Farlander (53 page)

The old man dripped some alcohol into the wound, hissing through his teeth as he did so. The gash was not overly deep, but gaped open and pink. The flesh around it, for the entire span of his upper arm, was now bruised a dark purple. Some more of the alcohol he poured on to the bandages. He used a match to heat the end of the needle red-hot, then threaded it with precision, though his fingers shook as the blood coursed freely down his arm. Once it was threaded, he held the needle up to Nico, and said, ‘Stitch me up, boy.’

Nico rocked back on his feet. He blinked, barely able to keep his eyelids apart. His body trembled with exhaustion, and he was close to falling down. There was no getting out of it though, so he took the needle and sat down beside the old man. He tried to pretend to himself that he knew what he was doing, that he had been listening during the field surgery lessons back at the monastery, that he had not been fooling around with Aléas at all.

Carefully, he stitched the ugly lips of the wound together, while Ash sat impassively and observed his work. In a way, Nico’s exhaustion was a blessing just then; his brain was too far gone to become squeamish at what he saw.

At last Ash nodded with a sigh: ‘That will do.’

Nico cut the thread with a knife and fixed a bandage, as best he could, around the arm. He then took off the old man’s boots and helped lift his feet on to the bed, making sure his head was properly propped on the pillow.

Ash closed his eyes. His breathing grew shallower.

Nico thought of this old man dancing through the armed Regulators while near-blind, wielding his blade as though it was weight less, all the glamour and myth surrounding him suddenly bearing truth.

‘I think I killed a man tonight,’ Nico said quietly over his master’s still form.

Ash inclined his head by the smallest degree to look up at him. ‘And how do you feel, now it is done?’

‘Like a criminal. As though I took something I had no right to take. As though I have become someone else, someone tainted.’

‘Good, may it always be that way. Only worry if after the act is done and your blood cooled, you feel nothing at all.’

But that was what Nico wished for most of all, just to feel nothing. How could he ever return home to his mother and meet her eye, knowing what he had done?

‘He might have had children,’ Nico said. ‘A son, like me.’

Ash shut his eyes, let his head straighten back on the pillow.

‘You did well, Nico,’ the farlander croaked.

The words barely registered on Nico. He kept his own boots on as he made the hardest climb of his life up on to the top bunk. He had barely sprawled on the thin mattress before his body gave up on him. He fell into a deep unconsciousness.

Both of them lay dead to the world, each covered in a sheen of sweat and dried blood, oblivious to the pounding of a fight in the room overhead, the coins falling and clattering endlessly behind other walls.

*

It was quiet in the dark streets surrounding the opera house. The great building itself lay in silence, the perfomance finished for the night. Its patrons had long departed for home or gone on to further late-night engagements.

The cart rocked on its wheels as another corpse was thrown on to it. The clean-up squad worked in silence, save for the occasional grunt of exertion from behind the kerchiefs wrapped around their faces or the odd curse in response to the reeking evacuations of the bodies they trod amongst. Two figures stood apart from the scene, a man and a woman. He puffed on a hazii stick; she leaned against a wall, wrapped tightly in her cloak.

‘He comes at last,’ the man declared.

Another zel-drawn cart creaked into the side street, a stout wooden box on wheels. Its driver clucked the zel on as quietly as he could, and pulled in the reins as he drew parallel with the two figures.

‘You took your time,’ the woman reproached him, pushing herself off the wall.

The driver shrugged. ‘How long?’ he asked, before dismounting.

‘An hour – no more.’

The driver clucked his tongue, strode to the back of the cart. He tugged open the doors and a pair of bloodhounds stared out at him from a wire cage, their tails wagging furiously.

‘Come my darlings,’ he said to them. ‘Time to earn your supper.’

After opening the cage he fastened thick leashes to their collars, then allowed them to jump down.

The hounds pulled hard against his bodyweight, keen to begin the hunt. They remained quiet save for their open-mouthed panting, as they had been trained. ‘The trail of blood leads that way,’ the woman pointed out helpfully.

But dogs were already on to it, and they scurried after the scent with their handler barely able to restrain them. ‘We move fast,’ he warned over his shoulder, not waiting to see if anyone came after him.

The two Regulators exchanged a glance, then followed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In any other city port on the Midères, alarms might have rung out at the unexpected arrival of a war galleon flying no colours save for a neutral black, and carrying a force of men clearly fitted out for war.

But this was Cheem, and sights like that were as common as fish. As the vessel moored by the wharf side and the men disembarked with military discipline, a few of the local beggars – ex-sailors mostly, crippled or burned out – turned to see if it might be worth their while asking for spare change, and quickly decided against it. Only one of these beggars allowed his gaze to linger for any length of time: a man in his forties, his left arm ending abruptly in a leather-bound stump. Once, he had been a soldier in the Imperial Legion, and he was not so far gone with age and drugs to miss noticing the imperial military tattoos on the bare wrists and arms of the men disembarking, nor the camouflage attire they wore under their plain cloaks, nor their obvious self-regard.

Commandos, the old addict decided, and slid further back into the shadow of the doorway. He watched carefully as one of their officers approached a city guard. Arrangements were made. More guards were summoned upon and mules soon brought forth. Sailors from the same ship offloaded caskets heavy enough to be holding gold, and strapped them on to the mules. That done, the officer, a few of his men and an escort of guards set off into the city along with their loads.

The remaining men, perhaps seventy in all, were told to stand down. They relaxed nearby in the early morning sun, grumbling whenever they were picked out for duties. Small groups filtered out into the streets occasionally, given heavy purses and instructions to procure riding zels, mules, supplies.

From his doorway, the old addict, his cravings forgotten for a grateful moment, watched with a frown and a curious pang of nostalgia, and wondered which poor fools had provoked the Empire’s wrath now.

*

A bitter wind blew through the open window of the tower, carrying with it the scent of rain. Osh
, looking out at the darkening sky, drew the heavy blanket tighter about himself, and shuddered.

A storm comes
, he thought, as he gazed across the mountains to the black clouds that crowded the far distance.
So soon after the last one too.
Winter comes early this year
.

It was not a pleasing thought. Osh
did not look forward to the winters here in the high mountains. The constant damp chill in the air made his bones ache, so that every movement cost him strength. The simple act of rising from his warm bed each morning was a battle of will that seemed to require ever more effort as the years went by. The winters made him feel his age, and in a way he resented them for it.

I grow weak in my old age,
Osh
thought.
Once, I would not have been plagued with so many doubts as I am now.

Below him, Baso hurried across the courtyard with his thin robe flapping in the wind. Osh
followed him with his gaze, thinking to call out to his old friend. But then he frowned.

It could not be Baso. Baso was dead.

He looked harder and saw, instead, that it was Kosh, red-eared and hunched against the chill wind. He disappeared into the kitchen, no doubt seeking an early breakfast for his ever-needy stomach.

It had been hard news, hearing of Baso’s passing. It had stunned Osh
to the core as he stood there in the courtyard, with the rest of the assembled R
shun, while the Seer told them of the loss of their men in Q’os. Osh
’s body had frozen with the shock of it, his chest tightening so that he could barely breathe. For a moment he’d thought he might be experiencing a heart attack, even though the bad turn had not lasted long. For the first time in his life, surrounded by men under his command, Osh
had been unable to take the lead.