When did he notice my blue eyes? she thought a little wistfully, feeling for a moment like a girl a quarter her age.
And then, suddenly, she stiffened. But this changes everything! She had thought to let Lord Falk bring Brenna back to the Palace and somehow spirit her away from there before he could take her north to the Cauldron. But now she had, or soon would have, both Brenna and Karl. She had only to have Brenna taken to Goodwife Beth’s safe house. Verdsmitt was inside the Palace…
After twenty years, the pieces of her grand scheme were at last falling into place.
But they’d quickly fall out of place again if Falk found Brenna. She knew exactly how he meant to do that: knew that he would be calling on Tagaza to go to the Spellchamber and use the powerful spell created to locate the Heir.
Mother Northwind had always had a healthy respect for what the strongest MageLords could do with their hard magic, and so had laid emergency plans to disrupt the use of the Spellchamber.
It is time, she thought, to put those plans into effect. She smiled. And by destroying New Cabora City Hall… the guards on her carriage had told her of that, their news having come via the magelink that had also provided their orders… Lord Falk had even provided the perfect excuse for it, one that would have no one thinking that the timing was anything but coincidental when it stopped Tagaza from locating the true Heir.
And so she summoned one more magelink, and passed a brief message to the Commoner who answered… and thus, when she arrived at the Palace in the early morning light, she was not at all surprised to find all in confusion, the MageLords having just been forcibly reminded that they were not totally sufficient unto themselves; that they did, in fact, depend on the Commoners for many things, including stoking the great MageFurnace with the coal that other Commoners dug from under the rolling hills of the southeast.
Three Commoners and one Mageborn had died in the mayhem in the great chamber of the MageFurnace as water had poured onto the hot coals and flashed into scalding steam. A regrettable but acceptable price, Mother Northwind thought.
She felt certain High Raven would agree.
She allowed herself to be helped from the carriage and led to her sumptuous quarters not far from Falk’s own, hobbling along with her cane, a harmless and humble old woman.
CHAPTER 18
When Lord Falk returned from the Square, grim-faced, the heart of New Cabora lay in ruins, the Courthouse and the Grand Theater (where many of Verdsmitt’s plays had shown in triumph) having both suffered the same fate as City Hall. Falk had made it clear that the fault lay with the Common Cause, “common vandals,” he called them, who had murdered other Commoners with their foolish and futile sabotage of the MageFurnace, and who had now brought down just retribution on their city. “Why are you protecting them?” Falk shouted to the white-faced, staring crowds, silent except for sobbing children too young to understand why they had been forced out into the frozen streets at sword point. “Give me their leaders! Give me their Patron! Give me Prince Karl! There is someone within the sound of my voice who has the power to do all these things. There is someone else who knows who that person is. If they will not act, force them to! For the sake of your livelihoods, your homes, your families. Tell me who they are!”
His voice might have been falling on deaf ears, for all the reaction it got, but he knew he was speaking the truth. There were people in that crowd who knew the leaders of the Cause, or knew how to get to them, and Falk was confident they would not let their city be reduced to rubble over some petty concern about so-called freedom. Freedom to live in squalor and chaos, Falk thought, looking around at the Commoners in disgust. Poor. Benighted. Powerless. Did they not realize how much the MageLords had done for them? Did they think they would have survived, prospered to build New Cabora at all, if the MageLords had not made it possible to survive in this frozen northland in the first place?
Falk was tempted to leave it at that, but he knew the importance of mixing a little honey with the bitter vinegar. “These buildings can be rebuilt,” he said. “Not in one year, or five years, or ten years, but in one day, one week, one month. The magic that destroyed them can build them up again. Your city can be what it was… if you cooperate with me.” He scanned the faces again. “And if it is me you hate,” he said, “don’t think of it as cooperating with me. I serve King Kravon. Serve him in turn as duty demands, and I will be as pleased on his order to build up your city as I am sorrowful at having to tear it down.”
Still nothing. Falk found the crowd’s silent, steady regard slightly unnerving, as though they were measuring him against something and finding him wanting. But he shrugged off the feeling, turned, and jumped down from the statue’s pedestal. “Get me out of here,” he said to the guards. They formed a tight phalanx of blue and steel around him and marched him through the crowd, which parted in front of him and closed in behind him like water passing under a boat.
Back in the Palace, he first checked on the MageFurnace. As he had expected, the Mageborn had driven the water away as clouds of steam, sent out through the Chimneys. The fires were being stoked, the heat returning. The interruption in power had been minute, and if a few magelights had gone out, a few magelinks cut in mid-conversation, a few breakfasts left uncooked, and a few MageLords left unwashed, well, what of it? The Lesser Barrier had not been touched, for like the Great Barrier, it drew its power, via the King’s Keys, from the great fiery Cauldron in the north.
Where, if everything had gone as planned, Falk thought bitterly, he would soon have been traveling with that little vixen Brenna.
Had Tagaza located her? Tagaza couldn’t tell him. He had remained unconscious since the eruption of steam from the MageFurnace had interrupted his spell. No Healer had yet been able to wake him, or even figure out why he still slept.
No Healer currently in the Palace, at any rate. But Falk had another Healer to call on. If anyone could Heal Tagaza, it would be Mother Northwind.
And then he turned onto the broad boulevard leading up to the Palace from the bridge, and saw a carriage bearing his coat of arms being driven away from the main entrance, and quickened his pace, knowing that she had arrived.
He found her in the rooms he had set aside for her, not far from his own, sitting by the fire, knitting, as though she had never left her cottage. “Well, Lord Falk,” she said as he came in, before he could say anything at all, “I must thank you for sending your men-at-arms for me last evening. It saved me that long walk down to the manor to demand they take me to the Palace.”
“Good day to you, too, Mother Northwind,” Falk said dryly. “I hope you had a pleasant journey.”
Mother Northwind snorted. “Too old for small talk,” she said. “We both know why I’m here. You need me to question Davydd Verdsmitt for you. And I want to be here when you find Brenna and the Prince… poor lambs.”
“You are quite correct in the former,” Falk said. “Verdsmitt, if he is not the mysterious Patron, is at least very high up in the Common Cause. He can name names, people we can arrest and question in turn, until the whole foul web unravels. You heard what they did to the MageFurnace.”
“I heard,” Mother Northwind said sympathetically. “You poor MageLords. No running water for a whole morning!”
“The inconvenience was minor,” Falk said, refusing to be baited. “And the only people killed were Commoners. But as a symbol of rebellion… it could not be allowed to stand.”
“Rather like the buildings in New Cabora Square?” Mother Northwind chuckled. “I hear you’ve been making some ‘forceful’ speeches there.”
“Someone will give me information,” Falk said. “I don’t care how popular the Common Cause, there are those who will betray them to stop the destruction.”