by Juliet Kemp
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Asa stomped across Marek Square; Jonas had to lengthen his stride to keep up with them. Marek Square was busy at this time of the evening, with people passing through on their way to or from their evening’s entertainment, and some of them turned to look curiously at Jonas and Asa.
“Well, that was a total clusterfuck, wasn’t it?” Asa said grimly.
“It wasn’t… that bad?” Jonas tried, knowing as he did that it was a lost cause.
“Jonas. Your mother clearly doesn’t think that you should be going anywhere near some Mareker from the squats. And she was hardly subtle about it. The smell of fish villages? Really? Did she already have someone lined up for you at home?”
“No!” Jonas denied, then honesty insisted that he add, “Not to my knowledge. I wouldn’t put it past her, I suppose. But she’s never said anything, truly.”
“Still,” Asa said. They’d reached the foot of Old Bridge now. Asa in a hurry could move damn fast. “She made it pretty clear what her opinion is.”
“Kia was fine,” Jonas said, unable to counter Asa’s assessment of his mother but unwilling to concur with it out loud.
“Kia did her best to cover things over to make for a smoother evening, yes, I will give you that. Kia was perfectly polite to me.”
“Kia was a bit pissed off that Mother was making things difficult,” Jonas said.
“But you didn’t say word one,” Asa said.
“I did!” Jonas protested, then stopped. “Didn’t I?”
“No, Jonas,” Asa said. “You didn’t. You let her make all those snide little comments, and you contradicted her maybe once. And leaving aside all the business about curious Mareker customs, and the importance of the sea, and all the questions about the squats, leaving all of that aside – she quite clearly thinks she’s here to take you home. Doesn’t she.”
Jonas winced. “Look. How about we stop at the pub, on the way home? Nice soothing beer. Kind of thing.”
Possibly Asa would be a little less pissed off if they were in public.
“In this kit?” Asa gestured down at themself, and then at Jonas. “You must be having me on. Quite apart from the attention we’d draw, haven’t you to return this tomorrow? Clean?”
“Uh. Do you want to come to my room?”
“Right now what I want is to tell you to fuck right off,” Asa said, bluntly. “However. I don’t really want to have this discussion in the street, either, and I doubt we’ll do better by putting it off. You can come to mine. I have whisky. Right now I really need a whisky.”
Jonas wasn’t certain that was a great idea, after the tumbler of berith, and the Exurian wine with the meal, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to contradict Asa right now either, and it wasn’t like they were showing signs of being drunk. Annoyed, yes. Drunk, no.
Meekly, he followed Asa up to their room, where they immediately changed out of the formalwear, putting their customary shirt and trousers back on with a sigh of relief. Jonas supposed that it wouldn’t go down well to suggest that they left the whole lot off.
They poured off a wooden tumbler of whisky, and gestured at Jonas with the bottle. Jonas mutely shook his head. Asa didn’t have a chair in here; in the absence of other options, Jonas sat on the floor facing the bed, back against the wall. He doubted Asa would welcome him on the bed next to them right now. The floorboards were smooth underneath his fingers.
Asa took a healthy slug of the whisky, sat down on the edge of the bed, and then sighed, running a hand over their face.
“Right. I’m calmer now. So. Your mother doesn’t like me; fine. She wants you to come home, and she doesn’t want some Mareker encouraging you to stay here, nor, I suppose, does she want you thinking with your dick. I can understand that. But – couldn’t you have said something?” They sounded hurt, now, rather than cross, and Jonas felt it like a kick in the stomach.
“I,” he started off helplessly, then stopped, not knowing what to say. “I’m not very good at that,” he said, eventually, knowing how weak it was as he said it.
“At what? Standing up to your mother? Contradicting her at all?” Asa asked.
“That, basically. Yes. Look, she’s not just my mother. She was my captain, for years. And Kia’s too.”
“I noticed that,” Asa said, drily. “And yet Kia still managed the occasional deflection.”
“Kia’s a diplomat,” Jonas said. “I’m not. I know she’s being unreasonable, but the way she says things – I can’t think of how to contradict her, and if I do she’ll ask why, and I can never think of anything to say in time.”
Asa was halfway through their whisky already. They set it down, thoughtfully. “I guess I forget how young you are,” they said.
“Oh, come on,” Jonas said. “There’s no need to be like that. I’m only a couple of years younger than you.” With Asa looking at him like that, he felt small.
Asa shrugged. “In years, sure. But you were on a ship, with your ma and the rest of the crew looking out for you, until, what, six months ago? I’ve been making my own living since I was fifteen. Living on my own since a little after that. I’m not meaning anything by it, Jonas, it’s just – you’ve not had long to work out how to stand on your own.”
Jonas hunched a shoulder.
“So, fine. You aren’t any good at arguing with your ma. Mine can run rings round me, too, it’s true, though I’d like to think that if she started on at me about going with a Salinas lad, I’d have something to say.”
“If she’d said it like that, so would I!” Jonas said. “But she didn’t, did she? It was all about the interest of different cultures, and – she was like you, just now, treating me like a kid.”
“Well,” Asa said. “I want to say, don’t act like a kid. But that’s cos I’m pissed off. So. Moving on. She thinks you’re going back, and you didn’t contradict her. But that’s not what you’ve been saying to me.” Their tone was hard, challenging. “Let’s be clear about this, Jonas. It’s not that I mind. I mean, sure, I’d miss you if you went back. But we’ve been friends barely six months, and lovers just a few weeks. I like you, but I’d cope, you know? What I mind is if you’re lying to me, straight out.”
“I’m not,” Jonas said, miserably. “I…” He stopped. The problem was, he didn’t know what he wanted. Not enough to say it out loud. He wasn’t lying to anyone, he just needed… time. Time to work out what he was doing. Time to work out whether he wanted magic, and those accursed flickers, whether he would ever be able to control it. He opened his mouth, and shut it again. He couldn’t find any of the words he needed.
“So it’s your ma you’re lying to, instead?” Asa said. “Look at me, Jonas. What’s going on?”
“I’m not lying to her, either. I’m not agreeing with her. But you saw her, tonight. She’s not going to listen to me, if I tell her otherwise, is she?”
“Well, she’s certainly not if you never tell her, no,” Asa said.
Jonas looked down at the floor between his knees. “She never listened to me before. I don’t see her starting now.”
Asa took another slug of whisky. “You’re a grown man, Jonas. You’ve moved out, to another country, even. How about you start acting like it?”
Jonas buried his head in his hands. “I don’t know what I want to do. I wasn’t supposed to stay here. I sure as hell wasn’t supposed to become a bloody sorcerer, and angels alone know what Mother would say if she found out anything about that. But how long can I hide it from her?”
Asa sighed. “How long’s she staying?”
Jonas shook his head. “It’s not that. She can’t stay long. She’s got cargo to shift. But she’ll be back, and if I don’t come this time it’ll be next time, and she’ll want to know whether…” His voice trailed off.
“Whether what?” Asa asked. Jonas didn’t reply. His flickers. He didn’t want to talk about his flickers.
The silence stretched out.
“Why did you come here, Jonas?” Asa asked.
“I mean. I know there’s something you’re not telling me. Known it for a while. And now it seems like there’s something your mother thinks you should have done here.”
Jonas looked back down at the floor. “I…” Could he tell Asa? Surely he could, if he’d told Cato. And, angels help him, Urso. Asa knew magic. Asa wasn’t freaked out by it. And he wanted, so badly, to be able to talk about it.
The moment stretched out. He could feel Asa about to give up. He could say something. He could.
“I see the future,” he blurted out, and immediately felt his shoulders go up, waiting for… Asa’s reaction.
“You what?”
But they didn’t sound angry, or disbelieving, just… surprised?
He was committed now. He might as well go on. “I have these… flickers. Little snippets of the future. Had them since I was a kid. I told my mother, once, and she told me to keep it to myself, ignore it, and it would go away.”
“Salinas and magic,” Asa said, sounding resigned. “I see.”
“But it’s not magic, not exactly,” Jonas said. “That’s the thing. I came here to get rid of it. I hoped, Mother hoped, I’d grow out of it, but when I didn’t… I can’t join a crew this way.”
“Does she think you’ve gotten rid of it?” Asa asked, then, “Have you?”
“I don’t know what she thinks. I haven’t, though. No one seemed to know anything about it. And then…” He swallowed. “Urso said he could help. If I helped him.”
Asa grimaced. “Right. I see. Well, that explains a lot.” Asa had never asked how he’d gotten wound up with Urso and Daril. Asa had just come and helped him. Asa had been on his side.
“But Cato said it was too late. He’s tried to help, but… He says, it’s not magic but it’s related to magic. He said, learn to be a sorcerer and then I can control it, maybe. Except he doesn’t bloody know either.” Jonas could feel his frustration leaking out. “He keeps asking me about it, he’s nosy, but then he’s telling me I can do magic as well and…”
“And can you?”
“Sometimes. I…” He stopped. He couldn’t quite bring himself, even now, to talk about the link between the flickers and magic. “I don’t know.”
Asa sighed, and got down off the bed to kneel in front of him. “So you don’t know if you want rid of your flickers, and you don’t know if you want to go back to the sea, and you don’t know if you want to be a sorcerer. And your ma’s telling you one thing and Cato’s telling you another. Am I right?”
“Pretty much,” Jonas said. He felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.
“So. I guess what you need is to tell Cato and your ma, and me, come to that, to fuck off while you sort it all out.”
“I don’t want you to fuck off,” Jonas said, immediately and honestly. He grabbed at Asa’s hands. “Honestly. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to talk about it before.” He took a shaky breath. “But if you don’t want to… I mean, the flickers, they’re weird, right…”
Asa shrugged. “Lots of things are weird. It’s kind of interesting, to be honest, but I won’t be hassling you about it, don’t worry.”
“I can’t tell Cato to fuck off,” Jonas said. “He’s right. I need to learn to control this thing, if I have it. The sorcery.”
“And you can’t tell your ma to fuck off, that’s clear enough,” Asa said. “At least I understand now why you’re avoiding her. Look. You have to think this through properly, Jonas. You’re too young to commit to anything, but you need to work out what the hell you’re doing, and then maybe you need to find the nerve to tell your mother to back off.”
Jonas winced.
“Yeah, right enough, but maybe once you’ve made some decisions it’ll be easier. But right now,” Asa stood up, still holding his hands, and pulled him upwards, “have a damn brandy, get out of that posh clobber, and come lie down with me.”
Their smile had tilted upwards at the side, and Jonas let himself be tugged towards the bed, awash with relief and gratitude that Asa, at least, seemed to understand. Maybe, here, he really was safe.
NINETEEN
Marcia stood in Marek Square in front of the Guildhall – not a specific Guild’s hall, but the Guildhall, where all the Guilds met – and squared her shoulders. She’d dressed carefully for this; semi-formal, and just enough facepaint to remind them who she was, but not enough to invoke the full power of the Houses. Especially since, on this occasion, she was not, strictly speaking, representing her House. She’d even taken a litter down the Hill, so she wouldn’t get rumpled and sweaty on the way down.
Not that she intended to make it clear that she wasn’t fully representing her House. It was only as Fereno-Heir (… if then… ) that she had any authority at all.
She had to make them understand that what they were doing was only making matters worse, making the Houses less likely to shift. And it was working directly against what she’d been trying to do; but if she talked about that, she’d have to admit how long her method was likely to take. The Guilds wouldn’t like that at all.
Even just over the course of yesterday, she was aware that the Houses had been growing more irate. People had been in and out of their reception room all day, mostly talking to Madeleine rather than to Marcia, but Marcia had heard some of the louder discussions through the wall to the smaller reception room next door, and Madeleine had given her a clipped update at dinner. The word ‘blackmail’ had been thrown around more than once; but from Marcia’s perspective, the Houses were becoming uncomfortably aware of how much power the Guilds hold here. Unfortunately, they were using this as a reason to resist the Guilds’ demands; arguing that they couldn’t possibly ‘give in’. Marcia couldn’t help but see Selene’s hand in it. Encouraging the Houses to ‘stand firm’; driving a wedge between them and the Guilds; pulling them back towards Teren.
Whatever Selene was saying, whatever hot air the Heads of the Houses were spewing, Marcia was sick-sure that Marek would fall apart unless the Houses and the Guilds came back together. She had to find a way to bridge the gap.
Now that she came to the moment of entering the Guildhall, it was more intimidating than she’d expected. They might just send her away with a flea in her ear. But standing around out here wasn’t going to improve anything. She took a deep breath, and walked up the steps to the big carved main doors.
A very tidy-looking apprentice with a Weavers’ Guild mark on her shoulder showed Marcia into the meeting room where three of the Guildmasters waited. Marcia knew all three of them by sight: Warden Ceril of the Vintners, Warden Hagadath of the Smiths and Cutlers, and Warden Bradley of the Broderers. All of them were wearing robes, making Marcia glad that she was formally dressed too. Warden Hagadath had one of the Guild Council seats, but neither of the others did. She wished Warden Ilana was here. Not that Ilana had been particularly encouraging when they’d spoken the day before, but at least they had an on-going working relationship.
All three rose to greet her, and there was a couple of minutes of fussing around before they were all seated again. The room was comfortable, with armchairs rather than a meeting-table, and the apprentice hurried to offer Marcia an infusion. The Guildwardens already had theirs.
“And how is your mother, Fereno-Heir?” Warden Ceril enquired. She was a little older than Madeleine, and Marcia knew she had been heavily involved with the campaign to add Guild representation to the Council.
“Doing well, thank you, Warden Ceril,” Marcia said. She wasn’t about to say that her mother knew nothing of this current visit, nor of Marcia’s agenda for it. “And your own family?” She’d played with Ceril’s grand-daughter, when they were both children; the Guilds tended to marry younger than the Houses.
“Ah yes, all well too,” Ceril nodded. Warden Bradley coughed, a little
stagily, and Warden Ceril stopped what she had been about to say, and moved on. “So, what is it that brings you to us today?”
As if they didn’t all know.
Marcia took a deep breath and waded in. “I am here seeking to broker some kind of agreement between you and the Houses, with regard to your current – complaints.”
“You’re speaking for the Houses, are you, Fereno-Heir?” Warden Bradley asked, directly.
Marcia kept her face controlled. “In honesty, Warden Bradley? No, I am not.”
All three of the Guildwardens crossed their arms, in unison, all looking somewhere between disapproving and annoyed. Marcia bit back a bubble of wholly inappropriate laughter. The gesture was so neatly synchronised it could have been staged.
She forged on. “I am not, because if I were here speaking on behalf of the Houses, we would not get anywhere for protocol and long speeches. As well you know. My aim is to liaise between you and the Houses.”
“So what do you have authority to offer?” Warden Ceril asked.
“I agree with you that we need a more equal spread of responsibility between the Houses and the Guilds,” Marcia said, evading the question of ‘authority’. “The Small Council has been woefully over-used; and three seats is too many for the Guilds and the Houses to differ in Great Council.”
“So what difference would you see as appropriate?” Warden Bradley demanded. “Two seats? One?”
“Twelve Guild seats,” Marcia said. Thirteen was fair, of course, but knowing from Ilana that the Guilds wanted fourteen, she could hardly start negotiating there.
Warden Ceril shook her head. “And the Houses still outvote us? No.”
“The Houses rarely stand so firmly together as to all vote as a block,” Marcia argued. It was even true.
“And yet, if it comes to outvoting us, I fear that they will find it in themselves to do so,” Ceril said.
“Twelve seats and no more use of the Inner Council, other than for matters that affect strictly and only the Houses,” Marcia said.
