Juliet McKenna - The Thief's Gamble

'Anyway, Archmage, what was it you wanted to discuss?' Kalion half-turned on the deeply upholstered settle to address the neatly built man who was shuttering the tall windows and drawing the thick green curtains precisely together.

'Oh, it's nothing vital, Hearth-Master. You were in Relshaz for Solstice, weren't you? I was wondering if the antiquarians there have turned up anything interesting lately?' Planir lit a couple of oil-lamps and their yellow glow warmed the deep oak panelling around the room, a few gleams here and there revealing choice pieces of statuary in discreet niches. The soft light blurred the network of fine lines around the Archmage's eyes and made him look barely a handful of years older than Usara. He set a lamp down on the table.

'Do we want a fire, do you think?'

'I should think so,' Otrick said emphatically.

Kalion looked a little askance at the skinny old wizard, dressed neatly if unfashionably in grey wool broadcloth. He contented himself with loosening the neck of his own maroon velvet gown, new from the tailor in the latest style and shade and richly embroidered with a border of flames.

'You see, Usara thinks he may have turned up something new but, equally, it may just be a waste of everyone's time.' The Archmage snapped his fingers on a flash of red and dropped a flame into the fire laid ready in the spotless grate. He drew in the silken skirts of his own black robe and seated himself in a high-backed chair, warming his glass in his long-fingered hands as he leant back against the rich sage brocade. 'Sweetcake? Do help yourselves, everyone.'

'What exactly is it you're studying, Usara? Remind me,' Kalion asked the youthful wizard indistinctly round a mouthful of fruit-and-honeycake.

Usara's thin face flushed brightly, the colour clashing with his sandy hair and somewhat cruelly highlighting just how thin it was becoming above his high forehead. 'I've been working on the decline and fall of the Tormalin Empire for some seasons now, Hearth-Master. I met some scholars from the University of Vanam last year when they came to use the library at the Seaward Hall and they invited me to use their archives.'

Kalion shrugged with evident disinterest, the gesture creasing his chins unappealingly as he reached for more wine. 'So?'

Usara smoothed the linen ruffles at his neck, glancing fleetingly at Planir, who smiled reassuringly over the rim of his glass and inclined his sleek, dark head slightly. 'Go on,' the Archmage encouraged him. 'Well, when Sannin was there over the Winter Solstice, she went to a celebration where the wines were flowing pretty freely and tongues started getting loose as well.'

Otrick laughed abruptly, his thin face alight with mischief.

'If I know Sannin, that's not all that got loosened. She's a fun girl at a party.' He subsided at a glance from Planir but continued to chuckle into his straggly beard as he munched on a slice of cake.

Usara shot the old man an irritated look and spoke with a little more force. 'They started talking about history. Someone noticed her necklace, it's an heirloom piece, Old Tormalin, and one of the historians wondered what tales a necklace like that could tell, if only it could talk.'

Otrick coughed on his mouthful. 'That was an old excuse for looking down a girl's dress when I was a boy!'

Usara ignored him. 'There were scholars from all sorts of disciplines there, and a couple of wizards, and they started wondering if there could be any way to find out more about the original owners of antiquities.'

'What good would that do anyone?' Otrick frowned as he shook the empty bottle. 'Do you have another of these, Planir?'

The Archmage waved him to a collection of bottles on a gleaming sideboard but he kept his own grey eyes intent on Kalion.

Usara continued. 'Once they got talking, Sannin said, they started coming up with some interesting ideas for research.'

'Did they still look like good ideas when the wine had worn off and the headaches hit?' Otrick's tone was sarcastic.

'When she told us all this, we started to think about it ourselves. There are some old variants on scrying that we could try and some fragments of religious lore that we might be able to incorporate. We're coming up with some promising lines for further enquiry.' Usara leaned forward, face intent, unaware of Otrick's indignation at being talked over.

'You see, Hearth-Master, if we can find a way to use Tormalin antiquities to somehow look back through the generations, into the lives of ordinary people, we could have no end of new sources of historical information. Don't you see how it could help my studies? In all recorded history, the fall of the Tormalin Empire was the greatest cataclysm ever to befall a civilisation. If we could find clues to help us patch together the fragments of the written record—'

'None of which is of any more than passing interest and is of no use in the real world.' Kalion's disdain was clear as he reached for more cake and refilled his glass now that Otrick had located the corkscrew. 'Thank you, Cloud-Master.'

'Understanding our history is an essential foundation for looking to the future.' Usara's thin lips nearly vanished altogether as he squared his shoulders to contradict the larger man.

'Don't get pompous with me, young man. I can remember when you arrived here in your clay-stained apprentice rags,' Kalion said crushingly.

'Knowledge always has a value, Hearth-Master. It is—' 'Knowledge only has a value if it has an application.' Kalion spoke over Usara mercilessly. 'Why are we even discussing this, Archmage?' he demanded with a hint of exasperation.

Planir shrugged again and rubbed a hand over his smoothly shaven jaw. 'I was wondering if we should put some resources into following it up.'

'Oh, surely not.' Kalion looked as appalled as a man so well wined could hope to. 'There's so much else the Council needs to consider. You heard Imerald's account of how fast smelting is being developed in the north. That's a real advance, something we should be involved in. Look at the ways Caladhrian cattle stock is improving now that most of the Lords are enclosing their pastures. I could give you a handful more examples of other sciences where more progress has been made in the last generation than in the previous five—'

'Spare us the full speech, Hearth-Master,' Otrick yawned theatrically. 'We were at the last session of the Council, remember. We were listening.'

'You can't deny that some of my predecessors did take the isolation of senior wizardry rather too far, Cloud-Master.' Planir's rebuke was light but still unmistakable.

'That's what I've been saying for I don't know how many seasons.' The florid purple tinge on Kalion's cheekbones faded a little. 'Given the rate of the changes we're seeing on the mainland, if we don't find ourselves a role, we'll be left behind.

This prejudice against getting involved in politics, for example, is outdated and meaningless—'

'I'm not prejudiced. I just don't see the benefit to me of getting tangled up in helping to organise the boring little lives of the mundane. If I'm to spend my time on things that take me away from my own research and studies, it'll be on my terms and to achieve something I need.'

Otrick passed Kalion the wine which effectively diverted him. 'Anyway, save the speeches for the next session of Council, Hearth-Master. That's the place for important debate. Now, as far as I'm concerned, Usara, you can spend as many seasons as you like finding out who did what while the Empire was collapsing round their ears. What I want to know is whether this little scheme of yours is going to tell me anything about magical techniques and skills that were lost in the dark generations.'

'Now that would be knowledge worth having.' Kalion nodded emphatic agreement.