Irons in the Fire (29 page)

"All the way to the gate, Madam Scholar?" the foremost chair-carrier asked.

Aremil saw a gravelled path leading away between two buildings newly built in the most severe and Rationalist architectural style. The dark granite that made Vanam so forbidding on a dull day sparkled in the bright sunshine.

"This will be fine, thank you." As the men set the chair down, Branca reached into her purse.

"Up you come, Master." The rearmost man lifted Aremil to his feet with impersonal efficiency. As soon as he tucked Branca's coin into an inside pocket, his forward counterpart offered his crutches.

"Thank you." Aremil was excruciatingly embarrassed. How could he have been so foolish as to come out without money? He settled himself on his crutches and attempted a casual manner. "So, madam, shall we proceed?"

Branca waited until the chair-men were out of earshot. "Are you interested in learning how to influence others without them even realising it?" she asked bluntly.

"No, and besides, wouldn't the mentors have something to say about that?" Aremil replied. "I cannot see Mentor Tonin allowing such things."

"Who's to tell him?" Branca countered. "If the victim's left all unawares."

"The Archmage is content to leave such powerful magic undisciplined?" Regardless of what Charoleia had said, Aremil still wondered about that.

"He has little choice, given that wizards are the only people besides the musically deaf who seem quite incapable of working any Artifice." Branca laughed without much humour. "Which isn't to say he's ignorant of what's been discovered about Artifice. You may not have heard, but a group of mages closely tied to the Archmage have founded a new scholarly hall."

"Yes, I have heard," Aremil said crisply. "On the islands of Suthyfer in the midst of the Eastern Ocean."

"Quite so." Branca wasn't bothered by his tart answer. "Mentor Tonin has spent much of this last year there, working closely with those adepts from the Old Empire who were found sleeping in the rediscovered lands. They have taught us so much. That's as may be. I imagine the wizards in Suthyfer keep the Archmage very well informed of all such developments," she concluded wryly.

"I imagine so." Aremil wondered what that might mean for his plans, and those of his co-conspirators.

Branca looked at him and folded her arms. "Mentor Tonin has been good enough to recommend me to the mage-masters and adepts in Suthyfer's new hall. I am not about to pass up the opportunity of travelling there in favour of teaching you. Not unless you tell me exactly what secret you're hiding." Her brown eyes challenged him.

Chapter Eighteen

Aremil

The Physic Garden, in Vanam's Upper Town,

22
^nd
of For-Summer

"It's extremely hot." Aremil looked up at the cloudless sky. "If there's somewhere we could sit to continue this conversation, I'd be grateful."

"There are plenty of cool corners in the physic garden." Branca indicated the gravelled path.

Aremil began making his way cautiously along the potentially treacherous surface. "What are these splendid buildings?"

"That's the new Apothecaries' Hall." Branca waved to the right. "Naturally, the School of Physicians wasn't going to be outdone by mere poultice-makers, so they've been rebuilding. Thankfully everyone saw sense and left the gardens untouched."

At the far end of the path, Aremil saw a wrought-iron fence protecting an expanse of trees and plants, some flowering, some merely leafy. People were walking to and fro, some dawdling at their ease in twos and threes, others striding with single-minded purpose.

"I've never been here." As far as Aremil was concerned, doctors and apothecaries came to his door. Only paupers risked the attentions of their half-trained pupils at the university's back doors.

"You're not denying that you have a secret," Branca observed.

Aremil was looking at the kissing gate at the end of the path. He had no hope of negotiating that on crutches.

"A moment, Master." A liveried porter appeared and bent to find a latch.

Aremil saw how a hinged section made a cunningly concealed gate in the fence. A metallic squeal from the hinges turned heads all across the lawn and Aremil braced himself for incautious expressions of revulsion and hastily turned shoulders.

To his surprise, few people gave him more than a cursory glance. Only a youthful maiden halted, eyes wide with shock, the back of her hand pressed to her lips.

"Do you suppose she's stupid enough to think your condition is catching?" Branca asked conversationally as she went through the kissing gate. "It's not as if you're covered in sores."

Her laugh, like her question, was loud enough to be heard by the girl, who blushed furiously and hurried away.

"I wouldn't care to guess." Angry humiliation knotted Aremil's stomach regardless.

"This way."

Branca indicated a path running along the side of the garden and Aremil advanced carefully, his shoulders aching. The tall trees cast welcome shade and thankfully it wasn't far to an empty seat beneath a bower thick with honeysuckle.

"It is hot." The five bells of noon rang out across the upper town as Branca pulled off her linen cap and shook out her hair. It was lighter than Aremil had expected, touched with hints of blonde as it fell to her shoulders. She undid the plain pin securing her cotton wrap and fanned herself with one corner.

Aremil lowered himself carefully down and wished he could unbutton his doublet or at least loosen his shirt collar. He propped his crutches against the bench and noticed that the honeysuckle spread up a tall stone wall enclosing a separate space within the wider confines of the physic garden. "What's in there?"

"Poisonous plants." Branca left her wrap loose around her shoulders. "Some apothecaries' preparations require minute amounts of herbs that are deadly in any quantity." She grinned at Aremil's astonishment. "The poisons garden is always locked and there's broken glass embedded in the top of that wall. There are always doctors' pupils and apothecaries' apprentices around, never mind the gardeners."

"Even in the middle of the night?" Aremil drew a deep breath and found the scented air unexpectedly invigorating.

"I assume there's a watch kept since Vanam doesn't suffer epidemics of poisoning." Branca shifted to look directly at him. "So, what is this secret of yours? Why is it so important that you study Artifice under someone of Lescari blood?"

Aremil had been thinking how best to answer her as they had made their way to the seat. "Do you know why so many Lescari become apothecaries rather than physicians?"

Branca folded her hands in her lap. "I can guess, but why don't you tell me?"

"Money," Aremil said bluntly. "Studying medicine requires funds for several years of dedicated scholarship. While an apothecary learns, he earns his room and board as a condition of his apprenticeship. Lescari are always poorer than the people of Ensaimin. Even those who've lived in Vanam for generations struggle to lift themselves out of poverty because the misery of their kith and kin back in Lescar constantly leeches away their coin."

"Not mine," she assured him. "I see enough suffering in Vanam's gutters. If I ever have coin to spare, that's where I spend it."

"Then you are an exception," Aremil said. "Most Lescari-born in Vanam constantly try to salve the suffering of those they've left behind. They don't begrudge the coin, but they'd certainly welcome peace in Lescar and an end to such a drain on their purses. So some of us living here in exile have decided it's time to put an end to the senseless waste of lives and livelihoods, and every selfish duke be cursed."

"You expect aetheric enchantment to mend a situation that's gone unresolved for twenty generations?" Branca stared at him, astonished. Then she looked more suspicious. "You want to convince the dukes to abandon their hopes of the High King's crown by means of Artifice?"

"Could we?" Aremil looked levelly at her.

"No." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't believe there's an adept alive who could unpick an ambition so deeply woven into someone's life. To do that to all the dukes and all their families, with lasting effect?" She shook her head. "It couldn't be done."

That might dash Failla and Lady Derenna's hopes of a bloodless triumph, but Aremil wasn't surprised.

"Then it's just as well we have a different scheme. One which will be a great deal easier if we can use Artifice to contact each other rather than ciphered letters and courier pigeons."

"If Mentor Tonin hadn't assured me your wits are as sharp as your legs are weak, I'd say you were mad." Branca ran a hand through her hair.

Aremil ignored that remark. "If you have no interest in helping, can you introduce me to some adept whose Lescari blood still runs hot in his veins?"

"You really should get out more." She shook her tousled head. "You may move in circles where Lescari blood and Lescari rank still count for something. I don't. As for those still suffering in Carluse or Parnilesse or wherever else, if they find their lives so wretched, why don't they just leave to look for a better life elsewhere?"

"That's hardly so easy for the elderly or infirm." Aremil felt his anger twisting his face. He didn't care. "What of those burdened with children?"

"My father managed." Branca's tone hardened. "On crutches, with half an arm and still less of a leg. My mother's mother walked barefoot from Marlier, her husband murdered and her belly swelling with some rapist's child. She put all that behind her and made a new life, a new marriage and raised all her children as equals. None of my family cares a tinker's curse about my uncle's blood. None of my friends give a pennyweight's consideration to whether it's my mother or father who's Marlier- or Triolle-born. Down in the lower town, we're Lescari only in name. What of it?"

"What of it?" demanded Aremil. "When 'Lescari' is a byword for stupidity, for treachery and theft? However much you achieve, isn't 'Lescari' always hung around your neck like a brick to drown a puppy? Don't your friends have to be twice as good as any Vanam-born, just to stop such shackles holding them back? Wouldn't you all rather be free of such associations?"

"Your oratory is getting away from you." Branca's colour was rising, and not merely from the heat.

Aremil realised spittle was slipping from the corner of his mouth. He tried to swallow. "Peace in Lescar would prove we're not all such fools."

"You don't think offering hope is the greatest folly of all?" Branca looked away for a moment.

"You're refusing to help me?" Aremil wondered why Mentor Tonin had sent him this exasperating girl.

"We'll see." She looked down at her hands. "Let me try to find your travelling friend for you. That's the least I can do after bringing you all the way here."

Aremil was tempted to refuse her offer. But Tathrin had been away for fifteen days. If his quest in Solura wasn't prospering, they had to know. Master Gruit was right. They would have to send word through some contact of Charoleia's to recall Failla, Reniack and Lady Derenna. "Thank you," he said curtly.

"You must understand that contacting someone by means of Artifice is not like talking to them face to face. It's not even like a wizard's bespeaking that deals in sounds and images reflected through some magical mirror. There's an intimacy that cannot be avoided. I will see more deeply into your friend's thoughts than he might wish. I wouldn't normally seek to find someone who hadn't given me their permission first." She looked searchingly at Aremil. "Are you a good enough friend that you're willing to give me leave on his behalf? And I will need to see him through your recollections since I don't know him myself."

"What else might you see if I allowed that?" Aremil asked suspiciously.

"More of your reasons for wanting to study Artifice," she said frankly. "More of whatever it is that drives you to try to heal twenty generations of Lescari pain when everyone else I know is content to let the dukes go hang along with anyone fool enough to bow down to them."

"Is that the price of your assistance?" Aremil knew his scowl must be making a gargoyle of him. "Will you give me your word that's all you will go looking for in my thoughts?"

"If you want to know how your friend's faring, this is the only way." She didn't blink.

He held out his hand wordlessly. What choice did he have if he wanted to know what Tathrin was doing? None, not until he could write to Mentor Tonin and ask for an introduction to a more congenial aetheric adept.

Branca took his thin fingers in her sturdy hand and murmured something under her breath.

Aremil didn't understand the words but heard swift poetry in the cadences. He tensed. It felt as if a hand were stroking his brow. A shiver ran down his spine as if a finger had been traced along his bare skin. Branca was looking at him. He couldn't break free from her dark eyes.

He knew he was still sitting in the physic garden in Vanam. He could feel the sun's heat and smell the flowers. At one and the same time, he was sitting in a chair in the centre of a vast empty hall. Cool light reflected back from the pale stone walls. The high vaulted roof was full of echoes that he couldn't quite hear. Shadows he couldn't quite make out flitted behind distant pillars. He wanted to look at them, to see what they were, but he couldn't look at anything but Branca's eyes. Even though she wasn't there.