Terrell heard shouted orders, stamping feet and the ring of steel behind him. Somebody ordered the men to march forward to the edge of the ward, which was a risky maneuver with so much magic chaos. He couldn’t spare the attention to look, for something low and leggy tried to dart under the ward close enough to brush his leg. It exploded and added more gore to his armor. This time Terrell managed to turn his own head aside enough to shield his face. When another monster leaped over the ward and turned into a torch impaled on the advancing spears, the mass of creatures paused.
Fanged heads swung towards Terrell and beady eyes glared. Irreneetha swung, seeming to grow longer in Pen’s hands as she whistled through the air. But there was only one of her and there were dozens of them.
They’ve found the weak point, Terrell thought, shuddering. It’s me. I’ve got to do something to keep them back or they’ll eat my face.
The light pouring out of him to sustain the wards grew brighter. It almost had substance thick enough to touch. Earlier he had thought of it like blood moving in his veins; now it seemed thicker, more like dough being spun to make flatbread.
Spun . . . I can manipulate artifacts, and these wards are functionally the same as an artifact.
He groped for the light with his mind. Glowing cords came to his mental hands and he wound them into a ring. Small at first, he grew it fast and set it to spinning around himself and Pen. It crossed the ward spell effortlessly, the two magics intersecting without a ripple. He twisted the ring and it became a sphere centered on him. The advancing soldiers halted in confusion mere steps away, then surged to either side to attack the monsters.
The creatures boiled about the front of his spell-shield, clawed and bit at the light. They were sliced through or beheaded or exploded or simply maimed by their own actions. Gore splashed both himself and Pen and he had to spit to clear his mouth. Body fragments battered him as frenzied monsters threw themselves at the spinning barrier, some leaping up to dive down onto the glowing dome. One tried to burrow under and up but exploded as soon as it broke through the sod. He nearly fell over as a bone fragment slashed his face and his right knee went numb.
The soldiers thrust weapons past the glowing wards, stabbed and chopped at the milling creatures. Blood smoked on metal as the ward spells heated the blades. Some men hadn’t donned their gauntlets first; they roared in pain even as they kept swinging.
The mass of beastly attackers broke. Monsters fled, limped, crawled to the riverbank and threw themselves in. Archers fired arrows and crossbow bolts after them, some caught fire as they flew through the supercharged wards. Soon the riverbank lay clear of living creatures all the way to the water’s edge.
Terrell staggered. The spinning sphere around him and Pen faded, flickered, went out. Pen climbed down off the fish, now partly roasted, and caught Terrell as he sagged.
“Your Highness?” DiCervi’s voice seemed to come from far away. “I think you can let go now, Your Highness.” So very far away. Pen’s voice now: “Please let go of the wards.” Terrell’s hands didn’t want to move. “Please, Terrell! Let go?”
He finally managed to open his fingers and saw the frayed ends drift toward the ground. Two mages caught them and spliced in a replacement, transferred the dying ward to the new cord and revived it.
Pen’s strong arms lifted him as blackness closed in.
* * *
Terrell awoke to sunlight shining on the tent canvas. He tried to rise and immediately groaned.
“You had me worried,” Pen said, sitting up on his own cot. “How do you feel?”
“Like every bit of me has been used as a target for weapons practice. By the whole brigade.” He moved experimentally, touched his face. A wound throbbed perilously close to his right eye. He winced at the thought of being blinded, continued, “But I don’t think anything’s actually broken.”
“Dona Seraphina worked on you already and she agrees,” Pen reported, smiling. “Lots of bruises and strains and that cut on your face, she said, but nothing that won’t heal.”
“You were hit by as many exploding creature-parts as me,” Terrell said to him. “Probably more. But you don’t look like you even got bruised.”
“Oh, there were plenty of bruises!” Pen chuckled and casually added, “But they all healed by noon today. It’s Irreneetha’s doing. Pyrull said she can heal me of most injuries if they don’t kill me outright.”
I will not envy him that, Terrell told himself. Or at least, not too much. Aloud: “Noon? I thought we were going to cross the river in the morning.”
“We’re staying for another day while you recover enough to ride. The King of Autria can wait.”
“I can’t complain about that. But right now, I need the latrine.” Terrell struggled to his feet and leaned on Pen as he made his way to the slit trenches. When he finished he managed to hobble back to his tent under his own power. Dozens of troopers rushed to form a line and salute him; camp followers bowed. He managed to return their obeisances with a wave and a smile.
“What’s all this about?” He asked Pen quietly.
“You saved the camp,” Pen answered simply. “Hundreds of them saw it. Their wives and children and friends and favored whores were all on the line, and you saved them.”
“You did, too!”
“No, I protected you, as is my privilege and sacred duty. But I couldn’t have taken the broken ward spell in my hands and fixed it like you did. If those creatures had gotten in among the tents, dozens of our folk would have died. Maybe hundreds. Maybe us too.”
“Ah.” The memory flowed back, and Terrell had to lean on Pen again.
Dona Seraphina waited in his tent. She checked him over rapidly while he stood still and endured it.
“Your Light is much diminished,” she reported. “Evidently it can substitute for power in a standing ward, with no immediate ill effect upon you. Though I am concerned about potential long term damage, so far it appears to have merely enlarged your body’s own mana conduits.”
Her healing aura washed over him, and the battered feeling faded to a dull ache. He almost fainted from the relief. But his stomach growled. “Food?” he asked hopefully.
“Plenty of that.” She sat him at the folding map table and a servant put a covered dish before him. From it came a delectable aroma.
“Fish steak,” Seraphina said with a twinkle in her eye. “Everyone in camp had some for breakfast, but the cooks saved you a choice bit.”
Terrell cut a piece and lifted it on his knife blade. Delicious.
“Eating well is the best revenge,” Pen assured him, grinning.
CHAPTER 9: KIRIN
A few days later Grandfather and Sevan the Elder returned from the Guildhall empty-handed again, with a seething rage in the old man’s face that neither of them offered to explain. Grandfather pushed everyone mercilessly through practice that afternoon. Kirin endured it, driving himself with a relentless focus. Maybe if he could do a perfect double somersault the old man would stop raging at them all. He fell into the net twice from missed grabs while the troupe’s leader showered him and everyone else with abuse. Doggedly Kirin began to climb the ladder for another try.
“Enough!” Pieter said. “No more flying today. Kirin, Attir, stand down.”
Kirin hesitated on the second rung. Grandfather began to roar at Pieter, but he merely said, “The catcher decides when the flyer is ready to fly, and nobody else. You taught me that rule, Father. I am the senior catcher and I say these flyers are done.”
Sevan the Younger, the Troupe’s junior catcher, hastily backed him up with vigorous head-nodding.
Kirin looked at himself and Attir. They were both trembling from the strain. Kirin feared Attir would make a dangerous mistake from simple exhaustion.
“Father, please!” Sevan the Elder whispered something urgent into Grandfather’s ear. The old man growled several more times before his sons persuaded him to give the family a break. The two men went with their father and Uncle Ger to th
e troupe’s office in the Attic’s corner for a conference.
I’ve got to do something, Kirin thought as he wiped himself down in the changing room. Attir had stuck his head in the water barrel and sat on a bench dripping, too tired to even wash. I’ve got to find us a patron. I know who to ask. I can’t keep putting it off, or one of us will get hurt.
Kirin went to the tiny room he shared with Maia, put on a clean tunic and laced a pair of buskins on his feet. He had buckled on his belt knife and coin pouch when Maia came in.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as he put his last two silver dohba and a handful of coppers into the sadly-thin pouch. “What are you going to do?”
He hugged her and whispered in her ear, “To visit Mother Gee.”
Maia’s eyes widened. “Uncle Pieter won’t approve,” she warned. “He says she’s a spy for Madam Ymera!”
Kirin grimaced at the name. Rumor about the undying witch called Queen of the Red Street named her the most dangerous power in Aretzo. The Kings had kept her safely bridled in her little enclave for two centuries by binding her with oaths. The Orthodox Hierarchy frowned upon her, the Purists railed against her and all her works, and the Dissenters, despite pointing out that she had kept the Law and her Oaths for two centuries, were no happier to have a suspected vampire dwelling in the City.
“I know, and he’s probably right, but Mother Gee wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.” Anything worse than she already did. “Will you cover for me?”
“Yes. I’ll tell him you went to a temple to pray for a patron.” She kissed him. “So make sure you do, on your way back, because I don’t want to be a liar. And don’t take too long.”
“I will, and I’ll hurry,” he promised, and quietly snuck out of the Inn.
He avoided the open path to Mother Gee’s door. A dozen gossips would mark his arrival and departure if he went that way, and Pieter would know within a day. Instead he took the back stair out the Inn’s north end, cut through four alleys and a squalid little courtyard, and entered the back of a big stable through a loose board in the rear wall of the hayloft. He had to squirm to get through; he’d grown since the last time he tried this path. For a moment he thought he’d have to use one of the four other ways instead, but he made it into the dark hay-smelling loft without scraping off any skin. He made a left and a right and another left through the labyrinth of rafters over the stables below. One of the heavy planks groaned under his greater weight, but no stable hands were near enough to notice, and the horses didn’t care.
He finally found the hidden hatch, raised it and crawled into the narrow wooden tunnel beyond. He barely fit and had to wiggle along like a worm with his coin purse and belt knife both pressed uncomfortably into his groin. He’d almost reached the far end when a sliding panel opened above his head.
“Stop right there,” barked a gruff voice. “Who are you and what do you want?” A blade pressed against his neck.
“Mother Gee!” His voice squeaked humiliatingly. “It’s Kirin!”
“Kirin? Idiot boy, I almost cut your throat. You sounded like some fool trying to burgle me. Crawl out of there right now.”
Kirin wiggled the rest of the way through the tunnel, shedding some skin on the frame of the exit door; it had been made for little boys.
“You’re no boy anymore.” Mother Gee surveyed him, bending her neck to look up.
Kirin was surprised at how short she was; a wizened woman barely as tall as his breastbone. She had put down the knife and now she held a mage lamp up to get a better look at him. It lit the wrinkles in her face too, her gray hair, her bent neck. He saw with a start that she’d grown old and stooped. Had she really once been a famous courtesan on the Red Street?
“Mother Gee, I wanted to visit you without Pieter knowing,” he tried to explain.
“He still blames me for you getting enslaved,” she growled. “Doesn’t he?” He saw hurt in her eyes now and something he wasn’t used to seeing there; shame. “Maybe he should.”
“No!” Kirin answered forcefully as he caught her free hand. It seemed tiny and fragile in his callused paw, diminished like the rest of her. “Nobody’s to blame but the Governor. He’s the bastard who ordered all of us orphan boys rounded up and sold, not you.”
“There were hints about his plans. I should have kept you here that day.”
“It’s not your fault that I got caught.”
“I should have bought you off the slave block,” she told him, looking down at his hands. “I had the money—”
“Gerlach would have outbid you,” Kirin interrupted. “He recognized me, never mind why, and whatever you bid, he’d have raised until you couldn’t match it.”
Gee’s hand closed into a fist, she grabbed one of his thumbs the way she had when he’d been one of her child spies and she wanted him to hold still. She stared at his face with searching eyes, and harshly said, “I figured out later what kind of monster he really was. Pieter told me you were covered in blood when he found you in the street afterwards. It was the last thing he said to me before he stormed out of here swearing never to speak to me again. Tell me the truth, boy. Did Gerlach rape you?”
The ugly memory rose unbidden and he flinched from it. “I got away. Do you really want to know more?”
“Want?” She barked a laugh like a rusty saw. “No. I need to know, boy. Always been my curse, needing to know. After Pieter DiUmbra took you in, I dug out every detail I could find about Gerlach’s doings, the blood-magic sacrifices and all the rest of it.”
You don’t know all of it, Mother Gee, he thought. Nobody knows but me.
“Took me more than a season to get it,” she continued, staring at him closely. “The Watch and that Temple Inquisitor did a thorough job combing the ruins of his house. By the way, did you set that fire?”
“Sort of.” Kirin scowled. “It was an accident. We were fighting, and an oil lamp got knocked down.” The smell of Gerlach’s burning flesh . . .
“Fighting? You weren’t even eight years old, were you?”
“That’s about right.”
“How’d you fight a grown man three times your size?”
“I had help.” Kirin’s Shadow stirred within him and an uglier memory rose behind it. He instantly pressed them both down. No! Nobody must ever know!
“Care to expand on that?”
“I wasn’t the only prisoner in his basement,” he said, lying with the truth. “Mother Gee, it’s been almost ten years. He’s dead and I’m alive and I plan to stay that way. I’ve put what happened behind me, and I don’t want to remember.” I really don’t want to remember! he thought, added aloud, “Please?”
“All right, boy.” She released his thumb, hung the mage lamp on a bracket, and settled herself in a padded chair. “Sit, sit. Let me look at you without straining my neck. I heard about your marriage.”
Kirin brightened as he sat. “To Maia! Still I can hardly believe she married me. She’s wonderful, Mother Gee, I love her so much. When we dance together on the stage it’s like she lifts me beyond myself.” A sadder memory intruded, and he added, “I wanted to invite you to the wedding, but Pieter wouldn’t let me. I’m sorry.”
“No need. I don’t get out much anyway. Never did care for crowds, even at a celebration.” She studied him for a moment, her eyes as sharp and bright as ever. “You’re looking good, boy. Acrobat work agrees with you; marriage agrees with you. I’m glad you found a better way than some of my boys do.”
“I’m not the only one who’s done well. I saw Raff when we performed in Dalmatzo. He’s married and got two kids now, working for the Leather Merchant’s Guild. He had nice clothes and a silver ring with a blue stone. He’s happy.”
“Glad to hear it. He and you have company. The twins apprenticed to a chandler down at the docks, and Brase went to sea with a trader. He’s on his third voyage now, this time as a bosun.” She smiled fondly. “He found me four orphan boys from the Sump, they’ve trained up nicely. I’
ve got them working the Bazaar today, running errands and keeping their ears open. They already brought me some juicy tidbits that the Herdae paid well for.”
Kirin chuckled. He’d served her the same way when he’d been young, running messages and spying out information for her clients. Knowledge had always been a coin as good as gold in Aretzo, and she’d managed to turn long strings of casual observations into more than a few gold coins over the years. “What’s Tricky doing?” he asked. “I haven’t seen him in two years. Have you heard anything?”
Her smile disappeared. “By now, he probably wants to die. He turned to thieving when he left me, early last year. Always had too much anger, too much cockiness in him. Got caught three days after your troupe left town on your big trip; it was his second time.”
Kirin winced. “Second time thieving—that’s a flogging, isn’t it?” The whip would leave marks for the rest of Tricky’s life, but at least it wouldn’t kill him.
“No, flogging’s for the first offense, second is usually branding. Ap Marn said a man who didn’t learn from the flogging wasn’t likely to learn from a branding either, so he sent him to Sulmona.”
Cold ran up Kirin spine. The sulfur mines were a death sentence for any man less than very strong. His old friend had always been small and skinny; he wouldn’t last six months under the man-killing labor there. A helpless rage filled him. “Salim take that bastard Gwythlo! Governor, hah! He’s just a jumped-up thief. He sold our place in the Bazaar to the Suliemons.”
“I heard.” She nodded. “Half the tents in the Bazaar have had to pay bribes to keep their spots, and the other half are expecting to, as soon as he gets around to them. He’s not squeezing just there, either. Word is that City Watch commissions cost a hundred pounds of raw silver now.”
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