The Heart of the mirage

Two more legionnaires came up, grinning. 'Hey, what about us, Evander?' one of them asked the man who was holding me. 'I could do with a poke and she's not bad – for a Kardi.'

'Why not?' the one called Evander replied. 'Let's find a place.'

'I noticed some sacks of grain stacked in the alley back there,' Xasus said. 'Just the spot.'

Hardly able to credit I was hearing this conversation on a crowded city street, I twisted in my captor's arms and said – in Tyranian – 'How dare you! Let me go, this instant or you'll find yourself feeling Brotherhood justice.'

Evander did not release me, but the others looked stunned. 'Who the Vortex are you?' one of them asked.

'Ah, er, my mistress is Legata Ligea of the Brotherhood, at present residing with the Governor. She'll have you skinned alive and sold for slave meat if you touch me!'

Xasus backed off a little. 'Perhaps we ought to let her go,' he said to the others. T don't want any shit with the Brotherhood. And I've heard of that particular bitch. You don't cross her and get away with it. My cousin was a tax inspector in Tyr until he ran foul of her. Now he's a scribe in Gammed and his name is mud in Tyrans.'

'Since when has a slave told a legionnaire what he can and cannot do?' Evander growled. 'Damn it, Xasus, you reckon any Brother is going to give a shit about a slave?'

'You'd better believe it,' I snapped. 'She's very fond of me.'

Xasus held up both hands in a gesture of defeat. 'I'm off,' he said.

But Evander was not going to give up his prize so easily, and one of the others was prepared to follow his lead. The crowd around had thinned out, giving us space; people were backing off, concerned, wary, not knowing what to do. The oppressive humidity of their hate for the legionnaires hung in the air, but no one actually moved to help me.

I caught sight of the man I had been following, as he came back to see what had happened. He was broadcasting his concern before him, as strong to my senses as incense is to the nose. With what I hoped was unexpected suddenness, I sagged in Evander's arms and he lost his grin. While he was off-balance, I whirled and jabbed him in the throat with stiffened fingers. It was a deceptively harmless-looking blow, but in the Brotherhood we called it the Vortex-strike for its ability to send the recipient to Acheron. The jab was hard, crushing his larynx and slamming into the blood vessel behind; the shock stopped his heart as effectively as an arrow in the chest would have done. I didn't wait to see what happened; I was already running. Behind me I heard an outraged cry of: 'The frigging helot has killed him. Get her.'

My guide saw me coming, turned and dodged into an alleyway, also running. I darted after him. The legionnaires, spurred by fury, were not far behind, but my guide knew what he was doing. We hurdled a low

wall, dashed across a deserted courtyard and skidded through an archway into another crowded square. Back inside the crowd he dropped to a brisk walk to make our passage less obvious.

I risked a swift look behind. The legionnaires were shouting to someone in front of us: more legionnaires. My guide changed direction. He grabbed my hand and pulled me through another archway into a narrow lane hemmed in by adobe walls. The alley itself was a dead end, but several wooden doors set into the walls, intricately carved, hinted at an illustrious past for the Kardi homes behind them.

Without hesitation the Kardi opened a door and pulled me into the courtyard beyond. Once it had been a spacious garden for a wealthy man's home, now it was an untidy fowl-run surrounded by crumbling tenements. A number of curl-feathered hens scratched diligently in the dirt. There was washing hanging out to dry from almost every sagging balcony bordering the court, but there was no one around. I was pulled across the open space to the unkempt straggle of bushes against the wall on the other side. My guide forced his way into the heart of them, still drawing me with him. I was about to protest that the bushes weren't thick enough to hide bom of us when he slipped sideways and disappeared.

I turned to follow and found myself squeezing through a narrow cleft in the wall and into a rectangular recess beyond. Its purpose I couldn't begin to guess at, except to wonder if it had once been some kind of storage space. There was barely room for us both. I was jammed up against my guide, my head squashed down to tuck in tight under his chin, my hips hard against his, my breasts flattened against his chest. The only place he could put his arms was

around me. He smelled faintly of spice and sweat – and squashed fruit. His belt pouch, oozing peach juice, was flattened between us.

'Huh,' he said, amused, and continued in Kardi, 'It wasn't nearly so small when I was a kid hiding from my sister here.'

'You live here?'

'The whole building was my father's house once. Now I have a single room above. Can't say I've been in this cubbyhole for a few years, though.' He was almost laughing. 'Sorry about this – I'm afraid we're stuck here for a while. I think the legionnaires may have seen us disappear into the lane; they will have every house searched. We will have to wait until they are finished.'

He had barely stopped speaking when we heard voices shouting and the startled squawking of the hens in the courtyard.

'Pull the place apart if you have to,' someone said in Tyranian. 'If there's as much as a mouse hiding in the building I want to know about it! Bring everyone you find down here.' I didn't know the voice; it did not belong to any of the legionnaires who had assaulted me. However, it was clear one of those men was present because the next words, spoken in lower tones were, 'You, legionnaire – you stay here. I want you around to identify that murdering thrall if they turn her up.'

The Kardi bent to whisper in my ear, 'Not a sound.'

I nodded and resigned myself to waiting. The noise continued: voices raised in protest, the sound of breaking wood, running footsteps on stairs, children crying, hysterical hens clucking their distress.

It was uncomfortable squashed as we were. My back was pressed against rough adobe, my arms were pinioned by his. I twisted my head slightly to look out through the entrance crevice. The bushes grew thickly

to blpck out much of the light, but I could just see movement on the other side. The same voice, now alarmingly close, was saying, 'Check these bushes, legionnaire.'

Tension stiffened us both, and the movement, as slight as it was, jammed us still tighter against one another. A rustle in the leaves was an explosion to my ears; someone was using their sword to poke into the branches. Sweat, mixed with dust, trickled down my neck, and my slave collar seemed unbearably tight. I felt no fear; I was hardly in any danger from Tyranians. No one except the Brotherhood itself would dare to question the killing of a rankman legionnaire by a Brotherhood Legata. If I were caught, all I had to do was explain who I was and what had happened. It wasn't fear that built the tension in me; it was excitement, the provocation of the chase, the stimulation of pitting myself against another…

The tension was pleasurable. I moved my head slightly to relieve the crick in my neck and found my face almost on a level with the Kardi's, my mouth brushing his chin. His smell was pleasant, his hard muscularity tempting. No hint of his emotions now reached me; he had obscured himself, just as Brand did. I was intrigued.

He stirred against me in turn. At first, I thought it was merely discomfort at our cramped position. Then I felt the real reason for his unease pressing into my hips. I jerked my head sideways so that I could focus on his face. He was looking at a point somewhere above my head. The light was dim, but I thought I could see a flush colouring his cheeks. Indignation swelled inside me: how dare he!

Before I could do anything to indicate my displeasure, I felt him quivering. It took me a moment