I’d settle for an end to worrying about breathing when she was around, I decided.
I left the townhouse and walked down the steps into the night, because I’ve always thought it rude to depart someone else’s home magically. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done it, of course. Sometimes being rude is just a tool in a wizard’s bag.
But the night was still clear, and it was but an hour past midnight, according the sound of the bells from the Temple Ward. Most of the lights in the city were out, now, and there were few wandering the streets this far away from the illicit districts, save the city watch. For some reason, I didn’t want to leave, just yet, and when my nose caught a familiar whiff of smoke and ash, I realized why.
I decided I wanted to take a stroll through town to the site of the former palace.
It was hard to believe it had been almost a year since Sheruel sent a dragon to share his feelings about some raids in to the Penumbra by destroying the grand old place. Unfortunately for him, he’d done it while most of the warmagi in the Wilderlands were gathered for a clandestine conference, so we were able to slay it, after much difficulty.
Hundreds of people had lost their lives and countless treasures and legacies of House Terine were consumed by the flame. It had taken weeks to contend with the damage, recover the dead, and restore order following the attack . . . and the entire time, I recalled, that smell hung in the air over Vorone like a pall.
The dragon was gone, now, painstakingly hacked up and moved to Pentandra’s estate, just outside of town, where it was being transformed into tough armor for warmagi and valuable lore for thaumaturges.
The ruins of the palace, likewise, were gone. At great expense and over the course of months wains and hoxters had been filled with debris from the place and removed from the site, until all that remained was a cleared site and a single large pile of stone and bricks Carmella’s builders had chosen to be reused in the new castle.
But that smell was still lingering in the air like the memory of a tasteless joke.
I found myself walking toward the old palace just to enjoy the peace of the night in a pretty place like Vorone. Thankfully, the destruction had largely been confined to the palace grounds, leaving the narrow streets of homes, flats and shops nearby mostly undamaged. Outside of the missing palace, most of Vorone seemed intact a year after the attack.
In some ways, I reflected, the attack indicated a turning point in Anguin’s rule. Losing the palace was devastating, but it also freed the lad from generations of tradition and rules that no longer applied to the administration of his current lands. It had also decentralized power, forcing most of his court ministers to govern from their nearby estates or rented halls.
While that might have diminished a noble’s power in many circumstances, Anguin (and Count Angrial, I had to admit) had turned the temporary inconvenience into an advantage. Each ministry was commanded to re-structure and re-staff itself based on the rump duchy’s current needs, not the legacies of past policies. That got rid of a lot of dead weight, Pentandra had informed me, and allowed for a much nimbler administration.
As I entered the broad, mostly empty stretch where the palace had been, I was able to see the progress on the new citadel that was to replace it, growing resolutely at the far end of the lot.
In less than a year, using magic Carmella and her crews had managed to lay the foundations, excavate the underground portions, and lay out the basic shape of the castle. One side, I saw, was already starting to sprout from the ground. Long lines of mage-cut stone blocks snaked across the top of the heavy foundation stones, melded into place with bricking wands. Scaffolds were already being built to carry the work higher, I was pleased to see.
Usually it took years to get a castle to this point, I reflected, as I walked across the site. Traditional construction techniques, not to mention the inefficient methods of rounding up work corvees and getting them to work with skilled masons, meant that it could take as much as twenty or thirty years to complete even a small castle. Something this large would usually take generations to build.
Magic changed all of that. Magic and military-style organization. While the site was empty at this hour, I could see a dozen or more neat and tidy stations where various projects were being worked upon. Stakes and string crisscrossed the area, I saw as I got closer.
I stopped and sat on a pile of bricks to think and smoke for a moment while I contemplated what the castle would eventually look like. I’d been there for perhaps ten minutes when I heard a sound behind me.
I wasn’t concerned with footpads, despite Vorone’s recent reputation – the man who attempts to rob the Spellmonger is in for a nasty surprise. But no demand for money or threat against my life was forthcoming. My visitor was a girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen – hard to say in the darkness.
“You lookin’ for company tonight to keep you warm, my lord?” she asked in a saucy Wilderlands brogue. A prostitute, I realized.
“I am warm enough,” I said, apologetically, “though I wouldn’t mind some company, if you’d like to sit,” I decided.
“Don’t usually get paid for sittin’,” she quipped with a sigh. She dropped some of her professional act and took a seat beside me on the pile. “Kneelin’, yeah. Just as well,” she decided. “I had six clients tonight, thanks to the soldiers starting to come back to town. Wasn’t really game for a seventh, but a girl has to make a living,” she decided. “I’m Maid Cluaran,” she said, introducing herself – though the use of the term “maid” seemed ironic.
“Minalan,” I nodded, exhaling smoke. I didn’t bother adding a title or descriptors – I could tell she knew the name at once.
“Minalan? Like that wizard fellow?” she asked, startled.
“Just like that wizard fellow,” I agreed. “Only better looking in person. Aye, I’m the Spellmonger, Maid Cluaran. Just popping in for a chat with the princess, a few drinks with comrades, and a pipe to think with, before I return home to the Riverlands.”
“Tonight?” she asked, skeptically. “Ain’t it a bit late, to be on the road?”
I chuckled. “I use magic to travel that great a distance, Cluaran. Moments after I depart, I will be a thousand miles away, safe in my own bed in the distant Riverlands.”
“Well, ain’t that a spell?” she asked, laughing sweetly. “Save a lot on shoe leather, I imagine. So, you really slayed that dragon?” she asked.
“Slew,” I corrected. “And yes. I helped. My friend Sir Tyndal did the hard part,” I conceded.
“Sir Haystack? I’d heard that, but none of the girls believed it. He seems too young and fair to be that good a warrior.”
“You know the man?”
“Only by reputation,” she offered. “He ain’t had me, yet. But all the girls think he’s handsome! Almost as handsome as our lad the Duke. I’m more partial to Sir Striker, though,” she confided. “He never had me, neither. But I like the quiet ones. More of a challenge to make them holler.”
“Your dedication to professional excellence is admirable,” I said, chuckling to myself. I wondered what the lads would say about this young whore’s assessment. “Do you work for one of the houses in the Street of Perfume?”
“Oh, I did a spell at the House of Flowers,” she admitted, “but . . . well, it was weird,” she said, thoughtfully. “After all the fuss last Ishi’s Day, a couple of the girls and I moved out and set up on our own. We had a flat a few streets back. But then Delra got pregnant and married a Commando, and Rishi decided to take holy orders, so . . . just little ol’ Cluaran to make the rent,” she said, proudly.
“Are times good?” I asked, thoughtfully. I wasn’t aware of any lore or magic that made the opinions of whores an accurate economic survey, but I could make some astute guesses.
“Six in one night, and it not even a market day?” Cluaran asked, amused. “I recall a few years ago when a lass had to beg for a man to spend two coppers on her company. Now I get a silver penny per hour, by the temple bells,” she
said, proudly. “With so many of the other girls off getting wed to soldiers, there’s plenty of demand,” she assured me. “Even with the palace gone. A tumble with a mason isn’t as lucrative or . . . clean as a one with a courtier,” she considered, “but they tend to be more fulfilling. And just as lucrative,” she added, jingling her purse. “They don’t like to sport as much, either, so it gives a girl more time to work. Just in, out, and pay me, please!” she laughed.
“And if they don’t pay?”
“Oh, that don’t happen no more,” she assured. “Even those girls who don’t have a House on the Street don’t worry about it. A man who refuses to pay can be charged with rape, if he’s not careful – that’s a headsman’s offence in Vorone,” she said, solemnly. “But it don’t usually get like that. Usually, a man comes up with the coin after a simple beating. I got a couple of stout lads I can call on, at need. Treat a man to hamsoken in front of his wife and children over a whore, he learns to pay his debts.”
That sounded more like the Wilderlands justice I was familiar with: casual and thorough.
“I’ve never had a case of an unpaid whore in my docket,” I realized with a laugh.
“What? Ain’t you got whores in . . . in . . .”
“In Sevendor,” I supplied. “That’s my barony.”
That impressed her. “You’re a baron? A wizard who’s a baron? Well, ain’t that a sight!”
“We don’t have many whores in Sevendor,” I answered her. “Not permanent professionals, in any case. Many a wife and maid will misplace their virtue for a few days at the Fair, in the autumn, but most of the local girls marry early. And then keep their husbands too preoccupied to dally.”
“They just think they do!” she snorted, skeptically. “I ain’t met a man yet who wasn’t ready for a tumble, if he had coin in his purse and the girl was pretty enough,” she reflected. “Don’t think I’d like Sevendor, though. Those Riverland lads talk funny,” she complained.
“Oh, there are plenty of Wilderlands boys in Sevendor,” I informed her. “I settled four thousand refugees from the Mindens there. And in Sevendor, the maids complain about how they are the ones who talk funny.”
“Well, maybe I’ll come visit, perchance,” she decided. “Truth is, wizard, I like my work . . . but I’m starting to get bored.”
“Most girls in your situation consider marriage as an alternative,” I pointed out.
“Oh, I had a couple o’ offers,” she agreed. “But not the right ones. I ain’t ready to settle down to a kitchen, yet. And when I do, it will be with a proper man, not some infantryman or stonecutter,” she predicted. “I ain’t a lady, but you blow out the candle and come to bed, I can make you think I’m one,” she said, lapsing back into her professional sales pitch. She paused to think for a moment. “Mayhap I’ll come to your Sevendor, by your leave, and take a look around.”
“It’s safer than Vorone,” I pointed out. “Less goblins, at least. And less footpads.”
“Oh, none of them lads will bother us girls,” she assured. “They know better. They start a ruckus with us, and the Night Owls come for ‘em.”
I pulled a coin out of my purse – a golden Rose, damn it! – and handed it to her. “This will get you there, if you’re interested.”
She looked surprised. “You’re givin’ me coin? You want to . . .?”
“No, no,” I chuckled. “Though you’re a comely girl, and lively, as I like them. I have a wife.”
“You think all my clients are single men?” she asked, wryly.
“No, of course not, but . . . my wife has been ill. I miss her terribly,” I realized, as a wave of unexpected misery washed over me. Sometimes I was so desperate for the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, that I could feel physical pain.
“Aw, you poor duck,” she clucked, sympathetically. “I got a regular in that position,” she informed me. “A weaver. His wife fell down the stairs a few years ago, now she can’t walk good. He has me come by once a week for a pick-me-up. Nice man,” she decided. She took the coin. “Maybe I will go to your barony, Wizard. Sounds like a nice place.”
“It is,” I agreed. “It really is. I worked very hard to make it that way. But in Sevendor, magic is around every corner,” I told her. “Wizards walk the street as thick as day laborers. At night, magelights spring up all over the town, and the fountains run day and night, thanks to magic.”
“Well, isn’t that a wonder?” she said, thinking about my description. “I might like to see that. If the war don’t interrupt,” she added, anxiously.
“Best you find a coach headed east soon, then, love,” I sighed, looking anxiously at Anguin’s unfinished castle. “Because that could happen at any moment.”
Part IV
Love & Marriage
Interlude V
Desviatus
“The Ageless Company”
The hull of the two-masted Cormeeran galleon named Asberthel groaned as the master of the vessel, Captain Desviatus, changed course and brought her abreast of the increasingly turbulent waves as the sun went down. The course correction would soon take them out of sight of the rest of the Castali fleet that had departed Farise – though they wouldn’t be alone. Three other ships had quietly done the same as soon as the sun had set, by pre-arranged signal.
It was a dangerous move in a dangerous moment. The fleet admiral had sent explicit orders about maintaining fleet formation, before they’d departed Farise. Most of them covered the massive armada of pirates, slavers and renegades waiting to pounce on wayward Castali ships, but the last few promised severe retributions for any considering deserting the force before they arrived north in Enultramar.
But things happened at sea, at night, particularly during the kind of storm that was brewing out of the northeast. The Cormeeran master of the Asberthel was intimate with these waters, having plied the eastern Shallow Sea his entire life in pursuit of his trade. There was bound to be variations in speed among the widely-varied ships of the slap-dash fleet.
Most of the ships were low-draughted caravels, the kind that plied the routes betwixt Remere, Castal, and Cormeer. They were ill-suited for deeper waters, though serviceable in other ways. A few were much deeper draughted galleons, like the Asberthel, with three or even four masts, predominantly from Cormeer.
Other parts of the fleet had been patched together from independent landless mercenaries, Sea Knights seeking adventure on their family’s merchantmen, a contingent of decrepit Vorean cogs looking for a billet, fleeing from creditors in their home duchy, and a single Merwyni brigadine, captained by a Remeran master. That was in addition to the “ducal fleet”, the dozen-odd Castali carracks that weren’t good for much of anything beyond hauling horses and provisions for the expedition.
And then there was the Farisi contingent.
The score of coastal defense sloops were basis of harbor defense for the strategic port, a robust little fleet specifically designed for the protection of the vulnerable harbor.
Commanded from one of a pair of caravels and flagged with the colors of the Royal Admiralty, the shallow-draughted ships were ideal for nimbly tacking to intercept raiders, smugglers, or pirates who might challenge Castalshar’s possession of the peninsula. Once intercepted, the broad forecastles of the sloops, filled with crossbowmen and boarding marines, could quickly overcome all but the largest ships.
But those were local ships, designed for shallow water and with no room for provision. The two caravels were heavily armed but similarly unprepared for extended voyages.
Yet that nautical common-sense meant nothing to Prince Tavard, when he’d boldly insisted on adding the ships to his expeditionary fleet under his father’s presumed authority. After the Regent of the possession objected, Tavard relented a single caravel and a brace of sloops to remain behind; but he insisted on taking an additional two-hundred archers from the city’s garrison to make up for it, he said.
The additional ships dragged the rest of the fleet to a crawl. Nor wo
uld they fare well in the storm ahead, Desviatus reasoned. Should they survive, and come to face the Alshari armada in battle, the sloops would break in the face of real warships – the infamous Alshari corsairs, the bronze-clad barques used by the Sea Lords to raid and pillage, the self-exiled Farisi merchant fleet, and the various ships used by the pirate gangs and slavers who had confederated with the Alshari this season. Those sloops would sink or be taken quickly, their men in irons and sold at auction.
He favored the Asberthel’s chances better. The galleon was arrayed for war, the forecastle bristling with weaponry and her sails cut to a military bearing. Her crew was doughty, veterans of many a scrape. Most were descended from the same ratty village seaport in Cormeer and gone to sea early, just as had generations of their forebears. He could trust them in ways he could not trust a hired crew. And within the holds of the galleon were two hundred men who knew how to fight.
But Captain Desviatus did not favor the chances the fleet, as a whole, bore against the Alshari. It was too fractured and ill-prepared for what awaited them. Desviatus knew in his heart of hearts that most of the men who took wave from Farise were doomed.
Desviatus also knew he would not be one of them.
He tracked the ship’s location by the stars until the clouds rolled in, near midnight. When he was satisfied, just as the rains from the storm began to fall, he called his mate and issued orders to douse the lights, lower the colors, and re-rig the sails . . . with the ones he’d had to replace after their last encounter with an Eastern Island rover, off Merwyn’s coast.
The denim fabric was burnt and torn from the missiles and attacks of the cunning Easterners, and bore all authentic signs of battle. The flag he directed the mate to raise after the Castalshari colors were struck were in stark contrast to the naval ensign. They were black, bearing in white a charge of two ovals joined by a line – a chain. More precisely, a slave merchant’s token.
Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Page 91
