late Jahdo remembered his sister’s premonitions. He clung to the wall, paralysed like a rat cornered by a ferret, as Councilman Verrarc walked to the edge of the steps and looked his way. The traitor fire flared up and sent long lines of light to bind him to Verrarc’s cold blue stare. In the crowd several men called out a question.
‘He’s heading east.’ In the stress of the moment Admi dropped his rhetoric. ‘He says he does have business at the border. The one we share with the Slavers.’
Jahdo turned so weak and cold that he nearly fell. He grabbed the rough stones to steady himself and swung down to hide in the muttering swarm of townsfolk. Too late – Verrarc was speaking to the militiamen, summoning a pair, plunging into the crowd and heading straight for him. Jahdo tried to run, but caught in the forest of grown-ups he found no path. Verrarc laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and swung him round. The councilman was smiling.
‘Meer did remember you, lad. Bring me the boy who smells of ferrets, he said. That one owns a brave heart.’
Jahdo stared into his eyes and felt again that he was spinning in a mind-eddy, down and down, drowning in the lake of Verrarc’s eyes. From what seemed like far away he heard a woman screaming in rage. The screams grew louder, rushed close, turned into his mother’s voice. The spell broke. His mother’s face hovered above him.
‘You mayn’t, you mayn’t! How can you even think of it?’
‘It be the treaty bond, Dera!’ Verrarc shoved himself back, raising one hand ready to ward blows. ‘It’s needful that someone go. Do you want a whole pack of Horsekin sieging us for breaking the treaty?’
‘He be but ten summers! Send some other lad. Send one of the militia.’
‘Meer didn’t ask for some other lad.’
With an animal snarl Dera turned away and began shoving her way toward the steps. In his mother’s strong grip Jahdo found himself dragged after as the guards and Verrarc followed, with Verrarc arguing with Dera the entire way. Jahdo could just sense the crowd thinning, swaying, as most of the citizens headed for the gate. He was willing to bet that the family of every other boy there was running for safety. In the flaring torchlight by the colonnade Meer stood waiting, his arms crossed over his chest.
‘Listen, you!’ Dera growled. ‘I do care not if you be one of the gods themselves. You’re not taking my son away.’
‘Dera, please, hold your tongue!’ Verrarc looked terrified. ‘You’ll insult our guest.’
With Niffa, Demet, and Kiel right behind him, Lael pushed through the crowd. Dera ignored him and the councilman both and waggled one finger under Meer’s flat nose.
‘Just who do you think you are, anyway,’ she went on. ‘Marching in here and –’
‘My good woman, please!’ Meer held one huge hand up flat for silence. ‘I come to you as a suppliant, as one in need. Please, I beg you, allow your son to come with me. I promise you I’ll treat him not as a slave, but every bit as well and tenderly as I would treat my very own first-born nephew.’
Dera hesitated. Verrarc muttered astonishments.
‘A mother’s words are law, Councilman,’ Meer snapped. ‘My good woman, as I travelled this day through your city, everywhere I smelt fear, except on your son. He’s like one of your weasels, very small, but with the heart of a wolf. I cannot travel alone.’ He reached up to touch the rim of an empty eye-socket. ‘My own mother wept when they blinded me, but in the end my calling pleased her well. For all I know, some great destiny lies in wait for your lad. Would you stand in his way?’
‘Well now.’ Dera let out her breath in a puff. ‘Well now. If you were going anywhere but east –’
‘Truly, the name of the Slavers is not one to speak in jest. Among my own people we call them Lijik Ganda, the Red Reivers. An aeon ago they swept down upon us, and the slaughter drove us from our homeland and into sin and degradation. Woe, woe to the people of the horse that our desperation drove us to such sins! Do you think we’ve forgotten such terrible things? I will not lie to you. I take your son into danger, but I would take my own nephew, had I a nephew, into the same.’
‘This thing be as important as that?’ Lael broke in.
Meer turned slightly in the direction of Councilman Verrarc, just a brief involuntary gesture. Fortunately Verrarc was whispering to one of the militiamen and, at least, seemed to notice nothing.
‘It is to me. To no one else, mayhap. My mother laid a geas upon me concerning my brother, and I have reason to believe he’s gone east.’
To Jahdo the bard’s voice sounded entirely too smooth, too glib, making him wonder if Meer were lying, but he supposed that he might have felt that way because he too had something to hide from the councilman. As he thought of Verrarc, he felt words bursting from his mouth.
‘Mam, I want to go.’
The moment he spoke he was horrified, but there was no taking the words back. Dera threw her hands into the air and keened aloud, just one brief sob of sound, quickly stifled. Lael turned to him, his mouth working.
‘If we do owe this thing under treaty,’ Lael said at last. ‘And if you want to go, well, then, there be naught much your mother and I can say about it. But be you sure, lad? At your age and all, how can you know your own mind?’
Jahdo felt his entire body trembling, trying to squeeze out the words his traitor mouth refused to speak: no, no, I didn’t mean it, I don’t want to go, I don’t. His heart pounded the words like a drum, but he could not speak.
‘He smells great things on the move, my good man,’ Meer said. ‘Even a child may sense destiny.’
‘Destiny?’ Dera spat out the word. ‘Hogwash and turnip wine!’
‘My good woman, please. With luck we’ll never even cross the Slavers’ border.’
‘Hah! That sort of luck does have a way of running short. I’m not letting my lad –’
All at once Dera stopped speaking. Meer caught himself as he was about to speak, as well, and turned, moving his huge head from side to side as if he were straining to hear some small sound. Jahdo realized that he himself was – that they all were – turning to Niffa, staring at Niffa, even though she’d said not a word. Her face had gone dead-pale, and in the broken torchlight her eyes seemed huge pools of shadow, as empty as those of the bard himself. Demet grabbed her arm to steady her.
‘Let him go, Mam.’ Her voice was a hollow whisper. ‘He’ll be safer there than here.’
Involuntarily Jahdo glanced at Verrarc, standing just behind her, and saw the strangest smile on the councilman’s face. It reminded him of a playmate caught cheating in a game. Dera considered for a long moment, taking her daughter’s strange pronouncement seriously, as indeed she always did whenever Niffa came out with one. For a moment she seemed about to speak; then she burst into tears and rushed off, dodging her way through the remnant of crowd. Swearing under his breath, Kiel followed her.
‘Well, then, that’s settled.’ Rubbing his hands together, Verrarc stepped forward. ‘Lael, since your son’s fulfilling an obligation for the entire town, the council will of course provide him with a pony and such supplies as he’ll be needing for this journey. Meer,
