Wren Journeymage

by Sherwood Smith

  “Problem with your faithful hound?”

  Teressa started, then frowned up into Hawk’s face. The wind blew a long strand of his dark hair across his brow as he laughed softly. He stood just out of reach, one booted foot on the edge of the dais a pace from her chair, one hand leaning carelessly on his knee, the other on his hip.

  “No,” she said, and added deliberately, “All the dogs are in the kennel so they don’t get under the horses’ feet during the races.”

  “You know who I mean.”

  “If you want to refer to any friend of mine,” she said in her most polite, daunting voice, “then please say his name. Or hers.” And when Hawk just smiled, she added in a lot more normal tone, “I don’t understand why you keep referring back to your disgusting past actions. The time you turned Tyron into a dog is no pleasant memory.”

  Hawk did not show any evidence of being wounded. “That was a ruse of war, but the war is over. I’m here as your ally, if you’ll have me.” He smiled.

  She felt that smile in the heat of her skin, and shifted her gaze away. Orin was gone at last, and Tyron turned toward her. She beckoned.

  As Tyron started across the grassy expanse, Teressa could not resist a quick glance, and met Hawk’s steady, dark gaze. His amusement increased, narrowing his black eyes, and deepening the corners of his mouth.

  He was so unsettling! “I want to talk to Tyron alone.” She tried to sound calm and authoritative, but to her own ears her voice was merely petulant.

  Hawk raised his hand in a duelist’s salute. “For lack of a worthy foe I quit the field.”

  He sauntered down the steps of the dais just as Tyron mounted them.

  Neither Tyron or Hawk acknowledged the other by so much as a glance, though they passed within arm’s length; if Tyron heard Hawk’s words, he gave no sign.

  “Question?” he asked.

  Teressa was about to ask him what Orin was talking about for so long, and scolded herself inwardly. She really was acting petulant! “Has Wren scryed you?” she asked, as once again clapping broke out from the seated courtiers.

  Teressa’s namesake, Teressa Kaledd of Tamsal, had won. The queen waved at the young courtier enjoying her first season, who grinned and waved triumphantly back.

  “Wren scryed me the night of your masquerade.” Tyron’s brows contracted. “It was a little strange. Cut short. But she said she was safe, and I was monitoring the ballroom, if you remember. So I didn’t scry her back.”

  Teressa suppressed the impulse to scowl, and kept her face smooth, her smile steady. “Has she scryed you since?”

  Tyron looked surprised. “What for? She said she was safe.”

  Teressa’s lips parted, and though she still kept her social smile in place, she gave a tiny sigh. “But if it was cut short—”

  “Probably means someone came up behind her. You know we don’t travel as mages. Scrying is not a common sight among ordinary folk.”

  Teressa rubbed her forehead, wishing she didn’t feel so tense. The sun seemed too bright, the wind too strong, and the noise intolerable, but she had to sit there and smile and pretend to have fun. The court season had begun, and she was its center. Everybody looked her way, she could feel it. “I’m worried. That’s all.” She moved her lips as little as possible.

  Tyron said, “Wren is a journeymage. Part of their project is to take care of themselves while they accomplish it. She scryed that night because I’d asked her to, not because it was necessary.”

  Teressa snapped, “Oh. So when Orin finally goes on her journeymage trip, and finds reason to scry you every night, will you remind her it’s not necessary?”

  Tyron’s eyes widened in blank surprise. “What’s this discussion really about? If you think the Magic School is not adequately preparing our students, maybe you should talk to Master Halfrid.”

  “It’s not about anything.” Petulant again! “I have a headache.” Her jaw ached from the effort it took to keep that smile in place.

  Tyron’s brow cleared into instant concern. “Do you? Shall I get you some listerblossom tea?”

  Teressa clenched her hands in her lap. “Please.”

  He ran lightly down the steps and strode away toward the cook tent, his white mage robe tunic flapping around his long legs, but somehow he did not look the least ridiculous.

  She watched him go, fighting tears of anger and remorse. Hawk was here because she had willed it so, despite everyone’s advice; Wren was gone because she couldn’t keep her temper; and for the first time, ever, she couldn’t discuss any of it with Tyron, who was supposed to be her chief counselor.

  o0o

  At about the same time that Tyron was bringing the tea back, Wren, Patka, and the boys lay miserably in the dark, stuffy space where they had been dumped.

  For the longest time all Wren heard were distant shouts, clangs, bangs, groaning and creakings of ship timbers, and the whoosh and splash of water against the hull somewhere near her feet. They’d been dropped in a pile; as the ship rolled, they worked their way apart, mostly squirming like worms, for whoever had nabbed them had wrapped them thoroughly in canvas and rope.

  “We’ve been boomed!” Lambin said mournfully.

  “Boomed?” Wren asked, though it was hard to speak, what with the folds of mildewed canvas on her face, bound tightly by rope. Her voice sounded muffled even in her own ears.

  Patka also sounded muffled. “Booms are how you get things up and down. I guess you’ll be finding out soon. Too soon.”

  And Lambin added, sadly, “Boomed means you’ve been grabbed, not hired. All you’ll get is hard work, the rope’s end, and more work.”

  “But we never signed on! Surely we can report that as soon as we reach land.”

  “Won’t reach land any time soon,” Thad muttered.

  Lambin added, “And if we do, and say we came from Fil Gaen, they won’t do anything because everyone knows Fil Gaen has the press.”

  “Press?” Wren repeated, thinking of grape presses.

  “Im-press-ment,” Patka said slowly. “When the harbor guard sweep the streets after the midnight bells, and anyone out drunk can be caught up, thrown in the cart, and handed off to any captain wanting hands enough to pay the fee. Some hard captains never get enough crew. Or keep ‘em. They like the press.”

  Lambin added, “Harbor likes the press because it keeps order.”

  They fell silent, listening to the creak of masts under a press of sail, and the rumble of feet overhead.

  “But we weren’t out after midnight. Nor were we drunk.” Wren hesitated, unsure about reporting to the others what she’d overheard.

  “Try telling the Harbormaster that,” Lambin said. “Even if we could get back. Who’s to say different?”

  Thad muttered, “Whoever grabbed us probably has a deal going with someone. Maybe the Harbormaster’s office even knows about it, if they get their share.”

  Patka spoke up. “So much for Dad’s advice, stick together.”

  “At least it’s not pirates,” Danal said.

  “You think,” Thad said sourly, and no one had an answer to that.

  Wren slept fitfully—hungry, hot, thirsty, worried as she was.

  She woke when someone bumped against her.

  A hatch banged, then a deep, hoarse female voice said something cheerily in Dock Talk. The only word Wren recognized was “slubs,” which was a general term for sailors at the very lowest rank, and an insult, Patka and the boys had assured her.

  A strong hand flipped Wren over, and presently the tight bonds eased. She fought her way out of the canvas. Cold air met her face, smelling of old wood, fish, and brine, but after the suffocating canvas it was welcome.

  A male voice repeated something in Dock Talk, as someone yanked her upright. By the light of a lantern swinging in a stout middle-aged woman’s hand, Wren could see they had been stuffed into what she’d learn was a smuggler’s hole under the forepeak of a brig. She couldn’t stand upright, for the bowsprit slanted dir
ectly overhead, making the narrow compartment even smaller. No surface was flat, not even the decking under her feet, which slanted down toward the hatch.

  “Here’s our dunnage, mates,” Patka translated as a tall, scrawny man finished cutting the boys free.

  The man’s long, gnarled hand indicated the point of the forepeak, where someone had thrown all their knapsacks. Wren grabbed hers.

  “We’re to follow ‘em to crew berthing,” Patka said. “And I guess we’re on watch now. They’ll want to see what we can do.”

  Wren snorted. I’ll show you what I can do, all right. But she remembered she was supposed to solve her problems without magic, if possible.

  Magic.

  She sneaked a glance at Patka, who was tying up her short, curly hair into a brightly embroidered kerchief. When she saw Wren’s gaze, she said, “I wager anything I’ll be put to work under the cook. My kerchiefs keep my hair out of my eyes, and out of the food.”

  “Stop that gabble and come on,” the sailor ordered.

  They were taken down a narrow gangway lined with neatly stacked barrels and other cargo or supplies, and then to another hatchway with a ladder leading down below the waterline.

  They stepped into a hot, stuffy space lined with hammocks. Most sailors sleeping in them, their belongings neatly stowed along the curve of the hull below the swinging forms.

  Wren and her friends were led all the way forward, to what was obviously the worst place in the crew berth, as it was small, stuffy, and farthest from the hatch. Here the woman gestured with her lantern. Wren followed the motions of the others and secured her hammock to a pair of hooks, despite the flickering lighting and the suffocating air.

  She had just a moment to fling her knapsack on her hammock before it was time to go topside. The woman barked questions at Patka, who answered in Dock Talk, her tone flat.

  They climbed up the ladder to the deck above, but before Wren could follow the boys, Patka caught her arm and jerked her head in another direction. They picked their way over stacks of supplies to a small room that was far hotter than the stuffy berth below, smelling of cabbage, garlic, and leeks.

  “Galley.” Patka pointed at a cook and a helper standing over big cauldrons, stirring. Great clouds of steam rose from the cauldrons. “Let’s see if I can get ye in with me.”

  “Sure. But I don’t know anything about cookery,” Wren said, and Patka grinned.

  “Oh, you won’t be cooking. But still, it’s better than being forced up into the topsails when you’re still a landhugger.”

  The cook, a big, tough older man, scowled at them and snapped an order in Dock Talk.

  Sure enough, Wren soon stood at the cauldron, stirring a huge pot of oatmeal.

  “Welcome to adventure,” she muttered.

  Seven

  Her first watch seemed interminable.

  The second was worse.

  ‘Watches’ turned out to be exactly half a day. That meant at dawn the mate of the day watch began by turning them all out of their hammocks if they weren’t already awake. ‘Turning out’ as in tipping the hammock so Wren thumped onto the deck, to the sound of laughter from crew members wrestling into their clothes nearby.

  “Up and out or you’ll get the rope’s end to wake ya!”

  That much she understood by the third day.

  By the fourth she understood that a brig was a type of trading ship, and that this one was called the Sandskeet.

  Wren slept in her clothes, too tired to undress in the dark, so she was first out the of the stuffy, hot crew berth and into the hot, steamy galley.

  There she chopped, peeled, kneaded, stirred, and baked all day, broken only by the “All hands on deck!” cry, which meant racing up to the deck, no matter what the weather was, and pulling hard on various ropes.

  Her watch was supposed to be over at sunset, which would have been bearable—except for that “All hands!” cry. When the captain wanted all hands that meant everyone, not just the sailors on the deck. And so far it had happened at least once a night, always after she’d fallen into exhausted sleep.

  By the end of her fifth watch, she was learning the names for the various cooking utensils and foods in Dock Talk. She whispered them to herself over and over, because every time the cook had to repeat himself, he thumped her on the skull with whatever utensil he had gripped in his mighty fist. So far, that had been various spoons and mixers. Wren did not want to find out what would happen if he happened to be holding one of the big carving knives.

  By the sixth day, the constant scurry of tasks started to fall into patterns, divided always by the crew’s mealtimes. She not only knew most of the names of the things in the galley, she was beginning to understand some of the commands and threats the cook barked out.

  At the end of her first week, she no longer fell into her hammock and into sleep, she stayed awake at least long enough to jump through the single cleaning frame the crew shared, self and clothes restored to freshness. She found enough energy to repair tears in her tunic left over from the day they were boom-roped, and to follow Patka to the deck and stand in the fresh wind blowing over the sea, practicing the names of the jumble of ropes-that-were-not-ropes crossing the ship in all directions.

  Amazing. Shrouds, sheets, stays, braces, halyards—all these were specific ropes, but she learned fast what each one did. Thus, when she was required to stumble to the deck with the other half-asleep crew members, often in driving rain, with seawater washing over the rail, if she was sent to the ‘weather brace’ she knew to run to whichever side the wind was coming from.

  At the end of the next week’s watch Wren waited impatiently for the ship’s bell to ring the changeover. She’d gotten all the supper cook pots dry and hung on their hooks, oversaw the refilling of the water barrel with the cleaning spell on it after all the crew members had dunked their dishes and spoons in. Watching the magic spark faintly over the square dishes called mess kids, with their raised lip—you didn’t want bowls on a ship, which was never still, or plates for the same reason—gave her one of the few pleasures she had during the long, tiring day.

  The bell rang at last and she raced down to the crew berthing, hardly touching the ladder any more, though at first she’d clung tightly to it. This was the only time of day the crew berthing might be empty—and that only if the weather was good, for the night crew would have just reported for duty, and the day crew sometimes stayed on deck to enjoy space, air, and the last of the daylight.

  The weather was fine on deck, so nearly everyone in the day watch was up there, mending ropes and gear, talking, and through the open hatchways—every hatch and scuttle open to get air down into the ship—drifted the faint strains of someone singing a ballad.

  She wedged herself into between Thad’s and Lambin’s packs, partially curtained by the empty swinging hammocks. The light of the lantern aft was just enough for her to find her own pack and plunge her hand in, searching for her scry stone.

  She was finally awake and strong enough to manage a spell to remove that tracer-ward and then to scry Tyron, though she didn’t know how long before the day watch tramped below to their hammocks. She needed to think out her message, get it ordered in her mind for quick communication.

  “First: how is Teressa?” she whispered as she dug through her bag. She felt a pang of regret and hurt when she thought of Teressa. I just hope that Hawk doesn’t hurt her, she thought. “Second: I got boomed onto a ship by somebody who pointed out my stripey hair. Third: I don’t know where we’re going. Last: someone started listening in last time I scryed, which was why I cut it off.” There. That was a good, quick report, she thought as she dug deeper into her bag.

  Voices approaching! She groaned with impatience. If anyone else came below she’d lose another entire day unless she were fast, so she upended her bag, and stared at the pile of belongings glowing, then in shadow, then glowing again in the light of the swinging lantern. She already knew her money had been filched—she noticed it that first day.


  Far worse: her scry stone was gone.

  More sounds of laughter floated from the top hatch. She was very good at scrying—she didn’t have to use a stone. Water, glass, or even fire were almost as good, if she concentrated hard enough.

  She jumped up, leaving her belongings strewn under her hammock, and stood before the single lantern the captain permitted the crew, gazing into the flame . . . gazing . . . picturing in her mind Tyron’s face, the scry stone in Master Halfrid’s office—

  And got nothing but a black wall.

  She couldn’t scry.

  She’d been warded.

  o0o

  Tyron leaned against his desk, staring at the neat stacks of papers as though he’d never seen any of them before.

  “Tyron?”

  He looked up. Orin stood in the doorway, the lamplight picking out highlights in her silver hair. But her face was in shadow.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  He raised his hands, about to rub them through his hair, thought of Wren’s laughing about that habit of his, and lowered them to the table. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” Up came the hands again and he scratched his scalp vigorously, not caring if it made his hair into a bird nest. It looked like a bird nest anyway, no matter what he did. Not that he cared. If scratching would just make his brain work better . . . “Wren scryed me a week ago. Said everything was fine, but something she started to say has bothered me since.”

  Orin opened her hand. “Yet you say she’s safe?”

  “That’s what she said. She added something about Falin, our mage in Hroth Falls, but she didn’t finish it.”

  Orin was always patient and careful and listened with all her attention. “What do you fear?” she asked.

  “I wish I knew! She seemed to be accusing me of making a remark about Falin’s looks—but even Falin used to joke about all the ink stains on her hands and on her cheeks and ears and even in her hair when she’d accidentally put her pens or brushes behind her ear. I thought of that when I did my weekly check with the mages a couple nights ago, and there was Falin, just like usual. Ink-stains and all. And she told me just what I expected to hear, that Wren had been there, feasted right royally, next morning set off on her way to the harbor, just as she was supposed to.”