“Of course—!”
“Think and answer carefully, man. It may be your final act.”
The deadness in Unver’s words seemed to frighten the old man more than the blade. Zhakar’s staring eyes showed a great deal of white. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I misunderstood—it was such a long time ago!” He could not bear to look at Unver’s face. “Your mother might have been . . . might have been alive. Yes, perhaps that was how it went. But your stepmother was so pleased to have you. Yes, that’s it, I remember now, we told you your mother was dead. It was the thane’s orders!”
“Thane Hurvalt would not have ordered such a thing. He was a good man before his wits were taken.”
“It is the truth, I swear it, Sanver!”
“Do not call me that name!” He said it with such violence that the old man broke free and threw himself off the wagon steps and onto his knees. “That was the name my stepmother gave me, not you, Zhakar. After she died, you never spoke it once. You called me ‘Unver’ just like all the others—Nobody.”
“Oh, by the spirits, what do you want? What do you want from me?”
“I want as much truth as you know, old man. How did I come to the Crane Clan? Tell me all you know or I will slit you and bleed you like an old sheep.”
“Do not hurt me. If you do not care for me, think of the others in the clan. If you spill my blood, they will shun you!”
Unver laughed. It was sudden and loud, ragged as an uncleaned wound. “Will they? Do you know what I have done today, old man—stupid, selfish, lying old man? I have gone to a wedding, and I have killed the bridegroom. This here is his blood—at least so I believe.” He plucked at his tattered, stained shirt.
“You killed Drojan?” The old man looked up from his knees, his terror even greater. “By all the gods, what have you done? Odrig will have your head!”
“I think not.” Again, that terrible laugh, softer now but no less raw. “You see, I killed Odrig, too. I turned the wedding into a funeral. And I buried the bride as well—but her death was none of mine.”
Zhakar began to weep. It was clear he believed every word. “Oh, Gods, what will we do? What will I do? You madman, you have destroyed us!”
“There is no us, not since my stepmother died. You made that clear to me time and again, when you made me beg to be fed, when you gave me all the work you did not wish to do yourself, when you mocked me with the name the others had put on me—‘Nobody’. Now, if you do not wish to suffer a slower and more painful death than Thane Odrig, you’ll tell me everything you know about my true clan. And stop your blubbering or I will cut off your lips and you will tell me your secrets with a bloody mouth.”
It took a long time because the old man could not stop crying and lamenting his unfair fate, but at last Unver had the story from him, word by ugly, weeping word.
When he had finally finished, the old man lay on his back like a whipped dog. There were thin cuts on his cheeks and his hands, but no mortal wounds. “I have told you all I know,” he sobbed. “Please, son, do not kill me. Take Deofol and go. See, I did not sell him! I knew that if you returned, you would want him. He is in the paddock.”
The younger man frowned. “For the last time, do not call me son. I am no son of yours.” He snorted and stood up. “Kill you? I have killed two men today. Why should I waste my blade on a sniveling creature like you? For my stepmother’s sake, I will let you live, so that you may remember your shame. I hope it burns you, old man.”
“Oh, may the Sky Piercer bless you!” the old man said, and would have said more, but he was silenced by a kick in the ribs.
“But before I go, I wish to see your fine new wagon that you bought with my hard work—with my horses, that would have been Kulva’s bride price.” He bent and took a burning brand from the fire, then walked the length of the wagon, examining the cunning fittings of leather and metal and painted wood. Then he went up the steps and stepped inside.
“Seven horses this cost you?” he called. “Truly?”
Zhakar was on his hands and knees now, trying to get to his feet, puffing and gasping from the ache in his chest. “It is a fine wagon!” he bawled. “Odrig gave me an excellent price!”
Unver appeared in the doorway. “I think he cheated you.” He came down the steps and dropped the brand back into the firepit.
“Cheated?” The old man was still struggling, but at last he managed to rise. Thin streams of blood had run down his cheeks and into his beard, giving him the look of a painted clan shaman. “It is a fine wagon! Odrig’s second best! How can you say I was cheated? What is wrong with it?”
“For one thing,” Unver said with a hard smile, “someone seems to have set it on fire.”
As Unver walked away toward the paddock the old man screeched helplessly at the evening sky, calling for help. Flames were just beginning to lick at the windows and their carefully painted trim.
By the time Unver saddled his horse and rode away, the wagon had become a ball of bright fire, visible from a great distance away, like a nighttime sun.
She went out the southern door of the Sancellan Mahistrevis. It was the least used, but guarded as closely as all the others. Jesa nodded politely as the guards called to her, but she did not find their attention flattering, only confusing. Did they not know who she was? Did they think that the Duchess’s own nurse had time for flirting with soldiers, even if she wanted to? She was not even dressed to please, her hair pulled tight and wrapped in a head-scarf, her dress covered with an old cloak.
Most men are fools, she thought.
Time was pressing, so she made her way quickly through the farmer’s quarter of the old city to the spice market, and bought cinnamon, nutmeg, and Harcha pepper, paying with the silver coin her mistress had given her. As she went with her bag from merchant to merchant, Jesa kept a close watch for anyone following her but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The market was full of the usual morning buyers, many of them servants of great houses like herself—although none from any greater house, she thought with pride, since there was no house in Nabban above the Sancellan Mahistrevis, except perhaps the Sancellan Aedonitis, the palace of His Sacredness, the Lector.
When she felt confident that she was not being watched, she left the market and walked quickly down Harbor Way toward the docks, through the wide commons and into the Avenue of the Saints as most called it, since the great entrance arch bore statues of several important religious figures. She only knew Saint Pelippa, the one who had given the dying Usires a drink of water from her bowl, and although the saints of Nabban were not hers, Jesa respected Pelippa as a woman who, for once, had been given praise for doing a woman’s thankless job.
The Avenue of the Saints was a wide, winding road that led up from the quarter, curving around Estrenine Hill until it reached the large residences at the top, mostly owned by foreigners, rich merchants and rich nobles who liked to keep a place in the city—the greatest city in all the world, as Duke Saluceris liked to say. Jesa did not doubt it was true, at least in terms of size. Everywhere she went the roads were crowded, not just with folk going about their business, although there were plenty of those, but with others who never seemed to leave the streets at all; hawkers, layabouts, and even women who Jesa felt rather certain were the ones Canthia had told her about, those who had fallen so far from God (as the Duchess explained) that they had to sell their samuli, as Jesa’s people named them—their “delicate flowers”—for money.
And although today everything seemed ordinary enough, even in this wealthy neighborhood she saw signs of the troubles that had beset the city lately, the riots in which she herself had nearly died. Crude pictures of wide-winged birds and the motto, “SECUNDIS PRIMIS EDIS”—“the second shall be the first”—had been painted on the walls of several buildings, symbols of the Stormbirds, the men who supported the duke’s enemies, Dallo Ingadaris and the duke’s own brother, Drusis. At the poorer end of the street, near the public market, she could even see the ruins of several houses that had been set afire. She shivered as she passed one, the blackened spaces of its windows like ghostly eyes.
When she reached the middle of the hill she looked back once more to make sure she was not being followed, then turned and walked quickly through the gate and into the ill-tended courtyard of a tall house. At the back of the courtyard she knocked on a heavy wooden door. A servant opened the slot and asked her business. Jesa whispered Duchess Canthia’s name and was quickly admitted.