The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  Eldyn walked up a steep way and passed through the Lowgate, avoiding the eyes of the king’s men who stood on either side of the arch in their blue coats and red-crested caps. He made his way through the contorted streets of the Old City, past the bell towers of St. Galmuth’s, beneath the shadow of the Citadel, and toward the sober gray edifices of the university.

  Though the brief morning was passing quickly, he took a detour along a lane down which he had spied the sign of a moneylender. Most moneylenders kept offices on Marble Street, but there were a few of them in the Old City, and this was one he had not yet tried. He paused outside the door to straighten his gray coat. He kept it scrupulously clean, though it was starting to get threadbare at the elbows. Eldyn entered the office, waited several minutes to see a clerk, sat at the ink-stained table when beckoned, then presented his request for a loan of a hundred regals.

  “What is the purpose of this loan?” the clerk asked, taking a sheet of paper from a drawer. His lace cuffs had evidently served to wipe his pen when no other blotter was at hand. A circle of gray fringed his bald pate.

  “It is for an investment in a business venture,” Eldyn said, uttering the words in as firm a voice as he could manage. His father had always complained that he spoke like a priest.

  The clerk scribbled on the paper. “What sort of business venture?”

  “I intend to buy shares in a trading company that is preparing a voyage to the New Lands.”

  The clerk could not possibly think poorly of this use for the money. Trading companies were being formed at a rapid pace, now that the routes east across the sea had been charted, and many men had made quick fortunes upon the return of ships they had invested in.

  “And what have you to secure your loan?”

  “I would secure it with my name.”

  The clerk set down his pen and looked up. “I cannot sell a name if you default upon the note.”

  Eldyn moistened his lips. “My name, then, and the shares of the trading company.”

  The pen returned to the clerk’s hand. “And this name of such great worth is…?”

  “Garritt.”

  The clerk pulled a ledger from a drawer and thumbed through it with smudged fingers. “Mr. Vandimeer Garritt?” he asked, his finger on the page before him.

  “No, I am Eldyn Garritt. Vandimeer was my father.”

  The finger tapped against the page. “Your father has a debt with us.”

  Beneath the table, Eldyn clutched his knees. He was starting to believe his father had debts at every lending house in the city. “My father’s accounts were settled when his estate was sold.”

  The clerk peered at the ledger. “So I see. The account was settled, as you say—but only in part.”

  “That was the agreement reached between my father’s creditors and the magistrate at the debtor’s court. It was decided his estate would be sold and the proceeds divided as the settlement for all outstanding sums.”

  “And so he ends up paying no more than fifty pennies for every regal he owes. It appears your father has gotten off quite easily.”

  “Gotten off easily?” Eldyn swallowed an incredulous laugh. “I should think not. He has been deprived of everything he had and ever will have. He is dead, sir—he has lost his life.”

  “And what trouble is it for him to lose a thing of so little worth, when my accounts are down forty regals?” The clerk slammed the book shut. “Good day to you, Mr. Garritt.”

  Eldyn showed himself out to the street, then stood on the edge of the gutter, his cheeks hot. He had presented his request for a loan to a dozen moneylenders, and all had refused him. Eldyn’s father might be dead, but Vandimeer Garritt still haunted him, tormenting him from beyond the grave as relentlessly as he had when alive.

  A four-in-hand—glossy black with gilded trim—clattered by, and Eldyn had to jump back to avoid the muck its wheels splashed up from the gutter. He watched the carriage race up the street. There was so much wealth in Invarel, and he asked for only the smallest part of it for himself: a pittance, a seed from which he might grow his hopes, that he might have a chance to earn back what his father had gambled and drunk and whored away.

  However, if he was not able to secure a loan soon, those hopes would be dashed. The trading company that had approached him as a possible investor was already preparing for its voyage. And more, he was running out of money for day-to-day expenses. When he was a boy, his mother had hidden away a number of trinkets and jewels so that his father could not sell them for his gambling debts. Vandimeer had all but torn apart the house looking for them, but only Eldyn had known where they were concealed, for he had watched from the shadows as she hid them in a hollow in the wall. He had recovered them the night before they departed the house at Bramberly, which his father was forced to give over to tenants for the income, and had kept them secret ever since.

  Until recently. Over the last year he had sold the jewels one by one, making the proceeds from each sale last as long as possible. However, all he had left now was a single brooch of carnelian and a pair of pearl earrings. The lot might fetch fifteen regals, twenty at most. A few more months, and even lodgings at the Golden Loom would be beyond his means; he and Sashie would be on the street.

  Only Eldyn would not allow that to happen. It didn’t matter if a dozen lenders had refused him; all he had to do was convince one to write him the note. Not that it would be easy. While the affluent had all the money, Eldyn had learned that no one was less willing to part with his coin than a rich man. Well, except for Dashton Rafferdy.

  Then again, Rafferdy’s family would not have remained rich for long if Lord Rafferdy didn’t strictly limit his son’s allowance. Rafferdy would pay anyone’s tavern bill; the idea of someone going without their drink was a notion he could not bear, most likely because he could not bear going without his own. As a consequence, the one wealthy friend Eldyn possessed in the world had empty pockets as often as full.

  Despite his grim mood, Eldyn smiled at this irony, and he found himself wondering how Rafferdy was faring back at Asterlane. He had not been in good spirits when Eldyn saw him at the Sword and Leaf just before the half month. While he had not alluded to the reason he had been summoned home, clearly it was a meeting Rafferdy had not anticipated with joy. He had gotten so deep into his cups that night that Eldyn had been forced to drag him out into the street in the wan light of dawn and heave him into the back of a carriage.

  What sort of condition he had arrived in, Eldyn could only imagine. The moon was nearly to its darkest, and Rafferdy would likely be returning to the city soon. When he did, no doubt he would regale Eldyn with the story of the whole sordid affair.

  Cheered by this thought, Eldyn stepped over the gutter and put the moneylender’s office behind him.

  THE SUN WAS already above the towers of the Citadel by the time Eldyn arrived at Mrs. Haddon’s coffeehouse in Covenant Cross.

  Given its proximity to the university, Mrs. Haddon’s was always populated with students. Young men crammed around the tables, talking noisily, filled with the hot energy of ideas and the brew they drank. However, their conversations tended not so much toward rhetoric and mathematics as toward philosophy and gambling and, especially, politics.

  Eldyn’s plan was only to see which of his former schoolmates were hanging about and to find out how they were faring now that the new term was under way. He did not intend to loiter, for he dared not buy more than a single coffee. Even so, at ten pennies a cup, it was more than he could afford. However, Mrs. Haddon was so elated to see him after a long absence from her establishment that she cackled like a hen and pinched his cheek and told him he should have as many cups as he liked that day and not pay a thing. For, as she said, “The sight of your cherub’s face, Mr. Garritt, is payment enough for me.”

  This comment provoked laughter all around. Mrs. Haddon was old enough to be a mother to any of them; her white wig was frizzy as a dandelion gone to seed, and her cheeks were painted like a Murghese t
eapot, which was not inappropriate, as her shape recalled a teapot as well.

  After disentangling himself from Mrs. Haddon, Eldyn noticed a group of Gauldren men sitting at the table nearest the window. He had been introduced to some of them before, as they were classmates of Rafferdy’s. However, they ignored his glances and instead talked intently—and rather loudly—of astral conjunctions and runes of power. It was only at Gauldren’s College that the subject of magick was currently taught, which was why it had become fashionable for the sons of lords to attend that particular college, which was consequently too expensive for anybody else.

  Eldyn passed their table and instead—having noticed several hands waving vigorously from across the coffeehouse—made his way to a table in a cozy corner near the fire. At the table sat several of his classmates from St. Berndyn’s College. Or former classmates, as Eldyn had not been able to afford that term’s tuition. They found a chair for him, and he sat, grateful for the heat; the day was chilly, as short days after long nights often were.

  As he sipped his coffee, savoring the flavor of it, he asked his old companions about which classes they were attending and what their professors had discussed. However, as usual, they were less inclined to talk about their studies than the news in the latest issue of The Fox.

  “It’s criminal, that’s what it is,” Curren Talinger said, thumping the table so that they all had to grasp their cups and saucers to keep them from flying off. “It’s positively criminal what they’re doing.”

  Eldyn shook his head; he hadn’t read the broadsheets in several days. “What who is doing?”

  “The criminals, I should imagine,” Orris Jaimsley replied with a bent grin. “They’re usually the ones who perpetrate the crimes.”

  “Oh, they’re criminals, all right,” Talinger went on, clearly in a mood for oration. His red hair belied his Westland heritage. That and his temper: the table received another blow from a meaty fist that seemed better suited to a workman than a student of philosophy. “They’d make the king crawl on his belly and beg just to build a ship to defend Altania’s shores. But the swine are running things now, and we have only ourselves to blame for it. We’re the ones who put them on top.”

  “I don’t remember voting for a Sir Hogg or a Mr. Porkly in the last election,” Eldyn said, returning Jaimsley’s grin.

  “I think he’s referring to members of Assembly,” Dalby Warrett said, as usual not getting the joke.

  “Then he’s insulted swine everywhere,” Jaimsley proclaimed. He was a gangly young man who more than made up for his homely looks with an appealing wit. No one was more popular at St. Berndyn’s.

  “Really, Talinger, do you think this new act is so bad as all that?” Warrett said when their mirth had subsided. He had a face that, while well wrought, was too placid to be handsome; he was forever attempting to throw water on Talinger’s fires. “The Hall of Magnates has committed worse crimes than this of late. Besides, Assembly has always held the kingdom’s purse strings.”

  “Held them?” Talinger shook his head. “More like clutched them tight and knotted them shut, while at the same time slitting a hole in the bottom of the purse. They build walls around their manors to protect them, but they won’t let the king build a ship to protect our country.”

  “Protect our country from what?” Jaimsley said with a roll of his eyes. “There’s been peace with the Murgh Empire for half a century. And even if they decided to invade tomorrow, do you really think you could trust our king to keep Altania safe?”

  Talinger had to concede the point. “Maybe not King Rothard. He was already weak before he got ill. He never should have given up so much ground to Assembly. But if we had a strong king, a rightful king…”

  Jaimsley gave him a sharp look. “What are you saying?”

  “All I’m saying is…” Even Talinger had the sense to lower his voice, noisy as the coffeehouse was. “All I’m saying is that if Somebody was ever to come back to Altania, he would put an end to these sorts of problems. You can bet Somebody would stop the magnates from raiding Altania’s coffers and leaving nothing for the common folk, and you can bet he would put Assembly in its place. And if the princess married Somebody, then no one could complain the crown wasn’t rightfully his.”

  Warrett’s cup clattered against his saucer, and Eldyn cast a glance over his shoulder. What Talinger had said was dangerously close to treason, and the Gray Conclave had spies everywhere.

  “Oh, dry your breeches, Warrett,” Talinger said. “I didn’t speak a name. Even if the Black Dog’s men are sniffing about, there’s nothing they can do. All I said was Somebody.”

  Yes. And Eldyn, just like everyone else, knew that Somebody meant not just anybody but rather Huntley Morden—grandson of the Old Usurper, Bandley Morden—who rumor told dwelled in the court of a Murghese prince, waiting for the right wind to blow him and the fleet of ships he was building east across the sea to the shores of Altania so he might seize the throne his grandfather had failed to win. Given these times, Eldyn was not so certain as Talinger that one of Lord Valhaine’s agents, if he had overheard, would have sat there and done nothing. Men had been jailed for as much and hung for little more.

  However, nothing did happen, and after a moment Warrett retrieved his cup, giving Talinger a dark look. “Whatever you might think of the king, Talinger, you cannot truly believe Princess Layle would willingly marry her father’s sworn enemy.”

  “What do you want with a king anyway, Talinger?” Jaimsley said more lightly. “Are you so keen to be told what to do? If so, you need only to look there.”

  Jaimsley gestured toward the wall behind them. Warrett and especially Talinger glared at the piece of paper tacked to the wall, and Eldyn could not blame them. The Rules of Citizenship had gone up in every public place in the city by order of the Black Dog himself, Lord Valhaine. They listed all the things a good citizen of Altania was to do and not do. Among its myriad lines, the rules stated when people could gather, and where, and in what numbers. Rule Six said that anyone hearing treasonous talk should report it to a magistrate at once. Rule Fourteen stated that one was not to insult the king, the princess, or Assembly in public.

  Eldyn was pretty certain they had all violated that particular rule.

  Breaking any of the rules was a punishable crime. Tearing the rules down was one too. Whether that crime got you a fine, a night in jail, or an appointment with the noose at Barrowgate all depended on how foul a mood the judge was in, how large a bribe you could pay, and whether your grandfather had marched under the Arringhart stag or the Morden hawk.

  “That’s what a king does, Talinger,” Jaimsley said with a serious look. “He can’t help it. It’s in his blood. So if you’re intent on having a monarch, be sure to take special note of Rule Twenty-Four. It tells you when you can wipe your arse.”

  Talinger’s face reddened another shade. “Better a just king telling you what to do than a bunch of greedy lords.”

  “And I say we’d be better off without either king or Assembly,” Jaimsley said, balancing a spoon on his finger. “Perhaps, if we’re lucky, one will do away with the other, and Altania will be rid of the scourge of both.”

  “And who would rule us then?” Talinger said with a snort.

  “Why, we would rule ourselves.” Jaimsley gestured around the table. “The people would rule Altania.”

  Perhaps it was only the effects of too much coffee, but these words filled Eldyn with a peculiar exhilaration. What if it did not matter that one was a lord or of the gentry or the lowest of the commons? What if a man’s fate wasn’t decided by who his father was, but was rather something he could choose for himself?

  “I would start by tossing all the magnates in the pits beneath the Citadel,” Warrett declared, his usually tranquil manner replaced by a certain vehemence. “Throw away the keys and let them rot in there with the other rats, that’s what I say.”

  “Now, that’s the spirit,” Jaimsley said with a laugh. “We don’t ne
ed them to make decisions for us. The people can decide for themselves what’s best for Altania.”

  “But can they?” Eldyn said, realizing only after the fact that he had spoken the words. His excitement had faded. “Can common people really be counted upon to make decisions about important matters? What if they choose unwisely?”

  Jaimsley gave him a sharp look. “But that’s not possible, Garritt. If something is truly the will of the people of Altania, then it cannot possibly be wrong. It is only when the desires of the people are supplanted by the greed of the magnates that ill arises.”

  While Jaimsley’s words made sense, somehow Eldyn could not feel the same certainty. He remembered once, years ago, when his father took him to see a hanging at Barrowgate. Eldyn had been no more than five or six; why his father had wished him to see such a spectacle, he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was out of simple cruelty.

  He remembered how his father had hoisted him up on his shoulders so that Eldyn could see the black walls of Barrowgate. Who the men on the scaffold were he did not know, but the crowd shouted and jeered at them as if they were beasts. Except, after a while, it was the crowd that seemed to be comprised of beasts. Men threw stones and old women howled, while children danced about and vendors sold sweets and cups of grog from carts, as if it were a festival. There was a hunger in the air, and if one man had dared to get up and claim that one of the condemned was in fact innocent and should be spared, Eldyn was sure the crowd would have dragged him down and torn him apart with their hands.