Wild Magic Read online

  ‘I think the King’s shipmaker has plenty of orders on his hands. I suspect he may have turned down Da’s commission because of the rumours as to how the last King’s shipmaker perished.’

  He stated it as flatly as if it had been a goat Fent had skewered at the Allfair, rather than a man, and his sweetheart’s father to boot, Katla noted with surprise. Older and harder his face looked, too; more than ever like Aran’s. Halli was a man to be reckoned with, she realised with surprise; not a boy any more at all. Between the actions of their father and brother he’d lost every dream he’d ever cherished for himself – his own ship, the wherewithal to make a match with the girl he loved and the price of the farm on which they’d raise their stock and their family.

  ‘Jenna will come round in the end,’ she said softly. ‘She’s really very fond of you.’

  Halli’s head jerked as if she had hit him. ‘You know?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘Fent told me. On the voyage back.’

  ‘But instead of telling me you thought you’d let me find out for myself,’ he said bitterly. ‘Why would she ever ally herself to the clan who killed her father?’

  ‘She doesn’t know for sure. No one does.’

  ‘And that makes it right, does it? I say Fent should be a man and declare the killing and offer blood-price to the Fairwater clan and take the years of exile for the manslaughter that he’s due.’

  ‘But Da won’t let him?’ Even as she said it Katla knew this to be so: Aran was so fixed on his dream of gold that he’d not let a small thing like law or principle stand in his way. Paying blood-price for the King’s shipmaker would ensure that the Rockfall clan would never afford another ship, even if anyone was willing to trade with them again.

  Halli shook his head wordlessly, his jaw rigid.

  Katla shrugged. ‘Easier to move mountains than to shift our father a knuckle-length when he’s set on something.’

  ‘I hate him.’ Dark blood suffused his face.

  ‘Da?’ Katla was taken aback.

  ‘Fent.’

  ‘He’s a hot-tempered—’ she started.

  ‘He’s a monster.’ Halli said it with a vehemence Katla had never heard from her mild-mannered sibling. ‘He’s as dangerous as a mad dog. At best he should be muzzled and tied to a post where his poisonous bite can do no one harm.’

  A curious expression – part avidity, part calculation – passed over Katla Aransen’s face like a high cloud above clear sea.

  ‘I have an idea,’ she said.

  By the height of second tide, the mummers’ ships were fully laden and the Rockfallers had come away from their various tasks and had trailed down to the harbour to wave them off on their voyage back to Halbo. Only three of those gathered on the quay knew that there was anything more to the venture than a simple return to the mainland, and one of those knew more than the other two. In a tight knot on the end of the seawall a little distance from the crowd, Aran Aranson, Halli Aranson and Tam Fox stood with their heads together, talking quietly.

  ‘Only his best oak will do for the keel,’ Aran said urgently to his son. ‘Don’t let him palm you off with anything but the finest single timber he’s got in his store – I’ll have no botched-together vessel for this voyage. I’ve heard he has oaks from the Plantation, and trees from that sacred grove can reach a hundred feet tall. For the ship I have in mind, nothing else will do: that keel will need to be as whippy as a cat’s spine to weather the big seas of the far north.’

  Halli nodded impatiently. He had the air of one who had heard these instructions a dozen times or more. ‘And heartwood for the planking, yes I know.’

  ‘Come back with strakes of sapwood and I’ll send you back to Halbo in a rowing boat—’

  ‘Heartwood, not sapwood.’ Halli rolled his eyes, but his father had turned his attention to Tam Fox.

  The chief mummer matched Aran for height, but seemed taller for the mass of sandy hair he wore in a bizarre combination of topknots and braids and fierce-looking crests, some of which had been turned by years of air heavy with seasalt to a bright, streaky yellow. Plaits wove in and out of his long red beard like snakes; look closer and it became clear that some of the decorations were snakes, cured and withered, or stripped to their skeletal forms, their heads poised to strike.

  ‘Be careful with the shipmaker,’ Aran was saying. ‘If you have to knock him unconscious just make sure you have all the information you need from him first – men, timber, tools: I want nothing left to chance. And don’t hit him too hard, for he’ll be no use to me if he’s addled—’

  ‘Aran.’ Tam Fox gripped his old friend by the shoulder. ‘Do you think I have the memory of a chicken that you tell me this again and again? We will bring you Morten Danson, bruised if necessary, but in full possession of his wits; we will bring you the oak and the tools and the men to wield them, and we will be back here by Harvest Moon.’ He paused, his eyes scanning the crowd over the Master of Rockfall’s broad shoulder. ‘I had hoped to bid farewell to your daughter,’ he added casually.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since this morning when we had an altercation,’ Aran said stiffly.

  ‘I saw her,’ Halli offered helpfully. ‘She came storming past me into the longhouse, grabbed up some bread and wine, then ran out to the stables, leapt on one of the ponies and galloped off into the hills.’

  Aran grimaced. ‘She’ll be back when her temper’s cooled.’

  ‘She’s a tricksy little minx, your Katla,’ Tam Fox said with a grin, ‘but I like her fiery temperament well enough. Why not make her part of our bargain, Aran Aranson, and save yourself the trouble of civilising her for another? I’ll wager you’ll not have her wed by next Winterfest otherwise!’

  ‘The last time I included Katla in such a deal was ill-fated,’ Aran growled. ‘I’ll not be tempting the gods again.’

  ‘I mean to have her, Aran.’

  The older man held the mummer’s gaze. ‘Did I not know you to be more than you seem, this discussion would be ended for good and all. Besides, persuading Katla to be wed at all is likely to be the harder part of the bargain.’

  Tam Fox gave the Rockfaller his lupine smile. ‘Despite all appearances to the contrary, I am a patient man. Time weighs differently for me than it does for you, my friend.’

  The ship’s boat came bumping against the seawall below them and Halli threw his leather sack down to the men at the oars, then lowered himself nimbly into the stern. ‘Fare well, Father,’ he said tightly. He turned his gaze to the Snowland Wolf, its prow rising and falling on the tide, as sleek and elegant as a swan’s neck, scouring the decks for one slight figure.

  Katla Aransen watched the group of men on the mole with curiosity; but when they stopped talking and looked out towards the ship, she swiftly ducked her head and made herself busy about the lines. None of Tam Fox’s crew had noticed anything amiss when Aran Aranson’s younger ‘son’ had boarded the Snowland Wolf; but that might have had more to do with the skins of stallion’s blood she had brought with her than the efficacy of her disguise. Even so, she thought, fingering the unfamiliar fuzz on her chin, the honey had done a remarkable job of keeping in place the snippets of fox-fur she had stolen from the edge of one of her mother’s best capes, even if the hound, Ferg, had tried to lick it off. One good gale was likely to whip it away; but the weather looked set fair to see her safely beyond the point of no return. She stretched her arm up to reach for another of the lines off the yard and was assailed by a rich, rank stench.

  Whoo! She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Wearing Fent’s clothing for the duration of the voyage was going to be punishment in itself. A picture of her twin, securely gagged and bound to the central pillar of the main barn, eyes sparking blue murder as she and Halli bade him farewell at the door, flickered briefly and satisfyingly through her mind.

  Then Katla turned her face to the ocean and grinned with the utmost glee.

  Two

  Tanto

  ‘Take this vile stuff away! Ar
e you trying to poison me now, not content with having rendered me a gross and stinking cripple?’

  Saro watched the silver plate spin through the air and hit the wall on the other side of the bedchamber, emptying its contents down the pale terracotta like vomit. It was curious, he thought, that his brother could have the strength required to hurl a plate so hard that it left a dent in the plaster, but be apparently too weak to feed himself.

  It had been three months since Tanto Vingo had regained consciousness after succumbing to the trauma of the wounds he had received at the Allfair, and the equally dangerous ministrations of the doctors which had followed. Their parents, Favio and Illustria, had been tearful with relief and gratitude at the return of their favourite son – albeit in his new form; but on hearing that familiar voice rend the air of the darkened room on the night when the merchants had passed through, with their rancorous gossip and the fateful moodstones which had played their part in resurrecting the patient, Saro’s heart had contracted in misery.

  He had much preferred his brother when he lay like a dead thing, suppurating silently.

  ‘Clean it up, you toad! Lick it off the wall, like the revolting spew it is – it’s all you’re fit for, anyway.’ Fat tears welled in Tanto’s eyes and burst out onto his pale, fleshy cheeks. He balled his chubby fists and started to batter the counterpane with them. Then he began to roar in the way he did when there was no one else but Saro to hear him. ‘Why me? Why has the Goddess visited this mischance on me – why not you? You’re such a shit-filled, cowardly little worm – what good are you in the world? No one loves you, no one expected anything of you: to have seen you reduced to this would have been no loss. But me—’

  The wailing grew to tidal proportions until Tanto’s face went a putrid purple and he was forced to stop to gasp for breath.

  Saro studiously ignored this outburst, as he had learned to do (nothing infuriated Tanto more) and applied himself to scraping the remains of the roasted chicken, peppers, onions and zucchini off the wall. They had been pureed, like infant food, since Tanto refused even to make the effort to chew; but they had been prepared by their mother’s own hand, mixed with the most expensive herbs and spices and slow-cooked for hours to bring out the delicate flavourings. To see such love and effort treated with such childish scorn was painful to Saro. Though it was hardly surprising that Tanto was in such a permanent foul temper: he was somewhat changed from the young man who had set out from Altea bound for the Allfair those short months ago. Then he had been handsome, athletic and adored – the favourite son, of whom great things were expected. A fine marriage was talked of, an alliance which would bring status, land, influence and, it was hoped, not a little wealth. Through Tanto, the Vingo clan would claw back the economic and political standing it had enjoyed several generations back, before fortunes were squandered by delinquent sons and the war with the North had claimed the rest.

  And so Tanto had been raised as the golden hope of the family, every favour and luxury showered upon him: the best tutors (or rather, when the best were dismissed for gainsaying him, those clever, weak men who had learned not to complain at his laziness and lack of application, nor to suggest that the handwriting in which his exercises were delivered might not be his own); the best fencing masters and weaponry, the best tailors and the fabrics (though Tanto had never acquired good taste: his preference ran to ostentation and obvious expense); and later, the most costly courtesans and body-slaves. But none of this indulgence had done anything to improve what was already showing itself to be a dangerous personality, and in encouraging Tanto’s dreams of power and glory their father had succeeded only in fuelling an arrogant and overweening nature. Tanto did not simply walk: he swaggered. He did not laugh: he brayed, and usually at his own remarks, for he rarely listened to anyone else’s. He did not merely win: he triumphed, at everything he assayed; or there would be tantrums and blood shed, usually a servant’s.

  In short, Tanto had been well on his way to becoming the monster that the Goddess had, in her own inimitable way, now shown him to be, as if his ugly interior had been turned inside-out to show his true face to the world, so that his erstwhile tanned, healthful and darkly handsome exterior was displaced by a bloated, foul-smelling, evil-humoured slug. The beauty of it was that Tanto had brought his fate down upon himself by his own cruel hands (and other parts of his anatomy that were now sadly missing), no matter how vehemently he tried to heap the blame for it upon Saro. So it seemed that there was, Saro thought, scrubbing the last of the dinner off the tiled floor, where it had slid down the wall and congealed, some poetic justice in the world after all.

  ‘Perhaps some dessert, brother?’ he offered now, turning back to survey the ravaged creature in the bed. ‘There’s an apricot frangipan, or some fig jelly . . .’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, brother,’ Tanto returned viciously, his black eyes blazing baleful as coals in the soft blubber of his new face.

  Ever since the parts of his gangrenous manhood had been cut away by the chirurgeon’s knife and sealed with Falla’s fire, Tanto had swelled in size, lost all his muscle-tone and most of his hair. The fat was likely due to the fact that Favio and Illustria, while Tanto had been so blessedly unconscious, had equated parental love with the stuffing of liquid food into their son’s throat by day and night, by long spoon and then by ingenious tubes made from sheep’s intestines while a slave sat by the bedside and stroked his throat to make him swallow. Being bed-bound had converted all that food into these great swells and bloats of flesh: the hair, and the smell of putrefaction which seemed to boil up out of every orifice Tanto owned, well, that seemed a just punishment from the Goddess.

  No matter how hard Tanto railed against the barbarian Eyran raiders who had, he swore, burst into Selen Issian’s pavilion, intent on rape and destruction and wounded him in his brave defence of the girl, Saro knew his brother too well. Tanto had elaborated on the tale so much now, embroidering ever more unlikely details into it, that Saro suspected a far simpler explanation for the events and their consequences, and one that was far more in keeping with what he knew of his elder sibling. Tanto was not used to being denied anything: so when the marriage settlement with Selen had fallen through for lack of funds, there was surely only one reason why Tanto would have gone to the girl’s tent: to take (by force if necessary) what he thought should rightfully be his. And succumbing to a stab wound to the genitals spoke of a woman’s desperate defence rather than a brawl with a band of northerners, especially since the only other marks Tanto bore looked suspiciously like the tiny crescent-shaped cuts which might be made by a woman’s fingernails. They said the Goddess looked after her own . . .

  No one else had remarked on those small wounds, distracted, no doubt, by the horrifying nature of his other wounds, but Saro had been forced to spend a lot of time tending to his brother after the attack. It had been Favio Vingo’s way of punishing him for giving half his winnings from the horse race at the Allfair to the nomad child whose grandfather Tanto had butchered, rather than donating it to the marriage settlement, as a more dutiful (and hard-hearted) son should have done.

  He collected the plate and spoon, and felt for a moment as he did so a disconcerting buzz of energy tingle through his fingertips, as if some ghost of Tanto’s temper haunted the objects and was finding a way to discharge itself through him. As he left the room, he could feel his brother’s eyes boring into his back all the way. In the corridor outside, he shook his head: being alone with Tanto was an unpleasant experience: it could do strange things to his head.

  It was a blessed relief just to breathe clean air as he crossed the courtyard to run the plate, spoon and cloth under the tap from the water-butt there. Tanto would doubtless lie to Mother that Saro had not fed him, that he had taken the food away without waking him for his meal, or most likely had eaten it himself. And Saro would probably end up reviled and punished in like manner: by being refused any supper. But as he felt the sun beat down on his face and was assailed by the hot,
spicy scents of the honeysuckle and marigolds which had been planted against the whitewashed wall there, Saro did not care. He was used to his brother’s spitefulness, and to his parents taking Tanto’s word against his own. So much for the loving bonds of family, he thought. There were times when he felt he had made a deeper connection with the nomad folk he had met at the Allfair than with those with whom he had spent his entire life.

  He crossed the courtyard and leaned against the wall, looking out across the landscape. Their villa stood on a hill below which tiers of cultivated land stretched away in myriad steps, bearing their hard-won crops of limes and lemons, pomegranates and figs down into the orange groves, planted in serried ranks along the valley floor so that the land below appeared like a cloth boldly striped in alternating bands of dusty red and glossy green, shot through with a single sweep of glinting blue where the river ran through. Beyond, maybe sixty miles away or more, the land rose white and rocky to form the foothills of the Farem Heights; beyond that again rose the sawtoothed mountain range known as the Dragon’s Backbone, standing as clear and affirmative against the blue horizon as a voice calling his name.

  All I want, he thought, wringing the cloth out over the wall, is to be away from here. To call my life my own.

  But only the nomads could exist in the wild places beyond the bounds of the Empire. Travelling with their placid pack-beasts, the shaggy-looking yeka, they traversed Elda, never putting down roots, never founding settlements, nor claiming ground, never doing damage to the world. And because they trod so lightly on the land, the land appeared to allow them sustenance and passage through even its most inhospitable areas. The only nomads he had encountered had been at the Allfair, where both northerners and Empire folk travelled to do business, to trade their goods and services, to make alliances, marriages and gain political favour. Had this been the extent of the Fair’s attractions, Saro would have found it dull indeed: but the nomad people – known by the southerners as ‘the Footloose’, though they preferred to call themselves ‘the Wandering Folk’ – had also come to the annual fair, and their presence had provided wonders aplenty. He remembered watching them arrive in their garishly painted wagons and their outlandish costumes, bearing the fantastic array of goods they brought with them to trade and to sell: lanterns and candles, jewellery made from dragonclaws and bear teeth; ornaments, pottery and weavings; potions and charms. His fingers strayed unconsciously to the small leather pouch he wore around his neck. Inside, there lay the most dangerous object in the world, though when he had first come upon it at a nomad peddler’s stall he had thought it merely a pretty trinket, a moodstone which changed colour according to the emotional state of the person who handled it. Since that innocent time, however, he had seen it absorb an old man’s death and pass to him the wearer’s gift – a deep, and entirely unwanted, empathy with anyone with whom he made physical contact. He had seen it flush red in anger and poisonous green with jealousy; he had seen it flare to a white that hurt the eyes; he had seen it steal men’s souls out of their bodies and leave them stone dead upon the ground. Until three months ago, he had thought he had seen the utmost the moodstone could show him. Then, accessing some nexus of power he could not comprehend, it had brought his brother back to the world; and for that alone he felt like pounding it to dust and scattering its magic to the winds.