any more.” So they remained.
Just before noon on the third day at the inn, the rain finally let up. Erich walked out the town gate to assess things, concluding that the storm had passed.
“But the road is a morass,” he told Walther. “The wagon will have difficulty. We will do well just to reach the next town by nightfall.”
In fact, they did not reach it until well after dark, when the wagon and nearly everything else was splattered with mud. As they stabled the horses that night, Walther paid extra to have everything washed down. But he was feeling tired and irritable, and took his dinner to their room, leaving Erich and the girls in the tavern.
The innkeeper had brought them a plate of boiled beef and vegetables. Ariel and Astrid picked over theirs, while Erich dug in.
“Is this what adventuring is like?” Astrid asked.
“More often than I would prefer,” he replied.
“What do you do when there is no inn to shelter in?”
“Put up an oilskin or find a large tree. Sometimes there is nothing, and one must simply sit there in the rain.”
Astrid shuddered.
“I cannot imagine it.”
Ariel had been avoiding talking to him since the night of the resonance cube explosion, and she showed no interest in joining this conversation either.
“It is not a life for those who have other options, unless you are the sort of person for whom civilized society holds little attraction.”
“And which are you?”
“A bit of both.”
Astrid looked down at her plate, pushed her beef around a bit more, then looked at her sister.
“Ariel told me your story.”
Ariel’s eyes shot up in surprise. She glanced back and forth between the two of them, unable to settle between embarrassment at breaking her promise to Erich or anger at Astrid’s betrayal.
“I expected as much,” he said. “It is no great matter.”
“I’m sorry,” Ariel said. “I couldn’t help it.”
“You told me secrets of Astrid’s. I suppose she has a right to know.”
Ariel looked down again.
“So you wander because you have no other options?” Astrid asked.
“I wander because I prefer no others, not that I have many to chose from. I must earn a living. I have little other ways of doing so besides my sword, and employment such as that is rarely long term.”
“What will you do when Father no longer needs you?”
Ariel looked up at this. But Erich shrugged.
“I do not know.”
None of them said anything more for a few minutes. Erich found himself full and shoved his plate aside, but in doing so, his aim was slightly off, and he hit the lamp on the table, extinguishing the flame.
“Blast.” He righted the thing and moved to get the innkeeper to relight it. But Astrid stopped him.
“We can do it.”
She and Ariel touched index fingers, whispering something under their breath. When they withdrew their hands, a flame sparked into life in the air between them. They pointed at the lamp, and the flame moved toward it, settling on the wick. The lamp was relit.
“A neat trick,” Erich said.
“Father is an artificer,” Astrid said. “Our talents lie with the natural world, healing, the elements. Fire, water, air, and earth. That sort of thing.”
“Can you do more than light candles?”
“It depends. Ariel and I must cast spells together. It is related to why we must marry the same man.”
“She explained that.” Ariel glanced up at him, then back down to the table.
“But for some reason, our magic works best with odd numbers. It is strong against one thing, or three, or five. But with even numbers, it often fails.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Watch.” She put her hands together with Ariel again, and they summoned another flame, this time letting it float in the air. “One flame is easy.” She tapped two fingers against two of Ariel’s and another two appeared. “And three.” She did it again. “And five.”
Five little flames were dancing in the air over the table, floating around and beginning to circle one other. A few of the other townspeople in the tavern looked over at them.
“Even seven is not difficult.” Two more joined the rest. “But if we take one away . . .”
With a flick of her finger, she banished one of the flames. Almost immediately, the others begun flickering and losing strength, finally guttering out like a candle whose wick had sunk too far into the wax.
“That is interesting.”
“Yes. We think it has something to do with the way our flows are joined. Dealing with even numbers of targets seems to separate them. With odd numbers, the flow is smooth.”
Erich thought for a moment.
“And you cannot marry different men because it would separate your flows in the same manner.”
Astrid nodded. “More or less, yes.”
Erich took a swig of ale. “If this is impertinent, feel free to tell me to go to hell. But is this something you are comfortable with?”
Astrid shrugged. “We have no choice.”
Ariel finally spoke up. “If it were the right man, I could be happy with it.” She glanced at her sister. “I do not want to live apart from Astrid. I am
hoping and praying this is meant to be and there is a mage out there whom we can match with happily.”
“But if not,” Astrid said, “there is little we can do. It is share a husband, or abandon our talents.”
♦ ♦
The next morning, the mud had begun to dry, and the going was easier. But the weather warmed up as well, and soon the air was humid and muggy. Erich had to remove his corselet, then his shirt. The girls eyed him discreetly, but he pretended not to notice.
The road had been winding through a long valley along a narrow river, but toward afternoon, they crossed a bridge and began climbing into the hills.
“Is this where the ogres are?” Astrid asked.
“No. Not for at least another twenty miles. These are still settled lands. There is a village over the next hill where we should stop for the night. We will lose some traveling time, but it is that or sleep beside the road.”
“We should take our beds where we find them,” Walther said.
“Aye. Because before long, we will have none.”
The weather held for the next few days, and they made better time. The trees had begun to color with the approaching fall, and Erich allowed himself to begin enjoying the trip. Fall in this region was the most pleasant time of the year—absent the occasional thunderstorm—and it was certainly better than the summer heat or winter snowstorms. He only hoped their business in Köln was done soon enough for him to escape they city before he was trapped by the snows.
The hills grew more rugged, and before long the road was winding through one dale to the next before climbing through a pass between two steep cliffs. Beyond that, they reached the largest town on their route, and the last one before they entered the forest they had been warned of.
That night, Erich again asked around the tavern where they secured their rooms about the ogres at the river. A grizzled town guard confirmed the story.
“There are at least two of them. I’ve heard stories saying there are four of five, but I’m not sure I believe it. They’ve been preying on the road where it crosses the river about ten miles north. The lord here won’t do nothing. Says that crossing is the responsibility of the count over the hill.”
The Wizard's Daughters: Twin Magic: Book 1 Page 9
