Servants of the Sands, page 28
Gods, she’s a lot like I was. Azni blocked that thought aside hastily, not wanting to risk Cafad ever sensing that comparison lurking in her head. “Who is the heir, then?” she asked.
“There isn’t one,” Nissa admitted. “He keeps selecting and testing and rejecting candidates. I don’t understand what he’s looking for. Everyone’s unsettled.”
Azni shook her head, frowning. “That’s not good at all.” And Nissa shouldn’t be admitting something like that to an outsider.
Nissa seemed to pick up on the unspoken thought. She shrugged, her mouth twisting. “Keeping Sessin secrets doesn’t matter to me any longer.” She set her mug on the side table, and regarded Azni with a dry-eyed, bleak stare. “I’m not in line to be heir, and I never will be. I’m Sessin in name only, at this point. Lord Antouin made it clear that he won’t argue any use Cafad decides to put me to. He said Cafad could put me out for the guardsmen to enjoy—” She stopped and shut her eyes.
Godsdamnit. Azni bit her tongue hard, and only just managed to keep her expression impassive. Antouin has lost his mind. Sessin is in serious trouble if this gets out. What the hells did Cafad put in that letter?
Nissa shrugged as though shaking away the memory, and said in a harsher tone, “I walked myself into the situation. I can’t blame anyone but myself.”
“What did you do to provoke Lord Antouin to this extent, Nissa?” Azni asked bluntly.
“I can’t discuss it.” Nissa’s gaze was cold and clear now, all hesitation gone.
“It’s fairly important that you do,” Azni said. “Cafad is certainly going to want to know.”
“I’ll talk to him about it,” Nissa said, expression and voice equally flat, “but I can’t discuss it with you, or with anyone else. Even if that means losing my guest-right.”
Azni turned that over in her head a few times, studying the various angles and options. Compel the girl to answer, and she would acquire yet another dangerous secret to keep. Send the girl away and she would face Cafad’s certain wrath. At last, she said, “I won’t turn you out. We’ll speak to Lord Scratha tonight, and allow him to make the decision.”
The icy visage cracked abruptly. “Don’t leave me alone with him,” Nissa blurted. She bit her lip and looked away, clearly ashamed of herself for losing control.
“I won’t,” Azni told her emphatically. “Cafad will not treat you with less than full dignity, Nissa. I’ll stay with you to make sure of it.”
Nissa shut her eyes for a moment, then put her shoulders back and her chin up, and met Azni’s gaze. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know if you can fill that promise, but I feel better for hearing it.”
“I can and will,” Azni assured her. “And now, let’s get you cleaned up, dressed, and fed. By that time, Cafad will be done with the day’s business, and we can go face him—together.”
Chapter 36
Having companions dictated a night at the way stop, loath as Allonin was to take the time, but he needed the rest as well. Most of his recent travel had been by coast hopper, or short stretches of walking flat roads, which the Horn most definitely was not.
By the time he’d finished paying over the coin for a private room, his legs felt hot with strain. The excitement of the day had taken its toll on Lamb and Tenny as well. They became grey-faced and sullen.
The room was barely large enough for the two low beds, a simple table, and a single chair. Tenny, sparing only a brief glance at his surroundings, collapsed onto one of the cots as Allonin shut the door. Lamb knelt to tug the boy’s ragged shoes and socks off.
“Gah,” he said, straightening. “His feet are a mess. Do you have any salve?”
“No.” Allonin squinted at the boy’s raw, swollen feet. “Go pick up some roosh and a basin.”
“Got coin for it, lord?” Lamb said brashly. He faltered, sobering, at the look Allonin shot him. “Sorry.” He let himself out.
Allonin checked to be sure that Lamb was really gone and that nobody else was watching at the door, windows, or various chinks in the walls. Then he knelt by the low cot and cupped his hands around Tenny’s feet, careful not to touch any spot directly. A moment’s focus brought heat flaring through his hands and a mumbling snort from Tenny.
Allonin sat back, watching the boy intently, but Tenny only sank deeper into sleep. He held his hands around the boy’s feet once more, and this time kept them there until the bulk of the swelling subsided and the worst of the blisters eased to reddened skin. Then he stood, rubbing his palms against his trouser legs, and moved to lean against the nearest wall, crossing his arms as though bored and impatient.
Lamb returned not long after that, basin and two large wineskins in hand. “One for him, one for us,” he said, holding the skins up, and grinned. “I figure I’ve the right to a drink or ten.”
“You don’t,” Allonin said without a trace of humor, “but I’ll allow it. This once.” They were in relative privacy. There was no need for the formal respect Lamb had shown throughout the day, but Allonin knew better than to give the man too long of a leash.
“Oh, you have to drink with me. It’s no fun drinking alone.” As he spoke, Lamb set the basin on the floor beside the bed and poured a generous amount of roosh into the container. The harsh smell flooded the room. Allonin put a hand over his nose, wincing.
“Good gods, and you’re going to drink that?”
“I’ve had worse.” Lamb studied Tenny’s feet, frowning a little, then shot a puzzled glance at Allonin. “I thought he was more a mess than this.”
“Always looks bad at first go,” Allonin said, waving one hand in a weary, dismissive motion.
Lamb shrugged and rolled Tenny’s filthy pants legs up to the knee. With a hard shove and a tug, he turned the boy sideways, feet nearly resting on the bare floorboards, head tipped over the other edge of the cot.
“Ready for a yell,” Lamb said, and lifting the boy’s ankles, shoved the basin under and let go.
Tenny made a feeble attempt at catapulting upright. Too weak with exhaustion to accomplish that, he let out an energetic screech instead.
Lamb reached over and slapped the boy’s shoulder. “Shut it, Tenny,” he said. “Or I’ll gag you myself.”
The boy stuffed a fist in his mouth and began moaning.
“Good enough,” Allonin said as Lamb raised his hand again. “The yelling would bother people. The moaning won’t. Let him be.”
Unbelievably, Tenny was asleep again within moments. Lamb sat on one of the other two beds, uncapping the second wineskin.
“This is better quality,” he said, offering it to Allonin. “Teyanain-crafted. Price was bloody well high enough!”
Allonin shook his head, waving the skin aside. “One of us needs to be sober tonight.”
“Godsdamn well won’t be me,” Lamb said, and squirted a stream of cloudy liquid into his mouth. He swallowed, then gagged, his eyes crossing. Once he had his breath back, he swore hoarsely, staring at the wineskin. “What is this shit?” he demanded.
Allonin laughed. “Let me see.” He tasted the liquor and grimaced. “What term, exactly, did you use for better quality roosh?”
“Perroc-s’etta. A man’s drink.”
Allonin snorted. “No, Lamb. Teyanain mountain lightning, which is what I think you wanted to ask for, would be pehra teys’eshta: the drink of the teyanin man. This is a drink made from fermented cactus juice. Perroc-s’etta translates, roughly, to... ah, male... fluids. The fermented juice looks... and some people think it tastes... somewhat similar.”
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” Lamb said, his whole face wrinkling up. “Just when I think I know everything about the southlands.”
“You’re never going to know everything, Lamb,” Allonin said. He took another drink, then recapped the wineskin and set it aside. “So tell me about how you came to be in a machago-line, since the boy’s safely asleep.”
Lamb sighed and ran both his hands through his hair, finger-combing out snarled knots. “Well, I’m awake enough now,” he said, glancing at the wineskin. “Nothing wakes you up quite like a truly nasty taste. I didn’t know he was still alive. I thought he’d died alongside my mother. When I found out—”
“How did you find out?” Allonin cut in.
Lamb gave him a weary, sardonic grin. “Yeah, I thought about that too. So convenient a notion to drag me out of Water’s End, isn’t it? But the information came from Shadow herself.”
“No surety of truth there,” Allonin commented.
“Oh, we’ve a better working relationship than that,” Lamb said. “She doesn’t lie to me.”
Allonin raised a skeptical eyebrow. Lamb laughed. “All right, I had my doubts—of course I did! Right up until I saw him in person.”
“A half-brother you last saw—what—ten years ago?” He laced his tone with cynical distrust, deliberately harsh, to see if Lamb would be baited into defensive anger.
“Give me some credit, Allonin,” Lamb said, more soberly: not angry, not defensive, clearly acknowledging the validity of Allonin’s suspicion. Even exhausted, he knew the game too well. “I am fairly good at observation, you know. I’m normally the one doing the tricking, not the one being tricked.”
“Normally isn’t always. Never mind. Go on with the story.”
Lamb held off long enough to remove Tenny’s feet from the basin and slide the container aside, leaving the boy’s wet feet to drip onto the boards. “Well, I’d just finished some work that pleased Shadow no end, and I’d been thinking on this matter of my half-brother she’d mentioned some time back, so I asked for leave to go see how he was doing.”
“What took you so long?” Allonin filed away another question. Work that pleased Shadow no end meant it involved something significant. And very likely Lamb was trying to sidetrack the conversation with that casual remark.
Lamb shrugged. “As you say, I hadn’t seen him for some time. I wasn’t sure that Shadow hadn’t been trying to trick me. She’s done it before, as you well know. Even when she’s pleased with me. I think it’s a test, actually.” He paused, then added, “And there is a good reason I left Bright Bay in the first place. I wasn’t entirely eager to go back. Working for Shadow is much safer, even when she’s playing games.”
Listening to the pacing and tone, Lamb dearly wanted to shift the conversation to Shadow. “I thought you left Bright Bay because of the Purge.”
Lamb’s mouth twisted briefly. “Well, yes. That’s the part of the matter I admit to. Hold on, I think Tenny’s coming around.”
Tenny rolled and moaned. Lamb shoved him sideways on the bed and put the thin pillow under the boy’s head. The boy went from moan to snore almost immediately.
Lamb laughed. It trailed off into a heavy yawn. “I’ve never found that level of peace in my rest, not since the cradle,” he said.
“The part of the matter you admit to,” Allonin prompted.
“Well, nobody generally questions me past that point. It’s not unreasonable that I wanted to get away from a place where merely lifting a loaf of bread could see me gutted on the spot. Everyone knows the abuses those who enjoyed dabbling in less—ahh, legal activities—suffered during that time. Did you know that Shadow’s taken in several other refugees—”
“Thieves were brutally killed. Yes. Moving on to the other part of the matter?”
“You have no mercy, Allo.” Lamb sighed and rubbed his throat as though to forestall another yawn. “All right, all right. Along the way I apparently picked up an item or two that held more sentimental than financial importance to their previous owners. I had no real way of knowing that, of course—I thought they were, well, ordinary things, and being less... less experienced than I am today, less, ahh, wise in certain respects....”
Allonin could guess. “You threw them away.”
Lamb nodded. “More or less. I couldn’t retrieve them, because I didn’t know where they were. And the previous owners proved surprisingly good at finding me—and very willing to hang me upside down by my most personally precious items. Seemed a good time to abandon the nest.”
“Your mother and half-brother were still alive at that time?” Allonin prodded. Something wasn’t lining up properly, but he couldn’t quite pin it down yet.
“I didn’t know for sure,” Lamb admitted. His voice was becoming rough with exhaustion. “But my mother made it clear I wasn’t welcome to shelter with her again. So even if she was alive and free, she wouldn’t have helped. South seemed much safer. Which it was, for some good while—until I made the mistake of getting too interested in your history.” He smirked.
“That’s a banal story, Lamb,” Allonin observed, deliberately ignoring the dig at the end. “I always thought you’d have a more dashing, dramatic history once you finally spilled the real details.”
Lamb shrugged. “Diamonds don’t come from silver, Allonin,” he said around another yawn. “And you should have met my family, if you like dramatic. They were supremely good at that sort of thing. I didn’t care for that style. I’m far too subdued, and definitely too modest.”
Allonin couldn’t help a snort of laughter.
“In any case,” Lamb said, glancing at Tenny again, “Shadow granted me leave, and I came north to see for myself. I figured the people I’d upset would either be dead, relocated, or have gained perspective about missing romantic trinkets. I found Tenny easily enough.” He paused, shaking his head. His voice got quieter. “Of all places, he was with the s’iopes. They have a little enclave in the city. I stopped by to talk with him one day, and the priests took offense—”
“You didn’t simply ask to see your brother, did you?” Allonin sighed.
“Of course I asked,” Lamb said as though offended. His broad features shifted to sly amusement. “They said No. And I thought, well, they’re relying on a wall to keep people out, this will be simple....” He spread his hands in response to Allonin’s expression. “I am a master thief, Allo. What else could I have done? I’d come all that way, after all, and gods know I’m not fond of the Northern Church after what they did to my home city.”
Allonin raised an eyebrow at the irony of that statement. Lamb hooked the fingers of his right hand into the symbol for the Three Gods of the southlands.
“Facile,” Allonin commented.
“Not really,” Lamb replied, dropping both his hands to his thighs. “I breathed the air and drank the water while I lived in Water’s End, after all.”
“So the priests were offended,” Allonin prompted. “Get back to the main story.”
“Yes, lord,” Lamb responded sardonically and grinned, his humor restored just that quickly. “Well, I needed to leave in a hurry at that point, and Tenny wanted to travel with me—but the priests had already taken a dislike to me. They decided I would be a bad influence on a promising youngster, that sort of thing. They would have made a terrible fuss over his leaving if he’d asked to go.”
He paused to yawn, rubbing his face and scalp vigorously. “Heh—hand me the roosh, that’ll wake me up again. Ah, that’s worse than I remembered, good gods!” He recapped the wineskin and tossed it back to Allonin. “I brought Tenny to a spot where we could discuss what to do next. I wanted to head south, back to Water’s End. He was interested in going north for some godsforsaken reason. We disagreed.”
“If you’d cut the story down to basics, you’d already be finished and asleep,” Allonin said. “You’re getting caught up in your fancy wording, Lamb.”
“It sounds better that way.” Lamb yawned again, eyeing the wineskin, then shook his head. “Fine. We got into a brawl, the tavern we were in objected, and we both took clouts to the back of the head and woke up in chains. As soon as I knew we were headed south, I decided to play along. I figured I could get free at Water’s End, if not sooner, and it got us through the South Gate without inconvenient questions from any irate priests that might be trying to prevent Tenny from leaving. It was very kind of you to stop and help us out. I wasn’t looking forward to acquiring another slave brand. They tend to itch for days.”
“There’s a fair bit missing from your account,” Allonin said sourly. “You’re not skipping steps, you’re vaulting chasms.”
“Well, I’m tired, Allo,” Lamb protested. “You should be glad I can put four words together in a line, especially with you interrupting all the time. Can’t you prod at me tomorrow, or the next day?”
Allonin sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, and looked at the ceiling. He decided to let it rest for the moment. Exhaustion racked aches through joint and muscle, and he couldn’t be sure that he was thinking or hearing clearly.
“Can I go to sleep now?” Lamb said. “Please?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Allonin said absently, his thoughts switching to what would come with the dawn. “I’ll wake you for a watch in about three hours. You’ll wake me and Tenny three hours after that. We’ll have to get on the road early to reach Water’s End. I’d rather we stand before Shadow sooner than later.”
Lamb frowned. “Why is that a concern?”
“I killed a machago and released several northern slaves to get you free,” Allonin reminded him pointedly. “That’s not going to make Shadow happy. And I’m taking you from her service, which will make her even angrier.”
Lamb blinked, his gaze cutting to one side for a flickering moment.
“Oh, yes,” Allonin said, grinning unpleasantly. “Did you think I’d release you back into Shadow’s service once we stepped into her office, Lamb? Not a chance. I wasn’t putting on a show for your brother back there. I’m holding you to that oath, unless Shadow can give me something of equal value in its place. Has she become more charitable over rescuing you from your mistakes, of late?”
“Hells, no,” Lamb muttered. He stared at the wineskin longingly. “One of the few times I really feel a need to get drunk....”
Allonin laughed. “Go to sleep, Lamb,” he said. “I’ll sit up a bit, then wake you for a watch.”
