Outside the wagon, the guard seemed less than impressed with the carnival folk. “Really?” he said in acid tones. “Well, Master Mandzurano, kindly tell your exceptional troupe to get their arses out of those wagons right now.—We’re looking for the thief that robbed Lord Pendral. Get a move on, there!—I’ve a search to conduct, and I don’t have all bloody night.”
“My good man, are you insinuating ...”
“No—I’m telling you. No respectable folk would feel a pressing need to be leaving the city in the middle of the night. You wayfarers are always up to no good, and tonight is no exception, I’ll be bound. Get your rabble out here now—or I’ll arrest the lot of you.”
In the darkness of the wagon, Aurian smiled to herself. Apparently Mandzurano had a particularly aggravating effect on persons in authority. It was good to have something to smile about, she thought ruefully. It was suffocatingly hot and desperately cramped in her hiding place, crammed in as she was in the darkness together with Hargorn and all of her companions, including the little thief she had rescued the previous night. If they managed to get out of the city, however, all the discomfort would be well worthwhile. They would soon find out.
“Come on, you lot. Everybody out!” The guards were walking along the wagons, clouting the wooden sides with their sword hilts. Aurian could hear a ragged chorus of complaints and oaths as the carnival folk hauled themselves reluctantly out of their wagons. Angry accusations and outraged protests marked the progress of the search. As the guards drew gradually nearer to her hiding place, Aurian clenched her fists tightly around the hilt of her sword, unable to bear the agonizing tension of this wait.
The guard had reached her wagon. The Mage could hear his voice directly outside. “And what’s in here, that you’ve got it locked up so tight? Come on, let’s have it open!”
“Please, sir—do not open that door if you value your life,” Mandzurano was protesting. “There are dangerous wild beasts within!”
“Dangerous wild beasts, indeed! Pull the other one, Master. As if some ragged-arsed bunch of traveling vagabonds would have real wild beasts ...”
Within the wagon, Shia and Khanu waited until the man’s hand was actually on the latch. As he began to pull back the bolt, they broke into a deafening cacophony of bloodcurdling roars and snarls.
“Thara’s titties!” shrieked the guard. Even above the row, Aurian heard the bolt go crashing back into its socket. As the wagons moved on again, she buried her face in her sleeve and shook with laughter.
Aurian was wakened by the noon sun in her eyes, shining through the open doorway of a small and gaily striped tent. She felt wonderfully snug and relaxed in her cocoon of blankets, warmed by the two guardian cats who slept on either side of her. In the background she could hear the soothing burble of a stream mingled with a murmur of low voices and the sharp crackle of burning twigs. The glorious piercing song of a skylark rained down like a shower of silver from far above her head. The Mage felt her spirits rise with the sound.—How good it was, to be back in the living world!
A whiff of frying bacon drove her from her blankets, and as Aurian emerged into the open she was struck by the chill of the moorland air. It might be late summer, but there was no warmth at all in these northern uplands, not even in the midday sun. The camping place was in the bottom of a secret dell, formed and sheltered by three swelling green hills, with a stream for water and thickets of bramble, gorse, and whin to provide fuel, swift-burning though it be—enough for a small cookfire, at least. The colorful wagons had been drawn together in a sheltering semicircle near the banks of the stream. The horses, almost as colorful as the wagons, being mainly piebald, skewbald, or spotted, were picketed nearby.
Most of the carnival folk were up and about, moving drowsily from tent to wagon in what was clearly a regular routine, as the striped canvas shelters were struck with the swift ease of long practice. The Mage hid her cold hands in her sleeves and looked around for her companions. Grince was nowhere in sight but Finbarr—or rather, the Wraith that was occupying Finbarr’s body—she spotted immediately, sitting huddled in the lee of a wagon, his cloak wrapped tightly around him. Though its borrowed corporeal shell could be nourished in the normal way, Aurian wondered, with a pang of disquiet, how soon the creature itself would need to feed, now that she had taken it out of time.—Beyond the wagons, Forral was exercising Anvar’s body, sparring with a wiry young carnival lad using wooden staves. Aurian turned away and went to the fire, where Hargorn and the Great Mandzurano were engaged in the homely task of frying bacon.
“Aurian, lovey.” As Hargorn rose to greet her, Aurian noticed how happy he looked to be out of the city, out of retirement, and back to a soldier’s outdoor life again. “Sleep well?” he asked her. “There’s some taillin in the pot there, by the fire’s edge.”
“Thanks, Hargorn.” The Mage poured taillin into a tin mug and cupped her hands around it, appreciating the warmth that leaked into her frozen fingers. “I slept wonderfully well surprisingly well, in fact. I think it was pure relief at getting out of Nexis—the city has turned into an evil place since I was last there.” She shook her head. “I could feel it in the air the whole time: the sense that dreadful things have already happened—and far worse is yet to come.”
Hargorn, his grey hair bound back in the neat tail he had always worn as a warrior, handed her a tin plate laden with bacon fried crisp and a large, soft hunk of bread. “I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t even realize how bad it had become until I left last night. It felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off me.” He shook his head. “I’d as soon sell the Unicorn and get right out of the place, but I worry about Hebba. I know she would never leave Nexis again.”
Forral joined them, his face gleaming with a sheen of sweat and his chest heaving. “Out of condition,” he panted.
Aurian put down her plate. “Anvar was a Mage, not a warrior,” she said shortly. “Have a care you don’t do yourself some permanent damage . . .” she swallowed what she had been about to say, but her unspoken words hung in the air between them as though illuminated in letters of fire: because it’s Anvar’s body, and someday he may take it back.
Hargorn broke into the strained silence. “Now then, what do you say to us getting on our way? Now we’re safely out of Nexis, Thalbutt—sorry, Mandzurano—can give us horses and we can travel to Wyvernesse far quicker than the caravan.”
“Sounds good to me.” Aurian scrambled to her feet. “Has anyone seen Grince this morning?”
Hargorn and Aurian finally ran the thief to ground in one of the wagons. His skilled fingers had located the catch for one of the secret compartments that the smugglers used, and he was now prying into a variety of boxes and bales that had been sneaked out of Nexis under the very eyes of the guards.
“Grince!” thundered the Mage. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Grince started violently, then turned around with a broad smile and a carefully studied air of nonchalance. “Just looking.” He shrugged. “My compliments, Master Mandzurano. You wayfarers are very clever folk. Who would have thought that all this could be hidden in an innocent-looking wagon?”
Mandzurano preened himself. “The guards are looking for items pilfered from townsfolk, you see, not contraband. .. .”
Aurian, however, went on looking severely at Grince, until he began to fidget uncomfortably beneath her relentless gaze. “We don’t steal from our friends,” she said.