Dangerous Waters (7 page)

‘You don’t think wizards tempted to turn renegade should learn of Minelas’s fate?’ Jilseth countered. ‘To convince them that playing that particular game is never worth the cost of the candles?’

‘Perhaps.’ The Archmage’s sudden smile deepened the fine wrinkles around his eyes. ‘I don’t have all the answers. I can only follow the safest path I see.’

He shrugged. ‘In the event, Minelas’s magic didn’t affect the outcome of any battles and the duchess had truly repented of her monstrous bargain before you had to threaten her with my wrath.’

He raised a hand before Jilseth could respond. ‘On the other side of these scales, I cannot believe that Sorgrad will stand idly by and let me chastise Litasse, even if I could devise a suitable punishment. What then? The authority of my office will hardly be enhanced by a squabble with a rebellious mage over an ignorant girl. I certainly couldn’t let such defiance go unpunished, so would you have me impose my authority by killing him?’

‘It wouldn’t come to that!’ But even as she protested, Jilseth recalled Sorgrad’s unyielding will.

‘How could it not?’ Planir demanded. ‘If my authority is undermined by Sorgrad’s defiance, my authority over all wizards is weakened, in the eyes of mageborn and mundane alike.

‘What follows from that?’ he challenged her. ‘Some baron or prince claiming authority over a wizard who’s settled in his lands? Those who rule on the mainland only accept that Hadrumal alone has the right to discipline wizards as long as Hadrumal is deemed capable of keeping renegades in check.’

‘No mage would submit to such authority,’ Jilseth said slowly. ‘No noble could imagine they would. Hadrumal alone governs wizards because Hadrumal alone has the power to.’

‘I wish I shared your confidence that good sense would prevail,’ Planir said drily. ‘I find it all too easy to imagine some bumptious lordling clashing with a barely trained mage who lets his temper get the better of him. What then? If I must see that foolish wizard hanged for some inadvertent murder, I might just as well have killed Sorgrad in the first place.’

He shook his head. ‘Never mind how ill either death would sit with the other mages of Hadrumal. Consider what the mainland populace would make of an Archmage striking down one of his own. They wouldn’t be reassured. They’d be terrified. Those generations when mages were feared, the mageborn shunned, even murdered for fear of magical tyranny, those days may be long past but they’re not forgotten. Chimney corner tales and tavern songs still recall the fiery death of Lady Shress and the foolish ambition of Frelt of Algeral that laid waste to the Hecksen demesne.’

Jilseth wished she could protest but in good conscience, she couldn’t. All Hadrumal’s apprentices learned the litany of the dead, disgraced and mad from the days before Trydek’s decrees. They fervently agreed they would never become so arrogant, so deluded, that their names would become such a byword for wizardly folly.

Planir gestured to the trees planted along the garden’s enclosing walls. Stirring from their winter torpor, the barren twigs were budding.

‘Who would sell us apples, pears and quinces if Hadrumal was feared and loathed? Archmage Trydek found us this sanctuary where we can grow life’s necessities but I prefer to enjoy those luxuries which trade with our neighbours brings. So let’s be content that this Lescari upheaval is subsiding without tangling Hadrumal in its coils.’

Jilseth’s lips narrowed. ‘Sorgrad will think he’s got away with his insolence.’ She wondered why Planir had sent her hunting for him, Minelas, and any other mage even slightly involved in Lescar’s revolution, if he wasn’t going to act on what she discovered.

‘Does that matter,’ the Archmage asked lightly, ‘if we’re the only ones who know? If there’s one thing that Sorgrad can do, it’s keep a secret.’

Jilseth shook her head in silent disagreement before trying another line of attack. ‘What of Minelas’s previous treachery in Caladhria? Hiring himself out to fight the corsairs and then taking the enemy’s coin too?’

‘Once again, I ask where’s the profit in poking that sleeping snake with a stick?’ Planir shook his head. ‘Baron Halferan paid for that recklessness with his life, so there’s no penalty I could impose on him. If there was any sign that his neighbours were tempted to follow in his footsteps, then we would assuredly revisit the matter. Until then?’ The Archmage shrugged. ‘What’s done is done.’

The five bells of midday sounded from the towers some distance away in the heart of Hadrumal. As the peals subsided, the Archmage followed the gravelled path between the low hedges separating the plots. ‘We should get back before we’re missed.’

Jilseth followed, silently exasperated. In her firmly considered opinion, the mageborn of Hadrumal should know of Minelas’s crimes, and know that such crimes didn’t escape the Archmage’s notice.

As they reached the gate that forbade the ignorant access to the garden and its perilous plants, Planir turned. ‘I know that some of your peers saw fit to mock you, when your lodestone magic was unable to find Minelas last summer, until we picked up his scent in Relshaz. Do you want them to know what happened in Lescar to restore your reputation?’

Jilseth swallowed hard. ‘I don’t believe so, Archmage.’

Was that really true? She hoped it was. All the same, now that Planir had challenged her, Jilseth was forced to admit that she would like to see some of her contemporaries choke on their insincere commiserations for the failure of her magecraft.

The Archmage grinned at her. ‘Never fear. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to show Ely and Galen that they’d be fools to underestimate you. For the moment, let’s be glad that neither Minelas nor Sorgrad has mired Hadrumal in scandal and enjoy the festival. Will you be dancing this evening? At Hiwan’s Hall or Wellery’s?’ The Archmage gestured and metal whispered across metal as the gate unlocked.

‘At the Terrene Hall, Archmage.’ Once through, Jilseth relocked it with a touch of her own earth magic before following Planir through the shadowed alley.

The Spring Equinox festival had yet to get underway in this artisans’ quarter. Housewives were busy in their kitchens preparing the first of the five days’ feasts. Carpenters and joiners, weavers and shoemakers were tidying away their tools and any half-finished commissions. Children stayed prudently quiet, for fear of provoking parental wrath before the holiday’s treats appeared.

Planir and Jilseth left the warren of workshops and humble dwellings that lay between the wizard city itself and the quays and boatyards that framed the modest river’s estuary. They walked towards the lofty towers on the flagstone path alongside the masterfully crafted road. Hadrumal’s labourers took no less pride in their endeavours than the island’s scholars.

As the high road followed the gentle slope of the land, imposing buildings soon obscured the view of the green hills at the heart of the island. That was where the stone to make them had been quarried, so Jilseth had learned from her mageborn grandmother.

Scudding clouds obscured the sun and the commanding façades faded from gold to grey before brightening again as the shadows passed. No two buildings were alike; some were stern with narrow, angular windows squinting defiance at the weather, others were flattered by arches softening their doors and stone tracery decorating their windows. Some long-dead wizards had even been seduced by the florid excesses of High Tormalin style, bequeathing edifices embellished with frivolous carved swags and cornices. Together, Jilseth’s grandmother said, Hadrumal’s halls offered the finest history of architecture through the twenty generations since the first Archmage, Trydek, sought sanctuary on the island.

That sanctuary was now truly a city. Orderly quadrangles accommodated those apprenticed to master mages and magewomen. Towers offered more eminent wizards a refuge from their pupils’ chatter and, so it was always claimed, a clearer perspective on the mysteries of magic through their unobstructed views of the island and the sky and sea beyond.

Along the high road, merchants and tradesmen had long since claimed whatever space originally separated those havens of wizardly learning. Today the wine shops and bakeries were crowded with prentices and pupils enjoying the festival respite from their studies. Accents and fashions from every mainland realm mingled with the subtly different dress and dialect that marked out the Hadrumal-born.

A wine seller stepped out of his doorway to hail the Archmage. ‘Master Planir!’

‘Master Noak.’ The Archmage inclined his head in amiable greeting.

‘I have some cases of that Trokain vintage,’ the wine merchant confided.

‘Excellent.’

‘Archmage?’ A stout man emerged from a pie shop. His festival finery was fresh from the tailor, in sharp contrast to Planir’s shabbiness. ‘Madam Jilseth.’ He seemed less than pleased to see her.

‘Hearth Master Kalion.’ She greeted him politely before acknowledging his slender companion with a cool nod of her head. ‘Ely. What a pleasant surprise.’

The elegant magewoman in sage-green draperies scowled. Before she could find some reply to Jilseth’s veiled sarcasm, the Hearth Master spoke.

‘Archmage, forgive me,’ he said curtly. ‘I know it is festival time but we must discuss this latest news from the mainland.’

‘By all means.’ Planir sat on the wine shop’s window ledge, tucking his hands into his breeches’ pockets. ‘What news in particular?’

Kalion narrowed his eyes, exasperated. ‘Not here in the high road.’

‘As you wish.’ Planir stood up and smiled at the wine seller. ‘I’ll call back later, Noak. Fair festival to you and yours, and don’t sell all the Trokain.’

‘Trokain vintages?’ Kalion was momentarily distracted. ‘Of which Emperor?’

‘Bezaemar the Generous,’ the wine seller said promptly.

Planir grinned. ‘Why don’t we discuss these urgent matters over a glass, Kalion?’

‘It will be my honour to serve you,’ the wine seller offered at once. ‘In the rear parlour?’

Jilseth could see this was far from what Kalion wanted but the Archmage had already entered the wine shop, following Master Noak towards the rear door. She glimpsed men and women already in there sat on either side of white raven boards, playing the strategy game that so many found enthralling.

She had never seen the appeal of either challenge; capturing the solitary white bird with an assortment of other forest fowl, or escaping those painted figurines shifted turn by turn by the player seeking to trap the fugitive raven amid wooden trees and thickets. Jilseth would rather read a book offering some insight into her wizardry.

The flame-embroidered hem of Kalion’s red velvet mantle thrashed eloquently around his polished boots as he followed the Archmage.

‘You don’t need to wait.’ Spurning Jilseth with a shrug of her shoulder Ely hurried inside. She quickly took a stool at the counter where Master Noak’s daughters were serving dishes of wafer cakes.

Jilseth wasn’t about to be dismissed so easily. She followed and took the next seat. ‘It’s been a good while since breakfast and it’s longer till dinner. I’ll have two of those and a glass of Ferl River red, if you please.’ She nodded at the coarser wafers, spiced with caraway and topped with slices of mutton boiled in verjuice and wine.

Ely had already opted for sweet wafers with honey and almonds, spread with fresh curd cheese. She looked sideways at Jilseth, finely plucked brows drawn into a disapproving line. ‘You’re spending a great deal of time with the Archmage.’ Her insinuation was clear.

‘He’s not ploughing my furrow, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Jilseth already suspected it was Ely spreading such gossip. ‘Any more than you’re quenching the Hearth Master’s poker.’

Let Ely reflect on that; she wasn’t the only one who could loose a rumour in Hadrumal. Not that Jilseth had any interest in such tittle-tattle. Nor was she interested in luring any bed mate, man or woman, from the Archmage down. Jilseth’s abiding fascination with her element left no time for such trifling. Why couldn’t people believe that?

Ely coloured with indignation. ‘No one would ever suspect me of playing Galen false.’

‘Of course not.’ Jilseth sipped her wine. That was true, and was also why any ribald speculation about Ely was entirely centred on why such a lissom and lovely magewoman remained so devoted to a stolid bore like Galen.

Entertaining as it was to repay Ely for her spite, Jilseth was more interested in what the Hearth Master might be saying to Planir. With the door to the rear parlour half-open, she could see them sitting with their heads close together, their expressions serious.

Unfortunately all she could hear was two newly arrived apprentice wizards, each one trying to explain their imperfect understanding of their own affinity to the other. The girl had caused chaos in a village bake house when the oven fire had roared in sympathy with her anger at a schoolmate’s treachery in kissing a boy whom they both adored. The youth had found his temper summoning up a coil of air to throw his brother so hard against their bedroom wall that his ribs had cracked along with the plaster. Both were equally desperate to learn how to turn their unsuspected magebirth into proper magecraft, and then to learn the more complex wizardry enabling them to command the other elements.

‘Do you know what particular news from the mainland concerns the Hearth Master?’ Jilseth chewed a mouthful of mutton and spiced wafer.

Ely took a swallow of straw-coloured wine. ‘I know a good many mages think it’s well past time for Planir to give up the office of Stone Master. The office of Archmage was always intended to stand apart from the Masters and Mistresses of Element.’

Jilseth wondered if Ely was deliberately changing the subject or if she didn’t know what Kalion sought with Planir. For the present, she had no objection to discussing this recurrent topic of conversation around Hadrumal.

‘When Planir finds a mage with an earth affinity strong enough, and the strength of character to meet the office’s challenges, I’ve no doubt he’ll propose a candidate to the Council.’

And that won’t be Galen, she thought silently. Ely’s lover might have substantial talents, Jilseth readily acknowledged that, but he had no imagination when it came to exploring earth magic and scant feeling for other people’s sensibilities. That alone would make him a disaster in high office. If Ely was hoping for influence through his advancement instead of her own, she was doomed to disappointment.