Farlander

'I don't understand.'

'I know.'

They followed the stream for a short time, then angled away from it, treading across marshy ground that sucked at their sandalled feet. Ash continued walking without effort, as though he was taking an afternoon stroll. Nico, by his side, was now sweating.

'The Seer is our order's most valued member, boy. Remember this when you meet him. Our lore, our history, all of it has been passed down through the line of Seers. Without a Seer we would become blind, without direction. He alone can look into the heart of a seal and tell us what we must know from it. He can look equally into the heart of a novice, and judge if he is worthy. In a way, he will do so with you.'

'I am to be judged?'

'You will not know it. Mostly he will concentrate on the seal.'

'I still think he sounds like a miracle-man.'

'Boy, there are no miracles. What the Seer does is wholly natural.'

'In the bazaar of Bar-Khos, I once saw a man who could stand upside-down balanced on his lips. He could do press-ups of a kind when he pursed his lips against the ground. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.'

Ash gave a dismissive toss of his head. 'The Seer is what you Mercians call a… prodigy. They have not always been so, our Seers, but this one… this one is a man of learning as well as of intuition. When we first came here, to the Miders, he heard of Zanzahar and the many things they imported there from the Isles of Sky. He travelled to the city to study them, though it was not always clear what those things had been designed for. The seeds of the mali tree, for instance. They are sold in that city as rare charms capable of bonding to their wearer. They store a person's life in some way, so the wearers, if they practise certain techniques, can relive those events in dreams of their own choosing. The Seer – it was he who discovered how to bisect those seeds and twin them, so we could use them for our own purposes. In that way he invented the seals.'

'So how did you conduct vendetta before then?'

'With great difficulty.' Ash cast a backward glance at his apprentice. There was a sparkle to his dark features, a vitality that seemed to have been absent for some time. 'Your wounds have healed well,' he observed to his apprentice.

'Yes,' Nico agreed.

It was true. The wounds caused by Aleas had been small enough cuts, as it turned out. They had not even require stitching. Nico had simply applied beeswax to them, as Aleas himself had suggested, whereupon the wounds had not bruised but stayed red and raw for some days, before scabbing over, causing the discomfort of constant itching more than anything else. When Nico had later caught his reflection, backlit by candle flame, in the glass of one of the kitchen windows, he was even somewhat taken with what he saw. The small scars made him look older, he decided.

The Seer lived alone in a little hermitage further up the valley. His hermitage sat on a hump of grass in the bend formed by a small, frothy brook that ran between rocks turned green with algae. Trees protected it on the windward side, gnarly jupes in full bloom and a large weeping willow whose leaves trailed in the current of water and sparred with its passing. The hermitage itself was nothing more than a shack, with a rectangular hole cut in one wall to overlook the brook, and which served as both window and door.

'Remember what I have told you,' said Ash as they approached.

Nico followed him inside. For a moment, in the dusty sunlight filtering past him though the doorway, he wondered if they had come to the wrong place.

In the centre of the tiny hut, the Seer sat cross-legged on a mat of woven rushes, facing the door with his eyes half closed. He was a skinny, ancient man, with a milky film covering his hooded eyes, and skin like that of fruit left too long in the sun. He was a farlander, obviously, and his dark skin contrasted sharply with the great puffs of white hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears. His scalp was bald. His earlobes, ritually mutilated, hung obscenely down to his shoulders in a manner Nico had never seen before.

Nico turned with open mouth to Ash to find him kneeling on the ground. With a jerk of his head, he indicated for Nico to kneel beside him.

The ancient farlander stared at Nico silently, in a way that reminded him of one his mother's cats, as if gazing at something that was not even there. The old man blinked slowly, then spread his lips into a grin that exposed his toothless gums. He nodded once, as though in greeting, seeming pleased at the sight of the young man before him, or amused at the very least.

He became serious as he turned to Ash who, without comment, passed the dead seal into the old man's shaking hands.

They waited expectantly. A chant filled the air as the old Seer whined something in the farlander tongue, and scratched at the lice infesting his robe. Eventually he fell silent, sitting entirely motionless with his eyes closed, the occasional grassfly settling on his bald, liver-spotted head. It was like those initial sessions of practising meditation on the Falcon, in which Nico had been unable to settle, and the aches of his body had eventually turned to agony. Indeed, he tried to settle into meditation, but it was useless, for he was too impatient to find out what would happen next. Absently, he chewed at his lip and stared at the damp-stained planks lining the opposite wall.

It was a blessed relief when the old Seer finally broke his meditative silence, smacking his dry lips and leaning away from the lifeless seal cradled in both hands.

'Shinsh ta-kana…' he croaked in a high-pitched voice. 'Yoshi, li-naga!' And then he nodded his head and frowned quite sadly.

'Murder,' Ash translated for the boy, his voice hard.

*

That evening, as the Rshun finished their supper around the tables in the large dining hall that occupied much of the north wing of the monastery building, and the candles brightened against the fading light coming through its many windows, a sudden ringing of cutlery against glass silenced the quiet chatter.

Nico looked up from the table where he sat with the other apprentices, still chewing on the last of his rice cake. Aleas stopped talking to him, and did the same. From the back of the room, a wizened far-lander rose slowly from his wooden chair. He was older than Ash, though not as ancient and withered as the Seer. Nico knew him to be Osh, the head of the order, the man who had founded this very monastery here in the mountains of Cheem. He had several times seen him limping around the place, but never before had he heard him speak.

The old Rshun's voice echoed with a clear resonance around the hushed room.

'My friends,' he declared to the multitude of faces now turned towards him. 'We have, on this night, a task incumbent upon us of an exceptional nature. One of our patrons has taken to the High Road. The Seer informs us that it was murder. He has also told us, through his wisdom, of the culprit responsible for this act.' Osh paused and studied each face in turn, measuring them for attention, or perhaps some other quality only he could perceive.

'Tonight we must declare vendetta on a priest of Mann. Not merely any priest, take mind. No, as always, life refuses to be as straightforward as that. Tonight, we declare vendetta on Kirkus dul Dubois – that is, the son of Sasheen dul Dubois, the Holy Matriarch of Mann.'

Murmurs broke out around the room. Nico stole a glance towards Ash, who sat at the same high table as the old leader. Ash merely sipped from his goblet of water, his expression neutral.

'We have declared vendetta many times upon citizens of the Empire, but never against one of such standing. To do so tonight will be a hazardous venture for our order. Kirkus was aware that his victim wore a seal and was thus under our protection. Therefore, the Empire must know that we will seek vendetta against him. No doubt, they will do all in their power to stop us, including, I suspect, engineering our total destruction. He is, after all, the only child of the Matriarch herself.

'I believe their first response will be to target our agents scattered around the Miders ports, in the false belief that our people there in the cities will know the whereabouts of our location here. Since we have no other contact with our patrons save through our agents, that is all the Mannians can do for now. Tonight, I have already instructed that carrier birds be sent out to all of them, warning them to be vigilant.

'Being of consequence to all of us, I have chosen to speak here at a time and place where we come together to share in simple nourishment. We must be, every one of us, aware of what we undertake tonight. In such a spirit, I select no one to be sent on this vendetta. Instead, I ask for three volunteers.'

A pause, and then in the centre of the dining hall a man stood with a scrape of his chair and clasped his hands before him. Almost as quickly, a dozen more Rshun rose from their seats.