him, just like in the old days in Sorrow. Leon moved ahead now, giving Rik time to spot anyone who might be following him. It was a game they had played as kids, pretending that informers were after them. It was a game they had played as teenagers when there really had been watchers. It felt a little odd to be playing it again in the streets of a strange city, reassuring too in a weird way.
“I asked him to.” He did not say why and she seemed to sense from his manner that she was not supposed to ask.
The street was full of people, all of them busy. Many were buying paper Solace lanterns or papier mache masks of angels and demons and famous characters of fable. Some were sewing costumes. The smell of cinnamon spiced wine filled the air, attacking the odour of fish. Carp was a favourite Solace meal in this part of the world. Shoals of them swam in large wooden tubs in the street, ready for killing on the morrow. The city bustled with the air of subdued excitement and happiness that even he associated with Solace. It was one of the great public holidays, celebrated right across the Terrarch Realms. Just looking at the children all around he could see they were as excited as he would have been.
He shook his head. The kids were not old enough to know exactly what they were celebrating. The death of a world, he thought, or maybe two; the world the Terrarchs had come from, and the world of human empires they had destroyed and replaced.
“Why are you shaking your head?” Rena asked. He had found her back at the brothel when they had returned there. Weasel wanted to talk with some of his buddies and wait for some of his informants. Rik had seen no point in waiting around and gone with the original plan of eating out. She had actually seemed glad to see him, had even seemed a little scared that he might have left without saying goodbye. Maybe it was the war fever? The rumour seemed to be everywhere now. Maybe it gave him an air of doomed glamour. He had seen it happen before, as other campaigns started.
“I was remembering my childhood,” he lied. It was an old habit, learned early in the gutters of Sorrow. He rarely gave an honest answer to questions about what he was thinking.
“In Sorrow?” she asked. She seemed to have an obsession with the city. He was starting to suspect that it was the source of the attraction he seemed to hold for her.
“In Sorrow.”
“They say Solace in Sorrow rivals Solace in the Amber City itself.”
“They may be right. I would not know. I have never been to the capital.”
“But you serve in the Queen-Empress’s army. You have sworn fealty to her.”
Her statement made him laugh.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she said half-whining and half-wheedling.
“I am not laughing at you. I am laughing at the thought of the New Queen accepting my fealty. I swore the oath in front of a Terrarch captain and a Sergeant Major as ugly as sin, and I swore it in Sorrow, the day before we left to put down the Clockmaker’s rebellion.”
“You fought against the Clockmaker?” It was not something he particularly wanted to think about. Some of the rebels had been cruel and vicious men. Most of them had just been peasants sick of semi-slavery on Terrarch estates with heads filled full of the Clockmaker’s particular brand of religious nonsense. It seemed to be becoming more common these days.
“Yes.”
That made her thoughtful, which made her pretty too, Rik thought. He found he actually enjoyed her company though he wondered in his heart of hearts why she was still with him.
They sat down at a table in a grog-shop. He checked and found Leon loitering in front of a second hand clothes shop on the other side of the street. He ordered food and wine for them both. The wine tasted of cinnamon and it was warmed. It looked like the stall-keeper was making an early start, for Solace was still a day away.
“Cinnamon,” he said. “It always makes me think of Solace.”
“Me too. Makes me think of when Ma was alive and the others…” Her voice drifted away, and she forced a smile.
“They dead?”
“Last year — the lockjaw fever got them. The little ones would not stop crying. There was nothing I could do to help them either.”
Here it comes, he thought, the sob story, the touch for money. He had heard them a hundred times in the stews of Sorrow. He was even prepared to give her some, because he liked her and because it was expected, but she surprised him by shaking her head and changing the subject. “What was it was so urgent this morning when you were called away?”
“I told you. Somebody I know was killed in the Headsman’s Axe last night.”
“A soldier?”
“No. A hill-man.”
“How did you know him then?”
“He was a scout, went along on our last patrol.”
He looked at her hard this time. Was she a spy? Was she trying to get word of troop movements or dispositions out of him? Such information might be worth something to people on the other side of the border. He took in her face and hands and bearing, and knew it was ridiculous. She was exactly what she appeared to be, just curious. Spies were for the chapbooks and cheap novels. The truth was, you could find out more than he knew from any of the tavern keepers in Redtower. There was no need to go questioning private soldiers.
“You a spy?” he asked, just for fun. She looked at him very seriously.
“No. I would never do anything like that. I would never help enemies of the Queen.”
She sounded quite genuinely patriotic, but then most of the people of Talorea did. The Scarlet Queen was the guarantor of freedom, the defender of the people. She had led the progressive faction in the great schism that had brought down the First Empire of the Terrarchs. She had signed the Acts of Liberation, and gone to war with her own flesh and blood on behalf of suffering humanity, and her people loved her for it despite all the humiliations that had been heaped on them since.
Why not, Rik thought cynically? He had seen many a whipped dog that still loved its master. He tried pushing the thought from his head. By the Light, he was in a foul mood this morning. Then again, anyone would be after what he had seen. He was surprised that he could move without screaming. It seemed impossible that all of these people could be going about their normal Solace business while Vosh lay bloating in Shugh’s cellar. Rik was with the Barbarian about one thing. He doubted he would ever eat at the Axe again.
He watched the street closely, seeing only the usual mass of peddlers, beggars, singers and kids. There was nothing sinister going on, and he doubted anything would happen to him while he was in a busy street, at least in daylight anyway. At night it would be different. At night, dark deeds got done, and the minions of Shadow came out to play.
He told himself not to be so sure. He had seen murder committed in broad daylight in the alleys of Sorrow, had heard men scream for help and no help come when the sun was at highest noon.
On the other hand, it would take a particularly confident group of killers to attack in broad daylight, and that did not seem to be this bunch’s method. They had taken Vosh drunk and off-guard in a tavern. Sensible men, he thought. It was what he would have done himself.
“And the man was killed for helping the Queen’s soldiers root out the Queen’s enemies,” said Rena. “That’s a scandal.”
“I don’t think the hill-men feel the same loyalty to the Amber Throne that you do,” he said. “And really we don’t know why he was killed. Maybe he owed somebody money or slept with the wrong woman. Men’ve been killed for jealousy before.”
A thought struck him. “You know a girl called Marla?”
“It’s a common enough name, and a lot of girls here don’t use their proper ones anyway.”
“She’s a hill-girl.”
“Few of those here. Got pregnant, chucked by their lovers, disowned by their families. Come down here to get away.”
“Most of them probably don’t. Get away I mean. Most of them are probably thrown off a cliff for dishonouring their clan’s honour. Well, it was a long shot anyway.”
