She gave him a mournful look, staring at the coin. ‘Nobody has it for any price.’ Then she nodded. ‘But I could get you other things. Fire? Keleth seed?’
Marith almost laughed. Pressed the coin into her hand and then, feeling generous, gave her two more.
‘Fire? Yes. That would be lovely.’ Keleth seeds were utterly boring. But fire … He licked his lips. ‘Now.’
She nodded. ‘Come.’
She could just be going to kill him. But he’d killed a dragon. He’d killed Emit. He’d killed better men than Emit. Could probably handle a young woman barely able to walk. The thought disappeared from his mind as she turned and started down a narrow street. She walked slowly, unsteadily. He danced impatiently behind her, clutching the purse Tobias had given him in shaking hands.
After a short while they came to a little court of buildings, falling over each other and half ruined, with a dank alley running beside them. The woman gestured towards a small low doorway where a man crouched scrabbling in the dirt in a pool of his own piss. She tapped on the door and pushed it open. Marith followed her eagerly, his eyes bright, his whole body shaking now with anticipation and fear and hope and happiness.
Tobias arrived back at the Five Corners around early in the afternoon. Marith and Emit didn’t. It got to late in the afternoon and Tobias began to fret. They should have been back hours ago. It didn’t take that long to buy shirts. He had to meet Skie again, couldn’t show up and tell him he had no idea what had happened to half his squad.
‘Where the bloody hell are they?’ he shouted at Rate and Alxine. ‘They didn’t say anything to you, did they?’
‘Maybe they got lost again,’ said Alxine. ‘Or got in a fight. Or Emit finally snapped and lamped Marith one.’
‘We’d better go out and look for him.’ Tobias stood up wearily. ‘You two, come with me.’ If he left them alone, they’d probably manage to set fire to the building. He composed a message for Skie explaining he’d be delayed and asked the oldest sister, Navala, to send a message boy with it to the Star. All the boy had to say was ‘Will be late, meet at the Star tomorrow morning’, so it was probably pretty safe. Not much else he could do anyway.
They must have been to the tailor’s shop, a parcel of not entirely tasteless clothes having arrived just after midday, so the search started there. The two of them were fairly memorable, especially as Marith turned out to have bought an extremely expensive coat. An apprentice had been taking out some parcels at the time they left and thought he remembered them talking about going for a drink. Tobias almost kicked the wall with rage at this point.
There was a tavern just down the street. The landlady smiled wistfully at the memory of the beautiful boy who’d come in just after opening and bought a very large measure of extremely expensive brandy, as well, most generously in her opinion, as a cup of beer for his servant man. No, she didn’t know where he’d gone, but she very much hoped he’d come back. Tobias did kick the wall then, and almost kicked Alxine too, for good measure.
They wandered the streets vaguely for a while, feeling increasingly lost. After an hour’s searching, Rate was ready to conclude they were dead and give up. Moaning his arm hurt and he was fed up with walking round in circles. ‘They’re probably dead in a ditch somewhere,’ he muttered repeatedly. ‘Or in prison, or run off together to start a new life as travelling musicians. We are not going to bloody find them.’
‘They can’t have just run off,’ Alxine responded each time. ‘Emit wouldn’t do that to us, and Marith …’ But none of them could say what Marith would or wouldn’t do, and each time Alxine would trail off emptily.
Why on earth did I trust him with the money? Tobias kept asking himself. He just seemed so … so … Confident was the wrong word. Trustworthy was entirely and absolutely the wrong word. Frightening. Pitiful. Strange. Sad. Wrong and broken, in ways Tobias couldn’t begin to understand. But he’d given him a bag of gold and sent him off without a backward glance. Things they needed that really couldn’t wait. Could probably trust Marith. Yeah? What had he been thinking? What had he been bloody thinking? It was beginning to get dark, the sun red in the west and twilight drawing in. ‘Let’s go back,’ he said wearily. Gods only knew what he’d tell Skie. The man was going to bloody well flay him alive.
They had almost reached the Street of the South when Alxine grabbed Tobias’s arm and pulled him across the street. Tobias turned and saw a young woman in the midst of a violent argument in the doorway of a shop. ‘What—?’
‘No,’ Alxine said urgently. ‘Listen.’
The woman was hurling abuse at a well-dressed man, who was looking back at her in scornful disbelief. From what Tobias could gather from the jumble of Literan and Pernish, she was trying to buy a dress from the man, who was refusing to even let her enter his shop. Shouting that she had money enough to buy ten of his dresses, never mind one. To prove it, she thrust a talent piece in his face. Given she was currently dressed in rags, the shop-keeper promptly accused her of theft. She shouted even louder, yelling at the top of her voice that she’d been given it as a gift by a beautiful young lord with eyes like storm clouds and hair the colour of dark wine. He’d given her more, in fact, but she’d already spent them. On drink, from the state of her. The shop-keeper burst out laughing. Asked if he’d also had lips as red as roses and a gold-plated cock.
Tobias’s heart sank like a stone.
The shop-keeper finally succeeded in shoving the woman away from him and slamming his door shut. She stood transfixed in the doorway, hurling a stream of incoherent abuse at the dark wood. Finally she sank down onto the cobbles and began to cry. Tobias went over to her.
After a short discussion and the production of a couple of dhol, the woman agreed to show them where she’d taken her beautiful, generous, kind-hearted, charming young lord. They followed her warily, frowning at each other. Not looking particularly good, this. Hands on the hilts of their knives. The woman walked slowly; her voice slurred and stilted, the stress placed on the wrong words, with a rhythm to it like a body jerking on a noose. The skin around her eyes was raw and ragged, patterned with scratches and open sores; she rubbed at them as she walked and blinked constantly, as though the evening dark was blindingly bright. Tobias shuddered as she brushed against him. Made him think of worms and grave soil. Beetles burrowing into rotting flesh.