James Roy - The Gimlet Eye

‘You’re in trouble,’ said Freya, the pale young girl who worked with Tab at Nor’city Farm. ‘Bendo’s furious.’

‘I had to check on a friend.’ Tab looked around the complex of courtyards, stables and outbuildings that made up the farm. ‘Where is he?’

‘That’s what he was wondering about you.’

‘Oh, he won’t hurt me,’ Tab said. ‘He wouldn’t dare. We’ve got an understanding.’

‘Vidler!’ Bendo shouted. He was striding across the courtyard towards her, his jaw set tight. ‘Where were you?’

‘Somewhere else. But I’m back now.’

‘I could thrash you,’ Bendo sneered.

‘You could, but you won’t.’

‘Hmm,’ he grunted.

Tab smiled. Her only proper magical skill was the ability to inhabit the minds of animals, but Bendo didn’t need to know that. All he knew was that she’d once been an apprentice magician. She liked that he was still a little wary of what she might do to him, or turn him into.

‘Just… just go and finish your chores,’ he muttered in the end.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Tab chirped, wandering off to do the last of her jobs before the sun sank behind the high dry-stone wall of the farm.

After she’d finished, and tidied away her tools, she went to her tiny bedchamber, which was situated in a draughty annex off the end of the stables. Four farmhands lived in that annex, each with their own stall. Tab suspected that these stalls had once held animals, but that at some time long before she had come to live at Nor’city Farm, someone had nailed wall panels to the rails. A hessian sack hung down in front of each open doorway like a rough curtain, so there was a little more privacy now than the original inhabitants would have enjoyed, but it was still pretty harsh accommodation. Certainly a lot more spartan than the last place in which she’d lived, sharing modest but clean and breezy apartments with several other apprentice magicians.

Now she sat on her straw-sack mattress, closed her eyes and went reaching for one of her usual animal friends. She’d become a lot more practised at mind-melding, and in addition to the animals at the farm, with whom she would sometimes meld just to pass the time, there were a number of other, more important creatures she used for far nobler purposes.

As she focused her mind, a number of voices and awarenesses flickered through her consciousness. It was a little like walking past a busy schoolyard, and hearing different shouts, cries and conversations drift in and out, at times coming to the foreground, then drifting away to be background hubbub while other voices pushed forward.

But it wasn’t just voices in her mind’s ear. It was also a series of shadows and flickers of light in her mind’s eye, as if she were trying to see a wild creature behind a shrub, just tiny movements through gaps between leaves, never the whole, but definitely parts.

She shuddered, and pushed past the dog nosing about in a pile of rancid food scraps. It wasn’t a dog she needed. The cat she sometimes used to spy on Bendo threatened to distract her, but she squeezed her eyes closed a little more tightly and carried on.

Then it was there. She felt her nose twitch, and pushed down the desire to scratch at imaginary whiskers. In her mind she saw darkness, and a gap of light, in the shape of a rough triangle. She’d found Rat.

›››Rat, it’s just me››Thanks for letting me in again

Rat replied, in a very clumsy way.›››Did I even have a choice?

›››I need to talk to Stelka››Please go forward

Rat did as she’d asked, scurrying towards the gap of light. As it got closer it stopped, and poked its nose out. Through its eyes, Tab looked around.

Over on the far side of the cell, sitting at a rather ramshackle table, was Stelka. All her jewels and various decorations were now gone, taken by Florian, or someone answering to him. Her hair, once her pride, now hung in long, lank tresses, and her silk gown was soiled, scuffed and stained, and coming apart at some of the seams.

›››Speak››Please

From partly within her own throat, and partly within the rat’s, Tab heard a shrill screech. Stelka looked up from her writing, stared at the wall before her, then turned to look directly at Rat. ‘Oh, is it her?’ she asked. ‘Just a moment.’

Tab saw her close her eyes, while a look of enormous concentration tightened her face. Then, a moment or two later, she heard Stelka’s voice, stilted and uncertain, contained within the mind of Rat.

›››Good you come

›››I need to talk to you››I need to know what I should do

There was a pause. Stelka was new to mind-melding. Everything she knew, Tab had taught her within the confines of the tiny mind of this most accommodating rodent. So it was quite normal for the replies to come back rather twisted and dificult to understand, and slowly.

›››What you need know?

›››Fontagu has been asked to perform a play for Florian

The answer was almost instant.›››No, bad idea

›››I know – that’s what I told him

›››When he do play?

›››He’s going to the palace tomorrow. I’m worried that he’s going to say or do something stupid

›››Like going to palace?

›››What should I do?

›››Go with

›››Go with him? What good would that do?

›››Find out him’s plan. Then can fix

›››Keep an eye on him, you mean

›››Yes. Stelka must go now

Like a tiny pull on the hair at the side of her head, Tab felt Stelka’s mind-meld separate from hers. Through the eyes of Rat she saw that one of the troll jailers had entered the corridor that ran beside the cells, and was talking to her friend.

›››Thank you, Rat››That’s all for today

She stood then, and shook her head, trying to clear the fine cobwebs of mind-meld that always hung around after these ‘conversations’ with Stelka. Then, pulling her cloak around her shoulders, she slipped under her curtain, trotted silently to the end of the annex and, with practised movements, climbed the rough brick wall like a spider, using small jutting ledges for foot- and handholds. She reached the narrow gap in the corner where the two walls and the roof converged, and then, with no more sound than a quick exhale, she had squeezed through the gap and was dropping silently down into a Quentaran back alley.

She had a message to convey.

Tab slipped through the backstreets, taking care to stick to the shadows. Even someone like her, with better than average magic skills, wasn’t completely safe at night – not since everything had changed. She didn’t wish to be spotted by anyone who wanted to try to rob her, even with nothing to steal, and she didn’t fancy being taken by the ear and dragged back to face Bendo.

So she slunk around the ends of buildings, ducked into culverts and behind barrels, hid under the cover of shadows while late-night drunks staggered by, or guards laughed and swore on street corners. And she certainly made a point of giving Skulum Gate a wide berth. There might have been old friends in there, but she still had little desire to run into any of them. Not now.

One of Philmon’s fellow sky-sailors opened the little flap in the middle of the door of their quarters. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s me, Tab.’

‘It’s very late.’

‘I need to see Philmon.’

‘It’s very late.’

‘So you said. Can I see him? Please? I won’t take very long.’

‘Wait there.’

The little flap slapped shut, and Tab stood just a little closer to the door while she waited.

Finally the door rattled, and opened slightly. ‘Tab! What are you doing here?’ Philmon asked, holding the door open.