Shadow and Storm

by Juliet Kemp

  “Excellent news, Captain Barcola,” Marcia said. “Do please take a seat and – ah, excellent, refreshments.” The servant placed the tray on the table and Marcia gestured her out again. “A mint infusion, or apple brandy, if you prefer?”

  “I’ll take a brandy, thank you kindly,” Captain Barcola said. “Shake the dampness of the swamps out.” She shivered in illustration. “It’s nice to be back in Marek.”

  “And we can toast your success,” Marcia agreed, pouring the gleaming liquid into small glasses.

  The cut crystal sent shards of light into the brandy when she picked the glass up.

  “Your very good health, Captain Barcola,” Marcia said, meeting the captain’s eye as they both took a sip.

  “And yours, Fereno-Heir,” Captain Barcola replied. Marcia saw the woman’s lips continue to move; doubtless saying the customary extra line, and fair wishes to the cityangel, which Marekhill preferred not to use and the lower city wouldn’t dare to omit. As it happened, Marcia would be perfectly happy to drink fair wishes to Beckett, but she couldn’t admit it.

  “Anything in particular to report?” she asked instead.

  “Well. We sold nearly everything we took with us. Had to go a fair way into Exuria to do it, mind. Nothing to trade just over the mountaintop. Goats and so on. Didn’t think we wanted to be trailing goats after us. I did take the liberty of trading for a little in the way of cloth; some very beautiful work and I’ve not seen it in Marek before. I thought it would do as a sample; if you think it worthwhile, we’d be able to get more another time, fairly close to the pass.”

  Marcia nodded. “I’ll take a look at it.”

  The closer they could trade to the pass the quicker and thus cheaper it would be, but whether that was worth it depended on what price this mountain goat-cloth would fetch here, or whether it could be traded through the Salinas. If the captain hadn’t seen it here before, it might not generally make it out of the Exuria mountains, which meant rarity value.

  “A little further down they grow wild mustard, and iyag, and a few other spices I’ve not encountered before,” Captain Barcola continued. “I took a fair bit of mustard and iyag, and a sample of the new spices. I assume they’re not worth shipping the long way, but as a luxury good, maybe…”

  Wild mustard was a popular spice; iyag was in demand by the Apothecaries, and both were usually expensive, reflecting the shipping distance from the Exurian mountains down to the sea and out by a Salinas ship. Spices and dried plants were light, too, which was good for a challenging trip like this. The Spicers might be interested in the less-common things, or they might not, but it had been sensible to take the samples. Marcia nodded approvingly.

  “They weren’t entirely convinced by your pens,” the captain went on, “but I managed to exchange a couple, in the end, for some scrip from the Guilder cities. Brought most of them back though, I’m afraid.”

  “Hm. Well, I suppose, we can see whether the samples have engaged interest on another trip.” New experiments sometimes took a while to become popular. Madeleine still wouldn’t use one of the new pens despite Marcia’s encouragement, though they were popular among Marcia’s own age-mates. “Do you have the Guilder scrip with you?”

  “Delivered to the House Fereno strongbox at the bank,” Captain Barcola said. “Together with the stones we got. Everything else the porters took to your warehouse.” She pulled a couple of chits, one with the bank’s stamp on, and one with a porter’s number, out of her belt-purse, and handed them over to Marcia.

  The main Marek bank building, a squat, strong stone affair, was on the corner of the wholesale market. All the Houses, and most other merchants, had strongboxes there. Most likely it would have been safe enough for Barcola to bring the scrip here to House Fereno in broad daylight, when she’d already taken it over a mountain and through the swamps. There again, Marcia could well understand her preferring to offload as quickly as possible.

  “I’ve the porters’ list here,” the captain said, “and I noted the scrip value at the bottom.” She handed Marcia a slightly battered leaf of paper, written in her blocky painstaking handwriting.

  “I’ll check both later this afternoon,” Marcia said. “And you’ll be due your payment, of course. Where will I find you?”

  “We’ll be in the barracks for another day or two,” Captain Barcola said. “See if there’s another job on the horizon.”

  There was the shadow of a question in her voice.

  “I suspect nothing for us again just yet, but I’ll check with my mother,” Marcia said. “And of course I’ll happily give you a recommendation with the pay.”

  “Greatly appreciate it,” Barcola said, ducking her head.

  “Anything else of interest that won’t wait for the full report?” Marcia asked.

  She offered Barcola the plate of cakes and candies again, and the woman accepted one with a smile. She chewed for a moment, obviously thinking.

  “Not so as I can think of. All went very smoothly this time. We had reports of dragon-bears up in the mountains, so I hired a Teren sorcerer to come across the pass with us.”

  “Dragon-bears?” Marcia said.

  “Yes. There was likely enough of us to fight them off with cold steel, but…” she grimaced. “Sorcerer’s better at it, with less risk. And indeed we saw a dragon-bear, right near the top of the mountain, so Tait earned their keep. That came out of the extra funds, of course.”

  “Better that than you and all the goods in the stomach of a dragon-bear,” Marcia said. Barcola was right – the troop could most likely have fought off a dragon-bear, but they could just as easily have been unlucky, and they’d never have managed it without losing someone.

  “Kept ’em on all the way to Marek, in case of any problems in the swamps. Then they said they were staying. Said I couldn’t rearrange their journey back up the river, so we saved that cost. Had to give them the fare from the river to Ameten though.”

  Marcia’s eyebrows went up. “The sorcerer – a Teren sorcerer – came into Marek?”

  “Left ’em at the wholesale market,” Barcola said, with a shrug.

  That was – surprising. Marcia’s understanding was that, in the general way of things, Teren sorcerers did not come to Marek. Reb had been from Teren, once, but she’d come here specifically to learn Mareker magic; although she’d never told Marcia why, nor whether she’d done magic in Teren before coming here. Maybe this one wanted the same? But if so… why? Might they, just for example, be fleeing a demon? She tapped her fingers on her leg.

  “Did the sorcerer say why?”

  Barcola shrugged. “Who can say why sorcerers do things, eh? But,” she frowned, “they did seem very keen, if you know what I mean.” She looked anxiously over at Marcia. “Is it a problem? Should I not have brought them down the river? They weren’t charging much, and I thought, since we had ’em… Though I thought then they’d be heading back upriver, after.”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Marcia said. If it was the same person, there was no way Barcola could have known, and no reason to worry the woman. “Perfectly sensible decision. I was just curious what might bring them here.”

  Barcola had mentioned the sorcerer’s name a moment ago; what was it? She didn’t want to ask outright; Marekhill didn’t take an interest in sorcery, and she’d already pushed this further than she ought to. Oh, yes; Tait.

  “Bracken sent ’em to the White Horse, if there is any problem,” Barcola offered.

  “Ah, not at all,” Marcia said dismissively. ”What sorcerers get up to is hardly our business, is it now? Leave them to it.” She smiled, and Barcola smiled back in relieved agreement. “So, then, if we do this again, we’ll need to allow for dragon-bears.”

  “The villagers seemed to think it depends on the season,” Barcola said. “We saw none the last time.”

  “But the passage was otherwise easier this time?”

  Barcola nodded. “With a sorcerer – a decent sorcerer, which Tait was, give them cre
dit – I’d still rather go this time of year than earlier. I don’t much like sorcery, but Tait got that dragon-bear away as neat as you like. And the going other than that was a lot quicker. Safer too.“

  After a few more minutes of chat, Marcia rose from her chair.

  “Thank you for such a prompt report, Captain. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and then come to the barracks afterwards to pay everyone’s wages.”

  “I’ll have the full report packet and the accounts for you by then,” Barcola promised.

  “Until then, you and your team deserve a night out,” Marcia said, handing Barcola a couple of golden guilders.

  “Thank you kindly,” Barcola said, with a wide grin, and gave that bobbing bow again before she left.

  Thoughtfully, Marcia seated herself back down at her desk, and tapped her fingers on its surface. A Teren sorcerer, keen to come to Marek? She supposed that there could be lots of reasons… but she couldn’t help connecting it with that business Selene had spoken of.

  At the very least, it seemed like a good idea to write Selene a note on the matter. A Teren sorcerer at the White Horse. If it wasn’t the right person, no harm done. If it was, then that might be good for quite a significant favour at some future point; and Marcia could certainly do with a few favours to call in.

  TEN

  “What do you mean, you lost them?” Selene demanded.

  The unaccustomed Mareker trousers she was wearing felt scratchy against her legs. It didn’t help that the fabric was much more coarse than anything she normally wore. But it wouldn’t have done for the Lord Lieutenant to be seen out here in this, this shack on the outskirts of Marek that called itself an inn; so she had tied her hair under a scarf like some servant, and put on cheap Marek clothes, and gone out the back door of the guesthouse when no one was looking. She didn’t have that long, either; it was already nearly sunset, and she had to meet with the sorcerers in an hour or so, and then attend another formal event – she couldn’t even remember which, there had been so many of the wretched things – later. She’d received yet another message with a House seal as she was getting changed, and she hadn’t even had the time to look at it. She scratched irritably at the back of her neck and glared at her companion.

  Hira, the sorcerer who’d been tracking the escapee, fiddled with his beer glass, looking unhappy. Selene had a beer too, but she had no intention of drinking it.

  “It’s not that I lost them, exactly,” he said.

  “But you just said…”

  “Uh. I mean. We were following them, you understand? I mean, it was following them. The…” he trailed off, not wanting to say ‘demon’ here where he might be overheard, even though the background noise in the inn was more than enough to cover their conversation. Marekers were unenthusiastic about demons. To be fair, Tereni were too. But Hira was a sorcerer, so he was accustomed to them, and since Selene was apparently responsible for Hira now he’d arrived at Marek, she had to have this conversation, however much she might wish otherwise.

  At least the demon wasn’t close. Hira had it stashed away somewhere. Selene hadn’t asked about the details.

  “It was following Tait, yes,” Selene said, endeavouring to sound encouraging rather than furious.

  “But we couldn’t, like, pin them to a place. Because of them not calling up anything. We were just in the mountains.”

  Runaway sorcerers weren’t unheard of, but the Academy usually managed the problem efficiently and in such a way as to discourage repeats. It seemed deeply unfair that the Academy had chosen this moment to fail, and that this wretched sorcerer had made for Marek and turned this into her problem. She had no desire whatsoever to be associated with this, practically or politically.

  “You were in the mountains,” she prompted. “So, what, you knew they were in the mountains but not exactly where?”

  Hira nodded. “Yeah. Because the connection doesn’t, uh, locate itself properly unless,” he looked around himself and leaned in. “They’d have had to make their own connection to the spirit plane, see. Then,” he brought his hands together, “bang! Link, location, all fine. But they didn’t do that.”

  They probably knew how it worked, and weren’t stupid, Selene thought.

  “But the, uh… it… it didn’t have a proper connection, but it had, like, a direction. I knew we were in the right area. So… I got… it… to rile up a dragon-bear. I thought, iffen they had to fight one of those, they’d have to summon help, right?” By help he clearly meant, a demon.

  “But they didn’t?”

  Hira shook his head. “Guess not. I dunno if it didn’t find them or what. Maybe someone else dealt with it. Maybe we were in the wrong place. The, uh… it, it said we were close but it’s foldy, in the mountains, you know? Even dragon-bears can’t actually fly, not properly, not across some ravine or other. And the d– the, uh, it wouldn’t be able to tell either.”

  She could do without all this witless burbling.

  “So you followed the trail,” Selene prompted.

  “Right through the mountains. And over into Exuria.”

  Selene went cold. “Tell me you didn’t take a demon into Exuria.”

  Hira frowned. “I was following. I was told to follow.”

  “Tell me no one saw you with a demon in Exuria.”

  “No.” Hira sounded confident. “No chance.”

  Well, that was a relief. She very sincerely hoped that Hira was right, but there was no point in worrying about that now, and nothing she could do about it in either case. If Hira had sparked a diplomatic incident with Exuria, he would be dealt with back in Ameten, in due course. And it would take a while for word to get to Ameten from Exuria, via official channels. Not her problem.

  “Right. Well,” she said briskly, moving on. “The trail came back out of Exuria, I’m guessing.”

  “And down to the river,” Hira agreed. “And then along the river, and I figured, I’d do my best to catch up. But we missed the boat by a whisker, and we had to wait for the next one, and I tried to persuade the crew to help her along a bit, with the oars, but they weren’t having any of it.”

  “But you can’t have lost the trail on the river,” Selene said, grinding her teeth. “The river only goes to one place.” Unless the sorcerer had taken off into the swamp proper; but in that case the swamp would deal with them, no further intervention needed. And a sorcerer bright enough to avoid being caught for this long wouldn’t be foolish enough to go off into the swamps alone.

  “Yes,” Hira agreed. “The river comes here, and then people go into Marek.”

  “So?”

  “So now I can’t track ’em any more, because they’ve gone into Marek. Maybe half a day before we got here. Less, even. They’ve disappeared.”

  “What do you mean, they’ve disappeared?”

  Hira shrugged. “Marek’s under the protection of the cityangel. Don’t everyone know that? The… it… it can’t feel anything coming out of there.” He made a gesture, hands forming a dome. “Like a big cover, over the whole city.”

  “Then go in,” Selene said, impatiently.

  Hira looked horrified. “Go in? To Marek? With a… ? You can’t. Cityangel won’t allow it. Don’t you… ?” He met Selene’s eyes, and managed to bite back on ‘don’t you know that’.

  “So,” Selene said, words clipped. “You followed this rogue sorcerer through Teren, into and out of Exuria – thereby breaking our treaty with Exuria, I might add, though we will hope that they didn’t notice – you set a dragon-bear on them, and you’ve lost them at the Marek gates.” She sat back, arms folded. “Wonderful.”

  Hira hunched his shoulders a little. “I did my best. Tait trained with us. They knew what we’d be looking for. They were prepared!”

  Selene inhaled, tongue pressed against her teeth. “And you are supposed to be better trained, and to have been able to solve this problem.”

  Hira looked a bit like a dog with its tail between its legs, waiting to be beaten.

&n
bsp; “Very well,” Selene said. “You can stay out here, while I decide what to do next.”

  Hira brightened up a bit. “There’s rooms at this inn, I checked, but I haven’t enough left to pay for it…”

  “You’ve been camping out for the last month,” Selene said. “I suggest you keep doing that. I saw tents on the far side of the square. You won’t stand out. And keep a leash on your… acquaintance. I’ll get word to you when I have worked out how we can resolve this situation.” She put a vicious spin on the last few words and, with satisfaction, saw Hira wince.

  She would be meeting the Mareker sorcerers in an hour. She’d been hoping to hear that she didn’t need to talk to them about this; that she could just sound them out about other forms of cooperation. But she had her story planned. The rogue sorcerer, the unbound demon. The same story the Academy would have spread through Teren. That should make these Marek sorcerers amenable to assisting; they wouldn’t want a demon running around loose any more than anyone else did.

  And she didn’t have time to stay any longer here; not that there was anything else to be done. She nodded coldly to Hira – if the idiot had just done his job, she wouldn’t have to be dealing with this – stood up, and began to make her way out of the ugly little inn.

  Something crackled in her pocket as she moved, and she remembered the message she’d received earlier and not had time to read. She pulled it out and slid her thumbnail under the seal – House Fereno, she thought. As she scanned the brief message, her eyes widened, and she slowed to a stop.

  According to Marcia, this sorcerer was indeed in Marek; and she’d even helpfully given a location.

  Perhaps the demon couldn’t do anything inside the city, but sorcerers were no more immune than anyone else to a nice prosaic stabbing. She didn’t have the resources here that she might in Ameten, but Teren did have… connections, here, that she could draw upon. And potentially she still had these Mareker sorcerers she was supposed to be meeting as a back-up option.

  She might yet be able to resolve this quickly and quietly.