Release—but at the cost of being treated like a child, like an infant, at being insulted and abused by a fatuous prig who thought he was owed everything he got!
Kellen set his chin stubbornly and left the workroom.
He stopped on the way out of the College and deposited his books in his locker, hoping he wouldn't run into any of his year-mates at the Mage College who would wonder why he wasn't still at his morning's lessons with his tutor—or worse, that he wouldn't run into his father, who sometimes visited the College between Council sessions to check up on some of the more promising senior pupils.
He thought of going home, but the thought of going back to Tavadon House, to the chilly corridors and grudging servants, nearly made him ill. He had to get out, somewhere far from here, from there, from Mages and magick. He needed free air and—if there was such a thing in this City— free talk.
There was only one place to go for both of those things.
Kellen opened his locker again and pulled off his robe, wadding it up and stuffing it in atop his books and tools. Where he was going, it would be a disadvantage to be recognized as a Student-Apprentice of the Mage College of Armethalieh.
A definite disadvantage.
WHEN the foreign ships from the Out Islands and the lands beyond the bounds of those claimed by the City were in, there was one place in Armethalieh where there was little or no chance that anyone would recognize him for who and what he was. The docks were the one place where Mages didn't go if they could help it.
Sailors distrusted them, captains did not like having to depend on the magicks that they bought at such high prices from them—the Talismans that brought fair following winds, the Amulets that directed storms to move out of the path of a ship, the Runestones that dispelled fog, the Wands that warned the man at the tiller of shoals and dangerous rocks. Yet those who failed to purchase such aids often came to grief—far oftener, said the whispers, than mere bad luck could account for…
And as for the merchants, well—it was the Mages who dictated what could and could not be sold. It was hardly to be expected that they would welcome the sight of those who restricted their ability to profit.
Foreign sailors were confined to the area of the docks; only the merchant-captain of a ship—or better still, his City-born representative— was allowed into the City proper to present samples of the cargo for inspection or deliver promised goods. The dock even had its own market, plenty of taverns and inns, and in any case the sailors were kept busy enough even in port that they didn't have much time to spend wandering the streets of Armethalieh.
The citizens were not encouraged to wander the docks, either, and generally everyone had heard tales of drunken sailors quarreling with peaceful citizens, starting fights, and generally behaving in an uncivilized manner. That was enough to keep most folk away. But Kellen had learned—by going there himself—that very few of those stories were true, and of the rest, well, people got drunk and got into fights, robbed and were robbed across the breadth of the City every day. Sailors and foreigners were as apt to be victims as victimizers.
But the area of dockside was a rough neighborhood, and a Mage who wandered in there, if he kept his nose in the air as most did, was apt to be greeted with jeers and rudeness. If the sailors and travelers weren't welcome in the City proper, well, they returned the favor in their own territory. So when Kellen went to the docks, he was careful to do so wearing inconspicuous clothing. He watched what he said and who he said it to. Mostly, he just looked and listened, and tried to stay out of the way.
The boundary dividing the dockside from the rest of the City was nothing more than a very wide boulevard, but it was patrolled by regular City Guards, who questioned anyone who crossed that particular street quite closely, and turned back anyone going in either direction if he didn't seem to have appropriate business where he was going. And 'I'm just going to look around' was not considered to be appropriate business.
However, there were other places the guards didn't bother to check; one of them was a section of large warehouses that, rebuilt after a great fire a hundred years ago, had spread across the boulevard into the City. There was always so much coming and going there, wains being loaded and unloaded, men and boys heaving bales and barrels of goods about, that the guards couldn't have questioned everyone, and didn't bother trying. Kellen slipped across the border there, along with a gang of men and an empty wain; once on the dockside, he separated from the group and headed for the wharves.
He knew by now how to move out of the way of the stevedores and stay out of the way, and before too very long, he was perched on a piling in a disused slip, with the salt breeze blowing his hair away from his face, looking out at the harbor and the sea beyond.
If he squinted into the sunlight, it was possible to see a sort of shimmer across the mouth of the harbor—if he had used the spell that allowed him to see magick in action, he'd have seen what that shimmer really was. A curtain of power hung across the mouth of the harbor, the result of a spell that protected the harbor from the waves and winds and storms—but could also be 'tightened' to keep everything, including ships, out… or in.
It could have been made completely invisible, of course, but the Mages of the City didn't want that. They wanted the foreign captains and their sailors to see that faint shimmer, to feel a little tingle as they crossed it, and know that while it protected them, it could also exclude them if they became too troublesome. The City was a huge, voracious creature. It devoured entire cargoes, disgorging in return other goods and minted gold coins so pure and so exact in weight that they were the standard against which all other currencies everywhere in the world were measured. The square Golden Suns of Armethalieh were accepted everywhere, for thanks to the special magicks worked at the City Mint, they could not be melted down, debased, shaved, or otherwise adulterated—unless another Mage broke the spell, at which point they lost their stampings and ceased to be Golden Suns, becoming
