Peril’s Gate. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ on rooftrees and pilings and chimneys, breasts fluffed against inbound bad weather. Elaira pressed on to the dockside stalls, where seamy old women with crabbed hands and sharp eyes sold oddments of bone and glass jewelry, pomanders and luck charms, and the fish-scale talismans made to ward drowning prized by enlisted sailhands.

      The ramshackle awnings cracked in the gusts. A shrill couple argued in the tenements overhead, while a dog pack nosed garbage in the gutter. Elaira perused tables of knucklebones and brooches, her flyaway hair tucked under her cloak, and her saddle pack guarded against cutpurses. Craftsmen and tosspots jostled their way past, and a street minstrel scraped jigs on a fiddle. At length, she found the item she sought amid a stall with tied bundles of cedar, and braided lanyards with hens’ feet, and fiend bands of stamped tin and strung pebbles.

      ‘Mother,’ she said, ‘I’m in need of your help.’

      The old woman wrapped in faded plaid shawls perked erect, both eyes pearly with cataracts, and her arthritic hands clasped to her wash-leather satchel. ‘Dearie, speak up. Henlyie’s deaf as a post.’

      Elaira smiled. ‘I could whisper, and still you could hear me.’

      The old herb witch blinked. She loosened a crabbed fist, and reached out, unerring. Her swollen fingers jinked the quartz crystal nested like a frost shard among her ragtag array of queer wares. ‘Stone speaks, for you. How much can you pay?’

      The ancient bronze buttons scored Elaira’s clamped palm as she answered in trepidation. ‘I can offer two coppers, and your pick of the rarest herbs in my satchel.’

      Old Henlyie sucked a breath through gapped teeth. ‘That desperate, are ye?’

      Elaira shut her eyes, while the wind whined through the carved eaves overhead, and the thrash of the breakers against the seawall muttered under the boisterous shouts of the stonecutters on leave from the quarries. ‘Mother, if you only knew.’

      The old woman peered through fogged marble eyes, attuned to some cue beyond sight. ‘Healer trained, are ye? Then ye know well enough, a true quartz will defend against lies and dishonesty. Go on, dearie. Take the crystal you need. Just give someone needy the eight silvers she’s worth when you manage to mend your lapsed fortune.’

      ‘Ath’s blessing on you, mother,’ Elaira replied. ‘I’ll see your kindness repaid tenfold.’ She accepted the crystal, and left in its place a tin of her own spelled emollient, made to ease the pain of stiffened joints.

      The old woman touched the tin, lifted it, and sniffed at the contents. A smile touched her face, easing the wrinkles pinched at the corners of her eyes. ‘There’s a boardinghouse with red shutters on Cod Street. The landlady there may let her attic for a penny, if you offer to attend the complaints of her guests.’ The tin disappeared into the folds of the shawls, and a crabbed finger shook in admonishment. ‘No, dearie. I have lodgings elsewhere, and no memory left for recording elaborate recipes. What meager craft I still practice is more suited to amulets, besides.’

      ‘Then I owe you my heartfelt gratitude. Bless your days.’ Elaira gathered the quartz and moved thankfully on her way.

      Hungry, but in too much hurry to eat, she squeezed past the hawkers who sold bread, hot fish cakes, and sausage. The alley she descended led to the seawall.

      The bay was a heaving cauldron of spindrift. Green, foaming breakers reared up, steep sides glistening, then hammered an uneven percussion of spray against the riprap that fronted the harbor. Wheeling birds landed in the sluice of the runoff, pecking for crustaceans stranded like jewels amid knots of jetsam and weed. Elaira braved the stripping brunt of the winds and filled her tarred bucket with seawater. In shrewd afterthought, she added a gleaner’s harvest of kelp.

      If she planned to earn bread treating quarrymens’ pulped knuckles, she would need to replenish her tincture of iodine.

      The owner of the red-shuttered boardinghouse was a vivacious grandmother whose shrewd glance measured the cut of her seal riding boots, then the quality tanning of the leather pack slung over her cloaked shoulder. ‘One pence was summer rent,’ she insisted, and held out her palm for two coppers.

      Elaira gave in and paid her last coins, well aware hard-nosed bargaining would not prevail on a night with an easterly brewing. Her work required a roof over her head. Soup and coarse bread was included with lodging, and if she did not mind standing in line for the privilege, she could use the common washtub in the laundry.

      ‘Just show me inside,’ she answered, too chilled to stand on the icy stone step any longer.

      The grandame regarded the brimming bucket askance, then grudgingly widened the door and admitted her. Elaira followed her shuffling step over worn runners of carpet, then up a servant’s back stair. The attic landing led into a tiny room with a salt-streaked dormer window. The blankets on the truckle bed were moth-eaten, but clean. Beyond a washstand appointed with a battered tin cup and pitcher, the board floor was bare. Impressed by the size of the dust batts caught in the unswept corners, Elaira sincerely hoped the last occupant had earned her keep carding and spinning.

      ‘Candles cost extra,’ the landlady informed. ‘Water’s drawn from the crank well in the yard. Fetch and haul what you need for yourself.’

      ‘Thank you.’ Elaira stepped over the scuffed wooden threshold, cloak tucked against the drafts that sang through the gapped panes, and rippled the cobwebs over her head. Her breath scribed white plumes in the gray filtered light, and the basin wore armor-clad ice. She deposited her bucket of seawater and kelp, then latched the plank door after the landlady’s departure. Still badly shaken, she scarcely cared that the garret room was unheated. Far worse, to try a course of questionable practice in the precinct of a Koriani sisterhouse.

      ‘Dharkaron avert!’ She was no small bit frightened by her plan to enact reckless upset to Selidie’s expectations.

      Elaira squared her shoulders, firmed quaking nerves, and raked the wet kelp from the bucket. She piled the mass by the frozen basin. Next, she unhooked the tin cup from the washstand and scooped it full of raw seawater. The tarred bucket remained under half-full, its handspan depth just sufficient. Elaira dug through her pack, fingers shaking. She removed the silk-wrapped weight of the scrying sphere. The dread burn of its active sigils of command cast a bone-chilling ache, even through layered cloth.

      In naked trepidation, on a pent breath of terror, she eased the veiled quartz into the saltwater bath in the bucket.

      Sparks flew from first contact. A whine of released power threw off a hot wind as the sigils of binding tore asunder. Elaira jerked back a singed hand, while the water spat and roiled to the blast of unwound coils of energy. Crouched on her heels, her blistered hand cradled, she held on to hope that the quartz sphere could withstand the liberating force as the sigils dissolved without cracking.

      ‘Be free,’ she whispered in earnest encouragement. ‘Let the spells of coercion be lifted.’

      If the sphere had been loaned to help track Rathain’s prince, she would employ her own skills, leaving no loophole for unasked assistance through the seals of a preset binding. There would be no fertile ground for slipped steps, no avenue left for blind snares. The Prime’s bitter bargain to guard Arithon’s life would not be won upon hidden traps or sly trickery. By nightfall this day, Elaira avowed she would cast off all resource upon which to hang the obligation of her order’s oath of debt. If the hour ever came when for wisdom and compassion she must claim her given option to betray her heart’s love, she would use her own power by free choice. Though СКАЧАТЬ