"Indeed, my lady. I am sorry to have kept you waiting for so long."

"The wait was no trouble. It sharpens the antic.i.p.ation."

"Indeed? Then I must make sure to keep you waiting more often." The King's tone seemed casual, but there was a tenseness about him that he had not evidenced whilst in the tavern with Golophin.

Jemilla threw off her dark, hooded cloak. Underneath she wore one of the tight-fitting dresses of the court. It emphasized the perfect lines of her collar-bones, the smoothness of the skin on her breastbone.

"I hope, my lord, that you have not been squandering yourself on one of the lower-city doxies. That would grieve me extremely."

She was ten years older than the King. Abeleyn felt the difference now as he met the dancing darkness of her eyes. He was no longer the ruler of a kingdom, the commander of armies. He was a young man on the brink of some glorious dispensation. It had always been this way with her. He half resented it. And yet it was the reason he was here.

The lady Jemilla unfastened the laces of her bodice whilst Abeleyn watched, fascinated. He saw the high, dark-nippled b.r.e.a.s.t.s spring out, red-marked where the tight clothing had imprisoned them.

Their quiet noises were hidden by the creak of leather and wood, the rattle of the iron-bound wheels, the clatter of the horses' progress. The carriage wound its leisurely way up Abrusio Hill towards the n.o.ble quarter, whilst down on the waterfront the gaudy riot of the pothouses and brothels continued to paint the hot night in hues of flesh and scarlet, and in the harbour the quiet ships floated stark and silent at their moorings.

The high clouds shifted; the stars wheeled overhead in the nightly dance of heaven. Men sitting on the sea walls in the reek of fish and weed with bottles at their feet paused in their low talk to sniff the air and feel its sudden caress as it moved against their faces. Canvas flapped idly once, twice; then it bellied out asthe moving air took it. The gla.s.sy sea, a mirror for the shining stars, broke up in swell on swell as the clouds rose higher out on the Western Ocean. Finally the men on the sea wall could feel it in their hair, and they looked at one another as if they had experienced some common revelation.

The breeze grew, freshening and veering until it was blowing steadily from the north-west, in off the sea.

It swayed the countless ships at their moorings until the mooring ropes creaked, raised smokes of dust off the parched streets of the city and stirred the branches of the King's cypresses, moving inland to refresh sweat-soaked sleepers. The Hebrian trade wind had started up again at last.

NINE.

B ARDOLIN stared impa.s.sively at the wreckage of his home. The tower's ma.s.sive walls had shrugged off the fury of the mob but the interior had been gutted. The walls were black with soot, the floor inches deep in it. Someone had smashed the jar of Ur-blood and it had gelled into a slithering, gelatinous, slug-like creature, incorporating the ashes and the fragments of scale and bone that were all that was left of his specimen collection. It was the Ur-creature that had finally frightened them off, he guessed. He stared at it as its pseudopodia blindly touched the air, trying to make sense out of this new world it had been so violently born into.

For a second Bardolin felt like reshaping it, adding the crocodile skull that lay mouldering in a corner, giving it the sabre-cat claws he had picked up on a trip to Maca.s.sar, and then launching the finished, unholy beast into the streets to wreak his revenge. But he settled for unbinding the Ur-blood from its gathered organic fragments and letting it sink, mere liquid again, into the scorched floor.

All gone-everything. His books, some of which dated back to before the Fimbrian Hegemony, his spell grimoires, his references, his collections of birdskins and insects, even his clothes.

The imp tiptoed across the ravaged chamber with wide, bewildered eyes. It clambered up Bardolin's shoulder and nestled in the hollow of his neck, seeking rea.s.surance. He could feel the fear and confusion in its mind. Thank G.o.d he had removed it from the rejuvenating jar before he had left and had taken it with him, hidden in the bosom of his robe. Otherwise it would be one more rotting mess amid the littered debris.

There were things here which disturbed him, unanswered questions amid the ruin of his home which hinted at larger answers; but he was too blasted and bewildered to tackle them now. How had they forced the mage bolt on the door? How had they known he was not at home, but was away watching poor Orquil burn?

Orquil. He shut his eyes. Despite the cool sea breeze that washed over the city like a blessing, he could still smell burnt flesh. Not in the air, but off his own clothes. He had stood at the foot of the boy's pyre looking up into his apprentice's pitifully young face, as pale as chalk, but smiling somehow; and he had smote him with a bullet of pure thaumaturgy as potent as his grief and rage could make. The boy had been dead before the first flames began to lick round his shins. The first life Bardolin had ever taken with magic, though he had taken many more with blade and arquebus ball.

There will be more taken by magic before I am done, he promised himself, the bitter anger rising in him.

He wondered if Griella felt like this when the black change was upon her. That unfocused hatred, the mounting fury craving outlet in some act of extreme violence.

But that was not the mage way. Anger did no one any good. And besides, if Bardolin were truly honest with himself, he would have to admit that it was guilt that fuelled his rage as much as grief. The fact that he himself had not burned.Griella entered the blasted room. She had a sack slung over one slim shoulder and her hands were black with ash.

"I tried to salvage some things, but there's not much left." She smiled as the imp chirruped at her, but then her face went flat again. "If you had let me stay, I would have stopped it," she said.

Bardolin did not look at her.

"How? By slaughtering them like cattle? And then the city guard would have been swarming over this place like flies around summer dung."

"I don't think so. I think they would not have come here whatever happened. I think they were told to stay away."

Bardolin did look at her now, startled by the depth of her reasoning.

"Something does not smell right, it is true," he admitted. "Golophin has ensured our safety, by order of the King himself; but someone else is determined to hurt us ere we take ship for the West."

"Well, we've less to pack at any rate," Griella said brightly.

Her smile eventually drew an answering one from him. The heavy sun pouring through the splintered windows gave her hair the aspect of beaten bronze. Her very skin seemed golden.

"You are still sure you want to take ship with me, then?" Bardolin asked.

"Of course! I shall become your new apprentice, to replace the one they burned today. And I shall keep you safe. Not even when the change is upon me would I hurt you, I think."

Bardolin said nothing. When she had come round from the spell of unconsciousness she had been both furious and fascinated. She had never dreamed there could be a power to knock out a full-blooded shifter in the midst of the change. She had been a little in awe of him afterwards. But she was young, and she was not apt for an apprenticeship in the Seven Disciplines; shifters never were. And there was an aspect of her he had glimpsed whilst wrestling the beast down into oblivion, a hunger that was not part of the werewolf she became, but that was buried in her human soul. He had seen it only briefly, flickering as if in the depths of a long abyss, but it gave him doubts as to the wisdom of letting her accompany him on the voyage.

But what alternative was there for her here in Abrusio? She had been abused before; it would happen again, and then she would become the beast once more, and she would be hunted down. They would cut off the beast's head with a silver knife and stick it on a spear in the market place. In a few hours the head would change, and it would be her brown eyes staring down, that bronze helmet of shining hair atop the ragged stump of the neck. He had seen it before. He could not allow it to happen to her, and he would not yet allow himself to ask why.

He rose to his feet. He had only a leather satchel to carry; they had saved pitifully little. His magicks would be crude for a while, and reduced in power, for his memory was not up to the task of remembering all the subtleties and nuances of casting that were necessary to make a piece of thaumaturgy perfect. He hoped that some of his fellow pa.s.sengers on the voyage would be able to help him regain his lost knowledge.

The imp crawled into the bosom of his robe, not minding the smell of the pyre. New clothes; he must have new clothes, and get rid of this reek."Let us leave this place," he said. "We have things to do. I would like to see these ships that are to bear us, and perhaps buy a few things to make the voyage more tolerable."

"Salt beef and wormy bread are what sailors eat," Griella informed him. "And unwatered wine. They wash in seawater, when they wash at all, and they use each other in the way a man uses a woman."

"Enough," Bardolin said, uncomfortable with hearing such things from such a young mouth. "To the harbour, then. Let's take a look at these terrible seafarers."

There was one thing he could still do, though. As they left through the shattered doorway of his burned-out tower, Bardolin traced in the stone lintel a glyph of warding. It flamed briefly as his fingers brushed the stone, then died into invisibility. If anyone came after, picking around the bones of his home, the glyph would burst into an inferno and mayhap burn the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds while they rummaged.

T O a landsman, the Great Harbour of Abrusio was a vast and labyrinthine place. Now that the Hebrian trade had started up again, ships that had lain becalmed beyond the curve of the horizon were working in under all the canvas they could bear. The place was a stinking chaos of shouting men, squealing trucks and pulleys, creaking rope and thundering noise as a convoy of caravels out of Cartigella disgorged their cargoes of wine tuns on the quays and the enormous barrels were rolled up into waiting waggons which in turn would transport them to the public cellars.

On another wharf a beast transport had her square hull doors open wide, letting out a stench of animal excrement as the frightened cattle within were prodded and cursed down the ramps, scattering dung and straw as they went.

Bardolin and Griella paused to watch a Royal dispatch-runner, a lateen-rigged gallea.s.s, come sweeping into the harbour like some precisely rhythmed sea insect, the oars soaring up and out of the water at the same moment and the crew backing the mizzen to heave her to within yards of a free berth. These were the famous deep-water berths of Abrusio, hollowed out by the Fimbrians in past centuries using forced Hebrian labour. Abrusio could accommodate a thousand fully rigged ships at her wharves, it was said, and still have s.p.a.ce for more.

Here were boxes of fish and sea squid shining in the hard sunlight, sacks of pepper from Punt or Ridawan, gleaming piles of marmorill tusks from the jungles of Maca.s.sar and, stumbling, chained lines of slaves bought from the Rovenan corsairs to work the estates of the Hebrian n.o.bility.

Sailors, fishermen, marines, merchants, vintners and longsh.o.r.emen. They worked without pause in the unrelenting heat with the sweat shining on their faces and limbs unable, it seemed, to communicate in anything less than a bellow. Bardolin and Griella found themselves holding hands in the crush to avoid being separated, for all the world like father and daughter. The heat glued their palms together with slick perspiration, and inside Bardolin's robe the imp whimpered with the noise and the smells and the jostling press of it.

They stopped half a dozen times to ask for the Hawkwood vessels, but each time were regarded pityingly, like imbeciles abroad by mistake, and then the throng pushed them along again. Finally they found themselves inside the tall, stone-built harbour offices, and there were told by a harried clerk to go to the twenty-sixth outfitting berth and ask for the Grace of G.o.d or the Gabrian Osprey, Ricardo Hawkwood, Master. They would find them easily, they were told. A ship-rigged caravel of one hundred tons, and a low-fo'c'sled carrack twice that tonnage with a mouldy looking bird for a figurehead.

They left the place only slightly less bewildered than when they had entered. This was a different world, down here by the water's edge. This was the world of the sea, with its own rules, laws, and even language. They felt like travellers in a foreign country as they pushed past ship after ship, wharf afterwharf, and pa.s.sed men of every land and faith and colour as they went. Since the easing of the edict in the wake of the Prelate of Abrusio's departure for the Charibon Synod, foreign ships had been putting into Abrusio without let-up. It was as though they were trying to make up for the time they had lost-or would lose again once the Prelate returned and foreigners were once more hauled off their ships and into the catacombs by the hundred.

"There," Bardolin said at last. "I think that's them. See the bird figurehead? It's a sea osprey from the Levangore. One knows from the speckles on its breast."

They stood before a wide stone dock dotted with mooring bollards and littered with guano. Snug in the berth behind the dock were two ships, their bowsprits projecting out over Bardolin's head and their masts tall, rope-tangled edifices towering up into the blue sky.

There were men everywhere it seemed, clinging to every piece of rigging and every rail. Some were out on the hulls on stages, painting the sea-battered wood with what looked like white lead. Others were knotting and splicing furiously in the shrouds. A gang of them were heaving on the windla.s.s, and Bardolin saw that they were replacing a topmast. He knew little of ships, but he knew it was unusual, not to say revolutionary, to have masts in several pieces instead of one long, ma.s.sive yard. This Hawkwood seemed to take his calling seriously.

Yet more men were on the dock, hauling on tackles attached to the mainyard, lifting net-wrapped bundles of casks and crates up over the ships' sides and on to the decks. On the decks themselves the hatches were wide open and gaping to receive the dangling goods, and Bardolin was astonished to see sheep, goats and cages of chickens go up in the air along with the wine barrels and boxes of salt meat and ship's biscuit. He noted with approval a huge sack of lemons being loaded also. It was thought by many that they combated the killer disease of scurvy, though many others believed the condition was caused by the unsanitary conditions aboard any ship.

"Who are we to talk to?" Griella asked wide-eyed. Her grip on the wizard's hand had not relaxed one whit.

Bardolin pointed to a burly, ornately mustachioed figure on the larger of the two ships. He was standing at the back-the quarterdeck?-and shouting furiously at a group of men down in the waist of the ship.

He had a long, eastern water-pipe in one hand and he shook it at the men as though it were a weapon.

His hair was cut so short that the sunlight made his scalp gleam through the bristle.

"I would say he is in charge," Bardolin decided.

"Is he this Hawkwood man?"

"I don't know, child. We'll have to ask."

He and Griella made their tortuous way through the piled provisions and cordage and timber on the wharf to where a gangway with raised planks for steps had been thrown down from the waist of the larger ship.

Some of the sailors stopped to stare at the hard-faced, soldierly looking man and the shining-haired girl on his arm. There was an appreciative whistle and ribald chatter in a language even Bardolin did not recognize; but the meaning and the gesture that accompanied it were obvious.

Griella spun round on the obscenely capering seamen. With the sunlight in her eyes it seemed they had a yellow glow, and the lips drew back from her white teeth in a snarl.

Bardolin tugged her on, leaving the sailors staring after the pair. One man hurriedly made the Sign of the Saint.They laboured up the precarious gangplank, which seemed designed for the agility of apes rather than that of men. Once on deck, Bardolin raised a hand to the furious mustachioed man and shouted in his best sergeant of arquebusiers voice: "Ho there, Captain! Might we have a word with you?"

The man yanked his water-pipe out of his mouth as though it had bitten him and glared at the pair.

"Who in the name of the Prophet's a.r.s.e are you?"

"Someone who is to take ship with you in a short while. May we speak to you?"

The man's eyes rolled in his head. "A warlock I shouldn't wonder, and his doxy with him too. Sweet Saints, what a trip this is promising to be!"

He turned away from the quarterdeck rail, muttering to himself. Bardolin and Griella looked at one another, and then clambered up towards him, feeling two dozen baleful stares on their backs as they went. It was like intruding on the territory of some alien, primitive tribe.

The quarterdeck was littered with coiled ropes and light spars of timber. Everywhere lines of the running rigging came down to be hitched about fiferails. A bra.s.s bell glittered, painfully bright in the sun, and the huge tiller that steered the ship from the half-deck below had been unshipped and lay to one side. The man was leaning on the taffrail and puffing on his gurgling pipe. His eyes were slits of suspicion.

"Well, what do you want? We're outfitting for a blue-water voyage and we're short of men. I have things to do, and pa.s.sing the time of day with landsmen is not one of them."

"I am Bardolin of Carreirida and this is my ward, Griella Tabard. We have been told we are to be pa.s.sengers on one of the vessels of Ricardo Hawkwood, and we wanted to see them and ask for advice on preparing for the coming voyage."

The man looked as though he were about to give a sneering answer, but something in Bardolin's eye stopped him.

"You've been a soldier," he said instead. "I can see the helm scar. You don't look like a wizard." He paused, staring into the gla.s.s-sided bubble of his pipe for a second, then grudgingly said: "I am Billerand, first mate of the Osprey, so don't call me captain, not yet at least. Richard is up in the city wrestling with the provisioners and moneylenders. I don't know when he'll be back."

The imp squirmed in Bardolin's bosom, making Billerand gape.

"Might we talk below?" Bardolin asked. "There are many sets of ears up here."

"All right."

The mate led them down a companionway in the deck and they blinked in the gloom, startling after the harsh brightness of the day. It was close down here; the heat seemed to hang like a tangible thing in their throats. They could smell the wood of the ship, the pitch that caulked the seams, soft and bitter-smelling, and the faint stink of the bilge, like filth and water left to lie stagnant in a warm place. They could hear, too, the thumps and shouts of men off in the ship's hold. It sounded like a fight going on in the adjacent room of a large house, m.u.f.fled but somehow very near.

They went through a door, stepping over a high storm sill, and found themselves in the Master's cabin.

One side of it was taken up by the long stern windows. They could look out and see the harbour sunlitand framed by the curving lines of the interior bulkheads, like a backlit painting of sharp brilliance. There were two small culverins on either side of the cabin, lashed up tight against their closed gunports.

Billerand sat down behind the table that ran athwartships, the scene of the harbour behind him.

"Is that a familiar you have there?" he asked, pointing to the wriggling movement in the breast of Bardolin's robe.

"Aye, an imp."

The mate's face seemed to lighten somewhat. "They're lucky things to have on a ship, imps. They keep the rats down. The men will be pleased with that at least. Let him out, if you please."

Bardolin let the imp crawl out of the neck of his robe. The tiny creature blinked its eyes, its ears moving and quivering on either side of its head. Bardolin could feel its fear and fascination.

Billerand's fierce face relaxed into a smile. "Here, little one. See what I have for you?" He produced a small quid of tobacco from a neck pouch and held it out. The imp looked at Bardolin, and then leapt on to the table and sniffed at the tobacco. It took it delicately in one minute, clawed hand and then began to gnaw on it like a squirrel working at a nut. Billerand scratched it gently behind the ear and his smile widened into a grin.

"As I said, the hands will be pleased." He leaned back again. "What would you have me tell you then, Bardolin of Carreirida?"

"What do you know of this voyage we are to undertake?"

"Very little. Only that it is to the west. The Brenn Isles, maybe. And we are not taking cargo, only pa.s.sengers and some Hebrian soldiery. We'll be packed in these two ships tighter than a couple on their honeymoon night."

"And the nature of the other pa.s.sengers, besides the soldiers?"

"Dweomer-folk, like yourself. The hands do not know it yet, and I'd as soon leave it that way for the moment."

"Do you know who is sponsoring the voyage?"

"There is talk of a n.o.bleman, and even of a Royal warrant. Richard has yet to brief his officers."

"What kind of a man is this Hawkwood?"

"A good seaman, even a great one. He has redesigned his ships according to his own lights, despite the grumbling of the older hands. They'll make less leeway than any vessel in this port, I'll promise you. And they're drier than any other ships of their cla.s.s. I've been in this carrack in a tearing gale off the Malacar Straits with a lee sh.o.r.e a scant league away and a south-easter roaring in off the starboard quarter, but she weathered it. Many another ship, under many another captain, would have been driven on to the shoals and broken."

"Is he a Hebrian native?"

"No, and neither are most of his crews. Nay, our Richard is Gabrionese, one of the mariner race, though he has made his home in Abrusio these twenty years, ever since his marriage to one of the Calochins."

"Is he a . . . pious man?"Billerand roared with laughter, and a spit of fluid sparked out of the brim of his pipe. The imp jumped, afraid, but he soothed it with the caress of one callused hand.

"Easy, little fellow, it's all right. No, wizard, he is not particularly pious. Do you think he'd take your sort as supercargo if he was? Why, I've seen him make a sacrifice to Ran the G.o.d of storms to placate the tribesmen among the crew. If the Inceptines had heard of that he'd have been burnt flesh a long time ago.

You need not fear; he loves the Ravens even less than the next man. They had Julius Albak, the first mate before me and a d.a.m.ned good shipmate, shot in front of our eyes and then they hauled half the crew of the Grace off to the catacombs to await the pyre-but our Richard got them back, G.o.d knows how."

"Which lands do your seamen come from?" Bardolin asked with interest, perching on a seachest that rested against the forward bulkhead.