The Ambassador's Mission: Book One of th - By Trudi Canavan Page 0,132
hand dismissively. “No, we’ve been doing this for centuries. Got to move slaves about somehow.”
He frowned. “Won’t any Traitors seeing a cart like this suspect there’s someone travelling inside, then?”
Chari shrugged. “Yes, but unless they’ve got a good reason, they won’t approach us. Especially not during the day. Slaves don’t stop other estate’s carts. None of their business. If an Ashaki saw them doing it, they’d think it odd and investigate.” She frowned. “Keeping you hidden has the added benefit of preventing confrontations like the one you had with Rasha. I have the authority to stop Traitors like her – don’t worry, not all of us want you dead – but dealing with it would delay us. If other Traitors do suspect you’re in here, they’ll rightly assume it wouldn’t be without the knowledge of other Traitors. This is not something you could ever arrange on your own.”
“And let’s not forget the people searching for Lorkin,” Tyvara added. “Ambassador Dannyl and the king’s representative, Ashaki Achati.”
“Those two?” Chari waved a hand dismissively. “We’ve arranged for them to be sent off track, next time they go snooping around an estate.” She smiled. “They could ride past us and never know we’re here.” She looked up at the bales above them. “Though, it can get a bit stuffy on hot days. Good thing you two had a bath last night, eh?”
Lorkin nodded and looked down at himself. The last of the dye had washed off his skin. He patted the clean slave wrap. “Thank you for the new clothes, too.”
She looked at him and grimaced. “We’ll have you out of them and into proper clothes soon.”
“I never thought I’d say it, but I miss my Guild robes,” he lamented.
“Why didn’t you like them before?”
“Because every magician wears them. It gets a bit boring. The only change you get is when you graduate from a novice to a magician – unless you become one of the Higher Magicians, and most of them only wear a different colour sash.”
“A novice is a student, right? How long do they stay novices for?”
“All new entrants to the Guild are novices. They spend about five years in the University before they graduate.”
“So what sorts of magic do you learn at the University?”
“At first a range of things,” he told her. “Magic, of course, but also non-magical studies like history and strategy. Most of us turn out to be better at something, and eventually we get to choose which of the three disciplines we’ll follow: Healing, Warrior Studies or Alchemy.”
“What did you choose?”
“Alchemy. You can tell which of us are Alchemists because we wear purple. Healers wear green and Warriors wear red.”
Chari frowned. “What do Alchemists do?”
“Everything that Healers and Warriors don’t do,” Lorkin explained. “Mainly it involves magic but sometimes not. Ambassador Dannyl, the magician I came here with and am supposed to be assisting, is a historian, which doesn’t involve magic at all.”
“Can you choose two disciplines? Be an Alchemist and a Warrior – or an Alchemist and a Healer? Or—”
Lorkin turned to regard her. She looked at him apologetically. “We’re taught about the Guild along with the culture of many other lands during our training,” she told him.
“Yes, but I didn’t pay much attention at the time,” Chari replied. “It’s so much more interesting when it comes from an actual Kyralian magician.”
Lorkin turned back to find her looking at him expectantly. “You were saying?” she prompted.
He shook his head. “No, we can’t choose more than one discipline, but we all get a basic education in the three.”
“So you can Heal?”
“Yes, but not with the skill and knowledge of a fully trained Healer.”
Chari opened her mouth to ask another question, but Tyvara cut in before she could speak.
“You can ask questions in return,” she told Lorkin. “Chari may not be able to answer some of them, but if you let her do all the asking she’ll interrogate you all the way to the mountains.”
He looked at Tyvara in surprise. Throughout their journey from Arvice she had been reluctant to answer his questions. At his stare, her lips pressed into a thin line and she shifted her gaze to Chari. He turned to look at the other woman. Chari was regarding Tyvara with amusement.
“Well, then,” she said, turning to Lorkin. “What would you like to know?”
Though there were hundreds of things he wanted to know about the Traitors and their secret home, and Chari seemed much more receptive to questions, he