The Ambassador’s Mission

“No, but there is nothing to stop that sort of bias returning as magicians realise the limitations of the new rule. I won’t be convinced it’s an improvement unless the degree of harassment of lower-class-origin magicians lessens.”

“Do you think she would have helped the injured man if there was no incentive to please the man who asked her to?”

Sonea considered the question. “Yes, though not without some disdain.”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s an improvement on the past anyway. Thanks to your hospices, it’s no longer thought of as acceptable to deny Healing because the patient can’t afford it.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Things have changed that much? But surely Vinara hasn’t stopped charging patients who come to the Healers’ Quarters.”

“No.” He smiled. “It’s more of an attitude change. It’s not, well, healerly to ignore anyone you stumble upon who is in great need. That is, if they are injured or dying – not if they’ve got a hangover or the winter cough. It is as if the ideal for a Healer to aspire to is now someone who has Vinara’s cleverness and your compassion.”

She stared at him in disbelief and dismay.

He laughed. “I’d love to come to the end of my life knowing I’d made a change for the good, but despite all my work I don’t think I will. But now I see how uncomfortable it makes you, I wonder if I should be grateful for that.”

“You have made a difference, Rothen,” she protested. “I’d have never become a magician if it were not for you. And what is this talk of your life ending? It’s going to be years – decades – before you need to start planning a gravestone to outdazzle everyone else’s.”

He grimaced. “A plain one will do just fine.”

“That’s good, because by then there’ll be no gold left in the Allied Lands except what’s on magicians’ headstones. Now, that’s enough talk of death. Regin is, no doubt, pacing outside my door wanting to know how we decided, and I’d like to get that little interview over with so I can get some sleep in before tonight’s shift.”

Nine men now rode on either side of Achati’s carriage each day – four Sachakan magicians, their source slaves and one of the grey-skinned Duna tribesmen from the north, who had been hired as a tracker.

Dannyl had been acutely aware that these powerful men had left their comfortable homes and joined the search based on a mere guess that Lorkin and Tyvara were heading for the mountains, and that the Traitors would continue working toward the pair being captured. If he was wrong… it would be embarrassing at the least.

If the four magicians doubted Dannyl’s reasoning, they hid it well. They and Achati had discussed their plans in a way that had included Dannyl, but made it clear he was not in charge. He decided it was best to accept that, to seek their advice on everything and go along with their plans, but always make it clear he was determined to find his assistant and would not easily be persuaded otherwise.

One had asked the Duna tribesman, Unh, if he thought Lorkin and Tyvara were heading toward the Traitor home. The man had nodded and pointed toward the mountains.

The tribesman rarely spoke, and if he did he used as few words as possible to get across his meaning. He wore only a skirt of cloth on top of which a belt was strapped, hung with little drawstring bags, strange carvings and a small knife in a wooden sheath. At night he slept outside, and though he accepted food brought to him by the slaves he never spoke to them or ordered them about.

I wonder if all his people are like this.

“What are you thinking?”

Dannyl blinked and looked at Achati. The Sachakan was regarding him thoughtfully from the opposite seat in the carriage.

“About Unh. He has so few possessions and seems to need so little. Yet he does not behave like a poor man or beggar. He is… dignified.”

“The Duna tribe have lived the same way for thousands of years,” Achati told him. “They are nomads, constantly travelling. I suppose you would learn to keep only what you most needed if you had to carry it all the time.”

“Why do they travel so much?”

“Their land is constantly changing. Cracks open up and leak poisonous fumes, molten blackrock from the nearby volcanoes spills over the land or scorching ash falls on it. Every few hundred years or so my people have tried to take their lands, either by force or by establishing towns and claiming the land by settling on it. In the first case the Duna vanished into the dangerous shadows of the volcanoes, and in the latter they simply traded with the settlers and waited. It soon becomes clear that crops won’t grow consistently and animals die there, and each time my people have abandoned the villages and returned to Sachaka. The Duna returned to their old ways and…” Achati stopped as the carriage turned, and looked out of the window. “Looks like we have arrived.”