Charmcaster

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘How long do we wait?’ Nephenia asked.

  We were hiding in the alley, watching angry crowds go by. Twice guardsmen came running past us, pausing to ask if we’d seen a strange dog carrying an ugly cat on its back. Ferius made suitably caustic remarks about public servants drinking while on duty. I imagine that would’ve provoked a confrontation had it not also convinced the guards that she had no idea what they were talking about.

  ‘Those two better find us soon,’ Ferius said as the chaos died down. ‘The exhibition is going to start any minute now.’

  I was anxious for a completely different reason: what if I’d done the wrong thing by hiding with the others instead of going after Reichis? What if he needed my help? His leg was still hurt from the fight in the desert, what if they … Stupid, stupid squirrel cat. He’s probably dead and it’s my fault for not—

  ‘Stop, thief!’ a voice called out.

  I pulled powder and spun on my heels. Someone must’ve told the guards about us being with Reichis and Ishak earlier. I relaxed when I saw Nephenia letting out a relieved breath and Ferius rolling her eyes. From around the corner Ishak came sauntering towards us, Reichis still on his back, giggling all the while.

  ‘Do it again!’ the squirrel cat demanded. ‘Do the other one this time!’

  The hyena opened his mouth wide and in the frightened voice of an elderly Daroman man shouted, ‘They went that way! That way, I say!’

  Reichis hopped off the hyena’s back and ambled over to me, still holding the delegate’s coin in one paw. ‘Who wantsh to go shee shome shtupid exhibition?’

  ‘Are you drunk?’ I asked, trying to mask my desperate desire to hug him – something I was never, ever allowed to do.

  Reichis grinned up at me. ‘Nope. Had to make a shtop on the way back.’ He reached into his jowls and took out a pair of glittering rubies. He threw one to me. ‘Stick this in my bag, would you?’ The other one he tossed to Ishak, who caught it in his mouth and presented it to Nephenia, presumably for the same purpose.

  ‘Kellen,’ she said, giving me a withering look. ‘Inform the squirrel cat that he’s forbidden from corrupting my familiar.’

  Ishak looked up at her with adoring eyes, then barked, ‘Stop, thief!’

  A festive, almost celebratory air thrummed through the crowds inside the amphitheatre. Thousands of people chattered while taking their seats along the curved stone benches, calling over men and women bearing wide trays attached to leather straps that went round their shoulders. One of the vendors walked past me and the smells of spiced wine and roasted meats made me dizzy. Boys and girls sat on their parents’ laps, pointing and shouting excitedly as foreign delegations paraded into the amphitheatre, proudly displaying their nations’ colours and banners.

  There was probably more money in this place than in any single country’s treasury. Reichis would’ve been in heaven. Fortunately, after considerable debate, even the squirrel cat had to admit he and Ishak were too likely to be recognised by the exhibition guards.

  ‘Fine,’ he’d declared, dusting himself off. ‘Me and the hyena have got better things to do, anyway.’

  Ishak had let out a short series of excited barks that Nephenia took poorly. ‘You will not,’ she insisted. ‘How are we supposed to make a life for ourselves in this city if you and the squirrel cat go off thieving from everybody?’

  The hyena’s apologetic whine didn’t go over well with Reichis. ‘Are you kidding me?’ the squirrel cat demanded, gesturing towards Nephenia. ‘You’re gonna let a skinbag get in the way of our new venture? You and me can make a fortune! And Kellen can carry our loot, buy us anything we want.’ Somehow, without any agreement on my part, I had become the bagman for a squirrel cat and a hyena.

  ‘Over here,’ Ferius said, bringing my attention back to the exhibition. She led Nephenia and me to one of the less densely packed sections. There were sixteen in all, each with its own set of curved stone benches. In front of each section stood a tall structure, about nine feet high, in the shape of a half-shell, the opening facing towards the benches. In each shell a large man or woman holding what looked like some kind of horn or bugle waited patiently. ‘Translators,’ Ferius explained.

  ‘Translators?’

  ‘You fluent in Gitabrian?’

  ‘Well, no …’

  She pointed to the woman at the head of our section. I could tell she was Jan’Tep, though actually more likely a Sha’Tep servant since the tattooed bands on her forearms looked long-faded. She made up for it by being bigger and taller than any member of my people I’d ever seen. ‘The presentations are in Gitabrian,’ Ferius explained, ‘but most of the people who come for the event are from other places. So the translators repeat everything in the appropriate language.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that all the people in this section will be either Jan’Tep or their representatives?’ I glanced around at the other faces. Most didn’t pay any attention to me at all, no doubt wondering what I was doing there since I wasn’t dressed in the sort of clothes our people wore. They probably figured I was a Sha’Tep servant holding a seat for the head of my household. When someone did bother looking at me closely, their expression made me extremely uncomfortable. ‘Umm …’ I mumbled at Ferius. ‘Has it occurred to you that there’s a spell warrant out on me? And Nephenia’s an exile. What if someone from our clan sees us?’

  ‘No one would dare interfere with us here,’ Nephenia said. ‘Gitabrian trade laws are very specific. You make trouble for them and you’re cut off from all trade. Attempt any military response, and the Daroman or even the Berabesq will retaliate before they let you threaten access to all the trade goods that come from here.’

  Which I suppose made Gitabria even more of a safe haven for Nephenia. I doubted it would do me much good, though. I’ve never known my people to be entirely rational on the subject of what to do with shadowblack outcasts.

  A horn sounded, the note surprisingly sweet and pure. ‘Saddle up, kid,’ Ferius said, pointing to an open seat on the bench. ‘You’re in for quite a ride.’

  19

  The Grand Exhibition

  It all began with a small man in a long embroidered coat. Bright semi-precious stones stitched into his garments caught the light and gave him the appearance of a glittering peacock taking centre stage. He spoke in a manner so fluid it was almost musical. Gitabrian was a beautiful language, but spoken far too quickly for me to make out where one word ended and the next began. In addition to his oration, the man did a lot of smiling and gesturing, and after a particularly grand bow, he stepped back.

  The translators at the head of each section lifted their horns to their lips. They didn’t shout exactly, but somehow the acoustics of both the horns and the large shells in which they stood made their voices boom across the rows of curved benches. You could easily hear every word, even as the other translators spoke over each other to their respective sections.

  ‘You are welcome here,’ the Jan’Tep woman at the head of our section began. ‘You are treasured. You are prized. You are our beloved guests, whether from the brave and noble Daroman empire, the devout and wise Berabesq theocracy, the brilliant and powerful Jan’Tep arcanocracy …’ She went on like that, mentioning countries I knew well and a few I’d only heard of in passing, some of which weren’t even on this continent.

  ‘For one hundred and fifty years the Grand Exhibition has been a place for all to come and marvel at the wonders of other lands, at the ingenuity of those who – though they might not look or talk like us – are nonetheless brothers and sisters in spirit if not in skin. Here you will see what our explorers have found, what they have traded for at enormous expense, and what you, our honoured guests, may choose to purchase and bring back to your own peoples.’

  On cue, the man who directed the event stepped forward again. He spoke only for a few seconds, paused, said one last thing, and then stepped back.

  ‘As is our tradition,’ the woman at the head of our section said, ‘yo
u will also see what we in Gitabria have created this past year. Ours is a culture of exploration, of trade, but also of ingenuity. There is a word in our language which is found in no other: bellegenzia. It means the beauty that can only be uncovered through invention.’ She gave a slight, theatrical pause that matched that of the lead presenter, then said, ‘And oh, what wonders have our contraptioneers wrought this past year!’

  The man in the glittering coat stepped forward a third and final time, held out his hands as if in supplication, then suddenly raised them over his head and clapped them together.

  It was as if he’d summoned thunder from the clear night sky.

  From the wings of the amphitheatre, two contingents of dancers in red silk paraded forth, carrying eight-foot wooden poles connected to each other by similarly red cloth with gold fringes, the entire affair forming a kind of winged mythical beast with a long snout somewhat like that of a crocodile. It was probably best that Reichis couldn’t come – he has a thing about crocodiles.

  The beast bobbed and weaved, dancing under the elaborate choreography performed by the men and women holding the poles. They crossed each other at the back of the stage, then did so again faster, as if the creatures they bore were about to take flight. Suddenly they ran right towards the front of the stage, towards the audience. The jaws of the twin red silk beasts opened wide, and a clap of thunder and fire roared out. Smoke and flame came from the maw, and I tried to grab Nephenia and Ferius before the flames could reach us. Nephenia shoved my hand away as if I were some annoying child, her eyes still on the beasts. Only then did I realise that what shot forth from the creatures was not flame nor smoke at all, but long red paper streamers that flew through the air in a brilliant display. Something else came along with them: small bundles, each one no larger than a marble, wrapped in shiny gold paper. They fell throughout the amphitheatre, caught by eager hands.

  Again the silk monster spewed its strange cargo, and more coin-sized bundles flew into the air. ‘These Gitabrians sure do love to put on a show,’ Ferius said, idly reaching out a hand to catch one of the gold-wrapped parcels. She unwrapped it and displayed its contents for me. ‘Why don’t you try it, kid?’

  A small round piece of what looked like toffee stared back at me. ‘How do we know it’s not drugged?’ I asked. If that sounds paranoid, trust me: getting poisoned is a lot more common a problem than one might assume.

  ‘Can’t imagine that would be good for business,’ Ferius observed, noting all the guests who were greedily eating the contents. ‘But if you’re scared …’

  Before I could even attempt to counter that childish effort to sway me, Nephenia had neatly picked the candy from Ferius’s hand and popped it into her mouth. She couldn’t have sucked on it for more than a second before she stopped, her eyes widening. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘What? Is it …’

  Without answering, she looked down at the ground where a precious few gold-wrapped pieces were still being sought after by eager hands. She dived and grabbed one before a large man in mage’s robes could get to it. He snarled at her, but evidently the rules of the exhibition stayed his hand. Nephenia ignored him and returned to us, handing the candy to me. ‘Try it.’

  Not being keen on another accusal of cowardice, I unwrapped it and put it in my mouth, careful not to swallow. The effect was almost instantaneous. Everything around me … sharpened. Colours, shapes, textures. It was as if I’d been wearing a linen hood over my eyes my whole life and only now could see the world as it was. My hearing was finer, too. More than that, it was as if I could think more clearly, more rationally – like I’d been a dunce before and only now understood the most basic aspects of reality.

  ‘Lucidity,’ the translator declared, her voice booming far more loudly than I now thought necessary. I only then realised the exposition’s leader had spoken in Gitabrian before her. I could actually remember the exact syllables and pronunciation of the words he’d spoken. Of course, I didn’t know what they meant, but all of a sudden the language didn’t seem so hard to learn.

  ‘Lucidity,’ she repeated. ‘Is that not what we all seek? To see clearer, to hear better, to know the world more fully. The Shin Pazhani people who live across the southern sea know their world and more, for they know true harmony. With lucidity comes understanding, and with understanding, peace.’

  Already shouts were coming from men and women in all sixteen sections of the amphitheatre. They held up thin sticks, each one about six feet long so it could be seen from afar. The top foot or so of the stick had a crossbar so that various coloured rings could be placed on the stick and counted. Some were blue or green, others gold or silver. As bidders saw their competitors’ rings, they changed their own, or simply added more.

  ‘What exactly are they bidding on?’ I asked.

  ‘Trading rights,’ Ferius said. ‘They’re bidding for the right to buy the first year’s supply.’

  ‘All that money,’ I said, ‘and they haven’t even worked out a price for the thing itself?’

  Nephenia, the irises of her eyes radiant, said, ‘Imagine how much money the company with exclusive rights to sell these can make.’

  Eventually a winner was found, a Daroman who could barely hold his bidding stick up because it was so weighed down with gold rings. There was a kind of gracious applause from those who’d lost the bid, and some fanfare as the men and women holding the cloth dragons made them bow down in the winner’s direction. Less than a minute later, the dragons were hung up on hooks high above the stage and the performers were gone. The man in the peacock coat gave a bow, and then he too left.

  ‘That was incredible,’ I said.

  ‘You want incredible …’ a small chittering voice said from beneath my bench. I looked down to find Reichis staring up at me with unnaturally wide eyes. In one paw he was grasping several of the little gold-wrapped bundles. ‘You should try one of these Kellen. So good. So good.’

  ‘You idiot! You were supposed to hide out in the city. What if someone sees you?’

  He snorted. ‘These morons? They’re all too wrapped up in the show. Ishak and me have been here the whole time and nobody even noticed us.’

  I looked over and saw the hyena was under Nephenia’s bench, doing a vastly better job than Reichis of staying hidden despite the fact that they’d both disobeyed us. Reichis’s brashness was a concern, but it was the way his fur kept shifting colours over and over that really worried me. I grabbed one of the gold-wrapped candies from him. ‘How many of these have you eaten?’

  The squirrel cat’s head swivelled around left and right as if he were waiting for someone else to answer. ‘Dunno.’ He held up the paw barely hanging on to what must have been half a dozen of the wrapped candies. ‘Maybe five?’

  ‘Probably best you take those from him, Kellen,’ Ferius said. ‘And you …’ She pointed to the squirrel cat. ‘You stay under the benches. You or the hyena try stealing anything and you’ll answer to me, understand?’

  Reichis banged his paw against his forehead – his version of the way he’d seen Daroman soldiers salute their commanders. ‘Whatever you say, Captain.’

  Despite the fact that she couldn’t possibly know what he was saying, she stuck her finger in his furry face and said, ‘I mean it.’

  Reichis bared his teeth at her for daring to threaten him, but his snarl soon dissolved into giggling. ‘You have pretty eyes,’ he said, staring up at her.

  ‘What’d he say?’ she asked me. When I translated, she gave him a smile. ‘Well now, aren’t you the sweetest little—’

  ‘I’d really like to eat them.’ The squirrel cat’s head swivelled towards me. ‘Can I eat her eyes, Kellen? I’ll give them back later, I promise.’

  ‘Uh … we’ll talk about it some other time.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, then turned to walk away, only to promptly fall forward. It was only Nephenia’s fast hand that caught him before he landed face first on the floor. ‘She’s pretty too,’ he said, looking up at h
er as she cradled him in her arms. ‘I always liked this human.’ He idly stretched out a paw that had no hope of reaching its target but which I was fairly sure was aiming for one of her ears.

  ‘We should go,’ I said, assuming the big event was over.

  ‘Go?’ Ferius asked, settling in and turning her attention back to the stage where an entirely new and even more elaborate production was taking shape. ‘Kid, that wasn’t the exhibition. That was just the opening act.’

  20

  The Contraptioneer

  For the next two hours I sat in mute wonder as a parade of unusual and sometimes bizarre commodities made their way across the stage. Delicacies from places I’d never heard of were overshadowed by beautiful carved tools made from woods stronger than steel, only to have those pale in comparison to cloth goods like a shirt made from a kind of linen that cooled in the presence of heat and warmed when ice was placed against it. These marvels, we were forewarned by the translators, were in excessively limited supplies, and so the bidding started high and only travelled skyward.

  ‘Gimmicks,’ Ferius said at my astonishment. ‘Most of that stuff is made from materials so exotic you couldn’t outfit a household with them, never mind an army.’

  ‘Then why—’

  ‘The Gitabrians like to show off,’ she explained, gesturing at the enraptured delegates. ‘Most of these people don’t need magic candies or shirts that cost a fortune just to save you the trouble of wearing a coat. They come here to secure loads of candle wax or spices, hardwoods or ivory.’ She waved a hand dismissively. ‘The rest is just spectacle.’

  Nephenia wrinkled her nose. ‘Forgive me, Lady Ferius, but you reduce the wondrous to something tawdry.’

  ‘Not “Lady”,’ declared Reichis stridently from his resting spot on Nephenia’s lap hidden beneath her coat. He started giggling uncontrollably.