Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (29 page)

The craftmasters’ expressions were changing, some growing softer, some harder, as they remembered his story. This was his town—he didn’t have to explain his history to these men. Even
Commander Siddas’ face bore the mark of sudden understanding.

“So you agreed to spy for the Hrum?” Golbas asked. “Of your own free will?”

“Yes,” Kavi admitted, praying he wasn’t signing his own death warrant with the words. “I found out about the deghans’ troop movements, their battle plans. It helped the Hrum defeat them.”

Tebin rubbed the bridge of his nose, concealing his face. Kavi wished he wouldn’t. Even through his fear, it mattered to him what this man thought. Then again, perhaps he should be glad his master’s face was hidden.

“If you wanted revenge, you seem to have achieved it.” It was the millers’ craftmaster, dry as the flour he ground.

“I did, and I did,” Kavi confirmed. To his own surprise, his voice was steady. “But after that . . .”

How to explain what had happened after that. The night that had followed the battle, as the Hrum celebrated their victory. Kavi had left a bag of gold coin in his tent, uncounted, and wandered through the camp. He’d seen a girl he’d liked, for all she was a deghass, about to be hauled off to a
life of drudgery as some Hrum merchant’s kitchen slave. How to explain . . .

“Well, the matter seems clear to me,” said the craftmaster of the weavers and dyers. “He admits to having spied for the Hrum, and with some success—by his own account! So we must—”

“But the farmers with him swore he’s been helping them resist the Hrum,” said the millers’ craftmaster. “With equal success, by their account. Without the shipment of food he organized and brought in to us—almost all his doing, according to the farmers—we wouldn’t have lasted more than another month. Don’t you want to ask him why he did that?”

It was also the Hrum gold Kavi had earned that had paid for most of the food—but now probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up.

The master weaver snorted. “All right. Why?”

All eyes turned to Kavi, awaiting his answer.

“I changed my mind.” How lame that sounded. The watching faces were stiff and cold. Truth, it seemed, had some serious drawbacks. His heart beat as if he’d been running.

“It was the slaves,” said Kavi. “I knew they kept slaves—Patrius told the truth of that, like
everything else—but when I actually saw them—”

“All your hatred for the deghans vanished, and you were filled with repentance?” The master weaver was sneering now.

“No,” said Kavi slowly. “No, I still hated them. I still hate them. But at their worst they never kept slaves. I realized that if I allowed—helped—to enslave these people, then I’d have become one of them. And I didn’t want that.”

The silence should have been weighty, but it felt strangely light. As if, having spoken the ultimate truth, their judgment mattered less. Which was absurd, for their judgment could have him hanging from the battlements of the city he loved.

“I knew if the Hrum were defeated, then the slaves they’d taken would be returned,” he went on. “And I found out about the draft, how folks hated it. And it seemed to me that with the deghans gone, if we could get rid of the Hrum, we could be ruling ourselves for a change.”

It felt odd to say it aloud, his most secret hope.

“I see,” said the master weaver coldly. “So you say that you worked for the Hrum once, but not any longer. You say that now you’re fighting
against them. And if we ask, you’ll no doubt say that we can trust you, and you’d never betray us to your Hrum friends . . . again. But we’ve nothing except your word for any of that, and all we can see is the Hrum’s mark on your shoulder.”

So much for telling the truth. Tebin’s eyes met his for a moment, then turned away, and Kavi felt a flash of pure despair.

“That’s not entirely true,” said the master miller. “If you go down to the warehouse, you can also see a large enough shipment of food to keep this city fed—and fighting—for two months. And if you’ll open your stubborn ears and listen, which you seem not to have done so far, you’ll hear the farmers who helped him bring it in tell you that this young man organized the whole thing. That he was likely the only one who could have done so, because he’s the only one the people in all the scattered villages around Mazad know well enough to trust. If a stranger rides into one of those villages and says, ‘I need you to contribute food to help Mazad resist the Hrum,’ what do you think they’re going to say?”

The weaver attempted to answer, but the miller rolled over his voice. “They’ll say they’d
never dream of resisting the Hrum. Loyal citizens of the empire, that’s what they are. They’ll say it because they won’t trust a stranger not to get them all hauled off as slaves. But they do trust their peddler, and I think they’re right to do so. Because something else I saw is that none of the growers’ marks on those grain sacks is familiar to me—not one. And I’ve been grinding grain from all the farms in this area, man and boy, for most of my life. I don’t think the farmers would have thought to use false marks themselves. Not all of them.”

Inquiring gazes turned to Kavi, who shrugged. He hardly dared to hope. “It’s a simple precaution. If they’re stopped on the road, there’s got to be a mark on the sack, or the Hrum patrollers will get suspicious. But unlike the craft-master, they don’t know the local marks. And if the Wheel should dump us down, then nothing can be traced back.”

“Hmm,” said Golbas. “To my mind, the evidence speaks in your favor. On the other hand, that mark tells against you. And for your intentions at that time, and for the future, we have only your word. So what it comes to is: Do we believe you? Do we decide to trust you?”

“I will offer bond for him.” It was the first time Tebin had spoken since he’d identified Kavi. His voice, rueful and resigned, was just as Kavi remembered it in times past when his master had retrieved him from the authorities. But this . . .

“Master, you can’t. If you offer bond and I let you down, you could be asked to pay any penalty short of hanging. If I’m lying, you could be ruined!”

Tebin shook his head. “You never did know when to stop talking. But if you’re lying, we’ll probably all end up Hrum slaves—can’t get much more ruined than that.”

Several of the men had been grinning, but that sobered them.

Golbas sighed. “True enough. Masters, if there are no objections, I’m inclined to take Tebin’s word for this man.” He looked around the table. The weaver glared, but even he nodded consent. “Very well then, he’s yours, Tebin. Try to keep him out of trouble.”

This time several laughed, but not Kavi. Hope thundered through him, but still . . . “You can’t just write this off like . . . like an apprentice prank!” His gaze went from the craftmasters, who
were rising from their chairs, stretching, beginning to chat, to Commander Siddas.

The commander jumped down from the dais and came toward him. “Hold out your hands,” he said. “And stop talking for a moment.”

Kavi complied, and the commander began pulling at the knot that tied his wrists. “It’s not so much that they treat it lightly,” Siddas said. “It’s that they want those food shipments to continue. We’ve had several people offer us aid, but when it came down to actually helping, only one of them came through—and he’s having enough trouble feeding his own people. You’re the first to deliver food in any quantity, you did it before we were starving, and you say you can do it again.” The commander’s voice dropped lower still. “If there’s a crime you could commit that they wouldn’t ignore right now, I can’t think what it is. So consider your confession well timed, and come see me before you leave. I’ll tell you our exact supply situation, and you can tell me what you can bring in and when. I’ve hesitated to impose rationing if I don’t have to, for hungry people lose heart. But if it proves necessary, I can do it. And there may be other things you can supply. I could use a man who can move freely in the Hrum’s camp.”

“But how can you trust me?” Although Siddas’ cynical explanation for the council’s leniency was reassuring, Kavi still found it hard to believe that they would let him off so easily. “How can you just let it go?” He nodded to Siddas’ uniform tabard. Not that of a man in the deghans’ army, but still . . .

Siddas snorted. “What, you think I’m more eager to become a Hrum slave than they are? I’m no more a deghan than you, boy. I don’t hate them as you did, but I don’t have your reasons, either. So I’m inclined to let it go. Especially since the alternative is starving myself into slavery.” His expression was full of rueful self-knowledge, and that kind of honesty was something Kavi seldom encountered in any man.

“Most would be lying to themselves about something like that,” he said. “Making up excuses for me—for themselves, for letting me off.”

“I’m defending a city, under siege by the mightiest empire in the world,” said Siddas. “I can’t afford to lie to myself. Well, just one lie.”

Kavi’s wrists came free. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to conceal their trembling.

One lie.
Kavi thought he knew what it was, but
there was little use and less kindness in speaking it aloud.

He turned to Tebin, who had descended from the dais and was waiting for him, the familiar resignation in his eyes. “Honestly, lad, you sound like you’re trying to get yourself hanged.”

“If I was, then you’ve no business throwing yourself in the way. I’m not your journeyman anymore.” The words were harsh—Kavi meant them to sound harsh, but his voice softened on him. When Tebin held out his arms, Kavi walked into his embrace as if this man was the father who had died of fever when Kavi was a boy.

“I didn’t mean to cause trouble,” he muttered into Tebin’s muscular shoulder.

“You never did,” said his master. “But that never stopped you from doing it.” He pulled back and gave Kavi’s shoulder a bracing slap. “Come on home, and we’ll get some food. They got me out before breakfast for this!”

F
OR YEARS KAVI HAD THOUGHT
he had no home, except perhaps for Nadi’s house. He had returned before, of course. Most of the goods he sold came from this very shop. But since he first left to take up
his new trade, he never felt—had never let himself feel—the old sense of belonging here. Now, settling onto a bench in the yard in back of the smithy, with a tankard of ale and a thick, salt-beef sandwich, he realized that this place, with the clamor of men and boys working iron, and the acrid scent of hot metal coating the back of his throat, this was home too, and always would be. At least, as long as Tebin was here.

“You’re making nails?” It had been too hot to linger in the forge, but taking note of the apprentices’ work as he passed by came as effortlessly as breathing.

“The boys are making nails,” said Tebin, sitting down beside Kavi with his own sandwich. “I’m working on hinges today, and some of the journeymen are making cart braces.”

Unlike his master, Kavi had been given breakfast, but he suddenly found he was hungry. “Not swords?” He took a bite of his sandwich. “I’d ’a thought—”

“Just because we’re under siege, it doesn’t mean life stops,” said Tebin. “I’m actually preferring hinges these days. Though we’ve made swords enough. Especially after a fight, for ours
break like sticks on that cursed watersteel. Fortunately, there aren’t many sword fights in a siege.” Tebin’s voice held all the bitterness Kavi had felt when he realized how inferior Farsalan swords were, and the same combination of hatred and longing when he talked about their watersteel. A bitterness that was personal.

“You sound like you’ve seen our swords break yourself,” said Kavi curiously.

“Near enough,” said Tebin. “I saw the wounded when they brought them in. You’ve heard about the guardsmen’s raid on the Hrum camp?”

“A bit,” said Kavi. “I didn’t know how much to believe. Especially since rumor had Sorahb himself leading an army to support them.”

Tebin laughed, and Kavi’s brows rose.

“Oh, I’m not laughing at the men who came to our support,” said Tebin. “They fought with courage and paid a high price, from what I hear. It’s this Sorahb foolishness. The lad who leads them is called Jiaan. He’s the son of—what?”

Kavi tried to get control of his expression. “It’s just that I’ve met this Jiaan. At least, if he’s the son of Commander Merahb.”

Commander Merahb’s bastard son. Kavi
wondered again what had happened to the daughter, but the thought was fleeting. “Yes, I met him. He’d make a fine Sorahb, reckless, honorable fool that he is.”

“Maybe it’s fools we need,” said Tebin gently, “to be taking on the Hrum with swords that break.”

“Umm!” Kavi chewed and swallowed, suppressing a surge of guilt. “I’ve got something to show you!”

He fished the chip of Hrum steel out of his pocket. He’d showed it to a number of village smiths over the last months—usually he had to start by explaining what it was. Tebin knew instantly. He dropped his sandwich to the table and wiped his hands on his britches before reaching out to take the gleaming metal crescent.

“Time’s Wheel, lad, where did you come by this?”

“Off the battlefield,” said Kavi shortly. “But I can’t figure out how they get the layers so thin. I asked a miner about it, and he said the dark—”

“Dark steel’s hard, takes a great edge, but it’s brittle,” said Tebin absently, turning the fragment in his fingers. “Brittle steel’s even worse for hinges
and plowshares than it is for swords, which is why miners smelt it into a mix, but I’ve seen it. Worked with it a bit. But when you blend it with softer steel, you just get—”

“A blend,” said Kavi. “But the Hrum swords aren’t a blend—they’re as sharp as the hard steel, and as flexible as the soft at the same time. And this isn’t blended; it’s in layers as thin as frost on stone. So how do they do it?”

“You say you worked with the Hrum for a time,” said Tebin. His voice held nothing but professional curiosity now. “Couldn’t you get in to watch their smiths work?”

“No,” said Kavi. “They kicked me out, even when they were only making horseshoes. And threatened me with worse if I came back. When they’re making swords, they actually put guards around the smithy.”