"I'm tempted to agree," said Joss, but by the look she gave him in response, brows drawn down and mouth scowling, he saw he had truly angered her.
"So be it," she said. "I wash my hands of both of you." She crossed to the coin chest and helped herself to two fat strings of silver leya and one of humble copper vey.
"Thief!"
"Payment for services rendered. Yet the information is true enough. I'll return to the temple to warn them, as is my duty. After that, you are all on your own."
"You give no proof," said Master Feden. "You have no proof. How did you release this reeve? Why didn't you kill him, as you said you meant to do?"
"Marshal Yordenas commanded me to kill him-"
"You were trying to kill me!" Joss cried indignantly.
"No. The temple sold my labor to Marshal Alyon, when he requested protection. I stayed on after Marshal Alyon's death because the Hieros ordered me to. She saw that things weren't right at Argent Hall. She thought all the reeves had become corrupt. That's why I was armed when I approached you."
Joss could not help laughing. "Armed and naked. A deadly assault."
"The reeve is wanted for murder," said Master Feden. "Murderers deserve death."
"Murder? Whom is he supposed to have murdered?" she asked scornfully.
"A border captain named Beron, a holy ordinand in the service of the Thunderer."
"You and your council are fools five times over. I killed that man, on a commission given me from the temple."
Master Feden, surprisingly, remained silent.
"Captain Beron undertook a commission to assassinate a member of the Lesser Houses," she continued. "The Merciless One alone claims the privilege of such action. He crossed the boundaries, took a life in a way forbidden to the Thunderer's ordinands. Therefore, he was marked for death at our hands."
"The hells!" Joss glanced at Master Feden, but the merchant was now staring at his hands, all tied up tight, and not speaking. "How did you manage to kill Captain Beron? He was caged, concealed, and guarded by the Qin."
"I arranged for an axle to break. In the fuss, I meant to make my move. But as it happens, just before the breakdown a window opened, and I took the opportunity." She smiled, looking Joss up and down in a way that made him wipe his brow. She was laughing: at him, at herself. "I have many skills."
"We needed his testimony! He was willing to talk, to tell us who he was working for, who was paying him off."
"The Merciless One is a jealous mistress. He violated the boundaries. He had to die."
"Then we'll never know who hired Captain Beron to assassinate a man, and to hunt with ospreys."
"Master Feden might know."
"Me? Me!" Feden sucked in a lungful of smoke, and set to coughing. Belowstairs, heard either from down along that hidden stairway or through the closed door into the main part of the house, a clamor rose of many voices calling out the alarm.
"Master Feden! Master Feden!"
A high bell rang to wake the household.
"Heh! Heh! The guards come! You've been discovered! Now you can't escape justice."
She drew a knife from a sheath tucked up high on her thigh, hidden by the kilt. It was a thin, killing blade exactly like the one he had taken off her in Argent Hall. "It's all the same to me whether you die now, Master Feden, or die later at the hands of the allies who betrayed you. What did the leaders of this army that is marching on Olossi offer you? Gods! How gullible can a man be? Is it only greed that blinds you? Or are you just that stupid?" She waved the knife toward Joss. "Go on. Down in the warehouse, turn behind the ladder and find the fourth locker. Open it, and feel with your hands three bricks to the left. There is a stamp on the fourth brick. You can fit your fingers in and lift it, and find a hook beneath. Pull on that, and a door will open. Follow the tunnel out to the street, taking the third turn to the left and the second right. Go swiftly."
"What tunnel? I know nothing of a tunnel under my warehouse."
She ignored Feden's spluttering, and instead repeated the directions.
"How will you escape?" Joss asked. Feet pounded on stairs. Soon they would be at the door.
She clenched her jaw. "Why must men be so stubborn? Just go. Save yourself. I am not clumsy enough to be caught by this manner of men."
"Heya! Heya!" cried Master Feden. "Help me! Help me!"
Fists pounded on the far door. "Master Feden! Master Feden! We've news! Terrible news."
"He's busy!" she shouted. "Come back later, when I'm through devouring him."
But they were desperate. Her reply did not raise a single answering retort, not even a lewd joke. "Terrible news. You must open up. Villages are being attacked and all the folk in them murdered. A lad escaped. Hurry, Master Feden! We brought him, to tell his tale."
A new voice joined the chorus. "Master Feden! It's Captain Waras! Master Feden, open up, by the gods. You must convene the council. What will we do? What will we do? We've been betrayed!"
The merchant had been frightened before, then flushed with rage and doomed triumph as he contemplated being murdered in cold blood by the Devouring woman. Now his complexion faded to a ghastly gray. "Villages massacred? Can it be true?"
She said nothing. Joss found he could not move his limbs, as if he had fallen into sucking mud and gotten trapped.
Then she moved, too quickly for him to stop her. She unlatched and slid the door open, and behind it unlatched and slid open a second, secured door. Captain Waras strode in, looking first at her, then at Master Feden, and finally at Joss. He was so flustered and shaken that he did not act as a guardsman should, to assess and react to the threat. He waited, hands loose at his sides, sword in its sheath. A pair of guardsmen walked in, supporting a lad of some fourteen years, a slender boy with the wiry legs and arms of an experienced rider. He had the stone-shocked look of a person who has seen something he dares not believe but cannot deny.
Joss rose. "Give me your report," he said, finding his reeve's voice. "Quickly, while we still have time."
The lad lifted his chin, responding to the command.
"They marched in along West Track, from Hornward." He spoke in a flat tone, all emotion smothered. "I was at the Olossiward end of the village, stabling the horse for the night, and then… and then.. ."Almost he cracked, but he swallowed and blinked multiple times. He held on. "I rode away as fast as I could and though they rode after me they could not catch me and I rode all night and I changed horses at the villages and I warned them and some believed and some did not but I got torches and I kept riding through the night, oh the gods have set their hands down on this land, what will we do? Everyone. Everyone who could not run. They were all killed. All dead. Slaughtered like animals."
His eyes rolled up. He fainted.
The guards stared at the fallen youth, then at each other, waiting for someone to give them an order. Joss crossed to the lad and knelt beside him to be sure he'd not cracked his head; his breathing was even, and the reeve arranged his limbs more comfortably. Zubaidit sheathed her knife and went to the window, leaning out to stare into the darkness.
Feden wheezed out a breath. "Betrayed," he muttered, as if trying on the word as he would try on a new jacket, one as finely made as that which slipped around his bare legs now to reveal pudgy knees and ample thighs, a man with plenty to eat and plenty to boastfully display. With plenty to lose.
"We have been betrayed," said Captain Waras. "Everything these allies of yours promised the council, Master Feden. Lies. They said no one would be hurt, only that we would get our trade routes back and extra portions and a larger share of the market for those who cooperated with them and a lesser share for those who did not. That they would put down the revolt of the Lesser Houses."