“Your license for the dispensation of ardent spirits is in arrears,” said Vidalos. “There’s no record at the Magistrates’ Court of the fee having been received for this year.”
“But … but I did pay it. I certainly did!”
“Josten, sir, I desire to believe you with all my soul, but it’s my charge to execute this warrant, and execute it I must, or it’s my hide they’ll have off on Penance Day.”
“Well, we can settle the business about the records later,” said Josten. “Just tell me what I owe and I’ll pay it right now.”
“I’m
“But … that’s three days from now. Until then—”
“Until then,” said Vidalos quietly, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disperse this party. After that it’s your choice, whether we seal your doors or remove your liquor. It’s only a few days, sir.”
“Only a few days?” hissed Josten, incredulous.
“Oh, Sabetha,” Locke muttered to himself. “You gods-damned artist. Hello to you, too.”
INTERLUDE: BASTARDS ABROAD
1
THEY WERE FORTY miles beyond the border of greater Camorr, on the third morning of their journey, when they passed the first corpse swaying beneath the arching branch of a roadside tree.
“Oh, look,” said Calo, who sat beside Jean at the front of the wagon. “All the comforts of home.”
“It’s what we do with bandits when there’s a spare noose about,” said Anatoly Vireska, who was walking beside them munching on a late breakfast of dried figs. Their wagon led the caravan. “There’s one every mile or two. If the noose is occupied, or it ain’t convenient, we just open their throats and shove ’em off the road.”
“Are there really that many bandits?” said Sabetha. She sat atop the wagon with her feet propped on the snoring form of Galdo, who’d kept the predawn watch. “Beg pardon. It’s just that there doesn’t seem to be anyone actually lurking about.” She sounded bored.
“Well, there’s good and bad times,” said the caravan master. “Summer like this we might see one once a month. Our friend here, we strung him up about that long ago. Been quiet since.
“But when a harvest goes bad, gods help us, they’re in the woods thick as bird shit. And after a war, it’s mercenaries and deserters raising hell. I double the guard. And I double my fees, heh.”
Locke wasn’t sure he agreed that there was nothing lurking. The countryside had the haunted quality he remembered from the months he’d once spent learning the rudiments of farm life. All those nights he’d lain awake listening to the alien sound of rustling leaves, yearning for the familiar clamor of carriage wheels, footsteps on stone, boats on water.
The old imperial road had been built well, but it was starting to crumble now in these remote places between the major powers. The empty garrison forts, silent as mausoleums, were vanishing behind misty groves of cypress and witchwood, and the little towns that had grown around them were reduced to moss-covered ruins and lines in the dirt.
Locke walked along beside the wagon on the side opposite Vireska, trying to keep his eyes on their surroundings and away from Sabetha. She’d discarded her rather matronly hood, and her hair fluttered in the warm breeze.
She hadn’t kept their “appointment” the second evening. In fact, she’d barely spoken to him at all, remaining absorbed in the plays she’d packed and deflecting all attempts at conversation as adroitly as she’d parried his baton strokes.
The caravan, six wagons total, trundled along in the rising morning heat. At noon they passed through a thicket like a dark tunnel. A temporarily empty noose swung from one of the high dark branches, a forlorn pendulum.
“You know, it was novel at first,” said Calo, “but I’m starting to think the place could use a more cheerful sort of distance marker.”
“Bandits would tear down proper signposts,” said Vireska, “but they’re all afraid to touch the nooses. They say that when you don’t hang someone over running water, the rope holds the unquiet soul. Awful bad luck to touch it unless you’re giving it a new victim.”
“Hmm,” said Calo. “If I was stuck out here jumping wagon trains in the middle of shit-sucking nowhere, I’d assume my luck was already as bad as it gets.”
2
THEY HALTED for the night in the village of Tresanconne, a hamlet of about two hundred souls built on three marsh-moated hills, protected by stockades of sharpened logs. It was the only kind of settlement that could flourish out here, according to Vireska—too big for bandits to overrun, but too remote to make it worthwhile for parties of soldiers from Camorr to pay it a visit for “road upkeep taxes.”
No rural idyll, this. The villagers were sullen and suspicious, more appreciative of outside goods than the outsiders who brought them. Still, the rough hilltop lot they provided for caravans was preferable to any bed awaiting them out in the lightless damps of the wilderness.
Locke took his turn sweeping beneath the wagon while Jean saw to the horses. The Sanza twins, grudgingly accepting one another’s proximity, wandered off to survey the village. Sabetha remained atop the wagon, guarding their possessions. Locke needed just a few minutes to ensure that the space in which they would set their bedrolls was no embarrassment to civilization, and then it occurred to him that they were more or less alone.
“I, ah, I regret not having a chance to speak to you last night,” he said.
“Oh? Was it any real loss to either of us?”
“You had— Well, I don’t suppose you did promise. You’d said you’d consider it, at least.”
“That’s right, I didn’t promise.”
“Well … damn. You’re obviously in a mood.”
“Am I?” There was danger in her tone. “Am I really? Why should that be exceptional? A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command the world mutters darkly about her
“I only meant it by way of, uh, well, nothing, really. It was just a conversational note. Look, it’s really damned … odd … having to look for ploys to speak with you, as though we were complete strangers!”
“If I’m in a mood,” said Sabetha after a moment of reflective silence, “it’s because this journey is unfolding more or less as I had foreseen. Tedium, bumpy roads, and biting insects.”
“Ah,” said Locke. “Do I count as part of the tedium or one of the biting insects?”
“If I didn’t know any better,” she said softly, “I’d swear the horseshit-sweeper was attempting to be charming.”
“You might as well assume,” said Locke, not sure whether he was feeling bold or merely willing himself to feel bold, “that I’m always attempting to be charming where you’re concerned.”
“Now, that’s risky.” Sabetha rolled sideways and jumped down beside him. “That sort of directness compels a response, but what’s it to be? Do I encourage you in this sort of talk or do I stop you cold?”
She took a step forward, hands on hips, and despite himself Locke leaned backward, bracing against the wagon at the last second to avoid a fall that would have been, perhaps, the most graceless thing ever accomplished in the history of Therin civilization.
