by Sonia Lyris
She absorbed these words slowly. As the meaning came clear, she yanked her attention back from the kennels. “What is this you say? How can he know that? Who is it?”
Watching her, Innel opened his mouth as if to answer, then grimaced, backing away from her toward the door, his expression betraying something close to fear.
About time.
“Let me send for him, Marisel. That will, I think, save a lot of explanation.”
“Tell me, damn you, before I—” She bit off the words.
Before she what? She could think of nothing she could do that would help this situation.
Who was it?
To Nalas, standing outside the door, Innel spoke a few fast words. “Get him,” Maris thought she heard.
All right, then: she would begin again. Maris slammed her attention through the walls and doors of the palace, touching and dismissing people as fast as she could. If he was here, she would find him. She must.
What are you missing, Marisel?
Catching her breath, she brought herself back into the room and forced herself to think in an ordered fashion.
Perhaps panic was unnecessary and her exhaustion was making her assume the worst. The other mage, she now realized, could well be Gallelon, having taken his own advice and come to Yarpin for the good food, books, and conversation whose qualities he had extolled to her. It was just the sort of thing he might do.
Indeed, he could have been recruited by Innel as she had. She could easily imagine him telling Innel that they two would work well together.
She exhaled her tension, throwing etheric taps down through her fingers and feet and into the earth, seeking ground to settle her agitation. Yes, it all fit; likely it was Gallelon.
Then, all at once, she found him. As he was stepping into the room. No longer hidden, no longer cloaked.
Not Gallelon.
She yanked her awareness fully back into her body.
Innel moved back quickly out of the invisible line that stretched between her and Keyretura, that etheric connection from him to the deepest parts of herself, that now felt as if it were made of fire.
Innel’s expression was guarded. She read no surprise, but she would not spare thought for his culpability, not now; all her attention was on the dark-skinned man in black robes who faced her from the door.
Her creator. Her aetur. The man whose side she had left the very first moment she could. She had not even said good-bye.
The dark, wide-set eyes sent a familiar, stomach-dropping sensation through her. She felt herself begin to tremble, struggled to control it. Which he would notice, of course, along with her racing pulse and the fatigue in her body. He never overlooked such things.
His gaze slowly took her in, a familiar, faint smile on his face.
Innel said, “Marisel al Perripur, this is—”
“We’ve met,” Maris said shortly.
“Marisel,” Keyretura said, drawing out her name. “It has been a long time.”
She switched to the ancient language of mages. Formality, Keyretura himself had long ago taught her, was the best refuge when conflict was possible. And with mages, it was always possible. “Teacher.” The words felt clumsy on her tongue. “In this place, at this time, on this flow, I greet you. My respect.”
In a way, it didn’t matter that she was so exhausted; even fully rested she would be no match for him. If this came to conflict, she could not hope to survive. So it must not come to that.
“Uslata,” Keyretura answered in the same tongue. “I have faith that you are well.”
In a language rich with indirection and ambiguity, his reply could mean any number of things, among them, that by asking, the asker considered the answer in doubt. In the right context, it was an insult. So how did he mean it?
Why could he not have simply said he was pleased to see her?
Because he was Keyretura.
Anger and embarrassment made shards of her focus. He would know that, too.
“Well enough,” she answered in Perripin, where nothing was so subtle. She turned to Innel, her back partly to Keyretura, conscious of the slight, reprimanding herself for being foolishly petty. “You told him I was here. But you gave me no warning. What is this?”
“I need you both.”
Breath escaped her in a humorless laugh. At least now she knew where she stood.
“Lord Commander,” she said tightly, summoning all her focus for what she must say so carefully in Arunkin, “what splendid good fortune for you, to have Keyretura dua Mage with you in contract. There is no labor or sagacity I could provide you with that he could not offer you in greater measure. To even attempt it would be to risk disrespect to my aetur, for which I could never forgive myself. With deference to you both, I absent myself.”
“Marisel. Surely you can make the effort together?” He looked a question at the black-clad mage.
“We labored together for twenty years,” Keyretura said.
Her apprenticeship, he meant. That was something else entirely.
She walked to the door, keenly aware of each step, expecting the familiar touch that was the etheric equivalent of being grabbed, the tug that would mean Keyretura meant to do more than talk. She took the door handle in a tight grip to stop her hand from shaking.
Surely Keyretura would not throw away twenty years of apprenticeship over a moment’s unexpected encounter, however unpleasant. Surely.
What are you missing, Marisel?
How very dangerous this moment was.
No, she could not stay. It was all she could do to hold herself where she stood. To slow the pounding of her heart.
Turning halfway back to meet Innel’s look, she said, “Two mages are not better than one. The original saying, Lord Commander, is this: ‘Distract one mage with another and escape while you still can.’ It does not mean what you think it means, and you, ser, are a half-wit.”
It was a small satisfaction to insult Innel. Keyretura would not care; Innel was beneath him. But it did her no good; it was childish.
“I intended no offense,” Innel said. Respect? Regret? Whatever he had intended, it was done now.
“No,” she said, realizing the truth of it as she spoke. “You paid me well for work I did poorly. I should have left long ago.”
“Marisel,” Innel said. “Surely—”
“She has decided,” Keyretura said. “She can at times be mule-stubborn and impressively free of the influences of reason. No one could change her mind now, least of all me.”
A look back at him. Teacher, creator.
Aetur.
Mouth downturned, eyes narrowed, a tightness across the brow: he was disappointed in her. Of course he was.
So much time passed, but nothing changed.
For a moment she thought to give voice to her thoughts. He lifted his eyebrows in question, daring her to speak, but she knew better. Without the apprenticeship contract in place she had no protection from him at all, and she must at all costs avoid infuriating him, something she had never been very good at.
Say nothing, she told herself. In the decades since Keyretura, surely she had learned to do that much.
Swallowing words of anger and rage, she left.
Chapter Twenty-one
Tayre stood in the center of the tiny and abandoned apartment. Food and clothes and blankets had been taken. Little remained but trash. There were no clues as to where the seer and her family might have gone.
In his discussion with her the previous night, he had read her as suspicious and afraid, yet strongly inclined to taking the contract. Had there been a wager, he would have put gold on her saying yes today.
Even so, he had made sure he had hires across the city to catch her if he were wrong. By dawn the reports told him that the three of them had left together at first light, packs on their backs, and slipped into the crowds of Munasee.
Competent and experienced city trackers, his hires. They knew how to follow people. It should have been simple enough to keep the three of
them in sight.
They had lost them.
Whether by skill or instinct, to escape the net he had arranged was no simple matter. He himself would have been hard-pressed to do so. For two women and a small boy, it should have been impossible.
The trackers reported seeing them come out of the building, slip into the streets, and then into the crowds. Tayre had anticipated this as a worst-case possibility and had set watchers at all the roads leading out of the city, as well as ports and docks. Anywhere the exceptionally lucky trio could find an exit from Munasee.
None had seen them. There was not even a rumor. They might as well have vanished.
West to the Great Road then southward again would again be his first guess, continuing her momentum away from where she started. But she had been learning, as evidenced by her ability to not only avoid capture but thwart the multiple attempts on her life he had seen play out these last months.
Despite what he had told her, not all the attacks were incompetent. Some should have worked. She should have been dead many times over.
The other possibility was that the three had not left at all, but had gone to ground right here in Munasee. A thorough search of the city would take some time, but he had to be sure he was not being tricked into thinking she was not where she actually was, one of the very best ways to hide and just the sort of tactic he would use in her position to put a persistent hunter off the trail. If he left the city now and she were still here, he would be searching fruitlessly for a very, very long time.
He did not think her quite that clever, but he had been wrong about her before.
He would need to take a close look at the Munasee underground: the basement warrens, the labyrinths of storage, the coils of wine cellars. After Kusan it might well be on her mind to go into an underground for refuge.
She had a knack for getting people to take her in. Perhaps he should also look into the aristos of Munasee, even the Houses themselves. Who knew what she might manage?
An expensive search. He would need more coin. He had come to the point where he could no longer get funds from the Lord Commander without more in hand than an explanation of how he had lost her again, so he would need to do a bit of unrelated work. Something that paid especially well, which meant it would most likely be quiet, bloody, and illegal. That would take time as well.
As he searched the apartment once more, again finding nothing, he considered the pursuit in large scale, and wondered if he should continue.
It was easy to be deceived into thinking that coming close to a quarry was nearly the same as having it in hand, but this was the very thing that kept people gambling away all they owned when a sensible and dispassionate evaluation would tell them to stop.
There was his reputation to consider, certainly; failing to satisfy what was, at least to all appearances, a simple, straightforward contract would make it difficult for him to get the more lucrative and interesting contracts in the future. It would be best to tie off the loose ends and finish what he had begun.
But this now went beyond loose threads, reputation, and contracts.
Find the unknown. Make it known to you.
He had to understand her.
His offer to Innel to resign had been purely for show, to keep the man from making the suggestion himself. He would continue this search, even if the Lord Commander ended the contract.
What had gone wrong with the plan this time? He had seen the way she looked at the souver touch. Even her fear of him had been overcome by the promise of relief from his deadly pursuit, and the temptation of a life of comfort made strong by years of deprivation.
She must have foreseen something. The weak link in the plan had always been the Lord Commander himself. If, once he had her in hand, he would threaten her or her family, she might foresee this. Tayre thought he’d made clear to the Lord Commander how thoroughly his intention must change for this approach to work, but perhaps the man could not so easily change his intention.
In any case, the cause was unknowable. Tayre would simply have to go and find her again.
Now, at least, Tayre had the range of options available to him. He did not have to take her alive, which would make this much simpler.
There was no point in reporting back to the Lord Commander; that would only frustrate him to no good purpose. Tayre would return when he had her in hand. Or her head.
Chapter Twenty-two
A cold freedom, just as she had foreseen.
Amarta pulled the blanket tighter around her, wishing for another atop it, and gripped the rail as the ship rose and fell, watching the darkening blue line where the astonishing expanse of ocean met the sky, as a bright orange-red sun burned down into the sea. Above, the sky was brushed with strands of high, pink clouds, a few stars.
Some said the Beyond was up there, among the stars. Was it like this railing, she wondered, her parents looking down on her as she looked on the water below? Did they blame her for their deaths? They should; but for her lack of courage, they would be alive.
She missed her mother tonight, a pressure in her chest, a pain behind her eyes. What was that song her mother had sung to her about the ocean? Now would be the time for it, at least to hum it, a bit of remembrance for her mother. One last thing to hold, now that the seashell was gone, along with the strips of blue.
Even the blue trim on her cloak, with which Amarta had marked Nidem to die.
No, her mother’s ocean song was gone from memory.
Gone, gone. All gone.
It was bitingly cold. As the sky darkened it chilled further, but Amarta refused to go back down, below deck. Too many people. She was sick of people, even her sister and nephew. She ached everywhere, most painfully in her stomach.
To bleed for the first time should have meant something. A gathering of friends. A feast to celebrate the moment of becoming a woman. Her mother by her side. Now all it meant was one less shirt, torn up for rags. She wondered what women in the palace did when they bled, and what they ate, and if they were warm right now.
Getting from Munasee to the ocean port at the Munasee Cut, then onto this ship had not been easy. Amarta struggled to stay in a haze of foreseeing, indicating in each moment where to go next. First it was the markets, this many steps this way, and then that way. Down to Button Port and under Trout Bridge, around the russet stone fountain but not too close, then double back and down two levels underneath the huge First Bridge to the stables where large wagons waited for the day’s loading.
There, at a particular moment, they climbed inside a large box already atop a cart, nestling down into rolls of cloth to wait. An hour later the cart jerked to motion, taking them they knew not where.
They emerged at the ocean port, where a huge ship stood ready to leave. A fast departure seemed wise. Somehow their few remaining nals got them waved on board; they’d bought themselves a small stretch of floor in steerage near some sealed barrels, below other passengers who had claimed the ledges. It was wet, it stank, but they had escaped.
Now, overhead in the twilight sky, a gull paced the boat, high among the sails. It must be flying, she realized, even though it seemed only to hover. Like the ocean’s edge against the sky, which seemed a flat line but must be full of the same watery ravines and hillocks she saw looking overboard. Sharp waves, changing valleys, and the occasional spray in her face as the water spat upwards. Far distant, things could seem so much simpler than they were up close.
With the wind in her ears and her eyes on gull and horizon, it took her some time to notice the figure standing only a few feet away at the railing, watching her. For a moment fear seized her—somehow he had found them. How could he be everywhere, even here?
But no; another look told her it was not him.
“Blessings of the season to you,” came a woman’s voice, mildly accented, her feet set apart on the rocking deck, hand lightly on the railing.
Amarta clumsily sought through the next few moments for danger, but nothing signaled her. Perhaps th
e woman was no more than a fellow passenger. “And you,” she answered cautiously.
“Cold out here,” the woman said, voice loud enough to carry over the wind. She turned to look out at the ocean. “I’ll be glad to get home.”
Now Amarta saw the woman’s dark skin in the deepening gloom. A Perripin. She had seen them in Munasee, taken messages to them from time to time.
“Not very long ago,” the woman continued, still facing the blackening ocean, “I held a small seashell in my hand, striped with blue and white. Yours, I believe.”
Amarta gripped the railing tightly. Everyone seemed to know things about her, from the shadow man to this stranger. Where was vision to warn her?
The woman turned to look at her. “Come to my cabin where it’s warm,” she said. “We can exchange names and stories. I’m sure you have some interesting ones, like why the Lord Commander of the Arun Empire is looking for you.”
Amarta’s heart began to pound. Where to run to now, on a ship surrounded by ocean? Mutely she shook her head.
The woman’s voice held a smile. “We do not stop until Kelerre. Will you hide in steerage all that time to avoid me? I have food and drink and warmth to share.”
Amarta was so cold she thought she might freeze and shatter. Again she tried to foresee danger, but found nothing. It did not much reassure her, not after the talk with the hunter, in which vision was also less than forthcoming.
“I’m going to my cabin,” the Perripin woman said at last. “Follow or not, as you please.” With that she turned away.
It was too cold to stay on deck, but she did not want to go back to the crowded hold to see what bits of food they might still have left. She followed the woman along the inner walkway. Out of the wind, she felt better, a surge of guilt coming over her as they passed the ladders going down to steerage, where she belonged.
Near the front of the ship, the woman opened a door into a cabin with two bunks. A table. Lamps.
Warmth.
Amarta sat uncertainly as the woman opened a cupboard, taking out mugs, pouring red liquid from a wineskin, handing one to Amarta. A taste of the fermented, spiced liquid sent warmth into her belly.