“You look for excuses where there are none,” commented Hennea dryly. “Though I suppose you are right, and so should be grateful most solsenti wizards don’t know enough about the Stalker to be dangerous.”
She started rerolling a map as she finished speaking. Seraph took another and rolled it as well. When all of them were stored in the satchel, Hennea closed the buckles and handed the map case to Rinnie.
“You have maps to a world long lost, Cormorant,” she said. “This bag is spelled by one of the Elder Wizards of Colossae. It is a treasure entrusted to you.”
Jes stuck his head into the room. “I found something,” he said.
Tier expected the tavern to be nearly empty, but it was full of strangers, mostly hired swords, he thought. They were probably from some merchant’s caravan just passing through.
Maneuvering around the extra people, he found an unoccupied table in a corner and took a seat. Regil, the tavern owner, saw him and rushed over.
“Tier, welcome,” he said. “I was just hoping you or Ciro would be stopping through to keep this lot occupied. Our midday meal is bread from your sister’s ovens and fresh sausage—and you are welcome to it if you’ll sing.”
Tier smiled. “I’d be happy to, but I was helping my sister this morning. I didn’t bring my lute.”
“Would mine work?” asked Regil.
“That would be fine,” Tier agreed.
Regil grinned. “I was worried I’d have to entertain them myself, and I have other things to do.” He looked behind Tier for just an instant. “Master Willon, Tier will keep your men from too much trouble.”
Tier turned in his chair, to see the old merchant standing just behind him. “Willon, good to see you. I thought you’d be in Taela yet a while.”
Regil backed a few courteous steps away, then turned and hustled off in the direction of the stairway to his apartment. Willon took the seat on the other side of Tier’s narrow table.
“Once I heard some secret society had been brought low by Travelers, I figured Seraph had managed your rescue without my help.” Willon grinned. “I had just heard the first whisper of rumor that made me think you might have been stored in the Emperor’s palace itself, when the news of the Path’s demise hit the streets. Seraph obviously had no need of my help—not that I was surprised. Your wife is a very capable person. My cousin had a trading trip scheduled through this way, so I caught an escort with his men. I’m getting too old to enjoy the big city; my old bones prefer Redern.”
“I’m planning on growing old here, myself.” Tier smiled when he said it, though his heart worried Seraph would not be here to grow old with him.
“Disappointing,” Hennea commented, peering into Jes’s secret room.
“You’d expect any place that Volis went to such trouble to hide would have something in it.” Lehr brushed his hands on his tunic to rid them of the tingle of the power he’d used to open the lock on the hidden door Jes had found.
Seraph had thought it would have been magic he used, but it wasn’t—at least it wasn’t the same kind of magic that came to her call. Falcon’s secrets, she thought, and smiled. It was a good thing that Brewydd had known more of the Falcon’s Order than she did. She’d forgotten that locks and gates were something the Hunters did well—Brewydd had told them it had something to do with traps being a Hunter’s art. Whatever the reason, Lehr seemed to enjoyed being able to open whatever locks came his way. If it hadn’t been for him, for his tracking and lock picking skills both, they’d never have made it through the palace to the cell where Tier had been held.
Rinnie squeezed past Lehr and Hennea and darted into the room. “It’s empty.”
“Sorry,” said Jes.
“Not at all.” Seraph couldn’t see the interior of the room, but if it was big enough to hold Rinnie, it would be big enough for her purposes. “This is the perfect place to put the books on magic until we decide what to do with them. Lehr can spell the door shut, and Hennea or I’ll put a ‘don’t look at me’ on the removable panel. It’ll be safe as a lamb in the fold.”
“Then we don’t have to carry them all.” Jes gave her a bright grin. “Lehr and I,” he said. “We would have had to carry them all. Two trips for all these books. Through the town to home, then back through the town to here. Back through the town and home again. There aren’t so many Traveler books as there are wizard ones. Through the town just one more time.”
“You’ll still have the stairs,” Hennea pointed out dryly as she started back down the narrow hallway.
“Only one set. Easy.” Jes bounced passed her and ran up the stairway.
When Lehr decided to go exploring with Jes, Seraph relented and let Rinnie go with them. There weren’t so many books in the library that she and Hennea couldn’t take care of them.
“We’ll get more done,” she said, after the others had left.
“They’re not so bad,” Hennea said.
“Just not used to being cooped up.” Seraph tapped her finger lightly on the page of the book she’d been paging through. “I’ve seen this book before, I think.” She closed her eyes to aid her memory. “It was in a different language, but I recognize the illustrations.”
“In Isolde’s library?”
“I don’t know,” Seraph said. “For the first ten winters after Jes was born, I worked my way through the library of every mermora that came to me.”
Seraph opened her eyes and set aside the book. “I had Isolde’s after my brother died,” she said. “Once I settled at the farm with Tier, I think I had three more. By the time Jes was nine, I had twenty-five. I went through all twenty-five libraries before I admitted my father was right when he told me that the Elder Wizards did not include anything about the Orders in their writings.”
“You didn’t say anything about that when Brewydd had us go through Rongier’s library on the way to Taela.”
“Rongier the Librarian might have had books in his library that the wizards in my first twenty-five didn’t,” Seraph said. “Then, too, you and Brewydd know different languages than I do. We didn’t find anything—but we might have.”
Hennea stared off into space for a moment. “That was unusual, wasn’t it? How many Travelers, whatever their Order, do you suppose can read in any language other than our own and Common Tongue? To the Elder Wizards those libraries were invaluable, but for a Raven they are mostly just a reminder of what Travelers once were, good only for invoking on ceremonial occasions.”
“It sometimes seems to me that most of my life I’ve spent shaking my head, and saying, ‘What are the chances?’ ” Seraph fought to imitate Hennea’s calm and push away her anger. “My whole clan dies except for my brother and me—the very last of the descendants of Isolde the Silent. Then he is murdered, and I am rescued by the only Ordered solsenti I’ve ever heard of.”
“There are probably more of them out there,” Hennea murmured. “Who would look to see if a solsenti was Ordered?”
“Even the solsenti would have noticed a Raven when they tried to train him to be a wizard,” Seraph said.
“Really?” Hennea tilted her head. “I’m not so sure of that. Ravens can use ritual, chants, and components for spells. We just don’t need to unless we’re learning something we’ve never seen done before and can’t find the pattern of the magic any easier way. Affinities still apply. A mage whose affinity isn’t metalwork won’t be able to use magic to add virtue to a sword, whether he be Raven or just wizard. If a Raven thought he needed to use component and ritual, would he think to try spelling without it?”
“I see what you mean.”
“What else has happened that is unusual?” Hennea turned back to the book she’d been looking at.
Seraph looked at her hands. I should just stop the conversation here, she thought, because the rest of it is almost too painful to bear.