# Stealing Into Winter

Graeme K. Talboys

A breathtaking tale of adventure, survival and loyalty.When the thief Jeniche finds her prison cell collapsing around her, she knows it is not going to be a good day.Certainly, the last thing she wanted once she escaped was to become involved with a group of monks and nuns being hunted by the Occassan soldiers who have invaded the city. Nor did she want to help the group flee by being their guide through the desert and mountains. Unfortunately, Jeniche’s skills are their only hope of making it out alive.But the soldiers are not the only danger waiting for them in the mountains.

## Stealing into Winter

Book One of Shadow in the Storm

GRAEME K. TALBOYS


HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

Copyright © Graeme K. Talboys 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015.

Cover photographs © iStockphoto.com (figure); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

Graeme K. Talboys asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-810355-2

Version: 2015-06-16

For Barbara

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE: City

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

PART TWO: Desert

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

PART THREE: Mountains

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

About the Author

About the Publisher

PART ONE

## Chapter One

The wall opposite the door exploded. Thick, stale dust billowed into the dark cell. Particles of shattered stone ricocheted about the confined space, and lumps of rubble spilled in noisy profusion across the stone floor, tipping the bed on its side. Fast asleep at the time, Jeniche found herself sprawling in the debris, confused and in pain. Grit found its way into her mouth and she spat. Dust settled into her eyes and tears laid grimy tracks down the hollows of her dark cheeks.

She pushed herself into a sitting position while stones and chunks of mud brick cascaded from her hair and clothes, more dust drifting into the air. Resisting the temptation to rub her eyes, she blinked and winced, blinked again. And then began to cough as the pervasive dust caught the back of her throat.

Hunched in the deep gloom with her eyes streaming, still not understanding what had happened, she hacked until her lungs hurt. Perhaps it had been an earthquake. She had heard such things happened in Makamba now and then, but there had not been one in all the years since she had settled there. For the moment, as she sat waiting for the air to clear enough for light to filter through the barred window in the door, it was all she could think of by way of an explanation. Only when she had fallen silent, drawing cautious breaths of still dusty air through her nose, did she begin to hear faint, distant sounds.

They reached her through thick walls, long corridors, and many locked doors; through heaps of shattered masonry and thick dust. Disturbing sounds that filtered into her cell. Shouts. Screams. Faint exhalations, like sudden gusts of wind, followed by crushing thuds that made the ground tremble. Perhaps not an earthquake after all. She listened for anything closer, but just beyond her prison door, all was silent.

Feeling about her legs, she pushed lumps of crumbling mud brick away from her bruised shins and pulled herself upright. Grit cascaded to the floor stirring more dust into the air. She listened again, expectant, tense; the smell of fear mingling with the stale odour of sun-baked clay. Even the distant noise had subsided.

Placing her bare feet with care, she picked her way across the dark space to the metal door. Faint light showed through the iron bars at the small window. From a few paces back, she went up onto the tips of her toes. There was little to see. Blinking away the fog of tears, she stepped forward again.

The area beyond the door was filled with a haze of fine dust, illuminated by the pale flame of a lamp on the far side. Apart from that, the room seemed unchanged. A table. An arched entrance to a corridor at the far end. Rows of cell doors. In the window of one, large hands appeared, grasping the bars. She heard a heavy metallic rattle and tried the same with her own door, but it seemed as firmly locked as ever.

Only then did it occur to her in all the confusion that if the wall had collapsed…

Peering back into the gloom, she surveyed the damage. The splintered remains of her bed poked out at odd angles from a landslide of rough bricks and fragments of masonry. She looked at it, calculating. Somewhere beneath it was a lump of hard bread she had been saving, as well as her sandals. All she managed to retrieve was the thin blanket.

Beyond, the wall seemed intact, mostly coarse bricks and cheap mortar. The corner furthest from the bed bulged near the ceiling, as if something had hit it from outside, causing the inner section of wall to collapse. But bulge was all it did. There was no way through to the outside and the wall did not move when she pushed against it.

With a sigh, she stepped away, pulling the blanket round her shoulders. The sighing sound continued, even after she had expelled the air from her lungs. Became a rushing whistle. That grew louder.

Swearing in the dust-filled darkness, spitting more grit, and counting more bruises, Jeniche clambered out from under fresh debris. Something sharp snagged on her tunic and she pulled herself free. Dazed again, it was several long moments before she noticed that it was brighter. That the door to her cell hung at a crazy angle from just one hinge.

Once she noticed, she did not hesitate. The gap was small, but she was used to that. Head first, twisting part way and leaving the blanket behind, she squirmed out into the room beyond and was back on her feet in an instant. Wiping grit from her soles with a quick flick of her fingertips, she moved across the stone floor to the entrance to the corridor and peered into the dust-filled gloom. At the far end, lantern held high, a prison guard approached with a corner of his keffiyeh held across his mouth and nose. She dodged back, wondering if she could get past him.

Instinct made her go for height and she climbed on the table where the guards placed the food before pushing it through the feeding slots. Crouching ready to leap, she heard another loud crash and, as she fell, was astonished to see the guard expelled from the corridor into the room.

He hit the wall hard, his lantern crashing to the floor. The flame guttered, dust in the oil. From the floor, Jeniche watched the guard for a moment, but he was either unconscious or dead. Nothing she could do.

‘Keys.’

The hoarse voice came from the cell where those large, pale hands once more gripped the bars.

‘Get his keys and let me out.’

Jeniche was many things. A thief mostly. With standards. A liar when needed. Sometimes she was unlucky. This was, after all, a prison that was collapsing around her ears. And she was young. But stupid, she was not. And there was no way she was going to release the evil hulk on the other side of that locked door – a psychopathic rapist due for public execution.

She made a rude gesture in his direction before retrieving the keys from the unmoving body of the guard. A stream of lurid insults and threats poured from the darkness of the cell and the door rattled loudly. Jeniche retrieved her blanket, wrapped it round her shoulders, told the rapist in explicit and colourful terms what he could do to himself in the confines of his firmly locked cell, and stepped toward the corridor and freedom.

Freedom was not forthcoming. Instead, there was another loud crash and more debris poured into the space. Jeniche felt the floor tilt and fell, rolling against a wall hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. She lay gasping for air that was saturated with stale dust, wanting to scream with frustration and fear.

Silence settled as the air began to clear. And in the darkness, she could see a pale, shimmering speck. Blinking, she looked again through more tears. A patch of different darkness. Filled with stars.

With hurried movements, she began pulling the bits of shattered brick and broken wood off her legs, wiggling her toes to check that nothing was badly damaged. Everything seemed to be working, but her left foot was trapped at the ankle. She leaned forward, feeling into the rubble and finding what must be the remains of the table, pinned firmly by large lumps of masonry that lay just out of reach.

A tear rolled free and she made herself calm down, scenting the night air as it reached tentative fingers of freshness into the fusty interior. Distant voices, shouting; other sounds she could not identify wove a picture of chaos. If she could only free her foot…

Shuffling forward, she began to work again at moving the wreckage. Swift movements, quiet so as to avoid attracting anyone’s attention. Her foot moved. If she could just twist it to the left, she thought, or maybe bend her knee, just so. And as she contorted herself, feeling freedom edge closer, there came a grating noise from behind her, followed by an enormous metallic crash.

A dark shape loomed between Jeniche and the patch of starry sky. She pulled again at her foot as the escaped rapist leaned in close.

‘So, I can go fuck myself, can I?’

A seemingly endless silence followed in which Jeniche saw the anger on his face turn to puzzlement and then an evil sneer. She looked down and realized she had lost the blanket again and that her tunic was gaping open, revealing far too much.

‘How about,’ grunted the hoarse voice, close to her face, ‘I fuck you, instead.’

A hand groped its way to her leg.

Her own hands clawed at the stony rubbish as the broken table was pulled from her trapped foot and she was dragged across the floor. Sour, urgent breath hissed into her face and she saw his pale, ravenous face in front of hers as her fingers gripped something sharp. Her feet were trapped again as he sat on her legs. Hands fumbled with her tunic.

Frustration, anger, fear, and a blind desire to hurt powered the swing of her arm. He saw it coming and moved his head back. He didn’t move quickly enough. The torn metal base of the guard’s lantern caught his nose and ripped it from his face.

Jeniche could hear him screaming as she scrambled up the loose scree of brickwork and stone toward the patch of sky. She could hear him screaming above the shouts that were louder now she was outside. Even when she climbed stone stairs up out of the courtyard and found herself on a flat roof, she could hear his howling. But the immediate and very personal threat he posed faded as she looked around and saw the city of Makamba on fire.

For long, precious moments she ran from edge to edge of the roof, turning, looking, and trying to understand. In the darkness above her, things she could not see whistled past and tore into buildings in the Citadel and beyond, throwing debris in all directions. Arrows trailing flame arced in the night, finding dirt and oblivion, awnings and wood piles, jars of oil, flesh.

All through the Citadel, across the docks, up along the great ridge of the Old City, and beyond to richer enclaves, buildings burned. Flames leapt and roared, casting angry light into the dark parts of the city. And everywhere she looked, people ran; shouting, crying, and brandishing buckets and weapons.

Arrows fell with a clatter onto the roof where she stood, waking her from the distant nightmare. Wasting no more time, she ran and leapt the narrow gap between buildings onto a shallow-pitched pantile roof. The clay tiles clattered beneath her bare feet as she went up over the ridge and down the other side, her eyes trying to make sense of the unfamiliar roofscape as flame-shadows danced.

Running along the edge of the roof, she looked down to the ground three floors below. The only way out of the Citadel was through one of the gates, and she knew she needed to get there quickly. There had been a lot of people down on the river front, pouring off barges. She doubted they were ships’ crew.

At the corner of the building was a buttress. Without stopping to think about how narrow it was, she slipped over the side and shinned down, rolling into a small pool of shadow when she hit the ground, a yelp of pain bitten off behind tight clenched lips.

In the chaos, she took a moment to massage her stubbed toes and survey the scene. The Citadel did not have a complex layout, but it was haphazard, having evolved from the original, walled trading settlement. With all the confusion and the need to look as if she belonged, she hobbled across to a main path where a bucket chain had been formed. As one bucket passed, she slipped across, grabbed another that had been dropped and headed toward the small customs house; found herself being jostled toward the main gate just as she had hoped.

Torches flared in great iron brackets, lighting the main parade ground and gateway. The space was filled with men and horses and, to her astonishment, the main gates seemed wide open. For a moment she thought it was too late, that the Citadel had fallen, but then she saw that the great press of men were members of the city guard, newly arrived. And she also saw that the heavy gates were now slowly moving, blocking her only way out.

A horse stepped sideways and pushed her against a wall before its rider calmed it. Used to the great beasts, she waited anxious seconds so as not to startle it again by dashing off. And then, with one eye on the gates and the other on the melee of dismounting soldiers, she began to weave her way across the parade ground. Dodging booted feet and pikestaffs, bumped and jostled, she pushed her way to the ever-narrowing gap, tripping as a clear run opened up in front of her.

Hauled to her feet by a rough hand grasping her tunic, she turned ready to fight.

‘Get out, lad,’ said the soldier, not looking properly and making a mistake she was used to and often exploited. He marched her across to the gatehouse. ‘No place for you here,’ he added and pushed her out into the street. The gates slammed loudly behind her and she heard the first of the great locking bars fall into place.

‘May your gods protect you,’ she called as loudly as she could. And then ran off into the mayhem in the streets of the Old City.

## Chapter Two

The Citadel, a sheer-sided mud-brick fort perched on the steep hillside, had long ago become the centre of protection for the Old City and the docks. Mostly the docks. Which was why it had been maintained through the centuries. The Old City on the other hand, as old parts of cities do, had degenerated to a maze of tiny streets, small markets, and battered-looking houses where the poorest and hardest-working lived. Jeniche loved it. It was like a gigantic, sprawling family house, full of squabbling, loving, cooking, eating, reeking humanity, replete with secret places. Even though she knew no one who lived there, she always felt as if she belonged.

Tonight, it was different. Instead of a homely anarchy, the chaos of the place was driven by fear. The noise was confusing. Looks were hostile. She felt doors being closed against strangers. And all the time arrows fell and buildings burst and collapsed.

After a brief moment to draw breath, she decided the best thing to do would be to get back up into the main part of Makamba, retrieve her stash from her hideaway in the stables and head out of the city. Thieving was precarious at the best of times, more so since taking that ill-starred amulet, as she had discovered. In a city crawling with soldiers, it could easily prove fatal.

As she began to make her way uphill, moving from alley to alley and passage to passage, climbing walls, darting through cellars, the tone of the noise about her changed. She tried to place it and decided that the invaders must have by-passed the Citadel and attempted to breach the Old City defences.

Spurred on, she went faster, emerging onto the main street that ran between the docks and the newer parts of the city at the top of the hill. And stopped short.

A great length of the street seemed to be roofed with dancing fire, blazing cinders dropping to the cobbles, drifting in the warm breeze. Flags and bunting for the festival marking the visit of the God-King of the Tunduri people, flamed in the night. Paints and dyes lent their colour to the flames, blues and greens, yellows and reds, flickering and crackling.

The ropes on one great banner gave way and the whole thing fell, writhing, turning like a dying picture-book dragon. It hit the street with a whumph and scattered fragments of blazing material in all directions. Women emerged from houses and shops with brooms to beat it out.

Jeniche dodged on along the street, burning her feet on cinders, brushing them from her short hair as she ran. It seemed like a lifetime since she had wandered down this hill just three days ago, treating herself to sweetmeats and following the crowds out over the bridge and along the Great North Road to the complex of caves, hoping to catch a glimpse of the God-King of Tundur. Three endless days spent pacing that cell and listening to the ravings of the rapist. She shivered, dodging as a length of charred bunting fell in front of her.

The Tunduri had known how to enjoy themselves, even on a lengthy pilgrimage, but she still had no idea why there were ancient giant images of the first Tunduri God-King carved into the rock face by Makamba. Tundur, the Land of Winter, was many hundreds of miles away to the north, high in the mountains. She had asked some of the monks and nuns, but they probably hadn’t understood her, had simply smiled and given her flowers and bread. She’d bet that bread against her little bag of winnings that right now they were all heading north as fast as their feet could carry them, trundling their God-King in that huge, decorated wagon along the dusty roads to the north.

She was wondering, not for the first time, what the God-King would look like when her feet tangled themselves against something soft and heavy and she went down hard against a fresh pile of rubble, adding more bruises to her already extensive collection. A complex stench of rotting food, stale sweat, vomit, and cheap wine wafted over her and made her retch.

Peering into the gloom of a narrow alley, darkening as the last of the flags became drifting fragments of charred cloth, she could make out the dim shape of a body. Old boots, one with a missing heel, torn and no doubt dirty trousers. She didn’t want to speculate on the rest. Instead, she crawled into the darkness and leaned against the opposite wall, her arms around her knees. There would be plenty more like this one, she thought, and rested a moment.

‘Wha-oooh-err-eurgh.’

The emetic wailing startled Jeniche and she jerked back, banging her head on the wall. She lashed out, kicking at the body.

Another groan issued from the dark and the legs moved. ‘Whadjer wanna do that for?’

‘You frightened me and I’ve had enough of being frightened.’

‘What you frightened of? S’just a carnival.’

‘We’re being invaded,’ she hissed, peering out and down the main street which was now dark and quiet.

‘S’only nunks and muns.’ There was a pause. ‘Muns and nunks.’ Another pause. ‘Don’t feel very…’

At the sound of more vomiting, Jeniche stood and stepped back out onto the main thoroughfare. The sharp, tarry smell of burning rope and painted cloth came as a relief.

Firecrackers sounded at the bottom end of the Old City near the docks. A warehouse on fire, she thought, as she scurried on up the hill. When she reached the top, she paused on the edge of the old market square to look back down. Fires burned fiercely by the riverside and small, dark shapes could be seen flitting back and forth.

A shadow further up the hill seemed to move and she flattened herself back against the nearest wall before sliding round the edge of the square.

As she expected, the main gates in the Old City wall had been closed. It was the first time she had ever seen them like this. Even in the dark of night, she could see they wouldn’t last long; although if the dock gates burned down, the main gates would be all but redundant.

Standing on the narrow, unprotected stone bridge above the gates were several guards. Not wanting to test how jumpy they might be, Jeniche turned into a side street that ran parallel with the wall and looked for her own familiar route out of the Old City.

A faint smell of soot and smoke hung in the cool air of the cellar when Jeniche woke. She lay for a while, listening, sorting memory from dream. When she was fully awake, she moved to the door and edged it open. Early morning light filled the alley and lit the steps in front of her. She had slept for just a few hours.

Still moving with caution, she made her way to the street and peered out. This part of Makamba seemed untouched by the events of the previous night. Had it not been for the group of pale, fair-haired soldiers standing restless at the junction with the main street, turning back people with carts and barrows, she would have been tempted to think it all a nightmare. That and the collection of bruises. And the filthy, torn prison clothes. And her empty belly grumbling about breakfast and one or two other missed meals.

First things first, she slipped into a busy kitchen and then back out, taking alternate bites at bread and cheese as she walked. The place had been in uproar, everyone worried about the events of the previous night and trying to get food onto the master’s table. She had noticed one or two bundles of possessions tucked into discreet corners, ready for a quick getaway.

Back in the alleyways, she explored until she found a clean tunic and a faded keffiyeh hanging with other washing. The tunic was still damp, but it went part way to making her look respectable. The heat generated by running from the dogs, let loose by the tunic’s irate owner, soon had it dry.

People rarely looked up above street level, unless it was to answer someone calling from a window. Jeniche took advantage of this, working her way up to the highest part of the city which was built along the top of a long ridge. She knew this roofscape well and could travel in such fashion all the way to the wealthy quarter, right to the top of the great cliff where the villas had views of the northern river valley and enjoyed the benefit of pleasant evening breezes.

It was remarkable how untouched the buildings seemed. There was no evidence of large-scale damage or fires and only one or two arrows, and those only in the streets closest to the Old City. And if you kept your back to the main docks, you couldn’t see the columns of oily smoke rising endlessly into the blue sky.

Now and then a smut of soot would drift past to remind her, but she managed to push the events of the last few days to the back of her mind and concentrate on her plans for the immediate future. And for a while she hunkered down in a warm, sheltered roof valley to finish her breakfast, thinking of her room, which bits of her stash to sell, where she could go if she left the city, Trag…

Firecracker sounds roused her from her dream of feasting. Someone shouted in the street below. Booted feet pounded past. Jeniche decided it was time to move.

As she reached the top of the hill, something began to unsettle her. She wasn’t being followed, she knew that for certain. Ducking behind a parapet, she crawled to the edge of the tiles and dropped feather light onto the roof of a carved, wooden balcony. Sitting up under the eaves, she waited. And waited. Now she definitely knew for certain. Just to be on the safe side, however, she climbed down to the narrow street below and went on her way through the morning crowds.

At ground level, her sense of unease continued to grow. She made her way between knots of gossiping men standing outside the cafés, groups of women haggling over vegetables, all of them casting frequent glances at the groups of soldiers that patrolled the streets, the carts filled with rubble. All very much business as usual; all so very different.

That’s when it hit her, and she could not believe it. Heart pounding, sick in her stomach, she pushed through the crowds, telling herself over and over she was mistaken, that it wasn’t true, that she just hadn’t been paying attention.

But it was true.

Stretched across the length of the devastated gardens were the shattered remains of the great square tower of the university. It was the absence of its familiar shape on the skyline that had unsettled her. It was the fate of Teague that sickened her.

Ignoring the shouts of workmen, she clambered up onto the vast, shifting pile of demolished stonework, and ran along the broken spine to where the high rooms and observatory had been. Dust hung thick in the still, hot air and she wrapped her recently acquired keffiyeh across the lower half of her face.

With impatient hands, and darting eyes, she searched the remains until she found carved stonework from the observatory and began pulling it away, heaving it down toward the ground. People began to gather at a safe distance, watching, wondering. One of the workmen made to climb up to help her, but his companion stopped him, knowing this was not yet the time.

On the point of collapse, her hands and feet bloody, Jeniche found Magistra Teague. The elderly woman lay, seemingly uninjured, in a cavity in the collapsed stonework, surrounded by her charts and books, her astrolabes, and the fractured and twisted parts of her wondrous telescope. The books were torn now, scattered all around the body, broken-backed and dust-caked.

Jeniche lowered herself into the remains of the observatory, squatting beside her friend in the tiny, dangerous space. Grit sifted down with a serpentine hiss. In the silence that followed, Jeniche reached out and took Teague’s stiff hand in hers. It was cold, never more able to point out the stars.

A dark spot appeared on the cover of a book that lay by her feet, the tear washing the dust away to reveal a rich green beneath, the symbol of an eight-pointed star embossed in silver. Wiping her eyes on a loose fold of cloth, Jeniche let go of Teague’s hand. She climbed up into the fierce daylight, stumbling down the loose stonework.

Strange visions blurred her senses, left a grey haze in front of her eyes like the tricksy gloom of twilight. Cities layered on cities, people struggling in the ruins, firecracker sounds. Someone guided her away from the remains of the tower with trembling hands and sat her beneath a tree with a jug of water, told her in a whisper to get off the streets and go home, left a faint odour of sour wine in his wake as he walked back to the fallen tower.

She drank greedily.

## Chapter Three

Mountainous, immovable, Trag squatted in the hot dust, forearms resting on the leather apron draped across his knees. He watched the large barrel with unblinking eyes, holding his breath. Sweat glistened on his face as it grew redder. When his ears began to sing, he gave up, leaned forward, and rapped on the rough staves with great, callused knuckles.

Water erupted, sparkling in the early morning sunshine. It fell with a smack, patterning the dust with dark shapes and splashing Trag’s face. Other than drawing a deep breath, he did not move.

‘What is it?’ asked Jeniche.

Trag gazed up at her with impassive eyes as she wiped cool water from her face. ‘Was worried,’ he said.

She sighed through a sad smile and inspected the cuts on her hands. They stung, blood still seeping from one. ‘I’m all right, Trag.’

‘No you’re not,’ he replied. ‘You disappeared.’ He spread his left hand, palm up, and with an effort counted off some fingers. ‘Three days. Four. Then you come back sad. With cuts. I can see. And grazes.’

‘And bruises,’ she added.

He frowned. ‘Liniment.’

‘I don’t want to smell like a horse.’

Trag frowned again. ‘Why not? Horses smell good. Anyway, if the boss finds you in the water barrel there’ll be trouble.’

He was right. She was banking on routine at the stables being disrupted by the night’s events, but there was no point in pushing her luck too far. It had been in very short supply these last few days and it was not something she was ever happy relying on.

Ignoring all the aches and pains, she hauled herself up, perched on the rim and swung her legs out. Water ran from her clothes and pooled on the baked dust of the yard before soaking away. She heard Trag sigh, but was too dispirited to tease him about it.

With her trousers clinging to her legs and her recently won tunic hanging limp, she left a damp trail across the side yard, through the tack room where she grabbed a clean blanket, and up the steep steps to the storage loft.

Trag followed in amiable silence, carrying a bucket of water and a mop. ‘I’ll bring food when I’ve finished.’

Jeniche stopped near the top of the steps and peered down. ‘Thank you.’ She paused a moment, adding, ‘Do you remember Teague?’

After putting the bucket on a bench with care, Trag closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘The star lady,’ he said and opened his eyes again.

Jeniche nodded. ‘She… She died.’

Trag looked at her for a long time. Some people found it unnerving. ‘That’s a sad thing,’ he said, having worked it out.

Jeniche nodded again, not daring to speak, then turned and continued to climb. She pushed a rough wooden panel to one side, stepped through, and closed the secret door. Steep, makeshift steps led up into shadow.

It was already hot in the irregular space beneath the roof she had made her home. A slight breeze squeezed through a series of wooden slats, but it would not be enough if she wanted to rest in comfort during the day. It wasn’t much of a place to call home, but it did have the virtue of being safe and of having several ways in and out.

She stripped off her sodden clothes, squeezing them into a bucket before hanging them over a length of thin rope. At least they would soon be dry.

The rough wool of the blanket scratched her flesh as she dried herself and inspected the damage. And then she laid herself down on the narrow bed, curled up, and cried. Deep sobs, silent out of long habit, shook her body and the tears flowed until she dropped into an exhausted sleep.

When she woke, aching and stiff, there was a light cotton sheet covering her scrawny body and a pillow beneath her head. On the plank that served as a table, she could see a stone flask and a basket covered by a cloth. Trag had squeezed himself through the secret door and up the narrow stairway. He really was an old hen. She smiled for the first time in days.

Seated on a stool with the sheet draped loosely round her, she ate from the basket. Bread. Cheese. Fruit. The water in the jug was tepid, but welcome. And as she ate, she sorted the contents of her stash. A handful of coins that would keep her fed for a few more days. Three rings. A bracelet of dubious quality. A carved statuette worn with age and much handling, perhaps once a good luck charm. Which brought her to the amulet.

It was like nothing she had seen before. Wiping her hands on her tunic, she lifted it and looked at it again. The chain, if you could call it that, looked like a solid silver wire, except it was flexible as water. There was no clasp, just a continuous loop barely large enough to go over her head, passing through a link on the amulet itself.

The flattened red-gold teardrop was the same size as the top joint of her thumb. It seemed to glow, even in the dim recess in which she sat; the incised markings on one face as crisp as if they had just been cut. It turned as Jeniche held it up and she shook her head at the perfection of its shape. And what a parcel of trouble it had turned out to be.

There had been nothing in the villa. That is, nothing she could steal. Days of watching and planning ways in and out, of calculating the internal layout; nights spent watching the movements of the inhabitants. Waiting then until the main part of the Tunduri festival when the place ought to have been deserted with everyone down on the far side of the river to see the festivities. It should have been a rich haul. Wealthy merchant. Attractive wife. Servants. All that time wasted.

At first she had wondered if she had somehow climbed into the wrong building. It was comfortable enough inside. The courtyard garden was well kept and the one public room on the ground floor that was lit with lanterns looked as if it belonged to a wealthy person, but everywhere else was… she tried to think of a word. Functional.

Very little furniture and none of it luxurious. No pictures, tapestries, silk rugs. No statues or ornaments. No trinkets. She had wandered through the upper floors, a silent shadow, a summer night’s breeze, moving from room to room. Searching. A growing sense that she should get out haunting her like a bad odour.

And then, in the worst possible position, caught in a small room from which she could not run without hurting someone, she had come face to face with the merchant’s wife.

Finger to her lips, the tall, pale woman with rose-gold hair had stood in the doorway. Jeniche had seen no fear or surprise in her face; she had seen no anger. So confused was Jeniche that she nearly dropped the amulet when it was thrown to her. By the time she had finished juggling and looked up, the woman had gone. Jeniche hadn’t wasted any time after that, either. Pushing the amulet into her pocket, she had found the nearest window, climbed to the roof and disappeared into the night.

If it had finished there, it would have been a strange enough event to remember for the rest of her life. The only other time she had encountered someone during a robbery, they had screamed loudly enough to set the dogs howling three streets away. Jeniche knew because they were doing just that as she ran past them.

But it hadn’t finished there.

Suspicious and unnerved, she had roamed across the city for most of what was left of darkness, doubling back on herself, using secret ways and rooftops, watching for pursuit. By the time she had crawled into her hidden room up in the roof space of the stables, she was exhausted and still jittery.

That was when she had first examined the amulet, playing with the liquid metal thong, studying the inscription and the slight, circular depression on the opposite face. Just as she studied it now.

She had hidden it with her other winnings and her own money, safe in the socket of the false roof beam. And for days she had looked over her shoulder, staying away from her usual haunts, watching strange faces with care. Then, with a depressing inevitability that probably earned someone the price of a meal, the day she returned to one of her regular eating places, a squad of the city guard had pushed its way into the café where she sat and, after a violent struggle, dragged her through the streets down to the prison in the Citadel.

No one had mentioned the amulet or the merchant’s house. No one had mentioned anything beyond the fact that she was a thief and would be tried as one at the next assize. Which meant, she knew, that she would be found guilty. Which, she had to concede, she was.

The amulet turned slowly in front of her eyes, mesmerizing in the hot gloom. Ill-fated it may be, but she knew then that she could not part with it, that for better or worse it had been given into her care. She frowned at the tenor of her thoughts, drifting on a sluggish current between depths of grief and fear and the rocky shore of the future.

Distant firecracker sounds broke into her reverie. She listened a moment and then retrieved a jeweller’s belt from her hiding place, stowing her winnings and her money with care before tying it in place around her waist. She got dressed and was lacing on a pair of heavy sandals when Trag knocked.

‘Why they doing fireworks in the day? You can’t see them in the day. And they’re too close. Odrin said they were only allowed in the Old City. It’s upsetting the horses.’

Jeniche stared at Trag. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you?’

‘What?’

‘The city is under siege.’ She sat on the bottom step watching as Trag digested the news.

‘So… What about the fireworks?’

Jeniche had wondered about that as well. She had heard them a lot. Perhaps people were throwing firecrackers at the invaders. She shrugged.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s a siege?’

She stopped herself from sighing. It wasn’t Trag’s fault he was slow. And she knew no one in the stables bothered talking with him. He was treated like a pack animal, albeit with a degree of respect since that incident in the tavern. Someone who can eject four over-muscled bullies through a closed door without breaking into a sweat or spilling his beer tends to be given a bit of personal space.

‘Soldiers. From another country. They are trying to take over the city. Our soldiers are trying to stop them.’

‘Why?’

It was a very good question. If you sat in a Makamban café for long enough, you heard all the gossip, news, and opinion you could ever wish to hear, and not just local stuff either. The city was a trading centre, a crossroads. People had travelled hundreds of miles through many different states and countries to get there and some had hundreds more miles to go. Yet not once in the last few weeks had she heard of war threatening, of conflict, of border skirmishes, of arguments between leaders. It’s true that everyone had been preoccupied by the visit of the Tunduri God-King, eating and getting drunk, but news still circulated.

‘I don’t know that, either,’ she admitted.

‘Don’t we have magicians and things to get rid of the soldiers? The ones from that other country?’

‘That’s just in stories, Trag.’

‘I like them. Especially about the old days.’ A frown contorted his face. ‘Will they hurt the horses?’

‘I don’t think so, Trag. And this place is safe enough.’

Odrin had built the stables to impress wealthy clients as much as to house their horses. A large complex of buildings, it sat on the edge of the merchants’ suburb, saving them the need to take up space in their fancy houses and employ staff. The perimeter wall was substantial and the main buildings had been designed to create a cool interior for the animals.

Because the piece of land on which the stables stood had been an unusual shape, there had been a number of nooks and crannies in the construction. Trag had made a home for Jeniche in one of them, up under the roof above the storerooms. The Old City might feel like her natural home, but she liked it up here. She liked it because of Trag. She liked it because it was hidden. She liked it because it was so close to her hunting ground.

She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Just stay out of trouble.’

For some reason, Trag found that funny and began laughing. Jeniche shook her head and climbed back up into the hot space where she lived.

Allowing her eyes to get used to the gloom again, she tidied around and finished putting her things ready. She did not believe in a sixth sense any more than she believed in luck, but something about the last few weeks made her feel uncomfortable. The siege and occupation added a whole new layer of discomfiture. And if she had to leave, she wanted to be prepared.

Trag’s laughter was cut short. Jeniche froze. A knocking brought her down the steps.

‘Soldiers,’ said Trag. ‘In the yard. You going to hide?’

She nodded. ‘Be careful, Trag.’

He reached out with one of his huge hands and tousled her short hair. She smiled and then pushed the panel into place. From the other side came the sound of a bench being moved against that section of wall.

Jeniche climbed quietly up into her room and, from a stack in one corner, began wedging bales of hay into the narrow stairwell. If anyone took it into their heads to start tapping for secret panels, a dull thud is all they would get for their trouble.

When she had finished, she stood a moment in the stifling heat and listened. Apart from the usual muffled sounds of the stable, all seemed calm. It was too hot to stay in there, however, so she packed what was left of the food, picked up her coat, and opened a panel into the ventilation system.

A short climb took her onto the roof.

## Chapter Four

With all the grace of a drunken dancer, the ghost teetered about the empty square. It would lean one way and move off in that direction, picking up speed until it righted itself. Spinning on the spot for a moment or two, faint in the painfully bright sunshine, it would then lean in another direction and be on its way again, sinuous, trailing pale peach wisps of nothingness, and a faint, teasing hiss.

Jeniche watched the erratic ballet from the deep shadow of a cellar doorway. Dust ghosts were rarely seen in the city. It was seldom quiet enough. Most people would be sitting or lying in a shaded room, waiting for the heat to abate, especially at this time of the year. But there were normally some people about, scurrying through the oven of the afternoon; luckless servants mostly, sent on the errands of the fools for whom they had to work.

The square and the roads leading to it, the shops and stalls, all were quiet beneath the weight of the heat; sunlight shimmering from the hard-baked mud walls. Quiet except for the ghost that continued to skitter across the open space, spinning toward Jeniche and then changing direction. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her flesh tingled as it passed. She pulled her keffiyeh up over the lower half of her face, squinting as dust drifted into the stairwell. Childhood memories drifted in with it, just as unwanted. She blinked the dust from her eyes, wiping away a grimy tear with the back of her hand.

Turning in her shadowy hiding place, she watched the ghost swithering for a moment before it gathered new energy. It dashed along the main road out of the square, picking up more dust as it went, twisting, hissing, and taking on a more solid form. Without warning it collapsed. Mute sunlight pressed down into the silence as the dust settled.

Still uncertain, Jeniche waited. She much preferred crowds, hiding in plain view. Skulking and scurrying, even with the excuse of the heat, always looked suspicious. And her caution was rewarded as a squad of soldiers appeared at the end of the road where the dust ghost had collapsed.

Careful to remain perfectly still, she watched them, learning. It was all worth knowing. They must, she thought, be sweltering in their dark uniforms. But she also saw they were highly trained. They appeared to be standing casually, relaxed; but they were watching all the routes, and one, she noticed, watched the rooftops. Their backs were to walls and they moved as a unit. And they were still taken by surprise.

Plaster exploded in a puff of white dust as someone using a sling just missed the head of one of the soldiers, leaving a fist-sized crater in the side of a building. The squad ran off out of sight, firecracker sounds loud and echoing in the empty streets.

Taking her chance, Jeniche mounted the steps and crossed the square. On the far side she stepped into the shaded obscurity of a narrow alley. At the first doorway she dumped the basket she was carrying along with the sheet she had worn as a dress. Sometimes, it was useful to be what she was. It was only bored lechers that looked twice at a serving girl out on an errand. Now, though, she needed to become what people in this part of the city believed her to be.

As she moved away from the doorway, she found herself almost falling over a young Tunduri monk. Several paces beyond the child stood a much older man also dressed in the traditional mossy green robes worn by those who had dedicated their lives to the Bonudi religion. They had clearly been caught in the city when the invasion began, separated from their fellows by the fighting. Tired. Dirty. They stood looking at her.

Jeniche glanced over her shoulder, certain she sensed the presence of others behind her. There was nothing there. The alley and its entrance to the square where the dust ghost had danced remained empty in the midday heat.

The boy smiled. It did nothing to dispel the uneasiness that Jeniche experienced. It seemed less a greeting than a sign that he understood something. About her. Understood everything.

She shivered and was about to step around the boy and head off to Pennor’s for a meal when the old man spoke. The boy half turned his head to listen. His eyes, laughing and ancient, stayed firmly fixed on Jeniche, pinning her to the spot. The business of the world seemed suspended.

When the old man finished, he stepped forward and held out his cupped hands. With an inexplicable sense of relief, Jeniche shrugged. The Tunduri were begging and she had nothing to give. Apart from the basket. She hadn’t bothered to look at the contents when she helped herself. She gestured to it in the doorway and slipped past the monks, hurrying to get away.

The encounter left her unsettled. The last few days had taken their toll on body and mind. She didn’t understand how she had missed seeing the monks as she entered the alley; didn’t like the idea they had probably seen her transformation from serving girl to lad about town. Worst of all was the way the child had looked at her. Into her. Smiling. Or maybe he was the sort of child that some peoples would abandon in a wild place to let nature reclaim its own. Like the Antari.

At the top of the alley, she looked back. The Tunduri had gone. Ah well, she thought, nothing there a good meal won’t help to fix. If only the rest of life was that easy.

‘Hello, Pennor.’

Pennor dropped the tray he was carrying, stumbled as he tried to avoid treading on the wooden platters and ended up sprawled on one of his benches. He heaved himself upright, clutching his chest. ‘You little bastard. What you want to creep up on someone like that for?’

Jeniche grinned and settled herself at a table, close to the kitchen and facing the main door.

‘What you doing here?’

‘It’s a café, Pennor. I want some food.’

‘Not that, you scruff. I heard you was arrested.’

‘Oh? And where did you hear that?’

Pennor frowned. ‘You’re not pinning that on me. You was dragged out of Dillick’s place by four city guards. Made a right mess of his place.’ He smiled. ‘Word gets round quick.’

‘That much is true. I hadn’t got my spoon in the bowl before they arrived. Who could get to them that quickly, eh?’

‘No good asking me,’ said Pennor, edging past Jeniche into the kitchen doorway. ‘You want to be talking to Dillick.’

‘I will be, don’t you worry. But I want to eat first. Without fear of interruption.’ She looked up at Pennor. He gave a sickly smile in return.

‘You can trust me.’

‘I know. Because I know too much about you.’

‘What would you like to eat?’ he asked. ‘On the house.’

She paid when she left, not wanting to be in debt to Pennor. Besides, it was worth it. He might be all sorts of low life, but Pennor could cook and he kept a clean kitchen.

Before heading for Dillick’s tavern, Jeniche made a detour into the maze of alleys close to the top of the Old City grandly known as the Jeweller’s Quarter. It was a ramshackle place with dozens of small workshops and safe rooms crowded into the back ways behind the classier shops where jewellery and other items of metalwork were sold.

The whitesmiths shared it with locksmiths and sword smiths and all manner of artisans who spent their days hunched over their work, making the most of the natural light. The sound of hammers, saws, and files rang over the wheeze of bellows and the conversation and catcalls of the boys who worked them.

Jeniche had been in two minds about venturing so close to the Old City, but there seemed little evidence there of the invading forces. Thin trails of smoke still rose from the direction of the docks, occasional squads of pale-faced, sweating men in dark uniforms trotted by on business of their own. And that was it.

She stopped outside one workshop and waited for the crouched figure of Feldar to finish. Long, thin fingers worked with delicate instruments, plaiting gold wire. When the work was done the jeweller looked up. He squinted, refocusing his eyes.

‘Well, this is a surprise.’

‘You’d heard as well, I take it.’

A grey, bushy eyebrow was raised. ‘Aren’t you taking a risk?’

‘I think the city guard is otherwise occupied, just now.’

‘Hmmm.’ Feldar lifted the board on which he had been working from his knees and put it to one side. He unfolded his long, thin frame; joints cracked and Jeniche winced at the sound.

They went through into the dark, leaving Feldar’s tools and precious metals where they lay. Jeniche had been unable to believe it when she first wandered through the alleys, all that wealth for the taking. And then she had seen what happened to someone who tried, noticing only then that the workshops at the end of the alleys all belonged to blacksmiths.

The would-be thief had been carried back to the whitesmith’s workshop where he returned the silver ingot he had tried to run away with. And then his fingers had been laid one by one on an anvil and broken with the blade end of a hammer. Jeniche had been standing outside Feldar’s workshop at the time, watching open mouthed and feeling more than a little queasy. There but for the grace of fate…

‘Fool,’ Feldar had said. ‘Where,’ he had added with a wink to Jeniche, ‘did he think he was going to sell that silver apart from back to the man he had just stolen it from?’ It had been the beginning of a long, friendly, working relationship, not least because Feldar knew Jeniche had seen what happened if you stepped out of line.

In the cool interior, they sat in comfortable chairs behind a curtain well away from prying eyes and savoured the lemonade Feldar’s apprentice brought.

‘Have you had any trouble here?’ asked Jeniche.

Feldar shook his head. ‘I don’t understand it. Everyone is edgy, but apart from a few skirmishes, it all seems to…’ His words faltered and he stared at his hands folded in his lap.

‘Has the city fallen to the enemy?’

‘The Occassans.’

‘Occassans? Are you sure?’

Feldar shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. No one seems to know. There are plenty of rumours but not many hard facts. And few of those I trust. Occassus is so distant it barely seems credible. Tales of the Occassans have always seemed like the distant growl of thunder from a dark horizon.’ He paused for a moment, thinking. ‘The Citadel is badly damaged. That’s certain. Some of the warehouses on the docks are badly burned. That too is certain. And there are, according to some who are in a position to know, a thousand more soldiers in barges on the river.’ He sighed. ‘I just hope the young hotheads in the Old City don’t start thinking they can fight back. Not against these new weapons.’

Jeniche leaned forward. ‘What new weapons?’

‘Have you not seen?’

‘No. It was… chaotic down there last night. And I’ve not seen any soldiers up close today.’

‘You must have heard them, though. That firecracker sound?’

‘I thought that was… well… firecrackers.’

‘No. One of the sword smiths on Blade Alley has put up a bounty, a handsome sum as well, to be paid to anyone who brings him one of these… whatever they are. Moskets, they call them. I dare say if they get hold of one they will be making them here.’ He sighed again. ‘And then we will see real bloodshed.’ Feldar looked at Jeniche, searching her face. ‘You’ll stay clear of all that, won’t you?’

‘You needn’t worry about me. I’m not a fighter. I never have been. And all I want at the moment is some cash.’

‘Hmmm. Business. Very well.’

Feldar took a black cloth from his sleeve and laid it on the low table between them, smoothing out the creases. Jeniche waited until he had finished and then unlaced the jeweller’s belt beneath her tunic. She removed the three rings, the bracelet, and the small good luck charm, placing them on the cloth. After the briefest hesitation, she left the amulet in the belt which she retied round her waist.

‘It’s not much,’ she said, straightening her tunic, ‘but I thought the metal might be of use.’

He picked up each item and held it where he could see it clearly. ‘The bracelet is brass. You might get a few sous for it in one of the chandlers’ workshops. I can’t do anything with that charm, either, although if you find the right person you might convince them it’s pre-Evanescence. Fools will always pay over the odds for that.’

‘And the rings?’

‘Times are hard.’

Jeniche grinned. ‘Doesn’t work with me.’

Feldar grinned back. ‘That one is good, fine gold. Five crowns. The other two are plated silver. Three crowns for them.’

Jeniche was disappointed. She had been hoping for ten, but Feldar always gave her a good price. She nodded and picked up the bracelet and the charm. The smith folded the cloth over the rings and it disappeared into a pocket inside his work jacket. Jeniche knew the stones would be out of their fittings and the metal in a crucible before she reached the end of the street.

Eight crowns appeared on the table and Jeniche scooped them up. ‘Thanks.’

‘Hmmm. You be careful. Once the city guard is back on the streets, they’ll be looking for you.’

Jeniche sighed. ‘I don’t plan on being caught.’

‘What you plan and what happens…’ Feldar shrugged.

In the workshop, the bellows creaked and the charcoal fire beneath the crucible gave a soft roar. Jeniche left Feldar and his apprentice to their work and ambled along the alley trying to sort out her thoughts, edging round her grief for Teague. She peered into busy workshops, sold the bracelet, stopped to admire merchandise, bought a new knife to replace the one confiscated when she had been arrested, watched a party of Tunduri pilgrims in their green robes and wondered how people of the high mountains coped with the heat, tried to recall any hard facts about Occassus and failed.

When she reached Dillick’s tavern and went down the steps into the kitchen, the place was quiet, just as she had planned. She went on tiptoe past the two skivvies who were curled up and fast asleep in the corner by the pantry. It was their one respite in a long day’s work and Jeniche had no wish to deprive the two young women of the bliss of sleep.

The door to the servery was by the bar. Jeniche helped herself to some small beer from a keg and sat in a corner near the main door to wait. It was dark with all the shutters closed but there was enough light to see that there were several new tables and benches. It had been a short, scrappy brawl. At least Dillick had suffered as well, where it would hurt him most. He had probably had to spend the best part of his tip-off money on new furniture.

When Dillick’s pale face finally appeared in the gloom, Jeniche had long finished the drink, carved an elaborate design into the wood of one of the new tables with her knife, and begun to doze. He moved his oleaginous bulk between the tables, feeling his way as he went, eyes still dazzled by the afternoon sun. Even as a shadowy figure in the shuttered room, he managed to convey that mixture of servility and slyness that Jeniche so disliked.

‘Don’t open them just yet,’ she said quietly as he reached up to the nearest shutter catch.

Dillick froze. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Someone who is curious to know how the city guard can get here so quickly after one of your clients sits down to eat.’

The pale moon of Dillick’s face loomed toward her. Jeniche was reminded of a tulik worm, strange and poisonous creatures of the deep desert that come to the surface only on the night of a dark moon.

‘Is that you, Jeniche?’ The voice was pitched high with nerves.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ It was feeble even by Dillick’s standard.

‘Someone told them I was here.’

‘Could have been anyone.’ The face moved slowly away as Dillick backed toward the bar, knocking against a table and upsetting a bench.

Moving with long-practised silence, Jeniche crossed the room and stood beside him. ‘But it wasn’t.’

She heard a sharp intake of breath. It may have been surprise at her voice so close. It was more likely the cold, sharp point of her knife pricking the folds of flesh on his neck.

‘Anyone would know you,’ he said. ‘Anyone could have—’

She pushed the knife just a little harder.

‘Anyone?’

‘A lad like you. Out of the desert. Easily recognized.’

‘What makes you think I’m out of the desert?’ she asked, annoyed by the lazy assumption.

‘Skin that dark. Stands to reason.’

‘Not to me, Dillick. There’s more than just desert to the north of Makamba. A lot more.’

Jeniche pushed away the memories, saw Dillick frowning in the gloom. His was a small world. He’d probably never even left the city. Anything beyond the view from the city gates was beyond his comprehension.

Suddenly angry, Jeniche stepped back, keeping the point of the knife to Dillick’s neck.

‘There’s no need to—’ He cut off his protest with another sharp intake of breath as she pushed a little harder.

‘Just remember, Dillick,’ she said, keeping her voice low. ‘There isn’t a place I can’t escape from. There isn’t a place I can’t get into. There is nowhere you would be safe if I ever found out you were lying; if I ever found out you had gone running to the city guard after this little conversation.’

## Chapter Five

Small angular pools appeared first, fed from the corners and doorways from which they had never quite disappeared. They grew at a steady pace, unseen or disregarded. Sharp-edged and creeping, they moved out of the crevices and cracks, the sanctuary of awnings and cellar stairwells, onto the dusty ground of the alleys, streets and public squares. By the time Jeniche slipped out of Dillick’s place, the smaller pools of shadow were beginning to join together. It was the signal for the city to wake from its afternoon slumber.

A group of Tunduri monks and nuns stood directly outside the front entrance in the small space where there were benches for customers to sit. Jeniche began to push her way through, moving indecisive individuals firmly to one side or the other. She was almost clear when something snagged her tunic. Turning to free it from whatever nail or bit of rough timber she supposed it had caught on, she was taken aback to see the hand of a child gripping the cloth. The same smiling child she had encountered before.

‘I’m glad we met again,’ he said in impeccable Makamban. ‘I wanted to thank you.’

Jeniche was conscious that her mouth was open in surprise.

‘For the basket of food,’ added the young monk.

‘Food?’ She realized how stupid she sounded. ‘In the basket,’ she went on lamely.

The young monk smiled.

Jeniche looked away, not wanting to be caught by that look again and noticed that every Tunduri eye was fixed on her. Being the centre of attention was anathema. And the circle was growing. The Tunduri were attracting the attention of curious passers-by who were dawdling half-awake in the street. This, in turn, attracted the attention of soldiers who were fully awake. She had no thought they might have a particular interest in her, she was simply allergic to men in uniform, especially those that sauntered in her direction in that casual way that meant trouble.

‘It was kind of you.’

The child’s voice broke into her momentary distraction. ‘I have to go,’ she said, edging away.

‘You are from the north?’

She pulled her tunic from the boy’s grip. The question annoyed her as much as the assumption she knew the desert. Both things were actually true, but she wanted them to remain firmly in her past where they belonged.

Three steps took her through the group of Tunduri, which was considerably smaller than it had first seemed. A fourth let her join the slow current of pedestrian traffic that carried her away from the terrifying smile, the soporific presence of the Tunduri, the cold and focused eyes of the soldiers.

Shopkeepers were re-opening their shutters and setting out their wares in the thin slivers of shade that had washed up against their shop fronts. The markets were coming back to life, stall-holders emerging from beneath their trestle tables, yawning as they kicked their apprentices awake and folded the dust sheets that had protected their wares from the elements and felonious hands. As Jeniche reached the end of the street, she could hear Dillick swearing at the Tunduri.

More people were venturing out. Sleepy servants and listless children, ambling dogs and yet more pilgrims all getting in the way of the ox-drawn work carts that were once more trundling back and forth carrying rubble, bricks, and timber. A haze of dust began to fill the air and the water sellers and lemonade stalls began to do a brisk trade.

All of which suited Jeniche. Because there were soldiers everywhere. And with life getting back to something resembling normal she could fade into the free-for-all. At least the streets seemed to be clear of the city guard. Not that she was going to make that mistake again.

Bread was her first priority. When she arrived at the bakery, Bolmit, normally the most placid of men, was arguing with one of his regular customers. Jeniche stood in the street, bemused. It wasn’t until two soldiers stepped from the alley that ran alongside the bakery that she fished in her pocket to find some of the loose change that had, until recently, been in a box behind Dillick’s bar and approached the shop.

Close to, closer than she wanted, she could see the soldiers were seasoned professionals. Lean, wary, with a quiet confidence in their abilities. They had, she also noticed, discarded their dark blue tunics for something lighter and were wearing keffiyehs as well. Whether they were trying to cope with the heat or blend in and make themselves less obvious targets was anyone’s guess.

She managed to get the attention of Bolmit, disappointed that his good-looking son, Wedol, wasn’t serving. Once she had paid for her bread, she wandered away from the shop and crossed the street into some shade. She felt lost. Everything was out of sorts and the usual rhythm of the streets had faltered. People were still out as usual, errands had to be run, provisions bought, gossip exchanged. There was, however, an air of distraction that she shared, understandable given the circumstances. It was as if people weren’t sure how to behave. Unlike some, though, Jeniche didn’t think it a good idea to stand and stare at the pale-skinned Occassans, if that’s what they were. Every time someone did, she noticed, every time a group began to gather, more soldiers would appear, threatening and bullying until the curious and sociable dispersed with grumbles and resentment. If nothing else, it confirmed to Jeniche that she was in for a thin time.

Dispirited, she ran her eyes over a display of fruit, wondering about the weapons these soldiers carried. Feldar had mentioned the bounty a sword smith had put up for the capture of one. She couldn’t understand why. They looked a bit like long crossbows without the bow and string, nothing more than elaborate clubs. Not very practical.

She walked along the stall, only half seeing the produce. In the end, she bought some peaches and was about to move on in search of some goat’s cheese when she stopped in her tracks, heart beating hard.

Crouched in the shadow of the fruit display was a member of the city guard. The man wasn’t in uniform but she knew. He looked up at her for a long moment and then flicked his head to one side to get her to move on.

Letting out a breath of relief, she said with a quiet voice, ‘Your boots are a giveaway.’

The man, trying to look round her legs, flicked a glance up at her and frowned. She just hoped he wasn’t one of the ones who had arrested her. In the melee, she hadn’t paid much attention to what any of them looked like. Her fists had made contact a few times before a rope went round her wrists, and this guard had bruises. But they could have come from anywhere.

‘Just get out of the way.’

‘If they see those boots, they’ll know what you are.’

He looked down at them and then back at Jeniche. It was clear he was trying to decide if it was a con, but in the end he pulled them off.

‘Someone here will have a sack you can put them in. Trade them for sandals.’

After that, she saw several other watchers, tucked away in shady spots. One of them was talking with a small boy who ran off and Jeniche saw him pulling his boots off. She smiled, but it was half-hearted. There had been deaths already. More were sure to follow. Perhaps it was time to leave the city. First, though, she needed some sleep.

Deep shadow and a light breeze from the wide river valley to the south of the city filtering through the sandalwood screen made the balcony comfortable. The prospect, however, was not. Across the wide street, lined up against a long wall in full sunlight, were fourteen men and six boys. Two of the men had been beaten and blood had dried hard on their swollen faces. The seventh boy had fainted and lay in the dust. The only comfort to be drawn was that there should have been fifteen men.

I hope you’re not somewhere doing something foolish, she thought. Willed it. Though where Trag would go, she had no idea. The stables across the road were his work, his home, his whole world.

Jeniche moved with cautious steps, shifting her perspective. The group of soldiers guarding the stable staff had not moved, but others were now emerging from the buildings. They crossed the main courtyard and appeared in the grand gateway. She leaned forward and caught sight of the tops of the heads of two just below her. A board creaked beneath her shifting weight.

The voices below stopped their murmur. Not waiting to see what was happening, Jeniche launched herself through the door, made a forward roll that would add more bruises to her collection and was up the stairs to the roof. She could hear booted feet clattering up behind her.

Grabbing her sack of provisions as she passed, she crossed the flat roof, jumped the narrow alley to the next roof and was up and over the shallow pitch of pantiles with nimble steps, skirting a garden courtyard before dropping onto an outhouse roof and down to the packed earth of a narrow service alley. She doubted anyone had seen her, but she didn’t stop moving until tiredness forced her to rest in the shade behind an old, public fountain.

‘Are you all right, lad?’

She looked up, startled. A dishevelled man smelling of sweat and cheap alcohol stood a few steps away, watching her. He looked familiar in a vague kind of way, but she could not place him and did not much care. Two friends were gone and she had nowhere to sleep. All on top of being caught for the first time in her life. It really was time to be leaving the city.

‘You lost?’ continued the man. ‘You don’t look the type who gets lost.’ He shrugged.

‘I’m… just a bit tired,’ she said, not really wanting to get into a conversation, especially with someone she didn’t know.

The man nodded and lifted a stone bottle to his lips. ‘Don’t suppose you got much sleep last night.’

He waved his free hand in aimless circles and wandered away with the careful steps of someone perpetually drunk, raising the bottle to his lips again as he went. Jeniche watched him go until he was out of sight, her eyes burning, her throat dry, and her head full of questions.

There were no answers where she went looking, but there was a bed in the shade of a rooftop awning. However, after that first night of restless, dark, dream-haunted sleep, she moved down into the deserted house.

Shuttered and barred against the world, the building felt as if it was in mourning. A deep sadness permeated the rooms. Jeniche feared it meant yet another death. She touched little, despite the worth of some of the items. This was the house of a friend. And of all the friends she had made, the strangest and the best.

She made up a small bed for herself in an upstairs room near the stairs to the roof. A straw mattress from the kitchen and spare sheets from a linen press, that was all she used. That and cool water drawn from the well for bathing before she ventured out at night for food, searching the streets and taverns, listening to the talk.

And every time she slept, her dreams of being trapped, of sour breath and rough, grasping hands, drove her to a restlessness that woke her. Sick with weariness and ever more uncertain about the life she had made for herself in Makamba, she would make her way up to the roof terrace and sit beneath the awning to listen to the city, wondering whether the dried blood she had found up there was that of the child.

A week passed and the mood in the city turned from bemusement to discontent and then to open anger. Firecracker sounds sparkled in the night, most often from the direction of the Old City, but sometimes up on the high ridge and over towards the wealthier quarters. Shouts and the sound of running feet echoed in the hot dark.

On that seventh day, risking a daylight foray, she found one of the stable hands.

‘Endek?’

His hand half way toward a piece of fruit on a market stall, he looked round, searching the crowds nearby. Jeniche flipped a sou at the stallholder and picked up the slice of melon.

Endek eyed her with suspicion as she handed him the fruit. The faint remains of bruising stained his left cheek. ‘Who are you, then?’

‘I’m looking for Trag. What happened?’

‘Trag? Didn’t know he had any friends.’

‘You don’t remember me from the stables? Never mind.’ She had always tried to remain unobtrusive. It was a hollow triumph. ‘What happened? I saw you all lined up outside the main gate.’

A brief frown, followed by memory. ‘Bastards. They just walked in. Odrin tried to stop them and got beaten for his trouble.’

‘You, too, by the look of it.’

‘Wasn’t going to let them do that,’ he said round a mouthful of melon. ‘Odrin’s a foul-tempered old piece of shit, but he gave me that job. So they beat me as well. Then they made us stand in the sun. Well, stupid goat arses. It’s not like we’re not used to it, working for the gentry.’ He wiped juice from his chin. ‘After that they told us to get lost. Using the horses for their soldiers.’

‘Trag?’

Endek shook his head. ‘No idea. I thought he might wade into them soldiers and pull their heads off. If you know him, you’ll know what he’s like about those horses. But he weren’t there. Gone. Best thing, I suppose. Us, they beat. They would’ve had to kill him to stop him.’

‘Any idea where he might have gone?’

‘Hasn’t he got an old aunt? Down near Northgate.’ He shrugged and wandered off, sucking at the rind.

Jeniche pushed her way through the crowds and into an alley cool with shadow. She spent a hot afternoon following fruitless rumours and trying to pick sense out of gossip. But Trag, for all his bulk and slow ways, seemed to have disappeared as easily and completely as a dust ghost.

Wondering if she should start visiting the cemeteries to talk with grave diggers, she trudged back up the steep slope from Northgate. People were coming back out after the heat of the day. Soldiers were standing on street corners in whatever shade they could find, watching for signs of trouble.

To avoid getting too close to a group of four who looked bored and restless, Jeniche crossed the street. She need not have bothered as their attention was taken by two men who began a fierce argument. Continuing across, she kept a wary eye on a handcart laden with building materials that was being brought down the hill by a group of men. The wheels rumbled on the baked earth and the whole thing creaked.

It came as little surprise when the sound of the wheels changed, although it was odd no one shouted a warning. With sudden, stark clarity she realized why and looked for an escape route.

Before she could move, the cart had picked up deadly speed. The soldiers noticed the change in sound, turned, and leapt for their lives. One was too late. He was pinned against the wall and crushed to death. Another spun through the air and fell to the ground, scrabbling feebly to get out of the open. The other two ran into the middle of the street, shouting. They pulled their moskets from where they hung on straps on their shoulders and raised them like crossbows.

Jeniche watched from an alley and jumped at the loud firecracker sound the weapons made. One of the men who had let go of the cart was struggling up the hill, looking for cover, when his head exploded. Jeniche stared, unable to make sense of the horror she had seen.

More soldiers appeared and there were more loud sounds, crackling up and down the street. A boy ran down the hill past Jeniche, his face full of numb fear, a dark bloody patch blossoming on his tunic. She heard him stumble and fall. A woman began screaming.

That night, she sat with her back to the parapet at the rear of the roof terrace well away from the street, close to the bed beneath the awning. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she recalled the first time she had climbed to this roof, resting triumphant after relieving an odious merchant of a boxful of money.

As she had sat on the corner, she had become aware of eyes watching her from the bed. A young girl, small and frail, quite unafraid. Her name was Enshool – ‘But you may call me Shooly,’ she had said – and then gone on to tell Jeniche that she could only come up to the roof if the queen gave permission.

Bemused, Jeniche had asked how that might be done and was introduced to the finest doll she had ever seen, exquisitely carved and richly dressed, along with a whole court of smaller dolls. A gift was required in payment for permission to visit.

It would have been easy to steal a doll, or buy one with stolen money, but Jeniche had found herself a job at the docks. Filling a cart over and over with animal dung had not paid well, a few coins and many blisters, but the gift had no taint.

‘What’s a Bir…?’ Shooly faltered at the unfamiliar word.

‘Birba.’

‘What’s a Birba? And why are his clothes on backwards?’

‘A Birba is meant to dress like that. He’s a jester. Someone who makes jokes and dances and does magic tricks.’ And Jeniche had capered round Shooly’s bed and produced a coin from her tiny ear and made her giggle. After that, Jeniche had visited on a regular basis. Shooly wasn’t always there, but when she was and when she was awake they would play with the dolls and Jeniche would be the jester.

There was no sign of Shooly now, or her family, just chunks knocked out of the parapet overlooking the street, a bloodstain, and one old rag doll pushed down behind a large chest. Teague was dead. Trag could not be found. There was nothing left for her here; only one road to be taken, the one that led away from her beloved city. It was time to move on. She sat in the shuttered room of her misery, locked her arms round her knees and stared into the deep dark.

## Chapter Six

The queue at the Watergate was shorter than the others. Not many people wanted to go south. And who could blame them when the fields alongside the main road in that direction were an armed encampment for as far as the eye could see. Even so, it was longer than it had been two days ago. And now, there was a high wooden palisade to prevent those who went down to the springs to collect water from using that as an escape route.

Shuffling forward, guarding their places with fierce looks and fiercer words, the line of people was a depressing sight. They stood with bundles of bedding, bags of food, restless children, and fearful hearts. Soldiers walked up and down, watching them with unwavering vigilance. Since the attacks had started in earnest, they had lost friends and whatever semblance of good nature they might once have possessed.

The routine was exactly the same for all refugees. You stripped in a tent and your clothes and belongings were searched. Some valuables and other items were being confiscated. Any animal larger than a dog was also confiscated. The price of handcarts had long since gone beyond the purse of ordinary folk. In any case, most of them had nowhere else to go so they had to sit tight in the city and try to stay clear of the fighting.

Now and then a ripple of anxiety ran through the queue as someone was turned away or arrested. For the most part it was Tunduri monks and nuns that were being prevented from leaving. Jeniche couldn’t understand why, unless the foreigners were looking for someone in particular.

She slipped out of the shrine where she had been sitting in the shade. It was pointless thinking she could cheat the system. Some other way out of the city had to be found. There was one, but it was a last resort. It was becoming apparent, after days of traipsing about the hot streets and observing the queues and the searches at the city gates, that it was the only resort.

Following a group of water sellers as they went bow-backed up into the main market, Jeniche became tangled with a group of Tunduri in their mossy green robes. She wondered how they had survived for so long, trapped in the city. Begging mostly, she realized, as they turned to her.

It was the first time she had looked at any of them closely. True, she had been surrounded by them when she had been across the river to the caves during the festival and later when the boy was talking to her. But they had just been a crowd, excited, lively, handing out food the first time. She bet they wished they had kept some for themselves. That second encounter had come when they were exhausted and conscious of just how great the distance was between themselves and their home.

Her own supplies of money and food were getting low, but she fished out a crown from her belt and produced it from the ear of a bemused, older monk. He scurried off to catch up with the others and it dawned on her he looked a lot like the old monk who had been with the boy. She dodged into the nearest alley, just as a young face peered at her from amongst all the green robes, confirming her suspicion.

Jeniche trailed up the alley and into a quiet square. With a sharpened sense for trouble, she kept moving. She had no desire to get tangled up with anyone in whom the soldiers had taken an interest. Besides, the place was much too quiet and she could see a patrol approaching. Once out of their view she ran toward the market, moving up through a maze of passages and paths, back yards, and small public gardens, dodging beneath limp, sun-bleached washing, raked by the intense and suspicious scrutiny of groups of women gathered on precarious wooden balconies.

Where people gather to trade and buy and gossip, there will always be places to sit and drink and eat. The great market square of Makamba stood at the top of the hill, far enough from the Old City gates to have pretensions of grandeur, close enough for the traders to live there and bring their produce up from the dockside warehouses on a daily basis. To call it a square was an exaggeration of the term. It was just a place where several main roads met, creating a space broad enough for market stalls, customers and carriage traffic to co-exist without too much disharmony. And between the buildings that fronted the square were numerous, narrow alleys where all those places you could sit and drink and eat plied their trade.

Many of the eating houses never closed, catering for different clientele, depending on the time of day and season of the year. Different establishments catered for different pockets as well. Those that fronted on to the square itself, furthest from the Old City, were considered respectable enough for merchants and even their wives – suitably chaperoned, of course. The deeper you went into the alleys, especially those close to the Old City gates, the meaner the establishment and the better your eyesight needed to be, not just to find your way around, but also to avoid getting mugged.

Jeniche moved away from the bustle of the marketplace and the watchful eye of the foreign soldiers into a long and winding passage. Near the end, to one side, beneath a sign caked with the grime of decades, was a small tavern favoured by people who liked to stay away from trouble and keep themselves to themselves.

She went down the steps and through the open door, passing between busy tables to the back of the room. There, a wide arch opened on to a shaded courtyard. A table by the kitchen was free and Jeniche sat, grateful for the chance to rest out of the brightness.

‘Hello. Do you want anything to eat? Plenty of chicken, still.’

Jeniche looked up. A pale young woman looked down at her, smiling. ‘Er…’

The woman giggled. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

It took a moment. ‘Dillick’s. You’re smiling. That’s what threw me.’

‘I’d love to know what you said to him. He threw us both out, told us not to come back, and locked up. Not seen him since.’

‘What about…?’ Jeniche had no idea of their names.

‘In the kitchen. The work’s just as hard here, but there’s no Dillick pushing you around and breathing all over you.’

‘Well, I didn’t say that much. And the chicken sounds great. Some bread. Small beer.’

‘Must’ve been that big bloke, then, later on.’

Before Jeniche could ask, the waitress had gone. The place stayed busy all afternoon and Jeniche didn’t have a chance to ask any more, so pushed the thought to one side. Dillick must have upset a good few people in his time. He was that sort of person.

With a full belly, rested legs, and a half workable plan for getting out of the city with her treasures intact, Jeniche wandered back toward the market. The place seemed normal. The presence of foreign soldiers was obvious, but business had returned to its usual, noisy level. People were gossiping. Even some of the jugglers and other entertainers were putting on a show.

Making the best of her mood, she moved toward the western end of the market, where it gave on to the gardens at the front of the university. It was time to say goodbye, here and elsewhere.

The road narrowed at this end and although there were fewer stalls, they catered to the large number of students by offering cheaper produce. The crowds pressed in around her. It was hard to believe so many people had left the city. The rest must be right here, she decided, determined to keep things as normal as they could. For all that, there were signs of wear and tear, signs of the invasion. Not least the group of Tunduri. If it weren’t for the fact that everywhere you went, there seemed to be little knots of them drifting, begging, still finding time to stand and stare, she might start to believe they were following her round the city. She shrugged, trembling a little at the sight beyond the last of the stalls.

Rubble still lay across the gardens where the tower had been felled during the initial assault on the city. Most of it was gone, deep cart tracks cutting through the grass and flower beds kept watered by the university’s deep wells. But a long spine of grey stone remained, like the twisted vertebra of a stripped carcass.

Oblivious to the noise and bustle around her, she watched a team of labourers loading a cart, seeing the tower as she best remembered it, stretching up to the starry sky. When she was not thieving or producing coins from Shooly’s ear, she would sit atop the tower in Teague’s study.

She had first climbed it simply because it was a challenge, the tallest building in Makamba. Teague, who had a keen ear, had waited until Jeniche climbed into her observatory, remarked that the stairs were easier, winked at Jeniche, and gone back to peering through her telescope. Nothing more was said, but Jeniche, once she got over the shock of finding someone sitting in the dark, was fascinated by what she saw. Thereafter, whenever she saw the dim, red glow of Teague’s lamp in the observatory windows, she would climb up and join her.

The astronomer had been an elegant woman, much older than Jeniche, who clearly enjoyed the companionship. They had talked most often about the night sky. Jeniche told of using the stars to navigate in the desert. Teague told of what she had learned of the moon, of the stars and planets, of the wandering lights that sometimes flared across the sky and disappeared.

Jeniche had felt a deep link with Teague, drawn by her sense of rootedness and purpose. She sometimes wondered if, when it was time to give up thieving, a life of learning would suit her. Now she would probably never know.

Wrapped in melancholy, several moments passed between the eruption of noise and Jeniche noticing. She spun round to see the market in chaos. Angry firecracker sounds filled the space and echoed in the hot afternoon. Shards of mud brick spat into the air from the top of a nearby building. She ducked, instinctively, conscious of people hurrying along the rooftop.

All around the market, people were running and diving for cover. Women dragged children, letting their shopping spill to the ground as they sought out doorways and alleys. Men ran and ducked and fell. Horses screamed, rearing in panic, bolting through the fast thinning crowd. Bullets hit walls and tore through flimsy stalls in search of flesh. Several people already lay in the hot dust, bleeding their lives away, calling, screaming, pleading.

In the confusion, Jeniche lay beside a collapsed stall, half buried in melons. One exploded close to her head and she flinched, terrified. She caught a glimpse of a young girl with rose-gold hair in strange clothes standing in the open space, blinked melon from her eyes to find she had gone. Instead a young nun stood there in her moss green robes, petrified, the whites of her eyes showing all the way round.

Something caught the back of Jeniche’s left calf as she ran, hot and painful. She lost her footing, tumbling forward, rolling, and coming back onto her feet again in time to knock the nun flat to the ground. Shooting raged above them. The soldiers had found proper shelter and aimed at the rooftop assassins who also seemed to have moskets.

Jeniche didn’t care. She grabbed a handful of green robe and began to drag the nun with desperate energy. They scrambled across the killing ground and fetched up with a crash against a trestle. Jeniche pushed the nun into the shadow beneath the stall, rolled in after her and then pulled her toward the entrance of a narrow street.

The nun had other ideas, tugging Jeniche towards a café. The sound of running feet was close behind them. Jeniche caught a glimpse of another familiar face, grinning in the mayhem, and then heard a great crash. She didn’t turn, but followed the nun and headed for the low wall of the café courtyard.

In a cloud of dust, they crashed over the wall and lay in the cover of the thick mud bricks, drawing painful breaths. The nun began to speak, was cut short as a concentrated burst of fire had them scuttling on hands and knees for the doorway to the café. They pushed into the dim interior as tables splintered behind them and dust rained down.

## Chapter Seven

‘How many more times? The answer is “No”. It will always be that. So please stop asking.’

She lifted the torch above her head in the hope of seeing more. All it did was cast longer shadows into the tunnel, pick out doorways and arched entrances in tantalizing flickers, and wring tears from her eyes as oily smoke swirled at the sudden movement.

‘But you would be perfect.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘No.’

‘We need a guide who can get us across the desert.’

‘Why does everyone think I know anything about the desert?’

She turned at the silence, the torch flame roaring.

‘What?’

‘But, surely…’

‘No. No. No. Just because I have darker skin than most people in Makamba—’

‘Cinnamon.’

‘What?’

‘It’s the colour of cinnamon.’

She looked at the boy, wondering if it was deliberate. It was almost like there were two people in there. A child and an adult. She shook her head.

‘The colour of my skin does not mean I’m from the north or that I was born any closer to the desert than where you are standing right now.’

The boy looked round the gloomy passage.

‘Are you not from Antar?’ he asked.

‘No. Yes. How could you possibly know that? And what business is it of yours if I am?’

‘I’m sorry.’

The Tunduri shuffled their feet, not understanding much beyond the tone of her voice, knowing full well she had told them to stay in the room. She walked back through them, irritated by their presence, annoyed at having to abandon her exploration again, despite the fact she knew it was a pointless exercise. Their footsteps echoed after hers as they climbed the sloping floor of the rough-hewn passage and mounted the steps.

At the top, she dropped the torch on the ground and kicked sand over it, fading smoke twisting its way to the rocky roof. The draught of passing robes dispersed it, the old monk ambling along in the rear, singing to himself as he went. Darkness took back the tunnels and settled like a monstrous, watchful cat.

A bright shaft of light, solid and hot, cut at an angle through the gloom of the semi-basement room that Jeniche had found for them. It lay somewhere beneath the university, close to the main courtyard garden. Smaller rooms contained tools, sacks, old bits of furniture, shelves of dusty pots and dried tubers. This, with its dusty bed and other rickety furniture, had looked unused.

The six monks and two nuns followed Jeniche inside and stood in hesitant fashion as she sat on one of the benches from which they had cleared piles of old sacks. It wobbled and she kicked back at the nearest leg, hurting her heel.

‘Can’t you sit down?’ she said.

The youngest one pushed through. ‘Forgive them. They are confused. A little lost.’

‘Why do they keep following me?’

The boy frowned. ‘Do they?’

Jeniche resisted the urge to scream. It had been like this for days.

The boy said something in Tunduri and the rest drifted to the edges of the room and sat in shadow, their backs to the walls. Jeniche felt like she could breathe again. For a moment, she shut them out of her thoughts and drew up her left trouser leg. The cloth at the back was torn and bloody from where her calf had been grazed by a mosket ball. With care she unwrapped the strip of linen that had been used to bind a poultice to the shallow cut. Twisting her leg in the shaft of sunlight, she inspected the wound as best she could. Although it still stung and there was some bruising, it did not seem to be infected.

One of the monks placed a bowl of water beside her and handed her a fresh strip of linen torn from the sheet she had acquired for the purpose. She tore it in two and used one piece to bathe the back of her leg before binding it up again. The nun she had pulled from the battle would have done it if she had let her, but she was determined not to get close, form any sort of bond.

When she had finished she found the young monk was still watching her.

‘We walked here,’ he said. ‘We could walk back. With a guide.’

‘Yes, but you doubtless came by the river road. In a large company. There were towns and villages along the way. You could buy and beg for food. There was food to beg for and buy. Shelter. People were generally glad to see you.’ It didn’t seem to be getting through to them, although given their passive faces it was hard to tell.

‘Then,’ continued Jeniche, going over the next point in her argument again, ‘it would mean getting you all out of a city where very angry soldiers seem intent on keeping you in. Soldiers who doubtless control the main roads. Which means the back roads and the desert. And to get you across the desert would first mean finding supplies of food and getting you properly equipped. You could not walk home dressed like that. It’s not my fault your God-King or whatever he is left you here to fend for yourselves, but I cannot help.’

‘Ah. Yes. That’s something else.’

Jeniche looked at the young boy as he sat on the dirt floor, those ancient eyes scrutinizing her. She shivered. ‘What?’

‘Like you, I’m not what I seem to be.’

The battle had gone on all day and well into the night, skirmishes breaking out all over the city, but centred on the main market. Vicious fighting, chases, deadly ambuscades, fires, moments of silence, acts of bravery and idiocy; chaos had stalked the streets and fed.

In all the havoc, it hadn’t come as much of a surprise to Jeniche to find the familiar group of Tunduri in the café to which the nun had dragged her. Mowen Nah was her name. With mosket fire carving up the street outside, Jeniche led them all straight out the back way and into a more secure hiding place away from the fighting. It was there that the boy had told her their names.

The other nun was called Mowen Bey and the two of them were sisters, of an age with Jeniche. They had sat holding hands with shy smiles illuminating their serious faces as the boy told their names to Jeniche and expressed the thanks of the whole group for leading Mowen Nah out of danger.

Jeniche was embarrassed by it all and certainly hadn’t wanted to know anyone’s name. The boy, however, was relentless as only a child can be. The old monk was Darlit Fen and he clasped his hands at his breast when he was introduced. The other four, younger monks, about the same age as the nuns, were Nuvid Ar, Tinit Sul, Arvid Dal, and Folit Gaw. All physically different but of an almost identical demeanour. The boy’s name was Gyan Mi.

With a churlish reluctance, Jeniche told them her name and they all repeated it with a slight bow of the head in her direction. After that they sat in silence a while, listening to the sounds of street battles as they waxed and waned. It gave Jeniche a chance to work out where the Tunduri could be ensconced in safety as well as pondering on her own next moves.

Three days later and people were still clearing up, tending the wounded, and burying their dead. Those that had to be out scurried about their errands, desperate to replenish stocks of food before the curfew, equally desperate to get back off the streets, keeping their heads down to avoid becoming the target of retribution. Brooms scratched at the dust, lifting a haze into the air, shovels scraped, debris-filled handcarts rumbled under the sharp, loathing eye of soldiers.

Much to the disgust of Jeniche, the rooftops were now patrolled. She had become so used to moving about the city above everyone else’s heads that she felt trapped. Perhaps that was why all those tunnels under the university seemed so inviting, even though they didn’t lead out of the city.

It wasn’t safe to be out in broad daylight, especially for someone dawdling, but Jeniche needed to think, needed to be away from the stifling company of the Tunduri. She had become so used to ordering her life on her own terms that all those people watching her every move, listening to what she said even though they didn’t understand, confused her and made her feel uncomfortable.

And the young monk translating for her with his impeccable Makamban, punctuating everything with obscure and maddening comments. The young monk. A boy. Gyan Mi. Crown of the People. Jewel of the Mountains. God-King of the Tunduri. She was still in shock.

‘I’d keep moving, if I were you.’ The voice came from behind her. ‘They don’t like people to loiter.’

She turned. An open doorway to a burned-out shop. Deep shadow within and the odour of damp, smouldering timber. Frowning, she moved away with hesitant steps. The voice had been familiar, but so much had happened in the last few weeks she could not place it. And she had much more to worry about than someone giving friendly advice.

Food for one thing. It was hard enough feeding one person, especially since the invasion. Now she had eight more, one of them a god. Not much of a god, she thought, if he needs my help. He had tried to explain, breaking off now and then to question Darlit Fen. As far as Jeniche could make out, Gyan Mi’s many lives were a test. To be a good god he must live his lives here as a good man and a good woman. He had confessed to her in a whisper that he often felt as confused about it as she looked. It had made her smile even if it didn’t help much. How did that happen, she wondered. How had she been stuck with all those Tunduri? When did saving one confer the obligation to shelter and feed eight?

When she got to the nearest bakery, Pollet was closing up. He gave the merest flick of his head toward the door and Jeniche slipped inside. Heat hit from the ovens, heady with the scent of baking bread.

‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ he said when the door was bolted.

Jeniche shrugged. ‘It’s been… complicated.’

‘That’s one word for it.’ He looked at her warily for a moment. ‘You heard about Wedol?’

She felt her heart sink. ‘Can’t be good news, can it?’

‘Sorry.’

She spent a moment remembering his shy grin, the shared pastries, the shared moments in the early hours in the yard at the rear of the shop, telling herself she was not going to cry any more. ‘How’s Bolmit taken it? I seem to remember he was in a foul mood when I saw him a while back.’

‘I haven’t seen him since that bloodbath a few days ago. And his place is closed up and the ovens are cold.’

Jeniche shook her head, jaws clamped on a sob. She blew out a long breath and wiped a sleeve across her eyes. ‘Have you got any bread?’

‘The batch that’s in is nearly ready. Our new masters will be round to collect it later.’ His face pulled into an emphatic expression of disgust. ‘But they get short measures, so there’s always a bit spare for friends. You go through to the back. My old dumpling will be pleased to see you.’

For once, she had enjoyed being mothered by Pollet’s wife. She smiled to herself as she watched the street from the archway. A breath-expelling hug, followed by a proper meal sitting down at a table can work wonders. Especially when you get a sack of provisions as a parting gift.

To her left, the backs of soldiers. To her right, a long straight alley without any more doorways in which to hide. She waited, keeping tight hold of the sack, listening to the murmur of their voices.

Her sense of well-being was eroding as she stood. It was a long way back to the university. She had a heavy sack. And judging by the lack of people about, the curfew had started.

She could be tucked away somewhere safe. There were plenty of empty houses in the city now. Somewhere with a few books, she thought. That would be good. A bed. Food. But you never got what you wanted. Something else always came along and took that away as it pushed you in a different direction.

The soldiers had gone when she looked again. Having missed them move, she had no idea if they had marched away or sauntered just out of sight. But she couldn’t stand there all night. At least if they caught her now, she could claim she was slowed down by her provisions.

Without looking back, she strode along the alley with a steady pace. At the far end was another road, narrow and deserted. Once across she would be into a maze of twisting alleys, courtyards, and cellars.

Half way to safety, her mind wandering ahead to the problems awaiting her beneath the university, a shout filled the empty space. Startled, she turned. The weight of the sack threw her off balance and she staggered. The sight of No-nose lumbering toward her followed by soldiers made her find her balance again. And run.