Moon's Artifice by Tom Lloyd Page B

the child tight to her chest. ‘My husband said not to go ! He said not to trust the goshe, but I’d lost two ! I couldn’t bear to lose another baby, oh Gods – what’ve they done to him ?’
    ‘Nothing,’ Rhe said sharply, ‘Your baby looks healthy, do not fear.’
    ‘But … ? Then why ask about goshe ?’
    ‘Membership was mentioned at one address we went to, use of the hospital at another,’ he replied. ‘We have a few disparate threads that do not yet warrant an official investigation, that is all. Until we know what is relevant, we must ask for all information that we can. It is not your place to draw conclusions.’
    Narin turned to look at Rhe. The Lawbringer’s face was totally expressionless. One woman they had spoken to had mentioned using the goshe hospital, but that was all. The link was in fact that three of the addresses had infants in them, nothing more, but that was the last thing they wanted to reveal to an anxious mother. The one where that hadn’t been the case, neither of the men were sure they had actually gone to the right address – the brief instructions were too open to interpretation in the ramshackle street they’d been led to.
    ‘Can you remember the doctor’s name ?’ Narin asked more gently.
    She shook her head at first. ‘I was in a lot o’ pain, I’m sorry. The young doctor was Pesher – dark-skinned, House Wyvern I’d have guessed – but once he examined me he called another. I don’t remember his name ; I barely saw him, but he seemed in charge of them all. Gave orders and they jumped to it so quick it was like they were puppets on string.’
    ‘Pesher, I see. Thank you Mistress, we’ll leave you now,’ Narin said, heading for the door.
    ‘That’s all ? I’m … I’m not in danger am I ? From the goshe ?’
    Rhe shook his head as he waited for Narin to open the door. ‘I see no reason to believe so, no. If there was a threat to your family, it is over – most likely it never existed and this is mere coincidence.’
    The look on her face told Narin she wasn’t much mollified by the response, but the woman dared not argue with a Lawbringer, certainly not one with Rhe’s reputation, and she curtseyed again as the man joined Narin in the street. She shut the door quickly behind them, sparing only a glance around to see which of her neighbours were watching, and the two men started back the way they had come, heading for the main road that would take them back to their path.
    The day was brightening at last, Narin realised. The early mist had long since faded, but as morning progressed the cloud was also breaking up. They walked side-by-side through the rutted, tree-studded streets that were intended to echo the forested homeland of House Wolf, on the very eastern edge of the Empire’s south continent. Narin unconsciously rolled his shoulder as he went, to work the last of the stiffness from it, his mind trying to fit the pieces of what they’d learned together.
    ‘What is your next move ?’ Rhe asked at last. ‘Where now ?’
    ‘That’s the last of the addresses,’ Narin said with a sigh. ‘We’ve some sort of connection, but what that is I’ve no damn idea.’
    ‘Nothing that brings you closer to answering Lord Shield’s question,’ Rhe agreed. ‘Who is the moon ? I remember a myth I heard as a child, something about the moon being father of the stars – the lesser stars, of course, not the Gods.’
    Without meaning to, Narin glanced upward. The cloud had not thinned enough to see the greater stars as faint grey dots, the constellations of the Gods that were visible on the clearest days. ‘You think one man fathered all those children ? No, it’s impossible – the first two were pure-blood Dragons, skin as dark as anyone’s, but that last had skin as light as its mother’s.’
    ‘Just so, and his caste-stain read servant caste. Whatever his parentage, whatever possible scandal there might be, they would have not marked it so had they