The Ambassador's Mission: Book One of th - By Trudi Canavan Page 0,53

never asked me to tell him if I found a rogue.”

For a while they both looked through the spy holes in silence, then Cery let the cover of his hole swing back. The workmen knew of the escape routes they were building, but not of the ones that already existed, or of the spy holes Cery and Gol were watching them through.

“Let’s go.”

The hole of light before Gol’s eye vanished. Cery began walking, trailing a hand along the wall.

I wonder which one of the workmen I’ve hired will leak the location of my new hideout. Though Cery always treated workers well, paying them fairly and without delay, he could never be completely sure of their loyalty or ability to keep secrets. He found out everything he could about them: if they had family, if they cared about that family, if they had debts, who they had worked for in the past, who had worked for them, and if there was anyone, the Guard especially, they’d rather not encounter.

Not this time. Gol has set the information gathering in motion, but there isn’t enough time to be thorough, and that’s fine. For the trap to work Cery needed someone to leak information about it. But if I don’t take some precautions the Hunter might think it out of character, and become suspicious.

The passage turned, then turned again.

“You can open the lamp now,” Cery murmured.

There was a pause, then a faint squeak, and the tunnel was suddenly bathed in light.

“You know, any of those workers could be the Hunter.”

Cery glanced over his shoulder at his friend.

“Surely not.”

Gol shrugged. “Even the Hunter needs to eat and keep a roof over his head. He’s got to have a job of some sort.”

“Unless he’s rich,” Cery pointed out, turning back again.

“Unless he’s rich,” Gol agreed.

Once, it would have been a safe bet to assume the Hunter was rich. Only rich people learned magic. But these days, people of all classes could join the Guild. And if the Hunter couldn’t afford to bribe people, he could always blackmail and threaten them – possibly more effectively using magic to scare people.

I wish I could ask Sonea if any magicians or novices have gone missing. But I don’t want to risk meeting her again until I have proof there is a rogue in the city.

And in the meantime, he had best make sure he got that proof without getting himself killed.

CHAPTER 10

A NEW CHALLENGE

The former Guild Ambassador to Sachaka had told Dannyl that no walls surrounded Arvice. No defensive walls, that was. There were plenty of boundary walls in Sachaka. Taller than a man, or so low they might be stepped over, and always rendered and painted white, they marked the boundaries of property. The only indication that he and Lorkin had reached the city was that high walls now lined the roadside instead of low ones, except in places where they had collapsed and not been repaired.

There have been a lot of ruins, he noted. Out in the wasteland, and then the occasional clusters of broken walls within estates that looked like they might once have been mansions. And now this … The carriage passed another collapsed wall and through the gap he could see the scorched and crumbling remains of a building. It’s as if the Sachakan War only happened a few years ago, and they haven’t had time yet to rebuild.

But if the creation of the wasteland had cut Sachaka’s food production by half, as Ashaki Tariko claimed, then perhaps the population had shrunk accordingly. Houses wouldn’t be rebuilt if there wasn’t anyone to live in them.

The war happened seven hundred years ago. Surely the houses abandoned then would be long gone. These ruins must be more recent. Perhaps the population is still slowly diminishing. Or maybe the owners are too poor to afford repairs or rebuilding.

The carriage neared a young woman, walking barefoot along the street and wearing the plain, belted wrap of a slave. She glanced up as the vehicle approached, then her eyes widened. Veering away, she hunched over and fixed her eyes on the ground as it passed.

Dannyl frowned, then leaned closer to the window so he could see ahead. More slaves populated the road in front of them. They, too, reacted with fear as the carriage approached. Some turned and ran in the other direction. Those near side streets took advantage of them. Others froze and shrank against the nearest wall.

Is this normal slave behaviour? Do they shrink away from all