‘Stalwick.’ Gita raised a finger at him. ‘Please.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, sorry. Sharr, sorry.’
‘Anyway,’ Sharr went on, ‘when he said it, I knew we had to get over here in a hurry.’ He nodded towards the body in the corner, ‘but it looks like you had things in hand.’ Outside, the sleet had stopped; the street was silent. Drops from the roof above plunked an irregular rhythm on the wooden sill.
Gita gave the tired fisherman an uncharacteristic hug, then opened the windows, reaching on tiptoe to get the higher latch. She looked more like the partisans’ grandmother than their leader.
‘What happened, ma’am?’ Barrold picked up the chair, the map and what remained of Gita’s breakfast. He turned the body over with his foot. The woman was younger than Sharr, but not young. She was dressed as a maid, but it was impossible to know if she was merely a terrorist, sympathetic to Malakasian rule, or one of the occupation soldiers who had remained behind when the rest of them disappeared across the North Sea.
‘She brought a knife with my breakfast,’ Gita said calmly. ‘It was a mistake.’
‘A knife, ma’am?’ Markus asked. ‘Don’t they always bring a knife with your breakfast?’
‘I was having eggs and booacore.’
‘Well, you don’t need a knife for those things, ma’am,’ Stalwick broke in to state the obvious. ‘What needs cutting, really? I mean, what would you cut with a knife? It isn’t as though she brought you a loaf of old bread or anything.’
Sharr tested his legs and went to close the windows. ‘It’s cold.’
‘You all right?’ Gita asked.
‘Fine, fine.’ Sharr checked the street in either direction. ‘Just too rutting old for this business.’ The temperature had dropped again, and the sleet would freeze by the dinner aven, coating the town in ice. It would be a cold night for chainball.
‘Don’t talk to me about old, my friend.’ Gita smiled. ‘Anyway, if this one was Malakasian military, we have to be alert. Who knows what the others might be up to? How many did you say they had left?’ She ignored the body as she circled the table, shuffling through maps until she found one of Capehill.
‘There was a squad, maybe a handful more,’ Sharr said, ‘so fifteen, perhaps twenty soldiers.’
‘So we assume they’re in civilian clothes, hiding here somewhere amongst us.’ Gita bent over the map, her nose nearly touching the parchment.
‘That’s troublesome,’ Markus said.
‘And there’s no way to smoke them out,’ Barrold added.
‘Unless we round up the locals. You know them, Sharr. Pull two or three soldiers from each platoon, no more than ten from a company. Spread them out; blanket the town. See if anyone’s heard anything, seen anything. Find these motherwhoring pukes and bring me one of them alive.’
‘Very good, ma’am,’ Markus said.
‘And Sharr-’ Gita tugged her dagger loose from the treacherous maid’s chest with a grunt, ‘stay on your friend Hernesto. I want as much information as possible on the condition of the roads, the surrounding farms, the winter stores, the slaughterhouses, all of it.’ When he nodded agreement, she turned to Barrold and asked, ‘Any new additions overnight?’
‘Most of one platoon from the Central Plains, and almost a full company from Gorsk,’ he said.
‘Anyone from Rona?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Bloody Sallax.’ Gita frowned. And no word from Gilmour and the others either. When’s the Twinmoon, anyway?’
‘Maybe another day or two.’ Sharr checked again out the window, looking north.
‘We’re going to lose sleep over these leftover soldiers, boys. This isn’t good. Sharr, you’d better be right about Hernesto, because if he’s dirty, I’m going to eat his heart.’ Ignoring the map now, the grey-haired little woman prowled back and forth on bare feet, twirling her bloody dagger absentmindedly. ‘We have what… a thousand?’
‘Just over a thousand, ma’am,’ Barrold said.
‘Just over a thousand soldiers to feed, clothe and house this Twin-moon. I want to know that we’re hauling nets and booacore traps, that we’re running carts and wagons out to every farm with a storage cellar or a grain bin, that we’re contracting with every tailor, smith- rutters, even any schoolchild who can sharpen a blade or sew on a whoring button, understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ they echoed in unison.
‘This corner of Eldarn is the closest thing we’ve had to freedom since before your great-grandmothers were in nappies – even yours, Sharr! – and I don’t want us making a bloody mess of it. If an armoured division is riding north along the Merchants’ Highway, I want to know. If a Malakasian sympathiser is putting chickenshit in the water supply, I want to know. If a local whore is selling information to a Malakasian spy, I want her gutted and served up with greenroot and pepperweed. I want every able-bodied farmer, merchant, sailor, fisherman, bartender, gutter-digger, fruit-picker and teacher armed and ready to defend this town, or to march on my orders. History will not recall that we had this opportunity and buggered it up; I don’t care how many knife-wielding scullery whores they send in here to stick holes in me.’ Gita stood toe-to-toe with Markus Fillin. She was a full head shorter than the Falkan farmer, but Sharr wouldn’t have wanted to bet on who would win in a bar fight, especially hand-to-hand.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Markus said. Sharr nodded, and ushered Stalwick towards the door.
‘And find me these terrorists! Our hold on this town remains in jeopardy until we do.’
Markus saw the first fire before dawn.
Sharr was sleeping. They had been up much of the night, organising the search teams. By the middlenight aven, Markus had questioned hundreds of locals and dispatched pairs of their people to investigate nearly as many reports of suspicious strangers, unknown vagrants or potential terrorists. The people of Capehill either had no idea where twenty Malakasian warriors could have secreted themselves, or they knew exactly where to find the terrorists and were happy to lead Markus and his team to the hideouts. Naturally, each of these forays beneath the coastal town’s damp underbelly yielded nothing, and Markus, falling asleep on his feet, dismissed the search deployment for a few avens’ sleep.
But now he had the chance, Markus couldn’t sleep. He had met Sharr back at the boarding house – they had taken the room next to Gita’s, with Stalwick and Barrold in the chamber across the corridor. The big fisherman, exhausted after his heroic sprint across the town, had collapsed in his cloak and boots. He snored loudly for a few moments, then rolled onto his back, his mouth lolling open. Sharr owned an apartment near the waterfront; his wife and two sons were there, but he preferred to spend the night near Gita, on hand should another clandestine plot unfold before dawn.
Markus stirred the coals in their small fireplace, added a few bits of wood and some dried-out corn cobs Stalwick had hauled from the bin in the canning cellar, and warmed his hands. Someone shouted outside: a warning or a cry for help. Markus shuffled to the window, more out of curiosity than concern.
‘Who’s yelling at this aven?’ he asked of no one.
A shadow, dark and quick, hustled towards the town centre. Another followed. There was a second shout, louder this time, from the direction of Argile Street, the downtown business area.
‘What’s this?’ Markus whispered, his breath fogging the blurry pane.
Then he heard the cry again, this time from three or four streets over. Fire!
Someone moved in Gita’s room. There was a thud, some footsteps, and then the tired creak of her window hinges, complaining in the cold.
The first orange and yellow tendrils danced in the predawn haze. A plume of thin smoke rose above the merchant district, trailing in the light breeze.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sharr asked, without moving.
‘Nothing,’ Markus said. ‘Go back to sleep. One of the alehouses is on fire… I think. I’m not sure if it’s the Cask and Cork, the one we were in the other night, or the building right next door. It’s hard to see from this far away.’