Stealing Into Winter

Endek eyed her with suspicion as she handed him the fruit. The faint remains of bruising stained his left cheek. ‘Who are you, then?’

‘I’m looking for Trag. What happened?’

‘Trag? Didn’t know he had any friends.’

‘You don’t remember me from the stables? Never mind.’ She had always tried to remain unobtrusive. It was a hollow triumph. ‘What happened? I saw you all lined up outside the main gate.’

A brief frown, followed by memory. ‘Bastards. They just walked in. Odrin tried to stop them and got beaten for his trouble.’

‘You, too, by the look of it.’

‘Wasn’t going to let them do that,’ he said round a mouthful of melon. ‘Odrin’s a foul-tempered old piece of shit, but he gave me that job. So they beat me as well. Then they made us stand in the sun. Well, stupid goat arses. It’s not like we’re not used to it, working for the gentry.’ He wiped juice from his chin. ‘After that they told us to get lost. Using the horses for their soldiers.’

‘Trag?’

Endek shook his head. ‘No idea. I thought he might wade into them soldiers and pull their heads off. If you know him, you’ll know what he’s like about those horses. But he weren’t there. Gone. Best thing, I suppose. Us, they beat. They would’ve had to kill him to stop him.’

‘Any idea where he might have gone?’

‘Hasn’t he got an old aunt? Down near Northgate.’ He shrugged and wandered off, sucking at the rind.

Jeniche pushed her way through the crowds and into an alley cool with shadow. She spent a hot afternoon following fruitless rumours and trying to pick sense out of gossip. But Trag, for all his bulk and slow ways, seemed to have disappeared as easily and completely as a dust ghost.

Wondering if she should start visiting the cemeteries to talk with grave diggers, she trudged back up the steep slope from Northgate. People were coming back out after the heat of the day. Soldiers were standing on street corners in whatever shade they could find, watching for signs of trouble.

To avoid getting too close to a group of four who looked bored and restless, Jeniche crossed the street. She need not have bothered as their attention was taken by two men who began a fierce argument. Continuing across, she kept a wary eye on a handcart laden with building materials that was being brought down the hill by a group of men. The wheels rumbled on the baked earth and the whole thing creaked.

It came as little surprise when the sound of the wheels changed, although it was odd no one shouted a warning. With sudden, stark clarity she realized why and looked for an escape route.

Before she could move, the cart had picked up deadly speed. The soldiers noticed the change in sound, turned, and leapt for their lives. One was too late. He was pinned against the wall and crushed to death. Another spun through the air and fell to the ground, scrabbling feebly to get out of the open. The other two ran into the middle of the street, shouting. They pulled their moskets from where they hung on straps on their shoulders and raised them like crossbows.

Jeniche watched from an alley and jumped at the loud firecracker sound the weapons made. One of the men who had let go of the cart was struggling up the hill, looking for cover, when his head exploded. Jeniche stared, unable to make sense of the horror she had seen.

More soldiers appeared and there were more loud sounds, crackling up and down the street. A boy ran down the hill past Jeniche, his face full of numb fear, a dark bloody patch blossoming on his tunic. She heard him stumble and fall. A woman began screaming.

That night, she sat with her back to the parapet at the rear of the roof terrace well away from the street, close to the bed beneath the awning. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she recalled the first time she had climbed to this roof, resting triumphant after relieving an odious merchant of a boxful of money.

As she had sat on the corner, she had become aware of eyes watching her from the bed. A young girl, small and frail, quite unafraid. Her name was Enshool – ‘But you may call me Shooly,’ she had said – and then gone on to tell Jeniche that she could only come up to the roof if the queen gave permission.

Bemused, Jeniche had asked how that might be done and was introduced to the finest doll she had ever seen, exquisitely carved and richly dressed, along with a whole court of smaller dolls. A gift was required in payment for permission to visit.

It would have been easy to steal a doll, or buy one with stolen money, but Jeniche had found herself a job at the docks. Filling a cart over and over with animal dung had not paid well, a few coins and many blisters, but the gift had no taint.

‘What’s a Bir…?’ Shooly faltered at the unfamiliar word.

‘Birba.’

‘What’s a Birba? And why are his clothes on backwards?’

‘A Birba is meant to dress like that. He’s a jester. Someone who makes jokes and dances and does magic tricks.’ And Jeniche had capered round Shooly’s bed and produced a coin from her tiny ear and made her giggle. After that, Jeniche had visited on a regular basis. Shooly wasn’t always there, but when she was and when she was awake they would play with the dolls and Jeniche would be the jester.

There was no sign of Shooly now, or her family, just chunks knocked out of the parapet overlooking the street, a bloodstain, and one old rag doll pushed down behind a large chest. Teague was dead. Trag could not be found. There was nothing left for her here; only one road to be taken, the one that led away from her beloved city. It was time to move on. She sat in the shuttered room of her misery, locked her arms round her knees and stared into the deep dark.

Chapter Six

The queue at the Watergate was shorter than the others. Not many people wanted to go south. And who could blame them when the fields alongside the main road in that direction were an armed encampment for as far as the eye could see. Even so, it was longer than it had been two days ago. And now, there was a high wooden palisade to prevent those who went down to the springs to collect water from using that as an escape route.

Shuffling forward, guarding their places with fierce looks and fiercer words, the line of people was a depressing sight. They stood with bundles of bedding, bags of food, restless children, and fearful hearts. Soldiers walked up and down, watching them with unwavering vigilance. Since the attacks had started in earnest, they had lost friends and whatever semblance of good nature they might once have possessed.

The routine was exactly the same for all refugees. You stripped in a tent and your clothes and belongings were searched. Some valuables and other items were being confiscated. Any animal larger than a dog was also confiscated. The price of handcarts had long since gone beyond the purse of ordinary folk. In any case, most of them had nowhere else to go so they had to sit tight in the city and try to stay clear of the fighting.

Now and then a ripple of anxiety ran through the queue as someone was turned away or arrested. For the most part it was Tunduri monks and nuns that were being prevented from leaving. Jeniche couldn’t understand why, unless the foreigners were looking for someone in particular.

She slipped out of the shrine where she had been sitting in the shade. It was pointless thinking she could cheat the system. Some other way out of the city had to be found. There was one, but it was a last resort. It was becoming apparent, after days of traipsing about the hot streets and observing the queues and the searches at the city gates, that it was the only resort.

Following a group of water sellers as they went bow-backed up into the main market, Jeniche became tangled with a group of Tunduri in their mossy green robes. She wondered how they had survived for so long, trapped in the city. Begging mostly, she realized, as they turned to her.

It was the first time she had looked at any of them closely. True, she had been surrounded by them when she had been across the river to the caves during the festival and later when the boy was talking to her. But they had just been a crowd, excited, lively, handing out food the first time. She bet they wished they had kept some for themselves. That second encounter had come when they were exhausted and conscious of just how great the distance was between themselves and their home.

Her own supplies of money and food were getting low, but she fished out a crown from her belt and produced it from the ear of a bemused, older monk. He scurried off to catch up with the others and it dawned on her he looked a lot like the old monk who had been with the boy. She dodged into the nearest alley, just as a young face peered at her from amongst all the green robes, confirming her suspicion.

Jeniche trailed up the alley and into a quiet square. With a sharpened sense for trouble, she kept moving. She had no desire to get tangled up with anyone in whom the soldiers had taken an interest. Besides, the place was much too quiet and she could see a patrol approaching. Once out of their view she ran toward the market, moving up through a maze of passages and paths, back yards, and small public gardens, dodging beneath limp, sun-bleached washing, raked by the intense and suspicious scrutiny of groups of women gathered on precarious wooden balconies.

Where people gather to trade and buy and gossip, there will always be places to sit and drink and eat. The great market square of Makamba stood at the top of the hill, far enough from the Old City gates to have pretensions of grandeur, close enough for the traders to live there and bring their produce up from the dockside warehouses on a daily basis. To call it a square was an exaggeration of the term. It was just a place where several main roads met, creating a space broad enough for market stalls, customers and carriage traffic to co-exist without too much disharmony. And between the buildings that fronted the square were numerous, narrow alleys where all those places you could sit and drink and eat plied their trade.

Many of the eating houses never closed, catering for different clientele, depending on the time of day and season of the year. Different establishments catered for different pockets as well. Those that fronted on to the square itself, furthest from the Old City, were considered respectable enough for merchants and even their wives – suitably chaperoned, of course. The deeper you went into the alleys, especially those close to the Old City gates, the meaner the establishment and the better your eyesight needed to be, not just to find your way around, but also to avoid getting mugged.

Jeniche moved away from the bustle of the marketplace and the watchful eye of the foreign soldiers into a long and winding passage. Near the end, to one side, beneath a sign caked with the grime of decades, was a small tavern favoured by people who liked to stay away from trouble and keep themselves to themselves.

She went down the steps and through the open door, passing between busy tables to the back of the room. There, a wide arch opened on to a shaded courtyard. A table by the kitchen was free and Jeniche sat, grateful for the chance to rest out of the brightness.

‘Hello. Do you want anything to eat? Plenty of chicken, still.’

Jeniche looked up. A pale young woman looked down at her, smiling. ‘Er…’

The woman giggled. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

It took a moment. ‘Dillick’s. You’re smiling. That’s what threw me.’

‘I’d love to know what you said to him. He threw us both out, told us not to come back, and locked up. Not seen him since.’

‘What about…?’ Jeniche had no idea of their names.

‘In the kitchen. The work’s just as hard here, but there’s no Dillick pushing you around and breathing all over you.’

‘Well, I didn’t say that much. And the chicken sounds great. Some bread. Small beer.’

‘Must’ve been that big bloke, then, later on.’

Before Jeniche could ask, the waitress had gone. The place stayed busy all afternoon and Jeniche didn’t have a chance to ask any more, so pushed the thought to one side. Dillick must have upset a good few people in his time. He was that sort of person.

With a full belly, rested legs, and a half workable plan for getting out of the city with her treasures intact, Jeniche wandered back toward the market. The place seemed normal. The presence of foreign soldiers was obvious, but business had returned to its usual, noisy level. People were gossiping. Even some of the jugglers and other entertainers were putting on a show.

Making the best of her mood, she moved toward the western end of the market, where it gave on to the gardens at the front of the university. It was time to say goodbye, here and elsewhere.

The road narrowed at this end and although there were fewer stalls, they catered to the large number of students by offering cheaper produce. The crowds pressed in around her. It was hard to believe so many people had left the city. The rest must be right here, she decided, determined to keep things as normal as they could. For all that, there were signs of wear and tear, signs of the invasion. Not least the group of Tunduri. If it weren’t for the fact that everywhere you went, there seemed to be little knots of them drifting, begging, still finding time to stand and stare, she might start to believe they were following her round the city. She shrugged, trembling a little at the sight beyond the last of the stalls.

Rubble still lay across the gardens where the tower had been felled during the initial assault on the city. Most of it was gone, deep cart tracks cutting through the grass and flower beds kept watered by the university’s deep wells. But a long spine of grey stone remained, like the twisted vertebra of a stripped carcass.

Oblivious to the noise and bustle around her, she watched a team of labourers loading a cart, seeing the tower as she best remembered it, stretching up to the starry sky. When she was not thieving or producing coins from Shooly’s ear, she would sit atop the tower in Teague’s study.

She had first climbed it simply because it was a challenge, the tallest building in Makamba. Teague, who had a keen ear, had waited until Jeniche climbed into her observatory, remarked that the stairs were easier, winked at Jeniche, and gone back to peering through her telescope. Nothing more was said, but Jeniche, once she got over the shock of finding someone sitting in the dark, was fascinated by what she saw. Thereafter, whenever she saw the dim, red glow of Teague’s lamp in the observatory windows, she would climb up and join her.

The astronomer had been an elegant woman, much older than Jeniche, who clearly enjoyed the companionship. They had talked most often about the night sky. Jeniche told of using the stars to navigate in the desert. Teague told of what she had learned of the moon, of the stars and planets, of the wandering lights that sometimes flared across the sky and disappeared.

Jeniche had felt a deep link with Teague, drawn by her sense of rootedness and purpose. She sometimes wondered if, when it was time to give up thieving, a life of learning would suit her. Now she would probably never know.

Wrapped in melancholy, several moments passed between the eruption of noise and Jeniche noticing. She spun round to see the market in chaos. Angry firecracker sounds filled the space and echoed in the hot afternoon. Shards of mud brick spat into the air from the top of a nearby building. She ducked, instinctively, conscious of people hurrying along the rooftop.

All around the market, people were running and diving for cover. Women dragged children, letting their shopping spill to the ground as they sought out doorways and alleys. Men ran and ducked and fell. Horses screamed, rearing in panic, bolting through the fast thinning crowd. Bullets hit walls and tore through flimsy stalls in search of flesh. Several people already lay in the hot dust, bleeding their lives away, calling, screaming, pleading.

In the confusion, Jeniche lay beside a collapsed stall, half buried in melons. One exploded close to her head and she flinched, terrified. She caught a glimpse of a young girl with rose-gold hair in strange clothes standing in the open space, blinked melon from her eyes to find she had gone. Instead a young nun stood there in her moss green robes, petrified, the whites of her eyes showing all the way round.

Something caught the back of Jeniche’s left calf as she ran, hot and painful. She lost her footing, tumbling forward, rolling, and coming back onto her feet again in time to knock the nun flat to the ground. Shooting raged above them. The soldiers had found proper shelter and aimed at the rooftop assassins who also seemed to have moskets.

Jeniche didn’t care. She grabbed a handful of green robe and began to drag the nun with desperate energy. They scrambled across the killing ground and fetched up with a crash against a trestle. Jeniche pushed the nun into the shadow beneath the stall, rolled in after her and then pulled her toward the entrance of a narrow street.

The nun had other ideas, tugging Jeniche towards a café. The sound of running feet was close behind them. Jeniche caught a glimpse of another familiar face, grinning in the mayhem, and then heard a great crash. She didn’t turn, but followed the nun and headed for the low wall of the café courtyard.

In a cloud of dust, they crashed over the wall and lay in the cover of the thick mud bricks, drawing painful breaths. The nun began to speak, was cut short as a concentrated burst of fire had them scuttling on hands and knees for the doorway to the café. They pushed into the dim interior as tables splintered behind them and dust rained down.

Chapter Seven

‘How many more times? The answer is “No”. It will always be that. So please stop asking.’

She lifted the torch above her head in the hope of seeing more. All it did was cast longer shadows into the tunnel, pick out doorways and arched entrances in tantalizing flickers, and wring tears from her eyes as oily smoke swirled at the sudden movement.

‘But you would be perfect.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘No.’

‘We need a guide who can get us across the desert.’

‘Why does everyone think I know anything about the desert?’

She turned at the silence, the torch flame roaring.

‘What?’

‘But, surely…’

‘No. No. No. Just because I have darker skin than most people in Makamba—’

‘Cinnamon.’

‘What?’

‘It’s the colour of cinnamon.’

She looked at the boy, wondering if it was deliberate. It was almost like there were two people in there. A child and an adult. She shook her head.

‘The colour of my skin does not mean I’m from the north or that I was born any closer to the desert than where you are standing right now.’

The boy looked round the gloomy passage.

‘Are you not from Antar?’ he asked.

‘No. Yes. How could you possibly know that? And what business is it of yours if I am?’

‘I’m sorry.’

The Tunduri shuffled their feet, not understanding much beyond the tone of her voice, knowing full well she had told them to stay in the room. She walked back through them, irritated by their presence, annoyed at having to abandon her exploration again, despite the fact she knew it was a pointless exercise. Their footsteps echoed after hers as they climbed the sloping floor of the rough-hewn passage and mounted the steps.

At the top, she dropped the torch on the ground and kicked sand over it, fading smoke twisting its way to the rocky roof. The draught of passing robes dispersed it, the old monk ambling along in the rear, singing to himself as he went. Darkness took back the tunnels and settled like a monstrous, watchful cat.

A bright shaft of light, solid and hot, cut at an angle through the gloom of the semi-basement room that Jeniche had found for them. It lay somewhere beneath the university, close to the main courtyard garden. Smaller rooms contained tools, sacks, old bits of furniture, shelves of dusty pots and dried tubers. This, with its dusty bed and other rickety furniture, had looked unused.

The six monks and two nuns followed Jeniche inside and stood in hesitant fashion as she sat on one of the benches from which they had cleared piles of old sacks. It wobbled and she kicked back at the nearest leg, hurting her heel.

‘Can’t you sit down?’ she said.

The youngest one pushed through. ‘Forgive them. They are confused. A little lost.’

‘Why do they keep following me?’

The boy frowned. ‘Do they?’

Jeniche resisted the urge to scream. It had been like this for days.

The boy said something in Tunduri and the rest drifted to the edges of the room and sat in shadow, their backs to the walls. Jeniche felt like she could breathe again. For a moment, she shut them out of her thoughts and drew up her left trouser leg. The cloth at the back was torn and bloody from where her calf had been grazed by a mosket ball. With care she unwrapped the strip of linen that had been used to bind a poultice to the shallow cut. Twisting her leg in the shaft of sunlight, she inspected the wound as best she could. Although it still stung and there was some bruising, it did not seem to be infected.

One of the monks placed a bowl of water beside her and handed her a fresh strip of linen torn from the sheet she had acquired for the purpose. She tore it in two and used one piece to bathe the back of her leg before binding it up again. The nun she had pulled from the battle would have done it if she had let her, but she was determined not to get close, form any sort of bond.

When she had finished she found the young monk was still watching her.

‘We walked here,’ he said. ‘We could walk back. With a guide.’

‘Yes, but you doubtless came by the river road. In a large company. There were towns and villages along the way. You could buy and beg for food. There was food to beg for and buy. Shelter. People were generally glad to see you.’ It didn’t seem to be getting through to them, although given their passive faces it was hard to tell.

‘Then,’ continued Jeniche, going over the next point in her argument again, ‘it would mean getting you all out of a city where very angry soldiers seem intent on keeping you in. Soldiers who doubtless control the main roads. Which means the back roads and the desert. And to get you across the desert would first mean finding supplies of food and getting you properly equipped. You could not walk home dressed like that. It’s not my fault your God-King or whatever he is left you here to fend for yourselves, but I cannot help.’

‘Ah. Yes. That’s something else.’

Jeniche looked at the young boy as he sat on the dirt floor, those ancient eyes scrutinizing her. She shivered. ‘What?’

‘Like you, I’m not what I seem to be.’

The battle had gone on all day and well into the night, skirmishes breaking out all over the city, but centred on the main market. Vicious fighting, chases, deadly ambuscades, fires, moments of silence, acts of bravery and idiocy; chaos had stalked the streets and fed.

In all the havoc, it hadn’t come as much of a surprise to Jeniche to find the familiar group of Tunduri in the café to which the nun had dragged her. Mowen Nah was her name. With mosket fire carving up the street outside, Jeniche led them all straight out the back way and into a more secure hiding place away from the fighting. It was there that the boy had told her their names.

The other nun was called Mowen Bey and the two of them were sisters, of an age with Jeniche. They had sat holding hands with shy smiles illuminating their serious faces as the boy told their names to Jeniche and expressed the thanks of the whole group for leading Mowen Nah out of danger.

Jeniche was embarrassed by it all and certainly hadn’t wanted to know anyone’s name. The boy, however, was relentless as only a child can be. The old monk was Darlit Fen and he clasped his hands at his breast when he was introduced. The other four, younger monks, about the same age as the nuns, were Nuvid Ar, Tinit Sul, Arvid Dal, and Folit Gaw. All physically different but of an almost identical demeanour. The boy’s name was Gyan Mi.