Eye Spy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Oh, for Vutan’s sake,” said Evelie, the Mage-smith, shoving the mayor aside. “I swear, I am going to run against you next year, you useless waste of air, and you can go back to swindling children out of their pocket money.” She snatched some rolled-up documents from the mayor’s limp hand. “This gives you all the authority you need to do whatever you want to do with the Karsites when you find them,” she said, thrusting the documents at Jicks. Jicks took them. “If you want the reward, bring back something to prove you put them in the ground. Please don’t make it anything that rots.” She took a bundle of leather away from a boy who looked as if he was working on the same set of muscles she had, and handed it to Abi. “Saw you favored knives. These aren’t my work, they’re my teacher’s. She said they were ‘special,’ ‘good against evil,’ and her Master Works. Better Mage and a smith than me, but not real articulate. I’m only lending them to you, understand,” she added. “I expect you to bring them right back to my shop when you’re done. Same for you,” she added, taking a longer bundle from the same boy and giving it to Stev. “You get to borrow the sword of the set.”

  Abi peeked inside the oiled leather. The knives, from what she could see, were exceptionally fine. Better than anything she currently had with her.

  “Anyway,” Evelie continued, turning to the Masters. “We’d appreciate it if you three gentlemen can see to the wall being rebuilt, and we’ll load up your wagon and send you on your way back home. That’s it.” She spread her hands wide.

  “Well, this does take care of possible international incidents,” Stev admitted wryly.

  “But I have to say, if I were you, I wouldn’t advise your King to go bringing an army down here,” warned a third man, one extremely well dressed. “At least, not until I can reconvene the same delegation as before and we can agree to such a step. And we would be far more likely to hire our own mercenaries than invite your Guard, at least until we can agree we are joining Valdemar proper.”

  “Ah,” said Stev. “There it is.” He looked at the three Masters as if to say I told you so.

  Then he stood up, and shook the hands of everyone who had come trooping in here. “I think we all agree on all points,” he said. “With one exception.”

  “What would that be?” asked Evelie, sounding suspicious.

  “That you do something about the food you’ve been serving us,” Stev said. “Please. ‘Master’ isn’t just a pretty title. All four of our Masters are the equivalent of any of your Guild Masters, and you’ve been serving them peasant swill. Rude, don’t you think?”

  Evelie glanced down at the poor fare on the table and lifted her lip in a sneer of contempt. “Oh, I very much agree with you, Herald,” she said, bestowing a glance on the mayor that made him shrink visibly. “I’ll see to this myself.”

  * * *

  • • •

  To Abi’s relief the cement was curing nicely when they returned to the site. “Seven days,” Master Vance breathed. “Seven days, and we can start rebuilding the wall. These may be the longest seven days of my life. I swear, I will be looking over my shoulder every night for Karsite demons.”

  “Well, that’s easily fixed,” Jicks said cheerfully. “Go round up every priest you can find in this city and have them bless your sleeping quarters. They’re demons, right? Should be some god out there that can keep ’em away.”

  Master Vance cheered up immediately. “By Jadus, you’re right! And while I’m at it, I’ll talk to that formidable smith. Maybe she has some blessed iron we can hammer into the beams to keep things at bay.”

  He, Beyrn, and Padrick went to find a city map showing where all the temples were. Jicks heaved a sigh of relief. “Let’s get to the wagons and get supplies sorted out,” she told Abi. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better the chance we have of catching up to the imposters before they realize they’re being tracked. And track is what I’d like to do. I’d like to get caught up enough to them that we can actually track them and then take them on ground of our choosing.”

  “Seems solid,” Abi agreed, and they retired to the dusty carriage house to sort through the contents of both wagons, deciding what they needed and what they could leave for the others.

  “There’s no point in leaving any food that requires cooking, It’s not that the boys can’t cook, it’s that they don’t care what they eat. So they’re as likely to serve burned or raw food as anything decent.” Jicks just shook her head. “I don’t know how they do it. I swear they’re half goat.”

  “I think it’s funny that Vance, Beyrn, and Padrick all said they didn’t care what they ate, and I think they didn’t, until they got here,” Abi replied, shifting a bag of oats from the wagon they were leaving to the one they were taking.

  “There’s a difference between monotonous but decent, plain food and shitty food,” Jicks replied bluntly. “The little talk I had with the innkeeper? I learned a few things. That mayor ordered us to get the stuff that not even the lowest of the inn staff was eating. Our rations were literally leftovers no one else would eat, made into soup, and I’m surprised none of us got sick.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Abi frowned. “Just because someone else tricked him, that’s no reason to take it out on us.”

  Jicks shrugged. “Some people are like that. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover the City Council gave him a certain amount of money to feed and house us once we proved ourselves, and he decided to skim as much of it as he could. That’s why he fed us far away from anyone else, so no one else knew what he was doing.”

  Once they had all the supplies moved, it was suppertime, and they joined the others in the Great Hall. And waited. And waited.

  Finally just as Master Vance, stomach growling, was about to explode with anger, a boy appeared in the door. “Will ye not come over to the inn, Masters?” he said, in a tremulous soprano. “Yer dinner been waiting there this half candlemark.”

  Master Vance’s demeanor completely changed. The anger washed from his face, and his entire body relaxed. They all got to their feet and followed the boy out the door, crossing the square to the inn on the other side.

  When they got to the inn, oh! The change! They were ushered to a good table on the hearth. Slices of leg of lamb right off the roast at the fire were cut for them, and placed on a bed of roasted root vegetables to absorb the juices. There was good, strong beer, not the ale that they now knew had been collected from unfinished mugs and thinned down with water, and some kind of nut tart to finish. “Ye’ll be eating here from now on,” said the innkeeper, when they tendered their compliments and satisfaction. “And it’s ashamed I am of the swill Hizzoner had me send to ye.”

  Abi was pleased to see that the three men were so satiated that they had temporarily forgotten about Karsites and demons, and went up to bed in a jolly frame of mind, talking about how they intended to rebuild that wall.

  * * *

  • • •

  With Stev on the box of the wagon, Jicks and Abi mounted up on their hinnies. The sun wasn’t even up yet, and Abi glanced up at the attic of the Town Hall, dark against a lightening sky. “They’ll be all right, won’t they?” she asked anxiously.

  Jicks laughed. “As all right as we are, probably better.” She nodded at the wagon, which had had diagrams and symbols written all over the wooden bed and the canvas top in indelible ink, and countless little charms sewn onto the front and rear canvas flaps. Even the hinnies had charms fastened to their bridles and saddles. “Once the Karsites find out about us, and they will, eventually, we’ll be the rod that attracts lightning. The Karsites won’t even look for the others.”

  I’m not quite sure how comforting that is.

  They were waiting for just enough light to fill the streets that the hinnies wouldn’t stumble over anything. Just as real dawn began, and Jicks picked up her reins to urge her mount to move out, someone ran—well, if you could describ
e a flapping chaos of oversized robe hurrying in the gate as “running”—toward them.

  “Wait!” cried the Mage Korlak, breathlessly, as he stumbled to a halt at Jicks’s side. His crow flapped down out of the sky to land on his shoulder. “You’ll need a Mage. Take me with you!”

  “I thought your magic was unreliable,” Jicks said, raising her eyebrow.

  He blushed. “Better unreliable than nothing,” he retorted.

  “And I thought you were terrified of demons,” she pointed out.

  “Anybody with any sense is terrified of demons.” He stared at her stubbornly.

  She leaned down over her saddle-bow. “All right. I’ll bite. Why do you want to come with us? The real reason.”

  He flushed a deep and brilliant crimson. “I . . . can’t tell you.”

  Jicks sighed. “And yet, you will. One night over the campfire, you’ll get some wine in you, and you’ll proceed to tell us a long, sad, and hopelessly entangled story about how your master was attacked by Karsite demons, and you didn’t stay to help him, he died, and the demons turned your hair white overnight. Not necessarily in that order. And we’ll sympathize with you, because only a monster wouldn’t, and then when we do encounter the Karsites, you’ll do something stupidly brave to make up for your failure and get killed.”

  He had gone from red to white, and his mouth fell open. “I—but I—”

  “You aren’t more than thirty. Twenty-five, I’m guessing,” Jicks continued ruthlessly. “I’m a good judge of a lot of things, Korlak, and age is one of them. Telling who the people are who are desperate to redeem themselves is another. Now, how much of that did I get wrong?”

  “Only that I didn’t run,” Korlak muttered, looking at his shoes. “I fainted.”

  “Well, good, I’m glad we got that over with,” Jicks replied. “Now . . . just how do you think you’ll be useful to us?”

  “It’s not so much me,” Korlak replied, looking up again. “It’s this.” And he held up a small, leather-bound book. “It’s his book of spells.”

  Jicks sat back in her saddle and nodded slowly. “That’s more like it. I’ll tell you now, from what I know of Mages, that a lot of your unreliability is due to semistarvation. Eat, and you’ll be fine. Study that book for anything specific against demons. All right then. Climb aboard the wagon, Mage Korlak. And keep that bird from crapping on the bedrolls.”

  Instead of taking the route she had planned out of the city, Jicks went through the marketplace; there was one weaver setting up her stall, and Jicks had Abi buy blankets enough for a fourth bedroll. Other than that, Korlak actually had made as adequate a set of preparations as his poverty allowed; he had two changes of robes and more smallclothes bundled up on his back, plus eating utensils and his wand and knife. “I’m from the Red River School,” he explained to a bemused Stev as they sat on the wagon-box. “We use sigils and runes for casting spells, not components.”

  “How’s your healing?” asked Jicks.

  “It’s not bad, when I’m not hungry. . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Good. There’s travel biscuit in a satchel under the seat. Eat it until you’re not hungry,” she ordered.

  He rummaged and put the satchel on the seat between himself and Stev, removed a packet, and started eating. “This—this’s good!” he exclaimed. “Why does everyone always complain about this stuff?”

  Jicks exchanged a look with Abi, one that said Like I thought. Not hungry. Starving.

  He went through two entire packets of the biscuit before he sighed and put the satchel back under the seat. “I feel like I need a nap now,” he said, with chagrin.

  By this point they were out of the city and on route to the next scheduled stop.

  “So go make yourself comfortable back there and have a nap,” said Stev. “I very much doubt we’re going to have any trouble that we can’t see for leagues.”

  He gestured at the road before them, which wound along the side of a river valley between craggy hills. From her reading, Abi had a good idea what ideal country for an ambush should look like. This wasn’t it.

  Korlak didn’t have to be asked twice; he climbed into the back of the wagon, and nothing more was heard from him.

  “How did you guess what had happened to him?” Abi asked Jicks. Jicks shrugged.

  “I didn’t guess,” she said. “When you’re in charge of a fair number of new recruits, which I often am, you come to figure out what reactions go with what stories. Nobody goes into a mercenary company, or into a mission like ours, without motivation. Yours—yours is to set things right for the people the Karsites are hurting. Stev’s is to make sure Valdemar’s name is cleared. Right?”

  Stev nodded.

  “Mine’s twofold. Money is the primary one, but secondarily, I’ve heard a lot about these Karsite bastards, and I would be quite pleased if I could remove some of them from the face of the world.” She smiled grimly. “I suspect, I’ve heard rumors of what you know, Stev. That they’re child-murdering monsters.”

  “I’ve got proof of that,” Stev said quietly. “Every child who shows signs of Mind-magic is sacrificed to their god. Every child who shows signs of your sort of magic is conscripted into the priesthood, and failures are sacrificed to their god. All that is quite apart from the fact that they enforce their rule with demons, which kill indiscriminately.”

  “Good to have my intel confirmed,” she replied. “That just moves my motives around. Money’s nice, but nobody kills a child on my watch.”

  The look that passed over her face at that moment literally set Abi aback. She’d never seen that look on anyone’s face before. It was absolutely murderous.

  What in the nine hells is her story? she thought.

  But even as she thought that, she knew she would probably never learn the answer. Jicks would never let a relative stranger have that kind of hold over her. Not even Abi.

  * * *

  • • •

  Korlak and his bird emerged from the wagon when they stopped for lunch and to water the hinnies. He rubbed his head with a hand encased in his voluminous sleeve as he walked toward them. “How long did I sleep?” he asked.

  “Just till noon,” said Stev, and offered him trail biscuit. “Hungry again?”

  “Actually—I am! Thank you!” he replied, and shared the biscuit with his crow, holding it up for the bird to stab a bite out of it, then taking a bite of his own.

  “Where did you get that crow?” Abi asked, fascinated. “Will he let me pet him?”

  “He just showed up at my shop door one day,” Korlak told her. “He just decided to adopt me. He’s a lot bigger than any crow I’ve ever seen before. He’s almost raven-sized. I didn’t think I’d be able to feed him, but he seems to keep himself, and sometimes me and Zac, fed.”

  “Zac?” asked Stev.

  “My cousin. The boy in the shop. Albemarle was sane the other day and I asked him if he’d take Zac as an apprentice because I’d already decided to go with you if you let me. He said yes, so Zac went to him.” Korlak sighed. “I don’t know how much or how little he’ll learn, but his grandmam had the same troubles as Albermarle, and Zac took care of her until she died. He knows what he’s getting into—but he also knows he’ll get plenty of food and a good bed with the old man, which is more than he was getting with me, and that was more than enough to make up his mind. I should have sent Zac to him a year ago, but his mother probably would have had a cat.”

  Jicks looked thoughtfully at her half-eaten biscuit. “That’s as good a bargain as most people would ask for,” she said, mildly.

  Meanwhile, Abi stared with fascination at the crow, who stared with equal fascination back at her. He bobbed at her. Tentatively she held up her wrist. He jumped to it.

  To her surprise, his feet were warm. He looked meaningfully at her biscuit, and she offered it to him. He took a corn
er in his beak, broke it off, tilted his head back and swallowed it. The feathers at his throat rose as the bite went down.

  “He likes it when you scratch his head with one finger,” Korlak said around a bit of biscuit.

  She offered her finger. The crow didn’t bite it. Instead, he pushed his head into it, and looked at her again.

  She started scratching. He closed his eyes and leaned into the scratch, looking blissful. Absently, Abi put her biscuit down and handed Korlak another one just as he finished his last bite of the one he had been eating.

  Jicks laughed. “I think you’ve been adopted by a stray,” she said, with only a tinge of mockery.

  But for the life of her, Abi couldn’t tell if Jicks meant the crow or the Mage.

  17

  They made good time, and found a great camping spot next to the river, with plenty of bracken and rough grass for the hinnies to eat and low trees within walking distance for firewood scavenging. Abi reflected, as she helped set up the campsite, that she literally could not have imagined a more peaceful setting, back in Haven. I wonder if Perry prefers places like this, or the city? Since coming back from his adventure, he’d shown little sign of wanting to hare off to the wilderness, but she had no idea if that was his own preference or feeling that he needed to stay to help their father. She had the feeling that if her future included more places like this, and less time in cities . . . she would not be at all unhappy.

  The three of them arranged the supplies inside the wagon for the most possible comfort (oat bags on top) when they would go to bed later, and even Korlak managed to relax as Jicks made stew. They admired the sunset, ate, and listened to a particularly melodious nightbird singing in the bushes. The sky blazed with reds and oranges and even deep purple, and the hills cast wonderful, long shadows as the sun set behind them. The stars came out in the east and slowly propagated westward. The fire that Jicks was about to bank sent up a few sparks while the wood crackled and popped. She was about to suggest bed and offer to set up the oatmeal to cook overnight.