“What’s troubling you?” Tarallan said. Did I mention he’s observant as well as intelligent?
I cast about for something to say that wouldn’t implicate myself as a Castaviran sympathizer and came up with, “I’m worried about my husband. We were separated during the convergence and I don’t know where he is.”
“I…didn’t realize you were married,” Tarallan said, sitting back in his chair. “Where were you when you were separated?”
“Near the Myrnala River, several days’ journey north of Garwin,” I said. “The middle of nowhere, or at least it was. Who knows what kind of Cas—of invader cities might have appeared there?” Like, for example, their strife-ridden capital.
“It’s a dangerous place these days,” Tarallan said. “The messengers we sent in that direction returned with news that the whole area has been occupied by the enemy. I hope your husband is unharmed.”
“I’m sure he is,” I said. “I was traveling to find him when the trouble at Calassmir, and the King’s summons, brought me here.”
“Just as well,” he said. “You might have been killed, and the mages would be leaderless, and this dinner would have been a good deal more boring.”
I laughed, and said, “The mages wouldn’t lack for leadership, they’d still have Norsselen.”
“Really?” Tarallan said. “You make it sound as if Norsselen’s leaving was a response to your presence.”
“I, um, that’s a little true,” I said. “We had some differences of opinion, and he chose to, um, go elsewhere to use his talents.”
“I think you may be prevaricating,” Tarallan said, but with a smile. “However, you seem extremely competent, and the mages seem happy, so I’m willing to accept your version of events. And I admit I enjoy your company.”
“Thank you, General,” I said. “I enjoy yours as well.”
“That’s fortunate, because I’m going to require you to bring me a report every evening on your troop’s progress,” he said. “I want to know when new mages arrive, what progress they make on learning pouvrin, and I especially want to know how those ranges are extending. A verbal report will be enough, and I expect to see you between six and six-thirty every evening.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, pretending seriousness, which made him laugh.
“Keep in mind I’m still your superior officer, Thalessi,” he said, “and you’re to show respect.” He smiled at me to show he wasn’t entirely serious. Which is to say, I know he believes respect is key to good discipline, but he’s not so stiff as to have no sense of humor.
“I certainly intend to, but you should keep in mind I’m not military and I don’t always know how to be properly respectful,” I said in the same light tone.
“I’ll let you know if you overstep,” he said, still smiling, and rose to indicate the meal, and the meeting, was over. And now I truly am exhausted. I wonder what I’d be doing if I were with Cederic instead of here in Venetry. Not sleeping alone, for one.
Chapter Sixteen
23 Nevrine
The good news: everyone with fire or mind-moving pouvrin can work their magic at a distance of 100 feet, which is from one side of the ballroom to the other. The bad news: we’re pretty sure everyone’s actual range is a good deal farther, and we can’t practice finding the real distance without dropping fire or stones on the heads of people in the lower city.
In order to have that kind of practice area, we’ll have to go outside the city—at least a mile outside the city. And transporting all of us is a logistical nightmare. We lose too much work time in transit. But I don’t dare suggest we set up a camp outside the walls, out in the cold and snow (it’s been snowing heavily for two days, on and off), or I’d have a mutiny to deal with. So as frustrated as I am, I’ve had to accept the situation as it is.
So tomorrow morning there will be many, many carriages to drive us to our new practice grounds. All of us, including those who don’t have an offensive pouvra, and Relania’s group tried to pitch a fit about that until I said they would be learning new tactics that did not involve doing violence to anyone. I guess we’ll see tomorrow whether espionage falls under their rules about non-violence.
I wish there were three of me. I have two, maybe three mages who are almost capable of taking over the fire pouvra instruction, and when that happens I can focus on—well, it’s not exactly “focus on” if there are three things you’re splitting your attention between. I’m excited about teaching my pacifist mages thief skills, seeing if any of them take to it naturally. I was, after all, a thief before I was a mage, and I’m proud of those skills.
24 Nevrine
Unbelievable. Once we got access to a nearly unlimited space to practice, it became clear a lot of these mages had power nobody dreamed of. We went north of the city today, where there isn’t anything but fallow land stretching all the way to the northern forests a hundred miles away, and spent the morning marking off distances. The farthest marker was at two hundred yards, which I thought was optimistic, but better to have marked off too far than too short, right?
We marked too short. I was able to start a fire five hundred yards from our starting mark without even straining. Daerdra reached nearly as far. Hasseka and Saemon were so nearly tied for mind-moving things at five hundred and fifty yards’ distance we spent half an hour watching them compete for first place. That contest is still undecided. The fire-rope is limited in distance; no one could manifest it farther than fifty feet away, even me, but that’s a one-on-one “weapon” so that makes sense.
Once we’d extended the markings on the field, and I’d demonstrated the kind of exercises I wanted everyone to do, I left Jeddan in charge and had a handful of mind-movers help me set up the things I’d brought in a very large, very heavy wagon pulled by a team of placid horses whose shaggy winter coats made them look warmer than we were. At the end, we had a couple of “houses” that were just prefabricated walls jammed into the ground at right angles to each other, no roofs, a lot of sticks standing upright with ropes strung between them to make a path, said ropes being hung with little brass bells, and another wide stretch of empty field marked off at ten foot intervals.
Relania’s group watched all of this curiously—they don’t have the fire or mind-moving pouvrin, so it was either watch me or watch the great clouds of steam that went up wherever someone set a fire in the snowy field. When I was finished with my preparations, I called them to me and said, “You haven’t made any secret of the fact that you don’t believe we should be using magic for violence. Now, I don’t know if that means you don’t want to be here at all, or if you wish there were something else you could do. What I do know is King and Chamber see us as key to fighting the, um, invading army, and they are extremely unwilling to let any advantage slip away. Which means unless you want to make the kind of stink Norsselen did, you’re stuck here.”
“If you’re trying to make us feel bad, Sesskia, it won’t work,” Relania said. “We’re all committed to principles of non-violence.”
“Believe it or not, I agree with you,” I said, “mostly, anyway. I’ve spent most of my life trying not to get into fights.” Of course, my reasons for doing so weren’t that I believe violence is always the wrong way to handle conflict—sometimes it’s the only way—but that I’m too small to be an effective fighter. But that was irrelevant. “So I’m not going to train you to be fighters. I’m going to train you to be spies.”
That got them talking all at once. The voice that won out over the rest wasn’t Relania’s, but Tobiak’s. He’s about fifteen years old with terrible acne, poor kid, but he’s got the kind of self-confidence you usually only see in really attractive people. “How is that any different from making us fight?” he said. “We’re still advancing the cause of the military.”
“Tobiak,” I said, “what is the purpose of pacifism? In your opinion.”
“To oppose violence as a tool to make people do things,” he said. “To prevent people from being hurt or killed.”
“Sesskia, that’s not what—” Relania said.
“I know it’s not as accurate a definition as you’d like, Relania,” I said, “but the point here is to establish what exactly all of you want to accomplish by refusing to use pouvrin in the war. Am I right that you don’t want to be responsible for people’s deaths?”
They looked at each other, then began nodding, some vehemently, others as if they still weren’t sure. I pushed forward so I wouldn’t lose momentum.
“I know you don’t like it, but this war is happening whether you fight with us or not,” I said. “I don’t like it either. I think it’s idiotic that our people and their people can’t figure out a way to live in peace. But the army that’s advancing on us is commanded by a madwoman who doesn’t give a damn how many people die in her conquest of both countries. She doesn’t even care how many of her own people die. General Tarallan is working to stop her before too many people are killed. To do that, he needs information. And that is what spies are for—to minimize losses and end wars more quickly.”
Most of them looked confused, but to my surprise, one or two people had looks on their faces that said both that they’d never thought of it that way, and that now they had thought of it, it made perfect sense.
“So you need to consider this,” I said. “I’m not going to make you learn those offensive pouvrin. I’m not going to make you do anything that violates your principles. If you want, you can sit this out in Fianna Manor—I won’t even let the General know I’m not sending him all my mages. And you will have absolutely no effect on stopping this war. Or…you can learn to gather information about our enemies, give it to people who know how to use it, and maybe keep hundreds or even thousands from dying. It’s up to you.”
And I walked away and went back to watching mages argue over how to bring boulders here so people could practice their lifting as well as their distance. And that is almost exactly word-for-word what I said. It felt right, again, only better because I wasn’t making a speech to bully someone. I can’t even say I learned it from watching Cederic, because he doesn’t make speeches. I don’t know where it came from. It felt good, the kind of feeling I usually only get when I’m doing magic. I think I felt like an actual leader for the first time today.
Anyway. I let them talk quietly among themselves for a while, maybe ten minutes, and then I went back and said, “Well? What do you think?”
Relania stepped forward. “You make a good point, Sesskia,” she said. “We’re not just opposed to violence because we think it’s inherently wrong, though most of us do. We’re opposed to it because we care about human life and the preservation of it. And we think it’s not enough to sit back and not participate. So we’re ready to learn.”
“Some of us also want to know why you’re qualified to teach us to spy,” one of the mages said, grinning so I’d know he was teasing, and everyone laughed, myself included.
“Well, Keonn, the truth is I’ve had to do a lot of things in the course of learning magic, and one of those things is sneaking in and out of places,” I said. “You’ll be learning the concealment pouvra as part of this, but you have to remember it’s not invisibility, and you can’t rely on it to protect you. You also can’t rely on the walk-through-walls pouvra unless you think passing out is a good way to not be caught. So in addition to practicing those pouvrin, we’ll be learning how to move quietly, and how best to investigate an enemy’s home—or camp—and some other skills that will be of use in that. But first—” I waved my hand at the marked-off field—“we’re going to see how fast you can run.”
The rest of the afternoon was actually fun. I lined them up along the field and had them go insubstantial and see how far they could get before shortness of breath stopped them. Then I had them go inside the “houses” and practice putting their faces through the walls, trying not to expose themselves too much. And then I set them to walking the narrow, curving path I’d made with rope and bells. They couldn’t go insubstantial, and they couldn’t make the bells ring or I’d make them start over.
“You all know you can’t stay insubstantial forever,” I said when they complained. “You have to learn to move quietly, and you have to learn to pass obstacles. Yes, if this were a real camp, you’d work the pouvra and walk through the whole thing, but you can’t always count on being able to do that. Tonight we’re going to do this in the manor, with the see-in-dark pouvra. Think how much of an advantage that will be.”
They’re all more enthusiastic about it than I thought possible. And Rutika is a born thief, not that I told her this. She can’t stay insubstantial as long as some of the others, but she walked the rope course perfectly the first time, and she has a good sense for how far she can go through a wall to examine her surroundings without revealing too much of herself. I already have some special training planned for her.
I told most of this to Tarallan that evening when I “reported” to him—not the bit about Rutika being a good thief, but that she was going to be an excellent spy. He was happy to learn how far a range most of us have, and pleased about the budding spy corps. I think he might have made a good thief himself, because he thinks about problems sideways the way I try to, and he appreciates the value of intelligence.
Our conversation went long enough that he invited me to eat with him again, and I accepted. This time we talked about other things as well as the war, mostly him telling me about his family, and me talking about my Dad—I don’t know how we got on that subject. He seemed interested in the loss of our surname, and said, “So you don’t have any idea who your family was?”
“None, and I don’t really care,” I said. “From what I’ve seen of the upper classes, there’s nothing inherently wonderful about being part of them. And it’s not like I could regain our status even if I knew what the surname was.”
“I’d think it would be uncomfortable, not knowing if I had a connection to one of these families,” he said. “Suppose Lenssar was your uncle, for example.”
I shuddered. “Sorry, I don’t mean to disrespect Lord Lenssar, but—”
“—it would be like being related to a weasel,” Tarallan said.
I laughed. “A little. But the only thing I know is our family line was completely lost, so it’s unlikely I’m, for example, the King’s long lost heir.”
“Too bad,” he said. “That is, the King having an heir would almost mean more to Balaen than winning this war.”
“Why is that?” I asked. This was the first I’d heard of the King not having an heir.
“Obviously the King has no offspring, since he’s not married, and he hasn’t designated an heir,” he said, “which means if he were to die, the noble houses would go to war, so to speak—or maybe literally, I’m not sure—over who would take the throne. I’m not privy to their machinations, but I imagine the Chamber Lords have an edge over the others, and there’s no question they’re building support for themselves even though the King is relatively young and quite healthy.”
“One more reason not to belong to the upper classes,” I said, and we parted on that note. I like him. He’s interesting, and clever, and never makes me feel stupid when I say something that shows I know nothing about military science. I think we might become friends.
Time to go teach my spies about moving silently in the dark.
25 Nevrine
More practicing. Hasseka and Saemon still fighting it out for greatest distance with the mind-moving pouvra. My spies are getting better at navigating the rope course. Last night was funny. The see-in-dark pouvra makes moving around at night easier, but they don’t have any experience with moving quietly, and were all caught completely off guard when I flung open the door to a well-lit room in their faces and made them cover their eyes and cry out in pain. Not that I took pleasure in that. Well, maybe a little.
26 Nevrine
Mattiak—Tarallan offered me his praenoma tonight at dinner and asked the honor from me, and I do feel like we’re friends—is worried abo
ut the advance of the God-Empress’s army and the fact that we’re still stuck here in Venetry. He won’t come out and criticize the King, even behind his back, even privately to me, but it’s clear he’s frustrated at not having the power to do what he’s responsible to do, which is defend Balaen. Not protect the King, not protect Venetry, but defend our country.
The God-Empress is still besieging Hasskian, from last reports anyway, but it takes so long to get a messenger from there to Venetry we won’t know if she’s taken the city until it’s already happened. Mattiak showed me how they’d attacked the Castaviran city to the north with the utensils and condiments on the table, and I didn’t understand the details, but I think it made him feel better to have something concrete to focus on.
He also told me a few more details about the conflicts to the east that are centered on Colosse, not that he knew that, and asked if Cederic and I had a plan for finding each other. Of course we don’t, and that made me depressed, but Mattiak reassured me the best chance we had of being reunited is for only one of us to do the searching, that my remaining in Venetry was the smart thing to do. That made me feel better, as did the thought (which I couldn’t share with Mattiak) that Cederic and the mages are too powerful a force to simply have been destroyed no matter what had happened in Colosse. But I’d feel happier if any of Mattiak’s men would return with more specific information.
More progress. We set up some practice dummies from the archery range and worked on setting them on fire and smashing them with stones or bricks. I don’t like how excited everyone was about destroying them, because it feels like they’re not taking this seriously—when we face the enemy, we’re going to do it to actual people who scream and die. That’s what war is.
I’m afraid some—maybe a lot—of these people won’t be able to use magic on living targets, but there’s no way to test that. I’ll have to ask Mattiak what soldiers do to become inured to killing people. Or maybe they don’t. Something else I can ask him.
The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2) Page 19