That she understood what he tried to convey in those two words pleased him. He wanted to thank her but the drugged sleep overwhelmed him, and the world went dark again in the wagon.
He awakened once, groggy, thirsty, and with a mouth that felt stuffed full of wool rovings. Outside, low voices spoke near the wagon’s open door. The draft swirling over him was chilly but welcome. The effort to open his eyes proved more than he wanted to expend. He was content to lie still and listen, his growing awareness of his surroundings and increasing clarity sharpening his hearing so that indistinct murmurs became precise words and individual voices.
Two men and a woman spoke in turns. Malachus recognized them, though he could only put a name to Halani’s voice.
“I don’t care for the idea of bringing a stranger, a cursed one by his own admittance, into our territories. What if he’s an Empire spy gleaning whatever information and weakness he can find and reporting it back to Herself?”
Malachus was neither a spy for the Krael Empire nor a native son, but even he knew whom the man referred to when he mentioned “Herself.” The empress was known throughout all the world. And judging by this speaker’s tone, deeply loathed by some.
“Then he’s one piss-poor spy considering the trouble he’s landed himself in.” Halani sounded tired. “Besides, what does the Spider or her spies care about a band of free traders? I don’t expect you to welcome him, but I won’t abandon him. He’s healing incredibly fast. I, Asil, and possibly Seydom or one of the other men can stay here long enough to get him well enough and send him on his way. We can catch up with the rest of the caravan as it travels to Domora. Three people and one wagon can move a lot faster than an entire camp with all its livestock and supplies.”
“Cutting his throat and tossing him into the sedge would do away with such annoyances.”
Malachus admired the man’s pragmatism, if not his bloodthirstiness. The draga inside him slowly uncoiled from its hard-won torpor, alert to a possible threat.
The second man’s voice was far milder than the first, even a little amused. “I don’t think Halani will appreciate one of us knifing her patient after she just worked so hard to save him.”
The first man exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “He can stay for now. We’ll keep a close eye on him. If he starts smoking and setting people’s clothes on fire, I’ll succeed where his attackers failed.”
Don’t count on it, friend, Malachus thought.
“He isn’t joining our camp permanently and will be gone soon enough,” Halani replied. “I’m grateful for your support, Kursak.”
Malachus still didn’t understand Halani’s devotion to him, but he was glad for it. “As you say, he did Asil a kindness. That carries a lot of weight with me, though you’re on your own with Hamod when he learns about our latest guest. You know what he’ll say.”
“I’m hoping the Savatars’ hospitality will soften him some before he returns.”
The more mild-mannered man spoke once more. “You have to admit, it’s been a lot more peaceful in the camp without him here. Might do him—and us—some good if we sent him with the Savatar into the Stara Dragana for a season. And if you tell him I said that, I’ll say you lied.” Laughter followed his remark.
The Stara Dragana. In several of the old languages no longer spoken, it meant Womb of the Draga. One of several names by which the vast steppes were known. The birthplace of the first dragas, the burial grounds of many more. Malachus’s mother and the monks had told him of the steppe, where the bones of ancestor dragas rested deep in the earth.
If he found his mother-bond, he might well delay his return across the Raglun Sea to Winosia and visit the land of his ancestors, seek some tenuous connection to this foreign place crawling with humans who had done their best over the centuries to wipe his kind out. Malachus wondered what strange forces were at play that these same creatures succored him now.
Fate and fortune played an odd hand.
CHAPTER NINE
The outlawed magic market known as the Maesor bustled with commerce, all done in whispers and side-eye transactions accompanied by mysterious sign languages known only among a few. The business of sorcery fueled the market, along with the ever-present fear of being raided by the Empire’s martial forces. Gharek picked his way along the narrow avenues in a world caught between worlds, where the price of admission to the Maesor was paid in blood, souls, money, or magical items.
The sky above him was not that of the world he lived in day to day. This firmament was an acetous orange without sun, moon, or stars. The strange illumination gave the illusion of daytime.
Cobblestone paths snaked through the marketplace in no discernible order, dead-ending at walls or disappearing into shadowed closes only the foolhardy might venture into on their journey. Each paver sported a carved sigil that either glowed or hissed under the press of a footstep. Gharek kept his hand on the pommel of the dagger sheathed at his belt as he navigated through the strangely quiet crowd. Stalls hemmed either side of the paths, displaying goods for sale that were never seen in the regular markets. Demon blood in sealed jars, tapestries in which the warp and weft trapped a soul condemned to serve whatever master owned the textile, scrying cards cut from cured human skin lavishly painted to catch the eye and disguise their macabre origin. There were countless other things to fascinate, to repulse, and to barter, all of them a guaranteed death sentence for anyone caught with even a single one in their possession.
He passed a table where a woman with a tattooed face offered love potions, virility elixirs, and poison powders capable of felling a battalion with the sharing of one full teapot. She raised a hand to motion him closer, then thought better of it at the dead-eyed stare he leveled at her. He’d done things for the empress that left a stain on his spirit forever, but something about the Maesor, beyond its sorcerous purpose, made his skin crawl and his soul shudder. Eager to conclude his business here and depart, he picked up the pace to his destination: a lavishly draped stall whose entrance was guarded by a blind man with milky eyes and a dog that watched Gharek’s approach with ears swiveled forward and hackles raised in warning.
A low growl vibrated up from the dog’s throat, and the guard tilted his head in Gharek’s direction with a cloudy gaze. “I know who you are. What would the empress’s cat’s-paw be doing in the Maesor? Hoping to crucify or hang a few mages for Herself’s entertainment?” Gharek didn’t worry much when people recognized him. He wasn’t an Empire spy. He didn’t need to skulk in the shadows or pretend he was someone other than who he was. As the Spider’s cat’s-paw, having his reputation precede him worked in his favor. That this piece of human detritus knew him was of no importance.
“I’m here to see your master, Koopman.”
“Give me your hand,” the guard said. When Gharek hesitated, he chuckled, revealing teeth black with rot. “Give me your hand or you stay out here.”
The cur’s ears lay back flat, and its growls grew in volume when Gharek stepped forward. The animal only quieted when the old man tapped the top of its head and shushed it. Gharek’s lip curled at the feel of the guard’s moist grip, and he nearly jerked away, disgusted. His captor only held his hand more tightly, riding the rough pad of his thumb across Gharek’s knuckles for good measure. “You serve a mistress more dangerous than all of us here combined. Only a desperate man walks willingly through a pit of serpents.”
Gharek yanked his hand free to scrape it down his tunic. “Stop wasting my time. Is Koopman here or not?”
The guard waved him toward the entrance. “Of course. My master awaits.” Gharek skirted the dog and ducked to enter the tent. He halted just inside the entrance, allowing his vision time to adjust to the gloomy interior.
Like the sky outside, the tent reflected a preternatural sense of place. Lamps hanging from cording tied to the tent’s frame spilled pale green light across the fabric walls and a floor layered with mats and rugs. At the flicker of movement near his feet, Gharek glanced down to see a twist of shadow in the weave of one of the rugs. Liquid darkness slithered and trickled through the floor covering, moving independent of his own more rigid silhouette until it spilled like black oil over the rug’s edge to disappear beneath it. Gharek barely resisted the urge to go up on his toes or leap onto the nearest bit of furniture.
“State your business, friend, so that I may know how we can benefit each other.”
The voice came from one of the tent’s corners. An ember flare from a pipe bowl joined its own small light to the green luminescence, and Gharek smelled the spicy scent of pipe smoke. A man dressed in expensive silk and finely woven wool slouched in an intricately carved chair. Smoke wreathed his head as he lipped the pipe’s mouthpiece. Beads decorated his beard, a frippery at odds with his close-cropped hair and a face the gods had carved into shape with a blunt ax. Gharek’s connection to the Maesor market had instructed him to find the tent with the blind guard and cur. The man who conducted business inside was well-known in the market, a purveyor of the rare, the perilous, and if those tapestries were anything to go by, the grotesque.
“He’s known as Koopman,” the connection had told him. “But no one calls him that direct. You don’t either, not if you want to deal with him. He’ll call you ‘friend.’ You call him the same. No one in the Maesor market uses their name anyway. Safer that way.” Gharek was not a merchant, but he was well versed in the skills of prudence and diplomacy. He served Empress Dalvila and still lived to tell about it.
“I’m told you’re the eye that sees in this market. Knows what comes in for sale, what’s desired by certain buyers.” He kept a wary eye on Koopman and one on the rug where the shadow reappeared, creeping slowly over the pile toward his feet.
“Flattery doesn’t go far with me, friend,” Koopman said with a snort. “Try pairing it up with something of monetary value. I might be interested then.” Gharek retrieved a faceted ruby the size of a walnut from the pouch tucked into his tunic and tossed it to the other man. “Will this buy your interest?”