"He"s a dangerous man."
"Oh," she chuckled, "I know all about that, Master Buber. It seems the only person who didn"t was the one that mattered."
"There is a way we could end this, but it"s not without its risks." Buber straightened his legs in front of him to stretch them. Yes, he was tired, but he was used to being tired. Not like these townsfolk. The woman, mind, she was still awake and alert.
"Go on," she prompted.
He looked at her sharply. Anyone else, he would have told them that he was a prince"s man, and, as such, had the ear of the prince directly. Even a future princess of Carinthia. She had saved him, though, from being carted away across the river.
She pre-empted him. "If it"s none of my business, you only have to say. I"ve no authority over you."
Buber grunted. "Not yet."
"Not even then, Master Buber." Sophia made to get up, and he stilled her with his hand.
"Eckhardt isn"t the only sorcerer left. The one who rode out with Gerhard: she can still do magic, and she doesn"t need what he calls "fuel", either." Buber worked some dirt from underneath his fingernails. "She might be prepared to, well, kill him and Allegretti for us."
"Is she more powerful than the hexmaster?"
"Yes. Probably. Maybe." He shrugged. "I don"t know. This is the Order we"re talking about. She isn"t even a proper hexmaster herself; she"s an adept, though I think after what she did to Obernberg, no one"s going to worry about that."
Sophia shifted against the wall. "What did she do?"
"She burnt it to the ground. Along with everyone still in it." He grimaced. "There wasn"t the time to call for her last night. Probably a good job, too. Juvavum would be a pile of ash by now."
"No half measures?"
"No," said Buber. "She"s elemental. In more ways than one. The prince knows her, knows what she"s capable of."
"And so do you." Sophia toyed with the pommel of her spatha. "This woman..."
"Nikoleta. Nikoleta Agana."
She looked up and caught Buber"s gaze. She raised an eyebrow, and Buber gave a little shrug. Somehow, she"d guessed at more than he"d been willing to say.
Scratching at a cut on his face, he said: "Felix banished her, though that was more Allegretti"s doing than the prince"s. He might yet decide that he doesn"t want anything to do with magic any more, and she"s still not welcome."
"If he does that, would you leave with her?"
He thought about it. "I don"t know how he"s going to deal with Eckhardt without her help. He can"t overwhelm him with numbers, and as for sneaking up on him? I could do it, but I"d be lucky if I got half a chance at him. Then there"s the f.u.c.king sword-master to worry about, too."
"I"ll talk to Felix," she said.
"You? A Jew? Prepared to use magic?"
"Don"t mock, Master Buber." She shifted her shoulders again, uncomfortable against the cold stone. "You"re right. We don"t have enough soldiers. We don"t have any soldiers, just untrained boys and men trying to look the part, and they"re most of the people I know. If Eckhardt kills them, that"d be the end of the Jews of Juvavum, and that can"t happen."
"And what will your G.o.d have to say about this?"
"Honestly? That I should have faith and trust in Him, rather than rely on witchcraft to save us. That HaShem will send His angels against His enemies." She rolled onto her hands and knees, and Buber could see she"d changed her clothes at some point. The blood-soaked skirts of the night before had gone, and she was in something else, clean and bright.
"If he did, that"d solve a lot of our problems. Do you really think it could happen? I"ve never had dealings with any G.o.d, let alone yours."
"There are stories ..." she started, and he finished for her.
"All from a long time ago." He rubbed at his face. "They always are."
"Go and talk to your witch," said Sophia. "I"ll tell the prince when he wakes. How soon, a.s.suming she"s willing, could she be here?"
"Midday?" He got to his feet, and she to hers. They faced each other in the gloom. "Last night you saved the prince and the palatinate. That was well done."
"I didn"t do it on my own, Master Buber."
"We both know differently." He kicked at the floor. "If you are going to be our queen, then you"d be a worthy one."
"Carinthia needs its friends, huntmaster. We serve where we can." She reached forward and lifted his chin. "How long have you known you"re a berserker?"
"Last week, probably." He wouldn"t meet her gaze again, and pushed her hand away. "I don"t plan to make a habit of it." He barely remembered meeting her outside the library. He"d been tearing and snapping at the mob, using one of the librarians" makeshift clubs to lay indiscriminately about him, when the Jews appeared, seemingly from nowhere, bristling with weapons and armour to drive the insurrection from the square.
He"d almost fought them as well, but the sight of Sophia Morgenstern, b.l.o.o.d.y-handed and in command, had stilled him just enough that when she levelled her sword at him, he had the presence of mind to recognise friend from foe. The Jews had charged on, roaring their battle-cries in their foreign tongue, everyone taking fright at their ferocity. Sophia and Buber were left circling each other until he sprang his hand and dropped his club, letting it clatter to the ground. The madness had left him, and he was just the huntmaster once more.
"Like I said, we serve where we can. Some duties are more painful than others, that"s all." She rested her hand on his shoulder. "G.o.dspeed, Master Buber."
He nodded, and left her, making his way back down the stairs to the ground floor, deep in thought.
Getting back to where Nikoleta was waiting waiting for him? wasn"t going to be as straightforward as infiltrating the town in the first place. The Gaisberg was across the other side of the river: the next, much larger peak in the chain that included both Goat Mountain and the fortress crag.
He"d crossed the bridge yesterday, hidden among the crowds. Today, any large group of people was to be avoided, even the Jews guarding the crossing: trying to explain to them that bringing in another magic-wielder of uncertain temper would solve their problems wasn"t a conversation he wanted to have.
A boat, then, and away from the town to where awkward questions would be scarce.
The East Gate through the walls on Well Street was open. Perhaps it should have been closed and guarded, but the curfew seemed solid. He had his hand on his sword, and he made sure he walked down the middle of the road. Yes, there were faces at some of the windows, but he was a recognisable figure, and a prince"s man.
Outside the walls, the houses grew more spa.r.s.e and widely set. Rich men"s manors merchants and guildsmen lined the waterfront. Many of them would have a boathouse. He chose the last building on his left and self-consciously scaled the locked iron gate set in the tall brick wall.
The gardens in front of the house were immaculate, all squares of hedging and neat borders. The gravel path crunched underfoot: it was the only sound, and served to heighten his nerves. He had no idea who lived there but, on reflection, didn"t really care. It was just another faux-Roman villa, complete with a statue-lined approach, and couldn"t compare to the dark splendour of the forests.
Buber went on unchallenged: around the back and towards the river bank. More gardens, taking in the vista towards the lake country of the east, the Gaisberg now visible, rising from behind Goat Mountain, grey and indistinct in the morning mist.
The boathouse was new. It smelt of fresh-cut pine and still oozed resin, more so inside where the air was still and the river lapped at the base of the piling that supported the walkways either side of the tongue of water. The boards creaked as he walked to the far end to peer out through the opening at the far bank. He stayed still for a while, letting everything settle, watching and waiting.
There was no one over there. He climbed down the ladder to the smaller of the two boats and carefully sat on the bench seat as it wobbled under him. Two oars lay in the bottom, and after casting off, he used one of them to push himself out into the open water.
The current slowly took him, turning him in the direction of town again. Quickly, he fitted the oars to the rowlocks and began to pull himself around, aiming the prow of the boat upstream and towards his destination.
He stretched his legs, brought his arms into his body. The oars dipped and caught. The boat surged on.
44.
Before, his appearance his mere presence had always been a surprise: that she could see him and not sense him. When he"d left her the previous day, he"d stepped out of the clearing and was suddenly absent, where moments before, he was there and they were together.
Now, there was a subtle change. If Buber hadn"t previously been invisible, she"d never have noticed.
"Is it done, then?" she asked benignly. "I saw the fire."
Buber said nothing, walked up to the rock she sat on and squeezed on next to her. She never noticed the temperature, but sitting there, like that? She felt hot inside.
"Is it done?" he said. "Oh, it"s done, and more besides."
He carried injuries. Superficial cuts, spotty bruising. He"d been in a fight. But that wasn"t what concerned her.
"You"ve been ... prayed over." That was the taint that hung over him: prayer.
Buber worked his jaw. "Sophia Morgenstern. I didn"t even notice."
"So what has Peter Buber been up to, to warrant a blessing from a Jew?" She took his chin and turned his face left and right.
"Saving Carinthia. Apparently." He shook himself free. "I learnt a new word yesterday, though I don"t think it"ll be new to you."
"Go on."
He stared down at the White Tower. From their vantage point, they had a perfect view of both it and the White Fortress, with the town crouched in the gap between them.
"Necromancer."
"Who?"
"Eckhardt." Buber spat on the ground beside him. "The rest of your Order have either fled or been killed. By each other, or by Eckhardt himself."
She digested the news slowly and fully. "Just two of us left, then," she said. "What"s he doing?"
"In the middle of Gerhard"s funeral, he came down from the tower, as bright as the full moon. And that idiot Allegretti had been putting it about that Eckhardt could bring the magic back. All the townsfolk were lining the quays, and there was a f.u.c.king stampede." He hunched his shoulders. "Gerhard"s widow, her kids, the remaining earls, Trommler all gone. No one knows where: either they"ve been taken to Eckhardt or they ended up in the Salzach."
"And little Felix?"
"He G.o.ds, he fought like a man, like a giant. Eckhardt has promised them magic if they bring him sacrifices. Some more than enough to matter came back from Goat Mountain to do just that. They went for the Jews first."
"They always do," said Nikoleta.
"They didn"t succeed this time. The Jews were all up in the fortress, thanks to Felix. Thanks to Sophia Morgenstern." He looked down at his hands. He really ought to scrub them clean. "So they turned on the library, and I managed to convince Felix that losing that building would cost him the country. We had a pitched battle, right there, in the middle of the library, and we so nearly lost. Then the Jews came back down into town with two centuries of men."
She raised an eyebrow. "The library, Peter?"
"I"m not stupid. I know what that place means." He shrugged. "Besides, Frederik would have killed me himself if I"d let anything happen to it. Those librarians are furies when they"re roused. G.o.ds, it was close. Closer than Obernberg."
She leant more firmly against Buber"s side. "Are we still going away together? Your banishment, and mine, remember?"
"We"re not banished any more. We weren"t, even before I reappeared. Felix apologised, and admitted his mistake."
"Not very princely," she said, even though she knew the banishment was Allegretti"s doing in the first place. She waited for the catch.
"If they come across the bridge again, they"re lost. He"s lost. They could hold out in the fortress for months, but if Eckhardt gets enough power together, he"ll shatter the walls and it"ll fall in half a day." Buber growled in his throat. "The boy deserves better than that."
"Even if his own subjects would rather follow some mad sorcerer?"
"They"ve caught the madness from Eckhardt. If he was out of the way-"
"You mean dead."
"Yes, all right. Dead. The magic"s gone. It"s not coming back, is it?" He looked at her accusingly. "Is it? Those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have to learn to live without it, like I do, like the Jews do. Eckhardt"s just a mountain path that ends in a sheer drop, and he"s going to take everyone with him."
"Why do you care, Peter?" She shifted away from him. "Let them eat themselves. We"ll be hundreds of miles away and you"ll never even hear of them again."
Buber looked down into the valley, at all the little houses that were normally coughing up wood smoke, but that were instead cold and silent. "It"s not just the town, is it? So they kill all the Jews and all the librarians and burn all the books to keep themselves warm. What are they going to do next? Who else are they going to give to Eckhardt? I"ve got friends who live in the forests: they"ve got wives and children, and G.o.ds only know they"ve lost some already. Then there are the villages, and the farms, and travellers and, f.u.c.k it, Nikoleta, I don"t want to come from a place that mothers use to scare their kids with."
"If you don"t behave, the Carinthians will come and get you?" She laughed, but he was serious.
"I love this place. It"s all I know. I"ve spent my life trying to make sure that the enchanted and the normal the mundane, if you want to call it that can live side by side without killing each other. But Eckhardt"s like a dragon: a big scary f.u.c.ker with an unending appet.i.te who can"t be talked to or reasoned with." Buber drew his knees up and worried at his knuckles.
"And what do you do with dragons?" she asked.
"You can"t chase them off doesn"t work. You can"t buy them off they always want more than you can offer. In better days, we"d have called for the Order, and got half a dozen hexmasters out to bury it under a mountain."
She scoffed. "Exactly how many dragons have you seen, to give you such a wide experience?"
"Two. But," and he jabbed one of his half-fingers at her, "and this is the whole point, Frederik Thaler read a book to me about dragons. So although I"ve only ever seen two, I know how to deal with them all. And without magic, all we could do is march up to it in the company of the maddest b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the land and hope one of us can take it down before it torches the entire party."
"You don"t have enough mad b.a.s.t.a.r.ds left to do that, do you? For a dragon or for Eckhardt."
"Torsten would have been up for it. So would some of the other hunters: he"s gone, and I"ve no way of finding the rest quickly, and this needs to be done now."
"You can still let Felix deal with this. If he can"t, he"ll have to ... I don"t know ... come to some arrangement with Eckhardt. Perhaps the Jews" G.o.d will intervene now ours have gone. Or not: I don"t know him. Maybe he"s gone, too."
It wasn"t as if she didn"t know what Buber wanted, or even that she would refuse him. Fate had always been one of her least favourite aspects of the G.o.ds. Capricious whim and venial self-service she could deal with, and even understand, but not the idea of a long drawn-out inevitability, so that no matter what she did, her actions brought her, like the curve of a bow, back to one unavoidable point.
"Say for a moment that I agree," she said with a sigh. "What about afterwards? What do I do then?"
"Then you come away with me. I can leave knowing that Carinthia is safe, and we can go and find somewhere where having a skin full of tattoos doesn"t mean you"re a witch. I"ll teach you what I know."
"Because what I know is useless? I"ve spent my whole life learning not to be vulnerable again. What if we leave now? I"ll have my power. We can do whatever we want."