The Crowded Shadows (6 page)

“Do not insult me,” interrupted Christopher flatly. There was more silence, then Christopher said, “Stop shirking and go fill those waterskins. Your little sister is going to murder you when she realises that you took her watch, and I want your chores done before you’re too crippled to walk.”

“You had better run, Razi Kingsson,” growled Wynter from her bed, “for as soon as I get these covers off me, I’m going to kick your arse.” She rolled and glared across the clearing at him.

Razi was already walking off, the waterskins slung across both shoulders. He backed away, spreading his arms in challenge. “Catch me then, warrior woman! Come on!”

Wynter settled back, folding her arms, and Razi grinned.

“I thought not!” he said, and strode away towards the river.

Wynter watched Christopher’s slim back as he served out three bowls of mush. Like herself, he had his hair bound tightly against his head to protect it from the dust and parasites, and she thought the nape of his neck had a very strong, pleasing look to it. He had left off his tunic and she could see the closely muscled contours of his back and shoulders under the thin cloth of his undershirt. She swallowed hard at the feelings these things awoke in her.

“Christopher,” she said. “I am sorry that I intruded on your kindness last night.”

Christopher was perfectly still for a moment. Then he tilted his head towards her slightly, so that she could see a portion of cheekbone and the black shadow of his eyelashes. “Do you regret it?” he asked softly.

“No, I do not.”

She saw his shoulders relax, and he went back to dishing out the breakfast. “Would you mind packing away the bedrolls?” he asked. “There’s much to discuss before we leave, and it’s best to get everything done now.”

“All right.”

He sat still and quiet while she began her task, but she’d only knotted the ties on the first ground sheet when he spoke again. “Razi has asked us to leave him,” he said. She stopped in her work and they turned to look at each other. “I told him you’d be no more willing to leave him than I, but it has just occurred to me… I have no right to speak for you, girly. I don’t know your mind.”

Wynter smiled.
Oh, I think you do, Christopher Garron. I think we are of one mind in this. But thank you for asking my opinion
. “I will be staying,” she said.

Christopher regarded her closely, those clear grey eyes searching her face.

“Girly?” he asked.

“Aye?”

“Do you think this Alberon fellow sent those assassins to kill Razi? I have this fear that we are allowing our friend walk to his execution here, and it haunts me that I may be aiding him in his own destruction.”

Wynter thought of Albi, of his generous, loving nature, of his adoration of Razi, and she tried to dovetail it with the images of the assassins—the knife thrown across the banquet hall, the murderous arrow through the poor guard’s head. How could her sunny, laughing friend have been behind them? Then she thought of Razi, standing by while that poor man was tortured so awfully, and she realised that time and circumstance could change anyone.

“Girly?” insisted Christopher. “I am in the dark here.”

She sighed. Razi would be back from the river soon. In the short time left, how could she let Christopher know what Razi meant to Alberon and herself? How much he had done for them, and how unthinkable it was that Albi would ever want to hurt him. “Did you know that Albi and I were born on the same day, Christopher?”

He shook his head, puzzled by the direction the conversation had taken.

“We were not meant to be, but Albi came very late and I came much too early.” Wynter glanced in the direction of the river. Marni had been the one to tell her this, and she was never too sure that Razi would want her to know it.

She looked back to Christopher. “Princess Sophia… Albi’s mother?… had the most appalling labour. My mother and Sophia had been in their confinement together… you know about my father, of course?” Christopher shook his head, and Wynter spread her hands in frustration and glanced towards the river again. “Father was still on the run with Rory at the time, Jonathon’s father being determined to see them both dead.”

She held her hand up to deflect Christopher’s shocked questions. “Another time,” she said. “It is irrelevant to this story. Anyway, my mother was under Jonathon’s most steadfast protection, and so she had been sharing the Princess’s quarters. But the sounds of Sophia’s awful torment terrified my poor mother, who was already mortally afraid of the prospect of labour, so Mamma fled the palace, seeking the tranquillity of the home she had shared with… with my dad.”

Wynter faltered; somehow putting everything into words like this was very difficult. It brought everything sharply into focus for her. Most awfully, the fact that she, squirming and kicking in her mother’s womb, had been the reason for that good woman’s death and for the barrenness of her father’s remaining years. She stared at her hands for a moment, then blinked and carried on.

“Razi was most devoted to my mother. He must have followed her from the palace. Marni thinks that he must have found her very soon after she fell. It had been raining, the ground must have been…” Wynter paused again, the image of her seventeen-year-old mother, giving birth alone and frightened in a wet field, was much too vivid in her mind. “Razi turned up in the kitchens hours later, covered in blood and carrying me wrapped in his tunic. I was tiny, apparently, and blue with cold. Marni swaddled me and put me in a box of hay like a kitten. By the time they found my mother, she had already bled to death.”

Christopher shifted slightly, but did not speak or reach for her. She rubbed her forehead and continued.

“Albi was born that night. Princess Sophia lingered till morning, and then she too died. No one really knows why, though Razi has his suspicions.” Wynter raised her eyes to Christopher. “He blames her death on the same thing that kept Jonathon’s next two wives from carrying children, the same thing that led to
their
deaths. Poison…”

Christopher sat up a little straighter. “Oh,” he said.

“Two days later, Razi turned up in the kitchens again. This time he was carrying the royal prince under his arm, a weighty, great dumpling of a baby, apparently. It’s amazing that a four-year-old could have carried him so far.”

“Why did he do it?” asked Christopher quietly.

Wynter glanced towards the river again. “Have you met Razi’s mother, Christopher?”

“Aye.”

“What think you of her?”

Christopher gave it some thought. “I think
…”
he said carefully, “that she is a woman who has managed to make her way in a world dominated by men. There is much to be admired in her.”

This so stunned Wynter that she was speechless for a moment. Christopher was the first person she had ever met with anything positive to say about Umm-Razi Hadil bint-Omar. “My father calls Hadil ‘The Hidden Dagger’,” she said.

Christopher’s amused dimples blossomed into a grin. “That is also apt. Why was it that Razi brought his brother to the kitchens, girly?”

Wynter flicked a glance towards the river. Razi’s curly head was just coming into sight as he made his way up the slope towards them, and she continued in a whispered rush, “According to Marni, Razi would say nothing but ‘
my mother is looking at him
’. No matter how many times they returned Albi to his chambers, he would eventually be found in the kitchen, sleeping in the box of hay by my side, Razi sitting on the floor at our feet.”

Christopher turned his head at the sound of Razi’s footsteps approaching through the dry leaves.

“Razi has protected us our whole lives, Christopher. He has been our rock. Albi would never hurt him. I can’t
believe
that Albi would ever hurt him.”

Razi came trudging into camp, his long body curling forward with the weight of the waterskins and his own heavy thoughts. He sighed and glanced up as he began to make his way down the slope, then paused to see the two of them sitting cross-legged and deep in conversation.

“You God-cursed laggards!” he exclaimed. “You’ve done naught since the time I left!”

“Hmm… ten days,” mused Razi. They were packed and ready to go, the three of them hunched over Wynter’s map. The sun was just up, the heat already a curse and flies had already begun to swarm. Wynter blinked sweat from her eyes as Razi traced the journey from the Indirie Valley all the way down the map to the spot where they were camped. “Ten days,” he said again, and tapped the parchment thoughtfully.

“It’s a long way to go without knowing the situation at home,” said Wynter. “We need to know for whom the black pennants fly, Razi.”

He lifted his eyes to meet hers and they both looked away almost immediately. There was a moment of strained silence in which they stared blindly at the map.

“We could stop at an inn,” suggested Christopher quietly. “No better place for news and gossip.”

Wynter raised her eyebrows. Not a bad idea. “The closest inn is… here,” she indicated the Wherry Tavern, a ferry house and traveller’s rest located at the ferry ford. “It is only five days from here, and on our route.”

Razi leant forward to see.

“No, there’s another one,” said Christopher.

“Do you mean the Orange Cow?” Wynter traced her finger up the river to show the crossroads inn. “That’s seven days from here. Better to—”

“No,” he insisted, gently brushing her hand aside and turning the map to face him. “I’m certain I saw
…”

“Christopher,” she said patiently, “I’ve been over this map many times, there are only two inns.”

“Wait, wait,” he held his hand up, scanning the page. “What kind of map is this?”

“It’s a merchant map, a silver guild’s merchant map.”

“Ahh!” Christopher raised his eyes in excitement and traded a grin with Razi. “Ours ain’t so refined, lass!” He went and fetched the map case from his horse. “Look!” he said, spreading another map out to cover Wynter’s. “Here.” He jabbed his finger down to show Wynter a tiny dot in the heart of the deep forest, less than a day’s ride away. He tapped the map for emphasis and Wynter tore her eyes from his awful scars and forced herself to concentrate on the area he indicated. “See, this is a tarman’s map, girly. Details all the local places merchants wouldn’t be caught dead in.”

“That will take us less than two days out of our way,” murmured Razi. “I think it is well worth it.”

“Aye,” said Wynter, eyeing the nondescript spot. “I wonder if they’ll have a bathhouse. After seven days without a proper wash, I’m starting to stink like a Northlander.” She blushed immediately, appalled at herself. “Oh, Chris! I am so sorry!”

The dimples flashed wryly as he continued to study the map. “No offence taken, girly,” he said. “You Southlanders are insane about your soap and water. You’re almost as bad as his lot.” He jerked his thumb at Razi.

“I
am
a Southlander,” said Razi mildly, and it was Christopher’s turn to redden and mutter an apology. Razi just glanced affectionately at him, and went back to chewing the beanstalk he’d found in his breakfast. “A bath does sound good,” he mused, scrubbing his jaw. There was a good seven days of growth on it, the beginnings of an admirably thick and curly beard. “Yes,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“It
is
fierce habit forming,” admitted Christopher grudgingly. He squirmed and tried to scratch his back. “Once you’ve got the routine of it, you can’t seem to do without.”

“All right,” said Razi, reaching over and scratching Christopher between the shoulder blades. “Put the map away, friend, and we will go have our baths.”

Christopher crossed to tie the map cases to his saddle and Wynter began folding away her own map. She was so sunk into her thoughts that she jumped when Razi gripped her wrist.

“Wynter,” he said, his deep voice quiet. “I want you to ask Christopher to take you home.” At her frown, he bore down hard with his hand. “He cares for you, sis. He will go if you ask.”

She held his eye and purposely removed his hand from her wrist. “Do not insult us again,” she said. “We will not tolerate it.” He crumbled before her, his desperation palpable, and she couldn’t help but love him for his concern. “Razi,” she said gently, “I am staying, and that is an end to it.”

“Oh, Wyn,” he said.

Affectionately, she scrubbed her hand through his beard. It was surprisingly soft. “I like this,” she murmured, smiling. “It suits you.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure! I probably look like a crusty old imam.”

Wynter traced the white scar where his father’s punch had split his lip, then pressed her finger to the tip of his nose. “I
like
it. It makes you look piratical!”

Then she patted his knee and left him sitting looking at his hands, while she joined Christopher in his final check of the horses.

“J
esu help us, but this is remote.”

“I cannot imagine,” sighed Razi, “that we shall be seeing our bathhouse, sis. It’s more likely that this ‘inn’ will be a tent with a barrel and a couple of tree stumps for stools.”

“I cannot imagine we shall get any
information
!” Wynter exclaimed. “What kind of custom could a place this isolated get? Bears? Foxes maybe? Badgers?”