“Random has a clerk who speaks Ifriquy’a. Or Wahele or Bemba, I forget which.” Master Pye took his own wax tablet, wrote a note and put his ring on it to seal it. “Take this to Ser Gerald.”
Edmund took the tablet.
Master Pye gestured with his hand. “I think you should run.”
Ser Gerald Random came in person, stumping along with his master clerk who handled all his foreign shipments.
His clerk wore a gold ring and black cloak like a man of property. He bowed with his hands together.
The black man returned the bow most courteously.
The clerk spoke.
The black man answered.
After two exchanges, the black man spoke at some length.
On the fourth exchange, he smiled. It transformed his face.
The clerk looked up. “He’s a messenger. He’s looking for-for Magister Harmodius.”
“He’s a little late,” Ser Gerald said.
“He says he came ashore from the Venike ships; that the Golden Leopard refused to serve or house him, and he intended to leave Harndon at first light.” The man spread his hands and smiled. “He apologized for killing four men, but said that they attacked a woman, and he cannot allow such a thing.”
Two hours had passed since the two matched giants in ebony and ivory had stumbled into the yard. They’d had enough reports of the carnage in Palm Alley to know who had attacked Blanche and who had died.
“He seems unconcerned,” Ser Gerald growled.
His clerk shook his head. “Boss, I was there a year. I met men like this. They have a saying, ‘That which is, is.’ And they say, Inshallah, which means, ‘Let it be as God wills.’”
“Deus Veult!” Ser Gerald said. He nodded.
Ser Ricar nodded.
“No wonder they get along,” Edmund said, not very loud.
Master Pye leaned in. “I have a shop to run. We have a hundred items to deliver in fifteen days. And my gut feeling is that this is going to make a storm of shit.” He looked at Ser Ricar. “Can you hide him?”
Ser Ricar nodded.
The clerk spoke to the infidel, and he shook his head vehemently.
“He says he has a mission and he must go. He says that if we’ll hide him for one night, he’ll be gone by daybreak.” The clerk smiled. “He says if we’d retrieve his horse, he’d be eternally grateful.”
Ser Gerald rolled his eyes.
“Grateful enough for me to get a long look at his sword?” Master Pye asked.
An hour later, while Ser Gerald dickered with a bored Venike factor for a sea-sick stallion, all the apprentices and journeymen gathered in the Master’s shop around the clean table he kept there. Nothing went on that table but finished metal and parchment; today he laid his wife’s third best linen table cloth atop it after sweeping it, and the infidel knight-all the apprentices agreed he must be a knight-drew his sword and laid it on the table.
The strong daylight from the gable overhead made the blade seem to ripple and move.
Every metalworker in the room sighed.
The sword was a hand longer than the longest sword the shop had ever made, and swept in a gradual curve from the long, two-hand hilt all the way to the clipped point with its rebated false edge. The grip was white ivory from the undead mammoths of the deep south, and the crossguard was plain steel. Set into the blade-a masterpiece of pattern welding-were runes.
“Are the runes silver, Master?” Edmund asked. The colour of the runes was just barely perceptible as different from the rest of the blade.
Master Pye shook his head. “Oh, mercy no, Edmund. They are steel. Steel set into the steel.”
“Look at the finish,” murmured Duke. He had become the shop’s expert of finishing, and he now had a dozen boys working for him.
Sam Vintner, the most junior man present, was trying not to breathe, but he sighed. “So beautiful!” he said.
Tom leaned very close. “Magicked,” he said.
The infidel was on his toes, watching them very carefully. He was very tense.
The clerk made reassuring noises.
“He says-he says that in his own country, he would never allow any but his master or the Sultan to touch his sword. He says his master has filled it with power.”
Master Pye nodded. “Aye, lads. It’s full of power.” He went to a cabinet in the wall behind his prie-dieu and opened it with a word. The journeymen all knew what it was-a secret cabinet with a hermetical lock. Only the older boys knew how to open it-it was where the precious metals were kept.
Master Pye took out a set of spectacles that appeared to have lenses of faceted jewels. He leaned over the sword and put the jewels over his eyes.
“Sweet Mary, Queen of the heavens and mother of God,” he said.
He took them off and handed them to Edmund, who had never used them before. In fact, Edmund, now the senior journeyman in a shop big enough to be called a factory, was learning that Master Pye had more secrets than a necromancer.
Edmund put them on. The cabinet shone with energy in mage light.
The sword lit the room.
“What do you see, lad?” Master Pye asked him.
“The sword!” Edmund said.
“Aye,” Master Pye said. “It is a sword in the aethereal, too.” He pointed at the cabinet, which was merely a point source in mage light. “Things that are magicked are like shadows, and the hermetical praxis burns like a flame in the aethereal.”
“But this is a sword,” Edmund said. He took off the glasses and handed them to Tom, who was bouncing impatiently.
The infidel was still nervous. He spoke.
The clerk translated, after a long pause. “He asks if any of us know Harmodius.”
Tom put a hand on his master’s arm. “He’s got a magick ring,” he said, looking through the jewels at the paynim.
“Aye. He’s trouble, and no mistake. What do you boys reckon, when you see a sword that’s a sword in both the real and the aethereal?” Master Pye was pedantic, because he was always teaching.
They all looked at each other.
Edmund said slowly, “That it will function as a sword. In the aethereal, too.”
Master Pye gave him the glance of approval that they all treasured. He was not big on praise, was Master Pye. But he was more than fair. “Indeed, boys. That’s what is called a Fell Sword. Except that that’s a Fell Sword that will cut in the real or in the aethereal.” He bent over it and fitted a very pragmatic and ordinary loupe in his eye.
“I wonder who made it?” he asked.
The clerk repeated the question, and the infidel knight began to answer. He spoke for some time, and long before he was done, the clerk began writing.
“He says his master re-made it. But he says that it was made more than a thousand years ago.”
Edmund all but choked.
Master Pye nodded. “Ahh!” he said, with utter delight. “It is one of the six!” He lifted the sword from the table, and in that gesture, he was transformed from a tall, ungainly man with bulgy eyes and bad breath to a hero of legend whose shadow fell over the table like a figure of menace.
“Who is your master, my lord?” he asked.
The clerk repeated the words.
The infidel spoke. “Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad bin ’Aḥmad bin Rušd.” He bowed. His eyes were on the sword.
Master Pye smiled. “I confess to a very boyish inclination to try and cut something with it.” He carefully put it on the table, and returned to being a bent-shouldered man in late middle-age with a fringe of hair and bulging eyes. “His master is Al Rashidi.”
The journeymen all breathed in together.
“The Magus!” Edmund said.
Master Pye pointed at the tiny sign of an eye emerging from the sun. “The very same.” He offered his right hand to the infidel.
The black man took his hand.