“My mother spoke Shankri, a dialect of the Imperial common language, so that was what we spoke at home. She sang us the cradle songs and told us the nursery stories she had learned from her own mother. She was also encouraged to tell us about everyday life in the Empire. We played the games and ate the food we would have eaten in a well-to-do household in Shankrili—my mother was a very good cook.
“When I was five I was sent to school, where I was first taught formal Imperial and Chararghu as second languages, and then began to be inculcated with Southern values and Southern ideas. I was a ready learner, but at the same time a cautious and secretive child. I found it easy to please my teachers, but I did not reveal to them that I neither accepted nor rejected what they had told me about the superiority of Southern ways over the ways of the Empire. One day, I determined, I would go there and see for myself.
“I came to this conclusion well before I was taken to Charargh to finish my education and formally told that this was what had been planned for me all along. Even then I was careful not to sound too eager. I did not want them to suspect where my ultimate loyalties might lie. Since my earliest childhood I seem to have had a tendency to present a pleasant exterior to the world while concealing my inmost thoughts and feelings….”
Yes, thought Maja drowsily. Yes indeed. But he isn’t doing it now. She stared at her hands as they repeated and repeated the same hypnotic pattern, coaxing the clean new skin to cover the shiny scar tissue that closed the wound. Like rolling pastry further and further across the board, she thought.
There. Finished.
“See how it feels,” she murmured, and slipped the healing stone into her pouch. As she let go of it her hand and arm went numb.
Ribek rose to his feet and moved his arm around.
“Tingles a bit,” he said. “As if it’d been something that happened years ago. Thanks, Maja. That’s wonderful. You look all in.”
“I’m just tired. But it’s worth it.”
“Indeed it is,” said Striclan, who had also risen from where he’d been kneeling at Maja’s other side. “I did not like to say so earlier, but in my opinion you were likely to lose the use of that arm, if not the arm itself. May I see? Astonishing. Not even a scar.”
“And now you’re going to put it into your notebook and tell the Sheep-faces all about it,” said Saranja.
The sharpness of her tone silenced them all. Ribek bent to whisper in Maja’s ear.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“My arm’s gone numb. And my head hurts where the man hit it with his slasher.”
She felt his fingers gently probing the bruise, heard the hiss of his indrawn breath.
“Got anything for bruised head, Striclan? Maja’s got a lump coming the size of an apricot where that bastard bashed her.”
“I’ll get a salve.”
“My turn to do a bit of healing,” said Ribek, and settled beside her. He took her forearm into his lap, unstrapped her knife and gently began to massage the inert muscles. Almost at once Striclan returned and knelt behind her.
“Tsk, tsk,” he muttered. “You carry on with what you’re doing, old man. Take a sniff at this, Maja my dear—it’ll help with the headache.”
His hand appeared under her nose, holding a small pot containing a bluey-gray paste, reeking with a strange, sweet-sharp pungency. Even before she had drawn it into her lungs the headache was easing. She heard the snip of scissors and then he was deftly working the paste into the swollen flesh. His touch on the bruise made it feel almost pleasant.
“Where were we?” He sighed. “Ah, yes. I have in fact written nothing about any of you directly. Miss Saranja saved me from a hideous death. Ribek told me she was not at liberty to say how she did it. How could I not respect that, and apply it to the rest of your party? All that I have written in my notebook has been information you have given me that might have come from any fellow traveler. I have not ascribed a particular source to it. Miss Saranja’s account of the origins of the desert war is a good example. Chararghi intelligence has a wholly different take on that, claiming, and probably believing, that the desert chiefs were instigated by the authorities in Talagh to attack the Chararghi copper-mining concession.”
Dimly Maja heard a distant whinny, answered by Levanter, almost in her ear.
“Here’s Benayu,” said Saranja. “He’s got Pogo back all right. Stupid horse. Benayu’s looking pleased with himself, which makes a change. You mean you’re not going to say anything about him turning himself into a dog in front of your eyes, Striclan?”
“I see no need. I have already reported on consistent accounts of magicians being able to transform themselves into various animals. I shall simply add that I myself was a bystander at a similar event, and had no reason to doubt the evidence of my senses.
“As for the way in which he disposed of our assailants, which seemed to me, in my ignorance, a much more remarkable exercise of power, I propose to say nothing about it at all.”
Yes, thought Maja, as Benayu rode toward them, smiling and confident. Much more remarkable. And he’d done it as easily as flipping a coin. Well before he reached them she realized that he’d changed once more. The soundless hum that had come from him all the time, even when he wasn’t actually using his magical powers, until he’d lost the use of them at Larg, was back again. It was still quiet, still controlled and contained, but it was no longer mild. There was a depth and intensity about it, like the depths of a clear night sky before the moon has risen, going on for ever beyond the stars. The nearer he came the more it dazed her. She was going to have to learn to resist it, or she would need to wear Jex against her skin all the time, and then she would be no use to them at all. Not now, though. She was too tired.
Pogo was in a sulk, and halted untold the moment he reached them. Benayu dismounted grinning.
“We’d better move on,” said Ribek. “Somebody may have noticed you getting rid of those fellows.”
“As you wish,” said Striclan. “I suggest that for the moment I separate myself from you and follow a little way behind, so that you can explain to Benayu what I’ve told you and you can then discuss it among yourselves and decide, among other things, whether I can be trusted.”
“That’s all right,” said Benayu, smugly. “I’ve been listening. He was telling the truth.”
“You mustn’t do it!” said Saranja, instantly furious. “I said so right at the start! Looking into our heads!”
“I didn’t think he counted….”
“Well he does! And anyway I don’t need a mighty magician to tell me someone’s telling the truth! And what’s so funny about that, Ribek?”
“Just that it’s so wonderfully unfair.”
“Please,” said Maja, before she could blast him too. “I’m tired.”
Saranja sighed and turned to Striclan.
“Suppose we needed to talk to the Sheep-faces,” she said. “Could you fix that? What do you think, Benayu?”
“It might be useful. I don’t know yet. There’s a lot of stuff I can do now that I couldn’t before, but it’s nothing like enough even so.”
“I might be able to arrange something,” said Striclan. “I would need to give my superiors reasons why they should take you seriously. One of my briefs is to make contact with any groups resistant to the rule of the authorities in Talagh, and I have had to tell them that I have seen no sign of any such movement. Apart from yourselves, of course, and so far I’ve kept my own counsel about you. Everywhere else, as far as I can discern, the general mood seems to be a curious mixture of fear and contentment. The people, by and large, enjoy peaceful and prosperous lives, but at the same time live in terror of offending the authorities, or even attracting their attention. But I have gathered from things that you have both said and not said that, one, you have already jointly caused the offense and, two, that you are engaged on this journey in an effort not merely to escape but also to resist the vengeance.”