Sharfy sat back placidly, watching the veins bulge in Kiown’s neck, the flying spittle. ‘You finished yet?’ he said.
‘No! Traitorous shit! After I brought you the masks and all. You made it sound like I want us to get caught and killed.’
‘Guess I’m the one whose face he should’ve smashed. I done you wrong.’ Sharfy laughed his loud ugly laugh, then spat. Eric had seldom seen a meaner-looking face in his life than Sharfy’s gnarled, scarred and dented one. ‘Guess you won’t be leading any more missions any time soon,’ he said.
‘Aha! Now it comes out,’ Kiown said, looking triumphant and newly enraged all at once, the cone of red hair swaying wildly. He stood and walked away, his long lean body convulsing with anger, jerking him as if puppet strings pulled from above. Eric sat in his vacated place by the fire, glad of its warmth.
On the ground before Sharfy was a pile of that brackish dirt. Next to it were about a dozen flat, sparkling pieces that they’d dug out and rubbed clean. ‘You’re awake,’ said Sharfy. ‘Anfen doesn’t let me sleep that long. Not in Aligned country. You and your luck. Got that dirt I threw to you?’
Eric felt his pockets. ‘Yeah, but there’s not much.’
‘Your loss, your fault. You had a chance to grab plenty.’
Careful not to reveal the gun’s clips, Eric pulled out two handfuls of hard dirt from his pockets. Sharfy examined them. ‘Not much at all,’ he said. ‘Be lucky if there’s one or two scales here. Probably none. You’re crazy. Don’t get many chances at a dirt cart these days.’
Sharfy picked through the dirt pieces with his knife. Kiown, who’d angrily paced up the path, came back, unable to resist watching what Eric’s share would bring. Sharfy dug out what looked like sea shells buried in the dirt. ‘One, two … four, in this little clod? Ha! You and your luck.’ He spat on a rag and polished them one by one. Three of them gleamed brightly, two red, one blue, but one remained dull.
Kiown made a strangling noise. ‘He’s got a black scale!’
‘Nah, it’s just dirty,’ said Sharfy, rubbing it harder. The scale did not get any brighter. ‘Wait. It is black! Wish your luck’d start spreading around.’
Kiown made a noise like he was going to be sick. He looked at Eric in accusing disbelief. ‘You know how many black ones I’ve seen in my life? One! That one!’
Eric thought he was about to be struck by Kiown’s accusing, pointing arms. ‘It’s about the only thing in this world that I own,’ he said. ‘Does that make you feel any better? And can someone tell me what these are exactly?’
‘Scales,’ said Sharfy with a gleam in his eye. ‘Dragon scales.’
Eric looked closely at one of his other three. It gleamed a beautiful deep ruby red. ‘From the Dragon?’
‘No, from the mighty god-chicken, whose beak can peck at Time Itself,’ said Kiown in disgust. He stormed off, wringing his hands.
‘Ignore him,’ said Sharfy. ‘Lots of scales buried, over at World’s End, in the ground.’ He unfolded a small map, showing an oval shape, and pointed at a line running dead down the middle. ‘That’s World’s End. That line there’s the Wall, runs all across. Scales buried near it, mostly in the middle part, deep in the ground. Shallow ones all got dug out back when they started to use em for trading. Mad rush for scales. Now, only way they get new ones is in the mines, dirt from way down deep.’
‘Why so many, over in that spot?’
Sharfy waved away this clearly unworthy question, which Eric had learned meant he didn’t have the foggiest idea of its answer.
‘Professor Sharfy!’ Kiown called mockingly from up the pathway. ‘Say, Professor? Why are some men born short and ugly?’
‘How’s your eye, precious?’ Sharfy replied. ‘Aw, did you hurt yourself?’
‘Stop your squabbling,’ yelled an old shirtless man from one of the other fires. Apparently to himself, he said, ‘We been on this hilltop too long, like I told him. Past the point of being safe, by now. Is a tight squeeze now, oh aye.’
‘Ignore him too,’ Sharfy muttered.
‘What makes these things valuable?’ said Eric, putting the scales in his pockets.
‘Rare, pretty. Plus you can crush em up for visions. Not many people do that. Show you why.’ He took Eric’s black scale, laid it on the rocky floor, then tried to smash it with the handle of his knife, many times. The scale didn’t break or crack. The underside of Sharfy’s knife handle had some new slits cut into it. ‘See? Got magic in em. Hard to crush up — that’s why no one knows about the visions. Good thing, too. Visions sometimes show you too much.’
In that moment, Eric resolved to do a vision as a matter of priority. ‘So how would I crush it up, if I wanted to?’
‘Shh!’ Sharfy’s lopsided eyes bulged with alarm. ‘Against Anfen’s rules. He won’t have it, not while we’re on the road. But if you wanted to, that’s who you talk to.’ He pointed at the grisly old man, who now lay flat on his back, snoring.
‘What the hell is he supposed to be, anyway?’
‘Him? That’s Loup. He’s our magician.’
The magician in question farted loud enough to turn heads all across the platform his way.
‘Not quite Merlin,’ Eric murmured. ‘Not quite Gandalf. Live and learn, I guess.’
Anfen’s voice called from the upper platform. ‘Pack up camp. We ride soon.’
21
The women changed their dress out in the open, unconcerned if they were seen naked. Likewise the men. Eric found he was seeking out the one who’d shot an arrow at the train, hoping for a look at her changing garments, but when he saw her, she was watching him.
She stood and approached, the long braided plaits of hair swaying against a hide tunic which hung stiff over her, showing little of her figure. She stood close to him, chocolate-dark skin accentuating the whites of her eyes. Her tongue ran across her lips and, later, looking back, it was that one moment he’d look back on, as though it were a seed planted, or perhaps a bomb set. ‘My name is Siel. Come with me,’ she said, unsmiling.
Eric shot a questioning look at Sharfy, who seemed to be very carefully examining a stray thread in his sleeve and was totally absorbed in the task. A few heads turned to watch as Eric followed her further along the winding path, his heart beating fast. One of two things, he knew, was probably about to happen. The curved knife she’d used to cut up his briefcase hung from her belt, and he envisioned her hand moving it across his skin, opening it with the same gentle ease, spilling its contents. Her bow was still slung across her. His hand went to the gun at his side.
They came to a point on the rock path where the encampment was no longer visible behind them, nor could its noise be heard. She stopped and moved a little away from him. To their right, the rock shelf dropped off, giving a view of a paved road winding below, visible a short distance away till hidden by the hillsides through which it wound.
He wanted to gently run a finger along the bumps of her braids, see her skin below her tanned animal hide. Just that — if he could just see it, he would need nothing more.
For some reason she paced as though wrestling with a private decision. ‘You are a prince?’ she said, turning to look at him again.
Not a hard question, he found. ‘Yes.’
She bit her bottom lip, seemed to silently curse, none of which he could make the least sense of. She resumed pacing. ‘I must watch here to ensure the road is clear when we depart. Go some way further, look to your left. You’ve seen war mages. You can now see the stoneshaper mages, down below.’ Seeing the look on his face, she said, ‘Don’t fear, they aren’t aware of us and don’t care. They are far too busy building things. Watch them.’