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‘So… What about the fireworks?’
Jeniche had wondered about that as well. She had heard them a lot. Perhaps people were throwing firecrackers at the invaders. She shrugged.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s a siege?’
She stopped herself from sighing. It wasn’t Trag’s fault he was slow. And she knew no one in the stables bothered talking with him. He was treated like a pack animal, albeit with a degree of respect since that incident in the tavern. Someone who can eject four over-muscled bullies through a closed door without breaking into a sweat or spilling his beer tends to be given a bit of personal space.
‘Soldiers. From another country. They are trying to take over the city. Our soldiers are trying to stop them.’
‘Why?’
It was a very good question. If you sat in a Makamban café for long enough, you heard all the gossip, news, and opinion you could ever wish to hear, and not just local stuff either. The city was a trading centre, a crossroads. People had travelled hundreds of miles through many different states and countries to get there and some had hundreds more miles to go. Yet not once in the last few weeks had she heard of war threatening, of conflict, of border skirmishes, of arguments between leaders. It’s true that everyone had been preoccupied by the visit of the Tunduri God-King, eating and getting drunk, but news still circulated.
‘I don’t know that, either,’ she admitted.
‘Don’t we have magicians and things to get rid of the soldiers? The ones from that other country?’
‘That’s just in stories, Trag.’
‘I like them. Especially about the old days.’ A frown contorted his face. ‘Will they hurt the horses?’
‘I don’t think so, Trag. And this place is safe enough.’
Odrin had built the stables to impress wealthy clients as much as to house their horses. A large complex of buildings, it sat on the edge of the merchants’ suburb, saving them the need to take up space in their fancy houses and employ staff. The perimeter wall was substantial and the main buildings had been designed to create a cool interior for the animals.
Because the piece of land on which the stables stood had been an unusual shape, there had been a number of nooks and crannies in the construction. Trag had made a home for Jeniche in one of them, up under the roof above the storerooms. The Old City might feel like her natural home, but she liked it up here. She liked it because of Trag. She liked it because it was hidden. She liked it because it was so close to her hunting ground.
She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Just stay out of trouble.’
For some reason, Trag found that funny and began laughing. Jeniche shook her head and climbed back up into the hot space where she lived.
Allowing her eyes to get used to the gloom again, she tidied around and finished putting her things ready. She did not believe in a sixth sense any more than she believed in luck, but something about the last few weeks made her feel uncomfortable. The siege and occupation added a whole new layer of discomfiture. And if she had to leave, she wanted to be prepared.
Trag’s laughter was cut short. Jeniche froze. A knocking brought her down the steps.
‘Soldiers,’ said Trag. ‘In the yard. You going to hide?’
She nodded. ‘Be careful, Trag.’
He reached out with one of his huge hands and tousled her short hair. She smiled and then pushed the panel into place. From the other side came the sound of a bench being moved against that section of wall.
Jeniche climbed quietly up into her room and, from a stack in one corner, began wedging bales of hay into the narrow stairwell. If anyone took it into their heads to start tapping for secret panels, a dull thud is all they would get for their trouble.
When she had finished, she stood a moment in the stifling heat and listened. Apart from the usual muffled sounds of the stable, all seemed calm. It was too hot to stay in there, however, so she packed what was left of the food, picked up her coat, and opened a panel into the ventilation system.
A short climb took her onto the roof.
Chapter Four (#u5ef27c74-bf0e-52b0-b744-17559563c82a)
With all the grace of a drunken dancer, the ghost teetered about the empty square. It would lean one way and move off in that direction, picking up speed until it righted itself. Spinning on the spot for a moment or two, faint in the painfully bright sunshine, it would then lean in another direction and be on its way again, sinuous, trailing pale peach wisps of nothingness, and a faint, teasing hiss.
Jeniche watched the erratic ballet from the deep shadow of a cellar doorway. Dust ghosts were rarely seen in the city. It was seldom quiet enough. Most people would be sitting or lying in a shaded room, waiting for the heat to abate, especially at this time of the year. But there were normally some people about, scurrying through the oven of the afternoon; luckless servants mostly, sent on the errands of the fools for whom they had to work.
The square and the roads leading to it, the shops and stalls, all were quiet beneath the weight of the heat; sunlight shimmering from the hard-baked mud walls. Quiet except for the ghost that continued to skitter across the open space, spinning toward Jeniche and then changing direction. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her flesh tingled as it passed. She pulled her keffiyeh up over the lower half of her face, squinting as dust drifted into the stairwell. Childhood memories drifted in with it, just as unwanted. She blinked the dust from her eyes, wiping away a grimy tear with the back of her hand.
Turning in her shadowy hiding place, she watched the ghost swithering for a moment before it gathered new energy. It dashed along the main road out of the square, picking up more dust as it went, twisting, hissing, and taking on a more solid form. Without warning it collapsed. Mute sunlight pressed down into the silence as the dust settled.
Still uncertain, Jeniche waited. She much preferred crowds, hiding in plain view. Skulking and scurrying, even with the excuse of the heat, always looked suspicious. And her caution was rewarded as a squad of soldiers appeared at the end of the road where the dust ghost had collapsed.
Careful to remain perfectly still, she watched them, learning. It was all worth knowing. They must, she thought, be sweltering in their dark uniforms. But she also saw they were highly trained. They appeared to be standing casually, relaxed; but they were watching all the routes, and one, she noticed, watched the rooftops. Their backs were to walls and they moved as a unit. And they were still taken by surprise.
Plaster exploded in a puff of white dust as someone using a sling just missed the head of one of the soldiers, leaving a fist-sized crater in the side of a building. The squad ran off out of sight, firecracker sounds loud and echoing in the empty streets.
Taking her chance, Jeniche mounted the steps and crossed the square. On the far side she stepped into the shaded obscurity of a narrow alley. At the first doorway she dumped the basket she was carrying along with the sheet she had worn as a dress. Sometimes, it was useful to be what she was. It was only bored lechers that looked twice at a serving girl out on an errand. Now, though, she needed to become what people in this part of the city believed her to be.
As she moved away from the doorway, she found herself almost falling over a young Tunduri monk. Several paces beyond the child stood a much older man also dressed in the traditional mossy green robes worn by those who had dedicated their lives to the Bonudi religion. They had clearly been caught in the city when the invasion began, separated from their fellows by the fighting. Tired. Dirty. They stood looking at her.
Jeniche glanced over her shoulder, certain she sensed the presence of others behind her. There was nothing there. The alley and its entrance to the square where the dust ghost had danced remained empty in the midday heat.
The boy smiled. It did nothing to dispel the uneasiness that Jeniche experienced. It seemed less a greeting than a sign that he understood something. About her. Understood everything.
She shivered and was about to step around the boy and head off to Pennor’s for a meal when the old man spoke. The boy half turned his head to listen. His eyes, laughing and ancient, stayed firmly fixed on Jeniche, pinning her to the spot. The business of the world seemed suspended.
When the old man finished, he stepped forward and held out his cupped hands. With an inexplicable sense of relief, Jeniche shrugged. The Tunduri were begging and she had nothing to give. Apart from the basket. She hadn’t bothered to look at the contents when she helped herself. She gestured to it in the doorway and slipped past the monks, hurrying to get away.
The encounter left her unsettled. The last few days had taken their toll on body and mind. She didn’t understand how she had missed seeing the monks as she entered the alley; didn’t like the idea they had probably seen her transformation from serving girl to lad about town. Worst of all was the way the child had looked at her. Into her. Smiling. Or maybe he was the sort of child that some peoples would abandon in a wild place to let nature reclaim its own. Like the Antari.
At the top of the alley, she looked back. The Tunduri had gone. Ah well, she thought, nothing there a good meal won’t help to fix. If only the rest of life was that easy.
‘Hello, Pennor.’
Pennor dropped the tray he was carrying, stumbled as he tried to avoid treading on the wooden platters and ended up sprawled on one of his benches. He heaved himself upright, clutching his chest. ‘You little bastard. What you want to creep up on someone like that for?’
Jeniche grinned and settled herself at a table, close to the kitchen and facing the main door.
‘What you doing here?’
‘It’s a café, Pennor. I want some food.’
‘Not that, you scruff. I heard you was arrested.’
‘Oh? And where did you hear that?’
Pennor frowned. ‘You’re not pinning that on me. You was dragged out of Dillick’s place by four city guards. Made a right mess of his place.’ He smiled. ‘Word gets round quick.’
‘That much is true. I hadn’t got my spoon in the bowl before they arrived. Who could get to them that quickly, eh?’
‘No good asking me,’ said Pennor, edging past Jeniche into the kitchen doorway. ‘You want to be talking to Dillick.’
‘I will be, don’t you worry. But I want to eat first. Without fear of interruption.’ She looked up at Pennor. He gave a sickly smile in return.
‘You can trust me.’
‘I know. Because I know too much about you.’
‘What would you like to eat?’ he asked. ‘On the house.’
She paid when she left, not wanting to be in debt to Pennor. Besides, it was worth it. He might be all sorts of low life, but Pennor could cook and he kept a clean kitchen.
Before heading for Dillick’s tavern, Jeniche made a detour into the maze of alleys close to the top of the Old City grandly known as the Jeweller’s Quarter. It was a ramshackle place with dozens of small workshops and safe rooms crowded into the back ways behind the classier shops where jewellery and other items of metalwork were sold.
The whitesmiths shared it with locksmiths and sword smiths and all manner of artisans who spent their days hunched over their work, making the most of the natural light. The sound of hammers, saws, and files rang over the wheeze of bellows and the conversation and catcalls of the boys who worked them.
Jeniche had been in two minds about venturing so close to the Old City, but there seemed little evidence there of the invading forces. Thin trails of smoke still rose from the direction of the docks, occasional squads of pale-faced, sweating men in dark uniforms trotted by on business of their own. And that was it.
She stopped outside one workshop and waited for the crouched figure of Feldar to finish. Long, thin fingers worked with delicate instruments, plaiting gold wire. When the work was done the jeweller looked up. He squinted, refocusing his eyes.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’
‘You’d heard as well, I take it.’
A grey, bushy eyebrow was raised. ‘Aren’t you taking a risk?’
‘I think the city guard is otherwise occupied, just now.’
‘Hmmm.’ Feldar lifted the board on which he had been working from his knees and put it to one side. He unfolded his long, thin frame; joints cracked and Jeniche winced at the sound.
They went through into the dark, leaving Feldar’s tools and precious metals where they lay. Jeniche had been unable to believe it when she first wandered through the alleys, all that wealth for the taking. And then she had seen what happened to someone who tried, noticing only then that the workshops at the end of the alleys all belonged to blacksmiths.
The would-be thief had been carried back to the whitesmith’s workshop where he returned the silver ingot he had tried to run away with. And then his fingers had been laid one by one on an anvil and broken with the blade end of a hammer. Jeniche had been standing outside Feldar’s workshop at the time, watching open mouthed and feeling more than a little queasy. There but for the grace of fate…
‘Fool,’ Feldar had said. ‘Where,’ he had added with a wink to Jeniche, ‘did he think he was going to sell that silver apart from back to the man he had just stolen it from?’ It had been the beginning of a long, friendly, working relationship, not least because Feldar knew Jeniche had seen what happened if you stepped out of line.
In the cool interior, they sat in comfortable chairs behind a curtain well away from prying eyes and savoured the lemonade Feldar’s apprentice brought.
‘Have you had any trouble here?’ asked Jeniche.
Feldar shook his head. ‘I don’t understand it. Everyone is edgy, but apart from a few skirmishes, it all seems to…’ His words faltered and he stared at his hands folded in his lap.
‘Has the city fallen to the enemy?’
‘The Occassans.’
‘Occassans? Are you sure?’
Feldar shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. No one seems to know. There are plenty of rumours but not many hard facts. And few of those I trust. Occassus is so distant it barely seems credible. Tales of the Occassans have always seemed like the distant growl of thunder from a dark horizon.’ He paused for a moment, thinking. ‘The Citadel is badly damaged. That’s certain. Some of the warehouses on the docks are badly burned. That too is certain. And there are, according to some who are in a position to know, a thousand more soldiers in barges on the river.’ He sighed. ‘I just hope the young hotheads in the Old City don’t start thinking they can fight back. Not against these new weapons.’
Jeniche leaned forward. ‘What new weapons?’
‘Have you not seen?’
‘No. It was… chaotic down there last night. And I’ve not seen any soldiers up close today.’
‘You must have heard them, though. That firecracker sound?’
‘I thought that was… well… firecrackers.’
‘No. One of the sword smiths on Blade Alley has put up a bounty, a handsome sum as well, to be paid to anyone who brings him one of these… whatever they are. Moskets, they call them. I dare say if they get hold of one they will be making them here.’ He sighed again. ‘And then we will see real bloodshed.’ Feldar looked at Jeniche, searching her face. ‘You’ll stay clear of all that, won’t you?’
‘You needn’t worry about me. I’m not a fighter. I never have been. And all I want at the moment is some cash.’
‘Hmmm. Business. Very well.’
Feldar took a black cloth from his sleeve and laid it on the low table between them, smoothing out the creases. Jeniche waited until he had finished and then unlaced the jeweller’s belt beneath her tunic. She removed the three rings, the bracelet, and the small good luck charm, placing them on the cloth. After the briefest hesitation, she left the amulet in the belt which she retied round her waist.
‘It’s not much,’ she said, straightening her tunic, ‘but I thought the metal might be of use.’
He picked up each item and held it where he could see it clearly. ‘The bracelet is brass. You might get a few sous for it in one of the chandlers’ workshops. I can’t do anything with that charm, either, although if you find the right person you might convince them it’s pre-Evanescence. Fools will always pay over the odds for that.’
‘And the rings?’
‘Times are hard.’
Jeniche grinned. ‘Doesn’t work with me.’
Feldar grinned back. ‘That one is good, fine gold. Five crowns. The other two are plated silver. Three crowns for them.’
Jeniche was disappointed. She had been hoping for ten, but Feldar always gave her a good price. She nodded and picked up the bracelet and the charm. The smith folded the cloth over the rings and it disappeared into a pocket inside his work jacket. Jeniche knew the stones would be out of their fittings and the metal in a crucible before she reached the end of the street.
Eight crowns appeared on the table and Jeniche scooped them up. ‘Thanks.’
‘Hmmm. You be careful. Once the city guard is back on the streets, they’ll be looking for you.’
Jeniche sighed. ‘I don’t plan on being caught.’
‘What you plan and what happens…’ Feldar shrugged.
In the workshop, the bellows creaked and the charcoal fire beneath the crucible gave a soft roar. Jeniche left Feldar and his apprentice to their work and ambled along the alley trying to sort out her thoughts, edging round her grief for Teague. She peered into busy workshops, sold the bracelet, stopped to admire merchandise, bought a new knife to replace the one confiscated when she had been arrested, watched a party of Tunduri pilgrims in their green robes and wondered how people of the high mountains coped with the heat, tried to recall any hard facts about Occassus and failed.
When she reached Dillick’s tavern and went down the steps into the kitchen, the place was quiet, just as she had planned. She went on tiptoe past the two skivvies who were curled up and fast asleep in the corner by the pantry. It was their one respite in a long day’s work and Jeniche had no wish to deprive the two young women of the bliss of sleep.
The door to the servery was by the bar. Jeniche helped herself to some small beer from a keg and sat in a corner near the main door to wait. It was dark with all the shutters closed but there was enough light to see that there were several new tables and benches. It had been a short, scrappy brawl. At least Dillick had suffered as well, where it would hurt him most. He had probably had to spend the best part of his tip-off money on new furniture.
When Dillick’s pale face finally appeared in the gloom, Jeniche had long finished the drink, carved an elaborate design into the wood of one of the new tables with her knife, and begun to doze. He moved his oleaginous bulk between the tables, feeling his way as he went, eyes still dazzled by the afternoon sun. Even as a shadowy figure in the shuttered room, he managed to convey that mixture of servility and slyness that Jeniche so disliked.
‘Don’t open them just yet,’ she said quietly as he reached up to the nearest shutter catch.
