David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

But then, maybe Cervoran hadn't had any more to do with Protas than Kenset had with his children while they were growing up. The things Cervoran wanted to learn about didn't seem to have included his own son.

"I thought…," Protas said, then looked away again. "I thought when I heard about you that you were like my father. With your art, I mean. That you didn't use wizardry to hurt people. That's so, isn't it?"

"Well, I try not to hurt good people," Cashel said. "I've met my share of the other kind, though, and some of them got hurt. By me."

He understood what the boy was getting at now. Though he didn't want to be unkind to Protas, he didn't intend to let him think Cashel was going to be some kind of father to him.

He grinned broadly. "Look, Protas," he said, "being a, well, a wizard the way I am isn't anything to be proud of. It's like Sharina having blond hair: it's the way she was born and I was born. The way she reads things, though-that she worked to do. Sharina's a scholar and Garric too; that's something they did all by themselves. And I'll show you what I did and Iam proud of."

Cashel looked both ways to make sure not only that there was room but also that nobody was about to step where he was going in the next instant; then he hopped to the railing. The ship heeled a trifle; Cashel was a solid weight, andTheShepherd of the Isles was both slender and perfectly balanced.

Master Lobon, the sailing master, turned and snarled, "Hey, you moron!" When he saw he'd shouted at Cashel, Lord Cashel the Prince's friend, he swallowed the rest of what he was going to say with a look of horror. Lobon's opinion of what Cashel was doing hadn't changed, but he wished he hadn't been quite so open with it.

Cashel was facing seaward on the stern rail. He crossed one bare foot over the other and turned so he could meet the eyes of everybody on theShepherd 's deck, then started his staff spinning slowly in a sunwise pattern.

He grinned. The sailing master was right about the foolishness, but it was in the good cause of lifting Protas' mind out of whatever bad place his father's death had put him in. Besides, Cashel needed the exercise after a day at sea.

The staff spun faster. The gentle sway and pitch of the ship wasn't a problem; Cashel was used to crossing creeks on rain-slicked logs, carrying sheep which were still muddy and kicking in terror from the bog he'd dragged them out of.

Everybody was looking at him now. Garric grinned with his hands on his hips; Sharina's expression was a mixture of pride and love. How amazing it was that she loved him! The ferrules blurred into a gleaming circle.

Cashel lifted the whirling staff overhead, feeling the tug of its rotation fighting the strength of his powerful wrists. He gave a shout and jumped from the railing, letting the hickory carry him around so that he faced seaward again; shouted, jumped, and faced the ship, the staff still in his hands.

Cashel jumped down to the deck, flushed and triumphant. The pine planking creaked dangerously at the shock; he'd hit harder than he'd meant too. He was making it look easy-that was half the trick, after all-but it'd taken a lot out of even his great muscles. After the strain, his judgment wasn't as good as maybe it ought to've been.

"There!" Cashel said to Protas, fighting the urge to suck in air through his mouth. "That's not something I was born to or given. That I can do because I worked till I could. That's something I'm proud of!"

But as he spoke, his skin itched like hot coals. Wizardry was building to the breaking point in the world about him.

Ilna os-Kenset squatted on the foredeck of the cutterHeron, a hand loom in her lap and her eyes on the sky. She was weaving a pattern that'd be abstract to the eyes of those who viewed it: blurred, gentle curves of grays and blacks and browns, the colors of a coast soon after sunset. All the hues were natural; Ilna didn't trust dyes.

She smiled faintly. She didn't trust most things. In particular she didn't trust herself when she was angry, and she'd spent far too much time being angry.

Though the plaque Ilna wove looked to be only an exercise in muted good taste, the pattern would work deep in the minds of those who glanced at it. They wouldn't be aware of the effect, not consciously at least, but they'd go away soothed and a little more at peace with the world and themselves.

Ilna smiled again. It even worked on her, and her disposition was a very stiff test.

"Give us a song, captain!" called the stroke oar, a squat fellow with his wrists tattooed to look like he was wearing bracers.

"Aye, give usThe Ladies o' Shengy, Cap'n Chalcus!" agreed one of the rowers from the lower tier, sitting on deck now that the ship idled along with only the slow strokes of four oarsmen to keep her steady in the swell.

TheHeron had a crew of fifty rowers in two tiers, with a dozen officers and deck hands for the rigging when her mast was raised. She was a stubby vessel, neither as fast nor as powerful as the triremes that made up the bulk of the royal fleet let alone the quinqueremes which acted as flagships for the squadrons and fleet itself.

For all that, the cutter was a warship. Her ram and the handiness of her short hull made her a dangerous opponent even to much larger vessels.

Ilna's smile, never broad, took on a hint of warmth. A fishing skiff would be a dangerous opponent if Chalcus commanded it.

"I will not sing such a thing and scandalize the fine ladies here with us," said Chalcus, but there was a cheery lilt in his voice. He bowed to the ten-year-old Lady Merota, seated on the stern rail like an urchin and not the heiress to the bos-Roriman fortune, then bowed lower yet to Ilna in the bow. "But I'll pass the time for you withThe Brown Girl if there's a swig of wine-"

The helmsman lifted the skin of wine hanging from the railing by him where the spray kissed it. He slapped it into Chalcus' hand though neither man looked at the other as they made the exchange.

"-to wet my pipes," Chalcus concluded as he thumbed the carved wooden plug from the goatskin and drank deeply.

He was a close-coupled man, not much taller than Ilna herself. Chalcus looked trim when dressed in court clothing; he was hard as mahogany statue when he stripped to a sailor's breechclout, as he did often enough even now that Garric had made him theHeron 's captain.

In a breechclout you saw the scars also. Several of the long-healed wounds should've been fatal. If one had been, Ilna would never have met him. It was hard to imagine what value she'd find in life at this moment were it not for Chalcus.

"'The Brown Girl she has houses and lands…,'" Chalcus sang in his clear tenor. His eyes continued to smile at Ilna till she leaned around to look at the sky again while her fingers wove. "'Fair Tresian has none…'"

Chalcus had sailed with the Lataaene pirates in southern waters. He didn't talk about those days or other days of the same sort he'd lived in the course of collecting the scars on his body. Ilna supposed Chalcus had as much on his conscience as she did on hers, though he carried the burden lightly as he did all things.

"'The best advice I can give you, my son…,'" Chalcus sang, his voice shining like a sunlit brook, "'is to bring the Brown Girl home."

Ilna didn't ask whether Chalcus was a good man or a bad one. He was her man, and that was enough.

Something rippled and seethed behind the sky's curtain of thin clouds. Ilna's fingers worked, weaving contentment for people she didn't know through ages she couldn't guess. Her patterns would last for the life of the wool, and that could be very long indeed.

Ilna'd always had a talent for yarns and fabric that went beyond mere skill. She could touch a swatch of cloth and know where the flax had grown or the sheep had gamboled; and she knew also what'd been in the heart of the one who wove it.