The Raven's Shadow by Elspeth Cooper Read Free Book Online

eye on the crowd around them as they passed out of the mercantile district and onto a wider street lined with shops still open for business. A steady stream of wagons occupied the middle of the street with foot traffic eddying along the margins and occasionally darting in between the slower, heavier vehicles to reach the other side, incurring curses and shaken fists on the way.
    The street opened out to a square up ahead, but instead of the traffic speeding up it slowed to a crawl and finally stopped. Soon the crowd began to mutter and shrug, standing on tiptoe to peer ahead in search of the reason for the hold-up. Gair stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes. The square was crowded with people listening to a man declaiming loudly in front of what looked like blackened trees. Occasionally the crowd cheered, and the man’s shouts got louder. Yellow gleamed around his waist.
    Burned trees. A flight of sparrows. Flames flared in Gair’s memory and he recognised the square ahead. Instinctively, he glanced south and east, and saw a faint smear of smoke still staining the darkening sky.
    Saints have mercy.
    He shook out his barouk to cover the ornamented cantle of Shahe’s saddle and sat down again. Black was not an uncommon colour for horses, but her silver-chased harness might be distinctive enough to mark her out if there was anyone in the crowd who’d been there that morning. He nudged her forward and the citizen throng obligingly shuffled sideways to let the horse through to the front of the wagon.
    As soon as he leaned down to the Superior’s ear, she whispered, ‘I know.’
    ‘Is there another way?’
    ‘In this crowd? We’d never make it to the gate on time.’ He saw her gaze flick around the exits from the square. ‘Straight ahead’s our best bet.’
    Gair bit back a curse. Straight ahead would take them past the thickest part of the crowd, close by where the Cultist was holding court atop the well-cover.
    ‘What is he saying?’
    She listened awhile. ‘The usual Cult rhetoric about godless oppressors— Wait, now he’s denouncing someone. See him pointing?’ Across the square, several yellow-sashed men were shoving a stumbling figure to the front of the crowd. ‘Hamesh the silk merchant has been trading with ammanai , profiting from his dealings with the oppressors . . . Now he’s pulling off the merchant’s rings – he calls them infidel gold, stained with the blood of the righteous—’ She looked down at her hands on the reins. ‘He’s been sentenced to death.’
    ‘Just for trying to make a living?’
    ‘According to them he has strayed from the true path.’ The Superior closed her eyes briefly, as if offering up a prayer. ‘I used to love this city. Now I barely even recognise it.’
    Her words echoed what Sister Avis had said when he had asked her about the sun-signs. The Cult was tightening its grip on El Maqqam, squeezing so hard the blood had begun to flow. You mark my words, there’ll be another desert war, and soon. Alderan’s prediction, from last year. The old man had known, had read the way the wind was blowing, and now the whole world was fraying apart.
    ‘This is madness,’ Gair muttered. ‘We have to get out of here.’
    ‘I’m open to suggestions,’ said the Superior dryly. Shahe nodded as if in agreement, mouthing at her bit.
    Ahead, someone began sobbing and pleading. Gair couldn’t understand the words, but didn’t need to. Hamesh the merchant was begging for his life. Gair shut his eyes. His instincts were screaming at him to draw steel and do something, but he was too far away, with too many Cultists and their supporters between him and the luckless merchant. So instead he had to listen to the gabbled pleas, the jeers of the crowd, with a dark, ugly fire inside and his hand clenching and unclenching around the whipped-leather hilt of the useless sword on his hip, and wait for it to end. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
    In the end, Cult justice