by Juliet Kemp
“Are you suggesting that the Houses don’t seek their own individual profit?” Marcia said incredulously, and, she realised after she’d said it, perhaps slightly less tactfully than she ought.
Piath frowned and began twisting the beads the other way. “The well-being of the Houses is the well-being of Marek, Marcia. We are the engine driving Marek’s prosperity.”
The words rang a faint bell in her head, but she couldn’t quite place them. Was it something Madeleine had said? It sounded like something Madeleine might have said.
“The Houses and the Guilds, together,” Marcia said, though she was fairly certain by now that this was a lost cause.
“But with the far-sightedness of the Houses. Allowing the Guilds to overrule that – no, I can’t see that it’s wise,” Piath said.
“But the Small Chamber,” Marcia persisted. “That prevents the Guilds from even putting forward their opinion.”
Piath pursed their lips. “The Small Chamber… I suppose perhaps that might be used with less alacrity. But there are many decisions where the Guilds’ input is simply not needed. Why should we keep them from their own work, when the Houses could take the burden of these decisions on themselves?” They leant forward, resting their forearms on the table. “Marcia, I do not carry my House’s vote.”
“Nor do I,” Marcia agreed. “But as Heirs, part of our job is to advise our Heads, and to prepare for the time when we will take that responsibility, no?”
“Indeed. Indeed. But I find, I am afraid, that I do agree with my Head’s decisions. In fact.” They shook their head with finality. “However. While you’re here, I did wonder whether I could interest you in taking part in a venture I’ve been putting together.” They took a piece of paper from the table, covered with small neat writing. “Now, in fact, this is precisely the sort of thing that the Guilds might not understand the value of. It is not so much a trading of items, you understand, as a trading of opportunities.”
Marcia bit back on her frustration and undertook to consider the proposal, taking the paper away with her. She thought she could probably see what Piath was intending to do, but she wasn’t about to commit to it without studying it more carefully.
Nothing there for the Guilds, even if she did potentially have something for House Fereno. At least the meeting hadn’t been a total loss.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that however in earnest Piath might have been, that they were echoing something they’d heard from someone else. That someone else was already seeking to keep the Houses from the Guilds. If not exactly to drive a wedge between them, then at least to prevent them joining together. She just wasn’t sure who in Marek might have something to gain from that. And despite thinking it over all the way back up to House Fereno, she couldn’t bring anyone, or any organisation, to mind.
Maybe she was just imagining things.
k k
The sun was up and it was a nice morning as Jonas trotted across the Old Bridge. A little brisk, maybe, and the streets were damp from overnight rain, but it was autumn. Jonas wasn’t much looking forward to his first winter in Marek. At least here he could be inside some of the time. Out on the Oval Sea it didn’t get as cold as Asa and Tam said it would here, but you were often very wet. Winter storms might not be impassable the way the late summer ones were, but they weren’t exactly pleasant.
He had a message; the far side of Marek Square, to a jeweller, and he was to wait for the answer, which if he was lucky meant he might get offered a sit down and an infusion. Some folks were nice to messengers that way; some not so much.
The flicker, when it came, nearly drove him to his knees halfway through Marek Square, as he was passing the fountain. He staggered, and clung to the fountain’s ledge. The worst part was that it wasn’t even an image, the way they normally were. It was more like a bell clanging in his head, an urgent warning of alarm. Disaster. Dread. Something coming, getting nearer. Danger. Danger. His gorge rose, and he dry-heaved, just managing not to empty his stomach out in the middle of the square. He was vaguely aware, as the reverberations of the flicker died away, of people around him giving him a wide berth, or looking over at him disapprovingly.
Slowly, he straightened up. It was gone, now, leaving behind only the sense of unnamed advancing danger. To him? To Marek? He had no idea. He started walking again, ignoring the tremor he could still feel in his knees.
It had been dread, not just risk. If he’d seen just danger to himself, would it have felt that all-encompassing? He chewed at his lip. Unless it was some kind of warning about his sorcery. There were pretty unpleasant things that you could do with sorcery. But he didn’t plan to do anything unpleasant at all. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to do more than learn the basics so he could avoid doing anything he didn’t intend.
Maybe that lack of commitment was itself the bad idea; maybe that was what he was being warned about. Maybe he was messing around with things that were really beyond him, and risking calling something down upon himself. Upon Marek? This flicker, happening so soon after he’d first managed to actually do sorcery – could that be coincidence?
Someone bumped into him from behind, and he took a step forward to regain his balance, realising that he’d slowed to a stop again.
“What you doing, just standing around lollygagging? Get out the road,” a taller man said, scowling as he pushed past Jonas with a big bag strapped to his back.
The middle of Marek Square was not the place to stand around wondering about the details of what he’d just experienced. And he still had this message to deliver. He sighed and started walking again, towards the far side of the square.
He ought to tell someone about this. The obvious person would be Cato, who was his mentor, and who already knew about his flickers. And was curious about them, in a way that Jonas didn’t entirely trust. What would Cato do, with a warning of danger? He’d protect himself, for certain, but would he have any interest in bothering to protect anyone else? Like, for example, Jonas?
Then there was Reb. Reb would try to help anyone she thought might be affected by whatever this was, without a doubt. But Reb didn’t know about his flickers; and she didn’t seem to trust his judgement, given the way she’d spoken to him yesterday. And he could just see how it would be if he told Reb: she’d be after him all the time, asking him questions, expecting him to drop the rest of his life to deal with whatever this turned out to be. She’d be as curious as Cato about the flickers, just in a different way.
Maybe, when it came down to it, he was overreacting. Taking himself too seriously. Maybe it wasn’t anything he really needed to worry about.
He left Marek Square between two of the Guildhalls, and made his way into the neat streets that contained the houses of those not quite well enough off for Marekhill; artisans, Guildmembers, and so on. Coming out of the square seemed to take a weight off him; made it easier to brush away how the flicker had felt. It was just a flicker. There was no need to talk to Cato or to Reb. They’d overreact, and they’d pry, and they’d start expecting things of him. Better to leave it alone. It wasn’t like worrying would do any good. He’d never yet been able to avoid anything he’d seen in a flicker.
He delivered the message, was given the answer immediately (so no infusion, and no chance to sit down, which was annoying), and retraced his steps towards Marek Square. He was sure, now, that he’d been overreacting. It would sort itself out, whatever it was. The flicker couldn’t possibly have been as important as it had briefly felt. And he couldn’t afford to take any more time away from earning money, given how much he was already losing to sorcery. It wasn’t anything to worry about. It couldn’t be.
“Hey! Jonas!” It was Tam, on his own way across the square, his cheerful round face creased in his customary smile.
“Hey there Tam. You busy?”
Tam shook his head. “Just started. Nothin’ yet. Thought of breakfast though – fire the legs up, y’know? Want a pastry? My treat, pretty sure I’m owe you.”
Jonas hesitated, tapping his belt pouch. “I’ve got a message…” But he wanted to sit with Tam, just for a few moments. He wanted to stop thinking about that flicker. “But – she thought the reply would take a while. So I can take a few minutes.” He shouldn’t, really; he should get it delivered and get onto the next message, the next coins. But a few minutes wouldn’t hurt. And Tam wasn’t wrong; he definitely owed Jonas a breakfast.
“Aw, grand. C’mon.” Tam jogged over towards their favourite pastry-seller, at the pitch by the south side of the Old Bridge, and Jonas followed him.
The two of them sat on the river-wall in companionable mouth-full silence. The leaves of Jonas’ pastry were as crunchy and sweet as ever, but it was the wrong time of year for his preferred berry filling; this one had goats-cheese instead. It was well enough, even if it wasn’t berries; he could hardly complain.
“First of Sharf,” Tam said. “Ships’ll be back soon.”
“Mm,” Jonas agreed.
It was true enough. The late summer storms across the Oval Sea would be blowing themselves out, and his compatriots would be leaving their island villages and taking to the sea again. They usually started to arrive at ports around the quarter-year, by the Salinas calendar. Middle of Sharf, according to Marek.
He glanced out towards the mouth of the river. In fact…
“Oh hey! I summoned it,” Tam beamed. “That’s no fishing-skiff. The first Salinas ship. Me and my sisters used to think it was lucky to spot it, you know?”
“My mother used to say it was lucky to be the first one into a port,” Jonas said. It had always been a good feeling, starting the season back up again, when he was sailing with his mother as a child. This ship was early, though, by a couple of weeks. Perhaps they had some urgent business; or the sea-storms had settled early this year.
In another world, he was one of the sailors on that ship, or some other at another port. It was early in the day to be coming in, though the tide was with her; idly, he wondered whether she’d lain-to outside the river mouth last night to make her way in in daylight, or whether she’d been sailing all night. She looked well, a neat sailor, like all Salinas ships…
His train of thought stopped dead as the ship came about and he saw her more clearly. That wasn’t just any Salinas ship. That was the Lion t’Riseri. His mother’s ship, his ship, the one he’d been brought up on.
And if that was the Lion, then his mother was on it. And there was no way he could even try to pretend that if his mother was coming to Marek, she wasn’t looking for him.
“Jonas? You alright, there?”
“My mother,” Jonas said, blankly.
“Your ma? That’s her ship? And you can tell that all the way from here?” Tam squinted down the river. “Well, that’s nice, then, spotting your ma…” He paused, and looked over at Jonas, more assessingly than Jonas expected from cheerful thoughtless Tam. “Is it nice?”
“She’ll want to see me,” Jonas said, which wasn’t an answer.
He fought the urge to run away, and tried instead to think the matter through. He was known, a little, around the docks, because he went down there every so often to hear a familiar accent. And Kia, the Salinas ambassador, knew he was here, and knew roughly where he was to be found; he’d admitted to living in the squats. He couldn’t realistically hide. And in any case, he did want to see her.
He just didn’t want to be shouted at. And he had a horrible feeling that she was going to shout at him. He’d sent a letter with the last of the Salinas ships to leave after New-Year, Marek’s Mid-Year. Just a couple of sentences: that he was well and that he was staying in Marek. He’d known at the time that it might not please her; he hadn’t thought that it might bring her in search of him.
Well, it wouldn’t just be in search of him. Marek was a prosperous place for a Salinas ship to put into, and most of them would stop here once or twice a year. His mother hadn’t become Captain t’Riseri by doing things that didn’t serve her trading needs. But it would be in search of him as well as in search of a trading bargain, he was mortally certain of that. And that she was this early…
An infusion-seller was passing in front of them, with her padded kettle in a basket slung from her shoulder and a net of disposable clay cups hanging from her belt. Tam handed her a coin, and passed Jonas a cup of something that smelt sweet.
“You look like you need it,” Tam said. “Hey, Jonas. You don’t have t’see her if you don’t want.” He sounded tentative.
He didn’t have to; but he did want to, really. He was just nervous. And if she was going to find him anyway, she might be in a better mood if she didn’t have to. If her loving and dutiful son was there to meet her at the docks when the ship came in. And he’d be pleased to see the Lion. A sudden gust of homesickness overtook him.
“I do want to see her,” Jonas said. “And the Lion. It was just a bit of a surprise, you know?”
“Fair enough.” Tam clapped him on the back.
The Lion had come about again, and was much closer now; she was coming in on the tide, barely needing the breeze she was tacking into. If he wanted to be there for her docking, he’d have to go now. But he had that message… if he ran, just for a moment…
“I should go see her,” he said, half to himself, as he drained the infusion and threw the clay cup into the river.
“Hey, you want me to deliver that message?” Tam asked. “You c’n go straight there, that way.”
“Would you?” Jonas fumbled for the penny to give Tam for the transfer, and Tam waved him off.
“No, don’t worry. Buy your ma some flowers or something on your way over. My ma always likes flowers.”
Jonas couldn’t imagine flowers in his mother’s neat, tidy cabin, but it was a kind thought. Jonas handed Tam the message, and the two of them jumped down from the parapet and crossed Old Bridge together.
Tam clapped him on the back again. “Go well, and my regards to your ma.”
Jonas arrived at the docks just as the Lion did. The crew were busy, and Jonas stayed clear – no one would thank him for getting in the way. He recognised some of the crew on deck, not others; and he couldn’t see his mother at the rail yet.
Then the ship was moored, and the accommodation ladder went down, and there was his mother at the top. Their eyes met, and she smiled at him briefly, before going rapidly down the ladder to greet the dock chief, there to welcome her. Captain t’Riseri had an excellent reputation; they’d be keen to keep her sweet here just like anywhere else the Lion sailed. Jonas resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot as he waited. Up on board the Lion, a couple of his old shipmates were waving; Jonas waved back, but shook his head at their gestured invitations to board. They looked down at his mother and nodded with over-dramatised sympathy. Jonas pulled a face, then hurriedly straightened his expression as his mother gave the dock chief a double handshake and turned towards him, moving with the slight unsteadiness of someone not used to solid ground under their feet. For a moment, Jonas felt a deep ache for a ship under him, for the lift of water rather than the unforgiving solidity of ground.
“Jonas,” his mother said, and opened her arms to embrace him.
She smelled just as she always had, and a rush of emotions overwhelmed Jonas. She was his mother; but she’d always been Captain t’Riseri too, and he’d been a child and then crew on the Lion, his relationship with her always complicated by those multiple roles. But she was his mother, and his earliest memory was of her arms round him. Holding him at the Lion’s rail with the glittering sea spread in front of them, the Lion rising to meet the waves, and his mother’s laugh in his ear.
“Mother,” he said into her shoulder. “Well sailed, well met.”
“And well met to you,” she said, breaking the embrace and holding him at arms’ length to look at him. “Are you well, Jonas? Have you lost your sea-legs entirely?”
“I’m sure they’d come back in a moment,” he said, evading what he knew was the point of the question. But he wasn
’t about to discuss this standing on the dock with half the Lion’s crew staring at them.
“I’m sure they will,” she said.
Will, not would. He bit back his response.
“I would love nothing better than to catch up with you immediately,” she said. “I would love to know what is it that has been keeping you here land bound, for example. Your letter was not wholly explicatory, Jonas.”
Jonas winced. He hadn’t explained anything in his letter, because he hadn’t really wanted to, and in any case he didn’t know where to start. And what she really wanted to hear was that he’d solved his little problem.
Cato didn’t think his flickers were a problem. Urso hadn’t either.
“I would love to catch up too, Mother. But you’re just landed…”
“And I have much to arrange,” she agreed.
Trading meetings, shore leave for the crew, messages to leave and to collect from the various dockside inns that doubled as mail-offices, all the other many and various things that a captain had to do. He knew all of that; had been brought up to it, following her through docks and trading towns right across the Oval Sea. She’d been bringing him up to take her place, in due course; and now here he was apprenticed to a landbound sorcerer.
He really, really didn’t want to explain that. His mother would be furious; more than furious, horrified. But how else could he explain why he was staying here?
Reb had been cross that he was apprenticed to Cato, but not about his sorcery. Asa wasn’t bothered by either thing.
He was Salinas, though, and this was his family. His sorcery might not be welcome here, but he was. Wasn’t he?
“Perhaps this evening?” his mother asked.
“I’ve to meet Asa this evening,” Jonas said without thinking about it, too busy worrying about Cato and sorcery.
His mother’s eyes narrowed speculatively, and he cursed himself.