“Pretend you are a Cherrati merchant and-”
“Oh, I see. Well, er. ” I faltered, quickly deciding that to behave like a lunatic in the company of lunatics was only reasonable. I started talking, hunching up my shoulders as I had seen the extravagant Cherratis doing in the marketplace at weekends. I was quite good at things like this, worthless though they were. I tilted my head and spoke through my nose. “You! Yes, you. Did you ever see quality like this? Feel that sleeve. That’s quality, my friend. The finest. what?”
“Silk,” he prompted.
“The finest silk you’ll put your unworthy hands on this side of the great river. Purchased at great expense from the hill tribes of the North and embroidered by the twelve virgin priestesses of Cherrath-waite. And would I ask twelve silver pieces of you? No sir, not twelve. Not ten. A mere eight silver pieces. What, you cheapskate, will you ruin me? All right, all right, I’ll take seven. ”
Shortly, Mithos smiled and told me to stop. “You have a talent, my friend,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll find a use for you yet. Now get rid of that dress and put the shirt on. And the trousers and boots. You’ll probably need a belt with those. There’s one in that box. Can you shoot a crossbow?”
“Kind of,” I answered. “So long as you don’t expect me to hit anything with it.”
“Take this,” he said. He handed me a whimsical little crossbow, one of the light, one-handed kind which was legal within the city. It probably wouldn’t do much damage to anyone in armor but it was a lovely piece of work: polished russet wood inlaid with silver. It was exactly what a Cherrati would carry.
Orgos was to ride with me in a wagon full of “borrowed” trade goods whose origin I dreaded to consider. He looked good too, I must say. There are more blacks native to Cherrat than to these parts, so he didn’t look at all out of place in his dark leather and crimson silks. He girded on a rapier (another weapon deemed legal because it wouldn’t penetrate the plate cuirass of an Empire soldier), and completed the picture with a plumed cap.
When Renthrette turned I was disappointed to note that she was dressed in the drab, coarse, and shapeless fabrics of a peasant. She gave me a blank look and turned away. I obviously wasn’t making much of an impression. She made light of a crate I could barely have lifted and my vague interest took another hit. This was unfortunate, since it was only my focus on her that was stopping me from thinking about all the terrible things I probably should have been thinking about, like where I was, who I was with, what I was doing, who was most likely to kill me, and whether they would do it this afternoon or sometime later in the week.
Orgos checked the ropes binding the innkeeper and the soldiers, all of whom were awake and frightened- looking in ways I would not have believed possible from Empire troops, and then ushered me out, heaving a box onto his shoulder and bidding me take the last bag. When only a couple of crates were left, Mithos led us into the corridor and spoke quickly. “Master Hawthorne, do as Orgos says. Speak only when you have to. I don’t want you being chased across rooftops again. There is an inn called the Wheatsheaf about a mile along the Stavis road. We will meet there, hopefully, for lunch. If we are not all together by nightfall, those who have arrived should head for Stavis at dawn tomorrow. Orgos, you take the wagon through the southwestern gate. And Will?” he said, bending down to my level and speaking carefully into my face. “Don’t even consider turning us in. If you do and they don’t have you up on the scaffold with us, burning your entrails in front of your dying eyes, I’ll make sure someone from our side does something similar. It may be less public, but it would probably feel about the same. Good luck.”
We left the tavern at a moderate pace and I kept my eyes turned down. With a flick of the reins Orgos set our four Cherrati mares walking out of the inn’s yard and into the streets. I fiddled with my crossbow and wondered if I should just shoot myself now and save them the trouble.
SCENE VI The gatehouse
A light summer rain had begun to fall as we left the inn. The Cresdon streets were rapidly being churned to mud by cart wheels, horse hooves, and the shaggy, lumbering cattle they breed in these parts. Orgos steered the wagon expertly enough and, at first, said nothing, so I was free to take a last look at the city, as we hit potholes of reeking, stagnant water deep enough to drown a sheep. All in all I wasn’t going to miss this place too much, even if I knew absolutely sod-all about what lay outside it.
Frequently we slowed to a virtual stop to negotiate the wagon through streets so narrow that we scraped against houses and shops on both sides. Most of them were white plaster and timber-framed ruins that tier fractionally outwards like inverted pyramids. The thatched roofs on either side of the street almost meet in the middle, but at ground level you can drive a wagon through. Just. I lost count of the number of times the street was blocked by some imbecile taking his geese or chickens to market. It took us three-quarters of an hour to cover about a mile and a half, a good ten minutes of which was spent arguing with the red-faced driver of the hay cart that was coming from the opposite direction.
I was not used to handling weapons (other than wholly ineffectual stage swords, of course, and since I had played almost nothing but girls, I didn’t get to handle those much either), and the feel of the crossbow in my hands, though it was little more than a toy, excited me. As we passed the hay carter, I let him glimpse it and he stopped throwing insults at us. Orgos noticed and frowned at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I wouldn’t have used it.”
“You got that right,” he remarked warningly. “And use your accent.”
“What? Why? There’s no one around.”
“Get used to it now,” he insisted, still using the nasal, singsong tones himself, “and you’ll be more comfortable should it become essential.”
“I’m shy,” I answered with a coy smile that was supposed to amuse him and make him sympathetic. It didn’t.
He leaned his face close to me and his black eyes fastened on to mine as he whispered, “This is not a game, boy, and there is more than just your scrawny neck on the chopping block. I am not requesting that you practice that accent, I am telling you to. Else get off my wagon.”
“Right,” I muttered, scared of his earnestness.
“What?” he demanded, making his point carefully.
“I mean, right you are, there, sir,” I replied in the best imitation of Cherrat as I could manage. He grinned, satisfied, and his white teeth glowed impossibly in his black face. His features seemed capable of slipping from death-threatening hostility into amiable good humor without so much as a pause for thought.
I hadn’t spent much time amongst black people for, in these parts, they tended to be wealthy merchants: hardly the types to frequent the Eagle. When you saw them it was usually in the marketplace, and I mean the traders’ market, not the bruised-fruit-and-rancid-meat places. They were well dressed, well spoken, and accompanied by servants and occasionally “attendants” (the euphemistic term applied to bodyguards to keep them legal). These guards couldn’t carry much in the way of arms in the town, of course, but they could be weighed down with plate armor and battle-axes on the roads. That was legal so long as they didn’t travel in groups of more than four.
People tended to be respectful of the black merchants for their wealth and education, but you sometimes got a sense of resentment simply because they were outsiders, a resentment aggravated by the fact that our town was occupied by foreigners. I was rather fascinated by the darkness of Orgos’s skin, the tight curl of his hair, and the broad features of his face. Fascinated, but not reassured. I don’t suppose I’d ever been this close to a black man before, and that actually made me feel worse. I wouldn’t miss this lousy town, if I got out of it, but Orgos, with his fake accent and unfamiliar appearance, reminded me of how little I knew of the outside world I was being thrown into, and I resented him for it. Whether I resented him enough to turn him over to the guards on the gate remained to be seen.
“What was that flash of light?” I said, suddenly remembering something that had been nagging at me.
“What flash of light?”
“Back at the inn,” I said. “When the soldiers came in. There was a flash of light, bright like a firework. I wasn’t looking right at it, but I saw the way it lit the room and then. I don’t know. I got confused or sick or something.”
“It must have been a spark from swords clashing,” he said. He stared ahead of him.
“A spark that lit the whole room?” I said. “No way.”
