Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (38 page)

In a village just west of Mazad, Kavi took the girl to an inn and left her to eat alone, claiming that he needed to speak with potential buyers at another table.

The men he spoke to swore that the searches, the increased patrols, had started shortly after the last food shipment. And that the Hrum weren’t looking for Sorahb’s wondrous, disappearing army—not this long after the battle—in other folks’ barns! On the other hand, they didn’t seem to know about the tunnels. Messages still appeared in the hollow tree, and the occasional guardsman still came out to contact them. But they weren’t certain a second shipment could reach the tunnel entrance, not with all these patrols about.

Kavi carried his tankard back to the table where Soraya sat, wondering how he was going to get thirty carts of food past all those Hrum.

“You don’t look like they wanted to buy many
knives,” the girl said softly. Her gaze was on the crowd, not on him. Kavi had spoken to many of them earlier—this close to Mazad almost everyone knew who he was, and what he was doing here. So now, when he seemed to want privacy, they left him alone.

“They don’t,” he said, erasing the scowl from his face. “But no matter. I’ll sell them down the road.”

Her expression said clearly that she recognized that for a lie, and a transparent lie to boot.

“They have bought my knives,” Kavi protested. And they had, though mostly as an excuse to meet with him.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Soraya slowly. “What matters is that these people trust you. They respect you too, but trust is the important part.”

The flickering light from the hearth, from the candles near the bar, shadowed her face and made her eyes mysterious.

“How would you know what they feel?” Kavi meant it to sound like a joke, but a prickle of unease ran down his spine, for she sounded as if she truly knew.

“That doesn’t matter either,” said the girl, with the firmness of someone who has made up her
mind. “But if they’re certain they can trust you, then . . . then I think I can too.”

“Oh?” Kavi settled back in his chair and waited. He’d become aware, as they traveled, that she was holding something back. But it couldn’t be too important.

“I think that Garren has suborned the governor of Mazad,” she said. “I think he’s working for the Hrum, planning to betray—”

“What?”
People all over the room turned to stare, and Kavi lowered his voice hastily. “What makes you think that? Governor Nehar’s—”

“A deghan,” Soraya finished. “So what? Plenty of deghans were ambitious fools, at the best of times. And this isn’t the best of times.”

“No, it’s not.” He watched her intently, but could see no sign of nervousness or deceit. “What makes you think Nehar’s a traitor?”

“Some things that Governor Garren said.” She was speaking more slowly now. “He’d just found out who I was, and he thought I was spying for Sorahb—I told you about that. What he was most interested in was who Sorahb was, how I was contacting him, that kind of thing.”

Kavi felt another chill. If she had made some
bargain, if her imprisonment and the threat to beat her had been a snare, she had certainly made contact with one Sorahb. But surely, that was too convoluted for the practical Hrum. “Go on.”

“Well, I said something about Mazad being a bigger problem than Sorahb, and he said he wasn’t worried about Mazad.”

“So? He likely thinks that all he has to do to overwhelm Mazad is bring in enough troops. Mazad’s stuck in one place—Sorahb can be running all over the countryside.”

“I know, but he sounded so confident. It just felt wrong. And later, in the same conversation, I said something like, ‘No deghan would ever work for the Hrum,’ and he said, ‘Tell that to the gov—’ and then he broke off and tried to change the subject. But I put the two together, and I asked him—accused him, really, of suborning Governor Nehar, and he hit me. I know it doesn’t sound like much.” Her hands were clenched on the table. “But Garren . . .” She seemed to have run out of words.

“Garren hit you?” Kavi’s brows rose. “I’d have said he’s not the sort to go hitting folk—more efficient to just tell the arms master to chop off their heads. Anger’s not worth the effort, for him.”

“How do you know that?” She looked startled, and a bit suspicious. And no wonder, for he’d betrayed a depth of knowledge no peddler dealing casually with Hrum ordnancers should have possessed.

“I know a lot,” said Kavi grimly. “But this isn’t much to go on. A couple of sentences, in different contexts, that could mean something else entirely.”

“But when I reached a conclusion, he hit me,” Soraya persisted. “Why would he do that, except to distract me from what I was thinking? To silence me? And why do you think he offered such a big reward for my capture, except to keep me from passing this on?”

Kavi had wondered about the size of the reward. The girl’s dark eyes met his without hesitation, as honest and open as any peasant’s.

“All right,” he said, making up his mind as he spoke. “Can you stay here by yourself for a day or two?”

“Certainly. Just leave me enough money for meals.” She leaned back in her chair at last, looking satisfied. Kavi noticed that she was smart enough not to ask questions he wouldn’t have answered, but it was a passing thought. Most of
his mind was already working on the need to reach Mazad and get in—tonight, if he could.

H
E DID GET IN THAT NIGHT
, with the help of a local lad who volunteered to guide him across country till he reached the familiar hills near the town. Hrum patrols were everywhere, and they had to waste much of the precious darkness crouching on hilltops, or in the gullies, as the Hrum marched past. His informants were right—they were far more numerous, and more alert, than they had been. Too numerous, and too alert, for thirty large wagons to sneak past them even if he created some sort of diversion.

But a lone man on foot could reach the tunnel’s hidden entrance just as the sky in the east began to brighten. The wheel that opened the hatch had been oiled; it still grated a bit, but not nearly as loudly as it had before.

Kavi hurried down the walkway making all the noise he could, for he wanted the tunnel guards to intercept him. It took them a cursed long time, but finally a lance shot across his path, into the water.

“Halt, and remove your—”

“I don’t have time for that, and it doesn’t matter,”
Kavi interrupted firmly. “I am marked as a Hrum spy, and the council knows it, and if I know Mazad, every apprentice and kitchen girl knows it too. I need to see Commander Siddas. Now.”

I
T TOOK A BIT MORE ARGUMENT,
but Kavi had never been shy about arguing. He was sitting in Commander Siddas’ spartan office before breakfast time. He ignored the two guardsmen who stood by the door, but they made up for that by never taking their eyes off him. They looked quite disappointed when the commander came into the office and closed the door behind him—like a pair of hounds watching a bone they’d hoped for, thrown into the soup pot instead.

“I understand your news is urgent,” said Commander Siddas, sitting down behind his desk. Kavi appreciated a man who could get to the point.

“I hope it’s not,” he said. “By the Wheel, I’m praying I’m wrong, but if I’m not . . .”

He told the guard commander all the girl had said, watching his worried frown deepen. The more Kavi talked, the slighter his evidence sounded. “I know it’s not much,” he finished. “A
few fragments of sentences. But Garren . . . He’s a cold bastard. Not the sort to be hitting someone for no reason. Not a man to lash out in anger. If he hit someone, there’s a reason for it. Though that girl could enrage stone, if she was trying,” he added ruefully. “I expect you think I’m a fool, running all this way with so little, but . . .” But what? Away from the girl’s dark-eyed urgency, with the sun shining through the narrow window, the whole seemed nothing but moon wisps.

Commander Siddas leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “I wish I thought you were wrong. This explains some things I’ve been wondering about as well. But we’ve no proof, and without it . . . What a flaming mess.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked tired, though the day was just starting. And he hadn’t been running across the countryside all night.

“Explains what?” Kavi asked.

“Shortly after you brought in that food shipment, Hrum activity around the city increased notably,” said the commander.

“I saw the patrols on my way in,” Kavi confirmed. “I’ve a second shipment all but ready to move, but I’ve no idea how to get thirty wagons
past all those eyes. Not to mention the swords,” he added.

“Yes, well, I found myself wondering why they suddenly became so active,” Siddas went on. “It was as if they’d learned that we got the food—just days after we received it—but they didn’t know how we brought it in. They searched the area near the city thoroughly—we could see them from the walls. Fortunately the aqueduct entrances are farther out than they thought to look. And they weren’t paying particular attention to the riverbank, which made me certain they didn’t know what they were looking for.”

Kavi frowned. “How could they know about the food at all, unless—”

“Someone told them,” Siddas agreed. “That was my thought. We expelled all the Hrum spies before the siege started—and they were easy to find.” He gestured to Kavi’s shoulder. “So whoever it was had to be a townsman the Hrum had suborned, but not marked. But if it was a townsman, then why didn’t he tell the Hrum about the tunnels?”

“Anyone who grew up here would know,” Kavi agreed. “It’s not something we talk about
with outsiders. It’s part of Mazad’s defenses, after all, but everyone knows about it.”

“So the Hrum agent has to be an outsider,” said Siddas. “Someone the townsfolk wouldn’t talk to. Someone the Hrum wouldn’t dare mark.”

“But the governor has to know about the aqueducts,” Kavi protested. “They were built by that old gahn, with the city’s defense in mind. The governor back then probably oversaw their construction!”

“True,” said Siddas. “But there’ve been lots of governors since. Governors who died in office and didn’t have time to train their successors. Governors who wouldn’t have given a thought to where the water came from, or the sewage went, so long as it worked. Nehar’s that type. I doubt any thought of water or sewage has ever so much as crossed his mind. And you may think that the secret of those tunnels is badly kept, but I didn’t know you could get into the aqueducts from inside the city till the council told me, and I’ve been a guard here for almost twenty years. It was townsmen’s business, and the guard wasn’t town. Not then.”

“So you think Nehar doesn’t know about the
tunnels,” said Kavi. “And he somehow got word to the Hrum that we’d got food in, but he couldn’t explain how.”

“It would fit with the way they’ve been acting,” said Siddas. “But until now, I thought it was probably one of the guardsmen who are loyal to the governor, not the governor himself.”

“The guardsmen who are loyal to him,” Kavi repeated. “Would there be a lot of them?”

“Almost a third of the guard,” Siddas confirmed grimly. “So just arresting him probably wouldn’t work, even if we had solid evidence, and as it stands . . . I can’t allow an internal war to break out inside these walls. If it did, the Hrum would be at our gates in moments. We can fend them off now, united. If we were fighting each other, we couldn’t.”

“So what can you do?” asked Kavi, chilled. “If a third of the guard is prepared to betray you—”

“I don’t think the guardsmen themselves would betray us.” Siddas sounded as if he was working it out as he spoke. “Not most of them. Not if I had time to explain, and evidence to present to them. So the first step is to get that evidence. For that I have two men I trust, close to the governor.
A gift from the other Sorahb, they were.”

Why did that make him smile? “Is there anything I can do?”

Siddas’ sober gaze was suddenly laced with amusement. “There are several things you could do for us,” the commander said. “Important things. If you care to try.”

“What?” Kavi made no attempt to keep his sudden suspicion out of his voice, and Siddas smiled again.

“I admit it’s a lot to ask,” he said. “But the thing I want most is the next shipment of food.”

Kavi opened his mouth to repeat that he couldn’t get past the patrols, but Siddas lifted a hand for silence. “And that’s not all I want—I want to distract the Hrum from the tunnels, so I want you to bring this shipment in by some other route. And I want the Hrum to know that you’ve done it.”

Kavi frowned. “Except for the aqueducts, the only way into the city I know of is through the front gate.”

“Then it will be easy for the Hrum to find out about it, won’t it?” said Siddas.

“You expect me to drive thirty wagons
through the front gate in full view of the entire Hrum army? How?”

“I have no idea,” Siddas admitted. “But if you could do it, it would not only get us the food and distract the Hrum from the tunnels, it would probably force Nehar to report. If we can find out how he’s contacting the Hrum, perhaps even catch him in the act, then maybe we can convince his guardsmen to give him up without a fight.”

“But that’s impossible!” Kavi exclaimed. “The whole army would have to be asleep on their feet, or . . . hmm.”

Siddas waited patiently, but after a long moment he said, “ ‘Hmm’ must be promising.”

“What? Oh. I wouldn’t go as far as promising,” said Kavi. “But it’s maybe worth some thought. Maybe even worth a visit to the town’s apothecary . . .”

H
E DID VISIT THE APOTHECARY
, and they had a long chat. After he left the city, he located an empty barn outside the area the Hrum were searching, and sent for the scattered supplies.

And while he waited for their arrival, he’d have time to take the girl to the Suud, as she’d requested.

Kavi’s informants had told him a lot about the army that young fool had gathered in the mountains, and Kavi didn’t want to run into them—if news of the meaning of the tattoo on his shoulder was out, who knew how fast it might have spread, and where? So instead of passing through the croft, he took her down the dizzying trail he, Jiaan and the girl had first used to descend the great cliff to the desert.