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A month of peace, but why then did her absence fill him with foreboding?

The barge opposite had slipped ahead, riding some vagary of the current, and he could now see the eastern shore of the river. A low bank of boulders and reeds and beyond that rolling plains lit a luminous green by the jade slashes in the southern sky. Those grasslands should have been teeming with wildlife. Instead, they were empty.Advertisement

This continent felt older than Quon Tali, older than Seven Cities. It was a land that had been fed on for too long.

On the western shore, farmland formed narrow strips with one end reaching down to the river and the other, a third of a league inland, debouching on to the network of roads crisscrossing the region. Without these farms, the Letherii would starve. Yet Bottle was troubled by the dilapidated condition of many of the homesteads, the sagging barns and weed-ringed silos. Not a single stand of trees remained; even the stumps had been pulled from the withered earth. The alder and aspen windbreaks surrounding the farm buildings looked skeletal, not parched but perhaps diseased. Broad fans of topsoil formed muddy islands just beyond drainage channels, making that side of the river treacherous. The rich earth was drifting away.

Better indeed, then, to be facing the eastern shoreline, desolate as it was.

Some soldier had been making the circuit, pacing the barge as if it was a cage, and he’d heard the footsteps pass behind him twice since he’d first settled at the railing. This time, those boots came opposite him, hesitated, and then clumped closer.

A midnight-skinned woman arrived on his left, setting hands down on the rail.

Bottle searched frantically for her name, gave up and sighed. ‘You’re one of those Badan Gruk thought drowned, right?’

She glanced over. ‘Sergeant Sinter.’

‘With the beautiful sister-oh, not that you’re not-’

‘With the beautiful sister, aye. Her name’s Kisswhere, which is a kind of knowing wink all on its own, isn’t it? Sometimes names find you, not the other way round. So it was with my sister.’

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‘Not her original name, I take it.’

‘You’re Bottle. Fiddler’s mage, the one he doesn’t talk about-why’s that?’

‘Why doesn’t he talk about me? How should I know? What all you sergeants yak about is no business of mine anyway-so if you’re curious about something Fid’s saying or not saying, why don’t you just ask him?’

‘I would, only he’s not on this barge, is he?’

‘Bad luck.’

‘Bad luck, but then, there’s you. When Fiddler lists his, uh, assets, it’s like you don’t even exist. So, I’m wondering, is it that he doesn’t trust us? Or maybe it’s you he doesn’t trust? Two possibilities, two directions-unless you can think of another one?’

‘Fid’s been my only sergeant,’ Bottle said. ‘If he didn’t trust me, he’d have long since got rid of me, don’t you think?’

‘So it’s us he doesn’t trust.’

‘I don’t think trust has anything to do with it, Sergeant.’

‘Shaved knuckle, are you?’

‘Not much of one, I’m afraid. But I suppose I’m all he’s got. In his squad, I mean.’

She’d chopped short her hair, probably to cut down on the lice and whatnot-spending a few months in a foul cell had a way of making survivors neurotic about hygiene-and she now ran the fingers of both hands across her scalp. Her profile, Bottle noted with a start, was pretty much… perfect.

‘Anyway,’ Bottle said, even as his throat tightened, ‘when you first showed up, I thought you were your sister.’ And then he waited.

After a moment, she snorted. ‘Well now, that took some work, I’d wager. Feeling lonely, huh?’

He tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. Came up with nothing. It all sounded pathetic.

Sinter leaned back down on the rail. She sighed. ‘The first raiding parties us Dal Honese assembled-long before we were conquered-were always a mess. Suicidal, in fact. You see, no way was a woman going to give up the chance to join in, so it was always both men and women forming the group. But then, all the marriages and betrothals started making for trouble-husbands and wives didn’t always join the same parties; sometimes one of them didn’t even go. But a week or two on a raid, well, fighting and lust suckle from the same tit, right? So, rather than the whole village tearing itself apart in feuds, jealous rages and all that, it was decided that once a warrior-male or female, married or betrothed-left the village on a raid, all pre-existing ties no longer applied.’ pqdm.com