Two small boys with dirty faces, soiled tunics and irretrievably black fingernails passed her, carrying an old chainball between them, but they stopped long enough to take a wide-eyed look at the odd woman talking aloud to no one.
‘There’s nobody there, lady,’ one of the youngsters said in a small but amused voice.
Brexan whirled on them. ‘Yes, you wretched little rutters. I am a full-gone lunatic with a cracking nasty headache and a tendency to talk out loud to phantoms right before I kidnap, kill, cook and eat annoying little boys!’
The two children screamed and ran, their chainball forgotten, as fast as they could to get away from the homicidal woman with the drawn face and the deathly-pale skin.
Brexan winced at their cries, whispering, ‘Yes. That’s grand. Alert the entire city.’
Hustling along the side street, she was careful not to make any additional noise but assumed, for the fourth or fifth time that day, that she had already created such a clamour that Jacrys would be waiting for her at the next corner, knife drawn and ready to pierce her ribs – but when she reached the main thoroughfare, the well-dressed man was working his way along the river towards a tavern near the waterfront, apparently oblivious to the racket. Jacrys paused at the tavern door and looked left then right, as though the person or people for whom he had been searching all day would somehow appear, then gave up and entered the inn with a dismissive shrug.
‘Thank the gods,’ Brexan said. ‘Have five courses, six if you want them. I’ll pay. Just give me a few moments to catch my breath and get some water.’ There was an alehouse conveniently across the way; with any luck she could get a table near the window so she could keep a close watch on the main boulevard while choking down a hasty dinner and drinking an ocean of cold water.
She crossed the street, pausing to allow a mule-drawn wagon to pass, then fell in behind the cart before stepping onto the plank walkway lining the muddy road that wound its way to the northern wharf. She stopped long enough to stomp the mud from her boots and checked angles of sight from the various windows in the alehouse; she didn’t want to lose Jacrys if he were only visiting the tavern to ask more questions. Worried he might slip past her in the darkness, Brexan decided to look around for a better place to sit, one without an obstructed view of the waterfront.
She rounded the corner and disappeared into the darkness of the alley, but she had not taken five steps before she sensed another presence: someone backed against the wall to her left. Something was wrong. She took one or two awkward, lunging steps back towards the main street before feeling a hand clamp down on her shoulder and then around her throat. Brexan strained against the grip until she lost her balance and then the stranger heaved her off her feet and slammed her into the alehouse wall.
The force of the blow knocked the air from her lungs and Brexan, too weak to fight back now, gasped for air and looked longingly towards the relative safety of the waterfront boulevard. The grip on her throat made regaining her breath all the more difficult. Light streaming through the alehouse windows was only a few paces away, but it might as well have been a Moon’s ride, for the alley darkness had swallowed them.
‘Tell me who you are and do not lie. I have some respect for spies, even hideously inadequate spies like you, but I have no patience for liars. So be quick about it and don’t lie, because I will know.’ The man’s voice was difficult to hear over the rushing blood and raspy inhalations echoing in Brexan’s head, but she knew who it was. Well, you knew you had been too rutting noisy, you stupid fool, she thought, disgusted with herself.
Her vision tunnelled as consciousness closed in, then she regained control. Her vision was blurry, but she could see the cut of his cloak, the broad shoulders, the frilly edge sewn onto his hood and the white lace collar. He was a good dresser. ‘I’m-’ Brexan coughed and spat in an effort to draw breath, but the spy didn’t seem to care that her spittle dribbled across her chin and dripped onto his wrist.
‘You’re…?’ he prompted, loosening his grip just enough for Brexan to wheeze audibly.
‘My name-’ She took quick breaths; they were coming somewhat easier now. She forced herself to make eye contact with the Malakasian killer, knowing if she looked him in the face, he would be prone to believe what she said. ‘My name is Brexan. I was sent here by General Oaklen to-’
‘To what?’ Jacrys asked, his dirk drawn now and pressed against her ribs. Brexan could feel its tip against the bruise where the scarred Seron had elbowed her.
To what? To what? To what, you idiot, a Malakasian general sent you here to do what?
‘To get the stone key, the talisman… he told me you were looking for it as well and…’ She hesitated, forcing her gaze back up to his face.
‘You’re lying, Brexan, or whoever you are.’ He pressed the dirk a little harder between two of her ribs. ‘How could you have known who I am?’
Brexan took the risk of her life and prayed it would create enough credible confusion that the spy would spare her. ‘I met you once in Estrad.’
Jacrys paused at that, loosened his grip and even withdrew the dirk’s point. ‘Go on.’
Heartened by this measure of good luck, Brexan said, ‘I met you and after Bronfio was killed – I don’t know if you had heard, but he died in the assault on Riverend Palace, just a few days after you had visited him in our camp-’
Now it was Jacrys’ turn to lie. ‘I hadn’t heard. Pity. He was a promising officer.’
Brexan tasted a sour tang in her throat. ‘Anyway, when he died, I was one of the only ones who knew what you looked like and Oaklen, sorry, General Oaklen sent me to get the stone. He said Prince Malagon wants that stone as soon as possible and that you had failed to-’ She paused in her story for effect, looked down at her boots again and waited.
Jacrys was angry, but he did not return the dirk to her ribs. ‘Failed to do what? Failed to do what? Tell me!’
‘You know – failed to get it back.’
‘That is none of your concern. How did you know where to find me? I came across the Blackstones. It nearly killed me. Did you manage that, Brexan?’
Jacrys was off balance and she decided to confuse things further, hoping to weave such a tangled web of nonsense that the spy would let her go, if only for an instant. She would make a quick dash for the street and disappear into the crowds along the wharf. ‘Oaklen sent me to Strandson. There was a merchant. He never told me his name. But he had one of them, Versil, Versec- something like that. He, the merchant, had Seron with him. They had caught this fellow, Versil and they were bringing him here. It was a schooner, a fast ship. The merchant, the fat man with the mole on his face right here,’ Brexan indicated the side of her nose with one finger, ‘he told me where to start looking for you.’ She held her breath, hoping to the gods of the Northern Forest that the Malakasian spy had worked with the Falkan merchant. This was it; this was the moment – there’d been just enough accurate information to be believable, but if Jacrys had never met the fat traitor, Brexan was about to die.
Jacrys relaxed his stranglehold on the young woman and muttered, ‘Carpello, I am going to kill you.’
Carpello! That’s his name. Thank you, Jacrys. And no, I am going to kill him.
The spy looked back at her. ‘Well, my darling. I must say you aren’t much for espionage, are you? And although I believe you are telling me the truth, I cannot have you meddling in my affairs, Oaklen or no Oaklen.’ He raised the dirk to her throat. ‘Goodbye, Brexan.’
‘No! Wait!’ she pleaded. ‘I know where they are, where they’re hiding.’ Brexan assumed he’d been looking for the Ronan partisans; it was them he had followed north from Estrad. Gabriel O’Reilly had told them about the wraith army descending on the Ronans in the Blackstone forest, but the ghost had known nothing more. She took another risk. ‘The Ronans,’ she said finally. ‘I know where they are.’