Page 12 of Fate of the Argosi

Arissa shot him a look that could’ve set a forest ablaze in the middle of a rainstorm.

‘You carrying any money?’ I asked Chedran.

‘What?’

‘Money. Gold, gemstones, maybe some lender’s scripts we could exchange for horses and supplies?’

Leaning against me for support, Chedran weighed more than I’d expected. All that lean, ropy muscle, I suppose. His attitude was the heavier burden though. ‘You found me in a prison cell. How stupid must you be to assume the magistrates, the bailiffs, the clerics and finally the prison guards would’ve permitted me to hide a single coin on my person?’

‘Well, that’s the problem, see? I spent every coin I had getting into that same prison. Which means the only way we’re going to acquire those horses you’re so keen on is to steal them. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Berabesq are real protective of their livestock. So unless you plan on ridin’ on the spire goat’s back . . .’ Conch gave a snort that made it clear what he thought of that idea. I shot Arissa a grin. ‘Guess we’ll need to find ourselves a professional thief to acquire less ornery mounts.’

Chedran was quiet for a while, limping alongside me. Every few steps he tried to walk on his own, then stumbled and had to let me take his arm across my shoulders again. ‘So this is the Way of Water,’ he said.

‘Not so bad, is it?’ I asked.

He turned his head and spat in the sand behind us. ‘Thatfor your Way of Water.’

8

Heroes and Horse Thieves

Those next days and weeks came and went in flashes for me, no longer measured in sunrises and sunsets but by the reflexive scowls and reluctant smiles of my companions. There’s a price you pay for learning the seven Argosi talents. Arta loquit teaches you to hear what people are trying to say beneath their jumbled words, and how to give them the space to find the right ones. Arta precis reveals both what others are trying to hide from you and what they’ve hidden from themselves. But what happens when your ears can’t take the sounds of their suffering any more? When your eyes can’t bear the sight of all those other, deeper pains waiting to be unleashed?

‘You forgot the Way of Water, kid?’Durral would’ve asked.‘What business you got hangin’ on to someone else’s pain? Listen to ’em, that’s all. Let ’em cry or scream or spew a thousand hateful words your way. That’s what a friend does. Then you take yourself off into the desert and tell yourself dirty jokes until you’re laughing so hard all the pain shakes off you like rainwater. Let it sink into the sand at your feet, where it can’t do any more harm. That’s the Argosi way.’

I tried, Pappy, I really did. But watching Arissa struggle to keep pace with us, day in, day out, pretending the sandstorms could scrape the miseries of Soul’s Grave off her skin, only to relive each and every one of them the moment she collapsed into restless sleep once we made camp? Conch tried to comfort her at night, but she’d wake kicking and screaming when she felt him near her. A couple of times the spire goat got so scared he belched gas from his belly that knocked her unconscious again. Seemed almost a mercy, but I knew it wasn’t, not really. After the first few nights Conch slept up against Quadlopo, who never let Arissa near him.

At least we managed to acquire a pair of horses for her and Chedran. Fine Berabesq bronzes that looked like they were posing for a painting every time you put a saddle on them. I couldn’t tell the two apart. Arissa adored hers though, and Chedran treated his with respect, even talking to it politely now and then – which is more than I could say for the way he talked to me.

‘You think I didn’t see what you did?’ he demanded the day after our heist.

Thanks to Arissa’s ingenious scheming, we’d snuck into the largest and best fortified horse trader’s stable I’d ever seen. Forty-seven guards I’d counted while scouting the perimeter; crossbowmen on the rooftops; short, thickly muscled women with wickedly curved cavalry swords waiting next to saddled horses, ready to ride down anyone who tried to get away with their boss’s property. Took us three days just to prepare the traps along our escape route so we could delay any pursuers without hurting them or their mounts. That was just one of seventeen components of Arissa’s intricate plan. Her favourite was the one she’d devised for Conch.

Can’t say I enjoyed the rehearsals.

‘That the loudest he can scream?’ she’d asked me for maybe the fifth time that afternoon. We were in a dried-out gully roughly twelve miles from the horse trader’s fortress.

I took the candle wax out of my ears, which were ringing something awful despite my precautions. Small they may be, but spire goats can let out a scream so loud, so blood-curdling, that most predators would rather claw out their own eardrums than hear it a second time. Conch was pleased with himself, wagging his tail at me – which looks weird on a two-foot-tall goat. ‘How much louder do you expect him to be, Arissa?’ I glanced up warily at the clifftops above us. ‘I thought we needed a distraction, not an avalanche.’

Chedran was in an even fouler mood than me. ‘This is madness, trying to steal horses without killing those guarding them!’ He was pointing a finger at poor Conch, who was probably wondering why everybody kept yelling around him after his exquisite performance. ‘He’ll send most of the horses stampeding before we can even steal any!’

‘That’s the point,’ Arissa explained, the smirk I’d painted on her disharmony card appearing for a brief, achingly beautiful instant. She bent down to scratch Conch under his billy-goat beard. ‘Mostof the horses will stampede, which will keep the third set of guards inside the stable busy. The finest stallions though, the ones bred and trained exclusively for the highest-ranking Berabesq military officers to ride into battle—’

‘Those will be the ones that don’t bolt!’ Chedran exclaimed, so delighted at the prospect of a triumph over the Berabesq that he allowed a little admiration for Arissa’s scheme to show in those mesmerising eyes of his.

Nothing admiring about the way he looked at me the next day though.

‘You’re a traitor and a coward,’ he informed me bluntly.

Lucky for both of us, he’d waited until Arissa was out of earshot. She was off singing to herself and her new bronze stallion about the daring thief who came to this lousy country to steal a sacred horse and damned if she didn’t wind up stealing a pair twice as fine.

‘We got what we came for,’ I reminded Chedran, and kept on brushing Quadlopo’s coat in long, languorous strokes the way he likes. I didn’t want the horse to feel out of sorts, what with us having those two smug bronze stallions with us now. The slow, repetitive motions helped me keep my own temper in check. ‘None of us got hurt and none of them got killed. Arissa’s plan worked perfe—’

‘You let your friendbelieveher plan succeeded,’ he countered. He’d been cutting me off more than was healthy lately. ‘It was all a sham. A piece of theatre to make a damaged young woman feel better about herself.’ His snarl turned so angry it almost made me wonder if he was falling for her. ‘I hope you’ll spare me from any such acts of “friendship”.’

‘It was just a note, Chedran. No harm in leaving an apology for the trade lord. We did steal his prize stallions after all.’

‘Ah, the “Way of Water” again, is that it?’

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