‘Oh, I think so!’ she said, hugging herself to keep from floating away. ‘Mara says I’m to start sword
classes tomorrow! Tomorrow, Drayco. Tomorrow morning!’
It’s tomorrow then?
She flicked his tail.
It is!
‘I thought I would have to stay with the ritual spells for another six months at least. Actually, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get a chance to train with the sword at all. What a surprise.’
Not such a surprise when you consider the level of your intention. How’s the milk coming along?
He leapt down to sit closer to the fire, watching the pot begin to steam.
‘What’s that, Dray?’ she asked, reading the note for a third time.
The milk?
‘Here it is.’ She poured it into a bowl and placed it in front of him. ‘Hot.’
I like it hot.
She stroked his neck as he began to lap. ‘Now we just have to figure out why the Sword Master came by. That was after Mara, yes?’
It was.
‘What could he have wanted?’
Reading his note might elaborate.
Drayco sent the suggestion in spurts, clearly not wanting to be distracted from his bowl.
‘What?’
He paused to stare at her.
The note from the Sword Master. Perhaps you would learn more if you read it.
Tiny droplets of milk spattered his whiskers and he licked them off with his pink tongue before going back to the bowl.
Rosette sprinted out to the front porch. ‘Where is it?’ she yelled, squinting up at the lamplight. She checked the doorframe, and then looked down at the bristly horsehair mat. There it was, tucked under the left-hand
corner. Clutching the note, she brought it into the firelight to read.
‘It’s from him, Drayco. It is from the Sword Master himself!’
Really?
The feline’s comment dripped down the edges of her mind.
‘Shush. I am reading.’
Read it to me too,
Drayco instructed without looking up.
Aloud.
‘Okay. It says…“Rosette de Santo, You will be attending sword classes starting tomorrow. Best you don’t lose concentration in my arena. Report at dawn. RL”.’
She pressed the note to her heart. ‘He signed it
RL!
’
His initials perhaps?
Drayco had finished the bowl of milk and was grooming himself by the fire. His wit, as usual, increased in proportion to the fullness of his belly.
‘Of course it’s his name! R. L., Rowan Lawrence! It’s just that personal initials are not often used in correspondence to initiates. Could it mean he is going to make me his apprentice?’
You read a lot into it.
Drayco looked up briefly before twisting around to reach a spot directly between his shoulderblades.
Rosette smiled at her companion. ‘Just let me have this thrill. He wrote to me. He called me by name. I will be in his class!’
Drayco looked at her and sneezed.
‘I can’t wait to tell Clay.’
He’s gone.
‘I heard.’
He left earlier tonight, headed for Morzone. Supposedly he’s playing for a wedding celebration on Sunday.
Rosette turned her head. ‘What do you mean, “
supposedly
”?’
Drayco stood, bow-stretched and lay down on the sheepskin in front of the fire. He tucked his front paws under his chest before responding.
I mean ‘supposedly’ because first of all, he took with him a bird of prey, hooded and clutching his gloved wrist. Tell me, when did he become a falconer? Second, he left by the south gate. If he was going to Morzone, he planned to get there the long way around.
Rosette stared at him. ‘How’d you get so good at geography?’
I know what you know, Maudi, and then some. Clay wasn’t going where he said. He was going south, towards Lividica.
‘Or maybe he was just going home to Cusca first.’
Maybe.
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
If he was going to Cusca first, he’d never get to Morzone in time for a Sunday wedding.
D
rayco was right. Clay hadn’t gone to Morzone; he’d gone to Lividica.
He sat at a table in the harbour pub, smoke floating in drifts around him. He’d drained three pints of home draught in the last half hour and was on his fourth. If he didn’t stop guzzling, his performance would definitely suffer, but he didn’t care. He wanted to escape.
He picked up his guitar and checked the tuning. Low E was flat and he tightened the tuning peg slowly while plucking the string, comparing it to his top E and the harmonics further up the neck. His ear was bent close to the fret board as he strained to hear the subtle changes in pitch—not an easy task in the boisterous pub with glasses clanking, people cackling, an argument exploding in one corner, and fists pounding the table behind him accompanied by shouts for more beer. The cacophony was more than distracting—it felt like debris floating down the river of his mind, smacking into his thoughts, bumping them out of place.
‘I never heard of the girl,’ a drunken voice declared.
‘Nor I. It’s a ghost he’s after, I’ll wager.’
‘Plenty of them around.’
‘How would you know? You weren’t there.’
‘Neither were you.’
The voices drifted into the background of his mind as a fight broke out, a table overturning and glasses breaking before the barman tossed the drunks out. Clay sighed. They would call for more songs any minute and though he was exhausted, and quite drunk himself, he looked forward to getting lost in the music again. His performances were a success even if nothing else about this trip had been. Damn the Sword Master and his cryptic intentions.
Seven days ago, on his way to meet Rosette at the bathing pools, Clay had been waylaid by An’ Lawrence—the mission urgent. He hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to her or even offer an explanation. Of course, it would have been a lie, whatever he said, but at least he could have seen her. He didn’t like the idea of leaving her stranded with only a message from Amelia. He could just imagine how that would translate. He sighed again.
Women…
An’ Lawrence had given him an assignment he didn’t like, yet he couldn’t—or was it ‘wouldn’t’—refuse. He was to take a mountain horse, along with one of the Sword Master’s falcons, and travel down through Cusca, skirting the Jacor mountain range to the port of Lividica, Rosette’s home town, or so she said. He was charged with finding out anything he could about the young witch.
‘Find her family, Clay,’ An’ Lawrence had instructed. ‘Discover everything you can about her past. I particularly want you to find her connections,’ the Sword Master had gone on. ‘Are any of her relations linked to the witch Nellion Paree? From the past? From Treeon perhaps? I want to know everything, and for them to suspect nothing. Do you understand? Play your
songs and ask your questions as if you were a curious lad in love with an elusive young woman. That would be the best ploy.’
Clay laughed. Ploy? It wouldn’t take much of a witch’s glamour to pull that off. If he wasn’t already curious about Rosette before this trip, he certainly was now. The
‘in love’
aspect was a given—had been so since the day they’d met. What he discovered, though, didn’t put him at ease and he was certain it wouldn’t satisfy the Sword Master.
He’d been here a week now, playing his music in every pub from the northern docks to South Lister Bay. Between sets, and in the busy shops and markets by day, he’d asked his questions. He queried as any enthusiastic suitor might, but nobody in the whole town had ever heard of Rosette de Santo. There was a Rosa de Santiago, and a Rosie del Mar. There was even a Vera and Armone de Santo, but no Rosette. It was like he’d dreamed her up and word was getting around that the redheaded bard from the north played wonderful tunes but seemed to be looking for a girl that didn’t exist.
He flicked the breadcrumbs from the table when his dinner plate was cleared away.
‘You’ll be playing more?’ the maid asked, her dimpled face blushing as she balanced the tray of crockery on her hip.
‘Yeah, sure.’ Clay managed a wink before he returned to his contemplations.
The results of his queries weren’t completely fruitless. He had aroused the interest of more than a few young women, gorgeous girls enamoured with his eccentric ways and alluring music. The flirtations were heady and he was planning to act on one of them tonight. He’d met her today by the jetty, a girl full of charm—touching his arm when she spoke, giggling at
his every sentence and jouncing her bosom when she laughed outright. Her embroidered peasant top and short white skirt had made a very pretty backdrop for her waves of chestnut hair. If he couldn’t distract himself with the likes of her, he needed to visit the local herbalist. He wondered when they opened.
Clay drank the last of his beer and stared at the empty glass. Tipping it slightly to the side, it caught the light from a candle, creating sparks of brilliance on the rim.
The punters were turning his way, eyebrows up, glasses raised. Their desires were clear and if he was to do well when he passed the hat, he’d best give them one last round of songs. He put down the glass and finished tuning his guitar. Soon he’d be playing and that would vanquish the torment from his mind, for a while. It was like shooing away a stray cat, though. As soon as he turned his back, it’d be there again, right beside him. Meow.
Rosette was always on his mind, and having to leave Treeon and dig into her past rankled Clay like no previous assignment. Why hadn’t he walked that first day? This had been the worst year of his life.
He laughed at himself. Who was he kidding? This had been the best year of his life. Besides, he couldn’t walk away from Rosette, not then, and certainly not now. Clay was living a paradox that haunted him—Rosette had become his love and his nemesis all in one. He wouldn’t dare cross the Sword Master, who insisted on the deception, and he could barely look Rosette in the eye because of it. It was like being trapped between a bear and a lion and he didn’t know how to free himself. He wasn’t even sure it was possible, and now here he was, in her home town—supposedly her home town—searching out her past and coming up with nothing.
‘Rosette de Santo? Nah. No girl of that name or description, but there are plenty of de Santos further east. Perhaps you are in the wrong seaport? Have you tried Flureon?’
He got the same story every time he asked, except from the girl he met today, the girl on the jetty. Sally. She had told him there had been someone here like he described, until about six years ago. She had lived on an estate with her family not far out of town. She matched his description right down to her slender arms, wide eyes, hawknose and flowing black hair, but her name was not Rosette. Her name was Kalindi Matosh, and she had been murdered, along with the rest of her family. Tragic, really. Assassins from Corsanon had done it. Never caught, though. Intuitively, he felt it was true and not just a fancy strategy to get his attention which she definitely wanted. But between the flirts and hints and innuendos he learned things about Rosette he’d wished he hadn’t. It could not be undone now and it would have to be reported to An’ Lawrence. What he would do with such news, Clay could only imagine. Meanwhile, he twisted alternately between feeling like the betrayer and the betrayed.
Clay pushed his chair back and walked towards the stage. He stumbled on the way up. This would be his last gig. He was heading home tomorrow, as soon as Sally was through with him and the hangover eased.
He’d sent a message back to Treeon earlier in the day via Clawdia, the Sword Master’s peregrine falcon. It unnerved him to call in the bird, but he swallowed hard, donned the red cap and walked out to the very end of the jetty to wait. The smell of fish and salt air had filled his lungs and the constant barking of sea lions had drowned out all other sounds. He’d pulled on the leather glove, stretched out his arm and closed his eyes until wind had swept across his face.
When he’d opened them, the falcon was back-winging onto his wrist. The huge talons, seemingly out of proportion to her delicate frame, wrapped around the leather gauntlet. They pinched through the glove and into his flesh. He shivered.
‘Welcome, beauty. We’re friends, remember?’ He found it hard to breathe. ‘It looks like you’ll be home long before me after all.’
The blue-black head tilted at Clay’s words. She blinked her eye once, as if to say,
Of course.
‘Can I give you a message for An’ Lawrence?’
At the sound of the Sword Master’s name, Clawdia whistled loudly. She fanned the air, extending her wings to reveal creamy-white underparts.
Clay cringed, holding the message in the palm of his hand, a note tucked into a small leather scroll case. She rolled it over, her razor sharp beak surprisingly gentle against his skin. When she had it just right, she grabbed it with her talons, looking him straight in the eye.
‘Okay, gorgeous one. Go home!’ He launched her with a sudden lift of his arm and watched as she disappeared up into the clouds.
One more night’s work and he would follow her, back to Treeon and his mysterious girl Rosette.
The pastel hues of daybreak washed over Rosette. She sat sipping jasmine-flower tea and stirring a small pot of porridge. She ate in silence. Drayco’s whiskers twitched softly in his sleep where he lay curled like a living pillow in the middle of her bed, his black fur a stark contrast to the red velvet spread. She smiled, catching the dream image of a dusky she-lion giving him a nose touch in the night.
Dressing in dark leggings, sword-belt and leather bodice, she gazed into the mirror, braiding her hair. She skipped the silver bell charms, weaving in a strand of
thin red leather instead. Her thoughts were on the challenge ahead. If she impressed the Sword Master straight up, she would have a better chance of gaining an apprenticeship. He chose only a handful of initiates each year and there had to be over fifty students clamouring for the position. They’d been practising formally all summer, which Rosette had not. The odds weren’t good, though she kept her spirits up, her intention clear.