Shadow

Poldarn nodded. 'Robbing carts,' he said.

'Trying to rob carts.' The man grinned. He couldn't be more than twenty. 'Just our luck, the first time we actually connect with anything-'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'And that's all you know about me? You're sure?'

The man dipped his head in confirmation. 'You came to the ships just after we landed. They were expecting you. At the time I guessed you were one of ours-you know, we've got scouts in deep-but I was just assuming.'

'Fine. Do I look like one of you?'

'I guess. From the south island, anyhow. But you could be one of them, too. Truth is, I haven't seen enough of them to know. This is my first time, see.'

'First time?'

'First time over here. The first expedition I've ever been on.'

'Ah.' Poldarn clicked his tongue. 'Things haven't been going well for you lately, have they?'

The young man nodded. 'It's been a thoroughly rotten year,' he said. 'First we lost twenty lambs in the cold snap, then our big shed fell in the sea during the high winds, then the sheep got into the leeks, and then we found the blight had got in the apples, ended up slinging half of 'em, and then all the bees just upped and died on us, like that, so we sold all our spare timber to get places on a ship to come here, hoping we'd be able to make enough to set it all straight, and now look. God knows what's become of Dad and Raffenkel, I'm stuck here in the middle of enemy territory, and I can't even rob a cart. It's enough to make you give up.'

Poldarn agreed that it all sounded a bit much. 'What's your name?' he asked.

'Eyvind,' the young man replied. 'And Dad's Kari. We live at a place called Ness-any of this ring any bells?'

'No,' Poldarn said. 'But that doesn't mean anything.' He thought for a moment. 'All I can suggest is that you get away from here as fast as you can, before someone comes along and finds these bodies. I'll say there was only one of you; he killed my carter, I killed him. That's all I can do for you, I'm afraid.' He paused. 'No, that's not true,' he said. He pulled his purse from his sleeve and counted out twenty quarters, leaving himself fifteen to cover his expenses for the rest of the trip. 'You could try pretending to be deaf and dumb, I suppose,' he said. 'At any rate, you'll stand a better chance than if you try and make a living as a highwayman. Do I speak with an accent?'

Eyvind nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'but I can't place it. And there's all sorts of accents up and down the south island, depending on where people came from originally. Like I said, you could be us, you could be them. No way of knowing.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said. 'I don't think his boots'll fit you, but you could pad them out with bits of shirt. I'd leave the jacket, though.' He frowned, then said, 'You can have my coat instead, I'll take his jacket. You know, I have about as much luck with coats as you do with your life in general.'

'Thank you,' Eyvind said. 'I-'

'Goodbye,' Poldarn interrupted. He pulled the dead carter up by his arms, slid him out of his jacket and toppled him off the cart; then he wriggled out of his coat, slung it out on top of the body and walked the horses on.

Of course, he hadn't much idea of where he was, so it was fortunate that the road went straight to Liancor, with no options or choices to betray him. The first things he saw, as he laboured up a slope between two high hedges and suddenly found himself at an unexpected crest overlooking a deep, hidden valley, were two sand-yellow towers four or five miles away, their tops poking up above the folds of the ground like the heads of Eyvind and his dead colleague. Half an hour or so later the gentle hills got out of the way and he was able to look down on the whole town.

It reminded him of a lake, filling the lowest point in a valley, as if the houses and buildings had drained down the hillsides and flooded the flat water meadows on either side of the shallow, lively river that wound away at right angles to the road. Certainly, Liancor gave the impression that it had got there by some natural process of accretion, that it had grown there or been carried there like river silt over a very long period of time. The light brown stone and brown-grey thatch gave the impression of camouflage, as if the town was an animal who'd grown that way to avoid the attention of predators.

He'd made a point of finding out the correct procedure, so the first thing he did was ask the way to the prefecture, which turned out to be a doorway in the side of a long, low, scruffy-looking building with large chunks missing from the outside rendering. He gave a small boy a quarter to look after the cart and went inside. There were three clerks sitting at a bench, huddled together so as to be able to share the narrow beam of light from the one small window high in the wall to their left. One of them looked up as he walked in; the other two carried on writing slowly and carefully in big ledgers.

'Hello,' he said. 'I need to report a death.'

The clerk glowered at him as if he was a small child pestering his mother for sweets. 'Right,' he said irritably; he pushed away the ledger in front of him, stretched out an arm for another ledger behind him without looking round, laid it on the desk and let it fall open at the bookmark. 'Citizen or offcomer?'

Poldarn frowned. 'Me or him?'

'Both of you.'

'Both from Sansory,' Poldarn said.

That cheered the clerk up a little. 'Fine,' he said. 'Where?'

'Four hours by cart towards the Bohec, about a day south of the river.'

'Splendid,' the clerk said. 'Outside the jurisdiction,' he explained. 'Outside the jurisdiction, I just take names and details, check the outstanding warrants, you sign or make your mark and that's that. Inside, I have to arrest you and hold you for interrogation.'

Since the clerk was short, fat, just the right side of sixty and younger than his two colleagues, that told Poldarn a lot about the way things were done in Liancor. There was a three-legged stool against the wall next to the door. Poldarn picked it up, carried it over to the table.

'Sorry,' the clerk said, 'forgot my manners. Yes, please take a seat. Names. His first.'

As the clerk dipped his pen in the inkwell, Poldarn realised that he didn't actually know the dead driver's name; the man had been sitting on the box of the cart Falx Roisin had pointed to, Poldarn had got up beside him, the cart had moved off and the man had started moaning about how unfair it all was. Quite justifiably, as it had turned out.

'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I don't know his name. He was new; at least, it was the first time we'd worked together.'

'Oh.' The clerk looked sad. 'I need a name,' he said. 'Who do you work for?'

'Falx Roisin,' Poldarn replied. 'He runs a-'

'Unknown, Falx house, Sansory,' the clerk recited as he wrote. 'That'll do fine. You see, we pass our returns on to the prefecture in Sansory, they check them against their returns, it'll be sorted out then. Your name?'

'Poldarn.'

'Poldarn what?'

'Just Poldarn. I'm a southerner.'

The clerk looked up for a moment. 'Oh well,' he said. 'All right, just Poldarn. Now then, what happened? Accident?'