Page 14 of Fate of the Argosi

‘Can’t help but feel sorry for those kids when he gets his hands on them,’ Arissa said quietly as we followed a few yards behind.

Four weeks of solid meals and a couple of hundred miles’ distance from Soul’s Grave had done wonders for her health. Shedding those tattered, filthy clothes I’d found her in proved equally curative to her spirit. I kept catching her rubbing the various fabrics of her crisp new linen shirt, leather riding trousers and silk scarf between her thumb and forefinger. It was like she needed to remind herself every few seconds that she wasn’t encased in prisoner’s rags any more. Back when she ran with the Black Galleon gang, Arissa had been legendary for wearing only crimson. Now though, for reasons I could only imagine, she insisted all the clothes I bought for her be white, and washed them in every stream or fountain we passed.

In the evenings we’d catch each other’s eye across the campfire sometimes. My arta loquit would pick up all kinds of conflicting clues when she looked back at me. Some nights, if I was especially exhausted, every subtle squint, wide-eyed stare or sleepy, limpid gaze turned into a confounding monologue in my mind – like she was talking to me but nothing she said made sense.

‘I’m happy you’re here, Rat Girl.’

‘I owe you a debt now. I hate owing people.’

‘Every time I look at you, it reminds me I couldn’t escape that hell myself.’

‘Quit looking at me like I’m some injured dove, Rat Girl. Do I need to come over there and kiss—’

No. That part was just my own yearnings playing tricks on me. Arissa had always made it plain she favoured men, not women. Why then did she taunt and tease me so often? Was it just to give herself a fleeting sense of power to banish the helplessness that still haunted her? When she talked about sex – never love, of course – she always made it sound as if, to her, romance was this . . . afterthought. Like if she really thought about it for more than ten seconds, she might decide maybe she liked girls as much as boys.

Idle thoughts, the kind many a forlorn lass has surely pondered. Problem was, in me those thoughts awoke more than just wistful longing.

‘We will give her to you,’the Scarlet Verses promised me, soft as the gentle tickle of a snake’s tongue flicking in your ear.‘Go to her tent tonight, speak our words, and the thief will be yours. Her mind, her soul and, most especially, her body.’

Resisting temptation ain’t hard, even for something you find yourself craving more and more. Submitting to such impulses is no different than submitting to an iron collar around your neck. No Argosi ever fools themselves into believing you can take from another something they don’t want to give and still call yourself free. That’s why, over the weeks that followed, the verses would add this little tidbit:‘Alone, the thief is miserable, whatever mask she wears to hide it. Soon she’ll crave the touch of flesh so badly that she’ll give herself to the man. He will not make her happy. You would.’

This is how they get you. Charlatans. Con artists. Deadly mystical mind plagues. They begin with that which you most desire, then turn that desire into a virtue and eventually an inevitability. That’s when you give in. That’s when you break. But I am Ferius-gods-damned-Parfax, and Ido not break.

I started messing with my own arta loquit, twisting the meanings of Arissa’s glances across the fire or when our hands touched on occasion, sometimes by accident, sometimes on impulse. All those different looks and gestures, the shifting shape of her eyes, varying degrees of softness in her gaze, the length and warmth of any touch between us . . . I collapsed all their manifold possible meanings down to one. A single sentence, repeated with every moment of contact between us.

‘We’re friends, Rat Girl, and that’s how I like it.’

An Argosi’s not supposed to mess with their own talents, especially not arta loquit and arta precis, since those ones are crucial for following the Way of Water. But it made the nights go by easier. Soon, I’d reunite Chedran with his runaways and get Arissa into some big Daroman city where she could go back to thieving and laughing at the world. My debts would be paid and I could finally set out on the Path of the Wild Daisy, alone, sure, but that’s not the same thing as being lonely.

Chedran had recovered from his time in Soul’s Grave too, more or less. His bruises were gone, along with whatever other hurts had made it hard for him to walk unaided. We’d tied up the horses back a ways so as not to leave a trail, but we hadn’t slowed our pace one bit. Chedran moved like a feral cat on the hunt, his quick footsteps almost completely silent – which he more than made up for with his endless stream of invective.

‘Idiot children,’ he repeated.

The source of his ire was a trail of footprints, crushed leaves, broken twigs and about a dozen other signs of his errant teenagers having done an impressively poor job of hiding their tracks in and out of the camp. The Daroman ridge where the abandoned mine lay also bordered northern Berabesq and the southern tip of the Jan’Tep territories. Not a good place for a pack of Mahdek runaways to be seen, which made me wonder why Chedran had risked sending them here.

Our people aren’t exactly known for their talents for subterfuge. Lacking a homeland, what’s left of the Mahdek tribes survive by never staying too long in one place, selling what services they can to those generous enough to hire strangers for jobs their own kind can do just as well. Begging is no sin to the Mahdek; it’s a simple fact of life. Three centuries of charity takes its toll on a culture. Children learn quickly that it’s safer to appear weak than dangerous, gullible and ignorant rather than cunning.

It’s easy to mock those who live that way, and, I’ll admit, I’m as prejudiced against my people as anyone else. But the Argosi are gamblers, so we know that anyone, whether an individual or an entire society, can be dealt a bad hand. What can you do but play each lousy card, one after another, until the game is over?

‘Listen,’ I said to Chedran, risking a hand on his arm to make him slow down a moment, ‘when we step inside that camp, if those kids are there and alive—’

‘Of course they’re alive,’ he snapped, peeling my fingers off his arm more forcefully than necessary. ‘Can’t you hear them? It’s the middle of the day and those simpletons are chattering louder than your goat.’

Conch, who’d taken to riding on my shoulder when we had to move quickly since his legs were too short to keep up, produced a warning rumble in his belly.

‘Try not to paralyse me when you’re belching on him,’ I said.

Chedran was right though: now that I was listening more carefully, I could make out the faint sounds of shouts and laughter in the distance. The kids must’ve been playing some kind of game.

‘I’ll kill them myself,’ he said, upper lip curled like he meant it.

Arissa and I exchanged the same glance we had a dozen times before: the one that wondered whether the quiet rage eating Chedran from the inside out was too far gone, and maybe today was the day we were going to have to put him down. I gave a small shake of my head.

I’m not walking the Way of Thunder with him, I vowed silently.Not yet. Not until it stops being so damned tempting.

‘From what you have told us, you saved those children from their own ignorance many times,’ I said, my arta loquit framing the sentence more in his manner of speaking than my own. ‘Now you must protect them from your own ire.’

Chedran spun on me, his body loose, ready to fight. Only his eyes betrayed how badly he wanted to beat me bloody once and for all. Arissa reached into the small leather pouch strapped to her right hip where she kept a few of the steel throwing cards she’d never returned to me.

---