The Cunning Man, page 4
The streets grew quieter as he made his way back to the merchant quarter. There were more guardsmen on the street, fingering their clubs nervously as they watched the crowd. It hadn’t been that long since rioting had nearly destroyed the city and the council was clearly taking no chances. Adam did his best to avoid being noticed. Beneficence’s City Guard was better than most, from what he’d been told, but they still took bribes and harassed everyone who refused to pay. Being a magical apprentice might protect him or it might not. It wasn’t as if he could really zap them into frogs if they looked at him funny.
He tried not to feel bitter as the shop loomed in front of him. His mother had made him work as a shopboy as soon as he’d been old enough to do the sums in his head, pointing out that the family simply didn’t have the money - or inclination - to hire outsiders. It was traditional for fisherwomen to run the shops and yet ... he wondered, suddenly, if he was a double failure. He’d never gone to sea as a fisherman and now he was no longer an apprentice. His father, may he rest in peace, would be unamused. His youngest son hadn’t lived up to his responsibilities. And yet ...
Adam pushed the door open, schooling his face into a blank mask. He’d never wanted to be a fisherman or a shopboy or any of the other traditional jobs. His father had died at sea. His mother had practically worked herself to death to make the shop work and he knew - they all knew - that the family was barely keeping itself above the waterline. His siblings ... there were just too many of them. Adam knew his mother had only let him go to the apprenticeship because otherwise she’d have to feed him herself. And he’d effectively lost the apprenticeship overnight.
Finnie, his oldest sister, stood behind the solid wooden counter, cradling a heavy blunderbuss in her hands. “Adam,” she said. “You’re back early.”
“I have to speak to mum,” Adam said. He wasn’t surprised Finnie hadn’t joined the party on the streets. She had always been a responsible girl. She’d even turned down a handful of suitors because they’d been reluctant to let her keep working. “Is she upstairs?”
“Yep,” Finnie said. “I hope it isn’t bad news.”
Adam shrugged and walked into the backroom before his sister could ask any more questions. She’d been his babysitter when he’d been a toddler - his mother had been working in the shop - and she’d been incredibly bossy. Adam understood, now, just how she’d felt, but he still resented her trying to tell him what to do. Finnie still seemed to think he was a little boy. He sometimes wondered if she hadn’t realised he hadn’t been a toddler for nearly two decades.
His mother was sitting in the backroom, using a needle and thread to repair a shapeless garment. Adam winced inwardly, remembering the sheer number of times his clothes had been patched up before finally being declared beyond repair and turned into rags. He’d never realised just how poor the family was until he’d started to work for Master Pittwater. It was far from uncommon for clothes to be passed down from wearer to wearer in the poorer parts of the world, but magicians laughed at the thought. They bought all their outfits new.
“Adam.” His mother squinted at the garment. Her eyesight had been getting worse recently and there was no way in hell they could afford treatment. It was just a matter of time, he feared, until she went completely blind and then ... who knew what would happen then? “You’re not dancing in the streets?”
“No, mum,” Adam said. “I just got back from the shop.”
His mother shot him a sharp look. She might have agreed to let him be an apprentice, but she’d had her doubts. Adam understood. He could have put on airs and graces and generally acted as if he’d been magically transformed into an aristocrat. He’d seen a handful of women who’d married well suddenly start acting as though their former friends were beneath them ... he’d told himself it wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t that different either. Matt certainly acted as if everything he touched turned to gold. If Adam had had enough magic to do it ...
She put the garment to one side. “What happened?”
Adam took a breath and started to explain, bracing himself for the torrent of questions he knew would follow when he’d finished the explanation. He’d often thought his mother would have made a great interrogator. She didn’t need torture to make someone talk. She could pick up on the slightest discrepancy and use it to unravel the whole story, piece by piece. Adam still scowled when he remembered how she’d forced him to confess how he’d made out with a girl from down the street. The lecture she’d given him about the danger of getting someone pregnant out of wedlock had been worse than the beating. She’d been so angry that he’d wondered, despite himself, if she’d had to get married in a hurry herself. It was far from uncommon.
“I see,” his mother said. “How do you intend to support yourself?”
“The apprenticeship offer comes with bed and board,” Adam said. He didn’t want to mention Master Pittwater’s offer of spending money. His mother would force him to refuse it. “I have enough saved to live there for a few weeks, if the apprenticeship falls through.”
“If.” His mother said nothing for a long moment. “And what if you’re wrong?”
Adam hesitated, then met her eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“I should have marched you down to the boats and forced you to sign on as a fisherman,” his mother said, more to herself than to him. “It would have given you a chance to climb the ladder until you had a boat of your own.”
“I’m too old, now,” Adam said. It was true. Fisherman normally started when they were children and climbed up from there. If his father had lived, Adam and his brothers would have gone to sea with him almost as soon as they could walk. “And there aren’t many places that’ll take me on as an apprentice.”
His lips twitched. “Would you like me to go work in City Hall?”
“Bite your tongue,” his mother snapped. “The day a son of mine works as a thief ...”
Adam hid his amusement with an effort. His mother regarded taxmen as nothing more than bare-faced thieves, fools who knew nothing about the businesses and families they were trying to tax. They thought shopkeepers were practically swimming in gold, to the point they’d think nothing of paying thousands of crowns in tax. Adam knew better. The shop brought in so little they could barely afford to pay their suppliers. And his mother worked hard to hide what profits she could from the prying eyes and ears of the taxmen. He didn’t blame her. The bastards took everything they could and gave back nothing.
“I don’t have many options,” Adam said. “I’m too educated for most jobs. I might be able to get work as a labourer, but that won’t earn enough to keep me alive. The only options outside the apothecary are accountancy, scribing and tax collecting and none of them are particularly good positions ...”
“There are some people down the street who’d probably thank you for doing their taxes for them,” his mother said. “They made the mistake of keeping paper records.”
“And then someone will put a knife in me,” Adam reminded her. “You remember the tax collector who waltzed into the Lower Depths. They chopped his body to pieces and some of the bits were never found.”
His mother grimaced. “I don’t want to see you go so far,” she said. “But if you want to go you have my blessing.”
Adam hesitated. He’d read the papers he’d been given. Heart’s Eye sounded fascinating, the sort of place - he admitted, at least to himself - he wanted to live. And yet, he was all too aware how easy it was for someone to paint a rosy picture that might bear little resemblance to reality. He wanted to spend more time reading around the newborn university, but ... events were moving so quickly that the news might be outdated even before it reached Beneficence. The city was thousands of miles from Heart’s Eye. Even with portals and railways, it was a long way away.
“Thank you,” he said, finally. “I’ll do my best to stay in touch.”
“Only if you can afford it,” his mother said, firmly. “How much does it cost to send letters from there to here?”
“I don’t know.” Adam frowned. The international postal service was supposed to be cheap, but only by magical and aristocratic standards. For him, it would be expensive to send so much as a single sheet of paper. “I’ll have to look into it.”
“See that you do,” his mother said. She tilted her head as she considered the question. “There may be other ways to get messages from there to here. People going back and forth, or suchlike.”
“I’ll look into that too,” Adam said. He had his doubts, but it was worth checking. “I wish ...”
He shook his head. It wasn’t his mother’s fault that her husband had died at sea. It wasn’t her fault that none of her children had any talent for magic. It wasn’t her fault that she’d been forced to put them to work at a very early age. It wasn’t her fault ... he told himself, firmly, that he’d been very lucky. There were families that had sold their children into service - de facto slavery - or prostitution to pay the bills. His mother had worked hard and honestly, save for a limited amount of tax evasion, but she’d never crossed the line. Better they went hungry, she’d said, than sell themselves. He understood, now, that she’d been right.
“We’ll cook something nice for your last day,” his mother assured him. “And then ... we’ll wait for your letters.”
Adam nodded as he stood and headed to the bedroom he shared with his brother. It was cramped, so cramped that Greg and he had bumped into each other constantly as they’d grown into manhood, but there’d been no choice. The house was too small for them to have separate rooms and the idea of sharing with their sisters was appalling. He wondered, idly, how his sisters coped sharing with their mother. They had even less privacy than their brothers ... not, he supposed, that it mattered. There was no hope of getting separate rooms ... he rolled his eyes in disgust.
And to think Matt had made a terrible fuss about the garret over the shop, he thought, crossly. I wouldn’t have complained. The room might be cramped, but it would be mine.
He put the thought out of his head as he stepped into the bedroom. Greg was out, probably partying with the rest of them. He sat on the stuffed mattress - they couldn’t afford proper beds - and silently assessed his collection of clothes and books. It wasn’t much, he reflected, but he’d never been able to afford all the books he’d wanted to buy. He sighed, feeling oddly unsure of himself, as he collected a handful of clothes and put the rest aside for his brother or cousins. The family couldn’t afford to leave them lying around, gathering dust. They’d serve the family better by going to someone who needed them.
We owe it to our family to do what we can for them, his mother had said years ago, when he’d protested losing a stuffed toy to a younger cousin. It had hurt, even though he’d already outgrown the tatty teddy bear. And they in turn do what they can for us.
He shook his head sourly as he packed his clothes into a bag, then added books. The cheap novels his sisters loved had never really interested him - it hadn’t taken him long to realise the stories were little better than fantasies - but he wanted to catch up on his theoretical studies while riding the railway. And then ... he felt a thrill of excitement, mingled with fear. He was going to be travelling a long, long, way from Beneficence. He was going to go where no member of his family had gone before. He would be so far from everyone he knew that there would be no hope of help, if he ran into trouble. His family might never hear from him again. He was tempted, very tempted, to go back to the shop and decline the offer. It would be safer to stay where he was.
And that would mean giving up all hope of a brighter future, he told himself. There was nothing wrong with being a fisherman or a shopkeeper or even an accountant, but it wasn’t the life he wanted. He wanted to do something important, something significant, something that might change the world. And Heart’s Eye was the only hope of doing something that might be remembered after he was gone. I have to take the chance.
Chapter Four
“I trust you’ll do a good job,” Master Pittwater said, as the locomotive began to puff steam into the air. “And that you’ll remember everything I taught you.”
Adam nodded. It had been an odd few days. His duties at the shop had shrunk to almost nothing, Master Pittwater leaving the shop in Matt’s capable hands while he detailed everything he remembered about the old school and lectured Adam how to behave in the new university. Matt’s own advice had been practically useless, although Adam had to admit it would have been a great deal more useful if he’d had magic of his own. The idea of playing pranks on his fellow students might not have been so appalling if he’d actually been able to put them into practice.
“I’ll do my best, sir,” he said. He wasn’t an apprentice any longer, at least not until he reached Heart’s Eye. “And thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
He sighed, inwardly, as he hefted his bag. His mother and siblings had held a dinner for him - they’d treated it as if they expected never to see him again - but they’d declined to come to the station to see him off. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Perhaps coming and watching him board the train would have been a little too final. His mother didn’t like trains - she regarded the railway as new-fangled nonsense and had flatly refused to invest in Vesperian’s Folly - but his siblings were a little more adventurous. He told himself it didn’t matter as the whistle blew loudly. He’d said all his goodbyes when he’d left the house for the final time.
“Here.” Master Pittwater passed him a small bag. “Take this with you, open it when you’re there. And don’t lose your tickets or all hell will break loose.”
Adam took the bag automatically as the whistle blew again. The guards started slamming doors shut. He hurried to the door and clambered into the carriage, a moment before it was slammed closed behind him. The railway carriage stank of rotten cabbage, oil and something he couldn’t place, but he still felt excited as he sat on a bench and waved to the people on the platform. The whistle blew one final time, a moment before the train lurched into life and glided out of the station. The passengers started chattering excitedly, pointing out landmarks as they passed through the city. Adam was torn between excitement and a strange sense he was doing something wrong, something unnatural. The train wasn’t magic. Anyone could build a steam locomotive. And yet, there was something weird about it.
He put the thought out of his mind as he stared through the warded window and peered over the city. The train was picking up speed, puffs of smoke flashing past the carriage as it headed towards the bridges. Adam had walked along the cliffs before - it was a good place to bring girls, where they’d have some privacy but not too much - but he’d never seen them from a carriage. The people standing beside the lines were a blur. He wondered, idly, how many of them were train spotters and how many of them were using train spotting as an excuse to spend time with their girls. It wouldn’t be the first time everyone had pretended to believe such a ridiculous excuse. People would happily pretend to believe anything, as long as the formalities were observed.
The train slipped onto the bridge. The transition was so sudden that Adam nearly felt his heart stop as he stared down at the churning waters. He knew a handful of young men who’d taken small boats down the rapids in demented bids to prove their masculinity, but he’d never dared try it himself. Half the teenagers he’d watched set out had vanished, their bodies presumably washed out to sea and lost forever. And yet, teenagers still tried to do it every so often, even though it was officially banned. Adam sucked in his breath as the train reached the far side of the river and kept going. They were in Zangaria now. He was almost disappointed. It didn’t look like an alien land.
He smiled as the train picked up speed, gliding past fields and roads while dropping, from time to time, into tunnels cut into mountains. The fields looked healthy, the farmers looked happy ... he reminded himself that Cockatrice had been spared the worst of the Zangarian Civil War. Lady Emily had been well on her way to turning the barony into the kingdom’s breadbasket even before the civil war had ruined her competitors. Adam took heart as he spotted the neat little houses, so much better than the shacks and hovels he’d seen in the Lower Depths. If Lady Emily could turn a barony into a wonderland, who knew what she could do with a school?
The train kept going. Adam leaned back on the bench, resting his head against the wooden bulkhead. The motion was oddly hypnotic. He hadn’t been awake for long and yet he already felt sleepy. He bit his lip as he dug into his bag for a book, pushing aside the sandwiches his mother had made before they’d said their final goodbyes. The trip wasn’t supposed to take that long, he’d been assured, but his mother had insisted on packing him a lunch anyway. He told himself to be grateful. The trains rarely ran on time. It was quite possible he’d be delayed ...
He opened the book and started to read, losing himself in magical theory to the point he almost didn’t notice when the train started to slow again. The whistle blew, once again, as the train swept into the city, passing row upon row of brick factories, apartment blocks and houses clearly intended for merchants and magicians. Beneficence was cramped, the entire city perched on an island that could be crossed in less than an hour; Cockatrice City was huge and sprawling, spread out over miles and growing constantly as it sucked up more and more outlying villages. It looked as if the city would just keep growing until it swallowed the entire kingdom, although he was sure someone would do something to stop the expansion before it could get that far. The train slowed, then rattled to a halt as it swept into the station. Adam felt cramped as he stood, picked up his bag and joined the other passengers as they hurried out of the carriage. The station stank of smoke and oil, but he had to admit it was impressive. It looked as if one could get anywhere on the railway.
