Hyuke sat back grinning while he brushed his moustache. Then he cuffed his partner. ‘Hear that, Pull? I just made sergeant.’
Bakune felt his shoulders sag.
‘’Nitiative,’ Hyuke added, nodding profoundly.
Puller pouted into his glass.
‘So what was that about bodies then, Sergeant?’
‘Ah!’ Hyuke touched a finger to the side of his bulbous nose. ‘Been turning up at an awful rate. Used to be no more than one every few months, hey? Now it’s two a week.’
Bakune felt himself clenching tight. A hot sourness bubbled up in his stomach. ‘Where?’ he said, his voice faint.
‘All over. Both male and female. All young, though.’
Damn this monster, whoever he was! Taking advantage of the upheaval. ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ He swallowed to wet his throat. Something took a bite out of his stomach.
Hyuke was frowning at him. ‘You okay, Ass- ah, sir?’
He waved a hand. ‘Yes. Now, are we safe here? Can we use this place?’
Both nodded. ‘Oh, yes,’ Hyuke said. ‘Safe as the baker’s wife in the morning.’
Bakune felt his suspicions stirring once more. ‘Why?’ he asked slowly.
The partners exchanged uncertain looks. Hyuke opened his hands. ‘Because he’s busy baking…’
Bakune just glared. Hyuke’s thick brows rose. ‘Ah! I see. On account this is Boneyman’s place.’
‘Boneyman…?’
The two watchmen shared another glance; it seemed they could communicate solely by looks alone. Hyuke shook his head. ‘Really, sir. You bein’ the Ass- ah… I’m surprised.’
Bakune struggled to keep his face flat. ‘Please inform me. If you would be so kind.’
‘Boneyman runs the smuggling and the night market here in town, now that-’ Puller loudly cleared his throat, glaring, and Hyuke frowned, confused. Puller tilted his head to glance significantly to Bakune. Hyuke’s brows rose even higher. ‘Ah! Well… now that things have… changed…’ he finished, flustered.
Bakune felt his gaze narrowing. Things have changed now, have they? Now that Karien’el has been marched off to war. So that was why so very few black-market cases ever came to me. So be it. All that is the past. The question is what to do now.
‘Things’ll be really bad next week,’ Puller complained.
‘How so?’ Bakune asked.
The big stoop-shouldered fellow blushed, looking to his partner for help. Hyuke cleared his throat. ‘On account of the Festival of Renewal.’
Of course! He’d lost all track of the time. The winter festival celebrating the Lady’s arising and our deliverance from the Stormriders! Banith will be crushed beneath pilgrims as usual — surely the Guardians will allow the shiploads of worshippers to dock! And the Cloister will be open to all devout as well. This monster will think he has a free hand that night. That’s when we will act! He nodded to his two men. ‘We’ll lie low until then.’
Hyuke touched his finger to his nose. ‘Wise as a mouse in a kennel, sir.’
Puller was frowning. ‘A kennel?’
Hyuke leaned to him. ‘No cats.’
The man’s round face lit up. ‘Oh yeah. Course!’
Hyuke stood, brushed his moustache. ‘Thanks for the drink.’ He motioned to Puller, who remained slouched in his seat, unhappy again. ‘What?’
‘I still don’t see why you get to be sergeant.’
Hyuke cuffed his partner. ‘Tell you what. You show some command qualities like me an’ maybe you can make corporal.’
Puller straightened, his eyes widening. ‘Really? Me? Corporal?’ He stood and the two pushed their way through the crowd. ‘You think so?’
‘If you’re the best candidate.’
Bakune watched them go. All the foreign gods help him. What did he think he could possibly accomplish? Still, he had to try, didn’t he? Yes. That’s all one could do. Follow the dictates of one’s conscience.
He got up to return to his room, where the priest would no doubt be sound asleep despite the raucous crowd of the night.
They followed the track of the daemon migration. The carnage it wrought across the rolling Shadow landscape was unmistakable. So much for my fears of wandering lost, Kiska thought wryly. How long they walked she had no idea. Time seemed suspended here in the Shadow Realm. Or so it had seemed to her. But now change had struck. What the daemons described as a ‘Whorl’ had opened on to Shadow and drained an entire lake, obliterating their aeons-old way of life. That Whorl sounded suspiciously like the rift that had swallowed Tayschrenn. It even touched on to Chaos, or so Least Branch claimed.
They’d been walking in a protracted silence. Neither, it seemed, knew what to say. She thought of asking about his past, but comments from him suggested that that was a sensitive, if not closed, subject.
Then something moved beneath her clothes.
Kiska shrieked her surprise; she dropped her staff, tore off her cloak, her equipment, her jacket. Jheval watched, tense, hands going to his morningstars. ‘What is it?’
Kiska retrieved her stave, pointed to her heaped clothes and equipment. ‘There!’
Jheval regarded the pile, frowned his puzzlement. ‘You were bitten? A scorpion perhaps?’
Something beneath the clothes shifted. ‘Did you see that?’
One of Jheval’s morningstars whirred to life. ‘I’ll finish it.’
‘No!’ Gently, she prised apart the layers until she revealed her blanket and the few odds and ends wrapped in it. Kiska felt an uneasy sourness in her stomach. The sack! Some thing inside?
Kneeling, she untied the blanket and gingerly unrolled it. The dirty burlap sack was exposed. Something small squirmed within.
‘Do we let it out?’ Jheval asked.
Kiska rocked on her haunches. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we should yet.’
‘Well I’m not carrying it.’
She gave him a hard stare. ‘You haven’t been, have you?’
The man had the grace to look chastened. He brushed his moustache. ‘I was just saying…’
‘Never mind.’ Raising it gently, she tied the sack to her belt. Perhaps there it wouldn’t get crushed — if it could be. She drew on her jacket, her bandolier of gear, shoulder bags and cloak and started off again. ‘Come on.’
After walking for a time she regarded the man who was pacing along beside her, hands clasped behind his back. ‘So you participated in the Seven Cities uprising.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now you are here hoping to buy some sort of pardon.’
Jheval waved a hand deprecatingly. ‘Oh, not a full pardon. I don’t think I will ever be granted that… but it would be good not to have to worry about my back for the rest of my life.’
Now Kiska wondered just what crimes the man had committed against the Empire. Or, in a case of bloated vanity, he may just fancy himself an infamous wanted criminal. Or he was just plain lying to impress… her. She cleared her throat. ‘So. You served in the army of this Sha’ik?’
The man stopped dead. ‘Served? I? I…’
‘Yes?’
A cunning smile crept up his lips and he waved a finger. ‘Now, now. You see a mystery and you thrust a stick in — what will emerge? A lion or a goose?’ He walked on. ‘You thought you’d found a weakness, yes?’
Thought?
‘But all that is over,’ he said, waving a hand again. ‘For a time I was a true believer. Now, I’m just embarrassed.’ He slowed suddenly, shading his gaze. ‘What is that?’
Kiska peered ahead: a dark shape in the midst of the daemons’ wide migration track. Some sort of abandoned trash? A corpse?
