by Mary Corran
Margit nodded. ‘You’ll get the funds for her? A gold piece, I should think.’
Stifling her reluctance, Asher agreed, remembering how little they had in reserve. ‘I’ll see you tonight, and give it to you then.’
As she made her way back to the hall, she had to stand aside as the Treasurer passed, accompanied by the Chief Councillor and his diviner. Avorian favoured Asher with a friendly acknowledgement, much to the Treasurer’s disapproval and her own astonishment.
‘Mistress Asher — I hope to see you soon, in a week I think we said?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘Yes, Chief Councillor. I’ll have the assessments ready for you.’
‘Excellent. Come to my house at mid-morning.’ He waited for her concurrence, then carried on through the hall. Asher hesitated. If she asked him if he knew the full extent of suffering in the city, would Avorian help? He would understand how the tribute had impoverished women most of all, the very people who could afford the least. But, reluctantly, she knew he would not; from his perspective, paying the tribute was a political necessity, while alleviating the plight of the women was not. It was an evil truth that the city was more important to him and the other councillors than half its citizens.
She returned to her desk and opened her ledger, feeling a dark depression settle as she did so. Turning to the list of names of men employed in maintaining the civic buildings, she picked up her pen with a hand that trembled.
Stop it, stop being a fool! she told herself angrily. Business was going on around her as if nothing had happened; death was not so uncommon in Venture, and no one had known the girl. It was the personal element that made such events tragic rather than mere spectacles. She dipped her pen in the glass ink-stand balanced on the edge of her desk and took a few deep breaths to calm herself.
She had purposely left some spare lines at the bottom of the list, where she began to inscribe a name chosen at random. She herself was to pay the men that evening, and she could abstract whatever sum she wrote in. One gold, three silver, and eight coppers. That was a feasible sum and should be sufficient to pay for the care of a child for a year. She experienced no guilt at what she was doing; she only embezzled funds in cases of desperate need, and the care of a child easily qualified. The women needed funds, and it was for her to find them, and to evade detection.
Even prostitution was hardly an option now. The merchants imported slaves whose services belong wholly to their masters; far more profitable than free women. That many of the merchants who were also councillors held such investments removed any sense of wrong-doing as Asher concluded her task and picked up her blotter, touching it to the line.
She was disturbed in her abstractions by an awareness of being the focus of someone’s attention. Warily, she looked up and caught sight of Stern watching her.
‘Do you want something?’
‘No.’ Stern continued to stare, a small smile creeping around his thin lips.
Uneasily, she bent her head, selecting the ledger dealing with the tribute totals, forcing herself to concentrate as she compared the takings to the previous year’s, calculating shortfalls from various districts for Avorian. Her mind, however, was racing from speculation; she neither liked nor trusted Stern.
She reached out her right hand to return the quill to the ink-stand, her attention far away. Her fingers knocked against the glass, and she felt it move; too late, she tried to catch it, but it eluded her grasp and fell, smashing on the floor an instant later.
Someone gasped. It was Dart. He had risen to his feet, sheet-white. ‘Death,’ he whispered. ‘To break glass means a death. Another death ... ’ He began to murmur words of protection under his breath.
Asher sat, stricken into immobility. Everyone was looking at her, watching her. One of the boys whose job it was to keep the floor clear of dust came across and began to sweep up the mess, smearing ink and shards of glass everywhere. Asher got up to join him, trying to appear deeply concerned as she collected together a few sharp pieces, and saw Stern observing her, again with that same curious gleam of interest.
Had he guessed?
Someone came with a replacement stand, and Asher put the broken glass down on top of her desk. She tried to return to her work on the tribute figures, but felt shaky and off-balance. Slowly, her panic drained away, but her normal self-possession seemed to have deserted her; it had been a day of disasters, and, unfairly, she blamed Mallory for the whole. It was the knowledge of his arrival which had made her careless; and made her, for a painful moment, doubt the value of what she was doing with her life. Her helplessness in the face of tragedy dented the sense of purpose and satisfaction she was accustomed to feel in her work with Essa, as if she were only scratching at the surface of what needed to be done.
Stop it. Every single person is important; that’s the point. How would you have felt if Essa and her folk had turned you away? Would that have been unimportant?
Pretending to an application far from her capability at that moment, she ignored the occasional curious stare that came her way and attempted to work, but it was hopeless; images of the girl’s hideous death confronted her, with others equally unwelcome.
Mallory, why did you have to come back now?
She seemed all at once to be losing control over events in her life. What would happen if he were to walk through the doors now? The thought obsessed her. For six years she had deliberately never thought about him, nor about anything else in the past; now, she could not seem to dismiss it, or him, from her mind, as if she were a silly infatuated girl.
Shut up, Asher!
With a supreme effort, she forced herself to concentrate on the figures in front of her. They danced about on the page, eluding her best efforts.
By the time the Treasury doors were shut and barred for the night, she had failed to make any headway at all.
*
The wind had got up again, and the door slammed to as Asher entered Carob’s. The tavern was far noisier than on the previous night, but Carob beamed at her and pointed to a small table in the left-hand corner, the only one not already occupied. As Asher sat down, Cass appeared, bearing a brimming tankard.
‘There’s to be singing tonight,’ she informed Asher with a grin. ‘That’s why we’re so full. But Mylla’s not here yet.’
‘It’s early.’ Asher managed a brief smile. ‘I’ll enjoy the music. Thanks, Cass. It’s been a long, long day.’
‘I thought you looked tired.’ Cass surveyed her critically. ‘Is there anything else you want — some supper? There’s a good fish stew in the kitchens.’
‘I couldn’t, thanks.’ Her insides felt too knotted with tension to accept food. Asher looked about the crowded room, noticing in the opposite corner a slender woman with a lute on her lap. She was tuning it softly, obviously preparing for her turn.
‘Then you just sit and relax. Say if you change your mind about the stew.’ Cass moved away, giving her a sharp backward look.
Several of the faces Asher remembered from other nights were present; the dice-players were at their usual table, and further away a garishly dressed fortune-teller was doing a roaring trade with her cards. The small girl and her brother were in evidence by the hearth, their mother one of the party waiting to have her future told, but this time the boy had brought along his own amusement, and was engrossed in the destruction of what appeared to be a wooden model of a ship. He fed broken pieces into the fire, watching them burn with a contented expression. Spoons clattered on plates and voices rose and fell with the tankards.
The warmth and friendly atmosphere began to have their effect, and Asher felt the tension in her neck and spine unravel as she listened to the cheerful conversation around her. The woman with the lute began to sing; she had a high, pure voice, and played well. It was not a song Asher knew and she was content to listen, although most of the other women joined in, humming along with the tune if they did not know the words.
I think I could go to sleep right here. Asher closed he
r eyes briefly. The room was growing hotter, even a little stuffy, but the music acted as a soporific, and when she next opened her eyes the singer was calling for a pause, and a familiar figure was making its way over to her table. Asher jumped to her feet, her weariness temporarily deserting her.
‘Mylla!’
A tall, thin young woman of about twenty, with dark hair and dark, thick brows, waved her free hand; the other held a stick on which she leaned heavily as she hobbled to the spare stool at Asher’s table. She wore a short tunic over loose trousers which suited her length of leg, although they earned her many disapproving stares from the older women in the room; Asher wished she cared so little for convention, for Mylla seemed not to notice the looks directed towards her.
‘If I don’t sit down, I’ll fall down!’ She promptly fell on to the stool, grinning broadly. ‘Been waiting long?’
‘Four nights! What happened, Mylla? I thought something must have gone wrong.’
Mylura shrugged her shoulders. ‘My horse stumbled and I fell off and twisted my knee. It hurts like blazes, but there’s no real damage.’ Her keen eyes went to Asher’s face. ‘You weren’t really worried, were you? You know me — I always turn up in the end.’
Asher nodded evasively. ‘Did it go all right? No problems?’
As if by instinct, Cass appeared, bearing more ale and a large plate of stew which she deposited in front of Mylura, who winked and began to eat, with a smile of apology to Asher. ‘I haven’t had a bite since yesterday — too many grey men on the road,’ she announced between mouthfuls. ‘I swear there’re more of them than ever. We have a hard time getting to the border, I can tell you!’
‘Is the network still intact?’ Thanks to Essa’s contacts outside Venture through her agency, it had been relatively simple to build up staging posts where escaping slaves could hide on their way north. The smallholders who were the women’s main helpers seemed to revel in having some means to oppose the Kamiri invaders.
Mylura made a face. ‘Not quite. You remember the holding in Stenbrook — Kerwin’s place? About forty miles south of the border?’ Asher nodded. ‘I was wary when we got near it. It smelled wrong, if you know what I mean. I went on ahead to take a look, on foot, and it was crawling with Kamiri. So we carried straight on.’ She paused, her usually expressive face studiously blank. ‘I stopped on the way back. It’d been burned to the ground. Someone must have informed on him. I’ve arranged a new bolthole further west, so don’t worry about that. I’ll draw a map so you know where it is.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Asher shivered, sharing Mylura’s anger. The collaborators who betrayed their own people to the invaders were worse than the grey men themselves; but it was a subject too close to her private thoughts to speak about, even to Mylura.
‘I have, however, some news for Essa — and you, too, might be interested,’ Mylla continued, changing the subject. She mopped up the remaining gravy on her plate with a thick piece of bread. ‘But first, tell me what’s been going on here. You look like death before it’s been warmed!’
‘It has been a little fraught.’ Asher detailed Essa’s illness and the events of her day, while Mylura listened closely.
‘What happened to the baby?’
Asher’s face clouded with disgust. ‘We found the girl’s father at the address on her papers; he said to give the baby to the orphanage.’ Her voice was bleak. ‘Do you know, Mylla, it was his child. He didn’t even seem to care about his daughter, let alone his ... ’ She stopped.
‘But you found someone to take the child?’
‘Yes. Margit knew a woman who’d recently lost her own baby, and we’re paying her an allowance to take this one. She’s to be paid monthly, at Margit’s insistence, to make sure she keeps the child alive and well.’ It was a cold-blooded arrangement, but they had discovered over the years that some women would pocket the coins and leave the babies in their care to die, claiming sickness or accident rather than the truth, which was that they were starved to death.
‘You got the money the usual way, I suppose?’ Asher nodded. ‘You should be careful, Ash. They’ll catch you one day.’
‘Can you think of an alternative?’ They let the subject drop, knowing there was little choice; the underground was perpetually short of funds, not least because the women earned so little and neither the poor mothers they aided nor the slaves they helped to escape could contribute to their coffers. ‘But you said you had news?’
Mylura smiled importantly. ‘I do.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Do you remember the fuss about the woman who escaped from the internment camp near where you came from? The wife of some military captain or other, who managed to get to Saffra after the invasion?’
‘Of course.’ It had been the main topic of the gossips in the markets for at least a week.
‘Well, she was there.’ Despite the injury to her leg and the long journey, Mylura seemed positively to crackle with energy. ‘I don’t know how she got to Saffra, she didn’t use our network; she was ill from exhaustion when I saw her. But the Saff asked me to talk to her, she seemed to want to tell someone something, and they picked me, in case it was a message I could carry.’
‘And what was it?’
Mylla glanced round to see if anyone was listening, then turned back to Asher. ‘She was wandering in her mind, poor thing, most of the time; she’d been in that camp for years, and looked like a skeleton. But she did say something.’ She paused, then went on in a whisper. ‘Ash — she said something about there being a girl in the camp, a girl who was important.’
‘Just that?’ Asher asked doubtfully, but with a sinking heart, remembering her conversation with Essa the previous night, about which she had, as yet, done nothing.
Mylura’s eyes glowed with excitement. ‘Couldn’t it be, Ash? It’d be an ideal hiding place. Don’t you think it might be Vallis?’
Asher frowned. ‘But Mylla, it doesn’t sound likely. I don’t want to curb your enthusiasm, but surely, if she was in a camp, she’d be dead by now. Amrist has every incentive to have her killed, like her brothers.’
‘But only if he knows she’s there.’ Mylura seemed no whit dismayed by Asher’s negative response. ‘What if the Dominus had her hidden there all along? And, yes, I know he’s dying. They’d heard it in Saffra — don’t ask me how! I never understand them.’
‘Did this woman say anything else — what the girl looked like or her name?’
‘No. Just that she was important; she had it on her mind that someone should know about her.’
‘It’s a very slim lead, Mylla,’ Asher said slowly.
‘But better than nothing. This could be the clue we need.’ Asher only shook her head, not certain why she felt so strong a reluctance to involve herself in what would surely turn out to be a wild goose chase. ‘Think what it would mean if we found her.’ The younger woman’s fervour was contagious, and Asher fought to suppress a surge of answering excitement.
‘We can’t just leave it, Asher.’ Mylura regarded her steadily. ‘What is it? Why don’t you want us to be involved?’
‘I suppose — because I don’t believe it will make any difference if she is found,’ Asher said honestly. ‘I don’t believe in the prophecy of the Oracle, and I don’t think we should waste our time and our small funds on something which will help no one. Why can’t we simply pass this piece of information to your cousin Jan, and let him tell any of the resistance groups he talks to?’
Mylla frowned. ‘You’re wrong, Asher.’ But she was puzzled rather than annoyed. ‘The Oracle isn’t a question of belief; it simply is. It’s as if you still thought the world was flat when it’s been proved it’s round. I’ve never understood you in this. What is it you don’t want to believe, or you’re afraid of?’
Asher stiffened, unwilling to discuss the depth of her feelings even with Mylla, her horror of being nothing more than a counter in a game of chance. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly. ‘Anyway, it’s for Essa and Carob to decide wh
at must be done. If they say we’re to look for this girl, I’ll try to find the funds for it.’
‘Ash.’ Mylla sounded concerned, but evidently Asher’s expression was sufficient to deter her from further questions. ‘All right, I’ll talk to Essa in a day or so.’
‘Will you come back with me tonight? There’s a spare room in the hostel if you want it.’
Mylura shook her head. ‘No, I’ll go to my cousin’s. Jan keeps space for me when I want, and it’s a lot closer. I don’t want to walk so far on this knee.’ She patted that portion of her anatomy affectionately.
‘Don’t you ever resent that he has it all — the house and the rest?’ Asher found the relationship between Mylura and her family fascinating. Brought up by an elderly aunt, she had grown up first on a smallholding near the Saff border, then more latterly in the old quarter of Venture, where her aunt had built up a useful business dealing with the distribution of stolen goods. When she died, she had intended her niece to inherit both house and occupation, but the courts had ruled in favour of a claim from a nephew, Jan, her brother’s son. Mylla had simply shrugged, refused what she saw then as a token proposal of marriage from her cousin, then offered her services to Essa, whom she knew by reputation, and was welcomed by the women’s group with open arms.
Now, she shrugged again. ‘Why should I? This life suits me, I would hate to be tied down. And Jan has his uses.’ There was an odd smile on her face as she made the remark, distinctly startling to Asher whose mind began to work furiously. ‘Now, let’s get some more ale, I’m thirsty.’
Asher signalled to Cass who responded at once, coming across to refill Mylura’s tankard. ‘It’s good to have you back,’ she commented with a smile, wiping a few spilled drops from the table.
‘It’s a lot warmer here than up north, believe me!’ Mylura drank deeply, then excused herself to go and talk to Carob. Silently, Asher agreed with Cass’s observation; the younger woman’s boundless energy and optimism always acted as a spur, pushing her friends on to greater efforts. It was as if Mylla’s high spirits acted as a restorative to her own, and Asher wondered if her own troubles were really so very pressing.
