Fall of a Kingdom (The Farsala Trilogy) (12 page)

His escort announced them loudly, and yet another guard gestured for Kavi to enter. Inside, the tent was divided into several rooms, with the front clearly for official business. Enough light came through the canvas that the brass lamps affixed to the support poles weren’t lit. A table covered with scrolls, with chairs around it, numerous chests, and what looked like a traveling desk occupied the room—all plain and sturdy, with neither a peasant’s bright paint nor the polished grace a deghan would have insisted on.

Judging by the way the chairs were pushed back from the table, there’d been a meeting here recently, but only two men remained. One was stacking papers on the table; the other lounged in the largest chair, which also had the only cushioned seat.

The guards thrust Kavi forward, hooking his ankles neatly from under him so that he fell to his knees before the chair. The earth beneath the canvas floor was cold and hard. Kavi looked up and met the seated man’s gaze. “So you’d be Substrategus Garren?”

The man’s eyes, a dark, cloudy gray, narrowed. “And you would be a foolish peddler, who’ll lose that impudent tongue if you’re not careful.” His Faran was deghan accented, but fluent.

Kavi cursed himself. Favius and Alen had made him careless. He said nothing.

“Not a total fool, I see. Good. I have no use for fools. Free his hands. If he tries anything, kill him.”

It would have been a fine, dramatic gesture to cut his bonds with a single stroke of one of those lovely, watersteel blades, but the Hrum were too practical to waste good leather. The substrategus waited while Kavi’s wrists were untied, with the patience of a serpent.

Kavi rubbed his wrists and said nothing. Garren’s thin mouth twitched in a semblance of a smile. “Decimaster Raiban says you might be able to provide us with information.”

“Aye.” Kavi took a breath. They both knew what he was bargaining for. “I’m a peddler. But my wares aren’t city fancy—journeymen and apprentice pieces. So I sell in the countryside, north and south of the Trade Road. I know the back roads, the trails, the shortcuts. Terrain.”

Soldiers cared about terrain, didn’t they? He hoped he wasn’t babbling.

Substrategus Garren’s face gave nothing away. The other officer had come to stand behind him. His expression was somber, but Kavi saw a shadow of pity in his eyes. Not a good sign.

“There’s something else I know. About the high commander’s daughter. And it’s political information too….”

He told the lady Soraya’s story from the beginning, bringing out any aspect he thought might interest them. Garren was paying attention now. Or, at least, he was frowning.

“Do your people actually believe in these djinn?” he asked when Kavi finished.

“Not my folk,” said Kavi. He was sweating, despite the cool afternoon. The light had gone dimmer as he spoke. Soon it would be raining. “Not even the deghans, really, though I think they did long ago. Now it’s just a…an echo from the old times. Or a convenient excuse.”

“Your folk. You’re different from the deghans?”

“So the stories say,” Kavi replied. “They say in the ancient days we made a pact: our ancestors to serve and farm, and the deghans to fight and rule. To protect us.” Sarcasm bled into his voice, despite his care, and he bit his lip. This man was too dangerous for sarcasm—or any other form of wit.

“Hmm.”

Judging by his lifted brows, Garren heard it anyway. Not a stupid man. Pity.

“So you feel the deghans are not ‘your folk.’ I notice you betrayed this Soraya to me very lightly.”

Am I having a choice?
“I don’t care about her,” said Kavi. “I care nothing for any of them.” The truth of it rang in his voice. Could they hear it? Would it save him?

The other officer, a younger man than Garren, perhaps in his thirties, spoke for the first time. “What happened to your hand?”

One look at their faces told Kavi that prevarication would cost him his life. He swallowed. “I was a journeyman smith. Usually working with iron—like I said, just a journeyman—but my master was a weapon-smith. The best in Mazad.”

“Mazad. That’s the walled city, isn’t it?”

That had caught the bastard’s interest, right enough, but Kavi set his teeth. Mazad, he wouldn’t betray. But telling them things that were common knowledge could do no harm—and might save his life.

“Aye, Mazad’s walled. Whenever one of the high nobles takes a fancy to become gahn himself, first thing he does is seize Mazad. It’s where most of the metal is worked, just like Desafon works wood. You can field an army without furniture but you can’t without swords or javelins and arrowheads or armor. So one of the old gahns walled Mazad, and the governor makes sure that whatever craft strays outside the walls, tanning or weaving or whatever, the smithies are all inside.”

Garren and the young officer exchanged a glance that Kavi couldn’t interpret. “I see. Go on.”

“Well, I was a smith, like I was saying, but one day this deghan came to the shop.”

Walking in without a knock or a call, as if it was being his place and not another man’s. Of course, a lot of them walked in without asking permission, but there was something about this one. He moved all tense and edgy, and his eyes glittered like a man in fever, though he didn’t seem to be ill.

“I was minding the counter that day; my master was back in the forge, working with the younger ones. This deghan came in and said he needed a sword. The best we had.”

They all asked for the best. Kavi hadn’t wanted to bring the sword out, but the man had done nothing wrong by his own lights, and Kavi knew his master would be rightly angry if he missed a sale because the man
felt
wrong.

“I brought out the best sword we had. A good one.”

Kavi’s master had worked over it for months, not just the gleaming, perfect curve of the blade, but the flaring bronze guard, the perfect fit of the hilt to a man’s hand. Kavi sometimes felt he’d learned more from watching him make that one sword than in all the years that had preceded it.

“He wanted to be testing it, of course, so I showed him the proving block, and he struck with the blade, the point, even the flat. I wasn’t worried. It had been proved before. But he tried the blade over and over.”

Hacking chips from the block like he wanted to kill it, like the battered log was a deadly enemy. Like that beautiful sword was just an ax.

“I got worried then, so I went and stood by the door, so he couldn’t just walk out.”

Garren’s face was still indifferent, but the young officer frowned, seeing where this would lead. Any fool could have seen it. Why hadn’t Kavi?

“He said it was good enough, that he’d be taking it,” Kavi went on. “I told him the price was twenty-two gold eagles.” Kavi had to stop and swallow, for his mouth was dry, just as it had been then. He’d barely been able to name the price.

“He said he’d come back later with the money. I said he could get the sword then. That we’d hold it for him.”

A flare of anger had suddenly made it possible to speak and move. Not even a deghan should be able to walk into an honest man’s shop, take what he pleased, and walk out without paying. Not while Kavi was there.

“He said he needed it now and that we’d get paid soon enough. I said no, I’d see his money before the sword left the shop.”

He’d thought of calling his master and the boys, the neighbors, but he’d feared for them. He was too angry by now to fear for himself.

“Then he laughed, like he’d just been bluffing. Like he didn’t care. He said, ‘Take it, then,’ and he held out the blade. I grabbed it, hard, meaning to wrench it away before he could do anything.”

He’d been strong in those days, from swinging the heavy hammer. He’d been so certain he could twist the sword from the man’s grasp.

“But he was ready for me. As soon as I grabbed tight, he pulled the sword toward him.”

Kavi opened his hand and held it out. Even in the dimness, the scar showed, ridged and vivid, though it was white now with the passage of years. He had looked at his palm in astonishment then, seeing yellow bone at the bottom of the cut before blood welled to hide it. Before the pain hit and he began to scream.

“He took the sword. Seems he and a cousin both expected to inherit from some uncle, and the cousin did. He said the cousin forged the will or something. I don’t know. But he’d been left without a tin foal. I think there was something else between them as well. He killed the cousin and then paid the temple enough to ‘exorcise Gorahz.’ He came back and paid for the sword. Said it had done good service. He even threw in three extra eagles. ‘For your trouble,’ he said.”

It had happened almost four years ago, but the anger still burned—forge-fire hot. The tent was silent, except for the patter of rain on the roof. When had it started raining? Kavi could have gone on, but he knew these men wouldn’t care about the painful stitching and the long, slow healing that ultimately hadn’t healed enough.

“So you lost your living?” Garren asked.

“Aye.” Kavi flexed and curled his fingers as far as they’d go—not quite fully open and not fully closed. “I got some movement back, but my grip’s too weak to hold either hammer or tongs. But my master didn’t abandon me. It was his idea for me to take some of the lesser goods around the countryside, instead of throwing them back in the melt. It’s mostly from his shop that I get what I sell.”

His master had offered to pay the surgeon’s fee from his own pocket, and to support Kavi through his healing, but Kavi had refused. If his master wouldn’t let him go after the bastard and throw his money in his face, it might as well be put to use. There had been enough left over to buy Duckie and to pay his master for the first load of goods.

“I can see why you’ve no loyalty to the deghans,” said Garren. “So perhaps you could be trusted to serve us.”

“How much are you paying?” said Kavi with well-feigned interest. “Good service costs—”

Garren’s face darkened.

“All right, serve you how? I might be willing, but it depends on what you want me to do.”

And whether it will give me a chance to escape.

“What we want is simple,” said Garren. “We need information about the Farsalan army: their numbers, movements, and plans. It appears that through your link to the girl, you’ll have access to their commander.”

“Access to speak to him, maybe,” said Kavi. “But I’m not a warrior, and he—”

Garren held up a hand. “We aren’t asking you to serve as an assassin. If nothing else, that kind of thing has…limited value. All that killing the high commander would achieve is the appointment of another commander. One whom our spy would have no excuse to approach.”

“Your spy,” said Kavi slowly. “You don’t think I’m young for that?” Most Farsalans thought him young to be a peddler, on his own.

“Our soldiers come to us younger than you,” said Garren calmly. “And if you’re not our spy, then you’re nothing but a liability. You claim to have no love for the deghans. If you serve us well, bringing true and timely information, we will pay you. But be warned, we have other spies, and anything you tell us will be checked against other sources. If you lie, you’ll be killed. But the Iron Empire knows how to reward those who serve it—and in one year from the time of the first battle, Farsala will belong to the empire.”

Kavi shrugged. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“No,” said Garren. “You could flee, in the short term, but once the empire conquers your land, be assured we would find you.”

And a peddler with a crippled hand would be easy to find.
Curse the nobles, did they all think alike, no matter where they came from? Of course they did. To them, a peasant was just something to be used.

“But the empire rewards loyal service,” said the young officer suddenly. “In any man, of any rank. That’s why…Do you know that in many of the lands we’ve conquered, the common citizens, your ‘folk,’ I think you’d call them, have welcomed us? Even risen to fight their rulers in our support?”

Kavi grimaced. “I’m sure they have.” Given the same choice he’d been given, who wouldn’t?

“No,” said the young officer, seemingly reading his thoughts. “It’s because they know that in the empire the law is the same for all, rich or poor. What happened to you”—he gestured to Kavi’s hand—“well, it might have happened; but in our lands the perpetrator would have been charged with theft and assault. If he was found guilty, he’d have been heavily fined and beaten or maimed himself. For the murder of his cousin, he’d have been executed. And as one of his victims, you would have been compensated.”

Substrategus Garren rose to his feet. “I’ll leave him to you, Patrius. Come back tomorrow and tell me his decision—and your estimate of his sincerity.”

“Yes, sir.” The younger officer, Patrius, reached down to help Kavi to his feet. “This way, peddler.”

He stopped at the doorway to fasten his cloak and pull up the hood, and Kavi did the same. The rain was coming down with dreary steadiness. It was cold.

“Where are we going?” Kavi asked, following Patrius obediently. He was very aware that his hands and feet were free, but in the middle of the whole Hrum army it wasn’t going to do him much good. Dozens of scarlet-cloaked figures bustled through the muddy streets, despite the weather.