The Ambassador's Mission

CHAPTER 24

THE ALLIES YOU NEED



Sunny House was living up to its name. Warm sunlight bathed the garden and ruins, setting the more colourful flowers glowing in a sea of green vegetation. Skellin was waiting for Cery in the same shelter they had met in last time, his guard standing nearby.

Gol stopped, as far from the shelter as the other guard was. Cery walked on, resisting the urge to turn and look behind, but not because of his friend and bodyguard. As always, he’d arranged for some of his people to follow and watch, ready to help if he needed them, or warn of approaching danger. He called them his “shadow guard.” Only this time there was a new face among the familiar ones.

Anyi. She was learning fast. She was quick and agile, and a bit too reckless at times. It had turned out though that the risks she took were more often out of ignorance than foolishness, and she was taking in his and Gol’s instruction with reassuring enthusiasm and intelligence. Ordering her to follow and watch was the safest way to let her feel she was doing the job she wanted, without risking revealing her identity to anyone or putting her in real danger.

Yet the streets they’d passed through were never completely safe, and he couldn’t help worrying that some stupid thug would try something with her, and it would lead to a fight.

As Cery reached the shelter, Skellin rose to greet him.

“What do you have to tell me, friend?” the other Thief asked.

“Some news I heard the other day.”

The story of the rot-seller and his foreign, female helper brought a frown to the man’s exotic face. Cery lied about the source of the information, saying that it was a washerwoman who’d overheard the conversation. Better to keep Anyi’s name out of this.

“Hmm,” was all Skellin said. He looked displeased. Perhaps even angry.

“I also informed my friend that you would like to meet her,” Cery added. “She agreed to it.”

Skellin’s gaze lightened and he straightened his shoulders. “Did she?” He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Well, that’s something to look forward to. As for your rather bad news … I will look into it.” He sighed. “It does not look good, does it? First she is seen in my territory, now she is working for my rot-sellers.”

“Unless they’re someone else’s rot-sellers.”

The other Thief’s mouth twitched into a crooked smile. “Which would make it even worse news. I’ll let you know what I find out.” His voice had gained a harder, almost threatening edge. That’s more like what I’d expect from a man with his power and trade, Cery thought.

Cery nodded. They spoke polite farewells, parted and headed in different directions. After all the effort I have to put into getting here, these meetings always feel too brief. But sitting and chatting to Skellin doesn’t appeal either. I’m not sure why. Probably because I’m always waiting for him to try getting me to sell rot for him.

Gol joined him and they set off into the city. Sunny House was several streets behind when a figure stepped out of a doorway and walked toward them. Cery tensed, then relaxed as he recognised Anyi, then tensed again as he realised she was disobeying his orders. She wasn’t supposed to approach him until they were back at the hideout.

Maybe she needs to warn me of something.

Anyi nodded to him politely, her expression serious, then fell into step beside him.

“So,” she said, her voice low. “You got a good reason to be working with the King of Rot?”

Cery glanced at her, amused. “Who calls him that?”

“Half the city,” she replied.

“Which half?”

“The lower half.”

“I’m from the lower half, so why haven’t I heard of it?”

She shrugged. “You’re old and out of touch. So. Have you got a good reason?”

“Yes.”

They walked in silence for several paces.

“Because I hate that man,” she added suddenly.

“Oh? Why is that?”

“We had no rot here until he came along.”

Cery grimaced wryly. “If he hadn’t brought it, someone else would have.”

She scowled. “Why don’t you sell it?”

“I have standards. Pretty low standards, but that’s to be expected. I’m a Thief.”

“There’s a big difference between what he does and what you do.”

“You have no idea what I do.”

“That’s true.” She frowned. “And I’m not in a hurry to find out. But … why don’t you deal in rot?”

He shrugged. “Rot makes people unreliable. If they lose interest in making a living they don’t want loans. If they can’t work they can’t pay back the loans. If they’re broke, they can’t buy things. If they die they’re no good to anyone. Rot isn’t good for business – unless it is the business. And if it was no worse than bol I’d be lining up to trade in it.”

Anyi nodded, then let out a long sigh. “It sure does make people unreliable. There was … I had a friend. We worked together, were going to … do things together. My friend helped me out when you told me I had to hide.

“But we started to run out of money a lot faster than we should have. I knew my friend took rot, only enough to relax and sleep. When it ran out, my friend disappeared off to get more. I went next door to talk to the neighbour’s wife, so I was out when my friend returned. With two thugs. I heard them talking. My so-called ‘friend’ was going to sell me out.”

Cery cursed. “Did he know why you were hiding?”

“Yes.”

“So the thugs know, too.”

“I guess so.”

Cery glanced at Gol.

“They probably wanted to sell Anyi on to someone better positioned to use her against you,” the big man said. “Her boyfriend will have only wanted fast money.”

“So there are two thugs out there who know too much,” Cery said. He turned to Anyi. “Would you like this former friend killed?”

She looked at him sharply. “No.”

He smiled. “Would you mind if I had the thugs killed?”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “No.”

“Good, because I would have them killed whether you minded or not, but I’d rather be certain we got the right ones, and that’ll be easier if you can pick them for us.”

She nodded. Then she looked at him sidelong. “You know, nobody uses that old slum slang any more. ‘Pick’ is so old-fashioned.”

“I’m an old-fashioned kind of man.” They turned into a wider street, which was full of vehicles and people and noise. He lowered his voice. “Just so you know, the reason for today’s meeting is to find the person who you were hiding from.”

Anyi paused in scanning the street to glance at him. “Guess that’s a good reason to be talking to the King of Rot. Can I watch when you kill the murderer?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I won’t be killing her. I doubt I could if I tried.”

“It’s a woman? Why can’t you kill her?” She sent him another quick look, this time full of confusion. He chuckled.

“Don’t worry. I’ll explain when the time is right.”


I bet Regin wishes he was here, Sonea thought as the young female Healer was led to the front of the Guildhall. The woman wasn’t one of the Healers who worked at the hospices, so Sonea did not know her well. Lady Vinara had explained that she was from one of the city’s less powerful Houses – a younger daughter sent to the Guild in order to gain prestige, and Healing for the family without charge.

The Healer had been overheard relating how she had used magic for a smuggler, and, when the information had been reported, she’d been summoned to a Hearing by the Higher Magicians. Rumours claimed that the smuggler was her cousin. It was the first time anyone had been accused of breaking the new rule against magicians working for criminals.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Higher Magicians deal with this. Regin will be itching to know what is decided. I expect he’ll pay me a visit tonight, to find out the details.

She realised the prospect didn’t bother her that much. Though she could never completely relax in Regin’s company, he seemed genuinely concerned about the new rule and how it affected the welfare of magicians. And, of course, he was keen to find the rogue. But he didn’t drone on about it, like some magicians might, and never outstayed his welcome.

Because he’s a man who’d prefer to take action than whinge about something.

She stilled in surprise. Had she just found something admirable in Regin’s character? Surely not.

Of the rogue, there had been no news. Most nights Sonea worked at the same hospice in Northside, knowing this would make it easier for a messenger from Cery to find her. But no messages had come since he’d visited personally to tell her he was enlisting the help of another Thief.

Below her, Administrator Osen turned to the Higher Magicians.

“Lady Talie is charged with breaking the new rule forbidding a magician to be involved in or benefit from criminal activity,” he told them. “We are to decide if this is true and, if so, how she is to be punished.” He turned to look at a pair of magicians standing to one side. “I call on Lord Jawen to speak as witness.”

One of the pair, a middle-aged Healer, stepped forward. He was frowning and the way he was trying not to look at Lady Talie made it obvious that he was uncomfortable about speaking against her.

“Please tell us what you heard,” Osen said.

The man nodded. “A few nights ago I was gathering cures from a storeroom when I heard voices at the rear of the room. One of the voices belonged to Lady Talie. I heard her say, quite clearly, that what was inside some boxes wasn’t legal. Well, that attracted my attention, and I stopped to listen. She went on to say that she didn’t want to know what was in them. That she moved them, Healed a man then went home.” His frown deepened. “And that someone was stupid for thinking something so big and heavy could be moved by one man.”

“What did you do then?” Osen asked.

Jawen grimaced. “I left the room and went on working. I needed time to think about what to do. A few hours later I decided I had to tell Lady Vinara what I’d heard.”

“That is all you overheard?”

“Yes.”

“Then that is all for now.” As the man retreated to his former position, Osen turned to the young Healer. “Lady Talie, please come forward.”

She obeyed. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line, and there was a crease between her brows.

“Please explain to us what Lord Jawen overheard.”

Talie drew in a deep breath and let it out again before answering. “He has the gist of it,” she said. “I did move a box that was probably full of illegal goods – though I don’t know that for sure. When Lord Jawen overheard me, I was worried if this meant I’d broken a rule or law, and was asking a friend what she thought.”

“How did you find yourself in a situation where you might question the legality of your actions?”

She looked at the floor. “I was tricked. Well, not tricked … but I didn’t feel like I could refuse.” She paused to shake her head. “What I mean is, someone I wish I didn’t know took me to that place where the boxes were, saying a person was hurt and needed my help. He wasn’t lying, actually. One of the boxes had fallen on top of a man and his thigh bone had been crushed. I had to lift the box off him so I could Heal him. Once I’d done that they took me home.”

Sonea felt a pang of sympathy. The young woman clearly could not have left the injured man in his predicament. She shouldn’t have gone with the smuggler in the first place, of course, but she wasn’t asked to do anything criminal. Yet, while Healing isn’t a criminal activity, moving a box of illegal goods might be considered so.

“So your only action was to move one box and Heal a man?” Osen asked.

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know for sure that the goods inside were illegal.”

She grimaced and shook her head. “No.”

“Did you receive any payment for your help?”

“He tried to give me something but I refused to take it.”

“Is that all you can tell us?”

She paused, then cast a doubtful glance at Lady Vinara. “I’d have Healed that man anyway. And moved the box off him. I couldn’t have left him like that.”

Osen nodded then turned to the Higher Magicians. “Any questions for Lady Talie or Lord Jawen?”

“I have one for Lady Talie. Has this man asked favours or services of you before?” Lord Garrel asked.

“No.”

“What is your connection to him, then?”

Talie looked at Osen and bit her lip. “He has done work and favours for my family, though it was years ago before anyone knew he was involved in anything illegal.”

“Could you take someone back to the place these goods were stored?”

“No. He made sure the carriage windows were covered. When we arrived the carriage was inside a big room. And even if I did know where it was, I doubt the goods are still there.”

Sonea smiled at that. The young Healer was probably right. But by saying so, she had suggested she knew more about smuggling than a magician from a House ought to.

No more questions came, so Osen sent Lord Jawen and Lady Talie out of the hall. When they were gone, Lord Telano sighed.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “She only did what any Healer ought to do. She shouldn’t be punished for that.”

“She wasn’t paid,” Garrel added. “She didn’t benefit from it. I see no wrongdoing here.”

“The rule forbids involvement in criminal activity as well as benefiting from it,” Vinara pointed out. “But I agree. Moving a box is hardly involvement in crime.”

“Still, we ought to be discouraging magicians from having anything to do with such people,” Lord Peakin said.

“Which, as we established recently, is too difficult to enforce and apparently unfair to some Guild members,” Garrel reminded him.

“Has she clearly broken a rule?” Osen asked.

None of the magicians answered. Several shook their heads.

“Does anybody believe she should be punished?”

The question received the same response. Osen nodded. “Then, unless anybody disagrees with me, I will declare she has broken no rule. I will also let it be known that Lord Jawen acted correctly in reporting what he heard, and state that tests of the new rule are beneficial and to be encouraged. We don’t want anyone taking today’s decision as an indicator that doing favours for dubious characters will always be overlooked.”

“Do you think Lady Talie would agree to identify this man and confirm his activities for the Guard?” Rothen asked, looking back at Lady Vinara.

“I imagine she would be reluctant,” Vinara replied. “If he had enough influence to force her to this store, then he may have enough to prevent her speaking against him. I will ask her, but only if the Guard does require her help.”

“If she agrees and a conviction is achieved, it will discourage criminals from taking advantage of magicians,” Osen said. He called the young Healer back in and told her their decision. She looked relieved.

And perhaps a little annoyed to have been put through this, Sonea observed. Osen announced the meeting over and the Higher Magicians began to leave. As she reached the floor of the hall, she found Rothen waiting for her.

“What do you think?” he murmured to her.

“I think the new rule is going to be ineffective at keeping magicians and criminals apart,” she replied.

“But in the past someone of her status would never have been reported, not even if what she’d done was clearly wrong.”

“No, but there is nothing to stop that sort of bias returning as magicians realise the limitations of the new rule. I won’t be convinced it’s an improvement unless the degree of harassment of lower-class-origin magicians lessens.”

“Do you think she would have helped the injured man if there was no incentive to please the man who asked her to?”

Sonea considered the question. “Yes, though not without some disdain.”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s an improvement on the past anyway. Thanks to your hospices, it’s no longer thought of as acceptable to deny Healing because the patient can’t afford it.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Things have changed that much? But surely Vinara hasn’t stopped charging patients who come to the Healers’ Quarters.”

“No.” He smiled. “It’s more of an attitude change. It’s not, well, healerly to ignore anyone you stumble upon who is in great need. That is, if they are injured or dying – not if they’ve got a hangover or the winter cough. It is as if the ideal for a Healer to aspire to is now someone who has Vinara’s cleverness and your compassion.”

She stared at him in disbelief and dismay.

He laughed. “I’d love to come to the end of my life knowing I’d made a change for the good, but despite all my work I don’t think I will. But now I see how uncomfortable it makes you, I wonder if I should be grateful for that.”

“You have made a difference, Rothen,” she protested. “I’d have never become a magician if it were not for you. And what is this talk of your life ending? It’s going to be years – decades – before you need to start planning a gravestone to outdazzle everyone else’s.”

He grimaced. “A plain one will do just fine.”

“That’s good, because by then there’ll be no gold left in the Allied Lands except what’s on magicians’ headstones. Now, that’s enough talk of death. Regin is, no doubt, pacing outside my door wanting to know how we decided, and I’d like to get that little interview over with so I can get some sleep in before tonight’s shift.”


Nine men now rode on either side of Achati’s carriage each day – four Sachakan magicians, their source slaves and one of the grey-skinned Duna tribesmen from the north, who had been hired as a tracker.

Dannyl had been acutely aware that these powerful men had left their comfortable homes and joined the search based on a mere guess that Lorkin and Tyvara were heading for the mountains, and that the Traitors would continue working toward the pair being captured. If he was wrong … it would be embarrassing at the least.

If the four magicians doubted Dannyl’s reasoning, they hid it well. They and Achati had discussed their plans in a way that had included Dannyl, but made it clear he was not in charge. He decided it was best to accept that, to seek their advice on everything and go along with their plans, but always make it clear he was determined to find his assistant and would not easily be persuaded otherwise.

One had asked the Duna tribesman, Unh, if he thought Lorkin and Tyvara were heading toward the Traitor home. The man had nodded and pointed toward the mountains.

The tribesman rarely spoke, and if he did he used as few words as possible to get across his meaning. He wore only a skirt of cloth on top of which a belt was strapped, hung with little drawstring bags, strange carvings and a small knife in a wooden sheath. At night he slept outside, and though he accepted food brought to him by the slaves he never spoke to them or ordered them about.

I wonder if all his people are like this.

“What are you thinking?”

Dannyl blinked and looked at Achati. The Sachakan was regarding him thoughtfully from the opposite seat in the carriage.

“About Unh. He has so few possessions and seems to need so little. Yet he does not behave like a poor man or beggar. He is … dignified.”

“The Duna tribe have lived the same way for thousands of years,” Achati told him. “They are nomads, constantly travelling. I suppose you would learn to keep only what you most needed if you had to carry it all the time.”

“Why do they travel so much?”

“Their land is constantly changing. Cracks open up and leak poisonous fumes, molten blackrock from the nearby volcanoes spills over the land or scorching ash falls on it. Every few hundred years or so my people have tried to take their lands, either by force or by establishing towns and claiming the land by settling on it. In the first case the Duna vanished into the dangerous shadows of the volcanoes, and in the latter they simply traded with the settlers and waited. It soon becomes clear that crops won’t grow consistently and animals die there, and each time my people have abandoned the villages and returned to Sachaka. The Duna returned to their old ways and …” Achati stopped as the carriage turned, and looked out of the window. “Looks like we have arrived.”

They passed low white walls, then a pair of open gates. As soon as the carriage stopped, Achati’s slave opened the door. Following his companion out, Dannyl looked around at the estate courtyard and the slaves lying, face-down, on the dusty ground. The rest of the magicians, their slaves and the Duna tribesman dismounted, and Achati stepped forward to speak to the head slave.

I wonder how many of these slaves are Traitors, Dannyl thought. At each estate they’d stayed at, with the permission of the owners, the Sachakans had read the slave’s minds. Many believed that some of the country estates run by slaves, and a few by Ashaki, were actually controlled by Traitors, and were secret training places for spies.

This estate was run by an Ashaki. Dannyl’s helpers had decided it was the safest one in this area to investigate. Even so, the thought that they might be in a place effectively controlled by Traitors sent a small shiver of excitement and fear down Dannyl’s spine. If the slaves were all Traitors, did that mean they were also magicians? If they were, they outnumbered the visitors.

But even if they were all spies and black magicians, they would need a strong reason to attack a group of visiting Ashaki. The inevitable retaliation would force them to abandon their hold on the estate.

The head slave took them all to the Master’s Room. The Ashaki owner, an old man with a limp, greeted them warmly. When they explained why they were there, and that they needed to read the minds of his slaves, he agreed reluctantly.

“It is likely there are Traitors among my slaves,” he admitted. “Considering how close we are to the mountains. But they seem to have a way of hiding it from their thoughts.” He shrugged, suggesting that he’d given up on finding them.

After an hour, all the slaves but a few field workers had been read. The Ashaki visitors retired to the guest rooms, where they lounged on cushions and discussed what they had learned, after first sending away the slaves sent to attend to them.

“A female slave from another estate visited last night,” one of the Ashaki said. “She wanted food for four people.”

Another nodded. “A lone woman was seen arriving and leaving by one of the field workers. She took food to a stock cart.”

“We heard about this stock cart last night,” Achati said. “Is it the same one? Is it unusual for a cart to be travelling this way?”

“It’s not unusual for more prosperous estates to sell feed to less fertile ones at the foot of the mountains.”

“They are in the cart,” stated a new voice.

All looked up to see Unh standing in the doorway. He looked oddly out of place indoors, Dannyl noted. Like a plant which you know will die from lack of sunlight.

“A slave told me,” the man said. He turned and walked away.

The Ashaki exchanged thoughtful looks. None of them questioned Unh’s claim, Dannyl noted. What reason would the tribesman have to lie? He is being paid to find Lorkin and Tyvara.

Achati turned to Dannyl. “You were right, Ambassador. The Traitors do want us to find them, and they have finally given us directions.”