The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2)

by Melissa McShane

  Messenger from Mattiak approaching, waving at me. Let’s see what he wants.

  25 Seresstine, half an hour later

  So this is strange. General Regates of the Castaviran Army sent a messenger by collenna to tell us their advance scouts have reached Venetry, and there’s no movement. At all. The God-Empress’s forces are there, but they’re not attacking the city, even from a distance with war wagons. The main body of the Castaviran Army will reach Venetry in four hours, at which point they can send messengers demanding the God-Empress’s surrender. We’ll be there three hours later. Mattiak’s sent messengers to our army, the defenders of Venetry, now, hoping to learn what’s going on.

  I asked if I could go on ahead, but he was concerned that a woman unexpectedly appearing in front of them might make them lethally surprised. He has a point. Still, it’s killing me not knowing if Jeddan’s all right. Anything might have happened. We still don’t know how long the God-Empress has been here. About all the advance scouts could tell us, other than that the armies were at a standstill, was the walls of Venetry hadn’t been breached. That’s something, anyway.

  25 Seresstine, seven hours later

  We can finally see Venetry. Sure enough, it doesn’t look like it’s been overcome. I’m writing this as the wagon draws closer for lack of anything better to do—I’m not allowed to be part of the Castaviran negotiation with the God-Empress’s forces, not being Castaviran, and Mattiak hasn’t called for me, hopefully because there’s no news. Or maybe I should say it’s worrisome that there’s no news; our messengers never came back. Granted they don’t move that much faster than the army does, but they should have been back by now.

  I can see the Balaenic defenders we left behind on the walls, inside the main gate with that stupid clock over it. Something, possibly a war wagon projectile, hit it hard, caving in the hands so they point almost directly away from the clock face. I wonder if they’ll try to repair it.

  I wish we could see the God-Empress’s forces, but they’re ahead and a little to the right of our direction of march, which puts most of the Balaenic Army between us (the mages) and them. If Cederic hadn’t explicitly told me to stay behind, I’d flit over there to take a look. I might have disregarded his instructions if he hadn’t had the look I see so rarely, the one that says he needs me to obey without question, and I figure if he can trust me when I tell him I have to do something, I can return the favor when it matters to him.

  There. Finally, movement from the direction of Venetry. Someone on horseback, waving a flag and riding in our direction. I don’t know what the flag means—the only one I know is the red-bordered white one that asks for truce of parley, and this is blue. Well, Mattiak never told me I had to stay here, so I’m going to find out what’s going on.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  31 Seresstine

  I don’t know how long I’ll be able to sit up, but I’m recovered enough that I feel restless at being confined to bed. So I’ll see how much I can write before I need to sleep again.

  It feels like much longer ago than six days I wrote about the messenger approaching (I found out somewhere the blue flag means “clear the way” literally, but it’s symbolic of an urgent message that must be passed directly to the commander) and went looking for Mattiak. I tried the command tent first, but he wasn’t there; he’d gone to meet the messenger himself. It took me a while to find out where that was, and when I finally found Mattiak, he had dismissed the messenger and was saying to General Drussik, “I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I,” Drussik said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What happened?” I asked, not caring that I was interrupting.

  “Nothing to concern you, girl,” Drussik said.

  “We sent a message to the defenders of Venetry about half an hour ago,” Mattiak said, “asking for information. General Shansselen just sent his reply. The fighting was heated until two days ago, when the former Empress’s forces called for a cease fire for negotiations. A group of them were allowed inside the gates under guard.

  “A few hours later, they returned to their camp, and the next day, another group went inside, this one led by a woman, presumably Renatha Torenz herself. Several hours after that, Shansselen received orders to cease hostilities, but to remain on alert. They haven’t received any other orders since then. And the Castavirans—the former Empress’s forces, I should say—haven’t moved at all, though messengers have come through from the city to their camp twice.”

  “So what does it mean?” I said.

  “Shansselen said the battle was going their way,” Drussik said. “Don’t know why the King didn’t want the foreigners battered into submission. No doubt their God-Empress is a hostage against their good behavior.”

  “But then why hasn’t he made any demands of her army?” Mattiak said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “The King will almost certainly send orders soon,” Kalanik said. “I don’t suppose we’ve heard back from our Castaviran ‘allies’?”

  “Nothing yet,” Mattiak said, “and I don’t dare send a messenger, in case we’re being observed and someone takes it the wrong way. All I know is they’ve been in communication with the other Castaviran forces.”

  “I can find out,” I said. Mattiak frowned at me.

  “Sesskia, I appreciate your willingness to turn your magic to our service, but I want to keep the mages out of this,” he said. “Right now the King has likely forgotten you mages can do anything other than the martial pouvrin, and once the war is over, he’ll assume there’s no more you can give him. If anyone sees you, and he is reminded you can do other things as well, he’ll want to put you in permanent service to him—not to Balaen, but to him. And true God forbid he learns about flitting. You’d end up his personal messenger. Stay put.”

  That made me uneasy. He was right in his assessment of the King’s attitude toward magic, but I hadn’t realized I might be in as much danger from him as I had been from the God-Empress, though in a completely different way. I prayed Jerussa and Jeddan hadn’t revealed the flitting pouvra to him. Then I remembered I’d promised Cederic about not approaching the Castaviran camp, so I couldn’t have gone on that errand anyway. So instead I stuck close to Mattiak, but in an unobtrusive, non-annoying way, and waited.

  Nearly an hour later, a Castaviran mage I didn’t know came to our camp the long way around to avoid being noticed by anyone, friend or foe, though at that point those words had ambiguous definitions. He told us the following:

  1. When the Castavirans arrived and sent a demand to the God-Empress’s camp for her to surrender to them, they were told she was already in the city and would General Regates please not attack them.

  2. The God-Empress has been in the city for two days already, along with some of her high-ranking officers, and has been sending uninformative messages back to the camp that amounted to “stay where you are.” Based on her messages, they think she’s a captive, which makes sense to me, but as long as those messages keep coming, they don’t want to attack the city again. That also makes sense to me. Disobeying the God-Empress’s command is the same as stabbing yourself through the heart.

  3. Cederic sent a messenger (Terrael) to the King explaining what they were after and asking for a meeting. That was two hours ago and they haven’t heard anything since.

  Mattiak told the messenger what we’d learned and sent him back to Cederic. “Now what?” I said.

  “Nothing’s changed, Sesskia,” he said. “We wait for orders. You should get some rest. I promise I’ll send for you if anything happens,” he said, forestalling my objections. So I went and had something to eat, though I was too anxious to appreciate it. The mages and I talked about what might happen, and whether the war might actually be over without any more fighting. We were so ridiculously naïve.

  It was around sunset that a runner came for me, and I arrived back at the command tent once again to find a messenger just leaving. “Who knows what they have in mind? We
could be taking them to their deaths,” Kalanik was saying as I entered, and his words sent a chill through me.

  “That message wasn’t informative enough to make us draw that conclusion,” Mattiak said. “And I’m sure Aleynten knows the danger.”

  “What danger?” I said, alarmed.

  Mattiak held out a sheet of paper to me. “We’re to assemble an escort for a Castaviran delegation to the King,” he said. “A royal summons. No more information than that.”

  I read the paper, which said exactly what he’d just told me. “Who’s going?”

  “Of our people, or theirs?” Mattiak said. “I don’t know who they’ll send. For us, they said ten soldiers and as many officers as I deem necessary. That will be me, Bronnok—don’t argue with me, Wyoth, I need you here in case we end up fighting the Castavirans after all—Melekst, and Kyrran.”

  “And me,” I said.

  Mattiak looked as if he’d forgotten I was there. “You’re not coming,” he said.

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “Sesskia, you aren’t part of the military,” Mattiak said. “You weren’t summoned. If the King is at all in an irra—I mean, if the King decides to take offense at your presence, it could hurt the Castaviran negotiations. Aleynten would agree with me.”

  I concealed myself and enjoyed watching his eyes water as he tried to stay focused on me. “I think you misunderstand me,” I said, strolling around the tent and observing the other men closely. They were clearly tracking me by the sound of my voice, and not doing a very good job. “My telling you I’m coming is a courtesy to you. Your approval has nothing to do with it. The God-Empress went into Venetry two days ago and hasn’t been seen since. Anything might have happened. The one thing I’m sure of is that the King doesn’t mean to treat honorably with the Castavirans, and that means they’ll need whatever edge they can get. I am that edge, Mattiak, I have been from the beginning. Cederic understands that.”

  Mattiak managed to locate me after a few seconds and was following me with his eyes, turning as I circled around him. “Your concealment is not invisibility,” he said. “And while the King might not be capable of seeing through it, I can assure you Caelan Crossar will.”

  “Only if he knows to look for me,” I said. “And I intend to stand well away from the people he will be paying attention to.”

  Mattiak scowled. “It’s not as if I can stop you,” he said.

  “I take it from the way you are addressing empty air Sesskia has made a decision neither of us will like,” Cederic said, entering the tent at the head of a procession of people. Some of them were friends from the Darssan, including Sovrin; others were people in military uniforms, including General Regates, who’d turned out to be Aselfos’s co-conspirator. She looked grim. All of them looked unhappy and concealed it more or less successfully.

  “I’m going with you to meet the King,” I said, still concealed.

  Cederic focused on me with some effort. “If you are revealed, it will not go well with us,” he said.

  I dismissed the concealment pouvra and said, “I don’t intend to be revealed.”

  “Of course you do not,” Cederic said, “and I agree the likelihood of that is small.”

  “And you yourself said you thought I should be there,” I said.

  “That was when I believed you could be present in support of Garran Clendessar, but in this case, when you have not been summoned, the consequences should the King discover you could be severe,” Cederic said. “Master Peressten sent a written message instructing us as to exactly who would be members of this delegation. He included within it a code that said ‘all is not as it seems.’ We must assume we are walking into danger.

  “As I pointed out to Mattiak, you need every advantage you can get,” I said. “Suppose the King intends treachery. I don’t know why he would, but it’s possible. If he attacks you unexpectedly, the mages won’t have time to ready a defense, and your mind-moving pouvra can’t work in all directions at once, unless you’ve developed powers you haven’t told me about. And if the King has some of my mages in there, I’m better equipped to fight them than any of you. And if the King is plotting treachery, him discovering I’m there won’t matter to how he treats you.”

  “Do you really think the King is plotting treachery?” Mattiak said, though what he was actually saying was Do you think the King is capable of successfully plotting treachery?

  “Probably not,” I said, “not on his own, anyway, but I’ve survived this long thanks to paranoia and the ability to stay out of sight, and to be honest, this isn’t even close to the riskiest thing I’ve ever done.”

  Mattiak looked over at Cederic. “I don’t suppose you’ve figured out a way to confine her?” he said. “Some magic to counter that walk-through-walls pouvra she’s so fond of?”

  “General Tarallan, I would never even try,” Cederic said. He looked at me, and added, “Sesskia, please do not take unnecessary risks. Master Peressten’s code indicated he was being observed when he wrote that message. I have no idea what we will find inside the city.”

  I embraced him, not caring that everyone in the tent was watching us. “I never take unnecessary risks,” I said, “and suppose Terrael needs rescuing? Besides, Jeddan is in Venetry, and we haven’t heard anything about the mages, and that worries me. I’d go if only for that.”

  He laid his forehead against mine and sighed. “You would not be who you are if you were not willing to risk yourself,” he said. “Something I should always remember.”

  “Yes,” I said, then let him go and turned to face Mattiak. “I’ll follow behind you,” I said, “unless you think I should go first?”

  He shook his head. “Behind,” he said, and then it became a discussion about how our escort would be arranged. Then there was a bit of an argument about how I would get there, as everyone would be riding, and Mattiak looked cheerful for about five seconds in which he thought I’d have to stay behind, then I reminded him about flitting and he scowled. That’s how I ended up standing, concealed, next to the gate, trying not to shiver in my heavy coat because I’d left the hood down so it wouldn’t impede my range of vision. I’d never flitted while concealed before and had made the surprising discovery that I could go farther in that state. I wonder

  I started a list at the back of this book of all the things I want to investigate. Since it looks like it’ll be a long time before I can get to any of them, I don’t want to forget. I’m close to the end of this book, but I can spare a few pages.

  I think that’s a sign I should rest now. My back burns if I sit for too long, and my vision gets blurry. Not that I would ever tell Cederic that. He worries too much.

  1 Hantar

  A new year. We’re sort of making a fresh start, but nobody’s celebrating. I don’t know what Castavirans do to celebrate the new year, anyway, though this confirms that our calendars are in sync at least to some degree.

  I had to re-read my last entry to remember where I’d left off. The gate was heavily guarded, which made sense given that we were still at war, as far as I knew, and Cederic and Mattiak and everyone took so long to arrive I was tempted to run around the guards and taunt them. But that was too risky, even if I hadn’t promised Cederic, so I leaned against the city wall and let my mind wander. I thought about Jeddan and the mages, and about pouvrin, and I practiced the binding pouvra some more, and made a mental list of pouvrin I wanted to learn, or invent, but it was so long I don’t want to reproduce it here.

  I don’t know how long it took for the others to arrive, but I was thinking about climbing the city wall just to give myself something to do by the time I saw them. (I think it was really only twenty minutes. When I’m on edge I bore easily.)

  Mattiak rode up to the gate and said, “The Castaviran delegation to see King Garran Clendessar.” The guards hurried to open the gate—huh, I only just realized I’d never seen it closed until then. Everyone filed through, with me bringing up nearly the rear; if I were actually behind
everyone, I’d risk being shut into the door, not that that would have much effect on me, but still.

  It was well after sunset at this point, with a trace of pink tinting the clouds on the western horizon, and it was going to be another beautifully clear night. Mattiak was at the head of our procession with Cederic beside him, and I think they rode slowly so I’d be able to keep up. The few pedestrians stopped to stare at us, fourteen Balaenic soldiers surrounding twenty Castavirans in assorted robes and military uniforms.

  Cederic had borrowed someone’s golden ceremonial robe—I don’t know why anyone had brought one, but I wonder if they wanted to be prepared to perform religious rites, and now I want to know why whoever the robe belonged to couldn’t have witnessed Terrael and Audryn’s vows. Not that it matters now.

  Anyway, he looked elegant and handsome and exactly the kind of person you’d expect to see leading a delegation to a king. I can’t believe I ever thought he looked arrogant and smug.

  I was grateful to be trotting along behind the procession, because it kept me warm and forced me to stay alert and move quietly, good practice for the hard part, which was trying to remain undetected in Janeka Manor. I couldn’t stay too close to the horses, because they were too stupid to be fooled by the concealment pouvra and fidgeted when I was near, so I trailed behind somewhat and observed the watching Venetrian citizens.

  They were well bundled against the cold, so well bundled it was hard to tell which members of our group they were looking at. I don’t know what they thought we were, but from my perspective the Castavirans looked like prisoners being escorted to the hangman, except Cederic was talking to Mattiak and their body language was not that of captive and captor. The pedestrians stood and watched us for far longer than I’d have expected, given how cold it was, not to mention the curfew was almost certainly still in effect, and while I didn’t know when it started, I was pretty sure the city guard didn’t want people hanging around in the streets after dark.