his wife three years earlier, the general had ceased to be startled by anything that occurred in this never-ending war with the Mannians. It was as though nothing, ever again, could be as bad as the news he had received on the day of her death.
'I thought they were being overly quiet of late,' General Creed murmured from across the room, where he had turned to the windows overlooking the Shield, his hands clasped behind his back.
Somehow, in spite of the words, the general's calm tone settled Bahn's nerves. He realized once more how much store he placed in this old man's abilities as a leader.
He has turned into my father, mused Bahn, and I the young boy.
His hand sought out one of the two wooden chairs before the desk and he sat himself down heavily. Bahn was of a different cut to the general. He had been awoken shortly after dawn by Hanlow, of the Khosian intelligence corp, after a long and sleepless night in which his thoughts had refused to settle. At the door of his townhouse he had accepted a dispatch from the early-morning visitor, a decoded version of the message already scrawled down one side of it. Creed would still be asleep, Hanlow had said, and he did not wish to simply leave it on a desk. After Bahn had read the note his eyes had flicked to meet Hanlow's and he had cleared his throat. Very well, he'd said. He would take it to Creed himself.
Once the messenger had gone, the simple business of finding his left boot had turned into a one-sided argument with his wife. Marlee's patient decorum had only worsened his sudden bad temper, and he stomped around the house flinging items about in search of the errant boot. In gradual measures a black rage had descended upon him, a mood new to him, and wholly foreign.
Bahn had turned and shouted at Marlee at the top of his lungs, an occurence as shocking as striking her a blow. His son had fled the room; Ariale began to wail from her bedroom upstairs.
Marlee followed after her husband, talking to him calmly, allowing him no room in which to breathe. He watched himself, as though a passenger inside his own body, aware of his voice ringing loud and sharp in the ever- brightening rooms of their house, shocked by the things he was saying to her, to himself; by the outrage that coursed through him without reason.
At last Marlee had seized his arm in a sharp grip. 'What is it?' she had hissed. Bahn had forced himself to look her in the eye. At once the spell left him.
What am I doing? he had wondered, as he returned to his normal self.
Breathing out a long sigh, Bahn had caressed her arm as an apology. 'Maybe nothing,' he said softly, and he drew her to him, smothering his face in her berry-scented hair as he pressed her hard body against his own, her slender waist clasped within his hands. And in that embrace he felt all the weariness of the war rush into him like the years of an old man suddenly being poured into someone young and undeserving, and he thought again, trembling, What am I doing? – for it seemed in that question that everything he had ever loved or had offered purpose in his life lay furled within its answer.
Marlee held up his missing boot in one hand, which she had discovered a moment earlier. Their eyes glittered as they rested the bones of their foreheads together. He kissed her face while in his hand he still clutched the crumpled despatch.
'What do you make of it, sir?' Bahn asked, as he licked his dry lips. 'It sounds like an invasion to me.'
The old warrior was standing close enough to the window pane to mist the cold glass with his breath. He wiped it clear with a single noisy smear of his sleeve.
'Yes, it does, doesn't it?'
'To Khos?'
A moment of consideration. 'Perhaps – it would not surprise me.'
At those few words, Bahn felt the blood drain from his face. 'Sweet mercy. I pray to Fate it is not so.'
Creed said nothing for a moment, his eyes squinting as he took in the Shield stretched out below.
'As do I,' he murmured. 'We must inform the Council.'
Bahn stared hard at Creed's profile, silhouetted vaguely in the daylight. For a moment, just a second or two and no more, a tremor ran through the general's jaw. And then it was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Farlander This is all our doing,' said Serese, looking out of the carriage's window at the passing destruction, the bloodstains on the streets, the blackened buildings still leaking smoke.
Baracha peered at her, perplexed. He did not understand his daughter these days. By his side, Ash appeared lost in his own world. He had spoken little since his seeming recovery.
The carriage turned east towards the First Harbour, following the wide, meandering thoroughfare known as the Serpentine. Ash stroked the small jar of ashes that hung about his neck, unconsciously it seemed, as he pondered something.
They had deemed it too risky to book tickets for a passenger ship straight to Cheem; the Regulators would be watching the ports closely, hoping the Rshun would emerge from hiding now that the ports had reopened. Instead, they had met with an Alhazii smuggler known to Baracha, and had offered the man a large sum of money for berths on his fast sloop. He was intent on shipping a cargo of dross down to Palo-Fortuna; whence they could easily find transportation back to Cheem. It was a safer option. They would be avoiding customs altogether, by rowing out to the ship in a small boat from the wharf fronting a private warehouse.
The driver pulled the zels to a stop. To their right, the wharf led to the open bay where the fleet lay at anchor. The carriage rocked on its suspension as the four cloaked and hooded figures stepped out from both sides. Baracha paid the man and followed the other three to the edge of the wharf, where a large rowing boat bobbed in the water. Six bearded sailors sat at the oars, restlessly eyeing the vicinity. They held their oars vertical in the air.
Momentarily, the Rshun stopped to take in the sight of the great fleet.
'I wonder where they will make for,' mused Baracha.
'Wherever it is, I feel pity for them,' responded Aleas.
The sailors were waiting impatiently. They had no wish to linger here with their ship already loaded and ready to sail.
'Remember,' said Baracha in a hushed voice to his daughter and Aleas, 'we are escaped slaves, and Ash is a monk escorting us to his mission in Minos. Speak only when spoken to, and keep well out of sight.'
Aleas and Serese were first to clamber down into the boat. No greeting came from the sailors, save for sharp orders to sit quickly and stay out of the way. Ash held back, still fingering the jar suspended at his neck.
Baracha moved to step down behind them, then stopped, a foot still resting on the wharf side. He muttered what sounded like a curse, and turned back to Ash.
'You're not coming with us, are you?'
'No. I do not think that I am.'
The Alhazii strode off a short distance from the boat. Ash slowly followed him.
They halted together under the pale morning sun.
'You can't do this,' declared Baracha.
'Yet I must.'
'Speak plainly, you old fool. You wish revenge for your boy. You want to race off and slay the Matriarch herself.'
Ash did not deny it.
Baracha spoke low, though the words were spat with force. 'And what example do you set by such actions? Our oldest Rshun running off to seek his revenge?'
'It is justice that I seek. It is the very least the boy deserves from me now.'
Baracha snorted. 'You bandy with words. If you commit this act, you break the code that we live by. It is a personal vendetta you are speaking of, and it goes against all that the Rshun stand for. Even I can appreciate that much.'
'Then I am no longer Rshun,' replied Ash coldly, 'and I break only my own code, not that of the order.'
Baracha grasped his arm. The old farlander looked down at the hand that gripped him, then up to the angry eyes. 'Rshun or not, you set an example to us all. You have reached the end of your wits from grief, that's all.
