The Prodigal Mage: Fisherman’s Children Book One (46 page)

“Upset,” he muttered, and slapped the reins hard against the carriage horses’ backs, to stir them into a faster trot. “Is that what you call it?”

Sitting beside him was like sitting next to a furnace. The power in him burned so hot, so bright. He’d never burned like this before West-wailing harbour. She thought she could find him blindfolded, in the middle of the night.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” said Rafel, accusing. “Could you always feel it, Deenie? Were you part of their lie?”

“I’ve never lied to you, Rafe!” she protested. “Not ever.”

“You never told me you could feel things. That’s the same as lying. When it’s about me, it’s the same.”

Now he sounded like a sprat. Like he was working up to a tantrum.

“Rafe, I never lied. I never knew. Not about this.”

He sighed, a gusty sound full of pain. “The only reason
I
know is ’cause Da needed my power. If we hadn’t gone to Westwailing, chances are I’d have never found out. Chances are I’d have died an old man, like Darran, and never known what was in me. What I could do.”

The cloudy sky was getting lower. The air felt suddenly damp. Any ticktock it was going to start raining again, and once it started raining she’d get called back into the carriage.
Delicate,
Da and Mama said she was.

And I s’pose I am. But I hate it.

“I’d be angry too, Rafe, if it was me,” she said quickly. “Even if I knew why they didn’t tell me. Even if I understood it was ’cause they were scared for me. I’d be mad.”

“Hah,” he said, hunching his shoulders. “Don’t you go wheedling me, Deenie. I ain’t in the mood.”

“I’m not!”

“You are. You never get angry.” He nudged his elbow to her ribs. “You should try it, sometime. Prob’ly do you a world of good.”

She didn’t think so. It was bad enough feeling other people’s crossness. “What are you going to do, Rafe? You can’t stay gnarly forever.”

“Can’t I?” He slapped the reins again, and the carriage horses increased their pace. “I’m thinking I’ll give it a try.”

“Oh,
Rafe
…”

“Don’t fret on it,” he said sharply. “It’s not your problem, is it?”

In a way it was. Because what he felt, she felt, whether she wanted to or not. And what he felt, so hot and hard, was making her feel ill.

“They love you, Rafe,” she murmured. “How can you punish them for loving you? It’s not fair.”

He glared at the carriage horses’ broad brown backs. “How can they love me and lie to me? Is
that
fair?”

Poor Rafe. He wanted this to be simple. He wanted him to be right, and them to be wrong, and no uncomfortable middle ground between the two. But nothing in life was ever not messy. She’d learned that much from all the things she could feel. She let her head fall against his shoulder, and waited for him to shrug her away. But he didn’t. Her eyes prickled with tears, there was so much pain in him.

And then it started to rain, and Mama called her inside.

“Order! Order! I call this meeting of the General Council to
order!
” Speaker Shifrin bellowed, banging his gavel almost to breaking. “If you do not come to order I shall
disband these proceedings!
”

The General Council ignored him. Defeated, frustrated, Shifrin collapsed onto his seat, tossed his gavel to his desk and sank his head into his hands. All around him the tempest raged on, accusations and refutations and lamentations and disarray.

Asher considered shocking them all to silence with a thunderbolt or three. But only briefly. Things were bad, but they weren’t so far downhill he had to tell these shriekin’ fools the truth about his Weather Magic. Not today.

And Barl bloody willing, not ever.

But in the meantime there were no reason he had to put up with
this
malarkey. Two days after reaching home from Westwailing and he was pretty much recovered from his exertions there. Kerril’s mucky possets had done the trick. He still got tired a mite easy. Still felt a few aches and pains in his bones. And when he closed his eyes to sleep he could hear the ravenous whirlpool, roaring…

But it didn’t kill me. Nor Rafel, neither. And them it did kill, well, we did our best to save the poor bastards. I ain’t about to blame either of us for them.

Others might. Others did. Not Arlin Garrick, not yet any road. Word was he’d collapsed in private grief. But Garrick’s friend, Sarle Baden. He was makin’ a fuss. Fernel bloody Pintte. Natter, natter, natter to anyone who’d lissen. But so far they’d done nowt official, and if they changed their minds—well, they’d best look out. Because he’d warned ’em, he’d bloody
told
’em, don’t muck about with Dragonteeth Reef.

But there ain’t no tellin’ nowt to a yellow-headed mage. Or any Olken as arrogant as Pintte.

He looked at Council Speaker Shifrin, expecting him to bang his gavel again and restore order, but Rufus had given up trying to assert his authority. So he looked at Dorana’s mayor, ’cause Pellen wouldn’t have put up with this folderol for two minutes, but Fernel Pintte were too busy brangling with Sarle Baden, wearing his little bandage round his forehead like a bloody badge of honour.

Scowling, Asher shoved to his feet.

Down to me, again, eh? Why’s it always come down to me?
Shouldering his way through clots of fratching Olken and Doranen, he fetched up at the Speaker’s table and rapped his knuckles hard upon its document-crowded top.

“What y’doin’, Rufus? Be you the Speaker or ain’t you?”

Rufus glared. “You want to knock sense into their idiot heads, Asher? You’re welcome to try.” He hauled his chain of office over his head and threw it down on the meeting’s laboriously handwritten agenda. “I’m done with it.”

“Oh no you bloody ain’t,” he retorted. “ ’Cause if you quit, some fool’s like to ask
me
to take over. Now, you put that bloody chain back on, and I’ll get ’em to quit their cacklin’.”

He clambered his way onto Shifrin’s Speaker’s table. Summoned his bell from Justice Hall, boldly using Doranen magic, and raised it clanging over his head.

“Shut your traps!” he bellowed. “The whole sinkin’ bloody lot of you!” One by one they fell silent, the Olken and the Doranen chosen by their guilds and their districts to meet in General Council once a month to thrash out issues of importance to Lur. When at last the only sound in the chamber was the bell’s clamour, he put it down on the table. Raked his jaundiced gaze over them, and slowly shook his head.

“You lot, you be a bloody disgrace. Reckon the folks as sent you here want you carryin’ on like
this?
Raisin’ hackles and pointin’ fingers and lookin’ for somebody to blame? What’s the use, eh? Blamin’ each other ain’t goin’ to fix our troubles.”

Sheepish sideways glances. Gazes dropped to the floor. Hands pushed into pockets and shawls tugged tight. Shamefaced the lot of ’em, and so they bloody should be.

“I can’t deny we got ourselves a bad situation,” he continued, staying on the table. “With them whirlpools and waterspouts springin’ up like weeds everywhere between the reef and Lur’s coastline, and every bloody fishin’ fleet in the kingdom stuck at anchor or smashed to kindling. We got a lot of families without their livelihoods just now.”

“It’s worse than that, Asher,” said Sarle Baden. “Without the fishing fleets’ catches and not enough fish in our rivers and lakes to make up the difference, and the wheat and barley crops ruined almost to a field, stock drowned or dropping with footrot—and there’s a pestilence been found in my apple orchards, I’ve just had word—Lur faces a crisis the likes of which has not been seen for centuries.”

Agitated muttering from Olken and Doranen alike. Then Bediah Threeve, come up to Dorana from Westwailing ’specially for this meeting, tucked his thumbs into his braces and rocked on his heels.

“Are you sure there ain’t a chance you can fix Lur’s harbours, Asher? You and your boy?”

Me and my boy
. He felt the words prick him, like spurs. He’d hardly laid eyes on Rafe since Westwailing Harbour. Days and days of silence and avoiding each other. ’Cause they had too much to say and no bloody way of sayin’ it, all choked up with grief and guilt and anger and blame. Dathne told him not to push. Give it time. And he was trying. He was. Only—

“Asher!” said Threeve. “Can you fix them? We need to know.”

The Council chamber was dead quiet, like a crypt. Every gaze on him, every breath held.

He stared at Westwailing’s mayor. “
Fix ’em,
Bediah? No. You got told in Westwailing—ain’t no-one can fix ’em, which be why I said don’t fuddle with the bloody reef in the first place.”

And they didn’t like hearing
that,
but so what? It were the truth and he weren’t about to swallow it ’cause some folk found it inconvenient. Or ’cause Rodyn Garrick and his friends had died of their foolishness.

Frustrated, he stared around the gathered faces. “You think I ain’t gutted by what’s happened? Y’think I don’t want to snap m’fingers and make them whirlpools and waterspouts disappear? But I
can’t,
so best you stop hangin’ your hats on the hope I can.” He raised a warning finger then. “And my boy can’t, neither, so don’t none of you get the bright idea of bailin’ Rafel up and fratchin’ at him till he says he’ll try just to make you go away.”

Because you bloody would, and he would, and I’ll fettle every last one of you if you put my son at risk
.

Rufus shifted uneasily in his seat. “Yes. About Rafel, Asher…”

More mutters and whispers. Exchanged glances. Fresh tension.

“Aye, Rufus,” he said, sighing. “For once the City’s tattlemongers be right. Rafe’s got a drop of Doranen magic in him, like his da.”

Sarle Baden fixed him with a piercing pale grey stare. “You kept it a secret.”

“That an accusation, Lord Baden?”

“An observation.”

“Aye, well, here be another one,” he said, letting his temper show. “My family ain’t none of your bloody business.” He looked around the crowded chamber. “And that goes for the rest of you. If it be good enough that
I
got Doranen magic, you better bloody believe it be good enough for my son. And anyone who says different, you’ll answer to me. Now, are we here to talk on tacklin’ Lur’s problems or do we turn round and go home?”

“There’s only one answer to our woes,” Fernel Pintte declared. “This Council must rescind the prohibition on sending expeditions over Barl’s Mountains.”

“Why?” demanded Sarnia Marnagh, one of the few in the chamber who’d kept her seat. “So you can forcibly eject all the Doranen from Lur? Chase us out of the only home we’ve ever known? Is that your intention, Meister Mayor? To start a Doranen purge, and save yourselves at our expense?”

Her angry question ignited fresh uproar, Olken shouting at Doranen, Doranen waving clenched fists at Olken. Asher, closing his eyes, felt a stirring in the air. Anger and power were a dangerous combination.

Barl bloody save us all. Reckon we’ll cut each other’s throats long afore we got a chance to starve to death.

No point ringing the bell again. He needed to be a bit more
definite
this time. Recalling a spell he’d read in Durm’s privy notebook, he muttered its words, drew its sigils, and watched every chair in the chamber leap as though come to life. Watched them rattle and bang and make a bloody good racket, thudding and scraping against the mosaiced floor. Felt a grim satisfaction to hear the startled cries, the squeals of fright, to see the wrath of Barl put into every last fratchin’ bloody one of ’em.

Wheezing Barlsman Jaffee, who’d tipped out of his seat and was frowning gently in reproof, reached up and tapped him on the knee. “I think you’ve made your point, Asher,” he said, breaking the shocked silence. “Now take advantage of the moment and get these fools to listen. For if we don’t take action quickly, I do fear Lur is doomed.”

F
or once the wittering ole Barlsman were offering pithy advice. Still stood on the Speaker’s table, he fisted his hands on his hips. “You heard Barlsman Jaffee,” he said loudly. “Now sit down again, the lot of you.”

Olken and Doranen stared at him, unwilling to obey.

“Plant your bloody arses or I swear I’ll start throwin’ the furniture!”