Stealing Into Winter

Chapter Three

Mountainous, immovable, Trag squatted in the hot dust, forearms resting on the leather apron draped across his knees. He watched the large barrel with unblinking eyes, holding his breath. Sweat glistened on his face as it grew redder. When his ears began to sing, he gave up, leaned forward, and rapped on the rough staves with great, callused knuckles.

Water erupted, sparkling in the early morning sunshine. It fell with a smack, patterning the dust with dark shapes and splashing Trag’s face. Other than drawing a deep breath, he did not move.

‘What is it?’ asked Jeniche.

Trag gazed up at her with impassive eyes as she wiped cool water from her face. ‘Was worried,’ he said.

She sighed through a sad smile and inspected the cuts on her hands. They stung, blood still seeping from one. ‘I’m all right, Trag.’

‘No you’re not,’ he replied. ‘You disappeared.’ He spread his left hand, palm up, and with an effort counted off some fingers. ‘Three days. Four. Then you come back sad. With cuts. I can see. And grazes.’

‘And bruises,’ she added.

He frowned. ‘Liniment.’

‘I don’t want to smell like a horse.’

Trag frowned again. ‘Why not? Horses smell good. Anyway, if the boss finds you in the water barrel there’ll be trouble.’

He was right. She was banking on routine at the stables being disrupted by the night’s events, but there was no point in pushing her luck too far. It had been in very short supply these last few days and it was not something she was ever happy relying on.

Ignoring all the aches and pains, she hauled herself up, perched on the rim and swung her legs out. Water ran from her clothes and pooled on the baked dust of the yard before soaking away. She heard Trag sigh, but was too dispirited to tease him about it.

With her trousers clinging to her legs and her recently won tunic hanging limp, she left a damp trail across the side yard, through the tack room where she grabbed a clean blanket, and up the steep steps to the storage loft.

Trag followed in amiable silence, carrying a bucket of water and a mop. ‘I’ll bring food when I’ve finished.’

Jeniche stopped near the top of the steps and peered down. ‘Thank you.’ She paused a moment, adding, ‘Do you remember Teague?’

After putting the bucket on a bench with care, Trag closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘The star lady,’ he said and opened his eyes again.

Jeniche nodded. ‘She… She died.’

Trag looked at her for a long time. Some people found it unnerving. ‘That’s a sad thing,’ he said, having worked it out.

Jeniche nodded again, not daring to speak, then turned and continued to climb. She pushed a rough wooden panel to one side, stepped through, and closed the secret door. Steep, makeshift steps led up into shadow.

It was already hot in the irregular space beneath the roof she had made her home. A slight breeze squeezed through a series of wooden slats, but it would not be enough if she wanted to rest in comfort during the day. It wasn’t much of a place to call home, but it did have the virtue of being safe and of having several ways in and out.

She stripped off her sodden clothes, squeezing them into a bucket before hanging them over a length of thin rope. At least they would soon be dry.

The rough wool of the blanket scratched her flesh as she dried herself and inspected the damage. And then she laid herself down on the narrow bed, curled up, and cried. Deep sobs, silent out of long habit, shook her body and the tears flowed until she dropped into an exhausted sleep.

When she woke, aching and stiff, there was a light cotton sheet covering her scrawny body and a pillow beneath her head. On the plank that served as a table, she could see a stone flask and a basket covered by a cloth. Trag had squeezed himself through the secret door and up the narrow stairway. He really was an old hen. She smiled for the first time in days.

Seated on a stool with the sheet draped loosely round her, she ate from the basket. Bread. Cheese. Fruit. The water in the jug was tepid, but welcome. And as she ate, she sorted the contents of her stash. A handful of coins that would keep her fed for a few more days. Three rings. A bracelet of dubious quality. A carved statuette worn with age and much handling, perhaps once a good luck charm. Which brought her to the amulet.

It was like nothing she had seen before. Wiping her hands on her tunic, she lifted it and looked at it again. The chain, if you could call it that, looked like a solid silver wire, except it was flexible as water. There was no clasp, just a continuous loop barely large enough to go over her head, passing through a link on the amulet itself.

The flattened red-gold teardrop was the same size as the top joint of her thumb. It seemed to glow, even in the dim recess in which she sat; the incised markings on one face as crisp as if they had just been cut. It turned as Jeniche held it up and she shook her head at the perfection of its shape. And what a parcel of trouble it had turned out to be.

There had been nothing in the villa. That is, nothing she could steal. Days of watching and planning ways in and out, of calculating the internal layout; nights spent watching the movements of the inhabitants. Waiting then until the main part of the Tunduri festival when the place ought to have been deserted with everyone down on the far side of the river to see the festivities. It should have been a rich haul. Wealthy merchant. Attractive wife. Servants. All that time wasted.

At first she had wondered if she had somehow climbed into the wrong building. It was comfortable enough inside. The courtyard garden was well kept and the one public room on the ground floor that was lit with lanterns looked as if it belonged to a wealthy person, but everywhere else was… she tried to think of a word. Functional.

Very little furniture and none of it luxurious. No pictures, tapestries, silk rugs. No statues or ornaments. No trinkets. She had wandered through the upper floors, a silent shadow, a summer night’s breeze, moving from room to room. Searching. A growing sense that she should get out haunting her like a bad odour.

And then, in the worst possible position, caught in a small room from which she could not run without hurting someone, she had come face to face with the merchant’s wife.

Finger to her lips, the tall, pale woman with rose-gold hair had stood in the doorway. Jeniche had seen no fear or surprise in her face; she had seen no anger. So confused was Jeniche that she nearly dropped the amulet when it was thrown to her. By the time she had finished juggling and looked up, the woman had gone. Jeniche hadn’t wasted any time after that, either. Pushing the amulet into her pocket, she had found the nearest window, climbed to the roof and disappeared into the night.

If it had finished there, it would have been a strange enough event to remember for the rest of her life. The only other time she had encountered someone during a robbery, they had screamed loudly enough to set the dogs howling three streets away. Jeniche knew because they were doing just that as she ran past them.

But it hadn’t finished there.

Suspicious and unnerved, she had roamed across the city for most of what was left of darkness, doubling back on herself, using secret ways and rooftops, watching for pursuit. By the time she had crawled into her hidden room up in the roof space of the stables, she was exhausted and still jittery.

That was when she had first examined the amulet, playing with the liquid metal thong, studying the inscription and the slight, circular depression on the opposite face. Just as she studied it now.

She had hidden it with her other winnings and her own money, safe in the socket of the false roof beam. And for days she had looked over her shoulder, staying away from her usual haunts, watching strange faces with care. Then, with a depressing inevitability that probably earned someone the price of a meal, the day she returned to one of her regular eating places, a squad of the city guard had pushed its way into the café where she sat and, after a violent struggle, dragged her through the streets down to the prison in the Citadel.

No one had mentioned the amulet or the merchant’s house. No one had mentioned anything beyond the fact that she was a thief and would be tried as one at the next assize. Which meant, she knew, that she would be found guilty. Which, she had to concede, she was.

The amulet turned slowly in front of her eyes, mesmerizing in the hot gloom. Ill-fated it may be, but she knew then that she could not part with it, that for better or worse it had been given into her care. She frowned at the tenor of her thoughts, drifting on a sluggish current between depths of grief and fear and the rocky shore of the future.

Distant firecracker sounds broke into her reverie. She listened a moment and then retrieved a jeweller’s belt from her hiding place, stowing her winnings and her money with care before tying it in place around her waist. She got dressed and was lacing on a pair of heavy sandals when Trag knocked.

‘Why they doing fireworks in the day? You can’t see them in the day. And they’re too close. Odrin said they were only allowed in the Old City. It’s upsetting the horses.’

Jeniche stared at Trag. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you?’

‘What?’

‘The city is under siege.’ She sat on the bottom step watching as Trag digested the news.

‘So… What about the fireworks?’

Jeniche had wondered about that as well. She had heard them a lot. Perhaps people were throwing firecrackers at the invaders. She shrugged.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s a siege?’

She stopped herself from sighing. It wasn’t Trag’s fault he was slow. And she knew no one in the stables bothered talking with him. He was treated like a pack animal, albeit with a degree of respect since that incident in the tavern. Someone who can eject four over-muscled bullies through a closed door without breaking into a sweat or spilling his beer tends to be given a bit of personal space.

‘Soldiers. From another country. They are trying to take over the city. Our soldiers are trying to stop them.’

‘Why?’

It was a very good question. If you sat in a Makamban café for long enough, you heard all the gossip, news, and opinion you could ever wish to hear, and not just local stuff either. The city was a trading centre, a crossroads. People had travelled hundreds of miles through many different states and countries to get there and some had hundreds more miles to go. Yet not once in the last few weeks had she heard of war threatening, of conflict, of border skirmishes, of arguments between leaders. It’s true that everyone had been preoccupied by the visit of the Tunduri God-King, eating and getting drunk, but news still circulated.

‘I don’t know that, either,’ she admitted.

‘Don’t we have magicians and things to get rid of the soldiers? The ones from that other country?’

‘That’s just in stories, Trag.’

‘I like them. Especially about the old days.’ A frown contorted his face. ‘Will they hurt the horses?’

‘I don’t think so, Trag. And this place is safe enough.’

Odrin had built the stables to impress wealthy clients as much as to house their horses. A large complex of buildings, it sat on the edge of the merchants’ suburb, saving them the need to take up space in their fancy houses and employ staff. The perimeter wall was substantial and the main buildings had been designed to create a cool interior for the animals.

Because the piece of land on which the stables stood had been an unusual shape, there had been a number of nooks and crannies in the construction. Trag had made a home for Jeniche in one of them, up under the roof above the storerooms. The Old City might feel like her natural home, but she liked it up here. She liked it because of Trag. She liked it because it was hidden. She liked it because it was so close to her hunting ground.

She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Just stay out of trouble.’

For some reason, Trag found that funny and began laughing. Jeniche shook her head and climbed back up into the hot space where she lived.

Allowing her eyes to get used to the gloom again, she tidied around and finished putting her things ready. She did not believe in a sixth sense any more than she believed in luck, but something about the last few weeks made her feel uncomfortable. The siege and occupation added a whole new layer of discomfiture. And if she had to leave, she wanted to be prepared.

Trag’s laughter was cut short. Jeniche froze. A knocking brought her down the steps.

‘Soldiers,’ said Trag. ‘In the yard. You going to hide?’

She nodded. ‘Be careful, Trag.’

He reached out with one of his huge hands and tousled her short hair. She smiled and then pushed the panel into place. From the other side came the sound of a bench being moved against that section of wall.

Jeniche climbed quietly up into her room and, from a stack in one corner, began wedging bales of hay into the narrow stairwell. If anyone took it into their heads to start tapping for secret panels, a dull thud is all they would get for their trouble.

When she had finished, she stood a moment in the stifling heat and listened. Apart from the usual muffled sounds of the stable, all seemed calm. It was too hot to stay in there, however, so she packed what was left of the food, picked up her coat, and opened a panel into the ventilation system.

A short climb took her onto the roof.

Chapter Four

With all the grace of a drunken dancer, the ghost teetered about the empty square. It would lean one way and move off in that direction, picking up speed until it righted itself. Spinning on the spot for a moment or two, faint in the painfully bright sunshine, it would then lean in another direction and be on its way again, sinuous, trailing pale peach wisps of nothingness, and a faint, teasing hiss.

Jeniche watched the erratic ballet from the deep shadow of a cellar doorway. Dust ghosts were rarely seen in the city. It was seldom quiet enough. Most people would be sitting or lying in a shaded room, waiting for the heat to abate, especially at this time of the year. But there were normally some people about, scurrying through the oven of the afternoon; luckless servants mostly, sent on the errands of the fools for whom they had to work.

The square and the roads leading to it, the shops and stalls, all were quiet beneath the weight of the heat; sunlight shimmering from the hard-baked mud walls. Quiet except for the ghost that continued to skitter across the open space, spinning toward Jeniche and then changing direction. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her flesh tingled as it passed. She pulled her keffiyeh up over the lower half of her face, squinting as dust drifted into the stairwell. Childhood memories drifted in with it, just as unwanted. She blinked the dust from her eyes, wiping away a grimy tear with the back of her hand.

Turning in her shadowy hiding place, she watched the ghost swithering for a moment before it gathered new energy. It dashed along the main road out of the square, picking up more dust as it went, twisting, hissing, and taking on a more solid form. Without warning it collapsed. Mute sunlight pressed down into the silence as the dust settled.

Still uncertain, Jeniche waited. She much preferred crowds, hiding in plain view. Skulking and scurrying, even with the excuse of the heat, always looked suspicious. And her caution was rewarded as a squad of soldiers appeared at the end of the road where the dust ghost had collapsed.

Careful to remain perfectly still, she watched them, learning. It was all worth knowing. They must, she thought, be sweltering in their dark uniforms. But she also saw they were highly trained. They appeared to be standing casually, relaxed; but they were watching all the routes, and one, she noticed, watched the rooftops. Their backs were to walls and they moved as a unit. And they were still taken by surprise.

Plaster exploded in a puff of white dust as someone using a sling just missed the head of one of the soldiers, leaving a fist-sized crater in the side of a building. The squad ran off out of sight, firecracker sounds loud and echoing in the empty streets.

Taking her chance, Jeniche mounted the steps and crossed the square. On the far side she stepped into the shaded obscurity of a narrow alley. At the first doorway she dumped the basket she was carrying along with the sheet she had worn as a dress. Sometimes, it was useful to be what she was. It was only bored lechers that looked twice at a serving girl out on an errand. Now, though, she needed to become what people in this part of the city believed her to be.

As she moved away from the doorway, she found herself almost falling over a young Tunduri monk. Several paces beyond the child stood a much older man also dressed in the traditional mossy green robes worn by those who had dedicated their lives to the Bonudi religion. They had clearly been caught in the city when the invasion began, separated from their fellows by the fighting. Tired. Dirty. They stood looking at her.

Jeniche glanced over her shoulder, certain she sensed the presence of others behind her. There was nothing there. The alley and its entrance to the square where the dust ghost had danced remained empty in the midday heat.

The boy smiled. It did nothing to dispel the uneasiness that Jeniche experienced. It seemed less a greeting than a sign that he understood something. About her. Understood everything.

She shivered and was about to step around the boy and head off to Pennor’s for a meal when the old man spoke. The boy half turned his head to listen. His eyes, laughing and ancient, stayed firmly fixed on Jeniche, pinning her to the spot. The business of the world seemed suspended.

When the old man finished, he stepped forward and held out his cupped hands. With an inexplicable sense of relief, Jeniche shrugged. The Tunduri were begging and she had nothing to give. Apart from the basket. She hadn’t bothered to look at the contents when she helped herself. She gestured to it in the doorway and slipped past the monks, hurrying to get away.

The encounter left her unsettled. The last few days had taken their toll on body and mind. She didn’t understand how she had missed seeing the monks as she entered the alley; didn’t like the idea they had probably seen her transformation from serving girl to lad about town. Worst of all was the way the child had looked at her. Into her. Smiling. Or maybe he was the sort of child that some peoples would abandon in a wild place to let nature reclaim its own. Like the Antari.