Having spent years living near the Rose River, the stench of stallion piss came as no real shock to Mia, who promptly slapped a bit into the horse’s mouth to shut him up. Hateful as she found the beasts, she’d endured a three-week stint on a mainland horse farm at Old Mercurio’s ‘request’, and at least knew enough not to place the bridle on the beast’s arse-end.fn2 However, when Mia hoisted the saddle blanket, Chivalry began thrashing in his pen, and it was only through a hasty leap onto the doorframe that the girl avoided growing considerably thinner.
‘Trelene’s heaving funbags, keep him quiet!’ Tric hissed from the stable door.
‘… Did you honestly just swear by a goddess’s “funbags”?’
‘Forget that, shut him up!’
‘I told you horses don’t like me! And blaspheming about the Lady of the Ocean’s baps isn’t going to help matters any. In fact, it’ll probably get you drowned, you nonce.’
‘I’ll no doubt have long years locked in whatever stinking outhouse passes for the jail in this cesspool to repent my sins.’
‘Keep your underskirts on,’ Mia whispered. ‘The outhouse will be occupied for a while.’
Tric wondered what the girl was on about. But as she slipped into Chivalry’s pen for another saddling attempt, he heard wails within the garrison tower, pleas to the Everseeing, and a burst of profanity so colourful you could fling it into the air and call it a rainbow. A stench was rising on the wind, harsh enough to make his eyes water. And so, as Mia rained whispered curses down on Chivalry’s head, the boy decided to see what all the fuss was about.
Mister Kindly sat on the stable roof, trying his best to copy the curiosity found in real cats. He watched as the boy moved quietly to the tower, scaled the wall. Tric peered through the sandblasted window into the room beyond, his face turning greenish beneath his artless tattoos. Without a sound, he dropped to the ground, creeping back to the stable in time to see Mia wrangle the saddle onto Chivalry’s back with the aid of several stolen sugar cubes.
The boy helped Mia handle the snorting stallion through the stable doors. She was short, and the thoroughbred twenty hands high, so it took her a running leap to make the saddle. As she struggled up, she noticed the green pallor on Tric’s face.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked.
‘What the ’byss is going on in that tower?’ Tric whispered.
‘Mishap,’ Mia replied.
‘… What?’
‘Three dried buds of Liisian loganberry, a third of a cup of molasses essence, and a pinch of dried cordwood root.’ She shrugged. ‘Mishap. You might know it as “Plumber’s Bane”.’
Tric blinked. ‘You poisoned the entire garrison?’
‘Well, technically Fat Daniio poisoned them. He served the evemeal. I just added the spice.’ Mia smiled. ‘It’s not lethal. They’re just suffering a touch of … intestinal distress.’
‘A touch?’ The boy cast one haunted look back to the tower, the smeared and groaning horrors therein. ‘Look, don’t be offended if I do all the cooking out there, aye?’
‘Suit yourself.’
Mia set her sights on the wastes beyond Last Hope, and with a doffed hat towards the watchtower, kicked Chivalry’s flanks. Sadly, instead of a dashing gallop off towards the horizon, the girl found herself bucked into the air, her brief flight ending in a crumpled heap on the road. She rolled in the dirt, rubbing her rump, glaring at the now whinnying stallion.
‘Bastard …’ she hissed.
She looked to Mister Kindly, sitting on the road beside her.
‘Not. A. Fucking. Word.’
‘… meow …’ he said.
With a sharp bang, the watchtower door burst open. A befouled Centurion Vincenzo Garibaldi staggered into the street, one hand clutching his unbuckled britches.
‘Thieves!’ he moaned.
With a half-hearted flourish, the Luminatii centurion drew his longsword. The steel flared brighter than the suns overhead. At a word, tongues of fire uncurled along the edge of the blade and the man stumbled forward, face twisted with righteous fury.
‘Stop in the name of the Light!’
‘Trelene’s sugarplums, come on!’
Tric leaped into Chivalry’s saddle, dragging Mia over the pommel like a sack of cursing potatoes. And with another sharp boot to the stallion’s flanks, the pair galloped off in the direction of their certain doom.fn3
The pair stopped off long enough to retrieve Tric’s own stallion – a looming chestnut inexplicably named ‘Flowers’ – before fleeing into the wastes. The Plumber’s Bane had done its work, however, and pursuit by Last Hope’s garrison was short-lived and largely messy. Mia and Tric soon found themselves slowing to a brisk canter, no pursuers in sight.
The Whisperwastes, as they were called, were a desolation grimmer than any Mia had seen. The horizon was crusted like a beggar’s lips, scoured by winds laden with voices just beyond hearing. The second sun kissing the horizon was usually the sign for Itreya’s brutal winters to begin, but out here, the heat was still blistering. Mister Kindly was coiled in Mia’s shadow, just as miserable as she. Propping a (stolen and paid-for) tricorn upon her head, Mia surveyed the horizon.
‘I’d guess the churchmen nest on high,’ Tric ventured. ‘I suggest we start with those mountains to the north, then swing east. After that, we’ll probably have been drained lifeless by dustwraiths or eaten by sand kraken, so our bones won’t mind where they get shit out.’
Mia cursed as Bastard gave a small buck. Her thighs ached from the saddle, her rump was preparing to wave the white flag. She pointed to a lonely digit of broken stone ten miles distant.
‘There.’
‘All respect, Pale Daughter, but I doubt the greatest enclave of assassins in the known world would set up headquarters within smelling distance of Last Hope’s pig farms.’
‘Agreed. But that’s where I think we should set camp. Looks to be a spring there. And we’ll have a good view of Last Hope from up top, and all the wastes around, I’d wager.’
‘… I thought we were following my nose?’
‘I only suggested that for the sake of whoever might be listening.’
‘Listening?’
‘We agree this is a trial, aye? That the Red Church is testing us?’
‘Aye,’ the boy nodded slow. ‘But that shouldn’t come as any shock. Surely your Shahiid tested you in preparation for the trials we’ll face?’
Mia jerked the reins as Bastard tried to turn back for the fifth time in as many minutes.
‘Old Mercurio loved his testings,’ she nodded. ‘Never a moment that couldn’t be some trial in disguise.fn4 Thing is, he never gave me a test I couldn’t beat. And the Church shouldn’t be any different. So what’s the one clue we’ve been given? What’s the only piece of this puzzle we have in common?’
‘… Last Hope.’
‘Exactly. I’m thinking the Church can’t be self-sustaining. Even if they grow their own food, they’d need other supplies. I was poking around the Beau’s hold and I saw goods the inbreds in Last Hope would have no use for. I’m thinking the Church has a disciple there. Maybe watching for novices, but more important, to trek those goods back to their stronghold. So all we need to do is watch for a laden caravan heading out into the wastes. Then we follow it.’
Tric looked the girl up and down, smiling faintly. ‘Wisdom, Pale