The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  “So he ‘provided,’” Sarra said with a smile.

  “Easy enough, with money,” Val muttered, attacking a sausage with his fork. “Times are bad. Between taxes and trade quotas. . . .”

  “Quotas?” Sarra blinked over her tea mug. “What do you mean?”

  Alin heaved a sigh and shook his blond head. “Now you’ve done it. Never ask a Maurgen about trade.”

  Valirion spared him a glance before launching into his explanation. “The Waste doesn’t have a local government, Sarra, not like the other Shirs. We have a Council seat and the proper number of Assembly members, but that’s pretty meaningless. It’s the Web that runs everything.”

  “That’s true all over Lenfell,” she pointed out.

  “Not like here. Our Trade Web isn’t run by a family or group of families with holdings in The Waste. It’s all outsiders. Take the Maurgen Tannery. We sell leather to cobblers, glovemakers, saddlers, and so on. The rest goes to the Trade Web. A deal is made with another Shir in exchange for something we can’t produce here. The Web returns profit from the leather in cash, so we can buy tools, hire more workers, pay into the Dower Fund.”

  Sarra didn’t see the difficulty. “So you get rid of the surplus that the local crafters can’t use. That’s how trade works, Val.”

  Alin gave a complex snort as Val continued, “You think Web quotas are optional? Say the Obreic Cobblery gets an order for special boots to outfit Brogdenguard miners, and wants to buy every scrap of leather the Maurgens can make. Too bad! We must fill our quota, even though the price the Web gets might be less than that offered by the Obreics.”

  “And we never see the profits,” Alin added. “There’re salaries for Web officers, payments to port authorities, tariffs—”

  “—and the inevitable bribes,” Elomar finished for him.

  Val nodded. “Besides, the Web has first call. Nothing left over? Too bad! Rotten year and you can’t make quota? The difference is added to next year, or you make it up in cash. Some families owe two or three years on their quotas.”

  “Or more,” Alin said. “Remember when the Oslir Glassworks blew up in ’64? I heard in Ryka that Jaym tried to sell himself to Scraller for money enough to rebuild.” Hastily, he added, “He didn’t. His grandmother found out.”

  “We were at school together,” Val said, looking sick.

  Sarra felt the same after this tutorial in the school of specific example. Of the associated evils, strangled trade, theft, embezzlement, and bribery were the least. Daughters sold to unwanted husbands for the dowry; sons unhusbanded for lack of funds; women and men working like slaves for little or no return; women and men who sold themselves as slaves because they had no other choice.

  And all while others grew rich off the corruption.

  Lusira Garvedian had charged her to do something. As she finished her tea, she added the economics of The Waste to her ever-lengthening list of Things To Do Something About.

  Elomar Adennos correctly read her expression. “Right Lenfell’s wrongs once you’re in a position to do so, Sarra. At the moment, we have an appointment that I hope will help get you there.”

  Val had sold the horses to a Vekke cousin, so the four walked from the inn to the prosperous district of Combel, near the main circle with its temple to Gorynel the Compassionate. Sarra glimpsed the small stand of the Saint’s thorn trees in the middle of the circle and the domed sanctuary rising beyond. Anywhere else, there would have been gilding and glass and carvings. Here, where acid storms blew in at least twice a year, decoration was folly. And in that necessarily plain, unornamented facade, Sarra saw a problem that no one could solve: the ancient and continuing devastation of The Waste.

  Or—perhaps she was wrong. Magic had done this. Perhaps magic might undo it. She added that to her ever-lengthening discussion with Gorynel Desse.

  The Bower of the Mask (“Truth or lie, lie or truth/Ladder made in Maidil’s youth”), though a licensed and elegant establishment, reminded her of her experience in Pinderon. She was older now; she did not blush. But surely such display of masculine charm this early in the morning bordered on the indecent.

  The bower mistress evidently had a mania for black and white. Across a broad floor of chessboard tiles were scattered a dozen languid lounge chairs, in whose black or white depths a dozen young men were draped in various states of black or white undress. Dark-skinned boys in white robes; blonds in black longvests open to the waist; muscular youths in mists of white trimmed in black beads. All faces were hiden behind long-handled masks, features painted black and white, with dangling ribbons tied loosely about their wrists.

  Sarra told herself to think like Imilial Gorrst: this was a restaurant and the men were on the menu. She assumed her role was potential customer, with Elomar in Orlin’s part. All Val had said was, “Follow my lead.” Sarra called up her best dimples, tried to look charmed, and waited for a lead to follow.

  The bower mistress, wearing a gown that matched her floor, took one look at her guests and shrieked. “Valirion! Where have you been, you naughty boy?”

  Val kissed both lacquered cheeks. “Lovelier than ever, Domna!” He tore off his coif, unbuttoned his longvest, and shooed a sulky bower lad off a black velvet chair. Sinking into it, he went on, “Lost some weight, changed your hair—”

  The walking chessboard was still scolding. “If only I’d made you sign a contract! One week you were here—one week—and my customers have been heartbroken ever since!”

  “I got a better offer,” said Val.

  Sarra sneaked a quick glance at Alin. He stood beside Adennos, stone-faced.

  “I’ll match it—I’ll double it!”

  “Not even you could do that, Domna.”

  And that, Sarra thought with a smile, was for his Alin-O.

  “Tell you what, though,” Val added, “I’m in the mood for a little party.” He waved an idle hand at his companions. “Is the Plum Room available?”

  “For you, certainly—and at a discount, if you’ll take on just one client.”

  Val winked. “Not even tempted, Domna darling. The Plum Room, regular rates, until tomorrow morning.”

  She chewed her lip, then nodded. “Oh, very well. But out by Sixth, I’ve a special client tomorrow night and the room will need a thorough cleaning once you’ve finished with it.” She pinched him affectionately on the ear. “Will you need any of the boys?”

  Several looked hopeful. Several looked at Sarra. One looked at Alin—who gave him a look to freeze a volcano.

  “No, but thanks all the same. I’ve got a few more friends coming later. Be sweet to them, sweetcheeks. They’re shy.”

  “Ah. Of course. Well, then come upstairs, my fine Wastrel cockie, and let’s get you men and your lovely little Domna settled in.”

  Five minutes later they were inside a room remarkable for being exactly as advertised. Walls, rugs, curtains, bedclothes, bedstead, goblets and wine pitcher on a marble table—it was all decorated with motifs of plump, succulent plums. And it was all purple. The sensation of being inside a fruit pie was multiplied a hundredfold by two walls of mirrors and another on the ceiling over the biggest bed Sarra had ever seen in her life.

  “Geridon’s Holy Stones,” Val muttered. “She hasn’t changed a thing.”

  Alin, turning from contemplating a purple ceramic figurine of naked lovers, asked mildly, “Since when? Oh—since you made the sacrifice of spending a week here to establish your credentials?”

  “Don’t start,” Sarra ordered. “Alin, where’s the Ladder?”

  “Through there.” He pointed to a half-open door. “It’s just a closet.”

  “‘Just’?” Val snorted. “In the Bower of the Mask, Alin-O, nothing is ever ‘just’ anything.”

  “You should know,” his cousin shot back.

  “I said don’t,” Sarra repeated. “Be jealous on your own time, Alin.”

  “He�
�s not jealous,” Val said. “He’s envious.”

  “I suggest you take the Lady’s advice,” said Elomar. He stood before a bay window paned in lilac-tinted glass. “We have visitors.”

  Sarra parted two panels of lavender lace drapery. In the street below she saw four cloaked, hooded figures slinking through the bright sunshine.

  “In this case,” the Healer remarked, “‘shy’ translates as ‘nervous.’”

  “They’re practically begging people to notice them,” she agreed.

  “You be sweet, too, Sarra.” Val stood at her shoulder. “They weren’t supposed to arrive before noon. Something must’ve happened.”

  She looked up at him. “And what, precisely, did you have in mind to do until noon?”

  “Well . . . this room has some interesting possibilities.” Then he shrugged an apology. “My mother’d ship my hide to the tannery with me still in it, the manners I’ve used around you. But, truly told, you said you’d love a bath. It’s down the hall.”

  She could just imagine.

  Up the side alley privy stair came the four Mages. Elomar welcomed them, then performed quick introductions. “Scholar Mage Sirralin Mossen, her son Prentice Tiron Mossen. Healer Mage Truan Halvos. Prentice Keler Neffe.”

  They, too, were a trifle off their manners—Truan Halvos because he was utterly mortified at being inside a bower for the first time in his sixty-plus years. He twitched every time his dark glower alighted on some new purple perversion. Sarra kept her face sternly composed—a task made more difficult by the look on Tiron Mossen’s fifteen-year-old face. A slack-jawed stare around the Plum Room left the boy quite simply stunned. Brown eyes blinking, dark skin blushing, throat gulping, he was simultaneously embarrassed and fascinated.

  Prentice? Sarra thought as he finally remembered to bow in her direction. Ambrai had been destroyed before he was born, so it was impossible for him even to have seen the Academy, let alone studied there.

  His mother’s reaction to the room was one of amused delight. Sirralin Mossen looked like nobody’s idea of a Scholar Mage. Tall as Imi Gorrst and more generously curved, she had skin the color of coffee and cheekbones so prominent they tilted the corners of her eyes. Though she must be nearing forty, she looked thirty—and the glance she threw at Keler Neffe said she’d purely love to get him alone in here and pretend she was still twenty.

  He replied with a wink. Neffe was about thirty, so must have begun his studies at the Academy, but his subsequent education in magic had probably been sketchy at best. As he bowed over but did not kiss Sarra’s wrist, a thick lock of honey-blond hair escaped his coif to droop into gray eyes. He stuffed it back into the coif and apologized.

  “No need,” Sarra replied. “We’re scarcely formal, this little group.”

  “You’re very gracious, Lady,” he said. “Aunt Mairin would have my head shaved for the infraction.”

  “Having met your Aunt Mairin, I can believe it,” she said, smiling. She knew the Lady, and the Neffe Name—the family owned every leaf, twig, pebble, drop of fresh water, and vein of gold on Neffen, the smallest inhabited island of Seinshir. “Please sit down,” she continued. “Val, pour some wine. How is it you’re here so early?”

  “We were warned,” Sirralin Mossen replied. “Rather charmingly, too—a bouquet of flowers and herbs tied with the Desse colors. It’s the latest fashion in secret messages.” Nodding thanks to Val for the winecup, she drank and went on, “Truly told, Lady Sarra, I was losing my mind in that hut outside town. We were there five days, after a week on the road from a similar hovel on the Ambrai border. I’ve been languishing in that miserable frontier town since last Candleweek. No books, nobody worth meeting, no conversation beyond crops and rain. How do ordinary folk stand it?”

  She had summed herself into a total that Sarra did not find impressive. Scholar Mossen thought Mages in general and herself in particular superior to “ordinary folk.” Well, at least she wasn’t whining like the Mage Captal. And somebody thought her worth saving, or she would not have been summoned to Combel. Sarra sternly reminded herself not to judge in advance of real knowledge, and seized on the important point of the Scholar’s tale.

  “A message in flowers and herbs?”

  “Why, yes. I sneezed for two solid hours. The pennyroyal and water willow weren’t bad, but the roses—! I may be named for the patron of flowers, my dear Lady Sarra, as you are, but I hope she blessed you with a more tolerant nose!”

  Sarra glanced up at Elomar. “Flee, and Freedom,” he supplied in answer to her silent question. Then he asked the Scholar, “What kind of roses?”

  “What kind?”

  “Red, yellow, white—”

  Her son answered. “The white ones were Maidil’s Favor. And almost black ones, too, called Masked Moonlight. That’s how we knew to come here. I like flowers,” he finished shyly, and blushed again.

  Sarra looked once more to Elomar. He shrugged. “As Scholar Mossen says, flower language is a recent trick of Gorsha’s. But I must tell you, Lady, I do not like the implication.”

  “Or the haste. Val, what time is it in Neele?”

  “Neele?” exclaimed Sirralin Mossen.

  “Seven after Half-Fifteenth. It’ll do.”

  “Someday,” she said, “I’m going to check these so-called exact times of yours against a clock. How can you possibly know how many minutes—”

  “Why are we going to Neele?”

  “Have faith,” Val intoned. Then his dark eyes developed a wicked glint. “You’ll love this Ladder, Sarra. It’s . . . unique.”

  “Neele! Why didn’t you tell me before? A very dear schoolfriend of mine lives just two streets away from—”

  “Oh, do hush, please!” burst out Truan Halvos. “The sooner we’re out of this despicable place, the better!”

  As they crammed into the round closet, Sarra eyed Alin. “How unique?”

  Val replied, “Completely.”

  “Shut up, Val,” his partner snapped.

  And after a moment of now-familiar blankness, Sarra found out what he meant. The Neele Ladder was a platform of iron grating inside a gigantic vertical drainpipe emptying into the city sewer.

  14

  Collan wasn’t being held prisoner. He simply wasn’t being allowed to leave.

  Which was pretty much the same song, to his ears.

  Not that he’d never been in a jail. Wyte Lynn Castle’s was a real old-fashioned dungeon. Kenroke’s was at the top of a spindly tower. Dinn used an offshore island. He’d gotten himself out of all these and one or two others—most readily when the jailkeep was female. His experience was of honest jails with steel locks and iron bars. Deep stone holes. Five-foot-square windowless rooms. Being forced to accept Slegin hospitality was a lot more pleasant, admittedly—and a lot harder to escape from.

  He was given a fine, airy room down the hall from the Slegin sons. Those who stood watch over Lady Agatine’s four offspring also kept watch over him. Locks and bars lulled captors into complaisance; human eyes had human brains behind them. Outside his room, he never went anywhere—not even to the toilet—without being watched.

  It was maddening. They were all so nice to him, as if he was exactly what Orlin Renne said he was: an honored and valued guest. He was allowed free run of the residence and private garden, though not Roseguard Grounds. He ate dinner every night with the family, performed afterward, and was beginning to teach Riddon Slegin how to play the lute. He spent whole days in the library, learning new songs and variants of old ones from the vast shelves of folios, and was even allowed to raid Sarra Liwellan’s private collection for songbooks. He did all these placid, genteel things instead of trying to escape because Orlin Renne had not been at all nice that first evening.

  “You have two choices,” Lady Agatine’s husband told him when he woke from whatever potion she’d given him for reasons he couldn’t quite recall. “You can make life miser
able for yourself and everyone else at Roseguard by repeated acts of foolishness, or you can enjoy your stay. Because you will stay, Collan Rosvenir. If I have to truss you up head to foot in our best Cloister carpet and cut holes for you to eat, breathe, piss, and shit from, you will stay.”

  Thus presented, he saw Renne’s point.

  Besides, they’d be leaving soon, and out on the open road with a horse under him, escape would be simple.

  He hoped. That business about the Mageborn Somebody-or-other Rille worried him some. He’d heard what effect magic could have on a blind-mind like him.

  Seventeen days into this velvet captivity he really started to worry. Two more days before they were supposed to leave, yet no preparations had been made that Col could discern. Life went on as usual at the Slegin residence. What were they waiting for?

  He didn’t ask. Lady Agatine and Orlin Renne might risk their own safety but never their children. Col figured they’d get out in time and take him along.

  He liked the four Slegin boys—three young men, really, and eleven-year-old Jeymi. Riddon, twenty-two come spring, had a natural affinity for the flute and owned eight different kinds. Had Bard Hall been standing, he’d be there; as it was, he learned from whomever he could. Jeymi was all thumbs and had a voice like a tail-trod cat, but was an enthusiastic listener and amused Collan with an ardent case of hero worship. Elom was nineteen and girl-crazy; Maugir, nearly seventeen and horse-crazy. Musically, the two had tin ears, but Col’s fund of lore about both girls and horses won their undying admiration.

  “My eldest has recovered from the rebellious stage,” Lady Agatine sighed one evening while Col tuned up, “and my youngest hasn’t yet reached it, but my middle pair make enough mischief for six.”

  Riddon gave his mother an overdone bow; Jeymi grinned as if to say he was taking notes while waiting for his turn; Elom clapped a hand to his heart in injured innocence; Maugir simply looked smug.

  “Saints, the faces on those four!” said Renne. “Can you imagine what our lives would’ve been like with girls?”