“It sounds to me as if you and my sister will get along like two sister-mares in a herd,” Delia said, smiling a little.
“Well, we’re probably both lead-mares, so that’s just fine,” the Healer proclaimed, and raised her head and sniffed the air. “Is that chicken I smell?”
“Your nose must be phenomenal!” Delia exclaimed. “It probably is. We have country-supper, which is soup and things for our evening meal. Our cook makes an amazing chicken soup.”
“It’s another reason why I won’t go near the Capital,” the Healer said. “The stink. ‘The City of Smoke and Hate,’ I call it. And chicken soup? I’d have walked here for a good chicken soup.” She put her heels to her mule, who, seeing and scenting a stable nearby, this time willingly picked up his pace, as did the two carrying her luggage and gear.
They arrived exactly when supper was served, which gave them just time to wash up before joining the rest. She and Ivar enlivened the entire High Table with stories, and the entire room eavesdropped without shame. If there was ever a great distraction and an utter boredom for a spy, this is it, Delia thought, and she was very, very sure that this was exactly what Alberdina and Ivar intended. A mage scrying would have been asleep before they all packed up, and Isla gathered up the four of them with her eyes and indicated they were to follow.
They did, and Hakkon came along.
She had expected them to go down to the cellars, but they went to the common room of the Circle’s Tower. There were more mages there tonight—none of them as old or as eccentric as the Circle, but there were a great many crammed into the usually capacious space.
The mage-lights around the room were a peculiar hue, one that Delia had never seen before. A sort of pale purple. She settled on the floor—most of the seating here was either on stools or on the floor, and she didn’t want to take an actual seat from someone who physically could not sit on the floor—out of the way of the people she suspected were actually important enough to speak.
But not before she passed the note back to Isla, who took it, nodded, and—it ignited in her hand, going up in a sudden burst of blue flame.
When everyone had settled, and there was no one coming in the door anymore, Ponu cleared his throat and the muttering died away to nothing.
“Scryers will see the six of us gambling,” he said. “So everyone can speak freely. We have a big job ahead of us, and we need to figure out how to do it without anyone even guessing what we’re up to. Tomorrow down in the cavern, every mage in this place is going to help build the water-Gate and the land-Gate. The first, obviously, will be for barges, and the second for foot traffic. We’re having bedding brought down there, because when we’re done, most of you will be about to pass out.”
There were groans.
“Quit your bitching,” said Sai. “We’re also cracking open the best wine in the Valdemar cellars and drinking it afterward. Wine doesn’t take Gating well, so we might as well drink it now.”
The groans died away.
“I’ve already crafted the four pillars,” said Jonaton. “As big as I could manage, and I think we’ll be able to pass more than one barge or person at a time. There might be a rush on the Gates at the last minute, so—” he shrugged.
“Once the pillars are across the Foothold Gate, that’s the easy part. Jonaton is going to activate and attune them. I don’t envy him that.” For once, Ponu gave Jonaton a nod of respect. “Alberdina, we’ll need you on the other side for that, because he’s going to be flatter than a sheet of paper and about as much use after. Gates aren’t meant to be attuned by one person, but these are pulling Gates, and that means only one person can attune them.”
“I can do that,” the Healer said. “I have some ideas that might make it easier on him.”
“Once they’re attuned and they have the right resonance, anyone with the right talisman can use any other Gate in the entire Duchy to get there. And that’s the best plan; ideally, we want to use common, short-journey Gates that don’t need Keepers, but we don’t want to keep using the same Gates either. And we want to make it possible for people to travel short physical distances to the Gates rather than long ones. Is everything clear so far?”
Murmurs of agreement.
“All right. The last thing is the talismans. You will all know the resonance. You all know how to make them. We’re going to need a lot of them, but we plan on reusing them by sending a couple of you across to the destination, where you can temporarily neuter them and send them back in bunches.”
“How do you neuter a talisman?” someone asked.
“Carry it in a mule’s nutsack!” Ceri yelled out, and Sai smacked him, while everyone else laughed.
“Sorry, sorry,” Ceri snickered. “I meant to say, carry them in Sai’s nutsack.”
Ponu chucked a buttered roll at Ceri. “We have a status board in the workroom below and you know your code terms. Remember, the real trick now is to work hard, work fast, but act bored. Keep rain covers over everything coming in and out. Anything new, Jonaton?”
Jonaton reiterated, “Behave like nothing unusual is going on. I’m going through the Foothold Gate within the next few days to check some things from the other side, too, if Alberdina can keep me steady enough. I have some ideas. And don’t eat or drink anything from the Foothold side until the teams mark them as safe. Not even any field cooking until the tests are done. That means you’ll be sent home-cooked meals for a while.”
There was a collective sigh of relief. “That’s—much better than I thought,” said someone Delia couldn’t see.
Ponu snorted. “This Plan has been decades in the making. If we didn’t think of everything by now, it’s because whatever is coming is something we can’t anticipate with all the information we have. All right. This phase is going to happen within the week. Are you all ready?”
“I’ll never be ready,” someone finally said, breaking the silence. “But I’ll be able.”
Ponu cackled. “That’s what I want to hear. All right, you layabouts. This is where you pay for your years of living high on the hog and never being asked to do a lick of work. Now get out of here!”
And, to Delia’s surprise—the mages cheered.
11
Kordas’s bed was comfortable, which was not a given, seeing as it was the Capital. He awoke at his usual hour—which, he suspected, was much earlier than most people living here could tolerate. He was going to leap up out of bed, get dressed, and then—
But then he remembered his new wardrobe and how impossible it was going to be to get into it unaided. With a sigh, he got out of bed and pulled the copper chain beside it.