It was late morning before Chel was allowed back outside, and only in the company of one of Urbu’s clones, a wide-faced man with a thin beard and shoulders like hay bales. He seemed unable or unwilling to speak, but his disapproving gaze followed Chel everywhere.
Chel had seen little more of the girls who’d brought him supper; breakfast had been delivered by one of the Urbunites, and he was anxious for any human contact he could get. The sun was bright that morning, casting warm amber rays beneath a muddy expanse of turgid cloud, its climb in the north-eastern sky a reminder that time was moving on, even if he wasn’t.
Laralim met him at the top of the terrace. ‘Good morning, dear boy.’
He didn’t miss a beat. ‘Good morning, Auntie.’ He’d fast decided that absolute compliance was the order of the day. Only by giving them mastery over him would he gain trust, leeway, a measure of independence. He needed all of these things if he was to escape the compound, and take Rennic along with him. By his own guess, he had only a few days to get back on the road east and ride hard before they would arrive too late for the first moon. If they missed the others at the river crossing, they’d be stuck, isolated, the wrong side of the kingdom as warfare erupted around them. If he was lucky.
‘You will be pleased to hear that we believe we have found your parents in the archives.’ He nodded, waiting for her to continue. In truth he gave not a shit, but couldn’t risk informing her of that. ‘Tell me,’ she went on, ‘did your father have an elder brother? He would have died before your birth.’
‘I don’t know.’ And really, he didn’t.
‘No matter. Would you like to hear of your parentage now? We will be gathering the archivists for a reading shortly.’
A tinkle of familiar laughter reached him from the lower terrace. He saw movement among the blooms: Rasha and her friend, along with a handful of other girls, mostly younger.
‘If I may, Auntie, would it be all right if I took a walk in the gardens first? I’ve spent too much time indoors recently.’
She raised an eyebrow, in two minds, and he added, ‘Of course, you’d be welcome to accompany me and my friend here.’ He gestured at the Urbu, who glared back in mute antipathy.
She smiled then, that same mixture of indulgence and motherly reproach. ‘Very well, Vedren. Stretch your legs, and come and join us when you are ready.’
He watched her depart, then nodded to the Urbu. ‘Come on then, Chuckles. Let’s go for a walk.’
He made his approach to the terrace railing carefully, seemingly aimless, coming to rest just above where Rasha was digging in the fresh earth. The Urbu remained watchful, but at a distance, and Chel made a show of looking in every direction but down, angling his head away before hissing a greeting.
She looked up, then up again; her face brightened, then creased with worry at the sight of him.
‘Hey,’ he whispered, keeping his jaw as still as he could, speaking almost through gritted teeth. ‘Keep as quiet as you can.’
She nodded, casting looks over her shoulders at the other girls. If they had noticed her budding conversation, they were keeping it to themselves. She looked up at him, morning sunlight burnishing her tightly coiled hair, the thick linen of her work clothes.
‘You’re outside.’
‘I am.’
‘I wanted to … We weren’t allowed to—’
‘I understand. It’s fine. Really, though, I’m nothing to be afraid of.’
‘Oh.’ She actually looked disappointed. He felt himself flushing, tried to steel himself.
‘Listen, there’s another man here, who arrived with me. Do you know where he is?’
‘The hajamin?’
There it was, another gust of past aches thought long forgotten. A word he knew, one he’d not heard in over a decade. A word meaning outsider, foreigner, one who does not – cannot – belong, delivered as a guileless punch to the gut by an oblivious teenager.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s in a hut, down by the stables.’ She chewed her lip. ‘They told us not to approach him.’
‘That’s good advice. He’s dangerous.’
Her eyes widened, and she edged involuntarily back. He immediately regretted his words and tried to repair their intimacy.
‘He’s not so bad when you get to know him. Mostly.’
She smiled, then dropped her head in a flash, reabsorbed in her planting. Chel frowned, then felt the thick presence at his elbow. His friendly Urbu was staring at him, at the girl, then back at him, frown deeper than ever. He grunted, and nodded back toward the main building, and Chel walked. He risked one last look over his shoulder at the terrace below as he went, and she was looking back. He winked, then strode from sight, feeling an odd, hot tingling in his chest.
***
The chamber was busy, the benches loaded with petitioners or supplicants or merely those interested in the results of whatever occasion this was. Chel counted heads as he slid behind the Urbu along the side walls, guessing at the number of Andriz who lived on the estate. Most seemed older, their hair the same colour as their eyes, some very frail and ancient types near the front. He saw few children beyond a couple of babes in arms, guessing that the young of the Wards were either working in fields or gardens, like the girls outside, or undergoing some level of education. He wondered where his fate would lie, should he prove unable to extricate himself from Laralim’s schemes.
The Urbu went straight to her, bending to whisper or grunt into her ear, just as his namesake had on the day of Chel’s arrival. The elder woman nodded, her eyes still on the sheaf of thick, genuine paper notes before her, then she looked up at him, locking eyes across the wide table. Her expression was neither angry nor disapproving, more appraising, a hint of calculation behind those faded silver eyes. Chel shifted, defensive. He’d done nothing wrong, after all; nobody had forbidden him to talk to anyone else. If anyone had the right to be angry, it was him.
The reader standing before the table completed her oration, closed a heavy book and, tucking it beneath her arm, nodded in acknowledgement to both the folk in the high-backed chairs behind the table and the audience on the benches. Conversational hubbub rose around the chamber as the reader departed, and Laralim signalled for Chel to approach.
‘Did you enjoy your walk?’
‘I did, Auntie.’
She smiled, a quick twitch of one corner of her puckered mouth.
‘I’m afraid you missed the reading, but I can summarize things for you, unless you’d care to read them yourself?’ She pushed one of the thick sheets toward him, its scribblings arcane and impenetrable.
He shook his head. ‘Not my letters.’
She nodded as if this had confirmed a long-held, and disappointing, suspicion, then lifted the paper, squinting just a little as she read.
‘Only one entry even mentions Barva. Your mother was born Hurania of Pasaj, hailing from the heartland. She was promised union to Lorash of Aratesh, local to these parts, as part of an arrangement contingent on the acquisition of certain new lands.’
‘That’s my father?’
She didn’t answer directly. ‘The archives, at least those we have within the walls, specify only that the arrangement was agreed, and that these lands would be entering his family’s possession in return for what was recorded as “Service to the Lord”.’
‘Was that church or king?’
‘Uncertain, and unimportant. It’s dated twenty-four years ago, so although the archives are somewhat dry after that, it’s all too obvious what happened.’
He shifted, irritated. ‘Which was what?’
‘Lorash met his end in the course of his service, and the lands he was promised passed to his brother, as did the planned union to Hurania. We have no name for the brother, whom I take to be your father, but his presence is clearly implied. The two of them would have moved with their household to take up their stewardship of the manor of Barva, which must have been quite the journey. Especially given the novelty of their acquaintance.’
‘What are you saying? My parents were never supposed to marry?’
‘As it would seem. The lack of records on your father suggests he absconded, or was cast out; nobody seems to remember him. Wherever he was, he was called back and sent off to fulfil his brother’s obligations.’
Her words set things clicking in his head, his family dynamic recast, his father’s words and actions reversed in motivation. ‘He … he was in Roniaman. Training to be a minister.’
‘Ah, ever the lot of the second son. What a stroke of fortune for him that he was diverted, if you’ll pardon the expression. He and his new bride took a local name, and followed suit for their children.’ She finished with a smile that was not entirely manufactured. ‘Isn’t it better to know where you came from?’
He stood unsteady on his feet, legs trembling. On some level, he’d always assumed that his parents had a bond, a great attraction, a friendship at least, from which their disputes had flared. His father’s attempts to win the affections of the local populace, what Chel had taken for noble obligation, pronouncements of duty were, instead, the desperate attempts of a man destined for a life of priestly solitude to achieve some measure of substance, away from the fury of a wife who hated him as a stranger. His ministrations, his sermons, his deliveries of alms, quite unheard of for a local liege, even to plague houses …
‘Fuck,’ he whispered, swaying on his feet, something hot and burning like acid in his chest.
Laralim hadn’t heard. She dipped her pen and hovered it above the foot of her notes. ‘Now, I’m sure you mentioned other siblings. Perhaps you could supply their names and details for the archives?’
He wiped one hand across his forehead, feeling its slick clamminess despite the cool in the chamber.
‘I think,’ he began, then steadied himself and tried again. ‘I think I would like to speak to my friend.’
She glanced up at him then, silvery eyes peering from beneath silvery brows. She said nothing for a moment.
‘Very well.’
***
Rennic was lodged in a fat-walled wooden shack at the back of the stables, built right up to the outer wall, its windows barred and door securely bolted. Two men stood guard, little more than stable-hands from their appearance; at Chel’s approach they were seated on upturned wooden buckets, pouring steaming tea from a kettle. They jumped to their feet as Chel reached them, the original Urbu a pace ahead of him. Urbu spoke low words to them and they made a show of retrieving the spears they had left propped against the shack wall. One still reached for his tea the moment Urbu turned his back.
Chel stood before the door in expectation, but Urbu nodded at the barred window.
‘Window.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Window.’
‘You’re all heart, Urbu.’
He rapped on the round-logged wall, peering into the gloom within.
‘Rennic?’
‘That you, little man?’
Chel’s eyes focused, and found him, upside down against the far wall, pushing himself up and down on his hands just as he had in the cells of Black Rock.
‘Old habits, eh, old man?’
Rennic sprang down and back, then rose from his crouch and came to the window, reaching knotted, gnarled knuckles around the bars. Chel doubted he’d ever seen the man’s hands so clearly. He looked dirty and tired, a little hollow from the isolation.
‘You all right?’
‘Had worse. They’re feeding me, and they change the shit-bucket regularly, so mustn’t grumble.’ He looked at Chel through the bars, eyes black beneath his thick brows. ‘And you, little man? You look rough. Thought they’d be giving you the treatment, one of their golden folk.’ He spat through the bars, the gobbet sailing past Chel’s shoulder and splattering on the grey mud of the stable-yard.
‘Had some, I dunno, news, I supposed you’d call it. Two decades old, but new to me.’
‘Something bad?’
Chel slumped against the wall beside the window. ‘Only that my parents never cared for each other, and it’s probably what drove my father to devote himself to charity, which is what killed him.’
‘Sounds heavy.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I was born in a whorehouse, never knew my dad, and watched my mother cut her own throat, rather than be taken by looting soldiers.’
Chel’s mouth hung open. He was wordless.
‘If we’re sharing,’ Rennic added. He seemed dispassionate, staring vacantly out into the stable.
‘That must …’ Chel tried, but he had nothing to say.
‘I tried to fight them, tried to make a stand, give myself so she could escape with her friends. They batted me aside, left me in the mud, just went on past. Didn’t even bother to kill me.’
‘How … How old were you?’
‘Fourteen, fifteen or so. Probably a little before your parents were first getting to hate each other.’ He blinked. ‘I never told anyone that before. No one who wasn’t there, anyway. Suppose I’m not accustomed to having time for reflection.’
‘Did you, did you get revenge? Hunt the soldiers down?’
Rennic shook his head, as if clearing cobwebs from his mind. ‘No, what? No. How? A bunch of mercenaries, beneath the king’s pennant? How would I find them? It’s not like they killed her either, she took care of that herself. Who’s going to shed a tear for the grief of a whoreson?’
Chel’s troubles seemed abruptly small.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, and likewise for your sad parents.’ Rennic flexed his grip against the bars, straightening, shaking off his reverie. ‘Have you found out what the fuck we’re doing here, and why the fuck I’m locked in a box that smells of horseshit?’
Chel leaned in close. ‘They’re watching the traders in the huts, saw us going in and grabbed us on the way out.’
‘Then what do they want from us?’
‘You, as a mercenary, they don’t trust, and apparently they don’t like to let the leaf-traders talk to anyone outside their existing circle, especially “ruthless hirelings”. Me being one of them, looks like it surprised them. The one in charge, Laralim, who wants me to call her “Auntie”, she’s talking about, well, adopting me. They want to keep me here with them, make me one of them.’
‘Huh.’ Rennic’s indifference surprised him. He’d been expecting outrage, or ridicule. ‘Can see why,’ he said. ‘How many you reckon there are here? In this bastion of purity? Can only have another generation or two before they’re as inbred as ancient royalty.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They want you for breeding stock, little man. Stop their chins disappearing. See if you can use that to get us out.’
Chel nodded. ‘They might yet let you out, you know. Maybe we just need to be patient.’
‘Princeling would pitch a fit if I turned up without you. Besides, we stay here much longer, we won’t even make the Bridge House before the first moon, never mind hitting any townships on the way. Let’s hope Lemon and the others are having an easier time of things, eh?’
He shot a look at the barn opposite, indicating the small door at its side. ‘They stowed our gear in there. If they start going through it, we’d better hope that leaf I bought wasn’t too fresh or we’ll be wearing our arseholes as hats.’
Urbu was coming, his slow mouth already forming the word, ‘Enough.’
Chel raised his hands. ‘I’m going, I’m going.’ To Rennic, ‘Stay strong.’
‘Me? I’ve got my own bucket. I’ll be happy as a nun weeding asparagus.’