‘Gold?’ asked Shy.
‘Iron and copper.’ Majud leaned in to speak softly. ‘In my most humble opinion, only fools think there is gold in gold. Are the three of you minded to join up with our Fellowship?’
‘That we are,’ said Shy. ‘We’ve business of our own in Crease.’
‘All are welcome! The rate for buying in—’
‘Lamb here is a serious fighting man,’ cut in Sweet.
Majud paused, lips pressed into an appraising line. ‘Without offence, he looks a little… old.’
‘No one’ll be arguing on that score,’ said Lamb
‘I lack the freshest bloom myself,’ added Sweet. ‘You’re no toddler if it comes to that. If it’s youth you want, the lad with him is well supplied.’
Majud looked still less impressed by Leef. ‘I seek a happy medium.’
Sweet snorted. ‘Well you won’t find many o’ them out here. We don’t got enough fighters. With the Ghosts fixed on blood it’s no time to be cutting costs. Believe me, old Sangeed won’t stop to argue prices with you. Lamb’s in or I’m out and you can scout your way around in circles ’til your wagons fall apart.’
Majud looked up at Lamb, and Lamb looked back, still and steady. Seemed he’d left his weak eye back in Squaredeal. A few moments to consider, and Majud had seen what he needed to. ‘Then Master Lamb goes free. Two paid shares comes to—’
Sweet scratched wincing at the back of his neck. ‘I made a deal with Shy they’d all three come free.’
Majud’s eyes shifted to her with what might have been grudging respect. ‘It would appear she got the better of that particular negotiation.’
‘I’m a scout, not a trader.’
‘Perhaps you should be leaving the trading to those of us who are.’
‘I traded a damn sight better than you’ve scouted, by all appearances.’
Majud shook his fine-shaped head. ‘I have no notion of how I will explain this to my partner Curnsbick.’ He walked off, wagging one long finger. ‘Curnsbick is not a man to be trifled with on expenses!’
‘By the dead,’ grumbled Sweet, ‘did you ever hear such carping? Anyone would think we’d set out with a company o’ women.’
‘Looks like you have,’ said Shy. One of the brightest of the wagons—scarlet with gilt fixtures—was rattling past with two women in its seat. One was in full whore’s get-up, hat clasped on with one hand and a smile gripped no less precariously to her painted face. Presumably advertising her availability for commerce in spite of the ongoing trek. The other was more soberly dressed for travel, handling the reins calmly as a coachman. A man sat between them in a jacket that matched the wagon, bearded and hard-eyed. Shy took him for the pimp. He had a pimpy look about him, sure enough. She leaned over and spat through the gap in her teeth.
The idea of getting to business in a lurching wagon, half-full of rattling pans and the other of someone else getting to business hardly stoked the fires of passion in Shy. But then those particular embers had been burning so low for so long she’d a notion they’d smouldered out all together. Working a farm with two children and two old men surely can wither the romance in you.
Sweet gave the ladies a wave, and pushed his hat brim up with a knobby knuckle, and under his breath said, ‘Bloody hell but nothing’s how it used to be. Women, and dandified tailoring, and ploughs and portable forges and who knows what horrors’ll be next. Time was there was naught out here but earth and sky and beasts and Ghosts, and far wild spaces you could breathe in. Why, I’ve spent twelve months at a time with only a horse for company.’
Shy spat again. ‘I never in my life felt so sorry for a horse. Reckon I’ll take a ride round and greet the Fellowship. See if anyone’s heard a whisper of the children.’
‘Or Grega Cantliss.’ And Lamb frowned hard as he said the name.
‘All right,’ said Sweet. ‘You watch out, though, you hear?’
‘I can look after myself,’ said Shy.
The old scout’s weathered face creased up as he smiled. ‘It’s everyone else I’m worried for.’
The nearest wagon belonged to a man called Gentili, an ancient Styrian with four cousins along he called the boys, though they weren’t much younger than he was and hadn’t a word of common between them. He was set stubborn on digging a new life out of the mountains and must’ve been quite the optimist, since he could scarcely stand up in the dry, let alone to his waist in a freezing torrent. He’d heard of no stolen children. She wasn’t even sure he heard the question. As a parting shot he asked Shy if she fancied sharing his new life with him as his fifth wife. She politely declined.
Lord Ingelstad had suffered misfortunes, apparently. When he used the word, Lady Ingelstad—a woman not born to hardships but determined to stomp them all to pieces even so—scowled at him as though she felt she’d suffered all his misfortunes plus one extra, and that her choice of husband. To Shy his misfortunes smelled like dice and debts, but since her own course through life had hardly been the straightest she thought she’d hold off on criticism and let misfortunes stand. Of child-stealing bandits, among many other things, he was entirely ignorant. As his parting shot he invited her and Lamb to a hand of cards that night. Stakes would be small, he promised, though in Shy’s experience they always begin that way and don’t have to rise far to land everyone in trouble. She politely declined that, too, and suggested a man who’d suffered so much misfortune might take pains not to court any more. He took the point with ruddy-faced good humour and called the same offer to Gentili and the boys. Lady Ingelstad looked like she’d be killing the lot of them with her teeth before she saw a hand dealt.
The next wagon might have been the biggest in the Fellowship, with glass windows and The Famous Iosiv Lestek written along the side in already peeling purple paint. Seemed to Shy that if a man was that famous he wouldn’t have to paint his name on a wagon, but since her own brush with fame had been through bills widely posted for her arrest she hardly considered herself an expert.
A scratty-haired boy was driving and the great man sat swaying beside him, old and gaunt and leached of all colour, swaddled in a threadbare Ghost blanket. He perked up at the opportunity to boast as Shy and Lamb trotted over.
‘I… am Iosiv Lestek.’ It was a shock to hear the voice of a king boom from that withered head, rich and deep and fruity as plum sauce. ‘I daresay the name is familiar.’
‘Sorry to say we don’t get often to the theatre,’ said Lamb.
‘What brings you to the Far Country?’ asked Shy.
‘I was forced to abandon a role at Adua’s House of Drama due to illness. The ensemble was crushed to lose me, of course, quite crushed, but I am fully recovered.’
‘Good news.’ She dreaded to picture him before his recovery. He seemed a corpse raised by sorcery now.
‘I am in transit to Crease to take a leading part in a cultural extravaganza!’
‘Culture?’ Shy eased up her hat brim to survey the empty country ahead, grey grass and ill scrub and parched slopes of baked brown boulder, no sign of life but for a couple of hopeful hawks circling on high. ‘Out there?’
‘Even the meanest hearts hunger for a glimpse of the sublime,’ he informed them.
‘I’ll take your word on that,’ said Lamb.
Lestek was busy smiling out at the reddening horizon, a hand so pale as almost to be see-through clutched against his chest. She got the feeling he was one of those men didn’t really see the need for two sides to a conversation. ‘My greatest performance is yet ahead of me, that much I know.’