*
Eleanor removed herself to the floor of their small room that night without needing to be asked. As she lay staring up at the ceiling she wondered if she was the only woman in the world who had to go without sex because the man she’d been sleeping with had decided he loved her. It was all the wrong way round. And guilt gnawed at her for the way she’d attacked him over the caveats she’d thought so pointless. Guilt, and the nagging feeling that if she hadn’t goaded him she might still be sleeping by his side tonight.
She woke the next morning with a crick in her neck and an ache in her back, but she knew better than to mention it. Instead she fell into her regular morning stretches, just a little more carefully than usual.
“Let’s go and see about breakfast,” she said once Daniel was dressed. “I don’t know how much hospitality we’ll find in these desert villages.”
The skinny girl who’d welcomed them was sitting at the breakfast table with Gisele.
“Cass was just telling me about her success with our slave,” Gisele said. “He’s on his way back to the Empire in a smuggling ship.”
“Smugglers?” Eleanor asked. “Don’t they keep well away from people like you?”
“Out here, we’re all just Imperial citizens a long way from home,” Cass said, smiling slightly. “They’ll see him safely across the ocean. They even had a Tarasanka man on their crew.”
Eleanor thought back to her days aboard the Rose... but the coincidence would be too much to believe. Any number of Charanthe smuggling vessels might have picked up a Tarasanka sailor.
“And with the letter I gave him, someone will find him work when he gets there,” Gisele added.
“Are you sure about this?” Eleanor asked Gisele as they finished their porridge and gathered their bags ready for the journey. “Last chance to change your mind and go home.”
“I’m sure,” Gisele said. “Are you sure you want to go out with that much kit strapped to you? You look like a walking armoury.”
Eleanor looked down at herself. It was true, she’d dressed for a fight, while Daniel and Gisele both looked a lot less conspicuous. She laughed a little at her own display of weapons. “Okay, maybe not.”
They walked to the northwest gate and passed through the checkpoint without trouble; the guards were focussed entirely on the value of goods coming into the city. The first cart to rattle past them on the westbound road was heavily packed with bleating goats, but the second rode lighter.
“We’ll try this one,” Gisele said, waving at the driver. “Hey! Ba’utsa! Wait!”
He reined in his horses and turned to look at them across the back of his trailer. “You being Charanthe?”
“Yes.” Gisele held her hand up in the traditional Falisanka greeting. “Would you happen to have space for passengers? We can pay our way.”
“Where?” he asked. “I not being going to La’un.”
“No, that’s okay, we don’t want to go that far. Just to the second turning north.”
“And you not minding sitting with pigs?”
“That’s fine.”
There were only a couple of piglets in the cart, leaving plenty of space for Daniel, Eleanor and Gisele to scramble in. Gisele adjusted the canopy of the cart to give them a little shade from the morning sun.
The driver seemed to forget about them, and Gisele had to call for his attention so they could get off at their junction.
“What is Charanthe people wanting here?” he asked as they climbed down, but he didn’t really seem to expect an answer. Gisele handed him a couple of small coins for his trouble, and he drove off without a backward glance.
It was a pitiful excuse for a settlement, just a couple of houses perched on the corners where the two roads met. One had an optimistic sign offering hospitality to passing travellers, but in reality it was too close to the city for anyone to want to break their journey here.
“The place you’re taking us will be bigger than this, won’t it?” Eleanor checked as they started to walk north, sun beating down on their faces.
“A little,” Gisele said. “But people are spread thinly in this part of the world. Outside of the cities, there’s no benefit in living too close to your neighbours.”
They walked slowly through the morning heat, along a road that was barely more than two parallel tracks of wheel-compacted sand. Daniel strode ahead of the two girls, but Gisele held Eleanor back when she tried to match his pace.
“Don’t tire yourself,” she warned. “In a place like this, your priority is to stay comfortable. He’ll wait for us.”
Eleanor wasn’t completely sure that he would, but having convinced Gisele she was happily married she really didn’t want to start a new raft of explanations.
“What are we looking for?” Gisele asked as they came in sight of a few low buildings on the horizon.
“We don’t know. We’ve heard odd things – parties of Tarasanka men coming across the border, visiting little villages of no consequence. And then we found that map.”
Daniel was waiting for them at the edge of the settlement. “You took your time.”
“Desert pace,” Gisele said. “We’re not even carrying water – it would have been stupid to hurry.”
“Well, we need to find somewhere to stay.”
Eleanor looked around. Aside from a couple of small boys playing in the shade of a nearby house, there was no-one to be seen. “There’s no chance of a guesthouse here, is there?”
Gisele shook her head. “We’ll be lucky to find someone with a spare room. More likely we sleep tonight in a shed or on someone’s kitchen floor.”
They wandered through the streets without any particular purpose, keeping as far as possible out of the gradually-increasing heat of the sun. They found a well at one edge of the village and stopped to refresh themselves. As they were winding the handle to bring the full bucket up, a middle-aged woman came to see what they were doing.
She didn’t speak a word of Charanthe, and Gisele’s limited Faliska didn’t get them far beyond the exchange of names, but it was obvious that they were strangers who didn’t belong here. The woman’s name was Talika and she turned out to have one of the village’s larger houses, overlooking the well. Once they’d drunk their fill she waved them inside. It was much cooler within the house, even with the small cooking fire which glowed in one corner. Talika fussed around her kitchen for a moment and brought out a box of dry biscuits and one large, red-skinned fruit.
“Makta!” she called, and a moment later a skinny teenager appeared from the opposite door. She waved towards the visitors and mumbled something.
The girl Makta nodded, carried the tray of food across to them, and started to cut thin slices from the fruit. When no-one helped themselves, she took out three biscuits, arranged a couple of pieces of fruit on each, and passed them over. Gisele thanked her in Falisanka before eating, while Eleanor and Daniel just smiled their appreciation.
They spent the afternoon with Makta, while her mother came and went on a variety of errands. Though they couldn’t hold a meaningful conversation, they passed time pleasantly enough playing simple dice games and sharing food. When darkness fell, no words were needed to indicate that they were welcome to stay.
There were no internal walls in the house, although the two beds were divided from the rest of the room by light, transparent curtains. Makta arranged blankets on the floor for the guests, and they all settled down to sleep. By unspoken agreement Eleanor and Daniel lay close together for the sake of appearances, but the inch between their bodies felt like an unbridgeable gulf.
The next morning they went to look around the rest of the village, trying to get a feel for the place in the early hours of light before it became too hot to accomplish anything.
“We should buy some food if we can,” Gisele said as they walked. “It’s kind of Talika to feed us, but they can’t really afford it.”
They eventually found a grocer’s shop operating out of one window of a small hou
se. Rows of wilted vegetables were arranged on the windowsill. When Gisele stepped forwards to select some presents for their hosts, a young girl came to the window to take their money. She could hardly have been more than ten years old, and she stared in wide-eyed astonishment at where Eleanor and Daniel waited in the shade.
“What can Taraska possibly want in a place like this?” Eleanor asked as Gisele rejoined them. “It’s nonsense. Unless they just want the land to expand the city?”
“That seems the most obvious solution,” Daniel said. “But what concern is it to the Empire? Why are we here?”
“Oh, that part’s simple,” Gisele said. “Faliska’s military strength is more of an embarrassing weakness. They don’t have anywhere near enough forces to defend their lands.”
“And?”
“And with peace in the Empire, our armies are hardly used.”
“Would we do that for them?” Eleanor asked.
“Not for them, for us. In the circumstances, Faliska’s king won’t be able to refuse when we offer our assistance, even if we add crippling conditions.”
“What kind of conditions? This isn’t exactly a rich country.”
“The Empress has been looking for a way to annex Faliska. I think you’re here to find her excuse for her.”
It took a moment for the idea to sink in. “Why?”
Gisele shrugged. “I can only give you my opinion, but she’s getting old. I think she feels her great-grandfather’s shadow hanging over her: the whole Empire takes Charan’s name. Even if she just gets a strip of villages along the border, it’s a foothold in the drylands – and no-one will forget the Empress who first expanded the Empire beyond the great seas.”
“She wishes us to find enough proof to terrify the king,” Daniel said. Eleanor thought she could hear a hint of disapproval in his voice, but Gisele didn’t pick up on it and he said nothing more on the matter.
They headed back to the house and presented Talika with their purchases, to effusive thanks. When Gisele offered to help prepare a salad for the evening meal, Eleanor took Daniel and pulled him outside.
“Something’s troubling you.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me. You’re worried about this job – or what Gisele thinks it is. I could hear it.”
“I do not have to answer to you, Eleanor.”
“No, but you have to work with me.” He turned to go back inside, but she caught his arm. “Listen to me.”
“I have listened.”
“I miss you.” She blurted the words out, only a half-formed plan in her head. Everything had gone wrong since he’d decided to fall in love with her – and if she couldn’t love him back, she nevertheless had to find some way to ease his feelings. The job would suffer if they couldn’t find a way forward.
“We are together every day,” he said.
“It’s different. You’re ignoring me, you won’t even talk to me about work.” She reached for his hand. “Don’t shut me out.”
“You swore you would never care for me. How am I supposed to take that?”
“I think I was in denial. I think...” She swallowed hard. Unable to conceal her nerves at what she was about to do, she could only hope he’d attribute them to the wrong source. “I think I’m in love with you.”
“You do not have good timing, Eleanor. This is not an appropriate time to discuss such matters. We are far too busy to talk of love.”
“We don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Well, now I know. I hope you are happy.”
“Don’t do this. Listen, I know I’ve upset you, but this all took me by surprise. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He removed his hand from hers. “You wished to talk about our plans?”
“I want to know what’s troubling you.”
“If Gisele is right in her assessment, I believe we have much to worry about.”
“It all fits, doesn’t it? This, and renewed interest in the southern mountains at home, looking to make the Empire bigger in all directions.”
He nodded. “I am not sure I like it, that is all. These people have not asked to have our laws imposed upon them.”
They sat in silence for a while, until Gisele came out to tell them that dinner was ready, and that night they slept hand-in-hand on the floor.