Wren Journeymage (6 page)

“Good music, up at the Redfern Inn,” Lambin said somewhat wistfully.

“We can do it all,” Thad stated. “And have enough left over for a snug bed somewhere down near the docks. Let’s get started!”

They slipped out the back. The boys chattered happily, nearly masking the hiss of footsteps on the cobblestones, and whispered voices.

Wren began to turn—but a rough sack was thrown over her head. Someone else shoved her off-balance, and while she struggled, her knapsack was yanked out of her hands, and someone else wrapped rope around her, binding her arms to her sides.

“Hey!” “Ow!” “What’s this?” “ You can have the coppers!” the others shouted and wailed.

Wren was thrown into a wagon, and then something that smelled like heavy canvas was thrown atop her. She could hear her companions protesting. Wren stayed silent; she was sure that just before she was attacked, one of those whispering voices had said, “There. The one with the stripey hair, that’s the one.”

Teressa sat alone on a dais decorated with flowers and cloth bunting, the warm breeze carrying scents of blossoms and crushed grass. On either side, seated decorously on benches brought out that morning by laboring servants and stable hands, her courtiers watched the horse races. They wore their newest riding clothes, short tunics over voluminous trousers instead of robes or gowns. Both men and women sported bunches of ribbons tying up their slashed sleeves, showing contrasting color beneath, the ribbons dancing bravely in the breezes as they clapped, waved, and took turns racing horses from one end of the grassy sward to the other.

Everyone dressed in their best, but Teressa’s attention was drawn by how flattering a simple brown walking tunic could be when worn by someone slim and graceful as a bird, her only adornment long silver hair.

A burst of clapping caught her attention. Her cousin Garian had won another race. He smiled her way, fist in the air, and she hastily clapped, but as soon as he turned away to change mounts, Teressa’s attention snapped back to the far end of the observers’ half-circle, where Tyron and Orin, his oldest beginner magic student, stood at the very edge, in earnest converse.

Or rather Orin talked earnestly, her long silver hair blowing like a flag in the wind, as Tyron gazed at the horses, his profile pensive.

“Problem with your faithful hound?”

Teressa started, then frowned up into Hawk’s face. The wind blew a long strand of his dark hair across his brow as he laughed softly. He stood just out of reach, one booted foot on the edge of the dais a pace from her chair, one hand leaning carelessly on his knee, the other on his hip.

“No,” she said, and added deliberately, “All the dogs are in the kennel so they don’t get under the horses’ feet during the races.”

“You know who I mean.”

“If you want to refer to any friend of mine,” she said in her most polite, daunting voice, “then please say his name. Or hers.” And when Hawk just smiled, she added in a lot more normal tone, “I don’t understand why you keep referring back to your disgusting past actions. The time you turned Tyron into a dog is no pleasant memory.”

Hawk did not show any evidence of being wounded. “That was a ruse of war, but the war is over. I’m here as your ally, if you’ll have me.” He smiled.

She felt that smile in the heat of her skin, and shifted her gaze away. Orin was gone at last, and Tyron turned toward her. She beckoned.

As Tyron started across the grassy expanse, Teressa could not resist a quick glance, and met Hawk’s steady, dark gaze. His amusement increased, narrowing his black eyes, and deepening the corners of his mouth.

He was so unsettling! “I want to talk to Tyron alone.” She tried to sound calm and authoritative, but to her own ears her voice was merely petulant.

Hawk raised his hand in a duelist’s salute. “For lack of a worthy foe I quit the field.”

He sauntered down the steps of the dais just as Tyron mounted them.

Neither Tyron or Hawk acknowledged the other by so much as a glance, though they passed within arm’s length; if Tyron heard Hawk’s words, he gave no sign.

“Question?” he asked.

Teressa was about to ask him what Orin was talking about for so long, and scolded herself inwardly. She really
was
acting petulant! “Has Wren scryed you?” she asked, as once again clapping broke out from the seated courtiers.

Teressa’s namesake, Teressa Kaledd of Tamsal, had won. The queen waved at the young courtier enjoying her first season, who grinned and waved triumphantly back.

“Wren scryed me the night of your masquerade.” Tyron’s brows contracted. “It was a little strange. Cut short. But she said she was safe, and I was monitoring the ballroom, if you remember. So I didn’t scry her back.”

Teressa suppressed the impulse to scowl, and kept her face smooth, her smile steady. “Has she scryed you since?”

Tyron looked surprised. “What for? She said she was safe.”

Teressa’s lips parted, and though she still kept her social smile in place, she gave a tiny sigh. “But if it was cut short—”

“Probably means someone came up behind her. You know we don’t travel as mages. Scrying is not a common sight among ordinary folk.”

Teressa rubbed her forehead, wishing she didn’t feel so tense. The sun seemed too bright, the wind too strong, and the noise intolerable, but she had to sit there and smile and pretend to have fun. The court season had begun, and she was its center. Everybody looked her way, she could feel it. “I’m worried. That’s all.” She moved her lips as little as possible.

Tyron said, “Wren is a journeymage. Part of their project is to take care of themselves while they accomplish it. She scryed that night because I’d asked her to, not because it was necessary.”

Teressa snapped, “Oh. So when Orin finally goes on her journeymage trip, and finds reason to scry you every night, will you remind her it’s not necessary?”

Tyron’s eyes widened in blank surprise. “What’s this discussion really about? If you think the Magic School is not adequately preparing our students, maybe you should talk to Master Halfrid.”

“It’s not about anything.” Petulant again! “I have a headache.” Her jaw ached from the effort it took to keep that smile in place.

Tyron’s brow cleared into instant concern. “Do you? Shall I get you some listerblossom tea?”

Teressa clenched her hands in her lap. “Please.”

He ran lightly down the steps and strode away toward the cook tent, his white mage robe tunic flapping around his long legs, but somehow he did not look the least ridiculous.

She watched him go, fighting tears of anger and remorse. Hawk was here because she had willed it so, despite everyone’s advice; Wren was gone because she couldn’t keep her temper; and for the first time, ever, she couldn’t discuss any of it with Tyron, who was supposed to be her chief counselor.

At about the same time that Tyron was bringing the tea back, Wren, Patka, and the boys lay miserably in the dark, stuffy space where they had been dumped.

For the longest time all Wren heard were distant shouts, clangs, bangs, groaning and creakings of ship timbers, and the whoosh and splash of water against the hull somewhere near her feet. They’d been dropped in a pile; as the ship rolled, they worked their way apart, mostly squirming like worms, for whoever had nabbed them had wrapped them thoroughly in canvas and rope.

“We’ve been boomed!” Lambin said mournfully.

“Boomed?” Wren asked, though it was hard to speak, what with the folds of mildewed canvas on her face, bound tightly by rope. Her voice sounded muffled even in her own ears.

Patka also sounded muffled. “Booms are how you get things up and down. I guess you’ll be finding out soon. Too soon.”

And Lambin added, sadly, “Boomed means you’ve been grabbed, not hired. All you’ll get is hard work, the rope’s end, and more work.”

“But we never signed on! Surely we can report that as soon as we reach land.”

“Won’t reach land any time soon,” Thad muttered.

Lambin added, “And if we do, and say we came from Fil Gaen, they won’t do anything because everyone knows Fil Gaen has the press.”

“Press?” Wren repeated, thinking of grape presses.

“Im-press-ment,” Patka said slowly. “When the harbor guard sweep the streets after the midnight bells, and anyone out drunk can be caught up, thrown in the cart, and handed off to any captain wanting hands enough to pay the fee. Some hard captains never get enough crew. Or keep ‘em. They like the press.”

Lambin added, “Harbor likes the press because it keeps order.”

They fell silent, listening to the creak of masts under a press of sail, and the rumble of feet overhead.

“But we weren’t out after midnight. Nor were we drunk.” Wren hesitated, unsure about reporting to the others what she’d overheard.

“Try telling the Harbormaster that,” Lambin said. “Even if we could get back. Who’s to say different?”

Thad muttered, “Whoever grabbed us probably has a deal going with someone. Maybe the Harbormaster’s office even knows about it, if they get their share.”

Patka spoke up. “So much for Dad’s advice, stick together.”

“At least it’s not pirates,” Danal said.

“You think,” Thad said sourly, and no one had an answer to that.

Wren slept fitfully—hungry, hot, thirsty, worried as she was.

She woke when someone bumped against her.

A hatch banged, then a deep, hoarse female voice said something cheerily in Dock Talk. The only word Wren recognized was “slubs,” which was a general term for sailors at the very lowest rank, and an insult, Patka and the boys had assured her.

A strong hand flipped Wren over, and presently the tight bonds eased. She fought her way out of the canvas. Cold air met her face, smelling of old wood, fish, and brine, but after the suffocating canvas it was welcome.

A male voice repeated something in Dock Talk, as someone yanked her upright. By the light of a lantern swinging in a stout middle-aged woman’s hand, Wren could see they had been stuffed into what she’d learn was a smuggler’s hole under the forepeak of a brig. She couldn’t stand upright, for the bowsprit slanted directly overhead, making the narrow compartment even smaller. No surface was flat, not even the decking under her feet, which slanted down toward the hatch.

“Here’s our dunnage, mates,” Patka translated as a tall, scrawny man finished cutting the boys free.

The man’s long, gnarled hand indicated the point of the forepeak, where someone had thrown all their knapsacks. Wren grabbed hers.

“We’re to follow ‘em to crew berthing,” Patka said. “And I guess we’re on watch now. They’ll want to see what we can do.”

Wren snorted.
I’ll show you what I can do, all right
. But she remembered she was supposed to solve her problems without magic, if possible.

Magic.

She sneaked a glance at Patka, who was tying up her short, curly hair into a brightly embroidered kerchief. When she saw Wren’s gaze, she said, “I wager anything I’ll be put to work under the cook. My kerchiefs keep my hair out of my eyes, and out of the food.”

“Stop that gabble and come on,” the sailor ordered.

They were taken down a narrow gangway lined with neatly stacked barrels and other cargo or supplies, and then to another hatchway with a ladder leading down below the waterline.

They stepped into a hot, stuffy space lined with hammocks. Most sailors sleeping in them, their belongings neatly stowed along the curve of the hull below the swinging forms.

Wren and her friends were led all the way forward, to what was obviously the worst place in the crew berth, as it was small, stuffy, and farthest from the hatch. Here the woman gestured with her lantern. Wren followed the motions of the others and secured her hammock to a pair of hooks, despite the flickering lighting and the suffocating air.

She had just a moment to fling her knapsack on her hammock before it was time to go topside. The woman barked questions at Patka, who answered in Dock Talk, her tone flat.

They climbed up the ladder to the deck above, but before Wren could follow the boys, Patka caught her arm and jerked her head in another direction. They picked their way over stacks of supplies to a small room that was far hotter than the stuffy berth below, smelling of cabbage, garlic, and leeks.

“Galley.” Patka pointed at a cook and a helper standing over big cauldrons, stirring. Great clouds of steam rose from the cauldrons. “Let’s see if I can get ye in with me.”

“Sure. But I don’t know anything about cookery,” Wren said, and Patka grinned.

“Oh, you won’t be cooking. But still, it’s better than being forced up into the topsails when you’re still a landhugger.”

The cook, a big, tough older man, scowled at them and snapped an order in Dock Talk.

Sure enough, Wren soon stood at the cauldron, stirring a huge pot of oatmeal.

“Welcome to adventure,” she muttered.

Her first watch seemed interminable.

The second was worse.

‘Watches’ turned out to be exactly half a day. That meant at dawn the mate of the day watch began by turning them all out of their hammocks if they weren’t already awake. ‘Turning out’ as in tipping the hammock so Wren thumped onto the deck, to the sound of laughter from crew members wrestling into their clothes nearby.

“Up and out or you’ll get the rope’s end to wake ya!”

That much she understood by the third day.

By the fourth she understood that a brig was a type of trading ship, and that this one was called the
Sandskeet
.

Wren slept in her clothes, too tired to undress in the dark, so she was first out the of the stuffy, hot crew berth and into the hot, steamy galley.

There she chopped, peeled, kneaded, stirred, and baked all day, broken only by the “All hands on deck!” cry, which meant racing up to the deck, no matter what the weather was, and pulling hard on various ropes.

Her watch was supposed to be over at sunset, which would have been bearable—except for that “All hands!” cry. When the captain wanted
all
hands
that meant everyone, not just the sailors on the deck. And so far it had happened at least once a night, always after she’d fallen into exhausted sleep.