Fugitive Prince - Chapter Five - Riverton
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i_read_whatSo last time, we had Arithon return from a pointless voyage (Thanks Fellowship!), Morriel perform some kind of massive arcane working that kills one of the participants (because being a Koriani sucks), and Lysaer makes a trip.
What happens this time?
Oh, and this bodes well. The chapter starts with this:
If tears were hardened stone to carve, inscribe my cry for life: Let no man raise his unsheathed sword, may no man draw his knife, that this, our sore and grieving land, waste no more hearts to strife!
verse from the Masterbard’s lament for the widows of Dier Kenton Vale Third Age 5649
So we know things are going to get cheery this chapter.
But it does have interesting implications for the future. Because this is presented as an attributed quote.
We know from the prologue of Curse of the Mistwraith, that Arithon, primarily, is going to be remembered as the "Master of Shadows." NOT as the Masterbard of Athera. But this at least implies that his work will survive - but maybe attributed only to his title rather than his name. Does that mean that people might not know that the hopefully-not-last Masterbard of Athera was Arithon s'Ffalenn?
Now, on the Lachlan to Menolly scale - how is it? It seems okay. I'm intrigued by the triplet rhyming scheme. It makes me curious as to the structure of the verse. Well done, Arithon.
Okay, so the actual chapter starts off with a description of a tavern. Let's read it:
For three hundred years, the rambling, old tavern had stood below the river fork where Ilswater joined the broad, placid channel which drained off the mudflats of Mogg’s Fen. Moss shagged its fired brick walls on the south-facing side. The north wings sliced the brunt of the winds that scoured the leaves from the roof shakes. Its warren of galleries and peaked dormer rooms lay packed, that stormy, cold night. Chimney smoke smudged the deepening gloom, sliced by the needle tracks of rainfall. Bargemen forsook the damp berths on their vessels; drovers left the miseries of open-air camps and thronged in for a copper to spread blankets on the common room floor. Driven indoors as autumn’s late chill threatened the first, freezing sleet, soaked wayfarers huddled elbow to elbow over mugs of soup and mulled wine.
As an American, I admit, I'm always intrigued by very very old buildings like this. Which aren't nearly so old by a European perspective, I know. By ATHERAN standards, it's still younger than the revolution that deposed the kings, but seems to be on the older side for general townsfolk architecture.
The sentence tells us that they would have squeezed the accommodations past full even if there wasn't a bard in residence. So since that means there is one, we can tell this is probably an Arithon subchapter.
And indeed:
The inn’s kindly landlord held one room aside for his use at no charge, for the excessive demand on his talent. The mannerly threw money to keep him sweet. As each song drew to its closing, small coins sliced the gloom to chink on the boards at his feet. If the singer was built a trifle too fine, or his dress seemed a touch over-done, those delicate fingers on silver-wound strings wove sound like a net of enchantment. Through the chiming cascade of gift tokens, the whoops of approval, and a general hubbub of noise, the call of the mousy widow by the casement seemed the lost utterance of a ghost.
So Arithon apparently took Dakar's warning last chapter that he should look older or people would assume something entirely incorrect (or is it?) about his retinue and ignored it entirely. That fits. "Fuck you, you want to hang around with me, they're going to think we're fucking every night." - Arithon, probably.
And there's Dakar, being cryptic:
“Pray Ath our bard didn’t hear that,” Dakar said where he lounged, feet braced on a trestle crammed under the jut of the staircase.
Neither Caolle nor I knows what Dakar is talking about. Caolle expresses concern that Dakar isn't drinking. Dakar wisecracks that he's hale and "dreadfully sober" but "the misery's the same nonetheless." Heh.
But what is Dakar talking about?
That indefinable instant, the noise lagged. Rain drummed the slates and the windows, and the widow raised nerve to repeat her request. “Minstrel, play a memorial!” This time, her frail, porcelain treble reached every corner of the room. “Sing us a lament for the brave ones who died against Shadow in Dier Kenton Vale.”
Ahh. Yeah. Fuck. (A glance up actually shows that she'd called out once before, but it was buried in one of the descriptive paragraphs and I missed it.)
So yeah, this is Tysan. And there are a lot of men who decided to follow Lysaer's call to cross a continent and invade a foreign land to go after an alleged sorcerer that's never done anything to anyone in their country. A lot of widows and orphans left behind.
Caolle thinks Arithon will refuse her. Dakar knows Arithon won't be so sensible. Arguably he can't. His "masterbard's title" won't let him.
It's an interesting quandary though, and for Wurts, it's actually pretty subtle. Because, as a performer, and as a sane man, Arithon should and theoretically could write a song that tells these people exactly what they want to hear.
But we know that the Masterbard's office involves more than that. A normal performer could do that. But my guess is that, given the whole arbiter/interpreter of old law aspect of the office, there is some prohibition against the Masterbard performing something that's outright untrue. And well, unfortunately, this probably isn't something Arithon can take artistic license with.
And, well, does he really want to? We might be looking at a "Toss a Coin to a Witcher" problem here. There's never really been a lot of mention of other bards, and what they perform. We know Felliron, in Curse of the Mistwraith, got in trouble for performing some clan-friendly ballads to the wrong crowd. But we don't really see any others. And we don't see any mention of anyone performing any of Halliron's or Arithon's songs. (Not yet anyway.)
But let's say Arithon does make a good, pro-Tysan, pro-Lysaer piece about Dier Kenton Vale, and it catches on. Jaskier's song in the Witcher (tv version anyway) demonized the elves. We know it's not the REASON for bad feeling against the elves. But it likely didn't help. Implicitly, it did help feed the anti-elf sentiment that comes to a head much later.
Arithon could end up writing a song that is later used him against him. We know Lysaer's capable of it.
So...what does a Masterbard do here? It's a really interesting quandary thrown out in a couple of paragraphs, isn't it?
Well, Arithon...
The bard shifted the lyranthe in his lap. He regarded his hands, fine jointed and stilled, the image of languid elegance. The pose was misleading. To any who knew him, the mind underneath was as unperturbed as drawn steel. While the taproom grew hushed, and storm sluiced the eaves, he spoke in mellifluous courtesy. “Mistress, which of your loved ones was lost?”
“My husband, rest him.” The woman cried, bitter, “May the Spinner of Darkness come to suffer Dharkaron’s damnation!”
“Lady,” said the singer in plangent, fierce pity, “rest assured, he already does.”
Of course he does.
And more drama:
Then, as if unadorned words caused him pain, he flung back his head, shut his eyes, and struck a chord like a plummeting cry. No chance assemblage of minor notes, this opening, but the pure charge and power of a masterbard’s art, that ordered the air and snatched mortal heartstrings and twisted, until all the world became realigned to his measure of gripping, stark sorrow.
Dakar, knowing the situation as he does, knowing ARITHON as he does, basically tells Caolle to shut up and be ready to keep vigil at Arithon's bedside later. Aww.
So yeah. What's the song like?
The upwelling surge of an exquisitely made grief enthralled every listening mind. Arithon chose not to play to console. The deaths he had caused at Dier Kenton Vale were too harrowing a loss to soothe over. Instead, he spun melody in soaring lament and seized his hapless audience by the vitals. His notes sheared past thought like hooks in silk thread, unfurling a shimmering net of fine sound. The musician firmed his hold, dragged them under, then drowned them in a surge of emotion like tide.
It goes on like that for a while. We hear a few more lyrics. If tears were hardened stone to carve a monument to grief, would we let loss and trouble starve our spirits for belief?
Our men have gone from home and hearth and faith has made us weep!
We're told that Arithon "plays their mortality in the pressed heat of that dingy riverside taproom". And the song is a challenge. Not a comfort.
I particularly like this line: Barmaids and barge captains, beringed merchants and their coteries of servants; all, down to the coarsest, unwashed mule drover wept unabashed, that husbands and sons should ever leave home to kill for reasons of policy.
There's another good line here: He endorsed no heroic act of sacrifice, but stripped away mankind’s penchant for self-righteous zeal to its core of arrogant futility.
This isn't Arithon in Innish, comforting a widow and a town for their loss. This is Arithon in Jaelot. This time, thankfully, without a Paravian ruin underneath. These guys wanted a bard's comfort and got the Masterbard's chastisement instead. Good.
The last verse that we get to hear is: No cause is scribed in fire and star—then whose truth must we heed?
Why bind the will and blind the heart, more lives to rend and bleed?
Our men have gone from home and hearth, and hate has made us weep!
At least for the moment, it works. When Arithon stops playing "[s]ilence descend[s] with the brutality of a public execution.".
Oof.
Dakar snaps out of it first. Then other people start to stir out of their grief-stricken stupor. He grabs a swaying Arithon to get him the fuck out of there before people start thinking about the lyrics that they heard and equate that to "a treasonous dissent against Lysaer's vaunted Alliance."
They make it upstairs and rest behind a barred door. Arithon's already out cold, while Dakar and Caolle listen to the noise downstairs. Right now, folks are still reacting. Trying to drown out grief with forced laughter, drink and carousing. It's likely to turn ugly soon though, and they want Arithon far away from that.
Even asleep, Arithon gets some purple prose:
Arithon’s sprawl on the inn’s saggy mattress never shifted. The uncertain spill from the candle played over his tight-knit frame. Fanned snarls of black hair seemed to drink the faint light, while his slackened fingers curled on the sheet seemed masterfully carved out of alabaster. Such stillness unmasked a frightening vulnerability, a humanity grown too sharply defined in muscle and tendon and bone. Never a large man, Arithon had become alarmingly thin and worn. His wrist might be circled by one finger and thumb, and the cleaved edge of his cheekbone stood demarked in drawn flesh.
Dakar tries to recall the last time he heard Arithon laugh. Aw. Maybe you could get your asshole bosses to give the poor guy a real vacation?
Not now though, because things are about to go from bad to worse. Because you remember that pesky curse that drives both brothers into near madness when they're forced into the same proximity? Apparently a traumatic recollection of their last conflict kinda has a similar effect.
Wurts's style is either detriment or benefit here, depending on what she's trying to do. It's a little confusing. But I kind of think it's meant to be. There's a lot of gradual focus on what Dakar notices as he notices it. I THINK the big issue is that Arithon's basically sleepwalking, with some wild magic going on. And, well, as we know by now, he fights vicious.
The mazed creature he grappled spun about, bashed him spine first against the washstand. Basin and tin pitcher clattered askew, dousing his neck in cold water.
“Arithon!” Dakar ripped in a breath that shot branding fire through his chest. “Stop this! Now!” The next hammering blow broke his hold. He dropped, tasted blood from a bitten lip. The jolt as he crashed full length turned his head. Through dizzying pain and a fall of spun shadow, he heard the grind as the door bar slipped free. “Ath, no!”
Not good.
Especially if sleepwalking Arithon does manage to get out of there, considering his disguise isn't up anymore and fantasy genetics being what they are, he's incredibly recognizable. It gets worse when Dakar resorts to magic - having "barbed its flight in permissions garnered from Arithon for use against extreme need".
It ends up tossed back AT him. Because, apparently, when out cold and incredibly cursed? Arithon apparently CAN use his talent for magecraft! Oops!
On the plus side, it's proof that his inability to use it is psychosomatic. On the minus side, a sleepwalking, undisguised, SPELL-CASTING person is likely to get burned at the stake, even if they don't recognize him.
Poor Dakar, by the way, has a cracked rib now. But fortunately, Caolle chooses now to come back. And after a bout of fisticuffs, Arithon's on the ground.
Caolle great. He's got none of Jieret's sentimentality. He's just like "Arithon's gone nuts? Fuck it." and takes him down, no questions asked. Then he makes the usual comment about Arithon being "runt sized" but fighting dirty, and carries him out across his shoulders "like bagged game".
They get him back to the room, and since the sleep spell is fucked anyway, Dakar lifts it. Arithon wakes up immediately.
So time for answers. Arithon spots his awesome sword on the floor and realizes pretty quickly what THAT meant. He's the one able to explain it to Caolle
Basically the curse is getting worse and less controllable. There's some protection while he's in his right mind: the "permissions" that he gave Dakar let Dakar bypass his "deepest defenses". But, and Caolle quick enough to pick this up, he isn't always in his right mind.
Things get emotional here as Arithon begs Caolle to let him release him from his oath of fealty. Which, of course, gets dramatically turned down.
“Before I die by your own hand?” Caolle slammed to his feet. “Never.” He spun and paced, his wheeling shadow too large for the cramped room. “Liege, my death is not the worst that could happen. By your oath, sealed in blood before Fellowship Sorcerers, I stand fast. Even if your charge to stay alive was not binding, my heart could not do less. You are the hope for my Lord Jieret’s future. The heritage of your bloodline is not revocable, your Grace, any more than my own sworn trust.”
Aw. They love him so much. <3
Anyway, Dakar asks if Caolle will step outside, but Arithon vetoes that. If Caolle's going to endanger himself, then he's going to get the full story.
And so he gets to be right there when Dakar tells Arithon that, while cursed and unconscious, he's back to being a full sorcerer again.
Arithon's response actually is interesting, since it implies that Arithon actually DOES know why he doesn't have access to his magic:
“You’re quite sure?” Arithon looked as if his own knife had slipped and stabbed him through to the heart. “Ath save us all, then the curse has subverted even my royal-born gift of compassion.” The forearm half-raised to mask his stark shock dropped nervelessly back in his lap.
That kind of sounds like it's less a psychosomatic reaction to trauma, and more a deliberate act. Did Arithon, consciously or subconsciously, lock up his own magic to keep the curse from accessing it (again)?
Dakar notes that it's still safe when Arithon is conscious, but the problem is that Arithon's Masterbard gift is basically a sideways mage sight. Sound instead, but still, any performance that "recalls the Mistwraith's influence" might let the curse expand. Which means it's a really bad idea to keep fucking around in Tysan.
Arithon doesn't think he has a choice though. They need the ships, both to search for the Paravians, and more practically, to get "Lord Maenol's people" the fuck out of dodge. Arithon, of course, considers Lady Maenalle's execution to be on his conscience. And he pledged his word.
Dakar tries to appeal to reason, but Arithon's the one suffering the curse directly and points out that the curse keeps compounding as time passes, no matter what he does.
Dakar asks if he's telling the truth, or if the curse is corrupting his thinking. I mean, even if it is, the conclusion's kind of the same, right?
“Come ahead and find out,” Arithon invited. A testy, backhanded delight lit his face, almost welcome for the change as he shoved to his feet in familiar, acid-bright temper. “I’ve always liked fighting my demons up front. Since I’m dangerous, asleep, we may as well embrace folly headlong and ride on for Riverton tonight.”
Hee.
The next bit gives us some nice description of Riverton!
Dawn blazed over the deep estuary at Riverton, a veiling of cirrus like cloth-of-gold fringe strewn across dove gray silk. Against that gilt backdrop, the walled inner city spiked a bristle of towers and battlements, streamered with pennons and pricked by the rake of ships’ masts. Seventeen centuries of commerce had overrun the original citadel. The flats where the barges docked along the river delta spread crammed to bursting with wharves, the arched gateways of coach inns set chockablock with boathouses and ferryman’s lighters.
There's even more description of the harborside, but I'll spare you. Read the book! It's fun!
Arithon is meandering through the town, stopping at practically every open-air table, conversing with idlers and carters. And I have the distinct feeling that we'll be using that "Arithon is a scheming bastard" pikachu gif very soon. Poor Caolle's nervous because of all the lazy town accents and the "hated enclosure of the city walls". Dakar's carrying most of the supplies and complaints.
Dakar does point out the circle of ash in the market square - apparently someone got burned for practicing "unclean sorcery" the day before. Eek.
Dakar's complaint has an interesting cultural note though as he asks, rhetorically, who will craft "fiend banes" if everyone with "mage-sense" is too busy trying to avoid execution. He thinks the merchants should riot.
The iyats, or fiends, have come up in prior books. They appear to be imp-like, fairly uncontrollable and mischief-making. Dakar himself is rather prone to attracting them, or had been in Ships of Merior before he'd started his self-improvement efforts.
When Dakar complains about Arithon giving silver to every beggar in the streets, one spits on his shoe, leading to THIS interesting exchange:
“You toad-humping spawn of a maggot!” screeched Dakar.
The beggar cracked into devilish, deep laughter. “Now didn’t you say the same on the day you crammed yourself into that beer cask and we heaved you afloat on Garth’s Pond?”
That's a familiar anecdote: Arithon once shared it with Elaira when they were having their little fling in Merior.
And indeed, this is a familiar fellow:
Dakar’s eyes widened. The jab of Caolle’s elbow into barely healed ribs nipped his cry of recognition just in time. “I’m sorry,” he gasped when he could manage civil speech. Through another glare at Arithon, he added, “Our singer here has a soft heart and a head as addled as a duck’s egg. We’d all join you in the streets before he’d let a layabout go hungry.”
The beggar flashed a tigerish grin, none other than the lame joiner whose past touch at subterfuge had once helped the theft of a princess’s ransom. “Ye won’t lack for beer and feather mattresses, I’d say. Not in the company of a bard whose playing could charm life into a stone gargoyle. The Laughing Captain, hard by the shipyards, is a tavern to welcome a good singer.”
Arithon asks how the town deals with fiends. Apparently Koriani wards, purchased by the Merchant's Guild, protects the market square. The rest had been protected by bells. Unfortunately, the bell founder is a man who was born without perfect pitch, and his master set got cracked. So he's not all that useful anymore. Alas. The joiner does happen to say where the shop is.
After that encounter, there's more meandering. Arithon makes purchases: a posy of catmint, some tin scraps, a burgundy silk waistcoat. The last one, at least has a purchase:
Right there in the street, amid rumbling drays and carters who swore and reined their racketing teams around him, he donned his ridiculous glad rags.
The maroon-and-gold garment clashed stupendously with moss green hose. Dakar gave way to disgust. “Spare us all, you’re a sight to make a corpse walk.”
Arithon grinned, an edged flash of teeth. “I agree. After the clothes, who will look at the face?” He asked back his instrument, to Caolle’s relief, then waded undaunted through the rows of shawled women packing salt barrels.
Public undressing scene? Thank you, Ms. Wurts.
Eventually though, they do make it to the bell founder's shop. It's actually in pretty bad shape: all boarded and smashed, with pulverized roof slats. The iyats are having some fun.
Dakar can see them. Arithon cannot. But Arithon CAN see an opportunity. They go inside, to the dismay of the poor shopkeeper - "an angular crane of a man" who howls at them that they're fiend plagued and closed.
And indeed! Things seem quite chaotic in there:
Dakar cringed, face masked in his hands; Arithon tucked back an exhalation suspiciously like laughter; while the fiends, busy creatures, rocked into a wakened frenzy of assault.
A tin cup chained to a fallen washbasin gyrated in crazed circles in the dark. Something else made of wood, a potstand or a close stool, galloped to life on a circling course to smash ankles. Caolle yelled, stamped down on an offending pair of fire tongs which tried to stab holes in his boots, while a row of tin canisters rocked as if to dump themselves over his head.
“Ath, see what you’ve done!” the bell founder screeched above burgeoning commotion. “The blighted infestation has started all over again!”
Iyats enjoyed feeding upon human rage. Hand-wringing, dithering hysteria teased them on. Recharged to delight, they obliged, and seized on wild energy to fuel a new round of pranks.
Well, you did want Arithon to laugh...
The pranks go on a little longer before Arithon "whistled a shattering threnody."
I don't know how you can WHISTLE a threnody, but it works. Everything gets silent. The poor beleaguered bell founder ALSO knows opportunity when he sees it and immediately begs forgiveness and help.
Arithon lies and says he doesn't have the ability to set lasting protections, but he can place the pitch so that the man can recast his cracked bell. The man is delighted and shows it by physically manhandling Arithon, which causes amusing reactions:
Caolle scuffed sawdust in stiff-lipped distaste, as much for the disrespect shown to his liege as for the frivolous delay. Arithon’s humor stayed unruffled. For a private man who disliked being touched, he weathered his patron’s unctuous handling with striking equanimity.
Which anomaly at last snapped Dakar to cold thought. He had accompanied Arithon’s travels too long not to sense another seamless thread of subterfuge. Nor did his hunch prove misplaced. The reputation the bard earned in that one afternoon won them the most sumptuous, private room in the Laughing Captain Tavern for the rest of the week, free of charge.
Where's that meme again?
There we go.
So by helping to fix the bells, Arithon gets some free tavern time. And all the gossip and banter means that a steady stream of folk come in to chat with him.
Nor did every admirer wear the face of a stranger. Dakar recognized a ropewalker, a handful of caulkers, and two doxies twined through the arms of a suspiciously familiar sailhand. A street child sidled up, brother to one who had served them before as informant through a forced stay in Jaelot. Ath alone knew how the filthy mite had tracked Arithon the width of the continent.
...I want that kid's story. How the fuck did he make it to TYSAN from the east coast of Rathain?!
Cattrick himself eventually shows, and we get a pretty good description here:
Dakar caught first sight of him, a bluff, square man whose muscular tread rivaled Caolle’s for strength, and whose presence exuded authority. He elbowed his way through the press of galleymen, carousing deckhands, and off-duty royal guards as if he expected due deference, his immense, callused hands broad enough to span the slopping rims of four tankards. The squint to his eye from sighting straight board lengths, or the lines of new keels on their bedlogs, had grown more pronounced through the years since the Khetienn’s first launching in Merior. Lank shocks of brown hair still licked his wide shoulders, a new gleam of silver at the temples.
The gruff, ram’s horn bellow he used in the sawpits vanquished the taproom’s rank noise. “Beer for you, singer, and for your companions. You’ll need to get drunk to raise any tune through this racket.”
It continues a bit longer, with some bonus Arithon description:
He barged himself a seat on an overcrowded bench. The redolence of pine resin and coal smoke from the boiler sheds laced through the fug, and earned glares from a foppish pair of soap merchants. Cattrick scarcely cared. Braced on his forearms in a loose, sailhand’s shirt, he cut an enormous, rough figure alongside the bard, neatly clean in his flashy silk waistcoat and cap of feathered, pale hair. While the tankards brimmed over, his stilled, intense eyes took in Caolle’s scars and dismissed them. The weapons concealed by the clansman’s caped cloak merited no closer survey. His attention swept over the indolent, small frame of the singer he knew for the Master of Shadow, took note of Dakar’s closemouthed expectation beside him, then flickered back. “Demons take all, minstrel. Ye’ve scarcely the substance to bed a bony-arsed spinster. Are ye man enough, or should I have brought fresh-squeezed cider?”
No purple prose, but bonus points for talking about how tiny Arithon is. C+ description.
This leads to Arithon's favorite activity though, acid-tongued banter. They have some cheerfully insulting back and forth, before Arithon makes an invitation:
A smile from the bard, then a challenge. “Let me play this taproom to a standstill, first. If by then you aren’t flopped beneath the trestle with the rest, let’s find out who’s effete over fine brandy in private.”
Um. Is that a proposition, or a proposition?
This doesn't actually clarify:
“I thought you claimed you had Cattrick in hand,” the Mad Prophet murmured, voice muffled as he peered into the dregs of the beer the ship’s joiner had left him. “Those insults came barbed, or I’m a grandmother goat’s arse.”
Arithon shot off a sparkling run to retest the pitch of his strings. “It’s all jealousy,” he agreed, eyes alight with innuendo. “Somebody’s welcome was a shade too warm and that clerkish little guardsman behind us returned a bit too pointed an interest.”
Okay, so I THINK Arithon's suggesting the guardman is a spy. But I'm a slasher at heart, so I'm reading this as a love triangle waiting to happpen.
There is a rather pointed line about how Arithon chooses his associates for excellence, so if they come with quirks, unruly character, or balked at being nose led, he pretty much has to expect and work with that.
It's pretty funny when we consider how his relationships with Dakar and Caolle started. Also, likely, a pointed contrast to Lysaer.
Anyway, the evening goes well. No curse-provoking laments. Everyone's very happy and the landlord is very happy to offer free lodging and whatever he wants in order to stay.
Arithon bargains a year for one percent from the till, and any coin tossed at his feet, and the landlord is delighted. And well:
“On those terms? Bless you, I’d fund your retirement and welcome!” Unable to contain his disbelief and good fortune, the landlord beckoned to his comeliest serving girl. “Give the minstrel and his two servants any damned thing they might ask.”
While her painted, sloe eyes gauged the way the singer filled his clothes and warmed into frank invitation, the landlord moved off, chuckling.
“Any damned thing?” Arithon awarded her lush favors the compliment of his smile and snapped a sprightly run from his strings. “Then keep my friend the tinker in beer. That’s work enough for a brigade.”
The Dakar/Arithon ship continues to sail. Get a room, you two!
We do get this nice Arithonian exchange afterward:
“Do you offer the plate scrapings to the street orphans?” Arithon asked.
The landlord bobbed up from the gloom behind the bar, a polishing rag in his hand. “I give the ones willing to scrub pots all the leavings. Do you want to save the small coppers for them? You needn’t. That custom’s lapsed since my grandsire’s time.”
Arithon shrugged. “I keep stubborn habits. Just make sure the girl who sweeps up knows how to count in fair portions.” The instrument slung from his shoulder, he seemed impatient to depart.
Dakar, by this point, is rather lush and has the barmaid cuddled in his lap. Hah. Well done, man. That said, he makes an apologetic goodbye to her so he can accompany Arithon to the meeting with Cattrick. (Even though Arithon does say Caolle can watch his back. It's true love all around.)
I really do like how Dakar is both unashamedly fat and yet clearly has game.
--
The next subchapter is Payment and Bribe. It's also in Autumn 5652, as it is basically the meeting between Arithon and Cattrick.
We get some nice description:
The Laughing Captain’s best guest suite still wore its origins as a shoreside madam’s boudoir, bed hangings and dagged curtains done in gaudy, flame scarlet, tied back with gold-shot cord. Despite a casement cracked open to catch the sea breeze, an ingrained cloy of patchouli clung to the air and the rugs. The clothes chests were pearl and black lacquer from Vhalzein, new enough that they still smelled of citrus oil. The washstand supported an ewer of gilded enamel flaked with chips at the edges, two rails of embroidered towels, and a pair of pitch-smeared boots just kicked off and crammed with the wads of shed stockings.
Their owner had made himself comfortable on the bed, his back to piled pillows, a cut-crystal decanter propped between the knees of his patched canvas trousers. The brandy inside pooled pale amber in the glow shed by beeswax candles on prickets. Not mellow at all in the haze of soft light, Cattrick tracked Arithon’s entrance, slit eyed and primed for contention.
Okay, now it really sounds like it was a proposition. HELLO.
Sadly, they get down to business. Actual business. Even though, honestly, Arithon could probably do with getting laid.
Cattrick recapped the decanter and poised the filled tankards on his thighs. “Since we’ve rebuilt and launched a replacement for every galley that burned in Minderl Bay, the crown’s been hiring on riggers like ticks. Two-thirds, and the best, are all yours. The caulkers recruited from Havish were no good.”
“Too little pay,” Arithon supplied. “King Eldir’s no fool. He funded his craft guilds to keep the well-trained ones at home.”
“Then that’s old news.” Cattrick shrugged. “Your own crews from Merior have gradually replaced any second-rate labor. Petty infractions did for the rest. The plankers and sawyers all have southshore accents. By Ath, we’re so infested with talent a man wonders why none of it’s local.” He extended an arm in an effortless stretch, passed the most brimming vessel to Arithon, then finished, “Ye ken how I spit on pretty boy hair.”
a) Okay, interesting. In Vastmark, it seemed like most of Merior turned out for Lysaer - on account of Arithon trying very hard not to win any of them over to his side. But it sounds like the men who actually worked with him, and knew him, stayed loyal.
b) Eldir's pointed "neutrality" at work. It makes sense. As far as he knows, this is Lysaer's shipyard after all. I wonder if he'd have sent better if he knew who was really suborning the men.
c) It still sounds like Cattrick wants to fuck him. I'm just saying.
This is, of course, when Dakar shows up to demand entrance. Caolle is already present, so I suppose Arithon's dubious virtue is safe. Unless this turns into a gangbang, I suppose.
What Cattrick really means though is that he wants to speak to Arithon face to face. No disguises. Arithon complies:
“There isn’t an abundance of confidence to share.” Arithon sampled his drink, grimaced at the sting to a throat stressed from singing, then tipped his head back in the chair and shut his eyes. He let go a small binding. The shadows he used to disguise his appearance ran off like singed silk in the candlelight. When next he looked up, his eyes were bright green and his hair the sheened black of a raven’s wing. His gift had done more than falsify coloring.
Now none in his presence could mistake his frank warning: the exasperation laid bare, or its unwanted corollary, written into the planes of bone pressed against hollowed, pale flesh. If such an unmasking had meant to restore confidence, the mistake escaped salvage as Cattrick leaned forward, eager to test how far he might sway exposed weakness.
I've never quite been clear on how the shadow-illusion effect actually works. It does seem like most of Arithon's disguises stay pretty close to his own appearance aside from coloring - small, slim, fine boned, et cetera. Can he do more than just coloring?
Dakar asks first: is Cattrick in Koriani pay?
Arithon immediately jumps in, telling him not to answer that. He doesn't believe it. But if he doesn't believe it, why not let Cattrick answer?
But he has Caolle toss a pouch of gold coin to Cattrick.
This leads to a bit of battle of wills. Cattrick doesn't like the idea of a bribe. Arithon asserts that it's not a bribe, it's payment. Cattrick points out that he's getting paid by the crown of Tysan (Hah, so much for refusing the crown, eh Lysaer?), but Arithon considers that spoils.
Cattrick begrudgingly accepts, and asks if their stolen brig did indeed land in Corith. Ahh. So the apple carrying barge had been Arithon's all along.
“That much and better,” Arithon quipped. “The pay for your craftsmen was sent from the sale of the cider she carried as cargo. Now could we back off and swill spirits in earnest? You can sell me out to my enemies later if my nasty reputation makes you squeamish. But if we rise tomorrow undamaged by brandy, then all our brash claims to manly pursuit are going to lie forfeit by default.”
"Manly pursuits?"
I still think it sounds like they're going to bang.
Anyway, the scene shifts to a hungover Dakar. Arithon is, of course, awake, tidy and stone cold sober. He explains that he had to "render his gorge" after Cattrick passed out. Does it actually work that way?
I'm mostly a teetotaler, I have to admit. No issues with alcohol, I just don't like the taste. It does mean that I have no idea how it all works.
Dakar realizes that Arithon is sorting out his clothes for him and asks if they're going some place. They are indeed.
So we follow them outside. There's some nice environmental description here too:
“This excursion had damned well better be necessary,” he groused at the crossroads where the wharfside buildings thinned out. The stone road gave way to a rutted, mud track, interspersed by board bridges which stitched an uneven course through the mudflats of the Ilswater delta. Low ground wore bearded stands of marsh grass, interspersed with the less savory industry drawn by a thriving sea commerce. The air clung with smells. Still sunk in the misery of a tender stomach, Dakar pressed his cloak hem over his nose to cut the reek of the tanneries and the dead animal stink of the stock-yards.
“Where in bleak Sithaer are you taking me?” he demanded as Arithon moved ahead like a wraith through a streamer of late-rising fog.
“No place that’s civil. I’m sorry.” Reappeared in solid outline in his elegant gray silk, Arithon descended a weathered log stair. His high boots wore a fresh coat of wax, no detriment as he picked his way down a meandering path churned boggy with cow slots and muck. The ground oozed brackish water, and marsh wrens flitted off the fluffed heads of the reed stalks.
So they end up going to a hidden landing.
The hammer strokes paused, while a curse was returned, and Dakar parted the grasses. The headland where he and Arithon sheltered overhung an alluvial deposit, piled on the bend in one of the channels which drained the mouth of the Ilswater. The barge dock which hosted the current activity nestled beneath the steep curve of the bluffs. The planking was unweathered and new, but built to outlast winter storms. The bollards were well sunk and braced in roped triplets, with two vessels currently tied. One was a seagoing galley by the chipped strakes and dulled paint which bespoke the hard usage of a trader. The other was a river barge fitted out as a slaver. Halfnaked clansmen stood or sat, chained to steel rings in her deck.
Dakar's definitely long past his #TeamLysaer roots:
Dakar knew a white-hot explosion of rage, then an ache beyond words to express. These were the proud keepers of the old and irreplaceable bloodlines whose sworn bond of service began at the dawn of the Third Age. Now, one man’s whim reduced their function to brute labor. By Lysaer’s decree of revenge against Maenol, free men were reduced to the lives of kenneled dogs: a priceless heritage thrown to entropy and waste; a wild pride darkened to resentment and despair.
Slavery's horrible for anyone, but Dakar is particularly offended because the clans had, historically "braved their place as the link between mortal men and the burning, dire grace of the Paravians". Yeah, but what have you done for us lately, I guess?
Other cruelties stung for their needlessness. The captives had nothing beyond the crumpled leathers on their backs. Most were torn and marred with old bloodstains, testament to the violence of the hunt that had brought them to capture. They numbered a miserable two dozen, ill clothed and ill fed, their hair wind tangled and their bodies exposed to the chilly caprice of the weather.
Eight guardsmen with the badges of royal authority oversaw the next step of what seemed an entrenched routine. To pass time in boredom, they traded epithets and jokes as the prisoners were off-loaded one at a time from the barge. A small fire flickered on the verge. There, a bandy-legged smith fitted each convict with an iron collar and cuffs. His burly apprentice then closed the steel link which fixed their chains to a bench on the deck of the trader’s galley.
It gets worse, Dakar actually recognizes the young man that the guardsmen are joking about: it was the scout from Caithwood who had given Caolle a spare horse. Damn.
Arithon's point is made: Maenol's people need a way to fight back.
Sadly, this isn't Jaelot, so there's no death magic barding that can fix this situation now. Dakar and Arithon are stuck as bystanders.
Arithon's got more to show though: the galley captain comes out, with a pouch, where he counts the coin. It's a bribe for a harbormaster in Havish. Basically, even though Eldir's forbidden the traffic of slaves, the individual harbormasters have been letting them go through. And once they get to Shand, they'll be resold for labor.
“We can stop them.” Dakar shoved stubby fingers through his hair, thinking furious and fast through his hangover. “Send word ahead that corruption has undermined Havish’s edict.”
Arithon’s answering smile was cold as the north-shadowed side of a glacier. “I trust I’m forgiven the price of wet feet? Without an accurate description of that galley, we could do nothing at all.”
Dakar blinked. “Demon,” he murmured. “How did you know where to look for this shifty transaction?”
“That guard sergeant drank in our taproom last night,” Arithon murmured in reply. “It’s a galleyman’s dive, you had to have noticed. The fellow made his contact, then got into his cups and bragged of his cleverness to a trollop. Amazing, how men with a chit in their lap think a bard won’t take note of plainspoken words while he’s playing.” The Master of Shadow backed down from the crest then, his eyes grim as fired enamel. “We should go. There are urgent letters to be written and sent, and no more to gain here but heartache.”
I almost feel like using that scheming Arithon meme. But the topic is maybe a little too heavy right now.
--
The third subchapter is Liaison. It's Late Autumn 5652.
We're back with Lysaer, whose galley is arriving in Narms, in Rathain. Delegates have traveled from all over: particularly from Highcarp, Jaelot and Werpoint, in gratitude for the crown's "generous restitution for every galley destroyed by the Master of Shadow at Minderl Bay.".
Technically destroyed by Lysaer, but who's counting.
Lysaer'd also allotted pensions for families left fatherless, and new ships out of Tysan's royal treasury. Also... daily, there arrived the convict clan crews to satisfy losses to labor.
Ugh. Arithon, have you considered burning down most of your asshole kingdom? I'm just saying.
It does seem like the aesthetic in Narms is a bit less lavish and tasteless as Etarra or Jaelot:
The Lord Mayor of Narms had provided his visiting royalty with a large suite of rooms commanding the sweep of the harbor. The furnishings were heavy, varnished black walnut, and the rugs, woven in gold ropes with the deep scarlet dyes for which Narms was famed far and wide. The bedhangings had been scented with dried rose petals. The basin held lavender water. Towels and soap were of the first quality, and a tray of rare vintage wine had been left as a courtesy.
That's something I guess.
This is Lysaer's first trek to Rathain since the Minderl Bay disaster. Though he'd used the letters and gifts to keep these guys friendly and loyal to the alliance. But there is some emotional heaviness here:
Then memory smashed through the warm haze of wine. On his last pass through Narms, his best friend and confidant had still been alive. Now Diegan was dead, and Lady Talith estranged. Lysaer had no antidote for the loneliness, except to carry forward the cause of the Light. Arithon’s ruin became the last thing in life to have meaning.
The Talith part is your own doing, you asshole. You could bring her home.
We get some details about Lysaer's bed preparation here:
Tired, made tense from the drag of his diamond-and-gold collar, Lysaer closed his eyes and surrendered his person to the ubiquitous care of his valet. Stripped, bathed in warm water and clove oil, and reclothed in silk, he settled under blankets loomed by the finest craftguild in Cildorn.
“Leave the one candle burning,” he instructed his servant, though the silent, trained staff who attended him since Vastmark all knew: the one light was never permitted to go out. The prince never slept in darkness lest he suffer the torment of recurrent ill dreams. His servants were discreet. They did not speak of the fear that Lord Diegan had shared like a brother; that the fate the prince shouldered for the greater good of humanity might prove too great a destiny for one man. Lysaer stood apart with his given gift of light. He ived by his promise as defender of the innocent, though the burden to banish threat of sorcery and shadow at times seemed to sear through his blood. Diegan alone had tempered those moments when the mere sight of darkness could fracture his reason and drive him to targetless rage.
Now, Lysaer took no chances. His driving will to see his nemesis dead must not slip his control on the unquiet wings of night’s shadow.
There's an interesting compare and contrast between brothers here, I suppose. Lysaer gets to enjoy his luxuries, but in the end, both have those terrible nightmares.
I suppose I should feel more sympathetic here:
The servants had stopped suggesting that he take a mistress. After Talith, no woman born could ease the cruel quandary of his solitude. New staff were warned not to question. Since the friend who had been his right hand died in Vastmark, ever and always, Lysaer s’Ilessid passed the hours before daybreak alone. His honor guard knew to stand fast at his door. They would admit no one short of a messenger bearing word of war or disaster.
But mostly I just think he's a fucking douchebag. And every time he talks about Talith, I want someone to punch him in the balls.
He can't sleep today, though, and pretty soon, he realizes why. The room's not empty.
A woman sat on the lion claw stool. Her pose was so still the hands clasped in her lap might have been shaped of smoothed ivory. Her face lay obscured, sunk in the depths of a hood of violet silk. Her sleeves and hemline wore six bands in silver, the sheen of metallic cloth like chrome ribbon snap-frozen into black ice. Only the quartz pendant on its chain at her breast moved in time to her breathing.
“Koriani,” gasped Lysaer. Woolen blankets tumbled over his knees as he jackknifed erect in hard startlement. “What are you doing here? How did you get past my guards?”
Lysaer and the Koriani are not really comfortable allies. And that's something only Lysaer really appreciates right now. But the Koriani probably ought to be cautious with a man who has a lot of issues with women and with sorcery that they don't really know about yet.
“You were not invited,” Lysaer said, his consonants clear as chipped crystal. “Let me be plain. The Alliance of Light is opposed to the tyrannies imposed by the practice of sorcery.”
“The glamour which allowed me to slip in with your servants encroached upon no one’s free will.” The hands were a young woman’s, which lifted and removed the dark hood; underneath, a face of baby-smooth skin and a coil of salt-and-pepper hair neatly sculpted with tortoiseshell pins. The eyes were clear brown, and direct, and not youthful at all. She had lips like the pink underside of a conch, turned up in a half smile of irony. “Credit me with some semblance of courtesy. I could have made my presence known while you were engaged in your bath.”
The Koriani are used to the Fellowship, which at least in theory, cares about free will and consent. I mean, in practice...well...we've talked about that.
Lysaer is a man who's just brought slavery to the continent. He's not concerned about anyone's free will, lady. And reminding him that you could have encroached on him further, is not the way to go.
That said, she does know how to get his short term attention:
If the enchantress sought to unbalance him, the effort fell short. Lysaer turned not a hair, nor blushed, but regarded her with a calm that transcended small vanity. “Under any circumstance, I would have refused your public petition for audience.”
The Koriani laughed, a peal of joy like the struck tone of bronze bells. “You fear for your image of morality, I see, far more than for your male pride. Very well. Since I have obtained your close company on my own, you might as well sit and listen. I’ve came to offer you my order’s help to bring down the Master of Shadow.”
So yeah, okay, Lysaer's listening.
Through a grave stillness, the enchantress took his measure. Her smile was gone, and her hands cupped the quartz crystal pendant strung on silver chain at her breast. “Our kind make no bargains,” she said at chill length. “Nor am I here by any other will but the bidding of Morriel Prime. She would have you know that she shares your conviction. The Master of Shadow poses a threat to the free growth of society. Koriathain will assist your Alliance against that one enemy if you ask. Remember our pledge. Keep your captains at arms vigilant, no matter the season. We have cast auguries on the future. My Matriarch would have me say that your opening to take down Arithon will come far sooner than you think.”
The question burned through even Lysaer’s state discipline. “When will this happen?”
“You shall have fair warning.” The enchantress raised a finger and traced a sigil in burning lines on the air. The glyph flared bright violet, then flashed, shocking sight with its blinding intensity. Lysaer threw his hands up to shield his face. In the second he was dazzled, the light burst and vanished into a soundless clap of heat.
Cryptic! Dramatic!
Effective?
Lysaer shot from his chair. The beautiful carved back smashed into the wall, raising chips and a small puff of plaster. Barefoot, sweating, all over unclean from his bone-deep revulsion for magecraft, he paced over the floor. He searched every corner, banged open the doors to the armoire, even hurled the bedhangings free of their tasseled silk cords. He found nothing. No sign remained of the enchantress who had invaded his chamber. The stuffed cushion on the stool felt ice chill in the breath of the drafts. The street beyond the casement lay shadowed and dim, empty of mongrels or carriages.
Lysaer crossed to the nightstand, uncorked the wine bottle, and sucked down the vintage red from Orvandir in gulps. The dry heat that curled in his belly did nothing to settle the prickle of fear on his skin. He fought for cool reason. The wild heat in his blood was not rational, he knew, but extended back into childhood. The distrust that ripped him began with his mother, a s’Ahelas witch who had married a king, and then undone her vows in betrayal. Her perfidy had created his nemesis, the bastard born Master of Shadow.
Maybe.
Lysaer's got a lot of issues though. And the Koriani kind of dig into all of them.
On the other hand:
In the self-searching depths of a tormented honesty, he allowed that perhaps his harsh judgment had been premature. Spellcraft could become a tool or a weapon. The outcome depended on whose hands guided the range of its power. The Koriani Order long claimed to champion the cause of humanity. In all fairness, he must grant them their chance to stand by compassionate principle. Now that their arcane support had been offered, he could turn down no prospect of help to bring Arithon s’Ffalenn to destruction.
Never let it be said that Lysaer can't compromise his morals when he really really wants to.
--
Our sneak peek chapter is Dualities. It's notes as taking place from late Autumn to early winter, 5652.
In the first paragraph, a valet finds the prince in a rare, testy mood. He's been ordered not to speak, so he's too timid to point out the oddity that he's noticed: a small lock of hair has been snipped "from the nape of the royal neck."
Oh, no. The second paragraph is BAD NEWS:
A fortnight after Arithon’s arrival at Riverton, the master shipwright, Cattrick, sits morose in his quarters, head pressed between his huge hands; diligently he has tried, and failed, to provoke Arithon to distrust, and now time runs out to thwart the betrayal demanded as service for a Koriani oath of debt, sworn years ago to save a young sister stricken with fever in childbed…
Oh Cattrick. Dakar was right to ask. But Arithon's right about his character, too. What a mess.
The last paragraph is a bit happier though: Elaira is smiling at a black-haired child, promising that on his fifth birthday, she'll begin his first lesson in horsemanship.
What happens this time?
Oh, and this bodes well. The chapter starts with this:
If tears were hardened stone to carve, inscribe my cry for life: Let no man raise his unsheathed sword, may no man draw his knife, that this, our sore and grieving land, waste no more hearts to strife!
verse from the Masterbard’s lament for the widows of Dier Kenton Vale Third Age 5649
So we know things are going to get cheery this chapter.
But it does have interesting implications for the future. Because this is presented as an attributed quote.
We know from the prologue of Curse of the Mistwraith, that Arithon, primarily, is going to be remembered as the "Master of Shadows." NOT as the Masterbard of Athera. But this at least implies that his work will survive - but maybe attributed only to his title rather than his name. Does that mean that people might not know that the hopefully-not-last Masterbard of Athera was Arithon s'Ffalenn?
Now, on the Lachlan to Menolly scale - how is it? It seems okay. I'm intrigued by the triplet rhyming scheme. It makes me curious as to the structure of the verse. Well done, Arithon.
Okay, so the actual chapter starts off with a description of a tavern. Let's read it:
For three hundred years, the rambling, old tavern had stood below the river fork where Ilswater joined the broad, placid channel which drained off the mudflats of Mogg’s Fen. Moss shagged its fired brick walls on the south-facing side. The north wings sliced the brunt of the winds that scoured the leaves from the roof shakes. Its warren of galleries and peaked dormer rooms lay packed, that stormy, cold night. Chimney smoke smudged the deepening gloom, sliced by the needle tracks of rainfall. Bargemen forsook the damp berths on their vessels; drovers left the miseries of open-air camps and thronged in for a copper to spread blankets on the common room floor. Driven indoors as autumn’s late chill threatened the first, freezing sleet, soaked wayfarers huddled elbow to elbow over mugs of soup and mulled wine.
As an American, I admit, I'm always intrigued by very very old buildings like this. Which aren't nearly so old by a European perspective, I know. By ATHERAN standards, it's still younger than the revolution that deposed the kings, but seems to be on the older side for general townsfolk architecture.
The sentence tells us that they would have squeezed the accommodations past full even if there wasn't a bard in residence. So since that means there is one, we can tell this is probably an Arithon subchapter.
And indeed:
The inn’s kindly landlord held one room aside for his use at no charge, for the excessive demand on his talent. The mannerly threw money to keep him sweet. As each song drew to its closing, small coins sliced the gloom to chink on the boards at his feet. If the singer was built a trifle too fine, or his dress seemed a touch over-done, those delicate fingers on silver-wound strings wove sound like a net of enchantment. Through the chiming cascade of gift tokens, the whoops of approval, and a general hubbub of noise, the call of the mousy widow by the casement seemed the lost utterance of a ghost.
So Arithon apparently took Dakar's warning last chapter that he should look older or people would assume something entirely incorrect (or is it?) about his retinue and ignored it entirely. That fits. "Fuck you, you want to hang around with me, they're going to think we're fucking every night." - Arithon, probably.
And there's Dakar, being cryptic:
“Pray Ath our bard didn’t hear that,” Dakar said where he lounged, feet braced on a trestle crammed under the jut of the staircase.
Neither Caolle nor I knows what Dakar is talking about. Caolle expresses concern that Dakar isn't drinking. Dakar wisecracks that he's hale and "dreadfully sober" but "the misery's the same nonetheless." Heh.
But what is Dakar talking about?
That indefinable instant, the noise lagged. Rain drummed the slates and the windows, and the widow raised nerve to repeat her request. “Minstrel, play a memorial!” This time, her frail, porcelain treble reached every corner of the room. “Sing us a lament for the brave ones who died against Shadow in Dier Kenton Vale.”
Ahh. Yeah. Fuck. (A glance up actually shows that she'd called out once before, but it was buried in one of the descriptive paragraphs and I missed it.)
So yeah, this is Tysan. And there are a lot of men who decided to follow Lysaer's call to cross a continent and invade a foreign land to go after an alleged sorcerer that's never done anything to anyone in their country. A lot of widows and orphans left behind.
Caolle thinks Arithon will refuse her. Dakar knows Arithon won't be so sensible. Arguably he can't. His "masterbard's title" won't let him.
It's an interesting quandary though, and for Wurts, it's actually pretty subtle. Because, as a performer, and as a sane man, Arithon should and theoretically could write a song that tells these people exactly what they want to hear.
But we know that the Masterbard's office involves more than that. A normal performer could do that. But my guess is that, given the whole arbiter/interpreter of old law aspect of the office, there is some prohibition against the Masterbard performing something that's outright untrue. And well, unfortunately, this probably isn't something Arithon can take artistic license with.
And, well, does he really want to? We might be looking at a "Toss a Coin to a Witcher" problem here. There's never really been a lot of mention of other bards, and what they perform. We know Felliron, in Curse of the Mistwraith, got in trouble for performing some clan-friendly ballads to the wrong crowd. But we don't really see any others. And we don't see any mention of anyone performing any of Halliron's or Arithon's songs. (Not yet anyway.)
But let's say Arithon does make a good, pro-Tysan, pro-Lysaer piece about Dier Kenton Vale, and it catches on. Jaskier's song in the Witcher (tv version anyway) demonized the elves. We know it's not the REASON for bad feeling against the elves. But it likely didn't help. Implicitly, it did help feed the anti-elf sentiment that comes to a head much later.
Arithon could end up writing a song that is later used him against him. We know Lysaer's capable of it.
So...what does a Masterbard do here? It's a really interesting quandary thrown out in a couple of paragraphs, isn't it?
Well, Arithon...
The bard shifted the lyranthe in his lap. He regarded his hands, fine jointed and stilled, the image of languid elegance. The pose was misleading. To any who knew him, the mind underneath was as unperturbed as drawn steel. While the taproom grew hushed, and storm sluiced the eaves, he spoke in mellifluous courtesy. “Mistress, which of your loved ones was lost?”
“My husband, rest him.” The woman cried, bitter, “May the Spinner of Darkness come to suffer Dharkaron’s damnation!”
“Lady,” said the singer in plangent, fierce pity, “rest assured, he already does.”
Of course he does.
And more drama:
Then, as if unadorned words caused him pain, he flung back his head, shut his eyes, and struck a chord like a plummeting cry. No chance assemblage of minor notes, this opening, but the pure charge and power of a masterbard’s art, that ordered the air and snatched mortal heartstrings and twisted, until all the world became realigned to his measure of gripping, stark sorrow.
Dakar, knowing the situation as he does, knowing ARITHON as he does, basically tells Caolle to shut up and be ready to keep vigil at Arithon's bedside later. Aww.
So yeah. What's the song like?
The upwelling surge of an exquisitely made grief enthralled every listening mind. Arithon chose not to play to console. The deaths he had caused at Dier Kenton Vale were too harrowing a loss to soothe over. Instead, he spun melody in soaring lament and seized his hapless audience by the vitals. His notes sheared past thought like hooks in silk thread, unfurling a shimmering net of fine sound. The musician firmed his hold, dragged them under, then drowned them in a surge of emotion like tide.
It goes on like that for a while. We hear a few more lyrics. If tears were hardened stone to carve a monument to grief, would we let loss and trouble starve our spirits for belief?
Our men have gone from home and hearth and faith has made us weep!
We're told that Arithon "plays their mortality in the pressed heat of that dingy riverside taproom". And the song is a challenge. Not a comfort.
I particularly like this line: Barmaids and barge captains, beringed merchants and their coteries of servants; all, down to the coarsest, unwashed mule drover wept unabashed, that husbands and sons should ever leave home to kill for reasons of policy.
There's another good line here: He endorsed no heroic act of sacrifice, but stripped away mankind’s penchant for self-righteous zeal to its core of arrogant futility.
This isn't Arithon in Innish, comforting a widow and a town for their loss. This is Arithon in Jaelot. This time, thankfully, without a Paravian ruin underneath. These guys wanted a bard's comfort and got the Masterbard's chastisement instead. Good.
The last verse that we get to hear is: No cause is scribed in fire and star—then whose truth must we heed?
Why bind the will and blind the heart, more lives to rend and bleed?
Our men have gone from home and hearth, and hate has made us weep!
At least for the moment, it works. When Arithon stops playing "[s]ilence descend[s] with the brutality of a public execution.".
Oof.
Dakar snaps out of it first. Then other people start to stir out of their grief-stricken stupor. He grabs a swaying Arithon to get him the fuck out of there before people start thinking about the lyrics that they heard and equate that to "a treasonous dissent against Lysaer's vaunted Alliance."
They make it upstairs and rest behind a barred door. Arithon's already out cold, while Dakar and Caolle listen to the noise downstairs. Right now, folks are still reacting. Trying to drown out grief with forced laughter, drink and carousing. It's likely to turn ugly soon though, and they want Arithon far away from that.
Even asleep, Arithon gets some purple prose:
Arithon’s sprawl on the inn’s saggy mattress never shifted. The uncertain spill from the candle played over his tight-knit frame. Fanned snarls of black hair seemed to drink the faint light, while his slackened fingers curled on the sheet seemed masterfully carved out of alabaster. Such stillness unmasked a frightening vulnerability, a humanity grown too sharply defined in muscle and tendon and bone. Never a large man, Arithon had become alarmingly thin and worn. His wrist might be circled by one finger and thumb, and the cleaved edge of his cheekbone stood demarked in drawn flesh.
Dakar tries to recall the last time he heard Arithon laugh. Aw. Maybe you could get your asshole bosses to give the poor guy a real vacation?
Not now though, because things are about to go from bad to worse. Because you remember that pesky curse that drives both brothers into near madness when they're forced into the same proximity? Apparently a traumatic recollection of their last conflict kinda has a similar effect.
Wurts's style is either detriment or benefit here, depending on what she's trying to do. It's a little confusing. But I kind of think it's meant to be. There's a lot of gradual focus on what Dakar notices as he notices it. I THINK the big issue is that Arithon's basically sleepwalking, with some wild magic going on. And, well, as we know by now, he fights vicious.
The mazed creature he grappled spun about, bashed him spine first against the washstand. Basin and tin pitcher clattered askew, dousing his neck in cold water.
“Arithon!” Dakar ripped in a breath that shot branding fire through his chest. “Stop this! Now!” The next hammering blow broke his hold. He dropped, tasted blood from a bitten lip. The jolt as he crashed full length turned his head. Through dizzying pain and a fall of spun shadow, he heard the grind as the door bar slipped free. “Ath, no!”
Not good.
Especially if sleepwalking Arithon does manage to get out of there, considering his disguise isn't up anymore and fantasy genetics being what they are, he's incredibly recognizable. It gets worse when Dakar resorts to magic - having "barbed its flight in permissions garnered from Arithon for use against extreme need".
It ends up tossed back AT him. Because, apparently, when out cold and incredibly cursed? Arithon apparently CAN use his talent for magecraft! Oops!
On the plus side, it's proof that his inability to use it is psychosomatic. On the minus side, a sleepwalking, undisguised, SPELL-CASTING person is likely to get burned at the stake, even if they don't recognize him.
Poor Dakar, by the way, has a cracked rib now. But fortunately, Caolle chooses now to come back. And after a bout of fisticuffs, Arithon's on the ground.
Caolle great. He's got none of Jieret's sentimentality. He's just like "Arithon's gone nuts? Fuck it." and takes him down, no questions asked. Then he makes the usual comment about Arithon being "runt sized" but fighting dirty, and carries him out across his shoulders "like bagged game".
They get him back to the room, and since the sleep spell is fucked anyway, Dakar lifts it. Arithon wakes up immediately.
So time for answers. Arithon spots his awesome sword on the floor and realizes pretty quickly what THAT meant. He's the one able to explain it to Caolle
Basically the curse is getting worse and less controllable. There's some protection while he's in his right mind: the "permissions" that he gave Dakar let Dakar bypass his "deepest defenses". But, and Caolle quick enough to pick this up, he isn't always in his right mind.
Things get emotional here as Arithon begs Caolle to let him release him from his oath of fealty. Which, of course, gets dramatically turned down.
“Before I die by your own hand?” Caolle slammed to his feet. “Never.” He spun and paced, his wheeling shadow too large for the cramped room. “Liege, my death is not the worst that could happen. By your oath, sealed in blood before Fellowship Sorcerers, I stand fast. Even if your charge to stay alive was not binding, my heart could not do less. You are the hope for my Lord Jieret’s future. The heritage of your bloodline is not revocable, your Grace, any more than my own sworn trust.”
Aw. They love him so much. <3
Anyway, Dakar asks if Caolle will step outside, but Arithon vetoes that. If Caolle's going to endanger himself, then he's going to get the full story.
And so he gets to be right there when Dakar tells Arithon that, while cursed and unconscious, he's back to being a full sorcerer again.
Arithon's response actually is interesting, since it implies that Arithon actually DOES know why he doesn't have access to his magic:
“You’re quite sure?” Arithon looked as if his own knife had slipped and stabbed him through to the heart. “Ath save us all, then the curse has subverted even my royal-born gift of compassion.” The forearm half-raised to mask his stark shock dropped nervelessly back in his lap.
That kind of sounds like it's less a psychosomatic reaction to trauma, and more a deliberate act. Did Arithon, consciously or subconsciously, lock up his own magic to keep the curse from accessing it (again)?
Dakar notes that it's still safe when Arithon is conscious, but the problem is that Arithon's Masterbard gift is basically a sideways mage sight. Sound instead, but still, any performance that "recalls the Mistwraith's influence" might let the curse expand. Which means it's a really bad idea to keep fucking around in Tysan.
Arithon doesn't think he has a choice though. They need the ships, both to search for the Paravians, and more practically, to get "Lord Maenol's people" the fuck out of dodge. Arithon, of course, considers Lady Maenalle's execution to be on his conscience. And he pledged his word.
Dakar tries to appeal to reason, but Arithon's the one suffering the curse directly and points out that the curse keeps compounding as time passes, no matter what he does.
Dakar asks if he's telling the truth, or if the curse is corrupting his thinking. I mean, even if it is, the conclusion's kind of the same, right?
“Come ahead and find out,” Arithon invited. A testy, backhanded delight lit his face, almost welcome for the change as he shoved to his feet in familiar, acid-bright temper. “I’ve always liked fighting my demons up front. Since I’m dangerous, asleep, we may as well embrace folly headlong and ride on for Riverton tonight.”
Hee.
The next bit gives us some nice description of Riverton!
Dawn blazed over the deep estuary at Riverton, a veiling of cirrus like cloth-of-gold fringe strewn across dove gray silk. Against that gilt backdrop, the walled inner city spiked a bristle of towers and battlements, streamered with pennons and pricked by the rake of ships’ masts. Seventeen centuries of commerce had overrun the original citadel. The flats where the barges docked along the river delta spread crammed to bursting with wharves, the arched gateways of coach inns set chockablock with boathouses and ferryman’s lighters.
There's even more description of the harborside, but I'll spare you. Read the book! It's fun!
Arithon is meandering through the town, stopping at practically every open-air table, conversing with idlers and carters. And I have the distinct feeling that we'll be using that "Arithon is a scheming bastard" pikachu gif very soon. Poor Caolle's nervous because of all the lazy town accents and the "hated enclosure of the city walls". Dakar's carrying most of the supplies and complaints.
Dakar does point out the circle of ash in the market square - apparently someone got burned for practicing "unclean sorcery" the day before. Eek.
Dakar's complaint has an interesting cultural note though as he asks, rhetorically, who will craft "fiend banes" if everyone with "mage-sense" is too busy trying to avoid execution. He thinks the merchants should riot.
The iyats, or fiends, have come up in prior books. They appear to be imp-like, fairly uncontrollable and mischief-making. Dakar himself is rather prone to attracting them, or had been in Ships of Merior before he'd started his self-improvement efforts.
When Dakar complains about Arithon giving silver to every beggar in the streets, one spits on his shoe, leading to THIS interesting exchange:
“You toad-humping spawn of a maggot!” screeched Dakar.
The beggar cracked into devilish, deep laughter. “Now didn’t you say the same on the day you crammed yourself into that beer cask and we heaved you afloat on Garth’s Pond?”
That's a familiar anecdote: Arithon once shared it with Elaira when they were having their little fling in Merior.
And indeed, this is a familiar fellow:
Dakar’s eyes widened. The jab of Caolle’s elbow into barely healed ribs nipped his cry of recognition just in time. “I’m sorry,” he gasped when he could manage civil speech. Through another glare at Arithon, he added, “Our singer here has a soft heart and a head as addled as a duck’s egg. We’d all join you in the streets before he’d let a layabout go hungry.”
The beggar flashed a tigerish grin, none other than the lame joiner whose past touch at subterfuge had once helped the theft of a princess’s ransom. “Ye won’t lack for beer and feather mattresses, I’d say. Not in the company of a bard whose playing could charm life into a stone gargoyle. The Laughing Captain, hard by the shipyards, is a tavern to welcome a good singer.”
Arithon asks how the town deals with fiends. Apparently Koriani wards, purchased by the Merchant's Guild, protects the market square. The rest had been protected by bells. Unfortunately, the bell founder is a man who was born without perfect pitch, and his master set got cracked. So he's not all that useful anymore. Alas. The joiner does happen to say where the shop is.
After that encounter, there's more meandering. Arithon makes purchases: a posy of catmint, some tin scraps, a burgundy silk waistcoat. The last one, at least has a purchase:
Right there in the street, amid rumbling drays and carters who swore and reined their racketing teams around him, he donned his ridiculous glad rags.
The maroon-and-gold garment clashed stupendously with moss green hose. Dakar gave way to disgust. “Spare us all, you’re a sight to make a corpse walk.”
Arithon grinned, an edged flash of teeth. “I agree. After the clothes, who will look at the face?” He asked back his instrument, to Caolle’s relief, then waded undaunted through the rows of shawled women packing salt barrels.
Public undressing scene? Thank you, Ms. Wurts.
Eventually though, they do make it to the bell founder's shop. It's actually in pretty bad shape: all boarded and smashed, with pulverized roof slats. The iyats are having some fun.
Dakar can see them. Arithon cannot. But Arithon CAN see an opportunity. They go inside, to the dismay of the poor shopkeeper - "an angular crane of a man" who howls at them that they're fiend plagued and closed.
And indeed! Things seem quite chaotic in there:
Dakar cringed, face masked in his hands; Arithon tucked back an exhalation suspiciously like laughter; while the fiends, busy creatures, rocked into a wakened frenzy of assault.
A tin cup chained to a fallen washbasin gyrated in crazed circles in the dark. Something else made of wood, a potstand or a close stool, galloped to life on a circling course to smash ankles. Caolle yelled, stamped down on an offending pair of fire tongs which tried to stab holes in his boots, while a row of tin canisters rocked as if to dump themselves over his head.
“Ath, see what you’ve done!” the bell founder screeched above burgeoning commotion. “The blighted infestation has started all over again!”
Iyats enjoyed feeding upon human rage. Hand-wringing, dithering hysteria teased them on. Recharged to delight, they obliged, and seized on wild energy to fuel a new round of pranks.
Well, you did want Arithon to laugh...
The pranks go on a little longer before Arithon "whistled a shattering threnody."
I don't know how you can WHISTLE a threnody, but it works. Everything gets silent. The poor beleaguered bell founder ALSO knows opportunity when he sees it and immediately begs forgiveness and help.
Arithon lies and says he doesn't have the ability to set lasting protections, but he can place the pitch so that the man can recast his cracked bell. The man is delighted and shows it by physically manhandling Arithon, which causes amusing reactions:
Caolle scuffed sawdust in stiff-lipped distaste, as much for the disrespect shown to his liege as for the frivolous delay. Arithon’s humor stayed unruffled. For a private man who disliked being touched, he weathered his patron’s unctuous handling with striking equanimity.
Which anomaly at last snapped Dakar to cold thought. He had accompanied Arithon’s travels too long not to sense another seamless thread of subterfuge. Nor did his hunch prove misplaced. The reputation the bard earned in that one afternoon won them the most sumptuous, private room in the Laughing Captain Tavern for the rest of the week, free of charge.
Where's that meme again?
There we go.
So by helping to fix the bells, Arithon gets some free tavern time. And all the gossip and banter means that a steady stream of folk come in to chat with him.
Nor did every admirer wear the face of a stranger. Dakar recognized a ropewalker, a handful of caulkers, and two doxies twined through the arms of a suspiciously familiar sailhand. A street child sidled up, brother to one who had served them before as informant through a forced stay in Jaelot. Ath alone knew how the filthy mite had tracked Arithon the width of the continent.
...I want that kid's story. How the fuck did he make it to TYSAN from the east coast of Rathain?!
Cattrick himself eventually shows, and we get a pretty good description here:
Dakar caught first sight of him, a bluff, square man whose muscular tread rivaled Caolle’s for strength, and whose presence exuded authority. He elbowed his way through the press of galleymen, carousing deckhands, and off-duty royal guards as if he expected due deference, his immense, callused hands broad enough to span the slopping rims of four tankards. The squint to his eye from sighting straight board lengths, or the lines of new keels on their bedlogs, had grown more pronounced through the years since the Khetienn’s first launching in Merior. Lank shocks of brown hair still licked his wide shoulders, a new gleam of silver at the temples.
The gruff, ram’s horn bellow he used in the sawpits vanquished the taproom’s rank noise. “Beer for you, singer, and for your companions. You’ll need to get drunk to raise any tune through this racket.”
It continues a bit longer, with some bonus Arithon description:
He barged himself a seat on an overcrowded bench. The redolence of pine resin and coal smoke from the boiler sheds laced through the fug, and earned glares from a foppish pair of soap merchants. Cattrick scarcely cared. Braced on his forearms in a loose, sailhand’s shirt, he cut an enormous, rough figure alongside the bard, neatly clean in his flashy silk waistcoat and cap of feathered, pale hair. While the tankards brimmed over, his stilled, intense eyes took in Caolle’s scars and dismissed them. The weapons concealed by the clansman’s caped cloak merited no closer survey. His attention swept over the indolent, small frame of the singer he knew for the Master of Shadow, took note of Dakar’s closemouthed expectation beside him, then flickered back. “Demons take all, minstrel. Ye’ve scarcely the substance to bed a bony-arsed spinster. Are ye man enough, or should I have brought fresh-squeezed cider?”
No purple prose, but bonus points for talking about how tiny Arithon is. C+ description.
This leads to Arithon's favorite activity though, acid-tongued banter. They have some cheerfully insulting back and forth, before Arithon makes an invitation:
A smile from the bard, then a challenge. “Let me play this taproom to a standstill, first. If by then you aren’t flopped beneath the trestle with the rest, let’s find out who’s effete over fine brandy in private.”
Um. Is that a proposition, or a proposition?
This doesn't actually clarify:
“I thought you claimed you had Cattrick in hand,” the Mad Prophet murmured, voice muffled as he peered into the dregs of the beer the ship’s joiner had left him. “Those insults came barbed, or I’m a grandmother goat’s arse.”
Arithon shot off a sparkling run to retest the pitch of his strings. “It’s all jealousy,” he agreed, eyes alight with innuendo. “Somebody’s welcome was a shade too warm and that clerkish little guardsman behind us returned a bit too pointed an interest.”
Okay, so I THINK Arithon's suggesting the guardman is a spy. But I'm a slasher at heart, so I'm reading this as a love triangle waiting to happpen.
There is a rather pointed line about how Arithon chooses his associates for excellence, so if they come with quirks, unruly character, or balked at being nose led, he pretty much has to expect and work with that.
It's pretty funny when we consider how his relationships with Dakar and Caolle started. Also, likely, a pointed contrast to Lysaer.
Anyway, the evening goes well. No curse-provoking laments. Everyone's very happy and the landlord is very happy to offer free lodging and whatever he wants in order to stay.
Arithon bargains a year for one percent from the till, and any coin tossed at his feet, and the landlord is delighted. And well:
“On those terms? Bless you, I’d fund your retirement and welcome!” Unable to contain his disbelief and good fortune, the landlord beckoned to his comeliest serving girl. “Give the minstrel and his two servants any damned thing they might ask.”
While her painted, sloe eyes gauged the way the singer filled his clothes and warmed into frank invitation, the landlord moved off, chuckling.
“Any damned thing?” Arithon awarded her lush favors the compliment of his smile and snapped a sprightly run from his strings. “Then keep my friend the tinker in beer. That’s work enough for a brigade.”
The Dakar/Arithon ship continues to sail. Get a room, you two!
We do get this nice Arithonian exchange afterward:
“Do you offer the plate scrapings to the street orphans?” Arithon asked.
The landlord bobbed up from the gloom behind the bar, a polishing rag in his hand. “I give the ones willing to scrub pots all the leavings. Do you want to save the small coppers for them? You needn’t. That custom’s lapsed since my grandsire’s time.”
Arithon shrugged. “I keep stubborn habits. Just make sure the girl who sweeps up knows how to count in fair portions.” The instrument slung from his shoulder, he seemed impatient to depart.
Dakar, by this point, is rather lush and has the barmaid cuddled in his lap. Hah. Well done, man. That said, he makes an apologetic goodbye to her so he can accompany Arithon to the meeting with Cattrick. (Even though Arithon does say Caolle can watch his back. It's true love all around.)
I really do like how Dakar is both unashamedly fat and yet clearly has game.
--
The next subchapter is Payment and Bribe. It's also in Autumn 5652, as it is basically the meeting between Arithon and Cattrick.
We get some nice description:
The Laughing Captain’s best guest suite still wore its origins as a shoreside madam’s boudoir, bed hangings and dagged curtains done in gaudy, flame scarlet, tied back with gold-shot cord. Despite a casement cracked open to catch the sea breeze, an ingrained cloy of patchouli clung to the air and the rugs. The clothes chests were pearl and black lacquer from Vhalzein, new enough that they still smelled of citrus oil. The washstand supported an ewer of gilded enamel flaked with chips at the edges, two rails of embroidered towels, and a pair of pitch-smeared boots just kicked off and crammed with the wads of shed stockings.
Their owner had made himself comfortable on the bed, his back to piled pillows, a cut-crystal decanter propped between the knees of his patched canvas trousers. The brandy inside pooled pale amber in the glow shed by beeswax candles on prickets. Not mellow at all in the haze of soft light, Cattrick tracked Arithon’s entrance, slit eyed and primed for contention.
Okay, now it really sounds like it was a proposition. HELLO.
Sadly, they get down to business. Actual business. Even though, honestly, Arithon could probably do with getting laid.
Cattrick recapped the decanter and poised the filled tankards on his thighs. “Since we’ve rebuilt and launched a replacement for every galley that burned in Minderl Bay, the crown’s been hiring on riggers like ticks. Two-thirds, and the best, are all yours. The caulkers recruited from Havish were no good.”
“Too little pay,” Arithon supplied. “King Eldir’s no fool. He funded his craft guilds to keep the well-trained ones at home.”
“Then that’s old news.” Cattrick shrugged. “Your own crews from Merior have gradually replaced any second-rate labor. Petty infractions did for the rest. The plankers and sawyers all have southshore accents. By Ath, we’re so infested with talent a man wonders why none of it’s local.” He extended an arm in an effortless stretch, passed the most brimming vessel to Arithon, then finished, “Ye ken how I spit on pretty boy hair.”
a) Okay, interesting. In Vastmark, it seemed like most of Merior turned out for Lysaer - on account of Arithon trying very hard not to win any of them over to his side. But it sounds like the men who actually worked with him, and knew him, stayed loyal.
b) Eldir's pointed "neutrality" at work. It makes sense. As far as he knows, this is Lysaer's shipyard after all. I wonder if he'd have sent better if he knew who was really suborning the men.
c) It still sounds like Cattrick wants to fuck him. I'm just saying.
This is, of course, when Dakar shows up to demand entrance. Caolle is already present, so I suppose Arithon's dubious virtue is safe. Unless this turns into a gangbang, I suppose.
What Cattrick really means though is that he wants to speak to Arithon face to face. No disguises. Arithon complies:
“There isn’t an abundance of confidence to share.” Arithon sampled his drink, grimaced at the sting to a throat stressed from singing, then tipped his head back in the chair and shut his eyes. He let go a small binding. The shadows he used to disguise his appearance ran off like singed silk in the candlelight. When next he looked up, his eyes were bright green and his hair the sheened black of a raven’s wing. His gift had done more than falsify coloring.
Now none in his presence could mistake his frank warning: the exasperation laid bare, or its unwanted corollary, written into the planes of bone pressed against hollowed, pale flesh. If such an unmasking had meant to restore confidence, the mistake escaped salvage as Cattrick leaned forward, eager to test how far he might sway exposed weakness.
I've never quite been clear on how the shadow-illusion effect actually works. It does seem like most of Arithon's disguises stay pretty close to his own appearance aside from coloring - small, slim, fine boned, et cetera. Can he do more than just coloring?
Dakar asks first: is Cattrick in Koriani pay?
Arithon immediately jumps in, telling him not to answer that. He doesn't believe it. But if he doesn't believe it, why not let Cattrick answer?
But he has Caolle toss a pouch of gold coin to Cattrick.
This leads to a bit of battle of wills. Cattrick doesn't like the idea of a bribe. Arithon asserts that it's not a bribe, it's payment. Cattrick points out that he's getting paid by the crown of Tysan (Hah, so much for refusing the crown, eh Lysaer?), but Arithon considers that spoils.
Cattrick begrudgingly accepts, and asks if their stolen brig did indeed land in Corith. Ahh. So the apple carrying barge had been Arithon's all along.
“That much and better,” Arithon quipped. “The pay for your craftsmen was sent from the sale of the cider she carried as cargo. Now could we back off and swill spirits in earnest? You can sell me out to my enemies later if my nasty reputation makes you squeamish. But if we rise tomorrow undamaged by brandy, then all our brash claims to manly pursuit are going to lie forfeit by default.”
"Manly pursuits?"
I still think it sounds like they're going to bang.
Anyway, the scene shifts to a hungover Dakar. Arithon is, of course, awake, tidy and stone cold sober. He explains that he had to "render his gorge" after Cattrick passed out. Does it actually work that way?
I'm mostly a teetotaler, I have to admit. No issues with alcohol, I just don't like the taste. It does mean that I have no idea how it all works.
Dakar realizes that Arithon is sorting out his clothes for him and asks if they're going some place. They are indeed.
So we follow them outside. There's some nice environmental description here too:
“This excursion had damned well better be necessary,” he groused at the crossroads where the wharfside buildings thinned out. The stone road gave way to a rutted, mud track, interspersed by board bridges which stitched an uneven course through the mudflats of the Ilswater delta. Low ground wore bearded stands of marsh grass, interspersed with the less savory industry drawn by a thriving sea commerce. The air clung with smells. Still sunk in the misery of a tender stomach, Dakar pressed his cloak hem over his nose to cut the reek of the tanneries and the dead animal stink of the stock-yards.
“Where in bleak Sithaer are you taking me?” he demanded as Arithon moved ahead like a wraith through a streamer of late-rising fog.
“No place that’s civil. I’m sorry.” Reappeared in solid outline in his elegant gray silk, Arithon descended a weathered log stair. His high boots wore a fresh coat of wax, no detriment as he picked his way down a meandering path churned boggy with cow slots and muck. The ground oozed brackish water, and marsh wrens flitted off the fluffed heads of the reed stalks.
So they end up going to a hidden landing.
The hammer strokes paused, while a curse was returned, and Dakar parted the grasses. The headland where he and Arithon sheltered overhung an alluvial deposit, piled on the bend in one of the channels which drained the mouth of the Ilswater. The barge dock which hosted the current activity nestled beneath the steep curve of the bluffs. The planking was unweathered and new, but built to outlast winter storms. The bollards were well sunk and braced in roped triplets, with two vessels currently tied. One was a seagoing galley by the chipped strakes and dulled paint which bespoke the hard usage of a trader. The other was a river barge fitted out as a slaver. Halfnaked clansmen stood or sat, chained to steel rings in her deck.
Dakar's definitely long past his #TeamLysaer roots:
Dakar knew a white-hot explosion of rage, then an ache beyond words to express. These were the proud keepers of the old and irreplaceable bloodlines whose sworn bond of service began at the dawn of the Third Age. Now, one man’s whim reduced their function to brute labor. By Lysaer’s decree of revenge against Maenol, free men were reduced to the lives of kenneled dogs: a priceless heritage thrown to entropy and waste; a wild pride darkened to resentment and despair.
Slavery's horrible for anyone, but Dakar is particularly offended because the clans had, historically "braved their place as the link between mortal men and the burning, dire grace of the Paravians". Yeah, but what have you done for us lately, I guess?
Other cruelties stung for their needlessness. The captives had nothing beyond the crumpled leathers on their backs. Most were torn and marred with old bloodstains, testament to the violence of the hunt that had brought them to capture. They numbered a miserable two dozen, ill clothed and ill fed, their hair wind tangled and their bodies exposed to the chilly caprice of the weather.
Eight guardsmen with the badges of royal authority oversaw the next step of what seemed an entrenched routine. To pass time in boredom, they traded epithets and jokes as the prisoners were off-loaded one at a time from the barge. A small fire flickered on the verge. There, a bandy-legged smith fitted each convict with an iron collar and cuffs. His burly apprentice then closed the steel link which fixed their chains to a bench on the deck of the trader’s galley.
It gets worse, Dakar actually recognizes the young man that the guardsmen are joking about: it was the scout from Caithwood who had given Caolle a spare horse. Damn.
Arithon's point is made: Maenol's people need a way to fight back.
Sadly, this isn't Jaelot, so there's no death magic barding that can fix this situation now. Dakar and Arithon are stuck as bystanders.
Arithon's got more to show though: the galley captain comes out, with a pouch, where he counts the coin. It's a bribe for a harbormaster in Havish. Basically, even though Eldir's forbidden the traffic of slaves, the individual harbormasters have been letting them go through. And once they get to Shand, they'll be resold for labor.
“We can stop them.” Dakar shoved stubby fingers through his hair, thinking furious and fast through his hangover. “Send word ahead that corruption has undermined Havish’s edict.”
Arithon’s answering smile was cold as the north-shadowed side of a glacier. “I trust I’m forgiven the price of wet feet? Without an accurate description of that galley, we could do nothing at all.”
Dakar blinked. “Demon,” he murmured. “How did you know where to look for this shifty transaction?”
“That guard sergeant drank in our taproom last night,” Arithon murmured in reply. “It’s a galleyman’s dive, you had to have noticed. The fellow made his contact, then got into his cups and bragged of his cleverness to a trollop. Amazing, how men with a chit in their lap think a bard won’t take note of plainspoken words while he’s playing.” The Master of Shadow backed down from the crest then, his eyes grim as fired enamel. “We should go. There are urgent letters to be written and sent, and no more to gain here but heartache.”
I almost feel like using that scheming Arithon meme. But the topic is maybe a little too heavy right now.
--
The third subchapter is Liaison. It's Late Autumn 5652.
We're back with Lysaer, whose galley is arriving in Narms, in Rathain. Delegates have traveled from all over: particularly from Highcarp, Jaelot and Werpoint, in gratitude for the crown's "generous restitution for every galley destroyed by the Master of Shadow at Minderl Bay.".
Technically destroyed by Lysaer, but who's counting.
Lysaer'd also allotted pensions for families left fatherless, and new ships out of Tysan's royal treasury. Also... daily, there arrived the convict clan crews to satisfy losses to labor.
Ugh. Arithon, have you considered burning down most of your asshole kingdom? I'm just saying.
It does seem like the aesthetic in Narms is a bit less lavish and tasteless as Etarra or Jaelot:
The Lord Mayor of Narms had provided his visiting royalty with a large suite of rooms commanding the sweep of the harbor. The furnishings were heavy, varnished black walnut, and the rugs, woven in gold ropes with the deep scarlet dyes for which Narms was famed far and wide. The bedhangings had been scented with dried rose petals. The basin held lavender water. Towels and soap were of the first quality, and a tray of rare vintage wine had been left as a courtesy.
That's something I guess.
This is Lysaer's first trek to Rathain since the Minderl Bay disaster. Though he'd used the letters and gifts to keep these guys friendly and loyal to the alliance. But there is some emotional heaviness here:
Then memory smashed through the warm haze of wine. On his last pass through Narms, his best friend and confidant had still been alive. Now Diegan was dead, and Lady Talith estranged. Lysaer had no antidote for the loneliness, except to carry forward the cause of the Light. Arithon’s ruin became the last thing in life to have meaning.
The Talith part is your own doing, you asshole. You could bring her home.
We get some details about Lysaer's bed preparation here:
Tired, made tense from the drag of his diamond-and-gold collar, Lysaer closed his eyes and surrendered his person to the ubiquitous care of his valet. Stripped, bathed in warm water and clove oil, and reclothed in silk, he settled under blankets loomed by the finest craftguild in Cildorn.
“Leave the one candle burning,” he instructed his servant, though the silent, trained staff who attended him since Vastmark all knew: the one light was never permitted to go out. The prince never slept in darkness lest he suffer the torment of recurrent ill dreams. His servants were discreet. They did not speak of the fear that Lord Diegan had shared like a brother; that the fate the prince shouldered for the greater good of humanity might prove too great a destiny for one man. Lysaer stood apart with his given gift of light. He ived by his promise as defender of the innocent, though the burden to banish threat of sorcery and shadow at times seemed to sear through his blood. Diegan alone had tempered those moments when the mere sight of darkness could fracture his reason and drive him to targetless rage.
Now, Lysaer took no chances. His driving will to see his nemesis dead must not slip his control on the unquiet wings of night’s shadow.
There's an interesting compare and contrast between brothers here, I suppose. Lysaer gets to enjoy his luxuries, but in the end, both have those terrible nightmares.
I suppose I should feel more sympathetic here:
The servants had stopped suggesting that he take a mistress. After Talith, no woman born could ease the cruel quandary of his solitude. New staff were warned not to question. Since the friend who had been his right hand died in Vastmark, ever and always, Lysaer s’Ilessid passed the hours before daybreak alone. His honor guard knew to stand fast at his door. They would admit no one short of a messenger bearing word of war or disaster.
But mostly I just think he's a fucking douchebag. And every time he talks about Talith, I want someone to punch him in the balls.
He can't sleep today, though, and pretty soon, he realizes why. The room's not empty.
A woman sat on the lion claw stool. Her pose was so still the hands clasped in her lap might have been shaped of smoothed ivory. Her face lay obscured, sunk in the depths of a hood of violet silk. Her sleeves and hemline wore six bands in silver, the sheen of metallic cloth like chrome ribbon snap-frozen into black ice. Only the quartz pendant on its chain at her breast moved in time to her breathing.
“Koriani,” gasped Lysaer. Woolen blankets tumbled over his knees as he jackknifed erect in hard startlement. “What are you doing here? How did you get past my guards?”
Lysaer and the Koriani are not really comfortable allies. And that's something only Lysaer really appreciates right now. But the Koriani probably ought to be cautious with a man who has a lot of issues with women and with sorcery that they don't really know about yet.
“You were not invited,” Lysaer said, his consonants clear as chipped crystal. “Let me be plain. The Alliance of Light is opposed to the tyrannies imposed by the practice of sorcery.”
“The glamour which allowed me to slip in with your servants encroached upon no one’s free will.” The hands were a young woman’s, which lifted and removed the dark hood; underneath, a face of baby-smooth skin and a coil of salt-and-pepper hair neatly sculpted with tortoiseshell pins. The eyes were clear brown, and direct, and not youthful at all. She had lips like the pink underside of a conch, turned up in a half smile of irony. “Credit me with some semblance of courtesy. I could have made my presence known while you were engaged in your bath.”
The Koriani are used to the Fellowship, which at least in theory, cares about free will and consent. I mean, in practice...well...we've talked about that.
Lysaer is a man who's just brought slavery to the continent. He's not concerned about anyone's free will, lady. And reminding him that you could have encroached on him further, is not the way to go.
That said, she does know how to get his short term attention:
If the enchantress sought to unbalance him, the effort fell short. Lysaer turned not a hair, nor blushed, but regarded her with a calm that transcended small vanity. “Under any circumstance, I would have refused your public petition for audience.”
The Koriani laughed, a peal of joy like the struck tone of bronze bells. “You fear for your image of morality, I see, far more than for your male pride. Very well. Since I have obtained your close company on my own, you might as well sit and listen. I’ve came to offer you my order’s help to bring down the Master of Shadow.”
So yeah, okay, Lysaer's listening.
Through a grave stillness, the enchantress took his measure. Her smile was gone, and her hands cupped the quartz crystal pendant strung on silver chain at her breast. “Our kind make no bargains,” she said at chill length. “Nor am I here by any other will but the bidding of Morriel Prime. She would have you know that she shares your conviction. The Master of Shadow poses a threat to the free growth of society. Koriathain will assist your Alliance against that one enemy if you ask. Remember our pledge. Keep your captains at arms vigilant, no matter the season. We have cast auguries on the future. My Matriarch would have me say that your opening to take down Arithon will come far sooner than you think.”
The question burned through even Lysaer’s state discipline. “When will this happen?”
“You shall have fair warning.” The enchantress raised a finger and traced a sigil in burning lines on the air. The glyph flared bright violet, then flashed, shocking sight with its blinding intensity. Lysaer threw his hands up to shield his face. In the second he was dazzled, the light burst and vanished into a soundless clap of heat.
Cryptic! Dramatic!
Effective?
Lysaer shot from his chair. The beautiful carved back smashed into the wall, raising chips and a small puff of plaster. Barefoot, sweating, all over unclean from his bone-deep revulsion for magecraft, he paced over the floor. He searched every corner, banged open the doors to the armoire, even hurled the bedhangings free of their tasseled silk cords. He found nothing. No sign remained of the enchantress who had invaded his chamber. The stuffed cushion on the stool felt ice chill in the breath of the drafts. The street beyond the casement lay shadowed and dim, empty of mongrels or carriages.
Lysaer crossed to the nightstand, uncorked the wine bottle, and sucked down the vintage red from Orvandir in gulps. The dry heat that curled in his belly did nothing to settle the prickle of fear on his skin. He fought for cool reason. The wild heat in his blood was not rational, he knew, but extended back into childhood. The distrust that ripped him began with his mother, a s’Ahelas witch who had married a king, and then undone her vows in betrayal. Her perfidy had created his nemesis, the bastard born Master of Shadow.
Maybe.
Lysaer's got a lot of issues though. And the Koriani kind of dig into all of them.
On the other hand:
In the self-searching depths of a tormented honesty, he allowed that perhaps his harsh judgment had been premature. Spellcraft could become a tool or a weapon. The outcome depended on whose hands guided the range of its power. The Koriani Order long claimed to champion the cause of humanity. In all fairness, he must grant them their chance to stand by compassionate principle. Now that their arcane support had been offered, he could turn down no prospect of help to bring Arithon s’Ffalenn to destruction.
Never let it be said that Lysaer can't compromise his morals when he really really wants to.
--
Our sneak peek chapter is Dualities. It's notes as taking place from late Autumn to early winter, 5652.
In the first paragraph, a valet finds the prince in a rare, testy mood. He's been ordered not to speak, so he's too timid to point out the oddity that he's noticed: a small lock of hair has been snipped "from the nape of the royal neck."
Oh, no. The second paragraph is BAD NEWS:
A fortnight after Arithon’s arrival at Riverton, the master shipwright, Cattrick, sits morose in his quarters, head pressed between his huge hands; diligently he has tried, and failed, to provoke Arithon to distrust, and now time runs out to thwart the betrayal demanded as service for a Koriani oath of debt, sworn years ago to save a young sister stricken with fever in childbed…
Oh Cattrick. Dakar was right to ask. But Arithon's right about his character, too. What a mess.
The last paragraph is a bit happier though: Elaira is smiling at a black-haired child, promising that on his fifth birthday, she'll begin his first lesson in horsemanship.