The Mage's Daughter 2: Book Two: Enlightenment

by LeRoy Clary

  “What else?” El asked.

  Sara looked to Prin who shrugged as if she had covered it all.

  El smiled as he reached behind himself and pulled a rolled scroll from among others on a shelf. He motioned for them to sit at a small table, where two small chairs waited. He unrolled and spread the scroll, which was comprised of a simple line drawing without color or enhancement.

  He pointed with a bony finger, “This is to explain the process. We can provide details if this is the sort of thing you wish. May I offer refreshments?”

  They refused, and he continued. The first panel of the drawing simply detailed vertical beams that formed a framework holding up a loft. The second panel, the underside of a floor as seen from the underside as well as the top. The bottom four panels detailed how the room might be laid out. “Questions?”

  Sara said, “This can be adapted to any size? The stairs placed where we want them?”

  He nodded agreeably before saying, “The cost varies, but yes.”

  “And building work tables for sorting the spices, as well as shelves on the ground floor?”

  “Simple and inexpensive. The loft is also not too costly, but the roof? That is another matter. Until I see the building and in particular the roof, I cannot even give you a guess for the cost.”

  Prin liked his honesty. A wrong guess was far worse than being given a higher, but accurate price to begin with.

  Sara told him which building was theirs and agreed to meet him in the morning. She shook his hand, and Prin noticed the handshake may have taken slightly too long for a casual agreement. The look in their eyes lingered.

  Prin took Sara by her elbow and escorted her from the tent. Outside in the noise of a thousand deals being made, she said, “We still have things to do.”

  Sara said, “Are you sure you have enough gold for all this?”

  Prin paid for two mugs of unfermented fruit juice from a fruit she was unfamiliar with and stood to the side of the narrow passage between stalls as they sipped. “I have spent less than half of one large coin. If the repairs cost the other half, we still have the other coin to live on. Plus, we have all the smaller gold coins, but our only expenses will be food and what other necessities do we need.”

  “That’s enough to pay our way for two or three years?”

  “Fifty,” Prin snorted. “After the building is done.”

  Returning the empty mugs to the seller, they wandered up and down the rows of goods displayed. Carpets, clothing, weapons, jewelry, food, and a hundred other things. Prin noted the location of a leather worker in case the scabbard for Sara’s new throwing knife was not up to her standards.

  As they walked and talked, a raven landed on a tent and cocked its head as if looked at them. It pulled its head back and spoke, “Hannah beware.”

  In the noise and confusion of the bazaar, Prin turned to Sara, “Did you hear that?”

  Sara looked confused.

  The bird flew away. “A raven landed and said, Hannah Beware. At least I think it did.”

  Sara turned to look for the bird, and when she didn’t see it, she asked, “Are you sure?”

  “No. I was so shocked it called me Hannah, or thought it did, that I’m not sure it was even there. Nobody here knows that’s my name.”

  “Then, how could a raven know it?”

  Prin shrugged it off, but the incident haunted the back recesses of her mind. Had it happened? She decided her mind was playing tricks.

  Sara pulled her to one stall where an old woman with wistful eyes sat and watched the people flowing past. The raised table in front of her held stacks of paper, inks, quills, and even pens. The variety captured Prin’s attention.

  Sara said, “We desire paper, poor quality for a student, and all else a teacher might need.”

  The woman pulled out a small scroll which revealed the alphabet and numbers, each with small arrows indicating the flow of ink. Before she could fully describe it, Sara agreed to buy. Prin carried a stack of heavy paper while Sara carried a half dozen pens of different shapes and features, and small jars of ink.

  A cripple handed them samples of bread with small seeds baked on the outside. They bought two loaves. Another woman sold dried meat, peppered and spiced differently. She was kind enough to refuse to sell them their first selection because she said it would burn their tongues to cinders and then neither girl could ever speak again. All three laughed at the joke.

  Others welcomed them or asked friendly questions about their origin. They provided non-descript answers and indicated they had arrived more than twenty days before. They wanted to establish they had made a pilgrimage to visit a relative, more than two weeks before Hannah in the Kingdom of Wren, had disappeared. They also mentioned their father often, as well as Prin’s age, all to confuse those they believed would be searching for them.

  When the assassins came sniffing around, they would find no matching blonde girl of eleven had arrived in Indore, and the one that vaguely fit the description had arrived with her family on a ship twenty days before Hannah could have. Instead of hiding, they spread the story to all they spoke to and hoped it helped hide them in plain sight.

  Although their arms were already full, Sara pulled Prin to another stall where chamber pots were displayed. Prin said, “I guess we need one.”

  Sara shook her head. “We need two.” She pointed to one and asked to see it. The woman told her it was her biggest seller. But Prin saw another on display that captured her interest. While plain white and ordinary on the outside, the bottom of the inside displayed the image of a mage, arms raised, sparkles at his fingertips. She giggled.

  “Think that’s funny, do you?” the old woman asked. “You’d like to pee on a mage?”

  Prin burst out laughing, then said, “Tell me that’s a young mage, and I’ll buy it.”

  The old woman lifted the pot and pretended to carefully check the painting inside. “Why, yes, I do believe it is a young mage.”

  They located the steeple standing above the skyline, and headed in that direction. Another raven, or perhaps the same one, flew past Prin, so low she ducked and felt the puff of air on her cheek from the wings. As it passed, it squawked for attention, then said in a clear, soft voice, “Hannah, beware.”

  Prin said, “Did you hear that?”

  Sara had her head turned away, looking off into the distance, distracted. She had missed it again. “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  However, when they passed a locksmith, Prin said, “Hey, let’s stop here.”

  Sara protested, “We can’t carry any more.”

  “How will you sleep tonight knowing there may be a hundred keys to fit our locks in the hands of thieves and murderers?”

  “Okay, maybe we can manage to carry two locks. Small ones.”

  The seller was an odd little man of forty, or fifty. Not only did he wear a full beard, but a swath of material covered him from his nose to his chin disguising his features. Prin hoped he wore it for decoration and not because of an injury. She spotted locks like those on their building’s doors and pointed. “We need two like those, but with different keys that this one.” She held up the key to their new home.

  He said calmly, in a faintly amused tone, “Are you sure you want one like that?”

  “Why? They look solid enough to me. And they are big.”

  “Solid, yes. Secure, no.”

  Sara said, “Are we in the wrong place? Those locks are massive.”

  In answer, he removed one of the familiar-looking padlocks and pulled the key. “See here? The lock is thinner than your palm, and the key is inserted from the front. There is only space inside for only one of five patterns for the key. Any thief who cannot open a lock of this kind with one of the five keys he carries in his pocket is a fool.”

  Sara’s tone turned sharp. “And of course, you have a far better one for only twice the cost.”

  “Cost is relative. What will the cost be if a thief enters the place you intend
to lock? Far more than the expense of a better lock, I’ll wager.”

  Prin didn’t see the man as trying to over-sell them. She said, “Show us the kind you have in your shop or home.”

  “A baker always has good bread on his table, and a cobbler wears nice shoes. You don’t require the kind of quality lock I have, but I will show you one far better than that simple padlock, and it does not cost much more.”

  “No,” Prin said sternly. “I want to see what you use, and I want to know why.”

  Sara took a step back, placed her purchases on a workbench, and let Prin continue. The man pulled a lock from under his counter. Instead of the keyhole in the center of the lower portion, the lock was solid metal. He turned it sideways to reveal where the key would be inserted. He then opened his fist and showed them the key. It was a solid bar as long as the lock was wide. Along the lock were depressions at odd intervals, of varying depths.

  Prin saw at a glance that instead of a few possible key patterns, the lock contained hundreds, perhaps thousands. “The cost?”

  The difference in the costs was not as great as she expected. She would have paid twice what he quoted and still have been happy. “We’ll take two, with the same key for both. And do you have a smaller version for use inside?”

  “Yes, I can have them completed in two days, but there are other, cheaper locks I can sell you, almost as good.”

  “Two days?” Prin protested louder than she meant. “We need them today.”

  He didn’t become offended or upset. Instead, he reached back under his counter again and pulled a pair of locks that were fastened together, with a pair of keys hanging from them. “These are the locks I intended to sell you. Not quite as good, but if you tell me where you live, I will come by in two days and replace these with the better ones.”

  “These are better than the regular ones?”

  “Far better.”

  Prin paid him and hefted the pair of locks that were as large as her hand. She glanced at the load she carried, and it didn’t include any food. “Do you know someone who can help us carry all this? We sort of overdid it.”

  He cupped his hands to his mouth and called. A boy of eight with two new front teeth too big for his face arrived, eager to help. They split up the load and quickly left the bazaar before they found more things to buy. The boy was grateful for the small copper coin they paid him.

  When they arrived at their new building, the lock of the front door hung open. Prin pulled her throwing knife and opened the door carefully, prepared to let the knife fly. Nobody was inside, and neither was her satchel. While Sara and the boy set their purchases inside, Prin went to the pile of rubble and moved a few boards aside with her toe. Everything of value was still hidden there.

  They replaced the locks with the new ones and worked them open and closed several times. When the boy was gone, Sara said, “Well, the truth is that you’re less trusting than me, and I’m glad for that. The new locks will make me feel safer, especially after your things were stolen the very first day.”

  “The dog will make us even safer.”

  “Dog? What dog?”

  Prin kicked the door jamb in anger at their home having been violated, then placed her knife back in the sheath between her shoulder blades. She snarled, “The great big ugly beast we’re going to buy tomorrow. The one with all the teeth.”

  Sara chuckled. “The one that eats thieves?”

  “That’s the one.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  They woke cold and sore from sleeping on the hard stone floor and the lack of the blankets and sleeping mats they’d forgotten to buy the day before. Shortly after waking, El, the carpenter, beat on their door. He strode inside, made a few measurements, took notes, and inspected the inside of the roof. Back outside, he climbed a ladder he’d brought and walked around on the roof before climbing down.

  Prin waited for the news, prepared for the worst and she considered seeking more estimates as her mother had warned her to do before hiring workmen. Always get another bid. As a lady in the Queens court, her mother had observed many business transactions before moving to the seclusion of the Earl’s castle in the Darkling Forest.

  However, the man she greeted wore a lopsided grin and said, “Good news. The roof is sound for many more years. Oh, it needs a few minor repairs, but all are quick and will cost almost nothing.”

  Now, for the bad news, Prin thought, and the increase in price. He's being nice, so we’ll accept the higher bid for the other work and think it a good price. “The loft?”

  “Good news there also. The walls of the building are solid, the floor is, too. The loft that burned left behind the stone supports that held up the last loft, which is a little larger than you asked for, but will be far cheaper to build because I can duplicate the previous construction and reuse the existing bracing.”

  “Show me,” Prin said, understanding about every third word.

  He pointed to the wall above her. She hadn’t noticed a lip of stone running around the three walls, as wide as her hand, and apparently made for beams to sit upon. He pointed to places on the stone floor where timbers and once stood upright to support the center of the loft.

  “The cost?” she said.

  “I warn you, the cost may be more than my original estimate, but only because you may add to it. And you mentioned adding cabinets, tables, and storage on the ground floor that are not included in the original bid. Neither are the windows that open that you mentioned, but I don’t think you’ll need them. All that can come later.”

  “I want the windows,” she persisted.

  He pointed to the ones high on the wall. “Those are small, but they do open, and there are a lot of them. Tell you what, if we get the deck of the loft built and you want to add larger windows, we can do it then. That’s when we would, anyhow. But I think you’ll be happy with them as they are.”

  “The cost?” she asked again, more insistently.

  He gave her a price of less than half of what she expected to pay, and that would be after bargaining the price lower. He said, “Again, if the previous loft hadn’t left the supports we need, the price would be three times what it is.”

  “When can you start?”

  “I have another job this morning, but I can start on the roof by this afternoon. And I can order the materials for the loft to be delivered late today, at least most of what I’ll need. None of it is rare or unusual, so it’s readily available.”

  Prin held out three coins. “For the materials and initial work. We’ll pay the rest when we are satisfied, my father said.”

  El said, “I can see he’s taught you well. In your land, do you shake hands to confirm a deal?”

  She reached out and took his large hand in hers. Just to let him know she was stronger than she looked, she gave it a hard squeeze. He was enough of a gentleman to wince as if she’d hurt him, which drew a surprised look from Sara.

  Prin said, “I think we should go shopping again. Back to the bazaar.”

  “What for?”

  “Food. I’m starving. And chairs. I miss chairs. And blankets.”

  Sara said, “Then we also need a desk for you. And candles. You need to work on writing and then reading every day.”

  They went to the bazaar and found grilled sausages, pies and weak ale for breakfast. Both wore their ugly tan dresses but found small items in the market to decorate and make them more cheerful. Sara used imitation flowers made of thin colorful material pinned to her shoulders, and Prin bought a bright red belt.

  They encountered another of the Order of The Iron Ring and thinking it was the one they met the previous day, called out to him. However, he responded quickly and introduced himself, and said he knew of them and would help with anything they needed. Prime told him of the robbery in their house, and he offered to look for the thief.

  “They didn’t take anything of value,” Sara said.

  “But, they did,” he responded. “They took sanctuary and your trust.”


  “We ordered new locks,” Sara snapped harshly.

  “See?” He shrugged as if that explained it all.

  They returned with armloads of purchases to wait for the carpenter or the delivery of the building materials. Prin explored the small yard in the rear of their building that was surrounded by a hedge that blocked off a view from the street, yet allowed the afternoon sun to strike it. Chalmers had referred to it as a garden, as if the building was a palace with carefully tended grounds.

  The remains she found were of a vegetable garden where a few carrots and onions had managed to go to seed and grow. Sara pointed out that all five of the trees were fruit trees, and in the shade of one tree sat a sturdy bench large enough for two. Sara used a piece of wood from the scrap pile for a backing to rest on her knees and carried the ink and a few sheets of paper outside.

  Prin’s formal education began in the garden. Sara hadn’t had the opportunity to teach her much of reading and writing before they fled, and since then they had been far too busy, but now she changed from a friend into a taskmaster. While Prin had been proud of the letters she’d learned on her own, the knowledge didn’t begin to satisfy Sara.

  Sara made her repeat each letter and their sounds out loud, acting more of a disciplinarian than the crow that had corrected her at the tree in the forest. Each stroke of her pen had to agree with the little chart they’d purchased, and after she had grown tired of an exercise, Sara moved her on to another.

  She printed pairs of letters and had Prin pronounce how they should sound together. On the following day, Prin was again working in the overgrown garden after the rest of the lumber for the loft had been delivered and placed inside via the carriage doors at the end of the building. The new locks were delivered, the roof had been repaired, and the work on the loft was well under construction by a crew of four.

  Prin said, “Your knife is supposed to be ready today.”

  “Are you trying to get out of reading?”

  “Yes. I’ve thought of something else we need, too.”

  “Which is?”

  “Treeman.”