Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

'You've only just started to listen.' He held up the scroll. T shall deliver this.' He turned and walked away, leaving me feeling upset and restless. It was all too easy to remember a pool of blood, black blood, seeping into a woman's clothing as she knelt, wringing her hands…

The next morning, I thought about having Brand follow me again, but I did not want anything to jeopardise my meeting with Mir Ager. The Mirager. I would risk going alone. Brand did not protest my

decision; I would have been surprised if he had. We both knew being a member of the Brotherhood often involved danger. We both knew I revelled in risk and that nothing Brand said would ever change that.

Parvana was in the group of women waiting at the well. She nodded to me and drew me apart from the rest. 'Leave your ewer. I'll fill it and leave it over there, with the vegetable seller just behind us. You can pick it up any time. Now, see that neat-arsed hunk at the fruit stall on the other side of the square?';¦ I looked around. There was a man, a Kardi with no slave collar, idly poking at some fruit on display while he chatted to the stall owner. I put his age at about thirty, and took in his slim but muscular build and easy posture. I turned back to Parvana and nodded. 'I see him.'

'In a minute he will begin to walk away. You must follow him. He will take you to the person you want to see.'

Across the square, the man bought some of the fruit, placed it in his belt bag and, without glancing around, began to move off even as Parvana smiled encouragement and took my ewer. I crossed the square and entered the labyrinth of lanes on the other side, keeping the fellow in sight. I tried to probe ahead to see what his emotions were, but the alleys were full of Kardis doing their early morning shopping and it was impossible to separate one person's feelings from another's. I was jostled by the crowd and found myself pushing in an attempt to keep up with my guide.

It was my fault, of course; slaves did not jostle legionnaires. Slaves were submissive and polite, not pugnacious. But for a moment I forgot I was a slave and shoved a legionnaire out of my path. He grabbed at my arm and yanked me to a halt.

Well, well, he said, in Tyranian. What have we here? A willing slave wench throwing herself into my arms?'

I pulled away sharply and stepped backwards, only to find myself seized from behind. Another voice said, 'No, into mine I think, Xasus.' Laughter followed as this second man pulled me hard back against his chest, his intrusive hands fondling my breasts. I stood rigid with shock.

Two more legionnaires came up, grinning. 'Hey, what about us, Evander?' one of them asked the man who was holding me. 'I could do with a poke and she's not bad – for a Kardi.'

'Why not?' the one called Evander replied. 'Let's find a place.'

'I noticed some sacks of grain stacked in the alley back there,' Xasus said. 'Just the spot.'

Hardly able to credit I was hearing this conversation on a crowded city street, I twisted in my captor's arms and said – in Tyranian – 'How dare you! Let me go, this instant or you'll find yourself feeling Brotherhood justice.'

Evander did not release me, but the others looked stunned. 'Who the Vortex are you?' one of them asked.

'Ah, er, my mistress is Legata Ligea of the Brotherhood, at present residing with the Governor. She'll have you skinned alive and sold for slave meat if you touch me!'

Xasus backed off a little. 'Perhaps we ought to let her go,' he said to the others. T don't want any shit with the Brotherhood. And I've heard of that particular bitch. You don't cross her and get away with it. My cousin was a tax inspector in Tyr until he ran foul of her. Now he's a scribe in Gammed and his name is mud in Tyrans.'

'Since when has a slave told a legionnaire what he can and cannot do?' Evander growled. 'Damn it, Xasus, you reckon any Brother is going to give a shit about a slave?'

'You'd better believe it,' I snapped. 'She's very fond of me.'

Xasus held up both hands in a gesture of defeat. 'I'm off,' he said.

But Evander was not going to give up his prize so easily, and one of the others was prepared to follow his lead. The crowd around had thinned out, giving us space; people were backing off, concerned, wary, not knowing what to do. The oppressive humidity of their hate for the legionnaires hung in the air, but no one actually moved to help me.

I caught sight of the man I had been following, as he came back to see what had happened. He was broadcasting his concern before him, as strong to my senses as incense is to the nose. With what I hoped was unexpected suddenness, I sagged in Evander's arms and he lost his grin. While he was off-balance, I whirled and jabbed him in the throat with stiffened fingers. It was a deceptively harmless-looking blow, but in the Brotherhood we called it the Vortex-strike for its ability to send the recipient to Acheron. The jab was hard, crushing his larynx and slamming into the blood vessel behind; the shock stopped his heart as effectively as an arrow in the chest would have done. I didn't wait to see what happened; I was already running. Behind me I heard an outraged cry of: 'The frigging helot has killed him. Get her.'

My guide saw me coming, turned and dodged into an alleyway, also running. I darted after him. The legionnaires, spurred by fury, were not far behind, but my guide knew what he was doing. We hurdled a low

wall, dashed across a deserted courtyard and skidded through an archway into another crowded square. Back inside the crowd he dropped to a brisk walk to make our passage less obvious.

I risked a swift look behind. The legionnaires were shouting to someone in front of us: more legionnaires. My guide changed direction. He grabbed my hand and pulled me through another archway into a narrow lane hemmed in by adobe walls. The alley itself was a dead end, but several wooden doors set into the walls, intricately carved, hinted at an illustrious past for the Kardi homes behind them.

Without hesitation the Kardi opened a door and pulled me into the courtyard beyond. Once it had been a spacious garden for a wealthy man's home, now it was an untidy fowl-run surrounded by crumbling tenements. A number of curl-feathered hens scratched diligently in the dirt. There was washing hanging out to dry from almost every sagging balcony bordering the court, but there was no one around. I was pulled across the open space to the unkempt straggle of bushes against the wall on the other side. My guide forced his way into the heart of them, still drawing me with him. I was about to protest that the bushes weren't thick enough to hide bom of us when he slipped sideways and disappeared.

I turned to follow and found myself squeezing through a narrow cleft in the wall and into a rectangular recess beyond. Its purpose I couldn't begin to guess at, except to wonder if it had once been some kind of storage space. There was barely room for us both. I was jammed up against my guide, my head squashed down to tuck in tight under his chin, my hips hard against his, my breasts flattened against his chest. The only place he could put his arms was

around me. He smelled faintly of spice and sweat – and squashed fruit. His belt pouch, oozing peach juice, was flattened between us.

'Huh,' he said, amused, and continued in Kardi, 'It wasn't nearly so small when I was a kid hiding from my sister here.'

'You live here?'

'The whole building was my father's house once. Now I have a single room above. Can't say I've been in this cubbyhole for a few years, though.' He was almost laughing. 'Sorry about this – I'm afraid we're stuck here for a while. I think the legionnaires may have seen us disappear into the lane; they will have every house searched. We will have to wait until they are finished.'