Havenstar (31 page)

Meldor gave
Davron an inquiring glance and the guide nodded, remembering. ‘What
made you change your mind?’ he asked.

‘My brother.
He came to Hopen Grat looking for me. You were leaving that
morning; the guide to the Second wasn’t going for a day or
two.’

‘You were
running away from your brother? Why?’ Meldor asked.

‘Because I
didn’t want to be branded as a thief.’

‘Ah,’ he said
in sudden comprehension. ‘The crossings-horses. Of course.’

‘And a few
other things. My dowry money. Mapping equipment, camping equipment.
All legally my brother’s. He wasn’t going to use them; he didn’t
want to be a mapmaker. I did. He was going to bribe the local Rule
Office so that he could become a tavern keeper. He wanted me to
marry a friend of his. So I ran away from home. I knew I could
never be a mapmaker of course, but I wanted to go to my uncle in
Salient in the Second. When Thirl, that’s my brother, came after
me, I decided to go with you instead. I wanted to speak to Pickle
about my father’s death anyway, but most of all I needed a quick
passage out of Hopen Grat. I intend going to the Second Stab
now.’

Davron settled
back in his chair with a sigh. ‘So much for all our hopes. The
trompleri maps really are gone, lost...’

‘And so is our
only hope to find a mapmaker who might have been able to duplicate
Deverli’s work,’ Meldor added. ‘There’s no one in any of the Stabs
who has Piers’ imagination.’

‘Imagination?’
she asked without thinking. ‘My father was a practical man, not an
imaginative one.’

‘Not
imaginative?’ Davron raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Of course he
was! Why, you have only to look at his maps—’

Suddenly she
was tired of hiding her talents, and she could not even be bothered
to think through the implications of the confession she was about
to make. She said acidly, ‘My father was a rank traditionalist when
it comes to mapmaking. Mind you, he was probably one of the best
surveyors who ever lived and the accuracy of his maps was
phenomenal, but he would never have altered the format one
brushstroke from his father’s and his grandfather’s day if it had
been left up to him.’

They all
stared at her. It was Davron who broke the silence. He gave a low
chuckle of appreciation. ‘It was you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been
drawing all Piers’ maps for the past five years! All the coloured
ones were yours. All the revolutionary changes in style and
presentation, they were yours.’

She nodded and
stood up. ‘Thank you for returning my arrow, Master Davron. I’m
sorry I’m not able to help you with regard to the map. Now, if
you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.’

~~~~~~~

Scow and
Meldor exchanged bemused looks as she made her way to the hall
stairs. ‘I’ll be damned,’ said Meldor. ‘Can that be true?’

‘Oh, yes,’
said Davron. ‘I knew Piers and now I know her—oh, yes.’ An amused
smile played around the corner of his lips. ‘The maid’s a devil,
Margraf.’

Meldor looked
annoyed, but the annoyance was with himself. ‘I underestimated her,
and I was the one who said she was special. Careless,
careless.’

‘Now what?’
Scow asked.

‘That’s
obvious,’ Meldor said. ‘We persuade her to come with us. We need an
innovative mapmaker of talent, and if she made those Kaylen maps,
she’s the person.’

‘And just how
are you going to do that?’ Davron asked mildly. ‘She trusts me
about as much as a minnow trusts a pike, and you not much more.
What bait can you possibly use that will persuade her to travel in
the company of a man who could well turn around and kill her
anytime? Or are you going to coerce her with ley? That would be a
big mistake.’

‘You were the
one who advised it before.’

‘Only so that
we got to hear the truth. But for mapmaking we would need her
co-operation. Coercion would not achieve that.’

‘No,’ Meldor
agreed, ‘and I would never consider it. There are other ways.’

‘Just don’t
tell her the truth about Havenstar,’ Davron warned. ‘That won’t
persuade her to do anything except run for the nearest
rule-chantor. She wasn’t happy with our using ley to free Sam from
the bilee. She’d be appalled if she knew what we were really doing
with it.’

‘I think I
know exactly what to use for bait,’ Meldor said slowly. ‘And I’ll
be surprised if she doesn’t find it tasty.’

~~~~~~~

If a dog barks
at a mountain, does the mountain suffer?

—saying of the
old Margravate of Malinawar

Chantor Portron
regarded Keris anxiously. ‘So Master Pickle has arranged for you to
go to the Second? But no fellowships go that way from here,
surely?’ The chantor had found Keris out in the stables grooming
her horses, and now he dodged around after her keeping up a flow of
conversation as she attended to Ygraine.

‘No, but
traders apparently do. They come from the Third, stop by the halt
to make deliveries, then pass on to the Second. Master Grossbik and
his wife make that particular crossing all the time. I’ll be safe
with them. And they are willing to take a couple of maps as
payment. Don’t worry about me, Chantor. I’ll be fine. How’s your
head, by the way?’

‘Ah, a wee bit
of a headache, that’s all. I hit the wall when Graval pushed me,
but I’m fine now. Master Davron’s fellowship is off tomorrow too,
I’m thinking.’ He hesitated, as if he had reservations about that,
but then added, ‘I’ll not be sorry to be leaving this place. I’m
anxious to be reaching the Eighth as soon as possible, and all in
one piece too.’

She smiled.
‘After a journey like this one has been, you’ll be needing that
retreat once you get there.’

‘Well, to be
honest, it’s not really a religious retreat I’m on, lass. I’m after
fathering a babe for Chantry. Looking forward to it, I am at that.
My second. Bit worrying though, for a man of my age. It’s a long
time since I had experience with, er, well— But I shouldn’t be
saying that to a maid! Me and my tongue.’

She
straightened up, forgetting the grooming. ‘You’re after doing
what
?’

He blushed
slightly and went on the defensive. ‘All on Chantry’s business,
lass. When numbers are down, ’tis the duty of selected chantoras to
bring another babe to Chantry and I’ve been chosen to father one
such. The mother-to-be is a rule-chantora of my order. ’Tis an
honour much appreciated among we chantors.’

Shock jerked a
sharp reply from her. ‘I’ll bet it is!’ He looked hurt by her blunt
cynicism, but she went on relentlessly. ‘So that’s what Meldor
meant when he referred to a breeding chantora! This is not a holy
practice that is much discussed with the unencoloured public, is
it? I’ve never heard of such, although I’ve heard much made of the
chastity and celibacy of Chantry men and women. Tell me, on what
grounds were you chosen? Do you know the chantora concerned?’

He looked
horrified. ‘Of course not! This is not a matter of—of
personalities, Keris. Or desire. Or choice. ’Tis our duty, and the
selection of the pair is a matter for Hedrin-chantors to
decide.’

‘It is to be
hoped your chantora also thinks it an honour,’ she said dryly.

‘Well, of
course she does! She is to be allowed to bear a child, a privilege
that all women must be coveting, surely.’

She stared,
both fascinated and repulsed. ‘And the, er, logistics of this
liaison?’

He looked
increasingly uncomfortable, aware he had somehow lost control of
the conversation. ‘Logistics? Ah, well. I stay in the chanterie
until such time as, er, the chantora has evidence that she is, um,
increasing.’

‘And
then?’

‘Why then, I
will be returning to my Rule Office, and she to her duties. The
child, when it is born, will be taken to another chanterie, to be
raised there by others. Under a name not known to us, of course.
The chantora may well become a wet nurse for some years, to other
chantora infants, or to those taken from their over-productive
mothers and given to Chantry.’

‘Not given,’
she said involuntarily. ‘Not given.
Taken
. Wrenched from
their homes and true families.’

‘Keris,
Keris,’ he said reproachfully. ‘It’s the Rule. Why, think what
would happen if the population of the stabs was allowed to grow
freely? How could people be fed? Housed? We have to exercise
control, for the greater good of everyone.’

‘Control?’ she
asked bitterly. ‘It seems your idea of control is to breed
yourselves, at the same time as preventing others from doing so—or
taking away the off-spring they do have! Is that
just
?’

‘It’s just a
question of regulation,’ he protested. ‘Of keeping numbers right.
Chantry has to be obtaining its chantors from somewhere, and the
younger they come to the service of the Maker, the better. At the
same time, Order must be observed, and large unruly families are
threatening Order, you know that. There is no place in the father’s
trade for surplus sons, for example, and no marriage opportunities
for the surplus girls—it just wouldn’t
do
, you know.’

‘No,’ she
said. ‘No, it wouldn’t, would it?’ She took a deep breath, aware
that she was losing her composure. ‘Tell me,’ she said more calmly,
‘why don’t you allow a breeding chantora to feed her own child? Why
give her someone else’s instead of her own?’

‘A chantora’s
job is not that of a mother, Keris. Nothing must come between her
and her duty to Chantry. It is felt that caring for her own child
would be too much of a distraction. Similarly, children brought up
by strangers must surely be more dedicated to Chantry rather than
their families. Some of the greatest chantors in Chantry history
have been men and women who did not know their own parents, who
started life as chantry children raised within the confines of
Chantry walls.’

Oh Maker, poor
Aurin! Sheyli would have loved you so much… She thought of Sheyli’s
anguished, ‘There’s not a day but I don’t think of him.’ She
thought of Meldor’s, ‘I never knew my parents. I never even knew
what stab they were from.’ She thought of Davron, ordered to
abandon a crippled boy in the Unstable, one of the so-called Unbred
who were ordinarily suffocated at birth because of birth defects.
She thought of the young chantora waiting for a man, a paunched,
balding, white-haired man she did not know, waiting for him to
arrive and impregnate her.

Tyranny,
she thought.
The worst kind of tyranny of all,
the tyranny of guilt. And of love. If we love Creation, we must
serve the Rule and bow to the tyranny of Chantry. If we don’t, we
commit a sin against all humankind
… Aloud she repeated
bitterly, ‘It wouldn’t do at all.’ She bent to Ygraine’s foreleg
again.

Portron, made
uneasy by her tone, looked around for an excuse to leave. ‘I must
ask the stableboy to groom my palfrey,’ he muttered, and
disappeared.

She attacked
her task with unnecessary force, ignoring Ygraine’s rather startled
snort.

‘Keris?’

She
straightened again to eye dubiously the new silhouette in the
doorway. This time it was Meldor who blocked the light. ‘I’m here,’
she said. ‘Although how in all Creation you know that, beats me.’
She sounded sour, and did not care.

He did not
appear to notice her tone. ‘We’re leaving for the south tomorrow,’
he said. ‘I have a proposition for you.’

‘No,’ she
said.

‘You haven’t
heard it.’

‘I don’t need
to. The answer’s still no.’

‘You want to
be a mapmaker. I can make that dream come true. Come with us
tomorrow, and you can have your own shop, your own equipment. Staff
to help, if you want. Tainted assistants to take you into the
Unstable. All paid for.’

She eyed him
carefully. ‘I seem to have heard a rather similar offer once
before. Only thing was, there was a rather large and unattractive
snag concealed in the deal. Something about serving the Unmaker, I
seem to recall.’

‘I do not
serve Carasma.’

‘No? Then
perhaps the sediment dirtying the bottom of the glass is of other
origins. Let me see: you are offering to make me a mapmaker—’

‘Yes.’

‘In return
for—?’

‘Your promise
you’ll search for a way to make trompleri maps, and that once you
have found the secret, you will share it with us.’

‘And if I
don’t find it?’

‘I’ll take the
chance.’

‘Why do you
want trompleri so badly?’

‘To defeat
Carasma, why else?’

She paused in
her task to look at him. Was he lying? She thought so; at least he
was not telling the whole truth. She started brushing the stiff
hairs of Ygraine’s mane. ‘The answer’s still no.’

‘You ran away
rather than be forced into a marriage you didn’t want. Won’t the
same thing happen to you at your uncle’s? You’ll be expected to
marry. The Rule demands it of you. Keris, I offer you everything
you ever wanted, I know it.’

‘Do I have to
remind you what happened to your last mapmaker and his
assistant?’

‘We will
protect you.’

‘Ha! Can you
tell me how? Once the Unmaker decides on an Unstabler’s death, he’s
doomed sooner or later, for all that Carasma can’t do the deed
personally. Perhaps crossing a ley line. Perhaps in an attack by
the Wild. Or by Minions. Yet I can’t be a mapmaker by staying in a
stability. If there’s a secret to be found about trompleri, it’ll
be found right here, in the Unstable.’ She threw the rug back over
Ygraine and turned to Tousson, who nipped at her bad-temperedly and
then deliberately stepped on her foot.

She pulled the
animal’s ear and it reluctantly lifted its hoof. ‘You miserable
sod,’ she said. ‘I know you did that on purpose. The answer’s still
no, Meldor.’ She started brushing the horse’s coat. ‘And, quite
apart from the danger, I have a good reason. Several good reasons.
You travel with a man who’s a bonded servant to the Unmaker. And
you mess with ley. That’s enough to make up my mind.’