Vergence (43 page)

“Uh, where's Leth?”

“Resting, I should think. He came home with a huge belly on him this morning, so he's probably curled up, sleeping it off,” Sash said, frowning.

From her expression, Ebryn realised he'd chosen the wrong thing to say. He opened his mouth just as Elouphe's head bobbed up between them.

“Eby.”

“Hello, Elouphe.”

Sash sighed. “Come on, I'll race you both to the far end.”

Sash set off without waiting for an answer, slicing easily through the water, heading towards the buildings. Ebryn followed, creating a wave as he fought to keep up.

He guessed the pool might be sixty yards long and perhaps forty wide, surrounded by irregular wild-flower strewn slopes on three sides, and a stretch of dark, flattish rocks on either side of the drain, butting up against the side of the low building.

Elouphe disappeared under the surface with barely a ripple, reappearing at the far end, before they were a third of the way across. He appeared transformed in water. Confident and happier. Out of the water he always seemed to be there, loping along with them, like Sash's shadow, barely noticed. Here, sliding smoothly through the water, he looked effortlessly elegant, and powerful.

Ebryn arrived a few lengths behind Sash and grabbed onto a rock at the edge of the pool, breathing hard. “How did you learn to swim so fast?”

“Swim all time, Eby,” Elouphe said.

“No, I meant Sash. Where did you learn to swim like that?”

“My waspa friends, and watching Elouphe,” Sash said, putting an arm around Elouphe. “I used to swim every day when I was young. Not as much as El, but enough.”

Elouphe rolled onto his back, and they drifted with the eddies near the rocks. Ebryn lay on the water, facing upward, making the smallest movements needed to stay afloat, enjoying the contrasting heat from the morning sky, and the cooler pond.

After a while, Sash let go of Elouphe, and swam back to the rocks near Ebryn.

“I've talked to Teblin, and Leon, and a few others from the company, about visiting one of the spikes with us,” she said.

Ebryn twisted onto his front, and leant both his arms on a flat slab of stone near the water outlet. “What did they say?”

“Teblin said he'd come along with us, but only after the festival, if we choose a time which doesn't interfere with any of the performances. He said there'd be an opportunity for a break while the show's running — before we start working on the next one.”

“A week or two then.”

Sash smiled. “I imagine so.”

“So which part of Vergence do you want to see this time?”

“I'd really like to find the other tower — it wasn't on the map at all — but I don't think Elouphe could manage so many stairs. How about one of the spikes on the other side of the city, the one near the temple district?”

“Why not, it can't be as grim as outside the walls.”

Ebryn watched Elouphe glide through the water, travelling half the length of the pool in a few heartbeats “I don't understand why he's so happy. Does he really enjoy the work he's doing, pulling rubbish out of waterways?”

“Elouphe? He doesn't mind,” Sash said. “I asked him about it, and I think he's happier here than anyone else.”

Ebryn made a sceptical noise.

“No, he really is. It's a great honour amongst his people to be accepted here. It's rare. Not many have any ability at all as casters, so that makes him special to them, and his kind are looked down on by the selerians, which makes being accepted here even more important.”

“It's still unfair he spends all his time working with water, which he already knows. Isn't the point, for them, to teach him something new?”

Sash splashed water at him. “Honestly, listen to you. You're lucky with Tenlier. I'm in the Genestuer, and even I don't get to spend more than a day or two a week learning.”

“Yes, I know, but you enjoy what you do. I know you'd be doing plays in your own time, if you had to.”

“That doesn't change anything,” Sash said, splashing him again. “We all get about the same opportunity to study, apart from you, and you still haven't shown me what it is you've been learning. I think the real reason you go to the library every day is to avoid us, and play that game with Hoi.”

Ebryn laughed. “Then I really would be wasting my time, I'm terrible at it.”

“You must have learnt something you can show us.”

“I have something new I can try,” Ebryn said, recalling the casting he used to hold his book up the previous evening. “I'm not sure it'll work with water though.”

He mouthed the words of the casting, focusing on drawing together the lines of power, and spreading them into a fine invisible mesh, almost like a ward. With the final words, he threw a handful of water into the air, and as the droplets fell back in an arc he caught them. A shower of fine rainbow drops hung suspended in the air between them.

“That's clever,” Sash said. “Elouphe, come and look at this. It looks like an illusion, but it's real.”

Elouphe's head bobbed up to examine the curtain of suspended water. “How you make, Eby?”

“I mixed two castings together, a stasis casting, and part of a ward.”

Elouphe blinked at him.

“I'll show you how, the next day we're all free of work. It's not too difficult.”

“Why don't you show us something you can do with water, El,” Sash said. “We've never had a proper chance to see what you can do.”

“Show what Sash?”

“A fountain of clean water?”

“Clean water,” Elouphe said. He dived under, and reappeared half-way across the pool.

“You know your friendship means a lot to him, he's very impressed by what you can do,” Sash said to Ebryn.

“Really? I'm not doing anything that special,” Ebryn said.

She snorted. “I don't know any other apprentices who can blend castings at will.”

Four spouts of clear water appeared, arching through the air, sparkling in the light, and landing near the edges of the pool as a fine spray. The nearest fell in front of them.

Sash reached out to capture some in a cupped hand. “See … it's clean, you can drink it.”

“That's good,” Ebryn said.

“You should tell him. People don't know how you feel, if you don't say anything.”

“I'll tell him when I get a chance.”

“It is the time at which I must now go,” Addae called out, from the far end of the pool.

They swam back to the other side of the pool at a leisurely pace, with Elouphe diving under them, from one side to the other, and back again. Ebryn stopped at a natural underwater ledge a few paces away from Addae.

Sash floated near Elouphe. She seemed to have gone quiet again.

“So when do I get to see what
you've
learnt since we've been here?” Ebryn asked her.

“When you come to see our play, at the festival of stilts.”

“Eby and Addy not at play Sash, going between between,” Elouphe said.

Ebryn looked at him, surprised. “Where did you find out about that?”

“Addy tell me,” Elouphe said.

Addae grinned. “Brydeline is the one who told me. We will go there at the time of the festival.”

“Oh,” Sash said. “When did you know about this?”

“Addae told me yesterday,” Ebryn said, realising he hadn't thought about either Sash or her play when he'd heard.

“Why are you going during the festival? It's supposed to be a holiday — you knew we'd be giving our first performance. Can't you go some other time?”

“No, Sashael, this must be done when the seasons are joined.”

Sash gave Addae a blank look. “What do you mean, when the seasons join?”

Addae locked the fingers of his hands together. “Like this. When the seasons pass, there is a time they are together. This is when we must do this learning.”

“I see,” Sash said.

“Can't we see another performance? You're doing more than one, aren't you?” Ebryn asked.

“We've been working so hard on the play, I really want you to see the first performance. I wanted you to come and celebrate with us afterwards.”

Ebryn laughed. “After last time I'm not sure I ever want to see the inside of the Westerwall with Teblin again.”

Sash looked away. “Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. You're right. You can come to one of the other shows.”

Elouphe surfaced next to them. “What not matter, Sash?”

“They'd rather go walking the between than come and see the play I've been working on.”

“It's not like that, Sash,” Ebryn said.

“I need to go,” Sash said, after an uncomfortable silence. “El, will you give me a push?”

She stepped from the pool, dripping wet, and completely naked.

Ebryn hurriedly looked away. “Can't you use a glamour to cover yourself?” He could almost feel Fidela's disapproving glare burning into the back of his head.

“Why?”

“So we — people can't see you — you know, without clothes.”

“I don't care,” Sash said, her tone brittle. “If you don't like looking at me like this, then don't.”

Ebryn opened his mouth to protest, but Elouphe chose that moment to push him out. He landed heavily on his knees, accompanied by a curtain of water.

Sounds of laughter and splashing drifted through the large open windows of the Aremetuet quarters. Outside, Fla could see heads two heads bobbing up and down in the large pool on that side of the building. Occasionally they were joined by a third, brown and sleek, surfacing from below. At first Fla watched without interest, paying little attention to the swimmers, calculating what Brack might want from him, and deciding what response he should give.

The Aremetuet buildings were clumped along the central lower side of the second claw. A large cluster of living quarters, dining halls, training rooms and communal spaces occupied the bulk of the frontage. A smaller group of buildings, towards the far end of the claw, held quarters for senior members and administrative facilities, and connecting the two sets of buildings was a wide elevated roofed gallery bridging the pool outflow.

The outflow ran in a narrow channel under the gallery, where Fla waited, the main street on the other side of the gallery, and the buildings opposite, where it joined the river flowing past the third claw. When young he'd explored the dark culvert which now ran under his feet, finding a narrow space in the dark to hide from the persecution of fellow students, and later to practise illicit casting.

Now the nearness, the memory of hiding and trembling in the dark, unsettled him. The memory rubbed on him like a hard edge on bone, a bitter bile he swallowed back every day.

He looked through the window again — the voices were closer than before, the splashing and laughter louder, and a dark shadow like a bundled man sat on the rocks, watching. The shadow he recognised. His own creature, set to guard Ebryn Alire, and where Ebryn went as often as not he found Sashael.

Fla leaned forward, peering at the heads in the pool. And there she was, laughing and splashing water at her friend Elouphe as he dived under her, perfect white teeth, and long golden hair shining in the light. He saw Sashael and felt transported, gripped the window ledge tightly, forgetting the pain of his body and memories of his youth, as if he existed only because she was there.

The tall dark warrior — Fla couldn't think of him as a caster — called to them, and they turned and swam to the far end of the pool. Sashael stepped from the water naked, and something like a shock went through his body. He wanted to turn away, do something to preserve her from a gaze as profane as his, but he stared transfixed, unable to drag his eyes away. He could more easily have torn them out with his fingers.

Brack turned the corner into the room and swaggered up to Fla, followed closely by Lord Muro.

“You got the list, right?” Brack said to Muro as they approached. “There's enough there to keep your brother busy for a while. Get some of the turd-suck off the streets and we're all happy, right?”

“As long as my little inconvenience goes away,” Muro said.

“Ah, there you are, Fla. I was just talking about you,” Brack said.

They stopped next the open window and Muro looked down at him, one eyebrow raised. “Is this the one you're planning to send? What's he going to do, threaten to bite my man's ankles?”

Brack laughed and slapped Muro on the shoulder. “He looks like trikawi piss, but I don't waste time with bloody fools. Fired up, he'll scare the rear right off your man.”

Fla scowled and stepped away from the window. “If I choose—”

“What's been keeping you out here?” Brack asked. “Aha, I see—”

“But which one's he watching, eh?” Muro said, observing Fla from the corner of his eye.

Brack grinned. “Not all of us are as unpleasant to the eye as Fla.”

“Indeed,” Muro said, one hand playing with the end of his moustache as he stared out the window.

“I've been told she's very friendly, likes dancing, it's said.”

Fla looked from one to the other. He felt as if something had curled up, and died inside his chest. He weighed the bag of coins in his hand, wanting to throw them in Brack's face, but the work being offered would take at most a part day, and for the same sum Orim would have demanded a score or more full days.