"Few more yams if you please, Tanrose."
Tanrose shakes her head.
"Can't give you them, Thraxas. No yams at the market today. There's a shortage."
"Already?"
Tanrose nods. Much of our supply of yams for the winter was burned in the warehouse fires. Immediately I'm depressed. Yams running out, and winter not even halfway through.
"I'll kill those Orcs for that," I mutter darkly, and I mean it. I'm a man with a healthy appetite, and a lot of girth to maintain. Interfere with my food supply and you're going to find yourself in trouble.
Chapter Two
Perturbed by the yam situation, I take a beer upstairs to my office and check my supply of klee. I've only three bottles of the fiery spirit left. Maybe I should go easy. I've been fortifying myself with a few glasses before heading for the ramparts, but if it's going to be a winter of shortages, perhaps I should cut back. Though how a man is meant to sit in a cold guard post staring out into the snow without a warming glass of klee inside him I really don't know. Living in a city under siege is hell at the best of times. Living in a city under siege without a plentiful supply of alcohol doesn't bear thinking about. A month ago I expected the Orcs to smash their way into Turai. Now, I'm not so sure. Gurd may be right. Perhaps Prince Amrag has decided they missed their opportunity. We don't even know how many Orcs are still out there. Some are billeted in the Stadium Superbius, outside the city walls to the east, but apart from that, we can't tell. Their forces have withdrawn from sight. Our Sorcerers have scanned the area but the Orcish Sorcerers cast their own spells of hiding and it's hard for anyone to be certain. Lisutaris thinks that there are still Orcish forces guarding every exit from the city, but the main bulk of their troops may have retired southwards towards the forests, where it's not so exposed to the elements. Unfortunately for us, this winter is not as fierce as the last few have been. The Turanian winter can be bitingly cold, but after the first severe snowstorms, this one has turned unusually mild. No aqueducts have frozen up and the alleyways of Twelve Seas, usually clogged with thick drifts of snow, remain clear and passable. It might have been better for us had the weather been worse. The Orcs would have been less likely to remain.
After a glass or two of klee I find myself slightly more optimistic. We'll hold them off till the spring. The armies will arrive from Simnia and the Elves will sail up and we'll survive, just like we did fifteen years ago, last time the Orcs attacked.
The memory makes me frown. Last time we threw them back after a desperate struggle but we wouldn't have if the Elves hadn't arrived at the last moment. I was on the eastern wall when it collapsed and I was a second away from being mowed down by an Orcish squadron when we were rescued. No amount of klee, or passage of time, can make these grim memories fade. I get the uncomfortable feeling that if my life ends right here, then I haven't made that much of a success of it. Failed Sorcerer now scratching a living as an Investigator in the poor part of town, working for impecunious clients on cases so hopeless no one else will take them on. I curse, throw another log on the fire, and wish I'd studied more when I was an apprentice. If I hadn't discovered beer at such a young age, I might have been a real Sorcerer instead of a man who knows a few tricks. I'd be up in the Palace, living in luxury, with enough yams and klee to get me through any shortage.
Possibly the Palace isn't such a great place to be these days. The King is infirm and practically bedridden. The heir to the throne, Prince Frisen Akai, is so far gone on wine and dwa that he's no longer allowed out in public. Young Prince Dees Akan was killed when the Orcs attacked. Consul Kalius is wounded, traumatised, and out of action after the Orcish attack, leaving the administration in the hands of Deputy Consul Cicerius. A good man in his way, but not a warrior. All military planning is in the hands of General Pomius. He at least is an experienced soldier. He might just get us through, particularly as he has a proper respect for Lisutaris, Mistress of the Sky, head of the Sorcerers Guild and one of the most powerful people in the west. With someone like that on our side, there's always a chance of holding off the Orcs, and she's not the only strong Sorcerer in the Guild.
Makri walks into my office.
"Will you never learn to knock?"
She shrugs.
"Why?"
"It's civilised."
"We're under siege."
"No reason to abandon all standards. I thought you were spending the whole day with Lisutaris?"
Makri scowls. She takes off her heavy winter cloak then sits down on the chair nearest the fire.
"Lisutaris had to go to the Palace to meet the King. I couldn't go along."
Her eyes flash.
"Isn't that ridiculous? I can't attend a private meeting with the King because I've got Orcish blood. Who was it that saved Lisutaris from the Orcs?"
Makri is angry, though she knew what she was in for when she took the job. No one hates Orcs more than Makri and she's butchered a lot of them in her time. Nonetheless, she does have one quarter Orcish blood and that's never going to allow her access to the most refined places in the city.
I notice Makri's looking a little skinnier these days. She's still filling out the chainmail bikini well enough to earn a bundle of tips from the mercenaries in the tavern, but between her shifts as a barmaid and working for Lisutaris, I don't think she's been eating properly.
"I hate the way the library shuts in winter," she says. "I need to study."
Makri works here to earn money to pay for her education at the Guild College. I can't believe she's still thinking about education at a time like this.
"The Orcs are about to storm the walls. Can't you ever take a break?"
Makri shrugs.
"I like it. Samanatius isn't taking a break."
Samanatius is a prominent philosopher in Turai. Makri holds him in great respect. I regard him as a fool because he teaches for free. Obviously the man has no knowledge worth selling. To be fair to him, he was on the field of battle when the Orcs attacked, even though he could have been excused military duty because of his age.
Makri runs her hand through her great mane of dark hair. She looks dissatisfied.
"I wanted to dye it blond."
This takes me by surprise. Makri was champion gladiator by the time she was thirteen. She's such a brutal fighter I always think of her with a sword in her hand. Outside the city walls she stood over the unconscious body of Lisutaris and defended it with an astonishing display of savage determination, unflinching in the face of impossible odds. Hearing her come out with anything concerning personal vanity is strange, though since arriving in Turai she has taken on board a few of our feminine fashions, mainly low-class ones like a pierced nose and painted toenails.
"It'll make you look like a whore."
"No it won't. Senator Lodius's daughter has blond hair."
True. Turanian women are generally dark-haired. Blond hair is usually only sported by prostitutes, but the style is also affected by senators' daughters, and sometimes their wives. Why only rich women and prostitutes do this, I don't know.
"No one is going to mistake you for a senator's daughter. But what do you care? You've already managed to outrage the city. What's a little more public opprobrium?"
"I'm not worried about the public," says Makri. "I just don't have time. I have to work and study and be a bodyguard and then the Orcs are going to take the city and I'll be killed which I don't exactly mind but I wish I'd had time to see what I looked like with blond hair."
This is beyond me. My own hair hangs down in a long ponytail like the rest of the humble citizens of Twelve Seas and I never think about it from one day to the next. I ask Makri what news there is from Lisutaris.
"Nothing much. She can't tell how many Orcs are outside the city and General Pomius doesn't want to risk sending men to find out. But the Sorcerers have been busy with the messages. Everyone is making ready to help us in the spring."