‘I took too much,’ she admitted. ‘I even topped up my own reserve. You are very well provided with saar.’ She smiled. ‘And sihr.’
He shrugged. Sihr was the darker element of power. He knew he had it; all mages did. He didn’t know what to make of her comment and he recombed an area of his new horse he’d already done. She confused him. She was younger than he’d thought the night before. Without her paint, she was likely closer to twenty-five than thirty-five, and her hair was rich and brown, no trace of red, her face narrow and delicate, her limbs long. In fact, she looked like the frescos of the fae folk in the Temple of the City – the Temple of Wisdom, Hagia Sophia.
‘You used sorcery against me – when the duke first put you out of the wagon,’ Aranthur said. He met her eye. ‘Then you drained me of power,’ he went on. ‘Are you a Dark student, Donna?’
He hadn’t meant to ask her that. In fact, until that morning, he hadn’t fully believed that there were students of the Dark. It was a far nastier statement than he’d meant to make.
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘No.’ She turned to walk away, and spoke without turning her head to look at him. ‘Not everyone has nice fat rich parents to provide a Studion education, eh?’ she spat. ‘I came to thank you for my cases. And to apologise for using saar to manipulate you. I know it’s wrong, but how was I to know you were a student? Or had power?’ She looked at him and her look softened. ‘Not that that makes it any better,’ she said softly.
‘You are welcome. My parents own a small farm in a village. My father is not the headman, nor are we the richest; until the land reforms, we were peasants. Arnaut peasants. I owe my place in the Studion to the whim of our local lord, and nothing more. I doubt I’m even the smartest boy in my village.’ He shrugged, trying to be indifferent to her opinion, and mostly failing. ‘And Lec the Wheel sent his regards, and said that he knew that the duke would have your guts for garters. What did he mean?’
‘I do not serve the Darkness,’ Iralia said.
She walked away before he could answer, and as he curried his Nessan, he thought of all the things he might have said. The best retort was if you continue using power to manipulate people, you will serve Darkness, but it was too wordy. And too pompous.
In fact, she’d done him no harm. The entire incident had been to his advantage, at least so far.
Count no man happy until he is dead seemed apt, from among the ancient sages.
But his Magos of Philosophy liked to say that too much idealism was the death of rationality.
‘Look at the results,’ he would declaim.
And in this case, none of her arts had injured him. And she was a user of power, and yet she had killed ruthlessly. And he had killed, and his power seemed intact …
He frowned, trying to get to the root of the causality. The duke was overthrown, she was his … mistress? And he abandoned her on the road as he fled – a lesson in astrology, really. Had he not looked at his stars? And she, deserted, had claimed her belongings – which were, in all likelihood, really hers. More so than the loot in the saddlebags of all the horses were the property of their new owners, anyway. He tossed it all around while the curry brush went round and round, and the old mud and horse sweat filled the air.
‘Let me try this again,’ she said from the doorway of the stall.
‘Were you with the Duke of Volta?’
Aranthur wished he’d kept his mouth shut – she was making peace, and he was chasing the solution to a problem.
She winced. ‘Yes. “With” being such a resonant word, full of … meaning.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m trying to understand.’ He tried smiling. ‘I …’
He shook his head. He couldn’t very well say, I’m a peasant boy and we don’t really understand how the upper classes operate. It was an accurate statement, but not what he wanted to say.
‘So the duke pushed you out in the snow, and you used art to get me to help you,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘You know,’ she said, with a bitter smile, ‘I have two sets of arts. In a warm room, surrounded by people, I can ask most people – most men – to fetch me wine, and they will, without asking themselves why.’ Her eyes kindled, and she flashed him a smile.
He all but froze.
She nodded. ‘Do you know that when you attempt a compulsion using saar …’ She looked him in the eyes. Her eyes were deep and surprising, a livid blue that was like the sea on a bright summer day. ‘I speak to you as a scholar, you understand?’
Aranthur was almost bowled over by her assumption of his knowledge. ‘I’m not—’
‘When you attempt a compulsion, it helps if your target already likes you, and it makes the compulsion much harder – and much more dangerous to both the caster and the target – if the target dislikes the caster. You understand? If I had asked you to help me, and you declined – even if you only declined because, say, of the press of your chores – then it would be very, very difficult for me to send my compulsion. Almost impossible, in fact.’ She shook her head. ‘And I was almost drained anyway. I said something in the wagon that I should not have.’ She smiled at the false elegance of her own diction. ‘I told the duke he was a coward. I’d been wearing myself out using my arts to keep him from simply killing me – oh, he was angry. He is a Dark-damned coward, by the Sun. If he spent the energy ruling Volta that he did on escape plans—’
‘I don’t understand. Were you his …?’
She smiled, and it was an unpleasant smile.
‘Mistress? Courtesan? Whore?’ She shrugged. ‘What would you do to be trained in the Ars?’
He winced.
She shook her head. ‘I’m babbling. Listen, farm boy. I was a thirteen-year-old whore when my power came upon me. I am what I am, but I do not serve the Dark.’
‘Babble more,’ Tiy Drako said. He had his head and shoulders over the partition from the next stall, and now he leapt over, lithe, terribly graceful, and far more like an aristocrat than a priest. ‘I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’
‘Are you sure you are a priest?’ Iralia’s tone was arch, but her eyes stayed on him. ‘Is that your best line? Do you use it often?’
Aranthur had the strangest feeling that they knew each other.
Drako bowed – again, like an aristo and not like a priest, who would simply bow stiffly from the waist.
‘Your wit cuts like a good sword, Donna. I cannot decide if I am a true priest, or not.’ He smiled at Aranthur. ‘My mentor is angry with me for tackling the man we killed.’
Aranthur nodded and held out his hand.
‘I’m not. Without that …’ He paused. ‘Although I’m still … not happy … that I killed him – we killed him … What have you.’
‘We tried to save him,’ Drako said lightly. ‘Surely that exculpates our sin?’
Aranthur thought of his Philosophy Magos and his comments about results, and bit his tongue.
‘That’s a fine beast,’ Drako said, examining the small Nessen mare. ‘I took a pack horse, myself. I would never have convinced my mentor to ride, even if he were considerably more lame than he is. I gave the innkeeper’s son the goods in the bags.’
Iralia raised her eyebrows. ‘Because you have no use for worldly wealth?’
He grinned at her. ‘Something like that.’
The two of them locked eyes for a moment, and Aranthur went back to making careful strokes with the brushes.
‘Just how bad a priest are you?’ she asked, her voice suddenly lower.
‘We’re not celibate,’ Tiy laughed. ‘By we, I mean me. My mentor is, but he doesn’t need to be.’
She smiled wickedly. ‘If I understand the theology of the Sun it’s possible that he does not need to be – but perhaps you do.’ She smiled again, a dangerous smile, and turned. ‘Aranthur, am I forgiven? I promise, if it is ever in my power, I’ll do you a good turn. I can be a good friend.’
Aranthur bowed again. ‘Yes.’
He w
ished he had something witty or elegant to say. He wished he was as quick as Drako, who was, in fact, smirking a little at his discomfiture.
Iralia walked away, her pattens clicking on the barn floor, and Drako laughed.
‘Holy Sun rising in the east,’ he said. ‘It is like finding a gold Imperial in a dung heap.’
Aranthur kept working.
‘My former self would have passed through the cold halls of hell for that face,’ Drako said. ‘At least for a week or two, or until my money ran out and my father reined me in.’
He fitted his shoulders into a corner of the stall and looked at Aranthur, trying to assess the impact of his words.
Aranthur could feel the weight of the other man’s regard, but he kept the brush moving, changing direction with the grain of the mare’s hide. She was beginning to gleam.
‘You know what my father said when I told him I was going to become a priest?’ Drako raised an eyebrow.
Aranthur looked up and met the man’s eyes. He was smiling, but the words had clearly hurt him.
‘He said, “This is one little fad I will not support.” He thought my conversion was temporary. That I’d purge myself for two weeks and then be all the more self-indulgent for it.’ Drako shrugged.
Aranthur was working on the legs now, and he wondered why the older man was telling him all this.
‘I’d love to prove him wrong,’ Drako said. ‘If you’d just give me a little help here – I am confessing to being a worthless daesia. A little sympathy, and I can probably keep myself from following that incredibly beautiful young woman inside.’ He laughed in self-mockery.
Aranthur looked up, and met his eye, and smiled.
‘For the Sun’s sake say something!’ Drako said.
Aranthur giggled. He shook his head and rubbed some of the old dust and sweat off the brush by using it on the stable wall.
‘I’m probably so green I don’t even know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘What’s a daesia?’
‘A man who lives to … I don’t know. For pleasure. To lie with others,’ Drako said with a wicked look. ‘And gamble, and fight, and raise hell. A person who goes to plays and jeers at the playwright. Goes to temple and mocks the priest’s hypocrisy. Goes to the brothel to find love. Fights duels. Writes poetry.’ He laughed. ‘Bad poetry.’
Aranthur shook his head.
‘Sounds wonderful,’ he said. ‘Where do I sign up?’
Drako looked at him and his brow furrowed.
‘You?’
Aranthur thought about what his Magi might say, but he could only laugh, because he was honest with himself, and he knew how instantly Iralia enflamed him.
‘Only … I think I’d be terrible at it,’ he said. ‘Because I’d want to write good poetry, and that takes work, and I’d want to be a great swordsman, and that’s a lifetime of study, and I’d want to prove the priests to be hypocrites, and that would get me arrested.’ He laughed. ‘Especially the last, because I’m a peasant, not an aristo.’
Drako fingered his hairy chin. He had the beginnings of the full beard that priests wore, and from its length, Aranthur estimated the other man had been an acolyte for about two months.
‘What attracted you to your mentor?’ he asked.
‘Can’t you just feel his holiness?’ Drako asked.
Aranthur nodded. ‘I can.’
Drako nodded. ‘I’ve never met anyone like him. All my father’s friends and their sons are landowners. Everything is about land and money.’ He made a face. ‘Marce Kurvenos is a Lightbringer. He lives it. He … He talked to me. He sat with me and got to know me, and he told me what I was and where I had failed myself and the way of the Sun.’ Drako winced. ‘See? Even in my spirituality, it’s all about me.’
The mare shone like a bronze statue and the bigger gelding was contentedly munching the good, clean hay.
‘I want to see what I got,’ Aranthur admitted. ‘I’m not an aristocrat.’
Drako laughed. ‘You have nothing to say to my troubles?’
Aranthur looked at him. ‘They’re not like my troubles.’
He hadn’t meant it to be funny. In fact, he’d meant to add a stinging rebuke about how rich boys playing at monks deserved whatever they got. Or maybe he only thought he’d deliver such a rebuke – there was something about the man calling himself Tiy Drako that was very, very easy to like.
But he roared with laughter. He put his hands on his knees, he laughed so hard.
‘Oh, by the light of the new day, my friend, that was good – and well deserved. I will—’ He laughed a while longer. ‘I will eventually repeat that.’ Then he stopped laughing. ‘Let’s see what you got in your bags. You make me wish we’d given our share to you. The inn’s rich enough.’
Aranthur understood in a flash of insight: Drako had been waiting for him to open the cases all along. He frowned, filled with unaccustomed peasant suspicions – unaccustomed because he’d spent his first half-year at the Academy unlearning the habit of suspicion.
‘Why do you want to see?’ Aranthur asked.
Just for a moment, there was something hard in Drako’s eye – something utterly at variance with the banter and the softness.
But the aristocrat smiled easily. ‘I think the cone hides a cannone or a fine puffer. Something marvellous like that. I want to see it!’
Aranthur didn’t think the acolyte meant him harm, but the mountebank was showing under the acolyte’s façade.
Still, Aranthur wanted to see what was in the case too. He shrugged and opened it. It was smooth and beautifully made of heavy leather, carefully moulded into a shape a little like a leg of lamb prepared by a butcher, and it had a neatly fitted cover that was decorated with hair or fur – a very heavy, dark fur.
He opened the buckle, which was fine too – steel, but gilded and decorated with chasing. The little belt that went into the buckle had a metal end that was also decorated. Superb work.
Inside, the case was lined in chamois or buckskin, and nestled deep in it like a scroll in a tube was a heavy snaphaunce – like a puffer, but with a longer barrel. The stock was cunning – it could be placed against the shoulder or chest, or even held in one hand. The weapon appeared almost new, and the barrel was as long as his arm.
Drako whistled. ‘That’s beautiful. Deadly, too. Watch out – it’s loaded.’
Aranthur flinched.
‘Let me,’ Drako said. ‘Look – this is the pan cover – marvellous design. When you open the cock, the pan cover moves. Oh – I’d like to take this apart. See the powder in the pan?’
Aranthur found that he’d handed the acolyte the weapon without even thinking about it.
Their eyes met. But the acolyte’s eyes were guileless, and the weapon remained unthreatening between them.
Aranthur understood the basic principles of firearms.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘If that ignites from the sparks, it burns through the torch hole and lights the charge in the barrel.’
Drako dumped the contents of the pan into his hand. They were silvery grey – almost black; small kernels and flakes, all different.
‘Very good. They teach this at the Academy?’
‘Yes,’ Aranthur said.
Set into the side of the case was a set of tools – very handsome tools: a turn screw and a small pair of pliers and a bullet mould and a bronze-headed hammer. There were bullets in a hard leather tube. Seeing the mallet, Drako put the pinkie of his left hand into the barrel – Aranthur wanted to cringe at his daring.
‘Grooved. By the Sun! Let’s try it!’ He pointed at it. ‘This is a fine weapon – something special. I can show you how to keep it clean. It won’t thank you for mistreatment.’
Aranthur could not restrain himself from putting the butt to his shoulder. It was small, but he could get his head down.
‘Oh, promise me we can shoot it!’ Drako said.
‘Of course!’ Aranthur said.
The puffers and cannones that the scholars devise
d were among the most famous inventions of the City, even though the best ones were made in Volta and even further north.
But he noted that, despite the young aristocrat’s excitement, he continued to pull things out of the case. He opened every little compartment, unscrewed the bronze tube that held the cast balls and poured them out on his hand, and held the powder horn up to the light.
He’s looking for something.
Aranthur watched the other man go through the case and made no objection. He didn’t really feel that the magnificent little weapon was his; he expected the aristocrat to seize it. So he watched somewhat fatalistically.
His little mare, Ariadne, shuffled and snorted, and Drako looked up and raised an eyebrow. Without a word, he replaced everything – the bullets in the tube, the tools in their little case, and everything went back into the leg-of-lamb holster.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I got carried away. Beautiful work. Let’s look at the travelling case, shall we?’
Aranthur sat back and pushed the case over the straw.
‘Be my guest.’
Drako was startled. ‘No, no,’ he protested. ‘It’s yours.’
‘It belongs to a dead man. It’s no more mine than any of the rest of this. You want to see it? Be my guest.’ He paused, and then said, as lightly as he could manage, ‘I owe you for the black hose. Go ahead.’
The case itself had a small coat of arms on it, and initials: X di B.
‘Damn me.’ Drako’s voice changed. ‘Syr X,’ he said, and then, his mountebank voice changing, he laughed. ‘How mysterious.’ He gave Aranthur half a smile. ‘Listen, open it. Just let me watch.’
It was a man’s travel case – a malle. As soon as Aranthur opened it, he sat back on his heels. The case had a slight smell – spikenard or some other rare resin.
It struck him that this was somebody’s. The carbine had no real owner – in fact, it looked to be new. But the malle was full of clothes, so tightly packed that a securing strap had been cinched tight inside. There were shirts, some fine and some full of patches and holes, and two pairs of fine, light shoes, and a whole suit – hose in pale pink, and a black doublet and matching short cloak. There was a ring – a simple man’s ring in gold, with a black stone, tied to the securing strap. There was a closely wrapped man’s belt, and a purse, and a dagger. And a book – Kafatia’s Consolations, all done in neat scholar’s calligraphy. And a roll of gold Imperials, ten of them. A fortune to an Arnaut peasant.
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