Songs of the Earth (5 page)

‘Is the music there now?’

‘No, not since this morning.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose and pressed hard into his brows. ‘Saints, it’s like wasps.’

Alderan frowned. ‘What?’

‘That headache. It’s like wasps under my skin.’

‘How long have you been feeling that?’

‘Not long, maybe ten minutes. Why?’

The older man pushed his plate to one side and stood up. ‘We need to be somewhere else. Come on.’

‘What is it?’

‘Rumour has it Goran keeps a witchfinder,’ Alderan said grimly. ‘I think he might have just earned his pay.’

Panic fluttered a wing in Gair’s chest. ‘I’ll need some clothes.’

‘Already taken care of.’ Alderan pointed at a bundle on the settle by the hearth. Wrapped up inside a stout winter cloak, Gair found several plain shirts, some breeches and a sheepskin jerkin, hardly new, but all neatly mended. They were also his.

‘Where did you get these from?’ he exclaimed. Everything was there, from smallclothes upwards. Even his boots.

‘The Chaplain’s poor-box. I reckoned the Order owed you a little charity. I think this is yours as well.’ From the back of his chair, Alderan unhooked a broad baldric carrying a longsword in a simple leather scabbard. He laid it next to their plates.

Gair dropped his clothes and returned to the table. The sword was a plain soldier’s weapon, ungilded, with only knot-shaped bosses on the cross-hilts and a moonstone set in the centre for ornamentation. The dark baldric was supple from use, worn shiny under the buckle. Of all the things confiscated by the Lord Provost’s marshals when he was arrested, this was the only item he had really wanted back, though it was as shabby as the rest. He rubbed his fingers over the hilt. ‘I never thought to see this again.’

‘It’s precious to you?’

‘It’s all I have that’s really mine. The Church gave me everything else.’

‘You can thank me later. We need to move.’ Alderan pulled saddlebags and bedrolls from a closet, piling them on the floor. ‘Hurry, Leahn!’

Gair eased the sword part-way from the scabbard. Heavy, double-edged steel gleamed at him under a thin sheen of oil. He heard his foster-father’s voice again, harsh and bitter.
Take it. You might find a use for it in time. If the Goddess grants you the courage you’ll fall on it
. Slowly he slid the blade home. ‘Thank you, Alderan. I don’t know where to begin to repay you for your kindness.’

The old man dismissed it with a wave and a shrug. ‘It’s not necessary. I wasn’t prepared to leave you there and I’m sure if our roles were reversed you would do the same.’

‘Until they are, I am in your debt.’

‘Consider it a loan, then. When I think of something you can do for me, I’ll ask, and then we’ll be square. Done?’

‘Done.’

‘Now that honour is satisfied, will you for the love of the saints get dressed?’ Camping gear joined the pile in a clatter of tin plates. ‘Or were you planning on greeting the witchfinder in a robe that barely covers your stones?’

Gair felt eyes on him the moment he left the stableyard. He caught no one looking, and from what Alderan had told him of events outside the Motherhouse gates, the shave and clothes should render him unrecognisable, but his spine crawled under the imagined scrutiny. He shifted in the saddle. ‘Everyone’s looking at me.’

‘They’re not, trust me,’ the old man murmured. ‘Relax. Try to look like you’re enjoying the ride, and we’ll be out of here in no time.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Gair muttered. ‘You’re not under sentence
of death.’ He scanned the crowd eddying around them as they picked their way across a busy junction. His borrowed horse tossed his head, fidgeting with his bit.

‘It’s just your imagination. Saints, lad,
breathe
! You’re as tense as a nun in a bawdy-house.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘I know, but you’re upsetting your horse. If he bolts you really will have every eye on you and we can do without that.’

Gair made himself sit still. His right hand, holding the reins, he rested loosely on his thigh and let his hips move with the rhythm of the horse’s gait instead of fighting against it. By the time they had reached the far side of the Cornmarket and swung west towards the Anorien Gate the horse had settled into an easy walk.

Alderan gave him a nod. ‘Much better. When you look as if you have every right to be there, everyone else will assume that you have. Generally, people believe what they see.’

‘You sound like a slitpocket.’

‘But I don’t look like one, do I? The best slitpocket is the one who looks just like another ordinary citizen. Sneaking about is the fastest way to draw attention to yourself.’

‘I still feel as if everyone’s looking at us.’

The old man chuckled. ‘Do you know how many people pass through these gates in a day? In an hour? Thousands. We’ll be invisible in plain sight.’

If only I felt half that confident
. Gair glanced around him, but casually this time, giving his gaze something to rest on other than his horse’s ears. No one appeared to be paying any mind to him, but every time someone’s eye caught his, however briefly, he felt uneasy.

‘How far to the gate?’

‘Less than a mile. Look, you can see the towers.’

He followed Alderan’s gesture. Two square grey towers were just visible at the far end of the street, white banners curling like feathers against the sky. The sun sat a hand’s breadth above them.
Plenty of time then, though he was sure he could see it sinking as he watched.

Ahead the crowds thickened and slowed to a crawl. Carters sat their wagons in ragged lines, laughing and calling to each other over the heads of those on foot. Sober-skirted Dremen goodwives in starched linen coifs stood elbow to elbow with Belisthan trappers in buckskins. Young nobles on fine-boned Sardauki saddle-horses were obliged to give way to a farmer in pursuit of a mud-spattered sow with no mind to be sold. Caged fowl squawked, pedlars flourished their boards of ribbons and lace and slowly everyone inched closer to the gates and the winding dusty ribbon of the Anorien Road.

By the time the gatehouse’s shadow fell over him, Gair was nibbling his lip anxiously. The witchfinder’s presence in his head had faded still further the closer they came to the gate; surely that meant the search had turned to one of the other four roads out of the Holy City. He hoped so. His nerves were stretched tight as lute-strings as it was.

At the gates themselves, a party of Church Knights stood guard, surcoats gleaming in spite of the dust. They watched the townsfolk going to and fro but made no effort to inspect the carts that plodded along the road. Gair imagined their eyes boring into his back the instant he rode past. He all but swallowed his tongue when one of them called: ‘Halt!’

Alderan glanced back over his shoulder at the Knights. Though his expression was no more than idly curious, his eyes were sharp. Gair tried to emulate his casual attitude, but his heart was still leaping in his chest. A brewer’s dray stood immediately behind them, drawn by a pair of towering Syfrian bays with scarlet ribbons woven through their manes. The drayman twisted round in his seat and tipped his hat back to watch the Knights push through the throng. Gair looked forward again. The crowd was funnelling into the gate ahead, with barely a scrap of daylight to be seen. Men and horses shuffled either side of him; no room to
dismount. His mouth dried even as fresh sweat broke out across his back.

‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered. The chestnut danced from foot to foot, unhappy with the close quarters.

Alderan laid a hand on his arm. ‘Easy. I don’t think they’re coming for us.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Not entirely, no, so stay alert. Can you still hear our friend?’

‘Not as close as he was, but he’s still there.’ Gair stood in his stirrups to look round behind him, but the arched necks of the dray horses and the rampart of barrels blocked his view. Nothing to see but sweating men and restive animals. Somewhere up ahead an ox-team lifted their tails and added a bovine tang to the fug.

‘Smell that fresh country air,’ said Alderan.

Gair looked across at him. The confined quarters and soupy air made him uneasy and every minute he waited plucked more spiky, staccato notes from his overstretched nerves. Yet the old man appeared completely unmoved, sat in his saddle like a sack of turnips and picked at his teeth.

‘How can you be so calm? It’s like a cattle-crush under here. We’ll never get away,’ Gair said, peering behind him again. The guards were closer; he heard them shout at a carter to clear the way.

Alderan flicked away whatever he’d extracted from his teeth. ‘I’m not, but fretting won’t make the crowd disappear. We just have to wait it out. Yes, it’s taking a bit longer to get out of the city than I would have liked, but there’s nothing we can do about it. There are things in this life we cannot change, we must simply accept. Death. Taxes. Queues.’ He grinned suddenly, like a fox. ‘Look at you. Anyone would think you had something to hide.’

Gair said a word that would have earned him a birching from the Master of Novices and sat down.

Alderan’s laugh rang out, rich as port wine.

At last the guards came round the dray. Quickly Gair faced
forwards and gathered up his reins in anticipation. He couldn’t bear much more. If the Knights were coming for him, he had no idea what he would do. He had no room to even draw his sword, much less turn to face them. He chewed his lip and tried to work some moisture into his mouth, but he had no spit to spare.

‘Ho, master drayman!’ a guard shouted. ‘One of your barrels is leaking!’

Merciful Mother, thank you
. Weak with relief, Gair leaned on the saddle-horn and let out a shaky breath.

Alderan grinned again, but not unkindly.

Ahead of them the crowd began to move. The press diminished, at last disgorging them into the evening sunshine. Once past the last sprawl of houses clustered against the city wall, Alderan reined his horse onto the verge and halted in the shade of a copse.

‘Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he said. ‘You’re safe until dusk and even then they’re going to be looking for a fugitive, not some arrogant young lordling out for a ride in the country.’ Gair bridled at the description. ‘Forgive me the choice of words, but you have that look about you. It’s the way you carry yourself, as if you own the space you occupy. I don’t think anyone would ever suspect you’d been beaten senseless a few hours ago.’

‘Arrogant?’ Gair repeated.

‘Perhaps it’s a family trait.’

‘I have no family. I was found on the chapel porch a few days after I was born.’

‘You know, that has the ring of a story to it,’ Alderan said. ‘The orphaned boy with the crown-shaped birthmark that identifies him as the lost heir to the kingdom, and so forth.’

Gair shook his head. ‘No crowns. No kingdoms. Just a soldier’s brat put out to charity.’ He had worked that out long ago. His name-day, the one he’d been given, was close to Eventide; assuming a normal confinement that meant his mother had conceived early in the spring, round about the time the local levies were coming through on their way to Leahaven to take ship for Zhiman-dar,
where the army staged for the final push against the Cult. It took little imagination to work out the rest.

Perhaps his father had been a braveheart, one of the thousands lost to the bloody sands of Samarak. Or perhaps the truth was more prosaic, some country girl played false by a liegeman, too poor or too ashamed to keep the child she found herself with when the soldier was long gone.