Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (30 page)

Now the Archmage betrayed his exasperation. ‘You might also let me know if Captain Corrain has deigned to answer Olved’s summons as yet, to tell us what he has heard around the taverns and taprooms.’

‘Do you want me to go and find Corrain myself?’ Jilseth offered.

‘No.’ Planir shook his head. ‘The noble baron needs to learn the cost of ignoring my messages.’

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

The Red Library, Col

30th of Aft-Winter

‘T
HERE’S
M
ASTER
G
AREWIN,
’ Hosh stopped rubbing at the side of his face to look apprehensively at the mentor.

Now they were finally here, Corrain was beginning to fear that the boy was having second thoughts about submitting himself to this unknown aetheric magic. In his heart of hearts, he could hardly blame Hosh for being nervous. But it was his duty to see the lad healed despite himself.

‘Excellent.’ He raised his own hand to acknowledge the scholar strolling towards this imposing building across another of Col’s broad squares.

The paved expanse was similarly ringed by taverns and inns. Here awnings outside each hostelry sheltered benches and tables where breakfasting students ate griddle-seared flatbreads, pale cheeses oozing out of floury rinds and the pungent fish that was so popular here, smoked or pickled. Potboys set down jugs of small beer and well-watered wine while kitchen maids brought out stacks of fresh horn beakers and carried away abandoned plates.

Corrain noticed several hopeful cats prowling the empty spaces dividing each tavern’s territory from its neighbours. One ginger-striped opportunist darted forward as a careless elbow knocked scraps off a table.

The previous day Hosh had retreated to their bedchamber as soon as The Goose Hounds’ maids had it ready. Corrain had lingered in the taproom, leaning on the bar counter and chatting to the tapster whenever the man had some leisure between customers. The tapster had obliged him with a great deal of information about Col, most particularly the university’s libraries.

Corrain had been somewhat surprised to learn that the various schools of study to which the mentors swore their allegiance had no tangible presence in the city. There were no magnificent buildings with the various disciplines’ names chiselled above a door for newly-arrived students to knock on. The mentors who made up the Schools taught their pupils in the various libraries as well as in the taverns and tisane houses. In the summer seasons, they gathered out in the open air in the city’s pleasure gardens.

‘Excuse me.’ A student carrying books lashed together with a plaited leather thong hurried up the steep steps to the library door.

Corrain turned to watch the youth set down his burden and show a student’s base-metal badge on the collar before shedding his cloak. After looking the boy up and down, the stern-faced and sword-belted door-ward gave him a grudging nod. Draping his cloak loosely around his shoulders, the youth joined the queue already lengthening by the doors.

‘Good day to you.’ Mentor Garewin reached them as the carillon’s song announced the second chime of the day beneath the leaden sky. ‘Larasion’s still smiling, I see? Six days without rain at this season is truly an unlooked-for blessing.’

‘Indeed.’ Corrain managed a polite smile, though he found the Col populace’s fascination with their weather as pointless as it was tedious. It would rain or it wouldn’t and whichever way that rune rolled, he wouldn’t thank any goddess.

‘They said, in the tavern this morning, that this has been the mildest Aft-Winter in half a generation.’ Hosh was rubbing at his face again, as unthinking as a man scratching a itch.

‘Indeed?’ Garewin drew his silvered beard to a point between fingers and thumb. ‘I must ask my acquaintances in the School of Natural Philosophy.’

Corrain curbed an urge to demand some answers himself. How soon would Hosh see some visible improvement to his injuries?

But Hosh was more curious about the students, men and women, young and old, waiting by the library doors. ‘Why are they searched like some assassin trying to smuggle in a dagger to kill the Tormalin Emperor?’

Mentor Garewin smiled, amused. ‘The Prefects make certain that no student enters any of the city’s libraries with something which might damage the books and the knowledge which they contain.’

‘How many books are in there?’ Hosh stared up at the red-brick building, five storeys tall not counting the garrets beneath the curly-gabled roof. Each floor was well lit by wide, stone-mullioned windows.

‘I honestly couldn’t guess,’ Mentor Garewin admitted with refreshing candour. ‘This is the oldest of Col’s libraries, a hundred strides wide and two hundred long. Each floor has ten reading rooms, running the width of the building, each one furnished with reading desks. Then there are private studies flanking the staircases in each corner of the building, reserved for those of us with the rank of mentor.’ He glanced with some pride at the solitary silver ring on his off hand. ‘We’ll have our pick of them, so early in the day.’

He glanced at Corrain to include him in this lesson. ‘The Red Library was founded by the first avowed scholars who found common cause in this city. They were desperate to salvage what writings they could from the region’s temple libraries and shrine family archives when the fall of the Old Tormalin Empire ushered in an age of mindless plundering and despoliation.

‘But let us go in, before the rush,’ the mentor hastily suggested to Hosh.

All around the square, wood scraped on brick paviours as the carillon’s intricate song faded away across the city’s rooftops. Students abandoned their meals, leaving tables and benches awry. A handful more black-liveried and white gloved door-wards emerged from the library to form a resolute line guarding the doors, even as those who had already submitted to the Prefects’ scrutiny were allowed to enter.

‘Mentor Undil will be joining us,’ Garewin told Hosh. ‘She is sealed to the School of Apothecaries.’

‘Will you be here all day?’ Corrain asked the mentor.

‘We will,’ Garewin answered before smiling at Hosh. ‘Now let’s make a start, shall we?’

Corrain clapped Hosh on the shoulder, to offer reassurance and encouragement. ‘Then I’ll see you this evening, back at the tavern.’

Hosh hesitated as Mentor Garewin headed up the steps. ‘What will you do with the day?’

‘Scout around the drapers’ warehouses for gifts for Halferan’s ladies.’ If he said anything else, he guessed that the boy would try to insist that he needed his help. Corrain urged Hosh up the steps with a firm hand. ‘On you go, before we’re trampled by this mob of scholars. The sooner you’re healed, the sooner we can go home.’

‘Yes, Captain.’ But Hosh only went up a few steps before halting and looking back. ‘Will you look for some trifle I might buy for my mother?’

‘I will.’ Corrain noticed Garewin betraying some impatience. The mentor had reached the door-wards, showing them the silver seal-ring of his school and rank before looking around to see where Hosh had got to.

‘Go on. We want some good news for your mother, don’t we, when we find this wizard friend of Madam Jilseth’s this evening?’

Corrain tapped the breast of his doublet to remind Hosh of the note in his inner pocket, from the wizard Master Olved, telling them to come and inform him what they had learned on Planir’s behalf.

All in good time, as Corrain had told Hosh when the brusque summons had arrived the previous evening. They might be here at the Archmage’s behest but they were at no wizard’s beck and call. There was also no point in wasting this master mage’s time and wizardry with messages for Halferan or Hadrumal, just telling Planir and Zurenne alike that they had nothing to tell.

‘Go on.’ Corrain turned on his heel and strode away, giving the lad no more excuse to tarry.

He headed to the south and east corner of the square. There were no drapers’ warehouses in this direction, nor any emporium offering lace or ribbons for Lady Zurenne or silken flowers for Ilysh and Esnina. Corrain would make such frivolous purchases when he and Hosh were ready to leave this city. Meantime, he would find out something worthwhile to repay the Archmage for helping to heal Hosh.

The potboy from The Goose Hounds was waiting just around the corner.

‘Estry.’ Corrain nodded, not reaching for his purse until he knew if the lad could satisfy him this morning.

On the tavern’s back stairs the night before, the lad had grudgingly admitted that he’d been unable to discover where the Soluran was currently lodging. It seemed the sly fox changed his accommodations as often as his drinking partners.

This morning though, the lad grinned, confident. ‘He was waiting outside Casiter’s Library. He met up with Mentor Lestuld from the School of History and Mentor Itselai from the School of Music and they went into The Black Donkey to share some breakfast.’

‘Find out who else he’s had business with lately.’ Corrain flipped a silver penny through the air, both as reward and incentive for the boy. ‘Tell me this evening.’

‘Gladly, master.’ The lad’s fist closed around the coin, a glint in his eye. ‘There’s something else, Master.’

Corrain raised silent brows. He’d told Estry yesterday that he only paid for worthwhile information.

‘There are Archipelagans in the harbour.’ Estry smiled, confident that would earn him another silver penny.

‘Aldabreshi? At this season? From what domain?’ Corrain challenged.

‘Jagai,’ Estry said promptly. ‘Not just one ship, neither. A great galley with three banks of oars and two lesser with a single tier, with two triremes flanking them. Come in on the dawn tide after rowing up the Caladhrian coast.’

‘What do they want here at the tail end of winter?’ Corrain wondered aloud before snapping peremptory fingers at Estry. ‘Find out and you’ll earn a silver mark, maybe more.’

‘More, Master, for certain.’ Estry grinned before turning away.

Corrain watched the lad lope down the street and wondered if he should head for the wharves himself. But what could he learn along a dockside where he knew no one and no one knew him? Worse, these unknown Archipelagans might set their own hounds on his scent, if word of some curious Caladhrian asking their business reached Aldabreshin ears.

Whereas the taverns would be buzzing with speculation for a sharp-eared potboy to catch. What could the Archipelagans want so desperately that they would risk such a voyage? The first Aldabreshin ships weren’t expected until the Spring Equinox festival. Merchants’ trains of wagons and loaded mules wouldn’t arrive from northern Ensaimin until the last handful of days of For-Spring, bringing cloth of every weight and hue, wares in wood, brass and pewter, iron in raw ingots and every article which a smith’s skill could shape, leather and fur from the most northerly reaches where oak groves yielded to the pine forests and the mountains.

For the moment, Corrain decided, he would stick to his original plan and pursue the Soluran adept. He began walking, turning up his cloak’s collar against the wind pursuing him down the street. As he had learned quartering the district around the carillon tower the previous afternoon, there was always a wind blowing in Col from some direction or other, ready to catch people unawares whenever they left the shelter of a building to cross a broad street.

He scowled up at the unbroken grey clouds. This lull in the storms usually blown in from the western seas wasn’t much of a blessing from the Col faithful’s goddess if it allowed the Aldabreshi to arrive so unexpectedly.