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  They also got rooms in the inn this time. Good ones. And in the morning when they left, Abi saw that Stev had a certain cat-in-the-cream look about him. She cornered him in the stable.

  “You’ve heard from Valdemar,” she stated.

  He smiled grimly. “Every length of property and every copper belonging to Dudley Remp’s been confiscated, he’s been exiled, and the Border’s been closed to him. He’s stuck here, with only the money he has on him. If he comes back across the Border, he’s got nothing to draw on, and no one will help him. If he’s caught, he’ll be booted back across the Karsite Border, and bad luck to him.” He went back to hitching up the hinnies, and she went back to saddling. It was a good solution. After all, Remp hadn’t managed to kill anyone. And it was a solution that left a better taste in her mouth than the disposition of “Del.”

  They caught up with the Masters and Bret and Bart back in Elliston. And that was where Jicks and “Del” parted with them.

  “You have all the funds that were meant to hold a bigger party than you’ll have now,” Jicks pointed out. “Abi knows how to drive and cook now, you can sell the second wagon and tie the hinny to the tail of the first.”

  “I’d rather give you the wagon,” decreed Master Vance. “You can get a mule or a horse here, and it’ll make transporting your tame Mage a lot easier. You might as well take the supplies we won’t need, too. Think of it as a bonus for your work.”

  Jicks smiled, clearly pleased. “A pleasure doing business with you, Master. I’ll make sure to let everyone know how Valdemarans are.”

  The last was said with a knowing look at Abi. She’s remembered to tell Steen about what’s going to happen if the Border moves. Good.

  The people of Elliston gave them all one final feast, with a whole roast lamb all to themselves, and in the morning, they parted on the road, one party going north, and one south.

  Abi was relieved to see them vanish into the distance. She’d learned a lot on this trip, but too much of it had been things she wished she could forget.

  Still. I’ll be back in time to see my bridge built.

  EPILOGUE

  Two huge wooden cranes the size of siege engines carefully lowered the last slab of the roadbed into place. The cranes stood on the two sides of completed roadbed on either side of the limestone expanse. The main arch and the subarches had been completed long before Abi had gotten home, but she was in good time to see the last stage, the roadbed itself, set into place. It, too, was an arch, a fragment of a circle rising over the river in so gentle a curve that the eye scarcely noticed what it was.

  A crowd of people surrounded her, although she stood a little apart from them, in the company of all of the Artificers and workmen who had labored to bring this limestone dream to reality—in fact, crowds waited breathlessly on both sides of the bridge, here for the sole purpose of seeing it completed.

  Beneath the stone, the wooden supporting structure was still in place, but once the initial keystone of the arch had been set, and the iron dovetails were in place, the bridge had been supporting itself.

  Eight workmen guided the slab until it was directly over the gap. Then the crane crews cranked on their apparatus until the stone hovered within a breath of the surface.

  Then the workmen slipped a dozen wedges of highly flammable pitch-pine into the gap between the slab and the roadbed. The crews cranked again, and the slab lowered to almost fill the gap. The workmen removed the two rope cradles. Supported by the two dozen wooden wedges, the surface of the slab stood about a thumb’s-breadth above the roadbed surface.

  Now the workmen lit the wedges in quick succession, starting at the outside and working in. The wedges flared up like tiny torches, burning fiercely and quickly, going from wood to ash.

  With a grating noise, the slab settled into place, the roadbed now forming one surface.

  The crowds cheered wildly, and the group around Abi cheered with them, slapping each other on the backs, some hugging, all of them ecstatic.

  Abi stared, transfixed, hardly able to breathe. There it was, her dream, her sweet curve of stone come alive, hovering above the water like the gentle curve of a dove’s wing.

  Oh, it wasn’t “finished” yet. It still needed the parapets and pilasters on either side for safety. But those were cut and waiting to be placed, and it wouldn’t take long to get them where they belonged. But that would take a sennight at most with all the workmen on hand, so it would be done before the autumn rains.

  She looked at it with her inner eyes, and the soft, muted sweep of stress carried evenly and sweetly from the crown of the bridge, down the subarches, into the arch-span, and into the riverbed walls, like the soft sweep of wind over a hill. And like the bridge in her dreams, it sang. It didn’t cry out in pain. It didn’t groan under a burden off-kilter and askew. It was a melody in stone.

  Suddenly she realized the workers and her fellow Masters and Trainees were pushing her toward the stone. Not shouting, but urging her, “Go on, Abi! It’s yours! Go show them who made it!”

  When she set her left foot on the limestone roadbed, she thought she was going to cry. A few more paces, and she thought she was going to burst. The crowd went utterly silent, watching her walk, slowly along the creamy stone arch—until she came to the middle, and stopped.

  Without even thinking about it, she raised her arms, slowly, and spread them, offering this, the child of her vision, to her city.

  The crowd roared.

  * * *

  • • •

  “That was amazing,” said Kat. “I don’t think I’ve seen people cheer for Mother and Father the way they cheered for you.”

  Still feeling so full of nameless emotions she thought she might explode, Abi and Kat had gone up to the top balcony of The Compass Rose, an inn much frequented by Artificers and their Trainees. The lot of her fellows carried Abi off here; Kat had arrived later. Once the serious drinking started, Abi and Kat had managed to get away from them and go up to the balcony to see if it was possible to see the bridge from here.

  It was, and it looked even better by moonlight.

  “I feel drunk,” Abi said, staring at her bridge. “I haven’t had anything but cider, and I still feel drunk.”

  Kat laughed. “I don’t blame you,” she said, fondly. “And to be honest, this couldn’t have come at a better time. People are going to be concentrating on this, and not on Father’s bad news.”

  Some of Abi’s elation drained away. “Bad news? What bad news?”

  “That expedition you all went on—it was all for nothing,” Kat explained, leaning her arms on the balustrade and looking out over the river. “Father just got their answer today. A very politely worded refusal. They are very sorry to have put us to all that trouble, and grateful for the work you and the other Masters did, but they have determined they have more to lose than to gain by joining Valdemar, and are going to be sending a delegation to the Court of Menmellith.”

  It took Abi a moment to process this—and then those particular words, “more to lose than to gain,” echoed in her mind. The Mages! Of course! All those people in the area who depended on their Mages, weak and strong, and so very useful in everyday life—the Mages had talked to them and to each other and had convinced them. “More to lose than to gain.”

  And rather than feel like a defeat, this just felt like one more victory, at least to Abi, although she was sure Master Vance, Master Padrick, and Master Beyrn would feel differently.

  “Well, I bet in their eyes, they do,” she said. “After all, there is no one true way.”

  Kat laughed. “I’ll be sure to remind Father of that if I find him still grumbling when we get back. Goodness, even your bridge is a reminder of that. If we’d stuck to ‘one, true way’ it wouldn’t be standing there now.”

  Abi could only smile harder.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mercedes L
ackey is a full-time writer and has published numerous novels and works of short fiction, including the bestselling Heralds of Valdemar series. She is also a professional lyricist and a licensed wild bird rehabilitator.

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