Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  ‘No,’ Aranthur said. ‘No, it is against the law. When I go to sword class, I carry my sword – sheathed – in a cloth.’

  He didn’t say that most criminals and many other people had weapons and in fact wore them – and that everyone wore a dagger – and that the alleys were full of casual violence, from dagger fights to armed robbery and outright assassination.

  He didn’t say that, because at the same time, a careful student could avoid ever seeing so much as a bleeding corpse by walking along the seaward edges of the city, where the rich lived, and staying out of certain neighbourhoods, and not joining the riots. Or just by using the canals and not the alleys.

  His father sighed. ‘You know, it’s Theo.’

  Aranthur didn’t know. ‘Uncle Theo?’

  ‘He has a sword,’ Hagor said. ‘Bought one when we was boys. Went raiding with grandpatur.’ He was silent a while. Then: ‘He went east to fight for strangers. Some parts of him never came back.’ He shrugged. ‘Ever think what you will do, when you are done at the Academy?’

  Aranthur managed a laugh. ‘No. I mean—’

  ‘It’s not as if qualifying as a Magos will make you a better farmer,’ Hagor said.

  ‘It might,’ Aranthur put in. ‘I have learned …’ He paused, realising that saying ‘I see everything differently’ was not going to make his father feel better.

  That brought Lecne to mind, of a sudden – a boy who wanted to be a scholar, toiling in his father’s inn.

  ‘They do teach us things,’ he said. ‘Interesting things, about how people think, and what you can learn from them.’

  ‘And how to cast spells and defy your parents,’ Hagor said, but he winked.

  Aranthur switched sides of his mount.

  ‘Would you be a priest, lad?’ Hagor asked.

  Aranthur realised, with a shock, that he understood what his father was doing. He was trying to find a place for his son in his normal world of adulthood. Aranthur was more shocked at how easily he read his father’s thoughts than by the revelation itself.

  Aranthur smiled as he started on his horse’s neck.

  ‘I don’t think the life of a priest is for me, Patur.’ He paused. ‘If I’m good enough, I might try to be a Magos. But it will be years before I reach a point where I’ll know.’

  Silence.

  ‘My son, a Magos.’

  Hagor whistled, and then Aranthur listened to the rapid sound of his father’s brush starting work on the mud on the mule’s legs.

  ‘Ever wonder why the aristo chose you, lad?’ he asked.

  Aranthur realised he had never given it any thought.

  ‘You do think you are smarter than most folks, don’t ye?’ he asked.

  Aranthur counted in his head, thinking of answers.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally admitted.

  His father laughed. ‘Well,’ he said, as if he was about to say something.

  The mule – an old family retainer and a strong, capable animal – made quiet chirping sounds more suited to a bird than an equine. The horse – Soldier or Rasce, depending on Aranthur’s mood – grunted in reply and let loose a long fart.

  ‘That horse likes beans,’ his father said.

  ‘Soldier loves anything that counts as food,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘Don’t tell your mother you want to be a Magos. In her eyes, you’ll come home and marry and raise a family on a farm.’

  ‘I may yet!’ Aranthur said.

  Hagor came around the shed and clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘You know what, son? I doubt it. I think it’s even going to be difficult to hold your sister here. You’re at an age when parents seem like fools. I know – it wasn’t really so long ago for me.’ He shook his head. ‘I always wanted a sword, but it was Theo who went away and owned one. He fought in other men’s battles, son. He was a sell-sword. We never tell anyone.’

  ‘Why not?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Because we’re Arnauts. And everyone thinks we’re brigands and mercenaries anyway. I spent my youth as a farmer trying to convince Byzas merchants to trust me.’ He shook his head. ‘And yet we are Arnauts; my father told stories of the great raid, when they lifted six thousand head from the Byzas down in the valleys towards Lonika.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, we don’t brag about that any more.’ He laughed.

  Cattle thieving had once been an Arnaut way of life. They sang songs about it, but they didn’t mention it outside the valley.

  But his father wasn’t done.

  ‘By the Rising of the Sun, I even prayed for a sword.’ He made a face. ‘And your mother’s grandfather was a famous swordsman. At least, among the tribes in the hills.’ He frowned and looked at his hands as if there was revelation here about how to raise a child. ‘But those were different days. Anyway, what I want to say is, don’t … Don’t think we don’t want good things for you. And your sword … It … reminds me of other times. Other … ways. Don’t become a swordsman. And – don’t think that the City is better than us. Please.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Aranthur said.

  Mostly.

  Riding down the pass between the river and the deep, dark forest, he couldn’t decide whether his announcement that he would return for ploughing was a craven surrender or a noble idea. It certainly made his mother and father happy. Even his sister seemed more animated.

  He wondered to himself if going home made him younger. He had felt so much more … manly at the inn. His mother and sister, on the other hand …

  He laughed at himself and watched the woods.

  In youth, he and Marta had roamed the woods above the road, pretending to find signs of the Haiarkayo and the Zanash, just as on the high hillsides, they would delight in finding the ancient stone nests that once the Green Drakes had made, and pretending they found new eggs. They had pretended so hard that the games had become quite frightening.

  Now he watched the woods with what might have been an unnecessary intensity, and all but fell off his horse when a stag leapt from the cover of the trees and bounded through the open ground, leaping felled trees and rocks, thrusting through the melting drifts of snow. He wondered if the Haiarkayo were still there. Or how many Easterners now lived in the woods, and what they were eating in the heart of winter.

  One of the Masters had suggested that there were still Haiarkayo, in a lecture. That they were relatives of the Dhadhi. The idea seemed to take all their mystery away. And in Natural Philosophy they had discussed Eastern Drakes, the green monsters who could speak – and eat magik, or so his Master claimed.

  But as neither dragons nor faery knights appeared in the stag’s wake, he simply looked at the tracks and rode on with his heart hammering in his chest. He mocked himself as he checked the priming in his carbine.

  He wasted a lot of time when he missed the side road that paralleled the main road. It had no tracks and fell down a steep slope – that much he remembered. But it took him too long to find it again and walking up the path with snow-melt running over – and through – his boots was deeply unpleasant. It left him wet to the knees and cold to the bone. At the top he mounted, and he and Rasce – a better team now – rode quickly. The ground under the melting snow was still frozen, and the sun had reduced the snow cover down here to a patchwork quilt. He alternated between trotting and walking as the sun went down, and was shocked – again – to see the trail widen into a proper road lined with stone houses and good wood cabins: the small town of Fosse that sat north of the inn, hidden by a low ridge. He was in the yard of the inn well before dark, and Lecne came out and wrapped him in an embrace.

  ‘My pater’s well – recovering every day. He’s in the kitchen now and none can say him nay! Ha, I’ll be a great poet!’ Lecne laughed. ‘An Imperial soldier came. Can you believe it? They weren’t here when the attack happened, but we have to answer questions because some bandits died.’

  Aranthur felt a touch of fear.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ he asked as they pushed into the kitchen.

>   ‘As little as possible,’ Lecne said.

  Aranthur passed into the kitchen, was embraced by Donna Cucina and Don Cucino as well, and the cook and one of the girls for good measure. The girl smiled at him – the same who had served him at breakfast the day after the fight.

  He smiled back, reflecting how pleasant a smile was, and how different from a lecture on the failings of others.

  ‘I’ll bet you don’t remember my name,’ she said.

  ‘Hasti,’ he said.

  Girls’ names stuck in his head better than boys’, and he knew why – but the Studion also had games and strategies to help young people memorise details, because there were so many things a student had to remember.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice!’ she said.

  She had dark hair and a straight back and a face that was almost comically like a cat’s. She was very pretty – in a very feline way. Aranthur was struck by how disturbed he must have been by the killing, that he had not really noted her prettiness, or her grace. She laughed, throwing back her head.

  ‘Hasti!’ Donna Cucina said. ‘She’s my sister’s girl, and she thinks she’s the Queen of the Spring.’

  Her eyes stayed with his a fraction of a heartbeat more …

  ‘It’s almost as if Sun Rise never happened!’ Lecne said. ‘Master Sparthos is just back, and then you come in too. Perhaps the priest and the mysterious Despoina Iralia will come back too.’

  ‘About that …’ Aranthur cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘Yes?’ Donna Cucina asked.

  ‘I’m wondering if anyone …’ Aranthur shrugged. ‘My patur asked if I had looked for the dead man. The man whose clothes and horse I have.’ He looked around. ‘So … I wondered if you have heard any news. From the west.’

  Don Cucino shrugged. He glanced at the red line at the cuff of his shirt, where he’d had his hand cut off. He frowned.

  ‘Those hell-sent bastards killed a lot of people before they came here,’ he said.

  ‘That close to Darknight?’ Donna Cucina spat. ‘They were more like demons than men. Possessed.’

  Aranthur could tell that he’d dropped a shadow on the family, and he bowed and slipped away, but Lecne followed him out into the common room.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  Aranthur stopped and slapped his back.

  ‘Pater doesn’t want to say it, but they found some bodies back down the road, when the snow melted after First Sun,’ Lecne said. ‘They died hard.’ He shrugged. ‘No one wants to talk about it. Loot is loot. Take your share – it was the inn that set the shares and no man or god can claim we were unfair. Right? And we’ve had customers from Volta. Six hundred houses burned. Someone started the fire with magik. It’ll take them years to recover.’

  ‘Right,’ said Aranthur.

  He had stopped, because the man in brown – Master Sparthos – was sitting at the same table that he’d occupied a fortnight earlier. He sat with two other men, and they were speaking with a quiet intensity that was a little troubling. The City had given Aranthur a taste of how men behaved on the edge of violence, and the recent incident was recalled all the more powerfully by the inn. Both of the new men wore swords – one a long sword with a complex hilt, and the other a mid-length sword with a plain cross-hilt.

  Master Sparthos gave Aranthur a civil nod and went back to his guests.

  ‘You still willing to give me a sword lesson?’ Lecne asked.

  Aranthur laughed. ‘Do you have a sword?’

  Lecne frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is, we have an old one, but it’s special.’

  ‘Do you have a good stick?’ Aranthur asked. ‘Oak is good.’

  ‘I have to do chores. I’ll be back.’

  Lecne bounded off. Aranthur went up to his room and changed into dry clothes. Then he went back downstairs to the common room carrying his book. He had scarcely taken it out at his parents’ house for fear of their comments. He’d shown it to Marta, who had leafed through it, her mouth slightly open in astonishment. He’d formed an impression of a book full of terse comments and odd illustrations, including one of two people copulating which had made her giggle and him blush.

  Now, however, he set himself to read it. An older woman poured him wine and he thanked her. Then he sat in the beautiful bay window and let the warm sun bring fire to the gold in the illumination, which was of a man being roasted over a fire by two hares. The illumination had nothing to do with the words on the page – or rather, it seemed to have nothing to do with them. But some scholar’s instinct prompted him to stop and look at them from time to time, trying to look beyond the immediate. The words on the page were pious religious sentiments – the kind that could be purchased in brush calligraphy at stalls by the Great Temple of Winds in the Byzas quarter of Megara, for example:

  The Sun is Great

  or

  Awe of the Sun is the beginning of wisdom

  He looked up when the light changed. Master Sparthos was standing at his table.

  ‘A pleasure to see you again, young man,’ he said.

  Aranthur rose and bowed as he had been taught to bow to a magister, with one hand all the way to the ground.

  ‘Magister,’ he said in reply.

  Sparthos wrinkled his mouth, which seemed to be as close as the man came to a smile. With a civil nod, he passed outside.

  He went back to reading, but the language – High Ellene – was not his best, and he had to puzzle out cases and tenses very different from Liote. And the simplicity of the text was at odds with the illuminations. Could the two hares roasting the man represent an inversion? If so, the author was a blasphemer.

  Blasphemy was not so uncommon in the Academy, nor was outright atheism. Founded a thousand years before in the first flush of the Revolution to train young mages, the Studion had passed through a long period of monasticism. Even in the modern age a large proportion of the men, and even some of the women, remained initiates of one of the cults, or went out into the world as mendicants, with their power trained to enhance their faith. But at least two of the Magi dismissed the worship of the Sun as blatant superstition, and the most daring, the Practical Philosophy Magos, held that the juxtaposition of Light and Dark was a tool to force simplicity and superstition on the masses.

  He was lost in contemplation of the simplicity – or complexity – when a serving girl cleared her throat.

  He looked up into a severely beautiful face – the purest Liote looks: a long nose; black hair; stark eyebrows above deep black eyes. She wasn’t looking at him, but at the book in his lap.

  ‘You read Ellene?’ he asked.

  He asked with humour; the ancient language was only used by priests and scholars. He’d struggled with it for half a year, and the simple statements of Consolations were about all he could handle.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with a sniff. ‘Would you like something?’ She looked down her nose at him. ‘You are my brother’s friend, aren’t you?’

  Aranthur saw that she had something of the Cucina nose and forehead.

  ‘Where did you learn Ellene?’ he asked.

  She gave a little shrug.

  Silence hung between them.

  ‘I taught myself,’ she said. ‘Wine?’

  ‘No, thank you. I am going to try and teach your brother a little fencing.’

  He smiled to indicate that it wasn’t her brother he was unsure of.

  ‘And that’s dangerous?’

  ‘Wine won’t improve me, I promise. You taught yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Want me to prove it? I can read any passage you indicate.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Is that Consolations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Aranthur handed it to her, but she merely nodded and went to the table with the two friends of the sword master.

  When Lecne appeared with a stout staff shod in iron, Aranthur picked up his book. After depositing it in his room (carefully tucked between his straw matt
ress and the ropes that bound the bed) he grabbed his sword and ran back down the stairs. The two young men cut through the kitchen without being stopped, to the inn’s backyard, where horses were brought out from the barns.

  If Aranthur had had the talent or training to draw, he would have sketched his friend on the spot, as the personification of eager anticipation.

  He realised, facing his companion’s ardour, that he had no idea what – or how – he was going to teach the other boy.

  But after consideration and some uneasy silence, his brain began to work and he had some notions, and he shrugged.

  ‘First, you can have my sword. I’ll use the stick,’ he said. ‘Second, I feel it only fair to tell you that I’ve had less than half a year of lessons, and I’m not at all sure I know anything.’

  He shrugged again, because there was an insistent temptation to play the great man – to start talking at length about the parts of the sword and the way to purchase one. That’s how his own master had started, and it had been a very impressive, scholarly debut, including a display of his lineage, not as a man but as a swordsman – the name of his teacher, and all the teachers before him.

  In an inn yard with a cold wind blowing, action seemed called for.

  ‘Let’s start with some simple cuts. There are many cuts, but we can keep it to six …’ Aranthur began, and looked at his companion. ‘No, let’s start with how to hold the sword.’

  He had just got his friend’s hand comfortably around the grip, a little less like a man holding a claw hammer and a little more like a swordsman, when Hasti and the other girl, the one who’d taught herself Ellene, appeared on the kitchen’s back steps in hose and doublets.

  ‘My sister,’ said Lecne. ‘Nenia, can’t I, please …?’

  Nenia was a year or two older than her brother. If Hasti looked like a cat, she looked like an eagle, with a long, hooked nose that differed materially from any other nose in the family. She was striking rather than pretty. Her face dealt well with the family nose, and her eyebrows were dark and heavy above eyes of a surprising, almost indescribably dark colour. Given that she was in hose, it was easy to see that she carried a good deal of muscle and was as tall as Aranthur himself, a sharp contrast to Hasti’s diminutive size.