The sight of Kara’s face in the orichalcum glow stopped the laugh in my throat. The funny side of the situation didn’t appear to be pointing her way, and going by her murderous looks I’d be safer sleeping with the trolls.
Up at the head of the column Gorgoth issued some silent command and once more his subjects began to move. Grateful for the excuse, I turned my back on Kara and, after repositioning my pack, set off walking. I’d already petitioned Gorgoth to have a troll carry my gear, but he held some odd kind of reservation about the matter as if he thought it beneath a troll to carry the baggage of a prince of Red March. I guess that’s the sort of madness that sets in when you spend your life living in a dark cave. In any event he finally excused them on the basis they were apt to eat my rations, and then the pack and my spare cloak.
I grumbled to Snorri about it but he just laughed. “Does a man good to carry his own weight in the world, Jal. It’ll harden you up a bit too.”
I shook my head. “Seems the concept of nobility ends north of Ancrath. That one,” I nodded to the front of the column, “probably wouldn’t bend the knee if they made a new emperor and brought him a-visiting. Reminds me of a beggar in Vermillion, Fussy Jack they called him, or at least Barras Jon used to call him that . . . anyhow, he’d hang out on Silk Street round the back of the opera house with his tin cup, showing off the stumps of his legs and shouting out for money at the honest folk passing by. Tossed him a coin or two myself. Probably. Barras told me he’d seen the man empty his cup on a cloth and clean each copper piece with a bit of felt, careful as all hell not to touch a single one of them until he’d wiped the stink off them. Barras said he tossed him a silver crown once, just to get him to catch it. Ol’ Fussy Jack, he let it fall, picked it up with his cloth and wiped it clean. Silver from the son of the Vyene ambassador just wasn’t good enough for him.”
Snorri shrugged. “They say all money’s dirty, one way or another. Seems this Jack might have had it right. We’ll find out for ourselves soon enough, headed for Florence.”
“Hmmm.” I decided to cover the fact I was going no further than Vermillion with a non-committal noise.
“All the money of Empire flows into Florence, sits a while in the vaults of some or other Florentine banker, then flows out again. I’ve never quite fathomed the reason why, but if money is dirty then Florence must be the most filthy corner of the Broken Empire.”
I considered educating Snorri on the finer points of banking, then realized I didn’t have a clue what they were, even though I’d spent a desperately dire year studying at the Mathema in Hamada—another torture heaped upon all the princes of Red March by the ruthless old witch who claims to be our grandmother.
And so we trudged on. The trolls might not have missed the Danes and their torches, and I didn’t much miss the Danes, but I did like it better when I could see where I was going. Kara gave the orichalcum to Snorri so we wouldn’t break our ankles, but even in his hands the light made little impression on the dark and empty spaces around us.
? ? ?
After many miles wending our way through wooded uplands, around villages with their barking dogs and hedgerows, and down through tangled valleys, we stopped in the predawn grey to settle ourselves in an isolated dell.
I went across to Kara to make some pleasantry but astonishingly she still seemed to be holding a grudge, turning on me so sharply I took a pace back.
“And what did you do to Hakon?” she demanded. Just like that, no circling around the subject, no insinuations. Most unsettling.
“Me?” I tried for injured innocence.
“You! He said you’d told him where I was.”
“You didn’t want him to know?” A little bitterness might have slipped into that one.
I should have stepped back two paces. The retort of her hand striking my cheek set a dozen trolls hissing at the night, taloned hands raised to strike. “Ah.” I touched fingers to my stinging face and tasted blood.
Discretion is the better part of . . . something. In any event I took myself out of arm’s reach and spread my bedroll down on the far side of camp, muttering something about the anti-witch laws I’d be passing when I became king. I set myself down and stared angrily at the sky, not even taking a moment to be thankful that it wasn’t raining. I lay there with the copper taste of blood in my mouth and thought it would be a long time before sleep found me. I was wrong. It dragged me down in moments.