Practical adept book 17.., p.44
Practical Adept: Book 17 of the Spellmonger Series, page 44
“That means that Merwyn is now backing Count Cingaran,” Ruderal nodded.
“They’re at least bailing him out of a bad situation,” agreed Jannik. “That implies a favor owed. And the conduit to Merwyn is through a gentleman named Arak Porel. Local fellow, but one with some commercial ties to the east. He’s been up Cingaran’s arse and slightly to the left for months, now. Rumor is he’s supplying opium to the count and promising him a regency over Farise someday.”
“If he can hold Farise until the Merwyni fleet arrives in the spring, that could be decisive,” Mavone predicted, grimly. “This proves that’s their plan.”
“It’s not a bad plan,” I admitted. “As long as Cingaran and the Commodore can hold the city and the Straights until then, the Merwyni can sail in and mop up the rest of the provinces pretty quickly. And then they can dispose of Cingaran without anyone raising a fuss.”
“Oh, they’ll throw a street party,” Jannik assured. “You might not feel it as much on this side of the river, but over in the lofty heights Cingaran is despised as the worst sort of scoundrel. He’s trying to impose Alshari society and customs on the Farisian elite and they are not happy about it.”
“I don’t think many are,” I pointed out.
“We’re not talking about the mere oppression of the common man, here, or the interference in the markets or the unfair and arbitrary taxation and outright corruption – they could contend with that. But he’s screwing with their social lives, and that’s just unacceptable.”
“How so?” Mavone prompted. Jannik needed a responsive audience to work at his best, I’d noticed. So had Mavone.
“He throws lavish parties and then forces the Farisian nobility to attend. He shows up places uninvited and demands to be treated like a duke. He’s trying to beat them into submission, socially speaking, by taking over their holidays and celebrations He threatens them, fines them, and generally violates their delicate sensibilities in matters of protocol and etiquette. He makes them guest his senior officers. He appears with an entourage at their stately homes and requires hospitality. Also, he’s systematically debauched their wives and daughters at the palace, and then had the temerity to flaunt it in their faces. In Farise, a gentleman is expected to keep his affairs discrete and clandestine.”
“The horror of it all,” Ruderal grinned.
“Oh, he’s purposefully cruel about it. He’s trying to marry a few of his staff into the local nobility by any means he can find,” Jannik continued. “Apparently he promised every loyal Alshari rebel a dusky Farisian maiden if they followed him, and his men took him at his word.”
“And how do you know this?” Mavone prompted, again.
“Because down the street from the Golden Tiger is a slightly less pretentious tavern called Hibiscus Hall. That’s where the local nobles like to drink. Mostly petty nobles, of which Farise has a gracious plenty, but they discourage Alshari there. I was an exception,” he admitted, “because I’m such a charming fellow. I haunted the place on my breaks between sets. So I got to hear both sides of the story.”
“If they don’t like Count Cingaran, then who do they support? Rellin Pratt?” I asked.
“Not if they get another choice,” Jannik shrugged. “Don’t forget, these are non-magical nobility, the functionaries who work at the palace or the ministries, petty officials and bureaucrats who monitor taxes, trade, or the counting houses near the harbor. They see Pratt as a pretentious pirate, a pretender to the palace, preaching proposals of prosperity for the privileged and promising prestige for the poor people.”
“How predictably provincial,” Ruderal said, shaking his head with mock sadness and disgust.
“Precisely,” Jannik agreed. “Pratt disgusts them. But they hate Count Cingaran and the Alshari. They are politically frustrated.”
“How would they feel about a Merwyni conquest?” I asked, curiously.
“They’d hate it. As much as they hate the Alshari, perhaps more,” he suggested. “They just want to be Farisians. As if they could be anything else.”
“So the choice for them is between a foreign-born addict who is willing to sell out the city and an incompetent pirate who has no idea how to govern,” I sighed. “Those are not good options.”
“And both of them leave Farise intact as a raiding base and slave market,” Mavone reminded us. “Which means neither one is a real option for us.”
“How are the minor factions looking?” I asked him, hopefully. “Anyone in there who might be a secret savior?”
Mavone snorted. “Hardly. Most of them make Pratt and Cingaran look like dignified elder statesmen. Oh, there are a few secret societies of academics who aren’t too radical, I suppose, but no one with the ambition or means to take power. Of course, I’m still investigating. Something might turn up.”
“A pity. I was hoping you’d found some cult leader or revolutionary that would scare the Alshari exiles away.”
Jannik snorted. “They’re not scared of anything inside the city,” he assured us, his head starting to loll. “They haven’t seen any force they aren’t confident in defeating. The only thing they’re concerned about is the Occupation Remnant – the Loyalists, they call them.”
“The Loyalists?” I asked, intrigued.
“Apparently when Count Cingaran and Captain Pratt showed up and took over the city, the remnants of the original occupation garrison were killed, captured, surrendered . . . or took to the hills outside of town.”
Mavone blinked. “There’s a group outside of town?”
“A small army, actually,” Jannik corrected. “About fifteen hundred men. They took refuge in a couple of plantations north of town when they withdrew, and no one has gone after them in three years. That’s what the Alshari exiles are worried about the most: that the Loyalists will swoop down and attack the city. It’s really the only organized force they fear.”
“There’s been an army . . . outside of the city . . . for three years, and no one has done anything about it?” Mavone asked, his eyes wide in disbelief.
“Rumor is they withdrew to await rescue from the Kingdom, but of course that never happened. So they’ve been encamped, living off the locals, and they’re just . . . waiting. They made a few raids, early on, but they’ve mostly been quiet for the last few years, so most people have forgotten about them.”
My eyes went to the big map of Farise that Mavone had procured and tacked to the wall. My mind began doing calculations. I knew I wasn’t the only one thinking about the possibilities.
“Well, apparently Mirkandar the Magnificent is going to be taking a trip to the countryside in the near future,” I mused.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Spark Shack
The precincts of the city of Farise are as diverse and colorful as its people, each one representing a specialty of craft or trade reflecting the many facets of the city’s industry. The shipyards of Corsair’s Bay bustle with thousands of shipwrights who live in their own district, whilst porters required to cart and carry the many tons of goods passing through town have their own. But beware, the so-called Street of Rare Pleasures and the attending rot such precincts always carry spreads out into the slums of Porsago and Cesshaven district into nameless halls and shadowy shanties that promise pleasures they can never deliver.
Explorations of Farise, Enshalada, and the Shattered Isles
Author Unknown
As intriguing as the prospect of a hidden army out in the bush was, Mavone elected to postpone a visit to the encampment until he had more information. He sent Lorcus out to verify the report and learn more about the Occupation Remnant, as we took to calling them.
In the meantime there was plenty to occupy us. Despite the approach of winter, ice sales were booming. We were shipping out more than three hundred blocks a day on carts throughout the western side of the river, and we employed nine donkey carts to transport it all every day. Asalon was astonished about how many inquiries he was getting for people interested in buying more. I was glad I had ordered more Icestones from Planus.
Indeed, the ice business was getting so large that there was a congestion of carts and individual vendors crowding the cellar door of the practice every morning. It usually broke up within an hour as Parru and Ruderal swiftly got the ice distributed – it was a lot easier with the new iron ice tongs -- but the neighbors were starting to mutter about it.
More importantly to Asalon, the Bluestem location of the practice was just not as convenient for distribution as he would like. It hadn’t taken him long to locate and acquire a warehouse in the Mercer’s District, just west of the Great Market, that had access to one of the few reliable sources of fresh water in the area, an aqueduct that carried river water from above Corsair’s Bay.
That required three days of hard work moving the operation into the new place and installing the filtration system. It required a little adjustment of the spells to handle desalination – the backwash from the Sound at highest tide started to affect the salt content at the intake point – but it was worth it. We had more space, our ice storage more than doubled, and it was just easier to load up in the yard than the street in front of our practice. Asalon was planning on bringing on more carts to service the Doge’s Market and the growing number of customers around the harbor.
It was kind of fun, redesigning the place to scale up the operation. We doubled the number of molds and refined how the blocks would be stored and distributed, we tinkered with the enchantments that helped keep the storage locker cold, and we secured a supply of sawdust from a nearby carpenter’s shop – there just weren’t many carpenters in Bluestem, while there were scores in the Mercer’s District.
The dirty little secret of the operation, of course, was how Ruderal or I would use irionite to freeze entire batches at once when no one was looking. That allowed us to fill the storage locker to capacity in short order, and reduced the amount of time we had to spend actually making ice.
The new place also allowed us to expand our spying operations, as the business gave excellent cover to my men if they needed an excuse to be somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. But as Atopol’s cousin Jordi joined our efforts, it was clear that the practice was no longer entirely adequate to our purpose. Without running the ice business out of our cellar the comings and goings of my spies was more noticeable. We needed a second base of operations, fast.
Thankfully, it was a buyer’s market in Farise, if you had cash. Mavone located a small multi-room house in the Sea Lords’ District that would suffice. I suppose I should have been suspicious when he mentioned where it was, but I was preoccupied with the new ice house. It wasn’t until he persuaded me to come inspect the new purchase that I realized what he’d done.
It hit me as we were approaching the little market at the intersection of four different districts – it was a familiar route, I realized. When I saw the ancient sign of a cookshop featuring a pig, a chicken, and a fish dressed in festival garb, dancing in a circle, I realized what neighborhood we were in. When Mavone took a left at the first street past the market, I new exactly where we were going. I had a moment of vertigo-like memory as the years were stripped away.
“I found it,” Mavone said, with a quiet smile as we rounded the corner. “I was worried it might have gotten destroyed, but when I had Asalon make an inquiry it was intact – and for sale. And at a good price, actually,” he said, with a sense of satisfaction. “The previous owners want to sell everything and flee Farise.”
“That sounds like a wise idea,” I agreed, my head spinning as I saw the place again. A wave of memory washed over me.
It was just a modest three-story residence, split into six flats. It was constructed of brick and painted a faded ochre color. The terra cotta tiles of the roof were chipped and cracked, and somebody had painted the doors and shutters a garish green. They had been yellow, when I had seen them last. There were hundreds of similar buildings around the neighborhood, but this one was close to the market and distinctive for a dozen little reasons. It was only about a century old, from what I understood, but it was still standing and seemingly sound.
“The barracks,” I said with a sigh.
“The Spark Shack,” he corrected. “You have to admit, it was a well-located base. In ten minutes you can be anywhere in the west side of the city, and in twenty you can be beyond the river. It’s out of the way, it’s quiet, and the neighborhood is just seedy enough to make comings and goings go unnoticed.”
Mavone wasn’t wrong. But the sight of the old building brought me chills.
It was the first place I had called home after Inarion Academy. After the shock of combat training at Relan Cor and the interminable chaos of deployment, not to mention the hellish march down the length of the peninsula, this temporary billet was the first place where I slept in the same bed for more than a few nights. Indeed, it was the first time I had enjoyed a real bed. And my own room.
The house had been requisitioned by the occupation authority a few months after the storming of the Citadel. Leadership wanted to establish a strong presence outside of the palace grounds to pacify the population and discourage the growing insurgency, so they placed small squadrons of infantry and warmagi throughout Farise. For the next several months this decrepit old shack was my temporary barracks and interim home.
There were usually eight to ten of us in the place, but the roster shifted almost constantly as warmagi were transferred back and forth across the city as they were needed. There had been a much larger house deeper in the neighborhood that had housed about thirty infantrymen, and a smaller place just on the other side of the market that had been the headquarters of the local military commander – an arrogant prick of a Castali knight named Sir Gothanion – and a squad of cavalry.
For four or five months this was the place I returned to at the end of the day – or at the end of the night, if duty had demanded. It had been called the Spark Shack, eventually, though it was one of several in the city. If one of the regular patrol units required magical assistance – and they did almost all the time – this was where they came to get it, in the early occupation.
I had brought girls back to this place, I recalled. There had been fights between comrades, here, and wild drinking parties filled with dusky maidens. I’d eventually gotten my own room and even set up housekeeping, sort of. I remembered throwing up with Sandoval in a cracked clay planter near the door. The planter was long gone, but the fond memories lingered.
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “I suppose that’s fitting. We already know the place stinks.”
“It won’t take long to put it into shape,” Mavone assured me. “I’ll have Asalon hire some men to do it. It’s almost empty, right now, but we should be able to house our people here without difficulty or the likelihood of anyone noticing. Do you want to look inside?” he asked, casually.
I almost said no, whirled around, and stomped back to the practice. There were a lot of bad memories of the place, too. The times we had to clean out some poor Spark’s billet after he showed up for duty dead, the times we had wounded to be tended, the undeniable terror about being a target every time you crossed your threshold.
But I could tell Mavone was trying to work through some of his feelings about Farise, and I had to admit that couldn’t be done without including the Spark Shack in the equation. It looked a little sad and empty, with its rooms deserted and locked up, but it was still the same place. Just a little older, dirtier, and slightly more decrepit.
Mavone produced the keys and quietly let us into the main hall. There was one on each floor, narrow and dingy with a single fireplace on the first floor. The wooden floors were faded and cracked and creaked with every step. The stairs were still as rickety as I recalled, and the latrine was . . . in fact, let us not dwell on the latrine. It was the site of unspeakable horrors.
Each of the main rooms was large enough for two or three men, if they were cozy enough and not prone to snoring. There was a smaller room on the first floor that could be either storage or the bedroom of a servant or both. The furniture left behind by the previous owner was battered and unstable, and there were a few pieces I recognized from the old days. It smelled of mildew and woodsmoke, rain-soaked leaves and the evil odor from the latrine. It smelled empty.
But it had potential. It wasn’t nearly as bad as most of the tenements in the Porsago or Cesshaven Districts. It was dry, it wasn’t going to collapse, and it was comfortably close to the market. The cistern on the roof was intact and functional, and the tiny strip of yard around the house was only mildly filled with garbage and debris.
“I had a lot of history, here,” Mavone revealed. “A lot of us did, I think.”
“This was the first place I ever had a girl in a proper bed,” I admitted with a fond grin. “I didn’t have to worry about my parents or the other lads in the dormitory or anything.”
“I recall an excessive amount of rum that made me black out for the first time,” he said, smiling in return. “It was the first time I tasted the spirit. I thought it was like ale. So I drank it like ale.”
“You’re just lucky you didn’t end up in the river like poor Huflan,” I reminded him. “He got drunk on rum and decided to go speak to our superiors at the palace way past curfew. When they didn’t let him cross the bridge, he tried to wade across the river. Drowned.”
“I didn’t know him but I heard about that,” Mavone nodded. “I was over at the Garrison District at the time. Sad.”
I shrugged. “He was kind of a belligerent asshole. But it was sad.”
“This was the last of the Spark Shacks to still be in service for a few years after the invasion,” he told me, as he locked the door behind us. “We were just too expensive, and the insurgency was settling down, but this was where they kept the last of the warmagi stationed here.”
