‘You know?’ He frowned. ‘Of course you know. I saw that, when you looked at me, when we first met. I didn’t … I mean …’
How could I possibly have known that? she thought. Just a sudden terrible frightened guess. The panic in the city, running out into the dark and thinking she was free of something, and instead the streets were filled with shouts and torches, voices screaming that the Immish were invading, the Emperor dead. Men with knives. A troop of soldiers. A building going up in flames. It had struck her dumb. Left her reeling in fear. But it was death for a priestess to leave the Great Temple. For the High Priestess above all. The Small Chamber and the knife. Demmy’s little white hands – Demmy had only drawn the lot so recently, she thought suddenly. The God, then, had known what she would do? Demmy would have to kill her. And so she could not go back. She would not go back. And the city had been terrible and terrifying. So much noise, crashing over her like water, surging like a storm about her head. He had seemed to offer some kind of safety: a man with a sword, who was offering to help her.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ said Marith. ‘Your Emperor. I wouldn’t— I’d never— I mean … I would never have harmed you. He—’ he gestured to Tobias – ‘he was paid to do it. I was doing … what he told me to do.’ He sighed deeply, rubbed at his face. ‘That’s not true. You know that, too. I wanted to do it. I—’ He rubbed at his face harder, wincing at the pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You must hate me now, I suppose. If you didn’t before. And you’d probably be right to. What I am.’ In the bright brilliant white light of the desert, shadows beat in his eyes like wings.
Thalia walked on beside him, weary in the heat.
Finally, in the afternoon, Tobias decided it was probably safe to turn down out of the wilds to try to find a town. Bloody knackering, trudging along in the heat with his whole body aching, nothing to think about but the nagging sense of terror someone was pursuing them and the profoundly irritating sight of Marith edging around the girl. The boy was so bloody jumpy it made Tobias’s teeth ache. It was weird and unpleasant having a woman around at the best of times. Really awkward trying to sleep on a bit of hard rough ground next to one that looked the way she did. They needed to find an inn. A hot meal. Someone to have a proper look at Alxine’s arm. Some way to ditch the damn girl.
Maybe an hour’s walk on the road brought them to a small crumbling town with a large crumbling caravanserai. ‘The Seeker After Wisdom’, it was called, its sign showing a dead man hanging suspended from a dead tree. Rooms were four dhol apiece, demand being high given the number of Immish or potentially Immish people currently running like hell out of Sorlost. Nobody asked particular questions about who they were or where they were headed. Or why they were all injured and unkempt. At a table in the common room, a drunk man with a strong Immish accent was bemoaning at length that he’d lost everything he’d ever owned. From the way he was being profoundly ignored, he’d been saying it for most of the day.
Marith came up to him with a pleasingly needy look in his face. ‘I need— He frowned. ‘I want some of the money you owe me. Now, if you please.’ The lordly voice, and then a resigned sigh. ‘It’s highly unlikely I’d be able to find someone selling hatha in a place like this at a few hours’ notice even if there wasn’t a plague in Chathe affecting the supply, and I solemnly swear on my name and my blood not to spend it on anything … interesting, anyway. Thalia needs clothes, new shoes.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Please, Tobias.’ The effort that particular word must have cost him.
‘Thalia does, does she? Quite the hero, you are, boy. Two silver dhol, and the rooms and tonight all come out of your share, if I ever decide to give it to you. Agreed?’
A long pause, then Marith nodded.
‘And I do the purchasing.’
‘Oh, come on.’
Looking forward to taking the girl out on a little shopping trip, were you? Trying to impress her by flashing some money around? ‘The Altrersyr lie, I seem to remember someone saying recently. You killed a friend of mine for drug money a few days ago, you degenerate little shit. You really telling me you wouldn’t leave a defenceless girl wearing a dirty dress if temptation came your way? You’d probably whore her out in the street, if someone offered you a bottle of something in return.’
‘No! No. I—’ Marith sighed again. ‘A clean dress or two, preferably with long sleeves, a cloak, a blanket if we’re going to be sleeping outdoors again. Shoes.’
‘I’ll see what I can do, then. But this isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis with souk.’ Long sleeves, eh?
Had to admit, though, Thalia looked even more astonishing scrubbed clean in a simple brown dress, her hair loosely tied back. Rate almost drooled as she joined them nervously at a table at the back of the common room. Marith even looked up from the cup of watered wine Tobias had generously allowed him to buy himself. She sat down next to Marith, staring around the room like she’d never been in an inn before. With uncharacteristic generosity, Rate offered to fetch her a drink. She looked half astonished and asked for a cup of water. The water round here tasting like goat shit, he brought her a cup of wine instead.
A serving girl brought over bowls of stew, heavily spiced to disguise the rotten meat. The bread wasn’t bad either, after several days of Rate’s cooking and hard tack. They ate in near silence, the four men made awkward by the woman’s presence and by the changed relationships between them. Tobias listened with interest to the conversation around them instead. All the talk, of course, was with what had happened in Sorlost. The Emperor, he gathered, did indeed still seem to be alive, according to official proclamations, anyway, and the latest rumours had someone called the Emperor’s Nithque responsible. The bloke who’d paid them not to do it: ironic, that. Or possibly just cruelly predictable. The desecration of the Temple occupied most minds: they knew nothing of the Emperor and the government, and cared less, but what had happened to the religious heart of their world clearly troubled them. As Rate had said, would have thought they’d be pleased if people stopped dying, but there you go. No accounting for people’s beliefs.
The twilight bell tolled out. Silence. The girl bit her lip and looked around.
‘Should have been a sacrifice night,’ one of the men at the next table said loudly after the bell had tolled again. His companion hushed him, several men muttered into their drinks and spat for luck. The girl shivered. Marith looked at her oddly. She stared at him and he looked away.
Gods, they were setting Tobias’s teeth on edge.
After a long strained pause the noise in the inn started up a bit. Rate and Alxine tried to have some kind of conversation about something. Marith kept picking his cup up and putting it down again until Tobias wanted to hit him.