“Stop right there!” shouted a female voice from the left-hand cliffs.
Dobrey looked around to see that they were inside a small hedge of arrows, each one sticking upright in the ground. “Nice shooting,” he remarked to Genno. “Who is that up there?”
“Rooska, by the voice. That’s Ruskin’s cousin—or sister, I forget,” Genno said. “She’s got half her clan up there with her. The other half’s up on the other side.”
“Come down off there, Rooska!” Dobrey shouted upward. “What are you playing at?”
“Not playing at all, forgemaster.” Rooska’s voice rang back. “We artisans have taken over the fastness. We’re all equals here now. The ones who wouldn’t be equal are dead. Where’s Ruskin?”
“Sold him for the biggest treasure on earth,” Dobrey boomed, waving the book again. “Come on, Rooska. Stop this nonsense. We’re all tired.”
“Ruskin’s alive then?” someone else shouted from the opposite cliff. “Swear?”
“Swear it!” all the forgemasters chorused.
Genno added a further shout. “Sold to the Crown Prince of Luteria, if you must know. Now come on down and open the fastness for us!”
“You don’t understand!” Rooska bawled. “There’s been a revolution. You’re not in charge any longer. Because Ruskin’s alive, we’ll let you live, but you’ve got to leave. Go on. Go away!”
The forgemasters exchanged looks of true dismay. It began to dawn on them that the home comforts they had been looking forward to might not be available.
“We can settle this quietly!” Dobrey yelled. “You need us! You need the spells against the demons of the deep!”
“No one’s seen a demon in six hundred years!” someone yelled back. “It’s all a big fraud!”
That voice was followed by massed yells from both sides of the ravine. “Frauds! Get out!” and this merged into a chant, “GET OUT NOW, GET OUT NOW, GET OUT NOW!” The chanting was backed up by more arrows, all of which fell inside the first ones, uncomfortably close to the forgemasters. And Rooska screamed a descant to the chant: “We’ll kill you if you’re still here tomorrow!”
Dobrey looked drearily from the other forgemasters to the book in his hand. “They don’t care. They didn’t listen when I waved the greatest treasure on earth at them. If there were any demons, they deserve to be infested with them.” He sighed deeply. “Come, fellow forgemasters. If we hurry, we can get to Deeping fastness by midnight. They’ll take us in there if we give them the Book of Truth.” He sighed even more deeply. “The most expensive lodgings in the world.”
Followed by the chant and by yells and hoots and catcalls, the forgemasters turned their ponies around and plodded off again.
Sometime later, when the party in the University was in full swing, Blade fetched Flury another glass tankard of wine with a fresh straw in it, and sat down on the refectory steps, level with Flury’s head, to drink his own.
“Flury, if you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing here?”
Flury rested his feathered elbow on Wermacht, who was still a bar stool, and sipped at the wine. “I thought you knew my government sent me with Jessak,” he said. “He was the prime minister’s son, you know. I’m sorry I had to send to you for hel
p.”
“Oh, it was you, was it? I thought it was Elda. But I know that innocent tone, too,” said Blade. “I mean, why did you stay here, at the University?”
“I quite like teaching—and everyone was being so badly taught,” Flury replied, and put his head on one side to gaze across the courtyard.
Blade followed his gaze, across crowds of laughing human heads, some in helmets and some bare, over bottles and tankards being passed among bobbing griffin beaks and swaying wings, across dancing griffins and singing humans, all under a few flecks of rain, bright in the lights of the courtyard, which even Wizard Policant seemed unable to hold back, and found that Flury’s gaze ended at Wizard Policant’s golden pedestal. Olga and Claudia were sitting on the pedestal, back to back, with Elda pressed against them on one side and Lukin crowded in on the other. Ruskin and Felim were sitting leaning on the pedestal at their feet. All six of them were singing, five of them very badly. Blade could hear Claudia’s sweet, strong notes coming out over the din. For a moment he lost himself in thoughts of her thin, greenish face with its smile that creased into a dimple, her bright, intelligent eyes, her strangely coiling hair, and the way she laughed at things in spite of having had the sort of life that should make her severe and solemn. She was laughing now as she sang. Then a particularly discordant squawk from Elda made him wince. Elda never could hold a tune, Blade thought. And at this he understood Flury. Elda, of course.
“She’s pretty young still,” he told Flury.
“She can always see me,” Flury said. “I tell myself that’s a good sign until I realize how much she despises me.”
“She doesn’t like you being humble. She told me,” Blade said.
“Oh.” Flury was surprised. “I thought that was proper courting behavior. But she’s used to Kit, I suppose. Blade, she’s so beautiful that I ache.”
“I know the feeling,” Blade said.
Flury shot him a bright-eyed look. “I believe,” he said slowly, “that both our ladies have some growing and adjusting to do. Yours, if that terrifying Querida is any guide, has breeding that leads to some fairly powerful magic. That takes growing into.”
Blade stared fuzzily at Flury. In all the years he had known Querida and that green skin color of hers, he had never realized that Querida had Marshfolk blood. Well, well. That accounted for a lot. “And Elda’s young for her age,” he said. “We shall just have to keep visiting and hoping. Do you want me to find you work over here that your government will agree to, so that you can stay here and wait?”