Arithon looked up and unhooked the scored wood of his winding peg. ‘That one’s eyes are too clever. He’d have noticed my actions haven’t matched the ideological agenda. I wonder what actually drives him?’
Davien did not answer.
‘No.’ Arithon coiled his shining, wrapped wire, then reached for the spool on the table. ‘I’m not interested in taking an excursion outside to find out.’
The Sorcerer laughed, short and sharp. ‘Wait too long, you’ll be fielding a holy war.’
‘With no cause to be found?’ Arithon measured out six spans in length, used a knife, and nipped off the fine-grade silver. ‘Troops will lose their edge, speaking foolhardy prayers on their knees.’
‘No cause?’ Davien shrugged. ‘My dear man, Raiett’s a snake in the grass. He will make one.’
‘Not with yokels, still sparring with padding and sticks.’ Unperturbed, Arithon finished stringing the borrowed lyranthe. When at due length, he perfected the tuning, the Sorcerer had departed.
But the undertone troubling the recent discussion struck notes that snapped like live sparks from the musician’s strings.
A wily statesman with a clever network of spies would not lack for resource to support an armed conflagration: a royal wife gone missing and a dead heir at Avenor would become reason enough for unrest.
Arithon passed the afternoon, absorbed by the glory of watching his spun lines of melody key the unseen octaves of light, now unveiled by the healed invocation of mage-sight. Made aware of the pulse thrumming from the low registers echoed back from the polished rock floor, he sensed the slip-stream of time, aligned to the dance of the season. Fully restored to initiate mastery, he reaffirmed his intent to honour Earl Jieret’s bequest: that one day he would forge the blood-binding promised to the s’Valerient daughter in Halwythwood.
The next morning, the strung lyranthe was set aside for more books, heavy tomes inscribed in the fine, flowing runes of the Athlien Paravians. The beings the Sorcerers called sunchildren, more than any, knew the mysteries encoded in air and fire. Arithon studied the properties of the energy sprites, named iyats in the old tongue. He listened through crystals to songs sung by whales, and explored older things, recorded in the pictorial symbols the dragons had used before Athera received her awakened gift of actualized language.
The black volumes bound under iron locks, and kept on warded shelves, stayed untouched. Nonetheless, the uncanny awareness pursued him: like a dousing of ice-water poured down his back, Arithon sensed that the Sorcerer urged him to ask about those, first of all.
Outside of Kewar, summer yielded the harvest. The trees turned and wore the penultimate glory of autumn, except in the west, where the scouring rains lashed their storm-tossed, stripped branches. The High King’s restored capital of Telmandir fared no better under the onslaught. Candles burned behind the steamed glass of the casements to lift the drear damp of the gloom. Outdoors, the harbour heaved like pocked lead, the beaten sea-swells surging in without whitecaps. The sluicing downpour and the hammering breakers made a trial of unlading a ship.
Feylind stood on the puddled boards of the wharf, shivering, while the streaming water seeped down the caped collar of her oilskins. The merchant brig Evenstar lay warped to the bollards, while swearing deck-hands fought the jammed hoist. Others wrestled the wind-lashed tarps, chapped raw by gusts that fore-ran a cruel season, come early. The miserable work was already behind schedule when from shoreside, Feylind heard the crash. Shouts slapped off the misted facade of the water-front. Whatever had gone wrong, the king’s customs keeper would be watching from behind his steamed glass, with his parcel of ferret-eyed clerks.
The captain’s oath could have reddened the coarse ears of the longshoremen, now clumped into a distempered knot surrounding the stopped wagons. The risk of wet grain sacks, and losing damp cargo to rot shortened tempers: arms waved, and accusing voices entangled in argument razored through the pounding rain. Since the customs keeper’s officers would wait for a riot and damages before drenching their heads to take charge, a ship’s captain who wished to leave on the tide had no choice but chase after the dock-crew.
Grumbling, Feylind wrung the sopped tail of her braid and sloshed shoreward.
A slop taker’s cart had snarled the thoroughfare. Misfortune compounded by inconvenience, the ungainly vehicle also blocked off the bridge leading down from the palace. The impasse was not going to clear in a hurry. A split wheel hub had dropped the afflicted axle amid a mess of snapped spokes. The brimful barrels in the canted wagon now leaked under the tail-gate, streaming ripe sewage into a street momentarily due to receive no less than the High King himself. Filthy weather would not deter the royal preference. His Grace of Havish would personally seal the bills of lading, and so nip the temptation of shifty dock-side officials, who might stoop to black-marketeering in a shortage.
The blistering insults surrounded the fact that no man wished to shoulder aside the broken-down vehicle.
‘You’ll shift your pissing load, yourself, damnfool boy!’ howled the overseer to the carter, who stood, reins in hand, by the steaming draft mule in the traces. ‘Won’t catch us doing your stinking job for you! We aren’t being paid to handle any low-life’s haulage o’ jakes.’
‘By the curled hair on the Fatemaster’s bollocks!’ Feylind yelled. ‘Why hasn’t some nit gone aboard and asked for a block and tackle?’ Heads turned, bearded and flushed, while the argument spluttered and died.
Feylind shoved into the sheepish press. ‘While you stand here, ankle-deep, my deck-hands are left twiddling their puds in the hold! They can man a capstan and winch this hulk aside. Move out! Smart! I’ll rip off your bollocks before I watch you bunglers start fisticuffs over a muck-heap!’ As the slackers peeled out, the captain’s invective switched target to the sopped figure clutching the head-stall. ‘You! Get that sorry donkey out of the shafts before I decide to press-gang a new hide for the trusses on my main yard-arm!’
The cowled head turned. Beneath ingrained dirt, the graceful features were no boy’s. One glance of the wide-lashed, distrustful eyes made Captain Feylind take pause: a heart-beat to realize she confronted a person in desperate trouble. Before thought, she raised a piercing whistle and summoned her trusted first mate.
No customs keeper’s sluggard, he came at a run, a solid presence arrived at her back that warmed through her sopped layers of oilskins.
‘Handle that mule,’ Feylind told him, point-blank.
Years at her side, blue eyes bright with humour, he took over the reins without question. Feylind’s grin shared her gratitude. Then, as the drover moved to sidle away, she latched on to wet cloak and dragged the stumbling creature into an alley beyond sight and earshot.
‘Don’t even try,’ Feylind said through her teeth, as her catch drew breath to cry protest. ‘I realize this mess you’ve arranged was no accident.’
The woman stopped struggling. Tense, snapped erect, she sized up the ship’s captain without cowering. Her eyes were rich brown as the gloss on an acorn. Fear, or deep-set cold, had started her trembling. Yet authority and intelligence showed behind her exhausted bravado. ‘I’m sorry for your inconvenience. But I have dire need to address his Grace, the High King of Havish.’
Her accent was north westlands, town-bred, and cultured. Feylind sized-up fine hands that belonged to no slops woman, though the skin looked the part, cracked raw by her noxious profession. Alive to the perils of dock-side rumour, the brig’s master veered away from conjecture. ‘All right. But not here. Will my ship’s cabin serve?’
The woman hesitated.
Afraid she would bolt, Feylind tightened her grip. ‘Don’t be a braying ass! There’s no man in my crew who can’t keep his mouth shut.’
As the woman’s strained features showed panic, Feylind swore. ‘You want the ear of Havish’s king? Then listen, lady,