This time Tobin did speak, even though he made an unconvincing attempt at a whisper. “Quiet now, Whitey,” he said. “Please?”
Every eye turned to Cephas. Mattias spoke, looking at Cephas but directing his question to the kenku ringmaster. “You’ll try to claim you didn’t have this in mind, I suppose?”
Corvus appraised Cephas the same way that Cephas often did his opponents, measuring width of shoulder and deepness of chest, trying to gauge how hard the coming blows would fall. “I did not,” Corvus said to Mattias. “This is just another happy coincidence. Another wonder to delight all those good folk whose delight earns us our bread and wine.”
Mattias appeared unconvinced, but it was only Cephas who saw the old man’s expression, because everyone else gathered around Tobin and talked at once. They were congratulating the goliath on his new role, and the huge man was so overcome with joy that he began to cry.
Tears of joy; this was yet another new thing in a day full of them. And even though his instincts told him it was too soon to trust these people, there was only one thing to say when Tobin bent down and crushed him in a delighted hug.
“How much,” asked Cephas, “does a village elder weigh?”
Even here, alone and hidden from the view of any possible observers by far stronger shields than just the closed shutters of his wagon, Corvus took care to make it appear that he plucked the quill from his own heart feathers. He made a sound-a gasp of pain-and mimed a flinch to indicate the shock of pulling a living feather out by its root. Corvus practiced this little deception even now, this late, when the only people in the camp awake to appreciate the performance were those who had drawn the watch, who knew better than to disturb him, and Trill, whom he knew better than to disturb.
The quill, which he summoned with a mental command from the magical storehouse Mattias called his “nest,” did not come from a kenku, even though Corvus conceded that its oily black color and fanned plume were close enough to fool the inexperienced. Corvus remembered what he’d overheard Tobin tell the genasi while he was taking Shan’s wordless report. “ ‘Circus performers love unsophisticated audiences,’ ” he whispered, and for once he did not bother to use any voice but his own, a clear sign that he was alone.
Like lineage and heritage, sophistication and experience were close enough to the same thing for the purposes Corvus had for the young earthsouled genasi. Or the lad’s lack of them was, at any rate.
As he cut his own pen, so, too, had Corvus ground and formulated his own ink. The glass bottle he stored it in held no special distinction he knew of, beyond being perhaps two thousand years old and a shade of blue Corvus found pleasing; however, the ink’s ingredients would have earned him a small fortune from more than one wizard or ritualcaster-not to mention a life’s sentence or a headsman’s axe from any number of governments, depending on local laws.
He picked up the pen and dipped it into the ink. Opening his prized book to a certain page, he began scribing words that disappeared as soon as they were written.
The words, inked in blood and powdered metals, faded. Their meaning did not. Corvus’s pen moved, and his message took flight, launching into the night sky of a shadowy mirror world of magic. Seeking purchase, the words were drawn to a page twin to the one that cast them away.
Drawn to a page far to the south.
The message flew away from the shadow of the circus, where only their writer was distinct among the half- seen forms of his companions. The wagons, in the real world, were circled in the shadow of the Omlarandins; here, the mountains did not cast shadows, but
South and south, the message flew. Down the long Ithal Pass, where analogues of worldly human churches showed themselves as gigantic black hands radiating the fear and power of their inhabitants, servants of the Black God Bane. The Banites, mortal and immortal alike, let the message pass unmolested.
In the remnants of the Forest of Mir, a dimly lit woodland stretching between spires of stone to its north and a petrified swamp to its south, a three-horned dragon stirred but did not rouse from his century-long sleep for the scant temptations offered by communications between tiny souls who walked on two legs.
The Alimir Mountains were higher and sharper than the peaks in the North, concealing alien threats. The message arced downward, gaining in speed as it ended the flight that had taken only the time it took to scratch out the words.
In the last human city of what was once the oldest human nation on the continent, Corvus’s words marched across a sheet of parchment stretched between clamps fashioned of magical fire. As the brief passage revealed itself, the flames emitted an invisible stream of smoke that smelled first of cedar, then of sandalwood.
A tall, powerfully built man stopped speaking when the scent drifted across his richly appointed receiving room. He stood up from the throne where he rested, and with a sweep of his hand, indicated that the three genasi attending him should do likewise.
Two men, with fire dancing about their heads and skins colored gold, and one woman, a silver-skinned beauty who did not merely stand but flew up from her couch, exchanged wary glances as they followed their host. The WeavePasha of Almraiven was not only the leader of his people, but he was also the Caleph Arcane of the oldest guild of wizards in the world. The various objects that crowded his private rooms bore the appearance of works of art, mechanical apparatuses, and decorative plants. The two firesouled men and the windsouled woman knew that every item concealed deadly magic. It was best to follow the WeavePasha’s steps exactly.
The place he led them was not so impressive. The older of the two firesouled, a wizard of no small power, sniffed. “You interrupt our discussions to consult a toy, Acham el Jhotos?”
If the WeavePasha recognized the insult implicit in the man’s use of his given name, he gave no sign. The younger firesouled smirked at this weakness, but the silver woman hanging a few inches above the floor gave a slight shake of her head at his misreading. This human ruler would not be drawn out by the petty games of her fellows.
“I have interrupted our discussions, child, to receive a message of great import to all of us,” the WeavePasha said, and though the firesouled magician bristled, he dared not protest, because the WeavePasha had earned his powers over a very long time.
The wizard passed a hand before the parchment and what was written there disappeared, the ink of the letters flowing in a liquid stream down the page, into a shallow bowl of jade set below.
“My spy has found the lost heir of Calimport.”
In his wagon, Corvus watched the last word fade from the page that was simultaneously bound in his journey book and in a workbook of the WeavePasha of Almraiven.
Then he turned to another page. Taking up his quill again, he penned a very similar message, meant for a very different reader.
Chapter Five
Knowledge of the sword is useless
without knowledge of the world.
At dawn, Cephas stood on the driver’s board of a wagon, watching Corvus and a heavyset woman called Wagonmistress Melda scratch converging lines in the dirt with silver rods. Mattias waited next to the ringmaster’s
