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  “And in every case, the problem is manpower and money,” Padrick added. “Yes please, a nice thick slice of that mutton would be—ah, perfect. Never let them have a chance to think about manpower and money until everyone they are accountable to has a chance to build expectations and clamor for what you want to build. And that would be where you two come in.” He pointed his knife at Bret and Bart and went back to eating.

  “Who?”

  “Us?”

  “Yes, you.” Padrick’s mouth was full, so Vance took over again, as Beyrn listened intently. “You were planning on going to the pub tonight to fill yourselves full of beer right?”

  “Uh—” They both looked sheepish.

  “My dear boys, that’s exactly what we want you to do. And tell everyone about the magnificent ferry or floating bridge, and the even better stone bridge, we are planning for them. Tell them how wonderful the plans are—yes, I know they don’t exist yet, but they don’t know that. Make it all sound splendid. And in the morning, when I get done figuring how may men it will take, and how much wood, and he starts to get cold feet and wonder how it’s to be paid for, the townsfolk will turn up on his door demanding these things be built right now. They might even volunteer to work, or offer wood, but the important thing is that they demand these projects begin immediately. And that will get our reluctant horse over the jump. A spot more of that bread and butter, please.”

  Beyrn was not the only one listening intently as they sat around a very nice fire, with the leg of mutton kept warm on a spit to one side, the big clay pot of vegetables just in the coals, and the bread and butter and tarts on a makeshift table made of a couple of storage chests and some planks. Abi listened with all her concentration. Seeing Vance at work today and listening to him now had made her realize that it was not just creating good structures and executing them that made a Master—it was knowing how to manage the people that would make sure the project got built in the first place.

  That, it would seem, was an art in itself.

  When no one could manage another bite and the last of the food had been stored safely away from vermin and insects, Bret and Bart strolled happily away to the pub—beside which they had made their camp—the Masters took themselves off to bed, and Stev propped himself on a saddle beside the fire for his nightly communion with his Companion.

  Abi decided to take a stroll through the village to get herself acquainted with it. There was a full moon, and plenty of light, and she wanted to walk off a certain restlessness.

  There was a low stone wall at the southernmost end of the village just past the camp that seemed meant for sitting on. And there was a spectacular view of three tall, craggy hills in the moonlight, with the moon glinting off all the little watercourses and tiny ponds that lay beneath them. Abi sat and stared; she’d never seen anything like this in all her life. Moonlight over the Palace gardens wasn’t half as awe-inspiring.

  She heard footsteps approaching, and identified them as Jicks without even a second thought. A moment later, Jicks lifted her legs over the wall and sat down close beside her.

  “And this’s why I’ll never live in a city,” Jicks said, after a very long period of silence. Then, without any warning, she put her arm around Abi and kissed her.

  Abi was so startled she didn’t react at all. Even her thoughts were a sort of blank, a blank that only resolved itself when Jicks pulled away again. And . . . she didn’t know what to say. Without thinking, she lifted her hand to her lips, blinking a little. She just kissed me. Oh, dear.

  The awkward silence between them grew. Abi didn’t know how to break it, and Jicks was clearly waiting for some sort of reaction.

  Finally Jicks sighed. “No spark?” she asked. “Nothing?”

  Abi felt her face flushing, but more out of chagrin than anything else. “I’m sorry. . .” she said. “I . . .” Oh, hell. But I never—

  “I couldn’t help but see the lads weren’t doing anything for you, even though they were spreading their tails and all but dancing for you, so I thought I—” Jicks sighed again. “I thought I might have a chance. I guess I’m just too—”

  “No, it’s not you,” Abi managed to interrupt her. “Actually, it’s not anyone. Not even my best friend Kat. Or Rudi or Emmit or Brice or—well, it’s not anyone. It’s never been anyone.” The last was said with a kind of wonder, because—

  —well, because she’d never actually thought about this before. But it was true. It wasn’t anyone. All the giggling and carrying on and whispers and what people fondly thought were secret romances that had gone on around her, and there’d never been a spark of anything between her and anyone else. Oh, she loved Kat and Trey and Niko to bits. And she loved Brice, Rudi, and Nat. But . . . she loved them the same way she loved her brothers. She’d never thought about that, she’d just accepted it. And if anyone had ever been flirting with her (like Bret and Bart?) she’d been oblivious. It just wasn’t that important to her. Actually . . . it wasn’t important at all.

  “Ah, well, then, at least it’s not me.” More silence, broken only by the far off whoop of an owl. “Friends, then?”

  That startled her. Why shouldn’t they still be—

  Ah, well, one more thing she didn’t understand. “Of course,” she said, warmly. “We’ve been together enough for me to know you’re one of the best friends I have.”

  “Good.” They watched the silver moon creep higher into the sky. “You must be like my Sergeant back in the Harriers. Women, men, doesn’t matter, he’s always alone in his bunk and for all I can tell, he likes it that way. One Midwinter I watched him get roaring drunk, politely brush off girls that were literally hanging on his arms, and go to his bunk alone.” Jicks picked up a rock off the wall and threw it out into the darkness. “Well, maybe it’s all for the best. Messy things, love affairs. Worse when they get in the way of doing your job.”

  Abi didn’t even have to think about that. Although it hadn’t affected her, or anyone in her circle of acquaintances, she remembered very well how messy things had gotten among the Bardic and Healer Trainees when love affairs had gone awry. And Brice was always getting his heart broken by girls he was attracted to when they paired up with someone else; he’d go moody and hard to work with, sometimes for more than a moon. If that kind of mess is routine, then I’m much happier being the way I am.

  “I had no idea these hills were so beautiful,” she said, finally. And she sensed Jicks relax.

  “Nights like this . . . I don’t even mind taking a watch.”

  13

  As Master Vance had predicted, spreading the word that there was a short-term and a long-term solution to the crossing problem led the people of the town to clamor for both. As work on the series of floating platforms began, so, too did work on the eventual stone bridge begin. In the case of the latter, the local stonemasons worked under the direction of Master Vance in building up the two piers that would eventually anchor the arch of the bridge. That meant building out along the riverbank as well as up—to guide floodwaters smoothly past the piers so they wouldn’t be washed out.

  Abi and Master Padrick worked on the floating bridge, once Master Padrick had drawn up extremely detailed plans of how to build the scaffolding that would hold the arch in place until it was self-supporting with the addition of the keystones. That left Master Beyrn with nothing to do.

  Finally, he approached the mayor himself, on one of the latter’s many visits to the riverbank. “Are there any dams around here that need inspecting?” he asked, a little desperately. “Any buildings that need reinforcement?”

  “Well, there’s the old dam up the river that way,” Mayor Rufous replied, doubtfully, after some thought. “It’s stood forever, though. We don’t know who built it; it was here when the village was first founded.” He waved in the general direction of “upriver.” “You’re welcome to look at it, but I doubt you’ll see anything.”

&nb
sp; But Beyrn, who by this time was fidgeting with inactivity, saddled his mule himself and left immediately. Abi didn’t even give him a second thought; she and Padrick were too busy testing the first of their bridge platforms to make sure it could hold the weight of a wagon and horses without tipping as the wagon moved from one platform to the next.

  That is, she didn’t think anything of it until Beyrn and Bret, who had gone with him, came pounding back, having somehow persuaded their hinnies to return at a gallop. Beyrn’s face was white as marble, and Abi, who was the first to see him, ran to him and grabbed his hinny’s bridle. He moved his mouth, but nothing came out.

  She clapped her hand over his, which seemed frozen to the reins. “Deep breath,” she ordered, and he took one shuddering. “Another. Now what’s wrong.”

  “Th-th-the d-d-d-dam,” he stuttered. “It’s failing!”

  * * *

  • • •

  “I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Mayor Rufous said crossly, looking down at the runnel of brown, muddy water at the base of the dam. “It’s just a little leak. I’m sure we can patch it up with a few rocks.”

  But Master Vance whirled, grabbed the man by the shoulders and shook him, hard. “Listen to me, you blithering idiot!” he hissed. “It’s not ‘just a little leak! Beyrn’s right! That ‘little’ stream means that water has worked a channel all the way under that dam, creating an unstable area that could literally collapse at any moment!” he let the mayor go, and wiped his forehead with his sleep. “Dear Gods, man, how much water is backed up behind it?”

  The mayor gulped, shocked. “I . . . don’t know. Acres . . .”

  “We’ve got to lower the water level, Vance,” Padrick called from up on the hill that overlooked the dam. “And we’ve got to do it now. Otherwise a wall of water this high is going to roll down on the village and when it passes there won’t be a living creature left. And you all had better get up here now, just in case it decides to let go while you’re standing there.”

  Vance shoved the mayor at the horses—they’d borrowed horses, because horses were a lot easier to coax into a gallop than the hinnies. “Go!” he shouted. “We need men with shovels and picks and we need them here now, if you want to save your village!”

  Abi scrambled up beside Padrick, and gulped. Behind the ancient earthen dam was what had once been a wide, meandering valley, probably fed by a river that joined the one that the villagers needed bridged. It was easy to see why the dam had been built in the first place; if the village was having trouble keeping a bridge in place through flooding now, it would have been impossible with this tributary feeding it. And Padrick was right. When the dam caved in, all the water was going to rush down into the river and from there into the village. She tried to envision it; a wall of water, raging the way the Terilee in Haven raged at flood, and her imagination failed. All she could be sure of was that the result would be catastrophic. “Can we plug the hole?” she asked Padrick, feeling sick and cold.

  “Not in time, maybe not at all,” Padrick replied grimly. “We’ve got to release water in a controlled manner and drain that basin to let pressure off the dam.” He looked around, as if he expected to find a shovel or a pick-ax right at hand. “Here would be the best spot.”

  He pointed to a point just below their feet where the dam met the hillside. Abi nodded; not only was the hill probably more stable than the dam, it appeared to be solid rock right there, where the dam was just earth and fill-rock.

  Beyrn lay flat on his stomach a little higher than they were, peering down at the water at the center of the dam. “I don’t see any actual flow,” he called down to them. “So right now, it’s just a seep.”

  “It won’t stay that way for long,” Master Padrick said, grimly, then called down to Vance. “Vance, get up here! We don’t need to lose you if it decides to let go while you’re standing there!”

  Vance peered up at them from beneath the shade of his hand. “But think of the observational data I would get!”

  “Which would die with you! Get up here!”

  “Point taken,” Vance replied, and began laboriously climbing the steep slope of the hill to get to them. Once he reached them, he strained his eyes in the direction of the village. “What’s keeping them?” he muttered.

  “The difficulty of herding people who have no idea how dangerous this situation is,” Padrick replied, turning his gaze in the same direction. “You heard the mayor. ‘The dam has stood forever,’ so it’s difficult for them to imagine it’s failing.”

  It seemed to take forever before Padrick spotted the villagers approaching in the far distance—and even longer before they finally got there. When they finally arrived, it wasn’t Rufous who was in charge.

  It was Jicks. And with her was the village magician.

  She didn’t make any explanations about her presence, just got the men to work on the spot Padrick had chosen, and only when they were chipping away at hard-packed earth as tough as pure stone did she turn her attention to Master Vance.

  “I brought Steen,” she said, “In case he can do something.”

  “I don’t know what you think I can do,” the sorcerer replied, frowning. “I’m not going to be able to heal that breech—”

  “Wait,” Abi interrupted. “Can you freeze the water in it?”

  Steen looked at her as if he had never seen her before. “Actually,” he said, slowly, “I think I can!”

  And without waiting for anyone to say something, he scrambled down the slope to the seep, stood a little to one side of it, and began gesturing. He took longer this time than the last two times Abi had seen him work, but eventually there came a flash of white light from his hands that made her flinch and look away. When she could see again, Steen was bent over, hands on his knees, clearly unable to speak. She slipped and slid her way down the slope herself to see what he had done.

  Up close, Steen was a pasty white, beads of sweat standing on his forehead, and panting. But he wore a smile of triumph, and no wonder—the seepage of water had stopped, and all the grass around the area where the seepage was lay covered with a thick rime of frost.

  “He did it!” she called upslope, and was rewarded by a “Well done!” from Master Vance.

  “How long will that last?” she asked the sorcerer.

  “Don’t know,” he confessed. “But ice stored underground can last most of the summer. Should hold long enough to get the water down.” His head sagged with exhaustion for a moment, then rose again. “I’ll stay here till that happens, regardless. I can probably do the trick once or twice a day if I have to.”

  “You’re a good man, Sorcerer Steen,” she told him, warmly.

  He waved off her praise. “I live here too,” he reminded her. “Besides, you’re the one who thought of it.”

  “You’re going to be a hero,” she pointed out. “People here won’t care who thought of the idea, they’ll care about the man who made it happen.”

  Still bent over his knees, he managed a shy smile. “I’d like being a hero.”

  Then he looked up at the men trying to chip away the corner of the dam. “I think I can help up there, too,” he said, and he shoved himself erect again. Abi was dubious, but she helped him climb the slope anyway. He studied the situation and made a couple of complex gestures, then sat down again. “Work on the water side, gentlemen,” he suggested. “I’ve done something to pull some moisture into the earth to soften it up a bit.”

  Whether it was Steen’s doing or just dogged determination by the townsfolk, the earthen dam began to yield to their efforts. And once they got down to the waterline, they got some real results. They were able to tear big pieces out of the dam with their picks, and soon water began running down the face of the dam.

  “Get out of the gap!” Vance ordered, and they hurried to obey him. He watched the water flowing down the improvised spillway for a while,
then directed two, and only two, of the pickax men to dig a bit more at the spillway—and do so from perches they carved out above the waterline.

  “I’m watching for things to get to the point where the water will do the work,” he told Abi, as the water carried rocks and clods that had been chipped out of the soil down to the base of the dam. “Any moment now—there! Jump away, fellows, the lake will do the work now!”

  Sure enough, there was mud in the water even after the last of the work the pickax men had done had been carried away.

  As sunset neared, Vance stood watching the water flowing, deep in thought. Finally he gestured to Bret. “Would you and your brother be willing to stand watch here at night?” he asked.

  “Aye, if the chief’ll bring us food and our bedrolls,” Bret replied. “Why?”

  “I’m not expecting the dam to suddenly wash out and collapse, nor for the spillway to enlarge so fast it will create a downstream flood . . . but that’s a possibility,” Vance said, and he looked at Abi.

  Abi shrugged. “All I can tell is the whole dam is under strain, there’s a weak spot where we know the drainage is, and another where we put the spillway.”

  He nodded. “So, you see, if the spillway shows signs of suddenly getting bigger in an out of control fashion, or if the seepage at the bottom of the dam turns into a stream, someone needs to be here to see it and run to warn the town.”

  “Aye, we can do that,” Bret agreed.

  Steen sighed. “I should stay. If that starts to happen, I can make an ice dam and slow it down to a safe level again. Plus, I need to keep an eye on that blockage I did underneath.” The wizard shook his head. “This is more work in one day than I’ve done in a moon.”

  “Well, I hope it won’t be necessary, but that is a noble offer on your part,” Vance replied, clearly warming up to the sorcerer.

  “I’ll ride back to the town and let everyone know what’s going on, and I’ll make sure you get some creature comforts up here,” Abi offered, and she headed for the horses. She managed to get hers (reluctantly) into a canter, but his reluctance turned to eagerness once he realized he was pointed in the direction of his stable.