The Innocent Mage Read online

  Most of the stallholders were his own people, Olken, dark-haired and industrious, selling their wares with cheerful ferocity. Fresh fruit, vegetables, butchered meat, live chickens, cured fish, candles, books, jewellery, saddlery, furniture, paintings, haircuts, bread, clocks, sweetmeats, pastries, wool, work clothes, fancy clothes … it seemed there was nothing a man couldn’t buy if he had a yearning, and the money.

  ‘Ribbons! Buy yer pretty ribbons here, six cuicks a dozen!’

  ‘Teshoes! Ripe teshoes!’

  ‘Oy! Mind how ye go there, lad! Mind how ye go!’

  Asher spun on his heel and stumbled clear just as a bull handler, chocolate-brown beast in tow, ambled past on his way to the Livestock Quarter. The bull’s polished nose ring flashed in the sunshine, and its splayed hooves clacked on the cobblestones.

  ‘’Ere, you great lump, git out of me way!’ grumbled the fruit seller, a fat Olken woman with her dark hair straggled back in a bun, her bright green dress swathed in a juice-stained apron and a brace of plump pink teshoes in one capable hand. ‘You be trippin’ up me customers!’

  Because he’d sworn a private promise to ask whoever he could, he said to her, ‘Would you be needin’ a body to hire?’

  The fruit seller winked at the crowd gathered about her barrows and cackled. ‘Thanks, sonny, but I already got me a man wot’d make two of you, I reckon, so just be on yer way if you ain’t buyin’ none of me wares!’ A roll of her meaty shoulders heaved her abundant bosom, and her lips pursed in a mockery of invitation.

  Around him, laughter. Hot-faced, Asher waited till the ole besom’s back was turned, nicked a teshoe from the pile at the front of the stall and jumped into the swift-flowing stream of passers-by.

  He finished the fruit in three gulps and licked the tart juice off his stubbly chin. It was all the breakfast he’d get. Lunch, too, and maybe even dinner if he didn’t find work today. The purse tucked into his belt was ominously flat; it had taken nearly all his meagre savings just to get here, and then last night’s board had gobbled up most of the rest. He had enough for one more night’s lodging, a bowl of soup and a heel of bread. After that, he was looking at a spot of bother. But even as doubt set its gnawing rat teeth in his guts, he felt a wild grin escape him.

  He was in Dorana. Dorana. The great walled City itself. If only Da could see him now. If his brothers could see … they’d puke their miserable guts out, right enough.

  Ha.

  Long before devising the plan that had brought him here, he’d dreamed of seeing this place. Had grown up feeding that dream on the stories Ole Hemp used to tell the eager crowd of boys who gathered round his feet of an afternoon, once the boats were in and the catch was cleaned and gutted and the gulls were squabbling their fill on the pier.

  Ole Hemp was the only man in Restharven who’d ever seen the City. Sprawled on his favourite bench down by the harbour, puffing on his gnarly pipe, he used to tell tales that set all their hearts to thumping and nigh started their eyes right out of their heads.

  ‘Dorana City,’ Ole Hemp would say, ‘be so big you could fit Restharven in it twenty times over, at least. Its houses and hostelries be tall, like inland trees, and painted every colour under the sky. And its ale houses, well, they never run dry, do they. And the smells! Enough to spill the juices from yer mouth in a river, for in their kitchens they roast pigs and lambs and fat juicy bullocks over fire pits so big and deep they’d hold a whole Restharven fambly, near enough.’

  And the listening boys would sigh, imagining, and rub their fish-full bellies.

  But there was more, Hemp would say, so hushed and awestruck his voice sounded like the foam on the shingle once all the waves had run back to the sea. In Dorana you could see Barl’s Wall itself, that towering golden barrier of magic bedded deep into the sawtooth mountain range above and behind the City.

  ‘See it?’ the boys would gasp, unbelieving, no matter how many times they’d heard the story.

  ‘Oh aye,’ Old Hemp assured them. ‘Barl’s Wall ain’t invisible, like the spells sunk deep in the horizon-wide reef that stops all boats entering or leaving the calmer waters between coral and coast. No, no, Barl’s Wall be a great flaming thing, visible at noon on a cloudless blue day. Keeping us safe. Protecting every last Olken man, woman and child from the dangers of the long-abandoned world beyond.’

  That was when somebody would always ask. ‘And what about the Doranen, Hemp? Does it protect them too?’ And Hemp would always answer: ‘Course it do. Reckon they’re like to build a wall as won’t save their own selves first and foremost?’

  But he always said that quietly, as though they could hear him, even though the nearest Doranen lived over thirty miles away. For Doranen ears were magic ears, and they weren’t the sort of folk who took kindly to criticism.

  Unsettled and suddenly homesick, Asher shook himself free of memories then looked up and over the marketplace into the distance beyond the City, where Barl’s Wall shimmered in the morning sun. Ole Hemp had been right about that much, any road: there the Wall was, and there it would stand, most like until the end of time itself.

  A laughing group of Doranen sauntered by. Asher couldn’t help himself: he stared.

  They were a tall race, the Doranen. Hair the colours of silver and gold and ripe wheat and sunshine, looped and curled and braided with carelessly expensive jewels. Eyes clear and fine, glass hues of green and blue and grey, and their skin white, like fresh milk. Their bones were long and elegant, lightly fleshed and sheathed in silk, brocade, velvet, linen, leather. They carried themselves like creatures apart, untouched, untouchable, and wherever they walked the dust of the marketplace puffed away from them in deference.

  That was magic … and they wore it like an invisible cloak. Wrapped it around their slender shoulders and kept it from slipping with the haughty tilt of their chins and the way they placed their fine-shod feet upon the ground, as though flowers should spring blooming and perfumed in their wake.

  Down Restharven way, you’d hardly see a Doranen from one end of the year to the next. The king, at Sea Harvest Festival. The tax collector. The census taker. One of their fancy Pothers, if a good old-fashioned Olken healer couldn’t fix your gripes or your broken bones for you. Other than that, they kept themselves to themselves on large country estates or in the kingdom’s bigger towns and here, of course, in the capital. What they did to amuse themselves, Asher had no idea. Farmed and fished rivers and grew grapes and bred horses, he supposed, just like his own people. Except, of course, they used magic.

  Asher felt his lip curl. Living your life with magic … it wasn’t natural. These fancy yeller-headed folk with their precious powers to do near on everything for them, to make the world bend to their wishes and whims, who’d never raised the smallest blister in all their lives, let alone an honest sweat … what did they understand about the world? About the way a man should be connected to it, should live steeped in its tides and rhythms, obedient to its subtle voices?

  Nowt. For all their mysterious, magical powers, the Doranen understood nowt.

  With an impatient, huffing sigh, he moved on. Standing about like a shag on a rock wasn’t going to get him any closer to finding a job.

  With his elbows tucked in and one hand hovering protectively over his purse, he navigated the crowded spaces between the market stalls, asking each stallholder for work. The little girls back home, picking winkles at low tide, put fewer shells in their gunny-sacks than the rejections he collected now.

  His heart was banging uncomfortably. This wasn’t the way his dreams had gone at all. He’d reckoned finding a job’d be a damn sight easier than this …

  Scowling, he stopped before one of the few Doranen stalls in the marketplace. The pretty young woman tending it smiled at him and snapped her fingers. The cunningly carved and painted toy dog prancing among the other toys immediately barked and turned a somersault. With another Doranen finger-snap a jolly fat clown dressed in spangled red began juggling three yellow balls. T
he little dog yapped and tried to snatch one out of the air.

  The stall’s other onlookers laughed. Just in time, Asher caught and swallowed a smile. Snorting, he turned his back on the dog and the clown and the pretty young woman and stumped away through the streaming crowd. Bloody Doranen. Couldn’t even flummery toys to amuse spratlings without reaching for a spell.

  At the heart of the marketplace stood a fountain, spewing water like a whale. Its centrepiece was a carved greenstone statue of Barl, with arms outstretched and a thunderbolt grasped in one fist. Beneath the bubbling surface, trins and cuicks winked and flashed in the sunshine. Asher fished a single precious copper cuick from his purse and tossed it in.

  ‘It’s a job I be needin’,’ he said to the silent face above him. ‘Nowt fancy, and all in a good cause. Reckon y’could see your way clear to helpin’?’

  The statue stayed silent. Moisture slicked its carved green cheeks like tears … though what Barl had to cry about, he surely didn’t know. Turning his back, Asher slumped onto the lip of the fountain’s retaining wall. Not that he’d expected the statue to actually speak. But he’d half hoped for some kind of answer. An inspiration. A bloody good idea. For sure he wasn’t the most regular of chapel-goers, but like everybody else in the kingdom, he did believe. And he obeyed the Laws. All of them. That had to be good for something.

  He refused to accept his dream was dead before ever it drew breath. Somewhere in this noisy walled City there had to be an Olken in need of an honest young man with a strong back and a willingness to put in a long day’s toil for a hot meal, a soft bed and fair pay at the end of it. Some kind of working man, or woman. No point botherin’ with any of the fancy Olken. They were almost as bad as the Doranen. Fancy City Olken with fancy City houses and soft City hands and more money than sense, they’d be wanting workers – no, staff – with references and posh accents and clothes worth a year’s catch of mackerel. He had no use for that malarkey, and the folks that did would have as little use for him.

  No. He was a Restharven fisherman born and bred and he knew his worth. Somewhere in this City he’d find someone else who did too. Statue or no statue, he was going to get hisself that job.

  He had to. He had a fortune to make and promises to keep.

  Cutting through the babble of noise in the square, the indignant bellow of a cow. Asher snapped out of his slump. Of course. The Livestock Quarter. Fool. He should’ve tried there first, ’stead of traipsing from stall to stall getting nowt but a fistful of ‘no’ for his trouble. In the Livestock Quarter he’d find farmers, cattlemen. His kind of folk. For certain sure there’d be somebody there wantin’ the kind of service Asher of Restharven could provide.

  He jumped up, hope rekindled. On the other side of the square, sound and movement distracted him. Shouting. Whistles. Applause. Glimpsed between the market stalls and crowding bodies, a flash of dark heads and blue and crimson livery: the City Guard, marching down the sloping road from the palace, which gleamed like a settled seagull up on the hill above the City.

  Asher went to look. The Livestock Quarter wasn’t going anywhere, and he was curious. Five minutes here or there weren’t like to make a difference.

  ‘Way now!’ a stern voice shouted, carrying over the bubble and froth of the marketplace. ‘Make way for His Highness Prince Gar!’

  Asher felt himself jostled and bumped forward with the rest of the crowd as it surged and seethed around him. He didn’t understand the commotion. Why get so excited just because the prince was coming? The prince lived here in the City, didn’t he, along with the rest of the royal family? Didn’t City folk get to see him most every day of the week? Aye, they did. So why break a body’s toes to lay eyes on him now?

  But eyen as he muttered and cursed and shoved back, he had to admit to a breath of excitement. Not even Ole Hemp had laid eyes on a member of the royal family. This would put him one up, and no mistake. Da would be tickled pink.

  With the roadway cleared of shoppers and stallholders, the prince was free to ride his bay blood horse with only one hand on the reins. It was a beautiful animal, mincing and dappled and harnessed in jewels. Asher felt his throat close in envy. That’s what being a prince got you: a wondrous beast like that one, and a hundred more at home just like it, most prob’ly.

  For the first time in his life, he was fleetingly sorry to be himself.

  The approaching prince looked as well bred as his horse. His corn-silk hair, as long as a girl’s, was caught in a tail at the nape of his neck. His green silk shirt and tan leather breeches were immaculate. The gloss on his black leather boots was blinding. On his head gleamed a beaten silver circlet of rank, studded with rubies. His thin face was lively with appreciation as he waved and smiled at the well-wishers to his left and right.

  Thrust to the edge of the road by the heaving crowd, Asher eyed him up and down. So. This was His Royal Highness Prince Gar. Even down in distant Restharven they knew about him. Gar the Magickless. Gar the Cripple. Even, some whispered into their ale pots, Gar the Disgrace. Too blond to be an Olken, too magickless to be Doranen. That’s what folks said about His Royal Highness Prince Gar … at least down Restharven way.

  But from all the hooting and hollering of the City Olken around him it seemed they didn’t mind the prince couldn’t do magic. That he’d not be the one to take over the WeatherWorking once his father the king wore out. No, the City Olken seemed to think he was something to screech and dance for. Why? What use was a magician who couldn’t do magic? About as much as a ship without sails, to his mind.

  And it seemed he wasn’t the only one to think so.

  Barely a handful of Doranen had stopped to cheer their king’s son as he rode off to spend a strenuous day in the countryside sniffing flowers, or whatever it was he did to amuse himself. A few had paused to smile and nod. A lot more, though, paid him no mind at all, or watched him pass with bland faces and judgement in their eyes. Did the prince see it? Did he care? It was hard to tell. For sure his dazzling smile didn’t falter and his hand stayed steady on the reins … but mayhap there was a flicker in the green eyes. A momentary coldness, or stifled hurt.

  Asher snorted. Catch him wasting time feeling sorry for a prince.

  The king’s son was drawing level now. In a moment would be close enough to reach out and touch if he’d had a mind to. Determined to remain unaffected, Asher stared into the smooth, careless face of royalty … and royalty stared back.

  A frown. A jolt: of interest, or rejection, or something in between. Then an Olken lass tossed a rose. It struck royalty’s prancing horse on the neck. The horse shied, objecting, and the prince had his hands full.

  Disconcerted, Asher stepped back from the edge of the road, heedless of the trampled toes and curses behind him. Despite himself, and despising himself for it, he was impressed. There was something about the prince. The king’s son possessed an aura of authority. Of grace, even. Something inborn, of blood and bone and breeding, not circumstance. Something that made him … different.

  Codswallop. The prince was rich, magic or no magic he was Doranen, and he was royalty; probably it was that and nothing more.

  Asher shook himself, breaking the unlikely, unwelcome spell. All this standing about gawping at royalty. Da would’ve clipped him over the earhole long afore now. Time he took care of his own business.

  He turned away. From six feet further along the road came a loud bang. A scream. Asher turned back to see a whirling, whizzing rush of light as the rockets in a fireworks stall erupted into blazing glory, shooting skywards in a shower of green and yellow sparks. The crowd shrieked.

  Already unnerved, the prince’s blood horse whinnied in fright and reared. His Royal Highness fell off backwards to land his royal arse hard and hurting on the dirty ground. Panic-stricken, preparing to bolt, the animal bunched its hindquarters and spun about, eyes wild. Foam flew from its gaping mouth.

  ‘Ballodair!’ the prince cried as the horse launched itself over his head in a great leaping bound.


  ‘Catch him!’ cried another voice, sharp and commanding, buried somewhere close by in the crowd.

  Without thinking, Asher jumped into the path of the frightened horse. A lifetime of sailing boats in untamed weather had honed his reflexes and made him indifferent to danger. Catching those flapping reins was just like laying hold of a loose halyard in high winds; battling the beast to a standstill not much harder than wrestling with a net-load of fish reluctant to die.

  And besides, it seemed a shame for a fine animal like that to break a slender leg just ’cause some royal folderol couldn’t keep his arse in the saddle.

  Shod hooves striking sparks, the horse plunged and spun. The screaming crowd scattered. Swearing as the horse’s head collided with his own, seeing stars and shouting as an iron-clad foot ground his booted toes into the cobblestones, Asher struggled to keep the animal in one place. Blood from his split eyebrow blurred his vision. His sweaty hands slid on the leather reins as the horse grunted and thrashed and struggled for freedom.

  In the end, Asher won. Defeated at last, the horse stood with all four feet on the ground, trembling. Its nostrils were red and wide open as ale pots as it huffed hot, hay-scented breath. Its eyes stared but no longer rolled, white-rimmed. Asher bent over, gasping.

  Without warning the reins were plucked from his grasp and a shaking voice said, ‘Ballodair! It was just some fireworks! Are you all right, you fool of an animal?’

  Head pounding, blood warm and sticky on his face, Asher straightened.

  The prince, running an anxious hand down the animal’s legs, was searching for damage. Paid no heed to the man who’d saved his wretched horse’s hide. Offended, Asher cleared his throat. ‘It be fine, I reckon,’ he said, determined that this elegantly clad prince was a man, like him, who pissed and farted same as all men did, and had nothing more special to recommend him than an expensive tailor. ‘Don’t seem like the beast’s taken any harm, barrin’ a fright.’