by Jean Johnson
Maybe I should look into this Guildra person he . . . she mentioned. Gods . . . she certainly can pass for a young lad when she tries. Actors Guild, journeyman rank. Yeah, I can see how she earned that one, with who knows how many years of pretending to be a boy under her belt. Pushing away from the door, he crossed to the bed, rapped the control rune for the small crystal mounted on the headboard, then turned off the ceiling-embedded suncrystals. Retreating back to the bed, he picked up the book he had left there the previous night, selected the far side, and climbed under the covers.
It took her several minutes to emerge. When she finally did, he tried his best to ignore how the light from the refreshing room crystals backlit her figure. She looked around the room, then headed warily for the bed. Alonnen did his best to ignore her, save that she just stood there for a long while. Giving up, he sighed and tucked a ribbon between the pages to mark his place.
Instead of putting the book on the nightstand, though, he held it out to her. “Here. It’s a book of tales about Painted Warriors. Don’t budge my ribbon, please, but you can read as much of it as you like. The runes for the reading light are on the bedposts, there and there,” he added, gesturing over either shoulder. “And don’t hit me with it if I snore; that’d be too cruel to the book. Goodnight, Longshanks, and sleep well when you get there.”
With that, he twisted over, tucked one arm under the small mound of pillows, squirmed to get comfortable, and closed his eyes with a sigh. Several more seconds passed, then he felt her tentatively drawing back the covers. Determined to go to sleep, he focused on first tensing, then relaxing each muscle group. The only way to get her past her understandable fear of men was to be as matter-of-fact as possible. When she finally climbed onto the bed and slowly started turning the pages of the book, he relaxed further, until sleep finally claimed him.
• • •
Rexei woke abruptly. Her neck and shoulders ached, and there was a bruise on the side of her breast. It came from the corner of a book, she realized. Blinking, she tried to make sense of where she was. The bedding was far too soft and warm to be her bolt-hole in Heiastowne. The dove gray coverlet topping the layers keeping her toasty and comfortable was vaguely familiar for a moment, then it all came back in a rush: the temple, the mages, the dissolution of Mekha, the freeing of the prisoners, her uncomfortable interrogation by the Precinct leftenant, and the innermost depths of the Vortex.
And Alonnen. Her first post-awake memory of him was the full-on view of his unclothed frontside . . . and the feeling that had lain beneath her shocked fear at the sight of her host’s naked male body. Beneath the panic . . . beneath it, lay that same strange spurt of excitement from the first time he had grinned at her. Heart beating erratically, Rexei lifted her head to look at the other side of the bed.
The only sign he had been there at all was the divot in the feather-stuffed mattress and the rumpled lay of the covers, which he had apparently dragged more or less back into place while she slept. She was still clad in his nightshirt and her underdrawers, her chest wrappings were somewhere in the refreshing room, and aside from the awkward, curled-over angle at which she had slept and the book she had slept on, she felt just fine. Unviolated. Not that he’d . . . or that she’d . . .
Blushing, she admitted to herself that there had been more reasons than the fact she’d been tired to have impelled her into crawling into this bed. She was wary of men—rightfully so, given the things she had heard and seen—but Rexei knew that not all men were horrible, brutal creatures who abused authority and were driven by uncaring lusts. In fact, there were plenty of men who were good souls, kind and considerate, polite and proper.
Alonnen Tallnose might be a bit . . . casual . . . about his nudity and relaxed about his body in the presence of what he had thought was a fellow man, but at her confession, he had covered up quickly enough. And he had continued to treat her presence in his bedchamber as if she were still Rexei the “lad,” with no difference toward Rexei the “lass” aside from the quick donning of his nightshirt.
Once she got over her shock and realized he was honestly trying to go to sleep, she had thought it safe enough to climb into the bed. That was one reason right there. And he had proved himself a gentleman. Another reason was the fact that the longer she had stood there in the borrowed nightshift, the colder the room had grown, making the thick bedding look inviting. It certainly felt deliciously warm and soft this morning, even if a stripe of her back felt cold and a little stiff from having been exposed above the covers in her curled-over position. Wiggling onto her back, she pulled the covers up to her chin and blushed again.
And the third reason—fourth, if you count how tired I was—that I crawled in here . . . was because I wanted to sleep next to him. It . . . it doesn’t make me wanton or whatever, she asserted in her mind. It makes me human. He’s so different from most men I know. Very open and very accepting. Very friendly and welcoming. Yes, he wants something from me, but it’s nothing I’d refuse to give to anyone in this situation, man or woman.
But she didn’t want to think about Netherhells and priests summoning demons. Snuggling under the covers, she let herself inhale the slightly musky smell clinging to the blankets and sheets. The scent of a fully grown male, but not the sort of stench she associated with rancid, stale sweat. Some of the men she had worked alongside had reeked of the stuff—during her brief stint in the Coalminers Guild in particular. No, the head of the Mages Guild was a man who bathed regularly but without drowning himself in perfumes or heavily scented soft soaps.
Rexei knew she couldn’t lie abed forever, though. Her stomach insisted it was hungry. Adjusting the pillows, she scooted up against the headboard for support and surveyed the room.
The rest of the room, like the bed, was empty. It was lit by the suncrystals overhead . . . and by the headboard crystal, which she had forgotten to douse before falling asleep last night. At the foot of the bed, on top of the bench-chest, she could see her pack and a stack made from the clothes she had stuffed into it. The sight of a scrap of paper intrigued her enough to abandon the warmth of blankets and quilt.
Tapping the rune to shut off the headboard light, Rexei struggled out of the overly soft bed. Belatedly, she remembered to rescue the book and set it on the nightstand. Moving to the foot of the bed, she saw how neatly everything had been folded and that the scrap of paper held a list. On it was a neat accounting of every last item she owned, including all the spare Guild medallions from her earlier days, and a list of the food she had brought, with the beans and the oats counted by volume, the wheel of cheese by weight, and even the cloth-wrapped bread and sausage, which had apparently been rescued from her summer-weight coat, mentioned at the bottom of the page. But she didn’t see her food.
What she did see was an extra stack of clothes. She started to set the note aside and realized more had been written on the back. Turning it over, she read the star-tagged notation that her food had been added to the kitchen stores of the inner circle. The rest of the note listed a sweater, undershirt, undertrews, socks, and sheepskin-lined house shoes, which were the extra garments stacked on the bench-like chest. All of that was in one set of handwriting.
A separate hand had scribed a message in tiny, neat writing on the rest of the page. Referencing the starred line above, it clarified that note.
It’s an inner circle policy to share food supplies; food is something that can spoil if left alone too long, so it’s better to eat now and make it up later in meal-size equivalencies. The clothes are on loan while you’re here. You can trade for others to wear, or even buy them outright at fair prices in either labor or coin if you like a particular garment. If you would rather wear a skirt, the person to see about it is Master Tarani Redgriddle, the housekeeper, same for buying clothes or eventually arranging replacement meals for the amount you brought here.
Depending on when you wake up, there might be breakfast, or there might be leftovers
of breakfast. When you’ve eaten, come up to the top floor and knock on my office door. It may take me a few minutes to respond, but don’t worry, I will. Do Not Enter without my opening the door first, or you’ll literally never see me.
Your task for the day, O Apprentice of the Guild, is to finish writing up your detailed report on the doings in the Heiastowne temple. That and to relax. You’re safe here. Feel free to bring up the book.
~Alonnen
There. That right there. That was what he did to her. Touched her somehow with his openness, his honesty, his warm welcome coupled with his pragmatism. She barely knew the man, but she knew that as the head of the Mages Guild he surely could display the greatest of guile in protecting the men and women and even the children of the mages in his care. Yet he clearly didn’t feel the need to exercise any guile with her, and had instead spent some of his time in explaining things instead of dissembling or offering a lie.
It wasn’t a tender love note of the sort she vaguely recalled from her childhood. Her father had sent them to her mother when his expertise at repairing wagons and wains on the roads they broke down upon had kept him traveling around the countryside. Sometimes there would be a flower carefully pressed and folded into the letter, sometimes a bit of colorful ribbon, but always there were loving words. This note wasn’t anything like that—pragmatic, not passionate—but it touched her anyway that he would take the time to explain these things to her.
The warmth engendered by that thought, by that courtesy, warred with her deeply ingrained wariness. His brother Rogen, the leftenant for the Precinct, had made her feel afraid and wary; how odd that Alonnen could make her feel welcomed, even able to relax in spite of her fears. At least, a little.
She needed the refreshing room before breakfast, and with clean borrowed clothes at hand and with the bathing room specifically mentioned last night . . . she wanted a bath. Her tenement didn’t have bathing rooms, just refreshing rooms, and it cost to use the public baths. Rexei had money scattered across various guild accounts, but since she was in Heiastowne pretending to be a Servers apprentice, that meant either dipping into her savings or only being able to afford baths once a week.
Back before her world had fallen apart, her family had lived in a house with its very own indoor pump and boiling tank. Baths had to be taken in the kitchen since that was where the plumbing was, but at least the water had been plentiful and hot. After things fell apart, years of being on the run had given her an appreciation for being clean whenever possible. The trick had been finding a moment of complete privacy in which she could be safe.
Scooping up the stack of clean clothes, she added a roll of bandaging from her belongings and headed for the bathing room. After she bathed, she would rewrap her breasts and hope he hadn’t told . . . there was a note in the bathing room, too. Folded in half and propped up as a tent, it explained in the Guild Master’s neat handwriting how to use the spigots to control the flow of hot and cold water, which were powered by magic instead of the more normal boiling-tank method.
He had taken the time to do this, too. For a moment, Rexei smiled, touched by his helpfulness. Then she frowned in worry. Is he being nice because he actually is nice? Or is this Alonnen Tallnose trying to sweeten me for some purpose? I mean solely for some use he wants out of me. It’s obvious he wants something; he wants me to tell him everything I know of what happened in the Heiastowne temple. But is he also being nice because . . . he is nice?
. . . He doesn’t feel slimy to my inner instincts. Too many men and women had, in her past. More men than women, but enough of each to have made her leave twenty-five or so guilds. Like the women in the Actors Guild who had insisted that “the lad” that was Rexei was “horribly shy” and “just needed to be taken in hand.” In one case, literally; the woman had tried to shove her hand down Rexei’s pants in an effort to grope “his” groin. Everyone knew that women were preyed upon by the priesthood—and certain unscrupulous men in other professions—but it had been a shock to realize that some women were willing to force themselves onto men even in the face of the “young lad” protesting vigorously against the idea.
That had been one of a dozen cases where Rexei had been forced to sleep-spell her attacker. Most had been men. Most had a feel to them, what she had come to think of as an aura of intent, that was just wrong. It wasn’t always noticeable, particularly when the person was just . . . being a person . . . but when they started to plot, to indulge in evil thoughts . . . Reading another mortal’s thoughts was impossible, but these were feelings. Intentions, in the sense of the direction of one’s focus. The longer she stayed around certain people, the more she could sense it.
Bishop Hansu, oh yes. Bishop Koler, yes. Elcarei, the Archbishop of Heiastowne, yes as well. All in varying degrees from each other, and from the other bishops, priests, and novices of the temple. She had known and worked among them for two months. She wasn’t completely sure about that foreign mage, but his words, his suggestions had sounded flat-out wrong, in the sense that they felt wrong in his intentions, however truthful his words.
Alonnen Tallnose had none of that sense about him. In fact, he felt like . . . Rexei blushed. He feels like that bed behind me. Big and soft and warm, yet fully supportive. A refuge . . . if I can only bring myself to relax fully into it. She smiled wryly to herself and set her stack of loaned clothing on the small side table in the bathing room. Instead of staying up stiffly for half the night, reading until I was too tired to do anything but sleep.
She might not be able to bring herself to fully trust him just yet, but her instincts had kept her alive so far. With Mekha gone, it just might be time for her to start trusting someone, somewhere. Might as well be here, right? I guess. . . . I mean, if I can’t be safe in the midst of the Mages Guild, where can I be safe?
With a deep breath, she set her mind on the task of trying to trust the men and women around her. It felt weird and awkward. Too many years of being on my own. But they’re under the same threat. We all have a common cause . . . and Alonnen is right, she thought, blushing a little when her mind strayed in his direction. We need a place where we can accept who and what we are, a safe place to be ourselves.
To be myself.
A very odd thought, but not an unwelcome one.
• • •
If Alonnen had to keep expanding their available rooms like this, no one would be safe in the Mages Guild. The Vortex could only cover and cloak its existence so much. So wide, so high, so deep. Reports were coming in by talker-box from all over the kingdom of the disappearance of Mekha’s symbols, of some of the temples disgorging all their mages, of other temples trying to deny their captives’ existences . . . and of rioting in certain towns and cities.
Not in Heiastowne, thankfully. Captain Eron Torhammer and his second-in-command, Leftenant Rogen Tallnose, enforced the local laws ruthlessly, even when it meant going against the whims of the priesthood. But those other towns where the mages had been released, those in the know wanted to send them all to the Vortex, “just in case” this was a ruse by Mekha or by the priests. Even warned by Guardian Dominor that the incipient kingdom of Nightfall intended to try to resurrect the long-lost Convocation of Gods and Man, the actual Convocation had happened too quickly for Alonnen to prepare anyone outside the innermost circle of the Mages Guild . . . which included his brother, even though Rogen was no mage himself.
So Heiastowne was more or less prepared to quell rioting. The region was not, however, prepared to house thousands of spellshocked, traumatized mages, many of whom were terrified of being recaptured and drained by the priesthood. Many more were physically damaged, or worse, violated. Not just the women had been raped and bred with bastard children, but some of the men bore signs of being abused by the priests, too.
The Mages Guild didn’t have the rooms to house them, they didn’t have the food to feed them or the clothes to give them, and they definitely did not have the
ability to counsel and help hundreds of mages rebuild their shattered, emptied lives.
When the coded messages came through that shipments of certain vintages of “wine and dried fruits” were being sent toward the Heias region, Alonnen gave up trying to reshape more of the bedrock under the hills flanking the reservoir. Heias cannot house, feed, clothe, and care for them all. I will not be responsible for something that would completely beggar our resources “just because” the Vortex has a tradition of trying to keep mages safe from the priesthood.
We literally cannot keep them fed, housed, and all the rest, and so I will not take the blame for it. Swimming out of the Vortex—an odd, dry sort of swimming—he breached the gel-like barrier keeping the water back from the living spaces, dropped lightly onto the balcony, and ducked into his office.
Gabria Springreaver was manning his desk, trying to coordinate in code the shipment of all those mages to the Heias Dam. In the depths of winter, no less. The ash-blonde woman gave him a grateful look when he finished sliding the huge glass pane back into place, sealing off the faint chill of the Vortex chamber from the warmth of his magestove-heated study.
“Please tell me you’ve made eight hundred rooms?” she begged.
Alonnen choked, checking his stride. “Eight hundred?”
“Well, at the moment, it’s only four hundred and . . . thirty-six more of . . . well, our kind,” she admitted, consulting her notes. The talker-box, a thing of brass and wood and steel mesh, squawked, but no one actually spoke through it. Someone had probably hit the receiver-cone that picked up sounds for transmission. Springreaver shrugged when it made no further demands on her. “There’s even that Healer-mage fellow from outkingdom staying in the outermost circle. He’s making himself very popular by tending to all the traumatized mages.”
“I’m glad he’s making himself useful,” Alonnen allowed.
“Yes, but it’s barely an hour past breakfast, and only a handful of cities have relayed their requests. There’s bound to be more. Many more, Master Tall. If we can cram four and five to a room, or even sleep them in shifts, eight hundred might be enough . . .”