A Solitary Journey (48 page)

R
ees, standing under a small tree across the street from the Mountainview stay-house, waved frantically as Meg’s conveyer rounded the corner and pointed at the stay-house. On the entrance steps were three Peacekeepers. ‘Stop!’ Meg called to the driver. ‘Stop now!’

The driver reined in and turned on his higher seat. ‘I thought you wanted to go up there to the stay-house?’

‘No,’ she said, searching inside her bag for Andrak notes. She pulled out three and thrust them into the driver’s hand.

‘That’s too much, lady,’ he said, looking at it.

‘Keep it,’ she told him as she climbed out of the carriage. Rees was holding up something and waving it, looking across the road at the Peacekeepers who were looking down towards Meg and the conveyer.

‘But, lady?’ the driver protested.

‘Take it!’ Meg ordered. Rees was putting whatever she was holding in the fork of the tree. She then began to walk across the road towards the Peacekeepers who were descending the steps, still looking towards Meg.

‘Thanks, lady!’ the driver called as he flicked his reins and the carriage pulled away. Seeing Rees had reached the Peacekeepers and was desperately trying to get their
attention Meg turned and walked quickly around the corner.
How did they know to come here?
she wondered as she looked for an alley or an open door. A shoe-shopkeeper was lifting a wooden awning to open his store so she hurried across the street. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘Can I look inside?’

The shopkeeper turned, revealing his white-whiskered face and glass discs on his nose in front of his eyes, and smiled, showing a mouth of crooked yellow teeth. ‘Open any time a customer wants to buy!’ he cheerily announced and waved her through his door. ‘If you want to try something on go right ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll just finish what I need to do here.’

The shop had a comfortable leather aroma and the whitewashed stone walls were lined with so many shoes and boots of all shapes, styles, colours and sizes that Meg was momentarily entranced by the array. She picked up a pair of brown leather boots that were laced almost to the knee, wondering who would wear them.

Then she remembered why she entered the shop. Locating the shop exit she passed into a walk-through storeroom filled with more shoe boxes and entered a workshop with a central bench covered with cut pieces of leather and shoes and boots in various stages of construction stretched over boot lasts. A youth looked up from behind his fringe of blond hair. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. She ignored him and walked through the next doorway, the youth calling from behind, ‘Hey!’ and found a small cooking and eating space. A startled tabby cat sat up, arched its back and hissed. She headed for a hallway and opened the end door into a small backyard. She climbed over the low wooden fence at the back into an adjoining courtyard, spotted a ladder against the wall of a two-storey building and climbed quickly to the roof. From there she looked down.

The youth hadn’t pursued her into his backyard so she kicked the ladder away, letting it fall back into the courtyard, and searched the roof for a trapdoor. Not finding one, she clambered across the sloped red tiles onto the adjoining roof where she discovered that she could see around the corner into the street from where she first came. She crouched and waited.

Peacekeeper patrols came and went all morning and afternoon while Meg watched from her roof perch, waiting for them to work out that she’d climbed up there to escape, but they didn’t come and by late afternoon, when she was feeling her thirst and hunger, the Peacekeeper patrols stopped appearing on the street. She had to make her way to the tree to collect whatever it was that Rees had hidden there, but reasoning that it was safer to do so in the dark she remained on the roof from where she watched the sunset flash weakly and briefly below the ceiling of grey clouds that dominated the day.

At dusk she crept around on the roofs, searching for a way down, only to be disappointed.
I do some stupid things,
she mused, watching the street lamps flicker on one by one as the gas lighters did their daily duty. She peered into the courtyard where the ladder she’d pushed away was still lying.
I do some really stupid things,
she affirmed in her mind. As she contemplated what magical spell she might employ to get to the ground, yellow light spilled into the courtyard and a woman emerged carrying a lantern. She went to a small box in the courtyard, retrieved a water container and started watering a stand of plants in the courtyard corner. ‘Hello?’ Meg called tentatively.

‘Who are you?’ the woman asked, retreating towards her back door, trying in vain to use her lantern to reveal the intruder.

‘I’m stuck on the roof,’ Meg explained.

‘What are you doing up there?’ the woman demanded.

‘I was—’ She hesitated. What excuse could she have? ‘I was fixing the roof,’ she lamely offered. ‘The ladder fell.’

‘
My
roof?’ the woman asked.

‘The next one,’ Meg improvised. ‘I used your ladder to get up here.’

‘I would have thought a tile-fixer would have his own ladder,’ the woman remonstrated, coughed, and added, ‘or
her
ladder, in this case.’

‘Will you help me?’ Meg pleaded.

The woman put down her lantern. ‘Of course I’ll help you,’ she said irritably. ‘I’m not heartless.’ She heaved the ladder upright with difficulty and leaned it against the wall so Meg could descend. ‘How did you get into my courtyard in the first place?’ the woman demanded.

‘The shoe-shop owner let me over his fence,’ Meg told her.

The woman assessed her. ‘You repair roofs dressed like
that?’

‘I—it was a passing favour. I was on my way to—to shop in the market.’ Meg was quickly running out of excuses. Fortunately the woman stopped asking questions, but Meg guessed that she didn’t believe any part of her story and she noticed that the woman watched her carefully as she led Meg through her house. At the front door the woman said, ‘In future, I need to know if someone’s going to go crawling around on my roof or use my ladder. Is that clear?’

‘Yes,’ Meg replied apologetically.

‘And come up with a better story next time you do,’ the woman added, ‘or I’ll call the Peacekeepers. Is that also clear, young lady?’

‘Y-yes,’ Meg stammered. ‘Thank you,’ she added as she descended the front step. The woman smartly closed her front door, leaving Meg to retreat towards the Mountainview street. A black shape darted out of the
street drain to join her. ‘I know,’ said Meg, acknowledging Whisper’s arrival, ‘easy.’

Wedged in the fork of the tree was folded paper that Meg collected and she walked quickly away in case the Peacekeepers were still keeping a watch for her. Three streets on she stopped under a gas lamp and unfolded the paper.

Whatever it is you have done to make the Peacekeepers chase you I don’t know. Perhaps the government knows you are looking for your children. If you are lucky enough to get this note, I wish you even more luck in finding them. I know what you are suffering. Two of my babies died not long after they were born, and no mother should suffer the pain of losing her children.

My sister’s name is Raya Aylan. Her husband’s farm is on the southern side of a small town called Ridge, a good two days’ travel west of the city. I love my sister and I hate myself for sending you to take from her what she has never been able to have, but I do this for the reasons I’ve said above. You must never, ever tell Raya that I sent you. Good luck. I hope you find your children.

Meg re-read the note before folding it into her bag. Then she left the light and crept into the shadows of a building to cry—for her children, for Rees and for Raya.

When her crying was done, she considered her situation. She still had money. Her clothes were inadequate if it rained again or was cold. She was hungry and thirsty. She searched along two streets until she found a grocery shop. Checking that no one was watching, she unlocked the door with a spell and crept in to gather a bag of vegetables and fruit. She left Andrak notes on the counter and re-locked the door on her exit and three shops further on she helped herself to a shirt, trousers, a hat, coat and boots, leaving money as before. She dumped her old clothes in a narrow alley where other
garbage was piled against a wooden fence. It was time to leave the city.

‘Got you!’ a man yelled in Shessian words as a bag slid over her head. She swung her elbow back, catching her attacker in the ribs and kicked blindly, but a solid blow to the head sent her sprawling onto the cobblestones. ‘Bitch!’ she heard another voice exclaim, followed by a yelp and, ‘It’s her bloody rat!’

‘Kill it!’ the first voice ordered.

Meg struggled to remove the bag, but a weight pressed onto her chest and knees pinned her arms. ‘There’s no way out of it this time, girlie,’ the man growled. ‘You’re worth a lot of money to me.’ A cord tightened around her neck. ‘It only hurts more if you struggle. Relax. It won’t take long,’ her attacker advised as the cord tightened, strangling her.

She focussed her energy into an imaginary fist and punched it up from the source of amber in her chest. A flash of bright light glowed through the bag, her attacker roared and the weight pinning her vanished. She grabbed at the choking cord, wrenching it loose, and gasped desperately for air as she pulled the bag from her head and scrambled to her feet. One man was several paces from her, lying on the street, red embers glowing in a hole in his chest. His companion was staggering along a wall, feeling his way, crying, ‘My eyes, my eyes,’ in Shessian. People ran towards her along the street so she grabbed her bag and coat, and looked quickly for Whisper to find that the rat was already scampering into the distance.

‘What happened?’ asked the first man to reach her. ‘Are you all right?’ Meg turned and sprinted after Whisper, her throat burning with pain inside and out.

She stopped at the last gas lamp on a small bridge on the city outskirts and looked back at Lightsword. ‘We can never come back here,’ she said to Whisper who was sitting at her feet. ‘When we find Emma and Treasure,
where will we go?’ She sighed, bent to pick up Whisper who scrambled onto her shoulder and headed into the night.

The return journey to Lightsword was unlike anything he’d expected. The inclement weather grounded Luca’s dragon egg for three days and when they could eventually fly the breezes were light and the progress slow. To be greeted by Andrak Peacekeepers and arrested as a conspirator when he returned to Mother’s stay-house completed what had been a miserable trip. ‘And I tell you,’ he said angrily, wishing that he was the Dragonlord he was meant to be, ‘that I don’t know anything about this woman’s murderous streak or the reasons why assassins would be stalking her other than what you’ve told me. I’m her cousin. We never knew each other before the war in her land.’

‘What do you mean in
her
land?’ Captain Ennaeus asked, tapping his chin.

‘Our
land,’ A Ahmud Ki replied tartly, trying to remember the details Meg supplied of their relationship when they arrived in Central Andrak. ‘I always think of it as her land because I didn’t live near where the war broke out.’

‘And where exactly was it you actually came from?’ Ennaeus asked.

‘Check my papers,’ A Ahmud Ki retorted. ‘Western Shess.’

‘What region?’

A Ahmud Ki flinched. ‘The eastern forest.’

‘So you had a—what sort of farm?’

‘Pigs,’ A Ahmud Ki answered.

‘Ah, yes. Of course,’ Ennaeus said. ‘Makes sense.’ He leaned on the back of the chair behind which he was standing and asked, ‘Your last name is Kushel—correct?’

‘Jon Kushel,’ A Ahmud Ki answered. ‘Try reading my papers.’

Ennaeus smiled bitterly at the jibe. ‘Kushel isn’t a Shessian name, is it?’

A Ahmud Ki racked his memory for the clues Meg had given him and remembered. He’d botched the details in his earlier answers. Now he had to improvise. ‘No. Our ancestor came from further east.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Ennaeus, smiling as if he knew something that A Ahmud Ki didn’t. ‘He must have been an unusual looking man, this ancestor. And well travelled for you to speak Andrak so—interestingly.’

‘Meaning?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.
When I find what is mine,
he thought,
you, Ennaeus, will be the first person I return to visit.

‘Just an observation,’ Ennaeus replied. ‘I’m also interested in history. What do you know of the Lendel?’

The unexpected question made A Ahmud Ki glare at Ennaeus. ‘Never heard of them.’

Ennaeus nodded as if he anticipated the response. He motioned to the Peacekeepers on guard in the interview room and started to leave.

‘So I can go?’ A Ahmud Ki asked, rising.

Ennaeus turned to him. ‘No. You’ll be a guest of the government until this matter regarding your cousin is resolved.’

‘You’re imprisoning me?’ A Ahmud Ki challenged, clenching his fists.

The Peacekeepers unhitched batons from their belts, but Ennaeus motioned with his hand for them to relax. ‘Mister Kushel, let’s just say we’re ensuring that you can help us with our investigation. You see, I’ve learned that my colleagues in Port River invited you to stay there while they resolved the unfortunate murder of one rat-catcher, but it seems that you were too urgently busy to do as they asked. So this time we’re not asking you to stay here, in
Lightsword, while we get our answers to this mystery, we’re making sure that you do. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mister
Kushel?’
He eyeballed A Ahmud Ki with a brutal stare that reminded him of a similar man—Boeris, an egotistical man with whom he’d dealt in another lifetime. When A Ahmud Ki returned the stare without verbal reply Ennaeus smiled as if he had achieved what he set out to do and left the room.

The only compensation was that he wasn’t in a prison cell—at least not in the kind he remembered. There were bars on the windows of the two rooms and Peacekeeper guards at the locked door, but they were keeping him in a converted stay-house. He had a bedroom and a main room, with water and toilet amenities, and they brought him cooked meals as good as any he had eaten in Andrak since arriving. He was simply not allowed out. Nor was he allowed visitors. Luca apparently came on the first day of his imprisonment only to be turned away. After that no one came.