Still, Sarah was a major headache. She was unpredictable, deceitful, and entirely untrustworthy. Also, her magic remained a dangerous unknown. On the other hand, she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever met.
“If I take the job, I expect total honesty.”
“Fine.”
“Why did you set those thieves on fire instead of putting them to sleep?” he asked flatly, immediately enunciating one nagging concern.
Her response was matter-of-fact. “They attacked us and might have killed us. I reacted as necessary to prevent that.”
“They might be dead.”
“They probably received only moderate to severe burns. I didn’t ignite their bodies, just their clothes.”
“That sounds rather cold,” he suggested carefully. The thought that she might decide to set him on fire at any second was somewhat intimidating.
“It was practical. Why didn’t you immediately transport us? That would have been the simplest solution.”
He started to say, “There wasn’t time,” but rejected the rationalization as soon as it occurred to him. If he expected total honesty from her, he would have to adhere to the same standard.
“I had some very painfully embarrassing experiences with my spells when I was young. As I told you, my magic is crap and spells are never my first reaction.”
Just as Sarah opened her mouth to reply, an oddly dressed man with a strange cap on his head appeared beside her, shouted, “There you are! Let’s go!”
Then the bizarre fellow and the Kleinsvench woman promptly disappeared, startling passersby and causing a general disturbance. Someone began shouting for a constable.
“For Magic’s sake!” Everett cursed. There went his five thousand silver! “Beautiful Woman, come forth!”
Sarah popped back into his arms, disoriented, and he immediately cast again, transporting them both to the top of a multi-storey bakery a few blocks away. If Sarah’s abductor showed up again or a constable or gendarme arrived, he definitely wanted to be elsewhere.
“Who was that?” he asked her as soon they landed on the flat gravel roof.
She held on to him unsteadily. “I don’t know. A wizard I think.”
“I think I deserve a small remuneration for my trouble before you go home.”
“He didn’t take me home! I didn’t recognize the place and none of my family was there, just strange men with guns!”
Gravel rustled and dried bird droppings swirled as the wizard reappeared. “Let’s –“
Reacting in a flash before the man could complete his spell, Everett set Sarah aside, stepped in, and punched the wizard so hard in the face that the man bowled over backwards. As the wizard started to get to his feet, Everett closed and drew back his arm again.
The wizard cringed, plopping on his backside, and threw up his hands with fingers spread.
“Don’t hit me again!” he pleaded nasally through a bloody nose.
“If you try to cast a spell, I’ll break your jaw this time so that you can’t speak,” Everett warned.
Sarah moved up beside Everett and demanded, “Who are you?”
“And what in the world are you wearing?” Everett added. The thing looked like some comically exaggerated costume from a theatrical farce.
Wincing, the wizard applied one of the long, voluminous sleeves of his chartreuse, symbol embroidered garment to his leaking and rapidly swelling proboscis.
“I’m Grand Master Wizard Wendal Pourfrey, Recognized Specialist in Retrieval, and this is my wizard’s robe.” The wizard produced the statement with a certain amount of resurgent pomposity, and then shook the hem of the robe, encouraging the gold tassels to dance. “They are all the rage in the capital.”
The wizard spit out some blood, searching about until he found his hat, which looked something like a cross between a dunce cap and an old woman’s bloomers. Perching the hat on his head seemed to lend him a measure of strength and the man almost visibly gathered his dignity. “May I rise?”
“All right, but remember what I said,” Everett warned.
“Certainly.” Wizard Pourfrey hiked his robe to plant one sandaled foot, then levered himself up. Suddenly, he shot Everett a truly venomous look, and spat out rapidly, “Be ye wood, now and for all time!”
Everett froze, sucking in a frightened breath. However, nothing happened.
Pourfrey’s eyes grew large. “Wha--?”
Everett snapped his arm back again and the wizard ducked his head, crossing his arms protectively over it. Everett dropped his feint and kicked the man lightly in the groin. The slack of the overlarge robe dampened the blow somewhat, but still Pourfrey collapsed, retching and moaning as he clutched pitifully at his injured testicles.
“Set fire to him,” Everett told Sarah loudly, implicitly trusting that she understood that his words were meant only as a threat. Though the wizard’s failed attempt to turn him into a wooden statue made him feel less than charitable, he was not angry enough to want to watch a human being burn alive.
“Wait!” Pourfrey cried, trying to scramble away. “No more spells! I swear!”
“Only the truth, cretin,” Sarah told the man.
Everett felt the light jangle of a spell actuation. Quite often, he could do that – feel the magic actuations of others. The uncertain ability had never been more than random and the sensation barely detectable so he habitually disregarded it. This time he made careful note; a second of Sarah’s spells was an Imposition of Veracity.
“Who hired you?” Sarah questioned.
The wizard goggled as his mouth opened to respond, apparently in violation of his own wishes. “The Chief Minister of the Republican Directorate of Security and Technology, Donald de Grosivna.”
Sarah frowned. “The Zherians?”
Unsteadily, Pourfrey got to his feet a second time, but seemed unable to straighten completely. “Yes.” He sucked a long, shuddering breath. “More accurately, however, I must note that I believe the Chief Inspector to be operating more or less independently of the office of the President or of the Parliament.”
When he finished, he made a little humming noise to verify that he was again in charge of his own mouth and swung his head to look curiously at Everett. “Why didn’t my spell work on you? That’s never happened to me before.”
“We’ll ask the questions,” Everett growled, trying to appear as menacing as possible. He had been wondering the same thing himself, but decided that bluster would suit the situation better.
Pourfrey winced and shrunk into himself slightly. “Certainly.”
“Why did de Grosivna hire you to find me?” Sarah continued.
“He did not say and I did not ask. My Location Revelation spell needs only your name to produce a locus. I simply provide a service and do not concern myself with my customer’s motivations.”
Mindful of the exacting nature of truth spells, Everett crafted as general a question as he could. “Is there anything else that you can tell us about the motives, plans, objectives, or intentions of your employer?”
Again, Pourfrey’s lips worked under the influence of Sarah’s spell. “No.” Then, from all indications, voluntarily, he explained, “Curiosity tends to be negatively received by the sorts of people who engage me.”
“Is it necessary that I burn you alive to prevent you from trying to find me again?” Sarah asked in a deceptively casual manner.
The wizard stiffened, trembling slightly. “No, of course not. Absolutely not. Positively not under any circumstance, no.”
“Will you attempt to harm, locate, retrieve, disturb, discommode, or otherwise injure us in future?” Everett verified.
“No. Certainly not.”
“Then swear and be bound,” Sarah told Pourfrey.
Again, Everett sensed the slight vibration of a spell actuation and seemed to detect a flavor similar to the first. So! She had cast upon him when they had first met! He wondered what other spell she might have used upon him.
Pourfrey
nodded eagerly, with evident relief. “I swear.”
“Get out of here,” Everett commanded.
Pourfrey reached into a side pocket in his robe and pulled out a small cage. Inside was a contentedly corpulent and thoroughly bored black mouse.
“What’s that for?” Everett demanded.
Still under the compulsion of Sarah’s spell, the wizard replied, “My Vital Transportation Variant has a Paired Duo Component. The spell always transports live creatures in pairs.” Before he could be further questioned, Pourfrey quickly looked at the mouse and cast, “Let’s go!”
Once the man and his mouse had vanished, Everett relaxed.
Sarah smirked. “I guess I’m not so paranoid after all.”
SEVEN
Whether the result of paranoia or not, extreme caution seemed justified. Throughout the remainder of the morning, Everett bounced them around the rooftops of Eriis until they settled finally at a sheltered nook on the bell tower of the Steam Fitters Guild Hall. The position offered both a solid brick wall at their backs and a clear view of the surrounding roofs and streets.
For good or ill, he had firmly decided to throw in his lot with Sarah and see her back to Kleinsvench. If she had not lied about the payment, then he would come out of the affair flush with cash. If she had made the offer simply as a pretense to encourage him to help her, then he honestly would be no worse off than he was now. Also, the fact that the utility of his most powerful spell would forever be dependent on her cooperation remained a strong incentive. Were he to go with her to her home, perhaps from time to time she could be persuaded to assist him with commissioned courier work. Aside from these reasons, there remained a certain element of self-preservation in his decision. The parties that had sent Pourfrey would likely not take a positive view of his role in thwarting Sarah’s abduction and might try to take punitive action against him. Having seen the ease with which she cowed and completely dominated a Grand Master Wizard, the most powerful magical rank, he had little doubt that he would be safer with her than without her. He did not bother to tell the young woman of his decision; by all appearances, she had already taken it for granted.
Given the possibility that they might be required to flee at an instant’s notice, they stood close together, arms wrapped loosely around each other. Everett, though he dare not mention it, found the contact remarkably pleasant.
“I think we’re safe enough now,” Sarah suggested. “I don’t think any other wizard is coming for me, at least in the short term. Let’s find lunch.”
As Everett was beginning to learn, the young woman tended toward practicality. “Perhaps we should leave Eriis altogether. Return to the country side, that is.”
“Another wizard with the correct spells could find us no matter where we are. I think our best bet is to find a way to reach Kleinsvench as soon as possible and we won’t find that in a cotton field or a cow pasture.”
He had to accede to her logic. “Right. The same café?”
“Sure, as long as you promise not to leave a five silver tip. We’re going to need every copper.”
After a filling meal of fried catfish, grilled squash, snap beans, fried okra, and, of course, excellent cornbread, Everett spelled them with only three hops to the top of an apartment building near the river docks. They had taken care to cast only when unobserved and had remained as much as possible out of sight of the inhabitants of Eriis. Paranoia, of course, was not simply an occasional pastime, but a vocation.
“There’s Baron Heimgelberg’s new boatyard,” Everett identified, pointing south over the New City Wall and along the bank of the river to a dusty area of raw earth about half a mile out.
The yard covered forty or fifty acres of former cotton fields and the hulls of several shallow draft riverboats were already under construction. Stacks of timbers and lumber abounded and by Everett’s raw estimate more than two hundred men worked on the scaffolds about the gunboats. Other crews were in the process of laying brick ramps from the water to the dry docks and still more labored in the construction of foundry buildings.
“All that activity takes a great deal of money,” Sarah mused.
“The grocer said that the Kingdom was putting it up.”
“I’m sure they are. This isn’t good.”
“Why do you say that?”
“We’re convinced in Kleinsvench that this war is going to be a big one, not just an extended border skirmish like the last two. The Kingdom gets a lot of cotton, grain, meat, and farm produce from the demesnes along the Edze and they wouldn’t be spending all this money to secure their supply lines if they thought it would be another single season conflict.”
This left Everett wondering anew what type of mess he might be putting himself into by going west.
“We should head for the docks,” Sarah prodded, stirring.
“Right.”
Eriis was the major transshipment point for nearly all goods that moved along the Edze. Bellow the city, the low, mounded hills of the morainal ridge known as the Continental Spine confined the river and it ran much deeper, permitting the easy passage of the larger riverboats whose draft forbade the shallow and winding course to the north of Baron Heimgelberg’s capital. Hemmed in by warehouses and freight yards, the city’s docks lay in a shallow, artificial inlet just outside the New City Wall. Among the many small launches, barges, and punts were more than a dozen of the often gaily-painted large steamboats, most continuing to waft dark smoke from their stacks.
This morning, a great mass of cargo was on the move along the quayside, shifting on and off boats of all sizes, into and out of warehouses, and to and from other parts of the city. Many of the largest riverboats were piled high with cotton bales, wine casks, sacks of grain, and assorted crates and boxes. Indeed, the main business of the river traffic was the transfer the production of the agricultural demesnes down to the coast so that it could be shipped west to the more populous regions of the continent.
As they walked from the secluded cubbyhole of an alley onto the quayside, Everett noted with interest that among these major vessels were two of the newer side-wheeled type. He had heard that these had a top speed twice as fast as their older stern wheeled cousins. He had always had a more than casual interest in technology, and considered the possibility of observing the improved mechanisms at close range a treat.
The Edze Princess, a broad single stacked stern wheeler, wallowed heavily in the first slip, its decks piled twenty high with hundredweight sacks of corn. Crewmen, bare-chested in the burgeoning heat, worked to secure nets over the grain. She had the look of a well-aged craft and her upper decks had not seen a fresh coat of paint in some years, but as far as Everett could tell, the boat was river-worthy. A bald man with rough blue trousers and a high-collared, brass-buttoned white shirt sat at a fold-out metal table alongside her gangplank, entering bills of lading in a ledger. Perched beside the ledger was a faded blue, broad-billed captain’s hat with the leaping silver dolphin insignia of the Free Port of New Zindersberg.
As they approached, the captain looked up and awarded them a jolly smile. “What can I do for you folks?”
Sarah smiled brightly back at the man. “We wanted to inquire concerning the cost of passage to the coast.”
“I’m sorry, Madame, I’ve no berths available. Not even deck space. The New Zindersberg Consul has hired everything for a load of new recruits for the NZFC. I couldn’t squeeze in another soul.”
“What’s the NZFC?” Everett asked. He had never heard of it.
“New Zindersberg Free Corps. The Assembly voted three months ago to fund infantry regiments and I’d say that was a wise decision, the way things are looking. Enlistment is open and recruits come from all along the Edze. You know, you’re a strapping fellow. If you’re interested, there’s a five hundred silver signing bonus. They’ll sign you up at the offices of the Consul over on Beal Street, just other side of the gin. If you go and if you don’t mind, mention my name – Captain Gerard Corveille. There’s a twen
ty-five silver referral bounty.”
“Thanks, but I’ve no desire to soldier. I’m a Journeyman Magicker.”
“Even better! I heard last trip that the Assembly is also going to raise a company of magickers and wizards.”
“Sorry, still not interested.”
Corveille nodded. “Don’t blame you. I’m not anxious to see the Great Powers’ troubles come east myself, but I don’t think we’ll be given any say in it.”
Bidding the convivial man good day, they moved on.
The next boat in line had a generally ramshackle appearance and the name on the blazon board atop the wheelhouse had peeled so badly that Everett could not read it. Except for a deckhand shoveling cattle droppings and hay from a pole coral that covered the entire aft cargo stowage, there was no activity aboard. When hailed, the man informed them that the boat’s schedule called for a cruise upriver with a pilot to the cattle landing at Pennsbrook Town.
The third slip held a flat-decked punt with a modest open steam engine and stern wheel. No one was about, but chains and locks secured the boat to a bollard. Obviously, this craft worked upstream and would be of no use to them.
Everett and Sarah made their way down the quay, finding only boats fully booked or fares priced beyond their means. It seemed that every restless farm hand and dissatisfied laborer in the Barony had decided to try their luck in the expanding armies of the south and west. The cheapest quote was one hundred silver each for a spot atop a cargo of cotton with the proviso that they must bring their own food and water for the two-week trip.
“I’m beginning to think that I should have asked more for the potatoes,” Everett told Sarah.
“We could always enlist,” she told him with a crooked grin. “That would get us to New Zindersberg and then we could desert.”
Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth! Page 6