“That’s a reason to stay with the ’van.”
“You’re getting tired, love. You’re pushing yourself harder than your body can stand, and I don’t want to see you beat yourself to death against this. If you send word to Jorey, he’ll—”
“He’ll send me back to Camnipol under guard.”
“Yes, but not because you’d be a prisoner. A dozen swords to keep us safe wouldn’t be all that bad a thing.”
“Impossible,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve come out here to do the work. I’d be useless in Camnipol. And with Geder’s priests running through the city sniffing out secrets, all this around us strikes me as much safer. We left there for a reason.”
No place is safe, she thought. All the world has become a battlefield.
With two hours still to go before nightfall, the ’van master called the halt and pulled them all off to the side of the path to let some supply carts by. It had happened before, but these were not the sacks of beans and meal that she’d seen then. The ten wide carts that rolled by were piled with complex mechanisms of burnished bronze and steel, coils of braided leather rope, stacks of what looked like wheels with blades erupting from their sides, and great harpoons with loops at the back and vicious barbs at the front like something a hunter might use against an animal too large to be killed by dogs and arrows. Siege engines, she assumed, for the coming assault on Porte Oliva should they be foolish enough to refuse to hand over the banker. She imagined the great harpoons being flung into the stone walls of Porte Oliva and used to pull it down. That couldn’t be right, though.
Once the supply carts had passed, the ’van master consulted with a few of his men. They debated whether to stop here or press on, and chose to stay. Clara couldn’t say she was sorry for the decision.
They made camp in twilight. The days were still growing longer. Hotter. Even when the year turned its corner and the light began to wane, the heat would still rise. She wondered as she helped construct the little hunter’s tent whether she would still be in the field when the heat of summer was at its worst, or when it began to cool toward winter. She could imagine Dawson, his dogs at his side, looking out over the vast muddy swath the army’s passage had cut through the landscape and shaking his head. It made her sad that she could picture the dogs more easily than Dawson’s face.
The familiar scattering of stars came out, and the stink of cookfires rose to meet them, her own included. There was very little wood left after the soldiers had taken what they needed, and some of the others in the ’van had resorted to trying to burn grass or else dried dung. Clara had done a thousand things in the years since Geder Palliako took the throne that she would never have expected of herself, but eating food cooked over burning shit was still beneath her standards. She lay back on her filthy blanket and listened to the songs of the cicadas calling to each other from the grass and ate dried apples and salted almonds. She would have very much liked something warm to go with them. Even just a cup of hot tea. She would do without.
She hadn’t realized she was dozing until the sound of footsteps roused her. A man was tramping north through the muck, a lantern in his hand. In this fallen place, the little assemblage of glass and tin was enough to mark him as someone important. Clara sat up and arranged her hair as she might have in Osterling Fells before going to greet a guest. The habit of decades, as out of place here as a snowflake in a fire.
As the man grew nearer, his features became clear. He wore light mail, not the boiled leather of the normal foot. His cloak was caked with dirt and dust and streaked by stains whose origins Clara could not guess, but she could make out the remnants of the black and gold of House Basen, one of the smaller houses of Asterilhold that had not participated in the conspiracy against Antea and so had been allowed to live. The scabbard that hung from his side glittered with gems. Clara wasn’t sure whether she should look away, feign sleep, or get to her feet. The chances that she would be known and recognized were thin indeed, but…
“Hoy. Old woman,” the man barked. She pretended she was Aly Koutunin, her friend from the mornings she’d spent at the Prisoner’s Span. She bobbed her head and didn’t meet the soldier’s eyes. He accepted the deference as his due. “Heard there’s a cunning man back here someplace. A Kurtadam named Syles.”
Clara nodded again and pointed over her shoulder toward the dim bulk of the ’van master’s cart. The soldier tossed something at her feet, and it took her a moment to realize it was a coin, and that to keep up appearances she should fall to her knees and scrabble for it. When Vincen reappeared with a spare handful of dry twigs, she was turning the bit of bent copper in her fingers.
“All well?” he asked as he began to prepare a little fire.
“Walk with me,” she said. “There’s someone I want to see.”
Her thighs were chapped and angry, her muscles tight as leather bands. Her gait was more waddle than stride. The cunning man’s tent was a bit better than her own, the oiled canvas standing high enough that the old Kurtadam could sit up in it. The officer was gone, and the cunning man’s eyes were half closed and focused on nothing. When Clara sat at his tent’s edge, his gaze flickered to her and he smiled. The teeth he still had were yellowed and blunt.
“Fortune told, then?”
“No,” she said. “Not mine. What do they ask you?”
The cunning man’s eyes were open wider now. In the moonlight, his dark pelt seemed tipped by silver. He tilted his head, considering her, and she held out the bent penny.
“I’ll pay you if you like,” she said, “but the soldiers, when they come. What sorts of things do they ask you?”
The Kurtadam smirked. “Keep your coin. I don’t have anything to tell you couldn’t already guess. They ask if their wives and lovers still remember them. They ask if their children are well or if a fever has carried them away in the winter. They want to know when they will find their way home. And if. And what they can do to make the world let them be who they were before they first rode to this war. They’re men, they ask the questions men ask when they have been on campaign too long.”
“Nothing different? They don’t ask about the priests or the Lord Marshal?”
“Some do,” he said warily.
“And what do you tell them?”
The Kurtadam’s eyes flicked up toward Vincen and then back to her. There was a wariness in them now, and also a curiosity. “When I see something, I tell them what I see. When I see nothing, I invent. I try to comfort them. I tell them that there are difficult times ahead, but that they will weather them. Then when hard things come, I’m already halfway to right. Why are you asking me this?”
“These men are tired,” Clara said. “They started this campaign going east, and then south, and now west. They come to you for comfort. For word of home and of the future. If you chose to disturb some of them instead of offering comfort…” Clara shrugged, and the cunning man laughed.
“Yes, I could place a few poisoned seeds,” the cunning man said. “If the price were right. You have someone in the army that’s done wrong by you? Stole your horse, maybe? Didn’t pay you what he owed?”
“Perhaps,” Clara said. “Let me think about it.”
She was about to stand when his hand shot out, his dark-furred fingers snapping hard around her wrist. A wave of vertigo passed through her. A blue mist seemed to crowd in at the corners of her vision, narrowing the world, and the cunning man’s eyes glowed for a moment, bright as a Dartinae’s. She heard Vincen call out in alarm, but it seemed to come from a great distance. The Kurtadam released her and sat back, chewing at his lips. What did he see? she thought. What does he know?