Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

Usara watched a liveried man wearing the badge of some Tormalin princes stroll up to a laden cart’s driver. He produced an amulet that won him a nod but those that followed were waved towards a long row of water troughs beneath wind-tossed shade trees. “It must be worth the cost, to avoid the time and risks of a voyage around the cape.”

“Mind your backs!” Pered pulled Larissa aside as toiling horses snorted behind her, sides heaving as their driver slackened their reins. “Ferd, get that manifest to Den Rannion’s clerk! Jump to it, lad!” A child leapt from the back of the cart and ran off as the driver urged his reluctant team towards a space beside a gang of men dividing the cargo they had just carried up here between two wagons waiting impatiently for goods from Caladhria, Lescar and countries beyond.

Shiv surveyed the constant activity all around. “They must have paid for the road ten times over by now”

“More like a hundred times,” Pered opined. “But a Sieur can always find a use for more coin.” He nodded at the detachment of armed men relaxing around the base of a massive statue of Dastennin. Crowned with seaweed, the god of the sea’s robe broke into roiling foam around his feet, his weathered bronze hands green with age, outstretched in benediction towards both seas.

Larissa closed her eyes and turned her face to the steady breeze, face rapt. “I feel I could touch the sky up here.”

“It’s a splendid place to work with the air,” agreed Usara with hopeful anticipation. “Even I can feel that.”

Shiv turned to Pered. “Working magic in the open isn’t exactly against the Emperor’s writ but I don’t relish debating the point with Den Rannion’s sworn men. You said there were more private places up here?”

“This way.” Pered led them towards a mighty tower on the southerly side of the square. With its flared base of tightly fitted stones seamlessly married to the rock beneath, it looked like some marvellous tree grown of living stone.

“Wasn’t the Sieur Den Rannion one of the original patrons of the Kellarin colony?” Larissa queried, nodding towards the men with silver eagle’s head badges bright on their copper-coloured jerkins who shielded the tower’s door with crossed pikes.

“That was his brother, Messire Ancel.” Shiv glanced up at the broad balcony circling the slender waist of the tower. “The present Sieur is no friend to Temar.”

Excited voices floated out across the great square, exclaiming over the views. Above, where the tower was capped with a sturdily built watch-room, sworn men kept vigil to east and west. A great eagle spread vast bronze wings over them, poised eternally on the moment of flight.

Larissa tilted her head to one side. “If you can get mages with the right affinities working together, we could well bring ships safely around the Cape of Winds. Then D’Alsennin wouldn’t have to pay for the privilege of this rigmarole of portage across the isthmus.”

“I’m not sure Temar would want to put the Emperor’s nose out of joint like that.” Shiv waved away a hopeful lad offering a tray of sweetmeats.

“Where are we going?” Larissa looked uncertain as Pered led Usara towards the queue of well-dressed merchant folk and comfortably humble townspeople waiting to gain access to the fabled tower and its balcony with letters of introduction or the simpler expedient of a few well-chosen coins. Smiling lackeys offered them wine and tisanes beneath an awning fluttering in the constant wind.

“I’m not sure.” Shiv picked up his pace and Larissa hurried with him.

“I can’t imagine anyone building a greater monument than Den Rannion’s,” Pered was saying to Usara. “But that doesn’t stop them trying.” He waved a hand at the miscellany of commemorative stone and metalwork planted haphazard in an irregular space between the mighty tower and the ragged, fissured mountainside beyond.

Shiv raised an eyebrow at the blatant panegyric to some long-dead Tor Leoril engraved on a massive marble urn. “You said we could find a discreet corner?”

“This way.” Pered led the mages through monuments ranging from the blandly functional to the frankly bizarre. They passed a granite bull, big as life and pawing ferociously at its plinth, and reached a mighty bronze dragon leprous with verdigris and fighting against chains that ran from a collar to metal posts embedded in the ground. Its bating wings cast a deep shadow over a creature half fish, half hound that lounged unconcerned on a high drift of scallop shells carved from a single slab of marble. Behind, an empty space was effectively blocked from passing view and any curious eyes on the tower’s balcony.

Shiv nodded approvingly. “We’d still better work fast.”

“I’ll stand guard.” Pered took himself off to sit apparently idly some way beyond the dragon, digging charcoal and parchment out of one pocket. Usara stifled a smile.

Shiv raised questioning brows at Larissa who braced herself and held out hands that betrayed her tension with a faint tremor. Usara completed the triangle and all three mages concentrated on the empty air between them. The only sound was the stealthy scrape of Pered’s sketching.

“Dear heart,” Shiv said conversationally. “This would be easier without distractions.”

“Sorry.” There was an apologetic rustle and then silence from Pered.

Larissa’s gaze hadn’t wavered. She focused on a shimmer of blue at the very mid-point between them. The strand of magelight was barely a hair’s thickness but startling in its sapphire intensity. A faint smile curved Larissa’s full lips as the magic split, doubling and redoubling, threads blurring and fluttering in the curious wind coiling around the mages. “Usara?” she invited.

Usara was painstakingly summoning a grey-blue haze from the rock beneath them. It hovered on the very edge of sight like a memory of mist. Ever more dense as it drew closer to Larissa’s cerulean sorcery, the cold colour was drawn into her spell like smoke up a chimney, brightening to a vivid blue. “We can do this, Shiv,” he breathed, exultant.

Turquoise light pooled below the dancing tendrils of light, ripples edged with radiance. Aquamarine waves leapt to join Larissa’s magic, colliding with the sun-burnished blue. Flourishes of white light bleached the green hue of Shiv’s working to that same sapphire clarity. The breezes playing around the monuments danced around the wizards’ linked hands, any that ventured too close swept into the sorcery.

With a suddenness that startled an oath from Pered, two figures tore through the impossibly narrow line of the spell. The magic blew away on the wind like fragments of a dream.

“It’s me!” Pered backed hastily away from the naked dagger in Sorgrad’s hand.

Sorgren had somehow tripped as he came through the spell. He rolled like a fairground tumbler, back on his feet in an instant. “Ouch.” He grinned as he sheathed his own blade. “You really have to learn that spell, ’Grad.”

Pered looked past him to Shiv, wide-eyed. “That was incredible.” He shook his head. “How could I ever paint those colours?”

Sorgrad tossed his knife up high, catching it as it tumbled. He halted to survey Larissa. “My lady.”; His voice was warm with admiration.

“This is Larissa.” Usara wondered how best to introduce her. “Planir’s—”

“—pupil.” Larissa offered her hand. Sorgrad bowed deep and brushed it with his lips.

’Gren contented himself with grinning at her in blatant appreciation. He tugged at his collar to settle his crumpled shirt and something chinked in a pocket of his tattered jerkin.

“What were you running from?” Shiv frowned at the younger Mountain Man.

“Watchmen.” Sorgrad held two backpacks in his off hand and tossed one to his younger brother. By contrast with ’Gren’s dishevelled appearance, his shirt was clean, the silver buttons on his jerkin polished and his boots well oiled. ’Gren’s hair was long and tied back all anyhow with a scrap of leather. Sorgrad’s was neatly trimmed and brushed back with a touch of expensive oil.