A great circular dome of wood was hoisted into place and laid gently over the newly positioned glass. Satisfied, the woman turned and started off again.
“You are a brave woman, Theophila,” Shaene puffed, struggling himself to catch his breath in the mountain air and keep up with her. “Let’s go back inside now, so you might rest.”
The woman eyed him scornfully. “Rest? I have a last panel to fire, Shaene, and the color formula isn’t right yet. I’ve tried everything I know—different types of ash in the melt, stirring with iron posts to shade the purple, baking it longer. It’s still not true. I may have to send you or Sandy off to Yarim for some different metal ores to experiment with.”
Shaene laughed in a sudden bark of amusement.
“You had best send me, then, Theophila. Sandy won’t have no part of going to Yarim, but you should tell him you’re sendin’ him anyway; it will be fun to watch.”
The woman showed no particular interest, trying to avoid being trapped in conversation with the Canderian artisan. “Sandy will go where I direct him.”
“Yes, lady,” Shaene said hastily. “But he’ll turn white when you tell him he has to go. I’d like to watch, if I may,” he added lamely.
The woman stopped and leveled her gaze at him for the first time. “Why would he turn white?”
Shaene leaned forward conspiratorially. “He came from there a few years back,” he imparted importantly. “He’s terrified of what he left behind.”
“And what was that?” Her tone became suddenly warm, sweet and thick, like malt.
Shaene looked into her endlessly deep eyes, saw the corners of her mouth turn up in a sensuous smile, and blinked rapidly, trying to quell the swelling that was coming in response. She is so beautiful, he thought, beautiful and alone. If it has been as long for her as it has for me—
“A witch,” he said, his voice rumbling with a huskiness it had not had a moment before. “A hideous woman, or so he says, the mistress of his old guild. Evil incarnate, he said. But then, what can you expect from so young a lad? He knows nothing of the world.” He forced a laugh, trying to sound debonair. “And how truly evil women can be.”
The woman’s forehead furrowed, her brows drawing together darkly.
“Sandy?” she said aloud, half to herself.
“Oh, well, his name is actually Omet,” Shaene said, wiping the sweat of exertion off his brow with a stained handkerchief. “I call him Sandy because of the desert he comes from.”
“Yarim isn’t sandy,” the woman said distantly, as if her mouth were still engaged in a conversation her mind had long abandoned. “It’s clay. Red clay.”
Shaene shrugged, then gestured to the guards at the entrance to the Cauldron as they approached.
“Just a nickname,” he said. “So shall I meet you back at the kilns, or in the tower workroom?”
The woman turned to him and smiled broadly, then drew close to him in agonizingly slow steps.
“Neither,” she said sweetly. “You have been working far too hard, Shaene; I don’t want to compromise you.” She chuckled, giving him a meaningful look. “Not that way, at least.”
“Ill—urgh,” Shaene fumbled. “What—what do you want me to do, then?”
“Wait for me in your quarters. I have some cleanup to attend to, and then I will join you for supper.”
Shaene nodded dumbly as the Panjeri woman winked at him, then turned and walked into the tunnel that led back into the Bolg seat of power.
Something in his head did not add up.
But he was much too far past the point of the clarity of reason to do the figuring.
46
Old Barney led Ashe and Achmed out the back door of the Hat and Feathers. As soon as they stepped outside, the smoke of hickory wood was cleared from their heads by the fresh sea wind, itself still heavy with ash, but clearing.
Barney gestured as they passed the remains of a livery, the iron hitching posts out front the only survivors of the fire that had claimed it.
“I’ll procure four horses for you, three riders and a packhorse,” he said, not slowing his gait. “They’ll be here when you are ready to leave. If you need but three, leave whichever you judge to be least hale.”
“Thank you,” Ashe said; Achmed nodded.
All around them the wharf was growing busy with passersby, workman clearing away the rubble of the burnings, urchin children begging alms, fishermen bringing in the day’s catch, hauling nets that had seen better days’ bounty.
The closer they came to the waterfront, the stiffer the wind became. At high gusts it was almost a struggle to stand upright; after one particularly violent squall Barney turned to them and, seeing their hair and veils plastered against their faces by the wind and spray, laughed aloud.
“Welcome to Traeg, by the way,” he said, holding up a crooked arm to shield himself from the gale. ” Tis our claim in history, the home of the wind in this part of the world, or at least a place it feels comfortable enough in to stay for long stretches without abating.”
How appropriate, Ashe thought as they followed the barkeep off the loosely cobbled road and across a sandy bluff. The great Kinsman, a Brother of the Wind, makes his home near Traeg. It’s fitting.
Barney stopped a dozen yards from the edge of the bluff, pointing down a rocky train to the beach.
“If you’re to find him, you’ll find him down there most likely, m’lords,” he said, pulling his hat down farther over his eyes. “He’s sometimes out near the breakwater, or walking near the seawall, though some days he remains in his keep, attending to whatever business an ancient hero attends to. But do have a care; there are sometimes wastrels and floaters around these parts, beggars, sailors that were tossed off their ships when their captains put into port here and refused to be allowed back aboard. They are a ragged lot, with desperation in their eyes; hunger’ll do that. I used to bring food to them occasionally, the day’s leavings, until they fell upon me and beat me bloody one day. Since then I’ve stayed clear of the beach. Watch your backs.”
“Thank you,” Ashe said, giving his hand to the old man, resting the other on his arm. “For this, and for what you did those many years ago to spare Rhapsody. When I find her, I will bring her by so that you two might visit and reminisce.”
The old man smiled sadly, but said nothing.
He stood and watched as the sovereigns made their way down the rocky path to the beach below the bluff, then walked to the bluffs edge and looked down from below.
He could see them in the distance, making their way across the sand to the water’s edge, looking up and down the shoreline, buffeted by the fierce wind.
Barney then looked out at the beach at the foot of the bluff. The tide was rising, the waves creeping ever closer, rolling in amid a swirl of windy froth.
In the wet sand at the water’s edge was a strange drawing, a vast picture of simple lines, depicting a skull, Barney thought, or perhaps, upon second reflection, it was a head, its eyes set wide apart in a shallow, soft face, the line of the mouth missing below the flat nose.
As if the lips were fused.
The seneschal put the spyglass to his eye, scanning the black lava coastline, watching the breakers batter the jagged rocks below the promontory.
It was a sight that had come to haunt him not only in his waking hours, but in his dreams as well. As a demonic host, Michael had little need for sleep, passing a few hours in a sort of dreamlike meditation, the voice of the F’dor droning in his mind like an endlessly crackling fire.
It was during those times that the promontory appeared in his inner vision, as if it were mocking him. That jagged cliff, coming to a point over the rocky water, seemed to laugh as the brutal tide smashed over it.