Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (ereader ebook .TXT) 📖

he added, “We also ought to start finding your contacts within the city. We need to deliver the message that the birdmen and molemen aren’t going to be working by their rules anymore. We have to lay out that your people are demanding higher pay for their merchandise, or we will find some other outlet.”

Every head nodded. But the pressure was still on. They watched him expectantly for more. Probably for some magical solution. It seemed he was never able to convince them that work was the only real magic in the world.

“So,” Theissen turned to Dobbis, plowing forward, “You ought to arrange your own team for this job. It is your business. So once we are settled in, you ought to see to your business.

“And you,” he said to Karo, hoping to ease the pressure off his own back, “ought to go and visit those people you deal with about your stuff. I’ll leave it to you to arrange your team for that.”

Both former moleman and former birdman smiled. They exchanged looks with each other with that old strain of competition that perhaps would never go away.

“What about us?” Teppan said. He gestured over to Ronen. “We’re your apprentices now. We won’t be going into feather selling, you know.”

Theissen blinked at them. “You were serious about that?”

Both Teppan and Ronen nodded earnestly. Theissen could tell from the flow around them that they were being honest.

Daanee grinned at him, clinging to Ronen’s arm.

Seeing her public affection, Theissen smirked with a more inspecting look. He said to the couple, “And you two ought to get married, or else I might be forced to take measures you won’t like.”

Daanee’s grin slipped. Shock replaced it.

Ronen looked likewise surprised. He glanced from Theissen to his girlfriend. “Do what to us?”

But Daanee’s dark eyes narrowed into a glare akin to her old molewoman scowl, narrowing almost in slits at him. “Don’t be a prude, wizard,” Daanee said, huffing. “And don’t try and regulate us. We’re in love. This is how lovers act!”

With that declaration, she pulled herself tighter to Ronen’s side, planting a long wet kiss on her lover’s lips, lingering there with a passion the carpenter’s wife would never have approved of.

Theissen about gagged with disgust.

Averting his eyes, he stepped up to them to nudge Daanee off Ronen. “That is no excuse for behaving like the way you have been this entire trip.” He could smell their hormones, which made him feel even more ill. It was, as always, syrupy. “From now on, if you want to benefit from my help, you two will act more respectably. And get married as soon as possible.”

Nodding sharply, Ronen pulled Daanee close to him. “I’ll marry her today if I can.”

Daanee huffed irritably.

But Theissen smiled.

Fiercely, towards Ronen, though she was looking at Theissen, Daanee snapped, “Ronen! That’s not the point! We’ve been free from the restraints of our people. I don’t want another shackle.”

By this time, people in the area were turning their heads. Many stared at them. This, of course, was unavoidable. Their group had, after all, stopped on the main road leading into the city where there were large signs pointing the way towards three locations: the capitol, the bay, and the mercantile district. They were standing closest to the sign directing them towards the bay. Many carts headed past them that way.

“Would you rather be regarded as a common whore?” Theissen’s voice was overheard by passersby. He glanced at their growing audience out of the corner of his eye. In fact, he was hoping Daanee would notice them as well. He needed her to be conscious of the society they were entering.

But Daanee, Theissen soon saw, was one of those romantics with no sense whatsoever. She merely paled, withdrawing from him as she pulled back Ronen with her. “I would not be! We’re in love!”

Taking the pressure a step farther, Theissen gestured towards the Jattereen City center. “It doesn’t matter if you are in love. In Jatte law, a woman who chooses not to marry but wishes to continue physical love with a man is considered a common whore and is often treated as such.”

This time Daanee looked around herself, going pale as she clutched Ronen. Those on the road watching them suddenly seemed more menacing than before. Mostly the watchers were curious, but their dirty clothes and wan expressions made them look dangerous to the inexperienced eyes of the former molewoman. Theissen hoped it made her nervous.

“It is for your protection for you to marry Ronen,” Theissen said, his voice turning more off-handish, as if it really didn’t matter to him what she did with her life. “But if you choose not to, I can’t have you living under the same roof as myself. It would taint my reputation as a respectable carpenter.”

“You’re not a carpenter!” she shouted back at him. Her fists clenching in fury at being forced into a corner of logic. “You’re a wizard! Live like one!”

Unfortunately, that was the wrong thing to shout at him. Everyone in the caravan all knew it as soon as it escaped her lips.

Theissen drew himself up, his chest high. He adjusted his carpentry belt, then hiked up his pack as if to abandon them all on the skirts of Jattereen, something they had all feared he would do the entire trip over. However, he merely said to her, and to all, “My being a wizard does not exclude me from being a carpenter or respectable, not any more than my being a man excludes me from being a member of human race. Got it?”

She cowered. Staring up at him with those child-like wide eyes, Daanee retreated behind Ronen for protection.

“Now if you intend to travel with me then you had better understand that I have standards I live by. It isn’t prude. It is lifesaving and wise.” Theissen stuck out his hands to show her his scars. Across both his palms she saw the cuts made when he had broken the law as a child for stealing. “Do you want to suffer Jatte punishment simply because you think you are free to do anything you want?”

Daanee shuddered, barely looking at the scars across his palms. She shook her head at him.

“You can never escape laws and regulations, no matter who you are. If you do not bend to them, you will break,” he said. He tapped the scars on his palms. “I got these because I acted as a wizard, thinking only about myself and ignoring the damage I was doing to people around me.”

“What about that scar?” one of the former moleman asked pointing to the one on his wrist.

Theissen nodded to him. “My hand was chopped off as punishment for brawling with a boy. If we were adults, the hands would have stayed off.”

They knew his hand stayed on because he was a wizard. But they did not bring that up, in case he got angry with them again.

“If I had killed, my head would have been severed,” he said. “And no magic would have cured that.”

As if he had drawn in a fog, a dampness of mood settled on the caravan. Theissen’s usual off-handish joking nature had transformed into that of a grim schoolmaster ready to deliver the stern lecture of their lifetime. However, all he said was, “Now, let’s go.”

Theissen turned and marched past the signs up the main road, not even glancing back.

Theobold stared after him, as did the other. But then the birdman shook his head, walking straight back to the rear of their group. The others glanced at one another before they followed Theissen upward and inward to the city.

They found more signs ahead on the road as they went on. They came upon a wide gated archway, marking the first barrier into town. When they passed through the archway, the group could see the gates still had their iron hinges, oiled and kept from rust. Guards, armed with shields, helmets and bucklers, all carrying spears with short swords at their sides, stood at the top, prepared for a siege if necessary. The guards eyed those that followed Theissen up the road, though they barely gave the carpenter’s son a blink. Theissen was dressed like a regular journeyman after all. No one in the city saw a wizard at all when they looked at him. The others, however, began to feel more acutely that they were still outsiders. And as they passed through, Theobold taking up the rear, the caravan wished they were not so conspicuous.

A guard called out to the birdman.

“You there! What village are you from?”

Theissen stopped and looked back.

Theobold flushed, his eyes taking in the gleaming steel. Even if he tried to launch into the sky for escape, the guards up top looked more than capable of shooting him down before he could get out from between the walls of the buildings.

Practically flying back to the end of the caravan, Theissen was already at Theobold’s side whispering to the guards something that eased their concerns. They let the caravan hurry on its way soon after. When Theissen returned to the front of the caravan where he led them back up the streets, the others whispered back to Theobold asking what had been said to the guards.

Theobold looked like he had just barely escaped the grave. “He told them I was a friend of his, a performer from the west. He said my clothes were my costume.”

“Costume?” the others echoed, glancing at their clothing again, feeling conspicuous.

But Theobold frowned more. He glanced a back towards the mountains, wishing again that he were home.

The caravan passed through three more of these barrier walls into the city, each one with their set of guards. Theissen had asked a local about the city walls, as he had never seen the like before. And the local man responded that the city walls had been built ancient to protect it from marauders that came from the northern country of Hann. What fascinated Theissen was that the guards weren’t members of the Jatte army. Those, wore a different uniform. Also, the guards here were nothing like constables or sheriffs of the towns Theissen knew. They were more military-like rather than civil defense. Not that they did not see a constable every so often walking along a road, but that with these guards around the likelihood of needing a constable seemed less necessary. And the constables that they did pass mostly regarded his group with a shrewd eye, a look that made the carpenter’s son incredibly nervous.

“They’re watching us,” one former birdman murmured not far from where Theissen walked.

The travelers’ eyes lifted upwards most of the time as they passed the stony city walls. It was like walking through narrow canyons of stacked stone. Much of the roadways and highways were worn from foot traffic, with major cracks of weight and time in them. The city itself felt ancient.

“Indeed they are,” Theissen murmured. “Like always. I think once we get settled in you ought to go out and purchase ordinary clothing.”

The ex-birdman sighed. “I suppose so. But their clothing is so drab.”

Theissen chuckled painfully. His mood lightened.

The tenseness in the air also seemed to lessen when he did, so much that the people in his caravan also felt the release. It was true; they preferred Theissen when he was happy. It wasn’t his nature to be so irritable. So whenever he got like that, the others worried. After all, what could worry a wizard had to be something truly threatening.

“You didn’t really mean what you said back then, did you?” one of the ex-birdmen finally asked him.

“Which part?” Theissen exhaled, not sure of this particular man’s name yet.

Thinking for a moment, the ex-birdman chose exactly what he meant. “That living in Jatte is ruthless. That the law is ruthless.”

Theissen sighed again. He led them to a street corner where one buckboard rumbled past with two horses and two escort riders with it. A small goat cart and a man heaving a