Dangerous Waters (21 page)

The Archmage’s face hardened further. ‘There are more mages than Minelas who find Hadrumal’s stone walls more prison than sanctuary. I believe fewer will follow his path if they have some sanctioned route to a less oppressive place where we can still stay apprised of their conduct.’

Kalion grunted. ‘So you say. But if we’re reduced to swapping chimney-corner wisdom, let me offer this. He who hunts two hares catches neither.’

‘By which you mean Hadrumal and Suthyfer?’ Planir nodded. ‘You don’t see the folly of putting all wizardry’s eggs in one basket?’

‘The Council looks to you for single-minded guidance,’ Kalion said with growing ire, ‘on the future course of wizardry, on our relations with the dominions and realms of the mainland, on our dealings with this rival magic of Artifice. But we see you letting matters unfold however they may, in Hadrumal, in Suthyfer and clear across the mainland. Your responses are entirely haphazard, driven by events which you do not even attempt to influence!’

‘If the Council truly believes that my counsel is lacking, they may challenge my tenure as Archmage.’ Planir returned to his chair. ‘If that’s what you truly believe, perhaps it’s time we reconsidered your tenure as Hearth Master—’

‘You would not dare!’ Kalion’s booted feet slid back, as if he were about to spring to his feet. The dregs of wine in his glass ignited in a passionate scarlet flame. ‘Do not mock me, Archmage!’

‘Do not test me, Hearth Master,’ Planir shot back. ‘And don’t let me keep you from debating how to present my choices to the Council in the worst possible light.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘You will, however, oblige me by taking your discussions elsewhere. Galen. Canfor. Ely. Good day to you. Hearth Master.’

Startled, Kalion had no choice but to rise and depart, Ely following, her face pinched with anxiety. Galen went after her, as impassive as ever. Canfor followed, with a smile that Jilseth detested as well as distrusted teasing his lips.

Planir drank the wine which he’d been holding untasted.

‘Do you think Kalion will really try to discredit you before the Council?’ Jilseth asked reluctantly.

The Archmage raised a warning hand. ‘Canfor’s skills with auditory spells are considerable, even if he couldn’t reach all the way to Halferan.’

Azure haze filled the room, shimmering in the sunlight falling through the broad windows. Jilseth longed for such effortless control of the element so antagonistic to her own.

‘The Council needs to know of Minelas’s crimes.’ Planir sighed. ‘All his crimes, including Lord Halferan’s murder, and that it was encompassed by the villain’s magic. I cannot conceal such things from those who have entrusted me with Hadrumal’s governance. I have no choice there.’

That said, Jilseth noted, the Archmage could usually choose when to inform the Council of some cause for concern. Had Kalion forced his hand before he was ready?

Planir grinned. ‘Every rune bone lands to show one upright for each one reversed. If Kalion is fretting about what might happen if Minelas’s crimes come to light, he can’t be drumming up support for wizardly action against the corsairs.’

His smile faded. His hand tightened around the empty wine glass. It dissolved into fine white sand flowing to the floor.

‘My compliments to Cloud Master Rafrid, if you please, and ask him to call me at once.’

‘Archmage.’ Jilseth hurried from the room. She had never seen Planir betray such anger before. She also wondered uneasily if the Archmage had intended to reduce that second glass to sand; the one which Canfor had left on the windowsill.

How much trouble could Kalion stir up, among the other members of the Council of Wizards? It was meagre comfort to think how much worse this could have been, if the Caladhrians had even suspected Minelas of magic.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Halferan, Caladhria

40th of Aft-Spring

T
HIS WASN’T HOW
he’d imagined his homecoming; trudging barefoot along the high road wearing stolen clothes. Once he had been the envy of the guardhouse, drawing female eyes wherever he went with his fine linen, well-tailored clothes and polished boots.

Truth be told, Corrain had given up hope of getting home at all. Until, finally, around noon of that last terrifying day afloat, the Caladhrian coast relented. As the cliffs retreated inland, the sea met an expanse of windswept dunes. Once the tide turned in their favour, Kusint guided the boat into the surf. As soon as the hull bumped on the sand, Corrain yelled at him to jump over the side. He’d done just that before Kusint had a chance to ask why. As they spluttered their way ashore, fighting the buffeting waves, Corrain had explained.

‘If we let the waves take the boat, it’ll be cast ashore wherever the currents choose. No one gives a wreck a second look, not on this coast. But if we beach it properly, if some whelk picker stumbles across it, that could start a panic. I don’t want to be beaten senseless for a corsair.’

‘They could hardly think I’m Archipelagan,’ Kusint had objected, ‘and you’re one of their own.’

‘I doubt they’ll let me get close enough to open my mouth with skin as dark as this.’ Corrain had held up a hand tanned by the Aldabreshin sun.

Kusint had yielded; saving Corrain from having to tell him his Forest blood would be as suspect as any other foreigner’s. Nor did he say, though he guessed it would be so, they wouldn’t simply be beaten if they were caught. Not two unknown vagabonds, bare-chested in ragged trews, unshaven with knotted hair trailing down their backs and broken chains dangling from their fettered wrists. No. Corrain hadn’t escaped the corsairs and an Aldabreshin warlord’s swordsmen to be hanged by his own ignorant countrymen.

‘The first things we need are shirts and breeches,’ he had told Kusint. ‘We’ll arouse less suspicion if we’re decently dressed.’

Then if they were challenged, if they couldn’t escape being noticed entirely, he could explain away their presence with some bluff. With his familiarity with the region and its dialect, they should escape with only the usual insults and perhaps a beating, to keep vagabonds on their way.

Corrain wouldn’t be telling the truth. He didn’t want any whisper of his return to reach Minelas.

They circled right around the first village that they came to. Finally Corrain could steal them both some clothing from a goodwife’s laundry spread on a buckthorn hedge. At the next hamlet, they raided a cottager’s garden for the season’s first turnips and carrots, tender and sweet.

Corrain didn’t allow himself any qualm of conscience over the thefts. His first duty was to return to Halferan as swiftly as possible to avenge his dead lord. To return home unexpected, to cut that bastard mage’s throat before the shitsucker even saw him coming.

So he insisted they walk through pastures instead of along the high road. They skirted any fields where herdsmen tended placid beasts. As each night drew on, they gave lit windows a wide berth, snatching what sleep they could in the indifferent shelter of hazel coppices.

Around the villages the fruit trees were thick with blossom while the coppices were cloaked with fresh green. Crops thrived in the fields and the verges were dense with flowers; the high white froth of Larasion’s lace rising above clumps of blue quills, yellow hedge-bells and pink maiden’s blush. Birdsong sweetened the air, only broken by the harsher shrill of some cock bird spoiling for a fight with a rival. There’d been no rain these past few days and the nights were warm enough to spare them any frost on their blankets.

Waking with the dawn they joined the rabbits raiding vegetable gardens, wary for the thump of an early riser’s tools from some hamlet’s workshops. As they walked, they plucked spring greenery from the hedgerows. Kusint had a sharp eye for the most tender leaves and Corrain recalled hearing that Lescari vagrants relied on such forage. The Forest lad had found wild birds’ eggs and eaten them raw too. Corrain couldn’t stomach the thought of it.

Now his guts twisted inside him. Ahead in the gloaming he could see lights in the windows of the baronial tower, and the breeze brought the tantalising scent of an evening’s pottage from the village beyond the brook. But it wasn’t only hunger knotting his guts.

‘You’re as tense as a bowstring,’ Kusint observed.

‘I need a sword if I’m to kill him.’ Corrain looked at the manor compound wall and the dark bulk of the gatehouse. ‘I have to get in there unsuspected.’

Now he was here, either of those aims seemed an impossibility to rival their escape from the Aldabreshi. But of course, they had done that. Somehow the thought didn’t hearten Corrain.

‘You need to know if he’s in there first,’ Kusint drew him into the shadow of a chestnut tree a few discreet paces off the road. ‘Is there anyone you could ask?’

‘Not without them asking whatever befell me.’ Corrain hesitated. The Spring Parliament would have come and gone, leaving Caladhria’s barons free to return to their own firesides until they gathered at solstice, but who knew where a wizard’s business might take him?

He contemplated the village where the manor’s servants lived alongside a few craftsmen and those families who put bread on their tables with daily labour in the demesne fields. Hosh’s old mother lived there.

Their questions would be endless. How could he return and tell them he was the only one? That their beloved sons and brothers and husbands were all dead? That he had witnessed Lord Halferan’s murder?

‘I need to see her ladyship,’ he realised aloud. ‘Before anyone knows I’m back.’

An owl drifted overhead, piercing the dusk with a querulous cry.

‘Is there anyone you could trust to take your mistress a message?’ Kusint prompted.

‘I wonder.’ The finest of Halferan’s household guard had been murdered out in the marshes and the rest had vanished into the Archipelago. Who had that traitor Minelas hired to replace them? Home or not, Corrain must be as alert for danger as he ever had been among the Aldabreshi.

‘We must arm ourselves.’ He searched the hedgerow for some stick to make a cudgel. He tugged at a promising length only to find it wouldn’t come loose.

‘Whoever laid this hedge over winter made a handsome job of it.’ With his longer reach Kusint managed to wrench a stake from amid the woven branches.

‘Going in fear of the wizard,’ Corrain said savagely.

Kusint hauled a second stave out of the hedge for him. ‘So where are we going now?’

‘An old friend.’ Corrain swallowed. ‘If he lives.’

If old Fitrel had kept his head below the parapet. He’d always told Corrain to remember that a miller can never change the wind but he can always turn his mill’s sails to catch a favourable breeze. A long time ago, Fitrel’s father had been a miller.

‘This way.’ Corrain gripped his stick, though he had no notion what he would say if he were challenged.

‘That’s the tavern?’ Kusint wasn’t suggesting they call in for some ale.

Corrain halted as laughter and music drifted through the evening. He looked down at the lane; dry and well tended with no ruts allowed to wreck an axle or an ankle. When they’d reached the outskirts of the Halferan demesne that afternoon, Kusint had remarked on the fine condition of the flocks.

Corrain ground his teeth. Of course Minelas would see the barony well tended, to fill his pockets with more gold.

But the revelry in the tavern unnerved him. He had been gone for more than a year. How much had changed in that time? Had everyone forgotten their dead lord so entirely? What lies had Minelas told about what had happened in the marshes? Surely Fitrel wouldn’t have believed whatever that story had been?

They skirted the village, cutting across the rough grazing behind a row of placid brick cottages. A more disreputable wooden house lay some distance behind them. Rather than offering neat rows of vegetables, the garden was dotted with wooden cages. The inhabitants rustled, inquisitive.

‘Rabbits,’ Corrain explained as Kusint bent down to look. That reassured him. Fitrel was still raising meat and fur to supplement the grain and ale and copper pennies of his pension. Corrain rapped on the door with his purloined stake.