George Martin - Old Mars

I knew when he was close. I could smell the tope, and a shadow fell across my face. There was a light step, then a foot in my ribs. He reached down and snatched off the mask. I felt my hair spill down into the dirt. I didn’t stir but lay still with my eyes shut. He didn’t say anything, but I heard him laugh with surprise. He shoved me again with his boot. Then, when he still got no reaction, he picked me up and hoisted me up over the back of his tope. And that was when I kicked him in the head.

That’s one of the good things about being a professional dancer. I felt his jaw snap back, then he was down in the dirt. I dropped onto him from the back of the tope and flattened him for good measure. Then I took a good look at him: at the long face and the fawn hair sprawling in the dust.

“Nightwall Dair. My apologies.” I almost felt sincere.

I tied his arms behind him: I thought he was out cold, but I didn’t want to take the chance that he’d try the same trick with me that I had with him, and I wanted his wrists secured, at least. He was too heavy to lift onto the puzzled tope, so I left him lying there and ducked back under the lip of rock, making my way down the canyon. I dusted off the mask as I went and replaced it. On the way down, I met my mount wandering back up. It was now almost dark.

“You stay there,” I told it, and tied its harness to an outcrop. Then I looked for what I’d been expecting to find, and found it.

The ancestors of the Tribes, or those who came before them, had done something stupid once. I don’t know what. Some kind of poisoning of the atmosphere, a souring of the soil, thousands of years ago. It had made them take to the mountains for a time, burrowing into the rocks against the killing cold. Their tunnels could still be found, used now as winterings, and a round stone door showed where the closest one lay. It stood half-concealed behind a boulder. I gave it a push, judging the pivot point, and when it opened, I climbed through. It led into a passage, traveling downward. I could smell a perfume that I knew well, plus sweat and smoke. I followed.

Hafyre was huddled in a makeshift bed of furs, still in her riding leathers. She gasped when she saw me, and I saw her become more sinuous, sliding into the furs as she assessed this new threat.

Slowly, I took off the mask and watched her face change.

“Zuneida Peace,” she breathed. “All the way from Cadrada. I didn’t think you cared.” Her forest eyes were wide with surprise. “Of all the people I thought might come after me …”

“Your lord paid well.”

“Good enough,” she said, briskly. She got to her feet.

“Where is he? The sorcerer?” I demanded.

“He’s gone to find my aunt,” she said. “I don’t know when he’ll be back. I tried to get out, but I couldn’t move the door from the inside.”

“We need to go.”

On the way back up the passage, I said, “Did he rape you? The sorcerer?”

“No.” Our eyes met.

“What were you doing with him?”

“He took me from the palace. We’d been sleeping together.” She told me this without a hint of shame, as though what she and I had experienced did not matter, and perhaps, I thought with bitterness, she was right.

“He bound me with a spell and took me out of Halse’s palace through the cellars. I thought at first that he was taking me to Ithness, to the markets there. But he brought me here, instead. He wants leverage over the Tribes. He planned to use me as a bargaining chip with my aunt.” She paused. Her face grew downcast and demure, a little sly. She ran a hand over my arm and murmured, “What are you planning to do?”

“Take you back to Cadrada.”

I braced myself for resistance and fingered the little phial of amorphite in my pocket. It would knock her out immediately and keep her out for a while. But she perked up.

“Good! We both gain, then. You’ll get your fee and I’ll get a traveling companion back to the palace.” She laughed at the expression on my face. “You don’t think I want to stay here, do you? Shut up in a stuffy tent until it’s time for me to be a broodmare, manipulated by my priestess aunt because of some moldy old prophecy? Or shut down in a wintering like this, not able to go out for a piss for six months because the cold freezes the snot in your nose, and living off dried ulsa meat? No thanks.” She paused. “I suppose this has occurred to you already, but the roles of women in this society really aren’t worth much, are they? When I was snatched from the Cold Deserts in the first place, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve got opportunities in the palace. Clearly, Lord Halse wants me back, but in three or four years, I’ll be over the hill and too old for him. They’ll give me a pension—it’s happened to other women. Then I’ll set up my own place. I know several girls who’d be happy to work for me, and I’d have my own regular clients.” A meditative look entered her green eyes. “I fancy a place overlooking the Grand Canal—all those lovely gardens and a restaurant on every corner. I’ve got it all worked out.”

“I see,” I said, faintly.

“So.” Hafyre bounced up. “Shall we get going?”

“We might as well,” I replied.

I hoped Dair hadn’t come round by the time we left; it would save embarrassment, but the body sprawled in the dust had gone. That made me doubly eager to get going. He’d freed my tope, but the mount hadn’t gone far; after a moment of panic, I saw it trot nimbly down through the rocks with an air of affront. Hafyre had walked, apparently, since the edge of the mountains, and was more than happy to ride. All we had to do now was get out of the lands of the Tribes and head south.

But, however conscious I was of the missing Dair, I still wasn’t paying quite enough attention.

Once we’d come through the canyon, the stars were fully out, spreading a pallid light over the rocks. I saw the sorcerer from Ithness out of the corner of my eye, suddenly rearing up on the edge of a ledge, and Hafyre cried out as I toppled, paralyzed, from the tope and hit the ground for the second time that day. There I lay, while the sorcerer leaped from the rock as lightly as a bird and onto the back of my mount. Hafyre shrieked curses and went abruptly silent. They disappeared down the slope at a run.

Some considerable time later, I became aware that a pair of boots had appeared in front of me.

“Tut, tut,” said the voice of Nightwall Dair. “I see that the hand of immediate karma appears to have touched you. How ironic.” He bent down and touched something cold and damp to the side of my neck, and suddenly I could move again. “I really should try to get over these disastrous impulses toward compassion. Never does me any good … Especially after what happened earlier.” He helped me to my feet. His wrists were raw.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I wouldn’t say that I felt abashed, precisely, but there was a slight element of the embarrassment I’d hoped to avoid earlier. Why I should have felt this way, I don’t know: It must have been a professional thing.

“So, where is she? The girl?”

“The sorcerer from Ithness took her.”

Dair swore. “I thought so. Bastard. Are you on a finders’ fee?”

“Yes. You?”

“Yes, from a lord in Cadrada who took a fancy to her. One of Halse’s rivals. I know who you are now, by the way. A man named Thane. Or a woman named Peace. I recognize you from Halse’s palace. You were a dancer. Among, it seems, other things.”

“I’m not sure it matters.”

“We stand more chance of tracking her down together. I don’t need the hassle of your interference, and I know this sorcerer; we’ve got a history.”

“Very generous of you. I know him, too. We have a history. You could, of course, just kill me.”