But at least they don’t look like a Prince Consort and a Combat Sorcerer, she thought, stumbling towards the front of the wagon. She remembered her own disguise and scowled. Or a kept woman, for that matter.
She peered into the bright sunlight, one hand covering her eyes. Jade had stopped beside a copse of trees, planted to mark the boundaries between one set of common-held lands and the next. A set of bodies hung from the trees; their throats were slashed, blood staining their clothes and pooling on the ground. Flies buzzed, their hum somehow ominous in the warm air. The wind shifted, blowing the stench towards them. Emily had to fight not to cover her nose as the smell of decaying bodies washed over the wagon. The bodies had clearly been dead for days.
“Tax farmers, at a guess,” Cat said, from behind her. His voice was very calm. “Or perhaps the local noble’s functionaries, plotting to enclose the fields and turn the peasants into serfs.”
He nudged Jade. “I thought you were meant to be doing something about this.”
“Very few complaints ever reach the king,” Jade said, tartly. “And when they do, you can rest assured that he always rules in favor of the nobleman.”
“And so the commoners take matters into their own hands.” Cat waved a hand towards the bodies. “Who do you think they work for?”
Emily shrugged. The bodies wore a lord’s colors and badge, but she didn’t recognize the livery. Yellow and black, with gold trim…it was probably a middle-ranking nobleman. She didn’t want to go any closer to the bodies, even though it was possible one of them was carrying something that might give her useful intelligence. The smell alone was off-putting, but the prospect of the murderers having booby-trapped the bodies was worse. Sergeant Miles had told her, more than once, that peasant uprisings were always savage. The peasants knew little of the laws of war and cared less. Besides, it wasn’t as if they could expect any mercy either.
She looked away, her eyes sweeping over the checkerboard fields. They would be held in common, if she recognized the signs correctly; an entire village of peasants would work them collectively, giving half of their crop to their local nobility and keeping the rest for themselves. Tiny canals ran between the fields, so dry that only a trickle of water remained. The fields themselves looked abandoned, save for a handful of scarecrows. She was no expert, but it didn’t look as though they were being regularly tended. The peasants seemed to have vanished, leaving the fields behind.
They might not have had a choice, she thought, looking back at the hanging bodies. If the lord was planning to enclose the fields…
Her heart clenched. The nobility wanted to enclose the fields, claiming that larger fields would produce more crops. And they were right, she supposed. She’d seen the figures when it had been proposed at Cockatrice. It would be more efficient. But it would also turn the peasants into serfs, destroying what little freedoms they had left. She’d banned the practice in Cockatrice. Other aristocrats were far less concerned about the rights and freedoms of their tenants, let alone their traditional way of life.
“We’d better be going.” Jade cracked the whip and the horses started to move. “I don’t want to be around when someone comes to take down the bodies.”
Emily nodded in agreement as she settled back on the hard, wooden seat. The air outside was foul, but it was better than trying to sleep in the back of the wagon. She checked her headscarf, just to be sure her hair was still concealed, then looked down at the loose shirt and trousers she wore. She looked like a camp follower, a woman who served two mercenaries in exchange for protection…part of her found it humiliating, if only because Jade and Cat would have to treat her as a servant when they met other travelers, but she had to admit it was a good disguise. Between the headscarf, the clothes, and the dust on her skin, it was unlikely that anyone would draw a connection between her and the Necromancer’s Bane.
“We’re not moving fast enough,” Jade muttered. “We’re not going to be in Alexis for another week.”
“It can’t be helped,” Cat said, from where he was sitting in the back. “Unless you want to change your mind and teleport…”
Jade made a rude sound, but Emily didn’t miss the worry and desperation in his voice. “You know better than that,” he said. “We can’t risk being detected.”
Emily nodded, remembering the day they’d sat down in Dragon’s Den and hashed out the possibilities. King Randor, whatever else could be said about him, was far from stupid…and he had magicians in his service. Teleporting into Alexis–or even into the countryside near the city–risked detection, bringing the king’s army down on their heads. And while they could teleport into Beneficence, Emily had checked with Markus and he’d told her that anyone who crossed the bridge into Cockatrice was subjected to a careful examination. King Randor lacked the tools to carry out a real check–computers and databases were far in the Nameless World’s future–but his guards would know to watch for any inconsistencies. Or maybe they just used truth spells.
It was a risk they couldn’t afford to take.
“We’ll be there in time,” she said, resting a hand on his shoulder. It was a gesture of affection she would never have normally allowed herself. But she trusted Jade. “The king won’t hurt Alassa until she gives birth.”
“Hah,” Jade muttered. “He has a bastard son, you know.”
Emily looked away. Jade was right. Randor’s son might be a bastard–and the mother married to someone else–but the king wouldn’t have any difficulty proving that he’d fathered the child. And, in the absence of any fully-legitimate heir, he could probably convince the nobility to accept the child as his successor. Enough noblemen had been concerned about the prospect of a Ruling Queen–and about Alassa taking the throne–to make it hard for anyone to dissent.
“He won’t risk hurting a woman,” Cat said. “The nobility wouldn’t stand for it.”
Emily glanced into the darkened rear. “They have no qualms about beating and raping and even killing their maidservants,” she pointed out, sharply. “I’ve seen fathers complaining about the treatment of their daughters while beating their wives bloody. Why would they question the king?”
“Because Alassa is a noblewoman, even if she is removed from the line of succession,” Cat pointed out. He ignored Jade’s snort. “They’ll be reluctant to condone the king abusing a noblewoman, whoever she is. They like to think of themselves as chivalrous.”
Emily rolled her eyes at him. On the face of it, Cat was right; knights and noblemen did like to think of themselves as the protectors of the gentler sex. And yet, she couldn’t help noticing that their chivalrous conduct had the unintentional effect of making noblewomen practically helpless. They couldn’t protect themselves, they couldn’t speak for themselves, they couldn’t even dress themselves. Everything was done for them by their small army of servants. As children, they were little more than dress-up dolls; as adults, they were expected to have babies–after their marriage was arranged for them–and nothing else. Legally, they were effectively children–and property.
It does have some advantages, she conceded. It was vanishingly rare for a noblewoman to be executed, whatever the crime. Hell, she’d heard of noblewomen deliberately running up vast debts which their husbands were legally liable to pay. But I would find it maddening.