Farrol was a different matter altogether. He was Blaise’s right hand, doing much of the early planning for each raid, while guarding his friend’s back with ferocity and devotion. I gathered that they were boyhood friends, bound by ties so close that they could finish each other’s sentences and laugh at jokes that remained half unspoken. But I did not believe the hard round man served Blaise well, and, in fact, I wondered if Farrol’s purpose was to lead his friend to destruction. The stocky Ezzarian’s plans were always bloody, always ill considered, and they always jabbed at the very tender spots that Aleksander would resent the most. Blaise had slightly better judgment, but he had neither the time nor the will to argue over everything. I was too much an outsider to counterbalance the advising of such an intimate. Farrol never trusted me, and never let Blaise forget it.
As for myself, I was left very much alone. Blaise told me nothing of what I wanted to know, but neither did he pry into my own business. Only once did he bring up the matter, one morning some three weeks after my arrival, as I took my turn cleaning fish our comrades had caught from a nearby lake. He came and sat beside me in quiet companionship, as he did with everyone from time to time as they worked around his camp. He handed me another fish from the flopping heap of them, and watched quietly as I made a quick incision around the head and stripped out the entrails cleanly in the Ezzarian way. Then I washed the remaining flesh, not in the stream as most people did, but with water scooped out and used only for the one fish. “You never ask about your son,” he said after a while.
“I assumed you would tell me in your own time.” I took another fish, my knife moving of itself through the familiar task, though my attention was most definitely elsewhere.
He nodded and stood up to go, rinsing his hand, not in the stream, but with water from the pail I had brought to hold it. “Exactly right.” Then he strolled away and began helping an old man drag a heavy sled piled with logs. I wanted to throw my knife at him.
I was given a blanket and a straw pallet in a small barracks house with the other men. None of the raiders made any advance of friendship, but neither was I murdered in my sleep. After the Nyabozzi raid, Blaise began to ask my advice about Derzhi warriors’ habits and my experience with Derzhi household routine, and though I was not trusted with any responsibility in succeeding raids, I was given some deference with respect to my fighting skills. After the third venture, Blaise asked if I would teach his fighters how to defend against Derzhi sword work, and we worked at it every morning for two hours. He stood beside his men and women, making every move with them, learning, asking questions, laughing at his own mistakes as I ran them through the simplest of drills. The warriors of the Yvor Lukash were farm youths and serving girls, a miller, and an apprentice blacksmith. None of them had the least smattering of warrior’s training, yet all of them were prepared to die at Blaise’s word. Their success was due to blind courage, foolhardy determination, and the skill and brilliance of a leader who could bind them into something more than they were.
One rainy evening as I sat by a fire, honing a knife which needed no keener edge, Blaise sat down beside me and asked if I would teach him “magic.” I was surprised. “You seem to do quite well without any assistance from me,” I said. “I’ve been thinking of asking
you
for teaching. You confound me: showing up out of nowhere, seeing things you had no way to see unless you were sitting on the moon, getting us from one side of the Empire to another before I can digest my dinner. What do you think you have yet to learn?”
He flushed and dropped his voice. “I keep finding mice in my house, and Kyor told me you’d done something to keep them out of the barracks.”
I didn’t laugh. I was too puzzled. Who could have taught him workings so massively powerful without taking him through the most rudimentary arts first? I was even more perplexed when, after half an hour of trying, he could not so much as cast a light from his fingers. The melydda was in him; he just had no more idea than an infant how to use it. I walked over to the shack he shared with Farrol and cast the vermin barrier myself.
“I had thought to teach my son these things,” I said, once we were done and Blaise had thanked me for the lesson.
The young man cocked his head at me for a moment. “You’re a good teacher.” And that was that.
A few days after the foray to Basran, Farrol came to Blaise with a new scheme. “Jakkor the hostler says that every year at this time a train of horses is brought to Zhagad from the northern marches, bound for the Emperor’s stables. He says he’s heard that this year’s lot is prime. Think what we could do with Derzhi mounts. Sell half of them to the Peskar warlords—they’d think it fit justice to take the Emperor’s beasts—and we could use the rest. The sale price would feed the Kuvai for a year or pay off so many Thrid mercenaries, the Derzhi couldn’t hire them. And it’s easy takings. They’ll have to pass through the Makai Narrows, and I’ve heard they’ll be lightly guarded. The Derzhi bastards will never imagine anyone coming after them.”
“For good reason,” I said. “Do you understand that the Derzhi prize their horses above their houses, above their gold, above everything but their own children—and sometimes even that? And the Emperor’s horses . . .” Gods of earth and sky, Aleksander’s horses. He would go mad with it. There was nothing that would proclaim his weakness to his nobles in more glaring fashion than having his horses stolen from under his nose. “Their horses are the foundation of their wealth, the sum of their honor and status. Another tax collector . . . the royal treasury itself would be more sensible.”
Blaise looked at me across the fire. “I’ve heard this about Derzhi, but I never believed it. Who could value a horse so much?”
“Believe it.”
“He’s just trying to keep us from disturbing his friends,” said Farrol. “Why do you listen? He’s always after us about bloodshed . . . well, there’ll be no bloodshed this time. We’ll be in and out in half a day. If it gets their attention, so much the better. It’s exactly what we want to do.”
There was no convincing them that a Derzhi would defend his lord’s horses with his life. No persuading them that there was nothing more sure to invite the Emperor’s wrath. They could not comprehend such value being placed on a beast, therefore they could not appreciate the consequences of their plan. The sinking dread that presaged every venture was tripled in intensity for this one.
On the night before the venture, I caught Blaise by himself, walking by the stream. “I can’t go on this raid, and you mustn’t, either. I don’t want to see you dead.” Again, I went through all the reasons. Again, the outlaw listened quietly, respectfully, and changed his mind not a whit.
“Why are you so disturbed about this venture, Seyonne? Don’t you see that the reasons you give are the very reasons to do it? The Derzhi must learn to value their people more than their beasts. I can’t spare you on this one. We need your skills.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “We sealed our fates long ago. What are they going to do, kill us twice?” Though his lips smiled, his dark eyes challenged me to answer him—to tell him my secrets, to commit fully to his purpose or to explain why I could not. To prove my truth by fighting with him or to abandon pretense and leave. I could do none of those things, and he walked on alone while I stood cursing myself and fate and everyone whose name came to mind.
I needed to keep Blaise alive. He alone knew the whereabouts of my son. And truly, the young man was a mystery that was driving me to distraction; I could not let him die without telling me why he could take me across the Empire in a day, yet could cast no spell to ward his house from vermin. More importantly, he was a good and honorable man, a leader of such skill and worth that I could not see him dead from his folly. So when the day came, I, too, was dressed in black, my face stained dark and painted with white daggers. I just prayed that Aleksander would never find out what I had done.
The early morning was cool and damp. Thunder rumbled in the highlands of the Khyb Rash, the Mountains of the Teeth that would forever remind me of Parnifour, the city where I had stepped into Aleksander’s soul to battle the Lord of Demons. The water and grass were sweet in the high valleys of the Khyb Rash, and the altitude helped horses build good wind for racing. So in their second summer they were taken from their desert stables into the mountains to train. Now it was autumn, coming winter in the heights, and it was time to take the prized beasts back to Zhagad and their proud owner. The train of horses and grooms and guards had to pass through the Makai Narrows, a quarter-league passage scarcely two horses wide. Not a good place for a fight—which was rarely a concern, since no bandit who valued his skin would attack the Emperor’s horses. Clearly Blaise and Farrol and the others did not value their skin.
The Narrows was at the lower end of a high, sloping valley that had been scooped out from the mountains by an ancient watercourse. Most of the region was soft dirt and crumbling sandstone, cut out and smoothed by the ancient waterway. But partway down the valley, huge protrusions of harder rock had resisted the sculpting of the water, creating a narrow passage, like the neck of a bottle. Eventually the stream had given up and settled into a lake in the center of the upper basin, leaving the bottleneck dry and barely passable.
Blaise and I took a position atop a boulder at the upper end of the neck, where we could watch the train of horses cross the valley. As soon as we judged their numbers and their timing, we would jog down the rift to join Farrol and the others, where they held ready at the lower end of the neck. The outlaws could snatch the grooms and guards one by one as they emerged from the rift, and drive the horses into a small side valley to the left of the opening. If the assaults were quick enough, no one farther back in the train would be able to see anything suspicious in the shadowed gloom of early morning in the rift. Nor would they be likely to hear anything over the clatter of hooves echoing from the tall rock walls.
I didn’t believe it. Nothing was that easy. The dark, narrow slot that was the mouth of the side valley had left my neck prickling when Blaise and I passed by it on our way to the upper watch post.
The thunder held its promise, and the first gray light of dawn looked to be all the light we would get for the day. Heavy clouds hung over the peaks like soggy wool, and a cold drizzle trickled down our necks and left streaks of pale flesh on our coal-smeared faces. “They might postpone the journey,” I said, wishing I could will such a thing to happen. “It’s too miserable to travel.”
Blaise said nothing, his calm confidence a glaring reproach to my nervous babbling.
But it was only a little after first light when I caught the sound of distant hoofbeats, slow and leisurely, rounding the far end of the gray sheet of the lake.
“One . . . two warriors at the front,” I said. I could hear the measured tread of mature warhorses with riders, different from the lighter, less disciplined hoofbeats behind. “Four horses . . . then a walker, a groom most likely.” A groom would not be allowed to ride the Emperor’s horses. “Four more horses, then another walker . . .” The shapes my senses had identified emerged from the curtain of drizzle, the wet gray world . . . mournful . . . Twenty horses, five grooms, one for each four horses, the two warriors, and two other riders, probably minor householders, following. Nothing unexpected. The only trouble would be the warriors, and we were twenty.
“Let’s go, then. You can take one of the warriors. Farrol and I can deal with the other.” Blaise slipped down from our perch and drew back into the upper end of the rift. But I kept watching as the procession moved slowly around the lake. Why did my back feel so exposed as I lay on the rock? I glanced over my shoulder at the walls of the rift behind me, their tops lost in the gloom. It made me think of Aleksander and how we had spied on the outlaws’ hiding place from the cliff tops. I could sense no one there, but the clouds were heavy and the rain spattered in my eyes. I crept forward again and peered across the valley at the approaching men and horses. What bothered me so badly?
Blaise stood in the shadow of the rift mouth, waiting.
One warrior at the head of the train sat shorter than his fellow rider. He was slender but with powerful shoulders. He sat proudly . . . and so familiar . . . but I couldn’t place him. His warrior’s braid was blond. His braid . . . I glanced at the first groom. He wore a hooded cloak, and out of the right side of his hood hung a braid. A warrior? None but blooded Derzhi warriors wore a braid on the side of their head. What of the next walker? I couldn’t see his hair, but he was tall and muscular. I glanced back at the warrior at the head of the train, now close enough that I could see his face. My blood went cold. Kiril. Aleksander’s cousin, the Prince’s dear and trusted friend. My friend. Lord Kiril, the Emperor’s favorite nephew and foster son, would never be leading a common horse train. There would be a reason . . .
“Come on.” Blaise’s whisper was insistent. He wanted to get down the rift well before the horse party entered, lest they hear our footsteps.
“Wait.” I needed to be sure. The second groom rounded the lake and looked up at the rainy sky. His hood fell back, and I could not mistake the braid. Another warrior. My mind flashed back to the gaping mouth of the side valley and to the cliff tops that had my skin creeping with more than cold. I dropped off of the rock and snatched Blaise back into the lingering night of the narrow passage, flattening us both to the wall beneath an outsloping rock. “It’s a trap. Those are warriors, not grooms. And the leader . . . he is of the Prince’s household. He would never be sent to escort horses.” Only to trap outlaws.
“We’ll take them. They still have to come through one at a time. Perhaps it’s time we took a prisoner. Someone worth bargaining for. You say he’s in favor?”