It wasn’t her most attractive, but it gave a sense of authority without being overbearing, and even if no one agreed with her opinion of it, it helped her play the part she had chosen for the day. Vincen was still asleep when she stepped out into the street, and the smell of cooking lentils followed her. All the meat for seasoning it was gone, and meals were going to be a bit bland around the place for a time. Small price.
Clara walked to the south with a pleasant smile and a nod for every familiar face. She forced herself to own the road without commanding it. To take it for granted, and by doing so, make the city itself wonder if perhaps it was hers. She had four people to call upon, and no assurance that any would be able to help her. There was no option but to try.
She found the third house she’d sought in a cul-de-sac near the western wall. A dozen children raced through the dim, grimy space playing as children did everywhere. Even in the shadow of evil.
Clara stepped up to the door. It was thin wood held by a leather hinge well on its way to rot. She rapped on it smartly with her knuckles and set her shoulders. Inside, someone stirred, grunted. A bar was pulled away and the door swung open. The man standing in the shadows blinked at her, as astounded by her presence as he would have been at a gryphon or a dragon. Baronesses were clearly well outside his experience. Even fallen ones.
“Good afternoon. I’m Clara. You must be Mihal,” Clara said.
“Yes,” he said, then bowed as if only then remembering to do so.
“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” Clara said. “I don’t think we’ve met formally.”
“She … ah … talks of you. On occasion. Ma’am.”
Clara smiled, nodding. It was always so difficult to put young men at ease. They all seemed to look at her as something out of a myth. All except Vincen.
“Your sister’s wedding. It went well, I hope?”
“Quite, ma’am,” Mihal said, scratching himself sincerely and indelicately. “It was a nice dress you gave her.”
“I’m glad it suited. May I come in?”
Mihal’s expression went uncomfortable and he glanced back over his shoulder in concern.
“I have three boys of my own,” Clara said. “I’ve seen worse.”
“Well, then. Certainly?”
The rooms were tiny, squalid, close, and repellent. Clara sat on a stool and crossed her ankles as if this were the finest drawing room in the Kingspire.
“I was wondering, Mihal, if I might put upon you for a favor.”
“Ah. Sure, I suppose,” he said as she drew out her pipe and packed it with tobacco. She lifted her eyebrows, and he brought her a burning candle to light it from. The smoke tasted wonderful and smelled much better than the room. Clara took the bowl in one hand, tapping her teeth with the stem.
“I am looking for a young man. A Firstblood. He probably thinks of himself as a tough, and he associates with a Kurtadam man of middle years,” she said, “and his friends call him Ossit.”
Marcus
After his season in Lyoneia, the plains of the Keshet in summer felt as strange and exotic to Marcus as walking into a dream. The wide horizons under the uncompromising bowl of sky felt too large, and the desert air strangely cool now that it wasn’t too humid for his sweat to dry. A few distant clouds scudded overhead with the dim quarter moon showing pale in the blue among them. The caravanserai, as near a thing to a permanent city in this part of the Keshet, centered on a stand of massive obelisks that rose in a circle toward the sky. The stones curved like the claws of some massive beast that could hold a hundred wagons and their teams in its palm, and in the center a spring of clear water trickled from a broken stone into a wide and shallow pool. Half of the travelers in the little oasis were Tralgu, the other half Yemmu, and so two Firstblood men on foot and without so much as their own tent stood out like blood on a wedding dress. Everything smelled of dust and horse shit, and the suspicious looks from the caravan guards promised violence if Marcus or Kit spoke the wrong words or laughed at the wrong jokes. Marcus suspected that it said something unpleasant about his choices in life that he felt so comfortable there.
He sat beside the water, his little pack at his side. He’d wrapped the sword in cloth and bound it with leather straps. No particular use if he wanted to draw the thing, but there was less chance he’d need its use if it wasn’t obvious he was hauling magical treasures from the Dragon Empire about with him. His own blade still hung from his hip, though in a new scabbard. The old one had rotted through with his clothes. The sand-colored cotton robes they’d bought on the Lyoneian coast weren’t so different a cut from the local. Kit made his way through the camps, listening and talking, being charming and using the power of the spider goddess to ingratiate himself to the carters and guards and nomadic hunters. Marcus only saw him when he came back with money or a bowl of boiled millet and roasted goat.
“What’re we looking at?” Marcus asked, biting into the meat.
“I think it could be worse,” Kit said softly enough that his words didn’t carry. “I haven’t found anyone heading in our direction, but I have been promised a mule for a reasonable price.”
“That’s the good news?
“That and no one seems to have decided to kill us and take our things.”
“Counts as a good day, then,” Marcus said. “Let’s go meet our new mule.”
It was a good mule, as mules go, sturdy across the shoulder and placid-eyed. Marcus and Kit had little to carry besides sleeping rolls, food, and waterskins. The Yemmu man who’d agreed to sell it lumbered along behind Marcus as he looked the animal over, his expression vaguely disgruntled as if he might be regretting the agreement.
“He limps sometimes,” the Yemmu said. “Have to rest him for a day or two so he don’t go lame.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Kit said in a pleasant voice that meant the man was lying. The more Marcus saw the spider goddess’s power in action, the more useful it seemed to be. Not much in a battle, maybe, but in everything that came before and after. And in his experience, before and after were what determined who bled in the field.
“Marcus?” Kit said.
“She’ll do,” Marcus said, putting his hand on the beast’s shoulder. The mule didn’t respond even to look at him. “Get us where we’re headed, anyway.”
The Yemmu sighed and accepted a pouch of coins from Kit. They stood together as the huge man counted through the silver and copper, nodded to himself, and waved at the beast.
“She’s yours now,” he said. “Too damn small to be any use to me anyway. Where you poor bastards going anyhow?”
“Borja,” Marcus said.
“Trying to keep clear of the war, then,” the Yemmu said. “That’s wise. Uglier than a camel’s asshole, that is.”
“There’s a charming image,” Marcus said.
“Have you had word from the west, then?” Kit said before the Yemmu could reply. “I have friends in Sarakal, and I’d be glad of any news.”
The man’s shrug was massive.
“Had word. Don’t know how much of it’s true. Say Nus fell and the fucking empire stripped the damn place to the walls. Put half the city in chains for their crimes.”
Marcus lifted an eyebrow. A black fly as thick as his finger settled on the mule’s ear, and the mule twitched it away.
“That’s a fair load of crimes, if you’re depriving half a city of their freedom over it,” Marcus said.
“Timzinae were behind the coup last year,” the Yemmu man explained. “New Lord Regent took it personal. He’s a strange one. Stories are he’s some kind of cunning man, only more powerful than I’ve ever heard. Talks with the spirits of the dead’s what they say. Dead march with him. It’s why he can keep going. No one thought he’d win
