The Mages of Bennamore

by Pauline M. Ross

  The window changed.

  Hestaria shrieked. “You did it! Well done! But what did you do?”

  “Nothing!” Mal protested, a note of hysteria in his voice. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “You touched the window.”

  Understanding lit their faces.

  “So that’s all it is?” Hestaria said. “Just touch it?”

  She dabbed a finger at the window. Nothing happened. She pressed harder.

  I laughed. It was so simple! “Try a different one.”

  She moved along one window, and dabbed again. The view changed at once. Screeching with delight, she flew from window to window, changing the scene from one to another to another.

  When the city appeared, we all gasped. Now that we could see all the way round, the full extent of the place was apparent. Our tower was built perhaps a mile from the sea, and all around us, down to the lapping waves in one direction and the horizon in every other, there were buildings, towers and turrets, domes and flags, roads filled with wagons and closed carriages. There were even people nearby, lying about on the grassy hill where the tower stood, walking on well-maintained paths, sitting on benches, some sitting at tables with food and drink laid out, eating a meal in the open. They were dark skinned, with bright clothing that draped around their bodies in voluptuous folds and trailed along the ground, although I couldn’t tell which were men and which were women. They wore broad-brimmed hats and walked with sticks, although none of them were limping.

  “No swords,” I muttered.

  “Maybe those sticks conceal thin swords. I’ve seen one like that from the northern coast.”

  “Is that where that is?” I asked in a small voice. The size of the city was making me feel very insignificant. No Port Holding was even close to the size of it, not even a tenth the size, and I was pretty sure nowhere in the sun-blessed lands was so big, not even Kingswell in Bennamore.

  “I cannot be sure,” Hestaria said, “but I think by the shortness of the shadows, it must be a long way north. Not far from the Turbulence.”

  That sounded vaguely familiar. I hadn’t paid much attention to lessons about the far north when I was a child – I was more interested in fishing quotas and trade agreements, unnatural child that I was – but I felt sure she was right.

  We were quiet on the long descent to collect the others. The two boys – young men, really – had ventured into the tower and part way up the stairs and discovered the windows, but the rest still clustered where we’d left them, lying on the floor trying to sleep or sitting on bits of rubble in the tunnel outside.

  We shared round the water flasks, and led the newly cheerful group up the stairs to the first usable door. This was the one that was partly blocked by rock and earth, but Mal volunteered to go first to check there was enough room to squeeze through.

  “What if there isn’t?” I whispered. “What if you get stuck?”

  He grinned. “Then you’ll have to pull me back in, won’t you?”

  And with a quick peck on the lips, he was gone. After scrambling through the gap, he hauled himself into the sunshine and onto the waving grasses we could see outside. A few pebbles and rivulets of dirt slithered through the opening from outside.

  Silence.

  “Mal?” I called.

  “Fine, I’m fine. But – this place is fucking weird.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Out here, it’s the middle of the fucking night.”

  25: The Old Harbour

  The sailors began muttering behind me, reciting pleas to the Goddess.

  I had no patience with them. After all we’d experienced, this little matter of day and night was the least of it. So long as we emerged at Dristomar and not at Dragons’ Point, I would be content. I was going out through that door, even if the sea caught fire.

  “Anyone who wishes is welcome to walk back to the Hold and find another way out,” I said crisply. They subsided a bit, although they still clutched the charms round their necks, and rubbed their sleeves, which hid their tattoos.

  I crawled into the opening, and was immediately showered with loose soil. Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, I clawed my way forwards and upwards, rough plants scratching at my hands. Then I was out.

  I opened my eyes. The pleasant summer’s day I’d seen from within had vanished, plunging me into darkness. I couldn’t see a thing.

  Something grabbed my hand, and I squeaked.

  “Only me,” Mal said, hauling me to my feet. “Let’s move away a bit, leave room for the next one out. You all right?”

  “Not sure.” I laughed, gazing up at the velvety starred sky.

  “Takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? But the windows at the top were right, I think, and the ones lower down were lying little Sprites.”

  Gradually the rest of the group wriggled and huffed their way through the gap. We were already so filthy that no one complained about crawling through the dirt. I supposed it was lucky it hadn’t been raining.

  The air was glorious, cool and still, with just the faintest breeze carrying the sharp tang of the sea. I breathed deeply, relishing the freshness. Free at last. I tried to work out how many days it had been since someone had hit me on the head, but I gave it up. Four days, five maybe? But everything swam together in my mind, and I couldn’t quite remember the details any more. At least I felt well again, with no pain in my head. Even the gnawing hunger pangs were diminished.

  “What next?” Mal said. The group looked me expectantly.

  “Is there a path down from here?”

  It was Tun who answered. “There is, but it’s narrow and hard to follow even in daylight. The cliffs are treacherous, too. A misstep will put you into a ravine or onto the rocks below.”

  “Can you read the stars and tell the hour?”

  The sailors all laughed. “Course, Mis’ress!” they chorused. No more than an hour until dawn, they reckoned. “Nights are short, this time o’ year,” one said.

  “We’ll wait,” I said. “The rest will do us good, and it isn’t cold tonight. As soon as we can see, we’ll make our way home. Or wherever you want to go.” It crossed my mind that some of these men might have been imprisoned after a proper trial, and would now be on the run. I couldn’t regret releasing them, because they would have died down there, but I wondered uneasily what they’d done to deserve such treatment. Maybe nothing, like me.

  Mal organised an expedition of the braver souls in the party to re-enter the tower to replenish all the water flasks we had at the fountain. Hestaria and I sat with our backs to the tower, and the sailors wandered off to explore the surroundings and climb out of the hollow where the tower sat.

  “I never expected him to marry,” she said, in conversational tones, as if we were discussing the weather.

  I chuckled. “He needed a Holding wife to allow him to be a guard here – to carry a sword.”

  “Ah, of course!” Her face lightened, but although she looked speculatively at me, she asked nothing further. That was a relief. I wasn’t really in the mood for an interrogation of our marital arrangements.

  “Were you and Mallaron really looking for me, or did you just get slung in prison for disobeying the Holder’s command, like me?” Hestaria asked.

  “The latter, mostly. But we were looking for you, we looked everywhere, Mal especially. And the Holder’s aunt. And Gret. Poor Gret.”

  “Poor Gret? Why, what has happened?”

  Dragon’s balls. I’d forgotten she knew nothing of that. Hesitantly, I told her the bones of the story, but she took it remarkably well. “Gret never had any patience,” was her only comment, although she was quiet after that.

  When Mal came back and sat down beside me, Hestaria looked from one of us to the other, and then stood up.

  “I will see what these locals know about this tower – folklore and so on. Surprisingly informative, sometimes.”

  She wandered off.

  Mal and I sat
in silence for a while, passing a water flask back and forth. It was as fresh and delicious as spring water, but with a hint of something earthy about it, something very pleasant. It filled my stomach nicely, leaving me full and not at all hungry. I was pleasantly tired, and my eyes began to close.

  “I thought you’d come to rescue me,” Mal said conversationally. “When you turned up at my cell, I thought you were the relief command riding to the rescue. Didn’t realise you were in the same mess as me.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I came to find you, of course. They told us you’d gone to Shannamar, that a boat had come for you and you’d just – left.”

  “I wouldn’t do that!”

  “I know. You’d have told us first.”

  “No, I’d never go back to Shannamar, never.”

  “Oh. Well, I knew you’d have come back if you could, because we were going out for a bit of a feast, and you’d never miss that.”

  I had to laugh. “You know me too well!”

  “Do I?” He chuckled. “Anyway, I went storming up to the Hold, demanding to see the Holder. I got that Kestimar instead. He laughed at me, Fen.” He sounded so injured, I almost laughed again. “I won’t have that. I won’t be laughed at when I have a legitimate complaint. I’m your husband, they shouldn’t fob me off. Anyway, he just summoned his henchmen and they arrested me, and dragged me off to that foul cellar.”

  “I heard you arrive, I think. Or something being dragged, anyway. Why were they dragging—? Oh. They beat you up.”

  “Just a little. I had my belt, though, so I was right as a rainbow in no time.”

  Just a little? He’d been unconscious.

  “Not that I let on, of course,” he went on. “I pretended to be suffering. I thought I might get a chance to jump one of them, but they never came into the cell. If you hadn’t come… That’s a pretty neat trick of yours. I suppose I don’t need to ask now how you got into Kael’s money box.”

  I said nothing. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to talk about again. I wasn’t exactly ashamed of myself – I’d needed the money and, to be honest, I’d enjoyed the thrill of it. Still, it was over and done with, and I didn’t like being reminded of it.

  Mal smiled, though, not at all censorious, and took my hand, gently stroking my fingers. I confess the contact warmed my heart. Mal had many faults, but he could be a kind and considerate man when he set out to be.

  “So what about you?” he asked. “How did you get hurt? A fall?”

  I told him the whole story, and watched anger build in him. I thought he would explode, but after I’d finished the tale, he was silent for a long time, struggling to master the emotions that suffused his face.

  When he finally spoke, his tone was studiedly calm. “I don’t know how he could allow that to happen to you. I know he cares for you, it’s written all over him. So why?”

  I couldn’t answer him. It was the question that burned inside me, too, and threatened to tear my heart into tiny pieces. Seeing me injured, how could he stand aside while I was carted down to the dungeons and abandoned there? Why wouldn’t he insist on sending for a physician, or make sure I was sent to the infirmary or a moon temple? If, in some unfathomable way, he’d had no say in my incarceration, why wouldn’t he summon sun, moon and stars to get me out of there? Why leave me to Kestimar?

  And the only answer I could come up with was this: that he doesn’t love me at all, that he doesn’t care in the slightest what happens to me, and he willingly left me to die.

  Inside, I was frozen, reluctant to believe it of him, yet the evidence was irrefutable.

  I needed to get away from these thoughts. “Have you known Hestaria long?”

  He laughed, and squeezed my hand. “Too long! I met her at Kingswell when I first became a mage guard, and we had – a thing, for a while.”

  “An affair?”

  A heavy sigh. “I wouldn’t glorify it with that name, to be honest. She pursued me, I gave in, that was all it was. Then I got myself transferred to Wissonlent, mainly to get away from her. Well, you’ve seen what she’s like. It gets a bit wearing after a while. So then she followed me to Wissonlent, would you believe. Said it was on account of it being so close to the river, and her being fond of fish, but she was after me again straight away.”

  “A determined lady.”

  “Indeed. So I got another transfer, to Yannitore, and that did the trick.”

  “And here she is again,” I said cheerfully, amused by his discomfiture. “Prepare to be pursued once more.”

  “Ah, but now I have you to protect me,” he said smugly.

  “I told her we only married for legal reasons.”

  His horrified face made me laugh. “Gods, Fen, what did you tell her that for? Now I’ll have to fight her off again.”

  “And you don’t want that?”

  “No! I’d much rather fight you off.”

  I caught my breath. That again. Surely he wasn’t serious? “Did you mean it then, what you said in the cell?”

  Long silence. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget about it.” His voice was low, barely audible, but he gripped my hand painfully tight.

  He turned his face fully towards me, his features blurred in the grey half-light of the coming dawn.

  “Fen, I don’t want to interfere between you and the Holder. I know I’m only with you for a short time, so I’m happy to make the most of that, because I – I like you very much. But you belong with him. Or someone like him, someone as grand and clever and important as you are.”

  I thought of Ish, who may be grand and clever and important, but who’d abandoned me twenty years ago and now had abandoned me all over again. Then I thought of Mal, who’d always been kind to me, and generous. He’d gone tearing up to the Hold in a lather of indignation to find me, and got himself beaten up and tossed in a cell for his trouble. I hadn’t been at all kind to him, not in the slightest. That made me ashamed of myself.

  We sat in silence until the sun was well up, and then gathered everyone together for the long walk home. We topped up the water flasks one more time, drank our fill, and found the path out of the hollow where the tower sat.

  We emerged on the western side of the promontory, and there below us was another harbour, the old harbour, tucked into a deep cleft in the promontory. It was full of ships, some only half built. That wasn’t unexpected, but—

  “What are all these sword ships doing here?”

  Mal looked puzzled. “Why shouldn’t they be here?”

  “Because sword ships are constrained by law. The numbers allowed, where they have to be kept. Dristomar is allowed twelve, and they have their berths in the eastern harbour, marked by flag poles. There might be some from neighbouring Holdings here, in for repairs, but there are…” I counted quickly. “…ten, no, eleven.”

  I looked around for Tun. “Master Mariner!”

  He was ahead of me, but he stopped and helpfully returned to my side.

  “What are all these sword ships for? Are we about to start a war?”

  Several of the other sailors nearby muttered darkly as I spoke. “Good question,” one said under his breath.

  “Ah,” Tun said, stroking his beard. “You might well ask, Mistress. These are the ships ordered and paid for by Bennamore, to go round Dragons’ Point and trade with the foreigners on the western seaboard.”

  “Nonsense! These are lightweight, fighting ships, built for speed, not to withstand icy waters and heavy weather. And so many!”

  Tun laughed. “I said exactly the same myself to the Holder’s man. All of us here, we’re shipbuilders. I’m a roper, myself, I design the rigging, and Lors there is a carpenter. We asked questions, but we weren’t getting any answers. We got together and went in a group to tell the manager we weren’t happy about it. You saw how well that turned out.”

  “They threw you all in prison for asking questions?”

  “Aye.”

  I could hardly believe it.
Tarn had told me about the agreement to build sword ships to open up a new trade route, but they would need to be the large, heavy-bottomed type that the whalers used, perhaps modified to carry Sea Defenders, since they might well find themselves in hostile territory. But this was a war fleet. And who would Bennamore – or Dristomar – be going to war against? The only places within reach of these dainty little vessels were Port Holdings.

  My stomach turned over. Was this Ish’s doing? Was he planning a war against his fellow Holders, perhaps using the mages to subdue any resistance? It was unthinkable.

  “Some of these look ready, from the outside.”

  “Aye, some are. Those two on the far side – they’re fully fitted, and the one at the end almost so. Another two or three well on the way. The rest will take a while. But there’s more coming, two more in the dry dock by the eastern harbour, and as soon as one is watertight, they’ll kick it out of there and start another. There’s no end in sight.”

  “They’re no use as sword ships without swords,” Mal said. “This would need a lot of Defenders.”

  “Or Bennamorian soldiers,” I said.

  Mal let out a long breath. “Let’s get ourselves home first, then we can ask your Holder what this is all about.”

  Tun and some of the other locals led the way along the narrow path away from the tower. It quickly turned away from the old harbour, marching straight across the promontory, bordered by wind-tossed grasses. Then it scrambled along the cliff edge above the vast eastern harbour. It was large enough to hold a thousand ships, so they said.

  There were not that many there today, but amidst the many hundreds was one that tore at my heart.

  “See that?” I said to Mal. “The little flag ship right at the end of the pier with the red barrels on it?”

  “The one with all the flags on it? Oh – flag ship. I get it. It’s a special kind of ship, right? Someone important.”