Page 66 of Fate of the Argosi

‘I was only eleven when my clan was killed,’ I reminded her, ‘and the elders had a great many sayings. They always seemed to be about wisdom.’

She smiled, but there wasn’t any joy in it. ‘“Wisdom is never free, and the price is paid in either years or in pain.”’ Her hand fell away from my cheek, leaving behind a little warmth. She rose up on tiptoes to kiss that same spot. ‘No one so young should have had to purchase as much wisdom as you have, Ferius Parfax.’

The Letter

To Her Esteemed Ladyship,

Arelisa Valejine Talédra,

Contessa of Corveon,

You didn’t think I was gonna let Ala’tris keep your full name a secret from me, did you? What was so awful about being called ‘Arelisa Valejine Talédra’ anyway, that you had to give up all three and just went by ‘Arissa’? On the other hand, I seem to recall that the entire county of Corveon got swallowed up by its northern Daroman neighbours some fifteen years ago, so I can understand why you dropped the ‘Contessa’ part. One of these days you’re gonna have to tell me the whole story of how the only living daughter of the famously honourable Talédra family became a notorious cat burglar and sneak-thief.

I wish I knew for sure that this letter was going to reach you. Who knows how many thousands of leagues of shadowblack sea lie between us? Even if the spellship makes it back to those shores where you and I parted less than two weeks ago, you could be anywhere, rambling around any city in any nation across the entire continent. Ala’tris reckons her silk magic can follow your trail wherever you’ve wound up, but I’ve told her to start with the prisons just in case.

Anyway, if you’re expecting some tear-stained, poetry-inspired lament to lost love, you can remove the smouldering end of that hideous smoking reed of yours from the edge of the paper. This letter isn’t about loneliness or heartache. It’s about finding beauty in unexpected places. It’s about the Path of the Wild Daisy.

Durral once told me that a true Argosi, skilled in the seven talents, walking the four ways, is prepared for anything the world can throw at them except beauty.

Yeah, yeah – typical sort of Durral nonsense I’m always complaining about.

Thing is, beneath all his sentimentality you can always find some cold, hard logic, and this one’s no exception. An Argosi armed with arta eres knows how to defend themselves, with arta forteize, to endure all kinds of hardship; arta tuco sharpens the mind in evasion and arta siva in persuasion. On and on the seven talents go, each one stacked up like a deck full of trump cards waiting to be played. Yet, to what purpose? Why does someone become an Argosi at all? First and foremost, we’re wandering gamblers. But gambling on what? And wandering where?

Spend enough time on those questions – and I’ve spent plenty – and you realise that every Argosi’s path is a search for wonder, meaning and beauty. And when we find all three .?.?.

‘How can you be staring at scraps of paper withthatout there?’ Gab’rel asked.

I balanced the quill on the railing next to the little jar of ink and kept one hand on the letter while absently reaching out the other to tousle the fifteen-year-old’s hair. Gab’rel was sorely in need of a reminder that, while he might see himself as a promisingly powerful Jan’Tep breath mage, to me he was just an annoying kid.

The Mahdek passengers filling the deck of the ship had generously made a path for me to come to the bow and witness the prize that had brought us all here. Ala’tris was shedding tears of relief and pride, hugging Sar’ephir. The winding black markings on the tall woman’s skull were still swirling, but not so intensely as when she was navigating the spellship through the shadowblack. Her forehead and shoulders were glistening with sweat. Jir’dan and Ba’dari were grinning from ear to ear. The Mahdek were holding each other close, whispering promises of better days to one another. Even Chedran seemed dumbstruck by what awaited us.

Everyone – Ala’tris and her coven, the Mahdek, young and old, and yeah, even that arsehole Chedran – had waited for me to say or do something. I’d given some thought to what I wanted to say, then asked for some paper, ink and a quill.

Anyway, Arissa, where was I? Oh, right. Beauty.

So, the thing about the Argosi is that all of our talents are built on opening ourselves up to the world, not closing ourselves off. Arta precis requires us to see that which others do not wish seen or fail to even recognise in themselves. Arta loquit embraces the voices and eloquence of others. Even arta eres, defence, teaches us how to let the opponent in rather than keep them out, turning the fight into a kind of dance.

When we come face to face with something wondrous, something beautiful? All those talents can cause us to become . . . well, mesmerised.

As I write this, the spellship has docked next to a long, narrow strip of shimmering black onyx, smooth and flat. The causeway can’t be more than ten feet wide, but it stretches out a full half-mile before reaching a landscape so lush it practically bursts with colour, defying the eternal night of the shadowblack. Even from here, I can see the sandy beach glittering all golden, reflecting the rays of a sun whose light shines no further than the shore. Beyond the beach, grass and brush thickens as it leads to lush forests. There’s an astounding tapestry of trees and bushes crowned in lustrous leaves of shapes and colours both familiar and strange waiting for us. The streams and rivers . . . I shouldn’t be able to hear them from so far away and yet my ears delight at their babbling. Towards the centre of the island, I can just make out the wild, emerald landscape sloping upwards, gently at first, then more steeply to a mountain range that rises all the way up to kiss silver-white clouds. All this, Sar’ephir and Ala’tris had tried to show the Mahdek elders back at the enclave with their lightshaping magic. The real thing makes their spells look like parlour tricks.

‘We must send a scouting party,’ Stoika just announced. You remember her? The pompous, sour-faced elder who nearly had you locked up in Colfax’s dungeon for having hurled a dozen of my throwing cards at the entire Mahdek council? Anyway, she’s already gazing at the assembled passengers as if preparing to announce her choices.

Sorry, had to pause a moment in writing this so that me and Stoika could have us a staring contest. In my eyes, she saw curiosity that she’d so readily take the reins when minutes before she’d intended to die and leave leadership of the Mahdek to me. In the glower she returned, I read a more portentous message: I had refused to take power, and she would neither offer to give it up again nor shy away from wielding it in the best interests of our people.

When I first came back up on deck, Ala’tris had sidled over to me and spoke quietly so no one else would hear. ‘This is as far as we can go.’ She’d held up her forearm to show me the angry red rash forming around the sigils of her tattooed bands. ‘The mystical ores within the island are interfering with the ones that bind Sar’ephir, Gab’rel, Ba’dari, Jir’dan and myself to our own continent. We will grow sicker the closer we get.’

I took her arm, traced a finger around the reddened lines on her skin. They felt hot. ‘How long can you wait for us?’

‘Seven days, perhaps a bit longer. After that we’ll be too sick to make the return journey.’ She smiled wryly. ‘At least Stoika and the elders can be reassured no Jan’Tep invaders will ever come knocking.’

I thought about that a moment, about the sacrifices Ala’tris and her ‘restitutionists’ had made to bring her people’s ancient enemies to a place of safety. There would be no parades for her back in her home city of Oatas Jan’Dal, if ever she was allowed to return at all. Yet, she had undertaken this hard and harrowing quest because she knew, deep down, against the teachings and traditions of her own family, that it was right.

‘Ferius?’ she asked.

‘Yeah?’

‘Why are you staring at me that way?’

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