Irons in the Fire (Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution)

by Juliet E. McKenna

  "Sell them?" Aremil was bemused.

  "We can't all afford to keep bookbinders' and joiners' wives in velvet." She nodded at his crowded bookcases with a teasing smile. "I brought a list of the ones I can do without. I'll leave you my keys and you can send one of Master Gruit's apprentices to fetch them. That'll clear a shelf in my lodging for the titles I need next, so that we can continue our studies when I get back." She put the glass down and searched her cloak for an inner pocket.

  "I'll have them ready," Aremil assured her.

  Branca paused, her hand hidden in the folds of material. "Bought with the coin earned by selling the others."

  "Naturally." Aremil didn't need Artifice to know that Branca loathed being indebted or obligated to anyone. He wondered if that had hindered her studies in aetheric magic. Had some mentor at the university told her to set such things aside?

  He turned to the side table beside him. "I have something for you." He held out a small linen-wrapped package, fighting to stop his hands shaking.

  "What is it?" Branca took it and teased the knotted cord undone. The undyed cloth slid away to reveal a gleaming silver oblong.

  "You'll need a memorandum case as you travel," Aremil ventured. "I asked Charoleia where I might find one like hers."

  "It's lovely." Branca turned it this way and that. She looked at him, more bright-eyed than he'd expected. "Did you choose it yourself?"

  "I did." Aremil had thought the engraving of the goddess Arrimelin weaving dreams in her bower was charming.

  "That'll make it all the easier for you to picture it." Branca busied herself folding up the linen square. "When you're sending your thoughts to find me."

  "Indeed." Aremil knew he'd be able to fix his thoughts on Branca regardless.

  As she tucked the silver case into the pocket in the seam of her skirt, they both heard wheels growling on the street outside.

  "Here's Master Gruit's coach." Aremil tried to sound brisk.

  Branca donned her cloak. She found the list she'd been looking for and set it down on the table, weighting it with a key knotted on a medallion's chain. "Keep these for me. I've told my landlord I'm away attending family matters. Tell whoever you send to collect the books to show him my father's guild insignia." She managed a faint smile. "Then he won't send for the Watch and have the lad arrested for housebreaking."

  "Of course." Aremil nodded. "Now, quickly, hurry."

  Her books could stay where they were. He'd sent Lyrlen to the booksellers' by Misaen's shrine to ask what they would charge for the tomes Branca wanted to sell. Then he'd buy them himself at whatever outrageous price those scoundrels thought they could demand from an unworldly old woman. Master Gruit could take that purse and bargain his hardest for the titles Branca wanted to buy. Aremil would assure him that such knowledge was essential for the success of their whole enterprise.

  The doorbell rang.

  "Where are your crutches?" Branca looked around.

  "I'll say my farewells to you here." Aremil shrank from appearing before the other Artificers in his nightclothes.

  "I'm coming, I'm coming."

  They both looked up as Lyrlen's bedchamber door opened. An impatient hand rattled the door knocker.

  "I'm coming!" the old woman called irritably down the stairs.

  Branca drew a deep breath. "I had better go."

  "Be careful." Aremil felt anxiety twisting his face.

  "I will." She stooped and kissed his sunken cheek.

  Their eyes met and Aremil saw that her uncertainty equalled his own, and not just about this journey.

  Straightening up, she busied herself with her cloak ties. "Take good care of yourself."

  "Lyrlen sees to that." Aremil tried to make a joke of it.

  Branca bit her lip. "We'll talk about that, when I get back."

  Before Aremil could ask what she meant, she hurried from the room. He heard Lyrlen in the hall, the two women talking over each other as the door was unbolted. A man's voice out in the road was incomprehensible, overlaid with the stamp of horses' hooves.

  Aremil grabbed his crutches and heaved himself out of his chair. He reached the window just in time to see Branca climbing inside the coach. Master Gruit's lackey was strapping her travelling chest to the already laden roof.

  A draught shivered through a sheaf of papers on the sill as the front door slammed.

  "That's that," Lyrlen said with satisfaction. She entered the sitting room and her mouth fell open in astonishment. "My lord?"

  Aremil expected her to chastise him for presuming to get out of bed without her help, not to see such hurt in her expression.

  "I couldn't sleep," he said apologetically.

  "Do you need me to send for the doctor?" she asked anxiously. She took his hands between her own. "Oh, you're so cold!"

  "There's nothing amiss," Aremil assured her. "I just wanted to see Branca safely on the road."

  "Best I mix some poppy tincture in a little wine," Lyrlen said tartly. "You can go back to bed for a few hours."

  "I may as well start the day early." Aremil tried not to rebuke her. "Then I'll sleep all the better tonight."

  He wasn't going to take any apothecaries' concoctions to blunt his Artifice when he needed to be able to reach through the aether to Branca.

  "Very well." Lyrlen rallied. "Do you want to wash and dress, or breakfast first?"

  Aremil saw her look around the room. As the tisane glasses caught her eye, her lips thinned.

  "I was cold," he said firmly. "Branca was merely doing me a service."

  "And herself." Lyrlen sniffed.

  "Surely we don't begrudge our guests a glass of warm water," Aremil said more curtly than he intended.

  Lyrlen looked at him, and this time Aremil saw something like fear in her faded eyes.

  "There's bread in the crock and preserves laid ready. I told her last night but the girl's always so brusque. If you'd wanted me to get up and see her fed, my lord--"

  "No, don't worry." Of course Branca would have had something to eat in the kitchen if she'd wanted it. "Yes, please, I'll take my breakfast before I dress. Then I have some errands for you to run."

  "As you wish, my lord." Looking happier, Lyrlen slid her arm under his own to help him back to his chair. Once he was seated, she tucked his robe warmly around his knees before catching up the offending glasses. "I'll make you some porridge, with a little honey, my lord. That'll set you up nicely for the day."

  Aremil had been about to ask for bread and jam. He could eat that without assistance, albeit messily. If Lyrlen made porridge, she would insist on feeding him. He hid his irritation.

  "Thank you. That will be lovely."

  He hadn't liked to see the fear in her old, loyal face, though. If cosseting him would reassure her, he could put up with it. For the present.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Faila

  The Leather Bottle Inn, on the Dromin Road,

  in the Lescari Dukedom of Carluse,

  24th of For-Autumn

  She leaned back and closed her eyes. Stretching out her legs, her mud-spattered skirts hung heavy around her booted ankles. The settle in the parlour was unpadded, high-backed and narrow-seated. She didn't care. Her head ached with tension aggravated by every thud and shout from the bustling courtyard outside.

  "I've paid for this parlour and the two bedrooms up above." Nath kicked the door closed and dropped their bags. "I don't think that woman believes we're map-makers," he observed, lighting the half-burned candles on the mantel with a taper he'd been given. "Or brother and sister, come to that."

  Failla opened her eyes and glared at him. "So leave the door ajar so no one can imagine scandal."

  "If we don't want to be fodder for local tittle-tattle, why stop at an inn at all?" Nath demanded, as if they hadn't already had this dispute on horseback. "Or spend good coin on rooms we'll be abandoning at midnight? We can't leave it any later and still hope to meet this Artificer at first light. Won't riding out with
the rising moons give the gossips hereabouts something juicy to chew on?"

  "Duke Garnot has his dogs hunting for Woodsmen on the byways, not the high roads. An inn this busy sees people coming and going at all hours. No one will notice us." Failla was counting on it. She closed her eyes again so she wouldn't have to look at Nath as she lied to him. "There's no need for us both to go to this shrine. You meet this man Kerith and bring him back here. I have those letters to read and answer and Drianon's mercy, I'm tired and I'm filthy. I want a bath and some sleep in a real bed," she said petulantly.

  "You don't think I'd like the chance to brush the muck off my clothes?" Nath snapped. "Or to wash? I smell worse than my horse!"

  It was unlike Nath to lose his temper. Failla hid her alarm. "Forgive me, I know you're tired, too. You and this traveller should both come here to rest, before we go onwards."

  Nath was untouched by her apparent concern. He carried a candle over to the parlour's indifferently polished table and dropped heavily into one of the wooden chairs. "Are any of those letters that saddler gave you for me?"

  "I think so." Business was as good a way to distract him as any other. Failla sat up to find she had stiffened even in those few minutes sitting down. She grimaced as she bent to unbuckle her travelling bag. "Could we have some wine?"

  "We can ask." Nath wearily rattled the brass bell standing on the table.

  Failla sorted through the letters passed to them by the guildmasters' most recent courier. Uncle Ernout's friends hadn't let them down yet. "This is Sorgrad's writing."

  Nath flexed his grimy hands, rubbing them on his breeches. "Where are they?" he wondered with savage exasperation. "Halfway through For-Autumn and there's no sign of them coming down from the hills."

  "Hush." Failla tossed the letter to him and went to the door, just in case there was anyone in the passage to overhear. There wasn't. "Maybe that letter tells us."

  "This is cracked." Nath was studying the wax seal closely.

  Alarmed, Failla went to see. "Has it been opened?"

  "No, just roughly handled." Nath ripped it open, infuriated. "How many days have we lost, waiting for news to pass from hand to hand like this? There's no chance this side of the Otherworld that I'll be home for Equinox."

  Nath spoke of his family often enough and Failla was glad of it. Devotion to his absent wife meant he'd never once looked at her with speculative eyes. She only hoped homesickness was the reason for his uncharacteristic ill-temper.

  "Everything will move more quickly once this Kerith joins us. We'll be able to get word to and from Vanam much faster." She examined her own letters. "There's no sign that any of these have been interfered with." Snapping the wax seal, she unfolded the first one.

  "Is there anything I should know?" Nath asked sourly. "Or anything you're allowed to tell me?"

  "I don't like keeping secrets, but my uncle won't have it any other way." She looked at him with carefully judged anxiety. With luck he would think all her secrets were concerned with safeguarding the guildmasters and their fellow conspirators. "You've seen how keen Duke Garnot is to run the Woodsmen to earth."

  Nath stared at his letter. "I hope this Kerith can tell us why. Do you suppose Charoleia knows what's stuck a burr under Duke Garnot's saddle?"

  "I hope so." Failla said honestly. Travelling through Marlier to distribute Reniack's broadsheets had been nerve-wracking enough, where no one knew her beyond a few of Duke Ferdain's servants. Back in Carluse, with Wynald's Warband riding the roads in search of unknown rebels, she was as tense as an overwound harp string. But she and Nath had found so many willing ears for their message. She could almost believe this crack-brained plot stood half a chance of success.

  She hid her other concerns. If this Artificer's enchantments could see into someone's thoughts, would he use them on her? Better not arouse his suspicions and give him cause to try. Which only left her with tonight. As long as Nath agreed to ride on alone, curse him. How would she persuade him in his current mood?

  An elderly woman in a worn black dress looked round the open door. "I heard the bell. Can I help you, Master? My lady?"

  "A jug of wine and two goblets, if you please." Nath's voice was still harsh with strain.

  "Of course." The woman bobbed a half-curtsey, an amiable smile on her hook-nosed face.

  Failla saw her keen eyes taking in their baggage, the letters on the table and their travel-stained clothes. Inn servants were always nosy. Hopefully hearing her and Nath squabbling should convince the old crone that they were indeed brother and sister.

  She returned to her letters. Unravelling the Ashgil glover's circumlocutions wasn't easy. Finally she was satisfied that he'd done his best to persuade his fellow craftsmen that standing aloof would be their safest course if, by some unimagined chance, warfare returned to Carluse.

  "You wanted wine?" A different maid, neatly aproned, soon appeared with a tray.

  "Yes, thank you." Nath raked his fingers through his tangled hair. "Draw the curtains and close the door, if you please."

  Failla didn't look up, opening her next letter with her belt knife. All the better to convince the servant there was nothing lover-like between them.

  The maid poured some wine and pocketed the coin Nath gave her, the latch clicking behind her.

  He sprang to his feet. "They want maps of Sharlac as soon as possible." Kneeling by their baggage, he unstrapped his writing case. "As many as we can draw up. And everything we can tell them about the state of the roads in Carluse, and Marlier after that."

  "Why?" Failla's fingers tightened, creasing the letter.

  "Why do you think? It's finally starting." Nash leafed through some parchments. "Let's see what we can do to bring it to a swift conclusion. I surveyed a good deal of Sharlac last year." He quickly set pens, inkwells and paper on the table. "Let's hope nothing much has changed."

  Failla moved the wine jug. "Where are they, Sorgrad and Gren? And Tathrin?"

  She would so much rather be travelling with him, even at the price of the Mountain Men's escort. She stifled fleeting recollections of their walks in Vanam, their easy conversation about places and people they both knew.

  "We meet them the day after next." Nath emptied his goblet with a single swallow. "Six leagues out of Abray on the Great West Road at a tavern called the Pipe and Chime."

  "I don't know it." Failla could only hope that meant no one would know her.

  "We can spend this evening making fair copies until we have to leave to meet Kerith." Nath unscrewed his metal flask of ink and carefully filled the wells. "Then we can cut along the forest road from the shrine to reach the highway."

  Failla had long since learned to tell when a man wasn't about to be gainsaid. "Very well."

  "You take the main highway maps." He began trimming a quill. "The byways are more complicated, so I'll do those."

  Failla reluctantly took a sheet of paper and chose a pen. How could she get away from Nath now? As she drew careful lines, she thought furiously.

  They worked in silence until the third chimes struck. Nath scowled as he saw how few sheets she'd copied. "Can you work any faster?"

  "Not if you don't want them blotted." Failla continued working, her hand steady. She still saw no solution to her own problem, though.

  Nath bent over his own work. "I could do with some supper."

  "I'll see what the kitchen can offer." Failla set down her pen with a snap.

  She found the kitchens at the rear of the long building. The older woman who'd answered their bell was nowhere to be seen but the aproned maid was talking to a cook kneading dough.

  "My lady?"

  Failla smiled ruefully. "My brother has just had word of an urgent order for our maps. Could you serve us some food in our parlour while we work?"

  The cook paused in her kneading. "There's breast of veal with a green sauce and batter puddings. With apricot pies and crayfishes?"

  "That will be lovely, thank you."

  Failla walked sl
owly back to the parlour. Nath didn't look up, intent on tracing a fine line. Failla took up her pen again and, still working as slowly as she dared, waited to hear footsteps outside the door. Making sure Nath couldn't see her face, she reluctantly unlocked her most painful memory. Tears slowly filled her eyes.

  As she heard the maid approaching, she swept up the sheets of paper. "Here's our supper." Tipping an inkwell so that the black tide only flooded her own work wasn't easy but she managed.

  "Drianon's tits!" Nath sprang up, clutching his painstaking copies.

  "I'm so sorry." Deftly catching the sliding ink on the topmost sheet, Failla let the brimming tears spill down her cheeks.

  "Master?" The aproned maid opened the door, another carrying a laden tray behind her. "Your supper?"

  "What? Yes, thank you. Just put it down over there." Nath managed curt politeness but his face was burning with anger.

  Failla took her chance to drop the ink-stained pages into the sooty hearth and huddled on the settle, her face in her hands. The maids left the food and made a hasty exit.

  When Nath stopped swearing, Failla looked cautiously through her fingers. He was sorting through his own copies, checking to see if any of them were ruined.

  "It's not as bad as it might have been," he said with a visible effort.

  "I'll start again. I can work all night." Failla wiped tears from her cheeks with trembling hands. "If you meet this man Kerith and bring him back here."

  "I suppose so." Nath sat down, leaning heavily on his elbows, his head hanging.

  "If you're going to be riding all night, why don't you get some sleep first?" Failla hoped she sounded as if she'd just had the idea. "I can finish my copying and yours, too. Then I can sleep while you're on your way back. We'll both feel better."

  Nath looked too weary to suspect anything. "I suppose so."

  "Have something to eat," Failla urged.

  Without waiting for his answer, she served them both. Despite her hunger she took only a small portion to maintain her pretence of distress. As they ate, she kept Nath's goblet topped up with the vinegary wine. Their long day's travel and the food and the drink soon had him yawning.