“I sent a gift of banewort to Lerissa,” Worilke said. “If she lives, it won’t be for long.”
“She wasn’t there to receive it,” Louarn said.
“You’ve seen her?” A complicated array of expressions flitted over the dark lined face.
“I have,” Louarn said. “And I have seen magestone glow. She has proven what her codex contends.”
“For whom?” Worilke said, leaning forward. “For herself? She must not regain her light before—”
“For children,” Louarn said. “For children born after Galandra’s shield was broken. It did not glow for Lerissa. Lerissa was rendered lightless in the breaking, as were you, and Dabrena—even Dabrena’s daughter, who was an infant at the time. The fragment of magestone glowed for the children of the vanished light. The children born because the freedoms failed. The children who were not in this world to be affected by the searing release of power when Galandra’s warding was breached.”
“Coring and sealing can be reversed,” Worilke said dismissively. “They are never permanent.”
“Then you, as wordsmith, should understand that that is not the correct term, merely an analogy. The light was not sealed off inside our mages six years ago. The magelight was extinguished.”
“Not obliterated. Stunned dark. It will recover.”
“Then why didn’t Lerissa’s magestone glow for her?”
“Perhaps it returns more slowly in those of us stunned by the breaking.”
“I cannot dispute that possibility,” Louarn said. “Only time will tell. But according to the codex Lerissa had in hand, the light will return only in the next generation. How did you plan to geld that light? Kill all the children? Dismember them?”
Dabrena let out a hiss, reflexively reaching over to Kara, but her daughter was watching the debate with intense fascination, no sign of distress in her at all. Dabrena let it pass.
“No need,” Worilke said. “When my stewards’ work is done, [450] there will be no one left to teach them. All the light in the world is worth nothing without the skills to actuate it.”
“It didn’t occur to you that they might redevelop magecraft, all on their own? Scribing is available to anyone who would learn it. Vellum and sedgeweave are traded widely. In most of Eiden Myr, there is no superstition against painting or color or pattern. Your craft’s strictures have been lifted. What would stop them?”
“You think magecraft was the scribbles of a child on parchment incorrectly prepared, materials randomly chosen, words unstructured into effective verse forms? You know nothing. Be gone from me.”
“You’d have had to kill all the reckoners,” Dabrena said. “The runners. They’ve built a holding of their own, in the Haunch, with the express purpose of keeping the arts of magecraft in use, light or no. I thought Pelkin was wasting his time. It seems he was not.”
“I would have killed them,” Worilke said, deflating. Defeated. Was it a ruse? “Every last black one of them, and you warders as well. The proxy system was a dangerous dispersal of power. One ennead was sufficient.” Before Adaon could speak on the breath he drew, she said, “At any rate, you’ve thwarted me now. You’ve caught me out. The invasion will come, and Verlein’s blades will fail to halt it, and the first triad that casts with the return of the light will bring the rain of terror down upon us all over again, and Galandra’s vision of peace and safety will go dark at last.” For a moment Dabrena had thought she saw again the ebon-skinned, muscular woman Worilke had been, redolent of authority, redolent of light, impatient with nonsense. But it lapsed into the sullenness of a cracked old woman denied an expected treat.
“You used me,” Verlein said. “You hid in my shadow while you killed mages who might have protected us.”
Worilke shrugged. “We all use each other. I gave you good counsel, where I could. Perhaps we were meant to redeem each other, you and I. Two cold killers, with Eiden Myr’s best interests at heart.”
“You counseled me to take the menders and runners in hand. Not to set things right, as you claimed, as you knew would sway me. But so you’d have easy access to them all, to kill them.”
“They’re still warders and reckoners, whatever they call themselves now. Yes. That would have saved a great deal of time and trouble. A pity.” Worilke drew a morsel from the pouch she had been fiddling with and popped it into her mouth.
“We have not defeated her so long as any of her killers remain at large,” said Yuralon.
As he said the last words, Verlein, who had not finished her [451] exchange with Worilke, said, “I should have killed you six years ago.”
At the same moment, Karanthe’s voice called from the inn’s doorway, “See who we’ve got here, Dabrena!”
And at that same moment, Dabrena knew that what had looked like a bit of ginger root in Worilke’s hand had not been ginger root at all.
Verlein lunged for Worilke with a knife.
Risalyn met the lunge, and they wrestled for the blade.
Yuralon drew Worilke from her chair and away from the struggle. “Stand down, Verlein!” he said. “She has to call her killers off!”
Adaon drew Kara away in similar fashion, as Louarn said, “What’s that at her belt, Yuralon?”
“Don’t touch it!” Dabrena cried, pushing her way past chairs to get around to Worilke. While Yuralon held the old woman, though she gave no struggle, Dabrena pulled her sleeves over her fingers and pressed the worn, oily linen of the pouch around the human shape of a root within. “It’s banewort,” she said. “An emetic, Yuralon, do you have one?”
“Freyn’s justice works far too fast for that,” Worilke said through a grin tightening into a rictus.
Yuralon shook his head, his attention distracted as Verlein and Risalyn crashed against the wall and spun into a table. There was a clunk as the knife flew free, then a disgusted oath from Verlein. Da-brena turned in a desperate bid to sieze on something that would make Worilke vomit up the poison root she’d swallowed, and saw the bladebreaker, with Karanthe behind her, hustle a man into the light from the window. She knew him ... she knew him. ... “Bloody raving spirits,” she said, and turned back, snatching a pair of gloves from Yuralon’s belt and tugging one on. She’d have to stick her fingers down the cursed woman’s throat.
“No,” Worilke said. Her eyes were fixed past Dabrena, at the man Kazhe and Karanthe had brought in. Her face contorted with pain, she doubled over, saying, “No, no, no,” then choked on an agonized gasp.
Dabrena took another look at the man. “That’s Teyik,” she said.
“Our laundry steward from when we were vocates in the Holding,” Karanthe said vaguely, trying to make sense of the melee. “Valik’s son. Valik was Worilke’s steward.”
The man seemed torn between an attempt at bewildered innocence and an undisguisable desperation to go to Worilke. He chose to bolt; Kazhe held him firm.
“Valik’s dead,” Dabrena said. “He was old. ...”
[452] “The son’s her steward now,” Louarn said, from behind Dabrena.
Yuralon said, “The impaled man claimed her steward would kill her when it was rime.”
“I told you ...” Worilke choked. The banewort’s poisons worked in moments when applied to the skin. Dabrena could not imagine what they were doing inside her gut. “... to go ...”
“It wasn’t time!” Teyik cried, pulling toward Worilke. Yuralon gestured for Kazhe to free him, and let him take the dying woman in his arms. He sagged to the floor, keening. “I tried to go, I tried, but the runner said you wanted a word with me, what could I do, how could I know? Once I saw, it was too late, they caught me and held me.”
Worilke’s death rattle had already come and gone. She never heard his explanation.
“He was only her ... servant, her minder,” Verlein said. Her struggle with Risalyn had ended when the knife flew loose, or perhaps when Yuralon’s words sank in, about not killing Worilke before she had called her killers off.
Worilke had known that her
stewards would be the next question. A veteran of a cruel Ennead, she had not trusted herself to hold out under torture. Her steward Teyik was meant to carry on for her. Of course. An aging woman in a troubled time ... a woman kept under close watch by the shieldmaster ... a woman unable to manage the logistics of directing widespread killings ... she would have had to have one reliable, mobile agent to work the rest.
“He’ll know who all her killers are,” Dabrena said. “She died to keep him a secret.” She looked up. “Thank you, Blademaster.”
Kazhe snorted, and went off to put an arm around the distraught innkeeper and move him back to his servingboard.
More slowly, Dabrena said, “Thank you, Karanthe.”
“Take care with him until they’re found and stopped,” Louarn told Yuralon, as Risalyn came up beside him.
“We’ll handle it,” Risalyn said. “But we could use some help getting this out to the cart.”
Her gaze turned to Verlein. Verlein shook her head.
Teyik carried the body.
Dabrena held Kara in a long hug, far past the point where she was squirming and groaning to get free. At last she let her go, and said, “That’s Karanthe n’Farine l’Jebb. That’s who you were named for, Kara.”
Kara blinked.
[453] “Did you think I must be a dead person?” Karanthe said. “Head custom isn’t to name firstborn children for the living, is it?”
Kara shook her head.
“Your mother and father thought I was dead when they named you,” Karanthe said. “Lucky for me they were wrong.” She gave Kara a wink, but the gaze she turned on Dabrena said, Though perhaps, to your mother, I was dead, after a fashion.
Dabrena introduced Karanthe and Adaon, then drew him and her daughter into seats at the disarrayed table, implicitly inviting Karanthe to sit as well. “Do you think all our stewards were Ennead agents?” she said. “Lenn was Naeve’s, I figured that much out.”
Karanthe sat, and began to relax. “Probably. Wynn n’Miser l’Niggard, now, it’s hard to say whose pocket he was in.”
“He was our materials steward,” Dabrena told Kara and Adaon. “Tighter than a fist.”
“What about old Knobface?” said Karanthe. “Remember him, the lessons steward?”
“That was Bofric,” said Dabrena.
“I knew him!” said Kara. “He and Loris worked for the scary woman with the glowing ring.”
Karanthe’s slim brows went up, and Adaon wiggled down into his seat, plunked his elbow on the table, and put his chin on his fist with an expectant look.
Dabrena laughed. “It is rather a long story,” she said. “Does anyone have any tallies? I think we’d better get the drinks in. And a meal wouldn’t go amiss.”
Karanthe produced a drawbag full of tallystones, dangling it provocatively.
“Merciful spirits,” Adaon said, his eyes bulging. “Let’s order quickly, before the keepers make her spend it on plain clothes!”
Dabrena had not forgotten how beautiful Karanthe had been at two nineyears of age. But seven years later, she had matured into a stunning woman. Black did suit her awfully well.
Pretending to ogle the drawbag, she said to Karanthe, “Have I told you yet how good it is to see you?”
Louarn left mender and runner to their reunion meal with the scholar—whom he suspected must also be a seeker, though where his allegiance lay could not be easily determined in this region where dyed garb was ill received—and sat down alone at a small table between the servingboard and the door. He had no bag of tallystones, only his smile and his blue eyes, which with any luck would [454] persuade the serving girl to slip him a bowl of soup and forget to take payment. If not, he would see whether that keepers’ tithe was still on offer. But he wanted to hear what passed between the shieldmaster and the blademaster. It was unlikely that Verlein would persist in any bids for domination, but he’d get a more genuine sense of that from eavesdropping than from confronting her. And he did not want her to remember where she knew him from. Mellas did not ever want to talk to her again.
“Worilke was what changed me,” Verlein said.
Kazhe, rolling a cup of Strong Leg wine in her palms, did not even look up.
“I had tucked her away safe here,” Verlein said. “I came back here to break with her. Maybe kill her, if my own wound didn’t kill me first. And still she talked me back round to taking charge of the holdings. In the morning my wound was healed.”
“That wasn’t her doing.”
“Whose, then?”
Kazhe shrugged.
“Well, she’s dead now, and her schemes with her.”
“No one left to tell you what to do. Maybe you can still find that one on Khine.”
“She’s nothing to me.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I only wanted to watch the horizon for sails.”
“So you said. You’d best get back to it.”
“I will.” Verlein waved the wine-bearing innkeeper away. “Come with me, Kazhe. I need you.”
“I told you what I think of your fool shield.”
“Not to shield. To teach.”
Kazhe laughed aloud, then peered into her wine, as though some message had tried to manifest there.
“Not shielders,” Verlein persisted. “Me. I’d like to finish our training.” She pulled a small dagger from her belt; even in the dimness, Louarn saw it undulate, as though the metal were alive. “I’d like to earn that longblade of yours. Try to make up for ... Benkana. Learn how to destroy an opponent’s blades.”
Kazhe’s hands tightened on the cup until the tin gave under her whitened fingers. Then she set the cup down. “You can’t,” she said. “You have to want to win more than you want to fight. You have to want to stop the fight more than you want to win.”
“I could want that,” Verlein said. “For peace, for safety, I could learn to want that.”
[455] “You could never want any of those things,” Kazhe said, sliding from her stool. “And I have a prentice.”
She walked away, leaving her drink untasted.
After a long moment, Verlein laid the dagger beside it, and went out to her waiting wagon.
Rising quickly, Louarn retrieved the dagger before the innkeeper saw it. The serving girl had just started toward him with a look of interest. He shook his head, gave her a regretful smile. A glance showed Dabrena pleasantly engaged with her family and her friend.
He left the inn and stood at the side of the busy longstreet. Perhaps the Weak Leg, he thought. He’d never been as far as the Toes. He would find some way to slip the dagger to Pelufer without becoming entangled in pleas or farewells. She would return it to its rightful owner. Perhaps someday, if they met again, he would plumb the secrets of this ancient blademaster tradition.
He’d left tools and belongings in Gir Nuorin. So had the girls. He could go fetch his own, leave the dagger with their gear in assumption of its eventual retrieval, and take ship for the Toes from Glydh, at the top of the Knee. There might be vessels back in service by then.
“Where to?” asked Dabrena, coming up beside him.
“Glydh,” he answered, knowing that telling her invalidated it. Ulonwy, then. Or he could cadge rides to the Heel and take a simple ferry across Maur Lengra.
“What a nice coincidence,” she said. “Kara has grandparents there. We were considering a visit ourselves. It’s important to stay close to family. We forget that, in the holding.”
He handed the dagger to her. “This should go back to Kazhe,” he said. “Will you see that she gets it?”
Dabrena took it, and said, “Don’t go far, Louarn.”
Not Don’t go. Not You can’t leave. Not Please stay.
Just Don’t go far.
“I’ll try,” he said.
Dabrena nodded. “That’s all any of us can ever do.”
Gir Doegre
Their new stall was a thing of beauty.
It fit perfectly in its Hunger Long slot between Jiondor’s
sweets and Dalle’s pies. Dalle’s stall had been nearly demolished. Starting yesterday—Longlight—they’d rebuilt it right up against Riflin’s, eliminating one of the tight alleys Pelufer had used as an escape route in the old days. Jiondor’s stall had needed work, too, and between the lot of them they got it shifted over a threft, right up against Galtrelor’s. That left the perfect space for a stall that required only room for three girls to sit and cry their trades. There would be no wares to put out. Not at first, anyway—Pelufer had found, as they worked on the tin assemblages of the foodmongers’ stalls, that she had more than an affinity with metals, she had a knack, maybe even as strong as Elora’s knack for wood. Battered by haunts’ names and working hard just to survive, she’d never known there was more to her than names and scrounging and thieving. But she wouldn’t have time for any workings, not for a while, and she might not have Elora’s talent for them, in wood or metal or anything else. And Hunger Long wasn’t the place for metal-working.
Hunger Long was a place to satisfy hungers. And Harvest Long, its old name, had been a place to share bounty. If their plans worked out, it would be Harvest Long again soon.
“I wish I could smooth the wood,” Elora said, regarding the pocked awning supports with a critical eye.
[457] “Don’t,” Pelufer said. “It has to match the other.”
“I know. But not forever, I hope. Still, I wish we’d had Louarn to help us build it.”
“You had me!” Nolfi said. “And Jiondor and Riflin and Dalle and—”
“All right!” Elora laughed and gave him a playful shove, then blinked, blushed, and went quiet. Nolfi’s eyes were shining. He’d practically turned inside out with happiness when Elora came back. Elora wouldn’t miss Louarn’s pretty face for long.
Pelufer missed Louarn so much she couldn’t talk about it. He’d said he’d help her learn to cope with all the voices. Well, maybe she could learn on her own. Maybe what he’d already taught her, to find ways to live with uncomfortable things, could be applied to anything. But she was still furious with him for not saying goodbye.
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