“It’s not your fault.” Temar chose his words with exquisite care. “I know how difficult this is, Guinalle. I’ve thought just the same in the silence of the night, and wept for lack of answers and simple misery. Anyway, Nemith did more to bring down the Empire than you ever could. You know what he was like.” He faltered. “But we are alive and where there’s life, there must be hope and however much the world has changed around us, we can still look for warmth and succour to heal our hurts.”
“Can we?” Guinalle took both Temar’s hands and held them tight.
Vivid as a dream on waking, he remembered his desire the first time he’d seen her, his nervous awareness that she wasn’t some easy conquest like those many who roused his passing lust in his carefree youth. Memory sped through his painstaking courtship to linger on his astonished delight when she’d first accepted his kiss, permitted his decorous embraces and soon encouraged more. “Oh, don’t, Guinalle.” He tried to curb his embarrassment but felt a blush burning his cheeks.
“Couldn’t we offer each other a little solace?” she asked defiantly.
“You’re a fine one to talk about the ethics of Artifice, if this is how you’re going to behave!” Temar said crossly.
“You wanted to share everything with me.” Guinalle rebuked him with a memory of uncovering her nakedness in a secluded glade. “You wanted to marry me.”
“You declined that honour, Demoiselle,” Temar retorted, stung. But that wound was not as tender as it had been, he realised with some surprise. “Anyway, you were right; we were never meant to be more than friends.” The sour taint of Guinalle’s unguarded jealousy surprised him. “What’s Allin ever done to you?”
“Oh, no more than any other mage. Just dismissed my Artifice as quaint enchantment from a forgotten age, good for healing but no challenge to their crude and gaudy magic.” With the Artifice linking them, Guinalle’s sarcasm could not hide her hurt.
Temar found he wasn’t inclined to sympathy. “You’re exaggerating and you know it. Usara’s all but split his skull trying to work out where aetheric magic and wizardry might meet. He has nothing but respect for your lore. Saedrin’s stones, Guinalle, Artifice can leave a wizard mindless! Isn’t that enough superiority for you?” Temar fought a desire to take the demoiselle by the shoulders and give her a good shake.
“Once Usara’s worked out how to defend himself against such things, how much more interest will he have in me then?”
Temar saw she was mired in confusion over her feelings for the mage.
“Don’t you dare pity me!” she gasped, dropping his hands at once.
“We can’t go back, not any of us, Guinalle.” Temar rubbed at bruises left by her fingertips. “I’m not doing this with you, not now, not ever again.” He swallowed hard and glanced involuntarily across the beach. Mercenaries, yeomen and sailors were all going unconcerned about their business while he was knee deep in anguished emotion. “Let’s concentrate on the matter in hand, shall we? Debates over present, past or future will be entirely pointless if we’re dead at the hands of these pirates or their Elietimm friends.”
For a tense moment, he wondered if Guinalle was going to weep, storm off, or slap him in the face. Instead she girded her customary self-possession tight once more and held out her hand. “Halice will want to know what far-seeing has shown us.”
Temar seriously considered not taking it. Then he recalled what fits of pique had cost him in the past. Abandoning his aetheric studies to pay Guinalle back for her rejection of his youthful love, for instance. If he hadn’t done that he could work this far-seeing himself. If he were to truly lead these people as their Sieur, he had to know what their enemy was doing. Temar set his jaw, took Guinalle’s hand and tried to summon up every defence she’d taught him in case her feelings got the better of her again.
But Guinalle had turned her back on her own inner turmoil. Her seeking mind rose high above the islands of Suthyfer, intent on the echoes of hopes and desires whispering through the unseen aether. Her stern purpose brought them to the Nenuphar, captain and crew keeping alert watch. Guinalle wove their myriad thoughts into a vision of the empty sea between the headlands that marked the strait between the islands, bright sunlight dancing on the water. Temar saw the Eryngo reassuringly massive in the water, bright red paint weathered to a satin coral hue. Pennants at every masthead declared the ship’s determination to bar the way to any pirate. The Asterias cut broad circles in the sea a little way off, foam scoring the rippling surface as the lesser ship made sure no pirate lurked in the hidden corners of the coast. Her master stood by the foremast, feet solid, watchful and at one with his ship and men.
“This looks well enough,” Temar said with relief.
“Let’s see what else they’re up to.” Guinalle sounded as if her adamant discipline had never so much as splintered, let alone cracked to reveal her vulnerability.
Temar silently thanked Ostrin for his long-dead adepts and the way they had trained her and then winced as the poisonous discord around the pirates’ camp rang like a tocsin in his head. “Can you find Naldeth?” Allin was sure to ask him.
“I daren’t go so close.” Guinalle held herself aloof, the gravel strand a distant vision. “There’s precious little subtlety to their Artifice but even they’d feel me coming any nearer. I daren’t lead them to him.”
“That’s their sloop being rigged and readied.” Temar closed his eyes the better to study the picture painting itself inside his mind. “They’re up to something.”
“He’s not sure what he’s dealing with as yet.” Guinalle watched dispassionate as Muredarch walked to the water’s edge. “He can’t make a plan until he does.”
“We’re not dealing with a fool.” Temar didn’t need Artifice to tell him that.
“They’re coming north.” As Guinalle spoke, Muredarch stepped into a battered longboat with pale new wood hastily patching its wounds. The oarsmen pushed off for the deeper water of the channel. “His enchanters have told him we’re here.”
“What are they doing?” frowned Temar.
“Waiting for instruction.” Satisfaction coloured Guinalle’s thoughts. “It seems Ilkehan doesn’t encourage initiative.”
Temar watched the pirates coaxing the sloop against the discouraging wind Larissa was carefully spinning from the breeze of the open ocean.
“He’s going to offer a parley.” Guinalle dropped Temar’s hand.
He opened his eyes. “We’d better tell Halice.”
The corps commander’s reaction was immediate and uncompromising. “Vaspret! Signal the Dulse. We want her underway as soon as maybe. Ros! Get your troop together and ready for anything. This Muredarch wants to talk.”
“I’m coming too.” Temar caught Halice’s sleeve.
She looked at him, considering. “All right. Darni! You’re in command here. I can’t see how they could try anything but that doesn’t mean they won’t.”
The mercenaries sprang into action leaving Temar and Guinalle looking apprehensively at each other.
Usara and Allin came out of the cabin.
“What’s all the commotion?” the mage-girl asked, concerned.
“Muredarch’s sailing to parley with us,” Guinalle replied, voice steady.
Usara was watching her closely. “Do you suspect some deceit?”