The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1)

by Larke, Glenda

  I thought of Syr-sylv Duthrick. He and his fellow Councillors connived to break the breeding laws for Islandlords even as they upheld it for people like my unknown parents. Like me. For a moment I was thirteen again, lying on the table in the Physicians’ Hall in The Hub, knowing what was about to be done to me…knowing it, yet not really understanding. Not then. Bastards all.

  But I didn’t want to think about that. My future depended on Keeper goodwill.

  ‘It’s the Keepers who are to blame for this proposed marriage,’ she said suddenly, as if she had read my mind.

  I pretended ignorance. ‘What have the Keepers got to do with a dynastic marriage?’

  ‘Is there anything in the Middling Islands that the Keepers aren’t involved in? The royal families of Cirkase and Breth only exist because the Keepers prop them up. The Keepers like royal dictatorships; dictators are easily manipulated—and they keep the lower classes in their place. Keepers aim for a unity of the Middling Islands under their leadership, with everyone bowing down to them because they are the ones with the power: with the sylvmagic. They tell us that without their protection, we’ll fall to the dunmagickers. And people like the Bastionlord and the Castlelord jump to do their bidding, partly because they believe in the danger, but mostly because they know where the sauce for their fish comes from. The Keepers have bought them, just as they have bought everyone in the Middling Isles. We have become so dependent on them we can no longer stand alone…

  ‘And in the meantime, people like the Castlemaid Lyssal get caught in the middle. Nobody cares, least of all people like you.’ She looked at me bitterly. ‘All you care about is your two thousand setus.’

  Her tirade had caught me utterly by surprise. Everything she said was true up to a point, and she couldn’t have found a better way of making me feel about as low as a lugworm. But I needed my two thousand setus. Money was the only thing that kept me from joining the pox-ridden whores in some back street somewhere, and that two thousand setus was a small fortune. Without money, I had nothing except an unguaranteed hope I might earn Keeper citizenship with twenty years of service. Without an ear tattoo, earning a living was difficult: I couldn’t legally live anywhere for more than three days at a time, except on Gorthan Spit; I could be legally harried across the Isles of Glory like a criminal—and had been, often enough. Even my services to the Keeper Council were unofficial and I couldn’t claim exemption from the law because of them. At least with money I could buy some peace, I could bribe a landlord to turn a blind eye to his tenant’s lack of citizenship, I could live well.

  There had been a time when I’d thought money would also buy me a black-labour tattooist, a man or woman who could etch an island symbol and insert the precious stone within the tattoo, illegally, for a price. I had eventually discovered my mistake. The only artists who knew the secret of how to inlay the stone so that it did not fall out, so that the skin never grew over it, so that there was no scarring, so that its authenticity would never be questioned, were ghemphs—and ghemphs were incorruptible. They always had been and always would be, damn them. You couldn’t buy beings who apparently wanted nothing more than what they already had.

  The Cirkasian put down her drink and reached across to me to touch my hair. I jerked away, but she was only pushing back my curls to look for a tattoo. When she didn’t find it, she withdrew her hand and looked at me with something like pity in her eyes. ‘You poor bloody isle-hopper. You don’t have much sodding choice, do you?’

  I blinked. ‘Er, not much.’ She’d surprised me again, this time by her sudden lapse into earthy vulgarity; it was so at variance with her normal speech, with her aura of high-class style.

  She poured some more brandy into my mug and reverted to her usual language without missing a beat. ‘Cut your losses on this one. You’ll never find the Castlemaid Lyssal.’

  ‘Who the hell are you? A friend of the Castlemaid’s?’

  She shrugged. ‘What does it matter? I have Cirkasian citizenship, but otherwise, like you, I’m a renegade. My name’s Flame, by the way.’

  I knocked my mug against hers in salute and started to chuckle.

  ‘What’s so funny about that? It’s not my real name, of course. It’s because of the colour of my hair—’

  ‘It’s beautiful hair,’ I said diplomatically. It was yellow, rather than red, so I assumed whoever had called her that must have been thinking of candle flame rather than a kitchen fire. ‘The name suits you.’

  ‘So? What’s so funny?’

  ‘My name’s Blaze. Because I had a bit of a temper in my younger days. Together,’ I grinned, ‘we’re a conflagration.’

  We stared at one another and then simultaneously burst out laughing.

  I hadn’t wanted to like her. She was everything I wasn’t: petite and lovely and purebred. And she had sylvmagic—which would have bought her Keeper citizenship if she had lacked a citizenship of her own. She had everything I’d ever wanted… Yet I liked her. I liked the intelligent humour in those lovely blue eyes, I liked the compassion I read there. I liked the way she came straight out and said what she thought; it may have been dangerously naive, but after the deviousness I’d had to deal with, it was a draught of sweet water. I said, ‘You’d better watch your step, Flame. Did you know that no one who sailed in to the Docks on that slaver from Cirkase would tell me you were on board?’

  She shrugged. ‘They were well paid to keep quiet.’

  Did she really think money would buy the silence of dregs like that? Her strange mix of naiveté and shrewdness was puzzling.

  I said, ‘I suggested that I would pay them more. Normally that would be enough to have such men show an interest, at least, but they were scared. Or dunmagicked. You didn’t threaten them with sylvmagic, did you?’

  She accepted without comment that I knew she had sylvtalent, but her frown deepened. ‘You don’t threaten people with sylvmagic.’ She had a point. Sylvmagic could do lots of things as far as people who had no Awareness were concerned; it could deceive the senses, cloud the truth, blur reality, create limited illusions, promote healing—but you couldn’t hurt anyone with it, not physically. Not like dunmagic. ‘What are you trying to say?’ she asked.

  ‘That someone didn’t want me—or anyone—to know that you or the Castlemaid Lyssal came in on that vessel. And they were either willing to make some pretty dire threats or they used a dunmagic seal to make sure no one talked. I’d watch my back if I were you. People like that usually have rather nasty motives. Maybe they think they can earn a ransom from the Castlelord if they can return his daughter. Maybe they think they can find out from you where she is. Watch your back, Flame.’

  ‘I have the sylvmagic.’ She said it confidently enough, but there was a moment’s doubt in her eyes; a flash of fear.

  ‘That may not help you against dunmagic.’ That also was true; when dunmagic and sylvmagic clashed, it depended on which practitioner was the most skilled, and from what I had smelled around Gorthan Spit, the someone with dunmagic was very skilled indeed. In that one respect, I had an advantage over her; neither dunmagic nor sylvmagic worked against one of the Awarefolk. It wasn’t dunmagic itself that frightened me, it was the fact that, because we Awarefolk could usually spot a dunmagicker as if he were a shark in a shoal of minnows, and because we were impervious to their spells, dunmagickers hated us enough to want us dead. And there was always an abundance of hideous non-magical ways to kill people…

  Flame paled a little. ‘You have Awareness, don’t you? You and that Tor Ryder both; I saw your faces when you opened the door while I was healing Noviss. That’s how you know I have sylvmagic. You smelled it then. Neither of you could hide your surprise at seeing a Cirkasian sylv.’

  ‘They are rather rare,’ I said. ‘But you’re not nearly sharp enough for Gorthan Spit. Didn’t it occur to you that it might be dunmagic that we had? The dunmagicker who created that spell would have seen the healing of your sylvmagic spell just as you were able to see the damage that a
dunmagic spell did to Noviss. Don’t trust anyone, Flame. Not me, not Ryder, not even that pretty boyfriend of yours.’ Another thought struck me. ‘You don’t know who this dunmagicker is, do you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Or why Noviss was the victim?’

  She shook her head again. ‘Even Noviss doesn’t know.’

  I sighed. ‘It doesn’t take much to upset a dunmagicker. Perhaps Noviss was rude to him, not knowing who he was…that’s all it would take. If he sees Noviss is still up and about, and if he realises you’re the one who cured him, then you could be in real trouble. I’d get off Gorthan Spit as soon as I could, if I were you.’

  ‘I want to. But I can’t. I never bargained for what has actually happened: it’s that time of the year when the two-moon double ebb tides combine with certain currents; ships can come in from the north, the fishing vessels can potter around the coast, but no ship can hope to leave coastal waters for at least another week, perhaps longer. If they tried, they’d be swept south for days, weeks even.’ She gave a slight smile. ‘Thanks for the advice anyway.’

  I drained the last of my brandy and made for the door. Just before I left, she said, ‘You’re still going to search for her, aren’t you? What I said—it didn’t make you change your mind.’

  I looked back at her and smiled faintly. ‘You’re learning Flame, you’re learning.’

  Two thousand setus was a lot of money.

  I hadn’t given up yet.

  ###

  That night I ate in the taproom.

  Janko leered at me and deliberately brushed his clawed hand over my breast when he delivered my food; Tunn the tapboy grinned at me when he thought no one was looking; Tor Ryder of the Stragglers, still dressed in black, looked as serious as ever. Noviss glared in my direction whenever he wasn’t staring moodily into Flame’s eyes. I couldn’t believe that the Bethanic idiot had been so stupid as to put in an appearance in the taproom, thus showing himself to be cured of the dunmagic sore. Was he really so confident that the dunmaster wouldn’t try again? Or that Flame would save him next time?

  While I was still wondering what made such a young man so arrogantly sure of himself, Niamor the Negotiator breezed in with some friends for a drink, winked at me, and breezed out again. The usual mob of slavers and reprobates were, however, missing and the reason was obvious: ten or so crew from the Keeper ship, all sylvs, had honoured the place with their presence. They had used sylvmagic illusion to improve on their looks, a common and utterly frivolous practice that never failed to irritate me. The faint sweet scent of it drifted through the room from their tables. The trimming on their chasubles told me that not only were they all in Council service but every single one of them was a graduate of the exclusive Hub Academy, which meant they were the best the Keeper Isles had to offer.

  They ignored me totally, of course, although I was damned sure there wasn’t one of them who didn’t know exactly who I was and what I was doing there. What I didn’t know was just why they were there. Was the presence of a dunmaster on Gorthan Spit really enough to send a Keeper Councillor of Duthrick’s stature scurrying across the ocean? Enough to make Academy graduates eat in a place like The Drunken Plaice? Of course, Keepers loathed anything that threatened their sylvmagic and were therefore dedicated to wiping dunmagic off the face of the islands (they still had a long way to go, mind you!) but they didn’t usually send a Councillor and a shipload of their top officers to deal with one dunmaster. They normally sent someone like me, together with a few young Keeper sylvs who wanted to prove themselves. I wondered idly just how this lot thought they were going to find the dunmaster without the aid of one of the Awarefolk. I stared at them, exasperated by their arrogance and confidence, envious of their easy camaraderie—yet appreciative of their courage and all that well-trained, lightly sheathed energy.

  Anyway, their presence certainly put a damper on the atmosphere in the taproom. Even Janko tiptoed around them. Noviss glowered in their direction as often as he glowered in mine; the boy was a transparent as a jellyfish. I wondered why the Keepers annoyed him so, and I wondered just how long Flame would put up with him; she had ten times his good sense.

  However, it was Tor Ryder who interested me more that evening. His expression didn’t change (did it ever?) but he was as tense as a sea-pony too long out of the water. I came to the conclusion that he didn’t like the Keepers one little bit either. Interesting.

  I ate my dinner quickly and went back upstairs. As I’d expected, Flame had locked both her room and Noviss’s with sylvmagic, but that meant nothing to me. I just opened the doors and walked through the magic as if it wasn’t there. I searched her room first and found nothing of interest. There were a few clothes, a bar of perfumed soap and a comb and brush, all of a quality that indicated she wasn’t short of money, but there was nothing that gave me a clue to her true identity, or to the whereabouts of the Castlemaid.

  Halfway through the search I had that funny prickling feeling you get sometimes when you’re being watched; my heart lurched like a rowboat in a storm. I looked up, and found a line of birds roosting on the window sill in the darkness, on the inside of the shutters. They were awake and were looking at me with bright, curious eyes. I decided I must be a poor burglar; my nervousness made me so sensitive that even the stare of a bird seemed sinister.

  I moved on to Noviss’s room, and there I had more luck.

  I found a breviary in among his belongings.

  And that could only mean one thing. He was a Manod. A Man of God. My jaw dropped about as far as it could go—that naïve, immature boy was a lay brother of the Menod? He didn’t fit with my image of the sect at all. I’d been schooled by Menod, after all. As a child I had sometimes loathed their discipline and their rules and their constant attempts to mould me into someone they thought I should be, mainly because I had never been a soft-shelled hermit crab, willing to shape myself to fit another’s shell. I had respected their earnest goodness, however. Later, as an adult, I had come to know a few of them, lay members of both sexes as well as patriarchs, and I had a sneaking admiration for their dedication to Good with a capital G. I had learned to respect them all over again, mostly because they were so pragmatic. They did things rather than talked about what ought to be done. They didn’t bother too much with public prayer or proselytising like the Fellih priests. They certainly didn’t hate anything that was fun, as the Fellih did. They may have been prompted to good works by their belief that such would take them to heaven, but nonetheless I had always found them genuine in their kindness and charity.

  The relationship between Menod and Keeper was often strange, which might explain why Noviss had glowered at the Keepers downstairs. Most nonsylv citizens of the Keeper Isles were in fact Menod, worshipping the Menod God and subscribing to the idea of a single all-powerful, all-loving deity. There were more Menod patriarchs and worship-houses in The Hub than in any other city in any islandom. The Menod Patriarchy itself was centred on Tenkor, which was one of the Keeper Isles. In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, the Keeper Council of The Hub and the Menod Council of Tenkor often squabbled, sometimes quite acrimoniously. The Keeper Council did not like the growing power of the Menod, nor did they appreciate the directives given to the faithful about the way they should behave if they were in administrative positions of power. The Menod criticized Keeper morality and preached against the use of sylvmagic, calling it the temptation of the Great Trench. Worse still, at least from the Keeper Council’s point of view, the Menod faithful were growing in numbers as many of the smaller religious sects in other islandoms, impressed by Menod charity and education, were being converted. And greater numbers meant more power…

  At home in the Keeper Isles, anomalous situations were frequent. Some of the Keeper Council sylvs attended services, for example, seeking salvation as assiduously as any patriarch. Many atheist Keeper Councillors sent their children to Menod schools because of their superior teachers; and many sylvs managed to accept
the faith while still using their magic powers. ‘Ethical Sylvs’, they called themselves. Their catch phrase was ‘Sylv power with responsibility and Menod morality’. As a consequence, the Patriarchy often turned a blind eye to what their sylv flock was doing in their spare time. I might have called them hypocrites, except that they had a strong aversion to injustice, such as the injustice done to obvious halfbreeds like me. Curiously, many Menod, particularly many of their patriarchy, were Awarefolk, which gave me another affinity with them.

  Well, Noviss had no Awareness, that’s for sure, any more than he had compassion for the halfbred. If he was a Manod, he was a poor specimen.

  I thumbed through the breviary and found a name on the flyleaf: Ransom Holswood. Holswood. A Bethany Isles name, if I remembered correctly, and Noviss had a ruby-shelled crab tattoo, the mark of Bethany Isles citizenship. Oddly enough, I was fairly sure I’d heard Holswood linked to the personal name of Ransom somewhere before. I’d have to think about it.

  I didn’t find anything else of interest and I left the room as unobtrusively as I’d entered, the sylvmagic locks seemingly untouched.

  ###

  I went out into the town again that night.

  As usual, the day had cooled with the arrival of the afternoon Doctor, but the wind had dropped since and the evening was unpleasantly warm. A snatch of conversation I heard as I passed a group of middle-aged men loitering on a street corner told me I wasn’t the only one to notice the heat. ‘Damn weather,’ one of them was saying. He scratched himself vigorously and I saw that his skin was covered with a scabbing rash; there wasn’t a piece of him bigger than a fingernail that was free of it. I didn’t know what disease it was that he had, but I guessed he’d been hounded out of his home islandom because of it. He continued, ‘I feel like a lobster on the boil. Must be three months since it rained last.’