Tagg and Vaenuth shared a coffee on an open patio roof, at a small Lo Mallago Cafe called the Imported Shrine. Indeed, everything sold at it seemed to be a delicacy from afar, save the coffee. Tagg informed her of her ignorance—coffee didn’t grow in Lo Mallago yet, not even in the jungle woodlands that had re-grown after the Orrish’s blight.
For this, and other reasons, the city of Lo Mallago seemed strange. Many houses were empty, it appeared. Likely because of the revolution. Vae also noticed that the centre of the city, where the Rebel King held the Market Court, seemed to be a poor region full of displaced wealth. Rundown buildings now had glass windows or inhabitants dressed in silk and fine linen. They passed one man who had filled his stone-fenced yard with water and now bathed in it, without a care in the world who was watching. One of his neighbours appeared to be a shoe cobbler with three armed bodyguards. These were people who had taken more wealth from their leaders than they knew what to do with—in the wake of their poverty they spent their earnings on whatever strange uses they had a preference for.
Tagg smiled at her, and she wondered if she had missed something he had said. “Well, is the coffee good at least?” he asked.
Vaenuth nodded emphatically and sipped it again. There was a hint of caramel to it. She savoured the taste and let it warm her upper chest as she drank it.
Abruptly, her friend stiffened and looked into the street. “Those are Jorath men,” he said. A bedraggled group had entered the nearby city gate, striding between beige rock buildings with missing armour and gashed faces.
“Let’s go,” Vae said. She led the way out off the loft, leaving her unfinished coffee and the bill. They hurried down the steps at the front of the Imported Shrine, and out into the street. There were five guards, she saw, plus two servants in similar condition and a few young women. Two of the latter were weeping, despite their scrapes, bruises, and coated dust and dirt.
They were stopped by a lord of some kind, a wide man with sagging shoulders who strode out of the Market Court trailing an aquamarine robe behind him. His attendants scurried to keep up. “What brings you?” the man asked. “Where is your lord?”
The captain guard bowed his head. “Early this morning, an explosion shook the House of Jorath. The first floor and the corner of the second were blasted to damn debris and none know the cause. Our master, Jorath…. he perished. And his son was found dead on the road yesterday, looted and half-decapitated! We demand justice! Jorath’s widow and his daughters demand vengeance!”
“Of course,” the lord said, quietly. “The Rebel King will answer for this tragedy and send his Elected Warriors to investigate.”
One of the grieving women gave a shriek of curses, but Vaenuth and Tagg were already weaving away through the flock of merchants, customers, and wagons that crowded the main street. “What now?” Tagg asked.
“We leave,” Vaenuth said.
Tagg blinked. “What about Hulean?” Her friend scratched his poorly cut dark hair. He had used a knife on it, himself, just because after his injury and healing time it had become long and unkempt.
“What about him?” Vae asked. “He’s never been one of us, just an ally. If he survived whatever means he killed Jorath with, he’ll find us. If he didn’t, he won’t. No sense waiting in Lo Mallago until the Rebel King tracks us down and strings us up.”
Tagg nodded. “That’s reasonable,” he said. He clutched his sword hilt as he briskly strode beside her, to weave it through the pedestrians with him. Vaenuth’s small vest swayed as she walked, but never revealed the slave brand between her shoulder blades to the citizens around her. Tagg chuckled to himself, then shared his humour. “What about the man you’ve been wrapped around this whole time?”
Vae smirked. She had been with Novon every night she’d stayed in Lo Mallago. And some days too. “What about him?”
“Going to go say farewell?” Tagg asked her, more earnestly this time.
She shrugged. Novon had been fun, and had given her more pleasure than she had ever known in her life of turmoil and torture. But that’s all it was, and all that she wanted it to be. “Who cares?” she said. “Let’s just get the others.”
Tagg frowned, but kept walking. They found Pressip, Krebin, and Arloe at the Old Glory Inn where they had still been staying. Krebin was the only one who gave objection to Vaenuth’s decision—Hulean had saved his life, after all, and the mercenary wanted to find him—but the others gave in without much argument. Vaenuth led her mercenaries out of Lo Mallago by the Sheld gate.
She had forgotten how blistering the Barren Road was.