TEALE, FHAVEON
Penya Esamy laughed and salt wind tickled strands of her tied-back grey hair. Beside her scuttled a slender young man with pale skin, dark eyes and the slightly haunted look of one who sought her services a little too regularly.
But Rhan’s guise didn’t fool her and he knew it. She’d known him far too long.
The day was overcast, the sky fluffed layers of grey. To one side of them, scattered buildings rose in zigzags to forested hills above the town – to the other, trade-boats hunkered down in rows upon the water, covered in sun- faded fabric and awaiting summer rain. The great city of Fhaveon had no sea harbour – and this little town of Teale, further north and on a gentler coastline, was lifeline to both fisherfolk and incoming coastal trade.
Flanked by a tall lighthouse and a blurred, grey-sombre statue, the harbour mouth was currently quiet.
Down through long returns, Rhan had grown fond of Teale. He’d been instrumental in the town’s construction – generations ago, when Adward had been a young man, inheritor of his great-grandfather’s zeal and fire. High on the hillside, they’d built the Hollow Theatre together, the celebration of the trade cycle that had brought peace and communication to the Varchinde. It stood there, as Rhan remembered, like a promise – a promise that the Grasslands would thrive.
Teale was shabby now, more ribbon-town than trading post. A population once comfortable with a tithe of the incoming cargo had been suitably squeezed by Phylos’s tight fist. The theatre shone bright as the sun slanted through the clouds. On the waterfront, many businesses were shuttered and hard-eyed predators loitered in gaggles in their doorways.
Watching.
Rhan could feel their gazes as they passed, he didn’t look up. Beside him, Penya walked swiftly.
In the harbour, there were two of the great, square-sailed Archipelagan boats, their prow-sculpted maidens blank eyed and huge breasted above the wharf, smiling emptily at the rising town. These triremes would bring spiceweed, parchment and wrought-fibre gems – cargo then carried by cart and caravan south over the hills to Fhaveon herself, to the fiveday markets and the meticulous records of the Cartel.
They would return laden with terhnwood of their own.
The breeze filled Rhan’s senses with salt, with weed and wrack, with a tumble of images never forgotten – he breathed them deep. The world may have no memory – but these, these were
“You shouldn’t be here, you great lunk.” Penya spoke softly and with a long affection. She jabbed him with a conspiratorial elbow. “How the rhez did you get yourself arrested?”
“Carelessness.” He shrugged. “I needed to tell you to your face, Pen. You’ve been a good friend, never betrayed me – I don’t want to see this madness infect you. That – and I need to ask you something.”
She chuckled. The slant of sunlight was obscured by the grey and the theatre’s glow vanished back into the hillside.
“You didn’t come for a last fix, then?”
“I came to say goodbye, you daft old
“Now there’s a word you don’t hear any more.” Wheeling seabirds cried raucous laughter. “Facing the cold embrace of withdrawal, are we? I can make it easier for you, if that’d help.”
The first splatters of rain began to hit his cheek.
“For the Gods’ sakes, Pen, I know what I look like but comedown? The least of my problems.” The harbour wind was sharp, it blew the rain into his face. He lowered his voice to a rumble. “Elemental fires, roving monsters, and that’s only the beginning. You should... retire for a while. Things are about to get nasty.”
“I can take care of myself. You taught me how, as I remember.” Penya eyed a scattering of bored local toughs, loitering in a chipped stone doorway. Litter blew round their feet. Their eyes raked her like broken-off blades, but her hand rested pointedly on the long knife at her belt and they shuffled back. She shot him a look round the side of her cheek. “You took a chance coming here.”
“They’ll never notice me.” Rhan grinned, took a minute approximation of a bow. “Trick of the light.”
She chuckled, threw him a brief smile. Next to her grey hair and assured walk, he was slight and twitchy, hollow eyed and sallow skinned – carefully unremarkable. If Phylos’s eyes were here, they’d pass straight over him.
“Walk with me,” she said. “Round here, walls have bigger ears than you’d think.”
The wind cut harsh as they turned from the waterfront and began to move out along the grey-stone harbour wall, blinking at rain and spray. Hands had built this, bare hands. Sweat and effort had carried these stones and piled them high from the water... Now, algae and shellfish grew in their cracks.
The tide pulled at them, hissing.
“It got away from me, Pen. I wasn’t paying enough damned attention and now I have to fix it. All of it. The Bard’s heart holds a fear that’s crazing him – and this time his madness is catching.” Anger flickered like light under his skin. “You’re the finest herbalist I know – and I need you to do something for me.” He looked back up at the hills that cupped the town, almost as if he expected to see flames spreading through the green. “Call it a suspicion, a feeling. I need to know if there’s anything wrong with the grass.”
“The moons on two sticks.” Penya snorted. Below them, a boatman stood in the bottom of a small, local craft, picking spindly-legged crustaceans from a woven cage. He held them up, shook them, dropped the bigger ones into a basket, threw the smaller ones back into the harbour. “Y’know,” she said, pausing to watch, “some of those creatures are hundreds of returns old. Hundreds.” The boatman dropped another one. “They end their lives in that tar-stinky little boat – and we
Rhan stopped beside her, skin prickling, rain in his eyes. The clouds were sinking lower overhead.
“Why are you here, Rhan? Really? She rounded on him, punched him to hide an odd note in her voice. “You’ve been arrested! I should throw you in the harbour!”
“Maybe he’ll pick me up and put me in his basket. Penya –” now he turned her to look at him, searching her face “– what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” With a flicker of more usual, impish humour, she took his jaw in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. “Come on, you – bet I can still beat you.” She broke into a run, turned to grin at him, jogging backwards with strands of her hair blowing. She was still slender, a woman he’d watched grow from a fearful girl, into a lover, into a friend. “Come on, you timeless bastard, see if you can keep up!”
He chuckled, broke into a shambling run suited to his wasted appearance.
She taunted him. “Come
He shambled faster.
Under his roughly sandaled feet, the wall ran to a long, embracing curve, protecting the harbour and ending in its tall, stone guardian, a statue with features long since blunted by coastal weather. He stood faceless, twin to the lighthouse, sombre and dark, the other side of the harbour mouth.
Defended by the guardian’s plinth was a square cot, built like the wall out of shaped and carried rocks. Once, boats not wishing or needing to moor in the harbour had done trade here.
Now it was half tumbledown. No one had used it in returns.
Her laughter was snatched by the wind, thrown in his face.
And the realisation hit him like a clothyard shaft.
The thought was sharp and sudden, hurting – but his certainty was absolute. Rhan lurched to a stop, his heart slowly crushing in a fist of pure, cold betrayal.
