Forty Lamps

The lamps along Harrow's river wall took a cantrip each, and Tamsin Rook had forty of them to light before the Duke's party crossed the bridge.

She worked fast, the way the guild had taught her. Two fingers to the wick-stone, one word, move on. A cantrip cost almost nothing, which was the point of a cantrip. A lesser spell would have lit the whole wall at once, but a lesser spell left her sweating and light-headed for an hour, and she had been told to look presentable.

"You're slow tonight, Rook," said a voice behind her, and she did not need to turn to know it was Guildmaster Hesper Quill. Everyone in the town called her the Lamplighter, though she had not lit a lamp with her own hands in twenty years. Hesper Quill, the Lamplighter of Harrow, had led the Lantern Guild since before the Sundering, and she walked the river wall every evening as if she still owed it something.

"Thirty-one," Tamsin said, lighting the thirty-second. "I'll have them done before the outriders reach the gate."

"See that you do. The Hand of the King does not wait on hedge-mages."

That was what Tamsin was, and she had never pretended otherwise. A hedge-mage of the Second Circle, nineteen years old, guild-sworn and guild-paid, with a brass guild token on a cord round her neck and three silver crowns a month to show for it. In the capital a Circle Seven mage would have laughed at the thought of lighting lamps for a living. In Harrow, a Second Circle mage who could do cantrips cleanly all night was worth her wages, and that was enough.

Not everyone understood the Circles, so the guild made its apprentices recite them. There were nine. The First Circle was for those who could feel the current and little else. The Second Circle could shape cantrips and, with effort, a lesser spell. The Third Circle could hold a lesser spell steady and begin the greater workings. The Fourth Circle was where the greater spells came easily. The Fifth Circle, the Sixth Circle and the Seventh Circle were the ranks of the court mages and the war-wardens, each a step deeper into the current. The Eighth Circle had three living holders in all of Aldmere. The Ninth Circle had none, and had not since the Sundering, twelve years ago, when the last Ninth Circle mage cracked the crown of Aldmere in half and died doing it.

Nine Circles for mages. Four grades for spells: cantrip, lesser, greater and royal. A royal spell was one only the crown could work, and the crown had worked nothing in twelve years. People mixed the two scales up constantly, as if a greater spell made you a greater mage, which it did not. Tamsin had once heard a merchant in Vesk ask whether the Duke of Westmarch was "a greater mage, then, if he's the Greater Duke," and Hesper had laughed so hard she had to sit down.

The thirty-ninth lamp caught. The fortieth. Tamsin stepped back from the wall and wiped her fingers on her coat.

Horns sounded from the far side of the bridge.

Duke Rennard Ashcombe came across the Harrow bridge on a grey horse, and the lamps Tamsin had lit made his cloak look like poured wine. He was the Greater Duke of Westmarch and the King's Hand, the second man in the kingdom after King Osric Thane himself, and he looked tired. Beside him rode Duchess Isolde Ashcombe, his wife, with the hood of her riding cloak thrown back, and between their two horses, on a pony too small for the occasion, sat a boy of seven with his mother's dark hair. That was Cedric Ashcombe, their son, the only child of the marriage, and the town had been talking about him for a week.

Behind the family rode a thin man with a ledger case strapped to his saddle. "Edran Vale," Hesper murmured. "The Duke's steward. He counts every mark that leaves the Duke's purse and most of the ones that come in. Be polite to him and never lend him anything."

"Is he the Hand?" Tamsin asked. She had heard someone on the wall say so.

"No. People assume the steward is the Hand because he does the Hand's talking. The King's Hand is Duke Rennard himself. The steward is just the steward."

They dismounted at the guildhall steps, where Count Varro Haldane waited with his household. Varro Haldane held Harrow and the lands around it, and the Crown had named him Warden of Harrow at the treaty, which meant he kept the bridge and the ford and the road between. He bowed to the Duke the way a man bows to someone he has quarrelled with for a decade. House Haldane and House Ashcombe had been on opposite sides at the Sundering, and the Treaty of Harrow, signed in this town nine years ago, three winters after the Sundering, had put a stop to the fighting without putting a stop to the hating.

Tamsin did not hear what the Duke said to the Count. She was watching the Duchess, who was watching the river with an expression Tamsin could not read.

The Lantern Guild hosted the Duke's household that night because the guildhall had the only roof in Harrow large enough. Tamsin served wine, because a Second Circle hedge-mage served wine when there were guests, and she listened.

She learned that the Duke had come to Harrow on the King's business, and that the business was the crown. Not the king, the crown itself: the circlet of Aldmere that had been dark and cold since the Sundering, so that people called it the Hollow Crown and said it under their breath. The Treaty of Harrow had been signed on a promise that the crown would be relit within twelve years. The twelve years ended at Midwinter. If the crown was still hollow at Midwinter, the treaty lapsed, and House Haldane would be free of every oath it had sworn.

She learned, too, that the Duke paid his debts in gold sovereigns, which were rare enough in Harrow that the innkeeper had to be reminded of the exchange. Twelve brass marks made one silver crown. Twenty silver crowns made one gold sovereign. Edran Vale said it twice, slowly, and wrote it down for the innkeeper in a hand so small Tamsin could barely read it.

And she learned something she had known already, because every apprentice knew it: that no mage may hold a title above Count. It was the oldest law in Aldmere, older than the kingdom, and the Duke said it aloud at the table when Count Varro asked, half in jest, whether the Hand meant to raise a mage to a duchy to relight the crown.

"The law is the law," said Duke Rennard. "A mage may be a Count. A mage may not be a Duke, and a mage will never be King. That is why the crown was made in the first place. I am not here to break the law, Haldane. I am here to find a mage who can wake the crown before Midwinter, and I will pay in sovereigns to do it."

The Count's two children were at the table too, Tamsin noticed. Soren Haldane, the elder, sat very straight and said nothing. Wren Haldane, his sister, watched the Duke's steward the whole meal and did not touch her wine.

It was after midnight when the shouting started.

Tamsin was in the kitchen passage with a tray of cups when Edran Vale came through the hall door white as paper. "The Duke's signet," he said, to no one and everyone. "The Ashcombe signet ring. It was in the strongbox on the Duke's own table and the strongbox is open and it is gone."

Hesper Quill was already on her feet. "Nobody leaves the hall," she said, and the Lamplighter's voice carried the way it always had. "Rook. The lamps on the river wall. Go and see if any of them have been put out."

Tamsin went. Every lamp on the wall was still burning, all forty, which meant whoever had taken the ring had not gone out by the river.

She stood on the wall in the cold and looked back at the lit windows of the guildhall and thought: the Greater Duke of Westmarch has lost his seal in a town that hates him, nine weeks before a treaty ends, and the only mage he has in the room is a Second Circle hedge-mage with a brass token and a wet coat.

It was not a comfortable thought. She went back inside to be useful.