The Laurentine Spy (34 page)

F
RANTA AND
L
ENKA
were mending rips in the tent. They talked as they sewed. Athan couldn’t tell their voices apart; their accents were identical.
How does she do it?

He carried the kitten gently. It was thin and wet, shivering.

The women looked up. They stopped talking.

“Do you like kittens?” Athan held the tiny creature out to Franta. Its coat was gray striped with black.

She put down her needle. “Where did you find it?”

“At the market.”

“You bought it?” She reached for the kitten.

“Ah...no.”

Franta wrapped the kitten in a fold of her cloak. “What then?”

“They were stoning it.”

Her face tightened. Her hand cupped protectively around the kitten. “Who? Children?”

“Some of the stallholders. Men.” The cruelty fitted with the town; the squalor, the ugliness.
A miserable place, this.

“You rescued it?” It was the first time she’d smiled at him.

“Knocked down two men.” Osker’s voice held grudging admiration. “He’s a good fighter, your husband.”

Franta’s smile faded. “I know.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

T
HEY CALLED THE
kitten Solo. It seemed an appropriate name. The little creature cleaned up well and seemed quite content to spend his days curled up on top of a donkey’s load. Whenever they paused to rest or eat lunch, Solo played among the tussocks and the boulders. In the evenings he chased shadows inside the tent, provoking even Osker to laughter.

Athan narrowed his eyes against the midday sun and chewed his bread slowly. Franta sat beside him on a boulder. He watched as she plaited strands of tussock together and trailed them before the kitten.

Solo crouched low and pounced. He captured the tussock and began to do battle with it, rolling and springing upright and then falling over backward on his prey.

Franta laughed. “Solo, you have no dignity.” She picked up the kitten and hugged him. Her face, when she turned to Athan, was alight with laughter.

Athan smiled back at her. There was an odd tightness in his chest: relief.
She’s forgiven me for being Lord Ivo.

Franta let Solo down again. He scampered off to pounce on the hem of Lenka’s cloak.

Franta leaned close. “I think we should give them Solo,” she said in a low voice. “We can’t take him with us.”

“No.” He’d realized that. There could be no connection between the peasants on the plateau and the well-to-do citizens in Marillaq, not even a small striped kitten.

“They like Solo. Osker especially. They’ll treat him well.”

“Yes.” Athan turned the piece of bread over in his fingers. “I’ll get you another one when we’re home.”

Franta drew back slightly. She shook her head. “I’ll get myself one.”

She still sat beside him on the boulder, but there was a distance between them that hadn’t been there a minute ago.
I shouldn’t have mentioned home.

Athan took another bite of bread. The contentment he’d felt sitting in the sun, watching her laugh, was gone.

Franta stood. She brushed breadcrumbs off her cloak and walked over to the donkeys. Athan watched as she unfastened her pattens and bent to strap them on over her boots.

He finished the piece of bread. He was still hungry, but hunger was a constancy; like the air he breathed, it was always there. He’d learned to ignore the dull, gnawing ache—or at least to pretend to himself that he ignored it. He stood and stretched and walked to where Lenka and Osker sat. “May I have that?” He gestured to the heel of the loaf, which lay amid crumbs on a ragged cloth.

Lenka handed it to him.

“Thanks.”

The bread was heavy and dry, baked that morning in the ashes of the communal fire. Athan chewed, standing, and looked around. A few more weeks and they’d reach the end of this journey, where the mountains crowded close and the Dacha Gorge marked the border with Marillaq. On the flanks of the mountains were the lumber towns—and work. Labor in the forests for the men, or the sawmills and charcoal pits; for the women, cleaning and cooking in the taverns. Or for the unfortunate, whoring.

Athan swallowed the last of the bread. He rubbed a hand over his face, disliking the feel of his beard, and cast a final glance at the mountains. He walked to where his donkey stood. Thick mud squelched beneath his boots.

He donned his pattens and rechecked the loads. Osker joined him, running his hands over the donkeys’ legs, examining their hooves.

Athan looked around. He saw mules and donkeys and wagons, and figures bundled in drab brown-gray against the cold. Franta was talking with one of the women. Even with her back to him and her hair hidden, he recognized her.

She’s not from the Ninth Ward.
He saw it in the way she stood, the way she walked. She’d had lessons in deportment, as his sisters had.

Gentry, at the very least.

I can bring her home.

If she would let him.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

L
UKIN, THE FIRST
of the lumber towns, was a raw, new settlement possessed of a vigorous energy. The migrants felt it. Saliel was aware of an undercurrent of excitement in the camp. Osker walked into the town as soon as the donkeys were unloaded. He came back at a run. “Lenka!”

Lenka looked up from their food stores.

“Work,” Osker said, breathless. “In Kazacha. For any man that wants it!” His face was alight with excitement. He put his arms around his wife and hugged her.

Lenka hugged him back. She laughed.

The emotion on their faces brought sudden tears to Saliel’s eyes.
They love each other.

She turned away and walked across the stony paddock, shading her face from the late afternoon sun. Steep slopes rose high, twins to those standing at her back. Marillaq.

She said the word aloud, letting each syllable rest on her tongue: “Marillaq.” Another country, another step closer to home.

She couldn’t see the gorge. It lay somewhere between these mountains and those. The cliffs were said to be sheer. Thousands of men had fallen to their deaths during Corhona’s failed invasion of Marillaq. Their bones littered the floor of the gorge. It was said the cliff walls still echoed with their screams.

Saliel shivered and hugged her arms.
Campfire tales, to scare women and children.
The soldiers were ten years dead. There were no screams.

A shadow fell across her. She turned her head. Petter stood beside her. He looked at Marillaq for a long moment, and then dropped his gaze to her face.

“Well?” she asked, her voice low.

“The caravan’s going to Kazacha.”

She nodded. “We stay here?”

“Yes. There’ll be smugglers operating from here.”

Saliel looked at the mountains. She saw snow and stony scarps, dark trees. In a few days they’d be in Marillaq. She’d miss the camaraderie of the caravan, the doggedness with which hardship had been endured. Life had been uncomplicated during the past two months, simple, pared down to the basics. In Marillaq everything would become complex again.
He won’t be Petter any more. And I won’t be Franta.

She hugged her arms more tightly.

“I’ll choose a site for the tent.”

Saliel nodded. She stayed where she was, staring at the mountains, listening to the crunch of Petter’s footsteps as he walked away. The camp behind her, the tents and wagons, Petter—they were safe things, familiar. Marillaq was unfamiliar; and so was the person Petter would become once they were across the gorge.

She turned and looked at the campsite. Solo was curled up asleep on the bundle of their tent. Petter stood looking down at the kitten. His cheeks were hollow beneath the beard, his skin stretched too tightly over the bones. Shadows fell across his face, accentuating his gauntness.

He wasn’t Lord Ivo—but nor was he Petter. He was a stranger.

She watched as he picked the kitten up and put him gently on the ground. Solo shook himself. He yawned—pink tongue, sharp teeth—and stretched.

Saliel inhaled a deep breath. She released her arms and walked back towards the campsite.

CHAPTER SIXTY

H
E HUNG ON
the end of a rope in darkness, spinning. The net bound him tightly. Cords dug into his back, his arms. The rope jerked him higher.

They won’t drop me they won’t drop me they won’t drop me—

But he didn’t believe it. A scream built in his throat. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t drag air into his lungs. The ground was too far beneath him—

Athan jerked awake.

Darkness. Spinning. A scream filling his mouth—

He wasn’t bound in netting. He didn’t hang on the end of a rope.

Athan sat up, pushing aside the blanket. He gulped air. Sweat dripped off his skin.

It was dark. The smells of hay and cow and manure filled his nose. He was out of the Dacha Gorge. He was in Marillaq, in a cow byre.

Calmness returned. The bunched tension in his muscles relaxed. He closed his eyes and wiped the sweat from his face.

He heard the cows breathing below him. If he listened carefully he’d hear Three’s breathing—quiet inhalations and exhalations—and the breathing of the other refugees who hid in this barn.

Athan lay down again. It was over: the Citadel, the Bazarn Plateau, the Dacha Gorge. He was in Marillaq. Laurent seemed so much closer—his brothers and sisters, his parents. The estate, with the vineyard growing on the hills.

Soon I’ll be home.

He turned on his side and pulled the blanket around him, making the hay rustle. He stared into the darkness. Three lay there. He couldn’t see her.

He wanted to reach out and shake her awake.
Who are you? Please, I need to know.
But they weren’t alone, hadn’t been alone in the two days and nights they’d been here: two days when they’d talked together in careful Marillaqan and he’d not dared ask the questions that crowded on his tongue; two nights when they’d slept side by side on the straw.

By the end of the second day Three had spoken like their hosts, with the accent of the mountain people.
How does she do it?
He had to concentrate to speak the right words. The languages blurred together in his mind: Corhonase, Marillaqan, Laurentine.

Athan lay in the dark and stared at where she lay, listening to the cows breathing.
I want—

The things that he wanted were simple. To go home. To be himself again. To know her name.

T
HE FARMER BROUGHT
breakfast—bread and warm boiled eggs and cheese. “You,” he said, pointing at Three. “And you. Come with me.”

Athan paused, reaching for an egg. “We’re leaving?”

The man nodded.

Athan climbed down from the hay loft, his cloak bundled beneath his arm and a crude sandwich in his hand. At the bottom he waited for Three, chewing. “Our clothes have come?” he asked as they stepped outside.

The farmer nodded again.

They followed him across a cobbled yard and into the farmhouse kitchen. The walls were whitewashed, the ceiling low and heavy-beamed. A large pot boiled on the wood stove, hissing.

The farmer walked to the table. It was a solid slab of timber, scrubbed clean. Two bundles lay on it: fur-lined cloaks tied with twine, and inside them—

Soft wool. Finely-woven linen.

“May we bathe?” Three asked.

“Water’s for a bath.” The farmer jerked his head at the boiling pot. “One of you will have to wait.”

H
E SHAVED WHILE
Three bathed. There was a razor and a leather strop in the bundle of clothes, a nightshirt, undergarments, vests and breeches and knitted stockings, riding boots—everything a well-to-do citizen required. The fabric was costly, but the clothes bore no resemblance to those he’d worn in the Citadel. The colors were stronger, warmer. There was no satin or velvet or lace.

Athan set aside the bowl of shaving water. The farmer’s wife kneaded bread at one end of the table with her sleeves rolled up. He eyed her.
People like you are the reason Marillaq nearly fell.

It had only been ten years. Did she not remember the battle of Dacha Gorge?

He wanted to take her by the arm and shake her.
I could be a Corhonase agent, yet you smuggle me past your border guards. Do you not care? Do you value money more than your country?