by Glenda Larke
“You look worried,” Perie remarked as they walked to the tutorial the next morning.
“That’s because this one does worry me. It’s different, and when a sorcerer is unpredictable…” She shrugged. “One of these days we are going to be caught.”
He imitated her shrug. “Everybody runs out of luck sooner or later.”
“One keeps on hoping it’s going to be later.” She paused, then added, “We can always stop, if you want.”
He looked at her in surprise. “No, we can’t! We can’t stop while there is a single sorcerer alive.”
“I guess what I meant is that you could stop. Fobbing hells, Perie, you’re only fourteen, and you have—” She hesitated.
“—murdered nine sorcerers. Yes. It’s what I do.”
“You don’t feel anything?” she asked in a whisper.
He was surprised. “I feel glad. Should I feel anything else?”
Her glance his way was uneasy.
“I asked not to feel, you know. It was the bargain I made with the unseen guardian. It’s what I wanted.”
She was silent. He hadn’t told her that before.
“You can’t do this without me,” he pointed out.
He knew that was true; she had no witchery, couldn’t track a sorcerer and never felt that horrible taint of sorcery in the air. He didn’t know whether to pity her for her lack of acumen, or envy her because she didn’t know how foul the spoor of sorcery and ensorcellment was. Moreover, she wouldn’t have been able to kill a sorcerer either, because any one of them would have read her like an open page of a book and used his magic to stop her.
But no sorcerer had recognised him as a danger. Their eyes told them he was just a lad; their sorcery told them nothing of his intentions.
“What you mean, I suppose,” he said, “is that someone my age should be doing something different, like going to school, or learning a trade. Proctor, you keep thinking that I’m just a lad.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “I haven’t been a lad since the day Da was murdered.”
“What happened that day? After you left me, I mean.”
“I saw what had been done to Da, then I spoke to an unseen guardian. And after that… I was different. The Pontifect knew that when she met me. She knew. Both of them, the guardian and the Pontifect, gave me a choice – and this is what I chose, to serve the Way of the Oak. I’m not a lad. I’m not even sure I’m Peregrine Clary any more.”
“I’m a lawyer. I don’t know what the sweet cankers you’re talking about. All I see is a lad who should be enjoying life, not fighting an evil.”
“If I don’t, who will?” he asked, knowing she had no answer.
It was astonishingly simple to gain entrance to Professor Rork’s house. They joined the dribble of students wanting to attend the tutorial. Just inside the door, someone was collecting the fees for attendance, and they were directed into a room, which to Perie’s eyes was more like a chapel hall than anything he’d imagined a classroom would resemble. It had pews rather than chairs, and a raised platform for the tutor. Perie counted the number of students attending – thirty-two. He and Gerelda sat quietly at the back, each with a cheap writing tablet and graphite stick so that they both looked like students.
Camber Fox, who entered the room a few minutes later, was pale and ill-looking, not at all like Valerian, who reeked of a foul energy, powerful, vibrant, knowing, ancient. There was a softer element in Camber’s features, something less assertive in his attitude, something more ambivalent in the way he held himself. Perie’s senses did not scream a warning of wrongness; it was more a whisper. Up close like this, the foulness was still muted.
He settled back to listen, occasionally making a pretence of scribbling notes. The basic premise of the lecture was that the use of a witchery interfered with the natural processes of life, and was therefore antithetical to the Shenat belief in the inviolate essence of nature, and therefore called into question whether Shenat was truly Va predicated. He didn’t understand much of it, except that it sounded like nonsense. Camber Fox was saying that using a fishing witchery to call fish into your nets was wrong, but he didn’t appear to have a problem with using a net in the first place. Moreover, he was certainly using a mild form of coercion to persuade his audience of the rightness of all he was saying; Perie felt it pushing against him with an incessant gentleness.
When he glanced around at the rapt audience he could see them nodding in agreement. Worried, he nudged Gerelda, but she didn’t react. He scribbled on his tablet the word Coercion, and tilted it for her to read, jabbing her with his elbow, much harder this time. She glanced at the tablet, looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and bit her lip. Hard. He saw a bead of blood form, and knew she was concentrating on the pain in the hope it would enable her to resist.
When the lecture was over and the students were filing out, chatting to one another, he asked in a whisper, “Are you all right?”
“Thanks for snapping me out of it. I spent the rest of the time reciting in my head all the forty-two laws pertaining to land taxation in Vavala and Valance.” She shook her head ruefully. “The utter bastard. He’s dangerous, Perie. Perhaps even more dangerous than the Gaunt Recruiters. He’s recruiting our future generation of clerics and thinkers. Twisting the truth and making them believe something false. Even after you warned me, it took me a while to realise how I’d been drawn in to what he was saying.”
She dropped her tablet and pencil to the floor, and knelt to scrabble around under the pew to pick them up. He guessed she’d done it in order to delay their exit.
“Do we deal with him now?” he asked in a whisper.
“No time like the present. Let’s go up to him, if we can, as if to ask a question. If we get him alone… Worth a try. Otherwise, we’ll leave it for another day.”
By the time the last of the students had left, she’d retrieved her belongings and they and Camber Fox were the only ones left in the room. Fox was still standing in the middle of the platform, regarding them sombrely.
“I have a question, sir, if I may?” Gerelda said, walking towards him down the aisle between the pews. “It’s about witcheries…”
He nodded. “Of course.”
Perie walked immediately behind her, half-hidden, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they were truly alone. He reached through the slit inside his trouser pocket to grasp the hilt of the spiker where he kept it in the sheath strapped to his thigh. He didn’t pull it out. Not yet.
“I was wondering about the fact that we still have healers,” Gerelda said. “All other folk with witcheries disappeared. Does that mean that healers are somehow exempt from the guilt of interfering with the natural state of things? Is that why they are still with us? And if it is, I’m not sure I understand. I mean, what you said today seemed to imply that even witchery healing would be a sin.”
She sounded hesitant and rubbed a hand across her forehead in a puzzled way. Perie wasn’t sure if she was entirely putting on an act; he’d seen coercion muddle people’s logic before this. He hoped her asking a question was just as an excuse to approach, but it was also a way to draw Camber Fox’s attention to herself rather to him.
Stepping up on to the platform, she casually spread the fingers of her left hand. In the sign language the two of them had developed, it meant, Kill him when you safely can.
In front of him, the entry door on to the platform was closed. He checked behind once more. They were still alone. With his right hand out of sight behind Gerelda’s back, he pulled the dagger free.
He breathed in a wave of foulness, and gagged, choking. Sorcery. Coercion.
Gerelda stopped dead, her next words dying half-spoken in her throat. She stood rigidly still, rooted. When Perie stepped up to her side, he could see the panic in her eyes, begging him to hurry up. Another time, he would never have hesitated. The sorcerer would have died before he could even switch his attention from Gerelda to the unremarkable lad who accompanied her.
This time, it was different.
He was reluctant to kill.
13
The Heart of an Executioner
“You came to kill me,” Camber Fox said, addressing Perie. He spread his arms wide, to show he was unarmed.
Of course he was: sorcerers never had need of a weapon.
“Go ahead,” the man said, the words gently spoken, as if he was asking for an opinion rather than daring him to do it. The coercion was as thick as ever, and Gerelda was mired in it.
Perie hesitated. He halted, his spiker held at the ready in front of him. He wasn’t coerced; Camber wasn’t even trying to coerce him. No, he was snagged by his own indecision and he didn’t even know why.
“I knew that one day someone would come,” Camber said. “Someone who would not respond to my sorcery. I just didn’t realise it would be so soon, or that my… adversary… would be so young.” He continued to ignore Gerelda. “We’ve been hearing about the other deaths. Was that you too?”
“I’ve killed sorcerers, yes,” Perie said. “It’s what I do.”
“And nobody suspected you until it was too late for them. I understand now. They sent a lad who can’t be coerced.” He looked back at Gerelda. “I could kill you though.”
Struggling with the power he was exerting over her will, she was silent.
“Speak,” he ordered.
“Do you know that some of you also die because every time you use your sorcery, it sucks the life out of you?” she asked, directing a glare at Perie as she spoke.
“I know that,” Camber said. “We all know that. But Pontifect Fox has promised to tell the secret to those of us who are loyal, so we too can rejuvenate ourselves.”
She dredged up her best sneer. “And you believe him? He’ll never show you. And I think I can guess why.”
Camber waited, but she didn’t explain, so he sighed and said, “All right. I’ll ask. Why?”
“Because the moment Valerian’s father told him how to do it, Valerian turned around and killed him.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“We did a lot of research into your family. We think there’s an excellent chance that’s what happened.”
Camber considered that, then replied with a question. “An extended life span – do you know how enticing that is?”
Perie shrugged. “I don’t expect to make twenty,” he said. “I don’t think about it much.”
“I do,” Camber whispered. “And I want to live.”
A ripple of cold moved down Perie’s spine. His gaze locked on Camber’s. Beside him, he could feel Gerelda struggling to free herself physically from the coercion, but still he didn’t kill the man. This time, it was different. The sorcerer was different. “Did you believe what you were teaching them?” he asked, making a gesture at the pews where the students had been sitting. “Do you really think that about Shenat beliefs?”
He shook his head. “No, not really.”
“Then why say it?”
“I’m a Fox. I’m a sorcerer. What else is there left for me? I can’t fight what I am. Unseen guardians, the Ways of the Oak and the Flow – they are my antithesis. My enemy. If they are true and I am not, then kill me, lad. Just kill me.”
Perie felt all the man’s coercion die, the taint fade, the thick blanket of pollution dissipate. The sorcerer still stood with his arms spread away from his body, palms up, hands empty. Defenceless.
And he could not do it. He could not kill him. Even though the man had lied to the students and used coercion, Perie still could not kill him. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“I can,” said Gerelda. And before Perie could say or do anything, her sword was swinging and her two-fisted blow slammed the blade into Camber Fox’s exposed throat. Blood spurted, spattering across Perie’s face and chest like wind spray from a fountain. Thick red drops trickled down his cheeks as Camber dropped on to his knees in front of him, swaying, his mouth gaping as he tried to draw air into his lungs. One hand reached out towards Perie, who stepped back smartly. Camber toppled sideways to the floor, face-down. His body convulsed once or twice, blood pumping into a widening pool, then diminishing to a trickle.
“Well.” Gerelda poked him with the toe of her boot. “I guess he’s dead.” She glanced across at Perie. “You’re a mess. Blood all over you! Blister it, Perie, how are we going to get you out of here looking like that?” She bent to wipe her sword clean on the skirt of the sorcerer’s gown.
“Hardly my fault.”
She handed him her cloak. “Here, put this on and let’s get out of here before someone comes to see why he’s still in here after the students have gone.”
He did as she asked, without speaking.
For the next hour, when they returned to their student digs so he could change his clothes and they could gather their things, and while they collected their horses from the livery and rode out of Oakwood, he never said another word.
They took the road towards Beck Crossways, intending to head from there to Gromwell and the siege, as had been their original intention. That evening, they paid a farmer for a meal and permission to stable their horses and sleep in his barn. In spite of the chill of the evening air, Perie took the opportunity to wash thoroughly under the farmer’s pump and rinse the blood from his dirty clothing.
When he re-entered the barn, shivering and carrying the wet clothes, Gerelda said, “I’m sorry about that. Getting blood all over you, I mean.”
He shrugged as he spread his washing on the hay pile. “It doesn’t matter.” His voice sounded flat to his ears.
“You’re acting as though it does. Perie – why didn’t you kill him? I was coerced. I was in his power. He could have done anything to me. He could have asked me to kill you, and I would have done it! I couldn’t have stopped myself. He could have asked me to fall on my sword, and I would have done that.” She paused, groping for the right words while he pulled on his dry shirt and coat. “I have to be able to trust you. And right now, I don’t.”
He tried silence, but she was relentless. “What happened back there?”
“He was different,” he mumbled.
“Well, yes,” she conceded. “He was. Else why did he stop his coercion? I don’t think he expected me to kill him, but inexplicably, he appeared quite happy for you to do so. But that’s no reason to have let him live.”
She pointed vaguely in the direction of Oakwood and waggled her finger. “Those students back there might one day have been calling for the axing of the ancient oaks.”
“Coercion doesn’t last for ever.”
“No, probably not. But once an idea is planted, it’s hard to root out. True, he coerced them to believe it. His coercion made it all sound so true, so factual, so logical, that he must have thought that even after he’d gone, the ideas would stick.”
He stared at his feet, ashamed. “You’re right. I should have killed him. I’m glad he’s dead. It was just hard… hard to take the life of someone who – who knew what he was and wanted to die.”
“He said he wanted to live!”
“Yes, but he didn’t want to live as a sorcerer. It was horrible, Gerelda. I could…” He groped for words. “It was as if I could see into his soul.”
He raised his head to stare at her miserably and she stared back. Then she did something she had never done before, not even on the day his father had died. She reached out to him and pulled him into the comfort of an embrace.
“Oh, Va help us, Perie,” she whispered. “We are a pair of ninny-heads on a very hard road. You should be in school, or kicking a ball around on a village green. And I should be arguing about taxes with some weaselly goat of a cleric trying to cheat his parishioners, and then at the end of a day, putting my feet up in front of a tavern fire with a mug of mulled wine in my hand. Instead we are walking this unpleasant path. I wish it wasn’t so.”
When she released him, she turned her back and he wondered if he’d really seen tears in her eyes.
“So t
hat’s Gromwell Holdfast,” Perie said. “It looks like any other old castle.”
From where they were standing on the crest of a hill several miles away, separated from the holdfast by a river, the walls appeared toy-like, built of blocks with symmetrical towers at either end.
“That’s because it is an old castle.” A distant puff of smoke, followed a moment later by a booming sound and then a thud, made Gerelda add, “Although perhaps not for long. What can you tell me about the people we’re looking at, Perie?”
“The men surrounding it are mostly Grey Lancers.” When she raised an eyebrow, he amended the assertion to fit her lawyerly love of facts. “Well, that’s an assumption. Let’s say, they are folk with a dirty smudge of sorcery rising from them.”
“Are they led by a sorcerer?”
“There’s no sorcerer there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. There was one a few days back, but he’s gone.”
“Which way?”
“North, I think.”
“Ah.” She frowned as she added, “We’re standing up like scarecrows on a fallow field here. We need to find a place where we can hunker down while we watch what’s happening there for a bit.”
“Gathering information for Pontifect Fritillary?”
She nodded. She was always leaving written reports at shrines, or rather at places where shrines had once been. Luck-letterboxes, she called them, because if you were lucky, the letter found its way to the right recipient. They were actually caskets disguised as stones, always to be found next to a particular red-flowering plant. Neither he nor Gerelda was certain what happened to the reports after that, but sometimes – if she had indicated where they would be next – they would find a reply from Fritillary Reedling. Sometimes there would be letters left for other people as well.