Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) (22 page)

The guards grinned. Faia kept her expression neutral and just a little puzzled.

“Tax officer will want more than ten percent for her,” one of the side guards said “She’s the best-looking Fisher I’ve ever seen.”

Bytoris frowned. “He got her for a good price—due to her defects.”

The guard at the table chuckled. “If she can’t hear and can’t speak either, that would make her the perfect wife.”

Bytoris and Delmuirie both laughed, and Bytoris said, “He didn’t buy her to talk to, anyway.”

The guard looked at the paper Delmuirie handed them, and nodded. “That was a good price. Pity they didn’t come through here first—I’d have bought her myself.” He handed back the paper and the metal pass, then pointed to the packs. “You people have anything to declare?”

Bytoris nodded and smiled. He pulled out a couple of carved stone rings from the top of his pack and held them up to the guards.

The seated guard frowned. “What are they?”

Bytoris shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. I found them in the First Folk ruins.”

“So they’re artifacts.”

Bytoris nodded. “Of some sort.”

One of the other guards wandered over from his niche in the wall, and both he and the seated guard took one. They turned the rings over, ran their fingers along the edges, and squinted at them as if they thought squinting would make the artifacts make more sense. Finally, the guard in charge shrugged. “Small artifacts, unknown purpose, unknown value—let’s say one rit each. Silver, though, not pressleaves. If they turn out to sell for more than that, the tax officer will surely drop by to pay you a visit.”

Bytoris and the guard laughed, and Bytoris said, “Oh, surely. I imagine he will anyway—you know how they are about their taxes.” He reached into his pack again and pulled out two small, octagonal silver coins. The guard checked both sides of the coins, nodded to the other guards, then waved them through.

“And that is all there is to that,” Bytoris said with a chuckle as soon as they were out of earshot.

“What the man said about the Klaue worries me.” Edrouss Delmuirie wasn’t smiling. His dark eyes were thoughtful.

Faia hadn’t heard any of the guards say anything about Klaue. “What was that?” she asked.

“He said they have been attacking that same quarter of the city every day since first sunrise. No one knows why. This is the first day any of the Klogs were killed, and there were fewer human casualties than any previous day.” He shook his head. “That is not like the Klogs. They usually have a plan… and they usually win.”

“Maybe they’ve changed,” Faia suggested.

Edrouss shrugged, but did not look like he was considering the possibility. “Maybe.”

Faia studied Bonton. It was nowhere near as impressive as Ariss. She recognized the peak of the Remling Tower, visible from time to time over the rooftops. Anyone who’d gotten paid in Dorrell Province would recognize that, though—its image decorated the obverse of every Dorrellian coin minted or pressleaf pressed. It wasn’t as attractive in real life as it was stamped onto gold, either. And the rest of Bonton was even less prepossessing. The buildings, stone and baked brick and hewn timber, jumbled on top of each other closer and closer the further she and her companions penetrated into the city; deep in the backways, the inhabitants had built far into the streets so that in places the main road permitted only two people to proceed abreast. Traffic throughout was thick and rough; people fought past on foot or on horseback or in skinny little goat-carts. They all smelled of sweat and dirt. Their hair was greasy to a one, and their faces showed grime.

If the people were dirty, though, the city itself was worse. The cobblestones were slick with the droppings of horses and cows and other livestock, and the gutters ran with trash and dumpings from chamber pots. Faia noted rats and flies and thin, wary alley cats. The stink grew, and grew, and grew, the further they went into Bonton’s heart.

Bytoris slowed. Faia watched the expressions that dashed across his face; bewilderment, disgust confusion, and finally fear. “This is what this city has come to without magic,” he said. He stopped completely, looking at the filthy streets and the grimed people who hurried through them. He shook his head. This is vile. I need to get home.”

He led them quickly down a twisting, close road, through a foul, stench-bathed alley, and at last into a little closed-off circle of tall, brightly painted houses. The paving-stone circle was awash with the same mire that befouled the rest of the city, though Faia could see how the little circle of houses might have been thought pretty, if the stink were not so overwhelming.

A boy from the top window of a tall, thin yellow house suddenly shrieked, “Mama! Mama! Papa’s home!”

There was an instant of silence; then the house erupted with noise. “Papa! Papa!” a veritable chorus of young voices shouted, and a woman’s voice cried out “Bytoris?! Oh, gods, you’re home at last.” The floors echoed with the thunder of running feet; a slight blonde woman burst out of the front door first, leapt up, and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. “Godsall, I thought sure you were dead!” She hugged him close and smothered his face and neck with kisses; Faia couldn’t help but grin.

“Renina!” Bytoris spun her around and hugged her. “I nearly was dead, love. Nearly was.” He kissed her, then pulled away. “What’s been going on here?” he asked, but he didn’t have time to hear an answer. A horde of children—Faia counted six, but they were moving fast enough that she might have missed one or two—streamed out of the house and surrounded him. They, too, hugged him and shouted. The scene in the cobblestoned courtyard was mayhem; neighbor women ran out to see what the commotion was, and squealed when they recognized Bytoris. They and their children surrounded him, too, shouting and laughing and talking all at once.

It sounded like a huge flock of chickens in the henyard. Bytoris was popular; her brother seemed to be friends with everyone, and everyone stood around talking about how pleased they were to see him alive and how concerned they had been about him—and how worried about the winged kellinks getting him.

His wife Renina finally shooed the children back into the house—this time Faia was certain she counted eight—with an admonition to them to get back to work. Then she turned back to her husband with a laugh and flung her arms around his neck again.

Faia stood apart. She turned at the sound of a sniffle, and found Edrouss Delmuirie standing there, fists clenched and eyes suspiciously bright.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“It just hit me—anyone who might once have run out of a door like that for me has been long years dead.” His eyes unfocused, and he turned his head away.

“Your wife, you mean?” Faia asked. “Your children?”

For a moment he seemed not to hear her. Then he said, “No. I wasn’t married. I had both my parents, and two brothers, and two sisters. Nieces and nephews, too.”

“And a line of lovers that would reach from here to the sea,” Faia said suddenly.

“What?”

“All those women who begged to share your bed, and attempted to seduce you.”

“I never—”

Faia cut his protest short with a wave of her hand. “I read your diaries,” she said.

Edrouss Delmuirie turned the red of a ripe roseberry and pressed his face into a hand. “My
diaries?”
he groaned.

“Scholars found and translated them. Hundreds of people have read them. Maybe even thousands,” Faia told him.

He shook his head, and his face grew even redder, though Faia would have thought that impossible. He didn’t seem lost in grief anymore, though, she decided. He seemed positively buried by mortification instead. She grinned. It was always pleasant to think she could help distract a man from his troubles.

In the pause, she heard Renina say, “—well, invite them in, dearlin’.” Faia turned to see Bytoris’s wife tuck a bit of the hem of her outside skirt into her kirtle and spin around. She danced up the steps, radiating happiness.

Behind her, Faia heard Delmuirie mutter, “Why would anybody read
my
diaries? I made up everything in them… almost.”

Faia chuckled. She’d suspected as much when she read those diaries—
nobody
had people bowing and scraping the way Delmuirie had described; nobody was so invariably right at the expense of chagrined fools who’d disbelieved; but most of all, nobody got laid as often or as variously as Edrouss Delmuirie had claimed to get laid. The Delmuirie scholars had insisted the contents of the diaries were an unflinching look at the life of a great man; but then, they were trying to emulate that life.

Bytoris followed his wife into the house, and Delmuirie and Faia trailed after. Renina led them through a dark, narrow foyer, into the bright, window-lit interior of the house.

Glass windows, Faia thought, looking around. The individual panes were little and held together by narrow strips of lead—some of the panes were brightly colored so that the sun, blazing through them, left rainbow patterns on the floor. Faia had seen such windows before, but only in the great university buildings of Ariss—never in common houses.

My brother
does
make money, she thought.

The walls of the sunlit room were lined with shelves, and the shelves were covered with statues and plates and little stone carvings—all of them battered, most of them chipped or broken but expertly repaired, all of them obviously ancient.

Faia heard the low hum of children’s voices from further back in the house. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of crockery smashing, followed by a moment of silence.

Then a girl’s voice, shrill and angry, broke the quiet. “Oh, thanks,” she yelled. “Why not just break the next into a thousand pieces, to see if I can puzzle them out? Why couldn’t you just break the neck off?”

The boy’s voice sounded both older and calmer. “I can’t always just break the necks off. You don’t think real artifacts always break that way, do you?”

“Look, Seluis, see how well I’ve rubbed the paint off?” yet another voice called.

“That’s good, Jaychie. It looks very old.”

Faia held her breath, listening. The voices had fallen to murmurs again. She looked to her brother, questioning.

He shrugged. “This is the use to which we put scholarship—those of us with families who insist we would rather eat than starve.” He pointed to the rows of ancient artifacts. “My family makes these. I copy real artifacts, and carve molds of them, which my children then pour and shape and paint—and age. We sell them to collectors and traders—and Geos had a store where he sold them to people who wanted to think they’d gotten a bargain on artifacts created in the days of the old gods. We’ve done well enough.”

Faia picked up one of the little statues and studied it. “That’s dishonest.”

Renina gave Faia a cold look. “It’s work, and it’s food. When some people had great magic, and some of us none, things were bad enough.” She looked at her husband, and pointed to the stocked shelves. “Things are worse now. Few are buying, and those few are more careful of the provenance of their goods.”

Bytoris took his wife’s hand and squeezed it. “I brought artifacts and rubbings from the First Folk ruins for us to copy. First Folk artifacts are rare enough we should get rits in plenty.”

Renina’s happiness seemed to have worn off. “If people keep spending rits for trinkets when food and water become scarcer by the day…”

Bytoris nodded to Faia. “She may be able to do something about that.”

Renina looked doubtful. “Has she come to bring back magic, then?”

“Yes.”

Renina glanced at her husband, looking to see if he mocked her; then, when she realized Bytoris meant what he said, she turned to Faia with hope in her eyes.

Faia felt the weight of the other woman’s hope and everything that hope meant settle on her shoulders.

She cleared her throat. “There is a man—” she began, and faltered. “He stole something, and the magic of Arhel is tied to the thing he stole. I’ve come to—to find him, and get the thing back. I cannot promise—” She sighed. “In truth, kinswoman, I cannot promise anything. But I will not stop looking for this man until I have found him, or until I am dead.”

“Kinswoman?” Renina looked to her husband.

“She is my sister,” Bytoris said “though we have not yet sorted out legal kin-claim. We might not need to.”

His wife nodded. Both her attitude and her speech became formal. “Then, kinswoman,” she bowed slightly, “may the touch of Kedwar the Finder guide your footsteps, and may the Dark Hunter sharpen your eyes, so that your journey will be crowned by success.”

“My thanks,” Faia said.

Renina turned and hugged Bytoris again. “I’m so
glad
you’re home,” she told him fiercely. “This is a frightening city without you.”

FAIA and Edrouss, Bytoris and Renina sat around the good company table, eating by the flickering light of an oil lamp that threw the shadows of defunct magelights in their curving holders against the wall; the shadows looked like huge, jittery spiders lurking in the corners of the room. The dining hall must have been a cheerful place at night before the magic died, but it was far from cheerful at that moment. Faia could hear the children chattering while they ate in the other room; Renina did not feel the adult conversation would be any fit thing for children’s ears.

The three travelers had taken turns telling the story of how they’d arrived in Bonton, while Renina sat wide-eyed. When they were finished, Bytoris asked, “What happened here?”

“I wish I knew,” Renina said softly. She sat back in her seat and stared into the little flame of the lamp. “One instant, everything worked perfectly. The Festival of Darkness was on, and all the streets were full of dancers. Above us, fire-writers spelled out the prophecies of the wajeros for the new cycle of years in glowing letters against the dark sky, and the magicians in the beautiful flying castle moored to the west wall sent out fire-flowers by the thousands that burst over our heads and tossed their petals down into the streets. It was wonderful. The next instant, all the lights in the city went out, and the fliers fell from the sky, smashing into the roofs of houses and crashing down onto people in the streets… and the castle came crashing down.” Renina nibbled at her lower lip. “It fell into Five Cathedral and shattered all the altars—which the Priests of the White shouted was a sign, while the Priests of the Five shouted that it was not. The earth shook as though it might split open at any minute.”