Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04

by Chaz Brenchley

  When they came to the house it took both Jemel and Rudel to force the camel through the narrow gateway and into the yard. Marron watched uselessly until Rudel went inside, leaving Jemel still struggling to settle the unruly animal.

  Til go to the market,' he called out, 'buy her some feed.'

  A wave of the hand was all the response he won, assuming that the curses that came with it were not also directed at him. He grinned and turned and walked away, accompanied for some distance by Jemel's opinions on the camel's birth and breeding. Without those, so loud and fluent as they were, he might have been able to eavesdrop on the older men's conversation inside the house, but no matter. He knew some part of what they'd say, the stories they had to tell each other. What more they might say or decide or discover, he could learn later from them or from Jemel.

  At one time, the marketplace at Selussin must have been a sight to rival any in the Ekhed empire, when the town was a trading station as well as a centre for learning. The great open area below the temple would have been like a confluence of many waters, where caravans came together from all over the known world; big as it was, it could barely have been big enough. It must have seethed with crowds, with colour, with merchants crying the value of their silks and jewels, their spices, their camels and slaves. Now the people traded only with themselves, and only what little they could spare. One family had killed a goat, perhaps, and couldn't eat all the meat before it turned, couldn't spare the salt to keep it good; another had a precious harvest of apricots from a pair of trees nurtured in the yard, but needed oil.

  So the women would gather as the sun came down, setting out their stock on a blanket in one shaded corner of the wide and wasted space and haggling almost desperately with their neighbours, trying to eke any benefit they could from their meagre goods.

  No one traded halfa-reeds, of course, when they were free to gather; besides, Marron wasn't sure that even a camel would eat that wiry stuff. But here was a woman with a sack of withered greens, the outer peelings of her morning s harvest. Elsewhere they might have been thrown on a dung-heap to rot; on his uncle's land they might have been fed to the pigs, but never sent to market. Here they had value, they could be traded. No pigs to eat them in this town, of course; there were donkeys, though, as well as goats. Now, there was a camel.

  She was an elderly woman, or looked it from what little Marron could see of her body, eyes and hands. One of the eyes had a cast in it and both were rheumy, crusted with dry yellow matter; the hands were twisted and their skin was loose and wrinkled, heavily ridged with scars across the palms. The hunch of her back as she sat suggested that there'd be no straightness in her when she stood. Perhaps it wasn't age that had bent and shrivelled her, perhaps it was only hard years of work and hunger under the hot sun, children and disease and all the ill chances that come of being poor, for no god has ever loved a starveling; but Marron could deal with the world only as he saw it. Peering beneath the skin of things was a trick for subtle men, for Coren and Rudel and others. One other in particular, but this was no place nor time to be thinking of him. Marron wanted no sharp mind probing beneath his own skin; enough that they saw his one ghost burning behind his eyes. Who else haunted him was a private matter, emphatically not for sharing.

  And the world was what it was, what he saw, no subtlety or deception; he crouched politely and said, 'Old woman, I think I may have what you are seeking.'

  She snorted, showing him a mouthful of good hard teeth as she said, 'Not so many years ago, boy, I might have had what you are seeking.' Not so old as all that, she was saying; the world never was what he saw or thought it ought to be, however hard he tried to treat it so. 'All I seek now is dung to make my fire, and I do not think you have so much of that.'

  He couldn't begin to guess what she was seeing, with her gaze so twisted and her infected eyes; not the blaze of his, though, that seemed certain. There was no trace of fear or question in her voice, only a dismissive contempt.

  He found that familiar, reassuring; and besides, he felt a sudden flood of joy at the simple economy of her bargain. She would provide fuel, feed for an animal; she would take fuel, what came out at the other end, what her greens were converted to.

  'Actually,' he said around his grin, 'we have a camel, and you are welcome to the dung if you will feed the beast for us, as long as we are here.' Which he hoped, he prayed would not be long at all now. 'I hadn't thought your needs would be so simple, or so simply met; I'd meant to offer silver...'

  He trailed that expectantly, and watched her gape: silver, for a mess of sun-shrivelled greens? She might not have touched a coin in months, in years; this was not a money mart. In truth he'd handled little enough himself, lifelong. The coins in his pouch had come from Coren, and still seemed like an alien gift.

  The woman recovered tongue and wits sooner than he'd expected. 'Silver? And so you shall offer silver, boy. One camel's daily dung won't keep my fire, nor earn its food. Show me your silver ...'

  He fingered out a few small coins, wondering if they were too few or too many, willing to give her the whole pouch if she asked for it. As he leaned forward to offer them to her, he heard slow footfalls at his back. Three people stepping uncomfortably close, standing silent above him; his blood fizzed with the sense of danger, the Daughter waking to it, just a moment before the woman went entirely still before him. Briefly he thought he saw a faint shadow of smoke touch her sick eyes. Then she toppled over, to lie sprawled across her sack of greens.

  Marron stood, and turned. Two men and a woman, one Patric and two Catari and none of them a warrior, each of them simply dressed with that same lean look and weathered skin that spoke of a lifetime's labour for small reward. There was a blankness to their faces, though, that had nothing to say of their lives at all. Their bodies were present, and a very real threat; their souls he thought were somewhere else altogether.

  That emptiness seemed to suck at him, almost to sing to him, a greater danger than the blades they drew. None of them was a warrior, perhaps, but each of them had a knife.

  Well, so did he; and his vow not to kill was no hindrance here. With the strength and speed he borrowed from the Daughter, evading these slow strange creatures shouldn't be a problem. He was more worried about the woman unconscious at his back. He'd brought this trouble on her; if he ran, she'd be abandoned. She'd get no aid from her fellow Selussids. All about him, he could hear the cries and panic of the other women at the market as they snatched up their goods and fled. Even if their menfolk came, they'd surely come too late for her. And there had been too much abandonment already.

  Besides, Marron had another, a better weapon than his knife, and he shouldn't need to use it. The threat should be enough to drive these hollow people back to whatever hole they'd crept from. He could guard himself and the woman both, if he just released the Daughter.

  His blade was in his hand. A touch of the point to the ever-unhealing wound in his arm, blood and red smoke issued forth while pain coursed inward, through his bones. He had a momentary memory of another smoke, a black smoke insinuating itself into the woman's eyes; and then the Daughter shaped itself in the air between him and his three opponents.

  They made no move, and neither did he. It felt to him like a long, long time that they stood there, gazing at each other through the scarlet haze of the Daughter's almost-body.

  He thought that he might have to escape with the woman into the other world, as they seemed to lack the intelligence or the will to flee what was far more potent than themselves. But there was a chill biting suddenly at his bleeding arm, different from the pain that he was used to; it sapped his strength, and his own will also. He felt it strike deep into his body, numbing and draining where it passed; he dropped onto his knees, too heavy to stand any longer, and a grey fog clouded his sight. It clouded his thoughts, too. He was vaguely aware that the Daughter was losing its coherence, shifting into smoke and flowing back through his wound, into his blood again; it was hard to focus on how strange t
hat was when he had not summoned it, harder to remember why it mattered.

  And then it was within him, and the Daughters heat met his cold invader; and had he thought that he knew pain before? He rolled on the ground, dimly aware that he was screaming; that hands were seizing him, lifting him, gripping with a strength that defied even his bucking struggles; that rags were stuffed into his mouth to silence him to the world as he was carried away.

  8

  An Exchange of Knives

  It was children who came running to carry the news to Jemel. He was waiting at the open gateway, watching for Marron's return and keeping a careful distance from the grumbling camel; he'd finally got her couched and tied, but any close approach brought her head whipping round and her teeth snapping. His robe was liberally spattered with her saliva, and he'd barely missed losing another finger in a careless moment. He had hopes that food might pacify her, but those hopes were not strong. Mostly he only wanted to have Marron safely back at his side. There was - or should be -little danger to the Ghost Walker within the walls of Selussin, but that didn't stop him worrying.

  He looked for the familiar silhouette of his friend turning into the lane, burdened with any luck by a bale of fodder; instead he saw three small figures racing pell-mell around the comer. Just boys at a game after lessons, he thought at first. But they slowed as they came closer, and he saw how their eyes were wide and their skins were flushed with more than exercise.

  They came to a staggering, hesitant halt just a few paces from him; their leader, a scant finger taller than his fellows, forced a few words out around his panting.

  'You are his man.'

  'Yes.' No need for Jemel to pretend, whose man? or I am no one's man, no need for the boy to name him, Ghost Walker or red-eyed whiteskin. Of course the boys would know, where and how this foreign party lived; of course Jemel would understand them. 'What has happened, did he send you to me?' Fishing for hope now, for something short of disaster; pretending after all, perhaps, because their faces denied him before he'd even shaped the question.

  'Strangers came to the market,' the boy said, 'and a woman fainted. He called a demon, a creature of smoke, we saw it; but then it turned on him, he was hurt by it, and the strangers took him away.'

  Jemel understood the demon, but nothing more: not why Marron would release it, nor how it could have hurt him. 'What strangers were these?' he demanded.

  'Two men, and a woman; we had not seen them before,' and that was strange too, and disturbing. They couldn't mean the Sharai chiefs who came into the town with Hasan, nor anyone from the tribes camped outside, if one had been a woman; if there were other strangers in Selussin, the children surely would know.

  There was one other group at hand, though. He said, 'From the castle?'

  The boy glanced at his companions, and shrugged. 'Perhaps.' There was no surprise at the suggestion. Children were natural spies; growing up among the Saren, he and his fellows had prided themselves on knowing the movements of

  every family and every solitary rider for miles around. Boys got everywhere, and sharp eyes saw it all. "They carried him off towards the western gate,' the youngster added, confirmation enough. That way lay the castle, and nothing else but the road to Outremer. 'How long ago?'

  'Not long, but they were swift. Will you come?'

  'Show me.' He ought to take a minute first, to tell Coren and Rudel what was amiss; but a minute's delay might be one minute too long. And the old men would insist on coming too, not to weaken their party by dividing it further. He satisfied his conscience with a wordless bellow back into the yard, that started the camel roaring; that would alert them to trouble. They'd come out to find him gone, but perhaps they could follow his trail in the dust, or his scent in the air. If not, there would doubtless be other boys to guide them.

  These boys, his boys were already on the move, throwing little summoning glances back at him. He ran after, working his scimitar in its sheath as he went. No need to draw it yet, but he wanted it loose. He wanted swordplay, he realised suddenly, he wanted the heat and fury of battle to quell the chill of his fear; he wanted to spill the blood of those who had frightened him so, who were trying to steal Marron from him. He pressed on faster, dragging the boys in his wake as he charged through the winding, narrow ways, turning always towards the setting sun. They might have known a quicker way — show me, he had said, and gave them no chance to do so - but his legs were longer and his urgency burned his soul; he couldn't wait for them, for anything.

  Even so, he came too late. He'd hoped that the guards might have challenged unknowns with such a burden, might have closed the gates against them, but this was Selussin. His first sight of the walls showed him the wide and open archway, a few men standing, staring out. As he came closer, he could make out a distant moving shadow in the sudden dusk, running figures on the road.

  They'd gone too far, with too good a start. He could chase them all the way to the castle, and not catch up with them. He let himself stagger to a halt, gulped down a cry of promise and despair; his voice would never carry to Marron, and he wouldn't so disgrace them both in front of strangers.

  The boys had gathered in a hard-breathing pack at his back. He fumbled in the pouch at his belt, drew out a few coins and let them fall from nerveless fingers; then he started running again. Retracing his steps, heading back to the old men, the wise ones, those who would tell him what to do.

  Whether he'd listen was another matter; it would depend entirely on what they said. He'd listened and listened since they came to Selussin, first to Coren and then to Lisan; Julianne was still a prisoner and now Marron had joined her, and Jemel felt that there had been altogether too much of talking and of listening. Lisan had taken action, on her own. So would he, if he had to. He'd let her go alone into the castle largely to stop Marron coming after, now Marron had gone the same way, against his will and in pain. Nothing would stop Jemel following, with company or without it.

  He came pounding down the lane and into the yard, star-ding the camel out of what was doubtless a hungry doze. Ignoring her, he plunged into the house — and found it abandoned, both men missing and no message, no hint left behind to say where they were gone.

  For a moment he stood irresolute, before he turned and ran once more. Driving against aching legs and a pounding heart, whipped on by fear and determination in equal measure, he went up to the marketplace. That wide space was deserted now except for a few abandoned blankets and some scattered, trampled produce. Men were gathering in the long shadow of the temple tower, agitation showing in their jabbing hands and their raised voices, but they held no interest for Jemel.

  Instead he trotted past the temple, to find where the imams' house stood behind its high wall. The bronze gates were shut; he stifled a momentary yearning that the town's watchmen might have been as careful of what they were sworn to protect. If they'd closed all the gates they guarded when Hasan and his army had appeared, the strangers from the castle could never have come within the walls, and Marron would be safe now, the camel would be fed and quiet, all would be as it ought to have been with only the girls to rescue ...

  Pointless to dream; this town welcomed its enemies as eagerly as its friends. Rudel would call that good sense, Coren politics; to Jemel it was cowardice, no more. Better to fight and die than to be overrun. Here they had been overrun so often they had slave souls, it seemed to him, always looking for a master.

  The council of imams made different rules for themselves, apparently, but he would no more sit and wait to be noticed outside these gates than he would outside the castle. He tested them to be sure that they were locked, which they were; he hammered his fists against the heavy patterns of their decoration to be sure that the booming summons would go unanswered, which it did. Then - conscious that he was being watched from the temple doorway, but confident that the men there would do no more than watch, would not come to interfere - he took a dozen paces back, steadied his breathing and his body, and threw himself forward.


  As he reached the gates he leaped up, arms stretching as high as he could reach above his head. He just managed to curl the fingers of one hand over the sharp edge of bronze; briefly he hung there, feeling his grip start to slip as he cut himself once more and blood welled out. He swung his other hand up, for a doubled hold; his bare toes scrabbled for purchase and found it in the deep indentations of the design; he scrambled up and hauled his body over, dropped down into the half-dark of the courtyard beyond.

  Dark where he stood, crouched against the gates and breathing hard; light elsewhere, light spilling from the doors and windows of the house, more lights moving in his direction as men came with lamps to see who dared disturb their holy masters' peace.

  Jemel straightened slowly, tugged his robe into the best state he could manage — not good, stained as it was with camel-spit and now again with blood — and walked boldly out to meet them.

  They came with weapons drawn, of course; he kept his hand a careful distance from his scimitar, far enough to say I mean no violence to you or yours yet near enough to say also ‘ am not afraid of you, ready to close and draw in a moment if he needed to.

  'I am called Jemel,' he said, his voice carrying clear and grim throughout the courtyard. 'I have an urgent message for Hasan. Take me to him.'