Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [26]
Before dawn he had tracked down his errant mount and they had begun their journey in silence. The land around them was inhabited once, for they passed a patch of lumpy, mounded earth and rotting sticks that had clearly been a village. The rolling countryside had been cut into tiers for agriculture in the past, but many years of neglect were softening the contours. Grass, nettles and thistles grew tall, even at the approach of winter, and the land was broken up by knots of densely growing trees.
‘Did the war do this?’ she asked, the first words uttered for more than two hours. Even as she asked, she was thinking that the abandonment looked far older. ‘Was there a plague here or something?’
‘More than a generation ago, the family of little princelings who ruled this province ran out of heirs, I think,’ was Gaved’s response. ‘And by the time some other petty nobles came round to claim the place, after decades of duelling genealogies, the locals weren’t exactly ready for someone lording it over them.’ He did not sound particularly disapproving, but then that prospect was probably inviting to him. ‘All over the Commonweal, there are whole provinces gone fallow. More so since the war, obviously, but it’s been going on for ever, from what I can make out. Place is falling apart. If it’s not bandits setting themselves up as princes, it’s princes going bad and turning bandit. Raids across principality borders, villages burned, or village headmen declaring independence, thieves on the roads and in the forests, peasants deciding they’d rather be free, or lords taxing the shirts off their backs. The Monarch’s a long way away, and the Mercers do what they can – the proper ones and the provincial sort like we’ve got – but how many Mercers can there be?’
‘And yet you’re working for Salma’s family. I’d have thought you’d be on the other side,’ she said darkly.
‘Me? I’m making a living,’ Gaved declared, glancing back at her briefly. That she could stick a knife in his back at any moment was something he was apparently managing to deal with phlegmatically. ‘When I left Jerez and headed west, I only had one name to conjure with, and that was your friend’s.’
‘Salma? You got here through trading on his name?’ she demanded.
‘Once I heard his family mentioned, I made my way over and talked myself into a job. Maybe tomorrow Sef and I’ll move on, turn brigand even, but for today I’m on the side of the Monarch. It’s that kind of world. I keep my options open. Or I try to. There was no need for that bloodshed, last night.’ His voice was careful and measured, and he must have felt the flash of anger going through her.
‘They were going to kill you.’
‘I could have talked my way out of it, with them, or with Siriell if need be. It’s part of what I do. She was probably only going to make me an offer.’
‘Oh, and that would suit you well, wouldn’t it?’ she accused him. ‘Just waiting for the chance to jump flags to join the outlaws, after Salma’s people took you in.’
‘I like to keep my options open,’ Gaved repeated. ‘But killing people closes doors. Who knows when I might need to go back there, on whoever’s business? Now I don’t know if I can.’
‘I’m not going to be anyone’s prisoner,’ Tynisa hissed through gritted teeth. She was starting to see flickers at the edge of her vision, one or other of her imaginary companions keeping pace with her. Achaeos, was it? Had he come to reproach her now for the blood she had spilled?
‘It’s not so simple—’ Gaved began, but she hissed at him so fiercely that he stopped.
‘I have been a prisoner once,’ she snapped. ‘You have no idea what that cost me and what parts of me I left behind, when I got out.’
The Wasp scowled at her over his shoulder. ‘Well, it’s done,’ was all he could manage. ‘But they’ll have people in the air, searching for us. Nobody kills that many of Siriell’s