City of Sorcery (12 page)

She did not know if Peter was convinced, but he had reason to know she had always told him the truth. She hoped he knew she always would. They exchanged a few more commonplaces and parted in friendly fashion. But as Magda walked across the city to the Guild-house, she wondered if that was why Lexie had chosen to attend her lecture.

A few days later, as Magda was leaving the HQ, Doria joined her at the Gates.

“Are you going to the Guild-house? I will go with you. I have a message from my mother for Jaelle n’ha Melora.”

“Let me take it for you,” Magda said, glancing at the sky. “It will save you a long walk in the rain.”

Doria colored slightly. “I am sorry - Rafaella said I was to give it only to Jaelle herself.”

Magda shrugged. There was a time when she and Rafaella had actually been friends, but she could never count on the other woman’s friendliness. She would become accustomed to thinking of her as friendly, even presume on it a little - then discover without warning that Rafi was behaving as if she disliked her. But since she genuinely respected and admired Rafaella, she accepted her as Jaelle’s friend, if not her own.

The two women set off side by side, walking swiftly, the hoods of their capes drawn against the rain. “Are you staying much longer in the city, Margali?”

“I hope not. There is really not much for me to do here. I know Jaelle would like to go back to work with Rafi, and Rafaella would like that too, but that would have to be her own decision.”

They turned into the square where the Guild-house stood. Doria was about to ring the bell when the door opened and Keitha stormed down the steps, swearing aloud.

“Keitha, what’s the matter?”

“Doria? Oh - well - it’s not your fault, but when I see your mother again - “

“What? What
is
the matter, Keitha?”

“I leased a horse from Rafaella, since I have none of my own, and sometimes, when I am summoned to a confinement outside the City walls, I must have one. I wanted to make it a formal arrangement, but she said, no, she had a dozen ponies in the stable, eating their heads off, not getting enough exercise, and I was welcome to use one whenever I needed one to ride.”

“And you are angry with her for that?”

“No,” said Keitha, “but I asked her to lease me one formally, just so this wouldn’t happen! Now all her horses are gone, and I must hire one in the market or go afoot.”

“Take mine,” Magda said, “you know which it is, Keitha, the black.” It had been a gift from Shaya’s father. “I won’t be wanting it tonight.”

“Thank you, Oath-sister.” Keitha hurried back into the house, and Magda and Doria watched her run toward the back door leading to the courtyard and stables. Doria whistled in surprise.

“What, all Rafaella’s horses gone? I can’t understand this! She must have had a - a large commission, unexpectedly, if she couldn’t leave a horse for Keitha! It was really very thoughtless of her not to warn Keitha before-hand.” Frowning, Doria went in search of Jaelle, while Magda went to hang her cloak, by now thoroughly soaked, on one of the drying racks in the kitchen.

By the time she had dried the wet cloak and hood, the women were already coming into the dining room, so Magda stayed to help put bowls and mugs on the table. When everyone had been served, she slipped into her customary seat beside Jaelle.

“Did Doria give you her message?”

“Yes, but I cannot imagine what can be in her mind,” Jaelle said. She looked troubled. “It was the last thing I expected after all these years. We aren’t children anymore.”

“What is wrong, Jaelle?” With her freemate so troubled, it was more than Magda could do to keep her resolve to stay entirely out of it.

“The message was only a few words, not even written down:
There is a letter for you in the old place
. Magda, that goes back a long way - to when I was only a little girl, Kindra’s fosterling. Kindra used to take me with her on long trips, and Rafi and I wouldn’t see each other for long periods of time. So we used to have a secret, private letter drop at the old saddlemaker’s in the Street of the Four Winds.”

Magda shrugged. “Why not? I suppose most children do that sort of thing at one time or another.”

“Rafaella wasn’t a child, she was older than I - but, well, I thought it wonderful that an older girl would play games with me. Rafi and I have always been - close. You know that.”

“Indeed I do,” Magda said. The sympathy she felt was very real. As a Terran child, isolated among Darkovans, she had always been an outsider.

“But now we are not children, we are not even young girls, I am a grown woman with a child of my own, and Rafaella is older than you are! Why should she revert to this childish nonsense?”

“Oh, Jaelle,” Magda said, “don’t worry so about it. Perhaps she wants to confide in you, or to assure herself that you are still close enough to her to do something silly and childish for her. A way of - re-establishing that old closeness. She doesn’t trust me not to come between you. “

“And that
is
silly and childish,” Jaelle said, still looking pale and troubled. “We’re
not
children, and does she truly think she can come between freemates? I am ashamed of her, Magda. She can hardly want me as a lover after all these years. But if she does not understand that I will always be her friend - then she is sillier than ever I thought her.”

“Don’t worry,” Magda reassured her, “you’ll see, she simply has something she wants to tell you privately.”

“But she ought to know I
always
respect her confidences,” Jaelle fretted. “I am really afraid she’s gotten herself into trouble of some sort - “

Magda shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so. If she felt free to leave the city and take all her horses, leaving poor Keitha to borrow mine - “

“What
?”

“Jaelle, didn’t you know?”

“No, all day I have been recopying some old archives for Mother Lauria. The paper on which they are written is disintegrating, because the ink they used in those days was so acid. They are only about a hundred years old, but they are falling to pieces. And I’ve nothing else to do here. So I’ve been shut up all day in the library - “

Briefly, Magda told the story.

“It’s really not like Rafi to be so thoughtless. What can she be thinking of?” Jaelle’s smooth forehead drew into lines of puzzlement. “I think I should go at once to the saddlemaker’s, Magda.”

“Tonight? You’re out of your mind,” Magda said. “Listen to the rain and wind out there!” It sounded like one of the summer gales which blow down through the pass from the Venza Mountains, striking Thendara with rain and high winds and sometimes, even in high summer, sleet or snow. Jaelle frowned, listening to the wind slamming the shutters against the windows.

“Whatever it is, Rafi is out in it.” She pushed aside the untouched piece of nut-cake on her plate and went toward the hall. Magda followed.

“You can’t go out alone in this weather on some hen-brained notion of Rafaella’s - “

Jaelle turned and caught her arm. “Come with me, then. I have a feeling that this may mean trouble, Magda - more trouble than Rafaella being jealous or wanting to play girl’s games.”

With a sigh of resignation, Magda nodded, and caught up the cloak she had so painstakingly dried. Camilla appeared in the hallway behind them.

“Going out? In this weather? Are you both quite mad?”

Jaelle told her what had happened. Her face was pale and drawn.

“Camilla, come with us. You are Rafi’s friend too.”

“As much as she will allow,” Camilla said. Sighing, she took down a battered old cape. “Let’s go.”

Wind and rain slammed into the hall as the three women went out into the night.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The rain poured down as the three women walked swiftly toward the marketplace. Magda was angry at herself for having allowed the hostilities between them to go on for so long. Jaelle’s small triangular face was hidden under her hood, but it seemed to Magda that she could see pale anger there.

Camilla strode beside them, gaunt and silent, and the rain sloshed in puddles under their feet and flapped their capes around their faces. The marketplace was empty, pools of icy water making a miniature landscape of lakes and small rocky shores. Stalls, tightly locked and boarded, rose like islands over those shores.

“She’s not here. The saddlemaker’s stall is closed,” Camilla said. “Come home, Jaelle, there’s nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow.”

“I know where the saddlemaker lives.” Jaelle spun abruptly on her heel, heading toward a dark side street. Camilla and Magda exchanged a single despairing glance and followed her.

Magda felt she would like to shake Rafaella until her teeth rattled. She was also angry at Jaelle, who was for catering to Rafaella by tearing off into the Old Town at this godforgotten hour.

The wind was icy, even through their capes, striking hard down the back of her neck. Magda spared a thought for Keitha, riding outside the city. But Keitha would be warm inside a house, with a good fire they would build up for heating water. Magda had never had the slightest wish to be a Medic or even a Renunciate midwife, but at least tonight Keitha knew where she was going and why and what she was going to do when she got there. And that was more than the others knew.

Jaelle stopped before a small weatherbeaten house, spoke briefly to someone who came to answer the bell, and after a time, a fattish old woman came to the door.

“Why, it’s our little Jaelle, and all grown up, aren’t you? Yes, your partner left you a letter, and I brought it home here, afraid, I was, someone would put it away somewheres I couldn’t find it. Now, dear me, where’d I leave it?” The woman dug in several of her capacious pockets like an owl trimming her feathers, hunching herself and digging about. “Ah, here we are - no, that’s an order for Lady D’Amato’s saddle. This - ah, yes, here you are,
chiya
, won’t you come in, and your friends too, and have some sweet cakes and cider by my fireside, like you used to?”

She held out a somewhat grimy fold of paper, sealed with a colored wafer.

“No, I thank you, I must try and catch up with Rafi before she is too far out of the city,” Jaelle said, and turned away, her mouth set into a grim line. Magda could see her scanning the letter’s front, but it was too dark to see or read.

“Here.” Camilla seized Jaelle’s shoulder, steered her toward the spill of light from the open door of a wineshop on the corner. The place was humming with talk, crowded with mercenary soldiers and Guardsmen, but though some greeted Camilla with a nod and a word or two, none of them attempted to hinder the tall
emmasca
as she led her friends to a table at the rear. A thick-bodied lamp was swinging over the table. Camilla quieted Jaelle’s attempt at protest with a word.

“They know me here. No one will bother us. Sit down and read your letter, Shaya.” She jerked her head at the round-bodied woman who hurried toward them. “Just wine punch, and privacy at this table, Chella.” Camilla flung a coin on the table, and as the woman scurried off to obey her, said deliberately to Magda, “She’s not much now, but you should have seen her ten years ago. Skin like rich cream, and the softest neck I ever tried to bite. Her hair was long enough to sit on, then, and the color - it made you want to hang it with silver, and believe me, she knew it. But she’s a good soul for all that.”

The woman, coming back with the hot wine, giggled softly and ran her fingertips lightly across Camilla’s hand. Camilla smiled up at her and said, “Another time, Chella. My friends and I need to talk. Make sure nobody gets any notion that we want company, will you, Chella?”

Jaelle tore open Rafaella’s letter and moved it under the light. As she read, she frowned, and finally said, “She’s gone raving mad.” She tossed the letter to Magda.

Reluctantly, Magda took the letter and read:

Dearest Shaya,

I’ve been trying to get you to come back to work with me long enough. Now it’s time to stop talking about it, and do something. I’m leaving this at the old place as a way of reminding you of the good times, but this is bigger in every way. There might even be a chance at the special expedition we used to talk about. Lieutenant Anders thinks she is using me for the big discovery she thinks
she
can make. It’s the other way round, really. But I’ll give the woman value for her money, and so will you.