The Innocent Mage (45 page)

Well, naturally the prince would say that. His judgement was woefully suspect when it came to that ruffian. The prince was a good lad with a kind and lonely heart, ripe pickings for the unscrupulous, the callous and the calculating. ‘Yes, sir.’

The prince sighed and thumped back into his armchair. When he looked up again his expression was wry and cross and irritatedly patient. ‘You know he saved my life, Darran.’

Saved his life. That was how Asher would tell the tale, for certain. Like as not it had been an accident; like as not he’d been flung into the ocean himself and just happened to latch onto His Highness in all the confusion. Circumstance. Serendipity. To suggest that an uncouth savage like Asher could be heroic?

With a bow and smile he humoured his prince. ‘Yes, sir.’

The prince flicked him a sharp look. ‘Darran, he did. I was drowning and he saved me.’

Prickled by sudden doubt, by the new shadow in the prince’s eyes, Darran stared at him. ‘Drowning?’

‘A few more seconds and I would’ve been dead. Don’t let your dislike blind you, Darran. You’re a better man than that. I owe Asher my life.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said faintly.

With a dismissive wave of his hand the prince slumped inside his blankets. ‘Now leave me. Find one of our pigeons and get a message to the queen. Let her know I’m all right and that I’m coming home. And when Asher returns send him to me immediately.’

Another bow. He could try arguing some more, but what would be the point? ‘Certainly, sir. Can I send up something from the kitchens, sir?’

The prince shrugged. ‘No. Yes. I don’t know. Do what you like. Some soup, maybe.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Darran?’

Fingers on the door handle, he turned. ‘Yes, sir?’

The prince was scowling again. ‘You might as well give me the damned mustard bath. Seeing as it’s just sitting there, getting cold.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, killing the fatuous smile that threatened to spread over his face. ‘As Your Highness commands. As always.’

‘Watch out!’

Asher looked up, saw the slithering roof tiles and lea) aside just in time. With a crash and a splintering spray c clay shards the red squares hit the cobblestones beside him Peering downwards, a pale face mottled with bruises, eye; wide with alarm.

‘Be you unhurt?’ the man shouted. ‘Aye,’ he called back, but didn’t stop, kept on hurrying. If he stopped for every man, woman and child that needed help in these demolished streets he’d not reach the Dancing Dolphin till the middle of next week. That’s where he’d find his family. Year in, year out, without alteration, at festival time they stayed at the Dancing Dolphin.

It wasn’t a fashionable inn, which was why Da liked it so much. Good food, better ale, soft beds and no gapesters forever goin’ on about how they saw the king and what a mighty upstandin’ man he be and weren’t they lucky to have such a king to help sing in the harvest. Lucky. When everybody knew their festival weren’t nowt to do with any Doranen. An Olken matter, it was, and the king bein’ invited no more than a courtesy when you got right down to it.

Skirting more debris he turned his face away from a woman standing in a doorway with a mute wrapped bundle in her arms and tears pouring down her blanched and sunken cheeks. Ducked up Lickspittle Lane and into Baitman Alley, which ran along the back of the houses and shops facing onto Seaswell High Street and came out almost opposite the Dolphin at its far end. The damage wasn’t so bad along here. The storm seemed to have cut a straight path down through the township and over the water, as though it were alive, as though it knew exactly where it wanted to go and didn’t care what it went through to get there.

He didn’t want to think about what that might mean. Couldn’t be distracted by Gar’s problems right now. Right now he had his own.

Heart hammering, uncaring of his cuts and bruises and ike pains they caused, he jogged along the alley until he reached its end. Then he stopped, one hand clutching the corner of the building beside him, and stared.

The Dolphin’s sign was half torn from its moorings, (jangling tipsily groundwards. Two windows on the top floor were broken. Somebody, probably Hiram the innkeeper, had already boarded over the holes.

There were a few tiles missing here and there. By the side door, the old pittypine tree he’d played in as a spratling was half blown over, gnarly roots clotted with dirt and tangled like an old man’s fingers. Apart from that, the inn seemed to still be in one piece. Absurdly, his heart lifted. Brothers aside he had good memories of the Dolphin.

Dodging carts and timber-laden packhorses he crossed Harbourmaster Street, made his way through the gate and long the path that led to the Dancing Dolphin’s front door and banged both fists on it, hard. His heart was beating so violently he thought he could feel his eyes jumping in their sockets.

‘Asher!’ Hiram exclaimed, his vast belly swathed in a dark green apron and his wiry hair a little greyer than the last time they’d met. Standing back, the innkeeper swung :he door wide open. ‘Sink me with a rusty anchor! Hepple said he’d seen you ridin’ alongside that namby-pamby prince they sent down from the City, and a course I arsked our fambly and they said they knew nowt on it, said you’d took yourself off a year ago and nobody knew where you were, so I reckoned Hepple’d made a head start on the ale this year, but now here you be and by the looks of your fancy togs you ain’t a fisherman no more so Hepple were right then, were he?’

‘Hiram,’ said Asher, trying to see round the innkeeper’s bulk, ‘be my family here? Be they all right? Da —’

Hiram shook his head and stood back from the doorway. ‘Sorry, lad, sorry, here’s me gabbin’ like a barmaid and you all worrited about your fambly, and speakin’ ( fambly let me be the first to tell you how bad me and ol Mistress Hiram did feel when we got the news about —’

‘Hiram. Stow that gabble afore I slice out your tonga and roast it for dinner.’

Silenced midsentence, Hiram turned his head to look at the speaker.

Asher didn’t need to look. He knew that voice. Had known it all his life, and the fists that went with it. With a nod and a grim smile at Hiram, he stepped over the Dolphin’s threshold and prepared to meet his brothers.

Warily, Hiram shifted sideways to reveal the inn’s modest staircase and a pack of men, descending. Their boots on the uncarpeted treads were loud in the sudden hush. In the lead, of course, as always, lean and mean and warm as midwinter …

‘Zeth!’ Hiram said. ‘Look who be here!’

Standing still now, scarred fingers taut on the banister, Zeth nodded. ‘I got eyes, Hiram. I can see.’

Hiram cleared his throat. ‘Aye. Well. I’ll just be gettin’ on then, eh? You boys have fambly business to take care of, I reckon. Don’t need no outsider puttin’ in his three cuicks worth, eh? Good to see you again, Asher. Mind you say goodbye, now!’

‘Aye,’ said Asher, his eyes not leaving Zeth’s cold face. ‘That I will, Hiram.’

With a last nervous smile, Hiram retreated. Asher closed the inn’s front door behind him then stared at his brothers. Coming down the stairs one after the other, oldest to youngest, the way they went everywhere. Zeth. Abel. Josha. Wishus. Niko. Bede. All grimly staring and not a bump or bruise between them. Despite everything, he was relieved. He took a step forward. Shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. ‘That wasn’t very polite, Zeth. It’s Hiram’s inn, you know.’

Zeth bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Come home to lesson us in manners, boy?’

Asher swallowed a stupid reply. At Zeth’s back, his other brothers muttered. ‘There’s no need for trouble, Zeth. I just want to see Da.’

Zeth’s sharp smile widened. He started down the stairs again, the pack of brothers at his heels. He looked … olden There was grey in his hair and a new scar on his face, a pink and puckered line slicing through his left eyebrow and down his cheek, making his eyelid droop.

‘That be a fancy tongue you got in your head, boy. And fancy clothes on your back too. Where’d you come by them, eh?’

Asher stood his ground. It was an old game this, one they’d played him at all his life. Standover bully-boy tactics. Raised fists and whispered threats. Well, he wasn’t in the mood (ot games and he wasn’t afraid of them any more. Realising that, he nearly laughed out loud. He wasn’t afraid of them any more. After a year of Lord Conroyd Jarralt and Master Magician Durm, who was Zeth? Who were any of ‘em?

‘Don’t piss me about, Zeth. Where’s Da? I want to see him.’

‘Curly Thatcher said he saw you ridin’ into town alongside the prince,’ said Zeth, conversational, at the foot of the staircase now and leaning a negligent shoulder against the newel post. Silent and staring, the others spread out behind him. ‘Sailor Vem said you were troughin’ slops with ‘im. That where you been this past long while? Hobnobbin’ with blondie?’

Asher let the air hiss softly from his lungs. ‘I don’t answer to you, Zeth. Not any more. Now for the last bloody time, I want to see Da. Where is he? Upstairs? Then let me past. You got no right to keep me from him.’

Zeth turned his head, swept their brothers with a measuring gaze. Then he looked again at Asher. ‘No. No, he ain’t upstairs.’

An icy splinter of fear pierced him. There was something | in their faces. A memory in their eyes. ‘Then where is he, ‘«li? 1 want to know. Now.’

Zeth sighed. Inspected his chipped fingernails. Lifted his ‘ unfriendly face and said, with all the brutality in him, ‘Why, It’s right where you put ‘im, Asher dear. Deep in the cold’.

Boom, boom, boom went Asher’s heart. ‘What d’you mean, in the ground?’

‘What d’you reckon I bloody mean!’ said Zeth, suddenly I savage. ‘Da’s dead, boy. Eight months gone. Mast cracked I and fell on ‘im. Split ‘im in half like a rotten apple.’ : ‘No,’ he said. But not because he disbelieved his brother. ; Not because it wasn’t true. The truth of it was raw and I bloody in the air between them, in Zeth’s voice, his face. In I all his brothers’ faces. ‘No.’

Zeth heaved another sigh. “Fraid so. But don’t you go din’ too bad about it. He died screamin’ your name.’ He shrugged. ‘Course, his heart were already broke long afore ‘! ike mast felled ‘im. You could say he were a walkin’ dead man, really. Ain’t that right, boys?’

Shoulder to shoulder his brothers nodded and muttered, tkunder on the horizon.

‘Over and over the same old questions,’ said Zeth. ‘What’s happened to my Asher? Where’s he gone? Why did lie leave me? I’ll tell you, boy, it grew a mite wearisome after a while, and that’s for sure. Afore long Da weren’t ether right in the head no more. My word, it was the saddest sight I ever saw. That proud ole man, weepin’ night after night into his ale pot and sobbin’ your name.’

‘No,’ whispered Asher. ‘That’s wrong. I left a message. I asked —’

‘Message?’ said Zeth. ‘Don’t know nowt about any message, boy. Now just you keep your mouth shut, why don’t you, and let me finish? As I were sayin’. Day after day, for weeks on end, Da fretted on you. Drove us all mad. Then one night a storm blew in from beyond the reef. Howlin’ and wailin’ and peltin’ us with ice. Da swore he could hear your voice on the wind, callin’. He got to the boats afore we could stop him. Sailed out to find you. Wishus and me, we went after him, but there weren’t nowt we could do with him in one boat and us in another. He were sore distracted lookin’ for you, Asher, and distraction on a boat be an unchancy thing when there’s bad weather about. Prob’ly you might remember that.’ Zeth’s cruel gaze raked him up and down. ‘Then again, dressed so fancy like a Doranen, might be you don’t.’

Asher swallowed. There was a roaring in his head, as though the killing storm had returned. T don’t understand. The night I left I gave Jed a message for him. Jed swore blind he’d deliver it so’s Da wouldn’t worry.’

‘The night you left, boy, Jed fell down drunk and cracked his head like a hard-boiled egg.’ Zeth’s eyes were wide with mock sorrow. ‘There be nowt for Jed these days but sittin’ on street corners, droolin’.’

No. No, not Jed. Childhood friend. Partner in many a crime. Freckle-faced and easygoing and always game for a lark … ‘You’re lying. You’d say anything you could to hurt me, Zeth.’

The mock sorrow gone now, Zeth straightened out of his comfortable slouch and took a step closer. His eyes were empty of everything but hate. ‘I got better ways to hurt you than words, little brother. You should’ve told us yourself what you had planned.’

Asher held his ground, just. ‘You would’ve stopped me. Or tried anyways.’

‘Course we would’ve!’ Zeth snarled. ‘You got no business leavin’ the family. You owe your life to the family, your breath and your body belong to us. We say what’s to be done with ‘em. We say where you go and what you do. Them’s the rules.’

‘Your rules,’ said Asher. His voice sounded strange, as tioug/i it belonged to somebody else. ‘Not mine. Not any more.’

‘Da’s dead ‘cause of you, boy,’ said Zeth. ‘You might as well have stuck a guttin’ knife in his heart. You should’ve. Would’ve been cleaner. Kinder. Quicker. But no. You had to kill him slow.’

The air in his lungs had turned to ice. He couldn’t breathe. ‘I ain’t killed nobody. I’m goin’.’ Turning his back on them, he reached for the inn’s front door. Zeth growled. ‘Boys …’

Like wolves in the Black Woods they were on him. Clenched fists pummelled him. Vicious kicks felled him. Fingers snarled in his hair, his clothes, dragged him across the floor and tore the fine vest and shirt off his back. Face down they hauled him up the hard wooden staircase and pinned him to it like a bullock to the slaughter block. There were too many of them and they were too strong, he couldn’t escape; nothing had changed, he might as well be a child again and helpless before them as their grieving father drank away all memory of his dead wife, deaf to his youngest son’s cries for help as his brothers paid him back for eight years of their mother’s love and their father’s careless indulgence.

The sound of Zeth’s copper-studded belt sliding free of his trousers closed Asher’s teeth on his battered lip. Drew blood. Amid his other brothers’ eager encouragement, the first blow fell.