She snickered, then sobered. It might be better if they didn’t know who she was…
The path opened suddenly, revealing the village. Frieda gasped. Had it always been that small? And grimy? The low-built shacks looked laughable, even though she knew it was a very practical design. The children bustling around, watched by a pair of ancient crones — she knew the women were probably in their forties, but they looked older — were only half-dressed, while their older counterparts watched the newcomers warily. Frieda felt old memories rising inside her, taunting her, as she spied a cluster of thuggish young men eying her. She thought she knew them. She certainly knew their attitude.
Hoban addressed the nearest man. “I seek the headman,” he said, “Point me to him.”
The man jabbed a finger at the largest hut in the village. Frieda was torn between the urge to laugh or cry. She remembered the hut. It had once seemed a palace. Five rooms, a luxury beyond compare! Now… she found herself giggling helplessly, drawing disapproving stares from the villages who thought she couldn’t see them. She’d seen palaces and castles and magical mansions that were bigger on the inside. The headman’s hut was so tiny! Frieda tried to calm herself as they were shown into the audience chamber, a fancy name for a muddy parody of a throne room. The headman sat on a raised chair, trying to look both firm and obsequious. Frieda frowned, inwardly, as she looked back at him. She’d been impressed by the headman once, the strongest man in the village. Now… now, he was a joke.
“My Lord,” the headman said. “I am Ivanov, Son of Ivanov.”
“I am Lord Sorcerer Hoban,” Hoban said. “And this is Frieda, Daughter of Huckeba. She hails from your village.”
Frieda looked up. The headman stared at her, a wash of confused emotions crossing his face before he schooled his features into an immobile mask. Frieda was torn between amusement and annoyance as he tried to work out how she should be treated. Was she a powerful sorceress, with enough magic to burn the entire village to the ground, or was she a worthless woman who could be put to work while the men talked? Frieda held his eyes, daring him to try to order her to submit. The headman broke contact first.
It might have been better if Hoban hadn’t told him who I was, Frieda thought, crossly. I bet he doesn’t even remember me.
She kept the thought to herself and allowed her eyes to roam the chamber while the two men talked. The curtains at the rear were drawn back, revealing a makeshift kitchen — it had once seemed the best kitchen in the world — and a hanging birdcage, positioned against the far wall. Her heart clenched. The cage wasn’t for birds, but for young women. She’d slept in one herself, when she’d been a child. It was supposed to keep them safe from the men.
But it didn’t work, she recalled, trying not to shudder. The old memories hovered at the back of her mind. All it did was keep us firmly under our father’s thumb.
“Your team visited twice, then never came again,” Ivanov said. He sounded as though he was telling the truth, although Frieda wasn’t so sure. The wretched headman would have lost his head — the thought nearly made her smile — by now if he hadn’t been a very good dissembler. “They’re not the only people to have wandered off, never to be seen again.”
“Oh?” Hoban leaned forward. “Who else?”
Ivanov didn’t shrug dismissively, but the effect was there. “A pair of taxmen set out from the keep last month, hoping to make their rounds. They left the village late in the day and were never seen again.”
Frieda kept her thoughts to herself. The villagers hated the taxmen. They tended to be runaway villagers, looking for a little revenge by groveling in front of the local nobility while putting their insider knowledge to work rooting out hidden crops and seizing everything they could. Frieda recalled one boy, the runt of the litter, who’d become the worst of the bunch. He’d taken too much, even by the standards of the region. And he’d eventually had a terrible accident that was nothing of the sort.
And these taxmen probably got killed too, Frieda thought. She found it hard to feel any pity for the wretched creatures. They were little better than traitors to their own families and kindred. As long as their masters don’t know what happened to them, or even precisely where they died, there will be no punishment.
“We do need to recruit more workers,” Hoban said. There was a hint of threat in his tone. “We will pay good wages.”
Frieda tuned out the rest of the conversation. She knew how it would go. Ivanov would protest — probably truthfully — that the village couldn’t spare anyone, then make a show of offering a handful of likely lads before Hoban started trying to conscript local men to work on the dig. They wouldn’t be that helpful, not unless Hoban offered them permanent employment a long way from the village or something — anything — more than coins they’d probably lose in a hurry. The headman would take his cut — naturally — and the local strongmen would take the rest.
“We must discuss the details,” Ivanov said, finally. “Perhaps Lady Frieda” —Frieda could hear the sarcasm— “would care to visit her family?”
Frieda felt her blood boil. The headman was provoking her. No, he was testing her. He wanted to see if he had any influence over her… she wanted to laugh at the sheer provincialism of the trick. Didn’t he have any idea how wide the world truly was? Frieda had been to Mountaintop and Whitehall and Zangaria, all so far away the headman couldn’t even begin to comprehend the distance. His world petered out a few short miles from the boundary line. She doubted he’d been more than ten miles from the village in his entire life.
The thought made her smile. He looked disconcerted.
“Perhaps I will,” she said. She made a show of moving her eyes to Hoban. “I’ll meet up with you in an hour.”
She could feel the headman’s eyes boring into her as she turned and left, stepping into the outside air. The poor man had to be completely unsure of her. Hoban was a sorcerer and Frieda was neither his clear superior nor groveling at his feet, let alone keeping herself out of sight and out of mind like a village girl. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to make of her. Good. She felt her smile grow wider as she took a long breath and let it out slowly. The village stank and yet, the air was cleaner than the hut. She wondered, not for the first time, how many unexplained deaths over the years had been caused by poisonous air.
The thought sobered her as she kept walking, heading towards a shack she hadn’t seen for over six years. It hadn’t changed, as far as she could tell; it was still a long low building that seemed permanently on the verge of falling and being squashed under its own weight. The roof was covered with soil and grass, a trick that was supposed to keep the heat from escaping during the long winter months. The hell of it, she reflected, was that it actually worked. It just didn’t feel that way. She shuddered, remembering long nights when they’d huddled together for warmth. It wasn’t something she could do now. Not after…