скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Because I don’t particularly want to die of deeping fever, probably.’ Orhan took a last bite of meat and spoke as he chewed. ‘And it’s actually extremely fortuitous, as far as I can see. Excellent timing. The guards will be so preoccupied looking out for Chathean accents, they won’t look too closely at anything else.’
‘I suppose so … You’ve got a lump of gristle on your chin, by the way.’
Orhan rubbed at his face in irritation. The spices were beginning to sting his lips. ‘We could have just had this conversation in my study. Without the need for all this flim-flamming about.’
‘Your study … Now that’s somewhere I haven’t been for a while. What would people say? Quite an eventful day you’d be having. And I don’t trust even your men not to be peeping at the keyhole. Especially your men, if they really do only charge six dhol.’
They paused in the street, standing with the charred skewers in their hands, sticky with grease. Before them the small green square flanking the House of the East. A magnolia tree bloomed in its centre, its petals were beginning to fall and lay like skin on the marble ground. The air was very still, as though the city had stopped breathing. A bell tolled over in the west. Dusk. A ferfew called loudly; he heard a woman laugh. A dog barked and the bird flew up with a frantic beating of wings. Orhan thought: a little way over to the west, a child is dying. Always a perilous time, the border between day and night. He looked at his ex-lover, who was more worn now, more haggard, more alive.
‘Why don’t you come in, Darath?’ he said.
Darath looked back at him. The tension that was between them flickered like the tongue of a snake. ‘Damned erotic thing, plotting the overthrow of one’s Emperor. Or did the pretty serving boy earlier stir you up? I saw you eyeing him. Lovely lips, he had.’
They turned together in through the gates of the House of the East, which opened smoothly at Orhan’s approach. Amlis and Sterne and Darath’s escort followed behind them, knives drawn.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_1ca0b6a6-28d0-5fc3-8adf-73544f9758d4)
They line up in long rows, stretching away into the horizon. Rank upon rank of them. Gleaming silver armour, silver-gilt bronze over fine white cloth. The blood shows through the white and marks them as His soldiers, who will fight until they’ve lost every drop of blood in their bodies and beyond.
They carry the long spear, the sarriss, its jagged point a thing to rip flesh going in and coming out. A short wide-bladed sword that will stab and hack and cleave and tear. A broad cruel knife. No shields. His armies do not need shields. Shields are to stop a man dying. It does not matter how many of them die. Only that they kill as they do so. A shield is a coward thing.
Their helmets cover the eyes but leave the mouth bare, to bite and spit and scream. Ten times a thousand pairs of eyes stare through white-tempered bronze. They wear red horse-hair plumes that nod in the wind. He likes His soldiers plumed like birds in His colours. Seen from above, standing on the walls of a city looking down at them, they must look like a great field of flowers. Like the rose forests of Chathe must have looked, before they burned them.
They stand in perfect silence, still as standing stones, still as teeth in a dead mouth. Perfect order. Perfect discipline. He likes that. Demands that. His officers know the need for it, have passed the lesson on to their men. And they do not often need speech, anyway, when they march. They sing the paean and they sing the death song and they shout their allegiance to the skies. Anything else is unnecessary. What is there in the world to think of but Him?
Within their ranks are men and women and children and old men and cripples and the maimed and the half-dead. He does not care who they are. Whether they are strong or weak. Only that they will fight. If they have no other use, they will deflect an arrow or a sword. If they have no other use, they will die.
They are the army of Amrath, the World Conqueror, the King of Dust, the King of Shadows, the Dragon Kin, the Dragonlord, the Demon Born. For all eternity, they will fight for Him.
A command sounds, a great horn of silver. Music of paradise! The officers call out commands in clear voices. The ranks move forward, cavalry and infantry marching together, baggage wagons drawn by white oxen, camp followers with their meagre lives packed on their backs. Dark red pennants flutter above them, bright in the wind. The war drums pound out a beat like that of the human heart. The terrible, awful sound of living, that one first learns to love and tremble at when floating in the womb. The sound they march to, slow and steady. They are in no hurry. They walk slowly to the pounding of a human heart.
In the first day they travel perhaps twenty miles. They stop and make camp with the efficiency of those who have done this a hundred times. Tents are raised. Fires built up. Food prepared. The camp is filled with the usual bustle of armies. Women tend children or tout for business. Gamblers and loan sharks and pawnbrokers ply their trades. Soldiers dice or drink or sit quietly talking. A few even read. But no matter how long they have fought for Him, how far they have marched with Him, they turn, now and again, every one of them, to the great red tent in the centre of their encampment, where He sits. They say a baby can tell its mother by smell and texture, before its eyes are fully working, before it can see more than dark and light. So they know Him. So they feel Him. They whisper His name, sometimes, a prayer before any action taken. No other god they have but Him. They are hushed and reverent, knowing He is there.
They march again the next morning. Days and days they march. It is neither too hot nor too cold for marching. Though they would march through drought and snow and raging storm for Him. A light wind blows from the west, smelling of cut grass. They hold their heads high and march into it, the sun warm on the backs of their heads. He rides at the very front, with His guard in red and silver, mounted on His great white horse. His armour is too bright to look at. His cloak flutters around Him red as blood. The column stretches behind Him for hours, ten times a thousand faces set. A second column, a second army of camp followers, behind them. A city, marching.
On the sixth day, they come to the borders of His Empire. Excitement burns through them. The enemy is awaiting them, gathered already, horses and footmen and archers and even a few great weapons of war. Impossible to keep the enemy ignorant that they are coming. The trample of their feet on the dry ground alone must signal their approach like the roar of water signals the coming of a flood. They make camp that night in sweet meadows where the grass is tall and golden, scattered with pink flowers that smell drowsily sweet. The stars shine down on them brilliant as daylight. The Maiden. The Tree. The single red star of the Dragon’s Mouth. They sharpen their weapons and polish their armour and sing the paean. When the dawn comes they are roused and arranged in their lines. Birdsong all around them. Dew on the grass. His tent glows red in the morning. A second sun. The drums start up, beating out the rhythm of their blood pumping. The horses nicker and stamp. Leather creaking and shifting. The snap of their banners in the wind. All these sounds are graven on their hearts. They line up in battle order. Men. Women. Children. The old. The sick. The maimed. The half-dead. Red plumes bobbing on their helmets. Spears at their shoulder. Swords at their hip.
They are the army of Amrath, the World Conqueror, the King of Dust, the King of Shadows, the Dragon Kin, the Dragonlord, the Demon Born. For all eternity, they will fight for Him.
They wait.
Three days, they wait. The enemy is a coward who does not dare to engage them. A west wind blows, smelling of cut grass. A rich country, this, warm earth and tall trees and a fair sky. Good growing land. He wants it. Wants the orchards and the vineyards and the white-gold ripples of the wheat. Some to feed His armies, His cities, the march of His will across the world. The rest to burn and trample and sow with salt.
On the fourth day, they burn three villages, strip every leaf from the fruit trees and hang the inhabitants’ bodies from the bare branches. On the fifth day, they dump the fly-blown bodies into the sacred River Alph, whose waters run clear as the evening sky. The water churns and boils and distant voices beneath the surface cry out in pain. Poison flows downriver, towards the rich towns and cities of the plains. Samarnath, city of towers. Tereen, city of the wise. The wheat fields of Tarn Brathal. Bloated bodies bringing disease.
On the eighth day, the enemy is forced to confront them. And so they march out in silence, heads held high, filled with pride. The drums beat slow and steady. Loud. The tips of their spears glitter in the sun. A light breeze blows the plumes of their helms, sets the horse hair nodding.
A blare of trumpets, bright and sparkling. He rides up and down the battle front, inspecting them, checking their lines, raising love and fearlessness in their hearts. They shift and tighten their grip on their weapons, hunger rising. They look over into the south and see the enemy waiting. They sing the paean. The enemy beat their sword blades on the bosses of their shields.
It is beginning to get hot. Sweat drips down their faces, runs inside their tunics and their bronze armour. Sticky on their foreheads beneath their helms. The two lines shift and stare at one another. They sing the paean again. The drums beat louder. A heartbeat. The first and last sound of a human life.
A trumpet sounds. They lower their sarriss and begin to move forward. A slow careful walk. The gap between the armies closes. Arrows shower down on them, clattering on their armour with a sound like rain. The enemy begins to march, coming towards them, a wall of spears. They put their weight behind their sarriss and grit their teeth.
The gap closes. The two lines meet.
The dust rises. The enemy line is broken. The enemy is surrounded and shattered and killed and destroyed. They are the army of Amrath. They will conquer the world. They were born for this. As indeed all men are.
Death! Death! Death!
Chapter Eight (#ulink_ab235493-4c77-5ce6-ab99-0b25f5e79fb0)
The candle was still burning at the Low Altar that night, though it had melted down to a pool of golden wax. The Great Chamber still blazed and shone with light. A few worshippers still knelt in prayer, whispering praise and desperation, clinging on to the promise of hope or of a kind death.
In her bedroom high above, the High Priestess of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying leaned out of her window, looking down at the gardens, her girl’s face tired and drawn. Another priestess, also young, also tired-faced, sat cross-legged on her floor. They were drinking smoky-scented tea and eating small cakes flavoured with cimma fruit: the High Priestess always craved sweet things after her long days of fasting. The room smelled of fresh mint and lavender oil.
‘I really should go to bed,’ the other priestess said. She munched on a cake and gave no sign of moving.
‘Yes …’ The High Priestess gave no sign of moving either. ‘It went well, this evening, I think. The child cried a bit, at the end, but I think it went well enough.’
‘It went well. It always goes well. You should go to bed, Thalia. You must be exhausted.’
The High Priestess, Thalia, came away from the window and sat down beside her friend. She was indeed exhausted, so tired her legs ached. Three days’ fasting, a night and a day kneeling on the stone floor before the High Altar in the blazing light of the Great Chamber, and then the Small Chamber and the child and the knife. Her left arm was heavily bandaged: she had cut herself deeply, this evening, her hand had shaken a little on the handle of the blade as she raised it to her own skin. But she could never sleep, after. She felt wide awake, filled with a dizzy feeling that was part joy, part horror, part excitement, part shame. It took a long time to recover from it, to be able to think about sleeping and being alone.
‘Yes.’ She frowned at the other girl. ‘You really think it went well? The child was … was so little.’
‘Of course it did. You worry too much. You looked so beautiful, kneeling before the altar. Like you always do.’ The other priestess, Helase, looked at her companion in envious admiration. ‘It’s no wonder there are so many poems about you.’
‘They’re not really about me,’ said Thalia. ‘I keep telling you that. I don’t suppose some of the poets who say all those things have ever even seen me.’
Helase picked up a book from a pile on the table and flipped through it.
‘Beautiful as the dawn,
A willow tree beside clear water,
A flower in desert flood.
Her face blinds me,
Light too bright to bear.
I will dedicate myself tomorrow,
That I might see her close,
Hear her breathing, feel her skin,
My blood mingling with her bleeding,
Dying under her hand.
No one’s ever likely to write anything like that about me.’
Thalia laughed. ‘It’s hardly The Song of the Red Year, is it? And I haven’t actually seen the poets queuing up to offer themselves. Even the Red Year: do you think Maran Gyste was really so madly in love with Manora he’d have cut off his manhood if she’d asked him to?’
Helase yawned. ‘Some very great people came to the Temple today. Lord Emmereth and his wife. She was horribly sad, she must have had the scab worse than anyone I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t dare show even the tips of my fingernails, if I looked like that. I think I’d rather be dead. But she didn’t seem to care. Her dress was gorgeous, all yellow silk and embroidery like peacock tails. Her skin was whiter than doves’ feathers. They were celebrating the fact she was pregnant. The candle lit so brightly. It was lovely.’
‘That’s nice,’ Thalia said.
Helase said earnestly: ‘Because of you, Thalia. Because you keep life and death balanced. Those who need death dying, those who need life being born.’
‘You really think that?’ Thalia frowned. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
Helase yawned again. ‘Ah, I am tired. I will go to bed, now.’ She got up. ‘Good night, Thalia. It went well. Be pleased.’
‘Good night, Helase.’
The door swung shut. Thalia went back to the window and gazed out again. A flock of ferfews darted past, wings shimmering in the light of her lamp. They called as they flew, sweet and low. Ghost birds, she’d heard one of the Temple servants call them. Dead souls. Superstitious nonsense, for which the woman should have been whipped. The dead had no souls. Still, the thought made her shiver.
She went over to her bed and sat down on it. Her hair was damp from bathing, twisted into a long thick plait bound with silver thread. Cool sheets, faintly scented with spice.
We all drew our lots, she thought. Helase’s yellow, mine red. What would we rather, that we had drawn the black or the white? Fifteen years dead, both of us. And drowning is a hard way to die, they say. Maran Gyste drowned, she thought then. He grew old and fat and married and never cut off his manhood, and in the end he drowned swimming in a lake.
The day after a sacrifice was always a busy one in the Temple. After the sacrifice of a child, doubly so. People flocked to the Temple, offering small gifts of silver to buy candles, seeking blessing on a child born, a marriage contracted, an agreement made. A child was not sacrificed often, and was especially pleasing to the Lord.
Thalia felt tired and drawn still, her sleep heavy, broken with dreams. The extra day’s fasting, she told herself. Drained her. The wound of her left arm ached. It never fully healed, a delicate pattern of scar tissue, silver, black, red and white. She thought momentarily of Helase’s description of Lady Emmereth, scarred and grotesque. Her own scars a mark of her status. Words written on her skin.
She ate breakfast alone in the small room off the dining hall where the other priestesses sat. They were mostly silent, heads bowed, but smiles and nods and short exchanges passed between them. She ate a bowl of wheat porridge, sweet with milk and honey, studded with slivers of almond. It steadied her a little, gave her a little strength. The act of eating made what had gone before seem less real.
After breakfast, she was bathed and robed for her duties in the Temple. Her gown was grey, the colour of thin high rain clouds. She liked this robe and this ceremony, a day of joy after the shedding of blood. Walked with slow steps to the Great Chamber, Samnel walking before her, old fat Ninia and another couple of priestesses behind. Not Helase, today.
It was still early enough that morning light shone through the high east windows of the Great Chamber. The great room resounding with light, so brilliant it sounded in the heart. Thalia stood before the High Altar and her body shone in the light. Samnel chanted in a dry voice, the other priestesses echoing her. Old words, recited in a long rhythmic drone of old cadences. Like birdsong. Like rainfall. Thalia knelt before the High Altar, gazing up at the single red light. Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us. We live. We die. For these things, we are grateful.
Afterwards, she went back to her bedroom and sat by the window again, looking out at the gardens now bright with the midday light. The day was cool, a fresh breeze and a few clouds scudding in the golden-blue sky. The strange beautiful golden light of the desert that makes the air clear so that detail is picked out like the brush stroke of a painting, the soft wide shape of things blurred with wind-blown sand. A lovely day. Clean. She felt clean, bright as the sunshine, bright as the gardens. If she listened carefully, she could hear the bustle of the city, forever just out of reach beyond the high walls of the Temple. Laughter. Noise. The shouts of children, the clatter of a beggar’s bowl, the stamp of sandalled feet. The great towers and domes of the palace loomed above her, gold and silver, the only other building she had ever seen. The pethe birds called and whistled, higher pitched than the ferfews, less melancholy. The Small Chamber seemed very far away now. It is necessary, she thought. So that the living remain living, so that the dead may die. A good life and a good dying. And the things beyond either kept back. The world is a good place. Even with pain in it. Even with death.
Somewhere in the shade beneath the trees, a slave of the Temple would be digging a tiny grave.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_3c63d9a4-3b63-58e9-934b-73e9ddae21ba)
I was handed over to the Temple when I was three hours old. I am told that my mother cried, although why she should have done so, I do not know. We are born and bred to it, and whatever comes of us is decreed by fate. I was lucky beyond all things, for the lot I drew was that of High Priestess.
It is a curious thing, when I think of it. It is not the first thing that I remember – that, strange to say, is simply a blurred image of an old woman Temple servant, entirely insignificant to my life or any other’s, who died when I was three or four – but it is the first thing I can hold before me with any meaning, understand all that took place and render the events clearly from my recollection of them. Unwanted girls, girls whose parents cannot afford to keep them, girls who have been promised, girls who should not have been born … they are handed over to the Great Temple, dedicated to Great Tanis Who Rules All Things. At five, each child is taken into a dark room at the back of the Temple, to draw a lot from a silver box. The room is briefly illuminated and the lot examined before being replaced in the box. If it is black or white, it means death by drowning. If green, death by sacrifice. If yellow, the child is dedicated as a priestess of the Temple. If red, the child is acknowledged as the new High Priestess, holy beyond all things. Needless to say, there are a great many black and white lots, but only one red. It had not been drawn for forty years, before it was drawn for me.
You will ask, I suppose, what happens to the High Priestess-that-is, when the red lot is drawn. A simple thing: the High Priestess-that-will-be kills her. There is a great deal of training and suchlike first, of course, for there is a great deal to learn and to know. And five is rather too young, for killing or for learning. But when the High Priestess-that-will-be reaches the age of fifteen, she stabs a blade into the heart of her predecessor and takes her place. It has been fifteen years now, since I drew my lot, and I have not yet seen the red lot drawn. Perhaps it will be drawn tomorrow. Perhaps it will not be drawn for a hundred years, and I will live until I am an old woman, and die quietly, and be without a successor.
The poets sing all the usual things of my divine beauty. As she is described in The Song of the Red Year, the High Priestess Manora had skin like white satin and hair as golden as the dome of the Summer Palace at dawn. The High Priestess Jynine, according to the Book of the Moon, had eyes the colour of emeralds and a face like the bud of a rose. As to myself, my hair is like trees against the evening light; my skin is like rainwater in a garden; my eyes are like the sky after a storm. Which is to say, I have black hair, brown skin and blue eyes. I am tall, a good thing. Caleste, my predecessor, was so short she had to stand on tip-toe to reach the High Altar. I was taller than her as a girl of thirteen.
The day of my dedication was grey and hot. I spent the night before in prayer, fasting. I was not even permitted a drink of water in the heat. At dawn slaves came to bath me, dressed me in a robe of gold and a veil of silver net sewn all over with golden flowers. It was so heavy I could barely see through it; my reflection in the mirror when they showed me was distant and blurred like a figure seen through thick glass. Two acolytes had to hold my arms to lead me where I walked. On my feet I wore shoes of copper, raised up on wooden pads so that I did not touch the ground.
I was sat on a high-backed bronze chair with a curtain drawn around me while the priestesses and guests filed in; I could hear the chatter of voices and then the silence when the Emperor arrived. I sat hidden for a long time while the ceremony went on around me; priestesses chanted in high, sad voices, calling down the blessing of the Lord of Living and Dying upon me. After what seemed half an eternity, the curtain around me was pulled back and Samnel called upon Great Tanis to behold His servant in all her glory. More prayers, more singing, then, finally, slim cool hands lifted the great veil and revealed me to the assembled multitudes. The lords and ladies wore their best clothes, shining red and green and purple and white. So beautiful, they looked.
I looked first for the Emperor, of course, whom I had never seen. He sat at the front in the middle, flanked by his guards, young and striking in his black but disappointingly plain with a fat face. He looked bored, fidgeted with the clasp of his robe. Helase said later that it is because the Emperor must remain a virgin: it is harder for men to remain that way, she said.
More prayers, then Samnel approached me and raised me to my feet. It was strange to see her like that, masked in silver with lapis inlays around her lips and eyes, like the tiles on my bedroom floor. I stood awkwardly in the copper shoes. She helped me across to the High Altar, and two priestesses helped me to kneel before it. I’d been told to keep looking straight ahead, but the one on my right pinched my wrist and I glanced up into pale blue eyes: Helase, laughing at me behind her mask. I hadn’t known, before, that she would manage to get a role in the ceremony.
Samnel’s voice came lisping through the mask. I bowed my head and said the words after her. My voice was very loud. I had been afraid that it would stick in my throat. I was raised up again, a cup placed in my hand. Bitter in my mouth when I drank, salt water mixed with the tang of blood. The faces stared at me, a multitude of faces black and brown and white, bright eyes and golden jewellery. I rose and stood tall before the altar, in my robes and my crown, and I was the High Priestess, the Chosen of God, the Beloved of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, she who gives light and darkness and life and death and mercy and pain.
Chapter Ten (#ulink_44e944f3-70a0-511c-98b2-6d9ab9d5b278)
They would be in Sorlost the next morning.
The last few days had worn their patience, sleeping rough without tents, so close to their destination. Emit had argued with Alxine and Rate, Rate had snapped at Alxine, Marith had wandered along a few paces behind not speaking until Emit swore at him for nothing in particular except being alive and good-looking and not swearing at him first. The last of the bread had gone mouldy. Rate had found a scorpion in his boot.
And it had been the birth night of Amrath, two nights past. That was going to make a man edgy, even if he wasn’t sleeping on stones with nothing to eat but green bread. Emit had made a libation. Alxine had rolled his eyes. Rate had muttered words against ill omen, refused to watch.
‘About a thousand years late for that, don’t you think?’ Emit had muttered back at him. ‘You Chatheans really need to let it go.’
‘Bit hard to let it go, when someone wipes out your entire population.’
‘It was a thousand years ago! And it can’t have been your entire population. ’Cause you’d hardly be sitting here, would you, if it had?’
Marith hadn’t spoken to anyone all night that night. Twitchy. Nasty sad face. Best left alone. But the boy was from the White Isles, Tobias thought, to be fair to him. Biggest celebration of the year, there. Gods, the stories you heard of what went on! He’d be missing it. And it was lonely, being so far from home on celebration nights. Missing his mum especially badly, probably. Deep down the whole damn troop of them knew how that felt.
Being a good Immishman, Tobias had recited the story to himself in the starlight. His mother and his grandmother and everyone in the village had gathered to recite it every year. Light the lamps, stoke the fires, bar the door. It begins with a woman, a princess, a descendant of the old gods, and she lived in a country called Illyr, on the shores of the Bitter Sea, on the edge of the world … Amrath the World Conqueror, the son of Serelethe and … and, well, the gods and His mum alone knew who His father was, but He claimed that His father was a demon, and if any man who ever lived could claim that he’d been fathered by a demon, it was Amrath. By the time He was ten years old, He’d killed a man. By the time He was twenty years old, He’d conquered an empire. By the time He was thirty years old, He’d conquered the world. The greatest, the most terrible of all the Lords of Irlast. Merciless. Ruthless. King of Shadows. King of Dust. King of Death. The whole world feared Amrath. They were right to fear, too, since He was a bastard who killed like other men breathed air. His wife Eltheia was the most beautiful woman living. His armies were the wonder of the world. Whole cities, He ordered burned with a snap of His fingers. Whole kingdoms, He enslaved. And by the time He was forty years old, He was dead and gone without even an unmarked grave.
Not a good night to be out in, then, the anniversary of Amrath’s birth day. Ill-omened. The dark was close around them, the light of their fire was thin and weak. Their feet ached from walking. The ground seemed especially hard and lumpy. Rate discovered wriggling worm things in his water bottle after he’d drunk half of it. Emit laughed until Rate punched him. Marith woke them all up crying in his sleep again. Alxine found two scorpions in his boots.
Ill-omened. Hell, yeah. Tobias had a suspicion that even apart from Marith’s sobbing none of them had got much sleep.
Then the next morning the sun came up with a staggeringly pretty sunrise, and they found a tree full of ripe pink apples just sitting there waiting to be eaten, and a staggeringly pretty ripe pink girl waved at them, and Rate and Emit apologized to each other, and they’d finally been able to come down out of the wilderness into a town, and, glory of all the glories, spend the night in a cheap inn.
Amrath was born and died a thousand years ago. Ill omens could bugger off.
The inn had had hot food and hot water and a copious supply of not entirely undrinkable beer. Done them a world of good, Tobias reflected, watching them tramp along, mildly hung-over, Rate still eulogizing the fact he’d finally had a night in a bed. They seemed more comfortable around each other. Back to being a team. Even Marith: he’d fidgeted and hesitated, looked like he might cry again, refused to join them in favour of going straight up to sleep. Tobias had had to virtually drag him into the common room. But once there he’d relaxed quickly enough, to the point he either hadn’t been bothered or simply hadn’t noticed that Alxine had his hand on his leg. This in turn had cheered Alxine up enormously.
Good lads, Tobias thought. Basically good lads.
Shortly before noon he called a halt and ordered an early lunch. They could press on to the next village, but he’d rather they stop by the roadside, so he could talk to them properly. It was a lovely day, fresh and pleasantly warm after the searing heat of the high desert; they sat on scrubby grass and stretched out comfortably. Tobias shared out the food he had bought that morning, bread, cold meat and fresh golden apricots. The apricots in particular were delicious, sweet, ripe and perfumed, soft as skin.
‘The plan for the next few days is simple,’ Tobias said after a while.
‘That’s good,’ said Emit.
‘We’ll reach Sorlost tomorrow morning. Tonight, we’ll stay in a caravan stop outside the city and be in through the gates shortly after sunup. Then we’ll be lodging in the city itself while we make final preparations. It’s tight discipline from now on again, too, things might start up any time.’
‘What’s the cover story?’ asked Alxine.
‘Good question.’ Tobias drew a breath. This was the bit of the plan he wasn’t sure about, for all kinds of different reasons. Necessary, if anyone asked them what they were doing there and why. Always good to have a reason more than ‘because it’s there’, when you were about to shed blood in it. But it irked him. Uncomfortable, like a stone in his shoe. ‘We’ve got a few things to buy that might raise some eyebrows, if you know what I mean? Being bought by a load of hard men with funny accents. So. The story is that Marith here is a young Immish lordling come to Sorlost to sightsee, flash his cash and generally enjoy himself. We’re his entourage.’ He looked at the men uncomfortably. Knew what they’d say. ‘Got it?’
