Chien looked pained. ‘That is my shame. Not what you would imagine, Mistress Mishani. I have not tormented you or betrayed you. I have tried to safeguard you, and I failed.’
Mishani regarded him coldly. His explanation fitted, at least, but it seemed to her frankly unlikely. Still, she could not think why he would waste the effort on making it up, nor why, if he meant her harm, he had not done it to her by now. Why kill his own men? She supposed that it could be a trick – kill his men to win her trust; she had seen cleverer ploys than that in her time at court – but what advantage would that win him? She considered asking him why he was protecting her at all, then thought better of it. Any answer would likely be a lie. What was there that he thought she could do for him, what point was there in his winning her favour? He knew she was politically impotent.
‘I didn’t tell you before,’ Chien said. ‘If you realised that I knew about you and your father, you would have tried to get away from me as soon as you could. That would have only got you caught faster.’
Mishani had surmised this already, just as she had guessed why the intruders started off trying to kidnap her and ended up trying to kill her. Their orders were simple: alive if possible, dead if necessary. She was not in the least surprised at her father’s ruthlessness.
Chien looked at her levelly, his blocky features even, the lantern light limning one side of his shaven head. ‘Mistress Mishani, you may believe me or not, but I was going to tell you all this in the morning to try and prevent you from leaving. I left it too late, it seems. Your father’s men found you, and nearly had your life.’ He walked over to her. ‘If there is anything I can do to atone for my failure to protect you, you have only to name it.’
Mishani studied him for a long moment. She did believe him, but that did not mean she trusted him. If he was in alliance with her father, or even if he wasn’t, there was something down the line that he wanted from her, something that she did not even know she had in her power to give. Chien’s attempt at an explanation had made him more puzzling than ever. Was this an elaborate trap, or something entirely unexpected? Was he telling the truth about her father’s men?
It didn’t matter. He owed her now, and she needed him.
‘Take me south,’ she said.
TWELVE
The Fold was alive with celebration. The paths between the houses thronged with revellers in the heat of the late afternoon. The morning rituals were over, the noontime feast had been cooked and consumed, and now the people had taken to the streets, sated and merry and many of them already drunk. In the cities there would be fireworks as night drew in, but here in the Fault it was too dangerous to broadcast their presence with such fancies. Still, there would be bonfires, and another, more communal feast, and the revelries would go on past dawn.
Aestival Week had begun.
It was the biggest event in the Saramyr calendar: the last farewell to summer, the festival of the harvest. Since Saramyr folk counted their age in the amount of harvests they had lived through rather than the date on which they were born, everyone was a year older today. On the last day of Aestival Week, a grand ritual would see out the season, and autumn would begin with the next dawn.
The morning had seen a ceremony conducted on the valley floor for the whole town, by three priests of different orders. The denomination did not matter in any case, since Aestival Week was about thanking the gods and spirits alike. The bulk of the ceremony was an expression of gratitude for the simple joy and beauty of nature. Saramyr folk were particularly close to their land, and they had never lost their sense of the magnificence of the continent that they lived on. Everyone attended, for while most Saramyr picked and chose their godly allegiances piecemeal and prayed or attended temples as much as their conscience dictated, there were certain days when even the least pious person would not risk staying away if they could help it. And if there were some shreds of bleak and bitter irony in