“No,” she said, “but little of the ironworker’s art is known to me.”
He almost smiled. “A boy without a home or apprenticeship has a lot of time between thefts. I used to watch the craftsmen work in Bunard.” He frowned. “I thought that if I could show them how much I knew they might apprentice me out of the urchins.” He pointed. “No smith I’ve ever seen works that way.”
“It’s different?” she asked.
“It’s not just that it’s different, Lady Deel. It’s a complete diversion from the traditional way. He’s made a casting of the pick heads instead of forging them. Then, when he was done, he didn’t quench them, but left them to cool in the air. I’ve never seen the alloying elements he used—chorum and magnetite—spent on a common pickaxe. It’s far cheaper to replace the tool if it breaks.”
“Those elements aren’t found in the mines of Aille,” she said. “Caisel is the source.” Perhaps it was nothing more than an unexpected draft of cool air that raised gooseflesh on her neck. “A gifted smith might have the insight to attempt such.”
Fess turned to give her an unblinking stare. “Would a gifted smith time his work so that he would have to test it during the night? It will be dark before the pick heads will be cool enough to handle.”
The acrid smoke that hung in the air stung her eyes, and the scent of rust and scorched oil abraded her throat. Across the street, Isenbend closed the broad barn doors to his shop, the sound of the bar dropping into place to secure them clear in the late afternoon. “Your experience in the urchins will serve us well, Fess,” she said. “Find us a place we can hide and observe our innovative smith.”
Chapter 18
Toria crouched next to Fess, watching the smith’s shop from behind the closed doors of a competitor next door. A generous quantity of silver along with Fess’s urgings had been insufficient to persuade the man to lend them the use of his business as a watch point. In the end, she’d resorted to the use of her power to confuse him. She allowed herself a sigh of regret and condemnation. Her touch had been unexpectedly clumsy, and the man’s wife, fearing he had suffered a stroke, had taken him to the healer. She had no doubt the healer would wish to observe him for several hours. It would take at least that long for his memories to heal.
An hour after midnight, lantern light floated into Isenbend’s shop, but the smith kept the doors closed.
“Stay here, Lady Deel,” Fess directed.
Before he could leave, she caught him by the arm, a pointless gesture if he wished to pull away. “What do you mean to do?”
“I heard voices. If I am discovered, it will be a simple matter for me to escape.” He pulled the hood of his cloak over his blond hair and ghosted off into the darkness, slipping through the door without a sound.
She waited, catching hints of movement and conversation from Isenbend’s smithy but unable to take the pieces of sight and sound and assemble them into clarity and meaning. She stood in the dark, gnawing her worries, as a voice—Isenbend’s or another’s—rose in pitch, the staccato cadence of command obvious in the clipped delivery. Then a low hum drifted from his shop followed by the shriek of metal.
The strike of flint gave her the only warning that the owner of the shop had returned. Ducking, she hid behind the bellows, but she bumped the heavy leather, and soot drifted in the air.
“You see, love,” a woman said. “There’s no one here. Now come in. The healer says you need to rest.”
Toria squeezed her eyes shut and tried to swallow the soot that clogged her throat, but the black dust refused to budge. She needed to cough or sneeze. The lamp light came no closer, but neither did it recede. Tears tracked their way down her cheeks and spots swam in her eyes with the need to breathe.
“Come in, Corwian. The shop’s closed, see?”
Toria ducked her head and retched, burying her face in her cloak, working to muffle the sound. Bile and vomit cleared the soot, but rough hands grabbed her and hauled her to her feet.
“What have we here? What might you be doing, sneaking around my shop?” A charcoal-stained face leered at her, the prominent nose running askew from the rest of the features. “You see, Willa? I told you there was someone in my shop.”
Toria listened, praying to hear the sound of grinding from the smithy. “Please,” she said. “I just needed a place to spend the night. I didn’t mean any harm.” Her eyes wide with fear, she looked to the smith’s wife in pleading and breathed a sigh of relief when the woman drew almost near enough to touch.
Corwian’s brows drew together over the wreck of his nose. His hands dug into her arms, pinning them to her side “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” A portion of the fog clouding his gaze lifted. “You were here offering me—”
Toria twisted in his grasp, working to bring her fingers to up to his wrists. There. She dropped into his mind and struck. An instant later she stood, Corwian dropping toward her. “Help me.” She worked to catch his weight, but the man weighed more than twice what she did. His bulk bore her down to the earthen floor of the shop.
She scrambled from beneath him to see Willa edging toward her with the lamp held forward, a poker in the other hand. “What did you do to him?”
Toria backed away, but the smith’s wife followed. “Your husband is fine.”
Willa charged, the poker swinging in a wide arc toward her head. Toria darted back out of range of the blow. Snarling her rage, the smith’s wife followed, reaching farther with each swing.
Toria waited, her hands shaking for the next strike. The poker came for her, whistling as Willa strived to reach her. She ducked, her hair ruffling with the displaced air and leapt, her hands extended.
Caught unaware, Willa stood flat-footed as Toria crashed into her, her hands closing on her head. In that instant she struck, disrupting the flow of memories that lay before her, but when she released the delve, pain lanced through her temple. Righting the fallen lamp, she reached up to finger the knot on her head. No blood stained her fingers, but the room swam as if it had been her memories that had been muddled.
Setting the fallen lamp on the table, she put it out and made for the door to the street.
The sound of grinding, punctuated by brief silences, still came from Isenbend’s shop. Of Fess, there was no sign. She circled around to come from the other side, where she might be able to see through the slits in the broad doors.
A hand grabbed her and she spun, her fingers groping.
“Quiet,” Fess said. “He’s nearly done grinding.”
“The smith came back and surprised me,” she said in the barest whisper.
He led her around to the north side of the shed, where a hole almost the size of her fist offered an unobstructed view of Isenbend and the fake cobbler, who watched his art. Several wraps of cloth covered his eyes. The grinding sounds had ceased, replaced by the sibilant buzz of steel against the polishing belt.
“He’ll see us,” Toria whispered.
Fess shook his head. “Don’t put your face against the hole. Leave space so that the light from his shop doesn’t fall across your skin. Even so, it’s unlikely he’ll look this way.”
Curiosity tugged at her. “Why?”
Amusement colored his response. “It’s something we learned in the urchins. Isenbend is right-handed and we’re standing on his left. Like most people, he searches for threats toward his dominant hand.
Isenbend polished the blade and the point for a bit longer before setting the handle through the eye of the tool head. Without flourish or conversation, he handed it to the cobbler.
“Have you succeeded?” the cobbler asked as he hefted the tool. “My master is impatient.”
The smith flexed hands as big as hams. “If your master had any sense, he could have used the money I spent on alloying agents to buy a dozen picks.”
The cobbler’s expression closed. “It’s as I told you, a normal tool won’t do. The rock is too hard.” He moved to the one side, the pickaxe gripped for an overhead blow. Inste
ad of stopping him, Isenbend stepped back, wary. With a grunt of effort, the cobbler swung, bringing the sharpened pick of the tool down in a furious blow against the anvil. The ring that echoed through the smith’s shop brought a smile to the cobbler as he inspected the tool. “That’s one,” he said, rubbing his hand along a deep gouge in the anvil. “And it’s still sharp.”
He swung for a second time, and the ringing sound filled the shop once more. But this time it carried a note of complaint, an unintended dissonance that erased the cobbler’s smile. Yet the tool showed no flaws Toria could see. “That’s two. Once more.”
The cobbler adjusted the veil covering his eyes, set his feet, and swung. Instead of the ringing sound heard before, the retort of breaking metal shattered the air. Four inches broke from the end of the pick and went flying. The cobbler filled the air with curses as he spun and threw the broken pickaxe against the far wall, where it hit a rack of tools and sent them cascading to the floor.
Isenbend stood his ground. “You owe me payment.”
“I owe you nothing,” the cobbler spat. “It broke! After three swings against mere iron, it broke.”
“I care nothing for that,” Isenbend said. “Your master provided the instructions for which alloying agents to use. I told you they had to come from Vadras. If the tool broke, it is your fault, not mine.”
The cobbler spewed invective, his expression beneath his veil wild. “You failed, Isenbend. Don’t try to blame your lack of skill on the powders.”
The smith threw a string of curses at the cobbler. “I told you. The alloying agents had to be pure, absolutely pure.”
“The powders were as pure as the alchemist could make them,” the cobbler said.
The smith clenched his fists. “You’re a fool if you think one alchemist is the same as another. I said they had to come from Vadras, from the shop of Helioma.” He took a step forward. “I want my payment now, or I will cease to provide you any tools at all.”
“My master pays for results,” the cobbler said. “Succeed and you will be paid more handsomely than you can imagine.” He shrugged. “However, so that you will know my master is merciful, I will replenish the funds you need to make another attempt.” He reached into his tunic, searching, his mouth gaping as he grooped his clothes.
The smith’s hands shot out to grab the cobbler by his throat. His shoulders bunching, he lifted the smaller man into the air. “Swindler! I cannot succeed without money to buy supplies.”
Toria turned, reaching, but Fess had melted into the darkness.
Grimacing, the cobbler’s fists blurred as he hammered them into the smith’s forearms. Twin cracks, the breaking of bone, mixed with the smith’s cry of pain as he dropped to his knees. The cobbler smiled. “It seems you will be unable to make another attempt after all.”
Fess entered the smith’s shop, closing the door behind him. “Ah, master cobbler. About that boot.” Smiling, he held the blue-tinged lump of gold aloft.
The cobbler gathered his legs beneath him and leapt toward her apprentice, his fingers curled into claws. Fess appeared to shift to one side without transition, his hands moving more quickly than she could follow to rip the protective cloth from the cobbler’s eyes. Tools scattered and fell as the cobbler crashed into a broad worktable. He lay stunned, his arm thrown protectively across his face.
Toria darted to the broad door of the smithy, but by the time she entered Fess had lifted the cobbler from the floor and forced his arms away from his eyes. The cobbler’s struggles weakened, but he filled the air with threats of violence. With no more emotion than he might spare an insect, Fess put his bare hand on the cobbler’s neck.
Toria stepped over to where the smith lay on his side, his arms curled protectively across his chest. “How many more like the cobbler are there?” she asked. Then she touched him and dove into his stream of memories, swimming through those closest to the surface, but there were no images other than those of the man with them.
She destroyed all the threads of recollection connected to the cobbler and the new process for casting Isenbend had learned from him. When she released the delve, the smith had passed out, and Fess stood by her side, his eyes devoid of anger, pity, or even triumph. The cobbler lay forgotten on the floor, his unfocused gaze staring at her, a mute accusation. Only the shallow rise and fall of his chest showed that he lived.
When Fess stepped around her toward the door, she clutched at his tunic. “The mercy stroke.”
He turned to regard her, his eyes coolly thoughtful, before he demurred. “He’s beyond any succor or mercy we can render, Toria Deel. He passed beyond such aid when I destroyed his vault. If we kill him, the masses may lift him up as a martyr, but if they see him with his mind broken, they will be fearful of sharing his fate.
He stepped past her. “The people of Bunard had a saying about those of us in the urchins, Lady Deel. ‘Nothing in life is ever wasted. It can always be used as a bad example.’ I’d say the cobbler qualifies on that account.” At the door, he paused. “There are others besides the cobbler,” he said.
“There would almost have to be,” she replied. “When we get back to the inn, I’ll apprise the Chief of Servants of what we found here. She can inform regent Cailin and the rest of the monarchs to keep an eye on the smiths.”
Fess glanced at the broken pickaxe where it lay on Isenband’s table. “Let’s hope they all met with similar success.”
C
hapter 19
I spent a succession of days in Cynestol in a procession of delves interspersed with the savage niceties practiced by court. The overpowering luster of their throne room had ceased to impress. The nobles of Cynestol were no more substantial than their images the polished silver threw at me, and I had enough of their memories to prove it. My time in the collective psyche of Cynestol’s nobility had taught me to hate the city.
Then the entertainers changed. Cynestol, like every other court on the continent boasted any number of permanent musicians, acrobats, and the like, but there were more than a few itinerant court entertainers present as well. The niches in the wall were filled with men and women possessing a physical gift and the preponderance of some talent that enabled them to make a better-than-decent living putting on a show for others.
I recognized one of them. Heedless of Rory trailing me or Bolt’s stare, I sought the juggler who kept a weave of daggers in perpetual motion while he stood on top of a ball. Every now and then he would pretend to slip, but the knives betrayed his intent. Each throw and spin remained perfect. He saw me, and recognition dawned in eyes so dark they were almost black. The knives disappeared one by one until the air had emptied and he dismounted.
“My apologies, master juggler.” I bowed. “I did not mean to interrupt your performance.”
He bowed in return. I was, after all, a visiting lord, a guest of the kingdom, and the advisor to the last Errant. None of that accounted for the depth of his bow or the smile that accompanied it. “It is good to see you again, master reeve, or should I say, Lord Dura. The last I’d heard, you’d killed a count in Laidir’s throne room. I have to confess that I’m surprised to see you alive.”
My smile mirrored his. “Thanks in part to you, master juggler.” I looked around. Not one of the nobles paid us any mind. “I would have thought the gold I put in your hands would have freed you from entertaining those who take your abilities for granted.”
He shrugged. “I enjoy the work, and they pay me well enough, even if the coin is more to prove they can command my skills at their convenience rather than any real appreciation of my art.” He sighed. “As for the gold, well, money has wings, as they say, especially if a man has a gift for picking the wrong wagers.”
“Too true.” I nodded. “You have sharp eyes and ears, master juggler. I’d be willing to pay for useful information.”
The smile fled from his face. “Cynestol is my home, Lord Dura. I find I no longer have the desire to travel the other kingdoms. If the politics of Bunard ar
e murky, here in Cynestol they’re downright opaque.” He turned his back to me and remounted the large wooden ball. A moment later his knives filled the air and he’d adopted the fixed stare of a juggler working his craft.
I made my way to Bolt’s side, reflecting on the twists and turns that had brought me to Cynestol. A woman in a filmy blue dress that managed to float like a feather on the wind even as it clung to the curves of her body approached the throne, her movements as fluid as water. Nothing in her open, even friendly, expression hinted at the thoughts that lurked behind her deep brown eyes. Nothing in the expressions of the other nobles I’d delved had either.
“I hate this place,” I murmured.
From his seat to one side of the queen’s empty throne, Bolt nodded. “Of course you do. You spend all your time seeing the worst parts of it.”
The noblewoman was still ten paces away. “You mean the inside of everyone’s head?” I asked.
He nodded. “From what Pellin told me, it’s the same everywhere. Courts are defined by hierarchy and utterly ruthless competition. That tends to bring out the worst in people.”
I sighed. “And I get to wallow in their ambition.”
Bolt grunted. “I noticed you’ve been taking a lot more baths.” He stood as the woman in blue stopped and curtsied.
I took a deep breath and pulled the gloves from my hands. “I can’t seem to get clean,” I whispered, but if Bolt heard me, he gave no sign.
The conversation between Bolt and the woman proceeded along the same line as all the others had. After a few moments, Bolt turned to me. “Duchess Leogan, may I present my advisor, Lord Dura of Bunard.”
She curtsied and I bowed and we stepped toward each other to engage in the customary greeting. She extended her right palm as I held out my left so that our fingers matched, and I fell into her thoughts.
Delving nobles day after day had honed my ability to don the identity of the one I delved while simultaneously holding on to my own. As quickly as I could, I checked for any knowledge or demonstration that Duchess Leogan held the gift of kings. After sifting through a few dozen of the most recent recollections and tracing them to their origin, I prepared to surrender the link, but a particularly bright thread caught my attention. There in the river of Leogan’s memories was a gold-colored thread that shone like the sun. Curious, I reached for it.
The Wounded Shadow Page 15