Nyr #2
Esha’s hand on my arm. “I know,” she says. “I miss her, too.” And not the same. What stands between them is politics, neither of their doing. But I am my own worst enemy, with Lyn. I and my ill-chosen words.
We sit, the three of us. We sample the beer, local, smooth on the tongue. Alweraeyn Porsir the prosperous small-town mayor, Esharaeyn Wordbearer, travelling emissary, spy and agitator, and me. Nyrgoth Elder, reluctant wizard.
“I imagine you’re wanting a boat, then,” Esha says, just right out there.
And that’s simultaneously a loaded thing to say and cuts through a lot of difficult business which might have put Alwer in a tricky position.
Control of the river traffic is currently the subject of considerable debate and even a little bloodshed.
I reached Telm on a Lannesite barge, and there were soldiers on it even close to home.
I will leave Telm, it seems, on a Coaster ship, and they’d look askance at carrying any Lannesite envoy, or at least charge over the odds.
Esha is a friend, and she owes me. A berth is the least she can do.
More than she should really offer, but the Coast-people are as large on hospitality as they are on clannishness. Apparently, I don’t even need to ask.
“One wonders if you’ve met with this man yourself?” I ask her. I construct the sentence carefully so that it contains the roots of its own polite dismissal if this counts as state secrets.
Esha’s open enough, though. “Not me but mine,” she says. “Ulmoth come again, they say. Lord of a monstrous host.”
“I mean,” I say, playing up the peevish old man, “I hope he is. If he’s just some thug in a funny hat I’ll not be best pleased. A wizard’s time is valuable.”
And they smile, because they know me, despite all the water gone down that river.
“I’ve not seen her,” Esha says next. Apparently, it’s going to be one of those conversations where my own input is mostly implied. I would have asked eventually. Almost a year away from court, away from her daughter, because of me.
It is good to see them both, but sitting here is like being in a haunted room.
Haunted by her. Esha tells some tall Coast tales, and Alwer has some goings-on from the great and the good in Telm.
I pass on news from the court, hoping none of it is salient enough to turn up in Esha’s official reports.
But my face must speak for my heart, because we don’t mention Lyn again though she never leaves my mind.
The next morning there’s the boat. Alwer gifts me provisions I can’t possibly carry, and I understand he’s using my presence to thank Esha, where he couldn’t just give a Coaster barge free bounty without someone asking questions.
Why did everything have to become so prickly?
Well, I know: geopolitics, family feuding; a familiar tale if there ever was one.
The crew are leery of me, so I spent most of the voyage belowdecks.
I think about what I said to Alwer. What if there is no sorcerer?
In truth, I will simply be glad if there is nothing worse.
We’ve been waiting for another real problem for over a decade.
Demons—meaning some class of presence existing at ninety degrees to my understanding of the universe, further removed from my culture’s science than that science is from Lyn’s people.
Let it be just a local with some toys and a few command words.
Let it be nineteen bandits in a robot suit.
Let it be magic to the locals, but not to me.
By the time we tie up, I’ve worked out Esha’s people are trading with the brigands, because right now they’ll encourage anyone tweaking Lannesite’s nose.
Esha’s barge has come to take their traders back on board, business accomplished.
A swaggering band of them come with sacks and handcarts, away from a field where some tents are pitched.
A town beyond, previously walled, no longer. Which tells a tale.
I reckon about two score people camped outside the town, hardly an army, save for the monsters.
Hard to miss half a dozen colonial-era construction automata, battered old things that they are.
Considerably bigger and clunkier than my own people’s machines, of which there are still a few feral examples around, plus plenty mothballed back at the tower.
Bigger, clunkier and far less capable, and let’s give thanks for that.
I stride in, and I am marked. I’m wearing clothes of a decent local cut, but made in the tower from augmented fabrics. And the height. And the horns. And honestly, if you’re going to set yourself up as a sorcerer in these parts, surely you expect a visit from Nyrgoth Elder.
All eyes on me, therefore, when I reach the edge of their camp.
And I’m not saying I’ve been working on my wizardly walk, but there’s a trick to it, to tell people you mean magic business.
Honestly, between the old friends and the fresh air and the opportunity to be inscrutable, I’m building up quite the head of positive emotions, so that I let down the DCS and glow a bit with my own august importance. Always a mistake.
I peg the lad in the fancy chair as sorcerer material, mostly because of the signals and channels open in the wearables he has on. I’m just about to let him have my arcane opinion when I see, in the midst of his people, Lyn.