It was some time after midnight when Magda’s sons found him.
“Our mother—she’s not among the dead. Damn you,” the elder demanded, “what happened?”
His jaw bound up, the landlord could not speak. He proffered the stained letter. The elder son took it. The younger read over his shoulder.
It was unsigned.
Thieves:
We have taken the halfling Magda, who is our hostage for your obedience. Do as is written below and no harm will come to her. Fail to obey and she will be very slowly killed.
Steal from the Visible College those talismans that prevent the operation of magic, in as great a number as you can. Bring them in secrecy to the besieged fort of Nin-Edin. There collect your mother. If you cannot enter a besieged fort, or the Visible College, then you are not the thieves we have been told that you are.
We will be inconvenienced by this, but it is always possible to obtain more thieves. We believe it is less easy to obtain another mother.
Do this, at the very latest, before the moon passes out of its first quarter.
6
The war is over now.
Vultures wheel at heights from whicn the Demonfest Mountains are only rumpled white rock patching the curved earth. The birds’ centre-magnified vision sees alclass="underline"
The Northern Kingdoms ravaged, fields unharvested rotting in early winter rain. Men and other races huddle in their villages against famine and death, while in Herethlion and Fourgate songs are sung of heroes’ victories. Vultures avoid the cities of Men. The dead tossed over the walls stink of plague.
The war is over.
The abandoned Dark strongholds, the magical dead of the east, are desolate now beyond even vultures’ picking.
And vultures follow the Last Battle’s soldiers in their company-sized refugee bands, waiting as they take forts and castles, hold them for a time, lose them to their lawful owners or (more often) to larger marauding bands, leaving enough behind to glut the vultures so that they can barely fly.
The war is over. This is peace.
Vultures circle at heights where, like the fields of destruction beneath, the only rules are those of hunger.
The unseasonable November snow whitened the porticos of Fourgate’s mansions and turned to peach-coloured slush in the cobbled streets. Will Brandiman tipped the carriers of his sedan chair, got out, and trod cautiously across the slippery flagstones of the courtyard outside the Visible College.
A small girl with brown pigtails hurled a snowball. It burst against Will’s tricorn hat. He growled, “Cut it out, Ned!”
The girl, slightly taller than Will, stuffed one somewhat coarse hand inside a rabbit-fur muff and picked up the hem of her gown and cloak together as she skipped across the street. Close at hand, her hair was a little too short for braiding, and her brows too thick, and her mouth had lines about it that eight-year-olds do not commonly have…
The brown-haired halfling shuffled his large, hirsute feet under the scarlet velvet of his dress. He lowered his head demurely. “Greetings, brother Will.”
“Brother Ned.”
They both looked at the Visible College.
“Let’s set fire to the building,” Ned Brandiman said. “Then when everyone comes rushing out, we can rush in…”
“Dark damn it, Ned, that’s your answer to everything!”
“It works,” the elder halfling said, miffed. “Well? I’ve watched outside this place for two hours. We’re not going to get in. I’m not surprised orcs didn’t make it. There’s magic oozing out of the very stones.”
Will Brandiman raised his head. Cold wind and flakes of snow brushed his eyes. The monumental walls of the Visible College here gave way to a terraced frontage, lined with Corinthian columns, and a vast set of double doors flanked by stone griffins. Uniformed Wilderness mercenaries patrolled the colonnade in front of the doors.
Ned squatted and began constructing a snowman, singing a child’s game-rhyme in a high-pitched voice. The mercenaries’ gazes slid away. Will stopped pretending to be digging in his purse for coppers.
They casually walked away from the courtyard to one of the hot-chestnut-sellers’ braziers in the street and stood picking the shells off finger-burning nuts and chewing them, then dropping the husks.
Will swallowed thoughtfully. “It’s guarded. Magic and steel. The walls are insurmountable. I don’t fancy coming back tonight to pick the lock on that door. It’ll probably turn you into a hippogriff if you don’t have the right magical key.”
“We could set fire—”
“Ned!”
“It was only a suggestion.”
Will stamped his booted feet in the slush. There was no jingle from the mail-shirt under his cloak, nor from the bandoleer of throwing-knives he wore over his doublet, nor the daggers at his belt and in his boots. A thin coil of elven rope, wound about his waist, made him the image of a fat, possibly dwarfish, merchant (but not his feet). The wind blew through his curly black hair, silver at the temples. He narrowed his eyes.
“But there’s Mother to be thought of…”
“Yes.”
The two halflings exchanged glances.
“If they harm her…” Ned scowled.
Will said viciously, “I’d like to take something else out of the Visible College. Enough experimental magic to make mincemeat out of her kidnappers!”
“No point. Not if we’re stealing magic-null talismans for them. I don’t think we dare cheat.”
“Damn it.”
There was a pause, in the deadened silence that comes with snowfall. A coach crept by, cartwheels skidding, Percherons straining to pull it across the icy cobbles. Will nodded absently. He wiped wind-tears from the lined corners of his eyes.
“The Nin-Edin fort,” he asserted, “we already know. Those are the orcs we bemused into giving us an armed escort out of the Wilderness three months ago. Chances are it’s the same orcs there now—”
“No way!” Ned shook his head emphatically. One pink ribbon slipped from his braids. Nimbly, he picked it up and began plaiting his hair again as he watched the frontage of the Visible College. “After the Last Battle? There are stray orcs all over the place!”
“You’d know about the Last Battle,” Will said sceptically.
“And you’d know too, I suppose?” His brother gave him a look of absolute cynicism. “Having fought impressively on the side of the Light—as you insist on telling all the gamblers and ruffians and whores in Fourgate?”
“That has nothing to do with anything!”
Snow fell faster from a lowering sky, the flakes black against the clouds, white against the masonry of mansions and arcades. Will flexed his fingers inside embroidered gauntlets. It is never wise to let hands become too cold to act. He eyed the lantern light shining through the windowed dome of the Visible College—a dome accessible only by flight, if then.
“It has to be the same orcs! They lost their leaders at Guthranc, but they weren’t all massacred, not by any means. The question is, Do they know it’s us?” Will shivered in the wind. “I do wish Mother wouldn’t pray to Fortuna. It brings about the most amazing coincidences.”
Ned Brandiman hurled a snowball at the nut-seller. The elderly woman good-naturedly tossed a bag of hot chestnuts back. She turned back to her cash-tray, counted, and began to frown.
Boots stamped and weapon-butts hit the flagstones as the mercenaries changed guard. Will eyed the oiled brilliance of their halberds and the much-worn grips of their swords. Under his breath he murmured, “No, thank you…”