Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  Arianya glanced at the others. Salis was staring at Arvid, a spoon halfway to his mouth.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I must answer Arvid’s Marshal.” She hoped it was his Marshal. “Come along, Arvid.”

  Behind them, as Arvid led the way out of the kitchen, she heard, “It is him. Him and that gnome—”

  “What’s the problem?” she asked on the way to the stairs.

  Arvid handed her the note but spoke as she opened it. “Group of rowdies went through Marshal Hudder’s grange and took the children to test for magery. They’re holed up in Master Talin’s wool warehouse and say they’re not coming out until they’ve—” His voice changed to a snarl. “—‘dealt with what the Marshal-General got no guts for.’ ” In his own tones again, he said, “They claim they’ve got a perfect test for magery.”

  “Where’s Marshal Hudder?”

  “They attacked him and his yeoman-marshals, beat them badly, and left them tied up in his office with the door barred on the outside. Mador may die—head wound. Hudder’s got broken ribs and an arm, and Nadin’s got two broken arms.”

  “Who’s with them?”

  “Marshal Gantol and an herbwoman. Rivergate Grange’s yeomen are guarding the grange.”

  The smell of cow—the cow and cow manure both—overwhelmed her for a moment. No cows here … Why couldn’t Gird just say what he wanted?

  Arvid had a faraway look.

  “Arvid?”

  “It’s him,” he said. “Gird. And he says bring the cow.”

  “Bring—”

  “The cow. And he’s smiling.”

  Arianya turned back to the kitchen. The little group was still eating, though more slowly. To Salis she said, “I need you. All of you. We need to take Gird’s Cow with us.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Marshal Hudder’s grange was one of the lowest in the city, backing onto the remains of the old city wall. The wagon with Gird’s Cow had to be held back by ropes on its way down through the streets but arrived safely, the cow figure still intact. A crowd surrounded the grange, many of them parents of the children who had been taken. Some of the women were wailing, arms around one another’s shoulders. Men muttered; most held staves.

  “Marshal-General!” That was Marshal Stoll. “You’ve come!”

  “As soon as I heard,” Arianya said. “How’s Hudder? And Mador?”

  “Bad,” he said. “Marshal Gantol is praying a healing, but you know when the headbone’s split—”

  “Where are the child thieves?” she asked. “I heard in a woolhouse?”

  “Talin’s. They broke in, knocked down t’old man and his daughter, pushed ’em out, and barred the door. You know where ’tis?”

  “Yes. How many children?”

  “All that was in school here, like every morning. That would be fifteen or so. And they say they’ll fire the woolhouse if we try to break in.”

  Around the tall blank front of the woolhouse—its door shut, the windows shuttered—surged an angry, frightened crowd, growing larger by the moment. Gird’s Cow was a momentary distraction—enough to quiet them so Arianya could hear a ranting voice berating the crowd through the door’s peephole. Whoever that was caught sight of her.

  “There’s the problem, yeomen! Calls herself Marshal-General but lets evil mages live. Gird wouldn’t a done that! Gird knew magery’s evil. She’s weak; Gird was strong!”

  Behind and around her the crowd growled, a sound that raised the hair on her neck.

  “Gird wouldn’t hurt children!” she yelled. “Hurting children is evil.”

  “Magery is evil. Child mages is evil. Like rats—kill’m young!”

  The crowd heaved itself forward a little. A screech from nearby: “My Suli’s not evil! She never done nothin’ mean!”

  “You come too close, we burn the house and all in it!”

  The pressure of bodies, the smell of rage and terror mixed … and no way at all to break into the woolhouse that Arianya could see.

  “I can get in without their knowing,” Arvid said quietly. She hadn’t noticed that he’d come that close; he spoke practically in her ear. “But I’ll need my cloak.” He glanced at the cow. “And a distraction. Can you have them sing about Gird’s Cow? Over and over?”

  She looked at him. That narrow handsome face did not look like the Arvid she’d known these past quarters, the peaceful scribe, but even more dangerous than she’d seen the night he had stood between her and her attackers. The way he must have looked in his days as a thief-enforcer. But she had no one else. “How long to get your cloak?”

  He flicked fingers where she alone could see them.

  “Go, then.”

  A wool warehouse was nothing like so difficult a target as a thieves’ Guildhouse … except it was broad daylight, the streets full of alert and angry citizens. Arvid began three buildings away in an alley no one seemed to be watching. Buildings here were old and had once been barracks for magelord troops or warehouses for their stores, then merchants’ homes and stores. A staircase, built later, led up to the roof, but he preferred a less obvious way up in case the child stealers had a lookout up there.

  Arvid slid into a narrow crevice and went up the angle of two walls to the roof and eased over, staying back near the city wall, where he could not be seen easily from the street. A cautious look … he saw no one on any of the roofs. He picked his way over mossy slates to the next building—only a long step across from one to the other—and then with more care approached the wool warehouse. It was taller than the one he was on, but they shared a wall. At the back of the warehouse, he spotted a gap between it and the city wall, about a man-length wide. A ledge ran across from the roof he was on to a small arched opening in the back wall of the warehouse. He considered the ledge and its inviting approach to the warehouse interior. Above it, a beam projected, just like the one in the front of the warehouse, but without the block and tackle. Why was it even there?

  Then he grinned. A bolt-hole, a way out … and a way to remove goods, if necessary. In the old days, a way for smugglers to move goods over the wall without being noticed. Surely magelord troops had lived in the woolhouse once. He looked down; a long drop, but the building did extend to the wall below, leaving a blind space wide enough to fall into and no way to climb out. And—since it was on the highest floor of the warehouse, a warehouse that most people thought backed up right onto the wall—not an exit the mage-hunters were likely to know.

  Still, he approached the opening with caution. Street noise now included the toneless loud singing of “Gird’s Cow” along with the angry shouts and wailing of forlorn parents. He could hear nothing when he put one of his “donkey’s ears” to the planks that filled the opening. The wood was weathered but solid, oak by the grain, clearly an actual door, though small: it had hinges on one side and a lockplate on the other.

  Not, as it happened, a very good lock. A few moments with his picks, and he felt the lock give. Was there an interior bar as well? He paused to pour oil from his flask onto the hinges and then pushed. Slowly—for it was thick and heavy—the old half door moved. Arvid clambered over the tall sill into a long, high room that ran the full length of the building from street to wall. High round windows let in dim light along the left side, and a single tall window at the front let in more. Toward the front, sacks that smelled like wool formed an irregular mound, but much of the floor was covered with a jumble of old furniture, boxes broken and whole, and a layer of thick dust. To his right, the floor slanted down abruptly … a ramp that led down into dimness.

  Arvid chose the ramp; he suspected that the front had either a staircase beyond the wool sacks or a crane arrangement over that window for lifting heavy loads. The window would be visible from the street below—someone might look up, then they all would, and watchers within the warehouse would guess someone was above.

  The ramp, dust-covered and unobstructed, revealed to his sensitive feet linear gouges … tracks? Wheel marks? Th
ey might have used a cart or barrow to move things up and down. A single thin rail marked the inside of the ramp; Arvid stayed near the back wall.

  The ramp ended a scant two armswidths from a wall. Around the turn, the floor was flat … but he suspected another ramp led down another level. The space he came into was darker than that above … it would have, he recalled, common walls on both sides. Two small narrow windows at the back, opening into that shaded space between the back wall and the city wall, gave little light, just enough for dark-adapted eyes to see that a cross-wall closed off any view to the front. In this space, he saw more sacks of wool and also stacks of hides with cropped fleece still on. He could smell both distinctly.

  “Mmrow?”

  Arvid started, almost allowing a gasp to escape, before he realized it was a cat. Of course a warehouse would have a cat to keep down mice and rats … but a cat might reveal him to those he wished to evade. He felt the cat—a dim shadow—swipe against his legs. He reached down; a damp nose touched his hand, then withdrew.

  He had killed cats to prevent discovery in his days as a thief, but he had no desire to kill an animal now just for his own convenience. Experience told him, however, that finding a sack or box to shut the cat into would only increase its noise and lead to investigation by those holding the children. That might be useful if he had a way to set up a trap for them … but at the moment he was simply exploring, learning what was and was not possible.

  The cat moved away—dimness moving in dimness, more visible when it crossed the paler dimness of the two small windows, then jumped up onto a stack of hides and down onto whatever lay behind them.

  What lay behind them let out a gasp, then a small sound more like a tiny moan or whimper. Soft-footed, Arvid eased across the floor to the same stack of hides. That did not sound like someone left to guard this floor but like … a child?

  He leaned on the stack of hides and pitched his voice to carry no more than a handlength or two. “Are you hurt?”

  Nothing but a silence so full of meaning it could not be anything but a person in hiding, trying not to breathe or move.

  “I am not one of those below,” Arvid said. “I came by roof, hoping to keep children safe. Can you help me?”

  A shaky whisper then, more carrying than his own practiced voice: “They’ll kill me! Da said run hide.”

  “Quiet voice,” Arvid said. The cat jumped back up, landing on the hides with a tiny thump, and rubbed itself on Arvid’s arm. “I am Arvid. You hurt?”

  “N-n-o.”

  “Good. Tell me where in the building they are.”

  A rustle of clothing, of someone uncoiling … the faint scrape of a shoe on wood as the child stood—hardly as tall as the stack of hides. Arvid could make out nothing of the face except the smudge of eyes, nose, mouth, and a shock of dark hair.

  “I—think—in our—where we live.”

  “You are?”

  “Cedi.” The voice was steadier answering a familiar question.

  “Your da’s the wool merchant?”

  “Yes, and Grandda.” A faint glow appeared; the boy gasped. “No!”

  “Quiet voice,” Arvid said. His skin prickled; two of the boy’s fingers gave off a rosy glow even as the boy shoved them into a pocket. A mage child; no wonder his father had sent him to hide. “Don’t burn yourself,” Arvid said. “I won’t hurt you.” But why would the boy believe him?

  “I can’t stop it,” Cedi said. “I try—”

  He needed to get the boy to safety … that light would show almost anywhere in this room. Up the ramp? It might not show in that top room, but could the boy hide there? Get out the little door and over to the other building? At least in daylight, in the back of the building, no one would see his glowing fingers.

  “You need to be where it doesn’t show,” Arvid said. “Can you go very, very quietly up the ramp to the top floor? There are wool sacks there to hide between and more light from the windows. Or there’s the door out onto a ledge.”

  “Da said that door don’t work.”

  “It does now,” Arvid said. “If you could wait in that top room … maybe I could free the other children and they could come up—you could let them out, lead them across the roofs to where they can climb down.”

  The child blinked. He was younger than Arvid’s son, a head shorter at least. “Da said don’t move, stay hid.”

  “Your hand betrays you,” Arvid said. “Even down there behind the hides. If someone comes up here—”

  “They did. Didn’t see me.”

  “But your hand wasn’t glowing, was it?” This was taking too long; he could feel time passing. What was happening to the other children? What was happening outside? And yet this child was no less valuable … Arvid argued with himself. Of course the child wanted to do what his father said …

  “I have a fleece down there—I put my hand under—and then it went out for a while.”

  So maybe he would be safe, with the glow hidden. “How old are you?”

  “Seven winters.”

  Seven winters … for some, old enough to have sense and accomplish a lot … for others, not. Too young, Arvid finally decided, to be expected to go out alone and make his way across the roofs.

  “Stay hidden, then. If your hand lights, be sure it’s under the fleece, but don’t start a fire. Now tell me how the rooms are arranged—and what’s behind the wall to the front on this floor.”

  The boy was able to do that in a controlled quiet voice. Arvid started down the next ramp, directly under the first, knowing he would emerge in another such room, with a hall extending forward through a wall that cut off the front—that hall opened into the family apartments on either side. He was just starting down the ramp when he heard the slam of a door and voices coming toward the foot of the ramp.

  “We can’t go anywhere as long as they’re there,” said one.

  “Well, we can’t stay here forever. There’s got to be a back door.”

  “There’s not. Back wall’s solid to the city wall.”

  “Donag said there was a window up the next floor—so it can’t be solid, really. I’ll show you.”

  The sounds of two men walking … shoes, not boots. Were they armed? Where best to meet them? If someone had already been up this ramp, then his own foot marks wouldn’t draw attention.

  He chose his place, shielded from immediate view by a stack of wool sacks, readied his materials, and listened to the footsteps coming up. The men continued to talk; Arvid hoped they’d say something he could use.

  “You think that red-haired girl is one of ’em?”

  “We’ll find out when Goram tests her. Admit I’m surprised we only found three so far … I thought sure there’d be more of ’em here in the city.”

  “Goram—you see the look on his face when he killed that third one?”

  “Bin—you can’t let it bother you. They’re mages. Doesn’t matter how Goram looks—”

  “Does to me. There’s killin’ evil and there’s evil killin’—”

  “You want to be careful, Bin—that’s soundin’ a bit too much like the old lady.”

  The Marshal-General, that must be. The footsteps came on, slower now up the ramp.

  “Lighter up there,” said one.

  “Windows in the wall got to mean there’s an outside.”

  “Did Donag go all the way up?”

  “Dunno. Just said windows but no door.”

  “Well—I can see those is too high to get out of … and there’d be a drop.”

  “We should go all the way up—maybe the top one has a bigger window or something.”

  Arvid wished he’d gone back up—ambushing these two would be easier up there and quieter, too. But he would not have left the child behind.

  Now the footsteps were loud, on the same floor; they did not immediately head for the next ramp but approached the south wall … and he had to make his move.

  A bolt from his crossbow took the first one in the neck; before he hit t
he floor, Arvid was on the second, a choke hold and the tip of a dagger laid under the man’s nose. “Come quietly,” he said. “Or die.”

  “Grrhgh—”

  “Quietly.” He let the dagger tip dig into the sensitive point under the nose, and the man made no more noise. Arvid manhandled him around the corner, into the angle of the wool sacks, and shoved him facedown into the sacks, where any cries would be muffled. He moved the knife point to below the man’s ear “Quiet and still,” he said again. The man obeyed, but his muscles were stiff with either fear or anger.

  No matter. Arvid had dealt with such men before. Soon he had the man trussed so he could not kick the floor and gagged so he could not yell, braced in a cradle of wool sacks, held down by more, but with a small space for air … if he did not move and tumble another sack down to close it. Arvid explained this quietly, watching the eye he could see go from terror to fury to terror and, finally, to resignation.

  The other man’s body presented a dilemma. Hide it? Drag it to the top floor? Surely someone would come to find out where those two had gone, why they had not returned. He pulled the bolt free of the neck, swiping blood from the grooved shaft thieves used for inside work instead of fletching. He stripped the man’s pockets and pouches, looking for anything that might help him, then lifted the corpse, grunting at the man’s weight, and carried it carefully around the piles of wool sacks to lay it out of sight; he pulled another wool sack down on top of it.

  Now. Up or down? If he could get the child killers to come to him in ones and twos, it would be easier, but his stomach churned at the thought of three children already dead and a man—Goram—who seemed to enjoy killing them. The longer he waited … the more children would die.

  You know what to do.

  “Gird … Father Gird … help the children.” A pause in which he felt pressure like a weather change. “And me.”

  He had to go down. If he could identify Goram … kill the one who wanted to kill children, because clearly some of them weren’t that eager …

  He paused a moment to tell Cedi what he’d done, wondering as he did why he hadn’t killed the second man—once, he would have, without a doubt or a thought—then went down the ramp, silent as the thief he had been.