The Prodigal Mage: Fisherman’s Children Book One (36 page)

“Ain’t that a question for the likes of Barlsman Jaffee?”

“I already know what he thinks. I want to know what
you
think. I want to know if—”

“If we be foolin’ ourselves, prayin’?” Da said, breathing hard. “Fillin’ our bellies with false hope like you filled yours full of ale tonight?” Da shook his head. “I d’know, Rafe. That’s the truth. Mayhap we are. Mayhap them folk back there singin’ their hearts out ain’t bein’ heard by nobody but us. But if it makes ’em feel better… if it gives ’em strength to go on when they be frighted… does it matter? Folk need somethin’ to cling to when the waters turn rough.”

“They are rough, aren’t they? Lur’s in trouble, Da. Real trouble.”

“Aye,” Da said heavily. “It surely is.”

“So when do we leave for Westwailing?”

In the damp, ill-lit darkness he could feel his father’s surprise. His cautious pleasure. “That means you’re comin’, does it?”

The brewery wasn’t going anywhere. He could earn himself some coin there when he got back. He’d send a message to Goose. His friend would understand.

“Yes. I’m coming.”

“We’ll head out tomorrow, early as we can,” said Da. “I want to get down there afore Pintte and Garrick and them fools they be takin’ with ’em turn up. I want some time to get a feel for the place, ’specially now. I want to see if what they want to do can be done.”

And that made him stare, and slow down a bit. “And if it can be? Will you help them?”

“If it can be I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“How? There’ll be no Olken magic used, Da. Every last spell will be Doranen.”

“Aye, well,” said Da, suddenly cagey. “I got me a few tricks up my sleeve.”

The trunk
. Durm’s secret spell books and scrolls. The ones he wasn’t meant to know about. He nodded, careless. Trying to look innocent.

“That’s good, Da. That’s good to know.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way home.

At first light next morning, in a steady mizzle, they loaded up their carriage and trundled out of Dorana City, heading for the coastal township of Westwailing.

It was a miserable journey. Thirteen days of patchy rain, high winds, two hailstorms and four more juddering earth tremors. The carriage bogged three times and they broke a wheel once. That happened on a lonely stretch of road between Flat Iron and Slumly Corners. Doranen magic took care of it, since it was Asher’s turn to play coachman and there was nobody around to see.

Rafel watched his father mend the snapped spokes with absentminded ease and had to walk away, so riled did it make him. One rule for Da and another for him. And his parents wondered why he was so easily fratched.

When at long last they reached Westwailing, with Fernel Pintte and Rodyn Garrick and the rest somewhere on the road behind them, they took rooms at the Dancing Dolphin, still sailing along after so many years.

After that, it was a matter of waiting.

Dismayed and disgruntled, Asher stood with his family on Westwailing’s long stone pier and stared at the harbour’s somnolent waters. Stared beyond them to the distant, foaming breakers rolling in over Dragon-teeth Reef. Beyond the reef churned the whirlpools and treacherously random waterspouts spawned by the blighted magics left behind after Morg’s destruction. The magics that had tried to kill him all those years ago. The memory was a bad one, almost as bad as what had happened to Matt and Veira… and Gar.

Never wanted to think on that again, did I?

Yet here he was, thinking. Brought face to face with a past he couldn’t forget or outrun.

Two days ago, the afternoon he and his family arrived in Westwailing, he’d taken a skiff out to the reef. On his lonesome, though his family fratched at the notion. Twice a year, every year, someone from the fishing community sailed along the reef’s edge to see if the whirlpools and the waterspouts were gone or growing weaker, but they never were. Three men had drownded, even, caught unawares. Dathne, Rafel and Deenie were frighted he’d make the fourth. He’d ignored ’em. Seeing the reef up close again were something he’d needed to do.

Holding the skiff hard against the drag of the whirlpools, sailed as close to the reef as he dared, he’d watched the waterspouts spiral haveycavey from the ocean’s shifting surface. Squinting, he’d felt the spouts’ spitting spray sting his face. Soak his hair and clothes. Splatter the skiff’s sail. The air was full of angry sound and his whole body thudded to the racing beat of his heart. Then he’d looked at the swirling, growling mouths of the whirlpools, monstrous holes in the ocean eager to suck helpless ships to their doom. Opened his mind to the rot in the reef.

It were just as bad as he remembered. He puked his lunch over the Skiff’s side, feeling it. Pintte and the others were mad. He had to stop them afore it was too late. But he didn’t know how.

Raised voices pulled him back to the present. Further along the pier, towards its far end, a bustle of busyness as Rodyn Garrick and his son and the Doranen mages he’d brought with him prepared to challenge Morg’s creeping blight. That troublesome Ain Freidin was one of ’ em—and didn’t that raise some questions? Fernel Pintte bustled too, hob-nobbing with Westwailing’s mayor and council and chivvying the Olken fishermen who’d agreed—for a steep price—to sail them all out to the reef. Fools, every last one of ’em.

Brooding across the harbour, he pulled his hands from his pockets and folded his arms. “I’m tellin’ you this be a sinkin’ bad idea.”

Beside him, Dathne patted his arm. “Yes, Asher. We know.”

Deenie tucked her fingers into the crook of his elbow. “The reef makes me shivery,” she said, her voice low.

“Your own shadow makes you shivery,” said Rafe, scornful. “Why’d you even come?”

Ignoring him, ’cause Rafel in a stroppy mood were best handled by turning deaf, dumb and blind, Asher looked down at his daughter. “The reef’s bad, mouse, I know. But is that all you feel?”

“Don’t, Da,” said Rafel. “You’ll only set her off. You know what she’s like.”

Pushed, he shot his son a warning look. It were a sinkin’ shame Rafe had run across Arlin Garrick after breakfast, and let hisself get riled by the poxy little shit. Not that he needed much excuse right now. Dath were right—their son might be turned twenty, but he had some growin’ up to do.

Twenty. I were his age when I left home for the City. Were I brash like him back then? So fearless, and bloody certain I already knew it all?

He couldn’t remember. Too much had happened since. He’d sailed past forty.
Forty
. How were that possible?

“I’m all right, Da,” said Deenie, with a trembly smile. “Don’t mind me.”

Which were just like his little mouse, but didn’t answer his question. “Deenie, if you feel there be somethin’ else we—”

“No, Da,” she insisted. “Don’t
fuss
. You’ll have folk looking at us. At
me
.”

And for Deenie there could be nowt worse than that. Rafel loved attention. Thrived on crowds and noise and bein’ noticed. But Deenie? She weren’t never happier than when she were buried up to her eyebrows in a book.

She be a right proper mix of me and Dath. But Rafe? Sink me, Rafe be so like his granfer. Before Ma died, Da were the village lantern everyone followed
.

“Please, Da,” said Deenie, giving his shirt-sleeve a little tug, her wary gaze skittering to see if they’d been overheard by the Olken and Doranen scurrying like ants about the pier.

“Deenie,” said Dathne. “If you don’t feel well we can go back to the Dolphin.”

“Your ma’s right, mouse,” he said, and smoothed a hand down Deenie’s arm. “Ain’t no reason for you to doddle about here if this malarkey don’t amuse you.”

Rafel snorted. “Y’should have stayed home in Dorana, Deenie. Kept company with Charis.”

“No,” said Deenie. “Charis has enough to fret on with Uncle Pellen. She didn’t need me underfoot.”

Reminded of the sorrow left behind them in Dorana, Asher scowled at the pier’s salt-crusted stonework. Then, taking Deenie’s hand, he flicked a warning glance at Dathne and wandered their daughter a little ways back along the pier, towards Westwailing township where almost as many folk were gathered, hopeful of excitement, as came for the Sea Harvest Festival every year.

When they were a comfortable distance from eavesdropping ears, Pintte and Garrick and the rest of ’em, and Rafel, he let go of Deenie’s hand and slid his arm round her shoulders. She looked up at him, so trusting. A plain little thing, scrawny like her ma was back when he’d first met her.

“Come on, mouse,” he said gently. “Tell me what you feel.”

“Da…” Deenie scrunched her face. “I don’t like talking on that. Any road, you know already.”

“I know what
I
know,” he said. “Don’t know what
you
know, do I? Come on, Deenie. Nowt much good comes of keepin’ secrets.”

Sighing, she wrapped her thin arms around her ribs, just like her ma did, and turned her head to stare out across the harbour. Mid-morning and for the first time in days the sky was clear of rain. The unclouded sun struck glittery sparkles off the water and a salt-laden fresh breeze ruffled her short hair, rushing colour to her high-boned cheeks.

“Does it matter how I feel, Da?” she murmured. “Won’t change anything, will it.”

Sadly, that were true. But he still wanted—
needed
—to know what she could sense. Ever since that stinkin’ night she’d woke screaming ’cause he called warbeasts in his troubled sleep, he’d fretted about her. Not the way he fretted for Rafel, who chafed against any and all restraints. He feared for Deenie because, like him, she didn’t seem to care much for her magic… and yet, like her brother, was cursed by him with something not given to other Olken.

“It matters to me, mouse,” he said. “Ain’t it my job to keep you safe? Can’t do that if I don’t know what’s what, eh?”

She had a sweet smile, his Deenie, but now her lips were pressed flat. “You can’t keep me safe forever, Da. You won’t
be
here forever.”

Pellen
. “You and Charis been talkin’, mouse? She got you all stirred up on account of her da? Don’t let Pellen bein’ poorly fright you. I be stayin’ right here.”

Deenie looked at him. Young, so sinkin’ young, but cruelly grown-up in her eyes. “Until you go.”

“Deenie… Deenie…” He caught her to him in a crushing hug. “Pellen’s goin’ to be
fine
. If Morg couldn’t kill him no bloody cough will. Now why don’t you stop tryin’ to sail me off course, eh, and tell me what it is you feel.”

T
he skirling cries of Westwailing’s seagulls filled the long silence. Fratched voices lifted in dispute as Fernel Pintte kept doin’ what he did best, raisin’ hackles. Patient, Asher waited till Deenie was ready to speak.

“It’s just the reef, Da,” she whispered at last, her head tucked neatly under his chin. “That’s what upsets me. I can feel the way Barl’s magic is tangled in it still. I can feel the whirlpools and the waterspouts. Da, they’re so
hungry
. They’ll gobble anyone who sails near them. And I can feel—” She trembled. “
Him
. Morg. I can feel his magic. It’s like a weed, Da, choking a beautiful rose. Making it feel all—all twisted and ugly. Does that make sense?”

So she did feel what he felt. He closed his eyes, sick with sorrow.
I did this to her
. “Aye, mouse.”

Her arms tightened round his waist. “And I can feel you, Da. You’re scared. Don’t say you’re not, because I
know
.”

Back along the pier, Dathne and Rafel were standing side by side, keeping well apart from everyone else. He was all stiff-spined and prickly and her hand rested between his shoulder blades in comfort. Rafe wanted to be one of the mages as broke the blighted spells on Dragonteeth Reef and gave the people of Lur hope for a different future.

“Why can’t I, Da?” he’d demanded. “Arlin’s sailin’ out to help and I’m a sight better mage than him. You know I am. So why can’t I?”

“You know why, Rafe,” he’d replied tiredly. “It ain’t for them to see what you can do. Not yet.” Not bloody ever, if he had his way. “Any road, it’s too dangerous.”

And oh, Rafe had bellowed about that. Kicked against being protected and being told he still had to hide. From a spratling he’d never accepted how careful he had to be. But then he never knew how closely the Doranen had watched him, waiting to see if he’d grow freakish like his da. They’d watched Deenie too. They still watched. Olken with the power of Doranen magic in their veins? One was enough. One had saved them. But more than one would be a fox loosed in the henhouse.