“Well? What’s the fakery?” A younger man, unmistakably slurring his words through drink came in to the tavern. He was dragging a struggling girl, fingers biting into her arm as he forced her along. A frown gave his angled black brows a predatory air.
“Let me go! It’s no business of yours!”
The second man gave the girl a vicious shake. “Shut your mouth, you stupid slut.” She tried to hang on to the doorjamb and he slapped her hand away with a brutal oath. More men crowded round the doorway, some intent and indignant, others brought along by casual malice or idle curiosity. Many still had wine flagons in their hands.
Temar realised the girl was the one they had seen earlier carrying a baby.
“Masters, this is a quiet house.” The woman minding the ale casks stood a prudent distance from the thickset man. “We want no trouble.”
“You get trouble when you let some trickster use your place,” spat the man, taking a step forward to shove the woman back with one broad, calloused hand. “Where’s this seer?”
“It’s an insult to all rational thinking,” piped up someone from the back of the crowd at the door. An ominous murmur of assent backed his spite.
“Superstition. Falsehoods. Preying on an idiot girl’s folly.” The man emphasised each assertion with another shove, backing the woman hard up against her ale casks. “Taking her coin and telling her to go off Saedrin knows where after some feckless Lescari tinker we thought we were rid of?”
“Well rid,” the younger man panted, still struggling with the girl, who was trying to kick him, her face contorted with tears. “Until her belly swelled. Got his irons hot in your hearth, didn’t he, you whore?”
“I loved him,” screamed the girl in hopeless rage.
As the man gave her another vicious shake, she stumbled over a chair. Stretching her free hand out to save herself, she encountered a jug of ale. In one swift move, she smashed it on her tormenter’s head.
The crash of breaking crockery acted like a war horn on the mob outside. Men surged through the door, shoving tables and chairs aside.
“You Lescari are all the same, cheats!”
“Never set to and earn honest coin if you can steal it!”
“Go swallow yourself, you dripping pizzle!” A man who’d been sitting quietly over his ale stood up. Others braced themselves, ready resentments rearing their heads.
“Rational men have a duty to combat pernicious superstition,” one voice from the back of the mob rose in a sanctimonious bleat.
“Rationalists are soft in the head,” an incensed Lescari voice called out to considerable agreement.
“Soft as shit and twice as nasty,” shouted someone from the back room.
The rapid accents of latterday Toremal and sharp Lescari lilts left Temar struggling to understand but the mood of mutual hostility needed no explanation. He realised Allin was clutching his arm, trembling with fear. With a spreading mêlée at the outer door and indignant Lescari pushing through from the inner room, getting through the throng was going to be no easy task. Temar tucked Allin close behind him, keeping firm hold of her hand.
“Is there a way out through the yard, do you think?” she asked nervously.
Temar used elbows and boots to force a way into the back room, ignoring the protests of those few still seated. “There will be no more answers from the lady tonight,” he told them as he pushed Allin through into the outbuilding.
He looked at the door doubtfully. It wouldn’t take much to break down that single thickness of warped plank. The first sound of splintering furniture came from the front of the tavern, a startled yell and someone crying out in pain. Temar pulled the latchstring through, tying it as tight as he could.
“What’s going on?” Mistress Maedura was white and frightened but trying to calm Lennarda, who was rocking on her stool, moaning like an animal in pain.
“You saw some girl earlier, with a child,” Allin told her curtly. “Whatever you told her, it’s got her relatives all fired up.”
Maedura spread helpless hands. “It’s just what Lennarda sees and hears, echoes from the Otherworld.”
“You really do believe that, don’t you?” Temar paused on his way to look out of each window. Maedura stared at him in confusion.
“Never mind that,” Allin snapped, voice taut with anxiety. An outraged scream cut through the rising turmoil beyond the door and made Lennarda wail in confusion.
“We will help you leave here.” Temar strode to the door in the far corner of the room but opening it only revealed a large closet, two strides wide and less deep. His jaw dropped before the thud of something heavy against the painted planks of the door brought him swinging round. The noise outside sounded like a full-blown riot. Temar drew his sword, wondering what to do with growing unease.
Lennarda began shrieking, eyes wide and staring at the silvery steel. She backed into the corner, grabbing at her ragged hair.
“Put the blade away, you fool!” Maedura had tears on her cheeks. “She thinks you’re going to hurt her.”
“Into the closet, all of you—and that chest.” Allin ordered suddenly. She tried to lift the heavy coffer from the table.
Temar stepped forward to take the other rope handle. “Get her inside,” he yelled at Maedura, who was struggling with the frantic Lennarda. Once he had Allin and the chest inside he dragged the frenzied imbecile bodily towards the closet, Maedura following, nearly as hysterical as her daughter.
As the door to the outbuilding splintered and broke, Temar pushed the closet door shut, doing his best to brace himself against the frame. Barely a glimmer of light made its way through the cracks around the door and Temar felt the breath tightening in his chest. Was the darkness deepening, pressing in on him, threatening to steal away all sensation, as it had done before?
“You wanted us in here, Allin,” he panted. “Now what?”
“Now this.” She brought her hands together on a flash of incandescent scarlet that changed in a heartbeat to azure flame that danced around the four of them like a silken veil. Maedura’s mouth was a silent gape of terror but Lennarda’s pitiful cries stopped, to Temar’s inexpressible relief. The unfortunate girl put forward one bitten finger to touch the radiance but the teasing light retreated from her groping hand.
There was a crash as the table in the room outside was thrown over, stools clattering in its wake. “As quick as you can, Allin.” Temar struggled to hold the door closed as someone gave it an insistent shove.
Allin took a deep breath. The intensity of the blue light all around grew rapidly more intense, reflecting back from the whitewashed walls. Maedura and Lennarda faded into nothingness before Temar’s astounded eyes. Everything faded, vanishing into the brilliant flare of power. Heat enveloped him, the dry warmth of a furnace hearth. The light flashed incandescent and he had to shut his eyes but the radiance still beat against them, printing the pattern of the blood vessels against the back of his eyelids. His face began to sting under the searing ferocity of the heat and just as Temar thought he could not stand it an instant longer the light dimmed as suddenly as it had arisen. He shivered and coughed on an acrid smell of burned wool.
“What the—”
Temar opened his eyes as Ryshad remembered his manners and swallowed whatever barracks obscenity he’d nearly let slip.
“Hello, Ryshad.” Temar couldn’t help an idiotic grin. They were in the D’Olbriot library he realised, carried right into the heart of the residence by Allin’s magic. The chest was cooling gently beside his feet as it seared a black mark into the costly carpet. Ryshad sat at the table with the Sieur D’Olbriot, an array of papers in front of him, a penknife in one hand and a half-mended quill in the other. The Sieur was leaning back in his chair, his expression quizzical.
“My compliments, my lady mage!” Temar turned to Allin and swept a low bow, unable to stop himself laughing.
“What in the name of all that’s holy do you think you are doing, girl?” Casuel was standing on the far side of the mantel, a book open in his hands. His savage question overrode Allin’s nervous giggle and Temar saw all the delight in her achievement instantly wiped from her face.