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‘Have you lived in Mages’ Grave your whole life?’ I asked.
‘Mages’ Grave isn’t the name of the town.’ She pointed towards the hill in the distance. ‘It’s the name of the fortress. Used to be a proper castle. Had its share of big, powerful men like the baron ruling it. A few women, too, though they never lasted as long. Every time someone new came to take the castle, a little more of it got destroyed. Nobody ever bothers repairing it.’
‘How long has Baron Tristmorta been in charge?’
She ignored that question, too, and kept on with her recitation, as if she’d planned out what she was going to say and didn’t intend on being derailed now. ‘Every couple of years, a little army comes along– no more than two or three hundred soldiers, mostly led by war chiefs from the north. They didn’t speak the same language as us, and mostly left us alone.’
‘They didn’t try to take your land?’ Galass asked, jogging to catch up to us. ‘Your crops? Your women?’
Vidra gave out a hoarse cough, the local equivalent of a chuckle. ‘Didn’t need any of it. There’s good land on their side of the fortress wall and they’d always bring livestock from their own lands. As to the women, well, some of our young folk would go up to the fortress every now and then, offer their services or their bodies.’ Another cough. ‘Shishta, the northerners always said when they sent the girls and boys away.’
‘Shishta?’ I asked.
‘Ugly,’ Corrigan translated.
I hadn’t known he knew the northern tongue until then. Maybe he was a northerner himself. Funny how you can think of someone as your closest friend and hardly know them at all.
‘Can’t blame them,’ Vidra said, waving at a couple of children who were staring at us as we passed by. ‘Up north they’re all smooth and pretty. Not like us.’
Aradeus gently took her arm. When she turned, I caught the glint of a small knife held between her thumb and forefinger. The rat mage ignored the threat and said, ‘Forgive me, my lady, but it is not in my nature to allow a falsehood to go unchallenged.’ With his free hand he gestured to the run-down town all around us, held together with nothing but blood, sweat and raw determination. ‘You live in this place, where life is hard. You take care of your people, when others would abandon them. In my travels, I have seen these northern princesses of whom you speak, and my sword will set straight anyone who claims they are more beautiful than you.’
Vidra shot me a look. ‘He blind?’
‘His eyes work better than most, from what I’ve seen.’
She smiled at that, but it wasn’t the smile of someone who enjoyed flattery, and the blush in her cheeks was only the stain of blood soot. ‘Guess a man who can kill his enemies with magic can afford to talk foolish.’ She shrugged off Aradeus’ hand and resumed her march through town. ‘Anyway, the last of the war chiefs decided to call himself “the baron”– nothing else, just “the baron”. Didn’t even know his name was “Tristmorta” until you said it just now. He’s apparently got an interest in southern magic. Guess they don’t have much in the way of mages up north.’
‘Is it true that he started using your children in his experiments?’ Galass asked, holding Mister Bones in her arms to keep him from running off and barking at the townsfolk.
Vidra arched an eyebrow. ‘Children? The baron? No, he mostly leaves us alone, same as the others.’
Again Corrigan and I looked at each other. Why lie about the baron’s crimes if we were supposed to be coming here to defend him from an uprising? His eyes widened the same time mine did as the answer came to both of us: because suppressing a rebellion against a tyrannical, half-mad sadist was exactly the kind of lousy, soul-crushing job that we’d shrug and take on without asking too many questions.
‘Does he have. . .’ I hesitated, unsure how to describe an object I’d never seen before. ‘Did the baron bring a sort of. . . artefact with him? He might have called it “the Apparatus” or “the Device” or something like that?’
Vidra’s narrowed eyes made it plain both how poorly she understood my question and how little she thought of my sanity. ‘Why in the world would I know something like that? I told you, we leave them northern invaders alone, they leave us alone.’
‘What about these Seven Brothers?’ Corrigan asked. ‘We heard they were leading a rebellion against him. What are they, freedom fighters? Monks?’
‘Don’t rightly know,’ Vidra replied. ‘They’re not from the north, though, I can tell you that. Not sure where they’re from. Only ever seen them from a distance.’ She pointed up past the edge of town to a ridge. ‘They stood there a whole day and a night, all seven of them, just watching us. Maybe they weren’t looking at us at all, just taking in the majesty of the landscape.’ She offered up something between a cough and a laugh.
I turned to stare up past the ridge to the fortress at the top of the hill. It was some two miles distant, and even from all the way down here it looked big enough to have garrisoned Ascendant Lucien’s entire army.
‘What about the baron’s soldiers?’ Corrigan asked. ‘How many are we talking about?’
Vidra stopped walking a moment. She waved her hand slowly through the ashes drifting amidst the rosy haze. ‘Hard to count them, these days.’
Corrigan and I frowned at each other. I guess without meaning to we were silently arguing over who would have to ask the obvious question.
‘Where is the baron now?’ Galass asked, saving us both the trouble.
‘Up ahead,’ Vidra said, resuming her march up the main street towards the edge of town. ‘He’s waiting to have a word with you.’
This time, Corrigan and I didn’t need to look at each other.
Everything about this job felt like a set-up: the vague deal terms, the hordes of other wonderists competing for the gig, Tenebris pitching it to me in the first place, only to intentionally delay our arrival. . . all of it was stinking worse than a jackal’s farts. And now, after we’d arrived late to the job, this Baron Tristmorta was ‘waiting to have a word’ with us?
‘Perhaps we should reconsider our participation in this endeavour,’ Aradeus said.
