K Parker - Shadow

Being classically trained and thorough, he hung around Weal Bohec for the rest of the day, keeping his ears and eyes open, gathering potentially useful background information and local colour. After a thoroughly enjoyable dinner at the Blaze of Glory, a place he'd always wanted to try but had never had time for during any of his previous visits, he went to bed early and slept well before making an early start the next morning. The innkeeper told him that he hoped he'd enjoyed his stay in Weal Bohec and would come again. He replied that it was more than likely.

His journey home was long and tiresome. For some reason, the rain had chosen to come nearly a month early, and the first big storm caught him out on the road in the back of an uncovered carrier's cart halfway between Weal Bohec and Bealvoy. In the time it takes for a good cook to peel an onion his coat and hat were so completely saturated that he could feel the water trickling down his skin. The bed of the cart was flooded a finger-joint deep, and the smell of drenched cloth was overpowering. Fairly soon he stopped trying to cower under the brim of his hat-it was thoroughly waterlogged anyway, with the result that he was getting wetter wearing it than he would've been bare-headed. Instead he sat upright, blinked rain out of his eyes and tried to pretend he was in a nice, deep bath that he hadn't had to pay for.

As usual, the first storm of the season only lasted a very short time, but its after-effects stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon. Since he had nowhere to rest his feet except the floor of the cart, he was still sitting with water seeping through the seams of his boots long after the actual rain had stopped. As for anything not made of metal in his pockets or his luggage, he resigned himself to the fact that it was ruined for ever. When the sun finally came out and started to dry him off, he was sure he could hear the creak of cracking boot and belt leather, and feel the hug of his clothes shrinking around him. A thin dribble of coloured water running across the back of his hand confirmed his suspicion that the stallholder who'd sold him the gown had indeed been lying when he claimed the dyes were waterfast.

Sudden heavy rain plays havoc with dry roads and baked earth. Lakes and rivers that hadn't been there when he left Weal Bohec blocked the cart's way, forcing tedious detours that themselves ended in obstruction. As a result they didn't make Bealvoy until just after dark (rumbling and splashing down a rutted sunken track that had suddenly decided to be a riverbed instead with only the light of a single swaying coach-lamp to see by was rather more adventurous than he'd have liked) and of course all the inns were full up with wet, stranded travellers. Instead of a room to himself with a nice warm fire and a jug of hot wine and cinnamon, he had to make do with a corner of an overcrowded common room that stank of wet bodies, too far away from the fire to get dry. Even so he managed to get some sleep, out of which he was awoken just before dawn by the carter, who wanted to get on the road early before the rest of the previous day's delayed traffic added to the misery. That left him with a headache that stayed with him all day, made worse every time the cart bumped over a pothole or slithered in a boggy patch. Early sunshine, oppressively hot and stiflingly humid, dried his clothes out, just in time for the noon cloudburst, which left him soggier than he'd been the day before. By the time the cart finally rolled into Deymeson he was in that last, most desperate stage of wetness where you just don't care or notice any more.

What he wanted to do more than anything else was to crawl off to his quarters in the back cloister, bank up a big, unseasonal, totally non-regulation fire, and sweat out his incipient cold fever before it had a chance to get a grip. Instead he did his duty and dragged himself up six flights of deep, wide marble steps to the Father Tutor's lodgings. Because the rains hadn't reached Deymeson yet, the Father Tutor had the shutters and doors open so he wouldn't suffocate in the heat of the night.

'Where did you get to?' the Father Tutor demanded. 'You do realise it's after compline; you should've been back here in time for morning chapter.'

'It rained.'

The Father Tutor looked at him. 'I'd gathered that,' he said. 'You'd better get out of those wet clothes, before you catch a chill. Anyway,' he went on, 'I know how things went in Weal Bohec. It's a shame I had to hear about it from a travelling chair-mender rather than one of my own brothers, but at least I know.'

It occurred to him to explain how he'd decided to stay over an extra night, and how he'd been ambushed by the weather, whereas this chair-mender had obviously started earlier and escaped the rains altogether. He decided not to; he was too wet to be able to put over such a complex narrative coherently. Instead he nodded.

'It's also a pity,' the tutor went on, 'that you couldn't get the job done without killing that other trader. I shouldn't have to remind you that the whole purpose of the exercise was to send a nice clear message to the directors and the Guild; by killing someone who had nothing to do with it, you've muddied the waters. That chair-mender told me it was a simple robbery.'

'I'm sorry.' The brother tried not to notice the clammy texture of his gown across his knees. 'I didn't really have much choice in the matter. I had to go through him to get to the bodyguards; there simply wasn't time to step round him.'

The tutor shook his head. 'You're missing the point,' he said. 'If this other trader spoiled the moment by being in the wrong place, you should have waited for another moment when it was all clear.' He sighed. 'I don't want to have to dispose of another director, but if it's all gone wrong I'll probably have to, and you'll have done all this for nothing. And we'll be a week behind.'

He bowed his head, ashamed. 'I'm sorry,' he repeated. 'I should have thought three times and cut once. It won't happen again.'

'It's all right.' The tutor's lips twitched in a brief smile. 'These things happen, and you aren't the first to make a mistake like that. Certainly you won't be the last.' The smile broadened. 'I did something very similar when I wasn't much older than you are, but the world didn't actually come to an end.' He closed his large hands around the carved arms of his chair and pulled himself to his feet with a show of great effort (complete nonsense, of course, the brother knew; Father Tutor was as supple and strong as a man half his age, but he liked playing at being older). 'Which reminds me,' he went on. 'Have you heard the news from Josequin?'

The brother thought for a moment, as a drop of water trickled out of his wet hair and slid down his forehead. 'You mean about the council elections?' he asked. 'Well, yes. I feel they display a rather disturbing trend, if you ask me.'

'Ah. You haven't.' The Father Tutor poured himself a very small glass of wine. 'And it's funny that you should mention disturbing trends.' He took a little sip, more like a nibble. 'Josequin was destroyed four days ago.'

The brother felt as if he'd just fallen off his horse. 'Destroyed,' he repeated.

'Burned to the ground,' the Father Tutor said. 'Apparently no survivors-if that's true, it's quite remarkable, nobody at all left alive out of a population of nearly a hundred thousand. But our scouts in that area are generally very reliable, and they made a point of stressing the considerable numbers of dead bodies they saw in the ruins. And it's not unprecedented, of course, especially for a land-locked city, affording no easy means of escape by water.'

'My mother's family came from Josequin,' the brother said.

'Really.' The Father Tutor frowned, but decided not to upbraid him for the breach of protocol. Members of the order were supposedly forbidden to refer to their mundane families on pain of extreme penance, but in this case he was prepared to overlook the lapse. 'Now, you may be asking yourself how the fall of Josequin could possibly be relevant to the matter in hand.'