momentary carelessness that had cost him his life. I should have been glad to be rid of him, glad our interminable chase was finally over. I was. But the memory of watching him plummet from sight still plucked at my mind. If nothing else, it was a reminder that I hardly needed of how tenuous life could be.
After a while, the ground levelled once more. Ahead, it was bracketed only by the mountains to our right and a shimmer of heat haze in the direction of the river. We made sure to keep our distance from the only signs of life — herdsmen marshalling great squadrons of cattle and of horses, which drifted across the land like cloud shadows.
We camped that night near a thread of stream, in a clearing neatly fenced by trees. It was my suggestion; Alvantes would probably have ridden all night if I'd left him. We had no food, and neither of us was in any state to catch any. However, I did struggle through my languor to carefully unpack my cloak without revealing its precious cargo.
Had I given the matter a little thought, I could have saved myself the effort.
'Your pack.' Alvantes's voice was ethereal in the darkness.
I started. 'What about it?'
'They took it. When we were arrested.'
'Oh.' My heart was in my mouth. I wanted urgently to gulp it back down. Instead, I said, 'That's right. I found it.'
'Found it?'
'Your bags were there too. But empty.' I strained my ears, trying to catch a reaction. All I could hear was the sigh of wind in leaves. 'There must have been something in them they wanted.'
I sat tensed, not even quite sure what to fear. More questions, which would penetrate my obvious lie? Alvantes to tear the pack from my shoulder?
When I eventually dared look, long minutes later, he was curled with his back to me, obviously sound asleep.
In the morning we used the stream to wash. For the first time, Alvantes made some effort to bathe his wounds. The gash on his forehead was messy, though shallow. The cut on his arm was deep, as I'd expected, but cleaner than I'd have guessed. I counted it a small mercy that neither showed sign of infection.
For my part, my arm hurt abysmally. I reluctantly asked Alvantes to help me strap it, and was surprised when he did an excellent job. If the splint he improvised rendered it even more useless, it at least dulled the pain to a level I could about tolerate.
'How much further?' I asked. 'Can we still reach this friend of yours?'
'Who knows?' was Alvantes's only reply.
We set out riding once again, through terrain much like that we'd crossed the day before. Though I could sometimes see towns and cities in the distance, we never came close to one, just as we continued to keep our distance from the roaming herdsmen and their charges. As the day wore on, it began to seem that Ans Pasaeda consisted of one colossal, more or less empty field.
Then, around noon, the glistening stripe of a river came into view ahead. It cut down from the western mountains to carve a ragged line that frayed into nothingness far to our left.
'The Mar Fex.' It was so long since Alvantes had spoken that I jumped at the sound of his voice. 'It runs to meet the Mar Corilus,' he said. 'We need to follow it.'
A highway kept close to the water in the shallow river valley below, its grey thread stringing together wide- spaced beads of villages, villas and farms. It was well travelled — the closest we'd come to civilisation since we'd left Pasaeda. By unvoiced agreement, we chose to avoid it. The higher ground was easy enough to ride, and our view of the river was clear.
Late in the afternoon, Alvantes pointed out a dirty smudge of grey against the riverside green. From a distance it looked like a long-abandoned quarry. 'That's Ux Durada.'
My impression didn't improve as we grew nearer. I came to realise that what I'd mistaken for ugly slabs of uncut stone were in fact the ugly slabs of buildings; but even then they looked as if they could only have been made by something else falling down. Closer up, there was at least an air of faded glory to Ux Durada's sagging edifices. A few, like a large temple with cracked windows of stained glass, had clearly once been grand. Yet whenever its heyday had been, I couldn't imagine any of the town's inhabitants were old enough to remember it. All else aside, the atmosphere was so noisome and the streets so foul that it was hard to believe anyone lasted long in Ux Durada.
In the end, we had no choice but to abandon our solitude for the road. Even then, no one showed us much interest. Those who did glance in our direction looked away just as quickly once they registered our palace guardsmen's uniforms. It apparently didn't matter that they were torn and bloody, that one of us had a splinted arm, that the other was missing a hand and had a clumsily bandaged head and shoulder. Uniforms told them all they needed to know.
It took us barely ten minutes to reach the strip of dockside I assumed to be the justification for Ux Durada's pitiful existence. It was located at a point where the Mar Fex broadened to a navigable width, and once it had probably been a valued link in Ans Pasaeda's net of transportation. Perhaps a larger port had sprung up downriver or the requirement for whatever goods were moved this way had dried up. Whatever the reason, only a few shabby craft were moored here now, and the air was thick with lethargy.
I realised Alvantes's interest was focused on one particular boat, moored to a decaying wharf at the farther end. At a distance, the vessel looked curiously familiar. I'd only been in Ans Pasaeda for a few days, and to the best of my recollection I hadn't spent any of that time in studying boats. Yet the nearer we drew, the more that sense of recognition nagged in the back of my mind.
At the last moment, I realised it wasn't just the craft's wretched appearance that was ringing bells. A peculiar stench rose off it, so virulent that I could taste it too, so richly foul that it staked its own space amidst the general miasma of Ux Durada.
A figure, previously hidden by the heaped cargo on deck, stepped into view.
'Oh no,' I said. 'Not you. Anyone but you.'
The man upon deck was of clearly significant but otherwise indeterminable age. He wore a dress coat, once red, now faded to roughly the same shade of coppery brown as his deep-lined face. His shovel of beard would have been impressive had it not been trimmed so unconventionally. Just then, his mouth was hanging open and his eyes were bright with horror.
'I won't have that… ruffian… near my boat,' he said.
Alvantes held up his hand. 'Anterio…'
'I thought he'd be dead by now. Didn't I help you arrest him? Did he somehow escape? Have you travelled all this way to bring him back to custody? Far better to lop his head off right here and leave his body for the fish.'
'Anterio.'
'He's even posing as a guardsman again. Has he no shame? Guard-Captain Alvantes, with the greatest respect…'
'Anterio!' Alvantes's roar did the trick — but not without attracting the notice of half the dockside. At a more subdued volume, he added, 'Perhaps we can discuss this more privately?'
'Of course,' agreed Anterio sheepishly. 'Come aboard, Guard-Captain.' Even his nervousness, however, wasn't enough to stop him throwing a last glance of disgust in my direction.
'Wait here,' Alvantes told me as he set foot on the gangplank. 'Do nothing. Touch nothing. Speak to no one.'
Anywhere else, I might have struggled with such exhaustive restrictions. In Ux Durada, I was more than happy to keep my head down. There was no one on the dilapidated dockside I had the faintest desire to talk to, nothing I'd feel safe touching. The people were every bit as filthy as the boats, as the heaps of cargo, as the water lapping thickly round the wooden harbour.
At least it made sense that we should run into Anterio here. In our previous encounters, his riverboat had seemed uniquely fetid, just as he himself had been a paragon of uncleanliness. In Ux Durada, however, Anterio and his boat hardly stood out. In Ux Durada, they belonged.
The first time I'd met Anterio was when Estrada, Saltlick and I had been fleeing towards Altapasaeda. The last time I'd been trying to escape that fair city. On both occasions, he'd betrayed me; on both I'd ended up losing my freedom. As Anterio had just made clear, our relationship could fairly be described as antagonistic.
