they reached the clearing and she feared they’d missed their chance. Then the trees rustled and Adam’s sword hissed free.
“No need for that,” a voice said. “If you’re who you say you are.” A Sivahri man stepped into the clearing, his face half-hidden by a scarf. “Are you the foreigners who wish to treat with me?”
Adam’s hand brushed her arm, a warning pressure.
“We’re here to treat with Jabbor Lhun.”
“I am he.”
She laughed softly. “Don’t you know better than to lie to a mage? Send out Jabbor.”
He hesitated; Isyllt folded her arms under her chest and waited. A moment later leaves rustled again and another man stepped out. Dark-skinned, his black curls twisted into nubs against his scalp. Adam let go of her arm.
“Hello, Jabbor. Did Zhirin tell you why I’m here?”
“She did. Come with us, Lady Iskaldur, and we’ll speak further.” He gestured toward the southern slope. “The jungle is no place to linger at night.”
Isyllt blessed her mage-trained senses as she followed Jabbor’s masked companion through the trees; without them she’d have killed herself falling over rocks and roots. Even Adam moved with less silence than usual. Others slipped through the shadows beside them—at least four.
Night had settled thick and black by the time they reached the village, a tiny collection of clay-and-thatch buildings gathered around a river. Not the Mir, but some smaller tributary. Isyllt waved aside a thick cloud of gnats.
“Here,” Jabbor said, pointing to a building that rose on stilts at the water’s edge. A tavern, from the smell.
A few people sat quietly inside; when they saw Jabbor they either vanished quickly or drew closer. They claimed a table in the back and Isyllt sat gratefully. A girl brought them a pitcher of beer and clay mugs and left without a word. Half a dozen other men and women sat down around them.
“Now, Lady Iskaldur,” Jabbor said, filling their cups. “Tell me what it is you propose.”
Her cup was empty by the time she finished, and her mouth was dry again. Silence settled over the table, broken only by the pop and sizzle of a gnat flying too near a lamp.
“She isn’t lying,” one of the women said at last.
A murmur circled the table and died. Jabbor frowned, full lips twisting. She couldn’t read his slanting dark eyes.
“You want our blood to buy your freedom.”
Isyllt shrugged. “If you’re going to bleed anyway…” Someone muttered behind her; Adam tensed. “You wear a yoke. We can help you remove it. If you want idealistic fervor instead of practicality, then I’m sorry—I have none. But I do have gold.”
After a moment, Jabbor nodded. “Fair enough.”
Isyllt reached for the pitcher, refilled her cup. “Zhirin says you don’t want bloodshed.”
Someone laughed, but a glance from Jabbor silenced him. “Zhirin has all the idealism you lack. And of course we don’t want bloodshed—we’re not madmen like the Dai Tranh. But we want our freedom, or at the very least the equality the Empire claims to offer to all its citizens. And if that takes a war, then so be it.”
She sipped enough spiced beer to wet her tongue. “The Dai Tranh. Those responsible for the attack in the market?”
“Yes. The Khas calls us all radicals and murderers, but only the Dai Tranh goes to such extremes.”
“You don’t ally yourselves with them?”
“They wouldn’t have me.” He raised one dark hand. “I’m not pure enough for their cause. Though my father was Isethi, and that country has forgotten more Assari oppression than Sivahra has ever known.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t approve of the Dai Tranh’s methods.”
“Do we have an arrangement, then?”
Jabbor looked around the room—none of his people spoke. “It seems we do.”
She held out a hand to Adam, who pulled a purse from inside his shirt. The bag chimed and rattled softly as she took it. “A gesture of good faith. More will follow.”
Jabbor opened the pouch, poured coins and gems carefully into his hand. Unstamped gold and silver, garnets and amethysts—not mage stones, but still expensive.
“I could only carry so much, but I can have a ship sent. Gold, weapons, medicines—tell me what you need and I can arrange it.”
“Good luck,” he said with a humorless snort. “Perhaps you noticed the new port tariffs? Only foreign goods,” he went on when she nodded, “because everything we need we can get from Assar. It’s also a convenient excuse to search foreign ships, or the ships of merchants who don’t toe the Khas’s line.”
She nodded. “I understand. Let me worry about that.”