Snare (32 page)

‘What is that thing?’ Zayn said.

‘Watch.’ Ammadin held it up, took a breath, and intoned a single word. Yellow light sprang from the tube and turned the tent bright. Zayn gasped and took a step back. She chanted a brief phrase, and the light dimmed to the glow of an oil lamp.

‘I don’t want to exhaust the spirits,’ she said. ‘This was a gift from the ChaMeech woman.’

‘Maybe there’s something good to say for the females. I’ve never seen any, after all. How would I know?’

‘You don’t have to pretend for my sake. Were you worried?’

‘No, of course I wasn’t worried.’

‘I just wondered. It took us a while to get back to camp.’

‘Well, I’d thought the ruins were closer, yes, from what everyone said.’

‘I stopped to scan.’ Ammadin frowned at the tube in her hands. ‘It was the strangest thing. We left before Water Woman and her servants, and we hadn’t ridden far at all when I stopped, which means they couldn’t have gone far either. But I couldn’t see them anywhere.’

‘They might have been hiding in the forest.’

‘I suppose.’ She shrugged the problem away. ‘But it was interesting, talking with a Chiri Michi. Which reminds me –’

‘I do not want to talk about ChaMeech.’

Ammadin raised an eyebrow. Zayn grabbed his bedroll from the floor.

‘I’m going to sleep in the grass. If it rains, too damn bad.’

Before she could answer he left the tent. He strode across the campground, walking fast, and if she ever called him back, he didn’t hear it. In the middle of the night the rain came, soaking him awake. He lay in his sodden blankets and listened to the others rushing back and forth, finding a space to sleep in one tent or the other. Once the camp fell quiet, he got up and went to sleep under the wagon, or to drowse, really, shivering in his wet clothes.

By morning, a warm wind was scrubbing the sky clear of clouds. Zayn draped his blankets over the wagon tree to dry, then went back to Ammadin’s tent. He was expecting some comment on his damp clothes, but she said nothing about them. While he was cooking breakfast and packing the tent away, she never mentioned the ChaMeech, either. Zayn decided that he’d made his point.

When the comnee rode out, Zayn walked his sorrel gelding into his usual place in the riding order, beside Dallador at the head of the line of pack horses, even though the memory of his conversation with Maradin made him profoundly uneasy. Dallador seemed to notice the change in his mood. For a couple of miles they rode in silence; then Dallador turned in the saddle to look at him.

‘Something wrong?’

‘No.’ Zayn realized both that he’d snarled and that he had a plausible explanation close to hand. ‘Sorry. It’s the damned ChaMeech. It really gripes me, thinking of Ammadin having anything to do with them.’

‘She mentioned that you had a grudge against them.’

‘Me have a grudge? They’re the ones who raid our borders and
lay traps for our cavalry and kill our horses. Why the hell wouldn’t I hold it against them?’

‘Our cavalry?’

‘Well, it was mine once. I lost two of the men under my command to ChaMeech. It still hurts.’

‘Now that I can understand.’

‘Thanks. I figured you would.’

Dallador answered with an easy smile, affectionate enough to make Zayn look away. He leaned over his horse’s neck and pretended to be fussing with a snarl in its mane to cover the gesture. Damn Maradin anyway! he thought. Just like a woman! Ahead on the horizon he could see the dark swell of the forest, rising nearer.

‘Dallo?’ Zayn said. ‘Nannes is on the other side of that forest, right?’

‘Yes, about half a day’s ride. We’ll make camp once we’re through the forest and then ride into Nannes the next day.’

‘How far past Nannes will the comnee go?’

‘What?’ Dallador turned in the saddle to look at him. ‘We never go anywhere but Nannes. It’s the trading precinct.’

‘I didn’t realize that.’

‘It’s like the horse fair at Blosk. Anyone who wants horses comes to Nannes to buy them.’

‘Makes sense.’

‘It’s not just that, though,’ Dallador went on. ‘The people of the Cantons don’t like foreigners. When I was a boy my grandfather told me about the way things were in the old days. If the Canton people caught a foreigner out of the trading precinct, they killed him. Just like that – no trial, no nothing. But by the time Grandfather was a child, nobody cared that much any more. A lot of people have forgotten the old laws, I guess.’

Zayn considered for a moment. He was afraid of showing too much curiosity, but Dallador had no reason to be suspicious of his interest. ‘So anyway,’ Zayn said, ‘they’d let a single comnee man travel around, now, I mean?’

‘Maybe even two or three. They sure don’t want an entire comnee riding past Nannes. Apanador says they’re afraid of us.’

‘Stands to reason. They’re just farmers and town folk.’

Dallador nodded his agreement. So, Zayn thought. Soon he’d be leaving the comnee behind, heading out on his own again – alone,
the way he liked to be. He was damned glad of it, too, or so he told himself, although he had to repeat the thought a good many times before he believed it. He would be free at last to learn the truth about this sorcerer, who must have somehow or other corrupted Warkannan. Zayn simply could not conceive of Idres turning against his old loyalties on his own, not Idres, who had risked his life again and again to protect the khanate.

Earlier in the same day, Warkannan and his men had left the forest, but instead of heading east to Nannes, Soutan had led them south along a dirt road. On either side, fences woven of vines and bamboid marked out fields of wheatian and other food crops. Now and then they saw in the distance a white-washed farmhouse or barn. Once they passed a farmer in a long dirty-brown smock as he was strolling through a wheatian field, pulling a seed-head here and there to test for ripeness. When he saw the horsemen coming, he ran to the fence to lean over and stare until they’d ridden by.

‘These fields all belong to my supporter,’ Soutan remarked. ‘Or to his father, to be precise, though Alayn will inherit them when the old man dies.’

‘He must be pretty well off,’ Warkannan said.

‘By the standards of the Cantons, yes. By Kazraki standards, no. You’ll see. We’re almost to the manor house now. But even though they don’t live in luxury, Alayn’s family is an important one. His father is what they call a zhay pay, a local magistrate. He can try petty criminals and remand the more important cases to the ruling council in Nannes. He also keeps a cadre of private soldiers.’

Late in the afternoon they reached the villa, or as Soutan called it, the estate. About half a mile from the forest edge, a thorn and vine wall set off a long lawn of green grass. Behind it stood a cluster of plain, square buildings, made of woven bamboid and sticks of true-wood with pale blue roofs of bundled thatch. A gravel path led them to an iron gate, all twisted and rusty, and as they dismounted at the fence, noise broke out – some animal, Warkannan assumed, yapping and making a sharp sound rather like
ar ar ar.
Sure enough, when he looked over the fence he saw a pair of four-legged animals, covered in close-cropped tan fur, charging straight for them. They had prominent muzzles, long floppy ears, and skinny tails that waved back and forth as they ran.

‘Those disgusting shens,’ Soutan said wearily. ‘They bark like this all the time. We’d better wait till someone comes to see why they’re making this racket before –’

The barking shens threw themselves against the gate. They had lustrous black eyes, black noses, and black lips, pulled back to reveal sharp white fangs. Warkannan’s cavalry-trained horse stood its ground, but one of the pack horses whinnied in terror and tried to rear, a gesture that started the others dancing. It took all the men’s attention to keep them from bolting as the shens yapped and howled. Warkannan was ready to draw his sabre and slap the shens down when a young man came running out of the nearest building. As he raced up, yelling something or other in Vranz, the shens quieted, and in a few minutes so did the horses. With a laugh the young man began to untie the gate. He was slender, with pale skin and an untidy shock of red hair, and dressed in a pair of blue leggings and a white shirt made of coarse-woven cloth. He should have been handsome with his fine features, but there was something unsettling about his pale eyes. They glittered in deep sockets above dark circles, so livid that it seemed he’d not slept in days. At one corner of his mouth hung a brown wart the size of a fingernail.

‘Yarl!’ The young man held out his hand, then asked a question that sounded like ‘say too?’.

‘Daccor!’ Soutan shook it, but briefly. ‘Alayn!’

Warkannan understood nothing of the flood of Vranz that followed. Eventually Alayn turned to the Kazraks and smiled.

‘Come in,’ he said in heavily accented Hirl-Onglay. ‘The shens, they not hurt you. You are my guests.’

‘We came at the perfect time,’ Soutan said in Kazraki. ‘His father is away, so we won’t have to make any awkward explanations.’

‘About what?’ Warkannan said. ‘The reason we’re here?’

‘That, and about the false charges against me.’

Although they were reluctant at first, the horses walked through the gate after Alayn sent the shens racing back to the house ahead of them. As they approached the cluster of buildings, four men came trotting out of the house.

‘Ah, some servants,’ Soutan said. ‘They’ll take our horses for us.’

Alayn flung open the door of the manor house and ushered them inside to a big room, plain and airy. Four long trestle tables
with benches stood at the near end, along with a big ceramic stove and wooden bins filled with grains and produce. At the far end, wooden chairs and a divan woven of purple rushes stood under the windows. On the divan a woman with long, grey hair, tied back with a thong, sat reading. She wore a loose blue dress, sleeveless and pulled in at the waist with a belt made of linked gold coins. As Alayn led his guests down the length of the room, she looked up, smiled, and rose to greet them. Alayn began speaking fast in Vranz.

‘Alayn’s mother,’ Soutan whispered in Kazraki. ‘You address her as “mada” and bow over her hand if she offers it to you.’

Mada did indeed offer Warkannan her hand. Painfully conscious of her bare arms, he took it, smiled, and bowed. Arkazo did the same, and she smiled at them both, then sat back down on her divan and picked up her book. Alayn led them on through the room, out into a hallway, and on down.

‘Guest tents,’ he said in Hirl-Onglay and flung open a door to reveal not tents, but a sunny room with a further room visible beyond. ‘I have the maid bring water. Food?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Warkannan said.

Arkazo contented himself with nodding vigorously. Warkannan glanced around the room – a pair of narrow beds, covered with blue blankets, a pair of woven-rush chairs before a long window with a view of the lawn, and between them, a low table. Opposite the window an open door led into another room with a third bed.

‘This looks very comfortable,’ Warkannan said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘Thank you very much, sinyur.’

Alayn smiled, then left with a wave of his hand. Soutan followed him out, talking fast in Vranz.

Warkannan sank gratefully into a cushioned chair. ‘That was quite a shock, seeing a woman of position just sitting there half-dressed.’

‘Yes,’ Arkazo said. ‘But look, we’ve got real mattresses, real pillows! I’m going to lie down and take a nap.’

Arkazo was still asleep when Soutan came snarling into the guest room and slammed the door behind him. Arkazo woke, looked around yawning, then turned over and went back to sleep. Soutan threw himself into a wicker armchair and glowered at the view outside. Warkannan joined him at the window.

‘What’s wrong?’ Warkannan said.

‘I had the perfect plan,’ Soutan said. ‘But Alayn wouldn’t carry it out. I wanted him to go into Nannes and see if he could buy me some crystals. I told him I’d give him a gold coin for running the errand, but no, no, it’s not the money, he says. His father’s suspicious of certain things. The old man’s at the law courts in Nannes, and he’ll be there for days. If he sees Alayn buying a crystal, he’ll be more suspicious than ever.’

‘Can’t he avoid his father?’

‘Nannes is a good bit smaller than Haz Kazrak.’ Soutan paused for a dramatic sigh. ‘And everyone knows Sinyur Alayn and his father the Zhay Pay.’

‘If we ride straight to Jezro, you won’t need a crystal.’

‘Don’t be stupid! Of course I’ll need one with this wretched Zayn following us along.’ Soutan scowled at the lawn for a long moment, then continued. ‘Alayn did come up with something of an idea. There’s a group of – well, I’m not sure what they are, but they call themselves priests. Their head man’s collected a number of crystals, Alayn says. He might be willing to make a trade.’

‘Sounds like a good idea to me. We have Kazraki coins, and there’s at least one extra horse.’

‘Exactly. Surely we can work something out – provided he has the right crystals, of course.’

‘I take it they’re not all alike.’

‘No, I’ve catalogued twenty kinds. You see, they were –’

Someone rapped on the door. Soutan called out in Vranz, and Alayn stepped in, closed the door carefully behind him, then leaned against it for an extra measure of safety. As he and Soutan talked, Warkannan realized that Soutan was looking more and more frightened. Finally the sorcerer turned to him.

‘Our luck has definitely gone bad, Captain. The comnee’s camped just off the main road not more than five miles from here. One of Alayn’s tenants saw them just now.’

‘Then we’d better stay where we are till they’ve moved on,’ Warkannan said. ‘If that’s all right with the sinyur here.’

‘Oh yes, that’s fine with him and his mother. But I hope that those beastly barbarians move on tomorrow. All this waiting is getting on my nerves.’

About a mile past the forest the comnee had found an unfenced meadow that provided decent pasture for the horses. While the
men were raising the tents and starting the evening meal, Maradin and two other women went to the forest edge to hunt for fallen wood. With the Riders due to appear in the sky, Ammadin took her saddlebags and went with them. While the women spread out to forage, she scanned.