*
Daniel prodded Eleanor awake; Gisele was already stirring beside them. They were still in the same store room, restrained with iron manacles around their wrists and ankles. A young guard sat on one of the crates, keeping a half-hearted watch.
“What now?” Gisele asked, looking between Eleanor and Daniel. “I take it this wasn’t part of your plan?”
“Not exactly.”
Gisele leaned forwards to the guard. “What’s your name?”
“What are you doing?” Eleanor whispered. “We don’t even know if he speaks Charanthe.”
“I’m a reasonable woman,” Gisele continued. The guard ignored her as steadfastly as she was ignoring Eleanor. “And I’m confident that you’re a reasonable man. You’re how old, twenty? Twenty-one?”
He shrugged, unable or unwilling to answer.
“I’m sure you think you’ve done well for yourself. You’ve made it off the boats, and your master only beats you once or twice a day, I see that. But you know you’ll always be a slave.”
The boy stared at her now with dark eyes wide, spooked. “How you knowing?”
“I know the ways of Taraska. So what’s next? Where do you go from here?”
“What?”
“What’s next for you? We’ve got money. If you help us, you’ll never have to go back to your master.”
“You having almost nothing,” he said, holding up the bag of their possessions. It contained only the few weapons they’d stripped from Eleanor and Daniel.
“Not here,” Gisele said. “We’re not that stupid. But help us out, come with us, and we’ll see you’re never a slave again.”
He rubbed at his arm, where a black tattoo was just visible through the thin cotton of his sleeve. “Slave always being slave,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean anything in the Empire, or in Faliska,” Gisele said. “Haven’t you dreamed of freedom? I can give it to you. You just need to get us out of here.”
He thought for a moment, then peered out through the doorway to check they were alone. “I will to helping,” he said, loosing their manacles. “But we must going fast.”
“You’ll have to tell me how you did that,” Eleanor said to Gisele as they followed him through the corridors. “How did you know to say those things?”
Gisele smiled. “I’m a diplomat, remember? But it was nothing, just a little local knowledge.”
“You knew exactly what to say to make him listen.”
“I saw the slave mark on his arm – and I know the shape of their lives.”
He led them through quiet passages beneath the citadel, and out of a side gate into the streets.
“Where you wanting?” the youth asked. “We going for ships?”
“Not yet,” Gisele said. “We need to go to Hangman’s Square.”
The youth shook his head. “Not nice,” he said. “Better going to ships.”
“Hangman’s Square,” Gisele repeated. “That’s where we need to go first.”
Eleanor and Daniel exchanged puzzled glances, but if Gisele had a plan then they weren’t about to stop her. The youth reluctantly led the way into an area of tumbledown wooden shacks, in a corner of the city far from anywhere Eleanor had visited before.
Charanthe’s embassy in Taraska was small and unofficial – the Tarasanka lords would never knowingly have permitted the Imperial staff to set up offices in their city – but Gisele knew the woman currently serving as the Empire’s head of operations in the region. On the first floor of a narrow, half-collapsed building just off Hangman’s Square, they found a tiny office with a couple of cluttered desks.
“Is Fan around?” Gisele asked the skinny girl who sat behind one of them.
“She’ll be back tomorrow,” the girl said. “Can I help you?”
“I’m the assistant ambassador to Faliska,” Gisele said. That caught the girl’s attention, but Gisele waved her to silence. “Don’t ask how I ended up here, but this kid needs sanctuary in the Empire. Can you get him out of the city today?”
The girl nodded. “Do you want me to send him to your embassy in Faliska?”
“Or put him on a ship bound for home, if you can find one. I’ll write a letter of introduction.”
“Okay, I’ll see what there is.” The girl rearranged a few things on her desk, and beckoned the lad to follow her downstairs.
“You need to rest,” Eleanor said, pushing Gisele into a chair. “Daniel, I think we need your skills – look what those chains have done.”
“Yes.” He lifted Gisele’s arm, examined the wounds, then released her gently. “I will go to the market.”
“You might want to pick up some srakol,” Eleanor said. “It’s a local preparation that seems to help with healing.”
“Do you still think I know nothing?” Daniel snapped, then glanced apologetically at Gisele. “Yes, I will get some. I will not be long.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Gisele asked once they were alone.
“You first,” Eleanor said. “You’re the one who managed to get yourself kidnapped.”
“I assumed you’d worked it out. You managed to follow me, after all – I wasn’t expecting that. I thought I’d had it when I came round and realised they’d put me on a ship.”
“I guessed a few things,” Eleanor said. “Just easy stuff. You got changed into boring clothes and you went wandering in your house-shoes. And I heard someone following us in the night.”
“I was careless – I don’t have practice at this sort of thing. Whereas you, apparently, do.”
“A little, yes.”
Gisele narrowed her eyes. “A little?”
“Okay, more than a little.”
“What are you, Eleanor? What have you become?”
“Can’t you guess? You’ll get it wrong, of course, but everyone’s always wrong about us.”
“You’re an assassin.”
“That’ll do.”
“So the legends–”
“They’re not legends. All the crazy stuff we thought was fairy stories, well, it’s pretty much all true.”
“Except the ship-school.” Gisele let out a weak laugh. “That one’s far too ridiculous.”
“As it happens, that one is also true.” Daniel said as he pushed through the door.
“Daniel was at Hess,” Eleanor said. “Hessekolenisshe. That’s the name of the school on the ship.”
For a moment Gisele thought they were joking. Then, realising she knew even less than she thought, she shrugged and sank back in the chair. “Have you brought something for these scrapes?”
“I have a number of things,” he said, pulling jars and bottles from his pockets. “Here, drink this.”
“What is it?”
“It will help you. Drink it.”
She prised out the cork and tipped the bottle’s contents into her mouth, grimacing as she swallowed. “What was that?”
“I think you would prefer not to know what it contained. Some things are hard to come by in foreign lands – we must take what we can find. Srakol, on the other hand, is a local speciality.”
Eleanor took the wide-mouthed jar and began to smoothe the clear, sticky gel across Gisele’s broken skin. “This is good stuff,” she said. “The smugglers showed it to me.”
“There really were smugglers, then? I wasn’t sure if that was all some elaborate story to cover your tracks.”
“When I saw you in Almont I didn’t have any tracks to cover. I had no idea whether any of this was going to work out.”
“And... are you happy?”
Eleanor nodded. “Much happier than I would have been in some stupid police job, certainly. And it’s never going to be boring, is it, when we even have to dig our own diplomats out of trouble.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You thought you were doing your job.”
“The ambassador knew you were up to something. He started acting strangely from the moment you arrived, but he never to
ld me why. I was worried there might be trouble.”
“I know.” Eleanor patted her friend on the shoulder in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. “I told Daniel that was the most likely thing – that you were trying to help, and you followed us, and they got you.”
“Does the ambassador know? Have you sent word that you’ve rescued me?”
“No, not yet. We’ll send you back to Faliska on the next friendly ship, there’s no need for you to stay here. You can travel as fast as a letter, and tell him yourself.”
“Send me? Aren’t you coming?”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“Here? I thought you were visiting Faliska. Don’t you need to come back to the city?”
“There’s some stuff in the border lands. We’ll have to cross back, but not by far. But we’ll make sure we find a friendly boat for you to travel on – we don’t want to have to rescue you again.”