LITMIR.BIZ

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now Keshian. Once you reach Darkmoor, you will once more be on Kingdom soil. The Empire is reclaiming its realm, from Crydee to Krondor, Yabon and LaMut. Even as we speak the armies of Great Kesh are marching and our navies are sweeping through the Bitter Sea. You are now trespassing on Keshian soil, my prince,’ declared Captain Gorves. ‘You have two days to make ready for your departure or I shall bring horrors upon you and your people that no man should have to contemplate. It is a simple choice; leave or die.’

      With that he turned and walked away, leaving a stunned Martin unable to speak.

• CHAPTER TWELVE •

       Escape

      JIM DASHER RAN.

      Four armed men were following him and his guide, and he knew that if they were overtaken, he was certainly a dead man. Whoever was hunting him had proved to be relentless. They were dashing through the alleys and streets of Ranom, a miserable little trading port at the foot of the Trollhome Mountains in Western Kesh. The plan had been to get to a ship waiting in the harbour, and then sail to Durbin, as close to the border as a Keshian freighter could travel. Getting from Durbin to the Kingdom’s closest city, Land’s End, was Jim’s problem. Jim silently cursed Kaseem’s agent aboard the ship where he was captured; instead of merely removing the Tsurani transportation orb that Jim had hidden, he had prodded it with a dagger point, thinking it some sort of tiny multi-levered-lock box and his meddling had rendered it inoperable. Now the only way back to behind the Kingdom’s lines was by his own wits.

      His guide made a motion with his head, indicating a turn to the left, and they both darted down an alleyway. The guide suddenly leapt for a low overhanging roof and by the time Jim could follow his lead, was hanging from roof beams in deep shadows under the roof’s eaves, just a foot above a tall man’s head. Jim knew exactly what was being said without words. They couldn’t outrun the assassins, so their only choice was to get behind them.

      A moment later the four men came down the street, and not for the first time Jim was disturbed by how silently they moved. These were men who resembled the legendary Nighthawks, a cult of demon-worshipping assassins detailed in memoirs by his great-great grandfather, James, the first Jamison, the legendary Jimmy the Hand of the Mockers.

      There was a rueful sense of fate that visited Jim as he clung precariously to the eaves, waiting for his pursuers to run underneath him.

      As a boy his father, the second James, had raised him to be a servant of the Crown, as he was, but his Uncle Dasher, after whom he was also named, and Great Uncle Dashel, used to regale the young Jim with stories of his namesake, the first James. As a child Jim had insisted for a time on being called ‘Jimmyhand’, and the moniker had stuck. More than once he had employed it to good use, in his guise as Jim Dasher, simple thief and pickpocket in the Mockers. But more than once he had also decided that somewhere along the way he had got caught up in his own myth, and that without realizing it, he was competing with the ghost of a dead forebear. But, good gods, Nighthawks?

      If they were indeed a resurgence of that long-believed-dead clan of murderers, things were even more dire than he thought. It was believed the Nighthawks had finally been obliterated by Eric von Darkmoor’s special attack unit, The Prince’s Own, in the long-abandoned Cavell Keep, some ten years ago. Silently, Jim thought of them as cockroaches: you thought you’d killed them all, but they kept showing up.

      The same thought had passed through his mind after seeing the Pantathian Serpent Priest in that longboat. Every report he had read indicated they had been obliterated years ago and the birthing crèche in their underground lair in Novindus destroyed. Another nest of cockroaches, apparently.

      The pursuers ran quietly underneath, and Jim held his breath, praying they would not notice they were passing scant inches below their quarry, or they would be able simply to impale him and his companion as easily as spearing fruit on a tree branch with a pointed stick. Jim felt more than heard his companion let himself lightly down to the ground. Jim followed, his shoulders and hips burning from the exertion of holding himself in place. I am getting too old for this nonsense, he thought. His father and grandfather were both putting pressure on him to marry and start a more mundane life in the King’s service and he was getting to be convinced that was a really fine idea. Not for the first time he considered asking Franciezka to quit her post with the Crown of Roldem and run off to some tiny island where they could eat, sleep, and make love.

      The guide motioned and Jim followed, running silently through the dark streets of the city. Ducking through a maze of alleys, they reached an unmarked door, and the guide opened it.

      Jim followed him inside without hesitation and closed the door behind him. ‘We shall be safe here,’ said the guide.

      ‘Not for long.’

      ‘Yes, they will double back, but unless they can track by magic, they’ll have a hundred doors to investigate.’ He caught his breath and added, ‘The sun will rise in an hour. We can attempt to get down to the docks in the throng going to work. Rest now. I will go and seek help to get you out of the port. If I am not back by dawn, it means I have been captured or am dead; make your way to the docks as best you can and seek out a boat called the Mialaba, the name of a woman from the captain’s homeland. He is a man named Nefu. He can be trusted. Tell him you need to find a ship for Durbin and he will get you safely there. Latch the door behind me.’

      Jim waved a tired hand, indicating that he understood, and the guide slipped out of the door. Jim latched it and sat down heavily on a large, tied bundle of cloth.

      When he looked around, he saw he was in the back room of some sort of enterprise, a tailor’s shop by the look of it. Whoever owned it was absent, and Jim was certain the shop must be one of Kaseem’s safe houses in this town.

      He settled in, determined to sort through the strange events he’d endured since awakening in Ranom. For several hours, Kaseem abu Hazara-Khan had detailed to Jim what had occurred in his nation to bring this war on so suddenly and unexpectedly.

      It had begun, according to the desert man, with the unexpected rise in the Gallery of Lords and Masters of a few members of the nobility who were close friends with a Keshian prince by the name of Harfum, a distant nephew of the Emperor. This sort of nepotism and cronyism was nothing new in the Empire, and as long as it didn’t get too obvious and abusive, no one cared about it. The only thing Keshian nobility cared about was keeping their own rank and privileges. The offices granted these men were minor: supervising taxes in a distant province, overseeing the garrisons along the southern border with the Confederacy, supervising the building of ships, levying duties on goods transported by caravan. Nothing in these appointments signalled building a power base or creating a faction within the Gallery of Lords and Masters, so no one objected.

      Then came rumours about a caravan carrying certain goods being diverted at the request of the newly-appointed minister for that district, or a ship-building request that seemed to originate in some vague office attached to the Imperial Navy, but with no one quite sure who was authorizing that purchase. It seemed that Prince Harfum’s friends were always somewhere around when things turned odd, but Kaseem could not establish a clear pattern or find compelling evidence to present to his master, the Imperial Chancellor, or to the Emperor himself.

      Also the corruption that was common to Kesh’s bureaucracy hid much of what was going on, since bribes were paid for falsified cargo manifests and caravan freight was signed off without inspection. Bolts of cloth turned out to have sharp, hard edges; urns were filled with herbs that had steel broad-heads attached, and pottery was made from steel with nose- and cheek-guards. Bows were smuggled as trade goods; swords, shields and armour as raw timber. Iron ore intended for the Imperial Armoury at one city was diverted to a retired swordmaker’s forge in a different city. When a hundred horses were requisitioned for a garrison, eighty would arrive and a notation on a document would explain away the discrepancy. Mules, oxen, horses, dried foodstuff, crates for food, water barrels and casks – all the necessities to put an army on the march – slowly

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