The Magician's Apprentice (31 page)

“No, not killing them unless they force us to,” Dakon answered. “Werrin says the king fears doing so will stir up more support for Takado. Even if it didn’t, relations of those we kill may seek revenge. And we will be obliged to seek justice for further deaths. It could begin a cycle of vengeance – them retaliating for what we do in retaliation for what Takado and his allies have done.” He grimaced. “A cycle like that could start a war.”

His two apprentices nodded in what he hoped was understanding.

What would I prefer?
he asked himself.
Would I risk war for the sake of avenging the loss of Mandryn? Oh, I want justice for the deaths of my people, for the ruin of the home I grew up in.
The thought of the rare, irreplaceable books that had burned stung, but not as much as the thought of the ordinary men, women and children who had been tormented and slaughtered while he was absent. Servants he had known so long they were more like family. People who had known and loved his father.
Such a cowardly act, to wait until I was gone. Or did Takado not realise I wasn’t there? Well, I’m sure the king wouldn’t have been so reluctant for us to kill any Sachakans if a member of one of Kyralia’s powerful families had been murdered. That would have been an act of war.

Dakon understood the king’s caution, however. Sachakans would most likely be amused if Kyralians caught a few of their misbehaving ichani and threw them out of the country. But if Kyralians dared to kill Sachakans for merely attacking one little village and slaughtering a few commoners, the Sachakans might decide the empire needed to put their neighbour back in its place.

And if the Sachakan emperor’s grip on his own people was as weak as it was rumoured to be, he would not be able to stop them.

The sun warmed Stara’s back as the wagon climbed the shoulder of the hill. As the horses hauling the heavily laden vehicle reached the top of the rise, the view beyond was revealed, and the young woman caught her breath.

A great city fanned out over the land before her. At the limit of its spread was the coast, and the dark sea lay beyond. The apex of the fan was the mouth of a river. The buildings and roads that radiated from that point were linked by the concentric curves of connecting thoroughfares.

Arvice.
She smiled.
The largest city ever built. I’m home at last.

She had waited fifteen years for this. Fifteen long years since her father had taken her and her mother to Elyne and left them there. Now, at last, he had sent for her, as he had promised so long ago.

As the line of wagons continued down the other side of the rise it moved into shadow. She shivered and drew her shawl up around her shoulders. For fifteen years of her life the sun had set over water, painting the city of Elyne gold and red. Now if she wanted to see a spectacular meeting of sun and water she would have to wake early enough to catch the dawn.

It feels like I’ve travelled from one side of the world to the other
.

The climate was similar in Elyne and southern Sachaka, however. She almost wished it wasn’t. The same kinds of plants fed the same kinds of animals. The same types of trees bore the same kinds of fruit stolen by the same kinds of birds. The same views of fertile farmland surrounded her. Only occasionally did she notice something unfamiliar and exotic – an unknown bird, or a strange tree.

The mountains had been more exciting and interesting, with their cold stone precipices, towering spires, and trees that sprang stunted and twisted from impossibly steep inclines. The wind had sung with the voice of a demented, ageless woman and the air had been crisp and clean.

Once or twice the wagon drivers had spotted distant figures on unfeasibly high paths above. Ichani, they said. They had assured her there was little chance they’d be robbed. The ichani had no use for the dyestuff her father traded, and even if they had been tempted to steal it to sell, the pottery jugs it was transported in were too heavy and fragile to be worth carrying along those precarious mountain tracks. They knew there’d be no money on the wagon, and minimal food.

The wagoners had given Stara men’s clothing to wear, however. A woman of her beauty was worth stealing, they told her, using flattery to persuade her to co-operate.

They hadn’t needed to flatter her. She had liked dressing in the trousers and shift. Not only were they more practical than the dresses she usually wore, but she felt almost as if she was actually working for her father already as she helped the men with the lighter duties to enhance her disguise – much to their amusement.

She doubted her father would give her this sort of work to do when she arrived in Arvice, though. As the daughter of a Sachakan ashaki, she would be set to more dignified tasks. Like making trade deals and entertaining clients. Or overseeing the dye-making process and ensuring orders were filled and delivered.

She was well trained for the responsibility. Her mother had performed such work in Elyne for years, and included her daughter in every part of the process. Stara had hated it at first, but one day it had occurred to her that her father might want her back sooner if she was useful to have around, and from then on she had dedicated herself to learning everything she could about his trade.

Stara smiled to herself as she imagined listing her skills to her father.

I can read and write, do sums and accounts. I know how to talk a client into paying twice what he meant to, and be happy to. I know where all the dyes are made, and how, which minerals set them and what kinds of cloth take them best. I’ve learned the names of all the important families in Elyne and Sachaka, and their alliances. And most useful of all…I can…I have…

She felt her heart skip. Even in her mind it was hard to imagine telling him her greatest secret. One she had never even told her mother.

A few years after arriving in Capia, Stara had befriended the daughter of one of her mother’s friends. Nimelle had just been apprenticed to a magician, and was disappointed to find how few other girl apprentices there were. The girl had tested Stara for magical ability and found plenty. But when Stara had asked her mother what she would do if her daughter had magical ability the woman’s answer was firm and unhesitating.

“
I need you here with me, Stara. If you became a magician’s apprentice you’d have to live with your master for many years. Do you want to be separated from your mother as well as your father?”

Stara could not bring herself to abandon her mother. When Nimelle had heard this, she had called it a “waste’. She offered to set loose Stara’s magical ability herself, and teach her the basics – but she must keep it a secret. Stara had eagerly agreed. Since then Stara had taught herself to use her magic, borrowing Nimelle’s books and practising with her friend.

I’m going to miss Nimelle
, she thought.
She was the only person who never treated me differently for being half Sachakan.

They’d both blinked away tears at their last meeting. But Stara suspected Nimelle would be too busy to miss their friendship soon. Granted her independence as a higher magician last summer, Nimelle had married in the autumn and was now expecting her first child.

I’ll be too busy helping Father to pine for her, either
, she told herself firmly.
We have both started new lives.
Yet she was already looking forward to Nimelle’s first letter.

The wagon was now travelling along a long, flat road shrouded in the gloom of dusk. Now and then walled enclosures appeared, bringing back memories of the typical Sachakan mansions, with their endless sprawl of curved walls coated in white render.

She also noticed the slaves working in the fields. She felt slightly discomforted whenever she saw them. Too many years in Elyne had taught her an aversion to slavery, yet she could also remember adoring the slaves who had looked after and indulged her as a child.

I’m sure life is a lot better for a house slave than a field slave
, she told herself.
But as Mother said, “slavery is slavery’.
She had hated it, and Stara knew it was part of the reason her parents had parted and her mother had returned to Elyne.

There were other reasons, Stara knew. Some she had been told, some she had worked out herself. Her mother had run away from her family in order to marry the man she loved, then discovered that he was a different person at home from the one he’d been in Elyne. He needed to be, she had explained to Stara. You have to be tough and cruel to survive Sachakan politics and make slaves obey you. Yet she couldn’t bear to see the effect it had on him. Eventually he had allowed her to return to Elyne. A harder man would have made her stay, she had admitted. Or kept both of their children.

The man who visited them every year had always been the same: loving and generous. Stara had watched him carefully, looking for some hidden monster, but never saw it.

Perhaps because he never had to whip a slave when he was in Elyne.

Her brother, Ikaro, had visited Elyne a few times. Younger than Stara by three years, he had always been reserved to the point of being rude. She had admitted to her mother years before that she was jealous of him for being the one who stayed behind, but also felt sorry for him for growing up without his mother. But when she had expressed the latter to him during one visit, he’d sneeringly told her it didn’t matter as much for a man to grow up without women around, as they weren’t as important as men.

She lost a lot of respect for him that day. The expectation that he would feel the same way about her as he did about other women, especially in regard to her value in the trade, soured the anticipation and excitement of finally reaching her destination. But she was determined not to let him spoil her new life.

The fields between the mansions on either side had been shrinking, and now they disappeared entirely, to be replaced by unending walls broken by the occasional broad alleyway. The wagoners’ cheerful whistling had stopped and their expressions were alert and unsmiling. Slaves hurried back and forth along the road, their eyes downcast. The only light now came from the wagoners’ lamps and those carried by slaves, or the glow of hidden light sources on the other sides of the walls. Stara felt both excitement and disappointment as she realised they had entered the city, and it wasn’t anything like she’d expected. Unlike Capia, Elyne’s capital, the buildings didn’t spread themselves around a great harbour in a glittering display. Instead they hid behind walls in an unending, secretive sprawl.

The wagon slowed as they approached a large wooden gate and Stara’s heart skipped a beat as she realised this must be her father’s mansion. The vehicle stopped and the head wagoner called out. No answer came, but there was a clunk, and then the gates began to swing open, revealing a wide paved courtyard lit by several lamps. The walls around her were white, broken only by doors and the ends of dark wooden beams. Stara’s heart was beating fast. As the wagon moved inside her eyes searched the courtyard for her father, but all the people she saw were strangers.

When the vehicle stopped they threw themselves to the ground. Looking around, she realised that all their heads bowed toward her, and all their feet pointed away, so that bodies radiated away from her in all directions.

Slaves
, she thought.
Do they always do this? What should I do now?
She looked towards the house. No familiar paternal figure appeared. Sagging back in her seat, feeling a little confused and disappointed, she waited to see what would happen next.

“Nobody is going to tell you what to do, mistress,” a voice murmured close by. She glanced down to see a wagoner leaning up against the vehicle, his attention apparently elsewhere. “You give the orders now.”

Understanding came in a rush. Nobody was going to tell her where her father was unless she asked. Nobody would even get up. In Elyne a woman was supposed to wait until she was met by her host – or a senior servant at the least – before alighting from a wagon. This was not Elyne. Here she was not a guest, but part of the family that ruled the estate.

“Go back to what you were doing,” she called out.

The slaves slowly rose from the ground and resumed their tasks, but with a deliberate caution. She noticed that one, a man in a red cap, was ordering some of them about. Rising, she climbed down off the wagon with as much dignity as she could manage. She turned to the man in the red cap.

“I wish to see my father, if he is at home.”

He bowed, this time bending at the waist, then gestured to a shirtless slave standing near the doorway.

“Your wish can be fulfilled, mistress. Follow this man and he will take you to Ashaki Sokara.”

As she followed the slave into the interior she breathed deeply. A familiar scent hung in the air, but she could not identify it. The slave’s thin silhouette led her down a narrow corridor coated in the same white render as the exterior. They emerged into a large room. Stara recognised the floor plan. This room was the centre of the house: the “master room’, where her father met, entertained and fed guests. Doorways led from it to other parts of the house. Her mother’s home followed the same design, as did other Sachakan-built houses in Elyne.

She took all this in with one glance, because a man sat on a large wooden chair in the centre of the room. Recognising him, she felt her heart leap with joy.

“Father,” she said.

“Stara.” He smiled and beckoned.

Walking across the room, she was disappointed when he didn’t rise to greet her. She hesitated, unsure what to do next.

“Sit,” he suggested, indicating a smaller chair next to his.

Taking it, she sighed with appropriate and not entirely faked appreciation. “Ah. You’d think after sitting down all day I wouldn’t want to even look at a chair.”

“Travelling is tiring,” he agreed. “How was the journey? Did my men treat you well?”

“Interesting, and yes,” she replied.

“Are you hungry?”