On a Crooked Track

Chapter 3-1

CHAPTER 3

“I didn’t think you even saw it! And how could you set Munraz on his trail? He’ll stand out like a rooster in a flock of geese.”

Penrys paced the common room of their suite at the guild hall, tracing a path between the backs of the chairs and the open window. Najud and Vylkar twisted their necks to follow her from their seats, and the leather creaked as their bodies moved.

Najud raised a hand to slow her down. “What did you think, you could just pry it out of him? In civilized Stokemmi?”

He glanced over at Vylkar for assistance. “He was a wizard himself, yes?”

Vylkar nodded. “He would have to be, to demonstrate his wares.”

“He wore blue robes,” Najud said.

“Anyone can wear the robes,” Penrys said as she changed direction again. “People have been known to bluff. But Vylkar’s right—he was surely a wizard.”

“He recognized the chain. I’m sure of it.” Najud repeated. “He started to say something about it. What I don’t understand is why he stopped.”

“Because he didn’t recognize the wearer. In fact, I think the fact it wasn’t an Ellech face is why he was puzzled.” Vylkar’s tone carried certainty.

“So, he knows other chained wizards, eh? And maybe they all have Ellechen faces.” Penrys whirled to face Vylkar. “And are they the few you found already in Ellech, of various nations, that you reported on in Yenit Ping, or something else?”

Vylkar shook his head. “We found none alive, except you.”

Najud followed her speculation. “You think they have something to do with the makers you’re looking for?”

“I don’t know!”

He could hear her frustration. He pictured the two of them each holding an ankle and dangling the shopkeeper from the roof of his building, then he showed it to her. *This more what you had in mind?*

She gave an involuntary chuckle. “If only we could do that, Naj-sha.”

It worked—finally she stopped pacing and sat down in one of the padded chairs. “This is real, then. He knows something, so there’s something to know. Something that’s not a generation old.”

“More to the point,” Najud said, “we should find out what he’s going to do about it, if anything. If you scare him off, you may learn nothing. If he tells someone, that gives us another name. That’s why I set Munraz on him, for an hour or two—to watch what he does next.”

He hadn’t liked setting his nal-jarghal loose in a strange place where he would be noticeable, but he hoped his youth and obvious visitor status would allay any more sinister suspicions if he were noticed.

“And does this shopkeeper have any connection with Gialfinnur and his possible sect?” Vylkar’s deep voice quieted them all for a moment. “I don’t see how, but then we’re just starting to look.”

A knock on the door of the suite interrupted them, and Vylkar opened the door to a strange woman in wizard blues carrying a rectangular case in one hand. She inclined her head, exposing hair more gray than blond.

“I am seeking Vylkar. I’m Syrlyggi, sent by Redenchek to create a badge…”

At Vylkar’s nod of comprehension, she walked in far enough to clear the door and set the case down as though it were heavy.

Najud nodded to himself. The tools of her trade, and perhaps a bit of precious metal, too. No guard—but then a wizard is her own protection, I suppose. I’ll have to ask Vylkar how armed robbery works in a society with so many wizards around. Or maybe those badges over her breast say something that warns others away.

“You can set up over here, rerri,” Najud told her, waving her over to a table near the window that seemed to be the best height for her sort of work.

Penrys reappeared from their shared room with a velvet pouch and laid it on the table while the goldsmith opened her case and took out magnifying devices and a small balance scale, as well as a soft green felt cloth.

Clearing her throat, Penrys waved at the pouch diffidently. “This was from the Emperor of Kigali.”

The goldsmith’s eyes widened in spite of her urbane professionalism, and she reached for it. She drew out the square gold plaque almost the size of her palm and laid it on the felt. “Are there any documents that come with it?” she asked, her eyes never moving from their examination of the piece.

This time Najud accompanied Penrys to their room and rummaged in his pack for a small scroll encased in a leather pouch while Penrys did her own document search.

When they returned, Penrys laid out a fat paper scroll, heavy with the weight of wax and gaudy with yellow ribbons and the red chop of the emperor. Syrlyggi unrolled it and looked up puzzled. “I cannot read this, rerri.”

Vylkar recited its contents from memory, in Kigali yat. “To Sar Luplen, the foreigner Penrys of sarq-Zannib and Ellech, the thanks of the Emperor Ki Sechat for services to the Kigali Nation.” He walked over to the goldsmith and repeated it in Ellechen guma. Then he leaned over her and pointed to the individual characters on the gold plaque that signified the key names.

“I believe this may be the first time that a foreigner has ever received this particular honor,” he told her. “The Kigaliwen consider such a thing an heirloom of their house, earned by a famous ancestor, and boast of it hundreds of years later. It becomes part of their family emblems, to distinguish their house.”

Penrys had retreated out of embarrassment, and Najud took her place. He laid down the small scroll he carried. “I don’t know if you’ve seen this one, Vylkar. This was after the Voice was destroyed. It was presented by Chang Zenju, the commander of the military expedition where Penrys and I served. It’s a small thing, but I wondered if you thought it should be represented.”

He read the words and translated them for the goldsmith. The scroll’s simple acknowledgment of assistance, made on the behalf of the emperor by one of his military officers to two foreign wizards, from a nation which did not at the time officially recognize that it had wizards of its own, presented a puzzle.

Syrlyggi recovered from her surprise and ventured an opinion. “These are both proper honors to display, foreign though they are. The first one is, of course, the more important and should be represented at the largest size appropriate to an honor not of Ellech. The second would be more modest, but still a separate and worthy honor.”

She glanced at Najud, in his Zannib robes. “I see it bears both your names. Do you wish for your own badge?”

Smiling, he shook his head. “That’s no part of our Zannib traditions. Just the ones for Penrys, suitable for Ellech.”

After some discussion, they settled on an appropriate design for both. The larger honor would be in the form of crossed Kigali-style swords, since the service rendered included physical battle, even if most of it was magical in nature. It would include the characters for the Kigali Emperor’s name, and any decorative touches would complement the foreign style. All in gold, of course, to match the original plaque.

For the minor honor, they agreed that silver was more appropriate. At Najud’s request, the design included the hand-axe used to kill the Voice, the chained wizard eliminated by Penrys at such cost.

“Too bad you’ve nothing to show for your defeat of the qahulajti in sarq-Zannib,” he said to Penrys.

She glared at him. “Just as well. It’s nothing to boast of.”

Najud shook his head. “You’re wrong. Think of all the lives saved.”

“I’d never be able to look at it without thinking of that poor girl. The last thing I want to do is keep count…”

She broke off, conscious of the stranger in the room with them, but Najud knew how to complete the phrase—“count of the dead.”

Syrlyggi followed their conversation without interruption, but when they paused, she ventured, “If I may… I see you are of foreign birth and perhaps you are not aware… When wearing your wizard’s robe and Ellech honors, it is not customary to distract from them with jewelry, other than of the most discreet variety. Your necklace…”

Despite herself, Penrys stiffened, and Najud watched as she made herself relax. “It doesn’t come off, I’m afraid. Would you recommend I conceal it behind a piece of cloth, or would that be just as incongruous?”

“Ah, I see… Well, in that case, please forget my words. It’s always better to present yourself when in formal robes in your truest form, without concealment.”

Najud wondered what she would make of the wings. He caught Penrys’s eye and thought she might be considering the same thing.

The goldsmith worked on a piece of paper for a few moments and then laid down her quill. “For the design work, the materials, and the making of the badges, here is my charge. For the registration of the new honors with the heraldry guild, and for the special urgency, this additional amount.”

She looked uncertainly between Vylkar and Penrys, and Vylkar took charge. “This is for me to pay. You may lay it to my account with the wizard guild—half now, and half upon delivery, if that suits you.”

“If you will so indicate here, that will be satisfactory. Since I expect to stay here and deliver within two hours, I see no need to delay by taking the first p*****t in advance. Your name is known.”

Vylkar acknowledged her courtesy. “May we offer you a place to get started, or will this arrangement do?”

“Any private room with an appropriate table will be fine.”

“Munraz is still out,” Najud said. “Let’s put her in his room. If he comes back too soon, we’ll work around it.”

“How long before we have to show ourselves at dinner?” Penrys asked.

“Two hours, Pen-sha,” Najud told her. “Just enough time.”

“Please, raer, would it be possible to see how it works?”

Munraz concentrated on making his demeanor seem younger, rounding his eyes to convey guilelessness. He thought it helped to be beardless—young men his age here were all bearded, as best they could manage.

“And what does a Zannib youngster want with my signals tower?”

The middle-aged man, unremarkable except for his butter-yellow beard that was trimmed to the level of his collarbone, stood at the door of the westernmost of the four wooden towers at the top of the city’s hill. A steady stream of foot traffic passed them by in the warrens surrounding the cluster of buildings, the tallest ones in the middle, five stories high, and the rest of varying heights in loose rings around them.

It looked as if the clerk who had opened the door to Munraz’s knock had fetched the master of the tower, and Munraz bowed his best elaborate Zannib greeting.

“My apologies, most esteemed raer, but my master and I are newly arrived in Ellech, and he wanted me to study how things are done here. He’s a wizard, you understand. It was my idea to begin with these magnificent structures, but I had no intention to disturb a man such as you in your daily activities. I apologize.”

There. That would never work in sarq-Zannib, but maybe here, if he looked really young, and foreign… That shopkeeper, the one who’d stared at Penrys’s chain, had come here in haste and left more calmly, as if he’d taken care of a problem, and this was the only way Munraz could think of to find out what he’d done.

“Hmmph. Off to the Collegium, I shouldn’t wonder.” The man fingered his beard. “Educating foreigners now, are we?” He studied Munraz’s robe and the simple turban that surmounted it.

Now would not be the time for any of the small sharp items secreted in my anah-im-ghabr to suddenly poke out from the folds. Munraz’s fingers crept surreptitiously to the pouch at his belt and felt the outline of his lud for what luck it might bring him. He’d stumbled upon the small stone in the tunnels under the upper city of Yenit Ping, the Kigali capital, and it had seemed meant for him, as a lud does, but it was chancy to rely on that.

The man pulled the door wide, and waved Munraz in. A counter stood to his left in the small anteroom with benches, and the clerk who had opened the door to him in the first place stood nervously behind it, watching them. The master yanked open the heavy door at the far end of the room and bellowed into it. “Gechendair! Spend a few minutes showing our visitor around, eh?”

Munraz followed him into a large workroom at the base of the tower. Shelves with boxes and labels filled the walls, and his eyes sorted the bustle of activity into young men and a few women working at the narrowly-spaced tables throughout the room with stacks of paper sheets, quills and ink, and long, thin strips of paper. The center of the room was blocked by some sort of complicated column, and Munraz noticed the start of a staircase at its base.