Players of the Game. Graeme Talboys K.

the heart.

      ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I really am sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.’

      Jeniche turned in the balcony doorway and glared into the room. ‘I’m tired of it. I don’t like cheating people. It’s all wrong. And you needn’t look at me like that. Yes, I was a thief. And a good one. But I only stole from those who could afford to lose it. And I only did it to survive.’

      ‘What about that place in the south of Kamar? Oh, come on; don’t put on an expression of outraged innocence. I know you too well. Besides, it doesn’t suit you.’

      ‘I had nothing to do with that. I had very little to do with…’ She shrugged as she passed him on the way to the other end of the room. ‘All right,’ she added as she turned. ‘So I redistributed his wealth a bit. But that’s just my point. He was a bastard. Cheated his customers, including us, and treated his staff like something you’d step in after the cattle had been driven through. Which is why I don’t want to run out on this one.’

      ‘We don’t have much choice.’

      She leaned against the wall by the washstand and rubbed her eyes. ‘Well at least you’ll look after your purse more carefully in future.’

      Alltud looked up at the ceiling, perhaps well beyond. ‘I knew you’d bring that into it.’

      ‘Well, you had the rent money,’ she said, ‘and you would insist on taking it everywhere in that fat, fancy, tempting purse. I told you to keep it out of sight, but no. And some light-fingered guttersnipe gave up resisting the temptation. Which is pretty much the reason you are now proposing I climb out in the dark.’

      She pushed away from the wall.

      ‘Be that as it… Would you stop!’

      She stopped.

      ‘We couldn’t have left earlier,’ he continued. ‘Wherever we had stayed. Nobody was going anywhere during that latest storm. Nothing left the harbour and no one was venturing out on the roads. Besides. Where would we go?’

      Jeniche looked down at him with a frown and wiped her face again. ‘I thought you wanted to go south,’ she said.

      ‘Only because you did.’

      ‘Me? When did I say that?’

      ‘You’re the one that suggested that boat out of Haynja.’ He looked up, her frown mirrored on his face.

      ‘Only because I thought that gang from Kamar had caught up with us and it was the only boat taking on crew that didn’t look like it would infect us with something deadly before it sank and drowned us. What are you sighing for?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      Jeniche shook her head slowly and went back out onto the balcony. She rested her forearms on the balustrade and closed her eyes for a moment, aware of the deep ache in her limbs. They had been bickering all through the afternoon heat when everyone else, at least anyone who had any sense, was resting or sleeping. The whole thing had been conducted in angry whispers, like sparring snakes. Quite aside from the fact it was far too hot to engage in an all-out shouting match, they were anxious to avoid drawing attention to themselves. At least that had gone in their favour.

      She leaned out over the mud wall at the end of the balcony to get the benefit of the faint stirring of air before it expired. From there she could see four floors down to the narrow, crooked alley that ran along the side and back of their lodging house. Out of habit, she looked for a route down. She had done it as soon as they had arrived a fortnight before. Checked that the locking bar on the door worked and couldn’t be opened from outside; checked for ledges and handholds on this outside wall. Had ambled out into the alley and looked it over from ground level. But it was as well to be certain. There might not be time to think about it when she made the climb later on. As she knew she would.

      When she eventually stepped back into the room, Alltud was still sitting on his bed, only now he was staring at the floor between his feet. His hands, which had been resting on his knees, were otherwise occupied – holding up his head.

      For the first time it really struck her just how grey his hair had become, how white his six-day growth of beard. And it wasn’t desert dust. That and the fact his once-rangy figure now simply looked half-starved drew the fire from her frustrated anger. She felt her own bone-deep tiredness again. Alltud looked every day of his fifty or so years. She was in her early thirties, as best as she could calculate, but with all the aches and pains she might just as well be the same age as him.

      ‘“Anywhere green,”’ he said, ‘“with a flagon of good white wine, fresh bread, a mature cheese, sweet apples and students courteous enough not to pester me while I doze.” Remember that?’ he asked and looked up, slowly straightening his back.

      She managed a flat smile and nodded.

      ‘I’m feeling my age, Jen,’ he went on, as if he had read her mind. ‘It’s been two years or more since we left Ynysvron.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Nearly three. It was fun at first. I had finally achieved the goal of uniting the tribes and sending the Gwerin back to where they belong. Something I could not have done without you. We had no worries. There were new places to explore. But… I don’t know. The shine has worn off. We’ve been lost many more times than once, herded pigs, watched sheep, chased bandits, been chased by bandits, mistaken for bandits, dug ditches, dug graves, fought with considerable reluctance in three grubby little wars, marched who knows where with another army only to find the fighting was over, planted potatoes, planted cabbages, picked apples, been in far too many boats and bug-infested taverns, climbed too many high places and seen enough blasted ruins to last a dozen lifetimes. And do you know? I’m tired. Fed up with wandering in to villages and towns I don’t know, wondering what sort of welcome we’ll face; being cold, getting wet, going hungry. And all that walking. Now this. No money. No prospect of work. I don’t want to end up a mad old beggar on the streets of some dusty town where I don’t even know how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the natives. I don’t want to die alone in some desert or get cut down in someone else’s war. I’m sorry, Jen, but I want to go home.’

      Exhausted, she sat on her own bed, facing him. ‘You too?’

       Chapter Two

      Embraced by the hot, starless night, Jeniche sat in the dark and relaxed for the first time in… She tried to remember the last time she had really been at her ease and thought of the sunshine on the stable roof by the Great Hall in Gwydr. Despite the many hardships and bloody battles in Ynysvron, the northern homeland of Alltud, it was the aftermath she remembered best; the spring weather, watching them tear down the Great Hall which had been too stained with blood ever to use again, watching them rebuild it as the country knitted itself back together. It seemed a lifetime ago, sitting up there admiring her new boots and wondering what life would bring next. Now she knew.

      Knees up, back wedged into the corner of the balcony walls, the sounds of the city at work, the voices calling, laughter and song, the tantalising smells of jostling humanity that reached through the stale air… all drew her from her reverie. Her stomach rumbled as she caught a hint of spices, of something frying. Perhaps later.

      For now, she was alone. Alltud had gone. The door was locked. And their packs kept her company where she sat in the darkness on the balcony. Listening. Waiting for Alltud’s signal.

      She allowed herself a smile, thinking back to the first time she had come across him, all those years ago in Makamba, the night the Occassans invaded. It had been dark then as well, death dropping from the sky, the only light from burning banners and buildings.

      His voice had emerged from the darkness of an alley where she was sheltering for a moment. Having just escaped from prison she had been wary. He had sounded drunk. Had smelt disgusting. Not a promising start. Especially as the legs she had fallen over had been those of a corpse. One day she