by Tim Stead
“Nothing that can’t be changed,” the general said. “You want to take her to Blaye?”
“Next week,” Calaine said. She still hadn’t fixed on a day.
“The men have a five day leave,” Captain Parl said. “So next week would suit very well. There are precious few pirates to chase these days, and Blaye is a pleasant voyage this time of year. I’ll not be sorry to be doing it twice. Do you have a day in mind?”
“I’m glad to hear that, Captain, and no, I haven’t a day for you yet, but I’ll let you know by messenger tomorrow.” She looked at the general. “Now do you think I could speak to General Grand in private?”
“On a ship?” The General chuckled. “These walls are whisper galleries, Do-Regana. Let us walk on the dock and we can speak in private there.” He turned to the captain. “Are we done, Parl?”
“We are, General,” the captain replied.
“Then let’s step out,” he said to Calaine, and they went up into the sunshine again and stepped down from the gently swaying ship onto the firm, bleached wood of the dock. Grand didn’t say anything, but waited for Calaine to speak.
When they were a good distance from the ship Calaine broke the silence. “My father is keen to see me out of Samara,” she said. “Can you tell me why?”
Grand looked away from her. “I am not privy to your father’s thoughts, Do-Regana,” he said.
“But something is going on, and I’ve yet to get wind of what it is,” Calaine said. “I’d be shocked if you didn’t know.”
Grand smiled again. “You flatter me, but you’re right. There are rumblings. Three Darnese sailors have been killed in the past two days. There are rumours flying around that it was done to conceal an assassination plot.”
“My father?”
Grand shrugged. “Nobody knows, but the lawkeepers are looking into it.”
“Arla?”
“She came to see me. There is a piece of paper with symbols on it, found in a dead man’s boot. One of the symbols was a crown.”
“Is that it? Is that all?”
“Three men are dead – killed by the same man – and it seems they all crewed on the same ship.”
“I am sorry to hear that, or course, but this web is too thin to catch a ghost of reality. You say the lawkeepers are taking this seriously?”
“Three dead…”
“The plot, General, the threat against the crown.”
“There is a hint of Shannish poison,” Grand said. “And the Darnese captain tried to see me – something about a threat to Samara, apparently.”
“But why… oh, he thinks the plot may be against me?”
“The marriage,” Grand said. “The alliance.”
That changed things. Calaine found it hard to believe that anyone would try to poison her over a marriage, but the dead sailors had been Darnese, and Darna was no friend of Samara. She would have believed it more if they had been Saratan. The King of Sarata was reportedly still enraged about his humiliating defeat on Samara Plain, and having to watch it unfold from Serhan’s camp. He had returned home a bitter man. They had been expecting some riposte from Sarata ever since.
“If they are so determined do you think I will be any safer in Blaye? I think it might be otherwise. My death in Blaye would be a fatal blow to any talk of alliance.”
“But your presence there is necessary for the alliance, Do-Regana.”
“And so I must go. Do you believe that I should warn Portina?”
“I would think it wise,” Grand said. “But it is not a man with a knife you must fear. You cannot know what form the poison might take – a door handle, a meal, a drink, a fork laid beside your place, the bridle of a horse. There is no precaution that you can take.”
“From what you say it is all hints and whispers anyway. In all likelihood there is no threat to the crown.”
“In all likelihood,” Grand agreed.
Calaine looked at the wooden deck, silent for a moment. “Blood and fire,” she muttered. “Can’t ignore it, can’t do anything about it.” She would have to speak to Arla.
12 The Coast Road
The morning breeze off the sea was cool, but the day was bright and Taranath arrived at the citadel gates just after dawn with his coat already strapped to the saddle. His escort was drawn up before the fortress in good order, twelve of the king’s soldiers resplendent in dented plate armour and dusty boots. Taranath had never been a guard officer, but he knew that Gilan would have been disgusted by the display and would have made a point of saying so. Arla would just have shaken her head.
He looked round at Ansel and Worrel who rode a few yards behind him. Both of them were dressed for the journey and without armour. Ansel had a long northern bow slung over her back and a short sword, and Worrel a long sword on his left hip. Both were former guards.
“Polite,” he warned them. Ansel grinned. Worrel frowned.
They drew up in front of the soldiers.
“You’re Taranath?” one of them asked.
“Lawkeeper Officer Radiant Taranath,” he said. “You?”
“Lieutenant Genardy, King’s own,” the soldier said. Taranath studied the man briefly. He was no better attired than his men and slumped in the saddle. There was an arrogant tone to his voice which the lawkeeper didn’t like. Also the question of command wasn’t quite as clear as he would have liked. In theory they had equal rank.
“Just so that you understand, Lieutenant,” he said. “This mission is mine, and we will go where I say, stay as long as I like, and speak to whomever I wish in whatever manner I choose. You are here to see that I am not troubled by…” he waved a dismissive hand, “brigands.”
“I am here to keep you safe,” the lieutenant replied. “And to fight your fights for you. You leave the fighting to us and we’ll do just fine.”
He wanted to point out that twelve men was a poor army to be invading a foreign city, but he simply nodded.
“Let’s be about it then,” he said, and turned his horse’s head north, leading the way through the quiet city streets parallel to the river. It didn’t take long to get clear of the old town, and they rode through Morningside as the streets grew busier with servants out to fetch water for the morning meal, for richer folk to bathe, for tea and jaro.
Taranath liked Morningside. It seemed civilised to him, quiet and peaceable, a place where a thinking man could think. The houses were easy to look at, the gardens a treat. It was becoming apparent that Morningside was splitting into two separate entities. The houses down by the river were less grand, the streets narrower, and he had already heard the term Riverside applied to them on several occasions. Across the river, too, things were changing. The better off were migrating away from the sea and the traditional squalor of Gulltown. The western city above the bridge was becoming more orderly and had reclaimed its old name of Callista. Even from here he could see new buildings going up and the occasional green flash of a garden between houses. Samara was changing, growing, swelling into the city it had been half a millennium ago.
They passed through thinning houses and came out onto the plain. The land here was mostly chopped up into small farms, and to Taranath’s eye they looked prosperous, though he was happy to concede he wasn’t an expert. The fields were neat, the farmhouses whitewashed and clean, the orchards orderly. Less and less of the plain was open for grazing or simply riding, and so they stuck to the road, turning right at the junction where the north road met the east-west highway. This far out it was a gentle climb to get above the cliffs that bounded Samara on the East, and it seemed no time at all before the city fell out of sight behind them and they rode the open plains, the road bending once more towards the ocean.
“Have you been to Pek?” Ansel asked, pushing her mount beside his.
“Four or five times,” Taranath replied. It was true. He’d been to almost every port on the south coast before he’d become a lawkeeper.
“You’re from High Green,” Ansel said. It was half a question, see
king confirmation and further enlightenment.
“Aye,” Taranath said. “My father was a shipwright there, and I learned some of his trade, but I wanted to see the great cities of the world, so I signed aboard a trader as mate for a year. We got pirated, and I washed ashore in Samara – a Samaran ship picked us up. I’d liked the city, and folk were kind to me, so I stayed.”
It was as potted a life story as he could make it, and lawkeeping hadn’t been his first choice after his ship had been lost, but Arla had persuaded him he could be useful, could make a difference, so he’d joined. But none of that was important.
“What’s Pek like?” Ansel asked.
“White,” he said. “The citizens have a penchant for whitewashing their homes, and for choosing their leaders. And they like green as well. There are great parks within the city with grass and trees. It’s a pretty place, but their wine isn’t worth a stick of tar, and steer clear of anything that isn’t seafood.”
The road had drifted within a stone’s throw of the cliff edge, and now the sea was a constant rumble beneath them. Conversation died away and Taranath rode in quiet contentment until the first village appeared ahead of them. The sight brought the lieutenant up beside him.
“How do you want to do this?” the man asked.
“We’re ten miles from Samara, Lieutenant,” Taranath said. “There’ll be no trouble here.”
He was right. The villagers here, who called their home Cliffside, a name they shared with about twenty other villages on the coast road, knew what a lawkeeper was and had respect for the red tabard.
The village elder, a grey haired woman of considerable bulk, walked out to meet them as they rode into the central square.
“Lawkeepers,” she said. “How may we serve you?” She was typical of the type, Taranath thought, old enough to have lived through it all, too old to do much work, but still respected.
“We are seeking answers, Ima,” Taranath said.
“Then you shall have them if they are known to us,” the elder said. She pointed to a collection of log rounds arranged as seats in the shade of a tree. It reminded Taranath of a northern Kalla Tree, but so far south the resemblance would be nothing but coincidence. He swung down from his horse and walked with her to the seats.
“Is there much traffic on the road?” he asked.
“Village to village,” she replied. “Now and then we have a stranger come through. But many ships sail by.”
“About four days ago,” Taranath said. “There would have been one man, or perhaps three travelling together, heading west.”
“Five days ago,” she said. “Three men in a hurry riding horses. They looked foreign, outlandishly dressed, but they did not stop to speak.”
So Arla had been right, they’d passed this way.
“And after them?”
“We’ve had no strangers by since the three,” the elder replied.
“Not a man alone – perhaps the sound of a horse in the night?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know, but I can ask others if you wish it.”
“It would be a kindness,” Taranath said.
She shouted and a scruffy, skinny urchin came running out of one of the houses. She told him to find his friends and run about the village asking Taranath’s question.
“It will take some time,” she said when the boy ran off. “Will you all share a cup with me?”
“There are so many of us, Ima,” he replied. “It would be an imposition, but if you would allow me to contribute to the village coffers I’m sure we could all use something cooling.”
The old woman smiled and nodded. Taranath fished out a Samaran silver and handed it over. Villages like this were poor, and hospitality cost money. A silver would cover twice what they would eat and drink, but Taranath believed it was always wise to overpay on official business, especially if you were spending the city’s coin.
The company dismounted and they ate small, fried flour cakes and drank jaro and a sort of sweet tea while they sat and waited for the boys to return.
Taranath guessed that not much had changed in villages like this since the fall, and ventured the opinion.
“Much has changed,” the elder disagreed. “In those days there were men who came and stole our food, raped our daughters and killed our sons. They are all gone, and we are happy now. The law has been good to us.”
So the absence of evil was a perceived good. It was a philosophical point that he would have to remember. The law had done nothing for these people except sweep aside those who persecuted them, and not for that reason. The benefit was accidental.
They talked a while longer, mostly about crops and village life, and eventually boys began to return from the fields and the shore, all reporting alike that no sign of another stranger had been seen or heard on the coastal road.
It was not what Taranath had expected. It made sense that their killer had followed the Darnese sailors from where they had abandoned their ship, and he’d hoped for another sighting. If the murderer had been waiting for them in Samara it changed many things. Perhaps they had gone there to meet him. But that idea was at odds with Silman’s actions once in the city.
It was more likely that they had simply not noticed him as he slipped past in the night. A man with murder in his heart might well be careful not to be seen.
They left the village behind them and rode on. A lot of the downland above the cliffs was settled, and they stopped in four more villages that day, each telling a variation of the same tale – three men on horseback and nobody behind them.
In the evening they came to a change in the country. The cliffs shrank to nothing and they found themselves riding across a coastal plain. The Sybelline River flowed across this plain, and the coastal road bridged it at a small town unimaginatively named Sybelline Bridge. It boasted several taverns, being an important stopping place on the road, and Taranath chose the largest of these to house himself and his party. It was an hour or two short of dusk and so, after making sure that all was well he took Ansel and Worrel with him and went to question the inhabitants.
The bridge lay on the eastern fringe of the town, which meant they had not crossed it when they rode in. It turned out to be a venerable and solid stone structure supported by two immense granite pillars. On the town end there was a bar lowered across the entrance to the bridge and a pair of armed guards.
Taranath walked up to them.
“Is this a toll bridge?” he demanded. The two men turned to face him.
“It is,” the taller of them said. “One copper if you’re afoot, two for a mounted man and three for a wagon.”
“And you’re here day and night?” Taranath asked.
“Aye, there’s no getting past us,” the man said.
Taranath smiled. “Who would want to?” he asked. He pulled a silver coin out of his pocket. “But I do have questions for you, if you were here five days ago.”
“Day shift,” the bridge guard said.
“And did you see three men ride through here. They would have been strikingly dressed, like sailors, and probably in a hurry.”
The man eyed the coin. “We see a lot of folk,” he said.
Taranath tossed him the coin. “You’d remember these three,” he said.
The guard caught the coin and smiled. “Aye,” he said. “I remember them well enough. Three men, as you say. They paid their tolls like good folk. Been riding all night by the look of them, and came by at dawn. From what I hear they didn’t stop in the town neither – just kept riding.”
Confirmation. Again.
“And a fourth man, a little while after,” Taranath prompted. “If my credit’s still good.”
The man stroked his chin. He turned to his colleague. “Nobody crossed that day, did they, Orin? But there was that rider – you remember?”
Orin, the shorter guard nodded. “Aye, I remember. He was on the road but stopped short, a long way short, and turned south.”
“Towards the sea?” Taran
ath asked.
“Aye.”
“And can the river be crossed below here by a man on horseback?”
The guards exchanged looks. “It’s possible,” the tall one said. “But why take the risk to save two coppers?”
So they were being followed. The confirmation warmed Taranath a little. He’d been worried for a while there.
“Thank you,” he told the bridge guards. “We’ll be passing this way tomorrow, I expect.” He turned and shared a look with Ansel and Worrel, then led them south along the river bank. When they were out of earshot of the guards he stopped.
“I want to be sure,” he said. “They didn’t see anyone cross, so I want to find proof – the place where he crossed.”
“It’s a couple of miles to the sea,” Ansel said. “And there’s no more than an hour of light.”
“What we don’t find before nightfall we’ll find after dawn,” he replied, and with that began to walk the river bank. Somewhere there would be a place a man and a horse had struggled from the river’s grip, and no man, not even the most careful assassin would stop in the night to wipe away the traces.
Ansel walked ahead, leaving them to search close to the town. She walked until she was almost out of sight and then stuck her short sword in the bank to mark the start of her search. Taranath noted that with approval. It would save time. They could search more of the bank if they split up.
The bank was thickly grassed, and the search went slowly. Taranath was looking for freshly torn marks. In most places the river was deep enough right up to the bank that a horse would have struggled to clamber out, especially with a rider on its back.
He’d barely gone thirty paces down the bank when a shout from Ansel brought his head up. She was standing, looking back with her hand in the air. Could she have found something already?
He left Worrel searching and walked quickly downstream to where she was standing. Sure enough, there was a stretch of bank where the grass had been torn away, and a clear hoof mark in the mud.
“You found that pretty quickly,” he said.
“Simple enough,” she replied. “I walked until I was out of sight of the village, then figured the current would have carried him down towards the sea a way, and started there.”