Wild Magic (11 page)

In the lagoon a great litter of vessels lay scattered, most of them stationary, some slowly weaving a line in and out of the dozens of moored pontoons, barges and rafts of timber. Clearly the local area had been stripped of every suitable tree for miles around, and demand for new ships ensured that Morten Danson had to source his materials from rather further away. The largest of the logs must surely have come from the sacred Barrow Plantation, since the trees which had been cut and stripped of their branches to provide this timber must once have towered to over a hundred foot in height, ancient giants now laid low.

A tributary stream of the river that flowed into the southern end of the lagoon had been diverted from its original course, which now lay abandoned, marked only by a line of darker grasses and a bed of dry pebbles through which tall weeds protruded, so that it now ran between culverts of stone right into the heart of the yard. Men ran from the stream to the steaming sheds with great leather buckets brimming with this diverted water, and so much vapour billowed up from these sheds into the air of the valley that from a distance it seemed that the manufacture that went on in this valley was not that of ships but of clouds: a weather-factory such as only Sur himself could possibly command.

Katla and Halli made their way down the road leading into this well of industry and stared in amazement. Even Halli, who had travelled more than his sister, to Ness and Fairwater, and once, after an Allfair, as far as Ixta in the north of Istria, had never seen such evidence of man’s will exerted over the natural world.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ he breathed, taking in the great swathe of activity below them.

‘It’s awful,’ said Katla. ‘I think I’ll never take sail again.’

‘This place provides the lifeblood of Eyra, sister. How else can we master the oceans? Did you think the
Fulmar’s Gift
was whittled by our grandfather on an idle day from a couple spare branches from his favourite oaks?’

Katla looked unhappy at his jibe. ‘I don’t know. It’s just—’ She spread her hands to take in the view. ‘There’s nothing . . . given back.’ She frowned. ‘I can’t explain what I mean. It’s all so grim.’ She stopped, at a loss. When she worked her metals in the forge she could feel the power of Elda flowing up out of the heat, through her and back into the ground. It was a kind of blessing, a bargain with the world. But this—

‘Can I help you?’

The man who addressed them was small of stature and richly dressed. He was beardless in the southern fashion, but had a thin moustache neatly cut to reveal thin, chiselled lips and his sideburns had been trimmed to a sharp line accentuating the shape of his jaw and cheekbone. His collar was knife-sharp and edged with expensive brocade quite out of place in these surroundings; his under-tunic such an improbably perfect white that it must have been donned new today. Katla thought she had never seen a man who presented himself with such conscious effort at precision and contrived elegance. His voice, though, gave away his origins: an accent from the poor far east of the islands, flat and harsh, had yet to be turned out to quite the same level of perfection as the rest of him.

‘We have come to see Morten Danson, the owner of this yard,’ Halli said.

The man looked him up and down, then turned his attention to Katla. She felt his eyes travel across her, taking in the ravaged hair, the outlandish costume, the smallness of her breasts. ‘More beggars and ne’er-do-wells no doubt come to seek employment,’ the man sighed. ‘We have enough pig-ignorant labourers here without casting about for the likes of you. Take your motley and thievery elsewhere and good day.’ He turned on his heel.

Halli opened his mouth to reply, but Katla was quicker.

‘Never mind, brother,’ she said loudly enough that her words would reach the retreating figure. ‘If this gentleman wishes to prevent us from delivering an invitation to Morten Danson on behalf of the King then that’s up to him. I’m sure a mere shipmaker will hardly be missed among such an august crowd of nobles and men of influence.’

The small man turned in a flurry of silks. ‘An invitation? To me? From the King, you say?’

So this strutting cockerel was Morten Danson himself. Katla felt a keen stab of dismay. How could such an overweening and snobbish fool be the finest shipmaker in Eyra? His hands, pale and smooth as a lady’s, looked as though they had held no tool – at least not one used in the pursuit of carpentry – in decades. It made no sense at all.

Halli reached into his bag and removed the roll of goat-parchment, tied with a silken band. He held it out to the shipwright, who took it avidly, his long fingers playing up and down the shaft of the roll as if in a paroxysm of excitement. Then he unfurled it with shaking fingers. Katla watched how his eyeballs flickered up and down the unfamiliar markings and his brow knit in consternation. He cannot read, she thought delightedly. It means nothing to him at all; so much for pig-ignorance. She coughed delicately and took the parchment away from the shipmaker deftly.

‘You know we were instructed to declaim the invitation properly, brother,’ she said to Halli, extending the paper to him. ‘’Tis hardly polite to expect a gentleman to do his own reading—’

Halli’s face became carefully bland, although behind his smooth expression she could sense his mind working furiously. ‘Ah yes,’ he said after a bare moment’s hesitation. He held the parchment out at arm’s length. ‘The King – Lord Ravn, son of Ashar, son of Sten of the Northern Isles – requests the presence of his most loyal and esteemed shipmaker, Morten Danson, to an evening of entertainment on Halfmoon Night by the world-famous mummers under the chieftancy of the great Tam Fox at Halbo Castle to celebrate his marriage to the beauteous Rose, Queen of his heart.’

‘An entertainment? Tomorrow night? At Halbo Castle? By Tam Fox’s mummer troupe? Invited by King Ravn himself?’ The shipmaker’s eyes gleamed.

‘You are invited to attend the feast, and to enjoy the King’s hospitality overnight in the guest chambers.’ Halli finished loudly. He furled the parchment back into its roll and proffered it to Danson who took it from him greedily.

‘My, my, what delight. What a charming prospect. And what should I wear for such an occasion?’ Danson’s eyes flicked to Halli, then shot away again. ‘Whatever am I thinking, to ask the messenger such a question? Let alone a messenger clothed as if he has dressed in the dark out of someone else’s wardrobe—’

Katla grimaced at her brother. ‘He’s got you there,’ she mouthed silently.

‘We have been asked, also,’ Halli said, ignoring her, ‘to make an inspection of the yard and bear word back to our master of the marvels you carry out here.’ He was careful to avoid being too specific about who their ‘master’ might be. Let the shipmaker believe they answered to the King rather than to the chief of the mummers if he was so arrogant that he thought Ravn would have sent them personally with such a request.

The deception worked. Katla could almost see the man preening. ‘Of course, of course. Follow me.’

The tour was perfunctory, and delivered amid such a torrent of self-serving verbiage that by the end of it Katla felt ready to knock the shipmaker over the head there and then and save everyone the bother the following night. They had, however, gathered all the information they had come for. Morten Danson had commissions for three ice-breakers, was in the process of smelting the iron for a fourth, had felled every big oak in the eastern isles, including the sacred grove above Ness – ‘for they say war is coming, you know,’ the shipmaker had said, bobbing his head like a robin sighting a worm, ‘and then it’ll be he who has the wood who makes good’ – had cut a swathe through the Barrow Plantation, too, and had in his employ not only his own yard foreman, Orm Flatnose – a master craftsman of the finest order – but Finn Larson’s man, Gar Fintson, too. Any Eyran who wanted an oceanworthy ship built would be forced to beat a path to Morten Danson’s door and take their place in a growing queue. They would also have to pay his extortionate prices – ‘so little competition any more,’ the unpleasant little man had leered. ‘With Larson dead and what’s left of the Fairwater clan chopping rowing boats and rough knarrs out of the last of their seasoned timber. No wonder they’re reduced to selling off their prize cow.’ At which point Katla had seen Halli’s face cloud over as thunderously as their father’s could in the worst of his tempers.

They had had the foremen pointed out to them; also the master steamer, who steamed the planking to shape by eye alone; and the riveter and the rabbetter too, and had ascertained that, given the number of urgent orders to be fulfilled, all lived on or near the yard site. Sailmakers and ropemakers they had aplenty in the western isles; there would be no need to bribe or kidnap any with these skills. They had marked the whereabouts of the finest heartwood and the best oak for the stempost. It would be hazardous sailing two barges through all the obstacles on the lagoon and out into the firth, but the barges were huge, the other vessels were tiny in comparison and the problem would be lack of speed rather than manoeuvrability. Katla did not envy her brother that task at all. She was, on the other hand, looking forward to rendering the shipmaker unconscious and carting him off to the
Snowland Wolf
as ungently as she could.

The next day dawned with ill omen. The sun’s red light edged piling clouds with a fiery glow; then minutes later the whole sky turned as dark as dusk and a fork of silver stabbed down through the gloom. With a dull groan the heavens opened and rain came sheeting down. Katla stared out into all the greyness and took in the rain-slick stones, muddy streets and filth-choked gutters with a sinking heart. For the first time since she had slipped aboard the mummers’ ship, she wished she were at home in Rockfall, where storms over the sea seemed more like the theatre of the gods and the rain served merely to clear the skies, green the fields and clean the birdshit off her favourite climbs.

Beside her, wrapped in a pair of old flour sacks, Halli mumbled something inaudible, rolled onto his side and began to snore again. He had slept badly, and as a result so had Katla, since she had been forced to elbow him forcibly on several occasions to quiet him. The word ‘Jenna’ recurred eight times in the course of his nocturnal ramblings. Katla knew: she had counted.

Now, she inserted a chilly bare foot beneath the sacks and placed it firmly on the hot skin of her brother’s belly. Halli sat up, snorting wildly.

‘Wha—’

‘Time to leave your happy dreams behind,’ she said sternly. ‘You’ve a raid to lead and I’ve some tumbling to learn.’

‘She’ll be there. Tonight. I won’t even see her.’

Katla stared at him. ‘What on Elda are you talking about?’

‘Jenna.’ Halli’s face looked grey, though perhaps it was just the light.

‘How do you know she’ll be there?’

‘I saw her, yesterday, riding in with the rest of them.’

Katla remembered the cavalcade of wagons that had rumbled past them on the road from the east the previous day – the group of giggling girls, the long blonde hair; Halli’s stormy mood thereafter – and felt a fool. ‘Oh, Halli – the wagon that nearly ran us off the road . . .’

He nodded. She could tell how his jaw was tensed by the cords of tendon that stood out on his neck.

‘That stuff the shipmaker said about the Fairwater clan—’

‘—selling off their prize milch cow,’ he finished bitterly. ‘She’s up for marriage to some ancient, crippled retainer, no doubt. Or some fat lordling jostling for position and favour, thinking he’d do well to take the runner-up to the nomad whore.’

Katla made a face. ‘You had best not say such things in the King’s city if you care to keep your head.’

‘My sister, the diplomat.’ Halli laughed shortly, then moved to the window of translucent membrane made from the stretched stomach lining of a seal, or suchlike, and peered out. ‘Is that a shadow I see up there, or a flying pig?’

Katla stared up into the clouds, her eyes narrowed in mock concentration. ‘A pig, definitely.’

They stood there in silence for a few minutes, just gazing out into the racing sky. Then: ‘What can I do, Katla?’ Halli asked in an anguished tone. ‘I have Father pushing me one way and my heart and conscience another . . .’ He passed a hand across his face. ‘If I carry out Da’s plan, I’ll be miles off down the coast, stealing ships and timber, while Jenna is parcelled off without a friend in the world to save her, and I’ll have lost her forever.’

Katla didn’t know what to say. She squeezed his arm. ‘Do you really love her?’

Halli nodded. ‘But I fear she doesn’t love me.’

Katla grinned. ‘Jenna knows how to love no one but herself, and that not as well as she could. I will find her tonight and talk to her. Trust me, brother.’ She pushed herself off the wall into an awkward back-flip and landed in a tangled heap on the floor. There was straw in her hair and dust streaked across her cheek. She looked about four years old. Halli could not help but smile. ‘A fine and limber serpent you will make tonight. Best run along. You need as much practice as you can get.’

By the time Katla got to the stables where the mummers had arranged to meet to rehearse, it was clear she was late, which was not entirely surprising since she had got lost and had then compounded the error by deciding to explore the town beneath the castle, finding a pie-shop and a knife-maker in the winding lane below the walls and had eaten her fill in the first and got into an interesting conversation about quenching metal in the second.

The performers in Tam’s troupe, their first exercises completed, stood around in knots, sweating profusely. The men had stripped down to linen clouts or soft leather breeches, while the women had bound their breasts flat and their hair into long tails. They all stared at her as she ran in. Tam Fox, resplendent in his shaggiest cloak, gave her a cool, assessing glance that took in every detail of her attire, and every inch of flesh beneath it, and beckoned Urse One-Ear, his huge deputy, to him. ‘Tie the second and third fingers of her left hand together,’ he bade the hulking creature. ‘It may serve as a reminder to her to be punctual later.’ He turned back to Katla. ‘Four fingers, fourth hour after noon. The Great Hall. If you’re late then, I’ll have Urse cut both fingers off.’ He walked away without a backwards glance.