Resigned to the fact that they were spending another evening with their enemy, Jala and her companion sat close to the tent door, watching the camp as the evening meal was cooked and guards posted. Then, Halfdan appeared, calling for the other maid, and the two captives perked up with interest.
‘Zari? Come here.’
The young Pelasian sauntered over, all-but fluttering her eyelids inanely at the man. Once again, Jala wished with all her heart that she could risk slapping the foolish girl.
‘My love?’
‘You almost cost us everything last night, Zari.’
The maid stopped in her tracks, clearly surprised by the tone of the comment, and the tone of her master’s voice. ‘Halfdan?’
‘You are aware of the delicacy of our task, Zari, and the need for care and stealth?’
‘Of course, my love.’
‘And yet you decide, without even consulting me, that it is perfectly acceptable to leave your place of concealment in Calacon and go swanning off around the town as though this were a simple shopping trip?’
Zari recoiled slightly as she realized her error.
‘I was… I just… I thought…’
‘No,’ the ghost said, his voice little more than a sibilant whisper and yet carrying in a shudder-worthy manner even above the noise of the camp. ‘No, Zari, you did not think. You never think. It is clearly beyond your capacity.’
In an almost humorous way, Zari’s brow furrowed as she worked through the insult. Jala felt a moment of glorious satisfaction that her former maid was being upbraided, and she could feel the same thing emanating from Nisha beside her.
‘I thought we would need a few extra supplies,’ Zari spluttered out. ‘After the shipwreck we lived on such meagre rations all the way to Calacon, that I thought while we were in a large town with a market…’
‘And it had not occurred to you how unusual a Pelasian face would be in Calacon? Fortunately one of my men alerted me to your foolishness and I was able to track your movements, which led me to discovering the location of our pursuers. Hopefully, our little engagement has made them more cautious and they will delay and lose our trail. But the fact remains that I was forced to leave the city by clandestine means and utilize some of my carefully-placed hidden allies because of your desire to shop. What have you to say for yourself?’
‘Halfdan, my love… I…’
‘You are an utter liability to my mission, Zari. I find you vapid and pointless. I have seen better use of skin and bone among village idiots. I am past protecting you from your spiteful mistress now, I think.’
‘My… my love?’ stuttered the girl in confused shock.
‘Oh, do try and break through that veil of self-delusion, Zari. Had you not been so well-placed I would have sooner trysted with the stable boy than with you. He is considerably brighter, and better-looking for that matter.’
Zari stared at her master in total shock.
‘Now, my little Pelasian moron, I have to teach you a lesson about following my instructions, but I am mindful of the fact that our relationship is now changing nature, and I must give you a choice. I still may have use for you, since you are well-versed in the habits and abilities and thoughts of your empress, and that could be handy. Thus I would like to keep you around, though in a more subservient role. But I am a practical man and not given to sentimentality. If you are not willing to submit to my justice, I will grant you quick release instead. Choose now.’
‘You’ll just let me go?’ blabbered Zari, and the empress shook her head and rolled her eyes in the shelter of her tent.
‘No, Zari. Release from this mortal realm. Honestly, if you were any slower on the uptake, I would wonder if there was sheep somewhere in your parentage.’
Again, the maid took a moment to think this through. Anger flashed quickly across her face before it was replaced by fear. ‘I… I submit to you, my lo… Halfdan.’
‘Good.’
The ghost’s hand, which had been hidden behind him in the shadows, appeared holding a length of timber with a leather grip at one end. Zari’s eyes widened in terror just before the first blow hit her across the upper arm, accompanied by the sound of breaking bone. She screamed.
‘I will not tolerate the kind of foolishness that you have brought to this endeavour,’ Halfdan said sternly as the girl recoiled, whimpering, clutching her upper arm. ‘I will now deliver you one blow for each night you have accompanied me on this journey with your incessant chatter and your dangerous and useless idiocy. And when I am done, if you live, you will travel with the prisoners and you will keep that pretty and stupid mouth firmly sealed. Do you understand?’
Zari stared at him in panic and horror, and the ghost simply gestured with the rod. ‘Nod.’
When she continued to stare, clutching her broken arm, he changed his grip on the timber and stepped forward and to one side, delivering her a powerful, driving blow to the gut that sent her to her knees, doubling up and choking out vomit.
‘That’s better,’ the white-haired man said without the trace of a smile. ‘Twelve more blows and you may retire for the night.’
Jala found suddenly that her elation at the thought of the traitorous maid being punished was not as to her taste as she had expected, and she winced as the third blow took the girl around the back of the head and sent her scattering across the floor, sobbing through the vomit and blood.
‘Oh, Zari, you stupid girl. Now look what you have wrought for all of us.’
She turned away, unable to watch the rest. Nisha, she noticed, was less put off, an air of sickened satisfaction sating her need for revenge.
‘The time is coming to leave soon,’ Jala said quietly. ‘But before we go, I want to know who is behind all this. Who is pulling Halfdan’s strings and making him dance. Be prepared, Nisha. Soon, we go.’
Chapter XVII
Of Plots and Designs
Jala felt the carriage rattle across ruts, suggesting that they had moved onto a more major road, and a brief muffled murmur of conversation between the accompanying riders told her that there was some discussion, presumably about the route. Every jolt brought a whimper of pain from Zari, who lay upon the carriage floor on a bed of blankets taken from the bags and scavenged from elsewhere. The beating she had taken from Halfdan had not killed her, though Jala was fairly sure the maid wished it had. Miraculously she seemed to have suffered only three broken bones, in her upper and lower left arm, and her right collarbone. Nisha was familiar with basic medicine, which was an art oft taught in Pelasia, and she had set the arm as best she could and made their companion comfortable. She did not like doing so, of course. That was clear. Zari’s face was a mess: scrunched up, misshapen and discoloured, like an old windfall apple in an advanced state of rot. Neither of her eyes had opened the next day, and only one the day after. Nisha was clearly hoping that the eye was permanently damaged, which would grant her a little of the vengeance she sought. But finally the maid saw clearly again this morning, on the fourth day out of Calacon.
Zari slept. She slept most of the time, healing slowly, and even though she whimpered now with the jolting of the carriage, still she slumbered, murmuring her pain in her dreams. Jala glanced down at her and then across at Nisha, who sat as usual with her ruined face to the carriage side.
‘We need to get away, mistress,’ Nisha said quietly. ‘Every day we move north is a day further from safety and a day closer to Halfdan’s master.’
Jala nodded her agreement. The delay was making her twitch, too. She had rather hoped that whoever it was who had so rattled their captors back in Calacon would catch up with them in short order and deal with the traitorous scum, but either they had been dispatched in the city, or had missed the clue and ridden off the wrong way, or – at best hope – they had been delayed and were still on the chase some distance behind.
‘I still want to find things out. I have a feeling we’ll know when we’re close to our destination. Soldiers always change attitude when a jo
urney’s almost over, have you ever noticed? And they still seem settled and weary, so there are a few days left yet at least. Besides, we’ve yet to make any kind of headway with an idea, and now that she’s with us, I’m loathe to talk about it openly. But I need her to come round properly so I can pry a few answers out of her.’
The wounded maid’s eyes flickered for a moment. She had been conscious a few times over the last few days, but her mind was still rattled and fugged from several blows to the head, and Jala had not yet deemed her recovered enough to question.
‘I’d say ask her now,’ Nisha prompted. ‘You’ll probably get more truth out of her while she’s brain-aching. She won’t be able to dissemble properly. Not that she was ever much good at that.’
‘I would say that our predicament suggests otherwise,’ the empress replied archly. ‘But I take your point. No, I want clear, precise answers. This is too important. If I manage to get away and back to my husband, I need to have every last detail I can discern at my fingertips to help him put this trouble down, whatever it might be. I need more information.’
‘Ask away, Majesty,’ muttered a cracked, tiny voice from the floor.
‘Zari?’ Jala leaned forward. The maid’s eyes were open, and though they were still pink and bloodshot, there was more clarity in them than these past two days. Sudden alarm thrilled through her that the girl must have been aware and listening to her damning conversation.
‘Ask your questions, mistress. I will answer them with perfect truth, I swear on the name of Astara, most high and most powerful goddess. I have wronged you and I will pay with my everlife, but I will do what I can to set things right here.’
‘Don’t trust her,’ Nisha huffed.
‘She swore upon Astara,’ Jala noted. The senior Pelasian goddess was the keeper of oaths and punisher of wrongs, and an oath to her was the most binding that one of the faithful could ever make.
‘For a traitor like her, oaths are as easily broken as a glass.’
Jala peered at Zari’s face. Though it was difficult to look into those reddened, damaged eyes without squeamishly looking away again, Jala focused on them. She knew people, and she could see one thing clearly here that overrode any other possibilities or aspects: Zari was broken. Utterly and hopelessly broken. It was plain to see for those who knew how to look.
‘She’s not lying, Nisha.’
‘So you say, mistress,’ the other maid replied, unconvinced.
‘Ask your questions, Majesty,’ Zari said again, ‘and if I can answer them, I will.’
Jala flexed her fingers and then steepled them. ‘Who is Halfdan’s master?’
‘He’s a northern lord. I’ve never met him or seen him, but I’ve heard Halfdan and his men talking about him. He’s someone called Aldegund.’
The empress frowned for a moment, casting her mental net wide and fishing for details in her memory. ‘He’s one of the newer lords. Only one generation, if I remember correctly. My husband’s father made him a lord. Before that he and his people were just a semi-civilized tribe on the northern border. Darius gave him a title and imperial support and set out his domain. He has quite a lot of land and is fairly wealthy. He’s in a fine position. He could gain little from taking me, unless he means to try for the throne itself, but he would never manage that. He is not an idiot – I remember him from the celebrations of my husband’s coronation anniversary. He’s far from stupid enough to think he could take the throne. So what could he hope to gain from my capture?’
Zari tried to talk and the result was a coughing fit that lasted for some time. Once she subsided and relaxed, she took a calming breath. ‘From what I understand, mistress, Aldegund is not the master in this. They talk of him as a king in his own right, as though he was independent of the empire, but they also talk of him paying lip service to some other lord. Not the emperor, though, mistress. Some eastern warlord.’
Jala’s eyes widened. ‘He serves someone from the east? I presume, then, that he has been promised his own little kingdom in return for his support. If Aldegund were no longer bound by his oath to the emperor, he could easily overwhelm his neighbouring lords and create a sizeable domain.’ She tried to picture the map of the provinces hanging on the audience chamber wall back in Velutio. If Aldegund was based where she believed, then it would be within his power to create a kingdom that stretched from the Western Ocean to the Nymphaean Sea and from the mountains to the southern peninsula. More or less the whole of the western provinces. He would never stand a chance with the imperial government and army in place, though. Unless this eastern warlord…
‘Why me, though? What use am I to him?’
Zari looked worried now. ‘I cannot say for sure, mistress, but I have heard things, and if I assemble them like a puzzle, it forms a horrible picture.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, mistress, they say that two of the marshals are dead, and that the other two are missing.’
‘Quintillian is missing. Who else?’
‘Titus Tythianus, mistress.’
Jala tried to picture someone abducting the scruffy, unbearably down-to-earth Titus. The idea seemed somehow absurd. Titus was surely indestructible? She’d certainly heard both Kiva and Quintillian opine as much. Not dead, though. Just disappeared. A small smile crept across her lips. Could he be the cause of Halfdan’s troubles? It was an attractive idea.
‘So the army is without its senior generals, and this Aldegund has the empress in his grasp.’
‘I think, mistress, that you are lucky.’
‘Lucky?’ snorted Nisha, her first words in the conversation. ‘Lucky how, precisely?’
‘Lucky to be alive,’ Zari replied quietly. ‘I get the feeling that Halfdan was supposed to sink the ship and kill everyone aboard. I believe he took you instead of killing you, because of your potential value as a bargaining tool.’
‘Then I am lucky,’ Jala murmured. ‘And my husband, the emperor, is in Velutio, utterly alone, facing insurrection and possibly further trouble from the east. He is missing his brother, his generals and his wife. My poor Kiva.’ A further thought struck her. ‘What do you suppose my brother is doing?’
‘Mistress?’
‘Oh, sacred sand devils, I just realized what will happen – why Aldegund took me.’
‘Why?’ Nisha asked, edging forward.
‘My brother will blame the emperor for my disappearance. You know Ashar. He’s hot-blooded and quick to anger. Even now the Pelasian army and fleet will be preparing. Gods above and below, can you imagine it? My husband is alone in the capital without his advisors and generals, and facing disaster on all sides! The north rebels against him, some eastern warlord is interfering, and now my brother will go to war with him too. Pelasia alone might well destroy the empire if it is not prepared, let alone with war on other fronts. And the empire will not be prepared. The military and the government will be in chaos!’
Nisha’s one eye widened in horror, and the look on Zari’s battered face below was terrible as the maid realized how much of a part she had played in potentially bringing down the empire and ruining centuries of peace between the two nations.
‘Oh, no. No, no, no,’ the empress said, the line of her jaw hardening. ‘This will not do. This will not happen. I will get out of here and back to Velutio and warn my husband. If the gods are with me, I will be in time to help. We must go, and we must go immediately. As soon as it is dark, I think, and the soldiers are settled in for the night. But first, we need a plan.’
‘I think, mistress, that I can help there,’ Zari said quietly, a new look of determination in her bloodied eyes.
Chapter XVIII
Of Freedom
Aulus Wulfstan was underappreciated. Signed on to serve with the army of Lord Aldegund, he followed three generations of his family in that service. Of course, his grandsire and great-grandsire had been tribal warriors of note, rather than imperial subjects, but the principle was the same. His father had begun as a tribal hero fightin
g alongside Aldegund the chieftain and, after the agreement with the empire and the resettlement of lands, had become an officer in the lord’s personal guard. Aulus had followed in his footsteps only a year before the old fellow’s demise. He’d almost joined the imperial military, since he felt he could get far, but something in his tribal blood had called him to Aldegund. He felt sure that within the first year of service he would be made an officer as his father had been.
But no. Instead, he had been selected by that creepy monster Halfdan to take part in this backside-pummelling journey through the wilderness escorting three difficult, snobby women through horrible conditions for no greater remuneration. Of course, Halfdan had declared that they were all chosen because they were the best, but being the best should net you more in return than danger, soggy clothes, catty women and a sore arse.
He pulled his wool cloak around him as the spring rain came down like javelins from the night sky, pounding him and pushing him ever further into depression. The cloak was now so wet it was hardly worth calling protection from the weather and may well in fact be making him more sodden.
He grumbled and cursed Halfdan – an old curse his grandsire used to use on men who cheated at dice. The camp was silent. Oh, there would be snoring, farting, murmuring and probably chitter-chatter from the women in the tent, but with the constant hiss of falling rain and the clatter of the heavy drops battering off leaves, such noise was a hidden thing. Another curse at Halfdan, this time not for his general situation, but for his immediate one. Drawing the middle watch was irritating. The only thing that made it bearable was that Halfdan’s most favoured man had drawn the same watch and was suffering just as much on the far side of the camp. And, of course, that Halfdan himself was wandering about somewhere in the downpour. The man never seemed to sleep. Aulus couldn’t remember ever catching the boss aslumber during the entire trip. He couldn’t possibly sleep more than an hour or two a night.
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