The Innocent Mage (6 page)

There was, after all, more than one way of crying.

Asher’s days trotted briskly by, filled sunup to sundown with the exacting business of horses. Aside from Barlsday mornings in the palace chapel, and those times when the prince came into the stable yard to discuss stud business with Matt or fetch Ballodair to go riding, he scarcely saw his employer.

Which suited him just fine. What did a fisherman and a prince have to talk about anyways, eh? Nowt, save for the weather. And once you got past ‘That were a nice drop of rain your da organised for last night, eh?’ ‘Oh yes, wasn’t it?’ there wasn’t much left to say. So let the prince keep hisself to hisself up in his fancy Tower. Asher of Restharven was happy to perform his horsekeeping duties untroubled by princes, count twenty of his twenty-five hard-earned trins into his own personal and private chest at the Royal Treasury at the end of each week … and gloat on the thought of returning home to Restharven the same time next year a rich, rich man. At first his nights were tossed and turned by dreams of the life he’d left behind. The sweet salt air, and the slap and suck of the tide against the hulls of the fishing fleet in the harbour. Jed’s mad giggling. The wheeling, whirling gulls and the music of the village’s menfolk come singing home from sea. Da’s cracked baritone, butchering another ditty and making them all laugh.

Barl save him, there were mornings he’d wake with the memories so fresh it would be several pounding heartbeats before he knew where he was, and why the world smelled of horses. Before he remembered the names of the lads roused grumbling from their dormitory beds by Matt’s merciless cowbell, and why they weren’t his brothers.

Then he’d have to wait, hands fisted in his blankets, treacherous face hidden in the pillow, until he could greel the sunrise uncaring.

Those mornings were hard.

But the choice had been his. There was no point complaining about it, and no-one to complain to any road. This was his life now. Best get on with living it.

In spare hours Matt taught him to ride properly on the prince’s retired brown hunter Dauntless, because — the stable meister said, comically despairing — he couldn’t stand to see a man so woeful ignorant of decent basic horsemanship.

It was a far cry from his bareback slipping and sliding on Dotte, the family’s decrepit half-blind nag who pulled the fish cart to and from Restharven Harbour. At first he wasn’t sure about the notion of learning fancy riding. Especially when Dathne shut up her bookshop and came to watch, and laugh.

Turned out, though, he was an apt pupil with a knack for staying put in the saddle. Pretty soon Dathne wasn’t laughing much at all, nor the lads neither, Boonie and Bellybone and Rinnie and the rest. Pretty soon he could walk, trot and canter ole Dauntless in figure-eights with his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest and no stirrups. Ha!

So Matt promoted him onto Folly, with a wicked glint in his eye that said ‘Right then, Meister Fisherman. Think you’re a horseman now, do you? Well let’s just see about that…’

Folly had a pigroot in her that could turn a body inside out and back again faster than a frog catches flies. But Asher wasn’t going to be beaten. Not by her, and not by smirking Stable Meister Matt. The tricky chestnut mare’s antics had him eating dirt four times on the first day, twice on the second and never again after that. So, with an admiring grin and a proud slap on the back, the stable meister pronounced him fit to be seen in public.

That meant he joined Matt and his string of lads riding out every morning on the prancing apples of His Highness’s eye: blood horses bred and cosseted for the purpose of fetching a tidy sum of trins at auction, or commanding high stud fees from hopeful folk with promising mares, or winning the races run every week for the entertainment of Olken and Doranen alike.

Within weeks, the sea dreams dwindled and life settled into a comfortable, comforting routine. In the evenings after work he tramped down to the Green Goose with Matt and the other lads. There they hobnobbed with other royal staff, supped ale, threw darts and swapped tales taller than the tallest house in the City. Often he’d argue amiably over a game of knuckles with Matt, then work up an appetite dancing with a comely Olken lass. Or Dathne.

In the softening light of the inn’s lamps, when she let her hair loose onto her shoulders and a tankard or two of ale had smoothed the knife edges from her face, the bookseller was … well, not ugly. And she wasn’t such bad company, either, once she’d blunted her sharp tongue on the hide of whoever was handy.

He learned soon enough to make sure it wasn’t him.

Same as the other lads, he was only required to work five days out of six. So he spent his day off each week exploring the City on foot, or its surrounding countryside on borrowed horseback. Swam bare-arsed in River Gant. Fished for silver spotties off Dragonshead Bridge with a homemade rod and line, sometimes alone, more often with one or more of his new-made friends: the stable lads, a few of the junior City Guards, a handful of palace staff. Sometimes he even rode with Dathne in her wagon when she trundled off to investigate reports of old books in other towns and villages.

Not that he was interested in old books. Or her. It was just nice to enjoy a change of scenery once in a while. To set how other Olken lived. To talk about things nowt to do with colic and fetlocks and worming elixirs. And if he came back from those occasional outings with a smile on his face, so what? Weren’t no law against smiling, was there?

Riding. Swimming. Playing darts and sinking a few pints here and there. Dancing with pretty barmaids and aye, right, flirting with ‘em too. All that on top of making fists of money without breaking too much of a sweat over stable-yard chores.

If there was a better way to occupy a year of self-imposed exile from the ocean, Asher was hard put to imagine it.

So he didn’t even try.

He was on his own in the yard one sleepy afternoon, pottering with bits and bobbery while Matt was out on errands and the other lads minded their own business mending harness, polishing carriages and collecting manure from the pastures, when a tingle between his shoulderblades told him he was no longer alone. He stopped sweeping the brickwork outside the currently empty sick box, and turned. Prince Gar. Leaned against a convenient hitching post watching his fisherman stable hand earn those twenty-five weekly trins. Wearing his official ruby and silver circlet, what’s more, which meant he was off to somewhere important. His clothing was officially flash, too: a crimson silk shirt under a gold and black brocade weskit and indigo fine wool’ britches, with his boots like polished black glass. Asher pulled a face. Fancy that for a job, eh? Primping a prince’s boots till you could see your face in ‘em. Poor bastard stuck with that chore must be near out of his skull with boredom by now.

‘A touch of indigestion, Asher?’ enquired the prince kindly., Asher straightened his expression. ‘No, sir. Afternoon,

sir. Somethin’ I can help you with?’

Still leaning, still considering, the prince let his gaze stray around the immaculate stable yard. ‘Perhaps. How’s the job working out?’

‘Fine, sir,’ Asher said cautiously. ‘Thanks for askin’.’

‘No problems adjusting to your new life?’

‘I been here nigh on two months, sir. Reckon if there were goin’ to be problems I’d have stumbled across ‘em by now.’

The prince’s lips twitched. ‘Yes, I reckon you would have.’ He sobered. Nodded. ‘That looks nasty. “What happened?’

Asher looked down at his bare left forearm, revealed by the rolling up of his sleeve, where a thick white scar like old rope wound from elbow to wrist. ‘Cut m’self.’

The prince blinked. ‘No. Really? How?’

Taking Jed up on a damn fool drunken bet was how. He’d pinched Young Mick’s solo sailer and skimmed the waves all the way out to Dragonteeth Reef, intending to snap off a bit of coral and bring it back as proof, and a trophy.

Dragonteeth Reef had pretty near snapped off his arm instead.

Which wasn’t the kind of thing he felt like telling this pretty prince, so he shrugged. ‘Just an accident. Fishin’s a chancy life. Accidents happen all the time.’

‘Do they?’ murmured Prince Gar. ‘Remind me not to take it up as a hobby in that case.’

He kept a straight face, just. ‘Aye, Your Highness.’

If he knew he was being laughed at, the prince didn’t show it. Instead he smiled. ‘Matt says you’ve settled in well. ! It seems the horses like you as much as you like them.’

Unsettled, Asher started sweeping again. Matt and the prince had been discussing him? He didn’t much care for the sound of that. ‘Aye. Sir.’

‘Do you have a favourite?’

‘S’pose,’ said Asher, with a one-shouldered shrug lit picked up from Dathne. ‘I like Cygnet. He’s a good horse’

The prince grinned. ‘Good? He’s the best I’ve ever bit! You’ve a keen eye, Asher.’

Asher shrugged again. ‘I’m learnin’.’

‘It’s an admirable trait.’

Still sweeping, Asher frowned. Something wasn’t here. Princes didn’t make a habit of wandering about stablt yards paying compliments to minions with brooms, they? Not bloody likely. So. Time to land this fish and what he’d caught. ‘Your Highness —’

The prince didn’t let him finish. ‘Listen. I’ve seen ft| myself that you’re quick in a crisis, and brave. Matt saj| you’re a competent if reluctant reader, and yoij handwriting is legible, although a trifle undisciplined, also says the rest of the lads look up to you, you’re i cheerful drunk, you ride like a man born in the saddle eva though everyone knows you weren’t, you know when art how to hold your tongue, you never have to be toSof anything twice and you don’t suffer fools gladly.’ A small smile. ‘Well. At all.’ j

‘He does, does he?’ His fingers were clutched so tight* around the broom handle he was getting splinters. Blood;1 Matt and his great big mouth. There’d be words down a; the Goose that evening, oh aye, and none of then complimentary.

‘Yes,’ said the prince. ‘He does. Is he right?’

Sweeping could wait. Asher leaned the broom against the nearest wall and scowled. For all his negligent post-leaning, the prince was … edgy. Like a colt with one ea: cocked for the sound of wind and an excuse to helter-skelta madly with its heels kicking the air.

‘Right enough,’ he admitted. ‘And what if he is? What’s all that malarkey got to do with how well I shovel shit? Sir?’

The prince shook his head and smiled again. ‘Nothing, How old are you?’

‘Four month older’n you.’ He’d surrendered to curiosity about the prince’s age after a week and asked Dathne.

‘Why?’

The prince didn’t answer, just stared into the distance instead, lost in thought. Waiting, Asher reached for the broom again and tipped it upside down to pick out two dirty bent stalks of straw from between the bristles. Matt surely went spare if his precious brooms weren’t put away prissy like unmarried maidens. To hear him go on, you’d think the bloody Wall itself would tumble down otherwise.

‘Do you have something to wear that’s a little less … industrious?’ the prince said abruptly.

Asher looked down at his green cotton shirt, brown cotton trews and sturdy brown leather boots. ‘No use blarain’ me for how I look. Some ole biddy up at the Tower gave me this clobber.’

‘Mistress Hemshaw. My housekeeper. I know. But do you have anything else? Anything — I don’t know … smarter?’

Asher scowled. Over his bitter protests Dathne had made him squander half his precious first week’s pay on outfits that were neither fishermen’s homespun nor Tower-provided working clothes. Not silk, ha, or leather, or superfine wool either. Lawn for the shirt and second-card wool for the trousers. Expensive enough. He’d only worn them twice. Didn’t want to wear them out completely before he got home again to show them off. ‘Smarter? Aye,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Sir. Why?’ ‘Good.’ The prince pushed away from the wall to stand with his hands on his hips. ‘Go and get changed then. Quickly. The carriage will be here any moment.’ Asher gaped. ‘Carriage?’

‘Yes. I always travel to Justice Hall in His Majesty’s carriage. As the Lawgiver I speak with his voice. Arriving in his carriage sets the proper tone for the proceedings.’

‘Justice Hall?’ Asher stepped back. The broom in his hands lifted, a flimsy barrier between himself and the might of royalty. ‘Court, y’mean? You be takin’ me to court! Why? I ain’t never broke the law and whoever said I did be a drowned liar!’

The prince raised a calming hand. ‘Peace, Asher. You’re not in trouble. I want you to witness today’s hearing, that’s all.’

‘Why? Sir?’

‘We can discuss that afterwards. Now go and change, quickly.’ The prince grinned. ‘We don’t want Justice Hall smelling like a stable, do we?’

‘And what about Matt?’ said Asher, retreating slowly. ‘If he comes back and I ain’t done with —’

‘Matt knows you’ll be absent this afternoon.’

Oh, did he? Bloody Matt. No wonder he’d been so insistent that the stable yard be swept and raked again, even though Bellybone had done it well enough that morning. Wanted to make sure the prince’d have no trouble finding poor ole mushroom Asher.

And now he was off to Justice Hall? With the prince? In the king’s carnage? Why? What in Barl’s name was going on?

‘Asher’ said the prince, all patience fled. ‘Now.’

Asher took the hint. Dropped the broom and ran for the dormitory, swearing under his breath with every pounding step.

Bloody Matt! Bloody Matt! Bloody bloody bloody Matt!

They were nearly halfway to the main palace gates, the king’s magnificent enclosed carriage riding smooth as melted butter, when they heard a pounding tattoo of hooves approaching’ from behind. Scant moments later one of the smartly trotting carriage horses whickered and a young, feminine voice cried: ‘Hold up there, Matcher! I want a word with His Highness!’

As the coachman shouted a reply, Asher looked at the prince. Gar’s face was pinched with displeasure and his manicured fingernails were drumming on his knee. ‘Barl save me,’ he muttered. ‘What does she want now?’

The carriage slowed. Stopped. The prince pulled down the sliding window beside him. ‘I’m in a hurry, Fane! Whatever it is will have to wait!’