Jicks slung her bag down onto the right-hand bed. She looked at Abi with an expression that told Abi she was feeling very awkward about being together in a room they shared, after trying to kiss her. Abi herself wasn’t at all sure what to say. So probably it’s best to leave it unsaid. “I must admit it’ll be nice to sleep in a bed that doesn’t move every time someone gets up to visit the bushes in the middle of the night,” she said instead, opening the windows to let the breeze come through. Jicks managed a smile. Abi took that as a good sign.
Their meals were to come from the inn across the square from the Town Hall, but the parsimonious mayor had decided that the meals were to be sent over from the inn and subject to his orders, not eaten off the menu. So when they all gathered at a very small table set up in the enormous Great Hall, they were greeted with what was probably the cheapest fare the inn had to offer. Pease porridge flavored with bacon, bread and butter, raisins, and thin ale served from a pail.
Bret and Bart dug in without a word. Abi and Jicks exchanged a look and a slight headshake, and Master Vance looked as if he was going to explode.
“No point in getting upset, Master,” Herald Stev cautioned him. “This man is going to pinch every penny he has until it screams for mercy.”
“Well, he’s just guaranteed that we are only going to find the root of his problem, tell him how to fix it, and move on,” Vance huffed. “Really! I’ve no doubt he’s sitting down to roast pork and baked apples this very moment!”
“This is better than my cooking, Master Vance,” Jicks pointed out diplomatically, then followed the example of Bret and Bart and dug in herself.
Just as they all were finishing their meal with a handful of raisins, Stev coughed meaningfully, and nodded when Abi looked up. She slowed down her eating, so that eventually everyone had left the table except her and the Herald. By that time the sun had set, with blue dusk visible outside the Great Hall windows. “Let’s take a walk,” Stev said, and she followed him across the shadow-shrouded Great Hall and out into the stableyard, which was deserted at this late hour.
“I don’t like this,” Stev said, without preamble. “It’s all very well for Master Vance to say that the why of this is not our problem, but someone was specifically impersonating our group, and to me, that’s a problem.”
She nodded. “I was thinking the very same thing. Someone has something to gain by discrediting Valdemar. I don’t think it’s the mayor.”
“I don’t either. He’d have to be the best actor in the world to have convincingly put on the performance he did today. Either he should be on the stage, or he was honestly angry, then shocked, then full of chagrin. All my instincts say the latter.”
She leaned against the stable wall. “How good is your Mindspeech? Good enough to read surface thoughts?”
“If I’m close enough to the source.” She was very pleased that he didn’t quibble at what some Heralds would have considered an invasion of privacy—then again, her father wouldn’t have bothered to recruit him if he had those kinds of qualms.
“Well then, you know what you should do,” she replied. “And taverns are probably the best place to do it. I am absolutely no help to the other three when it comes to this wall problem, so tomorrow I am going to drift around the area where that breech is and listen to the women gossip. I may not learn anything of value, but I can at least get a clearer picture of what the imposters looked and acted like, how many of them there were . . . well, just as many details as I can.”
“Good plan,” Stev replied, nodding agreement. “All right, the other reason I asked you out here was that I want you to watch out for trouble while I talk to my Companion. These imposters may only be one-time opportunists, or they may be more than that. Either way, your father needs to know.”
And that pretty much cemented the assumption that he was her father’s agent into certainty.
“Easy done,” she replied, and kept careful watch as he slid down the wall of the building to sit with his back to it and apparently nod off.
About half a candlemark later, he “woke up” again, stretched, and got to his feet. “I’m for bed. Looking forward to one that doesn’t move six times a night.”
She smiled in the darkness. “I think I said the same thing to Jicks before dinner.”
* * *
• • •
In the morning, she put on the single skirt she had brought with her, a shirt, and a modest bodice, and after a cheap breakfast of bread and butter and the same thin ale as last night, went out to meet the ladies of Gescony.
She joined the thin crowd of onlookers who were watching a crew of local men move the stones away from the wall and arrange them in neat rows out of the way. It was already warm, although the morning was young, and about half the men were shirtless, so many young ladies were in the crowd, using any excuse they could think of to loiter. Using her talent of being unobtrusive, she joined a knot of women about her age who were off to one side, gossiping. Mostly she learned about which of these men the young ladies admired most, but she did glean the location of the washing well nearest the breech in the wall.
Having learned that, she went back to the wagon, gathered up her own laundry and soap, borrowed a basket, and sought it out.
Now, her clothing was definitely different from the local women, and there was nothing that she could do about that—their blouses had square necks finished with embroidery, while hers had a drawstring neck, they had loose, bell-shaped sleeves, she had tighter ones, their bodices were embroidered black canvas, hers was brown leather, their skirts were black, worn with white aprons, hers was brown, with no apron. But she was fairly sure that if she appeared to keep herself to herself, and seemed to be concentrating on scrubbing, after a while they’d speak freely in front of her. Very likely they’d assume she didn’t understand them.
And after a candlemark or so, they did, indeed, start to gossip, as she had hoped.
For three candlemarks of hard scrubbing, wrinkled hands, and a wet blouse, she had learned the following. There had been four of the strangers, and they had not been accompanied by anyone like a servant. They had ridden into and out of town on ordinary horses. None of them had claimed to be, or dressed as, a Herald.
And one of them had stood back while the others had saturated the mortar of the wall with their “curative” liquid. Not doing anything. Just apparently watching.
Had this one been the Mage? Had he been ensuring that the water penetrated deeply into the mortar, using that trick Steen had used at the dam?
It seemed very likely.
The strangers had all spoken the local tongue like natives—so the Mage had probably been able to do for them what Steen had done for the real party from Valdemar.
She carried her basket of heavy, wet clothing back to the Town Hall, got some rope from the wagon, and when Jicks returned to their bedroom from whatever she had been doing, she was greeted by a zig-zag of rope festooned with drying clothing. She regarded the transformed room from the doorway for a moment, hands on hips.
“Sorry,” Abi said from the far side of the room, where she was just draping the last pair of stockings over the line. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”
“Gathering information at the washing well?” Jicks asked.
Abi once again felt a moment of commonality with the mercenary. “You think there’s more to the story too, don’t you?”
“It’s enemy action, as far as I’m concerned,” Jicks replied, but very quietly so her voice didn’t carry beyond the room. “There aren’t that many people who knew we were going to be doing this, and most of ’em are in Valdemar. There was no reason to specifically pose as us, if all this group wanted was to weaken the wall for an attack or an invasion later. But if the main goal was to discredit Valdemar . . . this may be the first time we’ve caught them at it, but I’ll bet it isn’t going to be the last.”
“What possible motive could there be, though?” Abi asked. Not that she didn’t have her own share of speculations, but she wanted to hear what Jicks had to say.
“Could be someone local to this town that doesn’t want to be gobbled up by Valdemar,” Jicks replied, ducking under the clothesline to get to Abi. “But my gut says it’s bigger than that. My gut says it’s someone who doesn’t want this whole strip of territory to join up. And that still could be someone local; someone who wants to consolidate this area for himself, or someone who’s anxious that all these little towns and villages remain disunited and easy pickings. But my gut doesn’t think that’s right either.”
“So what does your gut tell you?” Abi asked.
“That I haven’t guessed the right answer,” Jicks said, her jaw set. “But there is one thing my gut knows for certain. We haven’t seen the last of them.”
15
“Well, there’s our problem,” said Master Padrick, prodding a soggy patch of ground with his toe. Now that the blocks of stone had been cleared away and the ground had been revealed, all four of them were making faces.
The ground dipped here. It was already at the bottom of the hill. And the ground was . . . wet. Wet ground was shifty ground; it only took one part of the wall being a trifle heavier than the other to have caused that initial crack that had brought the fake Valdemarans here in the first place.
Master Vance nodded with agreement. “Look how green the grass is, too.” He turned around and looked at the backs of the buildings that stood behind the wall. Abi noticed that there was a row of outhouses behind those buildings, and that they too were uphill from the wall. “There is not a hope of getting those people to clean out their latrines on a monthly basis,” he said with resignation. “And they’ll never believe this isn’t a spring that just somehow decided to break through at this spot. Or just something temporary.”
“Or that wet ground can cause problems in the first place,” Abi pointed out.
“So?” asked Padrick.
“So, we pour concrete footings for this spot and build the wall on that. No more shifting ground.”
“I haven’t seen any concrete in this entire city,” Padrick replied, worried. “There isn’t even a word for it! They have nothing but mortared walls.”
“Then we’ll teach them how to make it.” Master Vance, then scowled. “This is going to take much more time and work than I wanted to allow.”
“Charity, Master Vance,” drawled Stev, not in his Whites, strolling up beside Abi. “’Tis a great virtue. So I’m told.”
Master Vance growled something under his breath and turned to his crew of predominantly shirtless, burly, thick-thewed, and mostly thick-headed workers. “Have any of you any notion of how to create . . .” He swore. “Damnitall, he’s right, there isn’t even a word for it in your tongue . . . it’s like mortar, but you make entire slabs out of it. It hardens into something like stone. Anyone?”
The men looked at each other and shrugged. The more intelligent looked as if they thought Master Vance was crazy.
“Seven hells,” he muttered. “We’re going to have to make it from scratch and teach them how.” He turned back to his crew. “You and you!” he barked, pointing. “Get me a cartload of sand. You and you, get me a cartload of gravel no bigger than this.” He held up a rock chip. “You and you, get me a cartload of lime. You get me a cartload of that white clay your potters use. You get me several cartloads of wood, and you get me a cartload of fire-bricks, because we’re going to have to build a bloody damned kiln.”
They all gawked at him.
“Don’t just stand there staring like a bunch of owls! Hop to it!” Jicks shouted.
Well, they recognized the Command Voice when they heard it. They hopped.
Master Vance sighed as they disappeared. “Sennights of pease porridge,” he moaned.
“I can always make stew,” Jicks offered.
* * *
• • •
Abi had always taken cement for granted in Valdemar. The components were generally available, separately, if not premixed. In fact, the actual formula for it hadn’t been taught in her Artificer classes. After all, why would an Artificer need to know how to make it, since every mason already did? Now she got a quick lesson in how it was made, and she marveled at Master Vance’s depth of knowledge. He even knew how to build a kiln!
But most of her time, as the components of cement were created, was spent in trying to learn about the four men who had impersonated Valdemarans, by loitering all over the city—just as Stev was. He’d immediately gotten a suit of the local clothing, and so had she—boy’s gear, and women’s. They each went where the other could not, at least not without being conspicuous.
What she mostly learned was that the imposters had not been housed in the Town Hall but had paid for rooms in an inn near the wall, staying only two nights. Naturally, she posed as a chambermaid to get a look at those two rooms, but the imposters had left absolutely nothing behind. Their stay had been very brief. They had arrived in the evening and hired the rooms, presented themselves to the mayor in the morning, inspected the cracked wall that afternoon, applied their “treatment” the next day, stayed overnight, and left sometime before dawn. By the time the town was awake, the damage was done. Riders had been sent out to look for them of course, but they had completely vanished.
She and Stev pooled what little information they had, while the Masters burned the clay to get the final components they needed.
They sat across from each other, conferring at the table they used for eating meals, in the echoingly empty Great Hall. Light poured in from second floor windows on both sides, touching the banners of all the city Guilds hanging from the rafters. “I haven’t learned much more,” he admitted. “Whoever these men were, they spent as little time as possible talking to the locals. Most of their interactions consisted of ordering meals. They were even highly secretive about their ‘wall-healing potion,’ but that’s most probably because they didn’t want anyone to know it was just water.”
Abi drummed her fingers on the table. “Did my father tell you about any would-be warlords down here, or anyone looking to increase his holdings or consolidate these people under his rule?” She paused. “Or hers. Women have as much ambition as men, after all.”
“No. In fact, everything his people down here told him indicated the locals were united on one thing: they were all so jealous of one another that they didn’t want anyone from along this stretch of territory to rule over the rest of them.” He smirked a little. “I think that’s why they hit on this scheme of coming under the umbrella of Valdemar.”
So there was no answer there. I need to know the why of this. Knowing the why should tell me who is responsible. But who would have a magician or Mage at his disposal? That’s nearly as important. And how difficult would this be? Steen told us that we’d only see really powerful Mages in places where there was a lot of money to pay them, and I certainly haven’t seen any signs of wealth so far.
“I wish Steen were available,” she fretted. “He’d know how easy or difficult it is to break a wall apart with that freezing trick.”
“There are three magicians in town, and I think we should ask one or all of them,” Stev replied. “Look, there’s no point in skulking about anymore. People know now that we’re the real Valdemarans. They know we’re actually doing work to fix the wall, not pretending to. Let’s just approach these magicians openly and ask their opinions.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You mean . . . just ask?”
He laughed. “I know, right? We never do anything openly. Well, as my Companion would say, there is a first time for everything.”
“Well, I know of one of the magicians, she’s got a shop—I suppose you’d call it a shop, even though she doesn’t actually sell anything—not far from the washing well I used. I can go talk to her,” Abi offered.
>
“And I’ll have a word with the one right here, near the Town Hall.” Stev stood up. “At least we can give the appearance of being useful.”
* * *
• • •
Abi knocked on the door of the “shop,” and when no one answered the door, cautiously tried the latch. It wasn’t locked, and she pushed the door open. A bell set over the door jangled as she did so.
It looked like an ordinary shop inside: narrow, a door and a window in the street-side wall, lath and plaster walls on the inside, with counters and shelves on the left and back, and a door into the back half of the place behind the rear counter. And now that she was inside, she saw it wasn’t quite true that there was nothing for sale. There were a few weapons—several daggers, two swords. The daggers were displayed on the counter, the swords on the back wall.
The door at the back opened, and a woman with the shoulders of a brick-carrier or a blacksmith entered from the rear. Her red hair was as short as Jicks’, the sleeves of her shirt were rolled up over her biceps, she wore a leather apron over her shirt, and her arms were muscular enough to match her shoulders.
I thought this was a Mage, not a smith. . . . “I’m sorry,” Abi apologized. “I was looking for Mage Evelie—”
“You came to the right place, dearie,” the woman replied, sounding like someone grandmama, amused, but kindly. “You’re one of those Valdemarans, aye?”
“Well, yes, but . . .” she glanced again at the weapons on the counter.
“I’m a Mage-smith. I hammer spells into metal,” the woman explained with a laugh. “Now, I’m not one of your legendary types. I don’t make unbreakable swords, or daggers that never miss, or gods-forbid bleeding talking swords, and why you’d want one of those I can’t imagine. I just make weapons that are a good bit tougher than your ordinary sword or knife, with edges that never need sharpening, weapons that never rust. Once in a while I make one you can use as a torch, in a pinch.”
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