“Enjoy your lager.” Asoryk nodded to the pair, then walked back to where Daasn still sat, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Why’d you do that?” asked Daasn. “Those Lancers are mean bastards. They won’t forget. They’d have cut you down right here if they could.”
“They’re mean,” replied Asoryk, seating himself. “That doesn’t mean good.” His hand—hidden by the table—briefly brushed the hilt of the iron shortsword.
He turned his chair slightly so that he could watch the archway to the kitchen, as he had the feeling that the two Lancers were. Even from the momentary glimpse Asoryk got of the woman in gray, he had the feeling she didn’t belong at the Blue Ram, just as Anallya hadn’t belonged in Howlett.
As he sipped the ale, no longer in any hurry to finish it, he also kept studying the room, but all the others were regulars, or with regulars, or seemed to be familiar to the two servers, but then Klyana had always made that easy. Some women did.
Anallya had been the one who’d taught him that, with warmth and kindness, even when she had turned him away.
“You’re sweet, Asoryk.” That was what she had said, but her smile had been sad.
“There’s someone else … isn’t there?”
“There was … and there’s my son.”
For a moment, Asoryk had been shocked, not by her words, or by the fact that she had a son, something that he never would have guessed, but by the sadness in her wide gray eyes.
“I’ve never seen your son.”
“He lives with my parents.”
“What happened?” he had finally stammered.
“Nothing you can change. Nothing anyone can change. You don’t want to be close to me.” With that she had retreated into the inn’s kitchen.
Before he could follow her, the innkeeper’s wife had appeared, shooing him back to the stable.
Asoryk shook his head. He’d never even been able to find out anything about her son, either.
When he glanced over at the table where the Lancers had been, it was empty.
“Time for us to go.”
“You were just saying that we had plenty of time.”
“That was a while ago.” Asoryk rose, leaving a pair of coppers on the table, not that Dhuris would appreciate them, and strode toward the door.
Daasn moved after him with the quiet grace that showed why he’d made squad leader so quickly.
When the two stepped into the starlit dimness outside the tavern, it didn’t take long for Asoryk to make out the figures of the two Mirror Lancers. It wasn’t hard because they’d removed the workingmen’s tunics and stood in the pleasant early summer air in their shimmering whites.
“They want to be seen.”
“Proud bastards,” murmured the junior squad leader.
Asoryk looked back at the tavern, past the weathered signboard showing a ram rampant, barely illuminated by a lantern with a glass fogged with smoke. From what he could tell, there were no entrances on the sides, just the front entrance and, presumably, a rear entrance to the kitchen. “We’ll go this way.” He walked southward, moving past the alley behind the tavern.
“The post’s the other way,” Daasn pointed out.
“I know. I want to see something up this street.” Asoryk kept walking until they passed another side street and were well out of sight of the two Lancers. Then he took the next narrow street to the left.
“Asoryk, where the frig are we going?”
“Back to the Blue Ram.”
“You think the Lancer boys are there to scare someone out the back, and that there’s someone waiting—”
“Don’t you?”
“Looks that way. Why do you want to mess with the Mirror Lancers?”
“I don’t. They’re not worth a boar’s teats.”
“Then … why—”
“Because I want to see who they’re after.” That was easier than explaining why what he was about to do was necessary.
“Best be careful.”
“Aren’t I always?”
Daasn chuckled.
At the next corner, Asoryk headed back north. When he reached the alley that led to the Blue Ram, slightly uphill of the tavern, he eased into the shadows on the left side, moving as quietly as he could.
Crack. Asoryk’s boot came down on a curved shard of broken crockery, and a cat, little more than a flash of gray and white, took three bounds in front of them before vanishing behind a pile of trash behind a shop that Asoryk recalled as a cooperage.
“Scared it, you did,” murmured Daasn.
“Quiet now.” Asoryk moved into the deeper shadows on the south side of the alley, the side away from the rear of the cooperage. After easing his way along the backs of shops whose function he’d never paid much attention to, he stopped beside a slops barrel, ignoring the stench.
“Why are we waiting here?” muttered Daasn.
To do what I couldn’t years before. Except Asoryk did not speak the words. “To even the odds.”
“What odds?”
“The ones armsmen seldom have the chance to even. If you don’t understand, I’ll explain later.”
“You’d better.”
The senior squad leader did not reply.
After a time, exactly how long Asoryk could not have said, but patience was one thing he had learned as an armsman, the rear door to the Blue Ram opened, and a scullery wench emerged carrying a pail with both hands and clearly struggling with the weight. The faintest of reddish-white light appeared in the dark shadows some ten yards ahead of Asoryk, outlining but briefly a tall figure in white. A white wizard.
His eyes went to the still-open rear door of the tavern, where he saw clearly, if but for a moment, a slender figure in gray—except that gray had a solidity of a luminous black—and then the woman in gray darted back out of sight.
Asoryk nodded, if only to himself. A black mage, possibly even a healer. The white mages were known for their intolerance—Asoryk would have called it jealousy more than intolerance—of either whites who did not go to Fairhaven to be trained or of most blacks. Why, he didn’t know, except it went back in time and was somehow connected to Recluce. But none of that mattered to him. Not tonight. Not once he’d seen the woman trapped in the Blue Ram. Not after years of memories.
The scullery wench finally finished emptying the bucket into the slops barrel behind the tavern and returned to her chores inside, closing the rear door … but not quite all the way, Asoryk realized. After he watched for a time longer, he also realized that the white mage was watching the door, and that the black mage—or healer—was watching the white wizard.
Asoryk edged around the slops barrel, keeping close to the rear walls of the shops. He froze as he heard the baying of a hound, but realized it was too far away to be one of those used by the Lancers to track fugitives from Fairhaven.
He flattened himself against the wall as the faint reddish whiteness increased slightly, as if the mage was about to do something. Across the alley, the tavern’s back door widened from a crack to a slit.
Asoryk looked to the junior squad leader. “Give me your blade.” His voice was low and hard.
Wordlessly, Daasn passed him the iron shortsword.
No sooner had Asoryk grasped the hilt than the white-clad mage turned, lifting his arm, about to point at Asoryk and Daasn.
Asoryk hurled the borrowed blade, hoping his aim was true enough to distract the white wizard. As soon as the heavy blade left his fingers, he sprinted forward, drawing his own shortsword.
Whhsst! Ugly reddish-white fire flared against the dark iron of the flung blade, slowing, then melting it as it dropped to the uneven stones of the alley.
Before the mage could turn his chaos-fire on Asoryk, the squad leader thrust the tip of the shortsword into the only part of the tall, thin mage’s body he could reach, the right side of his chest, almost at the shoulder—far from a killing blow.
Yet reddish whiteness flared around the blade. The mage’s mouth ope
ned, but no sound came from it. The white wizard seemed to shrivel under the steel, and the white flames died away, leaving Asoryk holding a blade that appeared untouched. In moments, nothing lay on the uneven patchwork of stone and clay that paved the alley except a few bronze buckles and oddments, and a few coins.
Asoryk glanced toward the inn, but the door was half-open. He barely turned in time to see a gray-clad figure running past them on the far side of the alley, almost immediately swallowed by the shadows farther to the east … perhaps aided by a certain darkness of another kind.
Daasn stepped up beside the senior squad leader and looked down. He shook his head.
“Must have been hit by lightning … or something,” Asoryk said.
“Must have been.” Daasn nodded slowly.
“Should start back to the barracks.” Asoryk leaned and picked up the melted blade, then handed his own to Daasn. “This is yours. We’ll take the long way back.” He started up the alley, following the unseen steps of the woman who had fled, not that he would follow beyond the street ahead.
Daasn joined him.
This time, at least, he’d been able to even the odds.
He wondered if the black mage, or healer, had a son, not that it mattered. She’d at least have that chance. He also wondered, not for the first time, what had ever happened to Anallya’s boy. He shook his head. He’d done what he could, even if he’d have to dispose of the melted blade and pay for a replacement. That was cheap for what he’d gained.
Not all magic, either in Recluce or elsewhere, comes from those who wield order or chaos … or even both.
BRASS AND LACQUER
I
The air was crisp, but not chill, that afternoon on the last eightday of harvest when Shaunyce and Talysen walked up the black stone walk to the wall north of Nylan. She glanced at him, stocky and barely taller than she was, not to mention his already thinning blond hair. But he was a black mage, of sorts, as a student engineer, and he was sweet.
Talysen gestured to the wall. “It was built over three hundred years ago.”
“I know that, silly mage. Everyone does.”
“Did you know that a student mage destroyed a good part of the wall right there?” He pointed. “That happened in my grandmother Aleasya’s time.”
“It doesn’t look any worse for it.”
“She said it took three masters to fix it.”
Shaunyce nodded politely. “What happened to him? The student mage, I mean?”
“It could have been a woman, you know.”
“A woman wouldn’t destroy a wall. That’s stupid.”
“Don’t you understand how much power that took?”
“It was still stupid. You never said what happened to him.”
“She said the masters sent him to Hamor. There was a healer who followed him.”
“What happened to her?”
“She didn’t say.”
“You mean you didn’t ask.”
Talysen flushed. “Why are you so difficult?”
“I’m not. Any woman would want to know.” She did not shake her head. Instead, she turned and walked away from him and to the chest-high black stone wall. There she looked south toward the entrance to the harbor. A black vessel, somehow indistinct, headed outbound into the gray-green-blue waters of the Gulf of Candar. She knew it had to be one of the black ships. She said nothing until Talysen joined her. “That’s a black ship, isn’t it?”
“Most likely.”
“Most likely? You’re an engineer. You’re studying so you can build them, and all you can say is, ‘Most likely’?”
“It is. I’d guess that it’s the Shierra.”
Shaunyce thought he could have said that first. She only smiled. “Have you been on one of them?”
“Not at sea.”
“But you’ve been on one when they’re tied up behind the walls at the west end of the harbor. Right below the engineering buildings?”
“Just a few times.”
“What does it feel like standing on the front of one?”
“The bow?” Talysen shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was mostly down in the engine room.”
“You could get me to where I could see one up close, couldn’t you? Even on board one?”
Talysen shook his head. “No one gets on a black ship except engineers, shipfitters, and the crew. Not even the council members, unless they’re a black master.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“That’s what the senior engineer said.”
“I’d really like to see one of the ships. Just look at it.”
“So would every engineer or naval officer from Hamor and every other land.”
“I’m just a shopgirl. I couldn’t tell anyone anything if I wanted to. It’s such a little thing. Why can’t you let me see one of the ships? What harm will it do?”
“Probably none at all,” Talysen replied, “but I’m just an apprentice junior engineer. Junior engineers follow the rules. That’s if they want to become senior engineers.”
“Fine.” Shaunyce offered the single word coolly. “I’m ready to walk back.”
Talysen looked puzzled, but only said, “If that’s what you want.”
II
She was still angry when she reached the shop on oneday morning, but she managed a smile as Master Brauk said, “Good morning, Shaunyce.”
“Good morning, ser.”
“Did you have a pleasant endday?”
“I did,” she lied, not wanting to admit that she was still angry with Talysen. It wasn’t as though she wanted to do anything to hurt Recluce, and how could looking at an iron ship reveal anything at all?
“That’s good.” He turned away and opened the shutters protecting the front display window. The morning sun glinted off the polished finish of the kettle that adorned the signboard of the adjoining coppersmith’s shop. “How is your mother?”
She responded, as she always did, “She’s doing well, ser.” Brauk never asked more about Nynca, or her pottery, although he must have known that she produced fine pieces, but since he never asked more, Shaunyce didn’t feel she should say more, either.
“That’s good. Don’t forget to dust the display shelves.”
“Yes, ser.” She headed toward the counter to get the dust cloth.
Two glasses later, Shaunyce was getting hungry and impatient. Brauk hadn’t said another word before retreating to his study adjoining the storeroom. She’d heard the side door, the one to Brauk’s study that opened on to the alley, open and close several times as traders came and went, but the door to the study muffled their voices.
Then the front door opened, and a balding man walked in. He looked to be a merchanter, and not a poor one, from the black velvet of his jacket.
“Good day, ser,” she offered cheerfully.
He nodded brusquely in reply, but did not speak, walking to the open display cabinet set against the north wall, surveying one shelf, then the next. He kept looking at the pair of polished brass creatures standing side by side on the third shelf of the open cabinet. She didn’t like the brass figures, each in the shape of a winged beast the like of which she had never seen, with four-clawed feet and a winding barbed tail. The figures were almost identical, except that their long-snouted heads were turned in opposite directions, so that, on the shelf, they looked either toward each other or away, depending on how they were positioned. They were also absolutely flat on the back, and each was hinged, but not exactly in the middle, with the sides bent forward slightly so the figure would balance, giving the impression that each of the creatures was poised to take flight.
“What sort of creatures are these, girl? Why are they hinged? They’re too fancy just to be hinges. How much is Brauk asking?”
“They’re dracones, ser. Seven silvers.”
“Seven silvers? For something no one has ever heard of?” The merchanter shook his head. “Creatures that never were as hinges…” His words dying away, he shifted his gaze to a bo
x, the smallest on display, set on the higher shelf. The top of the seemingly plain box, lacquered or enameled in black, or perhaps coated with something similar, had an inlaid circular oval depicting a silver-white winged bird with a long curved neck unlike any ever seen in Recluce or even in Candor, gliding across a pond against a background of golden-green rushes, seemingly moving from right to left.
“I’ve never seen a bird like that.” The merchanter turned toward Shaunyce. “Do you know what kind it is?”
“A cigoerne, ser,” replied Shaunyce.
“I didn’t ask where it came from, girl.”
“Yes, ser. I was told the city of Cigoerne was named after the bird. The cigoerne was a bird from the Rational Stars.”
The merchanter snorted. “A mythical bird from a mythical place, and that’s what the Hamorians named their capital?” He paused. “Doesn’t look that old, though.”
Shaunyce just hoped he’d buy something, either the pair of winged brasses or the box, and leave. She didn’t like either the bird box or the brass creatures, but each for a different reason.
“How much is it?”
“Fifteen golds.”
“Fifteen golds?” The merchanter shook his head. “Your master doesn’t want to part with it, that’s certain.”
“That’s just the way it is, ser.” Shaunyce had wondered about that, since Brauk had only displayed the box for two eightdays in the three seasons she’d worked for him.
With the sound of the study door opening, Shaunyce knew Master Brauk was headed to the front of the shop. She did not look back, but kept her eyes on the merchanter. She hoped Brauk hadn’t heard her words.
The angular merchanter took a last look at the black enameled box, shook his head, and walked toward the display window. Shaunyce slipped from behind the counter, following the merchanter, not intruding, but staying close and trying to convey helpfulness.
Brauk eased forward and gestured for Shaunyce to return to the counter. Then he said something in a low voice to the merchanter. The other man laughed.
“… might look at the lower shelf on the display case,” suggested Brauk, stepping back, but in a fashion that left the way to the display open.
The merchanter nodded, then returned and studied the lower shelf before speaking. “What about this?” He held up a woman’s jewelry box, with a hinged top of fine black lorken. The top was simple, with just an inlaid border of twin lines of white birch, and the box was easily five times the size of the more expensive enameled box.
Recluce Tales Page 29
