by Cat Rambo
Sebastiano grimaced. A month of this nonsense already, he thought. Another two to go before the actual elections! Assuming the elections took place, since the Duke and the Council seemed incapable of agreeing on the form that they should take. Even the College of Mages had been infected by the political fever, and sponsored their own Order of the Rune. I might have bowed to pressure to wear their pin, but it is ridiculous for respectable people to take part in this nonsense, trying to appeal to the uneducated voters, incapable of knowing who they should choose. The mass of people will pick whoever produced the brightest fireworks, the prettiest words, the juiciest sausages, or, most likely, the strongest beer.
Sebastiano had more important matters to attend to.
As a rare—if undervalued—Merchant Mage, he was qualified to do business on the College’s behalf, and he didn’t mind that the College made him pay for the privilege for now. He was still learning to become a Mage. If he could master that, if he could shed the Merchant part of his title, he could join the College as a paid, rather than paying, member.
Wouldn’t that be a blow for his father? Sebastiano smiled.
He could see the silvery trunks stacked on the aft deck, their stumps like ringed eyes, sacks of Dryad hair piled near them, gathered from the imprisoned Beasts on the trip. Ten trunks wasn’t bad. Twenty years ago, though, when he was only a youth, the ships had come in with nothing but Dryad trunks, great floating rafts of them, because the silvery, magic-rich wood was so plentiful that it didn’t matter if a few floated out to sea.
He and Urdo spoke on the dock as the Minotaurs loaded the lengths of half-living wood, long enough to be awkward, on the cart. Brown leaves scattered across the snow like moldering cards, broken edges picked out by the streetlights.
“College know you’re using their Honor Mount for pulling lumber again?” Urdo said with a squint towards the Gryphon. The larger Gryphons, sacred symbols of Tabat, were forbidden to most owners; the College held Fewk by special dispensation.
“Gryphons need exercise, more than just flying,” Sebastiano said. “What the College doesn’t know won’t hurt anyone.”
“It’s twelve galleons and seven schooners for the wood. Two and seven for the search and one per trunk.”
“I can’t give it to you,” Sebastiano said. “You’ll have to come round and talk to the Treasurer.”
Urdo spat into the water. “Last time you said that, Toj had mooned half a dozen times before I saw a copper skiff! I had to submit invoices and tallies and receipts and a thousand other paper cantrips.”
Sebastiano shrugged uncomfortably, looking at the water’s icy glitter. “Believe me, I wish I had it for you.” This is always the worst part of dealing for the College.
Urdo snorted. “I don’t blame you for your masters’ stinginess. Although, I will say that for people who claim they will be contaminated by financial dealings …”
“It’s not that, precisely.” Sebastiano flexed his hands inside his gloves, trying to warm them as he spoke. “Coins and currents of finance affect magic, just as lines of magnetism or Dragon bone or Zombie flesh does. So most of the Mages there cannot handle business dealings except through a Merchant Mage, someone trained in both traditions who does not have much magic to be distorted.”
“They usually cloak it up in more words than that,” Urdo said.
Sebastiano shrugged again, feeling the comforting warmth of the coat around him. “It wastes time to talk around things.”
Urdo clapped him on the shoulder. “Well enough, I’ll not argue with you too long. Will you come and have some fish tea with me?”
“I need to get Fewk back to the stables, else I would,” Sebastiano said. “Will you be in Tabat long?”
“A few weeks,” Urdo said. “Till the politicking drives me away. But I want to time my travels so I’m back for the vote.”
“You can do it before time, if you intend to travel,” Sebastiano said.
“I know, I know.” The captain’s calloused hand wavered in the air as to forestall further argument. “But it feels a moment of such significance that I would rather be here to witness it, to be able to tell my children’s children I cast my vote along with the rest.”
Sebastiano was surprised at the depth of romanticism to the usually stolid captain. He cast about for something to say. “Certainly a time of change,” he said.
Urdo grunted and turned away as a syrup cask splintered on the snowy wharf. Sticky brown liquid splattered the planks underfoot, the cart, the startled sailor who had dropped it, the Minotaurs standing waiting. They snorted steam out of their massive nostrils, icy condensation forming on the brass rings fastened there, big enough to serve as a Human bracelet.
One surreptitiously licked his ungloved hands, the backs pied with black and white fur.
“Travel safe,” Urdo flung over his shoulder as he strode off to berate the sailor.
A sharp-featured man with a boy in tow approached Sebastiano. “Bound for the College of Mages, are you?” He had a flat, workingman’s twang to his voice, as though emphasizing his origins pugnaciously.
“Aye,” Sebastiano said, putting away his purse. He couldn’t say what it was, but he disliked this man on sight. Months of river travel had left the sailor unkempt, shaggy haired and bearded. His faded wool coat, once red with the touches of purple and white that marked him a follower of the Moon Temples, was much mended and at least a decade out of date. He didn’t wear a political cockade.
Sebastiano drew himself up, fingering the rich, bright fur lining the edges of his pockets, conscious of his own shaved and lotioned cheeks, and the Merchant Mage’s chain, not quite as large or gilded as a full Mage’s but still signifying years of labor at learning, strung across his chest.
The other man seemed unimpressed. “Then you can take this boy along to the Moon Temples and drop him there.” He fished a packet from inside his coat and held it out. “Give them this, it’s his moon coin.”
“That’s the other side of town!” Sebastiano said.
“Not if you take Spray Avenue. Though it’s longer, it’ll be easier on your Beast, surely?”
The man was, unfortunately, right, as both Sebastiano and Fewk knew. The Gryphon shifted in his harness, but said nothing for once. Sebastiano took the coin and put it in his pocket, scowling.
Stirring from the Pilot’s grasp, the boy approached the Gryphon, face bright with wonder. Fewk lowered his great beak, allowed the boy to stroke the fine feathers around his glistening eyes. The boy’s fingers ventured into the feathers around the uptilted ears, and the traitorous Gryphon’s eyes lidded with pleasure as he leaned into the caress.
“The boy’s new and the eve’s cold,” the irritating man persisted. “Surely you’ll not begrudge him a ride on the way to a Temple life. It’d walk him clean off his feet.”
Poor little wretch, Sebastiano thought. “Very well,” he said. “Stand by that wheel, boy, and don’t get in the way.”
He turned back to the Captain. There were still three tuns of spring water unaccounted for.
Fireworks barked again as Fewk shrieked warning. A weight struck Sebastiano’s back, clung there, clawing at the thick cloth—the layers of felt almost as good as armor—as the Dryad tore at his shoulders.
CHAPTER 5
Sebastiano staggered forward two steps, off balance and leaning forward as Urdo shouted and sailors rushed up.
The Captain was a good ten paces off, long enough for Sebastiano to reach to dislodge the awkward, shifting weight, to feel her teeth, an herbivore’s flat shape, meant for grinding, doing so against the bones of his wrist, hampered by his thick gloves. Her tapering fingers, long as hollow twigs, plowed hot furrows across his cheek, cold air snapping the pain awake.
Fewk shrieked again. Fingers prised the jaws apart, pulling the Beast away so Sebastiano could stand straight again. He gasped icy air, heart thrumming, and thought calming mantras, mental cantrips. By the time the Dryad had been re-chained amid her fellows, his breath had slowed
and his heart no longer felt as though it were going to fly apart.
He paid the Dryad no particular mind, other than a certain internal caution as he approached the cart. Beasts acted according to their nature. As soon blame a pebble for tripping him.
“Let me have our ship Doctor summoned,” Urdo said. At first Sebastiano demurred, but gave way as he saw the blood dripping from his face.
The Doctor turned out to be one of the sailors, who sluiced the wound with spirits and put a few fiery stitches in it, making Sebastiano’s stomach churn with the pain.
“Shall I send a messenger to the College, have someone else summoned to take the Gryphon home?” Urdo asked. Sebastiano shook his head, trying to ignore the dizziness that followed on the gesture’s heels.
“No,” he said. “I’m headed towards the College anyway.”
“Poor quarters for a Merchant, I’d think,” Urdo gibed.
“I’m Mage as well,” Sebastiano insisted, and tried to repress irritation at the Captain’s assumption that his Merchant side ruled the other. The same sort of assumptions that led the other Mages to look down their noses at him, although it was his sort of work that enabled things like their exotic and unprofitable studies.
The man from earlier stood there glaring at him.
Sebastiano looked around. “Where did the boy go?”
“Fled in all the noise while no one was looking,” the man said. He stuck out his hand. “Eloquence Clement. I will talk to the Temples about his escape but first I thought perhaps you might try magic.”
“Magic is an art, not a skill,” Sebastiano huffed out, but the other man only gave him a blank look. “Not like a machine I can turn off and on. And I would need something from him …”
“Like the moon coin in your pocket?” Eloquence said.
“That would be suitable,” Sebastiano admitted. He took the coin out.
The cantrip was easy enough but he tried to make it look a little harder and showier than usual, conscious of the others watching him. The result surprised him enough that he cast it twice more before opening his eyes.
“That looked like a deal of effort,” Eloquence said dryly.
“He’s dead,” Sebastiano said.
“Are you sure?”
“Believe me, I did double-check that sum. That didn’t take long, poor little calf.”
Eloquence sagged. “This city holds evil at its heart,” he said, “But by the Moons, that is swift for anyone to sink into its cesspool.”
Sebastiano eyed him. Overblown prose, he thought. He must be a writer of some sort, composing what he’s going to say about it in his head. With his accent, it sounds even more absurd.
“I must be going,” he said, to Urdo more than to Eloquence, although they both nodded at him in acknowledgement. Fewk butted him insistently, repeatedly, in the ribs, then sniffed and nuzzled at his face until, satisfied, the Gryphon huffed and allowed himself to be led away from the docks.
As they wound down a side path, then up Coast Ramp to bring them along Salt Way, Sebastiano wondered what sort of fate had befallen the boy. Something was burning, far down near the docks, an orange glare that he thought was perhaps on Printers Row, but that was a long distance. Surely impossible that the boy got far enough to be swept up in whatever that is, he thought, brow furrowing. The wind was colder now. He hunched forward, casting a look back now and again to keep an eye on the Dryads.
Alarms sounded in the distance, still down near the fire. Peacekeepers, gathering. Those posed their own urban danger; they’d been known to claim the lives of bystanders by accident. Was that what had happened to the fuzzy-headed youth, all jug-ears and astonished brown eyes?
He handed over the Dryads without incident to the Duke’s envoy and then turned towards the College. Snow had taken to its job of covering the landscape in earnest by now; it muffled the rumble of the empty cart. Fewk remained silent, plumed ears twitching now and again to shake off the incursions of snowflakes.
The sun’s retreat hours ago still left Tabat a busy city. The way here was lit with more of the aetheric lights. Beautiful, he thought as they passed from one pool of illumination to another, but so expensive. Surely someone will find an alternative to Dryad logs soon.
Despite the size of the College of Mages’ grounds, the longevity of Mages led to personal space on those same grounds being fiercely, zealously, sometimes bloodily contested. One thing had advantaged Sebastiano—the traditional disdain for Beasts. This meant that he had been able to secure the small loft above the stables for his own, inheriting it from the Mage who had previously tended the College’s collection of Beasts—nothing near the size of the Duke’s menagerie but still surprisingly wide in its range.
The night watch at the gate nodded at him as he passed, and he made his way through the silent campus towards the stable. He was alarmed to see its main door open. He took his time unhitching Fewk, worrying.
His worries were confirmed as he led the Gryphon inside. Arms folded, a junior Mage waited. “Master Mage Faustino had a report you took a valuable Beast outside the grounds. You are to report to him in the morning.”
She didn’t bother to bow in reply to Sebastiano’s inclined head before she departed.
Faustino knows I need to work with the Beasts, he thought. And it does no harm to Fewk to be taken out. Three hundred years of them as Tabat’s patron animal has made the Ducal laws about Gryphons grow silly and convoluted.
Fewk rubbed his head against his ribs and Sebastiano ran his hands through the feathers near the great bill, smoothing and soothing them. When he stopped, the Gryphon nudged him back into action, butting at him like a cat but with enough force to tilt him on his feet. His fingers coaxed along the great brow ridges, scratching gently at the soft, dry skin, so like thick paper, but paper with life to it, blood throbbing deep below its surface.
“We are in trouble,” he said.
“I like going outside,” the Gryphon said.
“Well, that is reward enough, surely,” Sebastiano said wryly. He sighed. “No point in calling after torn nets, though.”
He took a deep breath before moving to tend to his charges. He was glad that the old Satyr that had been such a favorite when he was first a student was gone—they were so short-lived, all the caprine derivatives—having succumbed to influenza several Winters ago. Its reek still lingered, but had faded over the handful of years.
The Piskies tee-heed and clustered at his approach. He ignored them where they hung in their iron-barred cage. They had no Human urges, were hive creatures, but they had learned to beguile men and women with such affectations. Their stares prickled on his back as he moved to Fewk’s stall one last time.
The Gryphon put his head on the fence and eyed Sebastiano sidelong as he approached. He reached out and rubbed his fingers along the grain of the feathers, smoothing them, helping them twitch back into alignment. He cupped the heavy base of the bill, despite Fewk’s impatient nudge, then yielded to the silent importuning and brushed fingertips along the base of one feathered ear. Fewk grumbled happiness—so many of the larger Beasts made that noise.
The Mages prided themselves on publishing scholarly works about their studies, which were read only by other Mages. Sebastiano had contemplated a piece on his thoughts, how Beasts felt joy, but there had been so much Abolitionist furor about it that he was reluctant to let himself be identified with that strident, violent, and highly illegal campaign.
As he scratched, the Gryphon’s dark, liquid eye rolled to regard him inquisitively. He laughed and stopped scratching in order to search through his pockets for the last of the dried apricots.
“Can you smell, has anyone else been through while we were gone?” he asked. The Gryphon shook his massive head. Most of the Mages would have ignored Fewk, considering him barely intelligent, unable to tell one robed figure from another. Sebastiano knew, though, that it wasn’t the case. Fewk was better than a Human at sorting people, because his sensitive nose read clues unavailable
to Humans’ lesser senses.
That was one reason Beasts were expensive. Consumed with the proper rituals, their flesh could allow the eater access to the Beast’s capabilities for a time. Nowadays the standard fate for a Beast when it died: rendered down to its constituent parts and sold for consumption, down to the last hair or drop of blood.
When Fewk died, his hide would be stripped off with as much care as possible to keep it whole, and the flesh stripped from the skeleton, even the guts preserved or set aside to be consumed, and the bone sawn into the thumb-length cores used to fuel perpetual lanterns and other small magics.
Fewk nudged him in the side, claiming more attention. “You think too much,” the Gryphon complained, then subsided as Sebastiano returned his attention to his ears.
Finally he left off petting Fewk, and climbed the rickety stairs up through the smell of hay and the simples used in the stable herbcraft, tied in the rafters to dry. He had a little lock spell that secured the door, but he had no illusion that a skilled practitioner could not have circumvented it with ease.
No, the real defense was Fewk, and the spell was simply there to keep an intruder from contemplating what other defenses he might have. He turned the doorknob, a solid thing of bronze and ceramic his predecessor had installed, and went inside.
His caution was one common among all the students of the College of Mages. Not just space was scarce. So were resources, both material and not (usually attention or learning from the overworked staff). And his space—well, it was worth defending, as he reckoned it.
At his left hand stood a table with candles and matches. He struck a match now, applying it to the wick revealed by the buttery light. It sizzled and sparked before flickering into a steady flame.
Its wavering illumination played over the surroundings to reveal piles of books and student notebooks, a leather couch with a Sebastiano-shaped divot worn into it, a narrow desk and hard wooden chair. A small shelf housed keepsakes: a toy wand, a jar holding a fistful of Fewk’s feathers, a little pearl-handled hoof-knife too nice for everyday use, all of which jostled for space with a handful of his favorite Trade Gods and two candle holders.