Book 3: Chapter Eight

Everyone gathered around the wooden table in the private dining room they’d used the day before. Corec waited while Ellerie described the proposal. He and Treya occasionally interjected comments when they thought of something important.

Boktar had paced around the room while Ellerie was speaking. When she was done, he asked Corec, “What’s this Varsin fellow like? Can we trust him?”

“I guess you could say I’ve been working for him for years, but only in the sense that he’s in charge of Senshall’s local caravans. Before today, I’d only met him once. The company’s always paid me on time and I’ve never had any real problems with them, but as for Varsin personally, I just don’t know. If he decides to stab us in the back, his family’s powerful enough that he could get away with it. I didn’t get the impression he would, but I can’t promise he wouldn’t.”

“If he does, we’re not exactly helpless,” Ellerie pointed out.

“No, but I’d rather not have to avoid Tyrsall for the rest of my life.”

Treya said, “I don’t think Varsin would do anything like that. I don’t know him any better than you do, but Renny trusts him. Plus, his other brother—not Burton—is having some trouble with the Three Orders. The company wouldn’t want to risk another incident by breaking a contract that was brokered by two Sisters.”

“Trouble?” Ellerie asked. “What sort of trouble?”

“It’s…a personal matter, but it’s caused some embarrassment for the family. It doesn’t affect Varsin, though. Renny insists he wasn’t involved.”

“I don’t have a problem with him either,” Corec said. “I just want to make sure everyone’s aware of how much influence he has before we go making a deal with him.”

“Should we make a deal?” Katrin asked. “It seems like he gets everything he wants first, while we do all the work.”

“That’s true,” Bobo said. “Is he loaning us the money or is he investing in the search? Why does he get the loan paid back while still earning shares of anything we find?”

“I don’t think we can change that part, but the other terms are generous,” Ellerie said. “If we don’t find anything, we don’t have to pay back the money, and between the three investors, they’re willing to cover the full cost of the expedition.”

“Plus, we don’t have to give him what we know about Tir Yadar,” Corec added.

Ellerie nodded. “I insisted on that, so Varsin can’t cut us out of the deal. He wanted to know the route we were planning to take, but I told him that couldn’t be part of the bargain. He knows we’re headed east of Nysa, and that we have directions that may or may not get us to Tir Yadar, but he doesn’t know the details and he doesn’t know about the amulet.”

Boktar frowned. “He’s willing to give you that much money without knowing where we’re going?”

“To a man like him, it’s not much money. He must have decided it’s worth the risk.”

“How will he pay for everything if we don’t know what our expenses will be yet?”

“His factor, Marco, will be able to borrow money from Senshall’s operations in Cordaea. Up to two hundred gold, minus whatever we spend before we get there.”

“Two hundred?” Boktar asked, his eyebrows raised. “That’s more than twice my highest estimate.”

“Some of the extra will be used to pay the other people he’s sending along, and the rest is meant to cover delays or unexpected expenses.”

“Do you really think it’s worth it?” the dwarf asked her seriously. “This has always been your plan. If you want to bring in someone else, I’ll back your decision.”

Ellerie hesitated. “The truth is, we still don’t know if we’ll ever find Tir Yadar, and if we do, whether it’ll be worth it. Do we spend months trying to scrape together enough money to actually go, or do we take the offer and go now? We’re not really giving up anything to let him be part of it.”

“We were going to do the work anyway,” Corec said. “This just means we’re not paying for it ourselves.”

Boktar nodded.

“How will the shares be divided?” Bobo asked.

“Evenly, of course,” Ellerie said, “though the Senshall employees will get partial shares rather than full shares.”

“That’s not what I meant. Who decides the worth of everything? Varsin? Or this Marco fellow, who works for him? If you find a bunch of pottery shards and a single intact vase, how is it divided up? Do you sell everything before cashing out the shares? Do you sell things in Cordaea, where the prices may be lower, or haul them back to Tyrsall? What if you find something you want to keep? Is it Marco, again, who decides how to count that against your share?”

“You know as well as I do that we’re not likely to find anything worth arguing about. Varsin just wants bragging rights in front of the other trading houses.”

“I’ll remind you that we found that in Tar Navis,” Bobo said, pointing to Corec’s sheathed sword, which he’d left propped up against the wall behind him. “Now, I’m no expert on enchanted weapons, but I’m reasonably certain something like that could pay for the expedition ten times over…provided you can find someone who’s got that much coin to spend. If you’re in a rush to sell it just so you can pay back the investments, you’ll have to take less than it’s worth. The investors might get their money back while the rest of us end up with nothing.”

Corec shared a concerned look with Ellerie. They hadn’t considered that. “Varsin kept saying we could discuss the details when we negotiate the contract,” he said. “We should probably bring you along for that.”

“Indeed.”

#

“Well?” Razai asked. When she’d told Renny she was leaving, and that she needed a job that would take her away from Tyrsall, the girl had begged her to stay for a few more days. She’d insisted she had a big deal in the works, and could provide the escape from the city Razai was looking for.

“The contract is signed,” Renny said. “You’ll go along to represent my interests, as well as serving as an extra guard and mage. Four silver per day plus expenses, and if the expedition makes a profit after paying off its loans, you’ll earn an eighth of a share as a bonus.”

“That’s generous.”

“Well, you shouldn’t count on the bonus, but your pay is guaranteed regardless of what happens, and there’ll be someone along from Senshall to ensure you get it. We expect the trip to last four to six months. You’ll be paid until you land back in Tyrsall, even if the search fails. It should come out to a fair amount.”

Razai nodded. “When do we leave?”

“The ship is due to arrive in three days, but then it’ll take another three to unload, resupply, and give the sailors shore leave.”

Razai grunted. Another week stuck in the city, with Corec possibly hiding just around the corner. She could still leave instead, but Renny was a useful employer…and a friendly one. Razai didn’t want to burn that bridge unless she had to.

“I guess that’ll do,” she said.

“I wish you would tell me who you’re trying to get away from,” Renny said. “If someone’s trying to hurt you, maybe I can help.”

“It’s nothing like that. It’s just someone I’d rather avoid running into.”

“I think I understand,” the girl said with a knowing smile.

Razai very much doubted that, but she’d found it was sometimes easier to let Renny believe what she wanted to believe.

“Do you want me to keep working as your bodyguard until I leave?”

“You might as well,” Renny said, “though I don’t think I’ll need to look for a replacement after you’re gone. Stavo should be enough. Did you know that someone caught Dallo and turned him in for the bounty?”

Razai hid a smirk. “I heard something about that.”

The concubine suddenly ran forward and wrapped her arms tightly around Razai. “I’ll miss you! It’s been so fun having you around!”

Razai stiffened, forcing herself to take her hands off the hilts of her knives. “I…” She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she awkwardly patted the other woman’s back.

“It was great having another girl to talk to! Kelsa’s nice, but she and I don’t really talk much, so normally it’s just Eva.” Eva was Renny’s lady’s maid, and Kelsa was Varsin’s wife.

Razai hadn’t considered herself as being good company. In the weeks she’d been guarding Renny, she’d mostly just listened to the girl chatter nonstop.

“I’ll miss you, too,” she said, trying to be polite. But it wasn’t entirely a lie. The concubine was more interesting to spend time with than Vash, who was always focused on finding his next woman, or Wotar, who rarely spoke about anything other than work.

Renny said, “With you around, it’s been like having my old roommate Treya back. You’ll like her. I’ve met some of her friends too, and they seem nice.”

Razai nodded, then froze, her blood running cold. “Did you say Treya?”

#

Ellerie found the bookshop in the middle of the Tailors’ Quarter, wedged between a cobbler’s stand and a seamstress’s shop. Inside, a young human man was dusting the bookshelves.

He smiled at her. “Welcome to Deshin’s Rare Books, Lady Elf. I am Deshin. How may I help you?”

“Someone told me you sell spell books.”

“It’s not my stock in trade, but I do have a few…for qualified buyers. May I ask who sent you?”

“Corec. Corec Tarwen of Larso. Tall human with dark hair and a big sword.”

“Ahh, yes, I remember Corec. You’re a friend of his, then?”

“Yes.” Was she? She didn’t think of him as an enemy anymore, but a friend? That was hard to say.

“Then tell me, what are you looking for?”

“Are you familiar with an arrow shield spell?”

“I believe so. It’s similar to a regular shield spell. It can be maintained longer, but it only stops arrows, crossbow bolts, and the like, yes?”

She nodded. “Yes, but I’m hoping to find a version that can be cast on others. Or on a large group of people at once.”

“Arrow shield spells tend to be passed down from battle wizards, who weren’t known for being generous with their spell-casting. But let me think… I do have part of a spell book that once belonged to a Nobitari mage who rode to war with his king’s army. If I remember right, that may have what you’re looking for.”

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“Part of a spell book?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t completely warded from the magical flames that killed the wizard. That was back during the last war between Nobitar and Valara. Let me go in the back and find it.”

He left through a door in the far wall, and Ellerie took the opportunity to explore the bookshelves. She laughed when she reached a row of historical treatises and found a complete copy of the nilvasta scholar Yishara’s works, all in original handwritten Elven. She considered buying it, but she’d already read the complete set, and it was seven volumes long—seven heavy volumes.

Deshin returned then, thumbing through a scorch-marked tome bound in leather. “It was partly protected, so it’s still intact, but the first two-thirds of the pages are mostly unreadable due to fire damage. You can see a few words here and there, but certainly not enough to reconstruct the spells. Let’s see… Oh, a mage lock spell. That’s always handy.”

“I already know a locking spell,” Ellerie said, hiding her impatience.

He flipped through more pages. “Hmm, a few wards, a lore spell…”

“What’s that?”

“The lore spell? It gives you impressions of an artifact’s history. I use a similar spell when I’m hired to examine the authenticity of a piece of art.” He flipped to the next page. “And here we go, just as I thought. An arrow shield spell that works in a circle surrounding you, and protects anyone within that circle. It takes a great deal of power to be useful, though. It was designed for protecting small military units, and it wouldn’t do much good if it only blocked two or three hits like a normal shield spell.”

That made sense. Even a regular shield spell could be strengthened to last longer, though Venni was the only person Ellerie had ever seen do so.

“Let me see it,” she said.

The shopkeeper handed over the book. Ellerie read the description of the arrow shield, then glanced over the first page of the spell itself. It looked complicated, but she thought she could manage it. Whether she had the strength to make it worthwhile would be another question.

“Is there anything else in here?” she asked, skipping over the next few pages. “What’s this? Magic opposition field?” It was the most complex spell she’d ever seen, but the description merely said, ‘for stopping enemy mages.’

“I tried reading through that one when I first bought the book, but I wasn’t able to figure it out.”

She nodded. “What’s the price?”

“I suppose I could let it go for three gold.”

“Three gold? For less than half of a book?”

“Spell books don’t come cheap, I’m afraid, and this one has several rare spells.”

Ellerie stared down at the book, frowning at the cost. Corec had suggested that Deshin’s services came cheap, but apparently the man still knew the worth of his goods.

If she’d been in Terevas, she could have simply gone into the wizardry archive in the Glass Palace and copied the spells she needed—that was how she’d painstakingly constructed her own spell book during her apprenticeship. But she wasn’t in Terevas. She’d tried to find a better arrow shield spell in Snow Crown, but the stormborn didn’t sell spell books. They only traded them amongst their own wizards.

Sighing, she said, “I’ll give you two and a half.”

#

Nina kicked, her foot extending up toward Treya’s head. Treya brushed the kick to the side, and while the girl was off-balance, dashed forward and poked her under the ribs. When Treya’s magic had first started affecting her sparring, Kelis had ruled that she shouldn’t fight full out when sparring Nina, who’d only been thirteen at the time.

Treya had better control over her magic now, and Nina had grown to be taller than her, but Treya still stuck to the old rules, not willing to risk an accident.

Nina backed away, then ran forward, feinting to the left before aiming a strike at Treya’s jaw. Treya twisted and spun around to the side, then tapped the lanky girl behind her ear. “Ten points, you’re out.”

“No!” Nina cried out in disappointment. “I almost got you that time!” She bent down and braced her hands on her knees to catch her breath.

Treya laughed. “It was ten to one!”

“I meant right there at the end. I figured out what you were going to do and I almost got turned around in time to stop you.”

“If you say so.”

“Honest!”

Treya grinned at the trainee. “I believe you, but I think that’s enough for today.” She grabbed the clean towels they’d left hanging from a rack at the side of the practice yard and tossed one to Nina. “Don’t you have other classes?”

“I guess, but have you found out how long you’ll be here?”

“It’ll still be a few more days until the ship’s ready to go.”

“Good. It’s been so boring with Kelis off chasing that bounty. If I’d known how long she’d be gone, I’d have taken a ship to Circle Bay to visit Enna.”

“Mother Ola would never let you go off on your own; certainly not as far as Circle Bay.”

“She might if one of the Sisters ever heads that way and could chaperone me. Enna says there’s another mystic teacher at the chapter house down there.”

“There aren’t any new students who need you here while Kelis is gone?”

“A couple of girls are interested, but Kelis won’t let them start the training until they turn twelve.”

“Well, you can ask Ola about Circle Bay, but I doubt you’ll like the answer. Maybe Shana or one of the others will show up here.” Shana wasn’t the only traveling mystic, just the one who spent the most time in the northeast.

“Shana’s been gone as long as you have,” Nina complained. “I think she went west somewhere.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something to occupy your time,” Treya said. She spied her former roommate entering the practice yard. “I need to talk to Renny. You do your stretches, then go get washed up.”

Nina nodded and started her cooldown routine, leaving the two women alone.

“It’s chilly out here,” Renny said, rubbing her arms. Then she wrinkled her nose. “You stink!”

“If you’d been sparring for two hours, you’d stink too.”

“You’d never get me out here for any amount of time. Of course, sometimes Varsin and I can go for hours, but you keep insisting you don’t want to hear about that…”

Treya rolled her eyes. “Funny. You got my message?”

“Yes. What’s up?”

“Why did you do it? I asked you not to.”

“Do what?” Renny asked, with a fake look of innocence.

“You know what.”

“I wanted to help.”

“You don’t have that kind of money! Do you know how guilty I’ll feel if we don’t find anything?”

“I’m only in for thirty gold. I can put up that much without a problem. If your total budget goes above ninety and I have to put in more, Varsin will cover the extra for me, with shares to be divided appropriately. He’s the one that really wants this to happen—I only talked to him about the other stuff, like you said to. I didn’t ask him to do this, I promise.”

“Yet you were first in line when he was looking for investors.”

Renny shrugged. “I still wanted to help, and now I can. Please don’t be mad at me. Varsin was thinking of funding it himself, but when we added up the numbers, it was too high for that.”

“Isn’t he one of the richest men in the city?”

“Fifth, I think, after his father, his brothers, and Duke Voss, but if he wants to maintain his status in the company, he can’t just fling money around. Everything’s already invested. Finding Tir Yadar is more of a gamble than his other investments, so the gold is coming from the extra profits he made last year on his side projects, but he wouldn’t have made the offer if he didn’t think it was worth the risk. He and I both know there might not be anything to show for it. That’s not something you should feel guilty about.”

Treya looked down and exhaled. “All right, fine. I’m not mad at you. I just wish you’d warned me first.”

“I thought you’d like the surprise.”

“You’re the one who likes surprises.”

Renny grinned. “I need to have some fun. You’re the one who gets to go on all the adventures. And this is a real adventure, like the ones in the stories.”

“Trust me, they’re nothing like the stories,” Treya said. Especially the stories Renny liked, which focused on romantic interludes with dashing princes rather than on the practical implications of riding all day long and camping outdoors night after night.

“You’ll have to tell me all about it anyway. Send a letter back when you reach Nysa?”

“I will.”

#

Leena appeared in the middle of a busy marketplace, startling a mule team that was pulling a wagon through the crowded street. The mules shied back and Leena dashed out of the way, taking shelter near the market stalls lining the way. The driver shouted at her but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. “I’m sorry!” she called back in trade tongue, but he was already gone and didn’t hear.

The merchants in the stalls hawked their wares in Eastern, a language she didn’t know but had grown to recognize as she traveled north along the coast, through Nobitar, Valara, and Circle Bay. The woman closest to her was selling decorative knickknacks and cheap jewelry. Leena smiled at her, politely pretending to browse the wares before moving on.

She’d finally reached Tyrsall. It had taken weeks, walking as much as twenty or thirty miles a day, plus Traveling when she could, and she was exhausted. Her back and shoulders hurt from the pack she wore, and her feet and ankles ached worse than they did after standing up all day in the bakery.

But she’d made it, and now she had to figure out what to do next. Her magic had grown easier to use over time and she felt strong enough to try another Seeking, despite having just done one before Traveling to this spot.

Find Sarlo, she thought to herself. If he was in the city, then he was close enough that she could finally Seek him directly.

The responding ping came almost immediately. He was to the northwest, perhaps two miles from where she was standing. She could finally talk to him and the friend he’d mentioned, and see if they could teach her how to use her magic as a weapon.

But first, she had to try one more thing. Where do I need to be next to protect my brother and avenge my parents?

The twinge came from the east, and Leena froze in the middle of the street, trying not to cry in despair. This whole time, both routes had led her to Tyrsall, but now that she was here, they were sending her in different directions. She’d thought—she’d hoped—that her blood feud would send her to Sarlo, so his friend Yelena could help her master her magic. She knew Sarlo and trusted him.

But that wasn’t where she was supposed to go.

She found a street leading east and followed it, not knowing where it would take her. She knew little about Tyrsall, other than the fact that it was even larger than Sanvara City. She found herself passing through a neighborhood full of elegant houses—not mansions, but obviously owned by the well-to-do. Half a mile later, she ended up in another business district, but this one didn’t have market stalls. The building she was looking for was huge, but it was functional rather than fancy. It wasn’t a shop, but obviously wasn’t a home either. Unfortunately, the sign over the door was in Eastern, and she couldn’t read it.

Checking the location she held in her mind, she realized her target wasn’t the building itself but a message board that had been constructed off to the side, with a small overhang to keep rain away. An armed man stood there, looking over the weathered notices. Shaking his head and muttering, he turned and clomped away in his heavy boots.

“Don’t bother,” he said in trade tongue as he passed her. “They’re not hiring.”

Hiring? She looked more closely. The notices were all written in trade tongue, which she could read well enough to get by. Each of the notices was for a different trade caravan, indicating a starting location and an ending location, as well as the jobs they’d been hiring for at some point—drivers and guards, mostly. On each announcement, the list of jobs had been crossed out and someone had written in ‘All positions filled.’

But there was one new posting down in the corner, recent enough that the paper hadn’t had time to age and weather like the others.

Senshall Trading Company seeks cook for long-term expedition to Cordaea, traveling by sail and horseback. Pay is 1s 1c per day, food and lodging included. Inquire within.

Leena stared at it. The notice was posted in the exact location her Seeking had sent her. Had the magic failed? How could working as a cook and sailing across the ocean help her hunt down those responsible for her parents’ deaths? Cordaea was even farther from home than Tyrsall!

Had her family figured out some way to sabotage her Seeking in order to send her away somewhere safe? No, that couldn’t be it…her grandmother had begged her not to leave. Besides, while Leena had taken along one of the attackers’ knives, hinting that she’d use it to track them down, she’d never actually told her family that she could Seek. As far as they knew, she was nothing more than a failed Traveler.

Give me a way to protect my brother and avenge my parents! she shouted in her mind.

Her senses pinged again, directly on the job posting itself.

Leena slumped in disappointment, then turned around and started walking in Sarlo’s direction. She’d come this far; she might as well talk to him and salvage what she could of her plan.

She hadn’t made it twenty steps away before she stopped and marched back, entering the trading company’s office.

The man behind the counter looked up at her. “Yes?” he asked.

“Are you still hiring for the cook’s job? The one going to Cordaea?”

“We don’t hire women for caravans,” he said promptly, but then hesitated. “Though I suppose it’s not a caravan, and there are other women going along. You’re Sanvari?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how to cook anything other than Sanvari food?” he asked, his lip curling up in distaste.

“I’ve learned northern dishes.” A few, anyway, but she’d been at the boarding house in Telfort long enough to know that northern cooking and southern cooking weren’t all that different, other than in the way the dishes were prepared. She hadn’t done any of the cooking at the boarding house, but Sarlo had shown her how to prepare a few simple things. Buying a book of recipes would be enough to let her get by, and if she ever ran out of ideas, she could make a Sanvari dish and leave off the spices that made it taste good. Northerners liked bland food.

“You’d be gone for at least four months, likely more. You understand?”

How could being away for so long possibly help protect her brother or find her parents’ killers? Was this all a mistake?

She quickly nodded before she could change her mind.

“Ever cook for twelve or thirteen people at once?”

“Yes,” she said, thinking of the long days she’d spent working nonstop in the bakery. Cooking and baking weren’t quite the same thing, but they weren’t all that different.

“You’d be cooking over a campfire most of the time, but there and back, you’d be on board the Peregrine, sharing the galley with the ship’s cook. Done any shipboard cooking before?”

“No.”

“Didn’t really expect you had, but it would have been helpful.”

Worried her chance was slipping away, she said, “I can bake!”

“Not much call for baking over a campfire, though I suppose the Peregrine might have an oven.”

“I know how to bake bread in an iron pot over a fire, and there are flatbreads and pastries that can be made on a frying pan or griddle.”

“I suppose that might be useful. You know how to ride a horse?”

“Yes,” she lied. If she was supposed to take the job, she had to ensure the man didn’t have any other reasons not to hire her.

“I’ll send a runner to the group’s quartermaster. He’s the one you’ll have to convince, and if you want any particular supplies, he’s the one to talk to. Peregrine’s shipping out tomorrow. Can you be ready?”

“That’s not much time to buy supplies for that many people,” Leena said.

“They’re already provisioned for the first leg—they’d just about given up on finding a cook for the trip. You’ll resupply at Kitish in two weeks, fresh food only, then again when you reach Nysa.”

“I can leave tomorrow.” It wouldn’t leave her any time to visit Sarlo. That would have to wait. Now she just had to hope her Seeking wasn’t sending her to the wrong place.