The Warrior's Bond (Einarinn 4) by Juliet E. McKenna Page B

kept an eye out for anyone lurking in hopes of cutting a purse to pay for whatever vice had them in its claws.
    I was heading for the tongue of higher land that forms the northern side of Toremal Bay. When I’d first come to the city, little older than Temar and proud of my newly sworn status, it wasn’t a district D’Olbriot’s men would go to in anything less that threes, daylight or no. Any Name with property thereabouts balanced the rents they might collect against the blood it would cost them, and most reckoned the game not worth the candle. Then a new storm had blown up in Lescar’s interminable wars and the ebb and flow of battle washed fresh flotsam up on to Tormalin shores. This was the only place the dispossessed wretches could get a foothold, and they’d dug in their heels, refusing to be knocked on their arses again. It’s easy to despise the Lescari, to mock their dogged persistence over claim and counterclaim, their obsession with land title and vengeance, but there’s no denying that single-mindedness serves them well at times.
    I walked along streets where broken shutters had been replaced with new wood, bright with paint. The children might be grubby from playing in the dust but had started their day with clean if patched clothes and lovingly brushed hair. The clack and creak of working looms floated out of open windows high above, and women chatting as they kept an eye on their offspring sat on balconies with distaffs busy in their hands. The Lescari may have arrived without half a lead Mark in their pockets but they had skills in their hands and knowledge in their heads. These days more than half the noble dwellings in the upper city have North Bay tapestries gracing their walls.
    I pulled the perfumed letter from my jerkin and realised I had missed a turn. Retracing my steps, I found the narrow flight of stone stairs. Counting doors along the soiled walls, I saw I wanted the one marked by an earthenware pot bright with scarlet flagflowers. I knocked, wondering how long the brilliant splash of colour would last before some drunken reveller kicked the blooms down the steps, either from accident or exuberant desire to see how far they might fly.
    The door opened a scant hand’s breadth and I saw a shadowy figure within. “Yes?”
    “Ryshad Tathel.” I held up the note. “For my lady Alaric.”
    The door closed as the wedge securing it was kicked aside. It opened to reveal a gawky youth whose nervous energy kept his hands in constant motion. He was no stripling though, much my height and with shoulders broad enough to promise strength when he filled out. He wiped sweat from his forehead before running a hand over the beard so many Lescari affect. His beak of a nose and wide set eyes reminded me of seasons spent about Messire’s business along the border with Parnilesse. I’d had a friend from there, Aiten, whose death was a score I vowed to settle with the Elietimm.
    “This way,” the lad said curtly. Tormalin was much his mother tongue as my own so some earlier brush with Lescar’s recurrent catastrophes must have swept his wretched forebears here.
    I followed him up uncarpeted stairs dimly lit by an inadequate skylight. The lady I had come to visit proved to rent the entire first floor. A demure maid in an expensive silk dress sat on the landing and rose to greet me.
    “I’ll let my lady know you’re here.” Her accent was unmistakably Relshazri, seldom heard in Toremal for all the trade plied across the benign waters of the Gulf that separates the two great cities.
    She disappeared and the lad clattered noisily down the stairs to his kennel. I ran a contemplative finger over the inlaid swags of flowers decorating a table where the maid had put her sewing. This piece would grace the boudoir of any wife of D’Olbriot.
    “My lady bids you welcome.” The maid ushered me into the front room. I swept a bow fit for the Imperial presence.
    “Good day to you, Master Tathel.” The woman