Blood and Bone Read Free

customs official.’
    ‘And you’re no ship’s captain.’ Another figure stepped up on to the gangway, yanking Shimmer’s attention away from the woman: a towering man in layered shirts, a curved dirk at his side. He too was dark, like the woman, as the Kanese can be, skin the hue of ironwood rather than the black of Dal Hon. He too wore his hair long, but gathered atop his head by some sort of carved stone clasp. The thick timbers of the gangway groaned and bounced as he descended.
    After looking Shimmer up and down, he rumbled, ‘She is of them.’ His gaze was not challenging, yet something of his eyes made her uneasy: the irises glittered as if dusted in gold.
    The woman’s gaze sharpened, a sudden wariness touching it. ‘Ah. I see it now. I was fooled – no Isturé would have deigned to appear so … informal.’
    Shimmer frowned, and not only at being discussed as if she were not standing right before these two foreigners.
And that word … why did it grate like a dull blade across her back?
    Yet with Blues gone north she was the acting governor and so she inclined her head, all politeness. ‘I’m sorry, but you have me at a disadvantage. What was that you said?’
    ‘Isturé. It is our word for you in our lands.’
    ‘Us …?’
    The woman did not even try to disguise her distaste. ‘You Avowed. It translates as something like “undying fiend”.’
    Shimmer reflexively retreated a step and her hand went to her long-knife at her back. ‘What do you two want here?’
    The woman opened her hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Forgive my ill-temper. I have been set a task that finds in me a reluctant servant. We come with an offer for you Crimson Guard.’
    Shimmer relaxed her stance a touch. Behind the two foreigners the sailors climbed the rigging to prepare the ship for the repairs of a port call. They worked barefoot, the soles of their feet black with tar. ‘An offer?’ she answered, doubtful. ‘What would that be?’
    ‘Employment.’
    She understood now, and she shook her head. ‘We are no longer accepting contracts.’
    ‘Well, perhaps that is for your general to decide. K’azz.’
    ‘He’s not … seeing potential employers right now.’
    ‘He will see us.’
    ‘I doubt that very—’
    ‘There is an inn, or hostel, here in this hamlet?’
    Shimmer gritted her teeth against her annoyance at being interrupted. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you stayed on your vessel …’
    ‘I think not. I am quite as sick of it as they are of me.’
    That I can well understand
. ‘If you insist.’ She invited them onward . ‘We have an inn with some few plain rooms … but I cannot guarantee they will take you.’
    The woman’s smile was a wolfish flash of needle ivory teeth. ‘Our gold is good, and innkeepers are the same breed everywhere.’
    As they climbed the gentle slope up to the hamlet Shimmer introduced herself.
    ‘Rutana,’ the woman answered. She gestured back to the man who followed with slow deliberate steps. ‘This is Nagal.’
    ‘And where are you from?’
    She snorted a harsh laugh. ‘A land close to this but of which you would never have heard.’
    Shimmer’s patience hadn’t been tested like this for some time. ‘Try me,’ she managed to offer lightly.
    ‘Very well. We come from the land known to some as Jacuruku.’
    Despite her irritation Shimmer was impressed. ‘Indeed. I know it. I haven’t been there, but K’azz has.’
    ‘So I have been told. You will take a message to K’azz for us.’
    Shimmer’s irritation gave way to wonder at the woman’s breathtaking imperiousness. ‘Oh?’ she answered. ‘Will I?’
    ‘Yes. You will.’
    ‘And what is that message?’
    Rutana stopped. She scowled, as if only now noting something in Shimmer’s tone. She tugged on the tight lacing of the leather straps cinching her left arm and winced as if at an old nagging wound. Shimmer noted that the amulets knotted there were small triangular boxes each of which appeared to