by Jo Spurrier
Mira found herself raising a hand to her throat, heaving a great sigh of relief, before she’d even realised what she was doing. Hastily, she altered her course and laid it on the baby’s sweet-smelling head instead. ‘Your uncle is most generous. I’d be honoured to accept his hospitality, though I hope I may visit as a woman of a free country with my son’s father at my side, not as an exile in search of shelter.’
Makaio leant back in his chair, steepling his fingers together. ‘Now, those are words worthy of a toast. Captain Bayard, would you be so kind?’
‘Of course, my prince!’
As Bayard laid out a rattling set of silver cups and sloshed some amber liquor into them, Mira caught the prince’s eye. ‘Your excellency, I’d like nothing more than to drive the Akharians out of the north, but it seems an impossible task. I have some friends whose aid would make a great difference, but they’ve been lost to me for some time now. If you have connections in Akhara you may have heard of them …’
Makaio leant forward in his chair. ‘I may have, but the tale is a confusing one. I hope you might shed some light on it. Tell me, my lady, have you had much news from the empire?’
‘Very little,’ Mira said. Her clan had placed some spies in the Akharian ranks, and until the last few weeks, she’d had friends enough in Ruhavera to pass word along.
‘It’s been difficult to get much news from northern Akhara since the summer,’ Makaio said, ‘but it seems our neighbours had some trouble with their harvest. Our ships were hired to resupply the legions, but vessels have waited days or even weeks for their cargo, and are sent away with holds only half-full.’
Mira frowned. ‘I thought the Mesentreian raiders were responsible for their famines.’
‘For the last few years, yes,’ Makaio said, ‘but not since the Akharians took their northern harbours.’
‘Then what’s behind it? Some pestilence?’ Mira couldn’t see it helping much. Ricalan had suffered a poor growing season as well, what with so many people lost as slaves or hiding from the Akharian legions and leaving the fields fallow.
‘We’re not sure,’ Makaio said, ‘although there are rumours aplenty. Some talk of a slave uprising. Others mutter of demons running amok through the empire. Still more say that Blood-Mages have settled in Akhara and are raising an army to march on the emperor himself.’
‘Well,’ Mira said, ‘I think we can safely lay aside any talk of demons. As to the rest —’
‘Is it true that the former king’s Blood-Mage fled into the west?’ Makaio said.
‘It is,’ Mira said, still frowning. What of Isidro, did he still live? She’d hoped and prayed that he and Sierra would destroy the old man, but if they’d failed, at least he was Akhara’s problem now, rather than Ricalan’s. ‘And this slave uprising — does Akhara have any other source of slaves?’
‘They’re all from the north, my lady. Akhara has had trouble supplying slaves for some years now — peacetime is always poor for the trade. It’s been suggested that they carried some pestilence.’
Mira drummed her fingernails on the arm of her chair. ‘That seems unlikely, our spring fevers passed months ago. I’d have thought our folk would suffer from Akharian diseases, rather than them be afflicted by our illnesses.’
‘I agree, madame, but I’m not certain I can give this talk of slave uprisings any more credence. You’ve seen for yourself how warriors fare against mages. How is it possible that some cowed and unarmed slaves have defeated Akhara’s attempts to subdue them, to the point of plunging the empire into famine? The Blood-Mages seem to be the only answer — and yet, our information there is confusing as well. Our spies have reported that the Akharians are certain the one known as Kell has been slain —’
Mira sat bolt upright. ‘He’s dead? Are you certain?’
‘The Akharians seem to be. As we understand it, the Akharian Blood-Mage Kell fled Ricalan after the death of King Severian and was pursued by his rebellious apprentices, a man called Rasten and a woman known to the Akharians as the Stormblade.’
‘Sierra,’ Mira said. ‘She’s not a Blood-Mage.’
‘Indeed? Curious,’ Makaio said. ‘There are two others mentioned — an Akharian mage turned traitor, and a Mesentreian man.’
Mira’s heart leapt in her chest. ‘Was that all? There should be another man with them, a northerner. Kell took him as a hostage when he fled to the west.’
Makaio frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I seem to remember him from the initial reports … but nothing since.’
Mira had to turn away, hiding welling tears behind her hand. By the Black Sun, Issey … She remembered him in the Spire, lost in despair but fighting it for the sake of the babe in her arms. She remembered the night he’d led them to Cam, and then, weeks later, when he sacrificed himself to keep them safe from Kell.
‘My lady,’ Makaio said. ‘I do apologise. I am truly sorry to have caused you distress.’
‘It is not you who has distressed me,’ Mira said, while Ardamon handed her a handkerchief. ‘It’s the son of a bitch who killed him … if he’s truly dead.’ She forced herself to draw a deep breath as she mopped at her eyes. Isidro’s been given up for dead before, and yet proved us wrong. She wrapped her arms around the little lad. She’d been thinking of a name ever since the boy was born. If Isidro truly was dead she’d name the young prince after the one who’d sacrificed so much for his kin. ‘Please do go on.’
‘Our spies are certain Kell is dead … but in all honesty, it makes no sense. The tales always come back to this talk of demons in the desert — it’s rubbish, of course, but there must be an ounce of truth behind it. There are whispers of whole legions disappearing without a trace. When you see how many Battle-Mages the Akharians have deployed to quell the matter, only to have them vanish …’
‘You don’t know my friends, your excellency,’ Mira said.
‘My lady, I —’ Makaio broke off in frustration and snapped his fingers, holding a hand out to the woman behind him. ‘Give me that report.’
The woman pressed a thick sheaf of papers into his hand.
‘Here,’ Makaio said, folding the pages back to a map of the northern reaches of the empire. ‘These are known troop movements, you see. With the old one dead, we know of only two mages in the region capable of so much destruction — there seems to be no way only two people could account for so many losses. Do you see, my lady, the time frame, the distances, it simply doesn’t work out. They would have to travel more quickly than any horse could take them, and as they’ve headed eastward, it only gets worse.’
‘I see,’ Mira said. ‘I understand.’
‘It seems the only explanation is that they have many more mages than we thought, and that number is growing — but that raises yet more questions. Now, I understand that this woman Sierra was able to conceal her powers from the Akharians …’
‘That’s true,’ Mira said.
‘Do you know how? Could others have done the same and escaped the empire’s cut-throats? But even that seems implausible. There would have to be dozens, and by all accounts Ricalan has been devoid of mage-craft for a century, with the exception of these Blood-Mages and the corrupted Sympath.’
Mira shook her head. ‘No, I agree, it’s not possible. Sierra only kept herself hidden because she had help from the other mage.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Makaio said. ‘So you see, my lady, what’s going on in the west is unexplainable.’
‘May I?’ Mira took the report from him and leafed through the pages. It was written in Mesentreian. She frowned as she studied the maps and skimmed the text, and in her mind’s eye, she pictured the ruins of Terundel, the first time Sierra had truly tested her powers, the first time the Akharians had seen just what she could do. ‘It has to be Sierra,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Such destruction … who could it be, but her?’
‘My lady?’
Mira slapped the documents down on the desk. ‘We have to find them. If this is true — if Si
erra has destroyed Kell, if she’s now marching across northern Akhara, freeing slaves as she goes … then, by all the Gods, she has an army.’ A ragged horde of former slaves, unarmed and untrained, but an army all the same.
‘Could she have done it alone?’ Makaio said.
Mira thought for a moment, and then shook her head. ‘No. She has the spirit, but she’s not a warrior, or a leader.’ Someone else had to be there with her. Not Rasten, he was no more equipped to lead than she was. ‘It has to be Cam, or maybe Isidro, if he’s still alive. We have to find them.’
‘I agree. We have sent agents into Akhara to learn what they can of this, but I plan to send another, a messenger, my lady, bearing a letter from you.’
They would think it a trick, just as she had when Bayard first offered them shelter. ‘No,’ Mira said, ‘I have a better idea. I’ll send a messenger of my own.’
Chapter 7
The dog crouched at the end of its rope and whined. Rasten offered it his hand to sniff and it licked his knuckles and rolled over on the sandy soil.
Its tail thumped in the dust as he rubbed its chest. Animals often seemed to like him. He didn’t know why. He’d made a pet of a rat once, but he’d come to his senses before Kell found out about it. He threw things at it whenever it appeared and it soon went back to its wild ways.
Rasten scratched the dog’s dusty fur and looked up at the house, a low dark shadow looming out of the night-time gloom.
He’d lost track of time. Was it fifty days since he’d left? It could be sixty … but as many as eighty? Who could say? The pattern of the stars had shifted overhead, but he didn’t know enough of such things to judge how far the seasons had turned. The weather had grown cold and wet, but hardly wintry by Ricalani measures.
In that time, he’d given up counting the slaves he’d freed, the guards he’d killed, and the slave-trains he’d tracked across the patchwork of fields in eastern Akhara. After tracking down any who bore the dormant seed of mage-craft, he ordered the newly freed folk to head west. It was the last thing they wanted. It seemed a trap, a strange new nightmare, that a man of their own people would appear out of nowhere, slaughter their captors and then torture a few seemingly randomly chosen folk from their ranks and then order them to march deeper into Akhara, but they were never game to refuse him. After a while a few of the freed folk started following him at a distance, and when he ordered a new troupe to march west, they would swoop in to assure the frightened folk that there was more method in his madness than first appeared.
At first, they tried to ride with him, but after only a few hours, Rasten had driven them away. He couldn’t bear their presence, their inane chatter, the pressure of their gaze. It was better to be alone.
He hadn’t always felt that way. The first few weeks were an aching blur of loneliness, confusion and disorientation. He missed Sierra horribly — her presence had become his rock, his anchor once the framework of his life crumbled. But as time passed, he stumbled into the common rhythm of a man. He learnt to eat at regular hours rather than waiting until he remembered that the pains of hunger were not simply something to be endured. Boiling water for a hot drink was a comforting ritual. When there was enough water, he bathed and washed his clothes. He liked being clean. It had taken time, but he’d learnt how to live a simple life, to rise at the same hour each day and live like a normal man, even while he hunted the Slavers and their stock across the moist green plains.
Lately, things had begun to change. The Slavers had adapted to the predators stalking them through the fields — for Rasten was no longer the only one hunting them — and now made the southwards run in small groups, hoping to slip past the hunters. It didn’t do them much good, because there were now many patrols of new mages and freed slaves roaming the land between the desert and the sea, but it meant that the hunters had to be always looking for their next target. Every slave-train that slipped through meant more souls lost, with scant hope of ever returning home.
Rasten’s latest hunt had brought him to a dry and rocky patch in the northern region of the grain belt. It was an unpromising place, where the sprouts of winter wheat were sparse and stunted and the fruit trees along the lanes were gnarled and scrawny. There were no slaves here, and no stores to feed the horde. It was time to move on, but first he needed food for the journey. Rasten gave the dog one last scratch, and started towards the house.
The door was barred from within but he slid the bolt back with a thread of power. Inside, he stood silently for some time, letting his eyes adjust.
The old house had seen better days. The floor was nothing but dirt, pitted and uneven. Listing shelves held cracked crockery, but the hanging bunches of onions and herbs were braided and placed with care. A breadbin and a knife box stood on a narrow dresser, and nearby a drowning trap had been set for mice.
He moved deeper into the house. The scant furniture was rough-hewn, padded with lumpy cushions covered with worn cloth. There was an upright loom in one corner, and spindles filled an earthenware jar on a shelf. Rasten ran his fingers across the warp threads, and vaguely recalled helping to measure and cut yarn just like it, years ago and a world away.
In the third room, behind a striped curtain, a couple slept in a sagging rope-slung bed. An orange cat was curled up at their feet, and it lifted its head to blink at him. The couple were both women, and old, with grizzled hair and wrinkled skin. On the shelf beside the bed was a narrow brass bracelet and a few hairpins carved of bone, set there carefully like precious objects.
He left them sleeping and went back to the kitchen, where he took a loaf from the breadbin and cut a few onions from a bunch. In the chimney he found sausages curing in the smoke and took some, together with a wedge of cheese. A barrel revealed a store of apples, very small but smelling like nectar, and he took a few of those as well. He peered into the knife box, but sniffed at the worn and much-sharpened blades. He already had more than he could use, and Rasten removed a salvaged blade from his belt, and set it in the box. Bundling his goods in a piece of cloth, he went to leave, but then he set the package down again to fumble for the bag of coins he’d acquired from some guard or other. Rasten had never handled money before, not that he could remember, and he had no idea what the coins were worth — nothing to him, in any case. He tipped them into a careless pile, but kept the sturdy leather bag, before slipping outside and bolting the door again.
Beside the house was a pen woven from thorny branches, with a handful of scrawny goats inside. The dog came to lean against Rasten’s leg as he peered at them. Behind the pen was an outbuilding built of mud bricks, which held the farm’s meagre supply of grain. Rasten made a pouch of his shirt and scooped a few handfuls to scatter on the ground for his horse. When it nickered softly and bent its head to lip up the corn, Rasten stowed his supplies and went to the well to refill his water-skins and bathe with his shrinking cake of soap. As he wrapped it up again he glanced back towards the house. He hadn’t thought to search for more. Should he go back? No, he’d taken enough. There would be other houses, wealthier than this one.
It had become his habit to ride at night and sleep during the day. The night suited him, it was so quiet and still. There were no people to confuse him, no traps or pitfalls to skirt around. Houses could be avoided or explored as he wished, and when he found a troupe of slaves, it was a simple matter to take them. Sometimes days passed without his speaking a word, but at other times he felt compelled to speak a meaningless prattle, talking of anything and everything. The horse seemed to listen, at least, flicking its ears back as he rambled, giving voice to broken and disordered thoughts. He often thought of Sierra, but even in his garrulous times, he avoided saying her name, and he never let down the shields he’d set to ward her out, no matter how often he thought of making contact to see how she fared, and if Isidro still lived. He’d left for her sake, because he could see her loyalty to him threatened the friendships she valued so much. He was like poison for those bonds, so he stayed away, even when he
spent sleepless hours wondering and hoping that she was well. If she truly needed him, she could tear down that wall, but until she did, he’d leave her alone. He owed her that.
He rode most of the moonlit night at a ground-eating canter, heading east and south, and when the sky grew light and he rolled himself up in his blankets beside a gurgling stream, he was back in the deep, damp loam of the grain lands.
Rasten slept soundly, dreamlessly, with a fold of blanket pulled across his eyes to keep out the daylight — until all at once he came awake with a sudden heart-wrenching bolt of anxiety. Someone had found him. Someone was here.
He sat up with a roar of animal fury, flinging the blankets off with a wildly swinging blow of his fist.
There was a woman kneeling over him, reaching out with one hesitant hand to shake him awake. Dimly, Rasten registered that they weren’t alone, that there were many others — a dozen perhaps — circled around him at a respectful distance, but he was too deep in the grip of an instinctive defence to take notice. He swung at the woman’s face, and it hit something viscous and hot hanging in the air between them — a shield.
His power surged, but it was a weak thing compared to what he’d grown used to at Sierra’s side. These days it only ran high when he worked the rituals. But there were other methods of raising power — Rasten had never learnt more than the basics under Kell’s tutelage, but he’d spent long hours drilling himself and practising. With a hardened spike of power he popped her shield like a soap bubble. Then, while she was stricken and gasping with the stinging slap of the shattered working, Rasten swung at her again as he lurched to his feet.
Power surged around him as the gathered women cast a shield to protect her, and he snarled in fury. He could kill them, all of them. All he had to do was separate one from the pack and wring more power from her — they were nothing more than fledglings, weak and untried mages, no match for someone like him.
Then, as he stood over the shocked and crouching woman, he recognised her face. She was cleaner now, her hair combed and bound into two braids, but her expression was the same as the first time he’d seen her, sprawled on the sand and trying to crawl away from him.
