This was going to be aided by the fact that the Emperor’s birthday would be in a couple of moons, and the Emperor celebrated his birthday with a Regatta, a boat procession from one side of Wolf Bay to the other. The various components of the Empire were all expected to supply decorated boats and barges. The largest and most splendid of these went on display inside and outside the Bay at anchor, and of course included the warships that were part of the Bay’s defenses. The rest paraded through pairs of Gates on either side of the Bay in a solid formation of craft so dense you could walk from shore to shore without getting your feet wet.
It was ingenious, really. The Gates set their destination by talismans carried by whoever was crossing. So participants decorated their barges, put their talismans for the Bay and back on the prows of their crafts, and lined up for the nearest Gate on the nearest canal (or rarely, river or lake). They’d go through and find themselves staged up in line, each craft given a shove by pole-men on the other side. Each craft would be connected by rings mounted on the front and back, and the continuous shoving in of boats behind would carry the entire line across the Bay to the exit Gate, where hook-men would flip each craft free and pull it through, and participants found themselves back where they started. There were prizes for decoration, though never in anyone’s memory had a craft from Valdemar won such a thing.
For the participants—for the most part—it was the most tedious day of the year. You lined up your barge with all the other locals, often before dawn. You waited your turn as the line crawled slowly toward the Gate. When you finally got to the Gate you were generally hot and tired, and when you went through, you had to put on a show of sorts for the entire time you were crossing the Bay—if nothing else, you had to sing along or pretend to dance with the music from the larger ships. It took at least a candlemark to cross the Bay, and the entire time, your senses were bombarded with music, you were crowded so deeply among the other boats that unless you were lucky enough to be on the outermost layer, all you saw of the procession was your neighbors, and the never-ending colored smokes would leave your eyes red and watering. The only good thing was that it was guaranteed not to rain.
Kordas always participated. His barges always had the same big figures of horses as his great-grandfather’s, stowed in the manor from year to year, brought out, touched up, and decorated with flowers and ribbons. He and his people always returned from the Regatta with watering eyes and headaches, and only the fact that he made sure each barge had enough food and good beer to see them all through the day kept tempers in check. And with all of that, he couldn’t ever recall having seen anything of the rest of the parade, nor having been offered as much as a celebratory candy.
Every so often he’d have an “emergency” that kept him home, usually an illness, and hire boatmen to take his place. His father had done the same, and his grandfather. Everyone did, at least among those who weren’t vying for prizes. So that was what he planned to do this year. So his barges would go out, be seen, and come home—and mingled with them would be the last of the escapees. They would have entirely different talismans on their prows—talismans that would send them to a Gate that “pulled” rather than pushed, talismans that had no return marked on them.
It wasn’t foolproof, but it was as good as three generations of Dukes had been able to conjure.
And it had the advantage that even if someone found out some of the barges were not going where they should have gone, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to untangle the mystery until it was far too late. With so many craft going through the Gates, the Gate “memory” would have been overwritten a hundred times by the time mages came to “read” it.
And if worst came to worst, it would be entirely possible to snatch the talisman from the prow and run for the Gate to escape. During the Regatta, there were no Keepers stationed at each Gate to control the flow of traffic. You might lose whatever you had in the barge with you, but that would be a small price to pay.
Well, that and you’d be swimming when you got to the other side.
Three days after young Ivar had been installed at the manor, Jonaton turned up at breakfast with Hakkon.
If strict protocol had held at Valdemar, Jonaton would have been seated somewhere down among the servants. Very few people were aware he was a mage; those who were aware thought he was a “Magus Minor,” someone far too limited in power to be of interest to the Emperor, and just a small, civilized step above a hedge wizard. He could have been seated at the Head Table if his relationship with Hakkon were known—and sanctioned by the Empire. But that would have created dangers for both of them. It was thought best by everyone not to give the Emperor anything he could use to leverage someone who could legitimately take Kordas’s place.
But strict protocol was scarcely ever applied here, and Jonaton was perfectly welcome at the High Table, where he performed little bits of entertaining sleight of hand on the occasions when there were visitors. Mostly, though, Jonaton talked about geometry, Imaging, herbs and cures, and his cats. Anyone’s cats, really. Often, he brought Imager pictures of various cats, and added funny captions to them. They always raised laughs as they were passed table to table.
This morning, however, he was not here because of a visitor. Through a lifted brow and a couple of coded words, he made it very clear that he was ready to begin the first steps of creating the Gate, and that he expected anyone interested to turn up at mid-afternoon ready to work.
Then, he ate all the honey-melon, took a double-handful of crisp bacon rashers, and left.
Typical, Kordas thought, suppressing a laugh.
Mid-afternoon was the perfect time to initiate such a complicated and dangerous bit of magic. It wasn’t so easy to clear off tasks that had already been scheduled for morning, but at mid-afternoon even Kordas could be expected to take a break for a moment or two to himself. Mid-afternoon was the time when the highest amount of traffic would be passing through existing Gates, mid-afternoon was when most mages were deeply involved in projects of their own or the Emperor’s, and would not necessarily notice something going on elsewhere, and mid-afternoon was when the Emperor himself was most likely deeply engrossed in the business of the Empire. Night—now, night would have been a terrible choice. Not to mention that if Delia was going to Fetch something from the other side of the Portal Jonaton would create, she needed to be able to see what was on the other side.
So, just after lunch, one by one, all the interested parties made their way to what had once been the walls of the previous manor, and were now a series of artificial “ruins” in a garden.
Accessed by three hidden doors were two staircases and a ramp down into what had been the cellars of the previous manor, which were connected to the current manor via a fourth passage that ran beneath the Circle’s tower.
As Hakkon stood watch, Kordas went to a part of the ruins he was known for using as a place to read or even snatch a clandestine nap—a cool little grotto with a smooth stone bench that curved to fit his back admirably, and just happened to have a stone that lifted up to reveal the stair down. He disposed himself on the bench until Hakkon gave a soft whistle, signaling that there was no one watching, and slipped down the stair, dropping the stone in place behind himself.