A pile of curtains lay on the floor beneath the window. Someone had not just opened them, but taken them down entirely to let in as much light as possible. The oil lamp on the small table next to my bed was already lit, which gave me an odd sense of relief. I had vague recollections of screaming my lungs out about being trapped in shadows. Whoever had brought me here had chained me to the bed and yet gone to the effort of making sure I didn’t wake up in darkness so I wouldn’t panic.
Ferius would’ve known to do that. Was she still alive?
I tried to get up from the bed, momentarily forgetting the chains. They rattled as I pulled them taut. ‘Hey!’ I called out, the feeling of being trapped setting me off. ‘Get these off me!’
The sound of a scraping chair, just outside. Footsteps. A moment later Nephenia entered the room, her hyena padding silently alongside her. She gave me a searching look. I’m not sure what exactly she expected to find, but finally she closed the door behind her. ‘Well, you look like yourself, so that’s something.’
An odd choice of words, I thought, given that she looked nothing at all like I remembered. Here in these vaguely normal surroundings, so far from the surreal landscape of the desert, the contrasts between who Nephenia had been and who she was now only grew starker.
Stop obsessing over her looks, moron. Focus on what matters. ‘Ferius … is she—’
Nephenia came to sit at the foot of the bed. ‘It’s okay. Ferius is alive. The wounds were bad though. She almost … Anyway, she’s recuperating now.’
Oh, ancestors, thank you. For once, thank you.
I pulled at the chains attached to my wrists. ‘Would you mind taking these off me?’
Nephenia’s tone was sharp. ‘I don’t know. Do you plan on abandoning me again like you did while I was trying to keep your friend from bleeding out in the desert?’ She stopped herself. ‘I’m sorry, Kellen. I shouldn’t have said that.’
She came around and knelt at my right side, working a key into the lock holding the chain to my wrist, then unlocking the other side. ‘There. You’re free now. Try not to run off and … Damn it, sorry. I can’t seem to stop myself.’
She sat down on the floor next to the bed, her back to the wall. The hyena came and lay down next to her, its head in her lap. ‘Two months I’ve been away from our people, Kellen. I’ve been robbed twice, nearly killed on three separate occasions. I got food poisoning from fruit that had gone bad in my pack and ended up so sick I would’ve died from dehydration if Ishak hadn’t run fifty miles to the nearest town to steal a canteen of water for me.’
‘Why were you …?’ I stopped myself. I’d been about to ask her what she’d done to get herself exiled. It felt like the wrong time to bring it up. I was starting to think there never would be a good time. ‘I’m glad you’re okay,’ I said.
She stroked the hyena’s fur, then turned to look up at me. ‘How long did it take before you stopped being afraid, Kellen?’
‘Me? Are you kidding? I’m scared all the time. Hells, I’m scared right now.’
She laughed. ‘Of what? Me?’ The hyena gave a low growl. Neph patted its head. ‘Well, of course, my brave little darling, everyone’s afraid of you.’ In response, Ishak made a chuckling sound and licked her hand.
If I ever tried to pat Reichis’s head and call him ‘my brave little darling’, he’d grab hold of my tongue and shout, ‘Call me that again, skinbag. Call me “darling” one more time, I dare you.’
‘Come on,’ Nephenia said, gently lifting Ishak’s head from her lap and rising to her feet. ‘You must be starving by now.’
‘How long have I been here? And how on earth did you get us out of the desert?’
‘With a considerable amount of difficulty,’ she replied, leaning back into a stretch. ‘Suffice to say, it involved using up every bit of medicine I could find in Ferius’s saddlebag, ruining my two best summoning charms to lure your horses back, and three days of walking alongside Ferius’s mount, trying to make sure she didn’t fall off and you weren’t …’
‘What?’ I asked, suddenly self-conscious by the way she was staring at me.
‘It’s just … back in the desert, when you finally came out of whatever had you walking around in daze, I nearly forgot you.’
Great. ‘Look, I’m sorry I—’
‘No, I don’t mean like that. I mean I literally forgot who you were for a couple of seconds. Like there was just some guy standing by himself in the desert.’ She shook her head. ‘You know what? I’m not making any sense. I was exhausted and dehydrated and a bunch of religious zealots had gotten halfway to ritually murdering me.’ She extended a hand to me. ‘Let’s go. I’m going stir crazy in this place.’
I pushed aside the blankets and rose from the bed. My head was still foggy and I felt a slight chill, but I wasn’t going to let either stop me. ‘I want to see Ferius.’
Nephenia raised one eyebrow. ‘Really? Isn’t there something else you ought to do first?’
Being an ungracious idiot, I’d forgotten to thank her. She’d gone through hell to save my mentor, to find me and bring all of us safely out of the desert, and I’d barely expressed the tiniest shred of gratitude. ‘Thank you, Nephenia. I mean it. If there’s anything I can do in return—’
A smile grew from one side of her face and turned into a chuckle as she gestured towards the opposite wall. I followed the line of her finger to see my reflection in the mirror mounted there.
I was completely naked.
‘Just put some clothes on and we’ll call it even,’ Nephenia said.
Red-faced and suffering the chortling of both her and the hyena, I hurriedly dressed myself with the spare set of travelling clothes from my pack. The embarrassment faded when I looked in the mirror a second time and saw the twisting black lines around my left eye had grown. They did that whenever I used Jan’Tep magic, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, over time. Being lost in shadow had made my condition visibly worse than before. I quickly applied the skin-coloured paste I used to hide the shadowblack when we were in cities, flinching every time it touched my flesh.
‘Quit primping,’ Nephenia said. ‘You look more than pretty enough for this place, trust me.’
I put away the tiny jar of paste and grabbed my hat. ‘Where are we anyway?’
She held the door open for me. ‘You know, I was kind of hoping you could tell me.’
We walked along a hallway with half a dozen doors similar to mine along one side. I assumed Ferius must be in one of them, but Neph went right past them to the stairwell. ‘I thought you said Ferius was here recuperating?’
‘She is, but apparently Argosi convalesce differently from regular people.’
I followed her to the bottom of the stairs and into a large rustic common room. A dozen rough-looking men and women sat at benches, drinking and talking while a sleepy-eyed bartender sat on a stool washing mugs. Ferius was nowhere in sight.
‘She was supposed to meet us here,’ Nephenia said, glancing around the room.
I noted the swinging door that led outside. ‘What town is this?’
‘We’re not in a town,’ Nephenia replied. ‘Actually we’re not in anything. So far as I can tell, we’re in the middle of nowhere. This tavern sits at an empty crossroads near the border with Gitabria.’
‘How did you find this place then?’
She gave a soft snort. ‘Lady Ferius. She was so weak I had to tie her into the saddle to keep her from falling off, but every couple of hours she’d rouse herself and shout at me to go left, or right, or cut through some dusty field. We missed three separate towns where I could’ve found her a proper doctor, but she kept ranting about needing “the universal constant of civilisation”.’
‘Oh,’ I said, finally understanding what this unimpressive wood building really was. Ferius makes them sound so grand, but I’ve always found them disappointing. ‘We’re in a travellers’ saloon.’
‘How is that different from a regular saloon?’
I led h
er past the bar to the other side of the common room. ‘According to the Argosi, in all the ways that matter. Travellers’ saloons are secret rest stops on the long roads. They exist all over the continent, though they have lots of different names. In the Borderlands they call them “ramblers’ roadhouses”. I’ve never been to any in our own lands, but Ferius says you can find “wayfarers’ sanctums” there too. Even here, in the Berabesq territories, they have what they call “pilgrims’ respites”.’
Nephenia glanced at the men and women carousing in the common room. ‘Doesn’t look like much.’
‘That’s because we’re not technically in the travellers’ saloon right now. Come on,’ I said, stopping at an innocuous door with three stars scratched into the wood above a small spiral.
The bartender took notice of us. ‘Nobody goes in there,’ he said.
‘That’s why nobody ever comes out,’ I replied.
The bartender went back to washing his mugs.
‘What was that about?’ Nephenia asked as we passed through the door and into the darkness beyond. ‘Some sort of password?’
‘I’m not actually sure, but the bartenders always say the same thing and Ferius always gives the same reply.’
I kept my hand against the wall until we reached rough-hewn stairs that led underground. ‘Watch your step. It’s supposed to be seventy-seven steps down, but I always forget to count.’
‘What’s down there, Kellen?’
‘If you ask Ferius? The universal constant of civilisation.’
13
The Universal Constant
Nephenia stared wide-eyed at the massive room carved from the rock beneath the saloon. It was probably two or three times larger than the building above. I’d always wondered if maybe these places had first been created as sanctuaries for refugees fleeing the perpetual warfare that once plagued this continent, but they could just as easily have been made for smugglers or thieves needing a quick escape from the local authorities. You could survive a long time in an underground structure like this where it never got too hot or cold, and where the maze of tunnels that led away from it could provide a quick escape. But anytime I asked Ferius what the purpose of the travellers’ saloons was, she always gave the same reply – the one she shouted as Nephenia and I entered the cave.
‘Gambling, my friends!’ She raised a large mug of something I doubted was particularly restorative for someone who was supposed to be recuperating. ‘Is it not the finest form of poetry ever devised by civilised people?’
‘The universal constant!’ others toasted enthusiastically in response.
Two separate bars had been constructed on either side of the cave, no doubt so that the array of drunks never had to stumble too far to get their next drink. In between was a mismatched set of tables of varying sizes and origins, each playing host to a round of cards or dice, along with a few games of chance I didn’t recognise.
‘Kellen!’ Ferius called out merrily from a table where she was playing cards with three other travellers. ‘And girl-whose-name-I-keep-forgetting!’
‘As I keep reminding you, Lady Ferius, my name is Nephenia.’
‘Stop calling me “Lady”, kid. I must’ve told you a hundred times now.’
Nephenia arched an eyebrow. ‘Guess I forgot.’
Ishak loped alongside us and greeted Reichis with a low growl. Reichis was perched on Ferius’s shoulder, beady eyes focused intently on the card game. He glanced over just long enough to ignore me and bare his teeth at Ishak before turning back to Ferius’s cards. ‘Come on, Argosi. Let’s fleece these suckers. Go all in. All in!’
‘You’re teaching a squirrel cat to gamble?’ I asked.
Ferius grinned, dropping a pile of coins that must’ve come from at least three different countries into a wooden tray at the centre of the table. ‘Little fella’s developing quite the knack for it.’
‘But how do you even know what he’s saying? You don’t understand his language.’
‘Oh, he finds ways to convey his meaning.’
‘That card!’ Reichis chittered excitedly. He clambered down her arm and grabbed at it with both paws, snarling at her when she didn’t let go of it. ‘Hurry, before it’s too late!’
‘All right, all right,’ she said, laying the card face up for the other players to see. It was a three of shields – the suit that represented the Daroman Empire. Hardly impressive, I thought, but clearly I didn’t know the rules of the game.
‘Son of a bitch!’ a young woman in Daroman riding gear declared, tossing her own cards face down on the table.
A huge Berabesq man in robes to her right abandoned his own hand next. ‘I do not trust this creature. He brings ill fortune.’
‘Not to me, sucker!’ Reichis said gleefully. He hopped onto the table and began removing the coins one by one from the tray that held the bets to place them onto Ferius’s pile. The squirrel cat glanced up at me. ‘You and me are definitely playing poker later.’
‘What’s the point? You already steal anything I have of value every time I go to sleep.’
He glowered at me. ‘You take the fun out of everything, you know that?’
‘Hey, kid, you okay?’ Ferius asked, peering up at me. ‘You look a little out of sorts.’
Out of sorts? Her skin was so pale you’d have mistaken her for dead if she closed her eyes long enough. I’m not sure how long she’d been down here gambling, but judging from all the different coins in her pile, I doubted she’d been getting much rest. When she took another swig of her drink, the hand holding the mug trembled a little. That was the last straw for me.
‘You think I’m out of sorts? Look at you! You’re barely able to sit up in that chair! You nearly died, Ferius! I was lost in shadow and you were bleeding all over the sand and there was nothing I could do to help. Nothing! Do you not get that?’
The other players at the table stared at me, as did several other travellers nearby. I guess I’d got kind of loud.
Ferius waved away their looks of concern. ‘Things turned out just fine, Kellen. Now, why don’t you go have a seat on one of those couches over there and wait for one of the nice comfort artisans to come along and help you relax.’
‘Comfort artisans?’ Nephenia asked.
‘Prostitutes,’ I replied, even though I knew using that term would anger Ferius. Somehow she saw a difference between the two professions that eluded me.
‘There speaks a man who ain’t never spent a night with a real artisan,’ she said, eliciting bouts of laughter from the table.
I felt the sharp sting of my fingernails digging into my own palms. Nephenia tried to pull me away, but I shrugged her off. ‘How can you make everything into a joke, you stupid, selfish idiot!’
I knew I’d gone too far even before I saw the expressions of the people around me, which was bad because none of them knew that Ferius had saved my life more times than I could count. In return I’d almost let her die. She pushed her cards away. ‘No, Kellen, I guess you’re right. This ain’t no joke.’ She tossed a pair of coins to the Berabesq man who’d taken the deck. ‘Deal me out a few rounds, Hedriss. Gotta stretch my legs awhile.’ She rose from the table and headed for the stairs leading out of the cave. ‘Come on, kid. Let’s you and me take a walk.’
I followed Ferius outside, trying my best to stand tall but feeling like an errant puppy waiting to be scolded. The sun was just beginning to set in the west. To the east, darkening clouds settled over a range of hills that on the maps mark the Gitabrian border. We were clearly well out of the desert. There was even a lively stream babbling along a few yards away from the saloon where it passed beneath a small wooden bridge and into a forest of silver-grey trees blossoming with delicate orange-pink flowers.
‘Pretty, ain’t it?’ Ferius asked.
Compared to where we’d been these past few months? It was like I’d fallen into one of those magnificent, peaceful paintings you might find adorning the marble walls of a lord magus’s sanctum. ‘It’s fine,
I guess.’
She chuckled, reaching inside her waistcoat – no doubt for one of her smoking reeds. She stopped though, and her hand came back empty. ‘Places like this … Times like this, they’re meant to be drunk up like summer wine, kid. You can’t taste them if you let fear and anger swell up in your tongue.’
‘But you—’
She cut me off. ‘You keep sayin’ I almost died, Kellen, but I didn’t. Dwelling on all the bad things that didn’t even come to pass only makes it harder to celebrate that fact. Stop being so scared about yesterday – it only makes you forget to appreciate today.’
Her words made sense of course, and part of me wanted to accept her view of things. But I couldn’t. ‘All I know is that you did almost die.’ The last word came out in a humiliating sob.
I always cry after we get attacked, and I guess I hadn’t had a chance this time around. Still, I’d promised myself when we came out here that no matter what Ferius said, I wouldn’t blubber like some lost child. Like so many other promises, I broke that one too. ‘Because of me, Ferius. It’s always because of me. You were passed out bleeding in the sand and I couldn’t help you because of my stupid shadowblack. If it had been just the two of us out there, you would’ve—’
She cut me off and did something she’d never done before. She hugged me. The sensation was so odd, as unnatural to me as it no doubt would’ve felt completely ordinary to someone else. My people don’t tend to express physical affection. I tried to push her away but she held me there, arms wrapped around me. ‘See, this is what I adore about you, kid,’ Ferius said.
‘The fact that I’m scared all the time?’
‘The fact that nothing scares you more than the thought of lettin’ your friends down.’
14
The Game of Cards
Back in the cavern beneath the saloon, Ferius returned to her game. Reichis periodically cajoled her about which cards to play while Nephenia and Ishak watched. Occasionally the hyena would bark or make a yipping sound that meant nothing to me, but which sent Reichis into long-winded explanations of the rules. The squirrel cat now considered himself an expert in the strategies and tactics of card games.
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