“Come with us, Reva,” he said, imploring.
She scrambled to her feet and began to run, through the shifting dark of the long grass, tears streaming back from her eyes, the sword blade flickering as her arms pumped, stifling a sob as his plaintive call echoed after her. “REVA!”
CHAPTER NINE
Frentis
The seed will grow . . .
The itch began the morning after they killed the old man in the temple. Frentis woke with the woman’s naked flesh pressed against him, features serene and content in slumber, locks of dark hair tumbling over her face, stirring a little in her soft, untroubled breath. He wanted very much to strangle her. She had been exultant as she used him, nails digging into his back, her thighs firm around his waist, panting riddles in Volarian as she moved. “We have . . . the whole world now . . . my love . . . Let the Ally play his games . . . Soon I’ll play mine . . . And you . . .” She paused, smiling as she pressed a kiss to his forehead, sweat dripping from her breasts onto his scarred chest. “You will be the piece that wins the whole board.”
Lying there, his body lined with sunlight from the slatted windows, he willed his arms to move, his hands to reach for her throat, forcing every ounce of desire into the command. But his arms stayed at his side, relaxed and unmoving. Even now, lost in sleep and whatever nightmares she thought dreams, still she bound him.
He noticed the itch as he let his eyes wander the ornate ceiling of her inn room. It was a small, faint tickle in his side, just below the rib cage. He assumed it must be one of the numberless bugs that seemed to be everywhere in this corner of the empire, but there was a rhythm to it, a slight but constant scratch too regular to be the nibbling of a bug.
The woman stirred, rolling onto her back, eyes opening, a lazy smile on her lips. “Good morning, beloved.”
Frentis said nothing.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh don’t sulk. That man was singularly undeserving of your noble concern, believe me.” She got out of bed, walking naked to the window, peering through the slats at the street. “Seems we’ve caused a little commotion. Only to be expected. These irrational wretches are bound to react badly when one of their gods fails to stop her own temple burning down.”
She turned away, yawning and ruffling her tangled hair. “Go get dressed. Our list is long and so is the road.”
He went to his own room, drawing a wide-eyed gasp from the serving girl in the hallway. He closed the door on her blushing embarrassment and started to dress. The itch was still there and he was now allowed sufficient freedom to look, fingers probing the flesh under his rib cage. There was nothing, just the thick scar line that ran from his side to his sternum . . . wait. It was only the smallest change, a slight shift in the texture of his damaged flesh, from rough to smooth. He could see no difference but his fingers told another story. Is it . . . ? Can it be healing?
He recalled the woman’s alarm when she saw the old man’s blood on his face, the way she had bound him, eyes alive for any change in his state, and the old man’s last sputtering words. The seed will grow . . .
The binding flared with an impatient jab and he finished dressing. Healing or not, she bound him as tight as ever.
They went to the docks and booked passage to the Twelve Sisters aboard a compact merchant vessel. The captain was an aged veteran of the seas and eyed Frentis with no small amount of suspicion, saying something to the woman which made her laugh. “He says you look like a Northman,” she said in Volarian then gave the captain an answer in Alpiran which seemed to satisfy him. He pointed them to a spot on the mid-deck amongst a collection of caged chickens and spice barrels. They were gone from the harbour within the hour, sails unfurled to catch the north-westerly winds.
“How I hate seas, ships and sailors,” the woman said, gazing out at the waves with a grimace. “I once sailed the ocean to the Far West, endless weeks sharing a ship with slaves and fools. It was all I could do not to kill them all mid-voyage.”
There was a shout from one of the crew and they turned to see a young sailor pointing off the starboard bow, yelling in excitement. Frentis and the woman joined him at the rail along with a cluster of crewmen, all jabbering in Alpiran. At first he could see nothing to arouse such interest then noticed a thrashing in the waves some two hundred yards distant, a great sail-like tail rising out of the water. Whale, Frentis decided. He had seen them before, off the Renfaelin shore, impressive beasts to be sure but hardly an uncommon sight for a sailor.
The thrashing abruptly increased and a flash of red appeared amidst the foam, a great pointed head rising from the spume, jaws widened to reveal rows of bright teeth. It disappeared back into the water, a huge tail rising shortly after, more than forty feet in length, the skin shining in the sun, stripes of pale red on the dark grey topside, the underside milky white. The tail whipped from side to side and was gone. The water soon calmed, the red-slicked surface broken only by the bubbles rising from the depths.
“Red shark,” the woman said. “Unusual for them to come so close to shore.”
The crew dispersed after some happy chatter. It seemed this was a good omen.
“They say Olbiss the sea god gave the shark a whale to sate his hunger so we could sail safely on,” the woman observed, turning her face to the sea to conceal her contemptuous grin. “It’ll take more than a whale to sate mine.”
Land hove into view four days later, a great mountain appearing out of the morning mist. It seemed unnaturally dark to Frentis as the wind pushed them closer, but soon he realised it was covered in forest from top to bottom. She had brought him to another jungle.
Their vessel moored up on a narrow jetty reaching out into a natural harbour on the south shore of this island. The woman named it as Ulpenna, easternmost of the Twelve Sisters, the islands that formed the broken bridge between the continents. He followed her along the jetty to a sizeable town of wooden buildings. In contrast to the ramshackle slave market at the Volarian riverbank, this jungle town displayed an elegance and age indicating many years of settled occupation. The houses were mostly two-storey affairs with ornate wooden statues on every veranda, each one different.
“Each house has its own god,” the woman explained, once again reading his thoughts. “Each family its own guardian.”
They stopped at a tavern and ate a meal of heavily spiced chicken stew, the woman striking up a conversation with the man who served them. Frentis’s Alpiran remained poor but he picked out the words “law” and “house” amongst the babble.
“No guards,” the woman commented when they were alone. “A trusting fellow this magistrate. Popular too, by all accounts. Not what you’d expect for a lawmaker.”
They lingered at the tavern until late afternoon then took the only road, a track of dry red clay trailing out of town and upwards into the jungled slopes of the mountain. They followed the road for another hour before the woman led him onto a side track, through the dense jungle until they came to a large house. It was an impressive three-floored structure built on a ledge in the mountainside, shuttered windows open to the evening breeze coming in off the sea.
“Just the magistrate,” the woman told Frentis as he stripped down to his trews, taking off his boots and smearing earth over his exposed flesh. “Apparently there’s a wife and three children, but you don’t have to concern yourself with them.” She tweaked his nose a little. “Isn’t that kind of me? Now off with you, my love.”
The information from the tavern had been correct, there were no guards. A servant tended the small garden at the rear of the house and another lit lamps on the porch. Frentis approached through the thick undergrowth at a crawl, lying still when he got to within twenty feet of the south-facing wall. He lay against the carpet of vegetation until nightfall then crept forward to the wall. It was an easy climb, the ornamentation favoured by house-builders here provided plentiful handholds.