Dangerous Waters (65 page)

Zurenne couldn’t tell which of the mages promptly gagged Starrid with the linen again. She was merely grateful.

Could it really be that simple? This stupid, selfish man had taken out his petty resentments on her and her daughters, for the sake of whatever wrongs which he imagined he had endured at her dead husband’s decree?

Zurenne found that profoundly depressing, even amid the ruins of her home. Then she realised that particular rune definitely showed two faces. This knowledge was unexpectedly liberating. She had no faults to answer for here. She owed nothing more to this mean-spirited sneak-thief. She could spend her energies on those who deserved it, freely and guiltless.

‘As long as he quits the bounds of Halferan, I have no interest in punishing him further.’ She dismissed Starrid with a gesture of absolute finality. ‘If he sets foot in the barony again, then his life is forfeit and any man who takes it may claim his reward from me.’

The murmur which that provoked among the troopers satisfied Zurenne that her words would soon spread far and wide.

‘He is not welcome in Karpis,’ the baron said swiftly. ‘Any man seeing him should whip him on his way.’

‘And in Licanin.’ The grey-haired lord’s expression led Zurenne to suspect similar decrees would follow the length and breadth of the realm once the Caladhrian parliament next met.

Old Fitrel stepped forward, unconsciously squaring his shoulders as he addressed the wizard Tornauld. ‘By your leave, master mage? The keys?’

Tornauld grinned and the shackles simply dropped from Starrid’s hands. Zurenne could swear she heard him whimper even through the linen gag.

‘You can be on your way,’ Fitrel said with relish. Seizing Starrid by the elbow, he propelled him towards the village road and the highway beyond.

Acknowledging Karpis and Licanin with a brief nod, Jilseth came over to Zurenne and Ilysh. ‘We’ll leave you to set about your business.’ She handed them each a silver necklace. A triangular sigil of their birth runes hung from the fine chain. ‘Hold the pendant tight and say my name. Then I’ll know you wish to speak to me.’

‘My thanks.’ Zurenne could say nothing else, given that she would have to take up the merchant wizard’s offer to keep Halferan’s wealth in Hadrumal.

She looked at the coffers of coin and wondered exactly how much gold and silver they held. There did seem to be rather more of them than she recalled in Halferan’s strong rooms. Were the wizards paying her recompense for Minelas’s crimes? If so that was all well and good. They should help with more than merely the practicalities of clearing up this devastation.

She caught sight of Baron Karpis, thin-lipped with dissatisfaction. Let him try claiming dominion over Halferan, Zurenne thought with rising courage, when she had the means to summon advocates like that noble Caladhrian wizard so readily to hand.

‘My lady! My lady!’ Fitrel came running back through the roughly cleared wreckage of the gatehouse. ‘My lady! It’s the captain! It’s Captain Corrain!’

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-
O
NE

Halferan Manor, Caladhria

24th of Aft-Summer

C
ORRAIN VERY NEARLY
turned tail and ran. The shock of seeing Starrid shoved out into the road was only surpassed by his disbelief at hearing Fitrel shouting as he ran back inside the walls. Then he heard what the old man was bellowing.

He was calling out to their lady. Zurenne was alive? Corrain’s unwilling feet forced him closer. He saw the assembled men and horses, the Halferan coach in the desolation of the courtyard.

Then he saw the wizards. The lady wizard Jilseth and three more besides. Corrain stumbled to a halt, transfixed by the shimmer of magelight. He couldn’t go on. He couldn’t retreat. He could only stare at the unearthly radiance. He didn’t even glance at Starrid when the man staggered past, fleeing towards the high road leading to the woods and beyond.

‘Corrain? Lad? Where have you been?’ Fitrel was at his side, all anxious solicitude. ‘Poldrion forgive me, but we’d given you up for dead. Again!’ The old man tried for a grin to make a joke of his words.

Corrain couldn’t manage a hint of a smile, nor any attempt at reply. What a fool he’d been, to come back. He should have foreseen the possibility of finding someone, if only a stray tenant salvaging bricks for rebuilding.

He hadn’t really thought where his feet were taking him. What did it matter? Not a jot, once he’d walked out to Siprel Inlet and discovered that greedy Mandarkin, Anskal, had already used his magic to collect the treasure he’d cached in the mud. Corrain couldn’t even reclaim that fragment of his honour. He had hoped to share out the coin somehow, to salve Halferan’s hurts in their dead lord and lady’s names.

He should have kept on walking northward, to Ensaimin and beyond until oblivion claimed him in some distant wilderness. What a fool he had been. If he had never come back, if no one had seen him, they could have believed him safely dead. There was no hope for that now.

But Corrain couldn’t find it in him to resist as Fitrel led him inside the ruined manor. Incredibly, he saw Lady Zurenne and Lady Ilysh standing hand in hand close to the shrine door. He blinked, unable to believe the sight before him.

‘My husband!’ The girl’s triumphant cry rang back from the manor’s enclosing wall.

Amid the stir around the courtyard which that claim caused, Corrain only had eyes for Zurenne. He walked slowly towards her. This felt like a dream. Surely he would wake to find himself cold and stiff in the marshes. Unless everything dissolved into the nightmares that pursued him as relentlessly as Poldrion’s demons, when he finally sank into exhaustion every second or third night.

‘Where have you been?’ Zurenne looked at him, mystified. ‘What have you done?’

The words came unbidden. ‘My best. My oath.’

Shocked to hear himself speaking, Corrain clamped his jaw shut. This wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t about to admit to all that he had done this summer.

Not in front of a gaggle of mages studying him with keen interest. If the lady wizard Jilseth looked fit to drop, those other three looked as sharp as freshly honed blades.

Corrain’s wits felt as dull as a jug handle. How utterly deluded he had been, to ever imagine he could outwit a wizard.

‘Where is your companion?’ Zurenne looked to see if anyone followed him. ‘Kusint?’

‘Gone back to his own folk, my lady.’ Corrain managed to force out that half-truth. Could he tell Zurenne the whole of it, once they were alone? He quailed at the thought of her disappointment and of her contempt when she learned what depths he finally had stooped to.

Lord Licanin stepped forward, his gaze penetrating. Corrain hadn’t even registered his presence. ‘What of— your ambitious plans when you took that galley northwards? To save us all from the corsairs?’

Licanin knew, Corrain realised. He knew that Corrain had promised to bring back a Soluran wizard, believing that Hadrumal’s mages were no more use than a broken reed.

Corrain saw Zurenne colour as she looked apprehensively at Licanin. The grey-haired baron didn’t see. He was looking covertly at Lord Karpis. Karpis looked merely bewildered by this turn of events.

Those wizards flanking Jilseth were regarding him with close interest. What did they know? Corrain had no notion, and why were they standing beside a whole stack of strong boxes? That was a puzzle and a half. Were they buying Lady Zurenne’s silence about all Hadrumal’s offences against her with the coin to rebuild Halferan?

Corrain cudgelled his sluggish wits. If Karpis didn’t know of Corrain’s boastful intention to find a wizard and bring back salvation, then he must not betray Zurenne’s agreement to that foolhardy endeavour.

‘I did what I could, my lady.’ He stared into her eyes, hoping she would read something of his efforts into those lame words.

‘You told my captains how the corsairs ride the tides. You told them where to trap them.’ Lord Karpis spurred his horse forward. ‘That’s all well and good and we have chased them off for now, but the sailing season is far from over. What have you to say to that?’

Corrain could hear the fear in the man’s voice. Much as he would have liked to leave him prey to doubt, he saw the same dread in Ilysh’s eyes.

He managed a faint smile for the girl. ‘They won’t be back.’ Anskal had promised him that much and the Mandarkin mage did owe him his life, never mind any gratitude for the gold he’d won.

‘How can you be certain?’ demanded Zurenne.

Corrain choked on the prospect of admitting what he’d done. Besides, with any luck, Anskal was already dead. He groped for another half-truth.

‘The rainstorms that come up from the south will reach their islands any day now, and besides—’ he broke off as Ilysh’s gasp of relief pierced him to the heart.

‘Thank you.’ The girl held out her hands.

She looked so like his dead lord that he couldn’t bear it. Corrain sank to his knees. His legs could no longer support him. He pressed Ilysh’s soft hands to his forehead and wept.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-
T
WO

Trydek’s Hall, Hadrumal

25th of Aft-Summer

‘I
S HE A
broken man?’ Planir’s query wasn’t without compassion.

‘That remains to be seen. He is mightily humbled.’ Jilseth was waiting for the Archmage to ask if she were a broken wizard. Not that he’d ever be so tactless, but she was increasingly convinced that was the essence of her situation.

Planir leaned back in his comfortable chair. They were in the Archmage’s private sitting room. Jilseth had no doubt that any rumours about the two of them spending time behind closed doors now would have nothing to do with him tumbling her.

She’d put her money on Ely if anyone was taking bets on who exactly had betrayed her current distress to the fascinated gossips of Hadrumal’s wine shops.

‘There’s no rumour in Caladhria of any magic being used against the corsairs.’ Elbows on the chair’s arms, Planir steepled his fingers. ‘Rafrid, Tornauld and Canfor haven’t heard so much as a whisper, not even in Halferan.’