by Dave Duncan
He relaxed with a gasp of stunned relief.
“Sorry if we embarrassed you, sir.” A troll sorcerer could communicate without interference from equine teeth and shoe-size tongue. “The mistress is a narrow-minded old bag, and I thought that would be the best way to stop her spying on us. She’s gone to bed now. I’ve put her to sleep, so it’s safe.”
Thrugg lifted Andor out of the wall. He set him down gently in an untidy heap of limbs.
“I’m afraid I need help, too,” Rap admitted. He could make no impression on the sorceress’s spell. Feeling almost lightheaded with relief, he stared at the two Thruggs — the potent young sorcerer in the ambience and the lumbering barrel of muscle that came shuffling over to help him like a well-intentioned bullock, making the big room seem crowded. “It was you all the time?”
“Yes, just me. Urg really is my mate.” The troll lifted Rap out of the wall, also, with no apparent effort, either physical or occult. “She got caught when I was off doing a job near Drimush. I came to help, and then discovered there was a sorceress on guard. I’m ’fraid I’frightened your friend.”
Andor was spread out on the floor like a corpse.
Rap leaned against the wall, easing his aching joints and shivering. “No surprise. He needs the rest.” And Andor would try to disappear at the first opportunity, but he was still the cabal’s best horseman. “It might be a good idea if you left the shielding on him for the time being.”
“If you say so, sir.” Thrugg seemed shocked, though.
“Please. And please call me Rap.”
“Then that was a sequential spell I saw on him earlier?”
“Yes, it was.” Rap wondered how many sorcerers were powerful enough — and hence wise enough — to make a snap diagnosis of something as rare as a sequential spell. Thrugg sensed the thought and grinned bashfully.
A laughing Urg handed her man his shirt for the second time that evening. Norp had stopped pretending to be asleep and was sitting up. “Get… clothes… on now,” Thrugg growled at them. “You the Rap who turned down the Red Palace?”
“Er, yes. That wasn’t yesterday, though.” Thrugg could not have been more than a toddler.
“Mother’s told me about you.”
Mother? Gods! No wonder Grunth had protected the sorcerer who was rescuing slaves — her own son! And while Rap had been hiding his power from Zinixo, Ainopple had been hiding hers from Rap, and Thrugg had been hiding his from Ainopple!
“How long have you been here at Casfrel?”
Thrugg’s wolfish face became oddly sheepish. “Coupla months.” He climbed into his pants.
“Two months as a slave?”
If a hyena could look embarrassed, it might look like Thrugg did then. He scuffed a great horny foot in the dirt. “It wasn’t that bad. Urg was here. Food’s quite good. Lots of fresh air and heavy lifting.”
Trolls were notoriously placid, but that was ridiculous.
“You’re obviously far more powerful than that Ainopple woman!” Rap exclaimed, straightening up. He was disgustingly shaky. “Why didn’t you just swat her, and leave?”
“Well… I dunno. Just don’t like doing things like that to people.”
For the first time, Rap had met a sorcerer who felt as he did about the evils of sorcery — even more so, for he would not have endured what this gentle colossus had.
“You let them beat you?”
Thrugg chortled, a sound like a tree falling. “Oh, I turned off the pain if it got too bad.” Dressed now, he stooped and lifted Andor like a baby. “I kept hoping she’d get tired waiting and go away. I appreciate what you did for me, sir. Now, I suggest we leave her here for the Covin to find.” The door clicked open before him. “Mate… girl… come! Sir, I think we ought to get out of here smartish and head for the hills.”
“I’ll go for that,” Rap said.
Minds innocent:
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
Lovelace, To Althea from Prison
ELEVEN
Day will end
1
“Another piece of cake. Lord Umpily?”
“Most kind of you, ma’am.”
The cake was delicious. It could hardly be otherwise at the residence of Senator Ishipole, who was celebrated for her exquisite taste. She was reported to have originated the epigram “Only quality is necessary.” She was also rumored to be the third richest woman in the Impire, but Umpily rather doubted that — she spent too lavishly to be that rich. It was possible, though. Her family owned a couple of toll gates on the Great South Way, and she had been a marquise before she blackmailed her way into the Senate. So there was never any shortage of anything around Ishipole, and everything was always of the finest quality.
He sat on a quality silk divan and sipped quality tea from a quality china cup. The salon was a sumptuous room. Winter sunshine gleamed through high windows and was warmed by the ivories and yellows of the quality decor and the russet fire of her gown. In summer she would be surrounded by cool blues and greens. He hoped she would soon offer him yet another piece of that mouth-watering almond cake. Or even the chocolate one, which was almost as good.
The lady herself was no longer of the quality she must have been fifty years ago, when she had reportedly valued quantity as well as quality, at least in affairs of the heart — both Emshandar and his father had been mentioned in the same whispers. She was rumored to have been the model for the famous masked nude that hung in the Throne Room, although whatever likeness there might have been once would no longer be delectable. Now all the flesh had faded from her bones, except on her face, where it had sagged in soft folds like wax on a candle. Her mouth drooped in a permanent disagreeable pout and the bags under her eyes would hold the Julgistro apple harvest. No quantity of paint and diamonds could hide the ugly truth that Ishipole was truly ugly. Perhaps even the third ugliest woman in the Impire, he wouldn’t wonder.
“And who is to be the new mistress of the robes?” he asked, adopting an expression of false innocence that would not deceive the old crone for one second even if he wanted it to, which he didn’t.
Ishipole and he were old, er… sparring partners might be a better term than friends. Some of his earliest memories were of eating cakes at Aunt Ishi’s. His skill in gossipmongering had been learned at her knee. For years the two of them had sought to outdo each other in the pursuit of scandal, the tearing down of hypocrisy, the savaging of reputation. This private little chat was quite like old times, just the two of them in her private salon, except that now it was extremely dangerous for him.
“She has made a complete about-face, you know!”
Ishipole was commenting on the size of the impress’s clothing bill. She pursed eggshell lips in silent stricture. “When she was only a princess, she spent hardly a groat on dressing herself! Her ladies were driven to despair! You must know that! And now? Ha! They say if the numbers were known, she outspends the Imperial navy. Another piece of cake? And she can’t wear any of them with the court in mourning.”
“Have you heard any word of her sister, ma’am?”
The senator shrugged with distaste. “Why should I want to?”
The reaction was not surprising. Umpily had already established that the impress’s sister had vanished from the memory of the court. No one recalled seeing her for months. She was assumed to have returned to rural obscurity. Even household servants’ minds had been wiped. Zinixo himself might not be so thorough, but his votaries would further his cause scrupulously.
Official mourning would continue for many months yet. This season the social scene was bereft of the great functions at which the gentry normally displayed their finery and tattled gossip. In some ways that had been a help to Umpily. The social espionage he had achieved in the last couple of months would not have been possible in normal times. Even under present conditions it was a miracle that
he had remained at large so long.
And now he was growing reckless. He had scavenged as much information as he could about the court and its impostor imperor, but he had uncovered no trace whatsoever of Olybino. The problem of the missing warlock had become almost an obsession with him. If any mundane knew the answer, it would be this old hag. He dared not put the question directly; he must lead up to it with great caution.
Meanwhile, he had confirmed that the fake impress was lavishing state funds on clothes. That sounded exactly like Ashia, and she would undoubtedly display Eshiala’s gorgeous face and body magnificently. Shandie had already been informed of the clothes rumor via the magic scroll, but it was nice to have Senator Ishipole’s testimony, which added mass. It was no trivial matter, for if Ashia had enough freedom of will to indulge her own personality like that, then how much did Emthoro have? Who was running the government — the fake imperor Emthoro, or the sinister dwarf Zinixo? How long a string was the puppet allowed?
For example — and Umpily could well imagine Shandie himself arguing this point at a council of war as he had done so often in the years of glory — Dwanish was rumored to be preparing an attack. Zinixo dealing with the war himself, employing sorcery, would produce a result very different from Emthoro striving to react as the real Shandie might react. Did the dwarf have any loyalty to his own kind, or —
“And yourself, my lord?” Ishipole was supposedly almost blind now. Her eyes were dull orbs of amber, and yet they still saw more than most. They seemed to be sizing Umpily up, conveying a sense of getting down to business.
“Me, your Eminence? A well-earned retirement!”
“You quarreled with his Majesty, or so it is said.” The withered senatorial hand offered the cake plate again. “You had a disagreement.”
“Not at all! One does not disagree with imperors, ma’am! One merely agrees less vehemently.”
“You have not been seen at court.”
Umpily swallowed a morsel of cake with difficulty, his mouth strangely dry. He had held this same discussion many times of late, but Ishipole would be much harder to deceive than most of his acquaintances.
He sighed. “I never held an official position, you know. I was Shandie’s advisor — and also friend, I hope — while he was a prince. When he ascended the throne he automatically inherited the whole Imperial bureaucracy. It seemed a good time for me to make way for the professionals, and younger men. We parted on excellent terms! Not parted, I trust — I was merely relieved of my unofficial duties, at my own request. That would be a better turn of phrase. Quite amicable.”
“You see him sometimes, then?”
“Certainly. Just private functions, of course, because of the mourning, but —”
“You’re lying,” she said. “He denies it. You vanished. At first the word was that you’d been dispatched to Guwush on some fairy-tale secret mission, and he denies starting that story. But you were soon observed skulking around Hub —”
For a mad moment Umpily considered taking Ishipole into the great secret and explaining that the imperor she had met was not the real imperor, the impress was not the real impress, that an invisible sorcerer, who might not be a sorcerer in his own right, had stolen the whole Impire, dethroned the wardens, and usurped the ancient rule of the Protocol — but that road led to shackles and straightjackets. He could never dare reveal the truth except to a sorcerer, who would know it already anyway.
“Skulking, ma’am? Really!”
“Like today,” she snapped. “We haven’t spoken since before the old imperor died and yet today you just drop in. Just passing by, you say. No invitation, no note to warn me. Very unorthodox! So now we just have a nice little chat and you just drop out again, is that not so?”
Umpily took a sip of tea to give himself a moment to think.
“It’s the pattern of your behavior ever since Emshandar died,” she insisted, amber eyes studying him glassily — apparently as lifeless as a statue’s, yet seeing much more than they revealed.
“I have been finding the winter weather a little hard on the joints, I confess, and not getting around as much as I could wish.” He did not think he could deceive the old witch, and he certainly could not trust her. “I’m told that bands of eel skin worn around the ankles will draw the poison…”
She dismissed that irrelevancy with a flick of the thin hairs along her brow. “You have been skulking around the fringes of the court, asking a great many curious questions, and yet never entering the palace itself. Shandie is quite worried about you. He told me so.”
“Then I must call on him and reassure him!”
“Yes, you must.” The ugly old harridan reached out her knotted fingers and lifted a silver bell from the tea table. “I think they will have arrived by now.”
Umpily’s ample innards seemed to drop a substantial distance. “Who should have arrived, ma’am?”
The bell tinkled.
“Mutual friends, my lord.” The waxy, sagging features contorted themselves into a smile. “Persons who will be happy to escort you to the palace to impart that reassurance you just mentioned.”
The door opened in perfect silence. The big man who stood in the entrance was coated in gleaming bronze. There were other large men at his back. Umpily laid down his tea cup with a clattering noise.
“Lord Umpily!” the expected harsh voice said. “We meet again! At last.”
Umpily must have done well. His prying must have alarmed somebody, or annoyed somebody. It was a very great honor to be arrested by Legate Ugoatho himself.
2
“Here she comes now,” Mist said.
“About time!” Thaïle snapped.
Within the Meeting Place clearing, they sat side by side within an airy, open-sided cabana. The outside was smothered in flowers, the inside furnished with hard wooden benches. On a hot summer’s day she would have judged the building totally unnecessary except to hold up the vines — why not just lie on the grass in the shade of a tree? On a dank, gray morning with rain falling in ropes, the shelter was miserably inadequate. Water streamed from the eaves in torrents and danced in the puddles on the grass; a faint spray blew through all the time, soaking everything.
The three other novices were seated on the upwind side, which was wetter, but a safe distance from Mist. Their names were Woom, Maig, and Doob, although Mist still referred to them as Worm, Maggot, and Grub. While they were not as loathsome as he had described, Thaïle had no great desire to make friends with any of them. That was fortunate, for Mist seemed to believe that she was his property — either because he had found her first or just because he was the oldest and biggest. If any of the three as much as smiled at her, he shed his normal affability, becoming harsh and aggressive. Normally such arrogance would have annoyed her greatly, but she had ignored it so far because she had worse things to worry about.
The woman coming striding along the Way in a floppy hat and ankle-length sea-green cloak was Mistress Mearn herself, who had summoned all five novices here to attend their first day of classes. There was no one else in sight in the Meeting Place on this foul morning.
About time!
For six days, Thaïle had endured the College — angry, frightened, resentful, and bored. For six days she had endured Mist, too. He had shown her all the places she was supposed to know, and none had been particularly interesting. He had clung to her like lichen, impervious to hints, appeals, and the worst insults she had cared to throw at him. No matter how she tried to dissuade him, he just gazed at her with soulful, butter-yellow eyes full of hurt and disbelief. After that first calamitous night, he absolutely could not be convinced that she did not want him to make love to her every night. He wouldn’t mind mornings or afternoons, even. He promised to be gentler, rougher, faster, slower, more considerate, more insistent — any way she wanted, he would oblige.
Yet he was tolerable company when he was not explaining why they should be in bed together. He was easygoing and sometimes witty and usually bone laz
y, although he was capable of astonishing bursts of exertion when he was in a canoe with a paddle in his hands. He was all she had. She had not seen Jain since the day she arrived, and no one else paid any attention to her at all. Novices were obviously just a necessary nuisance in the College, like small children underfoot. They might be even less than that, because everyone else seemed to have occult powers.
Thaïle had no idea how many people abode within the College — probably more than she had ever met in her life. More than a dozen of dozens maybe! She had tried speaking with some of them, at the Commons or the Market. They had discouraged her, usually with a tolerant “Things will be explained to you soon.” Sometimes she’d met rudeness, and a couple of women had just vanished before her eyes rather than converse with a mere novice. To sorcerers, all mundanes must seem less than children, clumsy and foolish and ignorant.
When she’d remarked to Mist that there seemed to be no old people around, he’d assumed the owlish gaze he used instead of a grin. “Who would trust a sorcerer who grew old?”
Who would trust a sorcerer at all?
Archivist Mearn was a sorceress. She was closer to young than old, more than twenty, less than forty. She stepped into the cabana and removed her hat, then swung it so that wetness flew off in a shower. She tossed it onto a bench and unclipped the neck of her cloak, pouting at the awful weather. Mearn had a small, prissy mouth like a perch’s, and she wore her hair in a very large bun on the top of her head, probably to display the pointedness of her ears. Her eyes were an ugly brown, her blouse and striped skirt smart and well chosen.
She threw her cloak down beside her hat and looked over her charges with disapproval: Thaïle and Mist sitting at one side, Woom and Maig and Doob at the other. They stared back with fear or resentment or both.
