Qown paused from fishing through a satchel. “Hm, I doubt it.”
“Where should I start?” Janel said. “Perhaps with Duke Kaen?”
Qown pulled a small, neatly bound tome from his book bag. “We’d have to go back further than Duke Kaen or it won’t make sense. Further than Atrine. All the way to events at Barsine.” He tapped his thumb against the book cover. “Fortunately, I’ve logged the whole story.”
“Barsine. Is that a person or a place?” Kihrin asked.
Janel’s smile was wan. “It depends on context. Qown, you start. I’ll go fetch us all another round. And more upishiarral.”5
Kihrin followed her with his eyes as she headed toward the bar. She started talking to the bartender. Whatever Janel said made the other woman throw down her towel and cross her arms. A few seconds later, they slipped through a back door.
Meanwhile, Brother Qown picked up his notebook and read aloud. “There are many accounts of the rebellion, the reasons for it, the manner of its successes and failures. Brother Qown was certain his account wouldn’t match any other histori—”
“Hold up. I have a question,” Kihrin said.
Brother Qown paused. “Just one?”
“I make no promises,” Kihrin said dryly. “A rebellion? What rebellion? I thought we were talking about a dragon.”
“Context, remember?” Qown said. “Please be patient. It’s not as though you have any choice, until certain draconic obstacles are removed.”
“Fine, fine. Is this recent? Duke Kaen moving against the rest of the empire?” Janel and Qown had mentioned Duke Kaen earlier, and Kihrin’s friend Jarith Milligreest had been concerned about the duke’s undeclared rebellion. For that matter, Jarith’s father, High General Qoran Milligreest, had been concerned about Duke Kaen. Father and son had both watched him, waiting for the man to give them an excuse to send in the army.
Which reminded Kihrin his friend Jarith had been claimed by the Hellmarch two days before in the Capital.
He exhaled.
“My apologies,” Kihrin said. “Please continue.”
“Right, yes.” Qown looked for his place in the journal. “So … Qown would always insist the rebellion began in Jorat.
“It began with a robbery …
“The whole affair had been problematic from the start. The outlaws had proved unwilling to engage in the ‘robbing’ part of their duties. Brother Qown knew the bandits lurked in the nearby trees; he’d felt eyes on their position for hours. He wondered what they could be waiting—”
Brother Qown looked up, frowning. “Yes?”
“Third person?” Kihrin asked, trying not to laugh. “Really? If you were there … why wouldn’t you tell this from your point of view?”
“It’s a chronicle,” Brother Qown protested. “I’m a chronicler. One does not write a chronicle as a first-person diary.”
“I never found anyone who’d refer to themselves in third person trustworthy. I knew this mimic—”
Janel set down a tray filled with ciders, local beers, and several more bowls of upishiarral. “Here we are.”
“Problems with the barkeep?” Kihrin asked.
“Hm? No problem at all,” Janel said. She helped herself to a cider as she sat.
Kihrin glanced over at the bar. The bartender had returned, but now she huddled with the old groom, whispering.
“He keeps interrupting me.” Brother Qown looked over at Janel as if pleading for protection. “May I please continue?”
Janel touched Kihrin on the hand. “There’ll be no living with him if you don’t allow him to read.”
Kihrin let the little man read.
Qown’s Turn. Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.
The previous bandits had never hesitated like this.
In fact, they were taking so long to make their move that Mare Dorna joked about inviting them into the camp to share breakfast.
At last, a lone masked figure wandered into their clearing. Brother Qown hid his surprise; he hadn’t expected the brigand to be a woman. Then again, Jorat had defied so many expectations.
“Finally,” Dorna muttered. Brother Qown elbowed her to keep quiet. Evidently in this part of Jorat, criminals were timid creatures who had to be lured from their warrens.
“Where are your guards?” the bandit asked as she looked around—a sensible question to ask when about to commit a crime.
Mare Dorna snorted as she scraped stale sweet rice from her iron stir pan.6
Their party’s third member sat still and poised by the campfire. She embodied all the motives the desperate might ever need for banditry. A jeweled ring on a chain hung from her neck. Gold thread stitched her riding tunic. Jade pins decorated her laevos hair.
“Guards? Why?” Janel asked the newcomer while she sipped her tea. “Are you looking for work?”
The bandit rolled her eyes at the jest. She continued examining the clearing as if armed soldiers hid under the bedrolls. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the deer corpse, hanging upside down from one of the trees.
Brother Qown could guess her thoughts: there were just three of them, and none looked capable of stringing up a deer, let alone defending themselves. Dorna looked older than many mountains. Brother Qown himself was ill-used to strenuous exercise. The noblewoman, Janel, muddied the distinction between woman and child. Their horses foraged in a nearby pasture: harmless by casual observation. No sign, anywhere, of the all-important guards who might protect a Joratese aristocrat from those with less fortunate births.
Easy metal.
“Too simple,” the bandit murmured. “You’re too well-bred not to have protectors.”
That makes her smarter than the last four outlaw leaders, Brother Qown thought.
This trap always reminded Brother Qown of the salos, a snake living in the Manol Jungle. He’d never seen one himself, having never been as far south as to leave Quur’s borders, but Father Zajhera had described the creature. The reptile hunted by mimicking a wounded animal with its tail, twitching the tip in distress. Any predator who pounced on this free appetizer discovered they were intended as the main course.
His employer, Janel Theranon, Count of Tolamer, looked just as vulnerable.
His gaze shifted out into the woods as he heard dry leaves crackle, the twigs snapping underfoot. “Count,” he said, “this one isn’t alone.”
“I should hope not, Brother Qown,” Count Janel said, setting down her teacup with exaggerated care as she regarded the brigand. “Are your companions seeking employment as well?” She smiled at the woman.
“Depends. What are you paying?” a man shouted from somewhere beyond the tree line. Others, also unseen, laughed in response, revealing the woman had brought all her friends to the party.
The bandit sighed. She was dressed in an ornate leather tunic dyed in contrasting brown and green shades. Two pieces of embroidered green fabric comprised the mask over her face, overlapped to leave a slit for her eyes. Brown skin surrounded one eye, while wine-red skin surrounded the other. She had a bow stowed across her pack and a sickle in her hand.
Probably a farmer gone feral. That quality seemed infectious, given how often brigands had attacked them since Count Janel’s canton, Tolamer. However, there was an upside. Most ruling nobles in Jorat offered a bounty on captured bandits.