Heartland Page 5

  ‘No,’ she said, and he recoiled from the fierceness in her voice. ‘It is not your place.’

  But Char had seen all that he needed to. Ma was hiding. And underneath her calm façade, she was terrified.

  Char didn’t sleep much that night. When dawn picked out the stitches in the stretched hide of the tent, he knew what he had to do.

  He had reason enough to kill Genge, but his goal was manifold: he would do it for Ma. When Genge was dead, she’d have nowhere to hide. Years of running had blown her fear out of all proportion. She had broken her own rule: never turn your back on your demons. Now, when Ma glanced over her shoulder, her demons had become giants. This was the reason why she insisted they stay with Genge – always on the move.

  Skin tingling with his decision, Char threw back the tent flap … and got a face full of sand. The smoky black lenses he wore to cover his eyes blocked the worst of it. But the fine grains coated his lips and nostrils and stuck to the sweat on his face. Char retched and choked, guffaws ringing in his ears. Ren and Tunser. He spat his next mouthful at their boots.

  Tunser let out a growl to match his girth. He was wide, unlike his brother, but with the same pale skin that blistered beneath the unforgiving sun of the Beaches. They hailed from the north, Char knew, up near the borders of Yrmfast, where they were still under bounty. Many of the men Genge hired were criminals in their own lands. But no matter what they’d done, the law wouldn’t pursue them into the Beaches, not when the Beaches were themselves considered a death sentence.

  Char straightened. ‘Bastards.’

  ‘Thought you’d like a blast,’ Ren said, grinning. ‘Scrub some of that dirt off you.’

  Char shook the last of the sand from his clothes. ‘Too stupid to think up anything new?’

  Ren shrugged off the insult, but Tunser clenched his fists. Char laid a casual hand on the sticks behind his belt. ‘Come on, then, Tun,’ he said invitingly and rolled the night’s stiffness out of his shoulders. ‘Or you’ll be thinking about me all day.’

  Ren’s grin disappeared. He grabbed his brother’s wrist, a warning.

  Char smiled. ‘Just between you and me, Tunser,’ he said, ‘I think Ren’s worried I’ll hurt you.’

  The big man shook off his brother and furiously lunged at Char.

  He sidestepped the charge, spun the kali sticks into his hands and cracked one across Tunser’s shoulder blades. That move wouldn’t cause injury, but it would enrage him further. Predictably, Tunser bellowed and swung a meaty fist at Char’s head.

  Char ducked it and punched the ends of both sticks into the man’s diaphragm. Winded, Tunser staggered back and knocked over his brother. They tumbled to the sand in a tangle of limbs, and Char threw back his head and laughed.

  Like a snake, Ren twisted free of his brother and sprang up, pulling a knife from his belt. He had none of Tunser’s bulk, being spear-thin and half a head taller. Still, he was the more dangerous of the two, quick and vicious.

  Darting forward, Char went for his wrist, using the first disarming form Ma had taught him. Ren parried and Char saw his error too late. The scuffle had carried him perilously close to one of the wagons. When Ren lunged back at him, he had nowhere to go. Char got one stick up to block, but the knife shivered along its length and sliced into his forearm.

  Several things happened at once. Char gasped as Ren hooted in triumph. He watched as the wound on his arm opened, oozing blood. The pain came a moment later … and some restraint broke within him. Ren had only a moment to stare at the blood that ran in black rivulets down Char’s arm before a wind hit him, a wind with all the force of the desert behind it.

  Ren flew ten feet to smash against the door of an empty cage. The wind, which had come from nowhere on a windless day, held him there, splayed and defenceless, and his knife dropped from nerveless fingers. Char could see the whites of Ren’s eyes, as the man stared at him, inaudible words forming on his lips.

  Rage thundered in Char, boiling the black blood that welled from his slashed arm. The wind roared, filled his whole body with a whirl of air and sky.

  ‘Lesko!’

  Genge. And with his shout, the wind died. Char blinked. For the first time, he saw Tunser, contorted in a ball on the ground. Sand coated everything … everything except Char. He looked over his shoulder. The wind had come from the desert, but behind him, nothing was disturbed. Instead, a tumbled trail of debris spread in a rough cone from where he stood backed against the wagon.

  Dazed, Char tugged off his headscarf to bind the wound. His grey hair, more the colour of true ash than the dark char he was named for, fell around his face. Hoping the slave master hadn’t seen the blood, he wrapped his injury and pulled the scarf tight, biting off a curse.

  Genge kicked a length of rope out of his way. Stepping over a spare wheel, he came to stand in front of the three men. Char felt light-headed. He rifled through the last few minutes, trying to make sense of them.

  ‘What is this?’

  The slave master filled his vision. Char stood, clutching his arm, and Genge’s face darkened at his silence. It was a placid face with wide-set, not unpleasant features. It was a face few suspected and many came afterwards to hate. Char thought bitterly, It is a face to hide behind.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ren uncurl from where the wind had dropped him in a heap on the sand. The brothers struggled to their feet, spitting out mouthfuls of desert sand. Char almost smiled.

  ‘I said,’ Genge breathed in a low voice, ‘what is this?’

  ‘He attacked Tun,’ Ren said before Char could answer.

  ‘It was self-defence.’

  ‘He attacked him.’ Ren spoke more loudly. ‘He’s wild, Genge. Like a dog. You ought to be rid of him.’

  Genge’s pale eyes flicked to the scarf wrapped around Char’s arm and Char felt cold, standing there under the sweltering sun. Surely Ren had seen him bleed, had noticed the colour of his blood.

  Then, cat-quick, Genge reached out and whipped the lenses off his eyes.

  Panic shot through Char. But the slave master merely tossed the black lenses into the sand. ‘You’ll look at me when I talk to you.’

  Char let go of his breath. ‘Yessir.’ If his pupils looked like a regular man’s, then the rage truly had left him. For now. He had no illusion that this was anything but a temporary calm.

  ‘I keep you on your Ma’s word,’ Genge said, grabbing a fistful of cloth at Char’s neck. ‘She says you’re good. And she doesn’t lie.’

  How little you know her, Char thought.

  With a glance at his bandaged arm, Genge shoved him away and turned to include the brothers. ‘I pay you to fight bandits and mysha.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Unless you want a night on the dunes, you’ll keep your peace.’

  Char grimaced and saw his expression echoed on the faces of Ren and Tunser. A night on the dunes meant death; there was no way to hide from the packs of sand dogs, the mysha, that hunted there. Although if it came to a choice between them and facing Ma’s wrath if she found out he’d been fighting, he might opt for the mysha.

  The caravan rolled on its slow course under the relentless sun. Char made sure to keep the slaves hydrated. Until they reached Na Sung Aro and were sold at auction, their well-being was his responsibility. A dead slave meant a serious loss of profit for the crew.

  They had several able-bodied slaves that Iarl Rogan would probably buy for his Causcan mines. And if they were lucky, Iarl Alder would take their girls, seeing as how he only ever staffed his smithies with women. Char grinned. Good stock sometimes meant a bonus and he wanted a new scabbard to hold his kali sticks. Na Sung Aro wasn’t the best place to buy leather, but –

  What am I thinking? Char snatched back the water skin from the slave girl he had passed it to, ignoring her pleading request for more. He jammed the stopper in savagely and hooked the skin onto his belt. I need a plan to get out of here, not a bloody scabbard. But it was difficult to think in this blinding sun, let alone to think logi
cally.

  The nameless girl slumped defeated against the bars of her cage, but her sister eyed him venomously, her blue eyes afire with hatred. She hawked and spat and her aim was unerringly true. Calmly, Char removed the black lenses he wore and wiped them clean. The girl should be grateful, he thought, as he turned away – at least she had shade and didn’t have to trudge through the burning sands.

  Blotting the sweat from his face with the trailing end of a fresh headscarf, he returned to his assigned place in the vanguard. Genge’s caravan consisted of three covered slave wagons, pulled by a desert team of dune mules, a cart that carried whatever of the slaves’ possessions Genge considered worth selling, and another that held the tents, weapons, water barrels and rations they’d need to survive in the desert.

  Genge had been one of the first to capitalize on the empire’s slackening grip on its territories. And its grip on the Beaches was the slackest of all. Stalked by the rabid mysha, baked by blistering sun during the day and frozen under clear skies at night, only the very brave or very stupid made a life here. The Beaches had seen off the last Sartyan patrol around three years ago and it seemed that the Davaratch was disinclined to lose another. It wasn’t any surprise, then, that illicit trades had sprung up in and around the desert. Na Sung Aro had once been a ragtag straggle of huts sliding into the sand; now it was known as the Black Bazaar – a place that sold anything and anyone.

  Char let his lip curl. Slavery was the cleanest trade out here in the desert, considering what else went on. He had no patience with those who dabbled in narcotics like ithum or the rare and dangerous lotys stems, worth ten times their weight in ken. But drugs were the lifeblood of Na Sung Aro and ensured that the Black Bazaar remained a haven for the empire’s many enemies.

  ‘Hey!’

  The shout came from behind him. One of the slaves had managed to drag half the canvas covering off his cage in the front of the wagon and was standing as upright as the bars allowed. He was newly acquired from a ship unlucky enough to be wrecked on the barren coast of the Beaches. Most shipwrecked died within days, either from injuries sustained in the wreck or at the jaws of a pack of mysha, but this man had suffered only bruises. Genge had considerately ‘rescued’ him and now intended to sell him in Na Sung Aro. Char didn’t think he’d get much.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Char sighed wearily. ‘Don’t waste your breath,’ he muttered.

  ‘My name is Iarl Blattley – of Calmarac!’ the captive added, as if on sudden inspiration. ‘My estate supplies wine to the Davaratch himself.’

  Char glanced over his shoulder. The man’s face was ruddy in the heat and his salt-stained tunic had shrunk to reveal a fat strip of belly beneath. ‘Vintner to the Davaratch, eh?’ he said. ‘You must be good.’

  ‘Yes – yes,’ the portly man gasped, wiping his face on his sleeve. ‘The secret of the golden grape has been preserved in my family for generations. No other estate can produce so rich a flavour.’

  ‘A talent that brings in a tidy profit, no doubt.’

  ‘Tidy, yes,’ the man said eagerly. ‘I knew you’d understand – you’ve a sharp look about you. I am a wealthy man, very wealthy indeed. And I could provide significant reparation were you to set me free.’

  Char turned back to the desert to hide his smile. ‘Exactly how significant?’

  There was a pause in which he could almost hear the fat man struggling with his greed.

  ‘I could stretch to, say, one hundred red ken.’

  Char snorted. ‘A hundred? I could make twice that from selling your hide in Na Sung Aro.’

  ‘All right, two hundred,’ the man said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice.

  Char turned to look at him again and the man visibly recoiled. ‘Two hundred miserable red ken?’ he asked him softly. ‘You don’t place much value on freedom, vintner to the Davaratch.’

  ‘Three hundred, four hundred,’ the man spluttered, but Char shook his head.

  ‘You know what I think?’ he said. ‘I think you’ve never seen a bottle of Calmaracian wine in your life. Your tunic carries the signature of the Arkhann Weavers – fake, by the way – and your boots are made from green Stroc skin that only a local of the Hozen Swamps would be able to obtain. My guess is that you’re a minor lord with a few debts in his saddlebags who decided to try his hand at smuggling. A storm blew up on the Cargarac – and if you were a genuine smuggler, you’d have known that it’s currently storm season – wrecked your ship and destroyed your cargo of poteen, which is the only illegal substance that the people of the Hozen Swamps are any good at making.’

  There was stunned silence from the man in the cage. Then – ‘My tunic’s a fake?’

  ‘And a poor one at that,’ Char answered. ‘You can tell by the lack of double loops around the kingfisher’s tail.’

  ‘I’ll kill Egger,’ came the man’s reply.

  ‘So you see, my friend,’ Char said, gazing out at the shimmering sands that hid Na Sung Aro, ‘your knowledge of hooch-brew is worth more to us than your stingy offering of ken. Which, for the record, I don’t believe exists.’

  When he next looked round, the man had turned his back and small, smothered sobs shook his shoulders. ‘In the desert,’ Char informed him, ‘tears are a waste of water.’ He smiled without humour. ‘I suspect you’ll learn that the hard way.’

  The walls of Na Sung Aro slowly shaped themselves out of the twilight and Char breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced at the surrounding desert, but nothing moved. Though mysha were shy around Na Sung Aro, their scavenger instinct was sometimes too powerful for them to ignore, particularly when the pack hadn’t eaten well. So the people of the Black Bazaar were guarded by seven-foot walls of smooth adobe brick, which completely encircled the town. They might keep the mysha out, but they also kept people in and sand dogs were far from the only danger here.

  Beyond the low, round-roofed buildings, a wind was blowing up in the east. Char felt it in his bones. He’d always been sensitive to the airy force that whipped up the dune tops in a frenzy of dust. He knew the direction the wind would come from; he knew how strong it would blow, as if something inside both of them was the same. As a boy, he’d mentioned the feeling to Ma, and hadn’t forgotten the fleeting fear that had crossed her face. He’d kept quiet about it after that.

  The wind tasted strange tonight. The familiar dry tang of the desert was there, but beneath it was something more, something he’d never felt. This wind was rich, as if it blew from a land far greater than the desert. Char thought he discerned pine trees, hot rock, frothing rivers and mountains – those fabled spires of stone he’d heard tell of but had never seen.

  The only land east of Na Sung Aro was Baior … and the hoarlands. The Beaches might be famous for swallowing Sartyan patrols, but a whole division had once disappeared in the hoarlands. With Rairam gone, they marked the end of the world. The last Starborn had vanished five centuries before, taking the lost continent with him and thereby ending the Sartyan Conquest. Some people believed Rairam to be destroyed, gone forever, but Char wasn’t so sure. Especially when the wind blew from the east.

  ‘Lesko,’ a voice snapped and Char realized he was standing as though frozen. He shook himself out of his daze and saw Genge. The slave master pulled a cloak over his leathers and shrugged up its hood to protect him from the whirling sands. ‘Help Hake set up,’ he said, ‘and keep a watch on the girls.’ His pale eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t want them spoiled before market.’

  Char nodded and the slave master strode away towards the centre of town. He’d be back by midnight, his pockets bulging with ken – private viewings were reserved for top customers and accounted for nearly a quarter of the caravan’s profit. They’d have tonight to prepare the slaves before potential buyers began arriving at dawn.

  Several caravans had already set up camp in the space reserved for them just inside Na Sung Aro’s walls. The makeshift paving didn’t stretch to this apron of land where the sand was
packed solid by the hard feet of the slave trade. Char took the water around again, letting the slaves drink their fill. Long practice had taught him to close his ears to the pleas and rages of people crying out for freedom. Although the harsh reality of the caravan was the only world he knew, he couldn’t help wondering what his life might have been if his parents, whoever they were, had wanted him. It was a bitter poison that made him despise the caravan and his sordid existence all the more.

  But Ma wouldn’t leave, and if he belonged anywhere, it was at her side.

  Tunser drew a whetstone in slow strokes up and down his blade; an empty threat. Char knew the big man wouldn’t continue their quarrel. It was more than both their lives were worth if Genge returned and found them fighting. A quiet cough sounded behind him and Char turned to find Ma standing with bucket and sponge in hand.

  ‘Time to see to the girls,’ she said and then looked narrowly at his stained clothes. ‘You could do with a bath yourself.’

  He sighed. ‘Do you ever think of a life outside the caravan, Ma?’

  Her face darkened. ‘We have spoken about this.’

  ‘But there’s a whole world beyond the Beaches,’ Char pressed. The scent of the wind was still in his nostrils and it made him restless. ‘You weren’t born here. Don’t you ever feel like going home?’

  Ma’s look was cold. ‘I have no home.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ The restlessness was creeping into Char’s voice now, making it stronger. ‘But you came from somewhere outside the desert. You had a family, a people. You belonged. I’m an orphan, so this is the only life I’ve known, but—’

  ‘Enough,’ she said, throwing her pail to the ground. ‘I refuse to be judged by you – whom I rescued and raised instead of leaving to perish as I should have done.’

  Char took a step closer, the strange wind at his back. It seemed to whisper in his ears, to blow shivering down his spine. ‘You owe me the truth, Ma.’