Orhan smiled again. ‘Can you, now? Not receiving one yourself, then?’
‘Several, My Lord.’ Gallus ran his finger down a list of payments, raising his eyebrows slightly as he came to the scored-through Vorley and Emmereth entries. ‘This … and this … and this … come to me.’ His eyes met Orhan’s. ‘One of them might, perhaps, be considered to continue to remain necessary? For the moment, at least …’
‘It might.’ Sensible man. Quick and dynamic. Took his chances but didn’t push it. Could go far, Orhan thought. He’d have to look into promoting him. Though Darath might not like it. Knew he’d always had a weakness for gold hair.
Chapter Forty
They left Alxine where he lay, scattering a little sand over him but otherwise abandoning his body to the crows. They had no real choice: they had nothing to bury him with, and none of them wished to linger. As he was Aelish, from the uncharted territories on the other side of the Bitter Sea, none of them knew even what god he had worshipped, or what he had believed would happen to him now that he had died. Eternal feasting with his kin in the afterlife, Tobias said vaguely. Or possibly a big nasty toothy tentacled thing came and ate your soul. Ten years, he said, he’d known Alxine, and Alxine never really mentioned it, so it couldn’t have been particularly important.
‘Not among the useless things they teach princes, then?’ asked Rate.
Tobias shook his head at him. ‘Don’t bother the boy, now, lad.’ Marith was sitting on the sand, staring up into the sky, his eyes following where the dragon had gone. He scratched heavily at his face, looking grey and drawn.
Tobias poured a libation of wine beside the body. ‘Wherever your soul ends up, peace,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Whether that’s the beer halls of your ancestors or the digestive system of a squid.’ He poured three cups and passed them to the others.
Marith smiled at him bitterly as he took his. ‘Should let more people get killed more often,’ he said harshly as he drank.
Thalia did not join them, standing apart. A male thing, she judged. Men who had fought and killed together. Alxine was dead. That was the end of it. She went up to Marith afterwards and placed her hand on his arm. He shrugged her off and walked away. Anger in him. And fear.
Ansikanderakesis Amrakane.
Sikandemethemis. That word she knew. An obscure honorific, barely used outside of a few old hymns, the words of an ancient chant. It meant ‘lord’. ‘Master’. ‘King’.
Not a Literan word. Itheralik.
‘Marith.’ She followed him. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You saved the rest of us. Life and death have to be balanced. People have to die.’
‘“We live. We die. For these things, we are grateful”?’ Bitterness and dark in his eyes. ‘I’m a dragonlord now, I suppose. Two dragons I’ve met, two I’ve mastered. Almost.’ He rubbed at his face again. ‘Just leave me alone a while, Thalia.’
They rode on, Tobias glancing behind him once at the dark heap in the distance, upon which the crows were now descending. He threw a stone and they scattered but returned in a moment, calling. Followed the dragon, perhaps.
Again, they rode as long as they could, well into the darkness. ‘It did say it would leave us alone?’ asked Rate anxiously as they finally drew up to make camp. ‘It won’t come while we sleep?’
‘Not a lot we could do if it did,’ Tobias grunted.
‘It said it would leave us untroubled,’ Marith said slowly. He rode close beside the cart, slumped in the saddle, all the life gone out of him. Dismounted slowly and stiffly, like an old man, walked a few paces and sat down in the sand. ‘It should keep its word. If not … If not, I suppose I’ll have to kill it. But as I’m planning to drink everything we have left and then sleep like the dead, we’ll just all have to hope everything is fine until the morning.’
Shadows in the dark. Things calling him. She saw it, as she watched him. Ansikanderakesis. Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. Lord. Master. King.
It was a barren place they had stopped in, a flat depression in a long slope of shifting gravel that moved under the horses’ hooves. A tiny pool of muddy dirty water, a few insects buzzing wearily over its surface. A couple of scrub bushes, half-dead and desiccated, clinging on in the scree. But they were so tired now.
Thalia helped Tobias manage the horses, something she was beginning to find she was good at, trying to overcome her fear of them. The size of the creatures still unnerved her.
‘You’ve just seen a bloody dragon,’ Tobias muttered at her. ‘How can a horse seem big to you?’
‘That was a dragon,’ she said simply. ‘It’s not a human thing. These are. They’re so big, but they do what we tell them.’
‘He did what I told him, for a while. You’ve just got to treat them right. Break them, then make them your friend.’
She looked at him.
‘You’re a fool, girl,’ Tobias said shortly. ‘Can’t you see that? Look, when we get to Immish … I could give you some money. A couple of talents. One of the horses, even. You don’t … You don’t have to stay with us. With him.’
Thalia gave the roan horse some grain and said nothing.
‘We’re running out of supplies,’ Tobias said after a while. ‘Better hope we get down to the grasslands soon. Got two spare horses now, of course. Shame horses can’t eat horsemeat.’
He was trying to frighten her. Shock her. ‘How long will it be?’ This was the longest Thalia had ever spoken to him.
‘Till the Immish border? Four or five days, still, I should think. Unless we’re lost, of course. Look, girl. Thalia. Listen: I mean it about the money and the horse. Think about it, yeah? Face like yours, you don’t seem stupid, either … you really don’t need to stay with him. You’re better than him. You don’t know him like I do. Believe me on that.’
Thalia dug her nails into her palms. I am the Chosen of the Lord of Living and Dying, she thought. The words of life and death are written on my skin. Child killer. Bringer of light. The holiest woman in Irlast.
You think I don’t know what he is?
‘I don’t have to stay with him, no. I know that. I do have some power of my own, you know.’
He snorted. ‘Just think about it, yeah?’
Marith appeared beside them. His face was bone-weary, but he smiled gently and took the roan horse’s rein from her hands.
‘You shouldn’t be doing that, beautiful girl,’ he said softly. ‘You sit and eat and go to sleep. I’ll manage what needs doing here.’
‘Thank you.’
He smiled sadly. ‘You don’t need to thank me, Thalia.’
She flashed a smile almost of triumph at Tobias.
Tobias shook his head and went to join Rate.
They made a small fire, a little huddle of a few sticks that smoked and gave off a pungent, bitter smell. Horribly exposed, it looked out there in the night, a beacon to great green eyes. But it seemed horrible too not to have a fire, to sit cold and blind. They did not bother to cook food or make tea, but sat edgily around the tiny flames eating hard, stale bread.