Stealing Into Winter. Graeme Talboys K.
hard-baked mud walls. Quiet except for the ghost that continued to skitter across the open space, spinning toward Jeniche and then changing direction. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up and her flesh tingled as it passed. She pulled her keffiyeh up over the lower half of her face, squinting as dust drifted into the stairwell. Childhood memories drifted in with it, just as unwanted. She blinked the dust from her eyes, wiping away a grimy tear with the back of her hand.
Turning in her shadowy hiding place, she watched the ghost swithering for a moment before it gathered new energy. It dashed along the main road out of the square, picking up more dust as it went, twisting, hissing, and taking on a more solid form. Without warning it collapsed. Mute sunlight pressed down into the silence as the dust settled.
Still uncertain, Jeniche waited. She much preferred crowds, hiding in plain view. Skulking and scurrying, even with the excuse of the heat, always looked suspicious. And her caution was rewarded as a squad of soldiers appeared at the end of the road where the dust ghost had collapsed.
Careful to remain perfectly still, she watched them, learning. It was all worth knowing. They must, she thought, be sweltering in their dark uniforms. But she also saw they were highly trained. They appeared to be standing casually, relaxed; but they were watching all the routes, and one, she noticed, watched the rooftops. Their backs were to walls and they moved as a unit. And they were still taken by surprise.
Plaster exploded in a puff of white dust as someone using a sling just missed the head of one of the soldiers, leaving a fist-sized crater in the side of a building. The squad ran off out of sight, firecracker sounds loud and echoing in the empty streets.
Taking her chance, Jeniche mounted the steps and crossed the square. On the far side she stepped into the shaded obscurity of a narrow alley. At the first doorway she dumped the basket she was carrying along with the sheet she had worn as a dress. Sometimes, it was useful to be what she was. It was only bored lechers that looked twice at a serving girl out on an errand. Now, though, she needed to become what people in this part of the city believed her to be.
As she moved away from the doorway, she found herself almost falling over a young Tunduri monk. Several paces beyond the child stood a much older man also dressed in the traditional mossy green robes worn by those who had dedicated their lives to the Bonudi religion. They had clearly been caught in the city when the invasion began, separated from their fellows by the fighting. Tired. Dirty. They stood looking at her.
Jeniche glanced over her shoulder, certain she sensed the presence of others behind her. There was nothing there. The alley and its entrance to the square where the dust ghost had danced remained empty in the midday heat.
The boy smiled. It did nothing to dispel the uneasiness that Jeniche experienced. It seemed less a greeting than a sign that he understood something. About her. Understood everything.
She shivered and was about to step around the boy and head off to Pennor’s for a meal when the old man spoke. The boy half turned his head to listen. His eyes, laughing and ancient, stayed firmly fixed on Jeniche, pinning her to the spot. The business of the world seemed suspended.
When the old man finished, he stepped forward and held out his cupped hands. With an inexplicable sense of relief, Jeniche shrugged. The Tunduri were begging and she had nothing to give. Apart from the basket. She hadn’t bothered to look at the contents when she helped herself. She gestured to it in the doorway and slipped past the monks, hurrying to get away.
The encounter left her unsettled. The last few days had taken their toll on body and mind. She didn’t understand how she had missed seeing the monks as she entered the alley; didn’t like the idea they had probably seen her transformation from serving girl to lad about town. Worst of all was the way the child had looked at her. Into her. Smiling. Or maybe he was the sort of child that some peoples would abandon in a wild place to let nature reclaim its own. Like the Antari.
At the top of the alley, she looked back. The Tunduri had gone. Ah well, she thought, nothing there a good meal won’t help to fix. If only the rest of life was that easy.
‘Hello, Pennor.’
Pennor dropped the tray he was carrying, stumbled as he tried to avoid treading on the wooden platters and ended up sprawled on one of his benches. He heaved himself upright, clutching his chest. ‘You little bastard. What you want to creep up on someone like that for?’
Jeniche grinned and settled herself at a table, close to the kitchen and facing the main door.
‘What you doing here?’
‘It’s a café, Pennor. I want some food.’
‘Not that, you scruff. I heard you was arrested.’
‘Oh? And where did you hear that?’
Pennor frowned. ‘You’re not pinning that on me. You was dragged out of Dillick’s place by four city guards. Made a right mess of his place.’ He smiled. ‘Word gets round quick.’
‘That much is true. I hadn’t got my spoon in the bowl before they arrived. Who could get to them that quickly, eh?’
‘No good asking me,’ said Pennor, edging past Jeniche into the kitchen doorway. ‘You want to be talking to Dillick.’
‘I will be, don’t you worry. But I want to eat first. Without fear of interruption.’ She looked up at Pennor. He gave a sickly smile in return.
‘You can trust me.’
‘I know. Because I know too much about you.’
‘What would you like to eat?’ he asked. ‘On the house.’
She paid when she left, not wanting to be in debt to Pennor. Besides, it was worth it. He might be all sorts of low life, but Pennor could cook and he kept a clean kitchen.
Before heading for Dillick’s tavern, Jeniche made a detour into the maze of alleys close to the top of the Old City grandly known as the Jeweller’s Quarter. It was a ramshackle place with dozens of small workshops and safe rooms crowded into the back ways behind the classier shops where jewellery and other items of metalwork were sold.
The whitesmiths shared it with locksmiths and sword smiths and all manner of artisans who spent their days hunched over their work, making the most of the natural light. The sound of hammers, saws, and files rang over the wheeze of bellows and the conversation and catcalls of the boys who worked them.
Jeniche had been in two minds about venturing so close to the Old City, but there seemed little evidence there of the invading forces. Thin trails of smoke still rose from the direction of the docks, occasional squads of pale-faced, sweating men in dark uniforms trotted by on business of their own. And that was it.
She stopped outside one workshop and waited for the crouched figure of Feldar to finish. Long, thin fingers worked with delicate instruments, plaiting gold wire. When the work was done the jeweller looked up. He squinted, refocusing his eyes.
‘Well, this is a surprise.’
‘You’d heard as well, I take it.’
A grey, bushy eyebrow was raised. ‘Aren’t you taking a risk?’
‘I think the city guard is otherwise occupied, just now.’
‘Hmmm.’ Feldar lifted the board on which he had been working from his knees and put it to one side. He unfolded his long, thin frame; joints cracked and Jeniche winced at the sound.
They went through into the dark, leaving Feldar’s tools and precious metals where they lay. Jeniche had been unable to believe it when she first wandered through the alleys, all that wealth for the taking. And then she had seen what happened to someone who tried, noticing only then that the workshops at the end of the alleys all belonged to blacksmiths.
The would-be thief had been carried back to the whitesmith’s workshop where he returned the silver ingot he had tried to run away with. And then his fingers had been laid one by one on an anvil and broken with the blade end of a hammer. Jeniche had been standing outside Feldar’s workshop at the time,