The Windrose Chronicles 1 - The Silent Tower Read Online Free Page B

Salteris, that he was always a friend to the mages, for all he held them at an arm's length for political reasons. He believed-else he would never have raised the army that helped you defeat the Dark Mage Suraklin.”
    Salteris did not move, but the witchlight flickered with the movement of his dark eyes, and something of his attitude reminded Caris of a dozing hound waked at an unfamiliar footfall.
    “Pharos' hatred of you is more than disbelief,” Skipfrag went on quietly. “He blames you for his father's madness.”
    Lady Rosamund waved a dismissive hand. “He was hateful from his boyhood and suspicious of everything.”
    “Perhaps so,” Salteris murmured. “But it is also true that, of late, the Regent's antipathy toward us has grown to a mania. He may fear me too much to move against me openly-but it is possible that he would send an assassin.” His dark eyes went to Skipfrag. “Can you find out for me at Court?”
    The physician thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think so. I still have Pharos' ear and many other friends there as well. I think I can learn something.”
    “Good.” Salteris got to his feet and clapped Skipfrag lightly on the arm as the big man rose, dwarfing the Archmage's slenderness against his blue-coated bulk. Caris, hurrying before them to open the outer door, saw in the watery dawnlight outside that Thirle's blood had already been washed from the cobbles in front of Stinking Lane; the puddles of water left by it were slimy and dismal-looking. The swordmaster and the two novices still stood on the brick steps of the novices' house, talking quietly, all three wrapped in bedgowns, though, Caris noticed, the swordmaster had her scabbarded blade still in hand, ready for action.
    It occurred to him suddenly to wonder, as he watched Salteris usher the physician over to his waiting gig, what Thirle had been doing abroad at that hour of the night at all? For that matter, what had Rosamund been doing up; she had been fully dressed, her hair not even crumpled from the pillow, so she must have been so for some time. He glanced back into the room behind him. Aunt Min, too, was dressed, though her thin, straggly white hair was mussed-but of course, reflected Caris, with rueful affection for the old lady, it always was.
    Had they all, like himself, been restless with the damp warmth of the night?
    Tepid dawn air stirred in his close-cropped, fair hair and stung the tender cuts on his cheek, where the assassin's bullet had driven brickchips into his face. The day was beginning to blush color into the houses opposite, the black half-timbering of their shabby fronts taking on their daytime variation of browns and grays. The jungly riot of Thirle's pot plants was wakening to green in daylight their owner would never see.
    Down in the Yard, Skipfrag was climbing into his gig, adjusting his voluminous coat skirts and gathering the reins of the smart bay hack that stood between the shafts. Salteris stood beside the horse's quarters, talking quietly to him. The physician's voice came clearly to Caris where he stood on the steps. “It's best I was gone. My reputation as a physician might carry off experiments with electricity, but it would never recover, if word got around I believed in magic. I'll learn for you what I can—do what I can, at Court. Until then, watch yourself, my friend.”
    Salteris stepped back as Skipfrag turned the gig. The iron wheels clattered sharply on the stones. Then the Emperor's physician was gone.
    The Archmage stood still for some time after Skipfrag was gone. The brick steps were cool under Caris' bare feet, and the dawn air stirred his torn and muddied shirt. He looked down at his grandfather in the paling light of the Yard and noted again how the old man had aged in the eighteen months since Caris had taken his vows and come to live at the Mages' Yard. When he had last seen the Archmage before that time before he had gone into training in the Way of the Sasenna-the old man