‘I strongly urge that all boats be pressed into a general withdrawal from the east shore,’ Borun called after the Duke.
‘Let it be on your head!’
The Moranth commander watched them march off. ‘We will be blamed no matter what,’ he mused aloud.
‘Yes. But not to worry.’
The matt-dark helm turned to him. Ussu could almost imagine the arched brow. ‘No?’
‘No. I have a feeling that we may count on the intervention of a higher authority.’
The helm cocked sideways in thought. ‘Indeed.’
Ussu entered the opened front of his tent. He searched among his herbs, touched a hand to his teapot: cold. ‘Hot water!’ he shouted. At the fire a servant youth leapt up to do his bidding. ‘So much for the imponderables, Borun. What of the practicalities? Do we withdraw?’ And Ussu glanced out of the tent. The Moranth commander was facing the river, armoured hands brushing his belt at his hips.
‘No.’
Ussu was quite surprised. ‘Really? We relinquish one bank just to keep the other?’
The commander entered the tent. He picked up a twist of dried leaves and brought them to his visor, took an experimental sniff. ‘Haste, High Mage. Speed. This quick dash to take the bridge. The forced march across Skolati. All these speak of a strategy for a swift victory. Yes?’
From a meal set out for him Ussu tore a pinch of cold smoked meat. ‘Granted.’ The dirt, he noted, had been raked clean. Poor Yurgen, Temeth and Seel. Able apprentices, but all without even the slightest talent. What would he do for assistants now? He sighed. Ham-handed soldiers no doubt.
Borun crossed his arms, leaned against the central table. ‘Then it is my duty to frustrate this strategy, no? I must impede, slow, delay. Disputing the crossing will effect that.’ He began pacing. ‘Oh, he may cross downstream, or upstream, but that would add weeks to his march. Not to his liking, I think.’
‘Very well. So we remain.’
‘Yes. And thus the question, High Mage… What can you contribute?’
Ussu popped the meat into his mouth, both brows rising. Ah. Good question. He cleared his throat. ‘I will need new assistants.’
Bakune sat hunched forward on his elbows over his small table next to the kitchen entrance at the back of a crowded tavern. He was dressed in old tattered clothes, his dirty hair hung forward over his face and he kept one hand tight round the shot glass of clear Styggian grain alcohol. He studied that hand, the blackened broken nails. When was the last time he had been so dirty? If ever at all? Perhaps once, as a child, running pell-mell through these very waterfront streets.
That night of the escape the Theftian priest might have had a boat waiting but neither he nor Bakune had anticipated the harbour’s being closed. No vessels allowed in or out. The gates of the city had been sealed as well. They might have escaped their cells, but they effectively remained imprisoned within Banith. Bakune was under no illusions; he was certainly not important enough to warrant these precautions, nor did he think the priest so. No, the posted notices revealed that these prohibitions against travel had been levelled more than ten days ago.
The giant Manask, about whom Bakune had his doubts — after all, the man’s features betrayed none of the telltale markers of Elder blood, such as pronounced jaw, jutting brow, or deep-set eyes — had then bent down for a whispered conference with the priest. It was yet some time to dawn and the three occupied a narrow trash-choked alley close to the waterfront. While Bakune kept watch, the whispering behind him escalated into a full-blown shouting match with the two almost coming to blows. Only his intervention brought silence. The priest glowered, face flushed, while the cheerfulness the giant usually displayed was now clouded, almost occluded.
Manask had turned to him, set a hand on his shoulder, and winked broadly. ‘You will wait here a time, then Ip- the priest will lead you to our agreed hiding hole. I myself must travel ahead by stealth and secrecy to make arrangements for our disappearance. Do not fear! These clod-footed Guardians will not track us down. For am I not the most amazing thief in all these lands? Come now, admit it, have you never seen anything like me?’
‘No, Manask. I admit that I have never seen anything like you.’
The giant cuffed the priest. ‘There. You see?’ The priest just rolled his eyes. ‘And now… I must away into the gloom…’ and the giant backed down the alley, hunched low. ‘Disappear like smoke… like the very mist…’ He waved his hands before his face as if he were a conjuror, hopped round a corner. ‘There! And I am gone! Ha!’
‘Like a fart in the wind,’ the priest growled.
Bakune never did find out just what the giant’s ‘arrangements’ constituted. The priest had merely slid down one dirty wall and sat for a time, arms hung over his knees. Then, after a while, he had stood, sighing, and motioned for the Assessor to follow. They walked the back alleys. It struck Bakune that the city was astonishingly quiet, the streets empty; there must be a curfew in place. Eventually the priest stopped at one slop-stained door. The alley was appallingly filthy here, littered with rotting food and stinking of urine. Cats scattered at their intrusion. The door scraped open and an old woman eyed them as if they themselves were no better than the rubbish they stood among. She pulled the door open a crack more and beckoned them in with a desultory wave.
It was the kitchen of some sort of public house. The old cook kicked a bundle of rags in a corner and a child sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and blinked at them. The woman picked up a butcher’s knife and motioned curtly. The girl nodded, and urged them to follow her. Behind them the heavy blade slammed into the chopping block.
Bakune had since learned the girl’s name was Soon. Her plight pulled at his heart. To see her cuffed and kicked, forced to perform the dirtiest, most degrading tasks in the tavern, made him wince. True, she was half-blood, of the old indigenous tribes, but still it grated. The child was forced to do this work simply because she was small and weak and could not defend herself. It had never before occurred to him to be bothered by such a pedestrian truth. Such was the normal way of the world: the powerful got their way — it was their prerogative.
Perhaps seeing this principle demonstrated by a fist applied vigorously to the head of a child put a different perspective on it. A perspective that had not been available from his seat of office, or any courtroom.
He spent his days here in the tavern, named the Sailor’s Roost, retreating at night to the room he shared with the priest and attempting to sleep through the shouts, the drunken brawls, and the shrieks of real pain and faked pleasure. As for the priest, the man hadn’t left the room since they first entered it. Of Manask he had seen no sign.
Of course, if they wanted to sneak away, they could. The gates might be officially closed, vessels prohibited from sailing, the streets patrolled by the Guardians of the Faith, but the human urge to profit cannot so easily be suppressed. Already this night Bakune had overheard several arrangements for illegal shipments and deals to smuggle individuals in and out of the city. This tavern seemed a regular hotbed of black-market activities. He wondered why no cases involving it had ever come before him.
Early on the priest had made it clear he had no intention of leaving. He would stay for reasons of his own that he would not discuss. He also told Bakune that he and Manask would do whatever they could to help him escape.
Immediately his Assessor’s mind was suspicious of such generosity. ‘And why would you do so?’ he had asked.
Sitting on his mattress of straw the priest had smiled his wide froglike grin. ‘And why did you refuse to sign my death certificate? Who was I to you? A stranger. Nothing. Yet you helped me.’