by David Drake
"We weren't able to think!" Sharina said, getting down after Garric. The postillion was handing Liane and Tenoctris out the other side; Ilna waited for Sharina, then stepped down with an expression of disdain for the experience just over. "What a terrible lot of noise!"
"Well, Tenoctris couldn't have walked the distance," Garric said, "and Liane wanted to check her book of sailing directions. I thought that if we came in a coach instead of them in chairs and the rest of us walking, we could talk."
He shook his head ruefully. "I'll know better the next time."
During the Old Kingdom, the inn at Barca's Hamlet had been a stop on the coaching highway up the east side of the island. The road had been paved--Garric could see the broad way in Carus' memory--but the storms of a thousand winters had crumbled all but a few protected stretches into the sea.
Wealthy merchants sometimes rode horses to the Sheep Fair, and occasionally an overweight drover arrived in a palanquin borne by six or eight bearers across the hilly track from Carcosa on the west coast. "Carriage" had only been a word to Garric until the past few months, and even after he left home he'd never expected to ride in one.
"King Carus visited Klestis once," Garric said, speaking particularly to Tenoctris. He didn't discuss how he came by the information, though the others had probably guessed by now. Garric was just embarrassed to be speaking with, living with, a man dead for a thousand years. "There wasn't any bridge there at the time."
The driver and postillion could hear him; so could the people at the back of the crowd, though many had returned to their own conversations. Other people listened and watched Garric. That couldn't be helped and anyway, it was a part of life.
Nobody in a palace--or a rural village--had any realistic expectation of privacy. Whether you had servants or you lived in a hut of wattle and daub, your business was going to be the business of everybody else if it was interesting enough to notice.
"If we're going to see a bridge," Ilna said; not harshly, but in a tone of cool dispassion, "then we need to get closer to the water."
"Right," said Garric, wondering if they'd have to force their way to the levee. "Let's move up."
They could push forward, of course, with him and Cashel in the lead. Garric hadn't brought a detachment of guards because he didn't want to cause a stir. It hadn't occurred to him that although his government didn't have an inkling about whatever was happening in the Bridge District, word was certainly out among the citizens of Valles.
And beyond, apparently. Some of the spectators were obvious countrymen in dark wool tunics and hats with wide leather brims. There were also folk--most of them sailors, but not all--in the garb of at least six other islands, including a Dalopan with bone ornaments.
Some knots of spectators were families, others waited as a handful of friends. For the most part men stood with men and women with women. Children played with a degree of nonchalance, but their mothers kept a worried eye on them. There were no servants in these homes to watch children if the parents chose to go out of a night.
Cashel eyed the crowd. "There's room," he said. He started forward.
Because those watching were in discrete groups, it wasn't as much of a problem to move through them as Garric had expected. People talked to their friends, their backs to similar clots of people. They were uncomfortable about the event they waited for, but that hadn't formed the crowd into a mob. This was something they wanted to see in the company of those closest to them.
"Like the way trees in the woods don't quite touch their branches," Cashel said over his shoulder in mild amusement.
He shuffled forward sideways, though even so his bulk cleared a wide path for his friends. Occasionally his arm or chest bumped people apart, but the contact wasn't heavy enough to raise anger. Some folk looked around, but Cashel's size quieted even the mild protest that might have been made.
"Klestis stopped paying tribute to the Duke of Cordin when Ansalem became ruler," Garric said to Tenoctris, who followed Cashel closely. Garric was right behind her. Protected by the two big youths, there was no danger that the old woman would be crushed. "The gifts Ansalem sent to the duke at Ragos were worth many times what the tribute would have been, but he made it clear that he didn't owe anything to Cordin or to the Isles."
"That was my experience as well," Tenoctris agreed. "Ansalem was a thoroughly pleasant man, delighted to entertain a fellow scholar, but he was completely self-willed. I'd been told that Ansalem was unworldly, but he didn't really ignore the world. He chose to detach himself from it in every possible fashion."
She eyed Garric. The only light on the plaza was that of the partial moon, but that was sufficient to show the concern in her expression. "Almost anything might be possible for a wizard as powerful as Ansalem," she said. "But even he could make a mistake."
Cashel reached the levee and turned. The crowd directly overlooking the River Beltis was less dense than it had been twenty feet back from the masonry dike. Furthermore, none of the people Garric noticed in this front row were from the Bridge District. Many were foreigners, and there were several groups of nobles accompanied by shoals of guards and servants.
Garric stepped aside, forming a pocket into which Liane, Ilna and Sharina could fit along with Tenoctris. He and Cashel had worked together so often on jobs where timing had to be perfect to avoid danger--tree felling and similar tasks involving heavy weights--that the process of making room for the women was a matter of reflex.
"Excuse, sir," Garric murmured to a sailor with a cloudy emerald set in the lobe of his ear, pressing back the fellow with his chest instead of using the point of his shoulder. Garric's shoulder would have been arrogance and challenge; a bump from his ribs was accidental contact caused by too little room.
Cashel made space on the other side by looming over a footman in a lace-hemmed tunic, never quite touching him but forcing him back by sheer bulk. The footman scooted around to the other side of the group he was part of, throwing a black look over his shoulder at Cashel.
Liane squeezed close to Garric. He grinned down at her--like Ilna, she only came up to his shoulder. Sharina was within a hand's breadth of Cashel's height, and Cashel wasn't much shorter than Garric himself. Liane smiled a reply, but concern underlay her cheerful expression.
All of them knew that there was danger in wizardry; but Liane had watched her father blight his life, then lose it, through mistakes in what he called his art. Garric had never seen Liane flee from danger, whether natural or otherwise; but dealing with wizardry took a particular effort of will for her.
"The sailing directions I just searched are Serian," she said. She was speaking to all of them, but particularly to Garric and Tenoctris standing on either side of her. "They follow a different tradition than those of rest of the Isles."
Garric nodded. Liane's father had been a great traveller for the whole of his life. He'd used Serian bankers and often Serian ships as well, so his daughter had connections that would be unavailable even to Garric in his persona of Prince of the Isles.
The sailing directions were a notebook of thin bamboo sheets Liane had brought to read on the way from the palace. The oil lamps on either side of the coach lighted the interior through isinglass panels, but it must've taken enormous concentration to read during the jolting, thunderous ride.
"Serian sailing directions are really just a compilation of landing places on a stretch of coastline," she said, lifting the booklet from her left sleeve to identify her subject. "They give the political circumstances to the degree that a merchant needs to worry about them, and a list of imports and exports for each landing."
Garric nodded to show he was listening to Liane, though his eyes were on the river. The Beltis ran more swiftly here than it did a few miles south, where it broadened into a delta that reached the Inner Sea through three mouths. Nothing moved on the surface but moonlight and flotsam.
"This set is centuries old," Liane continued. "Too old for use, but a shipper who'd had dealings with my fat
her still kept it in his library. It says that Klestis is a little fishing port of no particular importance--"
"Right," said Garric. That's what Ornifal sea captains had told agents of the royal courier service when Garric asked about the place.
"But it also says that Klestis used to be the greatest harbor on the southern coasts," Liane said. "And that the old city sank into the sea as part of the same cataclysm that engulfed Yole."
Tenoctris pursed her lips. Her expression reminded Garric of a robin deciding where--or whether--to probe for a worm.
"That's possible, I suppose," she said. "And of course I was snatched away from Yole during the cataclysm, so I have no personal knowledge of what else might have happened at the same time. But I don't think Ansalem would have made the kind of mistake that would destroy Klestis that way."
She paused, considering how to explain what she felt. With a quizzical grin she went on, "Ansalem truly was Ansalem the Wise, but his wisdom went beyond mere scholarship like mine. He had an understanding of the cosmos that was more than simply human. In that he reminds me very much of Cashel and Ilna."
Tenoctris looked toward the pair, acknowledging them so that she wouldn't seem to have spoken behind their backs. Cashel hadn't heard her; Ilna grimaced, her eyes on the river.
There was a cold shimmer above the water. "It's happening!" a young woman cried in a voice quivering with wine and excitement.
"Yes," said Ilna as a tracery of blue light formed, stretching from the levee into infinite distance. "It is."
Tenoctris seated herself on the bare stone pavement. She moved with a jerky suddenness, like a tree that rot has finally overcome. She was too old and brittle to be graceful when she tried to move fast. Ilna reached to help her, but Liane was standing between the two of them and was quicker yet.
There was nothing wrong. Even as she sat, Tenoctris was fumbling out a bundle of the bamboo slivers with which she often worked her incantations. Other wizards used specially made tools, often an athame forged with the help of spells and inscribed to increase the power of incantations. Tenoctris made do with simple wands--bamboo, twigs; a stalk of grass--and discarded them after one use so that she didn't stain a spell with the residues of a previous one.
Ilna approved of her care. If Tenoctris had been a weaver, her designs would be small, tight, and absolutely perfect in execution.
Tenoctris drew a figure on the grime of the pavement--the cobblestones were so irregular that Ilna couldn't be sure whether it was intended for a square or a circle--and wrote around the outer edge. There wouldn't be any unintended results from the spell she was preparing to work.
Ilna returned her attention to the tracery of blue light which wavered above the river. Sometimes it touched the knees which once had supported the first arch of the ancient bridge. Individual flickers had no more direction than the glow of a single lightning bug, but if Ilna let her eyes absorb the pattern she could visualize a smooth curve mounting toward not the other shore of the Beltis but rather the distant horizon.
She wasn't sure she'd have thought of it as a bridge except that everybody else called it one. It felt to Ilna more like a fishing line cast from somewhere else to here. It wasn't a threat, precisely, but it was here for a purpose--and that purpose wasn't to benefit Ilna or those close to her.
"And who are you, my pretty?" a man said. His tone made the hairs on Ilna's nape bristle even though the words weren't directed at her. She turned her head while her right hand twitched the hank of cords out of her left sleeve.
The youth who'd spoken was no older than Sharina, whose neck he was fondling. His blond hair would have been shoulder length if it was hanging down, but tonight he'd had it slicked with scented oils and worked up into a chaplet of roses. He wore a diaphanous silk tunic next to his skin. Instead of an ordinary outer tunic, he wore a cutwork garment of gilded leather over it.
The fashion was new to Ilna but obviously expensive. The fellow had come over from a group--a gang--consisting of three similar youths, four women with the patina of highly-paid professionals, and a dozen servants. The youths all wore swords, but any serious violence would come from their quartet of bodyguards.
Ilna expected Sharina to slap the perfumed worm; instead she shook her head and moved back behind Cashel as though he were a boulder on a plain. "Return to your own party, sir," she said.
The youth stepped after her. Tenoctris was mumbling an incantation with her eyes closed, unaware of what was going on around her. Liane spread her arms between the older woman and the youth, trying to protect Tenoctris from being trampled. Garric threw the right flap of his cape over his shoulder, displaying the hilt of his long sword. His hand didn't touch it.
Cashel picked up the youth by the neck and lifted him back to where he'd been standing. It was quite a gentle gesture, rather like a mother cat carrying a kitten. Ilna had seen her brother crack pecans between his fingers.
"Go away," Cashel said. He sounded amused rather than angry. A little fellow like this was just a yapping puppy to Cashel. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Emrich!" the youth shrieked to his bodyguard. 'Dispose of this rabble!"
People--including the whores and ordinary servants of the noble party--had spread away from the altercation. Sharina and the rest of Garric's party were dressed simply for choice and didn't have servants along, so the youth had taken them for poor folk from this district. That meant he could do as he pleased with them. The notion was so foreign to what Ilna was used to in Barca's Hamlet that it shocked her.
A smarter man--or a more sober man, at any rate--might have noticed that while Garric wore a plain tunic, his sword was worth a year's income for a farm in the borough. The four bodyguards had noticed that, but they'd started to draw their own blades anyway. They might try to talk things out, but they'd do so from what they thought was strength--four men to two.
Ilna didn't doubt that Garric and her brother could handle the matter, but she could handle it better herself. She'd knotted four cords together. The pattern formed when she tossed them spinning in the air.
She'd have preferred better light, but the bleached wool caught enough of the moon to draw the guards' eyes. As one they cried out and fell to the pavement, clutching at their faces and torsos as though they'd been caught in a net.
"Don't let the spider get me!" Emrich screamed, "Don't let it get me!"
The youth turned and goggled at the writhing guards, their weapons forgotten. His three fellows watched with more interest than concern; one swigged from a silver-mounted drinking horn. They'd come for a spectacle, after all, and this was proving even better than the supernatural display they'd been expecting.
The youth touched his own sword, probably for lack of any other thought in his head. Cashel closed his own left hand over the youth's, squeezing it for an instant and then lifting it from the hilt. Garric stepped forward and took the swordbelt in both hands. He twisted, snapping the silver buckle like a dry cornstalk instead of bothering to unbuckle it.
"What are--" the youth said. Cashel gave him a little push backward. The youth's feet pedaled for a step or two; then he fell over with a thump. Garric tossed the sword--belt, scabbard and all--into the Beltis.
Garric and Cashel started laughing. Cashel passed his quarterstaff from his right hand to his left so he could clasp arms with his friend. They worked together like the two stones of a mill....
"Do you know what that sword was worth?" shrilled a servant, shocked beyond concern for his own safety by his amazement at what had just happened.
"It was very nearly worth this little ponce's life," Garric said, toeing the youth. The fellow began hunching backward across the cobblestones, staring up with eyes as wide as a frog's.
Smiling lazily, Garric turned to Ilna. "Are they going to be all right?" he asked, flicking the fingertips of his left hand in the direction of the guards. His left hand, Ilna realized, because his right was clenching and unclenching as though it wanted to grip his sword.
&nbs
p; She looked at the guards. They'd grown still. For a frozen moment Ilna thought that her fingers had added one knot more to the pattern, the knot her brain hadn't meant to tie....
The men were still breathing. They'd simply exhausted themselves in struggling with the web that only they could see. Ilna's knees buckled with relief.
"Garric, catch her!" shouted a voice, Liane's voice, and Ilna wasn't falling any more. Garric's arms, strong as hoops of hickory, encircled her and she felt his heart hammering with the fierce anger that had ruled him as it had Ilna herself.
"They'll be all right when the knots are loosed," Cashel heard his sister moan from against Garric's broad chest. "But oh! I was ready to kill them. I almost killed them!"
Cashel squatted beside the guards and looked them over. Their eyes stared back at him. None of them moved; their arms were close at their sides, as though they were wrapped in wet sheets. Emrich, something of a dandy in silver-studded harness and a silk neck scarf, mouthed the word, "Please...."
"You didn't kill them, though," Garric said, patting Ilna's back with his right hand. "And because of you, Cashel and I didn't have to kill them either."
Garric's eyes had been a thousand miles away right after the trouble, but they were coming back to normal now. Cashel himself hadn't been that worked up about the business. It had all been so silly.
He picked up the cords Ilna had knotted. The pattern didn't mean anything to him--it seemed as random as the way wind might have whipped the four bits if they'd been dangling alongside one another. He started to hand them to his sister. He saw she was still sobbing with reaction, though, so he picked the knots apart himself.
Cashel knew how much it took out of you to do what Ilna had done. It wasn't wizardry the way Tenoctris did it, with words and written symbols, but it did some of the same things.
And more. Cashel had faced real wizards, and when they'd each taken their punch it had been Cashel or-Kenset who was still standing. He didn't understand what it was he did--it was different from Ilna's tricks with fabric, that was certain--but there were powers they both tapped when they needed to.