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i_read_whatSo last time, Dakar tried to betray Arithon, but it backfired quite literally. Also, the Fellowship Sorcerers decided inexplicably to throw the lynchpin of their own fucking prophecy under the bus. I don't understand it either, to be honest, but we've known the Fellowship sucks for a while.
We rejoin Dakar and Arithon. Dakar's apparently dealing with the disappointment of failure by drinking again, a lot. And we see yet again, Dakar's perspective of things:
No brand of liquor could obviate the unpleasant truth: the prince whose affairs he was geas-bound to share was accursed by Desh-thiere. Over time, the destructive drive which had seen thousands slaughtered in Strakewood must re-emerge with intent to kill Lysaer, who once had been Dakar’s best friend.
Poor Dakar. Leaving aside that, yet again, we see evidence that the Fellowship told him nothing, the fact that he sees Lysaer as his best friend is really sad. Because Lysaer was the most common viewpoint character in Mistwraith and there was no sign that he had the same regard for Dakar. He was nice to him, even though he didn't necessarily want to be, and a few times they commiserated about Asandir and Arithon being generally THEM. But that's not really a friendship.
Lysaer was far closer to Arithon than he was to Dakar. But perhaps that's a sign of Lysaer's charisma. More likely it's a sign of how sad and miserable a life it is to be apprenticed to Fellowship sorcerers. I can't blame Dakar for latching onto anyone who seemed interested in him as a person.
So anyway, they're on a ship. It's a four week journey, and Arithon has been accumulating seasoned lumber for some reason. (Dakar is watching Arithon for signs of the curse, but blames the lack on Arithon's ability to "maintain seamless subterfuge".)
But now, they've reached their destination: a very tiny cove at Merior. Which we recognize from the title of the book! Presumably there will be ships here! I'm just guessing!
We get some lovely description of course:
The whitewashed cottages of Merior nestled in a little crescent cove, fringed with sea oats and palms, and notched into the narrow peninsula that bent like a hook to enclose the aquamarine basin of Sickle Bay. Here, the great combers that rolled in off the Cildein’s vast deeps burst white and unravelled against a landspit scarcely three leagues across. Shadowed day and night by their thunder, this village offered the last, lonely settlement. Beyond, a wind-raked ribbon of barrier sands dwindled into bars and scattered coral reefs, where surf churned and creamed at Scimlade Tip. The neat, seaside anchorage was too cramped for trader ships. It boasted no breakwater and dock. The slatted wooden tower burned a beacon light for fishing craft, which moored in bad weather to battered cork buoys scattered like beads amid the chop.
So anyway, Dakar has a moment of slapstick as he reaches dry land, tripping backwards and landing on his ass. Much to the amusement of "two barefoot, tow-haired urchins who sat on a barrel and smirked, then burst into shrieking gales of laughter."
These kids may be significant. They're Feylind and Fiark, fraternal yet identical-for-now twins.
A shadow darkened his face, cast by Arithon, just come ashore with an unwieldy beam braced across his shoulders. ‘Are you cap’n?’ shouted the nearer child. The pair looked alike as halved oysters, all brown legs and grey eyes and simmering curiosity. Their unbleached trousers were grimy and ragged, and each wore a smock shirt, clumsily cut down from a man’s size. The coltish angles of forearms and shins were sequinned in iridescent cod scales, and the narrow feet with their sturdy, splayed toes had likely never seen shoes.
Arithon denies being the captain of this ship, and they shrilly demand to know who he is, causes Dakar to misquote a gate inscription, calling Arithon "master of all things bleak and dangerous". (The original quote referred to Daelion Fatemaster, who appears to be a judge/underworld figure in Athera's general pantheon.)
Anyway, there are antics. The kids take to Arithon immediately and dislike Dakar, especially when he keeps misidentifying and misgendering both. Feylind is a girl and Fiark is a boy, but as mentioned, they're pretty much virtually identical at this age.
Things have clearly continued to sour in the Arithon/Dakar dynamic. Arithon mostly ignoring Dakar's many complaints instead of engaging with them. It's hard to blame him, but I still think hatesex is an option.
There are some interesting comments between Arithon and the captain of the ship, which give us some idea of Arithon's plans. He has supplies coming: dowers and planks, to be delivered by locals. Arithon's also looking for shipwrights and craftsmen, ideally masters and journeymen. The captain's perplexed by this as, for now, Arithon's only got one set of materials. But apparently, they're prototypes. He thinks the smith can make more.
Time seems to be a factor, but Arithon's going to pay very well. He also talks the Captain into letting the kids have a quick tour of the ship before it leaves. The captain is a good sport about it, though he has some incomprehensible warnings:
Drawn grinning into conspiracy, the hard-bitten waterman relented. ‘Take them yourself, but go lively. In another half hour, this bitch’ll be aground hard as Sithaer, and ornery as a half-skint wyvern for the pinch o’ the sand in her planks. Keep clear of the hold lest the ballast shifts.’.
No idea what any of that means, but he seems like a nice dude.
Oh, maybe all is not lost between Dakar and Arithon:
Slithered in a heap at the base of the companionway to evade notice as the conference ended, Dakar hugged his knees in stark misery. ‘I knew it,’ he mused in private conclusion. ‘I just knew it! He’s brought planks to build a damned war fleet.’
Immediately above, Arithon’s face eclipsed the light. ‘Right now, just one small sloop. You needn’t fret. We haven’t the coin left to arm her.’ Under pressure from Feylind’s impatience, a malicious glint stirred the green eyes. ‘You’re not in the mood to get stepped on, I trust.’
‘The fat man’s in the way again!’ the insufferable Fiark proclaimed. Forced to give ground in a cloud of ill grace, Dakar heaved up his tipsy bulk and moved.
Thing is, we know Arithon's got more coin coming. Dakar may not be completely wrong about Arithon's plans. We'll have to see.
The captain, by the way, takes a moment to listen to Arithon answering the kids and notes that he "knows his lines and halyards like a man born to blue water". Of course he does! But also wonders why the hell anyone would found a shipyard at a place with no lumber.
...because Arithon's just Like That, dude. Don't worry. You'll get used to it.
In a cheerfully domestic scene in Merior's only boarding house, Dakar has questions:
‘Who’s going to finance your fool’s notion, anyway? There’s not enough coin in this whole village for you to sing for your upkeep.’
‘Then you might be more gentle with the landlady’s crockery. Or tomorrow we’ll eat baitfish served raw on a cutting block.’ Green eyes regarded him, thoughtful; and in the same tone as the banter came the answer Dakar least expected. ‘I thought the crown of Rathain should bear the expense.’
‘Your emeralds are safe back at Althain.’ Had the tea mug remained in his hands, Dakar would have thrown to draw blood.
The knife-edged start of a smile compressed the line of Arithon’s mouth. ‘A pity, since you’re hot to lay into me for something.’
How are you so married?
Dakar asks where they'll be living in the meantime, and I think it's hilarious that after everything that happened, both Dakar and Arithon take it as a given that Arithon will be providing housing for both of them. Dakar isn't brave enough to mention that Jaelot and Alestron are probably going to attract the attention of the two armies amassed to kill Arithon off. But he has practical concerns: winter is coming. And while Merior doesn't get snow, it does get a lot of rain.
Arithon has leased the "shell flats by the abalone cutter's". I probably should read up on coastal things or something because I don't know what that means either. He notes that if Dakar wants to try carpentry, they've got enough wood for a shack.
‘I can scarcely drive nails when I’m sober.’ The Mad Prophet lapsed into offended silence.
By morning, he was once again comatose, and Arithon had to borrow a handcart to remove him to the site where his lumber lay. Dakar snored on through the ride, his arms and knees dangling, and his bearded chin tipped to the sky. Arithon dumped him in the shade to sleep off his poisoned stupor, then took stock of his future boat, stacked now in neat piles that beckoned to be shaped with adze and saw and plane.
I just added this part because it made me laugh. Seriously, Arithon, you could probably be madder at Dakar. It'd be okay if you were.
Anyway, we're told that the twins come by a lot. Dakar's very bad at telling them apart. The twins have some differences though: when he misnames Feylind, she screams at him until his ears ring. When he misnames Fiark, he throws rocks. Arithon's good with them, ruffling their hair and letting them hold the chalk strings.
I wonder how much experience Arithon actually has with children. He grew up in Rauven Tower, presumably there would have been other initiates.
Anyway, at some point he gets the kids' backstory, which he shares with Dakar (on a day that the latter wakes up with his bootlaces knotted): their father has just died at sea, and their mother forbid them to sail. Since Merior is a fishing village, only very young children and sick people stay on shore, so the poor kids are feeling lonely and isolated.
One boot half off, the other ingeniously entangled, Dakar looked up into green eyes untrustworthy for their mildness. ‘So why do you stay ashore?’
‘For my amusement,’ the Shadow Master said.
I still 'ship it.
One problem Dakar's been having is that he's been getting ripples of impending prophecy, but so far has been staving it off. (Biting his lip to draw blood, for example.) He's not having much fun in distraction either:
Eaten by nameless foreboding in the face of Arithon’s complaisance, the Mad Prophet found no comfort in his vices. Every girl he pinched was somebody’s wife, and twice he got pummelled by packs of brothers led by a wronged and vengeful husband. Merior’s villagers were closemouthed and reserved, and their town, a dull backwater that made the bigoted stews of Jaelot seem a wistfully remembered time of paradise.
Dakar is also suspicious of Arithon:
The days shortened; the fishing luggers sailed reefed to stronger winds, and the sandspit south of Scimlade Tip abided in its customary idyllic isolation. Arithon made no clandestine effort to stay abreast of events in the north. His easy-going humour under needling was just another sham, the sort of masterful, guileless fabrication his s’Ffalenn wiles employed to mask havoc. His work might seem unhurried, as he measured his fine wood in whistling patience. But the little sloop’s keel was laid and her stem post set in the sort of studied, sustained effort that admitted no loophole for setback.
Dakar and Arithon continue to bickerflirtatiously:
Like the baitfish before the barracuda, Dakar discovered he was unable to bury himself in detachment. Complaints became excuse to provoke arguments. ‘A man could get permanently griped on a diet of saltfish,’ he broke in after a laboured visit to the privy. ‘And sleeping under sail canvas has me rotten with sores like the pox.’
‘That might not be the case had you bought black beans and figs instead of that beer keg from the market.’ Arithon bent to shape a raw plank, shirtless, the shiny lines of old scars browned by the sun.
‘Curse you!’ Dakar dug his fingers behind his waistband to scratch. ‘They haven’t sold figs or beans since the last cart returned from Shaddorn, and that’s been better than a week.’
The adze sheared off a pallid scroll of wood. ‘Six days.’
I see your gratuitous shirtlessness, Arithon.
Things chill a little when Dakar accuses Arithon of aiming to "wreak vengeance in ships crammed to the gunwales with arbalests."
Arithon, "in pleasant deceit" praises Dakar as a master taleteller, and points out that he's only got enough material for one vessel.
And here we get a bit of honesty:
Half-inebriated, his tunic undone to the waist, Dakar lashed back in cornered fury. ‘Who are you fooling? You know you are cursed. Lysaer is amassing armies while you dawdle, and-’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ The adze scythed down in a vicious, white flare of reflection and sheared off a sliver of spruce. ‘Agree? Make you promises? Confide?’ In the sudden stabbing sarcasm he used when a nerve had been struck, Arithon smiled. ‘Much better to leave you dangling, Prophet. You’re far less bother to me, drunk. Failing that, you might consider washing your underclothes. They’re stiff enough to stand by themselves. If they rot from neglect, well all watch you greet Etarra’s armies bare-arsed.’
‘Oh, but you’re careful, and nasty in your arrogance.’ Dakar narrowed foxy eyes, suffused to a high, purple flush. You daren’t mention your nemesis by name, do you? What about this town? It is innocent. You’ll draw the danger to your web, sure enough. Do you tell me, will the children once again pay the cost?’
He had gone too far.
There's a funny/sad sort of irony in these parts, which is that if Arithon DID confide his plans, Dakar might see that he's mistaken about a lot of things. But by this point, I can't blame Arithon for not being willing to trust Dakar. And truth be told, Dakar still might not believe it.
So anyway, Dakar realizes he went too far and starts getting really nervous. (for his part, we get another cat comparison as Arithon's eyes are "flat and fixed as a cat's".) But this is Arithon's reaction:
‘Ath forfend!’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn. He raised a wrist and stifled back a belly whoop of laughter. ‘Dakar, what are you thinking? This is a pleasure sloop, and when she’s launched, I’m sailing her to Innish!’
He'd promised Halliron, remember? There's a widow who never got her reunion.
Dakar doesn't believe him, of course, or at least, he doesn't think it's the whole truth, but he doesn't have a way to push further.
So there are a lot of time skips in this chapter. They make it to autumn, the equinox and feast days. (The twins bring paper talismans, awww.) Dakar gets caught in the deluge of seasonal rain:
Indignant when the villagers dared to appreciate his discomfort too much, he retorted, ‘Well how can I see to bang a nail with Ath-forsaken water in my eyes?’
‘Wait till the rain stops,’ Arithon suggested.
Hee. Amusingly, the twins pick up some of Dakar's choice language and are kept home "in bed with coughs" the next day.
This leads to an interesting development though, when the twins' mother decides to come and meet the bad influences on her kids:
The woman came between showers, a thin, stoop-shouldered figure swathed in the black skirts of mourning,her wisped hair muffled under an enormous oilskin. She carried sprigs of sage to ease her passage through the fishmarkets. Against the white sands and the wheeling gulls, and the silver-banked, cloud-silted sky, the storm harried her like an omen in beggar’s rags.
She sees Dakar's crude shack, as well as the in-progress sloop. Austere as fine muslin, she rounded the building and stopped with caught breath at the absolute shock of discrepancy: before her, in grace that bespoke patience and a loving touch with raw wood, rose the clean curves of a sloop’s frames. Neat, tight pegs fastened the stempost to her keel, under damp like a patina of new varnish.
Of course.
And now, a momentous meeting:
The yard at first sight seemed deserted. Then the rhythmic tap at first mistaken for a woodpecker fell silent. A man crouched half under the unfinished hull stood up, compact, well-made, a mallet and chisel in his hands. Sawdust and shavings twined through his dark hair. He wore canvas knee breeches tied with fish twine, the cut ends whipped deftly in round splices. Too well-raised to stay shirtless in her presence, he snatched a soaked smock from a saw trestle and wrung out the water. She caught a disturbing glimpse of scars as the cloth dropped over his head. Too reserved to make comment, she strove not to stare as he flicked off scrolled shavings, then moved with his hand out to meet her.
His approach jarred her to an inadvertent step back. His build was small and light-boned as a hawk’s, where the twins had painted a giant. ‘You’re the one called the Master?’ She knew of no other address for him; even when maudlin and drunk, the stout companion never spoke his surname.
‘Friends call me Arithon.’ Eyes of a piercing summer green flickered over her. Then he smiled. Thwarted from shyness by warm fingers that touched and then steadied her elbow, the widow averted her eyes. Her reason for coming was not going to please him, and his manners left no excuse for brevity.
Hee, "the Master". And I love that apparently she's already met Dakar.
Anyway, the widow's name is Jinesse. Arithon invites her to sit on some stacked wood, which he claims is more comfortable than Dakar's shack. It occurs to me that I have no idea where Arithon himself sleeps. Maybe in Dakar's shack too? That would be just like them.
So basically, Jinesse doesn't want her children to hang around with sketchy sailing types. She wants them apprenticed to a craftsman. And she thinks their acquaintance with Arithon makes that difficult. Arithon agrees with her, but points out that they're in more danger from lack of knowledge than the sea itself.
‘I won’t have their future tied to fishing, can’t you understand?’ He had been in Merior long enough to have seen the crippled old men while away their afternoons on the guest house porch; the horribly-swollen arthritic hands, or ones maimed and scarred, that could no longer draw nets from the sea.
But Arithon did see, Jinesse realized as he faced her directly. The compassion in his challenge, and the stillness of his patience made her wonder if he, too, had weathered losses. He said, ‘The twins’ father has died. Would you give them your fear as their legacy? Will you force them to ignorance, where now there is laughter, when the sea is born into their very blood?’
Jinesse just wants him to build his sloop and go.
‘I will do all of that,’ Arithon promised. A less sensitive man might have tried to reassure her by touch. This one did nothing but speak, in that voice which relentlessly stripped the protections she had patched over raw and stinging grief. ‘But first I would leave you a gift. Let me teach your twins a mariner’s skills, as my father taught me. I will give them the sea, and a freedom beyond fishing boats, and you can face your heart and learn to abide without terror.’
He moved. Before she could frame any protest, he had risen. As he pressed a warm weight into her chilled fingers, she almost missed the welted scars that disfigured one palm and both wrists. ‘Here. Take my pledge. Your children shall be given all they need to stay safe, and you will find joy in their accomplishment.’
I think there are a lot of interesting elements to unpack in all this. Arithon's sympathy for children trapped by a parent's well-meaning plans. Arithon's sympathy for a mother who just wants to protect her children. And I wonder briefly how Arithon sees his own mother. Lysaer, rather understandably, seems to resent her more than anything else. But I don't think we've ever gotten Arithon's point of view.
I also love how Arithon's just randomly giving people sailing knowledge. One pirate lady, two children.
So what did Arithon give Jinesse:
Jinesse turned over the token he offered in trade for her personal weakness: a scratched signet of white gold set with an emerald and incised with a rampant leopard seal. The ring was an heirloom, and with it, he granted a trust. Merior was too small for a man of his presence; all the village wondered why he needed refuge, and what sort of trouble he was fleeing. The sigil offered means to unriddle his surname and his origin, hers to pursue if she wished.
Anyway, Arithon tells her that if, in six months, she still wants them apprenticed in a craft shop, he shall help underwrite her decision, but begs her to let him work with them until then. I think it's fascinating that he thinks it's his place TO underwrite her decision, but well, he is a prince even if he doesn't admit it. She ends up agreeing.
Jinesse is a really interesting character, actually, and I feel like I'll be talking about her more later.
Anyway, for a while she leaves the ring alone, afraid of what she might find out. But eventually she uses candle wax and chalk to reproduce it. Then she goes to the nearby village of Shaddorn, where there's a hostel of "Ath's initiates."
There's an interesting description:
Rumour held the disappearance of the Paravians had set the old order into decline. Certainly the long, winding lane that led to the hostel was hedged on both sides by rank woods. Its buildings were stone, dressed out in moss-flecked sigils that were uncanny to the eye, and which touched Jinesse’s skin to odd starts of gooseflesh. The grounds themselves looked unkempt, waist-deep in dog fennel and exuberant runners of wild vine. Unaware that initiates revered all growing things for their place, like most unversed visitors, the widow mistook their way of blessing for neglect.
The initiates seem to have some kind of power themselves, as they answer questions before they are asked, and seem to know why she's here. A brother named Claithen is the one who will identify the seal for her.
Arithon can't escape purple prose even when he's nowhere around:
She picked the string off her packet. Ath’s blessed sun made the leopard seem ineptly drawn, a sad and unexpected embarrassment. The original had been like the man, elegant in grace, with a captivating fierceness noticed too late for the safety of hapless small prey.
So Claithen identifies it as the royal arms of s'Ffalenn. Which does answer the question I had back in chapter one of Mistwraith as to how an island kingdom might have a leopard sigil. So now Jinesse knows some very dangerous information. But Claithen knows things too:
Claithen peered up in gentle censure. ‘No need. The world in its wisdom provides.’ He freed a hand from his book and gestured toward the sprawl of the citrus grove. ‘If it is Arithon of Rathain you have met, believe this. He shall do you no harm. The heritage of his bloodline will permit him no cruelty, and Ath’s greater mercy walks beside you.’
Yeah, Jinesse is not really reassured. She's heard of the Master of Shadow apparently, though she doesn't appear to be afraid of HIM so much as what he represents. If he stays, his enemies will come to Merior. Very true. Jinesse is a smart lady.
In the end, though, she doesn't prevent her kids from remaining friends with him.
But there IS something else interesting:
Another outsider came to Merior, a woman who rented a cottage and set up a small custom selling simples. The convenience was appreciated. Before, the only apothecary was south in Shaddorn, and when a babe sickened or a fisherman suffered injury, the hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood was a long, rough cart ride away. Good-wives gossiped with the village’s two shopkeepers, and wondered if the woman’s arrival might be connected to the other outsiders who currently inhabited the shell flats. Only Jinesse knew their questions were well founded, and she kept her own wary counsel.
Hello there.
Merior is a tiny place, but people keep distant from strangers. So Arithon and Dakar don't actually hear about her presence until she decides to pay them a visit.
She arrives at a time when Arithon is teaching the twins how to use some kind of wood shaving tool. And well, here we are:
At that moment, Arithon of Rathain looked up.
The enchantress who intruded upon his privacy was relentlessly trained to interpret every nuance through detail. She took in the sailor’s tunic, decently clean, but rumpled in emphatic rebuttal of royal birthright; the dark, uncut hair that cast an air of benevolent untidiness over a perception still mage-trained, and keen as a razor; the sea tan and shirt style that minimized old scars, and beyond these, surprise, masked behind the polite lift of black eyebrows.
The twins are good icebreakers, demanding to know who she is.
‘Is that how your mother greets strangers?’ the lady admonished, smiling.
‘Are you a stranger?’ Arithon countered, his guard nearly good enough to mask an underlying alarm.
Unprepared for the lurch of her heart as he regarded her, the visitor traced the end of the spar with her finger. The loving care that had guided its shaping sang through every fibre of the wood; as immediate, to her, the awareness of the hands that enacted the labour. Her shield of banality crumpled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But who is she?’ persisted the twin who was female, her grip on Arithon’s arm grown possessive out of blind instinct.
‘The lady’s called Elaira,’ Arithon said. His bard’s tongue made music of the name, and offered back skilled reassurance as he readdressed his visitor directly. ‘Were you bidden to see me, or Dakar?’
...I'm not sure what that bit about Feylind is supposed to mean. Ms Wurts?
Anyway, Elaira insists she came as a friend. Arithon's not stupid and notes that "her kind" don't go anywhere without a purpose. He invites her in the shack, which presumably means he stays there as well. The twins are gently dismissed (but not before they hear Feylind say that Elaira has pretty hair and wonder if Arithon will kiss her.)
MORE flowery description. You'd think Ms. Wurts would run out but I treasure each time:
Finished wringing out her damp hemline, Elaira straightened up to find Arithon beside her. His grip as he took her elbow was more firm than she recalled, and each steely, flexible finger seemed to sear through her sleeve like a brand. His sailor’s dress and dishevelled grooming made him exotic and strange, too immediate a presence to bridge a prolonged gap of years and separation.
Then he drew her past the rude doorway into close gloom. By the feeble light threaded through chinks in the artless board walls, Elaira glimpsed coils of new hemp, a box jammed with cleats and oak blocks bought used from the local fisherfolk, and incongruous in the clutter, a level set of pegs that hung the Masterbard’s lyranthe, his sword, and a new woollen cloak and an oilskin. Then Arithon closed the leather-hinged door. The. shrill talk of the twins, and the hesitant, rasping first strokes of the plane came through muffled, while something amorphous slouched in the corner choked through a stertorous snore.
They ARE sharing the shack. I love it.
Anyway. Dakar recognizes Elaira and freaks out a bit, noting, probably correctly that what Elaira hears will go to Morriel. He also says that if Asandir knew Arithon'd let her in, he'd bring the roof on his head. More proof that the Fellowship told Dakar nothing, because they clearly have plans for her.
I think Elaira might be a shipper too:
‘Damn you,’ Dakar swore. ‘This isn’t funny. Mark me, if you don’t send that witch packing, the one secret you can’t afford to share will be in Morriel’s ear by evening.’
Elaira’s breath caught. The nuance of Koriani observation inferred the entreaty was genuine; that despite a master’s training at magecraft and every informed and formidable defence, Dakar believed Arithon to be vulnerable.
Poor Elaira. "Desperate that the order’s plans for her should not yield any unexpected windfalls, Elaira wished herself blind and deaf as Dakar resumed his invective.". She also notes that the glare Dakar shoots Arithon is full of passionate hatred, which is very different from the disgruntled irritation she remembers from him and unsettles her.
So Dakar storms off. We get some great domestic description of the shack:
Elaira sat. Her fine linen skirt rasped on the saw-grained wood of the bracing, and her foot bumped an ill-fitted peg. The room’s split personality haunted: ramshackle joinery at silent war with the lone, level trestle, spread with parchments lined with fine chalk. Sketched in a hand unmistakably Arithon’s lay the plans of his thirty-foot sloop.
So Arithon asks how she found him.
Denied the easy, instinctive rapport of their first meeting, Elaira stayed still enough to mark the moisture that ticked off her soaked hem. She matched his gaze and gauged his reserve through her arts; and deduction implied the question pertained more to Lysaer s’Ilessid and his massed armies than to her, or any meddling of her order. ‘I think,’ she said, husky, ‘you could guess.’
‘Jaelot,’ he surmised. Green eyes that threatened to dissect her heart like sharp knives turned down and fixed on the hands which had wrought a great and joyous miracle on the solstice: an artist’s unfettered celebration of beauty that a fate cursed by geas had recast to invite his downfall.
His guilt filled an unpleasant interval, that his passion for music had led him to careless betrayal of the very foundation of his principles. Then he said, ‘Are you here to help or to hinder?’
There's some back and forth. Arithon thinks she's a spy and is pretty hostile at first. And we get some nice description from her side as she doesn't really react:
But the wry, patient tilt to her eyebrows set him back, and the malice he used to defend his deepest feelings bled away. His attention combed over all of her then, from the heavy auburn hair spilled loose from the braid that constrained its unruly fall, to the three coins for luck a thief’s superstition made her sew to the turned-back lining of her cuff, to the silly wet drape of her hem. Her eyes in the gloom were soft opal and mystery, and firmly determined in kindness.
So he warms up a bit, noting that he's in her debt for past service, but notes that "Dakar is forced company enough" and asks her to leave Merior. However when she asks if that's what he really wants, he goes uncharacteristically noncommittal:
‘What I want hasn’t merited much priority,’ Arithon pushed to his feet. A gust raked the shed; the mirrored liquid in the pans shattered into rings touched off by fallen droplets. Outside, the plane lay silent, the twins fled off home as a barrage of fresh rain pocked the gapped shakes of the roof. ‘Stay if you wish. I can’t stop you. Once the sloop’s fitted out, I will sail.’
For her part:
Elaira arose. On parting she gave him the two truths she had unentangled in her oathbound obligations: ‘Merior has no one trained in herbals and healing. And the prophet you keep in your company would as soon put a knife in your ribs as offer you comfort or friendship.’
It's not something we didn't know, but the gesture is important. She's still tied to Morriel's will, but Arithon knows of it, so it's almost honest? Maybe?
Unsurprisingly I ship it too.
--
The next subchapter is Dispatch.
We join Captain Mayor Pesquil, who is the commander of the northern league of headhunters. He's at the sight of a barbarian massacre, likely the one Caolle and Jieret ordered.
The other officer is confused: the caravan wasn't robbed. But Pequil recognizes the knife work, and brings up the kids "under Arithon's command" slitting the throats of the wounded at Strakewood. Considering they were attempting genocide, I still don't feel particularly bad for them.
One of the men suggests that they spare an hour to see the dead decently burned, but Pesquil tells them to let them stay as they lie. He doesn't want "Red-beard's Companions" warned by smoke. He intends to ambush them. And his instincts tell him that the slaughtered caravan has some connection to Arithon.
We fast forward two weeks. Pesquil is making a report. And critiquing the decor:
A fortnight later, the stench of corrupt flesh a memory that rankled no less, Captain Mayor Pesquil cast his jaundiced regard on the gold-bordered curtains, the ebony and ivory inlaid footstools, and a sumptuous tasselled carpet which silenced his predatory tread, and clashed in evil virulence against green and purple tiles of fired enamel. The tastes of the city seneschal were typically Etarran. The embers in the hearth discharged enough heat to wilt a hothouse flower.
Pesquil is not fond of the seneschal, by the way, but he's here to report big news. News that apparently has been spreading around the city's "riff-raff" for a while but never made it to the ears of the higher ups: Jaelot and Alestron.
We also learn that the armory explosion killed seven men. Damn. No wonder Arithon was upset. I kind of think part of this is the fault of the s'Brydions though, because who the fuck stores explosives without appropriate safety measures?!
It's actually pretty impressive that Jieret and Caolle kept the info quiet for so long, but the cat's out of the bag, and Pesquil intends to see the info go to Lysaer himself.
--
The last subchapter is Shakedown.
We're told it's the same morning that Pesquil's company embarked from Etarra. We're told that "[t]he Shadow Master whose misdeeds were named in Mayor Morfett’s sealed dispatches scarcely looked the mage-trained minion of evil. Clad in a plain linen shirt and loose trousers, he carried no weapon beyond a rigging knife. The tanned hands that drove the sweeping stroke of his oars as he rowed the sloop’s tender ashore were innocent of spells or subterfuge."
Well, maybe not completely free of subterfuge, as he pays a call at Jinesse's cottage. (We're told that two fishermen nearby grin in "lewd interest", Jinesse's neighbors seem to really want her to get laid). Not long after that, the twins escape, rambunctious as always, while Arithon emerges with Jinesse in tow.
‘Really!’ She tried to plant her feet, overbalanced, and stumbled into him.
Not about to waste the opportunity, Arithon grinned and snaked an arm around her waist. She pounded his shoulder with the fist just freed, and fingers pulled untimely from the mixing of bread dough shed small puffs of blown flour.
Jinesse shrieked, ‘It’s the woman who brews simples you should be dragging to your lair, not I, and certainly not my two children!’
I think Jinesse might be a shipper.
Anyway, they're not going to the shack of course, but to the beach. Arithon has decided that the first lady to board the Talliarthe should be the one afraid of the sea.
Jinesse howled. ‘You named your blighted vessel Talliarthe!’ Her terror now spurred by indignation, she emphasized with a chop that glanced scatheless off the hard-knit muscles of his chest. ‘How fitting!’
‘Well, yes,’ said Arithon, agreeably pleased; his sloop’s namesake was the legendary sea sprite reputed to spirit off maidens who wandered inside the tidemark. ‘Don’t be angry. Your girl Feylind made the suggestion.’ Staggered as a woman two fingers taller than his height thrashed and battered at his composure, he tucked his chin, changed grip, and hoisted.
I enjoy that Arithon is tiny. He is a tiny tiny asshole.
The rest of the village seems to find this pretty amusing:
‘Well, it’s fitting!’ declared the boarding house landlady, drawn to her porch with her broom still in hand to oversee the outcome of the fracas. ‘That Jinesse has been too straitlaced for health since the sea took her husband. Yon’s a comely enough young man, for an outsider. His company just might lend a bloom to her cheeks. Mayhap then she’ll stop fussing. To hear her carry on, you’d swear those poor twins were like to drown in Garth’s pond!’
One would hope they'd intercede if they seriously thought Arithon a threat, but then I doubt most rapists would bring the noisy kids along. A nice neighbor douses Jinesse's fire and closes up the cottage as the poor lady is kidnapped off to sea.
It's about five days of sailing. Poor Jinesse eventually does relax a bit. The twins sleep like kittens in a berth, aw. Dakar is drunk. She takes the opportunity to ask Arithon why he came to Merior.
Arithon dodges the question with a chorus from a shanty, but notes that he has no real secrets. Dakar will spill anything drunk.
But apparently Dakar hasn't said a word. "He's wary of you as the man who burned his tongue once too often at the feast."
You have no idea how heroically I am refraining from a very lewd comment. I deserve praise and gratitude for this.
But anyway, Arithon and Jinesse continue to talk. He notes that she knows who he is, and has heard the dire rumors, but never exposed him. She wants to know why he hasn't returned her to Merior, since his purpose in bringing her is served. But he's sailing on to Innish.
Actually, he's bringing her for selfish reasons:
A queer catch of grief half-strangled itself in his throat. He said in forced lightness that had everything to do with shedding defences he had no wish to lower, ‘Did you never think that I might need comfort or reassurance in return? What awaits me at Innish is a bereaved wife, and a grown daughter who never knew her father. Their loss is not beyond pity to encompass. But as a man raised in the absence of close family, I find myself disadvantaged. The ways of women’s hearts are written in no chart. I go as a dead friend’s emissary into a hostile home. Forgive my presumption, for asking the kindness of a stranger for my guide.’
I mean, it's still a dick move, dude.
My own thought is that he's bringing Jinesse here also because he wants her to understand him. \
Anyway, melodramatic asshole that he is, he takes her desire for a swift end for the passage as an excuse to speed up and splash the above deck with salt and water, causing Jinesse to go back to her berth. Because Arithon has no idea how to end a conversation when there's too much honesty at play.
He conveniently dodges her for the rest of the trip.
Let's look at the city of Innish!
To her dying day, Jinesse would recall her first sight of the city; the spindled, coral towers meshed into sky, a gilt-edged silhouette that turned slowly rose against a fringe of dawn clouds. While Feylind and Fiark curled at her sides, she marvelled at the long, lean lighters that ferried the ships’ crews ashore, black shapes like cut paper, with talisman scrolls or carved heads of beasts snarling at bow and stem. The cries of fish sellers drifted over lavender water, then the riffling stir of wind, with its mud-soaked scent of green river delta skeined with incense from the balcony braziers lit in brothels and rich ladies’ boudoirs. Jinesse watched the light brighten the lace-roofed, pennoned towers; the scalloped merlons of the curtainwalls where Shand’s old-blond royalty had walked; the pastel drumtowers with their odd, paned windows where the high king’s council once held its yearly court, and in her cars rang sweet showers of harmonics as the living prince of quite another kingdom tuned a new set of strings on his lyranthe.
For his part, Arithon's dressed up for the occasion: a groomed stranger in a black doublet corded with silver. He wore hose and boots with embroidery and buckles, and a silk shirt with points tipped with pearls, Dakar's bludgeoned into sobriety (though he's going to be staying on ship with the twins.) Jinesse tells him that if he desires her presence, she's ready.
Up close, Innish is a bit of a different experience:
Seen up close, the wharfside of Innish wore her decor like a tawdry, overdressed granddame fallen from wealth on hard times. The pilings were shagged green with weed, like harbour landings anywhere else. The air reeked of grease, decayed fish, and blood sausage, and the pretty pastel arches that reared above the crowd wore a pox of grey mildew and mould. The whores by city edict were required to wear bells. Their jingle chimed in sour descant over the oaths of the longshoremen bent under loads of boxes and bales. The gutters lay pooled with sewage dammed from egress down the culverts by thrown offal from the vendors, who cleaned hares for roasting over ramshackle portable braziers..
Arithon gives Jinesse one of his gloves to cover her nose and they make their way to the house. Jinesse thinks he's dreading the experience, he denies it but admits he feels inadequate.
Asandir has been a little useful at least. Halliron's daughter (rawboned, with straw coloured hair, charry-round nose, and full lips) knows why they're there, though she's not happy about it. Neither is Halliron's bedridden widow, who accuses her husband of living like a wastrel.
Both women state they have no use for songs, but they allow him to play Halliron's last work:
And of course, the prose, she is purple:
One measure, two; the passion of his fingering arrested the air, and then remelted it into a cry. Notes winnowed free like leaves ripped on storm winds, blended into cascades that transfixed the heart with regret. The music wrung out under Arithon’s hands begged no forgiveness for an abandonment of home and ties, but appealed for understanding through an offering of a beauty too wild, too forcefully inspired to be held or shackled in promises.
Arithon is wrapped up in his playing, but happily Jinesse is there to inform us that the elderly lady brushes away tears, and the daughter's denial and resentment unravels to "bare the unanswered pain of a fatherless child's yearning."
I like this description too:
The unsubtle, searching scald of verses gave back husband and father, not as his family wished him to be, but as he had lived, delineated in imperfections and grand strengths. This was not the eulogy Arithon had delivered for Halliron in Jaelot, but in fierce words and harmony the bard’s own statement, that given a mortal’s years to live and to love, the mastery of his calling had demanded to be shared in lands far removed from his hearthstone.
When Arithon finishes, the widow (whose name is Deartha, by the way) tells him that Halliron played the same song when he left, but he hadn't styled it that way. That apparently was part of Halliron's request: that Arithon was to do the arrangement for him.
Both women understand: Arithon is Halliron's legacy in a way they weren't. I'd think that would make them more upset, but weirdly they seem comforted by it instead. But Deartha does want something from him, to discharge the debt he claims when he accepts blame for Halliron not making it back: she wants him to stay in Innish for the rest of the season and play. Halliron had never come home after earning mastery, and the people of Innish should be given the chance to experience what he achieved through Arithon.
The daughter thinks the request isn't fair, while Jinesse realizes that Arithon chose Merior for a reason, and his survival might depend on the preparations he makes there. She hopes he'll refuse.
But it's Arithon. Of course he doesn't refuse. He agrees to play the taverns on the condition that Deartha and her daughter attend every performance.
Jinesse doesn't have to stay of course. They get her and the twins a ride home in a reliable merchant galley.
It does seem risky, but Shand is very far to the south from Tysan or Rathain, so as long as Arithon doesn't announce himself as the Masterbard, he probably can avoid notice for a while.
--
The sneak peek section is Visions and Voyages
1. Pesquil is hiring passage to Avenor, to arrive by spring.
2. Dakar is enjoying a bordello while Arithon plays below. He cries words of warning about a discorporate spirit (presumably Kharadmon, who I THINK is continuing to try to investigate the Mistwraith), alarming Sethvir. Sethvir is a fucking voyeur.
3. OOO. Jieret is being all restless as he stands on the quarterdeck of the Black Drake, bearing news for a prince he hasn't seen in seven years.
REUNION SOON?!
We rejoin Dakar and Arithon. Dakar's apparently dealing with the disappointment of failure by drinking again, a lot. And we see yet again, Dakar's perspective of things:
No brand of liquor could obviate the unpleasant truth: the prince whose affairs he was geas-bound to share was accursed by Desh-thiere. Over time, the destructive drive which had seen thousands slaughtered in Strakewood must re-emerge with intent to kill Lysaer, who once had been Dakar’s best friend.
Poor Dakar. Leaving aside that, yet again, we see evidence that the Fellowship told him nothing, the fact that he sees Lysaer as his best friend is really sad. Because Lysaer was the most common viewpoint character in Mistwraith and there was no sign that he had the same regard for Dakar. He was nice to him, even though he didn't necessarily want to be, and a few times they commiserated about Asandir and Arithon being generally THEM. But that's not really a friendship.
Lysaer was far closer to Arithon than he was to Dakar. But perhaps that's a sign of Lysaer's charisma. More likely it's a sign of how sad and miserable a life it is to be apprenticed to Fellowship sorcerers. I can't blame Dakar for latching onto anyone who seemed interested in him as a person.
So anyway, they're on a ship. It's a four week journey, and Arithon has been accumulating seasoned lumber for some reason. (Dakar is watching Arithon for signs of the curse, but blames the lack on Arithon's ability to "maintain seamless subterfuge".)
But now, they've reached their destination: a very tiny cove at Merior. Which we recognize from the title of the book! Presumably there will be ships here! I'm just guessing!
We get some lovely description of course:
The whitewashed cottages of Merior nestled in a little crescent cove, fringed with sea oats and palms, and notched into the narrow peninsula that bent like a hook to enclose the aquamarine basin of Sickle Bay. Here, the great combers that rolled in off the Cildein’s vast deeps burst white and unravelled against a landspit scarcely three leagues across. Shadowed day and night by their thunder, this village offered the last, lonely settlement. Beyond, a wind-raked ribbon of barrier sands dwindled into bars and scattered coral reefs, where surf churned and creamed at Scimlade Tip. The neat, seaside anchorage was too cramped for trader ships. It boasted no breakwater and dock. The slatted wooden tower burned a beacon light for fishing craft, which moored in bad weather to battered cork buoys scattered like beads amid the chop.
So anyway, Dakar has a moment of slapstick as he reaches dry land, tripping backwards and landing on his ass. Much to the amusement of "two barefoot, tow-haired urchins who sat on a barrel and smirked, then burst into shrieking gales of laughter."
These kids may be significant. They're Feylind and Fiark, fraternal yet identical-for-now twins.
A shadow darkened his face, cast by Arithon, just come ashore with an unwieldy beam braced across his shoulders. ‘Are you cap’n?’ shouted the nearer child. The pair looked alike as halved oysters, all brown legs and grey eyes and simmering curiosity. Their unbleached trousers were grimy and ragged, and each wore a smock shirt, clumsily cut down from a man’s size. The coltish angles of forearms and shins were sequinned in iridescent cod scales, and the narrow feet with their sturdy, splayed toes had likely never seen shoes.
Arithon denies being the captain of this ship, and they shrilly demand to know who he is, causes Dakar to misquote a gate inscription, calling Arithon "master of all things bleak and dangerous". (The original quote referred to Daelion Fatemaster, who appears to be a judge/underworld figure in Athera's general pantheon.)
Anyway, there are antics. The kids take to Arithon immediately and dislike Dakar, especially when he keeps misidentifying and misgendering both. Feylind is a girl and Fiark is a boy, but as mentioned, they're pretty much virtually identical at this age.
Things have clearly continued to sour in the Arithon/Dakar dynamic. Arithon mostly ignoring Dakar's many complaints instead of engaging with them. It's hard to blame him, but I still think hatesex is an option.
There are some interesting comments between Arithon and the captain of the ship, which give us some idea of Arithon's plans. He has supplies coming: dowers and planks, to be delivered by locals. Arithon's also looking for shipwrights and craftsmen, ideally masters and journeymen. The captain's perplexed by this as, for now, Arithon's only got one set of materials. But apparently, they're prototypes. He thinks the smith can make more.
Time seems to be a factor, but Arithon's going to pay very well. He also talks the Captain into letting the kids have a quick tour of the ship before it leaves. The captain is a good sport about it, though he has some incomprehensible warnings:
Drawn grinning into conspiracy, the hard-bitten waterman relented. ‘Take them yourself, but go lively. In another half hour, this bitch’ll be aground hard as Sithaer, and ornery as a half-skint wyvern for the pinch o’ the sand in her planks. Keep clear of the hold lest the ballast shifts.’.
No idea what any of that means, but he seems like a nice dude.
Oh, maybe all is not lost between Dakar and Arithon:
Slithered in a heap at the base of the companionway to evade notice as the conference ended, Dakar hugged his knees in stark misery. ‘I knew it,’ he mused in private conclusion. ‘I just knew it! He’s brought planks to build a damned war fleet.’
Immediately above, Arithon’s face eclipsed the light. ‘Right now, just one small sloop. You needn’t fret. We haven’t the coin left to arm her.’ Under pressure from Feylind’s impatience, a malicious glint stirred the green eyes. ‘You’re not in the mood to get stepped on, I trust.’
‘The fat man’s in the way again!’ the insufferable Fiark proclaimed. Forced to give ground in a cloud of ill grace, Dakar heaved up his tipsy bulk and moved.
Thing is, we know Arithon's got more coin coming. Dakar may not be completely wrong about Arithon's plans. We'll have to see.
The captain, by the way, takes a moment to listen to Arithon answering the kids and notes that he "knows his lines and halyards like a man born to blue water". Of course he does! But also wonders why the hell anyone would found a shipyard at a place with no lumber.
...because Arithon's just Like That, dude. Don't worry. You'll get used to it.
In a cheerfully domestic scene in Merior's only boarding house, Dakar has questions:
‘Who’s going to finance your fool’s notion, anyway? There’s not enough coin in this whole village for you to sing for your upkeep.’
‘Then you might be more gentle with the landlady’s crockery. Or tomorrow we’ll eat baitfish served raw on a cutting block.’ Green eyes regarded him, thoughtful; and in the same tone as the banter came the answer Dakar least expected. ‘I thought the crown of Rathain should bear the expense.’
‘Your emeralds are safe back at Althain.’ Had the tea mug remained in his hands, Dakar would have thrown to draw blood.
The knife-edged start of a smile compressed the line of Arithon’s mouth. ‘A pity, since you’re hot to lay into me for something.’
How are you so married?
Dakar asks where they'll be living in the meantime, and I think it's hilarious that after everything that happened, both Dakar and Arithon take it as a given that Arithon will be providing housing for both of them. Dakar isn't brave enough to mention that Jaelot and Alestron are probably going to attract the attention of the two armies amassed to kill Arithon off. But he has practical concerns: winter is coming. And while Merior doesn't get snow, it does get a lot of rain.
Arithon has leased the "shell flats by the abalone cutter's". I probably should read up on coastal things or something because I don't know what that means either. He notes that if Dakar wants to try carpentry, they've got enough wood for a shack.
‘I can scarcely drive nails when I’m sober.’ The Mad Prophet lapsed into offended silence.
By morning, he was once again comatose, and Arithon had to borrow a handcart to remove him to the site where his lumber lay. Dakar snored on through the ride, his arms and knees dangling, and his bearded chin tipped to the sky. Arithon dumped him in the shade to sleep off his poisoned stupor, then took stock of his future boat, stacked now in neat piles that beckoned to be shaped with adze and saw and plane.
I just added this part because it made me laugh. Seriously, Arithon, you could probably be madder at Dakar. It'd be okay if you were.
Anyway, we're told that the twins come by a lot. Dakar's very bad at telling them apart. The twins have some differences though: when he misnames Feylind, she screams at him until his ears ring. When he misnames Fiark, he throws rocks. Arithon's good with them, ruffling their hair and letting them hold the chalk strings.
I wonder how much experience Arithon actually has with children. He grew up in Rauven Tower, presumably there would have been other initiates.
Anyway, at some point he gets the kids' backstory, which he shares with Dakar (on a day that the latter wakes up with his bootlaces knotted): their father has just died at sea, and their mother forbid them to sail. Since Merior is a fishing village, only very young children and sick people stay on shore, so the poor kids are feeling lonely and isolated.
One boot half off, the other ingeniously entangled, Dakar looked up into green eyes untrustworthy for their mildness. ‘So why do you stay ashore?’
‘For my amusement,’ the Shadow Master said.
I still 'ship it.
One problem Dakar's been having is that he's been getting ripples of impending prophecy, but so far has been staving it off. (Biting his lip to draw blood, for example.) He's not having much fun in distraction either:
Eaten by nameless foreboding in the face of Arithon’s complaisance, the Mad Prophet found no comfort in his vices. Every girl he pinched was somebody’s wife, and twice he got pummelled by packs of brothers led by a wronged and vengeful husband. Merior’s villagers were closemouthed and reserved, and their town, a dull backwater that made the bigoted stews of Jaelot seem a wistfully remembered time of paradise.
Dakar is also suspicious of Arithon:
The days shortened; the fishing luggers sailed reefed to stronger winds, and the sandspit south of Scimlade Tip abided in its customary idyllic isolation. Arithon made no clandestine effort to stay abreast of events in the north. His easy-going humour under needling was just another sham, the sort of masterful, guileless fabrication his s’Ffalenn wiles employed to mask havoc. His work might seem unhurried, as he measured his fine wood in whistling patience. But the little sloop’s keel was laid and her stem post set in the sort of studied, sustained effort that admitted no loophole for setback.
Dakar and Arithon continue to bicker
Like the baitfish before the barracuda, Dakar discovered he was unable to bury himself in detachment. Complaints became excuse to provoke arguments. ‘A man could get permanently griped on a diet of saltfish,’ he broke in after a laboured visit to the privy. ‘And sleeping under sail canvas has me rotten with sores like the pox.’
‘That might not be the case had you bought black beans and figs instead of that beer keg from the market.’ Arithon bent to shape a raw plank, shirtless, the shiny lines of old scars browned by the sun.
‘Curse you!’ Dakar dug his fingers behind his waistband to scratch. ‘They haven’t sold figs or beans since the last cart returned from Shaddorn, and that’s been better than a week.’
The adze sheared off a pallid scroll of wood. ‘Six days.’
I see your gratuitous shirtlessness, Arithon.
Things chill a little when Dakar accuses Arithon of aiming to "wreak vengeance in ships crammed to the gunwales with arbalests."
Arithon, "in pleasant deceit" praises Dakar as a master taleteller, and points out that he's only got enough material for one vessel.
And here we get a bit of honesty:
Half-inebriated, his tunic undone to the waist, Dakar lashed back in cornered fury. ‘Who are you fooling? You know you are cursed. Lysaer is amassing armies while you dawdle, and-’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ The adze scythed down in a vicious, white flare of reflection and sheared off a sliver of spruce. ‘Agree? Make you promises? Confide?’ In the sudden stabbing sarcasm he used when a nerve had been struck, Arithon smiled. ‘Much better to leave you dangling, Prophet. You’re far less bother to me, drunk. Failing that, you might consider washing your underclothes. They’re stiff enough to stand by themselves. If they rot from neglect, well all watch you greet Etarra’s armies bare-arsed.’
‘Oh, but you’re careful, and nasty in your arrogance.’ Dakar narrowed foxy eyes, suffused to a high, purple flush. You daren’t mention your nemesis by name, do you? What about this town? It is innocent. You’ll draw the danger to your web, sure enough. Do you tell me, will the children once again pay the cost?’
He had gone too far.
There's a funny/sad sort of irony in these parts, which is that if Arithon DID confide his plans, Dakar might see that he's mistaken about a lot of things. But by this point, I can't blame Arithon for not being willing to trust Dakar. And truth be told, Dakar still might not believe it.
So anyway, Dakar realizes he went too far and starts getting really nervous. (for his part, we get another cat comparison as Arithon's eyes are "flat and fixed as a cat's".) But this is Arithon's reaction:
‘Ath forfend!’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn. He raised a wrist and stifled back a belly whoop of laughter. ‘Dakar, what are you thinking? This is a pleasure sloop, and when she’s launched, I’m sailing her to Innish!’
He'd promised Halliron, remember? There's a widow who never got her reunion.
Dakar doesn't believe him, of course, or at least, he doesn't think it's the whole truth, but he doesn't have a way to push further.
So there are a lot of time skips in this chapter. They make it to autumn, the equinox and feast days. (The twins bring paper talismans, awww.) Dakar gets caught in the deluge of seasonal rain:
Indignant when the villagers dared to appreciate his discomfort too much, he retorted, ‘Well how can I see to bang a nail with Ath-forsaken water in my eyes?’
‘Wait till the rain stops,’ Arithon suggested.
Hee. Amusingly, the twins pick up some of Dakar's choice language and are kept home "in bed with coughs" the next day.
This leads to an interesting development though, when the twins' mother decides to come and meet the bad influences on her kids:
The woman came between showers, a thin, stoop-shouldered figure swathed in the black skirts of mourning,her wisped hair muffled under an enormous oilskin. She carried sprigs of sage to ease her passage through the fishmarkets. Against the white sands and the wheeling gulls, and the silver-banked, cloud-silted sky, the storm harried her like an omen in beggar’s rags.
She sees Dakar's crude shack, as well as the in-progress sloop. Austere as fine muslin, she rounded the building and stopped with caught breath at the absolute shock of discrepancy: before her, in grace that bespoke patience and a loving touch with raw wood, rose the clean curves of a sloop’s frames. Neat, tight pegs fastened the stempost to her keel, under damp like a patina of new varnish.
Of course.
And now, a momentous meeting:
The yard at first sight seemed deserted. Then the rhythmic tap at first mistaken for a woodpecker fell silent. A man crouched half under the unfinished hull stood up, compact, well-made, a mallet and chisel in his hands. Sawdust and shavings twined through his dark hair. He wore canvas knee breeches tied with fish twine, the cut ends whipped deftly in round splices. Too well-raised to stay shirtless in her presence, he snatched a soaked smock from a saw trestle and wrung out the water. She caught a disturbing glimpse of scars as the cloth dropped over his head. Too reserved to make comment, she strove not to stare as he flicked off scrolled shavings, then moved with his hand out to meet her.
His approach jarred her to an inadvertent step back. His build was small and light-boned as a hawk’s, where the twins had painted a giant. ‘You’re the one called the Master?’ She knew of no other address for him; even when maudlin and drunk, the stout companion never spoke his surname.
‘Friends call me Arithon.’ Eyes of a piercing summer green flickered over her. Then he smiled. Thwarted from shyness by warm fingers that touched and then steadied her elbow, the widow averted her eyes. Her reason for coming was not going to please him, and his manners left no excuse for brevity.
Hee, "the Master". And I love that apparently she's already met Dakar.
Anyway, the widow's name is Jinesse. Arithon invites her to sit on some stacked wood, which he claims is more comfortable than Dakar's shack. It occurs to me that I have no idea where Arithon himself sleeps. Maybe in Dakar's shack too? That would be just like them.
So basically, Jinesse doesn't want her children to hang around with sketchy sailing types. She wants them apprenticed to a craftsman. And she thinks their acquaintance with Arithon makes that difficult. Arithon agrees with her, but points out that they're in more danger from lack of knowledge than the sea itself.
‘I won’t have their future tied to fishing, can’t you understand?’ He had been in Merior long enough to have seen the crippled old men while away their afternoons on the guest house porch; the horribly-swollen arthritic hands, or ones maimed and scarred, that could no longer draw nets from the sea.
But Arithon did see, Jinesse realized as he faced her directly. The compassion in his challenge, and the stillness of his patience made her wonder if he, too, had weathered losses. He said, ‘The twins’ father has died. Would you give them your fear as their legacy? Will you force them to ignorance, where now there is laughter, when the sea is born into their very blood?’
Jinesse just wants him to build his sloop and go.
‘I will do all of that,’ Arithon promised. A less sensitive man might have tried to reassure her by touch. This one did nothing but speak, in that voice which relentlessly stripped the protections she had patched over raw and stinging grief. ‘But first I would leave you a gift. Let me teach your twins a mariner’s skills, as my father taught me. I will give them the sea, and a freedom beyond fishing boats, and you can face your heart and learn to abide without terror.’
He moved. Before she could frame any protest, he had risen. As he pressed a warm weight into her chilled fingers, she almost missed the welted scars that disfigured one palm and both wrists. ‘Here. Take my pledge. Your children shall be given all they need to stay safe, and you will find joy in their accomplishment.’
I think there are a lot of interesting elements to unpack in all this. Arithon's sympathy for children trapped by a parent's well-meaning plans. Arithon's sympathy for a mother who just wants to protect her children. And I wonder briefly how Arithon sees his own mother. Lysaer, rather understandably, seems to resent her more than anything else. But I don't think we've ever gotten Arithon's point of view.
I also love how Arithon's just randomly giving people sailing knowledge. One pirate lady, two children.
So what did Arithon give Jinesse:
Jinesse turned over the token he offered in trade for her personal weakness: a scratched signet of white gold set with an emerald and incised with a rampant leopard seal. The ring was an heirloom, and with it, he granted a trust. Merior was too small for a man of his presence; all the village wondered why he needed refuge, and what sort of trouble he was fleeing. The sigil offered means to unriddle his surname and his origin, hers to pursue if she wished.
Anyway, Arithon tells her that if, in six months, she still wants them apprenticed in a craft shop, he shall help underwrite her decision, but begs her to let him work with them until then. I think it's fascinating that he thinks it's his place TO underwrite her decision, but well, he is a prince even if he doesn't admit it. She ends up agreeing.
Jinesse is a really interesting character, actually, and I feel like I'll be talking about her more later.
Anyway, for a while she leaves the ring alone, afraid of what she might find out. But eventually she uses candle wax and chalk to reproduce it. Then she goes to the nearby village of Shaddorn, where there's a hostel of "Ath's initiates."
There's an interesting description:
Rumour held the disappearance of the Paravians had set the old order into decline. Certainly the long, winding lane that led to the hostel was hedged on both sides by rank woods. Its buildings were stone, dressed out in moss-flecked sigils that were uncanny to the eye, and which touched Jinesse’s skin to odd starts of gooseflesh. The grounds themselves looked unkempt, waist-deep in dog fennel and exuberant runners of wild vine. Unaware that initiates revered all growing things for their place, like most unversed visitors, the widow mistook their way of blessing for neglect.
The initiates seem to have some kind of power themselves, as they answer questions before they are asked, and seem to know why she's here. A brother named Claithen is the one who will identify the seal for her.
Arithon can't escape purple prose even when he's nowhere around:
She picked the string off her packet. Ath’s blessed sun made the leopard seem ineptly drawn, a sad and unexpected embarrassment. The original had been like the man, elegant in grace, with a captivating fierceness noticed too late for the safety of hapless small prey.
So Claithen identifies it as the royal arms of s'Ffalenn. Which does answer the question I had back in chapter one of Mistwraith as to how an island kingdom might have a leopard sigil. So now Jinesse knows some very dangerous information. But Claithen knows things too:
Claithen peered up in gentle censure. ‘No need. The world in its wisdom provides.’ He freed a hand from his book and gestured toward the sprawl of the citrus grove. ‘If it is Arithon of Rathain you have met, believe this. He shall do you no harm. The heritage of his bloodline will permit him no cruelty, and Ath’s greater mercy walks beside you.’
Yeah, Jinesse is not really reassured. She's heard of the Master of Shadow apparently, though she doesn't appear to be afraid of HIM so much as what he represents. If he stays, his enemies will come to Merior. Very true. Jinesse is a smart lady.
In the end, though, she doesn't prevent her kids from remaining friends with him.
But there IS something else interesting:
Another outsider came to Merior, a woman who rented a cottage and set up a small custom selling simples. The convenience was appreciated. Before, the only apothecary was south in Shaddorn, and when a babe sickened or a fisherman suffered injury, the hostel of Ath’s Brotherhood was a long, rough cart ride away. Good-wives gossiped with the village’s two shopkeepers, and wondered if the woman’s arrival might be connected to the other outsiders who currently inhabited the shell flats. Only Jinesse knew their questions were well founded, and she kept her own wary counsel.
Hello there.
Merior is a tiny place, but people keep distant from strangers. So Arithon and Dakar don't actually hear about her presence until she decides to pay them a visit.
She arrives at a time when Arithon is teaching the twins how to use some kind of wood shaving tool. And well, here we are:
At that moment, Arithon of Rathain looked up.
The enchantress who intruded upon his privacy was relentlessly trained to interpret every nuance through detail. She took in the sailor’s tunic, decently clean, but rumpled in emphatic rebuttal of royal birthright; the dark, uncut hair that cast an air of benevolent untidiness over a perception still mage-trained, and keen as a razor; the sea tan and shirt style that minimized old scars, and beyond these, surprise, masked behind the polite lift of black eyebrows.
The twins are good icebreakers, demanding to know who she is.
‘Is that how your mother greets strangers?’ the lady admonished, smiling.
‘Are you a stranger?’ Arithon countered, his guard nearly good enough to mask an underlying alarm.
Unprepared for the lurch of her heart as he regarded her, the visitor traced the end of the spar with her finger. The loving care that had guided its shaping sang through every fibre of the wood; as immediate, to her, the awareness of the hands that enacted the labour. Her shield of banality crumpled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But who is she?’ persisted the twin who was female, her grip on Arithon’s arm grown possessive out of blind instinct.
‘The lady’s called Elaira,’ Arithon said. His bard’s tongue made music of the name, and offered back skilled reassurance as he readdressed his visitor directly. ‘Were you bidden to see me, or Dakar?’
...I'm not sure what that bit about Feylind is supposed to mean. Ms Wurts?
Anyway, Elaira insists she came as a friend. Arithon's not stupid and notes that "her kind" don't go anywhere without a purpose. He invites her in the shack, which presumably means he stays there as well. The twins are gently dismissed (but not before they hear Feylind say that Elaira has pretty hair and wonder if Arithon will kiss her.)
MORE flowery description. You'd think Ms. Wurts would run out but I treasure each time:
Finished wringing out her damp hemline, Elaira straightened up to find Arithon beside her. His grip as he took her elbow was more firm than she recalled, and each steely, flexible finger seemed to sear through her sleeve like a brand. His sailor’s dress and dishevelled grooming made him exotic and strange, too immediate a presence to bridge a prolonged gap of years and separation.
Then he drew her past the rude doorway into close gloom. By the feeble light threaded through chinks in the artless board walls, Elaira glimpsed coils of new hemp, a box jammed with cleats and oak blocks bought used from the local fisherfolk, and incongruous in the clutter, a level set of pegs that hung the Masterbard’s lyranthe, his sword, and a new woollen cloak and an oilskin. Then Arithon closed the leather-hinged door. The. shrill talk of the twins, and the hesitant, rasping first strokes of the plane came through muffled, while something amorphous slouched in the corner choked through a stertorous snore.
They ARE sharing the shack. I love it.
Anyway. Dakar recognizes Elaira and freaks out a bit, noting, probably correctly that what Elaira hears will go to Morriel. He also says that if Asandir knew Arithon'd let her in, he'd bring the roof on his head. More proof that the Fellowship told Dakar nothing, because they clearly have plans for her.
I think Elaira might be a shipper too:
‘Damn you,’ Dakar swore. ‘This isn’t funny. Mark me, if you don’t send that witch packing, the one secret you can’t afford to share will be in Morriel’s ear by evening.’
Elaira’s breath caught. The nuance of Koriani observation inferred the entreaty was genuine; that despite a master’s training at magecraft and every informed and formidable defence, Dakar believed Arithon to be vulnerable.
Poor Elaira. "Desperate that the order’s plans for her should not yield any unexpected windfalls, Elaira wished herself blind and deaf as Dakar resumed his invective.". She also notes that the glare Dakar shoots Arithon is full of passionate hatred, which is very different from the disgruntled irritation she remembers from him and unsettles her.
So Dakar storms off. We get some great domestic description of the shack:
Elaira sat. Her fine linen skirt rasped on the saw-grained wood of the bracing, and her foot bumped an ill-fitted peg. The room’s split personality haunted: ramshackle joinery at silent war with the lone, level trestle, spread with parchments lined with fine chalk. Sketched in a hand unmistakably Arithon’s lay the plans of his thirty-foot sloop.
So Arithon asks how she found him.
Denied the easy, instinctive rapport of their first meeting, Elaira stayed still enough to mark the moisture that ticked off her soaked hem. She matched his gaze and gauged his reserve through her arts; and deduction implied the question pertained more to Lysaer s’Ilessid and his massed armies than to her, or any meddling of her order. ‘I think,’ she said, husky, ‘you could guess.’
‘Jaelot,’ he surmised. Green eyes that threatened to dissect her heart like sharp knives turned down and fixed on the hands which had wrought a great and joyous miracle on the solstice: an artist’s unfettered celebration of beauty that a fate cursed by geas had recast to invite his downfall.
His guilt filled an unpleasant interval, that his passion for music had led him to careless betrayal of the very foundation of his principles. Then he said, ‘Are you here to help or to hinder?’
There's some back and forth. Arithon thinks she's a spy and is pretty hostile at first. And we get some nice description from her side as she doesn't really react:
But the wry, patient tilt to her eyebrows set him back, and the malice he used to defend his deepest feelings bled away. His attention combed over all of her then, from the heavy auburn hair spilled loose from the braid that constrained its unruly fall, to the three coins for luck a thief’s superstition made her sew to the turned-back lining of her cuff, to the silly wet drape of her hem. Her eyes in the gloom were soft opal and mystery, and firmly determined in kindness.
So he warms up a bit, noting that he's in her debt for past service, but notes that "Dakar is forced company enough" and asks her to leave Merior. However when she asks if that's what he really wants, he goes uncharacteristically noncommittal:
‘What I want hasn’t merited much priority,’ Arithon pushed to his feet. A gust raked the shed; the mirrored liquid in the pans shattered into rings touched off by fallen droplets. Outside, the plane lay silent, the twins fled off home as a barrage of fresh rain pocked the gapped shakes of the roof. ‘Stay if you wish. I can’t stop you. Once the sloop’s fitted out, I will sail.’
For her part:
Elaira arose. On parting she gave him the two truths she had unentangled in her oathbound obligations: ‘Merior has no one trained in herbals and healing. And the prophet you keep in your company would as soon put a knife in your ribs as offer you comfort or friendship.’
It's not something we didn't know, but the gesture is important. She's still tied to Morriel's will, but Arithon knows of it, so it's almost honest? Maybe?
Unsurprisingly I ship it too.
--
The next subchapter is Dispatch.
We join Captain Mayor Pesquil, who is the commander of the northern league of headhunters. He's at the sight of a barbarian massacre, likely the one Caolle and Jieret ordered.
The other officer is confused: the caravan wasn't robbed. But Pequil recognizes the knife work, and brings up the kids "under Arithon's command" slitting the throats of the wounded at Strakewood. Considering they were attempting genocide, I still don't feel particularly bad for them.
One of the men suggests that they spare an hour to see the dead decently burned, but Pesquil tells them to let them stay as they lie. He doesn't want "Red-beard's Companions" warned by smoke. He intends to ambush them. And his instincts tell him that the slaughtered caravan has some connection to Arithon.
We fast forward two weeks. Pesquil is making a report. And critiquing the decor:
A fortnight later, the stench of corrupt flesh a memory that rankled no less, Captain Mayor Pesquil cast his jaundiced regard on the gold-bordered curtains, the ebony and ivory inlaid footstools, and a sumptuous tasselled carpet which silenced his predatory tread, and clashed in evil virulence against green and purple tiles of fired enamel. The tastes of the city seneschal were typically Etarran. The embers in the hearth discharged enough heat to wilt a hothouse flower.
Pesquil is not fond of the seneschal, by the way, but he's here to report big news. News that apparently has been spreading around the city's "riff-raff" for a while but never made it to the ears of the higher ups: Jaelot and Alestron.
We also learn that the armory explosion killed seven men. Damn. No wonder Arithon was upset. I kind of think part of this is the fault of the s'Brydions though, because who the fuck stores explosives without appropriate safety measures?!
It's actually pretty impressive that Jieret and Caolle kept the info quiet for so long, but the cat's out of the bag, and Pesquil intends to see the info go to Lysaer himself.
--
The last subchapter is Shakedown.
We're told it's the same morning that Pesquil's company embarked from Etarra. We're told that "[t]he Shadow Master whose misdeeds were named in Mayor Morfett’s sealed dispatches scarcely looked the mage-trained minion of evil. Clad in a plain linen shirt and loose trousers, he carried no weapon beyond a rigging knife. The tanned hands that drove the sweeping stroke of his oars as he rowed the sloop’s tender ashore were innocent of spells or subterfuge."
Well, maybe not completely free of subterfuge, as he pays a call at Jinesse's cottage. (We're told that two fishermen nearby grin in "lewd interest", Jinesse's neighbors seem to really want her to get laid). Not long after that, the twins escape, rambunctious as always, while Arithon emerges with Jinesse in tow.
‘Really!’ She tried to plant her feet, overbalanced, and stumbled into him.
Not about to waste the opportunity, Arithon grinned and snaked an arm around her waist. She pounded his shoulder with the fist just freed, and fingers pulled untimely from the mixing of bread dough shed small puffs of blown flour.
Jinesse shrieked, ‘It’s the woman who brews simples you should be dragging to your lair, not I, and certainly not my two children!’
I think Jinesse might be a shipper.
Anyway, they're not going to the shack of course, but to the beach. Arithon has decided that the first lady to board the Talliarthe should be the one afraid of the sea.
Jinesse howled. ‘You named your blighted vessel Talliarthe!’ Her terror now spurred by indignation, she emphasized with a chop that glanced scatheless off the hard-knit muscles of his chest. ‘How fitting!’
‘Well, yes,’ said Arithon, agreeably pleased; his sloop’s namesake was the legendary sea sprite reputed to spirit off maidens who wandered inside the tidemark. ‘Don’t be angry. Your girl Feylind made the suggestion.’ Staggered as a woman two fingers taller than his height thrashed and battered at his composure, he tucked his chin, changed grip, and hoisted.
I enjoy that Arithon is tiny. He is a tiny tiny asshole.
The rest of the village seems to find this pretty amusing:
‘Well, it’s fitting!’ declared the boarding house landlady, drawn to her porch with her broom still in hand to oversee the outcome of the fracas. ‘That Jinesse has been too straitlaced for health since the sea took her husband. Yon’s a comely enough young man, for an outsider. His company just might lend a bloom to her cheeks. Mayhap then she’ll stop fussing. To hear her carry on, you’d swear those poor twins were like to drown in Garth’s pond!’
One would hope they'd intercede if they seriously thought Arithon a threat, but then I doubt most rapists would bring the noisy kids along. A nice neighbor douses Jinesse's fire and closes up the cottage as the poor lady is kidnapped off to sea.
It's about five days of sailing. Poor Jinesse eventually does relax a bit. The twins sleep like kittens in a berth, aw. Dakar is drunk. She takes the opportunity to ask Arithon why he came to Merior.
Arithon dodges the question with a chorus from a shanty, but notes that he has no real secrets. Dakar will spill anything drunk.
But apparently Dakar hasn't said a word. "He's wary of you as the man who burned his tongue once too often at the feast."
You have no idea how heroically I am refraining from a very lewd comment. I deserve praise and gratitude for this.
But anyway, Arithon and Jinesse continue to talk. He notes that she knows who he is, and has heard the dire rumors, but never exposed him. She wants to know why he hasn't returned her to Merior, since his purpose in bringing her is served. But he's sailing on to Innish.
Actually, he's bringing her for selfish reasons:
A queer catch of grief half-strangled itself in his throat. He said in forced lightness that had everything to do with shedding defences he had no wish to lower, ‘Did you never think that I might need comfort or reassurance in return? What awaits me at Innish is a bereaved wife, and a grown daughter who never knew her father. Their loss is not beyond pity to encompass. But as a man raised in the absence of close family, I find myself disadvantaged. The ways of women’s hearts are written in no chart. I go as a dead friend’s emissary into a hostile home. Forgive my presumption, for asking the kindness of a stranger for my guide.’
I mean, it's still a dick move, dude.
My own thought is that he's bringing Jinesse here also because he wants her to understand him. \
Anyway, melodramatic asshole that he is, he takes her desire for a swift end for the passage as an excuse to speed up and splash the above deck with salt and water, causing Jinesse to go back to her berth. Because Arithon has no idea how to end a conversation when there's too much honesty at play.
He conveniently dodges her for the rest of the trip.
Let's look at the city of Innish!
To her dying day, Jinesse would recall her first sight of the city; the spindled, coral towers meshed into sky, a gilt-edged silhouette that turned slowly rose against a fringe of dawn clouds. While Feylind and Fiark curled at her sides, she marvelled at the long, lean lighters that ferried the ships’ crews ashore, black shapes like cut paper, with talisman scrolls or carved heads of beasts snarling at bow and stem. The cries of fish sellers drifted over lavender water, then the riffling stir of wind, with its mud-soaked scent of green river delta skeined with incense from the balcony braziers lit in brothels and rich ladies’ boudoirs. Jinesse watched the light brighten the lace-roofed, pennoned towers; the scalloped merlons of the curtainwalls where Shand’s old-blond royalty had walked; the pastel drumtowers with their odd, paned windows where the high king’s council once held its yearly court, and in her cars rang sweet showers of harmonics as the living prince of quite another kingdom tuned a new set of strings on his lyranthe.
For his part, Arithon's dressed up for the occasion: a groomed stranger in a black doublet corded with silver. He wore hose and boots with embroidery and buckles, and a silk shirt with points tipped with pearls, Dakar's bludgeoned into sobriety (though he's going to be staying on ship with the twins.) Jinesse tells him that if he desires her presence, she's ready.
Up close, Innish is a bit of a different experience:
Seen up close, the wharfside of Innish wore her decor like a tawdry, overdressed granddame fallen from wealth on hard times. The pilings were shagged green with weed, like harbour landings anywhere else. The air reeked of grease, decayed fish, and blood sausage, and the pretty pastel arches that reared above the crowd wore a pox of grey mildew and mould. The whores by city edict were required to wear bells. Their jingle chimed in sour descant over the oaths of the longshoremen bent under loads of boxes and bales. The gutters lay pooled with sewage dammed from egress down the culverts by thrown offal from the vendors, who cleaned hares for roasting over ramshackle portable braziers..
Arithon gives Jinesse one of his gloves to cover her nose and they make their way to the house. Jinesse thinks he's dreading the experience, he denies it but admits he feels inadequate.
Asandir has been a little useful at least. Halliron's daughter (rawboned, with straw coloured hair, charry-round nose, and full lips) knows why they're there, though she's not happy about it. Neither is Halliron's bedridden widow, who accuses her husband of living like a wastrel.
Both women state they have no use for songs, but they allow him to play Halliron's last work:
And of course, the prose, she is purple:
One measure, two; the passion of his fingering arrested the air, and then remelted it into a cry. Notes winnowed free like leaves ripped on storm winds, blended into cascades that transfixed the heart with regret. The music wrung out under Arithon’s hands begged no forgiveness for an abandonment of home and ties, but appealed for understanding through an offering of a beauty too wild, too forcefully inspired to be held or shackled in promises.
Arithon is wrapped up in his playing, but happily Jinesse is there to inform us that the elderly lady brushes away tears, and the daughter's denial and resentment unravels to "bare the unanswered pain of a fatherless child's yearning."
I like this description too:
The unsubtle, searching scald of verses gave back husband and father, not as his family wished him to be, but as he had lived, delineated in imperfections and grand strengths. This was not the eulogy Arithon had delivered for Halliron in Jaelot, but in fierce words and harmony the bard’s own statement, that given a mortal’s years to live and to love, the mastery of his calling had demanded to be shared in lands far removed from his hearthstone.
When Arithon finishes, the widow (whose name is Deartha, by the way) tells him that Halliron played the same song when he left, but he hadn't styled it that way. That apparently was part of Halliron's request: that Arithon was to do the arrangement for him.
Both women understand: Arithon is Halliron's legacy in a way they weren't. I'd think that would make them more upset, but weirdly they seem comforted by it instead. But Deartha does want something from him, to discharge the debt he claims when he accepts blame for Halliron not making it back: she wants him to stay in Innish for the rest of the season and play. Halliron had never come home after earning mastery, and the people of Innish should be given the chance to experience what he achieved through Arithon.
The daughter thinks the request isn't fair, while Jinesse realizes that Arithon chose Merior for a reason, and his survival might depend on the preparations he makes there. She hopes he'll refuse.
But it's Arithon. Of course he doesn't refuse. He agrees to play the taverns on the condition that Deartha and her daughter attend every performance.
Jinesse doesn't have to stay of course. They get her and the twins a ride home in a reliable merchant galley.
It does seem risky, but Shand is very far to the south from Tysan or Rathain, so as long as Arithon doesn't announce himself as the Masterbard, he probably can avoid notice for a while.
--
The sneak peek section is Visions and Voyages
1. Pesquil is hiring passage to Avenor, to arrive by spring.
2. Dakar is enjoying a bordello while Arithon plays below. He cries words of warning about a discorporate spirit (presumably Kharadmon, who I THINK is continuing to try to investigate the Mistwraith), alarming Sethvir. Sethvir is a fucking voyeur.
3. OOO. Jieret is being all restless as he stands on the quarterdeck of the Black Drake, bearing news for a prince he hasn't seen in seven years.
REUNION SOON?!
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Date: 2021-07-12 04:22 am (UTC)I AM OVERCOME
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Date: 2021-07-12 04:35 am (UTC)