Magesong (9 page)

Ephemeris adjusted his hat and bent the absurdly long
peacock feather so that it drooped over his left shoulder. 
Ridiculous
costume — brocaded jacket, shirt of pleated taffeta, silk leggings — and hot,
too, on a summer evening
.  He looked again out the window of the carriage
and saw that the front of the large, columned building stood quiet now.  Most
of the guests had already arrived.

He called up to the driver, "I am ready now."

The driver clucked and the polished two-horse carriage
rolled down the cobbled street and into the driveway of the Royal Library.  The
footman opened the door and Ephemeris stepped out, trying to affect a look of
boredom.  As he approached the entrance a pair of uniformed men bowed and
opened the wide double doors. He went past them thinking how easy it was if you
just looked the part, when a well-dressed young man intercepted him in the
foyer.

"The reception for the Royal Historical Society?"
he asked.

“Yes," Ephemeris said with a patient smile.

"The grand hall, right through there, sir."

"Thank you, ah, what is your name?"

"Joffa, sir, assistant librarian."

"Have you lived here in Mira-Delvin a long time, Mr.
Joffa?"

"Yes sir, all my life."

"And are you personally acquainted with Airen
Libac?"

"Why yes I am.  I've helped him in his research a
number of times."

Ephemeris looked around casually.  No one was there.  They
were standing still.  Perhaps he could touch this fellow's mind with the Eye. 
Not that he truly needed young Joffa; he could surely just walk up to Libac and
introduce himself.  But an introduction from an esteemed librarian would look
very good, and getting Libac alone would be difficult without it. Besides,
Joffa might prove to be a valuable informant in the days to come.

"You have?  Then I would very much like your opinion
about a small artifact I found in the city of Xanxin."  He took out a
small piece of glass quartz and held it up in front of the young man's eyes. 
Sharply angular, with many facets, it threw fragments of light onto his face. 
Ephemeris had spent a month of long nights in the Sardonyx Tower cutting it
just so and imbuing it with glamour.

"If you look deeply into this, you can see three
ancient hieroglyphs in the center."

The young man stared at the crystal, and Ephemeris looked
through it and into his eyes.  He could feel Joffa sliding into a kaleidoscope
that washed away certain fears and painted the blank space there with new
feelings.  A brightness.  A kind of faith.

Now he had him.  It only remained to close the trap.

"The glyphs represent three ancient words," he
said softly, for here was the fix of the rune, "
Yaskarr, Omfinir
,
and — "

"There you are, Joffa," came a high, piercing
voice.

Joffa looked up at once, breaking the spell.  A very tall
man, almost emaciated in his thinness, stood in a doorway at the far end of the
foyer.

"I need you right away, if you please."

Joffa looked at Ephemeris, uncertain about what he had been
saying.  "Excuse me, sir," he said with a polite nod, "I must
take my leave."

Ephemeris watched him go.  He had only needed another
second.  No matter, he thought.  No matter at all.

Inside the grand hall the Royal Historical Society had just
finished making some sort of presentation, and now the lords and ladies mingled
in their finery, accepting goblets of wine from waiters in powdered wigs.  Ephemeris
asked a young woman to point out Mr. Libac, and at last he got a look at the
renowned treasure hunter.  Like Ephemeris himself, the man had a rather plain
appearance:  a little pudgy with a receding hairline.  Put him in commoner's
clothing and you would never pick him out of a crowd.

As Libac bowed away from his present conversation, Ephemeris
began to move toward him, side-stepping through the social melee.  He lost
sight of the man for a moment, then saw him again as Libac stepped out a side
door.  Walking as fast as he dared, Ephemeris got to a window in time to see
him disappear into a small outbuilding.

Had to go to the privy, eh
?  Ephemeris smiled as he
hurried to the same side door.  Maybe he would get more from this than simply
meeting the man.  He stepped outside and ran the rest of the way to the low
stone building thinking that if anyone noticed, at least it wouldn't seem
suspicious.

He slipped inside silently.  A plush entry provided coat
racks and basins of water with towels, but no attendant.  Excellent.  He
listened at the curtain, sensing no one there besides Libac.  He looked back
outside and found that no one was coming.  He waited.

When Airen Libac stepped out from behind the curtain,
Ephemeris closed the door behind him, like he had just come in.  "Good
evening, sir," he said, bowing curtly.  He started to slide past into the
privy when he let his eyes widen with recognition.  "You are Mr. Libac,
are you not?"

"Yes I am."

"How fortuitous to run into you.  We've never met, but
I know you by reputation, sir.  My name is Orez."

"I'm pleased to meet you Mr. Orez."

"I have a favor to entreat
of you, sir,"  he said, holding up the small piece of fine quartz. 
"I found this in a ruin near the city of Xanxin.  If you look deeply into
its center, you can see three ancient glyphs."

The moon had set just after twilight, and Ephemeris walked
the docks in the full black of night.  After the reception, he had told the
carriage driver to drop him at a seaside hotel.  He wanted no one, not even a
hired driver, to connect him to a felucca from the east.  He peered ahead at
his ship, seeing it dimly, carved from darkness by the light of a single lamp
that hung from the rigging.

The mate stood waiting for him at the top of the gangplank.

"There's somebody here," he said softly, nodding
toward a bearded man in a green coat sitting beneath the awning.  "A
customs official.  Tryin' to squeeze a little juice from us.  I would've paid
him off and sent him on his way already, but he wants half a crown.  I thought
I'd better wait for you, Captain."

Ephemeris shook his head wearily.  "I must begin some
important work very early tomorrow.  I'm going to my cabin, just pay the
swine."  He took one step then froze, his face stiffening.

"No, wait." he said icily.  "Bring him in to
see me.  You and Malor."

He marched to his cabin, a little hut built onto the deck
just in front of the tiller.  He hurled the peacock-feathered hat aside with a
snarl, sat behind his small writing desk and waited.  A moment later they
brought the man in, his smile wide between thick black whiskers and a bulbous
nose.

"Ah, there you are.  If you will allow, I am Ferra
Petrasco, customs inspector," he said, extending his hand.  "It is
pleasant to meet you, Captain . . . er, ah."

Ephemeris sat motionless, staring at him.  Sensing their
Captain's mood, the two sailors flanking the customs man kept very still, and
Petrasco quickly became uneasy that they had not been dismissed.  The mate was
not of slight build, and Malor, a huge man with arms that could crush a
hogshead, stood so tall that the ceiling forced him to stoop.

"I go to bed early, so I will skip the
pleasantries," Ephemeris said, snipping off the end of each word. 
"You want what, something like ten ducats from me?  That is, ah, too much
tax."

"Well sir, like I was telling your first mate here,
you've failed to report your cargo to the customs house."

"This is a private ship.  We carry no cargo."

"I think that would be difficult to prove, Captain.  I
mean, this ain't exactly the kind of ship anyone would use for a yacht.  With
your low freeboard and shallow draft this ship has to be a nightmare in a
storm.  And only this tiny cabin for yourself?  I've seen more luxuries on a
slave galley.  No, this is a sailor's vessel and a rough one at that.  And
something else caught my eye.  You're riding too low in the water to have an
empty hold."

"I told him," the mate said, looking at the
customs man, "that we carried over a ton of foodstuffs as well as five
hundred gallons of fresh water."

"This is absurd," Ephemeris said, "one of
your agents already inspected the hold, before we ever touched shore."

"That's so," Petrasco crooned, "but I could
come back in the morning with a boarding party for another look.  And I'm ever
so certain that I would find some heinous little thing, such as — "

"Shut up!" Ephemeris said savagely, coming to his
feet.  "There will be no more out of you, you filthy pig."

The stunned customs man, his face screwed up in indignation,
opened his mouth but Ephemeris cut him off, saying to the two sailors,
"Hold him."  Before he could move, they had his arms pinned behind
his back.

Ephemeris came around the desk, and the customs man actually
barked out a short laugh.

"Oh, now you've done it.  Now you have made a real
mistake.  This one will cost you more like a hundred crowns, if you ever get
your ship back."  A troubling thought crossed his mind, but he voiced it
defiantly.  "Unless you mean to murder me."

"No," Ephemeris said, drawing from under his
jacket a curved dagger, its handle made of human bone.  "I mean to do much
worse than that."

Petrasco looked at him and saw the truth of it in his eyes. 
"Help!" he screamed, struggling wildly so that even Malor strained to
hold him still.  "Murder!  Help me!"

Ephemeris reached out and touched the man's throat lightly
with the tip of the knife.

"
Thrathnog Aut Lurellen
," he commanded.

Petrasco's voice broke.  He gasped and tried to scream again
but no words would come, only muffled gibberish, the sounds a raving fool might
make.  His unreasoning eyes widened, and panic turned into uncontrollable
terror.  His head flailing from side to side in mad attempts to bite, he
twisted and bucked, his legs thrashing as if he could climb the very air and
escape.

Ephemeris nodded to Malor, "Could you quiet him down a
bit?"

Still pinning Petrasco's arm with his left hand, Malor let
go with his right, swung back, and drove it hard into the man's belly.  He bent
at the waist a little, but continued struggling.  Malor punched him twice in
the face and twice more in the guts, the customs man doubling over and falling
still.

"Good," Ephemeris said, "now hold out his
hands."

He passed the dagger over Petrasco's trembling hands,
tapping each one with the flat of the blade, whispering a chant the sailors did
not wish to hear.

"Now you will not be able to tell your story, or even
write it down," Ephemeris said, looking hard into the eyes of the customs
man.  He went out onto the deck then came back in immediately with a coil of
rope.

"Go ahead and tie him," he said to the sailors,
"can't have you holding him all night."

The two seamen did as they were told, Malor glancing
nervously at the mate, who looked only to his task.

"Hate me do you?" Ephemeris said to Petrasco, 
standing close, the knife hovering near the bound man's ear.

The customs man worked his jaw desperately, trying to
speak.  "Whuh.  Wh — "

"Why?" Ephemeris offered, taking a handful of
Petrasco's hair and cutting it off at the scalp, careless of any incidental
wound it might cause.  "Because you think that you have power, the full
backing of a kingdom.  Now you've seen what true power is, and how, when faced
with it, you are truly alone."

Ephemeris looked at the mate.  "Hold his head and I'll
get him ready."

He cut another handful of hair from the top, another from
the front, and another from the other side.  Then he began randomly sawing off
portions of the man's beard.

"Finest Kazhirradian steel," he said quietly, to
no one in particular.

With a long shallow slash, he cut through Petrasco's vest
and into his flesh, the customs man making a gargling sound as he twisted and
squirmed.

"This would be easier if you did not move,"
Ephemeris said, cutting him again and again on the chest and stomach and arms. 
"These are very light cuts.  You will hardly even bleed.  I just want to
make it look like you've been doing harm to yourself."

He stood back and looked at his work.  When he told the two
sailors the street where they were to take him, the customs man made one last
panic-stricken attempt to break free.  Malor beat him into submission.

"What if the night watch stops us?" the mate
asked.

"Simply say that you just found this man on the docks and
turn him over to them.  They will likely take him there for you."

"I don't get it Cap'n.  What is this place we're taking
him anyway?"

Ephemeris sighed, the storm that drove his thoughts finally
abating.  "That would be the insane asylum."

Reyin woke in his hammock to the flickering light of a
whale-oil lantern and the murmur of sleepy sailors, as he had done the last six
mornings.  It was four o'clock, time for the first watch.  The men of the
midnight watch padded past him to climb into their hammocks and fall almost instantly
asleep.  Two feet above Reyin, Farlo swung lightly, snoring to the rhythm of
the gently-pitching ship.

They had already more than retraced their journey in the
skiff, having passed the pinnacles near Lorendal valley a few days before. 
They had stood at the larboard rail looking eastward across grey-green water
that day, but the ship ran too far out from the land, and clouds of mist
alighted too thick on the ocean to see even the tallest crags.

Reyin slipped into his boots, out the door, and across the
waist to the galley entrance.  His kitchen duties didn't start until five, but
Lomney, the cook, a stubby man with a long drooping moustache, was always there
at four, building a fire in the big iron stove.  The Captain had his own sack
of coffee beans, and Lomney was required to roast some each morning and have a
pot ready at half past four.  If Reyin got there early and helped, Lomney would
give him a small cup when it was done brewing.

Reyin and Farlo as paying passengers worked only six hours a
day — Reyin the first watch and the second dogwatch, Farlo the morning watch
and the first dogwatch.  Reyin had fallen seasick as soon as
Tarradid
tacked out of Noraggen harbor and spread full canvass.  This had brought belly
laughs and the usual jibes about hearty meals of undercooked pork.  The illness
lasted only a day, and on the second night at sea when he took out his mandolin
and played just for himself,  the whole forecastle listened, those with good
voices singing along, and afterward they treated him fairly.  Farlo stood aloof
of any merriment, as did Tolan.

Captain Eltas came for his coffee himself that morning. 
"I've heard you are something of a musician,” he said.

Reyin smiled.  “I manage to pass as a troubadour from time
to time."

"Well, you see, today is Mister Isherwid's birthday,
and if you could come to the officer's mess tonight and play a few songs, we
would all be very pleased.  Of course we'll pass you a few coppers for your
trouble."

This man has me earning passage that I've already paid for,
thought Reyin, and now he asks for nearly free entertainment.  Little wonder
that he's barely over thirty and is already a shipmaster.

"No trouble at all, Captain.  I welcome the opportunity
to play."

"Good.  Very good.  Come to the wardroom after the evening
watch begins."

The day passed in rain but the night fell fair, and an hour
past sunset the western sky still glowed faintly.  Reyin dug through his
clothing to find the yellow vest with the red stitching and the green feathered
cap.  At parties, folks always tipped better when he dressed in bright colors.

When he entered the wardroom, the four officers spat
laughter as Isherwid finished telling a lewd story.  On the table, along with
the ruins of a baked turkey (which Reyin had plucked with his own hands the
night before), rested an empty bottle of wine and an open bottle of brandy.  He
knew what to do.  He played quiet, unobtrusively merry tunes and did not sing
while they listened and talked and drank.  When he began seeing a little
nose-paint, he broke into his best tavern pleasers.  By the end of the evening
they were serving him cordials and singing along with the most bawdy numbers. 
At last the two juniors coughed up a few pennies each and went off to bed. 
Isherwid fell asleep were he sat.  Reyin and Captain Eltas stayed at the table
until midnight, trading tales of their far travels.  When Reyin discovered that
Eltas had once lived in Kandin, they spoke of things commonly remembered.

"Do you know," Reyin asked, "the jeweler’s
shop on Juniper Square?  On the corner, near the perfumery?"

Eltas put his fingers to his lips, nodding weightily, and a
little drunkenly, as he considered the question.  "I do not."

"Oh.  It's just, uh, my father's shop, where I spent my
boyhood."

"Do you have an older brother who will take up the
family business?"

"No.  And I was never interested in the craft of the
lapidary myself.  I wasn't really fond of music either, but my father claimed
that I had a talent for it at an early age.  I don't remember that."  He
waved away the bottle that Eltas held out.  "He spent a good amount of
money to send me to a music school."

"Ah.  That is why you play and sing so well; you were
trained by a maestro.  I should have known.  You are far more skilled than any
street minstrel."

"I don't know.  I've played many a street."

Captain Eltas chuckled.  "Well, I'm afraid I didn't
recognized that you were an educated man.  I would feel responsible if anything
happened to those virtuoso hands of yours.  Let us say that you have fulfilled
the requirements of your working passage."

"I beg your pardon?"

"No more work for you."  Eltas grinned and shot
Reyin a knowing wink.  "That is an order, sir."

"I really don't mind helping Lomney."

"Come now my dear fellow, we are both learned men of
high profession.  I can't have you slaving in the ship's galley.  It just isn't
done."  Eltas stretched his arms behind his head and fought off a yawn.  "Besides,
you are under shipboard law here.  You must obey."

“There must be something suitable for me to do.”

Eltas stood to go.  "Come breakfast with me and we'll
discuss it then, for now I must find sleep.  Goodnight."

The next morning, at the end of first watch, Eltas summoned
Reyin to his cabin and served black bread with cream cheese, cold turkey, and
coffee.  The captain talked of little other than Jakavian art and Baskillian
tea, and Reyin thought that the matter of his shipboard work had been dropped,
but when the second dogwatch came and he reported to the galley, Lomney said
that he was no longer a working passenger, and called him "sir" and
treated him more like an officer than a fellow sailor.

The men of the lower deck stopped greeting him with a nod. 
No one except Farlo spoke to him in the evenings while they idled at the
leeward rail.  Everyone glanced at him when he entered the forecastle, not
hostile stares, but looks that pushed him out of their circle.  When he played
the mandolin, no one sang along or even seemed to listen.  Tolan glared at him.

The quarterdeck was now open to him, though, and the junior
officers were always amiable.  Isherwid owned a deck of cards, and on the odd
evenings invited Reyin to the wardroom for a few hands of ball-and-chain.  The
third mate, a barely-grown man named Haffi, sat in on those games, and in a
manner unbefitting the dignity of a ship's officer, he unashamedly begged Reyin
to go get his strings or fipple and play for them.  Haffi was young and in love
with music and words and people and work and sky and sea, so Reyin was happy to
do it.  Yet when he went to the forecastle to fetch an instrument the sailors
there marked him in silence, nodding to themselves, and Reyin felt he knew
their thoughts.  
There he goes to entertain his officer friends — thinks he's
too good to work like the rest of us
.

The tenth morning out of Noraggen, as they crossed the bay
of Oriana, catching sight of smoke from Evinna, the ship passed into the
tropical current.  The new airs from the south came thick and moist, and the
ship began tacking ponderously into that heat-spawned wind, a zigzag course
toward warm waters of brilliant blue.  Jackets went into sea chests.  The
dogwatch went shirtless.  Afternoon in the forecastle became oppressive, so
Reyin relaxed on deck and watched Farlo, easily distinguished because he kept
his shirt, at work high in the rigging with the other topmen.  They climbed
quickly from spar to line to yard, sure as spider monkeys in that distant world
where a slip could be fatal.

"Ever been aloft then, mate?"  A half-friendly, half-sarcastic
tone — it was Tolan.

"Not on any ship near this size.  Not while under
sail"

"Oh, so you can climb.  Say, I've got to go up to the
crow's perch for a stint, so how's about tagging along with me?  It ain't easy,
but it's no trouble for a grown man."

Wind and wave seemed not too rough.  The climb to the top of
the mainmast looked terrifying but not difficult.  Reyin wanted to decline.  He
wanted to see this as a childish game, follow-the-leader with the toughest kid
in town.  Tolan probably thought he was doing Reyin a favor, giving him a
chance to prove himself more worthy than a toad.  He had nothing to prove; he
had the respect of his own self.  Refusal would be the level-headed choice, but
then he suddenly found that he was accepting.

"Why not?" he said to Tolan.  "I'd bet you
can see the mainland from up there."

"Oh aye," Tolan said, grinning fiercely.

They crossed the deck to the rail where the shrouds were
secured.  Tolan swung himself up with the ease of a circus acrobat, and in a
flurry of arms and legs raced up the tar-covered rope ladder.  At the halfway
mark he stopped and looked back.  "The airs are fine up here.  Are you
coming?"

Reyin took hold, climbed atop the rail, stepped up onto the
ratlines, and at once the ship seemed to heel and heave severely.  He looked up
along the mast to its very top.  It appeared to sway and whip about in the
upper breeze.  Fixing his gaze to the ropes in front of him, he began to climb.

"Whoa there, what are you doing?"

Isherwid came trotting toward him, calling out.  "It is
absolutely forbidden for passengers to go aloft in the rigging.  Please come
down at once, sir."

Tolan looked down on the two of them.

"Can you make an exception this once?" Reyin
asked.

"Certainly not.  The shrouds are far more dangerous to
climb than they might look."  He pointed at Tolan.  "And you should
know better than to let him do it, seaman Tolan.  I'll have you standing extra
watches for this.  Off with you now."  Isherwid turned back to Reyin. 
"Come down, sir.  I command you."

Reyin obeyed.

The sky was moonless that night.  Long after sunset, Reyin
went to the forecastle and discovered the strap on his mandolin case
unbuckled.  He opened it.  Lifting up the mandolin gently, as if it were a
frightened puppy, he groaned aloud.

Farlo leaned over his shoulder.  "The strings are all
broken?"

Reyin fingered the remaining strands.  "I'd say they've
been cut."

They both turned slowly and raised their eyes to the men of
the lower deck.  The forecastle fell silent, the creaking of timbers and
rigging suddenly loud.

No one looked at them except Tolan, who reclined on a large
canvas sack full of netting.  "Must be the change in weather," he
said smugly, swinging a big bare foot up on an empty keg.  "Too bad. 
Can't play for the Captain now.  Think he'll put you back to work in the
galley?"

Reyin said nothing.  True magicians did not suffer the
indignities of vandalism and bullying.

Quietly, Farlo said, "Were those your only
strings?"

"No, I have an entire spare set.  But what would be the
point?  He could simply do it again at his leisure, and replacements are hard
to get and not too cheap."

This never would have happened to Artemes.  He would have
placed ethereal fastenings on his baggage.  If he wanted, Artemes could summon
an eldritch spirit to keep invisible watch on his goods.  Reyin had practiced
all these magicks with Ty'kojin on Wind Peak.  But here on the common ocean he
was like a ship becalmed, sails fully rigged and no breeze to fill them.  He
was not a true magician, for they carry their own wind.

Farlo walked over to Tolan, who stood to face him.

"Since you told me you speak for the crew," Farlo
said with frightening calmness, "I want you to tell me the name of the man
that done that."

"Must of been the sudden heat today," Tolan
growled back at him.

"Leave it, Farlo," Reyin called out, "it
really doesn't matter."

Farlo continued to stare at Tolan.  "I will tell you,
Mr. Tolan, that it was you who spoilt my friend's lute, and everyone here knows
it.  You should have to run a gauntlet for that, but I'll make it easier."

"Farlo," Reyin said.  "Stop."

"You're not fit to be a shipmate," Farlo continued
without pause.  "You are a coward and a damned liar."

Tolan balled his hand into a fist and raised it.  Fast as a
cat, Farlo stepped in close, jabbed a finger into Tolan's shoulder, and
suddenly Tolan froze, his arm twitching uselessly as Farlo grabbed him by the
hair and tripped him.  He fell hard on the deck, and Farlo kneeling swiftly
pinned his head there using only a thumb pressed hard between his jaw and ear. 
Tolan grunted in agony, thrashing like a wounded shark caught in a net.  Farlo
let it go on for half a minute, until Tolan's struggles turned to
pain-inflicted spasms and his groans to cries, till it seemed almost like
torture.

"Surprising, isn't it?" Farlo said to him softly.  "Not
the pain — though that's quite a shock too — no, I mean finding out you're not
the biggest fish in your very small pond."

Farlo stood and went back to the place he shared with Reyin,
swinging himself up into his hammock as if he had not a care in the world. 
Tolan, at last, rose on shaky legs.  He looked pale.

"He used some sort of dirty trick, not fair
fighting," Tolan announced.  No one seemed to listen.

"It was fair," said one of the topmen.  And that
was it; Tolan became just another sailor.  He shuffled outside and did not
return for hours.

"Should have done that the first day out," Farlo
whispered to Reyin.

"I wish you hadn't."

"He'll give us no more trouble now."