Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) by Ben Galley Page A

was wishing he was anywhere but under her nose. She could smell him now, taste him almost; the copper smell of blood still under his fingernails; the scent of mud and leather fighting for air. Metal. Week-old sweat.
    ‘You tell me, Jeasin,’ mumbled the mage. Leather shoulders creaked.
    ‘Bath, by the smell of you.’
    A shrug. ‘That too.’
    ‘Same old Farden. You’d better be careful. The Duke’s dog is becomin’ predictable.’
    The mage grunted. ‘Watch your mouth, and keep your voice low.’
    Jeasin lifted her chin. ‘Would you ‘ave me dumb, as well as blind?’
    There was a silence. Farden smirked. The sun was hot on his stubbled face. He examined a muddy stain on the back of his hand. ‘I’d call you many things. Dumb isn’t one of them.’
    ‘I meant…’
    ‘I know what you meant. That was quite the little scam you just pulled. Almost had me fooled. Especially the wife. We should find her a stage,’ said the mage. He reached out and flicked the bulging coin purse hiding under the embroidered neckline of her borrowed dress. It clinked. ‘Quite a bit of coin for a day’s work,’ he said, his voice low, quiet, dangerous if she didn’t know him any better. Luckily, she did. She slapped his hand away.
    ‘Nothin’ wrong with a bit of work on the side. Anyways, women have to keep together.’ She waited for the nearby footsteps to recede. ‘I was doin’ Karleah a favour. Serfesson’s been tourin’ the brothels like they’re goin’ out of business. Now she can finally be free of him and get what’s ‘ers as well. Reevers don’t pay no heed to us girls or to the city gossip. Those law men need to see proper proof,’ she asserted in a hushed voice. ‘So we gave ‘em some.’
    The mage leant forward. ‘Jeasin,’ he said. ‘It’s not a favour if you charge for it.’
    The woman shrugged, wondering why she was trying to justify her actions. The mage was right; she couldn’t have cared less about Karleah or her husband. There was no use trying to paint her life with a varnish of virtue and morality; it would have flaked off in an hour. Most of the people in her town were just purses with legs, open hands holding gold, waiting to be taken. That’s how she saw them in the murky darkness, and she didn’t care to be proven wrong.
    Farden though, now here was one of the precious few with qualities other than his coin, although Jeasin grumbled to admit it. She poked the coin purse deeper into her dress and reached for Farden’s hand. He let her find it. ‘If anyone’s the authority on morals ‘round here, Farden, it ain’t you. Not by a bloody long shot,’ she said to him, gesturing towards the street. ‘Come on then.’

    A few hours later, a bathed Farden stood in front of a grimy window, drying his tangled black hair in the sun. In a mixture of apathy and forgetfulness, he had let it grow down to his shoulders, and now it spent most of its day trying to annoy him, trying to escape. Farden gave up trying to unravel it with his fingers. He turned around, casting about for some sort of brush or comb. Jeasin was dozing on the bed, wrapped loosely in a blanket. A nearby window was propped ajar. Sounds of the canals and waterways floated up and rested on the windowsill like the grey pigeons that roosted there. They burbled and cooed sleepily, mumbling to themselves. A cold breeze ruffled their feathers, prickled the mage’s skin. Farden walked to the window, hands ready to shut it. He lingered there for a moment, looking out over the confused little city.
    Tayn was the sister city of Kiltyrin’s capital, imaginatively named Kiltyrin, and what a strange little place it was. Built straight in the path of a river, the city had bent it to its will, dissecting it into a hundred little waterways and canals, wrapping them up in brick and stone. It made the city looked like a bursting capillary. It was a jumbled place, full of dark stone and slate roofs, gravel and spindly bridges.
    The breeze