"So Wendell—and later Cardozo, as Wendell grew too old and mad—determined to get themselves a single Aubrey—you—to see if they could learn Our magic. They needed only one at first, to keep relations with the Aubrey as amiable as possible, but they were also very worried that two or more of you would be difficult to control, and would probably make your minds up to escape.
"But now that you have passed their test, the real plan begins in earnest: acquire as many Aubrey children as They can, and make them into a new generation of Our wizards."
"It cost some hundreds of Alliance lives to get me from the Aubrey," said Wit. "What do we have that they will trade dozens of children for?"
"Trade? I don't know much of their plan; before, it always struck me as silly. Despite their great power, throughout history the Aubrey have shown no interest in ruling others. Until just now, I was not convinced that a generation of Aubrey would be of any good for anyone. So I never learned much about what they would do if they determined that the Aubrey were valuable.
"But you are right: we paid a steep price for you, and I don't think we would do that again. The great thing about the Aubrey is their boats: they are made from wood that came from the trees of Isadoro, maybe a thousand years ago. And wood burns. I had always assumed that, if they ever decided that the Aubrey were useful, they would simply find some way to destroy the Aubrey fleet, and press whoever managed to swim away into the service of Our Order. I can see why Cardozo never told you, of course, but you do seem clever enough to have guessed it. Be careful of him."
"Sir," said Wit. It was all he could think of to say.
"Well, I think this has been fascinating for both of us. I hate Youngkent, it is one of the dullest places in the Alliance, even when it is being attacked by orcs. I got here an hour ago, and I am already ready to leave. But the humane thing will be to let my horses rest for a bit, and I suppose the polite thing would be to join whoever has this castle now for dinner. Who does have the castle, now that LinLaugh is dead?"
"One of the younger dragars—from a rival house. They had a ceremony to select him last night. He seems wise enough."
"Ah, well if there is a new High Dragar holding one of the Alliance's most important fortifications, then I think the least we can do is eat some of his food and get to know him. But we will leave first thing in the morning."
Wit ate only enough to seem polite at dinner, and drank almost no wine, although there was a beaming steward standing behind him, ready to fill his cup. Still, he felt as if he had drunk an entire barrel in the morning. As he saddled his horse and prepared to leave with Crane, he realized that he had never felt quite so tired and miserable at any point in his long journey.
Before, there had been at least the sense that what was happening would end; even if the most likely end had always involved Wit's death, it was still an end. And he had been able to tell himself that his death would help his friends, and further the beliefs that he had grown up in.
But only now, at the end of the journey, he could see that it was no end at all, and that the people he had hoped to serve were not who he had thought they were. Cardozo, his kind mentor, had actually been plotting to enslave Wit's people since before Wit had been born. And the rest of the Order seemed hell-bent on butchering the people of Isadoro until they could rule the few that were left with absolute power.
He was riding about twenty feet behind Crane. "Wa'llach, you cursed reprobate," he said over his shoulder, "I know it's damned early, but I could surely use a pull from that flask of yours." He waited for a response for a long, angry moment before it hit him: even the dwarf was gone.
They spoke little during the first days out of Youngkent. Crane traveled at a more leisurely pace than he and Wa'llach ever had, setting out every day in the late morning and stopping for the night whenever he saw a comfortable place to stay, frequently only a couple hours after noon. On those long afternoons of idleness in strange towns, Crane would talk with locals and travelers and eat the finest food he could find. Wit would generally find a quiet corner of the inn, where he would read his books of magic, copying the portions that moved him, and sometimes, tentatively, trying to put his own thoughts on the craft into words.
"I'd rather be your friend, Wit," Crane said when they had been on the road for five days. "I do not expect you to accept everything I have done, and will do, immediately—but I am sure that you can begin to see the benefits of my friendship."
Wit furrowed his brow and looked at the clouds. "There's rather a lot of blood, isn't there?"
"Direct: I like it. You and Haniel killed two of my friends—and I only mean to kill one of you. And even that might prove to be negotiable. If you were to prove a valuable enough ally, I might be persuaded to spare Haniel."
Wit said nothing.
"Vechtin did not give you much choice—I don't hold it against you," Crane added. "But Haniel killed someone weaker than she, and was not forced to do it at all. And in his way, Chattiel was much more important to my plans than Vechtin. I do have a very strong inclination to pay back his death with blood. But I am open to persuasion—and you could be more valuable to me than that boy ever was."
Wit still kept silent.
"I know, you have learned a lot in a short amount of time. I don't expect you to answer me now, or even soon. And unless I am mistaken about our friend Cardozo, it will be a little while before I can take any steps regarding Haniel. She is very unlikely to be in the capital when we return."
"What do you mean?"
"Cardozo will probably use this as an excuse to push her promotion through. Few people in training thought she had much more to learn as an Adept—her or Bronzino. But they wanted to keep them in training to provide guidance for a new group: the late Chattiel and three more who will be arriving over the next six months. And in Haniel's case, there were doubts about her tendency to unorthodox beliefs, and her past disciplinary issues. But everyone knows that I took an interest in the boy, and will want to punish her severely: the council will send her to an out of the way region, where they think she will be at least some use to us."
"Even though she killed a wizard?"
"She killed an Adept, while an Adept, and the Adepts govern themselves. By itself, it is not unforgivable. Listen Wit, whatever the future holds, I think that we might as well have ourselves a pleasant ride back to the capital, hmm?"
Wit nodded a little absently. A group of mounted soldiers stood in the road ahead of them, watching them. Wit blinked as he noticed their crest: the sword-wielding otter of the Brogdadus.
Crane waved to them, and Wit looked questioning. "Oh, them? I dislike the thought of having any bother with bandits—so I thought we might have an armed escort the rest of the way to the capital. An abundance of caution, perhaps, but I dislike risks."
Subtly, Crane pointed to one of the riders. As his companions waved to the approaching wizards, the rider Crane had pointed to clutched his chest and fell to the ground. The other riders dismounted and went to his side. Wit and Crane spurred their horses, but the man was dead by the time they reached them.
Wit looked from the dead man to his commander, standing over him: a tall girl with close-cropped golden hair.
"Wit!" She said. "All the gods, what is going on? First my man drops dead and then…"
Crane and Wit dismounted and looked at the fallen soldier. "A sudden fit," said Crane sadly. "There is much that even we wizards do not understand. Did the man have a great fondness for salt? There is a wizard of my acquaintance who believes that death of this sort is most common in those who eat a great deal of salt, but it is a sort of magic that we are only just developing."
"What are you doing here?" Wit asked Elayne.
"I thought you might know," she said. "I was in Reading six days ago, when a messenger said the Order was paying us to ride with a wizard, and insisted that I lead the detail. I rode here as fast as I could and took command of these troops."
"Forgive Wit," said Crane, "it was all my id
ea and he knew nothing. I am most sorry for the death of your man."
Wit and Crane hung back while the princess supervised loading the fallen soldier onto a horse.
"Yes," said Crane, "whatever our differences, I don't see why we shouldn't have a pleasant ride back to the capital."
"And if it were to be an unpleasant ride," Wit said, "I assume it will be a very unpleasant one," he finished, looking at the fallen soldier.
"Yes. How well we are beginning to understand each other. Go catch up with your lady friend, Wit. And remember that you and I can be friends."
39
Mantyger got them a room with upholstered chairs and large windows on the second floor of one of Kroywen's finest inns. There was a roast griffin leg, fried potatoes, and bowls of fruit on a side table; and a little skirbit in a red uniform that would silently come over and fill their cups whenever they were out of wine.
Haniel kept the skirbit busy. During the night, when she had assumed that she would be executed, her fear had somehow been kept in check by the fact that there was nothing she could do. Now she was saved, but the fear remained with her; it felt like poison in her blood and tension in her shoulders. She was growing impatient with the wine, but she could also tell it was very good, and was too embarrassed to ask the skirbit for a lump of grain alcohol to add to it. Eventually she said she needed to use a toilet and wandered out into the rest of the inn.
She had never been in the inn before and very few as nice. The top floor held four rooms like the one she was in and a hallway that ended in a wide balcony overlooking the street. Haniel went down the stairs they had come up to the main room on the first floor. In the back were small tables under delicate hanging lamps. In the front of the room, there was an open space and a bar.
Haniel went straight for the bar. She absently dropped a few coins on it and asked the bartender for a double glass of grain spirits. "Make it a triple, actually," she said.
"I am sorry, madam, but we do not serve plain grain spirits. Perhaps you would find what you are looking for at the dwarven tavern across the street."
"No, let me think a moment," she said, and the bartender was called away by a man sitting down at the end of the bar. She studied the bottles behind the bar, trying to figure out if she could afford any of them; they had not gone to the treasury, so she still only had the money she had brought to the blood fight.
The bartender returned and gave her a glass of clear liquor. She looked at him questioningly. "Compliments of the gentleman," he said, nodding to the end of the bar. Haniel turned and found the wizard that she had battled in her gym holding a glass of the same liquor and smiling at her. It briefly occurred to her to throw the drink in his face, but she wanted it too badly to let it go to waste.
So she returned the smile and raised the glass to her lips. The liquor was smooth, with the warmth of cheerful fire, and a hint of citrus in the aftertaste. The pleasure was visible in her eyes, and the wizard chuckled fondly at her. Haniel nodded and carried the drink down the end of the bar and sat next to him.
"A gin infused with Ganys berries, I am very partial to it."
"Ganys? That's the stuff that's getting me sent to Astolat." She took another sip. "Well, drinking this is something to look forward to, at least."
"Ah, no. While the berry is grown in the region, they ship it up the river and distill it elsewhere."
"Oh…well, thanks lots for the drink. Are you very disappointed that they didn't kill me?"
"You misunderstood me all along. My name is Aglovale. We have more in common than you know."
"We do?"
"We both served under Master Bour before becoming Adepts—I have remained very friendly with him. And we both have spent too much of our lives copying out his horrible book. We're probably two of the only people who ever actually read the damn thing."
"It belongs in the room where you sent me—with all the other books written by lunatics."
"Well, yes and no. Bour was very aware that he had written an awful book; he meant it to be awful and he used it to drive a wedge between him and wizards he disliked. The one you wrote out was the masterpiece, reserved for the wizard that Bour hated the most in all the Order. I visited him, shortly after you ended your time as his apprentice, and he showed it to me—he was immensely pleased with your handwriting, and took a deal of pleasure in pointing out how much better it was than mine. He'd had it bound in very striking white leather, with gold letters on the spine."
"At least it did some good for the book binder? They probably made nice money on it."
"It wasn't the last time I saw that copy of the book, you know. I stopped at Bour's when I had been called back from my region to take a post in Discipline within the Order. A few months later, I saw that book on the shelf of the head of my department: Grand Master Crane."
"Crane? Bour hated Crane?"
"He was a very good judge of character. Which was why I had high hopes for you."
"Me?"
"Yes. Discipline is Crane's tool. Me and maybe two or three other members are not his creatures, but the rest of them are, and we are never sure who we can trust. Several wizards have tried to report what they saw outside of the department—but all have ended up dead or with broken minds."
"So you wanted me as your ally in Discipline?"
"Indeed. However, it is hard to make a case for letting someone so… undisciplined into that Department. I was going to keep you doing clerical work until it seemed like you learned your lesson, but apparently you had other plans."
"All the gods, I've screwed up just horribly, haven't I? All I've wanted these last months was a shot at Crane. I don't even care if I win, I just want to fight him. And that was what you were offering me, if only I had kept myself in check and acted like a proper wizard."
"And now all Crane will want is a shot at you. The truth is, I might have actually wasted your talents. You struck Crane a much worse blow than I could have done."
"By killing Chattiel? Why does anyone care about that little shit?"
"It seems that Crane and his allies were counting on him to corrupt the next class of Adepts. And you have destroyed that plan utterly, depriving them of a generation of wizards. I am serious that Crane will want to kill you. He will probably make an attempt on your life during the journey to Astolat: he is as vengeful and violent as any wizard we have ever had."
They returned to the room with Mantyger and Bronzino. Aglovale knew Mantyger slightly and they all got to talking. A little later, a Bound page came into the room for Aglovale and Mantyger. A little boy had been noticed reading minds in one of the major markets, and then somehow got away. As a precaution, the Order was recalling all unoccupied wizards back to the tower in case they needed to be deployed in the search for the Gifted child.
"A small child, new with the Gift?" Mantyger closed her eyes.
"Don't bother. They'll run him down quick enough," said Aglovale, almost sadly. "Let them go through channels, no need to draw attention to yourself."
Bronzino coughed. "We will come with you back to the tower. Hanny still needs to see about paperwork and money."
"Telling me what to do?" she said. "Adept."
"Actually by the Principles, any member of the Order, even an Adept, is allowed—required actually—to take reasonable steps to ensure that wizards comply with the basic elements of their assigned duty."
Haniel squinted at him.
"It means that I can make you do things to get ready for your posting, even though you outrank me."
"Well…shit on the gods….what did I even want to be a wizard for anyway?"
At the tower, Aglovale left, and Haniel and Mantyger embraced. "I'll watch over you in my dreams," Mantyger said.
"Um…I'll write," said Haniel.
Bronzino got them through the treasury, and several other offices that Haniel needed to get papers from.
"Well, that was horrible," Haniel said when they were standing outside the tower. "Now let's—"
"Can we stop at a tavern on the way to the market?"
"If we must," said Bronzino, smiling.
First they bought a large trunk, and then they dragged it around the market district, filling it with things that Bronzino decided she needed. Bronzino took her to shops where he knew people. It turned into a rollicking, inefficient, drunken romp through the city in which they had been young. They went to two taverns for every shop. The fun and finality were so overwhelming that they could not bear to make eye contact.
It was well after dark when they paid a porter to drag the trunk to the caravan and went to the Adepts' quarters to pack the last of Haniel's things. This also took longer than it should have.
Haniel found a mostly full bottle of ink in a drawer in her desk, and as she left the quarters for the last time, clicked her tongue until the monkey appeared. She pulled the stopper out and placed the bottle on the floor. The monkey looked at her questioningly, not sure it was entitled to such a great bounty.
"I'll miss you, little friend," she said as the monkey raised the bottle to its mouth.
Bronzino got sick on the way to the city gates, but stuck with her anyway. Haniel introduced herself to the merchants she was traveling with and gave her things to someone who stowed them on her horse. The caravan was leaving at dawn, which was now about an hour away. They ended up in the little shop where Haniel had met Gondorf. Haniel bought herself a mug of ale, and Bronzino got the shopkeeper to give him a glass of water.
They were silent for long enough that Haniel felt for a moment that she had to say something to make the most of their shrinking time; but true friends, she suddenly realized, were not the ones you could speak to, but the people you could share silence with.
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