by Grace Draven
In his earlier musings, Malachus had assigned her a particular voice, one almost throaty and deep. When she replied to his inquiry, it was neither. Only a perfectly ordinary female voice lacking any raspy quality, and with overtones of mild surprise and a growing wariness the longer she spoke with him. Malachus wondered what about him beyond the fact that he was a stranger had spooked her. He had his answer as soon as he bid her good evening and led Batraza past her.
Sorcery, a familiar kind forged of earth and its eternal hymn, whispered across his skin. More than a hushed note, it had reached out to touch him, as if in recognition of a like entity. He paused, as did the woman, her eyes widening for a moment before she spun on her heel and strode away, lengthening her stride until she was nearly running back the way she’d come. Malachus watched the path she took until she turned a corner onto a smaller alleyway that led south from the market’s center.
He had walked a little more than half the Goban market today, scouting its lanes and stalls in a north-to-south direction, moving in a zigzag from east to west and back again. To the casual observer, he was simply a visitor browsing the goods he could buy with the coin he possessed. So far the lodestone power of his mother-bond had stayed true and stationary. Either the thieves he tracked remained unaware he was hunting them, or they’d pawned the bone off to another unwary buyer in the market.
Images from the lightning had hinted that maybe the gray-eyed woman was one of those buyers, but if so, she didn’t carry the mother-bond on her person. Malachus would have sensed it instantly.
Lightning was a gift from both air and earth, its ceraunomancy sharp in its imagery but not always accurate. When the bolt that shot through Malachus had shown him the woman, he’d assumed it had done so in relation to the mother-bond. Now he questioned his assumption. Whether she knew it or not, she was a servant of earth, just as he was. Judging by the brief glimpse he got of her wide eyes and alarmed expression, she knew and treated it as a secret too dangerous not to keep. Maybe the lightning had shown him her face simply because of a bond of common magic. If so, then searching out her camp in the market would be a waste of time. Still, he couldn’t risk not following a path that might lead him to the mother-bond.
He turned Batraza around to follow her, senses open to the wispy threads of earth song trailing behind her. He lost her track not far into his search, the notes fading to silence. Malachus didn’t fret. He’d find her again when he reconnoitered this part of the market tomorrow. Until then he’d use the time to take supper with a loquacious vendor hoping to sell him a costly bit of jewelry in exchange for information on a pair of traders who’d stopped at his stall to inspect his wares.
His luck so far favored him. If events continued in the same fortuitous vein, he’d have his mother-bond in hand in a matter of days and be on a ship returning home by the following week.
If only fate didn’t have a twisted sense of humor.
Gedamon the jeweler had served a fine meal to his guests—if one disregarded the faintest whiff of a sleep nostrom in both the wine and the stew. Curious as to what the man hoped to achieve by drugging his supper companion senseless, Malachus pretended to drink the wine and blunted the drug’s potency in the stew by using bread as a sop. His lips and tongue tingled from the effects, but he staved off the somnolence, adopting the behavior of a man teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. His host’s eyes gleamed in the lamp’s ambient light, and he subtly gestured to his wife while pouring a steady stream of distracting chatter into Malachus’s ear.
Malachus watched with a slitted gaze as she crept toward the satchel he’d brought with him, her movements stealthy even as she pretended to clear away dishes and pick up items from the floor. She nudged the bag away from his side with her foot, moving by small measures so he wouldn’t notice. The jeweler’s voice rose in volume to cover the sound of her furtive movements. When she bent, ostensibly to move a tray of cups from one spot to another with one hand, the other reached for the satchel’s flap.
Malachus set his goblet down with a thunk, uncaring that half of the drugged contents sloshed over the rim. “Madam,” he said in a flat voice. “If you put your hand in there, I will break your husband’s hands as punishment for putting you up to such mischief.”
They froze at his words, and Gedamon’s wife blanched, still bent with her hand on the flap. She darted a terrified gaze to her equally pale husband. He did a better job of mastering his shock and fear than she did, blustering his way through the tense moment by adopting indignation.
“Here now, get away from there, you foolish atwiten. What do you think you’re doing?” She leapt away from the satchel as if it had tried to bite her and scurried behind Gedamon, hiding her face behind her shirt’s draping sleeve. The jeweler turned an innocent look to Malachus and raised his hands as if shocked by her actions. “Forgive me, serdah. I don’t know what to do with her sometimes.”
Tamping down the urge to sling the dregs of contaminated wine in the man’s lying face, Malachus pushed the goblet and the mostly uneaten food away from him. “Save your breath for an honest explanation,” he said. “You’re a rich man without the need to pilfer off someone else. There’s nothing about my appearance to indicate great wealth, and you went through a lot of trouble here in the hope of searching my belongings and picking me over once you thought I was too stupefied to notice. You did all this for more than a chance at robbing me of a few belshas. Tell me why, and I’ll be a lot more forgiving regarding your trickery.”
He suspected he knew the man’s answer before he gave it. Gedamon, goaded by his wife’s elbow in his back and her furious whispering in his ear, proved him right.
“I swear, serdah, it was a chance thing. I’d seen you earlier in the day walking the market, dressed like the folk of the northern Winosia prefectures.” He offered a strained smile. “I’ve visited there. Beautiful country.” As if that somehow made him and Malachus compatriots of sorts. “Not long after, two men of similar dress stopped by my shop. I mentioned that if they were looking for their friend, I’d just seen you no more than an hour earlier.”
Malachus groaned inwardly. There went any element of surprise. The jeweler had verified he was alive and well and not at the bottom of the sea. “What did they say? And did they buy anything from you?” Gedamon dealt in real gold, silver, and gems—not the cheap bits of tin and copper worn by most people. Malachus’s blood sang with the feel of precious metals and jewels nearby, a tiny hoard that his hidden heritage recognized and yearned for. The smallest bauble came with a high price. If the thieves had bought something, it meant they’d sold the mother-bond, and he’d have to look for a new quarry. A vision of the gray-eyed woman flitted across his mind’s eye.
Gedamon shook his head. “No,” he said, adamant in his denial. “They didn’t buy a thing, though they asked what you looked like and offered a . . . generous deposit on a ring if I’d invite you here and learn more about you.”
“And you felt the need to drug me to do so?”
The merchant went even paler. “They said you were no friend of theirs, though they knew you. A wealthy nobleman’s son in possession of an artifact prized by collectors of the rare, the magical, and the outlawed.”
Malachus snorted. He truly wished his mother had thought to lay some sort of revulsion spell on the mother-bond she’d left with him. Maybe then fewer people would be so motivated to try to steal it.
If Gedamon only knew how he’d been tricked. Malachus was tempted to tell him except that the real joke was on Malachus. His mother-bond, so close now, yet still maddeningly elusive.
“What are you going to do now that you know?” The merchant’s pupils were fully dilated with fright, his wife’s gaze just as black as she peered over his shoulder at Malachus.
He rose and retrieved his satchel, opening it for good measure so the two could get a good look at the contents inside—clothing, a leftover bit of pastry wrap
ped in a handkerchief for later. He might have laughed at their disappointed faces were he not so annoyed. “I’m not going to do anything. For now.” Let them sweat from their own fevered thoughts of what vengeance he might extract in the coming days. Their imaginings would most likely be far worse than anything he could think of even were he bothered to put in the effort.
With as much snaffling and pilfering as he’d witnessed and dealt with in the short day and a half he’d been at the Goban market, he was vaguely surprised to find Batraza still waiting for him outside the shop. He’d half expected to find her gone or at least her saddle disappeared. She whuffled a greeting to him, and he patted her neck. “Let’s go, Bat. I’ve had enough of humanity for today. By the time this is over, I’ll be desperate not to see another human being for a very long time.”
Except for the woman in his vision. He’d like to see her again and intended to, even if only at a distance. The mother-bond remained somewhere in this market, likely still with the thieves who’d paid the unwitting Gedamon to delay and distract him from his hunt and buy them time to pawn the artifact and escape the market. There was no way they’d keep it now that the jeweler had confirmed Malachus was not only alive, but here.
Sleep was a luxury he couldn’t afford tonight, and he sought out one of the makeshift stables hurriedly built to house horses for those riders who’d arrived without the benefit of clan or tribe corrals to shelter their mounts. Malachus paid the extra coin for a roofed stall away from the other horses and an extra bucket of feed before leaving Batraza in the stable master’s care and returning to the market’s dark, empty byways. He had a night in which to scout the area, working from the center out in a widening circle, guided by his senses, which he focused on finding the mother-bond.
He gave up at dawn, having worked his way out to the market’s perimeter on its eastern flank. His coin had paid one night’s boarding for Batraza. If he wanted more, he’d have to return and pay again before they led her out of the stall and put her and his tack up for auction to cover unpaid time. If there was a generosity of spirit in the Goban marketplace, it didn’t exist at the stable yard.
The new stable master was happy to take another day’s boarding fee from Malachus and even more pleased at receiving an extra tip to exercise the mare away from the other horses. Malachus wasted no time returning to the market, this time tracking from the western perimeter to the center, starting with the cluster of round black tents newly erected by the celebrated Savatar nomads.
Searching their encampment proved impossible. This was a military force more than a trader group, their presence here by invitation, according to the gossip running through the marketplace. They’d likely confine any buying and selling to the stalls in the market itself and treat any visits to their camp as not only suspicious but also unwelcome. He didn’t linger. The Winosia thieves, if they had any sense, wouldn’t approach this group.
Once more he tightened his search pattern, circling back toward the heart of the market. A familiar silhouette caught his eye, and he spotted the spare, haughty trader who’d spat at the gray-eyed woman the previous afternoon. The man wore different robes, displaying a wealth that should have had every vendor on this alleyway clamoring for his attention and business. Instead, they either stared at him with baleful gazes or turned their backs, pretending not to see him. Even the merchant manning the pastry shop at which he stopped to browse simply watched him with a deadpan gaze.
The same merchant turned a much friendlier face toward a petite older woman with gray hair, a lined face, and a young expression. She returned his smile with a grin before her eyes lit on the pastries showcased on the table, and her mouth formed a delighted O.
Malachus’s stomach grumbled. He hadn’t eaten since last night, and then only very little thanks to his host’s predilection for drugging the food and wine he served. His belly clamored for sustenance, and the scents wafting from the pastry stall lured him with a magic as strong as the mother-bond’s.
He also wanted a closer look at the haughty customer, who now stared down his nose at the woman as if she crawled with fleas.
Blithely unaware of the man’s obvious contempt, she asked the vendor a few questions about his pies and cakes in a childish voice Malachus found both strange and charming.
“Hali liked the cake with the rose cream I brought her yesterday but not the spicy one. Do you have something else like the rose one?”
The vendor slid a decorated confection toward her. Covered in flowers shaped of sugarcoated dough dyed in pastel shades, the palm-size cake resembled a spring bouquet. “Take this to her. If she liked the rose flavor, she’ll like this one.” He pushed a second cake toward her. “And this is for you, Asil. No charge.”
He chuckled at her soft squeal of delight. She picked up the first cake as if it were a sacred relic instead of a sweet.
Arrested by the sight, Malachus checked his more negative assumptions regarding people in general. He’d just witnessed a generous gesture with no expectation of reciprocal charity, reminding him that not all of humanity suffered from petty cruelty and miserly spirits. Then again . . .
Beside the woman called Asil, the richly dressed trader scowled. “I was here before this flea-bitten cuntmonger,” he protested in waspish tones. As he said the words, he shoved Asil aside. Caught unaware, she staggered sideways, grasping for the table’s edge with her free hand in an attempt to keep her balance. The table tilted with her, sending pastries sliding toward her and the ground.
Frantic to save his goods, the vendor scrambled to catch them before they tumbled off the table, leaving smears of icing, honey, and crushed fruit across the surface. Malachus leapt forward, caught Asil, and righted the table. The smirking trader gave a nasty laugh and turned to leave.
His pained yelp cut through the morning air, the sound abruptly choked to silence when Malachus snagged him, practically garroting him with the collar of his own robe.
“Not so fast, serdah.” Malachus spun the trader around, hands still gripping the robes tight. The trader’s expression had gone from sneer to fright, and he gaped at his captor, who offered a smirk of his own.
“You’re an unpleasant piece of work, aren’t you?” Malachus said in casual tones, as if he strangled everyone he met during conversation. “Spitting on women as they pass you in the street, shoving them about as they buy a cake for a friend, destroying a man’s goods and labor because he didn’t kiss your arse hard enough for a sale.” He tightened his hold on the cloth so the man clawed at the suffocating collar. Malachus glanced at the woman, who gaped at him. “Are you well, madam?”
She nodded, her features creasing again with one of her open smiles. She raised the cake she still held, its decorations mostly undamaged except for one crushed flower. “I still have Hali’s cake.” Her grin gave way to a scowl, and she stuck her tongue out at the trader. “And I don’t have fleas, you shit-eating Guild worm.”
Malachus laughed, as did the pastry vendor and several onlookers. The trader reddened, either from embarrassment or from having his windpipe slowly compressed. He continued clawing at the constricting collar to no avail.
“How much for the damaged pastries as well as the two you gave Madam Asil?” Malachus asked the vendor. When the man quoted an amount, Malachus used his free hand to pat down the trader, finding his bulging purse of coins tucked tight into the belt that cinched his inner robes to his middle. He jerked the purse free and tossed it to the vendor. The trader squirmed even harder in his grip. “Count out the amount you’re owed in restitution,” he instructed the vendor. “I’m sure the serdah here can afford it and have plenty left over to continue his shopping.”
A wheeze of protest escaped the trader’s lips, and his eyes bulged from their sockets at the sight of the vendor extracting a handful of coins from the purse.
“Are you going to strangle him?”
Malachus returned his attention to
Asil, who split her scrutiny between him and the struggling trader. “I don’t know yet,” he replied. “Do you want me to strangle him?”
There was indeed something very childlike about this woman, in contrast to her aged appearance. A troubled look entered her gaze. “No. Hali would be cross with me if you did. She says the Guild is a boil on our arses as it is without borrowing trouble.”
“She has the right of it there,” the pastry vendor interjected behind her as he continued counting coins.
“Then we won’t make your Hali cross,” Malachus assured her. He gave the trader a hard shove, letting go of his robes at the same time so the man practically flew backward to land on his backside in the muddied pathway. Malachus caught the purse the vendor tossed him and flung it at the trader, who scrambled after it before one of the fleet cutpurses grabbed it. Humiliated, the trader glared at the trio with eyes brimming with a red-hot hatred. “You’ll regret this,” he snarled. “I’m a Guild factor, and the masters will hear what you’ve done to me.”
As Malachus knew nothing of this Guild and couldn’t care less, the threat bounced off him. Even the pastry vendor seemed unconcerned. “This is Goban territory now,” the vendor said. “Not Empire. The Guild holds no sway here. Tell whoever you want whatever you want. No one cares.” The Guild factor marched away then, shouting a string of blistering epithets at anyone in his path.
Judging by the look on Asil’s face, someone did care. She still held on to her precious cake, her lower lip’s telltale quiver betraying her worry. “I know Hali will still be cross,” she said, her tone mournful.
Malachus opened his mouth to assure the distressed woman he’d be happy to accompany her back to her family, explain the circumstances, and shoulder the blame for inciting the Guild’s wrath. He didn’t get the chance.
A voice to his left spoke first, one he recognized from the day before, and his heart beat a little harder under his breastbone. “I’m not cross, Mama. I saw what happened. Nothing here was your fault.”