“Enough? No. I’ve had enough, that’s what.” He started to say more, but someone rapped on the door.
Crossing to it, he pressed his palm to the metal plate above the handle. A section of the door turned transparent, like a window. Rexei Longshanks stood there, clad in the fresh clothes he had brought into his bedroom from his sitting room this morning, but still looking more male than female. Opening the door, he gestured her inside.
“In you get,” he ordered. She stepped inside, lean and lanky and looking like a nervous young man not yet old enough to shave. Her brown eyes widened when they alighted on Gabria’s face at his desk. About to introduce them, Alonnen hesitated, then leaned in close and whispered, “Which would you prefer to be introduced as, a lad all the time, or a lass while you’re here and a young man while you’re out beyond the dam?”
She blinked and gave him a startled look. Cheeks warming to a charming shade of pink, she ducked her head a little. “I . . . don’t know?”
He patted one of the arms holding his book of tales to her chest. “It’s okay. We have lots of girls running around with boy names and boy clothes, but they are safe here, and they know it. Nobody’s going to blink if you announce three weeks from now that you’re not actually a lad . . . and a few will guess it outright, but they won’t tell. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” Nudging her inside, he shut the door and led Rexei over to his desk. “Gabria, this is Rexei Longshanks. Rexei, Gabria Springreaver. Longshanks is a journeyman in the Gearmen’s Guild. Springreaver is a master in the Guild Which Is Usually Not Named . . . but which is giving me a bloody headache this morning.”
Gabria smiled shyly. “Hello. I think I’ve heard of you. Something about a . . . melody-chant . . . to hide energy traces?”
Rexei . . . acted like a boy, the kind who was mildly interested in Springreaver as a person but not as a potential flirtation candidate. She looked over the other woman, who was clad in felted gray trousers, a cream and gray knitted sweater—without any breast bindings—and a couple of long pins skewering her golden curls in a knot at the back of her head. Rexei then shrugged diffidently and dipped her own dark, short-haired head. “Yeah. Just something my mum taught me.”
“Well, the more you can teach the trick of it to, the more we’ll all be grateful,” Gabria said, and gave Longshanks a warm smile.
Alonnen felt odd. That half-shy smile was almost flirtatious. Not quite, but it irritated him to think of one of his assistants flirting with the lad . . . who was a lass. The talker-box squawked again. Shaking the feeling off, Alonnen focused on what his guild needed and not on what he was feeling. “Right. Call them all back and cancel the shipments.”
Gabria blinked, shocked. “What?”
“We’re not taking them.”
“But, sir . . .” she tried to protest, flabbergasted.
“We are not taking them in, because we cannot take them in. It doesn’t matter if I craft eight hundred rooms or eight thousand, Springreaver,” Alonnen told her. “We cannot feed four hundred, never mind eight hundred or eight thousand, we cannot clothe them, and we cannot tend to them. Particularly as most will be suffering from various physical, mental, and emotional traumas. A few, we can manage, but not hundreds and thousands.
“Not to mention it’s bloody winter. Nobody travels far in winter. If everyone tried to ship them all here, even if they didn’t freeze to death in transit—which is a chance I’m not willing to take—the priests would know exactly where they’re headed, and come looking for the Vortex. Two or eight or twenty, we can hide—barely for the latter—but four hundred we cannot, and I will not compromise the safety of this place.”
Longshanks looked between the two and lifted her chin, looking less like a callow youth and more like a young but mature man. Or a young but mature woman. “He’s right,” she stated, her low voice somewhere between a tenor and contralto. “There’s not much travel in winter. Even the Messenger Guild doesn’t go far from a particular town in deep winter, unless it’s truly urgent.”
“Well, they can’t keep the . . . ah, victims . . . where they are,” Gabria argued.
“Why not?” Rexei challenged her. “Every single one of those victims came from a guild, or was the child of a guildmember, and it is that guild’s responsibility to help care for its members and their immediate family members when they are injured beyond their capacity to contribute. That’s why everyone pays guild dues in the first place. Just because most of these guildmembers haven’t been free in years is no excuse for their parent guilds to shirk their oathbound duty to those members.”
Her words triggered a memory. Alonnen hurried over to one of the cabinets and started rummaging through it. “If I remember correctly . . . the agreement one of my predecessors . . . no, not this cupboard . . . The agreement one of my predecessors wrested out of the other guilds . . . no, no . . . ah, this cabinet . . . was to send a tithe of goods, foods, and coins to this Guild in exchange for taking in their mage-born members. And in exchange, we would train them to hide their powers and . . . here it is! It’s getting old. We’ll have to make a copy of it . . .”
“Train them to hide their powers, and . . . ?” Rexei asked, curiosity in her searching gaze. Both she and Gabria watched Alonnen unroll the parchment farther, crinkling the material as he searched for the exact words he wanted.
“And how to help shelter and protect the others . . . within their original guilds. There! Right there, inked and ratified by a quorum of Guild Masters,” he stated, tapping the middle of the scroll he had found and untied. “The assertion that . . . ‘the parent guilds shall remain responsible for the upkeep of their mage-empowered members.’ Right there, plain as can be. Just as a Gearman receives both an income from his current or highest-ranked guild and a stipend from the Consulate to which he or she is currently attached, so shall mages be granted all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges due to them by their original guilds as well as this one. Only even more so, as the Consulates do receive a tithe from all guilds within a given jurisdiction, because they act openly, but the Mages Guild cannot be acknowledged openly, so the other guilds must take up the slack.
“At least, until now,” he said. “Relax, I am not going to make the decision to expose ourselves anytime soon,” Alonnen added firmly as both Gabria and Rexei flinched. “Gabria, get on the talker-box to everyone and send out a message to hold those shipments in each town for now and to watch over them carefully. Phrase it, oh . . . that they are to be tended carefully so that they’ll be in excellent shape for later transport at some point after winter has ended. Emphasize that we have no room available to store any such shipments, and that they are required by guild charter to hold on to and care for that cargo until we send for it.”
“And if they ask when, exactly, the ‘items’ in question can be shipped?” Gabria asked him.
“Stall,” he ordered her flatly. “Don’t give any exact dates, just point out that shipping anything in the depths of winter has too many hazards at this point in time.”
“Don’t forget to emphasize how awful early spring weather is, too—wet and cold, with threats of sudden ice storms,” Longshanks offered. “Plus muddy conditions if the local Roadworks Guild hasn’t been keeping up with repairs, the constant threat of floods . . . all manner of troubles. The only really good season for traveling is summer, and even then, broiling heat and thunderstorms are always a hazard.”