Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (31 page)

He slowed as a new thought struck him. Aldabreshi had no more use for the mainland’s deities than he did but they wouldn’t risk this perilous voyage crossing the days of open water between the Archipelago and the mainland at the mercy of winter weather without favourable omens and the unequivocal urging of their stars.

Corrain began walking more swiftly, tallying up the days it must take to row from Jagai. That great galley would be their slowest vessel, making a mockery of the triremes’ swiftness. These ships would be crewed by free oarsmen besides, insofar as any Aldabreshin was truly free with his life at the mercy of his warlord’s whim. So they wouldn’t be flogged into rowing to exhaustion as the corsairs had whipped their slaves. Corrain’s shoulders tensed at the memory of the overseer’s lash biting into his own flesh.

A great galley might make thirty leagues a day, he calculated, allowing for the need for halts and to take on water for the thirsty rowers while daylight lasted. He ground his teeth. When he visited this Master Olved to send word home to Halferan, he would ask Kusint to make it his business to find out which Caladhrian lords had chosen to profit by allowing this Aldabreshin flotilla to make landfall on their coasts and replenish its supplies. But that could wait for Caladhria’s next parliament.

In the meantime, he guessed that these Jagai ships had left their home domain sixteen or so days ago. A moment’s thought told Corrain that the Lesser Moon would have been waning and Greater waxing, both a couple of days from their half. Any guard captain worth his rank planned journeys, winter or summer, knowing if the nights ahead offered any chance of safe travel or if dusk must see travel curtailed.

That was all well and good but Corrain had no idea where the constellations which the Aldabreshi looked to for guidance might be amid their heavenly compass’s precisely delineated arcs, still less the jewel-coloured wandering stars.

He would have to ask Hosh that evening. Corrain had never imagined he’d have cause to be grateful for the boy’s fascination with Archipelagan superstition but he wouldn’t scorn to make use of it now.

He frowned as he walked on. Omens would have told the Aldabreshi when to set sail but portents alone wouldn’t have prompted this unseasonal voyage all the way to Col. Relshaz was the closest port with far longer-standing ties to the Archipelago if the Jagai warlord had some urgent business with the mainland.

What had the northernmost Aldabreshi made of the uproar in Relshaz over the winter festival? Corrain knew that Archipelagan merchants who over-wintered in the river-flanked city tended island-hatched courier doves to send news south. Information was traded and valued across the domains as readily as anything else.

Perhaps he could work backwards from whatever the lad Estry was able to tell him of the Archipelagans’ purpose in Col, like a huntsman divining some pursuit and struggle from paw and hoof prints in the mud and tufts of fur caught on twigs and brambles.

Meantime, Corrain paused to take his bearings. How far was he from Casiter’s Library and the tavern where this Soluran was breakfasting with these unknown mentors? He reminded himself to make sure that Hosh asked Master Garewin who the men were and what they might want with this traveller. Most particularly, what business would they have with an aetheric adept?

He gazed up at the building looming over him, its brickwork as black as the livery worn by the swordsmen and women guarding its gates. The masonry was banded with white bricks, reminiscent of their sashes and gloves. From The Goose Hounds’ tapster’s description, this must be this Court of the Prefecture.

As the amiable man had explained, as well as watching over the libraries, and enforcing good order and discipline among the students, the University Prefects safeguarded the ever-lengthening rolls of parchment recording the names of each mentor formally sealed to each school of study. Their ledgers recorded students’ arrivals and departures of at each summer or winter solstice, and whether or not they had completed the requisite studies to satisfy their mentor’s inquisition. Only then would that mentor press his or her seal ring in the wax on the bottom of the letter to the Prefecture which would win the student a silver ring of their own, identifying them lifelong as a scholar of Col.

So that meant Casiter’s Library was only a short distance. Corrain curbed his pace and looked down the length of the broad street to see three taverns close at hand where students and mentors could work up a thirst debating or wash away the dust from pages of ancient learning. The furthest away was indeed The Black Donkey, according to the writing on the front wall and the carved and painted beast of burden up on the porch roof for those who couldn’t read.

That’s where Estry had told him the Soluran and his two companions should be settled. Corrain wasn’t about to risk going inside and have the Soluran recognise him. He was still less prepared to have the man look into his innermost thoughts again. Now the man would learn of the wizard Olved’s note and of this apothecary who was helping Hosh. Corrain didn’t know what the Soluran might do with that information but as the tapster had said Col’s scholars swore, all knowledge was power in the right place and at the right time.

So how could he find out what the Soluran and these mentors were discussing? Corrain walked slowly towards the tavern. Well short of the front windows overlooking the street, Corrain ducked down an alley way. As he’d surmised, it led to the back yard. Better yet, a sullen old man was winching a heavy bucket up from the well.

Corrain leaned on the gate post. ‘Can I offer you a hand with that?’

The dotard glared suspiciously. ‘Why would you be so helpful?’

Corrain showed him a copper penny. ‘So you can be helpful to me.’

The old man rested his none-too-substantial weight on the winding handle to stop the bucket plunging back down into the water. ‘If you want an arse for rent try closer to the docks.’

Corrain raised his eyebrows. ‘You rent out your arse?’

‘No, I do not!’ The old man was so affronted he took a wavering stride, raising bony and age-spotted fists. Unfortunately that loosed the bucket to crash down the well.

‘Good to know. Any fool can earn a few coppers dropping his breeches and bending over.’ Corrain strode into the yard and began winching the bucket back up before the old man could finish his startled curses. ‘I’m looking for someone with the wits to earn a few silver pennies with his eyes and ears.’

He soon had the full bucket winched back to the top and pulled it safely onto the brick lip. The dotard reached for the rope handle. Corrain refused to relinquish it.

‘There’s a Soluran in your tavern this morning, a traveller who’s met up with some scholars. I’d like to know what they’re talking about.’

‘That’s worth a silver penny?’ The old man eyed him, suspicious but equally coveting his coin.

‘Copper for you to try.’ Corrain set the bucket down on the paving. ‘Silver depends on what you tell me.’

The old man snatched the copper penny and his wrinkled face broke into a toothless smile. ‘Let’s see.’

He disappeared through the tavern’s back door. Corrain looked down at the bucket of water. Wasn’t the old man supposed to be carrying that into the kitchen?

The dotard reappeared with a log basket. ‘You wait there, Master.’

Chuckling with glee at his own cunning, the old man filled the basket with neatly split logs from the wood store.

Now Corrain was worried that the old fool would give the game away entirely, rousing the Soluran’s suspicions. What would the adept see if he used his aetheric magic to look into the dotard’s addled thoughts? Would he see Corrain as clearly as the old man had just seen him in the yard? Or would he only learn that some unknown man was unaccountably curious about what was being said in this taproom?

How did Artifice work? Would Mentor Garewin be willing to explain something of its mysteries? Would Corrain understand if he did, and anyway, would such understanding be of any practical use?

Corrain paced back and forth in the empty yard. When the tavern’s back door opened again, he was ready to leave if some other lackey or maid appeared. To his relief, it was just the old man.

‘Well?’ Corrain slapped the purse hidden inside his doublet, to encourage the old man with the clink of coin.

The dotard squinted at Corrain. ‘I don’t know if it’s worth coin to you, Master, but that Soluran, he doesn’t like wizards.’ He shook his balding head, puzzled. ‘Though I don’t see what Solura’s troubles with Mandarkin have to do with us in Col.’

‘Doesn’t like wizards or doesn’t trust them?’ Corrain took the bucket from the old man and carried it to the kitchen door for him.

‘Doesn’t trust them, and doesn’t reckon anyone else should either.’ The dotard’s frown deepened the wrinkles carved across his forehead. ‘Where do you suppose mages get their coin? Can they truly draw silver and gold out of the ground with their magic and stamp out gold marks with their hands?’

‘That sounds like a nursery tale to me. But your trouble’s worth a silver penny—’ though Corrain held the coin well out of the old man’s reach for the moment ‘—as long as you don’t tell anyone I was asking after that Soluran.’

‘How could I tell anyone who you might be?’ the dotard asked, guileless. ‘I don’t know your name and with my eyes so bad, I wouldn’t know you again if we met on the street.’

‘Quite so.’ Corrain let him have the coin and walked briskly out of the yard.

Now he would find somewhere with a clear view of the tavern’s frontage until the Soluran left. Then he would see where the man went next and who he met. If he could, he’d find out how the Soluran steered their conversation.

Corrain wasn’t about to assume that the Soluran was only in Col to stir up mistrust of magecraft. As he’d told Reven more than once, one man’s word was only as good as the second or third man or woman saying the same. More than that, Corrain wanted to know what the Soluran’s purpose in spreading such unease might be.

There was no point in calling on the wizard Olved with only half a story. Corrain wanted to be able to tell the Archmage what the Soluran was up to as well as whatever Estry might have learned to explain the Archipelagan ships’ unexpected arrival, as well as telling Abiath and Lady Zurenne how Mentor Garewin’s healing efforts were progressing.

Though Corrain decided, he wouldn’t trouble Lady Zurenne with any mention of the Aldabreshin ships. If they were already in Col, hopefully they had passed by the Caladhrian coast without raising undue alarm.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Halferan Manor, Caladhria

31st of Aft-Winter

Z
URENNE LOOKED UP
from the great hall’s steps as Linset shouted from his vantage point up in the gatehouse’s turret. The gusting wind snatched away his words but his waving was clear enough. He had seen the Archipelagans approaching through the dusk.

‘Mama?’ Ilysh turned to her, shivering and not from the chill wind. ‘When will Madam Jilseth arrive? Do you think she will bring news from Corrain today? Do you think anything has befallen him and Hosh in Col?’

‘Jilseth assured us they had arrived safely,’ Zurenne reminded her daughter. ‘They must simply be busy. Mending poor Hosh’s face cannot be a simple business.’

She smiled though truth be told, Zurenne was wracked with apprehension. Why hadn’t Corrain visited the wizard whom Jilseth had promised would bespeak her and Ilysh by means of the Archmage’s pendants? What would he say when she confessed to allowing Aldabreshi barbarians on Halferan land?