The Magicians and Mrs. Quent

by Galen Beckett

  They clapped Eldyn on the back as he sat down, got him a hot cup, and passed him a flask under the table. “By God, we’ve missed you, Garritt,” Jaimsley said. “I haven’t heard one bit of sense since you were last here. You’re the only serious and sober one among us.”

  “I warrant I’m as liable as any of you to lose my sobriety,” he said with a grin, and tipped the flask over his cup. They laughed, and Eldyn laughed with them, glad for the coffee, glad for the whiskey, glad for the company of familiar friends. It had been too long since he had done this.

  He passed the flask back and asked how they had been faring at tavern without him. Jaimsley treated him to a long description of Talinger’s spectacular successes with the ladies, and of Warrett’s equally spectacular failures, and his own amusement over it all. Then Eldyn asked how their studies for the term were progressing.

  “But haven’t you heard, Garritt?” Curren Talinger said. “No one’s been to classes in a quarter month. Well, no one save those mealy-mouthed prigs at Gauldren’s College. Precious little pets they are—they do anything the deans tell them to do. But not the rest of us. We came to university to learn how to think, not to think what they tell us to.”

  Eldyn stared. “You mean you’re not attending lectures by choice?”

  “No one is,” Dalby Warrett replied. The laconic young man was unusually animated, and his color high. “Well, except at Gauldren’s, as Jaimsley mentioned, and some of the men at Bishop’s and Highhall. But the rest of us walked out, and we’re not going back or paying our tuition. Not until they let Baddingdon go free.”

  Eldyn listened as they spoke of the events that had transpired at the university over the last half month. It seemed that Professor Baddingdon, a popular lecturer in rhetoric, had become increasingly critical of the king. The dean of his college had cautioned him to cease such talk, but Baddingdon, a Torlander, had a reputation for being as quarrelsome as he was clever. In response to the warning, he delivered a lecture in which he likened the king to a sparrow charged with guarding a field rich with grain, while the members of Assembly were cast as crows, pecking at the corn. And he said what Altania needed was a hawk with keen eyes and strong talons, one that would fly across the sea and send the crows scattering. Of course, it was plain to all that he spoke of the Usurper Huntley Morden, the hawk being the symbol of that house, and the verdant field was Altania itself.

  “He said that during his lecture?” Eldyn said, astonished that a man of learning could be such a fool.

  Jaimsley nodded. “I suppose so many fawning freshmen have regarded him in awe for so long that he thought he was above any reproach. But no one is above their notice. They must have gotten wind of what he was intending to speak about, because they didn’t even wait for him to finish his lecture but rather took him right there and then, in front of his students. He was put in chains and led out like a common criminal.”

  “By agents of Lord Valhaine?”

  “Not just any agents. Everyone said it was the White Lady herself who took him. She had been in the back of the hall with a hood pulled up, and as soon as he uttered the words about the hawk she put back her hood and stepped forward, and that was that. Baddingdon was done for. He started to rail against the king, but one look from her and his tongue froze in his mouth, and no one lifted a finger to help him.”

  Talinger made a warding sign. “It’s said no one can bear her gaze, not even the king’s Black Dog, and it’s him that she serves.”

  “Well, I should not have given way so easily had I been there,” Warrett proclaimed, making a fist and striking the table. “I wouldn’t have let anyone treat old Baddingdon like that.”

  “You would have pissed your pants when she glanced your way, is what you mean,” Jaimsley said, and though Warrett gave him a hot look, he did not argue the point.

  “There’s been talk, you know,” Talinger said then. The Torlander spoke in a low voice, so that the others had to lean in close to hear him.

  “Talk of what?” Jaimsley said, a frown on his homely face.

  “Surely you have heard it, Jaimsley. Some of the men—no, I would say a great many of them—say we should go fetch him from Barrowgate.”

  Eldyn nearly laughed, but it was out of horror, not humor. “You cannot be serious, Talinger. You cannot!”

  “Why can’t I? There’s more than a thousand of us, even if you leave off them prigs from Gauldren’s and Bishop’s and Highhall. It’s wrong that they’ve thrown him in the pits with murderers and whores. Baddingdon is old. He’ll not last long in that prison. What should stop us from marching on Barrowgate, breaking down the gates, and setting him free?”

  Because they’ll cut you down, Eldyn wanted to say.

  Only, Warrett spoke first. A hungry look had come over his face, erasing what had been soft and vaguely handsome and replacing it with a hard mask. “Now you’re talking sense, Talinger. Nothing can stop us. Not if we all stand together.”

  Eldyn’s stomach had gone sour, and Jaimsley was shaking his head.

  “Why do you look at us like that, Jaimsley?” Talinger said, his accent reverting to a rolling Westland growl. “Aren’t you always telling us that it’s the people who should rule?”

  “Yes, and I still believe it. But talking of rebellion is one thing. Doing it…Well, that’s another matter altogether.”

  “Aye, it is at that,” Talinger said. “You like to talk of it, but you’re afraid to do anything about it. But not me. I’m not like you, Jaimsley. I’m not afraid.”

  “Aren’t you? Tell me, which one of you at this table has ever so much as broken one of those rules in a voice above a whisper?” He nodded toward the Rules of Citizenship posted on the wall nearby. Their sheepish expressions answered his question. “And you speak of making rebellion.”

  Eldyn started to let out a breath, thinking they were going to let the subject drop. But then Talinger leaped to his feet, his chair falling back with a clatter that suspended conversation in the shop.

  “I’ll show you what I think of those rules,” he said. He did not rush or go furtively. Rather, with deliberate motions, he walked to the wall, pulled down the Rules of Citizenship, and tore the paper they were printed on into halves, quarters, eighths. He let the pieces fall to the floor. “That’s what I think of someone else telling me what to do,” Talinger said in a loud voice. “I don’t care if it’s pale ladies or black curs or kings giving the order. An unjust law is no law at all.”

  All was silence. No one made a move. Talk of disobedience to the Crown was one thing, but action—everyone had seen what action got you when one of the king’s men or an agent of the Gray Conclave was about. Eyes glanced back and forth. All waited for someone to stand up, point a finger, and call for soldiers to carry the young Torlander to Barrowgate.

  Instead, after a terrible moment, it was Mrs. Haddon who bustled toward him, huffing, her frizzy wig aflutter. “Well, well, a fine joke that was, young Mr. Talinger. A fine joke indeed. You know you could have simply told me that printing of the rules was out of date. You needn’t have made such a silly little play of it. Here—this is the new one delivered just yesterday. I meant to put it up, but I quite forgot. Though I’m sure they won’t throw a daft old woman in prison for being absentminded. I would hardly remember my own name these days if you boys weren’t always calling it out to me: a cup, Mrs. Haddon, bring another cup!”

  She unrolled a sheaf of paper and stuck it on the nail on the wall, then took Talinger’s elbow and led him back to the table. Gradually, the sound of talk filled the coffeehouse again, though lower than before.

  “…and it’s not yet here, my boy,” Eldyn heard Mrs. Haddon whispering to Talinger as they drew near. “But the time will come. Sooner than we all think, I wouldn’t doubt. And when it does we’ll wonder why we wished for it at all. A terrible thing it will be, a terrible thing. But that’s to worry about then. For now we must watch and wait. Do you see?”

  Talinger gave her a mute nod. His face,
bright with passion a moment ago, was now white behind his red beard.

  She pinched his cheek, bringing a bit of color back. “There, that’s a good lad. You’ll be fine if you don’t lose your wits. You can take him from here, boys.” She gathered up their half-drunk cups.

  The message was not lost upon them. They hurriedly rose.

  “You fool, you damn Westland fool,” Jaimsley hissed as he led Talinger toward the door. “And you’re a fool as well, Warrett, for encouraging him like that. Do you know what could have happened—what could still happen to us? Just because no one did anything doesn’t mean that no one was watching, that they haven’t already gotten our names and put them down on a list.”

  Talinger hung his head and Warrett looked away, and while the words were not directed at Eldyn, they struck him like a blow to the gut. What if someone had watched? What if his name was on a list?

  “What is it, Garritt?” Jaimsley said to him once they were outside the shop. “You’ve gone white as whey. You needn’t worry, you know.” He nodded toward Warrett and Talinger, who stood a bit apart, looking chastened now. “I was just trying to give them a bit of a scare. There are enough true traitors and spies about these days for the king’s agents to concern themselves with. Even if they did see what just happened, the most these two are liable to get is a bit of hard questioning from a captain. And it’s not like they have any secrets to spill. Can you imagine either one of them as rebels?”

  Jaimsley laughed, and Eldyn made an attempt to follow suit, but a sickness was spreading inside him. Perhaps Talinger and Warrett had no secrets to spill, but Eldyn could not say the same. It was a cruel bit of fate that had made him—the one in their group who had never spoken a word of rebellion—into the one who was now engaged in what was surely traitorous activity. What if the White Lady came and turned her unnatural gaze upon him and the truth of his night work spilled from his lips against his will?

  “Are you certain you’re well?” Jaimsley asked, laying a hand on his shoulder. “To tell the truth, I’ve been worried about you, Garritt. You don’t seem yourself of late.”

  “I’m thirsty, that’s all,” Eldyn said. “God, I need a drink.”

  “Yes, and not coffee,” Jaimsley said with a crooked grin. He clapped Eldyn’s shoulder, then called to the others. “Come on, gents. There will be no lectures at university today. We might as well go to tavern, if you two will promise to behave yourselves.”

  The promise was solemnly given. They walked down narrow streets and soon became a merry band, for laughter must always follow a close call with danger. However, more than once Eldyn could not help glancing over his shoulder, looking for a pale face behind him.

  IN THE NEXT day’s edition of The Fox, there was another advertisement for pewter candlesticks, silver snuffboxes, and gold thimbles.

  As before, deciphering the code led Eldyn to an address in the Old City. It was always a different house and different men, but their eyes were the same: hard and crafty, glancing up and down the street to make sure he was alone. Sometimes the message tube they gave him felt strangely warm, as if it was not ink that sloshed inside the chamber at one end but rather blood. He made his way to Hayrick in the middle of a hard rain and was grateful for the long lumenal that followed, and the chance to get some sleep.

  Two editions of The Fox went by with no advertisements, and as it was published thrice a week he began to let himself hope his ungodly work was finished. He went for a walk in Gauldren’s Heights and fancied which house he would let for himself and Sashie once his returns from the trading company came in. Something more Uphill than Down, he thought: a solid, respectable house.

  Except on his way back to the Golden Loom, he bought the newest edition of The Fox from a boy on a corner, still damp off the press. At once he saw the advertisement that was, among all the many eyes that read the broadsheet, for his eyes alone. He read the address, then tossed the paper in the gutter. The print had stained his fingers black.

  That night was the first night he was forced to release the ink in the tube. He was early to the well, as he always was, for he dreaded to think what they might do to him were he late. The mask he always wore for these meetings chafed against his face. Eldyn had no way to mark the exact time, but at last he became certain that the appointed hour had come and gone, and there was no sign of the red-haired man. As a sliver of moon rose, so, too, a fear rose in him, and he retreated from the well, making for a small thicket of New Forest beech and elm.

  And not a moment too soon. A pair of men stepped from the mouth of the lane and into the moonlight by the well. Neither was the red-haired man. They looked around, but Eldyn wrapped the shadows around himself and slunk back into the wood. The two finished their circuit, then went back to stand by the well. One of them carried a club.

  The message would not be delivered this umbral. Eldyn forced his way through the thicket, ran across a field where a single cow lowed, and leaped over a stone wall.

  “By God, so the devil comes to me!” a voice hissed, hardly a dozen feet away from him.

  Eldyn staggered back against the wall. A man with broad shoulders and bandy legs stood on the road. He wore a blacksmith’s apron. There was a hammer in his hand.

  “Give me that,” he said, gesturing to the leather tube.

  Terror gripped Eldyn’s heart even as he gripped the tube.

  “Here, here!” the man cried out. “To me! I’ve got him!”

  He started forward, hammer raised. His hands were big, the backs of them covered with black hair.

  “I said give that up, devil. I know it’s to him you were bringing it, but he won’t be coming to get it, I can tell you that. Come now, hand it over without any trouble, and I won’t have to crack your skull.”

  The way he tightened his grip on the hammer belied that promise. Eldyn did not wait; what the nature of the message in the tube was, he did not know, only that he was sure it would be his undoing if read before any court of law. He turned the end of the tube, and dark liquid flooded out. In the moonlight it looked indeed like black blood.

  The man let out a shout and sprang forward, but Eldyn flung the leather tube at him, striking him in the face. The man dropped his hammer, howling and pawing at his eyes, for the ink had splattered them. Eldyn scrambled back over the wall and ran past the cow to the south edge of the field, which was bordered by another thicket.

  This he dashed through headlong. Branches scratched at his face and ripped his clothes, but the sound of shouts behind him and to his right propelled him onward without heed. On one occasion the voices rang out not twenty feet to his right, but then he splashed across a brook, through a hedge, and down a footpath, all the way weaving the shadows around himself and praying to the saints for a cloud to cover the moon.

  The next time he heard the voices, they were behind him again and farther away. He kept moving, not south along the main road to the city but east, skirting around sleeping hamlets and farmsteads and slinking along the lines of walls. At last he staggered through the Morrowgate, having gone halfway around Invarel, and found a hack cab. When the driver eyed his torn attire and bleeding cheek, Eldyn made some weak mention of a tavern fight. Coins passed hands; no questions were asked. Eldyn made it into the inn and upstairs, unseen.

  He was safe. By St. Andelthy, he was safe. Yet no matter how many times he told himself that the message was destroyed by the ink, that he was not caught, he could not stop shaking. When Sashie came from the room, she found him in only his dressing gown, shivering, his hair still wet from a hasty bath. He told her he was ill with a cold.

  It was not until two days later that he learned the red-haired man had been taken to Barrowgate.

  He read it in The Messenger as he sat in the public room at the Golden Loom drinking a cup of beer. The story described how a villainous rebel had been caught in the village of Hayrick Cross, north of Invarel. His name was Wayt Howburn, and he had been a journeyman at the blacksmith’s there: a walleyed man with red h
air. It was the master of the shop, a devoted subject of the Crown, who had turned him in, for having grown suspicious he had searched Howburn’s room and discovered a bundle of letters.

  The letters were written in a code of some sort and had not yet been deciphered, but they could only be the work of spies and traitors to Altania, for who else would compose messages in such an unholy manner? Howburn was in Barrowgate, awaiting trial. That he would hang was all but certain.

  Trembling, Eldyn set down the broadsheet and reached for his beer. His hand groped thin air; the cup was not where he had left it. He looked up, and the breath went out of him.

  Westen raised the missing cup in a toast and took a swallow. He was dressed in rich clothes, as usual, and wore a look of amusement upon his face.

  Anger burned away some of Eldyn’s fear. “I should think you would not be so gleeful,” he said in a low voice, glancing to make sure the few others in the room were not listening. “Your man has been caught, and all the messages with him.”

  The highwayman set the cup down next to Eldyn’s hand. “So the king’s men believe. Those who serve the Crown are necessarily idiots.”

  “But they found the papers.”

  “They found some papers,” Westen said.

  A pain stabbed at Eldyn’s temples. He wanted to take a swig of his beer but did not. “I don’t understand.”

  The highwayman stroked the line of his smooth-shaven jaw with a knuckle. That he was so good-looking and so finely dressed made the gesture all the more mocking.

  Eldyn cast another glance out of the corner of his eye, then leaned in closer. “What were those papers they found?”

  “Not the letters you carried, Garritt, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can only imagine Lord Valhaine will waste days trying to decode them. Of course, when he finally does, he’ll find they contain nothing but a rather rude verse concerning the bedroom habits of the king.”