The Ambassador's Mission: Book One of th - By Trudi Canavan Page 0,65
the need won’t go away. I tell him he just needs to stop long enough for his body to heal properly, but he won’t.”
Sonea felt her heart sink. “Do you know who he buys the roet from?”
“No, he won’t tell me for fear I’ll stop his supply somehow.” The woman frowned. “And he said something about the source being a friend. If he had to find another seller, that person might ask for more than money.”
Sonea nodded. She looked at the others. “Have any of you heard of novices or magicians becoming involved with criminals – whether roet sellers or not? I don’t mean visiting pleasure houses. I mean trading through or with them, doing magic for money or favours?”
“I have,” the other Healer said. In her thirties, she had a young family which her non-magician husband watched over while she worked at the hospice – a practical arrangement that only Healers seemed to find unremarkable. “A few years ago, before I married Torken, a friend I’d known since our University days stopped spending time with us – my University friends, that is. He preferred some non-magician friends in the city, who met in one of these pleasure houses. He told us he wasn’t interested in the things people bought there, just the arrangement he had with the owners. Some sort of importing arrangement. He would never tell us what. Now he doesn’t even live in the Guild. He moved out into a house in the city and spends all his time helping his new friends.”
“Do you think the trade is illegal?”
She nodded. “But I don’t have proof.”
“Is he addicted to roet?”
The Healer shook her head. “Too smart for that.”
Sonea frowned. This was bad news, and something Regin would be interested to hear about, but it didn’t prove that roet was being used to lure magicians into criminal activity.
“Well, it’s always been known that some novices from the Houses have dealings with Thieves,” the other woman said. She was a thin woman named Sylia, who was a powerful and skilled Healer.
“But is that rumour or is there evidence?” Sonea asked.
“There is never evidence.” Sylia shrugged. “But young novices have always bragged about it. Often to bluff their way out of trouble with other novices, but if you asked enough questions there were always some rumours that stuck more than others.”
The others were nodding. “There’s truth in those rumours,” Gejen agreed. “It’s just difficult to know which rumour has truth in it.”
“So … do you think the rule against novices and magicians associating with criminals or unsavoury types has any effect at all on higher-class novices?”
“Yes and no,” Gejen replied. “There’s no doubt that it prevents some from taking the risk, but those who are foolish, or whose families are already involved in crime, won’t be dissuaded.” The others nodded in agreement, some smiling knowingly.
“And if the rule was abolished, would more be tempted?”
The five exchanged glances.
“Probably,” Sylia said. She shrugged. “Since the Thieves are involved in everything, and rich and powerful enough to offer tempting payment.”
“Like payment in roet,” Irala added.
“Any rule that reduces the number of novices and magicians caught up in gambling, drink and roet is good, as far as I’m concerned,” Gejen said. The others hummed in agreement.
“But the rule is unfair and ineffective as it is,” Sylia added. “It shouldn’t be abolished, just changed.”
As the five began discussing how, some quite passionately, a shiver of realisation ran through Sonea. They’ve all been thinking about this. And debating it. Have other magicians given the rule this much consideration? Are they all discussing it? Then she felt her heart skip. Can I gauge from them how the vote might go, if it’s put to the entire Guild?
She listened to them carefully, and while they talked she began devising another set of questions to ask them. This was going to be a more useful information-gathering exercise than she had planned or expected.
CHAPTER 12
DISCOVERIES
As Lorkin followed the slave down the corridor of Ashaki Itoki’s home, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Despite everything that his friend Perler had told him, he was still not entirely sure how to behave around the Ashaki. To be a magician and a landowner gave one the highest status in Sachakan society aside from the king. A magician who did not own land but was an heir to an Ashaki was one level lower in status than the Ashaki. A magician who was not an heir was next, then any free