A Solitary Journey (36 page)

A thud followed by a ball of smoke and flame rising above the rooftops shattered her thoughts. She crawled forward to see, listening to the cries of people as the smoke blackened and thickened. Whatever caused the explosion happened several streets from where she was hiding. Was it a thunderclap? Was it magic? Her curiosity urged her to climb down and go see what was happening, but she remembered what the old woman
told her and stayed put, watching over the rooftops for more explosions. There were none. As she relaxed against the beam Onebark barked in the alley, so she shuffled forward again in time to see a black bush rat scampering up the ladder on the outer rail. ‘Whisper!’ she cried and scooped the rat into her arms.
Found,
the rat projected.

Meg stroked Whisper’s shiny coat. ‘Where did you go?’ she asked. She smiled and projected as best as she could the question. Whisper replied with a jumble of images—boots and feet and horses’ hooves and then planks and boxes and stones—which made Meg laugh. ‘I can’t imagine the world from your point of view,’ she said and rubbed Whisper’s neck affectionately. Then she heard voices and tensed.

‘She’s up there,’ the old woman said.

‘Alone?’ a man asked.

‘Yes.’

Meg put Whisper down and edged towards the lip of the loft, but when she glimpsed the dark shock of hair of a stranger ascending the ladder she sat back, wondering what to do—wondering whether or not he was a threat. A head appeared—a young man, close to her age with a plain face except that his eyes sparkled ocean blue. ‘Why are you hiding from the soldiers?’ he asked.

A
Ahmud Ki crouched under the low wagon, watching the soldiers’ boots circling. Having lost Meg in the mad dash to escape he took an independent route along two alleys, through a shop and over a tall wooden fence until he emerged in this street and dived under the wagon. The soldiers here weren’t the ones who first chased him, but he wasn’t taking risks. As they moved away, he slid from under the wagon and eased into a small shop doorway. A dagger pressed against his throat and a rough voice whispered, ‘We don’t take kindly to thieves around here.’

‘I’m no thief,’ A Ahmud Ki calmly replied, memories of his experiences with the Andrakian assassin guild sparked by the blade’s cold edge.

‘Then tell me why the soldiers have so much interest in you.’

‘I don’t know. I’m new in the city.’

The knife slid from his throat. ‘Come inside and don’t do anything stupid,’ said the voice.

A Ahmud Ki entered the shop, squeezing past cluttered shelves and mountainous tabletops of goods. It was a hotchpotch affair, a confusing jumble of horse and wagon accessories, jars of condiments,
haberdashery, pottery and a host of nameless items. His host pointed to a small door at the rear of the shop. ‘In there.’

‘Why?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.

The man raised the knife and A Ahmud Ki saw that it was a long, ugly instrument, more suited to a butcher. ‘Because I said so.’

Having little choice, A Ahmud Ki went to the door, turned the handle and entered a room where two more men looked up at him. ‘Who are you?’ one asked, rising from his chair, a burly character with a thick brown beard.

‘I come from the east,’ A Ahmud Ki answered, remembering Meg’s description of him. He left the door open in case he needed to escape.

The second man was wiry and younger, but his shaven face was serious and his eyes glittered with the kind of energy A Ahmud Ki associated with dangerous men. ‘Where from the east?’ he asked.

Where indeed?
A Ahmud Ki thought. ‘Beyond the mountains.’

‘The Valley of Kings?’ the bearded man posited.

‘Further east,’ A Ahmud Ki replied. What he did know was that the people in The Valley of Kings were dark-skinned, nothing like him at all. But then what if they were also dark-skinned further east?

‘The old empire,’ the young man said and nodded. ‘But if you’re from there, how did you get across Kangaroo Plains? The Kerwyn own everything east of here.’

‘Carefully,’ A Ahmud Ki replied and smiled. ‘Forgive me. I don’t speak your language well.’

The bearded man grunted. ‘Well enough to get by,’ he said.

‘Well enough to tell us why the soldiers are after you,’ the familiar rough voice said from behind, and
A Ahmud Ki felt the shop owner’s presence. ‘Take a seat, stranger. You’ve got some explaining to do.’

Talemaker and Cutter got as much information as they could from the people who witnessed Meg and A Ahmud Ki’s flight from the market area when they came out of the Three Emus tavern, and so they scoured the streets, carefully avoiding the Kerwyn soldiers, but they failed to find their friends. ‘The Kerwyn are still looking for them,’ Cutter said as they observed a squad of soldiers moving along a narrow street two blocks from the market. ‘That at least means they haven’t been arrested.’

‘They could be anywhere,’ said Talemaker. ‘How will we find them?’

‘Our only hope is to stay near the tavern. If they’re looking for us that’s the first place to—’

Cutter’s reply was drowned by the roar of an explosion, the force throwing both men backwards in a shower of dust, stone and wood. As Cutter sat up he heard people shouting and screaming. He tugged Talemaker’s arm which was protruding from a mound of dirt and the minstrel coughed, shook his head and also sat up. The narrow street where the Kerwyn soldiers had been walking was a burning pile of rubble. Cutter stood and helped Talemaker up, saying quickly, ‘We better get away from here. The Kerwyn will be everywhere.’ The pair walked towards the closest intersection, stepping around people who stopped to stare at the destruction, but before they reached it the familiar red Kerwyn armour appeared. ‘This way,’ Cutter said and pulled Talemaker to a doorway. He knocked. No one answered. With a grunt and shove he forced the door open and they entered, pushing the door shut behind them, and they watched at a small window as the Kerwyn strode past, heading for the site of the explosion.

They were in the main room of a cottage. A rough wooden table and four chairs dominated the centre, and shelves and small cupboards furnished two of the surrounding walls, while a small blackened hearth sat in the centre of the fourth. Opposite the entry door, between two tall yellow cupboards, another door led further into the cottage. ‘Anybody home?’ Cutter called. When no one answered, he opened the second door to discover a bedroom, furnished with a double bed and a trunk. A door led outside and a small window let in light.

‘I found some bread and cheese,’ Talemaker said, and he passed a hunk of each to Cutter who ate hungrily. ‘What
was
that?’ Talemaker asked, returning to look out the front window.

Between mouthfuls, Cutter mumbled, ‘A thunderclap.’

‘To kill the Kerwyn?’

‘Who else?’ Cutter remarked, chewing a chunk of cheese.

‘But I thought the war was over.’

Cutter snorted as he looked around for a drinking vessel. ‘Wars are never over as long as the people you were fighting are still alive.’ Seeing a wine bottle he crossed the room and grabbed it and ripped out the sealing cork with his teeth. ‘The Kerwyn were killing off every one of us in the countryside all over the kingdom, but they’ve left this place relatively unscathed, so there’s bound to be people here who hate them and want them to go.’ He drank a mouthful from the bottle, grimaced as the bitter liquid burned his throat with acidity and passed the bottle to Talemaker.

‘Is it
that
bad?’ Talemaker asked, seeing Cutter’s pinched expression.

‘It’s wet,’ Cutter replied.

Talemaker braced and took a mouthful of the wine to rinse his mouth. He swallowed, his face wrinkling in disgust, and said, ‘Not as bad as the wine in some inns I’ve stayed at.’

‘I don’t know where our host is,’ said Cutter, ‘but we can’t stay here. We’ll go back to the Three Emus and see if your friend is ready to see us yet.’

‘What will the Kerwyn do after that thunderclap?’ Talemaker asked.

‘Take revenge,’ Cutter replied. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I thought this place looked peaceful when we got here.’

‘Battlefields always do when there’s a lull in the fighting. It’s just peaceful because the combatants are working out how to best kill each other next time.’

Talemaker nodded. ‘Do you still want to kill Kerwyn?’

Cutter laughed. ‘I’m a professional soldier. My job is to kill whoever my leader says I have to kill. That’s what being a soldier means.’

‘Do you ever think about what you do?’

Cutter stopped chewing and stared at the minstrel with a bemused grin. ‘What are you, a philosopher?’ He snorted and shook his head. ‘I think about it all the time. What you have to remember is that your enemy is there to kill you if you don’t kill him. Remembering that makes it all make sense.’

‘But what if he’s not there to kill you?’ Talemaker asked.

‘Then he wouldn’t be there in the first place,’ Cutter retorted.

‘What if he’s been press-ganged into the army as sometimes happens?’

‘Men have consciences,’ Cutter argued calmly, ‘and they don’t have to stay in the army even when they’re pressed into it. They can make a choice. They can die trying to kill me because they choose to obey their
leader, or die trying not to kill me because they choose to escape from their leader. I don’t have anything to do with the latter situation. And the first one is what I described before.’

Talemaker was astonished. ‘You think too much.’

‘You started the conversation.’

Both men turned suddenly to the front door that had swung open and in the doorway stood a big man with an enormous club.

The memory of the surge of power channelled through Meg that enabled him to cut down the Kerwyn soldier was strong in him and he craved being close to her again to revive his birthright. She had immense power—the kind of power he once had with the Fifth Ki. He could feel it when he touched her—but it was wasted on her. After the arduous journey and weeks in her company, the talking about magic and the Ki and how spells could be conjured, he knew that she was not a Dragonlord—did not even know the components of the five Ki. The one puzzle was that she knew of the Genesis Stone, an Aelendyell secret passed down from the Elvenaar and the Old Ones—a secret the Aelendyell considered sacred and never shared beyond Aelendyell culture. But he also knew it was possible that a renegade Lore Bearer from an Aelendyell village told her the sacred truth. After all, he himself had betrayed the Aelendyell to punish them for what they did to him. Why couldn’t someone else?

The men left him to wait in the dingy room while they decided his fate in the cramped shop, but he was A Ahmud Ki and he was tired of being dependent on human whims. He had to find Meg. She was his key. He hadn’t told his captors much and he knew they were dissatisfied with his explanation of how he ended up in Westport. He said nothing about Meg or Talemaker or
Cutter. He told them he was a traveller who came into Western Shess at a very inopportune time and all he wanted to do was get a ship back home.

Boots scraped and the door opened. A scruffy black- and-tan dog trotted into the room and sniffed at A Ahmud Ki’s leg, followed by the shop owner, a man with a paunch and broad shoulders below a scraggly black beard and rounded face. ‘You’ve got friends looking for you,’ the shop owner said. ‘A slim man and someone who looks like he’s been a soldier. You said you were alone.’

‘I met them outside Westport. They’re casual acquaintances. Where are they?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.

‘First you tell me who they are.’

A Ahmud Ki shrugged. ‘A minstrel and a soldier.’

‘A deserter from the army then.’

‘There is no more army,’ A Ahmud Ki replied. ‘The war’s over.’

‘Not yet it isn’t,’ the shop keeper said as he leaned towards A Ahmud Ki’s face. ‘It isn’t over till the Kerwyn bastards are gone.’

A Ahmud Ki wanted to say the man was an idiot for thinking he could wage a war that was already lost, but he kept silent, meeting the man’s gaze with unflinching determination. The shop owner straightened and said, ‘You can’t stay in Westport. The Kerwyn will spot a stranger with your foreign looks a street away. We’ll give you two choices. We can sneak you out of the city tonight, or tomorrow night if it’s too risky tonight. You can take your chances in the bush. Or we can get you onto a ship, but you’ll need some money to bribe the shipmaster.’

‘I don’t have money.’

‘Then the ship’s no option,’ said the shop owner diffidently.

‘Do these ships go to Andrakis?’

‘Where?’

‘Andrakis,’ A Ahmud Ki repeated hopefully.

The shop owner shook his head. ‘Never heard of the place. But then the ships go all over the place these days. You’d have to ask a sailor where they sail.’

‘Then I want time to ask around,’ said A Ahmud Ki.

‘You haven’t got time,’ the shop owner said.

‘Tonight,’ said A Ahmud Ki. ‘Give me tonight to go down to the docks to find out what I need to know and then you can get me out of this place.’

‘You leave this shop and you don’t get any more help from us,’ the shop owner told him bluntly. ‘We don’t do charity.’

‘Then I’ll take my chances,’ A Ahmud Ki replied.

‘No, mate,’ said the shop owner, puffing out his shoulders and taking an aggressive stance. ‘You don’t get it. We can’t let you stroll out of here now that you know about us. The Kerwyn catch you and they catch us next.’

A Ahmud Ki grinned. ‘You make two wrong assumptions. First, if the Kerwyn did catch me I’m trained in the ways of keeping my tongue silent. And, second, the Kerwyn aren’t going to catch me.’

‘Arrogant bastard, aren’t you?’ the shop owner growled.

‘Do we have a deal?’

‘No,’ said the shop owner. ‘No deal.’ He glared at A Ahmud Ki to emphasise his point, adding, ‘We’ll take you down to the docks tonight and stick you on a ship. That’s all I’m offering.’ Finished, he turned, called his dog, and exited. A Ahmud Ki listened, but didn’t hear a lock. From behind the door, the shop owner yelled, ‘Don’t get cute! Lathe is waiting out here in case you think you’ve got a better idea!’ A Ahmud Ki smiled wanly and sat on a chair to wait for the evening.

The sun was angling low through a crack in the wall when he heard voices arguing. Curious, he got up and pressed his ear against the door to listen. ‘Barter knows the drill,’ a stranger with a guttural voice said. ‘He’s got two lads ready.’

‘We can’t afford any clues,’ the shop owner’s recognisable voice replied. ‘The bastards are getting too close to home. We can’t afford to jeopardise the Movement.’

‘Did they learn anything from this afternoon?’

‘Thunderclaps don’t leave too much,’ a third voice added.

‘Word is the Kerwyn are dragging random victims off the street,’ said yet another voice that A Ahmud Ki guessed belonged to the thin-faced individual who had interrogated him earlier.

‘That’s why the streets are empty now.’

‘We can’t afford to get the people involved like this,’ someone else argued. ‘The Kerwyn don’t care who they kill in reprisal.’

‘Don’t go getting soft on us,’ the shop owner growled. ‘We knew what would happen when we started this.’

‘I didn’t think it would be like this.’

‘What did you expect? The Kerwyn would just let us attack them and not do anything?’

The room went silent, until the man with the guttural voice said, ‘There’ll be more reprisals after this attack. The Kerwyn won’t like us killing one of their leaders.’

‘Fuck the Kerwyn!’ the shop owner snarled. ‘How many of these bastards stopped to think about the men and women they slaughtered in the countryside? And you heard today what they did in Port of Joy. No one left. Butchered in the ocean and left to the sharks. I can’t kill enough of the bastards.’