Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

She told Benayu. He stopped for a moment and looked at the house. There was a faint liveliness in his tone when he answered.

“That’s a ward, not a screen. A pretty good one. It wouldn’t bother the Watchers, mind you, but I’d really need to work at it if I wanted to look at anything beyond it. Nothing to do with us, anyway. There are still a few Free Magicians around. I’m tempted to try and get in touch, but we’d better not risk it.”

“Screens. Wards. What’s the difference?” said Ribek.

“Wards are permanent and all-purpose. They stop anyone seeing what the magician’s up to, and keep out other people’s magic. A good one takes a lot of work to build. But they’ve been around a long time, and the Watchers can use a Seeing Tower in Talagh to look straight through wards as if they weren’t there. Screens are something Jex and Fodaro thought up. I mean they saw that it was theoretically possible, but they needed me to find out how to do it. You have to build into the screen a reverse mirror image of whatever magic you’re trying to hide, so that they cancel each other out when they meet. They won’t keep magic out unless you know roughly what’s coming, but Jex used to be able to do that for us. And they do have the great advantage that you can put a small one around you, so that it stays with you wherever you go. We didn’t think the Watchers had found out about them because they’d need Fodaro’s equations. In fact I’m probably the only person in the Empire who knows how to do them.”

It was strange to hear that astonishing boast in a voice so dull and hopeless.

The inn was in a quiet street near the western gate. Maja stayed with Saranja and Rocky in the inn yard while Ribek and Benayu hired a room for them, and then went with a friendly old ostler to see that Rocky was comfortably stabled while the other two carried Saranja up the narrow, dark stair. It was midafternoon by the time they’d eaten and settled in, and Ribek and Benayu were ready to set out and try to sell some of their jewels.

“You come too, Maja,” said Benayu. “You’ll be useful. We’ll leave Sponge to look after Saranja. He won’t let in anyone he doesn’t know till I come back.”

The trinket sellers occupied only a small section of a busy country market that filled a fair-sized square and spilled into the neighboring streets. For some reason it was not as crowded as the other sections of the market, less rowdy but with subtler and stranger reeks and odors, and lacking the otherwise ubiquitous petty magicians busking their wonders for coppers. But to Maja the area made up for that by the ceaseless murmuration from charms and amulets on many of the stalls.

“The trouble is, I don’t know anything about jewels,” said Ribek. “I can haggle over a bag of grain with the best of them, so I was thinking I could play it by ear, picking up from their tone and gesture and so on how roughly much they were trying to do me for, but now that I’m faced with it…”

“Don’t worry,” said Benayu. “You’ll know all right, because…Stop. Don’t let her see you looking, but that woman at the stall we’ve just passed. She’s trying to sell the stallholder something. Right?”

Maja felt a quick, soft pulse of magic come from him, and then repeat itself like an echo.

“Looks like it,” said Ribek, “but…oh, she thinks it’s a love charm, only it doesn’t work. She’s asking three imps for it, but she’ll be pleased if she gets one and a quarter. He knows that it’s actually a spiteful little cursing-piece—multiply any curse by seven, worth about eight imps in the trade, but he’d expect to get fifteen off a sucker, so he’s prepared to let her have two for it. So they’re both going to be happy with the bargain. You put all that into my head?”

For a moment Maja concentrated on the charm, and realized she could sense its nastiness.

“Uh-huh,” said Benayu, more animated again—it was the chance to use his magic that did that, Maja guessed. “Fodaro often brought me down here to practice, after we’d traded our sheep. He wouldn’t let me do it at home, or among the shepherds. He said that was dishonorable. But if somebody’s trying to cheat you…You can see how useful it is, especially with me picking the stuff out of the dealer’s head and passing it on. Mind reading isn’t that easy—anyone else’s mind is a wildly complicated place, and some are a lot more hidden than others—and all the dealers carry amulets against it, which you have to get past and they’ll lynch you if they catch you trying, so they reckon they’re safe. Even so, Fodaro used to keep an eye open while I was doing it, just in case anyone was noticing what we were up to. They’d need their own magic to that. That’s where you come in, Maja.

“The woman we’re going to talk to knows her stuff about jewels, though they’re only a sideline for her. She’s a crook with the customers, but straight with the other dealers. And the great thing about her is that she’s got a very open mind, very close to the surface. We haven’t traded with her much, in case we ever needed to sell something serious. All right?”

“I think I may enjoy this,” said Ribek, as Benayu led the way on.

They followed him to a stall whose holder was having some kind of friendly argument with her neighbor, but as soon as a customer showed up she left him and came smiling over. She was a soft-skinned, bosomy woman, her face heavily made up to enhance her dark and liquid gaze. She lavished this on Ribek with obvious approval. He responded with a touch of manly swagger.

“And what can I do for you, my dear?”

“I’ve a few small gems I’d like a price on, if you’d be so kind. I was told to come to you because you knew about this sort of thing.”

“A pleasure.”

She cleared a patch on her counter and he laid a folded cloth on it and opened it out to display three stones from Zald-im-Zald’s decorative curlicues. She picked them up one by one and studied them through a lens. Maja could sense a softly cooing vibration starting to come from her—no, not from her, from something she was wearing.

“Thank you for choosing me,” she said. “It’s not often I get shown anything as nice as that little garnet. Very rich, unusual color. The small topaz isn’t bad either, but the larger topaz—it’d be a very nice one if it weren’t for the flaw, this white streak running across it here, but as it is…”

“You haven’t seen a snow-stone before?” said Ribek, not mockingly but with kindly concern. He moved closer to her as if that were his main interest, took the stone and turned it to a precise angle.

“See how nicely it’s cut to show the structure of the snowflake,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ve seen a better one. As for the other ‘garnet,’ that’s a perfectly good ruby, first water, interestingly dark in color, four and a sixth tams, and you’re right that you won’t often be offered as good a one in an out-of-the-way place like this. The same with the yellow diamond, four tams or near enough, not my taste as a matter of fact….”

The stallholder looked up, still smiling, but differently.

“That wasn’t fair,” she said.

“My apologies,” he said, with a gallant turn of his hand. “I’ve found it a quick way to establish a relationship in a strange town. I need to make a sale, because there’s something else I want to buy, but not at any price. I gather you’re the only dealer in Mord who knows enough to be sure you’re getting a fair bargain, so if we can agree figures I’ll give you ten percent off for a quick sale.”

“Fifteen,” she said.

“Twelve and a half.”

“Done. Have you any idea where they come from? They were obviously set into some larger piece.”