“Sorry, I’m broke.”
She sighed heavily. “Of course you are.” Without another word, she began walking north.
Everett remained sitting. It might technically be his fault that she was here, but he had his own troubles. After a further few minutes of self-commiseration, he got up resignedly, began gathering the scattered potatoes, and tried to figure out what he was going to do.
There were houses and barns visible in the distance in just about every direction. He would have to hike to one of the farmsteads to seek assistance: another wheelbarrow or, even better, a cart. His Material Consolidation Variant, Manure, gather ye into a pile!, was always worth a few pence. Maybe he could trade several castings for a ride to Pylton.
It was simply a terrible shame – no, it was worse than that, it was an outrage – that his new spell, a Potent with such potential, was not generic. What good would being able to transport one particular woman do him? He had to admit that it had been a sight to remember, her standing there before him suddenly, her smooth skin wet from her bath and glistening in the warm sunshine. He indulged in the exquisite mental image for a moment and then stopped in mid-reach for an errant potato.
“Beautiful Woman, come forth!”
Striding determinedly, Sarah staggered when she appeared. She did not look at all happy to see him again. “This isn’t funny.”
“Sorry, I brought you back because I have an idea.”
“To help me get home?”
“Yes, or, at least, a way to get you to Eriis quicker.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
“First, an experiment. Here, hold this potato.”
As soon as Sarah reflexively took it, he cast his new spell. She disappeared and instantaneously reappeared as a tiny figure on a knoll a quarter of a mile to the west. He cast his spell again and she returned to her original spot. She still had the potato.
“What was that all about?” she inquired in a prickly tone.
“Transportation Variants come in over a thousand documented forms. Almost all are unique in some aspect and it is difficult to immediately comprehend exactly which Component modifications a spell may entail.”
“Are you quoting a textbook?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes.”
“So what’s your point?”
“Well, when you first arrived, you were … you know.”
“What?”
“Well, naked.”
“Hmmph.”
“Anyway, after we started talking, I suppose I was distracted and certain key facts didn’t register.”
‘For instance?”
“A small amount of water came with you the first time and my shirt stays with you –“
“Obviously. Most of them work that way.”
“Right. Clothing Retention Component. But the potato was also transported. It’s clear that my new spell also has an Associative Component.”
She nodded seriously in agreement. “So anything I’m carrying will be transported. That makes sense, but how does it help me get to Eriis?”
“If you can carry me somehow, we can leapfrog to the city in jumps as far as I can see. We might be able to reach it by this evening.”
“Hmm, what do you weigh? Fifteen stone?”
“Thirteen and a half.”
“There’s no way I could carry you. I’m strong but not that strong. Here, let’s try this. Raise your arms.”
Everett did as he was bid. Sarah stepped in close, wrapped her arms around his chest, and clasped him tightly. He felt her warmth through the thin shirt.
“All right,” she told him, her lips near his ear. “Cast the spell.”
The close contact was disconcerting, but with a major effort he pushed awareness of her soft form from his attention, focused, and enunciated the terms of the spell. At almost the same exact moment, he felt the spell actuation, experienced a brief instant of vertigo, and saw their surroundings whirl in a swift shift. When his vision settled, he saw an entirely different scene. They now stood on the knoll surrounded by knee-high grass and waist-high milkweed waving gently in an unenthusiastic breeze. A key fact, immediately apparent, convinced him that his scheme would work. Not only had she brought him along, but also his pants, boots, and the potatoes in his pockets.
Excited, Sarah released him and stepped away to look back toward the highway. “Great! It worked!” She turned and awarded him an approving smile. “Let’s get going!”
“We have to go back for the potatoes,” he told her.
Her smile vanished. “I was afraid that you were going to say that.”
It proved impossible to move all the potatoes in one trip; Everett could only shoulder two of the sacks at a time and Sarah literally had her hands full. Even though the transport itself was practically instantaneous, the process of moving the potatoes in two trips and then orienting to locate a new locus in the right direction, and, eventually, resting from the strenuous task of picking the sacks up each time, made the trips last on average ten minutes. Everett compensated by pushing his locus as far out as he could identify a point, but even so, after three hours, with the sun well passed noon, he estimated that they had covered only about fifty miles.
As they arrived the second time on a tree covered hill, Everett sagged to the ground, slipping from Sarah’s grasp, and let the sacks slide from his shoulders. He was exhausted. She stood looking down at him, not quite frowning.
“We’ll have to rest for a while,” he announced.
“We could move much faster without the potatoes,” she reminded him for perhaps the eighth time. This time, however, her words were not burdened with reproach.
On all the previous instances, he had refrained from responding, but this time he felt moved to offer an explanation. “These potatoes represent the only money that I have earned in a month. If I abandon them, I won’t eat today or tomorrow or for the foreseeable future.”
“You’ve no friends or family that could help till you find other work?”
“Not within three hundred miles, no. I came to the lowlands because I thought that I might find enough work as a Magicker to pay my way. So far, I’ve been wrong.”
“There’s a lot of work for magickers near Kleinsvench. In Filingham, Grand Duke Elder isn’t much fond of technology, they say, and bans it from his palace. I know that in Yarb it’s quite easy to get a magic license. Maybe you should come along with me and try your luck in the west.”
Everett briefly considered the proposal. It could not be worse there than it was for him here. But there remained the threat of war. “I might.”
“Well, whatever suits you. How far do you think we have left to travel to Eriis?”
“Probably twenty miles.”
“What kind of plan do you have to enter the city?”
“What do you mean?”
She looked meaningfully at his bare chest and then glanced down at herself. “I’m wearing your shirt.”
“So?”
“Are you really that thick or are you pulling my leg? I’m wearing your shirt and nothing else and you’re bare-chested. It looks like we’ve just been – you know.”
Everett grinned lopsidedly. “I suppose it might, but what difference would that make? You don’t know anyone there.”
“I’d still rather not enter the place looking like a harlot.”
Everett stood up, his annoyance giving him the force of will to push through the pain in his arms and shoulders. “We’ll find a place to get you some clothes when we get close to the city. There are a lot of little hamlets thereabouts. Let’s go.”
Two hours later, just on the outskirts of Eriis, Everett found clothes for Sarah by the simple expedient of sneaking through a cornfield and stealing them from a clothesline behind a relatively modest fieldstone dwelling. The pants, shirt, and jacket were a man’s work clothes, patched, stained, and much too large for her, but were the only clothes hanging on the line. Hidden several hundred yards from the farmhouse amidst th
e seven-foot verdant stalks, she made him turn around while she changed, which he thought rather silly, as he had already seen, as it were, everything. Nevertheless, presently he had his shirt back and she, though shoeless and with shirt and pants cuffs rolled up, had outfitted herself in a more modest if plebian fashion.
He did not have a watch, but the angle of the sun suggested that it was fast approaching four o’clock. Sarah had not said anything about lunch, so neither had he, but now his stomach, somewhat indignantly reminding him of the recent mistreatment it had suffered, had begun to rumble.
“Want to eat a bite before we go on?” he asked her as they wove through the clinging corn toward the low hill where they had left his potatoes. The pine-topped prominence gave a clear view of the sun-washed, red brick outer walls of Eriis, about two miles away.
“I thought you didn’t have any money.”
“I don’t, but I do have--”
“Potatoes. Yes, I know. I think I’m beginning to hate that word. No, let’s just press on.”
Everett shrugged. He had missed many a meal and could do so again. “Right.”
FIVE
As the lengthening shadows covered the cut-stone front of the shop, several younger men, apparently the sons advertised on the Hirogo & Sons sign, moved trays of ripe and green tomatoes, yellow squash, cantaloupe, egg plant, and sweet corn from the outside stands through the propped-open double doors and into the glass fronted interior. A heavy man with a full head of not quite gray hair, the grocer examined the potatoes that Everett had spread on an emptied tray. He picked up one, raised it to his generous nose, smelled it critically, and then rubbed its skin with his thumb.
“These are really fresh,” Hirogo offered. “We don’t often get the red potatoes here. I’m told they don’t like the soil.”
Everett did not comment. With Sarah determined to return to Kleinsvench, the usefulness of his newest spell remained problematic. He had decided that his best option was to refrain from acknowledging the existence of his Transportation Variant, and to simply allow it to remain disused and all but forgotten. Over the years, unkind souls had ridiculed his less than impressive repertoire of magic, and although he had learned to turn a deaf ear to the derision, the laughter still grated. The entire incident with Sarah and his new spell had all the trappings of a bawdy tavern joke and he had no desire to gain widespread fame in that manner.
The grocer seemed satisfied. “I’ll give you one silver six pence to the pound, but you’ll have to take most of it in banknotes. Coin is scarce since the Baron started sending hard money to Ferbam to buy steel for his new gunboats.”
Making one intermediary hop to an unwatched spot atop the New City Wall, he and Sarah had spotted a neighborhood market in the eastern section of the city and then transported the potatoes to a blind alley near it. They had arrived about two hours before dusk just as many of the shopkeepers were closing up. The grocer, who lived in an apartment above his establishment, had been willing to take a look.
Surprised and pleased, Everett tried not to grin. This was very much more that he had expected. “That’s a good price.”
“Quadruple what I normally pay, but what with the Kingdom buying up all the grain, beans, and oil, and the Baron deciding that he’s going to build a river navy, prices for everything are getting pushed up. It’s getting ridiculous. The boatyard is paying big wages, so there’s plenty of money around, but the price increases are hurting some of my regular customers. Everything that comes into Eriis nowadays costs twice or three times as much. Not much to be done about it, though. Let me get your money.”
As Hirogo counted the last few coppers into Everett’s hand, he glanced down at Sarah’s unshod feet and grinned.
“Ah, I see! I’d wondered about the red potatoes this far west, but you must have come down the Green from beyond Pylton?” He clasped Everett on the shoulder. “Congratulations! I took a farm girl to wife myself, some thirty-two years ago, but her dowry was asparagus!”
The man chuckled in remembrance, smiling kindly at Sarah. “The day I met her walking down a furrow, Elie was barefoot too.”
As Everett opened his mouth to stutter a denial, Sarah hugged his arm and glowed proudly at the grocer. “My dad isn’t too fond of Everett, so we decided to move to the city.”
“Well, don’t worry girl. He can find work right way in the boatyard. Baron Fredrick has determined to take it upon himself to police the Edze from here to the gulf and he’s building fifty steam gunboats to do the job. If you ask me, it was the Alarsarians who supplied the money, such as it is.” He glanced significantly at the fold of ten crisp, twenty silver banknotes in Everett’s hand.
“You’ll need shoes in the city, girl,” the grocer went on. “The cobbles will tear your feet to shreds. Tomorrow, go see a cobbler by the name of Bindston over on Elber Street. Tell him I sent you or he’ll try to charge you twice as much as he should.”
Sarah thanked Hirogo with a blissful smile and then started to steer Everett away up the street.
Having a sudden craving, he stopped before they had gone more than a few steps and turned back. “Monsieur Hirogo, have you any apples for sale?”
“I wish I did as they would go for a nice premium, but no, they’re out of season.”
“No storage apples left?”
“Not a one, sorry.”
“Thanks all the same.” Everett smiled through his disappointment and let Sarah tug him away.
When they had gone some distance along the flagstone sidewalk and were safely out of earshot of the grocer, he asked her “What’s with the pretense?”
She released his arm but continued to walk on into the city. “I don’t want it nosed about who I am. If Hirogo happens to mention us to others about town, which I don’t doubt that he will, he’ll speak about a young couple from the countryside, not a foreign girl. If there are Alarsarian agents here in Eriis, then there are sure to also be Zherian spies. If they learn that I’m here, they might try to prevent me from returning to Kleinsvench.”
Everett made a face. “Isn’t that just a little paranoid?”
Sarah laughed. “It did sound a little bit that way, didn’t it? And a little pompous?”
“More than a little.”
“Well, maybe I’m exaggerating the danger, but I’d still like to keep a low profile. Perhaps neither Kleinsvench nor I are of any significant importance to the Great Powers, but I’d still prefer this episode not to become public knowledge. My future in-laws are the sort of elitist nobility that would pretend to faint dead away at the slightest hint of scandal or irregularity. Kleinsvench is in a tough position. Without the alliance, one of the larger demesnes might decide to annex or occupy us when the fighting breaks out.”
“What will happen if you don’t make it back for the wedding?”
“I’m not sure. Since I just disappeared from my bath, I don't doubt that my family will suspect skullduggery. My Aunt Louise is the hand-wringing type but my father is pretty sharp and I think that it’ll be obvious to him that magic snatched me away. Hopefully, he’ll be trying to find a wizard with a spell that can locate me or explain what happened. If I don’t manage to return, I would imagine that the Elector, who is quite a shrewd old biddy, will try to convince the Burgrave to accept one of my cousins as a last minute substitute.”
“So this mess is probably not a total disaster, then?”
“Maybe. But I still need to try to get back. Even if the wedding gets sorted out, I have other … responsibilities … that I cannot be away from.”
“I’ll help all that I can,” he told her with utter sincerity.
She smiled in evident gratitude and then paused to look about.
Eriis was a pleasant little city, neat and prim. The current Baron’s great-grandfather had spent half his treasury to demolish and rebuild much of it according to an ambitious master plan drawn up by one of the most famous architects of his time. Most of the buildings, some up to four storeys, were of brick and often sp
orted balconies and sharply arched bay windows in the distinctive style known as “Heimgelbergian.” Rooftop gardens and street spanning arcades were common, as well as decorative cornices, faux columns, and colorful mosaics. The long dead architect had laid out the remodeled section of the city in regular, precisely oriented blocks, and the streets and walks were all paved and guttered, with good drainage and sewers. Generous spaces had been allotted for parks and tree covered commons and overall the place had an open, breezy, and clean feel.
Everett had only visited the city twice in the twenty-eight months that he had been in the Barony, but had immediately taken to Eriis, and had resolved to rent permanent lodgings here, once his commercial fortunes turned.
“All of the wizards have shops on Boulevard de Berast,” Everett informed her. “The avenue is in the wealthy neighborhood near the Baron’s palace, but they don’t keep long hours and are probably all closed.”
“Do you think that any of them would open up for us?”
“Unlikely. All of the commercial enterprises in that district cater to the affluent and are fairly prosperous. Living above one’s shop is an economy the proprietors there don’t need to practice and, as far as I know, none do. I would imagine that all have already scattered to their taverns, rooming houses, or apartments. But I don’t think we need speak with the magicians directly. I seem to recall seeing a sign in one of the wizard’s windows with a list of spells and prices. If the others do the same, then we could just window shop to find out if any of them can cast a Vital Transportation.”
“Sounds good! Let’s go.”
As they moved deeper into the heart of Eriis, they encountered no significant vehicular traffic. On occasion, they merged into bustling pedestrian crowds as the populace began to head home for the evening. Though their appearance was somewhat meaner than the majority of the citizens, they drew little attention. Most seemed single-mindedly intent on reaching the shelter and succor of their houses. After a charging matron with several packages unconcernedly trampled her toes, Sarah clung to Everett’s arm and let him run interference.
Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth! Page 4
