‘Don’t think so.’ Tric spat on the spyglass lens, rubbed away the dust. ‘Two laden wagons. Four men. Camels leading, so they’re in for a deep trek.’
‘I’ve never ridden a camel before.’
‘Nor me. I hear they stink. And spit.’
‘Still sounds a step up from Bastard.’
‘A whitedrake wearing a saddle is a step up from Bastard.’
They watched the caravan roll across the blood-red sand for an hour, pondering what lay ahead if the group were indeed from the Red Church. And when the caravan was almost a dot on the horizon, the pair clambered down from their throne, and followed across the wastes.
They kept distance at first, Flowers and Bastard plodding slowly. Mia was sure she could hear a strange tune on the wind. Not the maddening whispers – which she’d still not become accustomed to – but something like off-key bells, stacked all atop one another and pounded with an iron flail. She’d no idea what to make of it.
The pair weren’t outfitted for a trek into the deep desert, and they resolved to ride up to the caravan when it stopped to rest. There was no creeping up on it – the stone outcroppings and broken monuments studding the wastes weren’t enough to conceal approach, and Mia’s cloak of shadows was only big enough for one. Besides, she reasoned, if these were servants of the Lady of Blessed Murder, they may not take kindly to being crept up on as they stopped to piss.
Sadly, the caravan folk seemed happy enough to go as they went, so to speak. The pair were gaining ground, but after two full turns in the saddle, with Bastard nipping her legs and occasionally trying to buck her into the dust, Mia could take no more. Pulling the stallion up near a circle of weathered statues, she didn’t so much lose her temper as drop-kick it across the sand.
‘Stop, stop,’ she spat. ‘Fuck this. Right in the earhole.’
Tric raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘There’s more bruises in my britches than there is bottom. It needs a breather.’
‘Are we playing alliteration and you didn’t tell me, or …’
‘Fuck off. I need a rest.’
Tric frowned at the horizon. ‘We might lose them.’
‘They’re led by a dozen camels, Tric. A noseless dog could follow this trail of shit in the middle of truedark. If they suddenly start trekking faster than a forty-a-turn smoker with an armload of drunken prostitutes, I think we can find them again.’
‘What do drunken prostit—’
‘I don’t need a foot massage. Don’t want a back rub. I just want to sit on something that isn’t moving for an hour.’ Mia slipped off the saddle with a wince, waved her stiletto at Bastard. ‘And if you bite me again, I swear to the Maw I’ll make you a gelding.’
Bastard snorted, Mia sinking down against a smooth stone with a sigh. She pressed one hand to her cramping innards, rubbed her backside with the other.
‘I can help with that,’ Tric offered. ‘If you need it.’
The boy grinned as Mia raised the knuckles. Tethering the horses, he sat opposite Mia as she fished a cigarillo from her case, struck her flintbox, and breathed deep.
‘Your Shahiid was a wise man,’ Tric said.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Three turns of this a month is plenty.’
The girl scoffed, kicked a toeful of dust at him as he rolled away, laughing. Pulling her tricorn down over her eyes, she rested her head against the rock, cigarillo hanging from her lips. Tric watched her, peering about for some sign of Mister Kindly. Finding none.
He looked around them, studying the stonework. The statues were all similar; vaguely humanoid figures with feline heads, blasted by winds and time. Standing up on the outcropping, he squinted through his spyglass, watching the camel caravan trekking away. Mia was right – they moved at a plodding pace, and even with a few hours’ rest, they’d make up the lost ground. He wasn’t as grass-green around horses as Mia was, but after two turns saddlebound, he was aching in a few of the wrong places. And so sitting in the shade for a spell, he tried his best not to watch her as she slept.
He only closed his eyes for a second.
‘Naev counsels him to be silent.’
A slurred whisper in his ear, sharp as the blade against his throat. Tric opened his eyes, smelled leather, steel, something rank he supposed might be camel. A woman’s voice, thick with spittle, accent he couldn’t place. Behind him.
Tric said not a word.
‘Why does he follow Naev?’
Tric glanced around, saw Bastard and Flowers still tied up. Footprints in the dust. No sign of Mia. The knife pressed harder against his throat.
‘Speak.’
‘You told me to be silent,’ he whispered.
‘Clever boy.’ A smile behind the words. ‘Too clever?’
Tric reached down to his belt, wincing as the blade twitched. Slowly, slowly, he produced a small wooden box, shook it softly, the faint rattle of teeth therein.
‘My tithe,’ he said. ‘For the Maw.’
The box was snatched from his hand. ‘Maw’s dead.’
‘O, Goddess, not again—’
‘She’s playing with you, Don Tric.’
Tric smiled to hear Mia’s voice, grinned as the knifewoman hissed in surprise.
‘I’ve a better game we can play, though,’ Mia said brightly. ‘It’s called drop your blade and let him go before I cut your hands off.’
‘Naev will slit his throat.’
‘Then your head will join your fingers on the sand, Mi Dona.’
Tric wondered if Mia was bluffing. Wondered what it would be like to feel the blade swish from one ear to the other. To die before he’d even begun. The pressure at his neck eased, and he flinched as something small and sharp nicked his skin.
‘Ow.’
Dark stars collided in his eyes, the taste of dusty flowers on his tongue. He rolled aside, blinking, only dimly aware of the struggle behind him. Whispering blades slicing the air, feet scuffing across blood-red sand. He glimpsed their attacker through blurring eyes – a small, wiry woman, face veiled, wrapped in cloth the colour of desert sand. Carrying two curved, double-edged knives and dancing like someone who knew the steps.
Tric pawed the scrape on his neck, fingertips wet. He tried to stand but couldn’t, staring at his hand as his brain caught up. His mind was his own, but his body …
‘Poisoned …’ he breathed.
Mia and the stranger were circling each other, blades clutched in knife-fighter grips. They moved like first-time lovers – hesitant at first, drifting closer until finally they fell into each other’s arms, fists and elbows and knees, block and counters and strikes. The sigh of steel in the air. The wet percussion of flesh and bone. Having never really seen her matched against a human opponent, Tric slowly realised Mia was no slouch with a blade – well honed and seemingly fearless. She fought left-handed, her fighting style unorthodox, moving swift. But for all Mia’s skill, the thin woman seemed her match. Her every strike was foiled. Every advance countered.
After a few minutes of spectating, the feeling was returning to Tric’s feet. Mia was panting with exertion, crow-black hair clinging to her skin like weed. The stranger wasn’t pressing the attack; simply defending silently. Mia was circling, trying to get the sun behind her, but her foe was clever enough to avoid getting Saan in her