Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

'And the snakes?'

Another theatrical shudder. 'Ugh! They come into the house, you know. They are everywhere*. The Kardis feedxhem!

'Are they poisonous?' I asked Fabia, glancing at the Prefect. He was busy reading the letter-scroll I had brought him from Rathrox.

She shuddered. 'Praise the Goddess, no! I've tried to get the slaves to kill them, but they won't. These stupid thralls think serpents bring prosperity to a household.' She paused to indicate the spread on the low table in front of me. 'Legata, will you not eat a little of what we have prepared for you?' As one of the waiting Kardi slave girls hurried over to pour water for me to wash my hands, she added, as if it were a self-evident virtue, 'We do not eat Kardi food in this house.'

I held out my hands over the washbowl but, as the girl poured the water, she suddenly gasped and dropped the ewer. It knocked the washbowl flying, splashing water everywhere. I jumped up in surprise and chagrin, my wrap soaked. I was wet and the water was cold. And then the girl's emotions hit me: shock, wonder, fear…

Domina Fabia was both furious and humiliated. She slapped the girl and fussed over me. By the time the mess had been cleaned up and I had convinced her it was a minor matter, the Prefect was impatient. 'The

Legata and I have business to discuss, Fabia. Ignoring the angry flush on his wife's face, he waved her out of the room, together with the slaves.

'I abhor fuss,' he told me irritably, then reverted to a more formal tone to say, 'It is time to discuss this letter you have brought.' He tapped his forefinger on the letter-scroll. 'The Magister Officii indicates I should give you every assistance. But I do not understand, Legata, why it has been thought necessary for you to come in the first place. This matter is already closed. The man in question, this Mir Ager, was executed by fire, as is customary for insurgents. Hundreds of people saw him die. There are rumours, it's true, and unrest. However, that is nothing new for Kardiastan. He died, and there was certainly no resurrection of the dead, I assure you!'

He added unhappily, 'Do you know we still have the same number of garrisoned troops here as we had in the years immediately following the conquest? And every single one of them necessary. We can do nothing unless we are backed by legionnaires. The Kardis never cooperate willingly. Not ever.' He leant forward to put some food on my plate. 'That incident with the slave just now – it was probably deliberate. The girl will be beaten, but it will make no difference. Nothing makes a difference to these people. Sometimes I think they are here to plague us, sent by the God of Acheron himself.' His forefinger beat a dismal rhythm against his knee.

'Perhaps if you were to tell me all you know about this Mir Ager?' I prompted.

'Rumours say he came from the quarter of Kardiastan that's on the other side of the desert they call the Shiver Barrens, to the west. We never did find out whether that was true. The first we knew of him

was at a slave sale here in Sandmurram. There were slavers from Tyrans wanting stock, so we cleaned out the prisons and brought others down from Madrinya and similar inland towns, but there still weren't enough. Well, you know how it is at times like that – the legionnaires become a little stricter and a little more provocative, the number of lawbreakers increases, and so you get enough stock.'

I blinked, wonderin3 if I had heard him correctly. They tailored their law enforcement to their need for slaves? The civil law courts didn't behave like that in Tyr!

Oblivious to my reaction, he continued, 'It looked like being a good sale. The Exaltarch would get his sales fee, the administration here would get its slice, and everyone would be happy. But there was a disturbance during the sale.' He took a deep breath but his tapping finger, now thrumming on the table, never paused. I tried not to stare at it. 'This man, this Mir Ager, appeared and posed as a bidder. Well, we were all surprised because he was a Kardi. There's nothing to say Kardis can't own slaves, but it had never happened before. They don't hold with slavery. However, he had money so no one questioned his right to be there.

'Anyway, to cut the story short, suddenly the auction square was – well, I know it sounds unlikely, but it was full of smoke and fire and colours and wind and noise… it's hard to describe. I've never seen anything like it. And this man was at the centre of it.' Martrinus shook his head in disbelief at the memory. 'Everything was so confusing; it was so hard to see what was happening. The women were shrieking, gorclaks went berserk, people ran in all directions, screaming. Even the legionnaires were spooked. Somehow the slaves got free. The only thing most of

us knew for sure was that this Mir Ager fellow was at the middle of it all. He seemed to – well, glow.' Martrinus was embarrassed, but ploughed on anyway. 'And he had some sort of weapon in his hand, a gigantic thing that shot sparks. Well, one of the legionnaires, who had a little bit more sense than the others, managed to render him unconscious with a shot from a whirlsling. Mir Ager was packed off to the dungeons, but we lost the slaves – by then, they'd just melted away into the crowd. Worse still, the slavers took fright. They said they weren't going to trade in slaves who could escape from chains in the middle of a public sale. There was muttering about them being numina, or some such supernatural beings. Needless to say, we've had trouble selling Kardi slaves on markets throughout the Exaltarchy ever since.

'Mir Ager was tortured, but we couldn't get a thing out of him. Not a thing. He was sentenced to death by burning for inciting rebellion, which is high treason, as I am sure you know. He was taken out to the main square and chained to the stake. The fire was lit, but unfortunately the idiots who supplied the wood must have sent damp stuff. Instead of getting a lot of flame, there was enough smoke for a smokehouse. By the time it cleared, the flames were too fierce to see a damn thing. So that's when people began to say Mir Ager didn't burn at all, that somehow or other he escaped in the smoke.' At the memory, his eyes watered even more copiously and he produced a square of silk to dab away the moisture. 'Sorry about the eyes. It's the dust, you know. Irritates. There's always dust here in Kardiastan.'

'Weren't there bones? Some human remains?' 'I suppose so, although I don't know that anyone checked at the time. You must understand: we were

hardly expecting a public execution to be questioned! The rumours didn't start until much later. Felons executed by burning are not entitled to a marked grave, you know. So any remains would have been thrown away.' He sniffed and used the silk to wipe his dripping nose.

'Is that all you can tell me about this Mir Ager?'. 'Well, not quite,' he admitted. 'There have been reports from other places since, some of them true. Prisoners miraculously escaping, whole patrols of legionnaires disappearing, officers being assassinated. That sort of thing. And everywhere people whisper about how this Mir Ager out of the Shiver Barrens is behind it all. Sometimes I think the whole of Kardiastan is one big calabash of whispered rumours. It's so damned hard to find out the truth about anything – no two Kardis will ever tell you the same story, no matter what you do to them.' He'd lost his initial exaggerated respect for me and, formal tone forgotten, was treating me more like a confidante. His patrician accent faded into the roughness of a man who spent his days with military officers rather than politicians. I felt sure his wife would not have approved. 'Ocrastes* balls,' he complained, 'how I hate this place. Legata, I'm not giving away any secrets when I say there's not a Tyranian citizen, from the Governor in Madrinya to the lowest legionnaire cook-boy, who doesn't wish his tour of duty here was up.'