Company of Strangers, #1

by Melissa McShane

  “A memory…blessing?” Alaric said.

  “Indeed. Aside from that one request, I failed to specify in my morning prayers what blessings I needed for the day. To my surprise, based on what I received, Averran seems to think I am embarking on yet another scrapping adventure. But if that is what we intend, who am I to desert my team?”

  Dianthe poked Alaric, who looked stunned. “Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “We were a team the moment you revealed your other self. You just needed time to accept it.”

  “As do I,” Kalanath said. “I do not make friends easily, but you are all…I do not know the word.”

  “Congenial? Sympathetic? Harmonious?” Perrin suggested.

  Kalanath shook his head. “It is when you support each other. To want to make the others better. That is the word.”

  Family, Sienne thought. After eight days? Stranger things had happened.

  “I agree,” Perrin said, “whatever word you use. And now I believe I will accompany Kalanath and Sienne to this woman with the library. You may need my charming tongue to convince her of our sincerity and well-meaning.”

  Alaric’s stunned look was fading. “Well,” he said, cleared his throat, and went on more firmly, “Well. Then Dianthe and I will go to Mistress Pelegrus and confirm the details of the job. I’ve been thinking we may need to bribe someone to let us look at the contents of the trunk, if there are more ritual items there, and this job will go a long way toward paying for that.”

  “Bribery? Is that something we do?” Sienne asked, pushing back from the table.

  “Welcome to my world,” Dianthe said. “Just so Denys doesn’t find out. He thinks I’m completely respectable.”

  “He’s handsome. I can see what you see in him,” Sienne said, making Dianthe blush and Alaric laugh.

  She ran upstairs to fetch her spellbook and bumped into Alaric, coming the same way, as she left her room. “What changed your mind?” she asked impulsively.

  “About what?” Alaric said.

  “About using magic. I know it frightens you a little, and after hearing your story I can’t blame you. So why did you suddenly embrace it?”

  “Aside from your sheer manic exuberance in insisting on using it for absolutely everything?” His eyes twinkled at her, and without thinking she punched him lightly on the arm. “Ow. Truthfully?” His amused look vanished, replaced by a seriousness that made her uncomfortable with its honesty. “My relationship with magic is inconstant. On the one hand, my people are slaves thanks to a magic that removes their ability to choose for themselves. But I’m also a creature of magic by nature. I’ve spent years dwelling on the former and trying to forget about the latter. Having to change my shape to get us out of that keep…I couldn’t stop thinking about how that magic saved our lives. Or how determined you were to use your magic to protect all of us. And I thought…I shouldn’t have to deny what’s good about magic just because one evil man twisted its nature to his own ends.” He smiled, and the somber look vanished. “But I still don’t like wizards.”

  “And I’m still a special case,” Sienne said, putting her hand on his arm.

  Alaric put his hand over hers. An unfamiliar expression crossed his face, an inward-turned, probing look as if he were reaching for a memory just beyond his grasp. Then it vanished, and he smiled at her and turned away. Sienne went down the stairs behind him more slowly than she’d ascended, skipping the broken treads automatically. For a moment, she’d almost thought— She shook her head to clear it. He was her companion, even if for the briefest moment she’d seen him as something more.

  Alaric held the back door open for her and for Dianthe. Perrin and Kalanath waited outside, Perrin squinting against the sunlight. “We meet again at noon?” he said.

  “Agreed,” Alaric said. “Don’t get into trouble.”

  “We make no promises,” Sienne said.

  They strode off into the bright Fiorettan morning together.

  Sienne’s Spellbook

  Summonings:

  Summonings affect the physical world and elements. They include all transportation spells.

  Fog—obscuring mist

  Slick—conjure grease

  Evocations:

  Evocations deal with intangible elements like fire, air, and lightning.

  Scream—sonic attack, causes injury

  Confusions:

  Confusions affect what the senses perceive.

  Camouflage—disguise an object’s shape, color, or texture

  Cast—ventriloquism

  Echo—auditory hallucinations

  Imitate—change someone’s entire appearance

  Mirage—visual hallucinations

  Mirror—creates three identical duplicates of the caster

  Shift—small alterations in appearance, such as eye or hair color

  Transforms:

  Transforms change an object or creature’s state, in small or large ways.

  Break—shatters fragile things

  Fit (person)—shrink or enlarge a person; temporary

  Sharpen—improve sight or hearing

  Voice—sound like someone else

  The Small Magics

  These can be done by any wizard without a spellbook, with virtually no limits.

  Light

  Spark

  Mend

  Create water

  Breeze

  Chill/warm liquid

  Telekinesis (up to 6-7 pound weights)

  Ghost sound

  Ghostly form

  Find true north

  Open (used to manipulate a spellbook)

  Invulnerability

  About the Author

  In addition to Company of Strangers, Melissa McShane is the author of more than twenty fantasy novels, including the novels of Tremontane, the first of which is Servant of the Crown; The Extraordinaries series, beginning with Burning Bright; and The Book of Secrets, first book in The Last Oracle series. She lives in the shelter of the mountains out West with her husband, four children and a niece, and four very needy cats. She wrote reviews and critical essays for many years before turning to fiction, which is much more fun than anyone ought to be allowed to have.

  You can visit her at www.melissamcshanewrites.com for more information on other books.

  For news on upcoming releases, bonus material, and other fun stuff, sign up for Melissa’s newsletter at http://eepurl.com/brannP

  Sneak Peek: Stone of Inheritance (Company of Strangers, Book Two)

  The cloudy gray light before the storm dulled the white marble façade of the Tombrino auction house to pearly dimness. Its many arches and spires gave it the look of a temple of the avatar Gavant instead of a temple to worldly wealth. White statues topped the small round arches lining its roof, too far away for Sienne to make out details or identify who they were meant to be. She guessed long-ago rulers of Fioretti, or possibly representations of divine virtues, monitoring the activities of anyone who dared go within.

  A gust of freezing wind snatched her cloak from her hands where she gripped it closely around herself. She grabbed it and wrapped it more tightly to her. Winter clung to the city despite having supposedly been evicted by first summer. Rain was imminent. Sienne was grateful they were far enough south that it wouldn’t be snow instead. Snow was pretty when you were indoors looking at how it covered the gardens and drinking spiced wine, but less pretty if you had to be out in it.

  “Was this always an auction house?” she asked Perrin, who strode along beside her. His long dark hair was windblown, and the tip of his nose was as red as hers no doubt was.

  “It was the home of a minor noble, some hundred and seventy-five years ago,” Perrin said. “Someone who plotted against the queen of that era. His fortune and lands were confiscated, his family driven into exile, and his life forfeit. I am certain it was a far more tragic story at the time, but now it is simply a cautionary tale. The Fiorus family have ever been canny when it comes to protecting their rule.”

 
“I don’t know. That still sounds sad, at least for the family. I suppose it was generous of the queen not to have them all executed.”

  Perrin took a drink from the flask at his hip. “Indeed. And daring, to leave alive any who might seek revenge for their father’s death.”

  Sienne eyed the flask, but said nothing. After nearly nine months of being Perrin’s companion on their scrapper team, she was used to his near-constant state of mild to moderate inebriation. The priests of the avatar Averran, whom Perrin worshipped, were expected to be a little drunk when performing their devotions, but Sienne couldn’t help feeling Perrin took it too far. She’d overheard enough of his side of the prayer conversations he had with his avatar to suspect Averran didn’t like it either. But any time she brought it up, even obliquely, Perrin sidestepped the issue with steely grace, and after four months she’d given up even the most subtle queries.

  The entrance to the auction house was an open arch with no door, through which men and women bundled up in cloaks against the cold scurried like so many drab gray or black beetles. Perrin and Sienne followed the trickle of people through a short hall where the wind blew briskly and into a larger antechamber with a domed roof. There was no indication as to what it had originally been meant for, but the fine frescos on the walls and the doors beneath them suggested some kind of reception chamber. Scuffs on the parquet floor, which had not been waxed in some time, told Sienne this was a place of serious business that didn’t have time for niceties like polished floors. Though the room was sheltered from the wind, it was still bitingly cold, and Sienne wished her magic for heating water applied to air as well. Though it was unlikely she could heat a volume of air this size.

  There were only about twenty or twenty-five people in the room, standing in knots of two or three, all of them huddled into their cloaks or coats as she was. Sienne surveyed the frescos. They depicted a series of familiar fairy tales featuring talking animals that walked on their hind legs and dressed like humans. It was subject matter she would have expected to see in a nursery rather than a noble’s reception chamber. Nobody else seemed to notice. “There’s not many here,” she said in a low voice. “That’s good, right?”

  “It’s not bad,” Perrin said. “Though we are counting on no one wanting the rather pedestrian lot we are here to bid on. But we should not discuss it in public. It may be a pedestrian lot, but we do not want to give any hint that it matters to us more than that.”

  Sienne nodded. Perrin was right; the knives they were here to bid on shouldn’t matter to anyone but themselves, but no sense giving the game away, and possibly encouraging someone to bid against them.

  It had been a long nine months leading to this point. At first, their newly acquired quest to free their companion Alaric’s people from the wizard who had them in thrall went nowhere. Perrin’s blessing enhancing Alaric’s memory of the wizard’s binding ritual had given them plenty of information, but no clues as to where to look for more. Then, three months ago, Alaric had been successful in bribing someone to let him look at the confiscated possessions of Lord Liurdi, from whose property Alaric had originally taken one of the ritual pieces, a brass goblet. According to Perrin, the city treasury made good money off letting prospective bidders do this, so it wasn’t that spectacular an achievement, but it had been progress all the same.

  Alaric’s enhanced memory identified one of the knives in Liurdi’s trove as companion to the goblet. Warned in advance by Perrin, who refused to explain why he knew so much about city policies, Alaric didn’t try to buy the knife outright. Instead, he found out when Liurdi’s possessions would be auctioned off. And now Perrin and Sienne were going to bid on the knife. The lot of knives, actually; there had been five knives in the ancient trunk the team had found the key to. Sienne still felt annoyed that they hadn’t been allowed to keep the salvage, since they’d essentially found it, but Denys Renaldi, the guard lieutenant who’d arrested Lord Liurdi for kidnapping Sienne and a host of other crimes, had refused to break what was city custom, if not law. So bidding it would have to be.

  Perrin abruptly turned away from Sienne and swore under his breath. “What’s wrong?” Sienne asked.

  “There is someone here I would rather not encounter,” Perrin said. “Fortunately he is just as loath to meet me, but his companions might decide to force the issue. Better if they simply do not see me.”

  “Who—”

  “It is unimportant. Someone I knew once. Someone who took exception to my conversion.” Perrin raised the flask again, stared at it, then put it away with a grimace. “I must keep my wits about me, however much I would prefer to lose myself in a gentle fog of brandy. Damn him.”

  Sienne knew little of Perrin’s past except that his family had cast him off when he converted from the worship of Gavant to that of Averran and, to make matters worse, became a priest of that avatar. She casually scanned the crowd, looking for anyone who might be paying close attention to them. Was it a relative? Another noble associated with the Delucco family?

  She met the gaze, briefly, of a short, slim man wearing an old-fashioned jerkin over a bell-sleeved white linen shirt and hose. He appeared to be scanning the crowd as she was, and she wondered what he was looking for. Sizing up the competition, perhaps? A nearby woman dressed in a long gown of heavy chartreuse brocade looked warmer than everyone else, and for a moment Sienne envied her the gown. Then she thought about how awkward gowns were, and the moment passed.

  A high-pitched bell rang out, a single tone that stilled the already quiet conversations. A woman dressed as Sienne was in fine linen shirt, close-fitting wool trousers, knee boots, and a form-fitting vest emerged from one of the side doors. “The auction will begin in five minutes,” she said in a clear, carrying voice. “Please follow me.”

  Perrin hung back, Sienne guessed to avoid whoever it was he didn’t want to meet. They went through the door nearly at the rear of the group, giving Sienne plenty of time to observe the others. Most of them were men wearing the colors of various Fiorettan guilds: carpenters, watchmakers, chandlers, and a few Sienne didn’t recognize. There was the woman in chartreuse, and the slim man in old-fashioned clothes. A group of two men and a woman, dressed more finely than the others, might be a rich merchant’s representatives or even those of a noble house. And finally, a young woman, probably in her late teens, clutched a purse to her side in both hands as if fearing thieves. Her thin nose was red-tipped as Perrin’s was from the cold, and she kept her gaze focused straight ahead on the backs of those in front of her. Sienne couldn’t help wondering what all these people were after. How many of them had, like Alaric, bribed their way to an early showing of the merchandise?

  They passed through the door, and Sienne had to control a gasp. The enormous room beyond had once been a ballroom, though one at least twice the size of the ballroom at her father’s ducal palace in Beneddo. More frescos, these of dancing nobles in the dress of two hundred years earlier, covered the walls and the high, arching ceiling where chandeliers still hung, dark and cobwebby. The light came not from the disused chandeliers, but from lanterns on poles scattered throughout the room. This floor was also scuffed and scored with deep scratches where merchandise had no doubt been dragged over the years. It was almost criminal that they’d treated such a magnificent room so.

  But what had startled a gasp out of Sienne was not the beauty of the room. It was its contents. The ballroom was packed with furniture, tables and chairs and armoires and chests and all manner of household furnishings. Wooden crates with their lids removed lay here and there, some with packing straw sticking out of the top, others gleaming with unidentifiable contents. Sienne’s eye was drawn to a blocky, antique trunk atop which were piled furs, probably minks if Sienne had to guess. They weren’t interested in the trunk, though it had come from the same ancient keep that had started their quest in motion, but Sienne was tempted to bid on it, for nostalgia’s sake. Men and women in the uniforms of the Fiorettan city guard stood at attention around the r
oom, armed with the traditional sword and knife and looking willing to use them. Sienne didn’t need their deterrence to keep her distance.

  The auction house employee walked to a spot near where the goods were piled most heavily and said, “Bidding will proceed as follows. An item will be presented and an initial price declared. I will call for bids, and the highest bidder will be the purchaser. All items must be paid for at auction’s end. If the highest bidder lacks the cash to pay, the second highest bidder will be given the chance to purchase. Items not purchased at the end of the auction will remain the property of the city.” She waited as if expecting questions, then said, “The first lot is a dining table and sixteen chairs. Bidding will start at one hundred lari.”

  Sienne scanned the room again. This was going to be a very long day.

  She stood, trying not to fidget, as Lord Liurdi’s possessions were auctioned off. She hadn’t gone to the man’s execution—none of them had—and the last she’d seen of him had been when she testified to his kidnapping of her. When she’d first met him, he’d been vibrant and confident, if unattractive. At the trial, he’d looked as if all the life had been sucked out of him. Sienne felt no pity, because he’d murdered and schemed to get the key to open that trunk, but she did feel awkward, as if she’d seen him naked and not just beaten. She’d also felt angry that the Giordas, who’d been his accomplices in murder and theft, had been given prison sentences rather than death simply because they’d testified against him. Prison was awful, true, and it was possible they wouldn’t survive the term of their sentence, but it was just wrong.

  The bidding proceeded. It was boring, actually, with most items going for their first asking price and some items not bid on at all. Sienne couldn’t see a pattern to the order in which things were presented for auction. A sofa—a familiar sofa, she’d lain bound upon it while she listened to Liurdi and his friends plot her death!—was followed by a set of silverware, followed by porcelain bedroom utensils Sienne prayed someone had cleaned thoroughly. She let her mind drift, thinking about what Leofus might make for dinner. They were almost certainly going to miss the midday meal, the way things were going.