One of the others said, “I remember you.” He said nothing more. He lowered his head, went to sleep.
The second man acknowledged events with a nod and a shudder. He placed curds of dried camel dung on the resurrected fire, then lay down on his left side.
Haroun noticed changes next morning. Word had spread.
His presence was acknowledged subtly everywhere. Had his fireside companion truly recognized him? If so, it was definitely time to leave. Most of the walking dead here had fol owed El Murid.
Did he dare reclaim his animals and gear? Would the stable keeper even deal with him now that he could not be distinguished from the sort of man he pretended to be?
Nothing developed, though, except the exchange of whispers amongst the lost. Haroun got the news himself three times. No one named a revenant champion from days gone by. The man from the fire had changed his mind or had not been believed. Either was convenient.
...
Haroun wakened suddenly. Someone had come too close. He sensed no malice, however. He feigned sleep, let the situation develop. He was seated against an adobe wal in a pool of shadow. Moonlight il uminated what could be seen through cracked eyelids. A breeze tumbled the skeleton of a brushy weed.
Someone settled to his right. The man smel ed familiar.
He would be the companion who never spoke.
Haroun waited.
A long time passed before the man whispered, “A courier came from Al Rhemish.” The man had trouble talking. He stammered. “He told the Sheyik’s night boy to gather fodder for twenty horses for four days.” Someone would be coming out from the capital. Haroun could not be the reason. Megelin’s few incompetent shaghuns would waste no time spying on no-account towns awash in human flotsam. It likely meant only that a Royalist band would pass through on its way somewhere to make someone miserable.
Haroun did not respond. His companion did nothing to suggest that a response was necessary.
Next morning the Sheyik’s men came looking for day labor.
Haroun joined the volunteers. Some went looking for fodder. Haroun was in the group set to cleaning the Sheyik’s stable and corral. He did not see the point, nor did he learn anything useful.
His companions cared not at al . Shifting horse manure or no, it was al the same. The slower they worked the longer they would be employed.
Haroun wandered off, vacant-eyed, as often as he dared.
The Sheyik’s men would find him and bring him back to the corral. He learned nothing about the layout inside the adobe wal screening the Sheyik’s residence, which was a minor fortress built of mud brick.
Back behind his pitchfork, Haroun wondered why he felt compel ed to study the place. Because someone had a notion that important things were about to happen? Or because of some unconscious premonition of his own?
He had those infrequently. He had learned to pay attention.
But they were not universal y trustworthy. A premonition had made him murder an innocent prince and princess.
Someone was coming. Someone with an escort. Who it would be was secret but it had to be someone firmly convinced of his own importance.
Come sundown Haroun’s work party scattered into al-Habor after being fed. Like the others, bin Yousif stuffed himself til his stomach ached and carried away whatever he could hide about his person.
He fel asleep against the same wal behind another tiny fire. The same men shared the warmth. Both had been part of the work party. They were rich tonight, as al-Habor’s lost understood that state.
Haroun drifted off wondering if they three would not now offer too much temptation to the Bul s of al- Habor.
Chapter Seven:
The Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, Commander, Western Army, second in the Dread Empire, took some time off work.
Shih-ka’i used a portal known only to himself. He stepped out on an island unimaginably far to the east.
Ehelebe might once have been its name. He was not sure.
Ehelebe was obscure and might have been something else.
He was not looking forward but he was a man who had attained his station by meticulous attention to detail, to duty, by genius, by an unsul ied reputation for being apolitical, and because he once enjoyed some favor from politicals who used him as a showpiece.
Shih-ka’i believed that his character made him uniquely suited to pul Shinsan together fol owing its late, suicidal internal conflicts. The daughter of the Demon Prince was now the fountainhead of empire but Ssu-ma Shih- ka’i, the pig farmer’s son, was the symbol, device, and guarantor of the new era. And what he wanted to do now, in service to that guarantee, was make sure that a man he had exiled would be reintegrated into Tervola society. Kuo Wen-chin could be of incalculable value if he would stifle his ambition.
Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i owed Kuo. Wen-chin had plucked him from obscurity, as commander of a training legion, and had loosed him on the revenant god of the east. From that triumph he had gone on to glory in the west.
There was no sign of Kuo. The fortress round the old laboratories was deserted. It was morning but little sunlight reached Shih-ka’i. There was no artificial lighting. Dust lay heavy. It fil ed the air when he moved. He removed his boar mask so he could sneeze.
He did not cal out. Even an apolitical Tervola dared not go round shouting the name of a condemned man he had saved. Who knew who might hear you impeach yourself?
Had Kuo escaped?
Not likely, though the man was a genius. And there was a precedent. The Deliverer had escaped by swimming to the mainland. Then he
had walked on west, al ied with forces ancient and terrible. That route was closed, now. No one would survive it again. Portals were the only way out.
The dust in the staging chamber made it clear that Lord Kuo had not gotten out that way.
The kitchen was the place to start. Kuo had to eat.
Miniature portals delivered foodstuffs there, from sources calculated to raise no questions.
Shih-ka’i strained to remember his way. He had visited only briefly a few times, most recently to stash Kuo. It took a while.
The kitchen did show signs of regular use by someone with few skil s and no dedication to order.
A remote clatter caught Ssu-ma’s attention.
He found his man down where past tenants had housed their prisoners and monsters. Wen-chin was spoon- feeding a drooling old man.
Shih-ka’i’s advent startled Wen-chin, who, nevertheless, continued feeding the invalid. Kuo said, “I didn’t expect you so soon. Are you here to end the threat?”
“No. I wanted to make sure of your welfare. Who is this?”
“I don’t know. Presumably someone important to the previous regime. I can’t imagine how he survived. He hasn’t much mind left. He is a project fil ed with chal enges, the biggest being to overcome his fears so I can draw him back to the world.”
“Oh?”
“I would’ve gone mad without him.”
“Then him being here was piece of good fortune.” And a grim harbinger, perhaps.
“So. You’re not here to kil me. Then tel me what’s happened out there.”
Shih-ka’i brought him up to date.
