Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“I’ll find a proverb to trade you for that one tomorrow,” Planir smiled.

Troanna stood. “This is no matter for levity.”

She looked at Kalion and the stout mage reluctantly rose to his feet. She ushered him out of the room, neither mage saying anything further before she closed the door with an emphatic clunk.

Planir looked at the plain oak panels for a long moment before slinging his robe haphazard over the back of his chair. Weariness at odds with the early hour carved deep lines in his face now as the animation left it. He moved to the window, looking down as Kalion and Troanna disappeared beneath the arched gateway. Holding out his hand, he studied the great diamond ring of his office, sunlight catching the faceted gem set around with emerald, amber, ruby and sapphire, all the ancient tokens of the elements of wizardry. On the finger beside it, he wore a battered circle of silver. Whatever device had decorated it was long since worn to obscurity.

The Archmage clenched his fist and closed his grey eyes on a grimace of regret and frustration. The glasses Kalion and Troanna had used began to tremble slightly, a faint rattle from the table beneath. The dregs of plum cordial suddenly ignited in a startled flame while the untouched water in the larger goblet began to seethe before breaking into a rolling boil. The fluted bowl of the cordial glass folded in on itself, the long stem wilting. The water glass sank beside it, empty of all but a fugitive trace of steam, the broad foot spreading into a formless puddle. The gloss of the polished wood beneath was unmarred.

“Childish.” Planir said reprovingly to himself before opening his eyes with a wicked grin. “But satisfying.” Tossing the now cold and solid glass into an ash bucket by the hearth, he pulled a well-worn jerkin from the back of the door, shrugging it on as his light tread echoed rapidly down the stairwell.

Why are people always so eager to give you gifts?” I followed Halice out of the trading hall.

“It won’t be my beauty, so it must be my charm.” Halice offered me the little mint-lined basket of withy strips.

I took a sticky sweetmeat and nodded at Temar’s residence. “His lordship’s back.” The bold flag fluttered jauntily.

“Let’s see what he’s got to say for himself.” Halice curled her lip.

“Mind your manners,” I warned, mock serious.

“Me? Who served the Duchess of Marlier?” Halice pretended outrage.

“Who got dismissed for giving her mouthy daughter a slap,” I pointed out.

“She deserved it.” Halice laughed.

We turned down what looked to be a lane at first glance, running between the trading hall and Temar’s residence. Inside the latter, hammers still echoed and saws rasped over the much interrupted and delayed business of making it fit for a Sieur’s dignity. Two lads barely older that Tedin sat in a doorway dutifully straightening scavenged nails. One scooped a few from rain-dulled tiles at his feet. Their broken patterns beneath the gravel and the stumps of pillars buried in the new stone of the walls on either side were the last remnants of a great hall that had once stood here. But the roof was long since fallen and the mighty walls only offered a few broken courses so the colonists had merely taken them as a guide for new buildings raised around the shell of the old hall. We passed carved embellishments worn featureless by generations of rain.

The one elegant doorway that had survived above head height was now the entrance to Temar’s private quarters at the back of the tall building. Halice pushed open the door without ceremony. Once the carpenters had fitted out the reception rooms, archive and private salons necessary for the rank the Emperor had confirmed him in, Temar might be able to turn this into suitable accommodation for the Sieur D’Alsennin’s servants but for the present, the lower floor was undecorated with crude screens at one end inadequately masking a kitchen and a private chamber for Temar above reached by a plain wooden stair.

Temar and Ryshad stood behind a long table up at the far end, poring over a slew of charts with a couple of other people bending their heads close.

“Master Grethist got an ocean boat up to this cataract.” Temar tapped the map with a long finger. “With sail barges, we can explore further.”

So they were planning another expedition. If Ryshad was going, perhaps I should tag along. Summer in Vithrancel didn’t promise to be overly interesting without him.

“Portage over that ground will be a trial and a half.” A black-haired woman, sedate in a homespun tunic over undyed skirts traced a line with a chipped nail. “It’s far more broken than the slope on this side.” She looked up at our approach.

“Rosarn.” Halice greeted her with a familiar nod. The woman’s homely appearance was deceptive; Rosarn had been a mercenary longer than any bar Halice and as soon as Temar gave the word, she’d be in boots and leathers, daggers sheathed at hip and wrist, ready to cut her way through thickets a squirrel would rather go round. Half the corps commanders in Lescar went looking for her if they needed an enemy position scouted out or a potential advance reconnoitred. She specialised in tasks demanding light feet and the wit to think fast on them.

“How far did you get, Vas?” Ryshad, the love if not of my life then certainly of these past three years, brushed at his black curls in absent thought.

“Here at autumn Equinox.” Vaspret set a stubby finger on the parchment. Stocky, weather-beaten and with manners as ill made as his much-broken nose, he had come to Kel Ar’Ayen as one the original venturers and sailed on the first explorations of the continent’s coasts with the long-dead Master Grethist.

“To retrace Vahil Den Rannion’s route, we should really be using the caves.” Whatever they were planning, Rosarn was clearly looking forward to it. I’d heard her say more than once a whole continent to explore without risk of a Lescari arrow in the guts was a gift from Talagrin.

Temar was fair-skinned by nature and the spring sun had yet to tint his winter pallor but I saw him blench from where I stood. Ryshad looked sharply at Rosarn and a shadow darkened his amber-flecked brown eyes. Then he saw me and smiled, affection softening the stern lines of his long jaw and broad brow. I smiled back and the minor discontents of the day vanished like morning mist on the river.

“We want an overland route to join the two rivers,” D’Alsennin said with a touch too much firmness. He searched for some other map. “We can hardly take wagons or mules through caves, even if the route Vahil used is still passable, by some miracle of Misaen’s grace.”

And you’d rather face invading Elietimm single-handed than spend any time out of reach of daylight, my lad. I’d no idea if it was Temar who’d originally been afraid of the dark or Ryshad in some childhood fastness of his mind. Perhaps it was some echo of the imprisonment in Edisgesset’s sunless caverns that they’d both tasted, caught in the toils of Artifice. Whatever the case, both men now shared an abiding fear of enclosed spaces and I kept waking to an open bedroom door because Ryshad couldn’t sleep with it shut.

But Ryshad was older than Temar by a double handful of years and more. He set his jaw, visibly ignoring his own qualms. “Is there any chance the missing artefacts could have been lost in the caves, before Vahil got to the ships?”

Vahil Den Rannion, Temar’s boyhood friend and now twenty-some generations ashes in his urn, had borne the task of taking the sleeping minds of Kellarin’s people beyond the greedy Elietimm grasp. He’d found a way through the caves that riddled the high ground between Vithrancel’s river and another that ran down to a second settlement in the south barely founded before the Elietimm scourge arrived. I wouldn’t have wagered a lead penny on his chances but, against all the odds, Vahil had won back across the ocean, only to find the Empire collapsing around Nemith the Worthless’s ears. Every noble House had been too busy saving its own skin to spare any thought for a colony all but written off a year or more since.