“Always go for the one who lingers in a place like this,” the woman advised, lifting her wine cup to the man in the alcove and offering a bright smile. “He’ll have the keenest eye for opportunity.”
The man took another puff on his pipe then rose and sauntered over to their table. He was short, wiry but with a fighter’s face, displaying several gaps in the teeth he bared in a mirthless smile. Although Frentis judged him to be from northern climes he spoke to the woman in Alpiran.
“I speak the Realm’s tongue,” she replied. “And no, I have no need of five-leaf, thank you.”
The man inclined his head. “Ah, so it’s the redflower you’re after.” His accent was thick and familiar, Nilsaelin. He pulled a chair over to sit down at the table, helping himself to wine. “Available, but expensive. Not like the Realm here. The Emperor thinks redflower a great evil.”
“We’re not looking to buy any . . . amusements.” She gave a furtive glance around the shop, dropping her voice. “We need passage to the Realm.”
The wiry man sat back in his chair, grunting in amusement. “Good luck to you. Alpiran ships don’t dock there any more. You may have heard. There was this small matter of a war, y’see.”
The woman leaned closer, voice soft and intent. “I have heard there are . . . other ships for hire. Ships not so bound by the Emperor’s strictures.”
His face lost any vestige of humour, the eyes narrowing. “Dangerous talk, from a stranger.”
“I know.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We need to be gone from here. My husband . . .” She nodded at Frentis. “He is from the Realm, we met before the war. Things were so much easier then, our union was blessed by my parents, but now.” She put a sorrowful expression on her face. “The years since the war have been hard for us, shunned by family and neighbours alike. In the Realm though, perhaps we’ll find a welcome.”
The wiry man raised his eyebrows, giving Frentis a long look of appraisal. “From the Realm, eh? Whereabouts?”
“Varinshold.”
“Yeh, I can hear that in your voice. What brought you to the empire? You look more a soldier than a merchant.”
“A sailor,” he said. “Started as a cabin boy when things got difficult in the quarter. Needed to leave.”
“Difficult how?”
“One Eye.”
“Ah.” The wiry man drained his wine cup. “A name I know. Y’heard he died years ago now?”
“Yes. I didn’t weep.”
A faint smile twisted his lips. “I might have a name or two for you. But it’ll cost.”
“We can pay,” the woman assured him, displaying the fullness of her purse.
He stroked his chin, giving every impression of careful consideration before nodding. “Wait here. I’ll be back by the ninth bell.”
The woman watched him leave before turning to Frentis with a raised eyebrow. “One Eye?”
He drank some wine, saying nothing until she flared the binding. “My scars,” he hissed through the pain. “He was the one who gave me my scars. My brothers killed him for it.”
“So,” she murmured, letting the binding fade, “you were one of the Messenger’s.” There was a gravity to her voice as she said this, an unwelcome realisation. The look she turned on him was intense in its scrutiny, like the time in the temple, only this time she refrained from torture. After a moment she blinked, shaking her head and patting his hand. “Forgive my doubts, beloved. But the centuries have made me cautious.”
She rose from the table, adjusting the short sword beneath her cloak. “We’d best adjourn to await our benefactor.”
They climbed onto the roof of a shed overlooking the alley and waited. The wiry man returned a good deal before the ninth bell, with four rather larger companions. They entered the shop in a rush, re-emerging almost as quickly. The largest of the wiry man’s companions rounded on him, hushed threats accompanied by hard jabs to the chest.
“Don’t kill any,” the woman whispered. “And keep the lingerer conscious.”
It was Frentis’s experience that the larger and more aggressive a man was, the poorer his fighting ability. Large men, especially those employed in criminal pursuits, were more accustomed to intimidation than combat. So it was scant surprise to find the man he dropped behind failed to duck the blow that crunched into the base of his skull, or that his even larger companion simply gaped and failed to react to the spinning kick that caught the side of his head. The third one, the least physically impressive, managed to pull his knife free before the woman’s punch found the nerve centre behind his ear. The fourth was swift enough to swing at her with a cudgel. She ducked under it, delivered a knee-cap-smashing backward kick and finished him with a blow to the temple.
She drew her sword and advanced on the wiry man, now cowering against the alley wall, hands raised and eyes averted. She placed the point of the sword under his chin and forced his face up. “We’ll take those names now.”
“This is supposed to impress me?” The smuggler looked down at the wiry man’s beaten and bloody form with a mix of disdain and amusement. He had led them, after some persuasion, to a warehouse seemingly full of nothing but tea chests. The smuggler, plus several crew-mates were playing dice behind a wall that wasn’t a wall. He was a powerfully built man, speaking in a Meldenean accent, with a sabre propped within easy reach. His comrades were all similarly well armed.
“This is a demonstration,” the woman said, tossing the smuggler a bulging purse. “Of the consequences of failing to keep a bargain.”
The smuggler considered the purse a moment then aimed a kick at the wiry man’s huddled back. “This one goes about with four others. Where’re they?”
“They felt sleepy.” The woman held up their remaining purse plus a clutch of the jewelled bracelets Frentis had stolen. “Yours when we reach the Realm. This one says you’re due to make another run past the King’s excisemen. Consider us just a little extra cargo.”
The smuggler pocketed his new earnings then waved a hand at two of his men, nodding at the wiry man. They hauled him upright, dragging him off to the dark recesses of the warehouse. “I’m grateful for the business, but he shouldn’t have told you my name.”
“I’ve already forgotten it,” the woman assured him.
The smuggler’s vessel was little larger than the river barges Frentis remembered from childhood, but with a deeper hull and a taller sail. The crew numbered only ten men besides the captain, moving about their tasks with quiet efficiency and none of the ribald chatter of the merchantman’s sailors. They were pointed to a small section of deck near the prow and told not to move from it, meals were brought to them and none of the smugglers attempted to engage them in conversation. It made for a dismal voyage, unleavened by the woman’s unending voice and a thick bank of fog greeting them halfway across the Erinean on the fourth day out.
“I’ve only been to your Realm once,” the woman said. “This must have been, oh, a century and a half ago. The scryers had picked out a minor noble who was likely to scheme his way to Kingship in a few years. It was a fairly easy kill as I recall, the man was a pig, ruled by his appetites, all I had to do was play the harlot. I killed him before he could touch me, of course. A single punch to the centre of the chest, a difficult technique I’d been trying to master for years. It was odd, but when Janus started his rise several decades later, the Ally gave no instruction for his death. Seems your mad king fit his plans perfectly.”
The fog began to lift in the early evening of the seventh day, revealing the dark mass of the Realm’s southern coastline a few miles off the port bow. The captain ordered a change of course, the small ship tacking towards the west. Frentis kept a close watch on the misted shore until a familiar landmark came into view, a free-standing column of rock nestled in a narrow cove.
“Something of interest?” the woman enquired, sensing his recognition.
“The Old Man of Uhlla’s Fall,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“We’re about thirty miles east of South Tower.”
“Can we land here?”
The Wolfrunners had spent the months prior to the mustering at South Tower chasing smugglers along this coast, and he knew the channel surrounding the Old Man was far too narrow for a ship, but an easy prospect for the smuggler’s rowboat. He nodded.
“The captain first,” she said, moving towards the steps leading down into the hold. “I’ll see to the lower deck.”
For all his ruthlessness and impressive physique the captain proved a feeble opponent, barely managing a parry with his sabre before the short sword took him in the chest. The first mate was a tougher prospect, fending him off with a boat hook for several seconds, calling for help in between voicing curses in a language Frentis didn’t know. But curses and courage availed him nothing. He died hard but, like the rest of the crew, he died.
“Why is it called Uhlla’s Fall?” the woman asked. They were on the bluffs overlooking the cove, the rowboat abandoned on the shingle beach below. Beyond the Old Man the smugglers’ ship ploughed a steady course towards the rocks beneath the cliffs, the tiller having been lashed in place by the tightest of the woman’s knots.
