Snare (51 page)

‘Like what?’ Warkannan said. ‘I can see your point.’

‘Of course you can,’ Jezro went on. ‘We’ll have to work out the details, but I was thinking of something like using myself as bait. Sitting outside somewhere, alone, and waiting for him to arrive.’

‘What?’ Soutan’s voice slid upward to a squeak. ‘He’ll kill you!’

‘I doubt it.’ Jezro grinned at him. ‘But I’m not leaving here till we give him his chance.’

And that, Warkannan thought, is exactly why I rode all this way, isn’t it?

‘Well, Idres?’ Jezro said. ‘What do you think?’

‘That you’re right. But I also think we’d better be damned careful that he doesn’t get his shot at killing you before you get yours at talking to him.’

‘Well, yes, I can see the logic in that.’

‘And of course,’ Warkannan went on, ‘you can put off your decision while we wait.’

‘As sharp as ever, aren’t you?’ Jezro saluted him with his glass.

‘Now, hold on a minute!’ Soutan sputtered. ‘Jezro – you matter too much. How can you risk it?’

Soutan launched into a tirade, while Jezro sat, listening politely, saying nothing, but with the stubborn gleam in his eyes that Warkannan remembered from their border days. He knew why Soutan was panicking. Suppose they did manage to net Zahir – he wouldn’t be likely to lie to the khan about his imprisonment.

‘Yarl, Yarl!’ Jezro held up both hands flat for silence. ‘Everything you say is true, and I don’t care. I want to talk with Benumar, and damn it, I will.’

‘You’re impossible!’ Soutan hissed. ‘Simply impossible.’

‘I do my best.’ Jezro grinned at him. ‘What do you say, Idres? Shall we call it a night?’

‘We’d better, yes.’ Warkannan paused to yawn. ‘Since we’ll be here for a few days, we’ll have plenty of time to talk. You need to hear about the men waiting for you in Andjaro. Think about Kareem Alvado, and how he’s going to feel if you turn the throne down, after he’s risked so much to back you.’

‘Idres, you bastard!’

‘Don’t expect me to fight fair over this.’

‘All right, I won’t. I’ve been warned.’

The mention of Andjaro made Warkannan remember Tareev Alvado, dead in the Mistlands. As he and Soutan were leaving, Warkannan turned to him and spoke quietly.

‘Not a word to Arkazo about Jezro’s little talk with Zahir, all right?’

‘Not one.’ Soutan spoke the same way. ‘I owe you more than one favour, Captain. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He raised his voice to a normal volume. ‘I’m glad to see that headband off. Looks like you’ve put some salve on that sore.’

‘It feels good, let me tell you. Had I known how wretchedly uncomfortable it was going to be, I would have told you the truth back in Haz Kazrak.’

Commiz Duhmars sat on the edge of his chair like a guilty schoolboy. When Loy walked into Master Zhoc’s office, Duhmars greeted her with good morning, but he failed to look straight at her. When Loy turned to Zhoc, he forced out a brief smile, but his thin face, his dark, deep-set eyes – she knew them too well to miss his emotion.

‘Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it?’ Loy said.

‘Do sit down.’ Zhoc began straightening the books on his desk. ‘Please, Loy?’

Loy sat.

‘Mada Millou,’ Duhmars said. ‘At my recommendation your guildmaster here contacted one of your number in Burgunee. He then put the matter of this warrant to my counterpart there, Zhospah.’

‘And he won’t cooperate?’ Loy crossed her arms over her chest.

‘No. He won’t.’ Duhmars sounded genuinely angry – she could take some comfort in that. ‘He insists he can’t honour a warrant without approval from the full Council. It’s in summer recess, of course.’

‘Of course. For five weeks, isn’t it?’

Duhmars merely nodded.

‘Soutan’s found himself a patron, hasn’t he?’ Loy felt her voice hovering on the edge of screaming. ‘The goddamned Burgunee zhundars have been bought off.’

‘Loy?’ Zhoc leaned forward and used Tekspeak. ‘Please be calm and humour the useless little man. When he’s gone, we’ll talk further.’

Duhmars was glaring at them both; he doubtless could guess that he was being discussed. Loy nodded the master’s way, then turned back to the commiz.

‘I do not know,’ Duhmars said, ‘if bribery is involved or not. I can understand your frustration, Mada Millou, but those are serious charges. If you want to bring them formally –’

‘No. You know as well as I do that I don’t have one damned shred of evidence.’

Zhoc made a clucking noise and shook his head in a vigorous no, trying to shut her up, she assumed. Duhmars hesitated, then shrugged.

‘I’ll insist that it gets on the first day’s agenda. Please, Mada Millou? Be reasonable?’

My only child was raped and brutalized, Loy thought, and you’re telling me to be reasonable. Aloud, she said, ‘I know you’re doing all you can.’

‘Let me assure you of that. I’m taking a personal interest in this case. We’ve already got all the evidence in order for the trial, just for one thing. Don’t you worry. We’ll get a conviction.’

If it ever comes to trial, Loy thought. If that rotten little dungworm
hasn’t disappeared by the time Burgunee Council meets. Zhoc escorted Duhmars out, then closed the door with a snap.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in Tekspeak. ‘I never dreamt this would happen, or I wouldn’t have raised your hopes.’

‘Thank you, but in my better moments I know that. I wonder who Yarl’s found to protect him?’

‘Dookis Marya.’ Zhoc sat down, letting his body sag into the leather as if he were exhausted. ‘That damned rich little swine! I’ve already alerted the Master of Burgunee. He agrees that the situation’s serious, but –’

‘But Marya’s very powerful.’

Zhoc pursed his lips in a sour smile. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘It turns out that this Kazrak khan, Jezro, is part of Marya’s establishment now. Her secretary or something. Somehow she knew that Yarl and his friends were on their way and sent letters to the commiz ordering him to leave Yarl strictly alone.’

‘Merde!’ Loy saw him wince. ‘Sorry. It’s just like Marya somehow, collecting herself an exotic Kazraki secretary and a crazy loremaster.’

‘The same way she collected a title?’

‘Come now! She paid Burgunee Council a nice fair price for that title.’

Zhoc scowled at the joke. ‘She’s her father’s daughter, all right. God, I hate them both!’

‘Still?’

‘Well, look at what they did! Hoarding the technology they found, dribbling it onto the market at high prices, not even letting us inspect the site!’ Zhoc took a long breath and calmed himself. ‘Anyway, Master Pool will see what he can do if Yarl tries to bolt back to Kazrajistan. Once he leaves Burgunee, he’s fair game.’

‘That’s something, I suppose. I could go north –’

‘It’s too risky. Yarl would love to see you dead.’

‘The feeling’s mutual, and I’m smarter than he is.’

‘So? He’s got Kazraki soldiers with him. No, Loy, you can’t go hunting Yarl. It’s too dangerous, and I forbid it. As the master of your guild, not just as a friend. No. You may not.’

Loy opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. Arguing with Zhoc once he’d invoked his position in the guild would only waste her time. ‘Very well,’ she said instead. ‘But you’ll keep me informed?’

‘Of course! And don’t you worry. We’ll get this slimy little criminal yet.’

In a grim mood Loy left the guildhall and started across the square. Students were trotting from one set of offices to another, or standing around talking about their grades. They were young, laughing, full of hope and plans – she envied them as much as Zhoc envied the Tribes. I was like that once, she thought. Once.

Outside the sheltered square a wind had come up, easing the heat. As she walked along Loy heard music, drifting from the town centre, the sound of brass trumpets and drums. Laughing and calling out, a gaggle of students rushed past her, their robes flapping behind them.

‘Loremaster Millou!’ a girl called out. ‘It’s the Recallers. They’re in town!’

Loy hesitated. She could go home and brood, or she could let herself be distracted. After a brief fight, sanity won.

‘Wait for me!’ she called back. ‘I’ll join you.’

The Recallers had set up their wooden stage in their usual spot, the riverbank park across from the white dome of the synagogue. The stage rested on two open wagons with locked wheels, while one of their covered wagons stood nearby to function as a dressing room. A wooden frame rose half-way across the stage area, and upon it a pair of Recallers were hanging curtains. Around the stage a big crowd had already grabbed the best seats on the grass, while behind the lucky ones, on a slight slope up, a fair collection of people were standing, craning their necks to see. Since Loy stood just five feet two inches high, she gave up on actually seeing the performance. One of her students, however, ran off to the row of nearby shops and came back with a wooden crate.

‘Thank you,’ Loy said. ‘Remind me next semester to give you an A.’

The girl laughed, then trotted off to join a gaggle of her friends. By standing on the crate, Loy could just see the stage, still empty of performers and props both. She turned, idly looking over the crowd. Since she’d lived in Sarla all her life, she knew most of them – students, faculty, the grocer, the wood merchant, a couple of young men who’d joined the zhundars straight out of college. Two strangers, however, stood towards the back of the crowd: a Kazrak and a tall woman, her blonde hair severely braided. Loy could just make out what seemed to be a long feather hanging
from her single earring and a pair of grassar-skin saddlebags over her shoulder. A spirit rider, Loy thought. An honest-to-god spirit rider, here in Sarla! And could that be our third Kazrak with her? Loy would have jumped off her perch and gone straight over, but the performance was starting.

Dressed all in black, a stout man walked through the curtains. When the crowd clapped, he smiled, bowed, then raised the mask he was carrying and held it up in front of him. A caricature of a human face, it concealed a small megaphone in its mouth.

‘In the heart of the past the secrets shine, a galaxy of buried stars,’ he began. ‘Where is the ship to sail between the stars of the soul? It lies in our hearts, for the past has birthed us, and we are the past and present alike. When we came to the far country, we wept. By the waters of the Rift we sat down and wept, because we remembered the stars of home.

‘Eight hundred years ago it was, and the land here stretched wild. Not a house, not a ship, nothing but the saurs among the water reeds and the Chiri Michi in the hills. How could we have signed their bargain? We asked it a thousand times, but we knew that without Landfall we faced death. In the vast void twixt here and home, no stars shone to power our travelling.

‘Were it not for our children we might have risked death, but they, too young to choose, deserved what life this world could give them. The wild red valley would be our home, the wild brown swamps ours, too, to do with them what we could. Yet even still, some doubted. After Admiral Raynar sealed the bargain with his death, a good many cursed him for what he’d done.’

A tattoo of drums rang out from behind the curtain. The Chief Voice stepped to one side, and the players appeared, wearing the sleek blue costumes that traditionally represented the uniforms of the interstellar fleet. What the officers from the Settlers’ starships had actually worn, no one remembered, but the one-piece outfits with their multiple belts certainly looked archaic enough. Loy had heard this particular play,
Diamond Words,
so often that she knew large parts of it by heart. It wove a story around the founding of Nannes and in the process described the actual Recallers, the specially bred H’mai whose name the travelling players had taken for their guild.

Since the piece held no surprises for her, Loy spent a large part of the performance watching the Kazrak and the spirit rider. The
Kazrak she could only describe as entranced. He stood with his hands shoved into the pockets of his filthy grey trousers and his head tipped a little back to keep his gaze firmly on the stage. The spirit rider would watch for a while, then turn and look over the crowd, her face utterly expressionless. At times she rocked on her feet as if tired, bored, or both. Eventually, towards the end of the first act, she leaned close to whisper something to the Kazrak, then left him and began making her way through the crowd.

Loy jumped down and followed her. With her long legs the spirit rider walked fast, but fortunately she went only as far as the grassy bank of the river, where she sat down and hauled her saddlebags into her lap. Loy hurried up to her.

‘Excuse me,’ Loy said in Tekspeak. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you’re from the Tribes.’

The woman smiled at her. ‘Since you’re not blind,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose you could help it. You must be a sorcerer, if you know the spirit language.’

‘Well, yes. That’s certainly what your people would call me. My name is Loy Millou, and I was –’

‘Loy Millou? Old Onree from Nannes mentioned you to me.’

‘He did?’ Loy sat down, facing her in the grass. ‘Is that Zayn Hassan with you?’

‘It is, yes. My name is Ammadin, I ride with Apanador’s comnee, not that you’ll know who he is. Zayn and I were going to look for you after the performance.’

‘And I’ve been hoping to find Hassan. Onree told us about him in his report, but not about you. That’s like him, though. He forgets things.’

‘For a man his age, he’s still pretty sharp, I’d say.’

‘Yes. We should all be in such good shape at ninety, huh?’ Loy smiled at her. ‘I need to thank him. I’m so glad we’ve found each other.’

‘So am I. We have a lot to talk about.’

After Ammadin left, Zayn turned around once to make sure he knew where she was going; then the performance took him over again. Since he knew so little about the history of the Cantons, the plot proved difficult to follow, but he could pick that over at his leisure, he figured. He was memorizing every word of the performance, stowing away not merely the words but images of
the actors and their costumes to replay later in his mind. One thread of the play took all of his conscious attention: the Recaller herself, a woman who memorized and sorted information in exactly the same way he did.