to be considered a bit of a party town. I've been there once or twice, though not from this route.'
'Can we stay somewhere here for the night?' Eir asked.
'I would've thought so,' Randur replied. 'Agricultural town, mainly, but does a bit of trade doubling as a port. A few travellers pass through, but I'm not sure how things are with the Freeze.'
*
It was a town where dreams lay down to die. Places like this didn't much like change, their nature going against the fundamental laws of development or decay. The further you went from the largest towns, notably Ule, the further you moved from anything approaching cosmopolitan. In Randur's memory he'd only been there a few times, all during his late teens; there had been super-strength local vodka, and local women who were not shy in the least. Each time he had visited he'd sworn never to return. But there was always a girl, wasn't there, some reason to make that extra effort, to ride across the island in search of sensual fulfilment.
The cultural centre lay just where two straight thoroughfares met. Here, the taverns conducted a roaring trade, serving up equal measures of gambling and debauchery. A haven for card sharps to work their route around the various settlements. He wondered vaguely if rooms would be available at the Bitches Brew inn, one of the quieter places in the town, just off the main street.
An iren to one side sold mainly farming equipment, where a few men shambled around checking out the wares. The former dust road running between the buildings was now muddied snow. The buildings themselves were a mix of dark stone and even darker wood, at the most three floors high, but always well spaced out because there was plenty of room. Smoke dribbled upwards from most of the chimneys and, amid a sea of thatched and slate roofing, the wooden spire of a Jorsalir church poked tentatively above the townscape.
They rode into town, tied up their horses, and started hunting for accommodation.
*
Cheap lunches were being served at the Bitches Brew, a dreary place with four solid woodstoves and walls littered with old farming equipment now relegated to the status of decoration: sieves, forks, bushels, crooks, potato dibbers. Three men sat in companionable silence over to one side, while two old women played cards right next to the bar. Randur approached the landlord, a slender man in his fifties with a scar across the top of his head. He regarded Randur with startlingly blue eyes.
'Afternoon,' Randur greeted him, while Rika and Eir remained motionless by the door. 'Me and the girls are passing through and need a room for the night. You got any?'
'Might have. You got coin?'
'Enough.'
'You got a room then, lad. So what you lot drinking?'
Half-turning to Eir and Rika, he said, 'I'll have half an ale and the girls-'
'Kapp Brimir!' It was a high-pitched voice, and certainly not a happy one. Randur shot the room a furtive glance. Who knew his real name?
'Kapp! I know it's you.' A girl burst out from the kitchen, a brunette with big eyes and a big scowl. She marched right up to him then slapped him across the face.
'Ow!' he spluttered.
'You think you can just walk off and leave me after that one night we had? You promised you'd take me with you to Villjamur. You and all your lines – it was just to get into bed with me, wasn't it? You boys just want to have your fun and vanish into the night. Ha! Well I'm not having any of that.'
Randur backed off slightly, palmed the air to calm her down. This performance wasn't exactly not attracting too much attention. 'I… I-'
Another slap, this time on the other cheek, nearly knocking him over, a cloud of flour following the arc of her hand.
'I bet you can't even remember my name.'
This was true.
And just how the hell was he supposed to recall every girl he'd slept with? No, concentrate. He glanced back towards Eir, who stood glaring at him with her arms folded, before looking away.
Bugger… Randur, this is not looking good.
Back to face the girl – what was her name? 'I meant to tell you… I was called off on an emergency. My sword skills were urgently required.'
'And yet still the lies pour forth from his rancid mouth!' She reached out again towards him.
As Randur flinched, closing his eyes, she tipped the ale he had ordered over his head before marching off to the kitchen. He peered sheepishly around the bar, the liquid dripping off his face.
'Hope you're going to pay for that drink, lad,' the landlord grunted. 'Isn't a charity I'm running here. That'll be a hundred Drakar.'
*
The room contained four small beds, two on either side of the room. A dreary brown carpet was peeling away from the floor, and save for half a dozen unlit candles, there wasn't much else. A far cry from the glamour of the Imperial Residence that he was used to, but he reminded himself that this was better than camping outdoors.
While he stared out of the window, across a back garden filled with barrels, Rika remarked, 'She called you Kapp?'
'You what?' he replied.
'Kapp? I thought your name was Randur Estevu. So which one is it?'
'My name is not really Randur.' He glanced to Eir, who already knew the story. With a thin smile, she nodded, a gesture that said, Go on.
'You've been rather coy about your past so far,' Rika said. 'With good reason, it seems.'
He'd been careful not to show himself as more than a simple island boy who came fresh to the city. There was no need for Rika to have known, no need to make things complicated, but now was the time to relieve himself of his lies.
'I came into Villjamur with papers stolen from a dead man. The real Randur was a young man the same age as me, and when he was found murdered at the docks my dodgy uncle from Y'iren managed to get hold of the documents allowing this Randur into Villjamur. Kapp was my true name, but I took his identity, became Randur. I had plans to fulfil. I wanted to speak to the great cultists of the city – I needed their help in saving my mother's life. But that's another story, one I'm not going to repeat now. Was this deception such a bad thing?'
Details about his sleeping with dozens of rich women then stealing their jewellery to fund these great cultists would, perhaps, be better left unsaid right now.
'So, there you have it. I'm really called Kapp,' he declared, resignedly. 'But Randur or Kapp, I still saved your arse.'
Rika was looking out of the window, as snow began to fill the grey afternoon skies. 'That is true, and your motives were pure – even if your actions weren't quite what I would approve of. Kapp, you say? A better name, I think. Randur does sound a little sleazy.'
'What, that's it?' Randur asked. 'No big lectures on morality, on what a fool I've been and that my sorry rear is going to burn in some hell realm for a thousand years?'
Rika laughed then, for the first time, and he couldn't decide if he had been thoroughly stupid in something he'd said. 'That's just it, Kapp. My religion isn't all that complicated at times. Your motivation was a positive one. How else can we judge someone?'
'I thought you had, like, a million rules about what we're not supposed to do.'
'There are some in place, admittedly, but they're to aid our spiritual practice, not pass judgement. Yes, there are some priests who have interpreted aspects of our belief in what I consider a negative way, but really all we are – any of us – is the sum of our actions. Do I really come across as so… condemnatory?'
'Just a little… you know, preachy,' he muttered. Then, 'No offence, lady.'
'I suppose I've been through a lot, returning to Villjamur and then… leaving again so abruptly. We have all been through quite an ordeal.'
'Whatever,' Randur said, forgetting, as he often did, the importance of the woman before him. In truth Rika couldn't have had it easy – she'd been torn from her spiritual retreat to be thrust into the seat of power controlling millions of lives across the Jamur Empire, only to be manipulated by councillors close to her and falsely charged with plotting the destruction of thousands of her own citizens.
