Marcus turned back to the Jasuru. Confusion and anxiety twisted the bandit’s face.
“This is shit,” one of the three behind him said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“Who is that?” the Jasuru said.
“My cunning man,” Marcus said.
“ Hear me, ” Master Kit shouted, and the forest itself seemed to go quiet. “The trees are our allies and the shadow of oak protects us. You cannot harm us, boy. And we shall pass.”
A chill ran up Marcus’s spine. He could see that Orcus the Demon King was having much the same effect on the bandits. He felt a small, tentative hope. The Jasuru pulled his bow from its sling and nocked a vicious-looking arrow.
“Say that again, you bastard!” the bandit captain shouted.
Even in the dimness, Marcus saw Master Kit smile. The actor raised his arms, the dark folds of the costume seeming to twist on their own accord, just as they’d done during the play in Vanai. It was something to do with uneven stitching, but with Master Kit’s sepulchral voice and defiant posture, the effect was unsettling. Master Kit spoke again, slow and clear and utterly confident.
“You cannot harm me. Your arrow will miss its mark.”
The Jasuru scowled and drew back the string. The horn bow creaked.
Well, Marcus thought, it was worth the try. And then, a second later: God damn. He is going to miss.
The arrow sped through the gloom. Master Kit didn’t flinch as the shaft flew past his ear. The Jasuru licked his lips with a wide, black tongue. His gaze shifted from Marcus to Master Kit and back. There was real fear in his eyes now.
“And for what it carries, I really am Marcus Wester.”
The silence lasted four long breaths together, before the Jasuru turned his horse to the side and raised his arm. “There’s nothing here, boys,” the bandit shouted. “These little turds aren’t worth the effort.”
The horsemen sprang away into the forest. Marcus stood in the road, listening to their hoofbeats fade and realizing that he wasn’t going to die today after all. He clasped his hands behind him to keep them from trembling and looked up at the ’van master. The Timzinae was shaking too. At least Marcus wasn’t the only one. He stepped to the side of the road, leaning to see that the bowmen at the treeline had also vanished.
Yardem walked to him. “That was odd,” the Tralgu said.
“Was,” Marcus said. “Don’t suppose we have a winch? We’re going to have to move that tree.”
That night, the ’van master’s wife cooked meat. Not sausage, not salt pork, but a fresh-killed lamb the ’van master bought from a farm at the forest’s edge. The meat was dark and rich, seasoned with raisins and a sharp-tasting yellow sauce. The carters and drivers and most of Marcus’s guard sat around a roaring bonfire at the side of the road. All except the wool-hauler, Tag, who never seemed to eat with anybody. And sitting at a separate fire away from all the others, Marcus ate with Master Kit.
“It’s how I’ve made my living since… well, not since before you were born, I suppose,” the actor said. “I stand before people, usually on a wagon, and I convince them of things. I tell them that I am a fallen king or a shipwrecked sailor on an unknown shore. I presume they know it isn’t truth, but I see my work as making them believe even when they know better.”
“What you did back there, then?” Marcus said. “Talking the bastard with the bow out of his confidence? It wasn’t magic?”
“I think talking a man into believing in his own failure is close enough to magic. Don’t you?”
“I don’t really, no.”
“Well, then perhaps we disagree on the point. More wine?”
Marcus took the proffered skin and squirted the bright-tasting wine into his mouth. In the light of the two fires-the small one at their knees, the large one fifteen yards away-shadows clung to the old actor’s cheeks and in the hollows of his eyes.
“Captain. If it’s any comfort to you, I’ll swear this. I can be very convincing, and I can tell when someone is trying to convince me. That is all the magic I possess.”
“Cut thumbs on it?” Marcus said, and Master Kit laughed.
“I’d rather not. If I get blood on the costumes, it’s hard to get out. But what about you? What exactly did you intend, facing the man down like that?”
Marcus shrugged.
“I didn’t intend anything. Not in particular,” he said. “Only I thought the ’van master was going about it badly.”
“Would you have fought?” Master Kit asked. “If it had come to swords and arrows?”
“Of course,” Marcus said. “Probably not for very long, given the odds, but I’d have fought. Yardem too, and I hope your people along with us. It’s what they pay us for.”
“Even though you knew we couldn’t win?”
“Yes.”
Master Kit nodded. Marcus thought a smile was lurking at the corners of the actor’s lips, but in the flickering light he couldn’t be sure. It might have been something else.
“I want to start drilling your people,” Marcus said. “An hour before we ride in the morning, and an hour after we stop. We can’t do much, but they ought to know more about a sword than which end to hold it by.”
“I think that’s wise,” Master Kit said.
Marcus looked up at the sky. The stars glowed like snowfall, and the moon, newly risen, sent long, pale shadows across black ground. The forest was behind them, but the air still smelled like weather. Rain, Marcus decided. Most likely it would be rain. Master Kit was chewing his lamb, his eyes on the little fire and his expression distant.
“Don’t worry. Today was the worst of it,” Marcus said. “We’ve got our excitement behind us.”
Master Kit didn’t look at him, making his polite smile to the flames instead. For a moment, Marcus thought the old man wasn’t going to speak. When he did, his voice was low and abstracted.
“Probably,” Master Kit said.
Geder
Geder had imagined Vanai would be more like Camnipol or Estinport: a great city of stone and jade. The close-built wooden structures and wide canals felt both smaller than he’d expected and larger. Even the Grand Square of the conquered city was small compared to the wide commons of Camnipol, and the richest sections of Vanai were as thick with humanity as the better slums at home. Camnipol was a city. Vanai was a child’s scrapwood playhouse that had spread. It was beautiful in its way, strange and foreign and improbable. He wasn’t sure yet whether he liked it.
He limped down the rain-darkened streets of occupied Vanai, leaning on the blackwood-and-silver walking stick with every step. Lord Ternigan’s address was to begin soon, and while his wound would forgive his absence, Geder had missed too much already. The prospect of going home to regale his father with stories of how he’d collapsed in the battle and spent the two-day sack with a cunning man tending his leg was bad enough.
The canal on the eastern edge of the modest Grand Square was choked with fallen leaves, gold and red and yellow remaking the surface of the dark water. As Geder watched, a turtle rose from below, its black head sticking out of the water. A single bright red leaf adhered to its shell. The turtle made its stately way past what looked at first like a log, but was in fact a corpse wearing the drenched colors of the former prince: a soldier of Vanai hauled in a cart from the battlefield and dropped in the canal as a message to the locals. Other bodies hung from the trees in the parks and along the colonnades. They lay on the stairs of the palaces and the markets and the square of the public gaol where the former prince now ate and shat and shivered before his subjects. The smell of rotting flesh was only kept in check by the cool weather.
Once the prince entered exile, the dead would be gathered up and burned. They had been men once. Now they were political sculpture.
“Palliako!”
Geder looked up. From halfway across the Grand Square, Jorey Kalliam scowled and waved him on. Geder turned away from turtle and corpse, limping manfully across the pavement. The nobles of Antea stood in martial array, waiting only for the few stragglers like himself. Before them, on the bare ground, sat what high officials of the city had been spared. Timzinae merchants and guildsmen, Firstblood artisans and pragmatic noblemen. They wore their own clothing-much of it with a notably imperial cut-and held themselves more like the polite attendees of a religious function than the debased and the conquered. Sodai Carvenallin, the secretary to Lord Ternigan, stood alone on the stone platform they all faced and looked forward with folded arms. Geder hadn’t seen the man to speak to since the night they’d gotten drunk together. The night Klin had burned his book. Geder shook the memory away and took his place.