Stonemaster

by C. E. Murphy

  "We'll find clothes to travel in and we'll leave tomorrow or the next day, after we've all had enough to eat and have slept and warmed up. Then we'll go, but going overland isn't an option."

  Rasim inhaled and Kisia said, "I found maps," sharply, as if defying a protest Rasim hadn't yet made. "This peninsula sweeps down from the mainland into the sea for hundreds of miles, Ras.

  There are passes and passageways marked through them, but they're only usable in the summer, and even then it's a months-long journey. So I've been searching the grounds. There's a ship that

  hardly deserves the name, one of their silly one-masted ones, but some of the miners know how to sail it, and with two Seamasters aboard we should make the capital in three or four days."

  "All right."

  Kisia's eyebrows rose and she glanced around like Rasim might have been talking to someone else. "That's it? All right?"

  "It's a good plan. Why wouldn't it be all right?"

  "Because you're the one who plans things."

  "Only because I usually think of things faster than most people, Kees, and I'm too tired to think right now. Ice is hard." He felt foolish as soon as he'd said it, but it was true. No wonder Isidri had been so wrecked after thawing the harbor. He was ninety years younger than she was, and he could barely stay sitting upright after icing the snake.

  Kisia's smile appeared, softer than usual. "It is. If you don't mind, I'll sleep in here too. It's warm, and..." She drew a deep breath. "And I don't trust the Northerners. I'd rather be with you. Telun and Milu are next door."

  Rasim nodded. Kisia did too, and got up. "All right. I'll bring you food in a little while. Sondra and Lars raided the larder.

  There's meat, not just fish, and they're baking bread. It smells wonderful. I'll tell you if anything needs your attention." She went to the door, pausing there to look back. "Rasim?"

  He looked up tiredly. Kisia smiled. "You saved me again. Thank you."

  Laughter jolted out of him. "You just about killed that snake single-handedly, Kees. I don't think you need much saving."

  "Still, I didn't shape the stone that caught me." Kisia waved and left Rasim looking after her in bemusement. He didn't think he'd shaped the giant stone hand, either, but the only thing worse than arguing with Kisia was arguing with her and later discovering she was right. He would ask Milu privately. Tomorrow, after they'd all slept.

  Or, as it turned out, two mornings later, when they had indeed all slept, and eaten, and after Kisia had prepared the one-masted ship to sail. Rasim had barely left his room for the two days, glad to do nothing but eat and rest. By the second morning he felt well enough to come down to shore, where Kisia climbed the ship's rigging and shouted orders at Northerners who understood well enough to do as they were told.

  Milu stood on the beach too, his brown face as pale as it could be, and wry. "I cannot tell you how much I do not want to get on that boat."

  "Ship," Rasim corrected cheerfully. "Would you rather stay here?"

  "Almost. But it's days past when the slave ships were supposed to arrive, and if we have to sail, I'd rather do it before they get here. Maybe a storm took them," Milu said with an unusual viciousness.

  "Or maybe they saw the mess we left at the mines and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Thank you," Rasim said abruptly, feeling awkward. "For burying the snake instead of killing it."

  Milu glanced at him, surprised. "Not at all. You were right. We disturbed it, and...I didn't want it to die," he confessed.

  "There's a mind in there. I could almost feel it, thinking slowly, the way stone...does." He made a face. "Not that stone really thinks, but..."

  "No, I know what you mean. Water is like that too. Alive, in its own way. Anyway, thank you. And thank you for saving Kisia."

  "After that display with the hand, I figured I'd better catch her when she fell again or I'd have you to answer to." Milu sighed.

  "And I owe you enough for cleaning up after me on the Waifia .

  I'll try not to be so much trouble on this journey. I'd better go get something to throw up in, in fact." He left without realizing he'd stunned Rasim into silence.

  He had implied that the stone hand hadn't been his doing at all, but Rasim's. Which was either impossible, or everything the guilds thought they knew about mastery really was wrong. No one studied more than one magic, or at least no one but the royal family. It was unlikely many—or any—Seamasters had spent as many long, mind-numbing hours trying to understand stone's structure at all, never mind after watching a master stone witch at work, as Rasim had. The masters would have said there was no point, that everyone knew a witch could only master one magic, but if no one had tried , then they didn't really know it, they just believed it.

  "But why wouldn't anyone try?" Rasim asked Kisia's ship. It rocked, offering no answers, but Rasim came to one on his own, after a moment. The guilds had been created centuries ago by the royal family—the only people who could use more than one kind of witchery. If they wanted to remain in uncontested power, convincing others that only royal blood could master many magics was very, very clever. It might have been difficult in the first years, but over time any royal matchmaker could find men and women able to use more than one magic and marry them into the royals, until no one thought to test the tale's truth. It would make a lie of the legends, of the song about Sunchild and all the others, and of the royal family's descendence from the gods, but that was a story , not history.

  A band of Northerners at his side, an army of Islanders at his call, and now a dangerous insight into Ilyaran magic. Even Rasim could envision himself as an enemy of Taishm's rule, with those things in hand, and he didn't even want to be king. If any others in the King's Guild came to these same conclusions, or found themselves supported by foreign nations, Ilyara could fall into civil war breathtakingly quickly.

  Rasim closed his hands into fists, admitting the possibility that Kisia and Milu were right. He would never work stonewitchery again, if it was true that he could. The last thing he wanted was to upset the balance of power in Ilyara, never mind anywhere else. He would ask to leave the King's Guild when they returned to Ilyara, and go back to the Sea-masters where he belonged. And if Kisia ever asked him about it, he would just have to lie.

  Maybe he had worked stonewitchery once, to save her, but that was all he had ever worked a great seamastery for, too, before Siliaria's blessing. If Coluth came calling, Rasim would look away the same way Milu had when Siliaria had examined him.

  "Hey!" Kisia leaped off the ship and snapped her fingers under Rasim's nose. "Hey, Sunburn! I've been calling you for five minutes. We're ready to cast off, and you're standing here like a statue."

  Rasim startled, then caught Kisia's hand to stop her snapping.

  "Sorry. I was thinking. What do you need me to do..." He hesitated, genuinely not wanting to tease her. "...Captain?"

  A grin crooked the corner of her mouth. "Come aboard, First Mate, and translate. We've gotten by so far, but once we're at sea I don't want to be relying on pointing and arguing over the word for something. We sail on the tide, and I, for one, can't wait to see Missio's face when we turn up alive."

  ~

  After shipboard fires, storms, island adventures, slavery, and stone snakes, Rasim did not expect the sail to Ringenstand to go smoothly. Nor did it, from Milu's point of view: the bony Stonemaster youth spent the entire journey hanging over the rail or flat on his face on the deck, too wrung out to even weep.

  Telun, much more comfortable on shipboard this time, took over cleaning up after his partner while Rasim ran from one end of the ship to the other, always moving, translating, giving orders, and wondering how Hassin kept up enough energy to work this hard and to be favored by admiring women. But the exhausting work made the time pass quickly, and despite Milu's misery, the journey went smoothly.

  Only when they neared the capital's harbor did he begin to think about making an entrance. It was very clear they were approaching the right harbor
: unlike the more modest cove at Hongrunn, where Rasim had last entered the Northlands, the capital's harbor was

  guarded by massive, stunning statues that rose up fifty times a man's height, carved out of the mountains themselves.

  "They did that without stonemastery?" Kisia asked in awe as the statues became clearer. A man and a woman stood on either side of the harbor's mouth, both holding the same kinds of heavy swords Lorens had been teaching the journeymen to fight with. They were both armored, though neither wore helms, and both held their inside hands outward a little, as if welcoming sailors while also warning them that the people within were not to be trifled with.

  "I don't know." Rasim stood beside her on the captain's deck, his gaze drawn upward just as hers was. "Princess Inga said they used to have magic here. Maybe they used to have stonemasters. Kisia, how are we going to...I mean, we're..." He gestured at them, and then at the impossible statues.

  "You mean we're dressed like riff-raff, sailing a beaten-up old ship one step shy of the salvage yard, with a crew of slaves and puking journeymen, so how are we going to make a good impression on the Northlands queen and her court?"

  "Yeah." Rasim smiled faintly. "That's exactly what I mean."

  "I don't think we're really going to have to worry about it."

  Kisia pointed ahead of them, between the feet of the massive statues.

  The entire Northern fleet sailed out to greet them, the Waifia at its head.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  "Drop anchor." Even as he spoke, Rasim sent a tendril of witchery deep, searching for the seabed floor. Kisia gave him a look of faint disgust that made him sheepish as he discovered what she already knew: the sea floor was much too deep here to anchor.

  Instead, Kisia swung up onto a rail, gaining attention before shouting orders to turn into the wind and hold position while the fleet approached.

  For a moment, Rasim wondered why the Waifia didn't leap ahead of the single-sailed ships in a rush to greet them. Then, aloud, he said, "Oh. They don't know it's us. How could they?" in embarrassment, before frowning in confusion. "Why are they even coming out, if they don't know it's us?".

  Kisia flashed him a broad grin. "I don't know, but why don't you let them know who it is?"

  Pure reckless joy rose in Rasim's breast. He ran to the prow, grinning, and flung his fingertips toward the water, toward the oncoming ships, and called power.

  Mermaids—called Siliaria's daughters—leaped from the sea, made of magic and water. They sparkled in the soft sunlight, diving and splashing, their watery laughter burbling across the sea's surface. Rasim climbed higher on the prow, then scrambled over it to perch precariously on the figurehead, laughing as he shaped water into all the dreams and stories told by young sailors.

  Small ships appeared alongside the racing mermaids, who dove over the ships and captured sea witches to dance across the water with them. Some became mermaids and mermen themselves, embracing the sea with all their hearts. Embracing Siliaria, Rasim thought, because that was how it had felt to be graced by the goddess: as if he had finally, truly become part of the sea himself. His creations rode fanciful creatures, seahorses as tall as a mast or sea-glittering dolphins that sprayed rainbowed mist into the air.

  Then real dolphins burst up, disrupting the witchery and chasing it down, greeting their watery brethren with delight. Rasim threw his hands skyward, cheering and laughing as the Waifia finally did leap ahead of the other ships, drawn to the witchery on display. They were still a half mile away when Hassin's voice roared across the distance: " Rasim !"

  Rasim bellowed, " Hassin !" in return, knowing the Waifia 's first mate would never hear him, but it ap-peared chaos was breaking out aboard the Waifia. Half a dozen water spigots whirled to life, witches leaping from shipboard to ride the waves. For the first time in his life, Rasim flung down the power to ride the water too, and went to join them.

  Hassin's water spout raced ahead of the others, crashing into Rasim's before he'd gone very far from Kisia's Northern ship. The handsome first mate's magic actually wobbled, almost tossing him into the sea before Rasim lunged and caught him in a mindless, shouting hug. Hassin pounded Rasim's back, shouting in return, the noise so great neither could be understood. Within a minute, the others had caught up, half a dozen whirlpools bashing into each other, vying for dominance, dizzying their witches, and finally dumping all of them in icy waters. For once every sea witch got wet, all too busy shouting and questioning and pounding on one another to fend off the cold water. Even Desimi was in the mess, grabbing Rasim around the neck and knuckling his head as he shoved him under the surface. Rasim came up spluttering and seized Desimi in turn, returning the treatment. The bigger boy bellowed in half-real outraged astonishment, and on it went until they were all blue and chattering with cold. Only then did anyone have the presence of mind to get out of the water, witchery working together to lift all of them at once and deposit them on Kisia's deck.

  She stood arms akimbo and trying to look stern through a smile that threatened to split her head. "Look at all of you," she said in the most severe voice she could manage. "Soaked to the bone.

  What kind of seamaster—"

  Hassin and Desimi jumped on her, dragging her to the deck and soaking her to the skin while they returned to roaring greetings and shouting questions no one had any real desire to answer. It wasn't until the Waifia pulled alongside Kisia's ship that any semblance of decorum was restored, but even Hassin was still dripping as Nasira's crew threw clawed ropes over and hauled the ships side to side. Nasira climbed onto the rail, narrow braid lashing over her shoulder as she looked down at the sopping first mate who had just abandoned his ship, and then one by one examined the others.

  She came to Rasim and Kisia last, with all the hardness Rasim remembered in her eyes. His jubilation faded more the longer she stared at him, until she finally startled him by grinning broadly. "Well. I can see this is going to take a lot of explaining. I'm glad to see you alive, journeymen." Her gaze found Telun and Milu as well, and she nodded to them too. "You too, lads, but I'll thank you to stay on this lump of a ship while we get this sorted out."

  " Telun ? Milu ?" Stonemaster Lusa burst up from below decks, her round face so hopeful it made Rasim's heart hurt. No more comfortable with the sea than her journeymen were, Lusa nonetheless scrambled over the rail and all but fell onto Kisia's ship, then ran the short distance to catch her journeymen in an encompassing hug. For the first time in three days, Milu's color turned normal as they shared the embrace. Rasim's eyes stung with happiness and Kisia elbowed him in the ribs, beaming and pointing at the Stonemasters, like he couldn't see them himself.

  When Lusa finally drew back and composed herself, she said what the Waifia 's crew were all obviously thinking: "We thought you were dead. What happened?"

  To his dismay, the other three journeymen looked at Rasim. He dropped his chin to his chest, looking for an easy answer, and found none. "Someone drugged us and threw us overboard. The cold water woke me up, so we survived, and..." There was too much to explain, he decided, and skipped to, "And now we're here." The rest could be told later, perhaps when Captain Nasira's jaw wasn't quite so tight. Rasim shivered, which reminded him he was wet. He squeezed water off himself with his magic, and that made Nasira's jaw tighten even more.

  "You just water-danced, journeyman. As skillfully as a master.

  What happened ?"

  Rasim flushed, knowing no one would believe the truth, and not having tried to come up with an excuse as to why he'd finally come into the seamastery he'd always longed for. Silence drew out while he struggled to speak.

  "Siliaria kissed him."

  Every eye on two ships turned to Kisia, who look-ed almost nonchalant. "Rasim would never tell you, because you wouldn't believe him and that would upset him, but I don't really care if you believe me, because I know what's true. Siliaria came to us in the fog, tested Milu, called me sister, kissed Rasim, and brought us to shore before we died of exposur
e. And now Rasim is a seamaster, as strong as Guildmaster Isidri. I watched him turn salt water to ice to save our lives. Where," she said, her tone changing to sharp demand, "is Missio? I want to see her face when she sees we survived."

  Disbelief faded to discomfort at Kisia's last question. Even Nasira, whose face was drawn and thoughtful as she studied the journeymen, shook her head. "Missio disappeared into Ringenstand a few hours after we docked. No one has seen since."

  Rasim stared at the Waifia 's captain. "She's a dark brown Ilyaran in a city of snow-colored Northerners . How can she hide?"

  One of Nasira's eyebrows edged up. "She obviously has help."

  "Or she's dead." Rasim clapped his hands over his own mouth, appalled at the suggestion.

  Nasira's eyes narrowed, but she didn't respond beyond that.

  Instead she frowned at the open sea, then back at the narrow harbor mouth and its mountain guardians. "The Northern queen was..." She chose the next word carefully: "Disappointed. Not to meet you. She kept us in the capital days longer than we might have expected, trying to understand what had happened to you. We should return and present you, now that you've reappeared." Her frown pinched a line between her eyebrows as she glanced at Rasim. "You have an uncanny ability to return from the dead, journeyman. Cats have fewer lives than you do."

  Rasim, forgetting his rank relative to the queen's—or his captain's, for that matter—spoke frankly. "I'd like to have a talk with her, too. But you're—are you sailing for Hongrunn? To try to fix the water supply?"

  Nasira nodded once. Rasim gestured to the sea. "Then I think we should go do that, before things get any worse there. I can come back here another time—"

  Nasira snorted, making Rasim listen to himself. It did, on the face of it, seem unlikely that a Seamaster journeyman should have such an easy expectation of returning to the Northlands. Six months ago he'd never dreamed he might visit the North once, never mind return. On the other hand... "I've been North twice in three months," he said in his own defense. "Besides, the queen doesn't know I'm here, so she won't miss me if we just sail straight to Hongrunn. I can come back again after we've found the Sinaz 's crew who've been enslaved."