Lescari Revolution 03: Banners In The Wind (21 page)

'Now you're using these enchantments against friends, in Reniack's interests?' Branca scowled. 'What would Mentor Tonin think of that?'

Jettin shrugged. 'I don't care.'

The weight of truth in his words oppressed her dreadfully.

'Why not? What do you want?'

'Freedom.' Jettin moved closer. She could feel his breath on her cheek. 'To be free to explore my magic as I see fit, to go where I want and do as I choose, without you or Kerith or Tonin or my father or anyone else telling me what to do.'

'You're still doing Reniack's bidding.' Though Branca realised she saw no shadow of the rabble-rouser following Jettin, heard no echo of his words. She refused to yield. 'Will you claim the same freedoms that Minelas enjoyed?'

She flung every vile recollection at Jettin; all the renegade wizard's depravity that she'd discovered when she had been forced to sneak into his mind, to turn his thoughts from the pleasures of torturing Trissa and Charoleia to reminiscences of earlier murders.

Branca bludgeoned the younger adept with the dead mage's arrogance; his belief that his elemental talents lifted him above any mundane-born, that he was entitled to whatever rewards he desired, treating innocent girls as his playthings to be discarded when he had broken them.

She didn't know if she'd ever be free of the stains of Minelas's corruption. How could she ever share such repellent knowledge with Aremil?

Jettin took a step backwards but Branca didn't see what she'd sought in his eyes. Instead she saw derision.

'You chastise me for unwarranted Artifice? When you slid inside a man's head and deceived him so utterly that you made him your witless puppet?'

Before Branca could protest, the young adept was gone, leaving her alone in this desolation.

Had she made things better or worse? At least Branca found she believed Jettin, when he said he knew nothing of what had happened to Aremil.

But where was he? She closed her eyes to reject this uncanny emptiness.

Hearing a stealthy noise, she reopened them. What was that whisper at the very edge of hearing? Not a voice but something else.

Branca looked this way and that but saw nothing that hadn't been there in the nothingness before.

Was something hidden by the building? Had Jettin known what it was and fled? Or had he sent something here to attack her? Could his newfound Artifice do that?

She strode around the corner of the building. Whatever Jettin might try, she'd faced worse when she had used her Artifice against Minelas. How dare he rebuke her for that? Had he risked his life in this undertaking to free all of Lescar?

There was nothing around the corner but the featureless far side of the hall. Branca marched onwards but her boot skidded on the gravel. Looking down, she saw the ground was darker here. Halting, she watched it grow darker still.

Water was steadily seeping through the stones. Points of light glittered, then puddles began running together into glistening sheets.

Was this some manifestation of Aremil's illness? Was it some unpleasantness of Jettin's, directed at her or at Aremil?

Now the water was soaking the dusty leather of her boots.

Branca cut short the liquid syllables of her Artifice echoing in a remote recess of her mind. She blinked to clear this place from her vision and see the busy dockyard once more. She must tell Charoleia--

But the Solland Rope Walk was nowhere to be seen. Branca couldn't even feel the unforgiving wood of the barrel where she sat. She was trapped in this arcane emptiness with cold, clear water seeping through her boot buttonholes to soak her woollen stockings.

The overcast sky was darkening. Dark billows of cloud bulged with rain. How much faster would the waters rise? How could she get away?

Branca ran back to the door of the hall. It was still securely barred. She pulled at the nailed planks, a futile effort.

'Aremil!' she screamed.

A rising wind snatched her words away. It swirled around the hall, buffeting her coming and going. The waters ruffled to lap noisily at the stonework. Dust blown from somewhere stung her eyes.

Branca pressed her back against the door, shivering in the biting cold. On the far horizon, lightning seared a purple sky.

She remembered a childhood storm which flooded half the low-lying districts of Vanam. The worst weather in three generations had lashed the lake and all the towns around it for five incessant days.

Hundreds had died, drowned in the tempest's first fury or from the cold in the following nights. Those towns that escaped more lightly hadn't been able to help. Vanam's harbour was choked with wreckage from broken boats. Streets were impassable where gales had felled chimneys and ravaged roofs.

Branca recalled the paralysing terror as she and her family fled to the slopes of Vanam's hills below the walls of the upper town. Those lofty gates had swiftly been closed. She remembered her father slipping on his crutches, cursing the university and all its scholars with the foulest obscenities he knew. Her mother had held Branca's hand so tight that she'd feared the bruises would never fade.

Those with carts and horses reached the heights first. Those with family and friends living in such fortunate districts found shelter. Branca and her family had been forced to huddle with the other paupers in the wooded gullies where Vanam's feral pigs foraged amid the city's refuse. They had finally returned to find their humble house half-destroyed and their sodden belongings comprehensively looted.

This time she would drown when that deadly squall arrived.

'
Seldiviar ayemar ekelrath!'

Branca yelled her defiance at the storm. All at once, she was safe beneath the Solland Rope Walk.

She pressed a trembling hand to her breastbone. If she believed in any gods she would thank them. She certainly owed Mentor Tonin her gratitude for that passing mention of a mysterious incantation tied to the notion of Calm which occasionally had a quelling effect on other enchantments.

But if she told Mentor Tonin about this, she would have to explain how comprehensively Jettin had rejected his training and example. What would happen to the young adept then?

Had he truly meant to kill her? Branca struggled to believe it, recalling Kerith's stubborn advocacy for the youth. She forced herself to breathe more calmly and felt her racing heart slow.

Assuming that had been some spite of Jettin's, how had he found her terrified memory? Or was that his own recollection? Where had Jettin been, when that catastrophe struck Vanam? Wealthy as his father was, they still lived in the lower town--

'Good day, Mistress Branca.'

Startled, she saw a slender young man approaching, as soberly dressed as any clerk. Only a silver and enamel spray of honeysuckle gleamed on his collar. Yadres Den Dalderin.

She hastily gathered her wits. 'Good day, Esquire.'

'Are you taking the sea air?' His amusement told her he doubted that.

'Just running a few errands like yourself.'

'Quite so.' He bowed and offered her his arm. 'Shall we take the air together?'

Branca rose and felt her stocking feet squelch. They were sodden and cold, even though her boots were as dry and dusty as before.

She hastily thrust aside that shock as she searched out some nugget of information she knew Charoleia would be willing to share.

'Have you heard the latest news from Triolle?' She feigned amusement. 'The longer Iruvain lolls in Adrulle, the more loyalty to him melts like snow in a thaw.'

The duke had Charoleia to thank for the tales of his drunken idleness being whispered in every chimney corner. Her broadsheets printed in Solland had nearly the reach of Reniack's.

Yadres Den Dalderin pursed thoughtful lips. 'My uncle tells me Lord Leysen of Sharlac is now Duchess Aphanie's private courier to Duchess Litasse.' He glanced at Branca. 'Shall we see what your mistress might know of this noble?'

'Why not?' She took his arm.

That was at least as urgent news as telling Charoleia of Jettin's newfound audacity.

Chapter Fourteen

Litasse

The Mistle Wreath Inn,

Adrulle, Caladhria

34th of For-Winter

She looked down from the window seat into the bustling street, searching in vain for any courier.

These delays were as infuriating as the incessant squeak of the swinging inn sign. Even before all this, some missive too long or insufficiently urgent to warrant a courier dove's dispatch could spend as many as fifteen days making the round trip between Triolle and Sharlac. But now, when her mother's correspondence must first be smuggled out of Lord Rousharn's demesne, then covertly passed to Lord Leysen, then carried along the Great West Road to Abray before finally being sent down the River Rel to Adrulle? Karn had warned her that even a slip of paper fine as onion skin could take twenty days to travel in either direction.

He could do it faster. Litasse was convinced. He would steal fresh horses and evade whatever bandits roamed the roads. But that would take him away and she had no one else to rely on here, certainly not her husband. So she must just wait patiently for her mother's letters.

At least she could wait in comfort thanks to the coin her mother had already sent. If this apartment overlooked the noisy street rather than the peace of the inn's rear gardens, the rooms were warm and clean with polished panelling and mistletoe motif embroideries.

Best of all, she had her own bedchamber with a door to lock against Iruvain. His room was on the other side of this parlour while Karn slept on a truckle bed in here between them. And it seemed her husband wasn't quite shameless enough to bring his would-be mistresses to this well-respected inn. Not now that something of his standing as Triolle's duke had been re-established by her mother's money.

Though Karn told her Iruvain still spent his evenings drinking with foolish Carluse and Sharlac nobles, all drunkenly reassuring themselves they would soon reclaim their domains.

Litasse didn't care. If his insobriety became the stuff of gossip, so much the better. Whatever might be rumoured about her own adultery, she would soon enjoy more sympathy than censure as Karn discreetly spread word of Iruvain's recklessness around the back stairs.

She crossed the room to put another split log on the fire and set the iron tongs back in the basket, careful not to smudge her red gown. Her wardrobe still only held three dresses.

Litasse went back to the spacious bay window to gaze at the dressmaker's over the road. When would that insolent slut of a seamstress finish the gown she had commissioned for the Winter Solstice?

How would they spend the festival? How rowdily did Caladhrian merchants and barge-masters celebrate? Which exiled Lescari nobles might invite them to some more elegant evening of feasting and dancing? Litasse sighed. Her own purse wouldn't run to the most modest entertainment, never mind anything remotely ducal. Doubtless Iruvain would blame her for that.

She gazed over the snow-dusted rooftops and smoking chimneys towards the unseen estates of Caladhria's barons. Could they expect any invitations there? She doubted it. After writing endless courteous letters to the wives and daughters of her father's erstwhile allies, she had yet to receive a single reply.

Hearing a step in the corridor, she swiftly reached for her lace-making pillow. Whoever entered would see a portrait of womanly virtue.

It was Karn. 'Your Grace.' His bow was perfunctory as he offered her letters.

'At last.' She tossed the pillow aside with a clatter of ivory bobbins. 'Have they been tampered with?'

'The ones coming through Sharlac Town are definitely being read.' Karn passed her a sealed parchment packet. 'But they don't know about Lord Leysen's wife's orders to her favourite spice merchant.' He handed her a thinner, grubbier letter.

Throwing the thicker packet on top of the lace pillow, Litasse snapped the seal on the single sheet. Deciphering it was a slower business. It would be quicker with pen and ink but she wouldn't take that risk even with a fire to burn the evidence.

'Lord Rousharn of Nolsedge?' She looked up at Karn, appalled.

He frowned. 'Lady Derenna was deeply involved with the exiles' plots in Vanam--'

'He's to be elevated to my father's rank?' Litasse's hand shook so hard the parchment rattled. 'What right has my lady mother to make so free with my inheritance!'

She bit her lip as Karn took the letter, intent on reading the coded words himself.

'Why did she not assert her own rule as dowager?'

Karn didn't answer, still intent on the page.

Litasse couldn't decide what was more infuriating - his silence or what she knew full well about her mother.

When had her mother ever asserted herself? When had she ever controlled her own fate? Duchess Aphanie's life had been guarded and guided by her father, her brothers and her husband. She had fully expected to live out her days cherished by her adored sons. Such were the expectations she had taught her daughters.