Chapter Twenty-Five
“It went very well,” Johan said, the following morning. “I had a wonderful time.”
Elaine smiled. As promised, she’d followed Johan with Inquisitor Cass – Cass hadn’t bothered to wear a glamour, which had resulted in them being interrupted by men intent on buying her a drink – but she hadn’t eavesdropped on him. She had seen the kiss, however. It had suggested that Jayne was not adverse to the idea of a relationship after all.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Are you ready for our trip?”
“I have to leave a note for her,” Johan said, suddenly. “I didn’t even tell her I was going!”
“An apprentice is at the whims of his master,” Elaine pointed out. Johan might not be her apprentice in truth, but he was definitely working with her. “Jayne will understand ... but you can leave her a note if you like.”
“I will,” Johan said, reaching for a piece of paper. “Um ... what should I say?”
“The truth,” Elaine said. “The Head Librarian is taking you out to the country for a few days, but you’ll be back soon. And that you’ll write.”
Johan looked up, dismayed. “Write?”
“It lets her know that you’re thinking of her,” Elaine pointed out. “Girls like that, don’t you know?”
She smiled again at his expression, then returned to her own thoughts. No matter how she looked at it, it would be good to be out of the city for a few days. The Inquisitors had turned up nothing to track down the killer, which meant that the whole city was on edge. Deferens and the Conidian were demanding action, Johan’s father with the added suggestion that his son should be freed from captivity. After all, he’d pointed out yesterday, Johan might suffer consequences if he testified against his elder brother. Somehow, he’d managed to make it seem as though he was genuinely concerned for Johan.
He might well be, Elaine conceded, reluctantly. She hated people who could make black seem white, up seem down and right seem wrong – or vice versa. Johan’s father might get his eldest son completely out of trouble; the gods knew he had even been pressing for a visit.
“Thank you,” Johan said. He scowled down at the bag at his feet. “Did I pack enough?”
“Put a few more books in,” Elaine said. “No, not ones from here; ones from bookstores. You will need something to read during the ride.”
She watched him finish, then used a simple charm to render both bags effectively weightless. They couldn’t take the carriage to the station, not if they wanted to remain unseen. No one without wealth and power would take a carriage in the Golden City. Hefting her own bag, containing a selection of books as well as clothes, she headed towards the door. Johan followed her a moment later.
“I meant to ask,” he said, softly. “Is it safe for you to leave the Great Library?”
Elaine scowled. “The wards will work well enough for Vane,” she said. She had a feeling that wasn’t entirely what he’d meant. “Sadly, the library isn’t my personal possession – or home. I just wear it until I retire.”
Johan gave her a sharp look, but said nothing else. Elaine led him out of the library by one of the hidden exits, then started to walk down towards the station. They could pass a bookstore on the way.
***
Johan had never seen a bookstore before – or even a library, before Elaine had taken him into the Great Library. The bookstore awed him; there were thousands of books, many of them of dubious value. Charity had enjoyed reading romance before her father had found out and forbidden her to read any more; Johan had read a couple and decided that they were either utterly mushy or terrifyingly perverse. Who would have thought that magic could be used to enhance the sexual experience? Apart from teenage magicians, that was.
He found himself moving from shelf to shelf, examining the books. There were no books on magic, unsurprisingly, but there were books on everything else. One entire stack appeared to be devoted to Lady Light Spinner, with several different biographies written by different authors just waiting for his attention. Elaine snorted and pointed out that anything written while she was still alive was completely untrustworthy. Very few people would dare to disrespect the Grand Sorceress, certainly not in print. In the end, seeing that Elaine was getting impatient, he picked up a handful of history books and a pair of thrillers, then paid for them at the counter. They were surprisingly cheap.
“The inventor of the printing press has a lot to answer for,” Elaine muttered, as they left. “I can’t have the books students most want to see copied, for fear of losing track of them, but they can waste their money and material on trash.”
Johan shrugged. “Why can’t the older books be copied?”
“The ones we have are integrated with the wards,” Elaine explained. “Stealing them would be impossible. But newer books ... they don’t integrate so well. And besides, they’d have to be copied in the library itself.”
She led him down the street at a brisk pace. “We don’t have much time,” she said, glancing at the sun. “The Iron Dragon leaves soon.”
Johan had loved to hear tales of the Iron Dragons – giant locomotives that ran on rails, without magic – but he rapidly discovered that the sight outdid the tales. He went to look at it as Elaine bought tickets, drawn by a fascination he found almost impossible to put into words. The Iron Dragon was colossal, a giant machine crouching on the tracks, steaming smoke into the air. A faint stench of burning surrounded it, but he didn’t take any notice as he peered into the cab. Inside, two men clad in the bare minimum of clothing were busy shovelling coal into the fire.
“There’s no magic,” he said. “None at all!”
“No,” Elaine agreed. “I believe that some of the earlier models had spells to ensure that the boiler didn’t burst, but as they grew more confident in their work they started refusing to allow magicians to help. Lucky, really; the shortage of magicians we have now would ensure that few could be spared, if they needed them.”
A man in a fancy uniform blew a whistle; Elaine hurried Johan forward and into one of the coaches, ahead of the guard as he shut the doors one by one. Inside, it was cramped, but surprisingly cosy. Elaine found a pair of window seats, motioned for him to sit down and pulled a book out of her bag. Johan, his gaze riveted to the window, refused a book when she offered it to him. A moment later, the coach lurched and started to move.
Johan had never really realised just how small the Golden City was. Hemmed in as it was by the Four Peaks, there was little room for expansion save upwards. It seemed like moments before the Iron Dragon plunged into a tunnel – the entire coach fell into darkness – and came out the other end in open countryside. The Watchtower could be seen dominating the mountains, but there were few signs of civilisation. There didn’t even seem to be any farms!
“They’re some distance from the city,” Elaine said. “The Emperors didn’t have full control over their Empire, so some of their aristocrats used the poor geography to pressure the Emperor whenever they wanted something. Now, of course, food shipments are reliable and fairly cheap.”
“And people enjoy hunting in the countryside,” Johan said, remembering Jamal’s boasts of happy hunting trips where he’d slaughtered hundreds of helpless animals. “They don’t want it turned into farmland.”
“No,” Elaine agreed. “They don’t.”
She turned her attention back to her book, but Johan stayed at the window, drinking in the sheer immensity of the countryside. He’d never really seen it before, not even when the family had been moving to the Golden City. They’d insisted that he stay inside the carriage, even when they’d been completely alone. Now, he could see the wilderness with his own two eyes ... and felt something calling to him. Why would he stay in the city when he could explore the world?
The wilderness gave way to farmland, but he still stared, watching people working in the fields. A handful of pieces of machinery seemed to be working with them, technology that reminded him of the Iron Dragon. He waved at a pair of farm girls, but they either didn’t see him or simply didn’t bother to wave back. The Iron Dragon passed through a small settlement – it was nothing more than a handful of houses – and then raced back into farmland.
They crossed a bridge that seemed to be made completely of iron, then passed a small building where several different flags were flying outside. It took him a moment to realise that they’d crossed the line between the Golden City’s jurisdiction and another part of the Empire, ruled by a client-king. But no matter how he stared, he couldn’t see any difference in the landscape outside the window. None of the people he saw looked different either.
“The borders are not so precisely delineated,” Elaine said, when he asked. She gave him a thin smile. “Most of the people who live here don’t give two figs for the borderlands, or who is actually in charge. Their families blur across the borderlands; they try damn hard to avoid paying taxes to anyone. Every so often, the authorities try to do something about it.”
Johan scowled. “And what happens?”
“The farmers play dumb,” Elaine admitted. “Most of them are living hand-to-mouth as it is, so they just ... pretend they don’t understand what the taxmen are saying.”
She shrugged. “Besides, this place was part of the Empire for centuries,” she added. “If you want to see somewhere truly different, you have to go much further from the Golden City.”
“I will, one day,” Johan said. “How many places have you seen?”
“Just Ida,” Elaine said. “It was ... different.”
They crossed another bridge, then the landscape changed. This time, the fields seemed to be awash with water, green plants growing up and out of it. Elaine identified it as a paddy field, where rice was grown, pointing out that rice was perhaps the cheapest staple food in the Empire. Those who couldn’t afford bread often ate rice as a substitute. She happily started to explain how the Empire had spread crops and concepts from one part of the world to the others, helping to improve the lives of ordinary people, but Johan could barely follow the explanation. All that mattered was that he was away from the city and away from his family.
He caught sight of a girl picking her way through the paddy field and felt a flicker of envy, even though he knew that she would lead a very hard life. She would never know what it was like to grow up completely powerless in a world where power was all. Instead, her world would be restricted ... unless, of course, she developed magic. There were magicians who watched specifically for new-born magicians and recruited them before their magic – or their families – could kill them. Jamal had sneered at them at the Peerless School, but Johan couldn’t help thinking that they had the best of both worlds. They certainly didn’t have families to please ... or to sneer at them if they weren’t magical enough.
Elaine looked pained for a long chilling moment. “The link with the library is fading,” she said. “It isn’t meant to be maintained at this distance.”
Johan eyed her, nervously. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes,” Elaine said, a little harshly. She rubbed the side of her head, then scowled. “It isn’t as if I can do anything outside the library anyway.”
Johan was unconvinced – she looked to be in pain – but held his peace.
“You might want to catch some sleep,” Elaine said, as they entered another tunnel. She cast a series of protective wards around them. “It will be seven hours before we reach our destination. I’ll key the wards to wake us then.”
Johan shook his head, too engrossed with staring out of the window. Elaine leant back in her chair and fell asleep, her brown hair coming loose and falling down around her face. She was definitely more relaxed when she was sleeping, Johan decided, glancing at her for a long moment. It made her look years younger.
The Iron Dragon started to slow down as it approached a large city. Johan stared, drinking in the sight; it was very different from the Golden City. The city seemed to sprawl out for miles, but it was oddly uniform, with none of the variety of buildings in the Golden City. If there was a style, he decided, it was strictly functional. The only decoration he saw was a large statue of a man on a horse, carrying a sword which he held up in the air. It seemed strange to him; a single magician, even an untrained one, could kill the horseman long before he became a danger.
He watched as the vehicle came to a halt in the station. Unlike the Golden City, everyone he saw wore the same kind of clothing; the women wore long dresses, while the men wore trousers and veils that covered their faces. Johan stared, not even sure if they were men; his father had always said that someone who covered their face had something to hide. But there were no sign of any curves that might indicate breasts ... they had to be men. Why were they hiding themselves?
Elaine was still sleeping, so he left her alone as the Iron Dragon started to move again. Outside the station, he saw a temple dedicated to a god – he didn’t recognise the writing – and then a series of smaller buildings that seemed like apartment blocks. But he couldn’t tell what they actually were ... shaking his head, he watched as the Iron Dragon picked up speed, racing out of the city and back into the countryside ...
He must have dozed off, for the next thing he knew was Elaine shaking his shoulder and the Iron Dragon coming slowly to a stop. It still seemed like broad daylight – it struck him, suddenly, that they had been racing against the sun – but he felt tired. Picking himself to his feet, he took his bag and stumbled out of the carriage and into Falconine City. It smelt funny, he realised, and there were green-covered mountains in the distance, yet otherwise it wasn’t that different from the Golden City. And the people thronging through the station looked much more diverse.
“This is the capital,” Elaine said, when he asked. “The outer cities are always more uniform.”
Johan blinked away sleep as they headed towards a grim-faced man in a carriage. Johan would have pegged him as an Inquisitor, he was sure, even without Elaine’s introduction; his expression suggested, very strongly, that they should both be in handcuffs before they were helped into the carriage. He didn’t say much to Elaine – he didn’t say a word to Johan – merely cracked his whip and the horses stumbled into life. The city melted away behind them as they drove up towards the mountains.
“The cabin has been prepared for you,” the inquisitor grunted. “You should be fine there for a few weeks, unless we need to use it urgently.”
“Thank you,” Elaine said, ignoring his tone. “What about food supplies?”
“There’s enough, particularly if you hunt or fish too,” the Inquisitor said. “Can you do either?”
Johan looked up, interested. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of hunting for fun, but hunting for food was a very different story. But he didn’t know the first thing about hunting. Jamal had made it sound easy, yet Johan would have bet good money that he’d cheated. Magic often made it impossible for the animals to get away.
“No,” Elaine said, tartly. Living in the Golden City her entire life wouldn’t have trained her in how to fend for herself. “But we can come down here to buy food, if necessary.”
“There are a handful of hermits who will probably appreciate the money,” the Inquisitor said, brusquely. “They would hunt for you, if you asked.”
Johan tuned him out, looking at the trees as they closed in on the muddy road. It was strange to realise that this was untamed beauty, a far cry from the gardens in the Golden City ... and yet, somehow, he felt free out here. The lingering sense of his father’s constant oversight was gone completely. He could be happy ...
The vehicle turned a corner and he saw the valley laid out in front of him. There was a shimmering blue lake, surrounded by trees and bushes, hidden amongst the hills. He hoped that there would be time to go climbing, even if the sky was starting to look overcast. There was a peal of thunder in the distance and he smiled. He’d always liked rain.
“We have to walk from here,” the Inquisitor said, pulling the carriage to a halt. “Get your bags while I talk to the horses.”
The air smelled fresh and clean, Johan decided, as the Inquisitor led them up a pathway that seemed almost invisible. He wouldn’t have seen it at all if it hadn’t been pointed out to him, suggesting that there were hidden charms that kept it concealed from prying eyes. There was another rumble of thunder, closer this time, as they advanced up the path, then over a bog that threatened to suck them in if they stood still for too long. It looked as though someone had tried to build a makeshift bridge out of planks and then given up halfway through, he thought, as he saw the planks. By now, they were sodden and completely useless.
He smiled as the cabin came into view. It was small, made out of wood rather than stone ... but wood would be cheap here. Elaine didn’t seem too impressed; Johan was delighted. It was a long way from his father, his brother and the rest of his family.
And, really, what else did he want?