"Good wit" and "Fine touch" hummed his supporters in the crowd.
"Scale never precipitates! Even apprentices know that," fumed the alchemist in his bubbling deep voice. He waggled a fat, pale finger across the table at the other, his stung pride, emboldened by drink, making him undiplomatically firm. He sputtered for words and finally blurted, "Why-ask your royal magister, if you doubt me!"
A chill swept the assembled collegium to a silence broken only by the tremolo titter of impudent apprentices from the back benches of the knot. The rest fingered their goblets and took great interest in their wine (forgotten till that point for the heat of the debate) while struggling to make their just-gay faces as bland as coal. In most cases, it only made them the more uncomfortably conspicuous, until they resembled no more than a line of hungry monkeys caught with the food.
Only the graybeard seemed unperturbed, arrogantly confident of his station. With a knowing smirk, he turned the baffled Calimshite's gaze toward the adjacent table- an island from their company. A lone woman, overladen in finery ill-suited to her age or itself, stared numbly at the air-or perhaps at the half-empty bottle before her.
"Our royal magister," the enchanter sneered in an intentionally loud whisper. "An adventuress-nothing but a hedge wizard. Never properly schooled at all." The last he added with overemphasis. "And fond of her drink."
At her table, Brown Maeve-Magister to His Royal Highness King Janol I (aka, Pinch), the Lich-Slayer, the Morninglord Blessed-knew what was said even before it was finished… even now, in her cups. The collegium's contempt was hardly a secret. She had heard the words and seen the smirks all before: hedge wizard, upstart, rogue's whore-adventuress! Not a true wizard in any case-no scholarly talent, no proper training, wouldn't even know an alembic from a crucible. Worse still, there was no denying most of it. A prestidigitous courtier she was not.
It didn't make their words right, though. They were a pack of poxy charlatans to lay their airs upon her. She'd done more than the lot of them, including helping Pinch lay down the lich Manferic, and it weren't their place to look down to her.
The smugness of their lot spoilt her wine, and so she figured they'd earned a little present of her own making. She could research too, as they'd soon remember. It was just a simple spell, nothing like their fine studies after the philosopher's stone or any of that, but Maeve kept it handy for bestowing on arrogant asses.
With a wicked good cheer, the royal magister pushed aside her glass, rose majestically, and managed to trundle like an old cart toward the salon doors. As she lumbered past the wizard-thick table, that hypocritical lot fell into a hushed silence, as if they had been discussing the weather, Maeve nodded, smiled, with excessive politeness greeted them all by name, and serenely extended her hand to the worst offenders to her dignity. As each took up her hand, a faint warmth flowed from her fingers, and Maeve's smile grew and grew until she was beaming with genuine satisfaction.
"Good morrow, and may the dawn bring you new dis coveries," at last she said, disengaging herself from their group. Oh, they'd have discoveries, all right. She could scarce keep from hooting it out loud. There was no forgetting when you broke out with sores overnight-big ugly ones that were sure to put off wives and lovers. "Old drunk, am I?" She chuckled as she parted their company. Her gleeful echoes joined her as she wandered down the hall toward her own apartments.
Fiddlenose, sitting in the shade of the big fern that grew just in back of Goodman Uesto's granary, yawned a yawn that for his wee size threatened to transform the whole of his face into a single pit of pink throat ringed by fine white teeth. He could veritably swallow another brownie half his size-as if brownies were inclined to go around swallowing up their own kind. He was bored, and the big yawn was just one way he had to show it. As if part of a flowing wave, the yawn descended into a sour pucker of pinched irritability.
Where was that baleful cat?
Fiddlenose the brownie was tired of wasting his morning like a dull huntsman squatting in his blind. This was supposed to be fun-a prank and revenge on old farmer Uesto's calico torn. The twice-, no, thrice-cursed beast was the spawn of night terrors, the very hellion of farm cats, who managed to ruin all good, honest Fiddlenose's peace. Every night it howled, prowled, hissed, and spat till there wasn't a hope of either rest or joy for a proper house brownie. Too many times, it had smelled him out just as he was creeping indoors for a taste of grog and jam, or scared him out of his haymount nest as it went springing after the barn rats. Poor, suffering Fiddlenose couldn't stand it anymore. With the proper logic of an irate brownie, he had devised a revenge that was all out of proportion to the crime.
Only that cursed cat wasn't cooperating. He'd waited all morning with his twisted vines and stink-plant bladder, and still that feline monster hadn't showed. The shade under the fern was thick and stale, and Fiddlenose's eyes were steadily drooping into nap time.
Elsewhere, in a dingy ordinary in the meanest ward of Ankhapur, Will o' Horse-Shank, brownie by blood, opportunist by breeding, was in a sulk.
Fate's against me, he railed-venting in his own mind so no others could hear him. Two nights before, he was certain this morning he'd be in silk breeches and drinking firewine. It was sure he was a made man, and all by the wit of Mask.
This morning, though, he perched on a rickety old bench in Corlis's wineshop, still wearing the tattered hose he'd stolen from a child's laundry. Clutched like a great outlander drinking horn in his tiny hands was a battered pewter mug, half-filled with the cheapest sack old Corlis could pour-a pretty mean drink. Still, with no more than a ha' copper left in his purse, it was already more than Shank could afford. The brownie was not much heavier than a fat wharf-rat and barely up to a small man's shin, and the drink was already making good progress on his wee wits in these morning hours.
For the twentieth time, or at least as many times as it took to drink half the mug, Shank bemoaned the vile spin of Tymora's wheel that had reduced him to this treacherous state. For a week, he'd cozened an outlander merchant with a tale of dishonest captains, wreckers, smuggled goods, and a galley named Swiftoar, foxing the fool into letting Shank play the broker for the imaginary cargo. All it needed was another day, and the coney would have passed all his coin into Shank's hands and-heigh-ho! — that would have been the last of this little brownie!
But did the game play that way? No-the greedy fool had to talk around about his coming good fortune and that let out the truth. There was no captain, no Swiftoar, no cargo and, most of all, no coin for Shank to spirit off. Instead, Shank got curses and blows when he came to close the game-and all unjustly of course. It would have taught the outlander a proper lesson if Shank had made off with his cash.
He moaned it all again, even though there was no use in it, and swigged down another gulp of sour brew. The taste reminded him of the empty jingle in his purse. Corlis would be wanting coin for the drink, and Shank didn't have any. What he needed right now was for a quick and wealthy mark to walk through the door, something not very likely at this squalid ordinary.
"Too much joy or too much drink? Or a little of both?" a chipper, thin voice probed with just a touch of peevishness at having missed the fun.
Maeve stopped in the marbled hall, caught unawares by the stealth of her interrogator. Stealth wasn't that hard, considering the shadowed gloom between the pillars and the fact that the voice came up from somewhere around the height of her waist.