I’m standing over a bench in the Mash Fist, where I’d spent the previous few days sleeping to avoid seeing any of my old company. I’m fixing my belt, packing a bedskin, bilt and other bits for the walk to Ruifsen’s farm. Good as their word, Thornsen and Nazz had fitted me out proper with what I’d need for a return to the Circle.
“Teyr?”
Her accent hasn’t changed; she always made my name sound more exotic than it is, like some breathy and beautiful sigh.
Salia.
She hasn’t changed since she was in my crew; at six foot tall she draws all the eyes in the room to her. Perhaps the beauty in her face which tapers like an almond is a little more set, hard work and age thinning out the softness of youth. Her green eyes are lit up by the deep brown and blue-shaded skin of the colour she’s paid. She still has her black hair, though it’s tied back in a thick tail. She was the difference on more skirmishes than I can count, a killer as cold as they come. What I recall of her dry and unforgiving humour, her beautiful body as we shared skins on nights out in the field, was long worn out with her betrayal back in Marola.
She walks over from the doorway, and I put my arms out for an embrace, a chance to get a sense of how ready she is, because I feel like we’ll be talking about Nazz’s purse very shortly. I’m suspicious of why she’s here at this time, even if Nazz isn’t. She feels hard and strong, square cut as Nazz would have said. I hold her hands as we pull back and they feel agreeably rough and callused.
“You still move like a dancer and your hands still feel like they hold a sword,” I says.
“I can choose my work these days, though it’s all for Farlsgrad’s king and it pays well. Word’s crossed the Sar regarding Othbutter’s troubles in the Circle. I thought I’d see for myself. I saw you yesterday, coming in here with a freshly waxed pack and that new scabbard you’re wearing. A new sword as well?”
“I’m off to see Ruifsen. He still lives about, his brother’s farm. Thought I’d walk it.”
She gives me a feeble smile, no interest in Ruifsen but too polite to say otherwise.
“Are you taking that handsome lad that’s pretending he’s not watching this place from across the lane?”
“I am. A long story.”
“Like that beautiful eye of yours. What caused it? Is it some new recipe?”
“Salia, it’s good to see you alive and looking so well, but let’s not pretend you give a shit about me and I’ll pretend you didn’t leave me to die in Marola. Why don’t you find Nazz, whose purse I’ve just taken, and join the crew he’s putting together? I suspect it’s why you’re here.”
She nods slowly, taking that one on the chin. It surprises me that she isn’t protesting ignorance of Nazz’s crew and that perturbs me all the more. She was a frighteningly good merc back in our prime, and her leathers, her colour, the strong smell of her plant speak well of her coin and status now. I’d wager she’s been sent by someone close to the king to report on the state of Hillfast.
“Seems like you’ve had a hard few years, Teyr. It would explain you paying in again. Give Ruifsen Sillindar’s blessing from me, would you?”
“Of course I will. May Sillindar follow you.”
I had no desire to suggest we meet up on my return, for all that I guessed she might have felt at least a bit awkward about seeing me again after what happened. So I walk past her and out of the Mash Fist onto the lane. I gesture to the man Salia had pointed out, the guard that was to watch me.
“I hope you’ve got your walking feet on, lad. Get yourself a pack, we’re leaving for the North Four farms. Did they only send you?”
He sulks and whistles to another further along the lane, signs to him what we’re doing.
“I have to have your sword, Teyr,” he says. “I don’t want to be run through the moment I fall asleep out there.”
“Get a fucking hold of yourself, boy. I’m wearing this sword and I have no desire to run and save my life, let alone kill you to do it. I’m just looking for a few chalk-faced traitors I can die with. Bring your friend along, he’ll give you someone to talk to.”
I fret about Salia appearing like she has, but if she joins Nazz’s crew I reckon there’s time enough to work out her position. With the two guards and their bows at the ready keeping some way out of my hearing I take them onto the Sixty, which refers to the number of trails that connect the farms in the quarters which are all worked by Othbutter’s own family.
Pair hadn’t set camp in their lives, so needed some telling about what to fetch and how to do a watch. Seems like they never did night work either, not even a recipe for night seeing, and both fell asleep, needed waking as the weger birds started their scritching at the turn of Aoig.
Few bother us as we pass through with Othbutter’s seal. The big galerin mushroom sheds cluster like villages amid the runs of celery, shiel and henbane. Seems little awareness out here that there’s trouble east. Thornsen knew many of the clearks on the lots here and visited often, securing us prices that others couldn’t get in return for ensuring the people here had a few kickbacks and someone in Hillfast they could trust on their visits to the markets there.
The point of me visiting Ruifsen was to persuade him not to come with us though, despite Nazz and whatever he and Othbutter was both plotting and paying in coin. I know it hasn’t gone so well with Ru in the years since we come back to Hillfast. He put his coin into his brother’s farms but his brother’s become a soak and a dicer and lost one of them. Now Ru works them, I guess to protect his investment, managing the two left and trying to bring his niece and nephews on so they don’t lose everything, and I’d have him do that for he deserves his happiness.
Like a lot of things I wish was different, I wish I had time to have seen him more in the years I was building up my own interests and got taken up with Aude and Mosa. It’s always easy to put off seeing those you love if they’re a way away. Perhaps you think they’ll always be there, so there’s no rush. But it isn’t true.
Ru looked after me all my life, from when I first left Hillfast for the fighting on the Farlsgrad border. He had served for Hillfast for a few years by then against Northspur in the Larchlands, so he was quieter than the rest of us new recruits, who didn’t know better what killing does to you.
When I first left Amondell and my family all those years ago I joined a van that was passing through to Hillfast and for passage I signed a contract they call the Beggar’s Blood, for I had no other way of getting out of the Circle without coin, and it’s blood, back and bone that’s taken as you’re put to work. When the old Othbutter come to Fat Steppy to raise some soldiers so he could win favour with the Farlsgrad king, Steppy put me, Nazz and a few others on the ship over the Sar.
I wanted to be out of the citadel. Getting a crew to look past my babs, legs and youth was a daily war and I had to break some faces and bones on occasion. There was three of us girls on Steppy’s Blood, and the fuckers we had for masters to train us always said the girls worked hardest. Don’t think that meant we got an easier ride for our work; Grilde, our one master, was brutal but straight as a line. Riebsen, however, was crazy, a vicious cunt I’d seen cripple a couple of boys that stood in the way of me or one of the other girls he’d try and give night shifts to when we all knew what he was after.
All in all I was told I’d pay down my contract a bit quicker and I’d be away from all that shit for a few months at least. Thing is, I’d got close to Nazz in the years we’d come through together with Steppy. He was a handsome boy then, reckless and immortal with self-belief, loyal to a fault, for a while, and all of that bound a crew to him fierce. I was full of juice for him, his soft lips and deep-set eyes; he made me laugh like a gull and got us into all kinds of trouble in taverns or break-ins, and, well, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Seemed all the better at the time that my paying colour stopped my bleeds. By the time we got on the ship going west to Farlsgrad I’d stopped going with him for I’d heard he was free with his cock and he was taking different jobs to be away from me.
Of course, being Nazz, surrounded by a lot of men and women he didn’t know, he was acting up, as it was his way of figuring out who was who, by their own reaction to him. Ruifsen, on the first day of the voyage, had come over as I was sicking up over the gunwale and asked if he could have my wrists. I turned about, chin still dripping, and held them out because it was that or throw myself overboard and be done with it.
He put his thumbs down hard on each wrist and faced me. He was a giant then and a giant now, a good foot taller and wider than me, his whole family, he said, seemed to have a bit of tree sap in their veins. The sickness fell away.
“I got some ginger in my pack, always pack a bit for a rough crossing. I’m Ruifsen.”
Nazz was nearby, had shouted over that there was others sick, not just pretty women. Ru give me a rag to wipe my mouth and otherwise ignored Nazz, which pleased me no end. Nazz had a few about him he was entertaining, but I too ignored him because I knew that wound him up the most.
The trails are signposted. There’s no fence as such when we get to Ru’s farmland, at least part of it. He and his brother gambled on growing food rather than the plant that goes in mixes. I knew from my last visit that the twenty acres before us was wild-looking; slender spruce and birch grew amid the rich soil that his family had spent years cultivating to fill with cloudberries. Before us we could see eight or so pickers in the nearest few acres, surrounded by the small furnace-orange fruits on their beds of papery singed-looking leaves. It’s beautiful land, left to itself, and their cloudberries are famous hereabouts because they can breathe the soil a bit more than other farms.
Further on we come to their great fields of barley and beyond those the fields of cattle.
My guards lose a little blood to the mosquies and flies that live off the cows as we tramp through their fields, one thing at least my colour saves me the trouble of. They’re fussing and complaining about them when we pass through a gate and I spot Ru talking to a few of his hands. They’re in their cups, a cool late afternoon and work’s done. His brother’s keep, his sister-ken, is with him, a basket of bread in her hands.
Something’s said, a nod towards us, and he turns about. His huge beard splits open with his smile. He slaps his thighs. His sister-ken I just about recognise, though she looks like she’s had a hard day on the land and her hair is tied under a scarf. She smiles and waves, obviously recognising me.
Ru runs over, delight all over him, and I shriek as he lifts me up off my feet and into his arms, crushing me and spinning me about and kissing my cheek as he does.
My eyes fill with tears, my black eye not so much of course, and I hug him back. He’s sour and wet with hard work and when he drops me down again we get a good look at each other. He’s got older, browner mostly, grey flushing through his beard and stache. His hair’s soaked to his head and he’s losing it at the crown a little. There’s a stillness in him that my eye somehow picks up, he seems rooted to the earth; the song, a hum, barely breaks between him and the ground.
He won’t say it, but my face is a concern to him. We both know it’s broken up.
“You get more beautiful, Teyr.”
“Fuck off, Ru. It’s lovely to see you.”
“Who are these boys?”
“My guards. I’m under a death sentence. And I’m hungry.”
“Right then. Well, you’d best join us at the house—we were just seeing off the hands for today. What do I call you two boys then?”
My guards aren’t in a great mood from the mosquies.
“I’m Bridmas, this is Niks,” says the one. “We’d be grateful for something to stop the itching of those bloody mosquies.”
Ru’s sister-ken come over then, Bridie.
“I can see you two poor things itching. You didn’t have a nettle cream about you?”
They shake their heads.
“Teyr, it’s good to see you again after all these years.” Like Ru, she’s staring at the black eye, the scars and broken nose, but is too polite to say anything about it.
“And you, Bridie, how’s Jol?” I was meaning her keep Jol Ruifsen. I never used Ru’s first name, Niel, he was always just Ruifsen to me.
“He’s away at Hillfast, he says. Won’t see him for a few days and he’ll want cleaning up and straightening out when he does come back. Always glad of Niel, in’t I?”
Ru shrugs and smiles at her.
“I can’t wait to see those duts of yours, though I expect they’ll be my height now, will they?” I says to her.
“They’ll love to see you, I’m sure. We’re grateful for the oil you still bring up here. I never got to tell you that before now.”
“That’ll be Thornsen to thank.”
“How do you mean?” she says.
“Well, I’ve been away a while.”
“I knew it,” says Ru as we’re in our pipes on the porch to his brother’s house. He has a hut of his own nearer the cows, just the one room he sleeps and washes himself in. It’s late in the night, and the two guards, in fairness, got stuck into helping with making cheese and then making a few rye loaves, or kuksas as we say in Abra. Far as I know they’re sleeping in one of the barns, the mead Bridie makes could take down a buffalo, but they thought they knew better.
“I know you got that funny eye, but I knew something was wrong from the look in them generally. I never seen you so sad, Amo.”
“You seem happy though, Ru, and that’s cheered me up. Sorry I been away so long.”
“You were getting rich and must have been busy. Your van that comes through and drops the oil off would give us news of you and your trading over the Sar. Then they were telling us you’d met a man and then that you had set up your posts over the Ridge and down near Ablitch.”
We’d been over it all the last few hours.
“How’s the two farms now? I look about and see it all in good order, from tools to wagons to fences.”
“Bridie’s managing it all now she’s got her letters. Jol didn’t want her to have them, didn’t want me near his scrolls either, but when the first farm got signed away on a bet she give him a right going-over and then I hears him hitting her and I put him out on his back, after which I said I’d be taking on the scrolls and tallies, and sure enough it was a right fucking mess. He got right for a while, because she wouldn’t have him in her furs until he did. Didn’t last. But I taught her letters so she could teach the duts. She’s running the scrolls and I’m keeping my eye on the hands and training Ilda and the two boys.”
They might have been his own children the way he loves them, and they are fond of him, Ilda the most.
“Nazz sent Threeboots up to see me a few weeks past. I’m thinking your being here has something in common with that.”
“How is she?”
“Still paid up, working for Nazz, probably running one of his crews. She’s got a bit of grey at her roots, dyes her hair a bit now, I think, and the plant’s took hold as well, like she’s shrivelled a bit. You know how it goes, one moment she’s full tilt talking about the thieving she’s been doing and the next she’s gone quiet or stops in the middle of what she’s saying and changes to some other subject.”
“How are you now, still off the betony?” A lot of us mercenaries have had trouble with betony, some it gets hold of and it’s a fight to get away from it. Ru was under for a long time in Marola.
“Aye. I got you to thank for that still, not been tempted by it since.”
I squeeze his hand, pleased, besides which I’d not seen the shakes on him all day.
“What did she say, Threeboots?”
“Nazz has a purse, a big one, going after this Khiese. Didn’t say it was a crossroads job, but she said it would clear the debts we got from Jol’s dice.”
“How much?”
“Teyr, I don’t want to go into it now—first night we seen each other in years. You’re going though, eh? Going back for Khiese?”
I nod. “Bit surprised Nazz is going though,” I says.
“He is?”
“He is. He’s leading it.”
“Don’t make any sense that. Nazz has his fingers in almost everything going on among the sheds except, it seems, yours. He got deckhands, vanners, cutters, runs dice pens, droop joints and taverns, whores. Can’t see what reason he’s got to go except to protect all that, but still don’t mean you’d go yourself.”
“What I was thinking, Othbutter’s got something to do with making him go. I was up for the noose for them thinking I had killed Crogan Othbutter, and it was a pardon if I went and did this. Nazz and the chief have something cooking and I don’t have an idea as to what it is. Then, as I’m leaving a couple of days ago, to come here, I see Salia in the Mash Fist, first time she’s been in Hillfast in years, has to be. She didn’t seem surprised Nazz had a purse for this job either. Don’t smell right, Ru.”
“Salia? Haven’t seen her since she took a boat over the Sar from Sukenstad in Jua. Well, I’ll be by your side at least. We’ll figure it, Amo.”
“No! No, you mustn’t, Ru. I come here to tell you to stay. You can’t go out there, the Circle, because nobody’s coming back, I know that much. I can’t help thinking it’s something Othbutter and Nazz must know, but regardless of what it means, you have to keep Bridie and the children safe. They’re your world now and all your coin you put in these farms—I won’t have you lose it all. My coming here was about me, well, saying goodbye, I guess. I missed you, Ru, but I come to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid for that spimrag Nazz. I can settle your debts if need be.” He puts his arm out and takes up my hand in his, brings it to his lips to kiss it. He’s quiet for a bit, looking about him at the fields darkening, but he’s breathing a bit harder, trying to stop some tears, I think.
“You tell me this Khiese is come to rule all Hillfast. Caring for this farm and my interests is at one with caring for you.”
“No, Ru, please.”
“Amo. How many times you saved my life? Nazz forgot it for his greed down in Marola, as the others did, but all those years you cared for us, did our worrying, got us our due. I wish you’d asked me to go with you last year. Don’t know if I could have made the difference but you’re stupider than my brother if you think I won’t be there for you now.”
“The farm, Ru, all this. It’s something you should be keeping hold of. I saw you earlier, laughing and eating with the hands and all settled. I would’ve turned back if I knew I was going to put ideas in your head. I didn’t keep us straight all those years so you’d be paying back in again, taking colour again. It was so you’d pay out ahead of all those broke-up mercs we see on the docks stammering and begging, lost on the betony, which we was close to.”
“You telling me I can’t pay you back for that love you showed me?”
“For fuck’s sake, Ru.” I tipped my head back, stars was out and a nip was on the breeze. “You’ve got to be paid up, on your Forms fierce. I worry about you on the brews again. Might be that Farlsgrad send a force if they see their interests in the citadels harmed, so your farms would be safe, I reckon. But Ru, you stand a chance to get away if Khiese does come. You got no chance in the Circle.” Can’t believe I didn’t ask Othbutter about Farlsgrad.
“If you’re so sure of dying, why are you going in there? What do you want to be dying now for? It don’t bring Mosa back and it don’t help Aude if he in’t dead already. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do. Course I do.” What I’m so sure of seems slippery when I’m trying to force it into words for they don’t come easy. “I’ve got a reckoning with myself to make. I thought I deserved what I had, I thought I should have got what I wanted just because I wanted it. And I wanted it all. I wanted to never be made keep to some Auksen runt and be pushing out duts for him. Then I wanted to be Khasgal’s queen and rule an empire. When I couldn’t have him I took you all to Jua and the biggest purses we ever had, though fuck knows it wasn’t enough. Then I come home and within a few years I’m trying to prove I can run a road where no one else dared and I’m thinking nothing can stop me because I’m Teyr Amondsen. Now I’m old and I got nothing worth having, only coin, and that gone with this death sentence.
“This is about me settling all that best I can. Just carrying on making coin like it matters a fuck isn’t going to fill that black hole in my head. Drowning in brandy won’t bring Mosa back to life. Maybe running Khiese through won’t fill the hole either, but I can’t think of anything else might work in place of getting revenge on him.”
He’s quiet for a bit, then he smiles and lets out a good big breath of smoke.
“What’s that smile for, Ru?”
“Only ever seems women have to apologise for a bit of ambition, don’t it? We all believed in you, din’t we? Me, Nazz, Thad, Tarrigsen, then Aude. We all been with you and for you.”
He takes my hand again.
“If I’m paying back in I want you to second me. Run the Forms with me in the morning, show me how far away I am, because I been doing them regular for years but without a second you get bad habits.”
“What about Bridie? You’re just going to leave her to your cock of a brother?”
“She’ll manage.” He says it a bit quieter. I know why.
“You love her, Ru. I can see it, she can see it, I’m sure, she’s sharp as a needle. I followed your eyes all day and they was much on her. And I think she’s fond of you and all, for I followed her eyes as well.”
He narrows his lips, gives the smallest of nods, like he thought better of trying to put up some sort of denial.
“We can stop another day. I can have a word with Thornsen to have a cleark come by now and again if you are coming with me. My two guards haven’t looked so happy since I led them off the quays, I’m sure they’ll stay a little longer.”
“Aye. Perhaps we can take a day.”
We leave two days later.
Bridie and the children give all the assurances that everything is in order and that both he and I need to look after each other. They all give me Sillindar’s blessings and Ilda sings us them as we all used to sing them. The boys give Ru a beard hoop they’d been making for his birthday; it is black larch, his favourite wood, carved in which was the Ruifsen emblem of the striking falcon, his family being renowned breeders about Hillfast. Him and Bridie have a good long hug but the children are too young to read anything into it. Bridie’s eyes are full when she asks me to try and bring him back safe, though she makes sure none of the others are about when we say our own farewell. I can’t say anything then she won’t want to hear, for she knows well enough what being a soldier means, what paying colour means. Might as well juggle axes blindfolded as take a fightbrew.
Good as his word, it looks like he has kept up his Forms and it give me some comfort for what was to come.
We wave farewell to Bridie until a slope in the fields takes the sight of her and we push on till Aoig’s on the wane before rigging a shelter for us to lie under. Ruifsen has been doing this for years and is fierce quick about it. Just as well because the rains come to stay all the way back into Hillfast.
Salia had left word in the Mash Fist I was to head for the market sheds east half a mile from the walls, the Thesselday after the half-moon. Nazz would have the crew ready to go that morning, which was the following day, given my stay at Ru’s, but we decided to make a night of it there with the carters, soaks and others anyway. Me and Ru sang, even danced together the jigs we remembered from our army days. I won a few arm wrestles, was reminded of why I was barred from most other taverns on the quays, mostly fighting and getting juicy with men whose keeps found out and come after me. But all that was long ago. Last night me and Ru just washed everything away with a rare old barrel of soraki, a strong juniper ale few there could afford.
I felt free.
Today’s a busy one on the docks, at least seven ships on the water, four cogs and three whalers already in and gulls and dockers alike are maddened by blood and blubber, crewmasters hoarse, waving their whips at the teams over and in the carcasses. One man’s being carried away dead and two more are howling with breaks as we hop and step around the hundreds giving it their backs and bones amid the black pools, fat and barrels.
We take Skipson Lane, move off the front and into a warren of flophouses, droopjoints and workshops of those that service the quays. We’re heading for the meeting point when an old man calls out from behind us.
“Master Amondsen!” He has the bearing of a life’s service in his straight back and measured, almost ritualised gestures, hands behind him, eternally waiting on the next instruction.
“Luddson, it’s lovely to see you.” I put my arms around him despite him being professionally unable to return the gesture, but I feel his smile widen as I kiss his cold cheek.
“Always a delight to see you, my child. Master Tarrigsen was much moved by your condition last week. You’ll be Ruifsen. I’ve been told a giant might be accompanying the young master.”
“Do you want us to come to Tarry’s?”
“Ah, no. He has sent me. My disapproval of his excessive working fails to excite him to any alternative pleasures, but he’s unwell. I fear that his interests take too much.”
“We should go—there might be something I or Thornsen can …” But Luddson raises a hand.
“He’s not well, Master.” The words are said with a subtle, practised weight, forbidding further dissent. He pulls from a pouch on his belt a small waxed leather wallet.
“The Oskoro have spoken with you once, I see.” He gestures towards my eye. “I hope they will do so again, Master.”
“As do I. They can no longer watch from the shade of the Almet if they wish to survive.”
Having handed the wallet to me, Luddson stands straight once more.
“Master Tarrigsen wishes you well and hopes that you’ll share with him the last of Thad’s leaf on your return. He has another gift, but it must wait.”
“Tell him I love him, Luddson. Tell him also that Thornsen will take over my interest and will cut him in, so that they can maintain our people’s livelihoods. May Sillindar follow you all.”
He bows and walks off with a grave and measured stride, leaving me upset for the news he’s brought. I know in my heart I won’t see Tarrigsen again and I’m angry that the last we saw of each other was that moment on the quayside as I was led off to the Hill.
“Come on, Teyr, let’s go see this crew we’re joining. And if that’s what I think it is in that pouch, I feel a good bit better about our chances.”
I try to smile. “You shouldn’t.”
“Took your fuckin’ time you black-eyed streak. Is that dried- out bag o’ twigs what we waited for, Nazz?”
This is Drogg. Like me, he’s been offered this purse over the gallows. Come from somewhere on the east side of Mount Hope. He’s almost Ru’s size, like someone piled up some big rocks, pebbles for cheeks and a chin, smooth and round.
“This is Teyr Amondsen, Drogg. I’m sure she’ll answer to Blackeye as well. And this is Niel Ruifsen, who I knew she’d bring. Good to see you again, Ru. You look ready.”
“Looks like you paid back in less than I have, Nazz. You ready for this or shall we let Amondsen run it?”
“Fuck you, Ru.” Nazz might have laughed this off years ago, but there’s an edge, a stress on him I think comes from not having had to draw a sack of misfits together tight and strong for a long time. You get nothing but your will done as a feared ganger.
They’re all mounted, the whole crew that’s waiting for us, with our horses and a couple of spares outside the stables of what must be one of Nazz’s farms.
“Master Amondsen!”
It’s Cherry. She dismounts and runs over, throwing her arms around me. My face is full of her wild red fuzz of hair, thick as a pillow of soft grass.
“Thornsen came by,” says Nazz. “Brought a couple of extras to look out for you, make us easier to see out in the hinterland. I hope they’re fucking good enough for this.”
“Helsen’s volunteered,” says Cherry, “you know, that sniffer we use over on the foothills of Crutter. His keep passed on. He wants to do something worth his while, he said. Thornsen didn’t make us come here, Master, he just asked for those willing to help on a crossroads job to go alongside you and make a difference. You been there for me, there for those duts and all down in Carl. We’re there for you.”
“Fucking Sillindar! Stick a few fingers in her cinch while you’re there and finish her quick, Blackeye, we got ground to cover,” says a big haggard-looking woman I learn is Agura. She was in the Coffins for poisoning her sister and sister’s family, hoping to get their plant concern west of Elder Hill. Used to be a legend among the vanners up in the Moors, renowned double-hander, but later in camp I’m going to give her a going-over.
“Who else we got here besides those I know?” I says.
“Good to see you again, Teyr,” says Threeboots. She speaks slowly, pipe in her mouth probably got some threaded bacca in there calming her. There’s half a grin through the smoke, black leathers as she always wore, though Nazz’s people were all in them, new belts and all. She’s kept her shape like Salia has, though she’s nearly a foot shorter, an acrobat as a girl growing up in Khasgal and still no fat on her. Her colouring had darkened like mine, hers browner, almost bruised-looking in patches.
“You met Salia, of course,” says Nazz. “She’s got a drudhan with her, Yame, the girl there with the olive colour from over Western Farlsgrad. My own people are here: Talley, who’s our drudha, Heddirn Thordsen from the Larchlands with the shield there, Caryd, who won me the singleton grand prize at the tourney and finally along with Drogg there’s Gravy, both taking the purse over the noose.”
Yame looks restless, might be a vadse addiction. Thick long ropes of brown matted hair, the front of it tied back and up like laces on a shirt. Gravy’s got a pickaxe of a nose, jacker’s build, he’s with Drogg and it’s clear they’ve known each other a while. Caryd’s from Mount Hope if I go by the name, but also the green eyes, and black hair worn short. I can see her hands tremble from fifteen feet off, she’s somewhere on betony’s road, but heading in or out I can’t tell for all she’s young. It’s her eyes, the eyes of a far older woman. Heddirn’s trying to look bored because he’s young, but mostly he’s just glancing at Salia’s backside, his horse being behind hers. Like Talley he’s been inked, something Nazz likes from his people. Talley’s shaved her head bald, and she’s got tears inked all over her head and face, all drawn to fall down to her neck. Heddirn’s just got the Thordsens’ kissing trees crest over his face.
Fourteen of us all told. There’s enough here with a bit about them we might last a few weeks, hopefully enough to get to Khiese. I’m sorry for Cherry and sniffer Helsen of course, but like Ru they’ve chosen this and I don’t want to let them down whatever else happens to us.
“We calling you Captain, Nazz? It isn’t right calling you by your name, not if we’re operating as a crew,” I says.
“Hasn’t seen you in years and she’s giving you orders again,” says Threeboots.
“Seems to be,” he says. “But she’s right. It’s Captain now. Crossroads purse. We’re after Samma Khiese, his brother’s a bonus but he’s fuck all, so once Samma’s done we’ll mop away whatever’s in our way and Othbutter can come and sort out the Circle. We ride for Faldon Ridge. Teyr’s got an outpost there and it’s a good base for Othbutter to hold and retake Elder Hill, close the Sedgeway. It’ll be full of whiteboys, full of killing.”
“Should’ve become soldiers, shouldn’t we? Getting paid to kill ’stead of all that sneaking an’ stealing,” says Drogg to Gravy, making it obvious Gravy is running him.
I see Salia shake her head and lead her horse about to head out east. Nazz takes the cue and we ride out for the Circle.