"We need a carrying chair." She held the coin out of his eager reach. "Quick as you like."

"Quick as spitting, Mistress." The urchin darted away.

Branca studied Aremil as he rested on his crutches. "I take it your condition stems from birth?"

"It does." Aremil decided to turn the conversation on her. "I take it an accident crippled your father?"

"A bolting team of brewer's horses." Branca grimaced. "The dray's wheels crushed both limbs on his right side. The surgeon had no choice but to amputate."

Aremil winced. "He must have been a strong man to survive. I imagine you despaired of him."

"He was only in his nineteenth summer." Branca slid him a sideways glance. "Long before he met my mother, and I am the second of seven children. He's never seen any reason not to lead a vigorous life."

Aremil coloured and cast around for a less awkward topic. "So what can you tell me about ancient enchantments?"

"What do you know of aetheric magic?" Branca countered.

"Let's assume I know nothing." Aremil saw the youth approaching with two chair-men hurrying behind him.

"You know something of elemental magic, I take it?" Branca paused as the open carrying chair arrived.

"Wizardry stems from an inborn ability to perceive and to influence the four basic elements of air, earth, fire and water." Aremil didn't want her thinking he was a complete fool. The crossing-boy tried to help Aremil take his seat. He waved him away peevishly. "The mageborn have a particular affinity with one such element. Through study and training, a wizard learns to wield magic involving them all."

"In rare cases a mage might have a double affinity." Branca handed the boy his penny and smiled at the chair-men. "We're going to the physic garden in Hellebore Lane, if you please."

As the men took Aremil up, she walked beside the chair, quite relaxed. "Magecraft requires magebirth and it's a magic of the physical world. Artifice is a magic of the mind. In some instances, of many minds. Aetheric enchantments depend on the adept's mental resilience first and foremost, but an advanced practitioner can draw on the strength of those close by, sometimes irrespective of their willingness. Ancient scholars concluded that something must link us all, some medium that an adept can use to take thoughts from another's mind, to see through another's eyes, to hear with their ears. They called this 'aether'."

"You can do such things?" Aremil wondered what the chair-men were making of all this. Their pace hadn't missed a step. Were they even listening?

"An advanced adept can. In theory, anyone can learn the secrets of Artifice, but doing so requires rigorous mental discipline. Crucially, only a certain amount can be achieved by reading enchantments aloud. Those who cannot memorise incantations reach a point where they simply cannot progress further. Other things can hinder proficiency. Emotion for one."

Aremil nodded. "Wizards risk losing control of their affinity if they're angry or grief-stricken, or in raptures." Everyone knew how mageborn youths and maidens were shipped off to Hadrumal after they'd set a chimney on fire or brought down a hailstorm on a hay crop.

Branca smiled. "It's hard to wreak inadvertent havoc with aetheric enchantments." She looked at him more seriously. "You may be a worthy scholar but this may be beyond you. Extremes of emotion and sensation, pain, or even the mildest fever make Artifice impossible. An adept must rise above all physical discomfort."

Aremil refused to be deterred. "I have spent my life doing that."

Branca acknowledged that with a nod. "There are other hindrances. Those deaf to music are incapable of Artifice, since even the most minor charms must be spoken with precise timbre and rhythm."

"I like music a great deal," Aremil assured her.

"Good. So do I. But however fine your feeling for pitch and melody may be, the hesitation in your speech may present problems," she mused.

"Let's not assume that before I've made some attempt," Aremil said curtly.

"Indeed." Branca nodded. "Do you play runes?"

"Seldom." The triangular bones were too cursed difficult for him to pick up. "I prefer white raven." Aremil wondered at the change of subject.

"I should have guessed that." A half-smile lifted the corner of Branca's generous mouth. "Can you at least tell me the set of runes that symbolise weather?"

So now he was being treated as a student. Did that mean she was going to teach him? Aremil cleared his throat. "The Storm; the Calm; the North Wind from the mountains; the South Wind from the sea."

"Good. The runes are an ancient collection of symbols," she continued. "The Forest Folk have used them for divination since time out of mind and the Mountain Men believe they were devised by their own gods, Maewelin and Misaen."

She could treat him like a student but not like the dullest pencil in the box. "The Mountain Men still have practitioners of aetheric magic among them."

"Who told you that?" Branca's eyes betrayed the intensity of her interest.

"A Mountain Man." Aremil permitted himself a carefully controlled smile. "Who's travelling with my friend. I can let him know you'd welcome an introduction. What have runes to do with any of this?"

Branca looked thoughtfully at him before continuing. "Those for wind and weather also symbolise the four aspects of aetheric magic. We find such images woven into many incantations and they consistently relate to the different uses of Artifice. We also find the runes for music cropping up--the Horn, the Drum, the Chime and the Harp--but those relationships are less clear cut. Let's stay with the weather runes for the moment.

"Much aetheric magic is concerned with the power of the mind as it relates to the physical world. Imagine stormy gusts, all unseen, nevertheless shaking trees, raising waves, stirring fires. Aetheric enchantments can be used to move things, to break them, to affect them in all manner of ways. By contrast, the Calm symbolises the adept's ability to remain unaffected by physical forces--to stay warm in the depths of winter, for example." She looked up at the clear blue sky wryly. "Or to stay cool, however hot the sun."

"And the North and South Winds?" Uncomfortably hot, Aremil wouldn't have minded a cooling breeze. "What enchantments do they relate to?"

"The other half of Artifice pertains to the influence an adept can have on another person's mind. Someone need have no understanding or even knowledge of aetheric magic to be susceptible to it. Though it seems that a common background or some other shared understanding makes it easier to work enchantments on another person," Branca observed. "The harsher these magics are, the more obvious, the more they're tied to the North Wind."

Aremil saw how this might be so. "The cold, dry winds that roll down from the mountains can be most destructive."

"While the South Wind is seen as benevolent, bringing rain and good harvests." Branca was looking serious again. "All the enchantments woven around that rune are subtle and not necessarily benign. The ability to read another's thoughts, to sift through their memories and desires, even to plant ideas in their mind? Such enchantments could be horribly abused without the victim even knowing what had happened."

Before Aremil could think how to respond to that, Branca halted. "And here we are."

"All the way to the gate, Madam Scholar?" the foremost chair-carrier asked.

Aremil saw a gravelled path leading away between two buildings newly built in the most severe and Rationalist architectural style. The dark granite that made Vanam so forbidding on a dull day sparkled in the bright sunshine.

"This will be fine, thank you." As the men set the chair down, Branca reached into her purse.

"Up you come, Master." The rearmost man lifted Aremil to his feet with impersonal efficiency. As soon as he tucked Branca's coin into an inside pocket, his forward counterpart offered his crutches.

"Thank you." Aremil was excruciatingly embarrassed. How could he have been so foolish as to come out without money? He settled himself on his crutches and attempted a casual manner. "So, madam, shall we proceed?"

Branca waited until the chair-men were out of earshot. "Are you interested in learning how to influence others without them even realising it?" she asked bluntly.

"No, and besides, wouldn't the mentors have something to say about that?" Aremil replied. "I cannot see Mentor Tonin allowing such things."

"Who's to tell him?" Branca countered. "If the victim's left all unawares."

"The Archmage is content to leave such powerful magic undisciplined?" Regardless of what Charoleia had said, Aremil still wondered about that.

"He has little choice, given that wizards are the only people besides the musically deaf who seem quite incapable of working any Artifice." Branca laughed without much humour. "Which isn't to say he's ignorant of what's been discovered about Artifice. You may not have heard, but a group of mages closely tied to the Archmage have founded a new scholarly hall."

"Yes, I have heard," Aremil said crisply. "On the islands of Suthyfer in the midst of the Eastern Ocean."

"Quite so." Branca wasn't bothered by his tart answer. "Mentor Tonin has spent much of this last year there, working closely with those adepts from the Old Empire who were found sleeping in the rediscovered lands. They have taught us so much. That's as may be. I imagine the wizards in Suthyfer keep the Archmage very well informed of all such developments," she concluded wryly.

"I imagine so." Aremil wondered what that might mean for his plans, and those of his co-conspirators.

Branca looked at him and folded her arms. "Mentor Tonin has been good enough to recommend me to the mage-masters and adepts in Suthyfer's new hall. I am not about to pass up the opportunity of travelling there in favour of teaching you. Not unless you tell me exactly what secret you're hiding." Her brown eyes challenged him.

Chapter Eighteen.

Aremil The Physic Garden, in Vanam's Upper Town, 22nd of For-Summer of For-Summer

"It's extremely hot." Aremil looked up at the cloudless sky. "If there's somewhere we could sit to continue this conversation, I'd be grateful."

"There are plenty of cool corners in the physic garden." Branca indicated the gravelled path.

Aremil began making his way cautiously along the potentially treacherous surface. "What are these splendid buildings?"

"That's the new Apothecaries' Hall." Branca waved to the right. "Naturally, the School of Physicians wasn't going to be outdone by mere poultice-makers, so they've been rebuilding. Thankfully everyone saw sense and left the gardens untouched."

At the far end of the path, Aremil saw a wrought-iron fence protecting an expanse of trees and plants, some flowering, some merely leafy. People were walking to and fro, some dawdling at their ease in twos and threes, others striding with single-minded purpose.

"I've never been here." As far as Aremil was concerned, doctors and apothecaries came to his door. Only paupers risked the attentions of their half-trained pupils at the university's back doors.

"You're not denying that you have a secret," Branca observed.

Aremil was looking at the kissing gate at the end of the path. He had no hope of negotiating that on crutches.

"A moment, Master." A liveried porter appeared and bent to find a latch.

Aremil saw how a hinged section made a cunningly concealed gate in the fence. A metallic squeal from the hinges turned heads all across the lawn and Aremil braced himself for incautious expressions of revulsion and hastily turned shoulders.

To his surprise, few people gave him more than a cursory glance. Only a youthful maiden halted, eyes wide with shock, the back of her hand pressed to her lips.

"Do you suppose she's stupid enough to think your condition is catching?" Branca asked conversationally as she went through the kissing gate. "It's not as if you're covered in sores."

Her laugh, like her question, was loud enough to be heard by the girl, who blushed furiously and hurried away.

"I wouldn't care to guess." Angry humiliation knotted Aremil's stomach regardless.

"This way."

Branca indicated a path running along the side of the garden and Aremil advanced carefully, his shoulders aching. The tall trees cast welcome shade and thankfully it wasn't far to an empty seat beneath a bower thick with honeysuckle.

"It is hot." The five bells of noon rang out across the upper town as Branca pulled off her linen cap and shook out her hair. It was lighter than Aremil had expected, touched with hints of blonde as it fell to her shoulders. She undid the plain pin securing her cotton wrap and fanned herself with one corner.

Aremil lowered himself carefully down and wished he could unbutton his doublet or at least loosen his shirt collar. He propped his crutches against the bench and noticed that the honeysuckle spread up a tall stone wall enclosing a separate space within the wider confines of the physic garden. "What's in there?"

"Poisonous plants." Branca left her wrap loose around her shoulders. "Some apothecaries' preparations require minute amounts of herbs that are deadly in any quantity." She grinned at Aremil's astonishment. "The poisons garden is always locked and there's broken glass embedded in the top of that wall. There are always doctors' pupils and apothecaries' apprentices around, never mind the gardeners."

"Even in the middle of the night?" Aremil drew a deep breath and found the scented air unexpectedly invigorating.

"I assume there's a watch kept since Vanam doesn't suffer epidemics of poisoning." Branca shifted to look directly at him. "So, what is this secret of yours? Why is it so important that you study Artifice under someone of Lescari blood?"

Aremil had been thinking how best to answer her as they had made their way to the seat. "Do you know why so many Lescari become apothecaries rather than physicians?"

Branca folded her hands in her lap. "I can guess, but why don't you tell me?"

"Money," Aremil said bluntly. "Studying medicine requires funds for several years of dedicated scholarship. While an apothecary learns, he earns his room and board as a condition of his apprenticeship. Lescari are always poorer than the people of Ensaimin. Even those who've lived in Vanam for generations struggle to lift themselves out of poverty because the misery of their kith and kin back in Lescar constantly leeches away their coin."

"Not mine," she assured him. "I see enough suffering in Vanam's gutters. If I ever have coin to spare, that's where I spend it."

"Then you are an exception," Aremil said. "Most Lescari-born in Vanam constantly try to salve the suffering of those they've left behind. They don't begrudge the coin, but they'd certainly welcome peace in Lescar and an end to such a drain on their purses. So some of us living here in exile have decided it's time to put an end to the senseless waste of lives and livelihoods, and every selfish duke be cursed."

"You expect aetheric enchantment to mend a situation that's gone unresolved for twenty generations?" Branca stared at him, astonished. Then she looked more suspicious. "You want to convince the dukes to abandon their hopes of the High King's crown by means of Artifice?"

"Could we?" Aremil looked levelly at her.

"No." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't believe there's an adept alive who could unpick an ambition so deeply woven into someone's life. To do that to all the dukes and all their families, with lasting effect?" She shook her head. "It couldn't be done."

That might dash Failla and Lady Derenna's hopes of a bloodless triumph, but Aremil wasn't surprised.

"Then it's just as well we have a different scheme. One which will be a great deal easier if we can use Artifice to contact each other rather than ciphered letters and courier pigeons."

"If Mentor Tonin hadn't assured me your wits are as sharp as your legs are weak, I'd say you were mad." Branca ran a hand through her hair.

Aremil ignored that remark. "If you have no interest in helping, can you introduce me to some adept whose Lescari blood still runs hot in his veins?"

"You really should get out more." She shook her tousled head. "You may move in circles where Lescari blood and Lescari rank still count for something. I don't. As for those still suffering in Carluse or Parnilesse or wherever else, if they find their lives so wretched, why don't they just leave to look for a better life elsewhere?"

"That's hardly so easy for the elderly or infirm." Aremil felt his anger twisting his face. He didn't care. "What of those burdened with children?"

"My father managed." Branca's tone hardened. "On crutches, with half an arm and still less of a leg. My mother's mother walked barefoot from Marlier, her husband murdered and her belly swelling with some rapist's child. She put all that behind her and made a new life, a new marriage and raised all her children as equals. None of my family cares a tinker's curse about my uncle's blood. None of my friends give a pennyweight's consideration to whether it's my mother or father who's Marlier- or Triolle-born. Down in the lower town, we're Lescari only in name. What of it?"

"What of it?" demanded Aremil. "When 'Lescari' is a byword for stupidity, for treachery and theft? However much you achieve, isn't 'Lescari' always hung around your neck like a brick to drown a puppy? Don't your friends have to be twice as good as any Vanam-born, just to stop such shackles holding them back? Wouldn't you all rather be free of such associations?"

"Your oratory is getting away from you." Branca's colour was rising, and not merely from the heat.

Aremil realised spittle was slipping from the corner of his mouth. He tried to swallow. "Peace in Lescar would prove we're not all such fools."

"You don't think offering hope is the greatest folly of all?" Branca looked away for a moment.

"You're refusing to help me?" Aremil wondered why Mentor Tonin had sent him this exasperating girl.