by Jean Johnson
“Enough? No. I’ve had enough, that’s what.” He started to say more, but someone rapped on the door.
Crossing to it, he pressed his palm to the metal plate above the handle. A section of the door turned transparent, like a window. Rexei Longshanks stood there, clad in the fresh clothes he had brought into his bedroom from his sitting room this morning, but still looking more male than female. Opening the door, he gestured her inside.
“In you get,” he ordered. She stepped inside, lean and lanky and looking like a nervous young man not yet old enough to shave. Her brown eyes widened when they alighted on Gabria’s face at his desk. About to introduce them, Alonnen hesitated, then leaned in close and whispered, “Which would you prefer to be introduced as, a lad all the time, or a lass while you’re here and a young man while you’re out beyond the dam?”
She blinked and gave him a startled look. Cheeks warming to a charming shade of pink, she ducked her head a little. “I . . . don’t know?”
He patted one of the arms holding his book of tales to her chest. “It’s okay. We have lots of girls running around with boy names and boy clothes, but they are safe here, and they know it. Nobody’s going to blink if you announce three weeks from now that you’re not actually a lad . . . and a few will guess it outright, but they won’t tell. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” Nudging her inside, he shut the door and led Rexei over to his desk. “Gabria, this is Rexei Longshanks. Rexei, Gabria Springreaver. Longshanks is a journeyman in the Gearmen’s Guild. Springreaver is a master in the Guild Which Is Usually Not Named . . . but which is giving me a bloody headache this morning.”
Gabria smiled shyly. “Hello. I think I’ve heard of you. Something about a . . . melody-chant . . . to hide energy traces?”
Rexei . . . acted like a boy, the kind who was mildly interested in Springreaver as a person but not as a potential flirtation candidate. She looked over the other woman, who was clad in felted gray trousers, a cream and gray knitted sweater—without any breast bindings—and a couple of long pins skewering her golden curls in a knot at the back of her head. Rexei then shrugged diffidently and dipped her own dark, short-haired head. “Yeah. Just something my mum taught me.”
“Well, the more you can teach the trick of it to, the more we’ll all be grateful,” Gabria said, and gave Longshanks a warm smile.
Alonnen felt odd. That half-shy smile was almost flirtatious. Not quite, but it irritated him to think of one of his assistants flirting with the lad . . . who was a lass. The talker-box squawked again. Shaking the feeling off, Alonnen focused on what his guild needed and not on what he was feeling. “Right. Call them all back and cancel the shipments.”
Gabria blinked, shocked. “What?”
“We’re not taking them.”
“But, sir . . .” she tried to protest, flabbergasted.
“We are not taking them in, because we cannot take them in. It doesn’t matter if I craft eight hundred rooms or eight thousand, Springreaver,” Alonnen told her. “We cannot feed four hundred, never mind eight hundred or eight thousand, we cannot clothe them, and we cannot tend to them. Particularly as most will be suffering from various physical, mental, and emotional traumas. A few, we can manage, but not hundreds and thousands.
“Not to mention it’s bloody winter. Nobody travels far in winter. If everyone tried to ship them all here, even if they didn’t freeze to death in transit—which is a chance I’m not willing to take—the priests would know exactly where they’re headed, and come looking for the Vortex. Two or eight or twenty, we can hide—barely for the latter—but four hundred we cannot, and I will not compromise the safety of this place.”
Longshanks looked between the two and lifted her chin, looking less like a callow youth and more like a young but mature man. Or a young but mature woman. “He’s right,” she stated, her low voice somewhere between a tenor and contralto. “There’s not much travel in winter. Even the Messenger Guild doesn’t go far from a particular town in deep winter, unless it’s truly urgent.”
“Well, they can’t keep the . . . ah, victims . . . where they are,” Gabria argued.
“Why not?” Rexei challenged her. “Every single one of those victims came from a guild, or was the child of a guildmember, and it is that guild’s responsibility to help care for its members and their immediate family members when they are injured beyond their capacity to contribute. That’s why everyone pays guild dues in the first place. Just because most of these guildmembers haven’t been free in years is no excuse for their parent guilds to shirk their oathbound duty to those members.”
Her words triggered a memory. Alonnen hurried over to one of the cabinets and started rummaging through it. “If I remember correctly . . . the agreement one of my predecessors . . . no, not this cupboard . . . The agreement one of my predecessors wrested out of the other guilds . . . no, no . . . ah, this cabinet . . . was to send a tithe of goods, foods, and coins to this Guild in exchange for taking in their mage-born members. And in exchange, we would train them to hide their powers and . . . here it is! It’s getting old. We’ll have to make a copy of it . . .”
“Train them to hide their powers, and . . . ?” Rexei asked, curiosity in her searching gaze. Both she and Gabria watched Alonnen unroll the parchment farther, crinkling the material as he searched for the exact words he wanted.
“And how to help shelter and protect the others . . . within their original guilds. There! Right there, inked and ratified by a quorum of Guild Masters,” he stated, tapping the middle of the scroll he had found and untied. “The assertion that . . . ‘the parent guilds shall remain responsible for the upkeep of their mage-empowered members.’ Right there, plain as can be. Just as a Gearman receives both an income from his current or highest-ranked guild and a stipend from the Consulate to which he or she is currently attached, so shall mages be granted all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges due to them by their original guilds as well as this one. Only even more so, as the Consulates do receive a tithe from all guilds within a given jurisdiction, because they act openly, but the Mages Guild cannot be acknowledged openly, so the other guilds must take up the slack.
“At least, until now,” he said. “Relax, I am not going to make the decision to expose ourselves anytime soon,” Alonnen added firmly as both Gabria and Rexei flinched. “Gabria, get on the talker-box to everyone and send out a message to hold those shipments in each town for now and to watch over them carefully. Phrase it, oh . . . that they are to be tended carefully so that they’ll be in excellent shape for later transport at some point after winter has ended. Emphasize that we have no room available to store any such shipments, and that they are required by guild charter to hold on to and care for that cargo until we send for it.”
“And if they ask when, exactly, the ‘items’ in question can be shipped?” Gabria asked him.
“Stall,” he ordered her flatly. “Don’t give any exact dates, just point out that shipping anything in the depths of winter has too many hazards at this point in time.”
“Don’t forget to emphasize how awful early spring weather is, too—wet and cold, with threats of sudden ice storms,” Longshanks offered. “Plus muddy conditions if the local Roadworks Guild hasn’t been keeping up with repairs, the constant threat of floods . . . all manner of troubles. The only really good season for traveling is summer, and even then, broiling heat and thunderstorms are always a hazard.”
Springreaver blinked, then nodded. “Right. I can do that. Thank you for the ideas, Miss Longshanks.”
Rexei started and blinked. She looked between Alonnen and the other young woman, visibly taken aback.
Gabria had the grace to blush. Ducking her head, she apologized. “Sorry. I’m used to spotting all the females running around in male clothes. This is the one place where we’re safe to be females. I don’t wear skirts often, but I like to wear them here, sometimes.”
“I told you,
Longshanks, we have a lot of women who try to hide their gender in this guild. Speaking of which,” Alonnen added, snapping his fingers and pointing at his assistant, “Springreaver, have you got room for one more in your quarters here? Longshanks could use a spot.”
The blonde shook her head. “Sorry. In fact, it’s now crammed with seven others, and we’re all now on rotation for sharing the bed and the couch. We had forty more from the local lot show up this morning. If you didn’t need me in here and if I hadn’t already given up my middle-circle quarters, I’d be headed back to the unshielded Hydraulics tenements on the north shore. They’re probably being filled up, though.”
Sighing heavily, Alonnen rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Gods . . . I may have to have you do that anyway. Right. First thing, Miss Springreaver, is to get on the talker-box to the Consulate in Heiastowne. Tell them there’s going to be an emergency meeting of all Heias Guild representatives this evening at sundown. Consuls, Sub-Consuls, grandmasters, and whatever Guild Masters can show up at the Consulate Hall from our nearest neighbors. There are a lot of them around, the Gods know . . .
“Then—politely—request Captain Torhammer to loan us his leftenant as well, since what will be discussed involves the governance of Heiastowne in the wake of the dissolution of Mekha, so-called God of Engineering and false Patron of Mekhana.”
“I’ll pass it along through my friend Marta, sir,” Gabria agreed.
Alonnen looked around, but there weren’t any actual seats in his office, other than the one Springreaver was currently occupying. He folded his arms across his chest and muttered a curse. Gabria blinked, but Rexei took it in stride. He shrugged and gestured at the chamber. “This place isn’t exactly set up to be the heart of a new government . . . and it cannot become the new heart. But we are going to remind all the other guilds that we do still have a government of sorts. And now that the priesthood isn’t being backed by the power of an unholy, un-dead God, we—the guilds, all of them—need to step up and take over.”
He looked at Rexei, who was slowly nodding, her gaze fixed on something beyond the walls of his study. “The guilds must take the lead. They’ve been our strength all along.”
Nodding as well, Alonnen unfolded his arm and draped one around the young woman’s shoulders for a brief, comforting squeeze. As much as she needed protecting, he knew he was going to have to ask a lot of her. Alonnen had never prayed to Mekha for help—no one in the kingdom had for generations, save for the priesthood—but he did have a sense for when someone had been tapped to be an instrument of the Threefold God of Fate. “Come on, let’s go back to my sitting room, since it’s the only place with more than one seat and more than enough privacy to start talking about this idea you had, about a Patron Goddess of Guilds.
“At least, I hope it still has some privacy left,” he added, guiding both of them out of his study. “For all I know, my chief housekeeper has shoved my entire family into my quarters by this point, trying to find room for everyone. If I’m not lucky, I’ll not only be stuck sleeping with my younger brother and his motorhorse-loud snores, but my father and maybe an uncle or a cousin as well, all crammed into my bed—you did sleep alright, didn’t you? Last I saw, you were curled up in an odd position.”
She blushed but nodded. “Most of me was warm. And, um, not too uncomfortable.”
“Good.” He patted her on the back as they reached the fourth floor. Voices could be heard from behind the first three or four doors. “I’d take you to a workroom, but not at this time of the morning. It’ll have to be my sitting room. A lot of my workrooms are being used for painstaking experimentation.”
“Experimentation?” she asked.
“We sometimes get mage-tomes shipped in from outkingdom, but since we daren’t get any living mages for instructors, we have to work out not only the translations for those tomes, but also what their actual meaning is. The inner circle of the Vortex is the only safe place to practice such magics openly, but they still require wardings to contain any accidental explosions or upsets in the aether.” Catching a hint of wistfulness in her gaze as they passed one of those doors, Alonnen reassured her. “Don’t worry; if you’re going to be here for a while, you’ll have a chance to enroll in classes as a student-apprentice. In we go . . . and excellent, no one is sleeping in here. Have a seat.”
Briefly glancing at him, she studied the collection of leather-padded furniture, then picked an armchair. It was clear she didn’t want to sit on the sofa, though Alonnen couldn’t be sure if that was because it would have allowed him to sit next to her or because his brother Dolon had lain on it last night. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do anything that’ll make her shy and bolt like a scared, half-tamed horse.
After all, Rexei Longshanks was not the first fearful, gender-hiding apprentice to enter the Mages Guild. Alonnen was fairly confident he could win her trust, even if it had been a few years since he had last gentled and soothed a nervous apprentice. He meant what he had told his mother last night, of course; Rexei Longshanks hadn’t nearly enough magic to be apprenticed directly to the Guild Master. But she was still important enough to need handling by him personally. He needed her to trust him.
That meant picking an armchair across from hers rather than the sofa. He went a step further and arranged himself with his back tucked into the corner of the chair and his leg hooked over the opposite arm. Not exactly the most Guild Master-ish of postures, but it did make her relax a bit. Bracing an elbow on the unoccupied armrest, he gestured at her.
“Tell me about this Guildra concept you have. If we’re to ensure law and order remains in place across the kingdom, then we need to impose it locally and ensure it spreads. Having the idea of a Patron Deity is too deeply ingrained to ignore, particularly now that we have none . . . but nobody will ever want another lying, false deity like Mekha,” he acknowledged. “So. How long ago did you first hear of Guildra? Or did you come up with the idea yourself?”
SIX
Still a little off-balance from that friendly hug, Rexei focused on settling her thoughts. Alonnen Tallnose was not the only person here in the heart of the Mages Guild to touch others so casually. Going downstairs to break her fast, she had seen a couple dozen late risers laughing and chatting, and yes, touching each other in friendly, companionable ways. In ways she had not seen since the destruction of her family.
She hadn’t realized how much she missed such friendly closeness. It unsettled her even as she longed for it. This whole place unnerved her, even as it made her want to relax—even her habitual mental humming, protective and omnipresent, seemed quieter in the back of her mind here. The place felt warm and cozy to her inner senses. It was hard to uncurl from her protective mental huddle and accept that comfort, when she had been forced to live out in the cold and the damp for so long.
Squirming a little, Rexei slouched in her seat and considered his questions firmly, banishing all other thoughts to the back of her mind. “I came up with it myself. Mostly. I remember . . . when I was young, my father and brothers were talking about this and that, and they got onto the topic of what we’d do if we ever actually did get rid of the Dead God. Lundrei, that was the one . . . my eldest brother—half brother, technically—he said something about he’d never want another male deity.
“He said Goddesses were almost always more compassionate and caring, and less devoted to war and other violent pursuits—not that we knew for sure if this is true or not,” she cautioned. “Even now, we barely have any friendly trade with the Sundarans, and the priesthood constantly comes up with blatant lies about them and everyone else just to keep the wars going on the other three fronts, against Arbra, and Aurul, and the northeastern lands.
“But that was his thought, to long for a gentler ideal to worship. And Father asked, what sort of patronage would a Goddess have of our land? So we all thought about it, and the others offered suggestions. I was a bit young, so I didn’t s
ay much, just listened. But I remembered it, and I thought about it from time to time, especially after I had to leave,” she said, looking past him at one of the bookcases lining his sitting room. “I remember I was apprenticing with the Coalminers. One of the priests came to oversee the operation.
“He wanted to grope me, just because he saw a young lad with . . . with a pretty bottom.” The indrawn hiss of Alonnen’s breath reassured her of his sympathy. She continued, clearing her throat. “One of the master miners distracted him, while one of the visiting Carters whisked me away in a coal shipment. Got me a job with the Coopers Guild, making barrels. Just like I’d gotten a job in Brassworks after a Tanner journeyman tried the same thing—he got punished by the local grandmaster, last I heard—and how the Woodrights took me on after my first accidental . . . you know . . . thingy we shouldn’t do.”
“Spellcasting?” Alonnen asked her, arching one brow.
Rexei nodded. “Yeah. That. It drew attention when I was apprenticed in a Glassworks forge. That’s when I realized the guilds had always been there for me, even as an orphan.” She looked up, meeting Alonnen’s gaze. “That’s when—in the Coopers Guild—I realized what kind of Goddess we needed, if we could only get rid of Him. A Goddess of Guilds.”
Listening to her recite her thoughts, Alonnen almost missed it. Almost, but not quite. As the Guild Master of Mages, he was constantly hyperaware of magical energies. Rexei still appeared to have none, even though he had watched through his scrying mirrors as she had demonstrated how to cast spells while cloaking the power traces. But behind her . . . something shimmered.
“I’d already played around in the Woodwrights with some carvings and drawings, a symbol of all the things I’d done. I was thinking I might go into the Engravers Guild at that point, but I ended up having to flee when my powers showed up again in the woodshop at the wrong moment, and I wound up in the Lumber Guild. I realized a Goddess would need a symbol . . . so I started working it up, perfecting it . . . and then drawing it everywhere I went. All the while thinking about what kind of deity we deserved, instead of the one we suffered.”