But even if she didn’t, she was lost in a foreign country, pursued by enemies. If she had any sense, she’d be trying to get home.
“She would try to reach Crotheny,” he said.
Vaseto nodded. “Two ways to do that. By sea or by land. Does she have money, this girl?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I should think it would be easier to go by land. You ought to know—you just came that way.”
“Yes, but the roads are dangerous, especially if those men are still hunting her.” He shifted in his saddle. “The countess said something about a man who had his head cut off, and was yet still alive.”
“She told you about that, did she? And you’ve waited this long to ask me about it?”
“I want to know what I’m up against.”
“I would tell you if I knew,” Vaseto said. “Not the usual sort of knight, but that’s obvious. As the countess said, the fellow was still alive, after a fashion, but not exactly in a condition to speak.” She wrinkled her brow. “Don’t you object to this at all? You seem all too eager to accept a most absurd notion.”
“I have seen shinecraft and encrotacnia enough this past year,” Neil said. “I’ve no reason to doubt the countess and every reason to believe her. If she told me they were the eschasl themselves come back from the grave, I would credit it.”
“Eschasl?” Vaseto said. “You mean the Skasloi? You Lierish can certainly mangle up words, I’ll give you that. In any event, the men we’re talking about are human, or started that way. We did find the more ordinary sort of corpse, as well. If I had to guess, they’re from your country, or some other northern place, for several had yellow hair like yours, and light-colored eyes. They were not Vitellian.”
“Which leads me to wonder how they came so deep into your country on a mission of murder.”
Vaseto grinned. “But you already know the answer to that, or at least you have some suspicion. Someone here is helping them.”
“The Church?”
“Not the Church, but maybe someone in the Church. Or it might be the merchant guilds, given your Sir Quinte’s attentions. Or it could be any random prince, who knows? But they have aid here, of that you can be sure.”
“And have they aid in z’Espino?”
“That’s likely enough. A copper minser could corrupt most any official in this wicked town.”
Neil nodded, looking with fresh eyes at the landscape that lay between him and city.
“What’s that down there?” he asked, pointing to where the road they were on joined a larger way. Along it, numerous tents and stalls had been set up. Just past the joining, the road crossed a stone bridge over a canal, and there was a gate on the city side.
“That’s where the merchant guilds take their taxes,” Vaseto replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because if I were looking for someone entering or leaving z’Espino, that’s where I might place myself.”
Vaseto nodded. “Good. I’ll make you a suspicious man yet.”
“They might be looking for me, too,” Neil said.
“Good boy.”
He felt she might have been talking to one of her dogs. He glanced at her, but she was staring intently at the travelers who were cueing up to cross the bridge.
“I have an idea,” she said.
Neil pressed his eye to the crack in the wagon wall. Through the narrow slit, he saw mostly color—silks and satin and brightly dyed cotton swirling like a thousand flower petals in the wind. Faces were nearly lost in it, but he caught them now and then.
The wain jounced to a stop. He tried to find the view he was after, by half crouching and gazing through a knothole.
A group of men in orange surcoats was talking to the drivers of wagons and those on foot or with pack animals. They examined cargo sometimes, sometimes let the travelers pass with little comment. A few arguments erupted, ending when coins changed hands. Beyond all that, at the gate, were more men, these armed, and he could see the archers in the towers above the gate.
He kept looking, cursing the knothole for affording such a small field of vision. The guildsmen were moving toward the wagon he sheltered in. Soon, he would have to—
It wasn’t his eyes that gave him the clue, but his ears. The cloud of unintelligible Vitellian surrounding him had become transparent. Now, through that clearness, he heard a language he recognized. A language he loathed. Hanzish.
He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he knew the cadence of it, the long vowel glides and throat-catching gutturals. His hands clenched involuntarily into fists.
He moved to another crack, bumping his head in the process. “Hiss, back there,” a voice whispered furiously. “There’s no bargain if you don’t lie still, as you were told.”
“A moment,” Neil replied.
“No moment. Get in your place, now.”
A face pushed through the curtain, and light flooded in. Neil saw only the silhouette of a broad-brimmed hat and the faint glint of leaf-green eyes.
“Do you see anyone with light hair out there?”
“The two Hanzish with the guildsmen? Yes. Now lie down!”
“You see them?”
“Of course I see them. They’re watching people, watching the guildsmen do their work. Looking for you, I’d guess, and they’ll find you if you don’t lie still!”
Another face pushed through, this one Vaseto’s. “Do it, you great idiot. I’m your eyes here! I’ve marked them. Now play your part.”
Neil hesitated for a moment, but realized he had no choice now. He couldn’t fight all of the guildsmen and the Hanzish, too . . .
He lay back, pulled the cloth up over his mouth, just as someone thumped on the back of the wagon. He tried to slow his breathing, but with a start realized he’d forgotten something. The coins! He found them and placed them on his eyes, just as the back wagon flap rustled.
He held his breath.
“Pis’es ecic egmo?” someone asked sharply.
“Uno viro morto,” A heavily ironic voice said. Neil recognized it as that of the Sefry man who spoke for the rest of them.
“Ol Viedo! Pis?”
Neil felt fingers grab his arm. He fought the instinct to leap up.
Then he felt fingers brush his forehead. His breath was going stale, and his lungs began to hurt.
“Chiano Vechioda daz’Ofina,” the Sefry replied. “Mortat daca crussa.”
The fingers jerked away. “Diuvo!” the guildsman shouted, and the flap closed. There followed an argument he could not make out. Finally, after long moments, the wagon started moving again. After an eternity of wooden wheels grinding and stopping on stone, someone tapped his boot.
“You can get up now,” Vaseto said.
Neil took the coins from his eyes and sat up. “We’re through the gate?”
“Yes, no thanks to you,” Vaseto grumbled. “Didn’t I tell you it would work?”
“He [garbled] of me. In another instant he would have reckoned I was still warm.”
“Probably. I didn’t say it was without risk. But the Sefry played their parts well.”
“What did they tell him?”
“That you died of the bloody-pus plague.” She smiled. “The makeup helped.”
Neil nodded, scratching at the counterfeit welts the Sefry had made of flour and pig’s blood.
“He’s probably off praying right now,” she added. She jerked her head. “Come on.”
He poked his head out the back of the wain. They were in some sort of square surrounded by tall buildings. One, with a high dome, was likely a temple. People bustled everywhere, as strangely and colorfully dressed as the caravaners at the bridge.
They went around to the front of the wagon, where three Sefry sat under an awning, swaddled thickly against the sun.
“Thank you,” Neil said.
One of the Sefry, an old woman, snorted. The other two ignored him.