The daws wheeled overhead.
“I don’t believe you’re spies,” Connor continued. “At least, not for this Black Hood, whoever he is. But I know you are watching me. I wish you’d tell me why.”
Dive, swoop.
Then another idea occurred to Connor, and he whispered to himself, “Even if you aren’t spies, how about some of the other birds?”
He whirled around. Sure enough, seabirds flew around the prison, wheeling and darting, but the mess building was just beyond, and the scrapings were always put out for the birds. He had to determine if they were ordinary birds, or ones being enchanted to serve as magical spies.
Connor drifted back in that direction, head down, careful to move slowly and aimlessly. The birds made constant noise, mostly about food. They also warned one another away. He sorted through their cries with the expertise of long habit, chilled when he sensed among them a single strangely monotone bird-voice from what should have been a raucous gull.
He felt the internal tickle of magic when he focused on that voice. And when he heard the gull cry, over and over and over, in no natural tone for any bird,
Vebb
,
Vebb
,
Vebb
,
listen
to
Vebb
, alarm burned through him.
Connor gripped his staff. This bird was a spy.
Connor had worked his entire life to keep his talents hidden. Should he expose them now? Even if the Commander believed him, he was not sure what could be done. He could hear the gull but he couldn’t point out which one it was. And the pirate was going nowhere.
He had been given the day off, but any thought of joining his friends or taking a solitary hike in the mountains had vanished.
He sat down to wait.
“Halfrid!” Tyron exclaimed.
Night had fallen, bringing a soft rain shower. Tyron had worked far later in Halfrid’s office than he’d intended, but the work was piling up. “I’m so glad you’re back,” he said, getting up from Halfrid’s chair and moving to sit in the window seat.
The senior mage smiled ruefully as he sank heavily into his chair. “I’m not back. That is, I am only back for a couple of very old texts on tracers. I have some ideas—oh, that can wait. First, give me a report on things here.”
Tyron rubbed his head, though he knew his hair was already a wild tangle. Not that he cared. “Mistress Leila is still gone.”
“I know. I spoke with her just before I transferred here. Queen Nerith is healing, but there is trouble in the court, something having to do with Prince Rollan.”
Tyron was surprised. “Prince Rollan?” He was the only one of Connor’s half-siblings that anyone liked, outside of Teressa’s deceased mother and Mistress Leila. “
He
can’t be causing problems. Though I wouldn’t say that for the rest of ‘em.”
“Oh, he’s not. That princess in Allat Los seems to want to marry him, and only him. One of the results of the war.” Halfrid chuckled, hands folded comfortably over his plump middle. “But the problem is his principality, there in the mountains. A strange place, I’m told. It’s out of the way, but strategically important for a number of reasons that I’m glad to say I don’t have to concern myself with as it is not our kingdom. Apparently the brothers and sisters of our friend Connor all want to be duke or duchess of this holding—but without doing any of the work.”
“Some things,” Tyron said grimly, remembering some of the stories he’d heard when Connor was first sent to Meldrith, “don’t change.”
“I do not envy Mistress Leila having to deal with her greedy royal siblings. Anyway, she won’t be coming back any time soon. So I thought I’d better see you before I return.”
“Well, we’re holding our own, in spite of our shortage of teachers,” Tyron said. “Classes sometimes double up, or get cancelled, but we just demand more practice time, and set the students to writing out of old spells in the ancient magic books, with glosses on historical context. This will be a well-educated set of mages, if we keep going this way.”
Halfrid chuckled again.
“All our border mages report in regularly, with no problems so far. Fliss found us a good mage for the farmland spells classes, who is now doubling with the beginners as I had to send Fliss out again, to meet our responsibilities along the southern border and at Hroth Harbor.”
“You could have sent Wren,” Halfrid said. “She would do well with all those renewal spells. And she speaks the language, so she’d get along with the Guild Council at Hroth Harbor.”
“She’s gone.” At the quick contraction of Halfrid’s brows, Tyron explained what had happened, ending with, “I know you didn’t want anyone going north, but she went south, and the only one who saw her was Mistress Falin. I just wish I’d known we’d still be short, as I would have had her do those renewal spells first.”
Halfrid sat back stroking his chin with his thumb. “Is young Hawk still here?”
Tyron was tempted to unload all his complaints. He took a deep breath instead. Halfrid was facing far more serious problems than an obnoxious suitor who hadn’t really done anything besides be insulting. “He noses around, but hasn’t interfered with anything,” Tyron said slowly. “He did tease Teressa into proposing a midnight party on the lake, come Two Moons Night. But Garian Rhismordith and I have made plans for that.”
“Good.” Halfrid neatened the stack of waiting papers with a decisive tap of his fingers. Outside the rain had stopped, leaving the occasional musical drip from the roof. As Tyron opened the window to let in the fresh, cool air, laden with wet garden scents, Halfrid went on, “I hoped that young Garian would prove to be steady. I don’t like Hawk being here, I confess. But if he has made no trouble, I’ll leave him to you. At the first sign of anything alarming, promise me you’ll use that summons ring.”
“Oh, I promise.”
Halfrid’s gaze dropped to the waiting reports. He looked old and tired. “Much to do, I see. Well, I shall help with some of these matters, and then return to our searches. All three mages summoned away on regular business, and all three vanished. And none of us, even the most experienced, can find a single trace.”
“Could they be dead?” Tyron made a face.
“Either that, or living in another form. That’s the trail I want to follow now. Fouling tracers by transformations is complicated, but not new. Except who would do it? And why? These three hardly knew one another, so we know they were not together. That’s for tomorrow. For tonight, let’s get these school matters caught up.”
Tyron and Halfrid bent over the lists, talking and writing by turns, until Tyron’s eyes burned and Halfrid blinked, hesitating longer and longer between his words.
Finally Tyron said, “I still have the fire class just after dawn.”
Halfrid pursed his lips. “The third year students are already there? You definitely need to be rested to teach that class.” No mention of how very complicated and dangerous stored fire spells were, and how important it was to be exact in one’s spells. “Go. Sleep. I’ll finish here and then return to my tasks in the northlands.”
Tyron got to his feet, glad to be heading toward bed at last.
He reached his room and clapped on the light, still feeling that sinking sensation of something undone. He hated that.
It could be just tiredness, but he didn’t think so. He sat on his bed and forced himself to run through the list of things they’d discussed. School, each year’s students, Orin’s special status, the mages’ reports from the border, Hawk, Teressa, trade and treaty spells, travel—
Travel. Wren! Tyron sat up straight. Yes, he’d wanted to ask Halfrid about Wren’s promise to scry and her failure to do so. Then he sank back. No, in the face of real problems, this one seemed like borrowing trouble. What could be wrong? Students went out on journeymage trips every year. Wren was an experienced traveler, and one of the best students.
“I’m just being fussy. Wren would hate that,” Tyron said to the ceiling, and clapped out the light. “If she were in trouble, she’d just transfer home.”
He was asleep before he’d drawn a second breath.
“And you can’t just, um, magic us away, somehow?” Thad asked, peering at the twinkling lights aboard the six ships chasing their gig, near enough now to make out the swing of lanterns as the ships rolled on the seas. During the day the shifting wind had given the pirates the advantage, bringing them close enough to see their hulls and sails. They had spread out along the northern and eastern horizon by sunset, and now each was distinct by the pattern of lanterns hung on the masts.
Wren shook her head without taking her eyes away from those winking lights. She and her four shipmates only had Wren’s small glowglobe, which they kept in their tent. Its light was probably visible through a spyglass from the closest pirate ships, but they couldn’t help that. “I told you, transfers are dangerous, which is why we build Destinations. And I don’t know of a single one close by. Distance transfers are dangerous for different reasons.” She tried to smile. “That’s why we prefer to travel around like anyone else.”
“I still think you should give ‘em a storm,” Danal said. “I know you can. I saw a spell in your book that causes rain. Why not just say it five times?”
Wren suppressed a groan. “What happens when you dam a stream?” she asked.
All four stared at her.
She clapped the hull. “You make a wall, and the water is pushed up behind, and it gets heavier and fuller and builds up. If you keep doing it, the water is stronger than the dam, and it breaks, and then what happens?”
“Whoosh!” Danal said, making swimming motions with his hands.
“Exactly. If you mess around with the weather, it’s like damming the air and the water and the sun’s warmth, and when they push back, you get monster storms that can last a very long time—and cause damage.”
“But we’re at sea,” Patka said. “No damage to farms here.”
“When you talk about weather,” Wren said, “you’re not talking about
here
this spot in the water, you’re talking about
here
all the way to the next continent. And maybe farther.”
Thad was at the tiller, a silhouette against the night sky. “That’s enough jawing at her about what she’s not doing. She knows what she can or can’t do, and why.”
Danal said, “I agree.”
Lambin rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Wren, you were doing magic all morning. If those spells weren’t for getting us ready to sail through the air to safety, then what were they for?”
“I made wards,” Wren said. “The smaller the area, the easier it is to ward. The bigger the area, the tougher. A boat like ours is not as difficult as a ship to ward, but it takes time. The result is, the pirates can’t shoot arrows at us, or rather they can, but the arrows will turn back into twigs and floop smack into the water. As for rock-hurling, the stones will slide right over us. Sploosh! That last one took the longest,” she added. “But it should protect us.”
“What if they reach us?” Patka crouched down on one of the benches. “They can still ram the gig, or just drop over the sides if they want us as prisoners. We got no weapons.”
“That’s next.” Wren turned to Thad. “How long do you think we might have before they catch up?”
Thad’s profile lifted toward the night sky, then turned slowly from side to side. “Say the winds stay the way they have been—strong during the day, dying at night—then we might get two or three days. That’s at best. Those ships’re bigger and heavier than us, so they’re faster in this wind. If the wind veers more that way, they’ll be on us real soon. If it veers back this way—” He waved his arm to the right. “Then we can get ahead again. But it doesn’t seem to want to.”
“Then I better bustle.” Wren sighed. “Get me all those stale biscuits. I’m going to layer fire spells onto them. It’s tricky, and dangerous, and it’s going to take me a long time to set up the spells, but tossing one at their sails and rigging and releasing the magic is like setting off a whole winter’s blaze all at once.”
The others gave a shout of approval.
“I’ve a few other tricks, but that’s the worst one. The rest, well, there are sticky-spells, and stone-spells like I put on the captain. As well as a few other tricks. Won’t last long, but should help. Our last defense will be illusions.”
And
our
last
resort
will
be
transforming
us
to
fish
.
“If they see monsters and so forth, they’ll know it’s all fake,” Patka declared.
Wren rubbed her hands. “That’s not the kind of illusion I had in mind.”
Connor got teased by his friends among the guards and runners and stable-hands for not having the wits, or the winnings, to go down the mountain into the town and live it up.
Connor just sat on a bench in the mellow sun, saying, “I’m far too lazy. And you have won all my pay.” He hooked his thumbs in his tunic pockets, wiggled his fingers, and made a comical face.
They laughed and left him alone.
He spent the rest of the day trying to distinguish that one gull from all the others. By mid-afternoon he was forced to give up. The gull had obviously flown away before he could isolate it.
He considered what he should do. He knew that the bird had been sent to spy, but by whom? It wasn’t worth telling the Commander or the Admiral until he could answer at least some of the questions that would come next.
So while the pirate Vebb waited in the jail for the Admiral to get his audience with the king, and the Admiral waited in the royal audience chamber on the high mountain behind the harbor, Connor waited on his bench in the courtyard, hoping the spy gull would return.
When the first drops of the usual evening thunderstorm spattered on his face, he wondered if Vebb was just too unimportant to be bothered with. It was time to give up.
He retreated to his bunk in the barracks, which overlooked the jail. He opened the window then lay down to rest.
It seemed he’d just fallen asleep when a strange sound roused him, a brushing, whooshing sound. He sat up, groggy and bewildered, to see an ominous black shape flit across his window, back again, and yet again.