‘This one?’ The baker grabbed the wrong loaf, but Brexan was too busy trying to come up with a reasonable question which would keep the men talking.
‘Something scared old Carpello last night?’ she asked, controlling the quaver in her voice. Anyone know what it was?’
‘His wives had a meeting.’ The baker nearly howled at that as he sprayed the counter.
‘Oh, really? Well, I think my mother was married to the fat old horsecock once or twice – I wonder if she was there.’ Brexan was getting into the spirit now; all she had to do was pretend she was back in the regiment.
Both men roared and the younger of the two nearly lost his balance.
Brexan continued, ‘The southern wharf, huh? Well, maybe I’ll go down there and see if she’s around. Actually, you’d better give me another loaf in case I find her.’
The baker’s face reddened and broke out in a sweat. This was apparently the funniest thing he had heard in his lifetime. Unable to breathe, he coughed long and hard into a piece of soiled cloth, hacking up whatever was festering in his lungs. ‘Oh girly, but that is the best I’ve heard in a Twinmoon. You come back any morning, any morning and visit us. If you find old Carpello down there, you tell him if all those wives are going to meet, he needs to build a bigger warehouse, huh.’
Brexan laughed herself, and repeated, ‘Bigger warehouse, you bet!’ She paid for her bread and waved cheerily before turning to hurry down the wharf.
Brexan had met Sallax Farro near the last pier on the southern wharf and she thought she knew the warehouses the bakers were talking about. She would be able to eliminate most of them just by asking around, although she might have to sneak inside two or three for a quick search. Gnawing thoughtfully on one of the loaves, she forgot her desire for a decent cup of tecan and instead bought a beer at a dockside tavern, one where she could sit and observe the pedestrian traffic outside.
The sun was bright this morning and except for the same black cloud that looked as if it had been hanging sentinel over the harbour since the day she arrived, the skies above the waterfront were clear. There was a pervasive chill, and the passersby all looked the same: bent over and clutching their cloaks tightly closed. They reminded her of Sallax; he had been stooped over as well.
Carpello would know. He would know where she could find Jacrys, too. She had originally planned to torture the bloated merchant simply because of what he had done to Versen. Now she could do both: Carpello’s imminent interrogation would be closely followed by an agonisingly long session of creative revenge. Anyone who had ever told her that revenge felt hollow had obviously not been doing it properly – bleeding Haden to death had ranked among the most gratifying things she had ever done. She hadn’t killed the scarred Seron to revive Versen; she had killed him out of a passionate lust for vengeance.
Now that lust flared again: as soon as he revealed Sallax’s whereabouts, she would quench that fire with Carpello’s blood. His mole, Brexan decided, she would hang from a string and present to Brynne if she ever managed to catch up with the rest of the Ronan freedom fighters.
By the evening, Brexan had worked out a rudimentary map of the southern wharf. There were numerous warehouses, owned by a mixture of individuals and companies, as far as she could make out, and roving teams of Malakasian guards patrolled the area. At least two of the buildings provided permanent offices for Malakasian customs officials, so those were discounted – though Carpello was working for Prince Malagon, Brexan didn’t believe for a moment that all his business was legitimate.
Several storage facilities were obviously owned by the same person: they were marked with a red slash through a white triangle. She had chatted idly with a stevedore stacking empty crates – the only one who would to talk with her, for work was hard to find in Orindale and most of the dockers had learned to keep their mouths shut. He mentioned that he did not often see his employer, a Malakasian shipping magnate who lived most Twinmoons in Pellia, and Brexan struck five more warehouses from her mental map.
Finally she found someone who directed her to a series of storage units as far down the pier as she could go – he knew the ships loading and unloading along those piers were bound for Malakasia. ‘You said he was from Falkan but that he had done well.’ The brawny young man tossed a pallet up and through a roughly hewn window in the warehouse wall. Brexan heard it jounce over several others before coming to rest somewhere inside. ‘No locals do well unless they run shipments back and forth for the prince. Try down there. You’ll find him.’
NEAR THE GORSKAN BORDER
Gilmour took his time checking every hoof, each limb and all the saddlery while the rest of them bedded down for the night: it had been the hardest ride thus far. He knew their nights of using a Larion tailwind were over; in northern Falkan the land was too rough: rocks and granite boulders broke unevenly through the surface of the earth. Too often the previous night Gilmour had been forced to make last-moment changes in their path to avoid tripping one of the mounts; it was too dangerous to risk again.
Now he had determined that the horses were fine, and quite fit to ride later that day, but he dallied a few moments longer, watching the stream trickle by. Late autumn was moving quickly into winter and there wouldn’t be much grass left anywhere this far north; they would need hay, and stables for the horses each night from this point forward.
He sighed. It had taken too long to get here, five, maybe six days. Nerak could have made it in one. Gilmour calculated that Traver’s Notch was still a day or two north and east from the bare earth and the exposed rock of their current campsite.
Once he was certain his friends had fallen asleep he waved his hand slowly through the air and whispered a few words, ensuring none of them would awaken until well after the midday aven. ‘They need the rest, anyway.’ He reached into his saddlebag and withdrew the leatherbound spell book.
Nearly a thousand Twinmoons later and he still wasn’t ready. He hadn’t lied when he said he had spent all his time since the fall of the Larion Senate studying, preparing himself intellectually and mystically to face Nerak over the Larion spell table one day. And he had, scouring every destroyed university and blasted library, seeking books and scrolls on science, medicine, the arts and especially magic, any remnants that remained. Though there were pockets of renegade scholars, with secret laboratories or hidden libraries, dissemination of their findings was nearly impossible in the occupied nations, so Gilmour was left working with outdated information in a world filled with ageing academics.
He learned to create spells of his own, infusing his existing knowledge of magic with research, but every time he used magic, he had put himself at risk. Nerak knew when Gilmour practised one of the more complicated weaves and invariably sent along bounty hunters, Seron warriors, spies, assassins, even a demon or two, whenever he felt his former colleague experimenting.
So Gilmour had lived a life on the run, moving from place to place, from job to job, learning to move quickly, and knowing every time he worked one of the master spells, Nerak would be after him.
Over time, even with all the difficulties facing him, Gilmour had expanded his work. Was all hope completely lost because he hadn’t studied Lessek’s spell book? Certainly not. The old man stroked his horse’s mane; brushing the long hair until it fell smoothly and he himself was calm again.