Arlen eased off the livery horse with a groan, reminding himself—firmly—he'd been lucky to acquire the animal at all. Transportation of any kind was increasingly more difficult to arrange, and only the application of a wince-worthy amount of gold had allowed him to acquire this rough-gaited mount. His, now, though he had no illusions that the animal could carry him all the way to Anfeald.
Or that he'd survive the trip if it did.
A deeper part of him knew he'd do anything to get home. Anything.
It wasn't a part he could afford to show anyone else. So he eased off the horse and he groaned and he kept his inconvenienced businessman's face in place.
The gelding chomped placidly on its bit, preparing to spit it out entirely, perfectly reliant on his new owner—as Arlen was on him, as unexpected as it had been. He'd been surprised enough at the high price the livery owner named for the rental of this coarse, feather-legged creature.
"Not a rental," the man had said as they returned to the small boxy storefront that served as an office. It, too, smelled like a stall in need of cleaning. "Look around, why don't you. The only reason I've still got him is that the last couple of people through here got picky, and he's all that's left. The only reason you're getting him is that word spreads fast, and yon coacher"—he nodded in the direction of the road coach station—"is a friend of mine."
And Arlen, who'd trudged over to the livery ring from the overcrowded hotel with half a mind on the unprecedented devastation he'd seen the day before and the other half on picking the best path through the crusty, well-used snow that ought to have been cleared but wasn't, looked out the big front window of the livery ring office with several different kinds of surprise. He'd known people were getting restless with the service disruptions, but . . .
"Word?" he asked, looking at what he could see of the town—the main road, which in a small town like this should have been speckled with people going about their business with casual purpose. Instead they walked in clumps, their conversation full of emphatic gestures, their postures full of frustration. The road inns were full, with restaurants running out of shipped food items and their trapped occupants going from cranky to truly worried. Arlen, sitting at a breakfast table full of stranded travelers, had made do with monosyllabic responses and a good many shrugs at the speculation he heard.
Where's the Council? Why haven't they done anything about this situation? Why can't anyone tell us what's going on?
He wished he didn't know some of the answers . . . just as he simultaneously wished he knew them all.
"Mohi asked me," the man said, recapturing Arlen's attention and making his exaggerated patience as plain as the awkward features of his face, "if you came here, to make sure you got a horse."
"Did he?" Arlen murmured. "That was a kindness."
"Said you were a big help on the road yesterday." The man shrugged narrow shoulders. "So I held this one back a while. Not that I'll have any trouble getting rid of him if you don't want him. But it's going to be a while before the road coach crew scouts clear the road for the alternate route. You don't like the looks of the horse, you're free to wait."
"Not a luxury I have," Arlen said. "But I'd be glad to return him at the next livery ring instead of buying him outright."
The man laughed, a barking sound. "Think you can do better, do you? Didn't I just tell you to take a look around? The coachers're lucky they've held onto their harness horses—that horse won't make it back to me no matter what . . . so I'm selling him, not leasing him, and when all this is over people'll be dumping horses cheap. I'll stock up again easy enough."
So Arlen had his horse, complete with sale document, rough gaits, placid temperament, and distinctly gassy nature. And as he looped the reins over the animal's head and considered the narrow streets of the outlying area he approached—the first precinct city he'd come to and a river community that still had the reputation for the most finely ground flours in Camolen—he realized the blunt little man at the livery ring had told him the right of it. Even here, in Tyrla's precinct city—or what had been Tyrla's precinct—any number of people gave his horse furtive, covetous glances.
Arlen hesitated, ignoring his body's saddle aches and taking better stock of his surroundings . . . wishing Carey were here with him. Carey was the one used to taking note of every nuance of a journey; the one who had not only traversed Camolen in Arlen's stead, but another world as well. Arlen . . .
Arlen was more accustomed to traversing inner worlds, to tracking ideas and not strange city-ways. Now the close-set buildings loomed over him; long and narrow, they backed up to the river, each claiming a precious spot at the water's edge and the ability to launch a waterwheel. The buildings on the opposite side of the street took more width—warehouses, mostly—but jammed together just as tightly to take advantage of the prime river territory. Some of them still bore the muddy waterline of the most recent flood several years earlier, soaked into every crevice of the brick where even diligent scrubbing couldn't reach.
At the end of this street, if he'd been told right, was a road inn with a room or two left; barring that, he'd have to venture further into the city to find an independent city inn—and that, he didn't want to do. The people of a precinct city were accustomed to magic, to its uses . . . and to its users. Arlen's was not an unknown face, even without its mustache and accustomed length of hair. He'd been here often—Council business, with Council travel booths and preferential Council accommodations.
No, best to stay on the working edges of the city, even if his horse drew the envious eye of every stranded traveler here. Travelers who wouldn't recognize him—but who consequently wouldn't accord him the respect of a man with power at his disposal.
Including travelers desperate enough to pace alongside him as he headed for the road inn, too tired to care about the churned muck he walked through. Or perhaps they were just common thieves, knowing they could make good gold with the sale of his horse. Not far ahead, he spotted the livery ring building, where he went not to turn in the horse, but to seek a night's stabling—near the hotel as was the pattern of most cities. Not far from either would be a road coach station . . . probably closed.
One man to his left, one to his right, easing closer to him; they were husky, confident, hidden in clothes entirely without style . . . meant only to keep them warm through the winter and no more. Between their hats, scarves, and hair, Arlen could see little of their faces, nothing of their expressions.
But he saw people getting out of their way.
"The horse," he said casually—if plenty loud enough to be heard—"is spelled. Unless you want to be as gelded as he is, you won't try to take him from me."
One of the men snorted, making no effort to pretend he didn't know just what Arlen was talking about. Definitely after the horse, and bold in these disturbed and uneasy streets. "Never heard that one before."
"Bootin' nice try, though," his partner said from the other side, but closer than he'd been just an instant before. "Quick thinking. Think quicker, and you'll hurt less by giving him up to us."
Their skepticism came as no surprise. Arlen, precinct wizard, Council member, the most powerful remaining wizard in Camolen, had never heard of any such spell.
But if pressed, he thought he could come up with it.
He stopped, held out the hand through which he'd looped the reins—an offering. He said, "It makes no difference to me. You'll bleed badly, so be prepared."
They glanced at one another in wary surprise. Arlen could see their faces now—rough men, but not necessarily tough ones. Taking advantage of a crisis . . . as if people weren't having enough trouble without this kind of activity. And while he could take care of himself if he had to . . .
Grim temper, habitually slow to rise, made its way toward the surface. He'd gotten their attention; he'd gotten everyone's attention. He gestured with the outstretched hand and its rein, impatient. And though the men hesitated, one of them quickly made a sneeringly dismissive gesture, and they both took a step toward him, closing him in.
The inertia spell was a marvelous thing.
Just a subtle twitch of it, nothing like he'd used on the coach. Enough to use their own movement to send certain body parts opposite the direction of the rest of them.
Enough to hurt.
It got their attention.
They froze, horrified—afraid to move even to look down at themselves. The fear didn't stop their eyes from rolling in that direction, though in the next instant they looked to Arlen most beseechingly.
"Back up," he suggested gently, as if talking to idiots. At the moment, they probably were. "Back up, and go away."
Slowly, they did so. Carefully. One step, a pause, then another—until after three steps they simultaneously broke and ran.
Arlen watched them go with a wry and twisted smile, but quickly squelched it. A man less well-armed with magic than he would show more relief than that, and he'd already been memorable enough for a man trying to avoid notice. He walked briskly for the livery, knowing the story would probably reach it before he did. Already he spotted a well-bundled child sprinting along the building shadows, and a tense-looking pedestrian eased casually over to the other side of the street to avoid walking near the horse.
No doubt using the tiny spell had been a mistake. No doubt someone on this street knew the lanky traveler with no business in this section of the city had created the magic on the spot, and not simply been standing next to a triggered spell. No doubt he should have simply surrendered the horse.
Except he had to get to Anfeald. He had to reach Jaime; he had to reach the safety of his own hold, of his workroom and his trusted dispatch crew and his only chance to protect himself and the people he loved while he figured out what had happened to the Council . . . and what was happening to Camolen itself.
Moments later, with the horse tucked away and the livery ring owner's honesty secured by a combination of bribe and threat—unspoken threat, for the woman pedestrian had witnessed the thieves' flight and the wide-eyed boy at her side, cheeks still flushed with cold, matched the size of the child who'd run down the street ahead of Arlen—he stopped in front of the road inn. At first distracted by the scrawled placard in the inn's window that declared common room lodgings only, he noted only in passing that the street news carrier—one of throngs of young dispatch apprentices who relayed the most recent breaking news to those on the street—had climbed her short pedestal at the corner of the road inn. Since the interruption of services days earlier, the street news pedestals had gone abandoned, turning into bird perches and something for children to climb.
This girl, her coat flapping open and her expression too bright, a flush of fear and excitement instead of cold, didn't wait for a customer to approach her with precinct script, and didn't relay her news in discreet murmurs to select ears. Her voice, flung to the street, cracked in her effort to project . . . or maybe just with emotion. "Breaking news!" she cried, the traditional attention-getter, making Arlen realize that today, after days of painful wizardly static, he'd failed even to try the general dispatch service. Like everyone else, he turned to look at her, drawn by her urgency, drawn by her appearance after so long a silence.
"Breaking news!" she said again, and then hesitated; for a moment Arlen thought she would burst into tears rather than find the words to relay the news. Finally she blurted, "The Council of Wizards is dead! They're all dead!" Her voice steadied slightly, lowering as her audience moved in closer. "They've been dead for days. No one knows how."
Arlen thought she went on to mention the Secondary Council, to say that the disruption in services would be handled as quickly as possible, to mouth obviously crafted phrases of reassurance from the Secondary Council itself, to repeat that no one had survived the mysterious attack other than a palomino stallion, no one knew what had happened—other than the palomino stallion.
He couldn't truly have said for sure just what she relayed. For as much as he'd known from within that the Council had met with disaster, he'd been unprepared to hear it confirmed; he closed his eyes and turned away, twisting inside with the enormity of the loss. Personal loss. Tyrla. Darius. Zygia. How many years had they worked together? And Camolen's loss . . . the intensity of effort it would take to recover from this, the very real potential that the Secondary Council couldn't. That Camolen itself would collapse into a country of panic and violence. And while the other members of the gathering crowd shouted astonished disbelief, Arlen realized anew that Camolen and its Councils—both Wizard and Lander, with their respective supportive enforcement services of peacekeepers and precinct guards—had to do more than survive their loss.
They had to survive that which had caused it.
Melting, bubbling, distorted landscape. Distorted reality.
Oh, yes. He had to get to Anfeald.
Jaime stared out the huge window of Arlen's asymmetrical office, soaking in all the things about the room that spoke of him. As much as he liked to keep potpourri simmering, he regularly let it cook down enough to burn; she could smell the faint bitter odor of the black herbs glazing the bottom of the pot on his workbench without turning her head from the snow-covered fields visible through the window.
The wall held his favorite old needlework piece—not his best, but one he'd done years earlier as a distraction from his first major spell construction. The spell that had alerted the rest of the wizard community to his true potential for spell creation and theory exploration, and had set him on the path to the Council.
She'd asked him the nature of the spell, and he'd only laughed and tickled her neck with his mustache. Something boring and intricate in the checkspell category, she thought he'd said. She remembered the touch of his hands better than the words of his reply.
Cesna and Natt had been working in here so as to leave the dispatch wizards more room, and had moved Arlen's belongings to the side—his scribbled notes, his stones waiting for the spells he would impress upon them, the tall, carved stool that suited his lanky build. His current-projects cabinet—covered with tooled and dyed leather, filled with carefully organized papers—had been moved to make way for the apprentices' plainer, light-wood cabinet with small turquoise tiles marching around the drawers.
Arlen's workroom, so full of the feel of him and yet changing around her. Moving on, somehow.
Jaime turned away from the workbench and the view beyond, clenching her jaw in sudden anger. It was too soon to move on, dammit, even driven by crisis. This had been Arlen's private sanctuary, a place he had literally carved out of nothing—
That's it. Get mad. Stay mad.
Then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much.
Cesna's timid voice came from the doorway. "Jaime?"
"What?" Jaime snapped, deep from her exploration of mad. She looked up just in time to see Cesna flinch, and gave herself a mental kick, giving up the mad for now. It was already evident to her that Cesna had sustained an emotional injury the day the Council had been killed—contributing to it was her last intent. So she sighed and said to the girl, "Never mind, Cesna, I'm not upset with you . . . it's just . . . a bad moment. What can I do for you?"
Still warily timid, Cesna flipped her thin blond ponytail over her shoulder . . . and her expression shifted to puzzlement. "There're two people here to see you," she said. "They say they're here on behalf of Chesba"—the Lander of Sallatier—"and they want to talk to you."
"But . . . ?" Jaime said, voicing the doubt when Cesna did not.
Cesna frowned, shaking her head. "I don't know," she said, relaxing a little. "It's reasonable that Chesba might ask for advice; his precinct wizard is dead with the Council, and Forrett, his own hold wizard . . . well, Natt is more skilled. And everybody's couriers are running ragged, so he might have decided to send some advisors."
"But." This time Jaime said it with more certainty.
With a shrug, Cesna said, "They just don't seem like Chesba's type."
Jaime rolled this little nugget over in her thoughts a moment; it didn't seem like much, although Chesba was easy to characterize—a charismatic older gentleman who didn't hesitate to do what he considered right. Then again, Cesna was the sensitive among them. And Jaime herself, once she stepped out of Arlen's quarters or the stables, was far out of her league.
By the factor of an entire world, more or less.
"I'll meet them in the null room," she said, after an indecisive moment during which her brain fought the request to climb out of its foggy grief and think. "Have whatever refreshments you think are appropriate sent up as soon as possible. And I should change, don't you think?"
Cesna eyed Jaime's breeches and hay-flecked barn sweater and gave an unusually decisive shake of her head. "I don't know why they're here," she said, "but I think it's good to remind them that you're pitching in with the rest of us. That you care enough about what happens to Anfeald to do it."
Jaime blinked, taken by surprise . . . wondering briefly why anyone would expect else of her—she had, after all, already been involved in several adventures nearly the equivalent of dark ops on her own world, and gone far out of her way to testify at several hearings against Camolen criminals. And then, just as briefly, she wondered why it would be so important, here and now and with so much at stake around them.
Cesna gave her what—just as surprisingly—could have been called a pitying look. Then she ducked her head to stare steadfastedly at the floor and said, "The precincts are assigned to Council wizards, Jaime. When new Council members are named, they have the option of using the existing hold."
It hadn't occurred to her. Arlen hadn't done so, after all; he'd chosen to build this place from scratch.
Now she found her mouth suddenly dry, her mind reeling from another blow. Now she understood Cesna all too well. She needed to show she had a place in this world, because she might well end up depending on the kindness of strangers.
Not a thought that had been anywhere near her mind when she'd made the decision to stay here.
"Son of a bitch," she said quietly, vehemently, and deeply felt. And then she brushed her hands over her hair in a habitual gesture to rid it of what hay she could, and stretched out the slump that had crept into her normally straight back. "I'm going down to the null room," she said. "Send them on up, and as I said, the refreshment. And I think it would be good to remind them—whoever they are, whatever they want—that along with pitching in, I'm also a guest here. A special guest of Arlen's, whom this hold is according the status to make decisions. Make sure I get one of the magically colored fancy glasses, will you? And have it already filled with ice water. And . . . you know how to listen in, don't you? Would you do that?"
Cesna allowed herself a small smile. "Gladly."
Jaime found herself with lips pressed together, face tense, shoulders bunching; she forced herself to relax. God, what had she gotten herself into? Not an intensely religious person, she still found herself sending out an honest prayer, here on this world where they didn't even know the word "God," but depended on afterworld guides she likened to angels.
On second thought, she sent an equally heartfelt prayer—just let me get through all this—to those guides. All the help she could get . . .
And then she headed for the null room.
She settled herself at the long table in this room without windows, noting the brightness of its new lighting with absent thought. Mural-like stenciling decorated the wall and ceiling juncture, a new design since the last time she'd been here, and a more colorful one. But the chairs—padded table chairs—were the same, as was the flower-filled planter lining one end of the room. Pencil and paper lay on the table by the head chair . . . the one she took. Without warning, a pitcher, glasses, and Jaime's requested ice water appeared on the tray in the middle of the table; one of the spellcook's fancy magics.
As Jaime took her glass—etched in delicate iridescent colors only magic could provide—a man and a woman reached the doorway, hesitating there.
"Come in, landers," Jaime said, using the term she'd learned was the polite gender-neutral equivalent of gentlemen in Ohio—even when the people being addressed weren't landowners at all. They glanced at the room, hesitating; she said, "It's a null room. I couldn't imagine you'd have any objections."
"No, of course not," said the woman, stepping inside and making room for the man to follow. Both wore the longsuits that passed for business wear in Camolen, though in this case wrinkled by travel. Personal coach, Jaime thought; they hadn't ridden, not in those fine-sheened trousers and long-tailed coats buttoned from the breastbone on up to a high, collarless neck. No ties here—but they did wear decorative triangles of silk hanging on fine chains at their throats.
"Feel free to sit," Jaime said, gesturing at the five remaining chairs, "and please excuse my appearance. I wasn't expecting visitors, and as you know . . . things are a little chaotic right now."
"Please," said the man. "We're the ones who should be apologizing. Unfortunately, it's hard to send ahead an intent to visit these days."
"Unfortunately," Jaime said wryly as they flipped their coat tails out behind them and sat in what might have been an orchestrated movement. Used to working together. Both man and woman were of medium build and medium height and neutral coloring; her light brown hair showed highlights not found in his, but was cut in a similar style; he had faint freckles nearly lost in the tan of his skin tone and she did not.
Utterly unremarkable.
And at the same time . . . it made her uneasy that they should want to be that way. She suddenly understood entirely why Cesna had looked so puzzled and wary. She gave the tray and its contents a slight nudge toward them and said, "Given the effort you've made to get here, I won't waste any of your time. How can I help you?"
In words so light and smooth Jaime almost missed their import, the woman replied, "You can tell us where Arlen is."
At first she just blinked at them—and then her anger rose, overwhelming her sense of propriety. She scowled. "Have you come all this way just to be cruel? Because you can just turn around and go right back to Chesba with the news that I kicked you out on your—"
The man raised a hand, glancing at his companion. "Time is not so short that we can't do a better job of approaching the matter than that." He reached for the pitcher and poured himself a glass of what, by the color, was a bitter spice-bark tea to which Jaime had never grown accustomed but which seemed to be available at most business functions. "We have, of course, heard the recent dispatch news regarding the Council. The truth of the matter is that Chesba isn't sure it is the truth of the matter. It's one of the things we're here to find out."
"If it weren't true, what makes you think I would know?" Jaime said, not as graciously as she might in light of the man's attempt to appease her. She lightly rubbed the side of her nose—her slightly crooked nose, a reminder of just how ruthless wizardly politics in this country could get. Until her first arrival in Camolen, it had been straight. Straight and high-bridged and as Gallic as her name, a reflection of her naivete.
The last two years had wrung that naivete right out of her. She knew what people could do to each other, the things they could justify to themselves if they even bothered to justify them at all. So she was less gracious than she might have been, and quite probably more suspicious than she should have been.
That they took it in stride bothered her as much as anything. "Who more than you would?" said the man, somewhat apologetically.
"When it comes to Council business, Arlen is just as discreet as he's supposed to be," Jaime said. "I'm not even of Camolen, as you must know. When it comes down to it, Cesna, Natt, and Carey know more about his work than I do." As soon as she said it, she knew she'd made a mistake; the woman's head lifted, her eyebrows raising ever so slightly over unremarkable hazel eyes.
"That's a point," she said. "Perhaps we could speak to Carey. Chesba mentioned him, also."
Jaime gave a firm shake of her head. "No," she said. "He's busier than I am, trying to hold things together, and so far you've done nothing but waste my time—I'm not about to let you waste his. I'm not sure what information you're digging for, but if the Council's not dead, they surely have a good reason for making us think they are." Offhand, she couldn't think of one, though a little voice in her head sang at the thought that someone else believed Arlen might yet live. "I'm not about to second-guess them, and if Chesba wants to pursue his suspicions, he'll have to do it somewhere other than Anfeald."
The woman regarded her coldly; the man less so. Good cop, bad cop. Except they weren't cops at all. Then what, exactly? This world might be alien to her, but she'd been here long enough to know that the Landers used their individual precinct guard for enforcement and investigations, just as the council looked to the country-wide organization of peacekeepers. Spies, then? The Camolen CIA and KGB?
If so, then she doubted she could take anything they'd said at face value.
Unless, of course, they were simply and truly assistants to Chesba, poking and prodding where they didn't quite belong. She supposed if she were a lander during this crisis, she'd want to get her information from somewhere other than the general news dispatch the new Council had used to announce Camolen's loss.
While the woman had continued her cold regard, the man relaxed in his seat somewhat, ran a hand over hair that didn't need rearranging, and said with casual precision, "We know someone's been working magic here. Magic beyond Arlen's apprentices."
Caught flatly astonished for the second time in this conversation, Jaime nonetheless found herself recovering more quickly. Dayna's world-travel spell. She hadn't realized that her friend's quirky brilliance had brought her so far, that the spell had been beyond Natt and Cesna. She kept her reaction on the inside, showing Chesba's people nothing more than a mild shrug. "Which has what to do with what? If it had been Arlen, you would have recognized his touch."
The man shrugged. "Signatures have been distorted before. We learned that last summer, as I know you're aware."
This time his outrageousness made her laugh out loud. "You think Arlen would take mage lure to enhance his ability? The most powerful wizard in Camolen?"
"It might depend," the woman said, unaffected by Jaime's amusement, "on what he thought he was up against."
Jaime leaned her chin on her fist and looked at them both a moment. "You know," she said, "I've got things to do. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but I'm not interested in participating. I'll have someone escort you out." No doubt it was the ultimate rudeness to fail to offer them a night's lodging—winter roads with disrupted road crews, the day more than half gone, the travel booths non-functional . . .
Too bad.
Thanks to Cesna's eavesdropping, there was a burly man waiting outside the door by the time the two nondescript visitors gathered themselves and left the room. Jaime recognized him as one of the groundskeepers, but he acquitted himself well in his role as an unobtrusive bouncer. Cesna herself joined Jaime in the room a few moments later, offering her little more than a puzzled look.
"And to think," Jaime told her, "we were worried that they were here to scope the place out for a new wizard."
"Scope?" Cesna said, and then shook her head, apparently putting the word into context. "That may still come," she said. "I don't know what this was about. But I think you should know . . . while you were talking to them, one of the grooms came up to let me know they'd been seen coming out of the job room, and I could have sworn I heard someone upstairs. Nothing obvious was missing, but—"
"But our courier assignments are pretty much there for the world to see," Jaime said. "Well, so they know who we've got out on the road. They don't know what we're carrying—and even if they did, I can't think of anything eyes only out there today, anyway."
"They were asking about Carey," Cesna said. "There's enough information in that room for them to figure out he's not here . . . and we don't expect him to be here any time soon."
Jaime breathed a frustrated curse. "And can they really tell," she asked, not at all sure she wanted the answer, "just what kind of heavy-duty magic they felt?"
Cesna gave her head a quick shake, toying with the ends of her ponytail. "No," she said. But then she hesitated, mouth barely open.
"What?" Jaime said flatly.
"No one can pinpoint an exact spell," Cesna said reluctantly, "but they can identify things like the complexity and power involved in a spell. And there are only so many spells with the same combination of those elements as the world-travel spell."
Jaime felt suddenly tired; she closed her eyes, rubbing the lids gently with her fingers. She didn't know what her visitors had truly wanted, or what they'd walked away with . . . or even what they'd do with whatever they'd learned. But they hadn't been straight with her, and that was never a good sign. And—
Her head snapped up; she looked into Cesna's startled watery blue eyes. "They were in the stable," Jaime said. "They know the palomino's gone."
And like everyone else in Camolen, they knew that the palomino Ramble was the only living witness to what had happened.
"They could figure it out," she whispered. "Where Carey is . . . why he took the palomino . . ."
"Does it matter?" Cesna said, slowly sitting in a chair without taking her gaze from Jaime's.
She hoped not. But—
"Only," she said, "if they don't want anyone else to know what Ramble knows."