On a Crooked Track

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Late the next morning, Penrys fingered her exposed chain while she waited for Najud to refill his and Munraz’s packs with samples for the third time.

The movement caught Najud’s eye, and he paused, with two small wooden sample boxes of kassa snatched up in one hand. “You could always cover it up.”

She glanced down at her informal robes which so clearly declared her occupation. The fancier honors were gone from her left breast—unsuitable for everyday wear. She shook her head. “Won’t help. My face is almost as obvious. Might as well make it easy for everyone to know who I am.”

The three of them were gathered around the large horse packs that had been stowed in the wizard guild’s warehouse, near the river docks. They weren’t the only people in the gloomy building, but Najud was pleased that their goods had been so conveniently and securely stored, far from any windows and with a watchman on the entrance.

The morning had been spent visiting wholesale merchants up and down the river. Najud had already filled four of the Zannib wax tablets with names, prices, and other notes, and he would need to take them along with him to the guild hall to transcribe them onto paper and smooth the tablets back to blankness.

“I don’t understand. If it’s dangerous, why do it?” Munraz said.

“Ah, but she has a perfect excuse to go round with me to the merchants to do a little trading of samples and selling of goods.” Najud told him.

Penrys added, “I want to be noticed, so that the word will spread and maybe someone like the man you followed will do something imprudent that gives us something useful. But it doesn’t do for the staked goat to have “wizard trap” inked all along her side—tends to scare off the predators. So I need a reason to walk around all innocently like this.”

A smile flickered across her face. “Not that anyone’s likely to notice, when they have these two exotic Zannib men to admire instead.”

That provoked a grin from Najud.

“And besides,” she said, “we don’t know if Ellech really has anything to do with the chained wizards, anyway. That’s just a long line thrown into the sea.”

“But that man sent a message…” Munraz said.

“So maybe the line got a little shorter.” She shrugged. “That’s still quite a way from proof.”

She rounded on Najud. “Explain to Munraz how you benefit from making connections with merchants you can’t trade with from the west of sarq-Zannib. They can’t reach your ports on that side of the country, without ridiculously long voyages, halfway around the world.”

“True, but there’s customers and then there’s wholesale customers.”

Najud put the sample boxes of kassa in his pack to free up his hands. “Ellech trades with Ndant, and Kigali at Kwattu, in the northeast. Those are the most important places for them. Now, goods that go to Ndant can be carried over the mountain spine to the west coast of the isthmus, and then back by sea down to the north coast of Rasesni, but that doesn’t do us much good. Maybe we can make a connection to that later—depends on the cost.” He illustrated the configuration of the lands with his hands in the air.

“But goods from Ellech reach Yenit Ping and the rest of eastern Kigali now, and that’s what counts.”

“Your new caravan won’t be in eastern Kigali, but in the far west,” Munraz objected.

Penrys told him, impatiently. “The Biziz Rahr will trade with Kigali, which has ports for Ellech. And the Grand Caravan will eventually send goods along to his new caravan.”

She turned back to Najud. “But what I don’t understand is how you can make any profit on something that has to pass through that many hands over such long distances.”

Najud held up a hand and started to tick off his fingers.

“Small rare things, like spices, dyes, and gems. Right, Munraz?”

The young man nodded, remembering his lessons last winter.

“New lightweight things that can become exotic fashions. Bunnas and kassa, for example. Everyone likes beverages that wake them up and form part of the habits of civilized people.”

A second finger went down.

“Unique things—small treasures from far-away places. Not expensive where they’re made, but suggestive of world travel. Something you’ve got, but your neighbor doesn’t.”

That took care of a third finger.

“Knowledge,” Penrys suggested, for the fourth finger. “Books, for example.”

“Or people.” Najud looked at her speculatively. “You’re a valuable commodity yourself, Pen-sha. New ways of doing things will travel, and some of those have measurable value. What price for a master wood-worker out of Ellech for a builder in Yenit Ping? Or communication devices for their guilds? Animals and plants for breeding, too—that’s a form of knowledge. You know that—look at the donkeys we brought from Kigali to breed mules in sarq-Zannib.”

He closed his fist.

“And finally ordinary commodities that no one can do without, like all trade. Iron via Kigali to sarq-Zannib, for example. Who’s to say something like that might not be found here in Ellech?”

Munraz murmured, “Power-stones.”

Najud frowned at him. “Yes, well, perhaps to trade in Kigali.”

His hand sprang open again. “So I’m looking for those things that might be useful either to the Grand Caravan, or to mine, items I can buy inexpensively here and sell for enough to make it worthwhile. And I’m showing them a few of the goods that sarq-Zannib has to offer, and describing what could come from western Kigali or eastern Rasesni. I’m learning prices and meeting people, setting up a network.”

Penrys could hear the excitement in his voice and feel it, even without the mind-speech.

He glanced around at the twenty-odd leather horse packs he’d brought to the harbor at Kwattu for this voyage to Ellech, with goods partially from sarq-Zannib, and partially from Kigali. “I may never get to come this way myself again, but I want to make the most of it—sell all of this, and fill them up for the return.”

“Better leave room for books, from Tavnastok,” Penrys told him. She had visions of shelves going up in the as-yet-unbuilt caravan base in western sarq-Zannib, where a city would eventually rise with a Collegium of its own for Zannib wizards.

“I can always buy more packs,” he said.

Penrys escaped Najud and Munraz’s rounds with the merchants by telling them she had errands of her own to run. It was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

She had a plan.

The recognition of her chain by that one shopkeeper still bothered her. What if he wasn’t alone? What if there were others? If a chained wizard had come to Stokemmi before her, perhaps he had done business in that shop. What better place for equipment than the center of commerce in Ellech?

Though the shopkeeper acted as if he hadn’t just recognized the chain, but had some understanding of what it meant, and how would that have happened?

Penrys shook her head as she reached the top of the street where it leveled off before entering the Stone Square. Too much speculation, not enough information. I need more facts.

She intended to walk ever-widening rings, starting with the Stone Square. The most expensive shops were there. Later, she would seek out the specialists in the other districts—anywhere she thought a chained wizard might have gone where his chain might have been recognized for what it was. She patted her throat to make sure her own chain was easily visible and began her tour.

Now if someone stared at her, it wouldn’t be for the Zannib strangers at her side.

Three blocks east and south of the Stone Square, Penrys paused at the edge of a food market to sit next to a stall and sip cider from a borrowed wooden mug. Her feet needed the rest, and this walk wasn’t working out the way she’d planned.

No one had apparently noticed her chain so far—no one at all. She’d kept her mind open for the general impression of the minds around her, but each time she’d felt surprise or fear, she’d been able to match it up with something that wasn’t her.

Now she stuck her nose in the mug and inhaled the sweet smell of crisp cider in wood, and watched everyone else for a change instead of inviting their attention. How long had it been since she’d tasted cider? Only a year? It didn’t seem possible. Three years in Ellech after Vylkar found her, and a year elsewhere.

Only a year since she’d made that stupid, clumsy mistake with her experiment, and ended up in western Kigali. A year since she’d encountered Najud in a military tent under attack. The seasons were reversed in the south, and it threw off all her sense of timing. She’d met Najud in the autumn, on the plains around the Mother of Rivers, and spent that horrible winter in sarq-Zannib, buried in the snow and chasing a nightmare—the second chained wizard they’d fought together to stop all the deaths that they brought with them, wherever they went. The one that Munraz executed, that haunted his mind still for all that he refused to talk about it.

She’d married Najud after that—six couples standing in the snow in the winter camp of the partially recovered Kurighdunaq clan, she in her borrowed clothing leaning on a crutch.

She lifted the hand not holding the cider to pat her right breast, where the wedding brooch should be, the silver spread-winged eagle, but her blues were bare there—only the simple honors on her left breast for informal robes and ordinary occasions. And what did that goldsmith say? That she shouldn’t wear jewelry while wearing her honors, any honors, like the small ones above her left breast?

Her hand dropped. She was in Ellech now, and should adhere to the conventions.

The months after that, more than half a year crossing sarq-Zannib on the way to eastern Kigali and Yenit Ping and meeting Najud’s family. Her lips curved upward at the recollection. So curious and lively, so casually fond of each other. So warm. Wanting the best for him, and willing to honor his exotic choice. She knew it wasn’t what they’d envisioned, but no one said a word. She could feel their acceptance, and the puzzlement that went with it.

A child’s shriek out in the market turned her head and she watched a group of three boys and a girl as they dodged around their elders in some sort of game.

She felt the familiar ache in her gut, the emptiness in her. It’s been how many months? I warned him, didn’t I—a body that heals so quickly and completely, it might “heal” a pregnancy, too, before it could take.

No children. Probably never. Another legacy of whoever had made the chained wizards. None of the dozens she’d met in Yenit Ping knew of any pregnancies among the women. Sterile, on top of everything else.

No children for Najud. I wonder if he told his family what I feared. Wouldn’t have been so welcoming then, would they?

What was I before they snatched me, emptied my mind, forged a chain around my neck? Put wings on my back and furry ears on my head? Made it easy to heal myself? Who were my people, my family?

I had a life, I must have had. Mpeowake’s nephew had a life in Ndant before he vanished and reappeared as a chained wizard in Kigali. He’d been a wizard in Ndant, but nothing touched him from his life before, not even the face of his aunt. Wiped clean, like me.

Was I married? Were their children, before my body was made unwelcoming to change? Will I age, or is that just something else to heal?

A vision of an elderly Najud struck her, watching his unchanging wife, in a round Zannib kazr, empty without sons or daughters or their children, empty as the zamjilah, the wheel-ring that held the smoke-hole open.

This isn’t what he asked for. He deserves a family. Maybe he can build one with someone else.

And the thought raised a different ache in her.

He’s in his element as a merchant, and I’m useless to him even in that.

She took a deep breath and finished her cider. This is pointless. I’ll find out… something in Ellech, about my makers. Or I won’t. I can keep looking. None of this is Najud’s fault, and there’s no reason he should suffer for it, whatever happens. He’ll leave Ellech eventually, with Munraz. Start his caravan, build his city.

She smiled wistfully.

Will I be there to see it, or can I set him free for a normal life? And heirs to follow him?

“I must have walked for miles,” Penrys said.

Najud’s eyes followed his wife as she described her afternoon exploring the shopping beyond the Stone Square. She fussed around their room at the guild hall, avoiding his eyes as she put things away, and he couldn’t identify what the trouble was.

Penrys hadn’t purchased much except for books, most of which had been delivered directly to the warehouse—almost a hundred of them, apparently. The papers itemizing them, provided by the sellers, were scattered on the table next to his chair in their room.

He’d told her about his day in return, hoping to distract her from whatever was worrying her, but she’d been disturbed all through dinner. As if reading his concern, she paused with her hands on a still-wrapped small package and lifted her face toward the handful of books on the table.

“Thought you’d like to look at those, on the trip upriver.” She pointed her chin at the two nearest to him. “They’re standards for all the Collegium students, whatever their eventual specializations. Basic texts for Ellech, like the ones you got from your teacher, the ones you showed me, when we met.”

The ones I carry around in my pack for when I take on students—children, not like Munraz.

“That was thoughtful. I’ll study them, see how we might make something suitable for the kind of school I’d like to build.” He added a bit of worry to the warmth in his voice, and she turned her head away.

“The others are for Munraz. You won’t like them.”

He smiled privately at the hint of defiance in her voice. Beginner’s books on devices, he knew.

“I thought we might as well indulge him while he’s here,” she said. “Vylkar can provide guidance for him. It’s not like he’ll have the opportunity once he goes back.”

He lifted a hand. “I count Munraz a man grown. If he wishes to explore other ways while in a foreign land, who am I to stop him?”

“And if he wishes to continue, in depth, and bring it to your home in sarq-Zannib?”

Najud almost didn’t answer. Your home? Is that where the problem lies? Not our home?

His stomach clenched, but he kept his face bland and his voice mild. “Munraz and I will discuss that if it arises, and we will hear each other’s reasons.”

I knew she was homesick for Ellech, but is it that bad? She’s been three years here and one with me. I thought I’d won that balance when she married me. Three years isn’t very long.

But for her, it’s her entire life, isn’t it?

Encouraged, she continued. “We’ll get some more books in Tavnastok, but I didn’t think you’d want to carry today’s purchases up the river and back again. That’s why I sent them to the warehouse and had them make those lists, so you’d know what you already had.”

She cleared her throat. “You were so busy with your merchants and their ships, and the exchange. And then it occurred to me this was something I could do for you. I know the books to buy, assuming you can’t just carry away the contents of the Collegium as a whole. You should be able to lay a foundation at your new school, if not do a lot of advanced research.”

Something’s very wrong. She doesn’t say it, but her words are giving it away. As if I’ll be there, and she won’t. As if she’s thinking of these books as a… a farewell gift.

I expected her to be eager to visit the Collegium again—I want to see it myself. It’s familiar territory for her. Must feel like home.

Was it a mistake to encourage her to come back to Ellech, just because I wanted to see it, too? To follow up on that tenuous clue about the obscure Gialfinnur? What if her past captures her again?

He thought of his gift to her at their wedding. A necklace was customary, but that wouldn’t work with her chain, so he’d found something in Neshilik, long before he’d convinced her to actually stay with him.

*Do you still have it, Pen-sha?*

He pictured the silver brooch with the spread-winged eagle for her, and a smile lit her troubled face.

*Of course I do. Wish I could wear it here.*

He stood up then, and plucked the package out of her hands, tossing it lightly to the chair he’d just vacated. He hauled her up by her empty hands and wrapped himself around her.

“There won’t be anywhere to pin it, in a moment,” he murmured, as he freed her arms from the foreign wizard robes she’d taken to wearing and felt her immerse herself willingly into sensation. He kept the rest of his thought private. Where we are is home, Pen-sha, don’t you know that? But I wish we were back there now, thousands of miles away. Safe.

“What does Vylkar think he’s playing at?”

Neinnur slid his eyes to Aergon, his usual ally in the senior council at the Collegium, but Vylkar’s friend refused to meet them.

Ossadaer was spouting his customary querulous rant, and Luveri was starting to stiffen up, in her usual reaction to the old man’s quavering voice.

I don’t belong here. No one listens to me. Just one more reliable vote for Vylkar’s faction, and he’s been away for months leaving Aergon to hold up his end. And old Ossadaer’s been relentless, like a rat gnawing on a tree. Luveri’s not the woman she was a year ago—Vylkar knew how to keep her flexible, but Aergon hasn’t the knack. Nor do I, if I’m being honest.

“He knew we’d hear about that dinner,” Luveri responded.

“From a dozen participants,” Aergon commented, quietly.

Neinnur snorted softly. The basket full of messages from the signal tower three days ago had been the impetus for this series of debates that showed no signs of coming to a conclusion.

He had work of his own he wanted to get back to. Another afternoon wasted.

“Clearly he had no intention of hiding his actions,” Luveri said, and she turned a shoulder slightly to Ossadaer’s side of the table.

Neinnur couldn’t see Ossadaer’s reaction without leaning forward to look up his side of the council table and being obvious, but he watched Feolderri taking notes across from him at the far end of the table and wondered what made a woman in her thirties spend so much time with the old steward. Ossadaer had been irritating chancellors at the Collegium since long before Neinnur’s time. Four chancellors he’d served, and no sign of stopping now. And Feolderri was the newest member of the council, and by far the youngest. Seemed a pity that she wanted to spend all her time with the records, but then the council always needed an archivist.

“Penrys is one of ours,” Neinnur ventured. “Surely we know her well enough to sift the truth from all of this… gossip. We sent Vylkar to Yenit Ping because of his experience—he knows the situation best and we should wait for him. They’ll be here soon enough.”

Istacher, next to Luveri, nodded at his words, but said nothing. A chancy ally—she won’t interfere with Luveri’s actions unless they become truly outrageous. He could hear her in his head, saying “Not my business,” the way she did when the topic wandered from her duties with the council’s physical arm. At least she was good at what she did, though the days of us sallying forth to control some rogue wizard are long past. It’s all play-acting now. And tradition.

Luveri said, “Vylkar has once again tried to force my hand by lining up this public… support before speaking with me. He presumes an authority he doesn’t have.”

That’s torn it. She’s got the bit between her teeth now. Neinnur wished Vylkar would finally make an effort to push her out of her position. Aergon looked uncomfortable but said nothing to support Neinnur’s attempt at deflecting her wounded pride. He’d tried before, at earlier meetings, but Ossadaer’s relentless antagonism was taking its toll.

“I’m sure he was just taking an opportunity to defuse the rumors while he was in Stokemmi,” he ventured. “We’ve seen his reports all along—he must have thought we’d agree with his actions.”

“It’s not his place to usurp the council’s decision about this Penrys. The picture he paints of these chained wizards is very disturbing. It reeks of yrmkenrolek, and I suspect he’s been seduced by it, like many another. I thought he knew better.”

Istacher nodded at Luveri’s words, and straightened up in her seat as though she could hear a distant horn, calling her to battle.

Luveri’s gaze took in all the wizards in purples at the council table. “It’s not just us. There are plenty of senior wizards here in their greens watching, waiting to see what we’ll do. Whether we’ll hold to our ancient responsibilities, or be driven by one lone council member. If he thinks to tie my hands, he’s mistaken.”