Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

  Torien said nothing. Alluin said, more loudly than was necessary as though to cover his silence, “Abundantly clear, sir.”

  “Dismissed,” said Espere. “All of you.”

  Torien kept his eyes fixed upon the stretch of bare sandstone wall above Espere’s right shoulder as he saluted, because he knew if he met Espere’s gaze the anger would spill out perhaps uncontrollably, and because he knew Espere was expecting as much, and he did not want to give him the satisfaction. He darted a glance to Alluin as they left the office. Alluin’s shoulders were still stiff, his harsh mouth pressed tight. He was uncharacteristically silent—conscious, perhaps, of how very fine a line they trod, and of the lieutenant going before them up the corridor, but either Tarrega sensed their hostility and wished to remove himself as its object, or else he meant to signal his own contempt, because he deliberately distanced himself from them as they walked.

  Only when they had come out onto the steps in bright sunlight, the iron-bound doors rumbling shut behind them, did Alluin say, in an undertone nearly lost on the wind sweeping east-to-west across the face of the building, “I believe that was a threat.”

  Torien did not answer. From where he stood, here at the top of the steps, he could just see over the fort’s eastern wall. He could see, with startling clarity in the dry air, the Road like a pale scar tracing back eastward over the sand to the city, and the sea beyond—a narrow ribbon of indigo between sand and sky, breathlessly still save for the pinpoint flash of gulls’ wings in the sunlight. He could not see the quay, but he knew the ship was there. Frustration and the stark realization of his own powerlessness gnawed at him like a cancer. How simple it should be to take a column of twelve horse and settle this thing. He had supposed that was how it would happen, and he knew now that had been his failing—his alone, not Alluin’s, because Alluin had pressed for immediate action and he, Torien, had counseled against it.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, Tor,” Alluin said, quietly, “we can’t do much until we lose our watchdog.”

  Tarrega was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps. He was showing himself politely disinterested, his face half turned away and hidden in shadow under the brim of his helmet, his right palm resting with measured carelessness on the pommel of his sword. Absently, Torien wondered whether he were any good in a fight. From sheer observation, he would not guess so—the lieutenant was too rigid, too decorous, like the young officers of senatorial stock on the parade ground at Vione—but he was unwilling to discount the possibility. If Espere weren’t the sort to tolerate foolhardiness among his staff, neither was he the sort to tolerate incompetence.

  “We could leave him trussed up in the granary,” Alluin said. “Leave the quartermaster to find him come supper time.”

  Torien smiled. “Tempting but unnecessary.”

  “Unnecessary but worthwhile,” Alluin said, “if only for the expression on his face.”

  “Espere said he’ll do what he can.”

  “And you trust him? Because I’ve the feeling he’d have given you piece by piece to his cat if you’d shown him any more cheek.”

  “I don’t know that I trust him. What I do know is that we can’t do anything until tonight, at the earliest—not if he’s going down to the harbor himself.”

  “And if by tonight we’re too late?”

  Torien shook his head. “We’ve got the Modigno on the harbor tax. Espere can’t deny that—if for no other reason than that disposal of the contraband falls to him by default, and a handsome cut of the profit. And no matter his own inclinations he won’t be able to keep a ship-hold of kidnapped citizens quiet. At some point, he’ll have to give the Modigno up for examination or risk suspicion of guilt himself.”

  “You assume he won’t slip a blade between the Modigno’s ribs for simplicity’s sake.”

  “I assume he’ll want to avoid the sorts of questions that would raise.”

  “What you fail to realize,” said Alluin, “is that no one besides us seems to be asking those sorts of questions.”

  They walked the perimeter of the fort. For most of it, Tarrega was silent. Perhaps he thought their attention had gone down to the harbor with Espere. Perhaps it was a clumsy attempt at insubordination, in solidarity with his commander against the presumptuousness of newcomers. He hung back in the street while Torien and Alluin went down the stable row. A cavalry troop was just coming in to the stable yard from the Road. It was an irregular troop, not a standard column—scouts, judging by their light harness. Torien stood and watched with Alluin while they dismounted. He had supposed them to be local auxiliaries, as scouts typically were, but when the dust had settled he picked out Vareno faces among them, and one face that might have been Cesino, though he could not tell for sure. One man’s eyes fell briefly on Torien’s, across the yard. His gaze was hollow. In his dirt-streaked face, Torien recognized the same look of resignation as had been in the woman’s face that night in the shanty in Modigne. The scout turned his head away without saluting.

  When they rejoined Tarrega in the street, Torien said, “Auxiliaries?”

  Tarrega said, “Signi.”

  Torien’s steps slowed. He looked back over his shoulder to the stable yard.

  Tarrega said, “You’ve never seen signi before?” As an afterthought, he added, “Sir?”

  “They don’t post signi to Vione.”

  “But to Cesin?”

  Perhaps to the Outland, to the furthest reaches of the mountains where the rebellious Brycigi still thrashed against the Imperial yoke; Torien did not know. “Is the Road so dangerous, then—that you use signi as scouts?”

  Unexpectedly, Tarrega flashed a cool knife-blade smile. His teeth were very white. “The Mayasi,” he said, “make it their peculiar habit to leave their prisoners stripped and staked out in the sand and dead of thirst or sun sickness or jackals, whichever comes first. Or they hold them alive, for interrogation, and from what I’ve seen of the few poor souls we’ve recovered—better to die in the sand. So the signi are useful twice over.”

  Torien looked at him. “They aren’t citizens,” Tarrega said. “It doesn’t matter how they die. And they don’t know anything to give up under torture.”

  By the time they had finished their circuit of the fort, the sun was hanging low and blood-red in the western sky, night shadows searching like long blue fingers between the barrack blocks and along the intersecting streets. In his quarters, he paused only long enough to rid himself of his helmet and boots and splash his salt-crusted face and cracked lips with water from the wash basin. Then he collapsed still in full harness on the cot. There was a stiffness in his left shoulder that spread all the way down to his fingertips, a lingering twinge of pain when he closed his hand. The mark of his oath was purple and scarring across his palm. The dry desert air would heal shoulder and hand quickly: the old Epyrian slave woman who had dressed the wounds for him on the ship had assured him so. The desert air was marvelous for the healing of wounds.

  He heard the call from the gatehouse when Espere rode in from the city, and the tattoo of hoof beats up the thoroughfare. A little while later, he heard booted footfalls coming down the corridor. There was a voice at his doorway: “Commander Risto.”

  He sat up from the cot. He propped his elbows on his knees and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Enter.”

  Tarrega ducked in through the curtain. He straightened to salute. “Commander Espere requests your presence in his office, sir.”

  “My adjutant has been likewise informed?”

  “I was not instructed to extend the request to Lieutenant Senna, sir.”

  Torien turned this over in his head. He was irritated; underneath he was uneasy. “Your duties usually involve running messages, Lieutenant?”

  “My duties involve anything the Commander requires of me, sir.”

  Torien bent to drag his boots across the floor. “He enjoys your unquestioning loyalty, I’m sure.”

 
“And I enjoy his trust, sir.”

  He looked up at Tarrega’s face. The knife-blade smile touched the corners of Tarrega’s mouth. The dark eyes were blank. Tarrega said, “I’ll wait at the door, sir, if you’ve no further need of me.”

  There were charcoal braziers lit on the gate wall and along the thoroughfare when they went out from the barracks. In the gatehouse and the corner towers, the guard were changing for the first watch of the night. The sun had slipped beyond the rim of the desert. The dunes stretched vast and silent under a cloudless sky, lit pale and shaded by starlight and the rising moon. Underfoot, the paving stones were still warm with the day’s heat, but the air was clear and cool and there was a breath of wind coming in from the sea and the smell of jasmine and almond blossom carrying from the infirmary garden. Light and voices spilled from the officers’ mess adjoining the headquarters on the main cross street. The headquarters lay empty save for the sentry posted at the vestibule, dark save for the thin sliver of lamplight coming out under the curtain at Espere’s office doorway.

  Espere was at his desk, still in full harness from his ride. He had tablet and papyrus spread open before him, and he was transcribing a letter in ink onto the papyrus by the light of the lamp sputtering at his right elbow. The spotted cat was stretched out long and lithe in the far corner of the room, tail lashing back and forth across the floor tiles, yellow eyes glowing like topaz in the darkness. Espere acknowledged their salutes with a quick nod but did not speak until he had finished writing. Then he tossed his quill aside and looked up. The lamplight cast his face in deep shadow. He looked older, and tired. “I owe you an explanation, Commander,” he said, “and an apology.”

  In the time it had taken to walk from the barracks, Torien had imagined any number of things Espere might say. This had not been one of them. He blinked, stupidly.

  “It was necessary subterfuge,” Espere said. “I needed to know whether you were mine or theirs.” He turned up his chin and smiled a fleeting ghost of a smile. “You understand it’s a lucrative venture—not just for the governor of Modigne. The roots run deeper. I don’t know how deep, for sure. I know I’m expected not to interfere. I’ve been instructed so: look the other way or lose my commission. You wouldn’t have been the first of their spies sent to test me.”

  “Do you look the other way, sir?”

  “You notice I haven’t lost my commission.” Espere’s voice was dry. “You appreciate the delicacy of my position. Should I do as justice requires—take a detachment of horse down to the harbor and seize the ship and its cargo and subject master and crew to the punishment befitting their crime—Modigne has only to remove me from command and replace me with a man more suited to their purposes. Tell me what that would accomplish.”

  “The governor of Modigne doesn’t have the last word. You’d have recourse.”

  “I told you I don’t know how deep this corruption goes. Certainly it goes beyond Modigne. Possibly it goes all the way to the capital. To strike here, now, to settle for what we can immediately grasp—it’s not enough. We must wait and watch until we can cut this thing off at the neck.”

  “In other words, you do nothing and let Imperial citizens pay the price.”

  “Commander Risto—”

  “Let me deal with the Modigno, sir. Give me twelve horse and let me take him. You can hang it around my neck. You can tell them I was insubordinate. I don’t care. But I gave my word in Modigne I’d see justice done—with or without official sanction.”

  “Your word to the bastard who knifed you? You feel compelled by your oath, I’m sure. But you forget you were already a man under oath. Your duty is to the Empire and to me as your commanding officer. Anything else comes at a distant remove.” Espere tested the ink on the papyrus with one fingertip. “The ship and its cargo are no longer your concern. Do not try my patience on this, Risto.”

  When Torien said nothing, Espere looked up. “You are young,” he said, “and you haven’t yet learned to count costs. That doesn’t mean you’re the only one in the Empire who cares to see justice done. Have I not convinced you I’m doing what I can?”

  “Tell me why you’ve decided suddenly to trust me, and I’ll tell you whether you’ve convinced me.”

  The faint smile went around the edges of Espere’s mouth again. “So you can exercise caution when it suits you.”

  Alluin would laugh, if he were here. “Curiosity more than caution. The only thing I’ve proven to you is that I know more than I should of Modigne’s business. I fail to see why that should earn me your trust.”

  “I’ve informants aboard every trade ship plying between Modigne and Tasso. If you were acting on Modigne’s directive, I’d have known it as soon as I went down to the harbor. We’d be having a different sort of conversation, you and your adjutant and I.” Espere rolled up the papyrus on a pin and tied it with a length of cord. “Which brings me to another matter—of curiosity, if you wish, not caution. I’m interested in your adjutant. He was your choice? Or was he recommended to you?”

  “My choice. Always my only choice.”

  “You trust him—knowing the manner of his disgrace and the circumstances?”

  “I daresay I know more of the circumstances than you do. I trust him with my life.”

  “He feels for you the same loyalty you feel for him, I hope.”

  “We’ve finished, sir?”

  “No. It wasn’t idle curiosity, Commander, and it wasn’t meant to cause offense. There’s a reason I asked—a reason I needed to know for sure. If I intended to keep you here in the fort, it wouldn’t much matter to me whether you were taking coin from Modigne, or whether the former Lord Senna deserves his rank and your trust. But I’ve need of you in another capacity.” Espere held out the scroll over the desktop. “I need you as my eyes on the Road.”

  Torien took the scroll very slowly. He did not open it. “I thought you had signi for your eyes on the Road.”

  “I have signi for dying. Right now, they’re not worth a damn for much else. They’re undependable at best, outright traitors at worst. I need reliable intelligence on the Mayaso rebellion, and to this point neither the signi nor our native allies have been able to give it to me.”

  “And you think I can?”

  “Vione recommended you to me as a risk-taker.”

  “You don’t need a risk-taker. You need someone who knows the desert, knows the Mayasi—”

  “The signi have the knowledge. What they don’t have is the discipline to put it to use. You know how to command men. That’s what I need of you.”

  “I’ve trained with heavy cavalry. I’ve no experience with scouting or with signi.”

  “Technicalities that may quickly be learned.”

  “Else I may quickly be dead?”

  “You’ve demonstrated initiative and creativity. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t have confidence in your abilities and desperate need for them. I’m aware it’s a disgrace of a command.”

  “It’s a pointless command. You’d do better to recruit a man from among the locals, or to choose an officer from among the signi themselves. Perhaps you’d find them better motivated under the command of one of their own.”

  Espere’s eyes had narrowed on his face. “You are very free with your tongue, Risto.”

  “Did Vione not tell you?”

  “The native population is useless to us. Most are Mayaso blood. They still consider the Road and the mines theirs by historic right. If the majority are too complacent now to take up arms against us, neither does it much bother them when the more volatile minority do. And the Asani who hold the mines are more interested in exploiting Imperial rule than in helping sustain it.”

  “One of the signi, then.”

  “With the promise of his freedom if he serves to satisfaction? I’ve tried as much. He took the opportunity to sell his services to the Mayasi. At their behest, he betrayed and murdered a high-ranking Asano—one of their nobility, one o
f our most important allies.”

  Torien did not say anything.

  “If you are unwilling, Commander,” said Espere, “perhaps your adjutant, as a chance to prove—”

  “Is he still alive?”

  Espere blinked. “Who?”

  “The signo. I assume you kept him for examination, considering he was in contact with the rebels?”

  Espere looked at him. Abruptly, he turned his eyes up over Torien’s shoulder. “Lieutenant.”

  Once again Torien had forgotten Tarrega’s presence; once again Tarrega stirred up stiffly to attention from the shadows behind him. “He’s alive, sir.”

  “I’d like to examine him myself,” Torien said.

  Espere’s voice was contemptuous. “You’ve had much practice examining prisoners?”

  “As much as I’ve had at scouting.”

  Espere was silent, studying him.

  “I’ll take the command,” Torien said, “but I won’t do it blindly. I want to know what this signo knows—of the Mayasi, of the desert, of his own men. You owe me that much. I want to examine him myself.”

  “The question isn’t whether he means to kill you,” Alluin said. “The question is why go to such trouble about it—to send you out into the desert in the vague hope the Mayasi will do it for him? It’s wasted effort. He might have done it with a pen-knife in his office last night.”

  In the cold gray pre-dawn, they were alone on the thoroughfare which ran between the barrack blocks to the guardhouse and the southern gate. “The Mayasi or the signi themselves,” Torien said.

  “The point is, it’s for someone else’s benefit. He doesn’t just want you dead—he wants you dead at a certain time and in a certain way. Anyway, I don’t see why we should give him the opportunity. We could be gone with the tide in three hours.”

  “We’ve no evidence against him that would matter to a court martial.”