by Bell, Hilari
“No, I mean he departed.” Shir fingered the ruby hanging from his ear. “He created a diversion and slipped off—neat as I’ve ever seen it done. Not bad for a lad no older than you. It worked out to my benefit in the end, and I got a nice buckle out of it, so I bear him no ill will. Well, not much. But when you turned up on the same errand, I assumed you were from the same source.”
“No,” said Jiaan slowly. “I really do want you to help resist the Hrum. It sounds like you’re already doing that, and you’re likely to go on doing it whether you want to or not. Wouldn’t it be better to do it in alliance with the rest of us?” He probably couldn’t trust this man any more than he could the Kadeshi, but at least he wasn’t likely to invade Farsala the moment the Hrum were gone. A young man, working for the Hrum. A man very near his own age—
“I wouldn’t have to fight at all, if Garren had the sense to do what every Farsalan gahn has done for the last thousand years! I wish you’d been a spy, my friend.”
Jiaan heard the threat but he was barely paying attention. It had occurred to him that he knew someone, about his own age, who spied for the Hrum.
“A very clever man, no older than me,” he murmured. “This Hrum spy, would you describe him?”
Shir’s brows rose. It probably wasn’t the usual response to a death threat, but at the moment Jiaan didn’t care. “You said he was my age,” he prompted.
“He was. But a bit shorter than you, and stockier. Wide in the shoulders. Peasant hair—light brown and curly—and a peasant accent. And he had—”
“A crippled hand,” Jiaan finished. He had to unlock his jaw to say the words. “His right hand, scarred across the palm. He’ll grasp something with it, and then switch it into his left hand to use it.”
It was that mannerism that had told him that the peddler the commander had bribed, and the Hrum spy who’d betrayed them, were one and the same man. Jiaan closed his eyes. Blood pounded in his ears. He was still working for the Hrum, the bastard. Trying to undermine potential sources of resistance. Trying to ensure Farsala’s defeat.
“It sounds like you know him well,” said Shir. “I don’t suppose this means you’re a Hrum spy after all?”
“No,” said Jiaan. He was too angry to do anything except tell the truth. “We only traveled together for a few weeks. Then he betrayed my . . . my master to the Hrum. You should have killed him when you had the chance. Everything he knows about you, everything he heard or saw, he’ll tell the Hrum about it.”
“Oh, I knew that.” Shir lounged in his chair, but his intent gaze was fixed on Jiaan’s face. “We had to move our lovely town. Quite a nuisance. I take it he’s no friend of yours?”
“He’s the man I’m going to kill,” said Jiaan. “At least . . .”
“If I let you survive to do so?” The amusement was back in Shir’s face. “Hmm. Well, why not?”
“What?”
“Why not let you go? That young spy caused us a certain amount of trouble, and he escaped, which is a bit embarrassing, all things considered.” The bandit rose to his feet and began to pace. “If I let you go, you can avenge us, and we won’t have to lift a finger. If he kills you, well, that’s nothing to me. It’s not like we don’t have everything of value you carried anyway. And if we should ever need help dealing with the Hrum, then you might be grateful. Wouldn’t you, Commander Jiaan?”
Jiaan’s jaw dropped. “How? . . .”
“I told you, sailors know everything.”
“My army is landlocked.”
“Landsmen aren’t as good as sailors, but they know almost everything.”
Jiaan rose to his feet, meeting Shir’s eyes on a level. “I can’t promise you aid. Depending on what the Hrum do, we might be too busy elsewhere to come to your assistance.”
Shir snorted. “But I notice you don’t mind asking for my promise to help you. Oh, don’t blush, boy. I don’t believe in any man’s promises.” For a moment, a lifetime of cynicism showed on the young face. Then Shir’s expression brightened. “Come to think of it, that’s not true. I do trust the last promise you made.”
Jiaan frowned. Shir’s brown eyes were full of mischief. “What promise? I didn’t promise you anything.”
“You didn’t promise me anything,” Shir agreed. “But you made a promise nonetheless. You promised to kill a man, and you meant it. And after all, who am I to stand in the way of another man’s promise?”
SPLASHING THROUGH THE MARSH some marks later, Jiaan slowly became certain that the bandit was also a man of his word—Jiaan hadn’t been followed, and he wasn’t being watched.
It would take him longer to get back to the army without money. He knew that Rakesh would probably return to the place where they’d camped last night, so he would regain the only thing he’d lost that truly mattered, and there was food in Rakesh’s saddlebags, along with Jiaan’s bedroll. But Jiaan would still have to stop and do a few marks’ worth of odd jobs each day, if he didn’t want to starve before he reached his army.
For all the bandit’s reluctance to fight, Jiaan thought there was an even chance that Governor Garren would be forced to send troops to subdue him. In a fight between the Hrum and Dugaz swamp rats, on their own ground, Jiaan would bet on the rats. So it hadn’t been a wholly unprofitable day, despite the loss of his purse and his sword.
And he had learned that the peddler, the traitor, was still alive, still spying and lying Farsalans to their deaths. Even using Sorahb’s name to do it!
Jiaan realized that his breath was hissing through clenched teeth, and deliberately relaxed his jaw, his shoulders, his back. But he couldn’t control the hatred that boiled in his heart—he didn’t try. Revenge would have to wait. Jiaan had an army to run, and a war to win, before he’d have time to hunt the bastard down. But once Jiaan was free, he would find him. And nothing would stand in his way then. Nothing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SORAYA
SORAYA’S FIRST MONTH as a slave hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared when she was first escorted to the place where Calfaer had slept. She had known that Calfaer lodged apart from the servants. There were nights, covering her ears to block out their snores, that she thought he had a better situation than the servants did. She had assumed that he had a small room, with a door that could be locked at night to keep him from escaping. The door that led to the narrow slot between the shed’s outer wall and the back wall of the goat pen did have a bolt outside, but aside from that . . .
“You’re joking,” she had said to the soldier who escorted her to the place where Calfaer had slept. “That’s not as wide as a corridor. There’s barely room to lay down a pallet!”
The soldier didn’t appear to care. “Here’s a slave’s tunic and britches,” he said, handing her a bundle of rough cloth that one of Reevus’ clerks had given him. “Put this on and bring your clothes out to me.”
Soraya tried to give the bundle back to him. “I’d rather keep my clothes.” In truth, her patched skirt and blouse were so worn at this point, that an army slave’s tunic might be better. And it wasn’t as if she’d never worn britches before—to her father’s amusement, and her mother’s dismay. But the too-large clothes were soft, worn to accommodate the contours of her body, and they were hers. Or at least, they had been.
“You don’t have any clothes,” the soldier said. “A slave owns nothing.”
Garren had meant it to hurt—watching her clothes and her other small possessions burn in one of the bake ovens. And in truth, losing the carvings Ludo had given her, the hair ribbon Casia had braided, did hurt. When you owned little it became precious. But the confiscation of her meager funds, hoarded desperately for the day she would be able to set out in search of her family—that stung even worse. Three iron mares per week had seemed like so little at first, but she had worked for that money. Her breath had hissed with anger as Reevus passed the pathetically small pile of coins to one of the clerks, to be added to the tally of Hrum loot and then to the camp’s general fu
nd. Their equivalent would eventually be sent back to the empire, but all Soraya’s worldly wealth was so little that the ledger entry was barely worth their time.
She was also tattooed as a slave. The physical pain of the proceeding made her grit her teeth and blink back tears, but she minded that much less.
FARS—the Hrum abbreviated the name in their square script, and added a horseshoe arcing over it, in memory of the deghans’ horses charging toward them at the Sendar Wall. Soraya considered the tattoo a badge of honor—the mark of a Farsalan brave and loyal enough to have resisted the Hrum’s invasion. Someday, she vowed, she would earn the right to wear it.
She tried to think of ways to use her position in the Hrum camp against them, but now that she wanted to spy she was too closely watched. Was there some way to fight them with magic? The Hrum’s disbelief in any kind of magic was surely a weakness that could be exploited, for Soraya knew that Suud magic existed, even though Brasnian and djinn magic might not. But what could she do with it? Suddenly make Garren’s shaving water scalding hot? Even if she dared try to summon another storm, it would be superfluous—the normal, late-summer rains drenched the Hrum camp with dreary regularity.
The only use she could see for her magic was to work on the wood of the enclosure where she was locked at night. No matter how tired she was, she spent some time before she slept seeking out the shilshadu of the wood, persuading it to let damp creep in, to let the rot take it faster. It was uphill work, for the wood’s nature was to stay strong, but Soraya kept at it. In time, perhaps she could steal some tool to help her, but for the first few weeks, she had enough trouble simply coping with her new status.
She thought that she had already performed every menial task the camp required, but she soon learned otherwise. As a kitchen maid, she hadn’t been required to carry the officers’ slop pots to the privies, or to shovel dung from the animals’ pens into the reeking midden cart every morning.
She didn’t think Calfaer had been required to do these things either—it was part of the animal handlers’ jobs, or the officers’ own servants. Garren was piling every disgusting task in camp onto her, assuming she would either break under the shame and “confess,” or rebel and refuse so he could beat her.
Odd that Hrum law would allow a rebellious slave to be beaten, but not the torture of captured enemies—though in a way it made sense. If you tortured captured enemies they might do the same when they captured you, but everyone knew that slaves had to be disciplined.
Soraya, wielding a shovel in callused hands, smiled grimly. Garren was in for a long wait. About half her current tasks were ones she’d done before—and if she’d traded the lighter duty of serving tables for all the dirty jobs other servants wanted to shed, it also got her out of the kitchen and into the forge, the cobbler’s shop, the carpenter’s shed. She was accustomed to sweeping floors by now; carrying buckets of charcoal wasn’t any harder than carrying sacks of flour; and the fact that her friend Calfaer had once slept there made even the narrow cleft behind the goat pen comfortable—to her heart, if not her body.
Soraya was surprised how much being separated from the other servants hurt. They’d been ordered not to speak to her, though shortly after her capture, Casia, carrying a load of dirty pots out to the wash yard, had paused to whisper, “Are you all right, San—um, girl? We were told—”
“I’m fine,” Soraya whispered back. Two soldiers lounged against the fence. Not quite near enough to hear, but near enough to see and report if Casia lingered. There were always two soldiers near her these days—seldom the same men, and most of them very good at not seeming to watch her. But Hrum soldiers were hardly ever idle, and in the midst of the busy camp they were painfully conspicuous. “Don’t try to talk to me. You’ll only get yourself in trouble, and I’m all right. Truly,” Soraya reassured her friend.
Casia, never one for taking orders, had hugged Soraya before going back into the kitchen. Soraya spent the next half mark scrubbing pots, with tears dropping into the dirty suds. It was good to know that someone cared. But she also noticed that the next day she was set to other tasks, and that Casia scrubbed all the pots—a duty that was usually shared among the kitchen workers.
She didn’t know if the order for Casia’s punishment had come from Garren or if it was Hennic’s own idea, for Hennic was genuinely angry with Soraya. Doing other work, even harder work, was almost a relief since it took her out of range of his slaps and kicks. Most of the other servants were angry with her too—or afraid, as if being revealed as a Farsalan spy had somehow made her dangerous.
Soraya tried to use the strange people sense her shilshadu magic had given her to ease both the anger and the fear, but she failed. She could usually read people’s emotions, some more clearly than others, but she couldn’t persuade them to change. Maok had said that animals were easier to handle than people—perhaps it was that. Or perhaps, Soraya reflected grimly, it was just that she was a despicable excuse for a Speaker, on whom Maok should never have wasted her teaching.
In her current loneliness, thinking of Maok and her friends among the Suud brought Soraya to tears. So she stopped thinking about them and avoided the other servants, for she disliked both the emotions that had replaced their friendship—except in Casia, who she was avoiding for Casia’s own sake, and Ludo, who she couldn’t avoid because he wouldn’t let her.
Ludo didn’t understand that being a Farsalan spy was a bad thing, though Soraya tried to explain it. She was Farsalan, he said. It was brave of her to fight, though in the end the empire always won. All he really understood was that his friend was sad and lonely, and working too hard. He worked with her when he could, and sought her out whenever he had a free moment, and neither Hennic’s furious scolding, nor Soraya’s own arguments and pleas could stop him.
Soraya knew she could have stopped him, and perhaps she should. She had only to tell Ludo that she didn’t like him, that he was stupid and boring and she didn’t want him around. As a child, Ludo had been driven off by cruel children using just those words, and he still cried when he remembered it. Soraya thought that might be why he so stubbornly refused to abandon her to her own hurt.
Even if it might be better for him in the long run, Soraya couldn’t bring herself to hurt him. But she didn’t encourage him either. At times she longed to praise him for his loyalty and strength, and tell him what a good friend he was. But binding him closer would be unfair at best, and might harm him if Garren took it into his head that Ludo was on her side. Still, she couldn’t help welcoming the chance to talk to someone person to person, instead of receiving orders as a slave, to feel friendship instead of anger or fear—both others’ and her own. These days, Ludo was the only one who smiled at her.
So when she saw the crowd gathering around him, saw the rare scowl on his face and heard the angry voices, Soraya put down the roll of leather she was carrying to the cobbler’s shop and joined them.
“. . . don’t care if he’s simple.” Soraya recognized the speaker as one of Marcellus’ underlings. “He’s got no business spying around my documents! Much less—”
“He works in my kitchen,” said Hennic. “One of the cooks probably told him they wanted him to check on some supplies, and he thought they meant the accounts. Was that it, Ludo?”
“No,” said Ludo. “I wanted—”
“Well, if he was checking on supply records, what’s he doing with correspondence between Governor Garren and the first strategus? Private correspondence, that—”
“If it’s so important and secret, then how could Ludo get hold of it in the first place?” Hennic demanded.
“I only left my case for a moment, right outside the door! Tampering with the Governor’s corres—”
“Be quiet!” Reevus’ voice wasn’t loud, but there was an edge in it that cut like a knife. Soraya wasn’t the only one who jumped. The ordnancer pushed past her, and the crowd fell back to let him approach Ludo, Hennic, and the ruffled clerk. “What’s going on here?”
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“It wasn’t my fault!” said the clerk, beating Hennic by half a breath. “I’ve been copying a letter from the governor to the first strategus, and I had to visit the privy. Didn’t have time to take my writing case to the record room, so I left it outside the door. Well, you know how small those shacks are. When I got out, my case was open and he”—he gestured at Ludo—“was walking off with a copy of the governor’s letter! That’s stealing the empire’s official correspondence! That’s treason! That’s—”
“That’s your fault, for leaving your case unattended,” said Hennic. “You’re just trying to shift the blame to Ludo so you won’t be punished for negligence. Ludo was probably told to check the supplies, and thought—”
Reevus held up his hand for silence. His expression was so stern that Hennic stopped in midsentence. Soraya shivered. As she well knew, the Hrum took the security of their records seriously. The clerk could be dismissed for such carelessness. But no one could think that Ludo—
“Tell me, Ludo, why did you take the scroll?” Reevus’ voice was gentle. As ordnancer, he knew all about Ludo and dealt well with him. Soraya began to relax. It would be all right.
“I took it for a friend,” said Ludo. “She needs scrolls from the camp. Real bad. I told her—” He stopped and shook his head. “I don’t want to get her in trouble. I’d better not say any more.”
Several people gasped, and Soraya stiffened. Ludo went into Setesafon often—he was big enough to carry a heavy load, so they sent him to fetch things. But no Farsalan spy in their right mind would recruit Ludo—he wouldn’t know what documents to take!
Reevus held up his hand again. “I think you need to tell us a bit more, Ludo, or there will be trouble. Can you tell me who this friend is?”
Ludo was already shaking his head. Once he fixed on an idea, he was almost impossible to move. “I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“But it is a girl,” said Reevus. “You’ve told us that much already.”
