Dragon Soup, page 10
“Fergus! Fergus!”
The only sound he heard in response was the smacking of Yaro eating the apple.
Perrin grabbed the lamp and dropped to his knees.
What he had thought were droppings, in fact, turned out to be bits of fabric.
Fergus’ jacket lay in tatters on the floor under the bed.
Fergus had pressed himself against the very back wall way under the bed where Perrin couldn’t reach. He held out his hand with the apple and slid as far under the bed as he could.
Bits of white showed in the corners of Fergus’ eyes. His fur was even more scruffy than before. He was breathing fast, and his whiskers trembled.
The poor thing. That man must have really upset him.
“Come on, Fergus. Here is an apple.”
The animal sat quietly for a long time. Perrin was getting sore. The floor was hard and his arm was getting tired. But when he moved the apple, because he needed to get his elbow under him, Fergus’ eyes followed the piece of fruit.
“Come on, it’s yours. Come and get it.”
Slowly, Fergus crept closer and closer still. Perrin held his breath.
Then he was so close that Perrin could almost touch him. A few drops of blood from a cut to the side of his neck had seeped into the fur.
Fergus grabbed the apple with his mouth and took it in his front paws to eat it.
Well, what now? Perrin had forgotten to bring the towel he had used to catch Yaro.
But Fergus was quite calm. He allowed Perrin to stroke his back. Then Perrin looped his hand around the animal and pulled him closer, while his nails scratched over the wooden floor, and wriggled backwards out from under the bed.
Fergus even allowed himself to be picked up. The fur felt moist and messy. He squeaked softly when Perrin picked him up.
Poor thing. That must have been some fright.
Perrin carried Fergus to the cage, put him in and gave him a few more pieces of apple.
But Fergus was not interested and hid under the straw.
Yaro had already finished his apple and was clearly interested in the untouched pieces in the other half of the cage.
Perrin brushed the grey hair off his jacket.
He had no idea whether to worry about this. Fergus didn’t look happy. Did he need to do something about the cut in his neck? It didn’t seem to be deep.
Every time when he thought he had everything about this job sorted out, something happened that made him feel like he knew nothing. What had that man been trying to do in his room? If the miscreant was still here tomorrow, he’d have a good word with him and with Dorella, and report it to the guards.
At least he had the books.
He picked them up from the floor where they had fallen, then he went to the table and spread them all out.
These books reminded him of the comfortable life he had once led. If just a year ago he would have been told that in a year’s time he would be living above a tea shop and making a living as a magic inspector, he would not have believed it.
As little as a year ago, Atreyo would use these books to determine the magical properties of items before he bought them. The salts and spices Atreyo bought should be pure, but sometimes a merchant thought to be smart and tried to infuse magic to make the spices appear what they were not.
Perrin could still see Atreyo sitting behind his desk in their house. He could see the mischievous smile on his face when Perrin came in to bring tea, to remind him not to work too hard.
He could smell the scent of spices that always hung about the room. And Atreyo standing at the cabinet where he kept his samples, sniffing at an unstoppered jar.
Atreyo was so handsome. Tall and strapping, with lively brown eyes, a bronzed skin and a short beard.
Atreyo would travel to all the realms and sometimes Perrin would go with him.
In the realms, they rarely left the ship for any reason other than business, because magic could corrupt a person, and there were many stories of travellers having been ensnared in schemes through their own ignorance of magic, who were not allowed back into Tamba when their ships or trains arrived in the city.
Magic was everywhere in the realms. It was always trying to creep into the city of Tamba that was supposed to be a Magic Free Zone.
Usually, the actions of people had something to do with incursions of illegal magic, but not always. Each realm’s magic was different and behaved in different ways. The glamours in Validor were rather harmless, even if they could also be used to deceive and manipulate innocent people who didn’t know they were being manipulated.
But in Solania, magic was far less benign, and the domain of licenced magicians who worked for the authorities in law enforcement. Solanian magicians who came to Tamba were usually criminals who could—and did—use magic to kill.
In Renesta, magic inhabited the elements: wind, water, fire. Its magic moved of its own accord, and people could use it, but not control it.
In yet other realms, magic could be contained in creatures, embedded in handicraft. It could be a learned skill, something that everyone could use, or something you were born with.
The magic types rarely worked anywhere other than their native realm.
Except in Tamba. All of them worked in Tamba.
Atreyo would explain that all the realms were like petals in a flower. Tamba was the heart of the flower, where they were all connected. It also meant that all types of magic worked in Tamba, and the interactions between all the types of magic meant that if left unchecked, there would not be an object, an action or a breath of air in Tamba that didn’t have magic.
In the past, this had led to all kinds of interesting situations.
Take a Validorian glamour magician and give him magic fire. Let him weave it into an illusionary magic sword, and he was invincible.
For ordinary people on the street… not only could you never be sure that if a neighbour’s dog came after you, that it wasn’t secretly trying to spy on you, turn you into a wraith by biting you, or even whether it was actually a dog at all. Anything you bought at the markets might be a completely different thing, and everything that people offered could be fake, everyone could be trying to trick you or bedazzle you.
If you bought something in the shops, you had no idea what you were buying, because it was impossible to be familiar enough with all the different magics to be well-versed in each.
In the past, there had been magic battles between the different parts of town, when magicians wielded the full extent of their powers to the terror of the common citizens, who were not trained in magic.
Thankfully, those days were gone.
But one still needed to know how to pick magic, and that was what Atreyo would use these books for. He would sit and read and then he would laugh sometimes and tell Perrin some sort of story about the silly things that people did and believed.
But that had been Atreyo’s job.
Perrin wasn’t even sure where in the books he could find what he needed.
He was sure there wasn’t a chapter called “How to pick when an inn is using magic.”
Or it would tell him to use magic sniffers. He’d already done that.
He picked a random book and leafed through, occasionally getting lost in the beauty of the pictures. Some of these books were genuine works of art where the author—probably a magician living in a secluded hut in the mountains—would have painstakingly coloured in the illustrations with ink and paint.
But then he turned a page and arrived at a chapter called The interference of magics.
It was a chapter of just a few pages, with no illustrations.
These illustrations had, in fact, been left off deliberately, according to the introduction, because they would be too disturbing for the general populace.
Mixing magic from different realms, it said, could lead to a magic storm that would tear through the land like a wayward tornado. It could last for days or even longer and, if not brought under control, would eventually lead to the creation of additional realms with new types of magic more powerful than the others. That was a given: new realms were always more powerful. Solania was the youngest of the realms. They did not need another Solania.
Perrin shuddered. People whispered about magic storms in hushed voices. Legend had it that they were controlled by sorcerers from the realms, but it seemed, from the description in this book, that no one controlled them and that they did untold damage to the fabric of the land. They could change rock into water, plants into animals, air into fire.
Perrin turned the page and read about the different types of magic.
The chapter explained that Validor was one of the oldest realms. For a long time, glamour magic had developed and people used it in daily life. There were jokes about people from Validor who used glamours to clothe themselves coming to Tamba only to find out that they were actually naked.
While glamour magic was just an illusion, when the illusion covered a new form of magic, for example, one that inhabited the elements, glamour magicians could control the elements.
Elemental magic could also combine with animal magic to let the animals control it.
The author talked about a time in Tamba when oxen refused to plough the fields and chickens laid their eggs on roofs and cows formed a union of milking cows and refused to let themselves be milked unless their demands were met.
Food prices went skywards and the poorer workers went hungry while the sea invaded the land—so that the seals could swim in the city’s alleys—the sun came out brightly to favour the cats and the next moment it would rain because ducks liked it.
The crazy weather left a number of people dead, their bodies washed into the harbour or burned after wildfires.
Fortunately, the author said two city guards had confiscated an illegal unicorn in a train carriage before it could use the power of illusion magic and element magic to enhance its own magical powers. Taking the unicorn captive had cost the lives of two guards—speared through with the animal’s horn.
The people of the city had risen up and the magic had been extinguished.
But what about next time?
Perrin shuddered.
What if someone brought whales, or—heaven forbid—a dragon? If either of those could use magical powers, there was nothing a bunch of magic inspectors—most of them barely out of their adolescent years—with two magic sniffers each could do.
Why weren’t those fabled investigators paying more attention to observations from the inspector team?
What would the city do if that happened?
People always thought of Tamba as a safer place than the realms, but because all magics worked here, it was less safe. Much less.
After he had gone through two books, he finally found one that was somewhat relevant. At least it had a section about dragons, even though it was very short. It said that dragons lived in the mountains of Solania, that they were highly magical creatures and that they could not be tamed except by magic.
Perrin already knew that.
It was not until the next book that he found something more interesting. This was a magical cookbook that detailed how to befuddle kings into eating poison and how to make love potions. Amongst all these outrageous things, he found information on how to cook meals that were so beautiful that everyone would eat them and that the cook would gather great fame.
A chill crept over him.
That was precisely what the girl Laeticia was doing, wasn’t it? Because that wizard who had given her the coins had said something else to her, and they’d probably met at some other time, and he had told her what to do.
Perrin read about magical ingredients that would change the taste of a meal. These had been used in cases of poisonings of kings and other rulers, because few of these ingredients were cheap or easy to get.
They masked the foul taste of poisons, but many required the skill of a good magician to get the balance right.
Interesting, but not relevant in this case.
Why had the wizard asked for dragon meat in particular?
The books said little about dragons and nothing at all about eating dragons. It seemed pretty risky to come close enough to a dragon to be able to kill and eat it.
There were many chapters about magic potions, but he already knew the Traveller’s Rest had none of those, because he had sent Fergus into the shop and he had not found anything.
If Laeticia was using this type of magic, it would have been obvious.
It was all very interesting, but he was going to need a lot more time to find out what he wanted, if the information he needed was actually in these books.
He was tired, so he went to sleep to the annoying sniffling and rufflings of the magic sniffers. In the middle of the night, he got sick of it, and put the cage in the wardrobe, but he still didn’t sleep very well.
Chapter 14
Because Perrin couldn’t sleep, he got up as soon as it started going light. He went into the hallway, but found the door to the other visitor’s room already open. So, he had cleared out before Perrin could complain about having had his room searched?
Noises downstairs indicated that Dorella was already in the kitchen. Perrin went down.
“You’re up early,” Dorella said. “Did you want breakfast?”
“I’m wondering where the other visitor went,” Perrin said.
“Oh, Anko Katando?”
“I don’t know his name. Wait. Is he related to Elro Katando, the dressmaker?”
“Yes, it’s his brother. He lives in Solania, but is here to help his brother with the fair and the upcoming election campaign.”
“Election campaign? What does Elro Katando have to do with the election?”
“He’s standing against the mayor.”
“Does he have any chance? I haven’t heard from any people who are unhappy with Tarlo Firello’s running of the city.”
“Haven’t you? I don’t know where you have been listening. There are plenty of people unhappy. When Captain One-eye sacked all the crew from his ferry, not one councillor stood up for the workers. People haven’t forgotten that, because their demands were fair.”
True. Not that it had affected him. Except traffic across the river by ferry had been hairy for a few weeks.
Also, that explained a few things. Elro Katando talking to his campaign organisers in the Traveller’s Rest, and the campaign organisers discussing tactics over dinner in the same eating house.
“But why did you ask about him?”
“It seems the other visitor came into my room when I was away last night, and tipped the cage with the magic sniffers on the ground. They escaped. I don’t think he took anything, but I was wondering what he was doing in there.”
Dorella frowned. “Did you actually see him coming into your room?”
“No. It happened while I was away last night.”
“That’s strange. I’m sure that if he went into your room, that would have been a mistake. He’s a highly respectable person.”
“But… if it was a mistake, why leave my room in a mess?”
“I can’t answer that for you, but I’m sure he went into the room by accident. He does normally stay in the room that’s now yours. Maybe he made a mistake because he’d had a bit too much to drink? Here is your breakfast.” She picked up a tray with tea and two pastries.
“At least let me pay for it this time.”
“You’re already paying me.”
Perrin opened his mouth to protest, but she said, “Come on, off with you. I’ve got a lot to do before the tea room opens.”
So Perrin took the tray and trudged back upstairs.
A squeaking noise reminded him that he’d put the magic sniffer cage in the wardrobe last night, because he’d gotten so annoyed at their noises.
He took the cage out of the wardrobe. Fergus hid in the straw. Yaro lay curled up on in the corner. He opened a baleful eye when Perrin opened the door.
He shook some seeds into the food bowl and then sat down with his tea and Dorella’s pastries, with the crunching of seed between the animals’ teeth as background noise.
It was still early, so he picked another one of Atreyo’s books off the pile he had collected.
This particular book was intended for the apothecary owner, and detailed how to test the purity of samples before buying, and also how to detect tampering, including the detection of masking magic.
Perrin inhaled the scent exuded by the pages, somewhat musty, hoping to catch a whiff of Atreyo’s perfume.
The book contained a big chapter on food because
Besides being of import for human sustenance, food provides enjoyment and affords the provider of food with status and reputation, a concept which is rich with potential for manipulation through magic and trickery for the use in enrichment or the gathering or maintaining of power when favours are needed or elections.
Well, fancy that. There was an election coming up, and if Dorella’s rumours were true, Tarlo Firello might have trouble hanging onto his position.
Besides having more money, Elro Katando was also more easy-going and less pompous than Tarlo Firello. And he had just bedazzled every attendant to the Dressmaker’s Fair with that incredible black dress. Supposedly without magical assistance.
Yeah. Pull the other one.
He even had a brother who lived in Solania, of all places.
The book said about food magic that the main ingredients that would tip off someone looking for magic in food-related trickery were vinegar and pink salt. Of the two, vinegar was the main agent that masked the distinct taste of magic, which was said to have a nutty flavour. The taste of vinegar was often neutralised by adding other ingredients, but those were not important for their working, unless—the book said in a laconic tone—they were poisons.
Pink salt came from an island off the shore of Gaminia, known colloquially as “the whale kingdom” because it consisted of many islands and whales delivered an important function in guiding and sometimes pulling the boats. Sea water dried on the shoreline and the chemicals in the rocks rendered it pink. Pink salt could detect magic by changing colour from pink to white when it came into contact with magic. You were meant to sprinkle it on the substance you wanted to test.
