Ash and Silver (6 page)

“That's not as easy as it was when I arrived,” I blurted. Foolishly.

“Try me, paratus. And as you bleed, you will still have to walk the seaward wall for the first quarter tonight and the next thirty nights you reside in the fortress, as punishment for your lies.”

•   •   •

F
ortress Evanide's seaward wall. Had anyone ever devised so miserable a place to stand watch? As if one could actually
watch
anything while facing the Western Sea in the pitchy dark after midnight. As if any boat would dare approach the sheer cliffs of Evanide's western face at any hour, come to that. The sea would smash it to splinters in an eyeblink.

The seaward watch was one of Inek's favored reminders of failure, this time exacerbated by his hatred of lies. He had assigned me a quarter's watch each night. Six hours. The normal duration of the seaward watch was two, because a moment's lapse of attention could send the unwary guard plummeting into the boiling black water below. The walk itself was forever slick from spray, fog, or rain, and narrow enough two men could not pass. That those who built the damnable shelf had seen no virtue in a parapet more than calf-high did nothing for a man's anxiety. And, of course, full mail was required. The weight of chausses, thigh-length habergeon, pauldron of plate, and all the sodden padding underneath added to one's weapons ensured death from a fall would be quick, though perhaps preferable to six continuous hours of aching back, neck, and legs, and unceasing wet, cold, and salt spray.

On top of normal training—sparring, running, unending study and practice with ever more complex magic—and four hours of dead sleep if I was lucky, my punishment ensured I had no time to ponder Curator Damon's purposes or fret over how I might investigate the Danae mystery. Indeed, those hours taught me to shove all distracting questions deep, as Inek commanded.

Raimo, the second armorer, helped me choose what spellwork was the most useful to affix to my silver bracelets. He insisted I do the work, of course, which was quite fine with me as long as I could keep awake. It wouldn't do if I got in a pinch and forgot that I'd linked a veil to the spiral sigil on the
left
bracelet and instead produced a gout of fire from the spiral sigil on the right.

On the morning after my third night on the seaward wall, I returned to my cell to shed the cursed mail—and wipe it down with oil, of course—find something dry to wear, and stumble to the Hall to see if anything was left from breakfast. I had made it as far as the wiping down when the curtain in my doorway flew aside. A dark-haired paratus in a mail shirt leaned easily against the doorframe. His grin flashed through his gray mask, warming even my cold skin.

“Ah, Greenshank, I thought I counseled you never to get on Inek's wrong side. Thirty nights on the seaward wall . . . Did you curse his forgotten mother?”

There was only one possible response to Cormorant, Evanide's paratus-exter, the next to be knighted. I grinned back.

“An omission is the equivalent of a lie,” I said, quoting Inek's first and most serious lesson to any tyro. “Perhaps when you beat that into me with such exquisite care, you managed to beat it right back out again.”

Honorable, generous, supremely gifted, Cormorant had been my paratus-mentor when I was a tyro, soothing the constant pain and terror while teaching me innumerable skills.

“Of all things, you idiot!” he groaned. “Perhaps another beating is in order.”

“The wind has done a sufficient job of that,” I said, resuming my blotting and oiling. “Please don't tell me I'm to spar with you this morning. Or just go ahead and skewer me now.”

“Though I'd relish the occasion, alas, not. I was just up to the armory and Inek dispatched me here. I'm to fetch your bracelets to him, and announce that your training schedule is canceled for the rest of the day. He wishes to see you in his chamber at midday and recommends you sleep until then.”

Slug-witted and cold, I stared at the heap of dripping chausses and the towel in my hand. “Bracelets?”

“Paratus, would it be those on your wrists, do you think?”

“Yes.” Blood surged into my head. “Yes, of course.” Bracelets meant Inek's spellwork for a mission . . . a mission off-island.

I unlatched the metal clasps, slipped the wide bands over my cold hands, and passed them over.

“
Dalle cineré
, Greenshank.”

“
Dalle cineré
, Cormorant
.
How many days left?”

“With the Sky Lord's grace, five-and-twenty.” Five-and-twenty days
until he crushed his relict—destroyed his past—and was invested as an
eques cineré
. A resolution spoken with joy and without doubt. How I envied that.

Once the curtain fell still behind him, I redoubled my efforts at the cleaning. The salt water could set rust in mere hours . . . and who knew how long I might be gone? Would the task be Damon's or Inek's? I doubted I could sleep for the questions roused by the coming venture, but somewhere between habergeon and mitons, I crawled over to my pallet and collapsed.

•   •   •

“Y
our task will be simple information gathering,” said Inek, shoving a small map across the table. Evanide's bay and the Gouvron Estuary made it easily recognizable as our own coastline.

“We've reports that one of Navronne's warring princes will visit the town of Ynnes in the next two days. Prince Bayard's ship docked at Tavarre three days since, and he rides down the coast road with a small party. No one has been able to ferret out what business he may have in a place so out of the way as Ynnes, but I doubt it's sampling their fish. As Navronne's war will shape the future of the Middle Kingdoms for generations to come, it behooves us to know as much as we can about the man. Our usual sources might be noticed in such a small place.”

“We're well placed for such a mission,” I said, studying the map. Ynnes lay perhaps thirty quellae north of Evanide and five or so inland, on the north banks of the river Aluelle.

“This is not practice. The dangers will be real and serious. Bayard is an experienced warrior, and is on alert for his brothers' assassins. He has purebloods in his service, thus enchantments will not pass unnoticed. Move fast, learn what you can that may be of use, and get out safely. Stay masked, and carry no weapon but a knife. You're given no permission to shed blood, and there is nothing here worth dying for—that we know of.” No suppressed humor broke my guide's grim demeanor.

We spent most of an hour going over matters such as transport and what the Order knew of Prince Bayard's recent movements. Inek provided a pair of wood tokens set with silver splinters that would allow me to erase an informant's memory of a masked man asking questions and had me fix an
obscuré
spell on my mask so that an observer's eyes would slide away from my face without remarking it—a common technique when we walked among ordinaries. I hadn't thought of either. What else hadn't I considered?

“The tide surges in an hour,” said Inek, standing. “Fix will provide your
map, provisions, and purse.” And my silver bracelets, I assumed. “Have you any questions?”

“None,
rectoré
.”

Inek stood. “Go in safety, Greenshank, and return in honor.”

“In honor, Knight Commander.” The ritual words carried a deeper significance this time. Our lives and fortunes rested in each other's hands.

An hour later, Fix untied my bowline and tossed it into the skiff. Map and provisions were stowed. The silver bands gleamed from my wrists.

“
Dalle cineré,
paratus,” called Fix, lifting a hand as I caught the tide.

“Dalle cineré.”
From the ashes
 . . . Perhaps so. The bracelets told me this was Damon's play.

Y
nnes was a most ordinary river town. Flat, cold, wet. Everything smelled of fish. The docks where the fishing boats set a course down the river Aluelle to the sea. The bloody gutting sheds hanging over the river. The smoke from the drying house. The streets that were little more than rivulets of mud overhung by top-heavy houses of gray timbers that had never seen paint. The hairy men clad in dun canvas, and the pinch-faced women bundled in cloaks the color of mud.

It ought to be a cheerful place. The lord who owned the land thereabouts had granted Ynnes's fishermen their catch decades ago, and though Navronne was well into its fourth year of famine, I'd watched a drudge ferry three cartloads of fish from docks to drying house in two hours. Yet children sat dull-eyed and listless while their gaunt-faced mams ground fish bones into a gray paste—a nasty ration I'd had the misfortune to taste on training missions. I wondered if the hard-eyed men guarding the drying house were protecting the town stores, not from outsiders but from their own townspeople.

I had arrived at Ynnes's rotting palisade at dawn, after spending a rainy night on a hilltop overlooking the road. No royal party had ridden past.

The pole gates stood open, but two townsmen perched on barrels in the center of the opening. With no other travelers to mask my entry, I was entirely too noticeable. I tried a muffled call from out of the morning fog, made other strange noises, and even loosed a will-o'-the-wisp to lure the men away, but only one of the guards succumbed. Unwilling to waste the memory tokens so soon, I resorted to a veil and crossed the town's threshold unseen—only risky if a skilled sorcerer nosed about. A quick exploration yielded a good sense of the town's layout and a fine observation post atop the ruin of a glassworks.

Half the morning I perched on a strip of broken slate roof joining a pair of brick chimneys—one of them easily climbable. Though I had to share
my aerie with pigeons and fifty years' legacy of their tenancy, it provided good cover and an excellent view of docks, street, and gate. I dropped my veil early. Veils sapped one's magic too quickly to be held long. The mask would keep me anonymous; its
obscuré
would prevent anyone noticing it.

The only travelers to arrive since I'd taken up my watch were a party of three men and two women, mounted on sturdy, well-fed horses. Not warhorses. None of the men fit Bayard's description. The women's plain but well-made capes, one blue, one gray, named them a merchant family, perhaps, but not royalty. None wore pureblood cloaks or masks.

The traveling party left their mounts at the town stable, and I noted the house they entered, above a potter's stall. It was far from the best house in the miserable town. I doubted Prince Bayard would give it a glance, much less visit. If he came.

Another hour passed. A steady rain poured from the inexhaustible clouds. At its making, my hooded cloak had been infused with spells to repel the wet. But spellwork that challenged the fundamental processes of the world so directly had little endurance. The bay crossing and most of two days out had soaked the thick wool through. Even so, it was not mail and I was not walking the seaward wall. Grateful, I ate the dried apples I'd stuffed in my jaque that morning. The provision bag remained with my horse in a stand of beeches south of the river.

At mid-morning, sharp hails drew me onto my knees between the chimneys. A party of six at the gate, this time all men, four of them heavily armed. The gate guards touched their brows as the six rode in, recognizing the travelers as men of rank. None of the party pressed the guards to proper reverence for a prince who aspired to be king, and yet . . .

The two who were not so obviously men-at-arms were both big men, and the larger of the two could surely be Prince Bayard, called the Smith for his build and his brutish hand. Tall and broad in back and chest, he wore a thick beard and a wide hat with the brim curled rakishly on one side. Though his garb was common leather and russet, he sat his mount with the ease of a knight and the assurance that the world was his to command.

The man who rode beside and slightly behind the bearded man dismounted with equal swagger. He was broad in chest and back as well, but he'd scarce reach the other man's shoulder. More significantly, his fur-lined pelisse was the color of good wine, and no hat or hood adorned his head, just a mask that covered the left side of his face. A pureblood sorcerer.

As the others waited, the pureblood knelt in the center of the gateway
and laid his hands on the earth. My fists clenched on their own, and my senses reached deep, as if I might feel his magic flow. Did he lay down a trip thread to warn if anyone followed or a trap to prevent their crossing? Or did he seek evidence of magic? The Order trained us to minimize the leavings from our spellwork, but if the man was exceptionally skilled at detection, he might notice a slight residue from my veil. Information worth the knowing. I'd best get an estimate of his skills before I left.

The pureblood rose and wiped his hands on his braies, then touched his forehead and bowed before speaking to the man in the hat—his contract master, then. A pureblood, seeing himself divinely gifted with magic, deferred to no ordinary, even royalty, save the one who had paid handsomely for his services.

Contracts were the foundation of pureblood life in Navronne, providing the sorcerers' families wealth and security in exchange for their magic. Before relinquishing my past to the Order, so Inek told me, I had been contracted to a necropolis. I had assumed that my bent, the unique talent inherited from the bloodline of one of my parents, must be weak. But if I could create such artwork as that portrait, why could my family find no better contract for me than a city of the dead—a burial ground?

My head pounded its usual warning to stop reaching for memories that weren't there. The task of the moment must come first. The big man in the hat was most assuredly a wealthy man to own a pureblood contract. But why would a prince of Navronne visit this dismal town while embroiled in a war that engulfed the entirety of the kingdom?

As the leader and his men-at-arms dismounted, the pureblood eyed the town, scanning slowly, carefully, from the river to the palisade, across the mud streets, the unpainted houses and sheds, and upward . . .

I lay still as the broken bricks, though my heart raced like that of a raw tyro.

Ridiculous. He couldn't know I was up here.

I peered around the chimney again. One of the four men-at-arms led the horses into the farrier's yard, while another took a post just inside the gate. The pureblood, his master, and the remaining two soldiers had been joined by a plump townsman with spindle shanks and a great beak of a nose. Likely a town official, as a red badge adorned his tabard. He bowed deeply and waved a hand toward the fish-drying house.

As the party moved toward the long, low shed, the awkward fellow bowed every other step. After he tripped over his own boots, near knocking
the imposing visitor into the muck, a soldier grabbed the bumbler's collar and quick-marched him the rest of the way into the shed. The door swung shut behind the five of them and the hard-eyed town guards resumed their watch.

Dried fish. Was that the story of this venture?

Determined to know more, I shinnied down the chimney. Two women emerged from the wellhouse down the lane and sent me scrambling into the tangled weeds of the ruined glassworks. Would Damon think a visit to the drying house confirmation enough of Bayard's mission in Ynnes? The pureblood had me uneasy; a quick departure would be welcome. Yet if the big man was indeed a prince of Navronne, why would he be buying his own fish?

Once the women had trudged past with their heavy buckets, I slipped around and across a muddy wagon yard to come up on the drying house from behind. The place lacked windows, but it did have back doors—ill-fitting doors, one wide enough for wagons, the other human-sized. By squeezing between a broken-down wagon and the wall, I could peer through a sizeable gap beside the smaller.

Dim . . . smoky . . . stinking . . . It was difficult to make out anything through the racks of fish. A thin gray-lit outline marked the entry door on the far side of the interior. Several shadowy figures stood beside it. A bit more focus and I sorted out the tall man in the wide-brimmed hat and the spindle-legged official.

As resolving vision built people from the shifting shadows, hearing picked out intermittent words from the smoky interior.

“. . . as soon as possible . . . my men sufficient to guard . . . Max, give . . . payment.” The commanding voice could only be the noble's. “. . . a dry place to wait . . .”

“Honored, honored, excellency . . . fire in the hall . . .” The dithering official. “Willem! Three wagons ready within the hour! You, Herc, and Voilo.”

The shouted orders birthed two scrawny figures in the shadowed interior. They headed straight toward me. Or rather toward the wider door and the wagons in the yard behind me. I twisted around, squeezing past the broken wagon, only to have my cloak snag on a splintered slat.

A rattle behind the wall was a beam being lifted. Hinges scraped and the wagon doors yawned. Impossible for me to get loose and all the way across the yard without being detected.

I touched the spiral on my left bracelet and held still. The veil enchantment slipped over me like a silken glove, just as two slovenly youths emerged from the opening maw, yelling for Herc. Wrenching my cloak free, I sped across the yard, hoping no one noticed footprints and cursing my stupidity. Inek would roll his eyes in strained patience while reminding me of the necessity of escape routes and other useful tactics to remain unseen, especially in the vicinity of purebloods.

Once back to the crumbled glassworks, I tried to convince myself I'd sufficient information. If I left now and traveled through the night, I could return the horse to our hostler and take the morning ebb back to Evanide.

But I couldn't. Inek might have assigned me a simple spying exercise to nose out such weaknesses as I'd just demonstrated. But Damon had chosen this mission. What purpose did this venture serve for
him
? He was expecting more than dried fish.

At the least, I should see the party off. If they departed within the hour with three wagonloads of fish, I'd go.

Once ensconced in my aerie again, I dissolved the veil. If the pureblood had sensed its invocation, he'd be watching for it. Unlike wisp lights or sparking powder one could buy from an itinerant Ciceron, veils were nothing anyone in the town might use.

The obsequious official escorted the visitors past the potter's house and a breadseller's stall to the grandest structure in the town—a rickety building that proclaimed its importance with four carved wood pillars and evidence of paint. My morning's exploration had identified it as the town's common hall. One of the men-at-arms accompanied the master and the pureblood inside, while the other made a circuit of the building before taking his post outside the door. The official hurried back to the drying house.

I watched and waited. The rain intensified. Nine small boats returned to the docks empty. The fishermen trudged away, several into houses along the lane, others continuing on toward a taphouse farther down the lane.

Then my every sense flared to life. The pureblood emerged from the commons house. He looked up and down the street, then crouched and touched the churned-up muck of the lane. What was he looking for? Me?

After a moment, he wiped his hands on a kerchief, stared at the ground in brief contemplation, then rose and trotted up the lane . . . but only as far as the potter's house. He knelt yet again and touched the stoop before going inside.

I held my breath, fascinated.

Moments later, the pureblood emerged in company with one of the women travelers. She was tall and slender, draped in a long blue cape. She raised her hood, but not before I glimpsed pale hair and smooth flesh. She was no crone.

The two dashed through the rain to the commons hall.

Instinct . . . training . . . everything in me screamed that this was not some royal fancy to while away the time by bedding a random traveler. Perhaps it was my vantage, observing so much from this height. This was the next move in a single game and it was not a game about dried fish.

My descent from the chimneys took only moments. Perhaps the pureblood's moves were naught but usual caution, but I had to assume he'd sensed the veil I'd worked at the drying house. That left my choice of tactics slim.

Veils were powerful magic. A veil confused the observer's eyes so they failed to see an object. An
obscuré
was quieter. It made the eyes slide away with little or no impression of the object. A suspicious sorcerer could detect either one. Neither prevented ordinaries from bumping into the hidden person's limbs, hearing his steps, or sticking sharp objects in the approximate area of his gut. The sorcerer could tell a swordsman exactly where to find that gut.

Inek had said this wasn't worth dying for. So, how was I to get inside undetected?

Without a good answer that avoided bloodshed, I had one alternative. Force them out. I wanted a better view of the woman and an idea of who she was. If I did it right, no one would notice the magic until I was well away.

I swung by the deserted docks and set a fire spell smoldering atop a broken cask. With some damp scraps of wood and rope arranged beside to feed it, and an infusion of extra magic to ensure the rain didn't douse my sparks, it should make a pretty blaze by the time I finished my other preparations.

Shouldering a hoop of rope and tugging my hood low, I trudged down the lane past the commons house, as if on my way to the taphouse. Instead, I turned into the alley between the bread stall and the commons house. Circling around as the prince's careful guard had done, I traced a line along the wall, my touch scribing a conduit for enchantment.

Now, a little work with my bracelets. I bound a spell of heat, one of smoke, and one of penetration into a single construct and linked that back
to the bracelet. Like the other bracelet spells, it would be available for my use, just waiting for an infusion of magic to bring it to life. My plan would have to unfold fast, before the pureblood could react. He would be expecting something, so I'd let him have it. But first, some bread from the stall.