Lured by a Pomegranate
Watching the man come into the restaurant and take the seat across from him, Anri let out a quiet sigh.
His eyes followed the family out the door. They did not look as if they owned much, but they looked happy. He could not remember ever, even as a child, wearing a face as unguarded as that little girl's, and yet she went on laughing as if she might tumble head over heels at any moment. What was so wonderful about simply eating?
Still. I envy them.
He had more than they did. The happy ones were the family in the shabby clothes.
He thought of the woman startling at the price of the food, and a short laugh escaped him. The man had looked oddly used to a place like this. The woman had not. Anri had never before seen someone eat while crying, then laugh, and cry again.
The door shut all the way. The family vanished. Anri turned to the man in front of him. The face across the table was not a calm one.
"What's the matter?"
The man dropped his voice.
"That fellow just now. You know him?"
"No. Today was the first time I saw him."
"He was a mage in the merchant caravan. The captain died because of him."
So that arrogant man was dead. Anri kept his face still and studied the one across from him.
"Didn't he use wind magic? I was given to understand he was considerably skilled."
"Strange thing. That man dodged the arrow the captain loosed. And he's a high-rank fire mage. A fair distance between them, and he still threw an enormous amount of mana."
"That is surprising."
If his ability ran that high, the figure Anri had just seen did not match it. He ought at least to have been better dressed.
Anri called up the magical beast that had been perched on the child's head. It looked like the rabbit he had raised in secret from his father, long ago.
He had kept it in a green corner of the estate grounds. After his father found it, the rabbit was disposed of. Unbecoming of a noble, the man had said, and beaten him with a thick wooden switch until night came down. A title bought with money could ape nobility all it liked. No one else was ever going to acknowledge it.
The man they called a mage had the same feel as the hunter who had sold him that rabbit.
The clothes. And he keeps a magical beast. A magical-beast hunter?
A magical-beast hunter and a high-rank fire mage did not belong in the same sentence. Something was wrong.
The Kingdom of Tyrone stole money out of this country, its enemy, and poured it into the war. Anri's father took an enormous commission for seeing the work done.
Anri was only the lackey. His father's puppet. When danger came, he was the one who died first.
A server came to take their order, and the talk broke off. When the server had gone, Anri asked,
"What became of the two you were meant to bring?"
"Don't know. They never came to the meeting place. Even if the job went bad, they were supposed to slip out of the column. The hour passed. They didn't show."
"They may have been taken."
Anri lowered his eyes a little.
If it started to go wrong, they should have gotten out first.
Fools from the beginning, and fools to the end.
So they'll die after all.
A younger brother he had never gotten along with. When they were small, the boy had still called him older brother. From first to last it had never been the bond of real brothers. Only a person joined to him by half his blood.
Anri set down, in the bowl, the pomegranate seeds he had been turning over on a thread of wind. The round seeds looked like the face of the little girl.
"The goods."
"As arranged. We couldn't make a list. Plenty died besides the captain. No spare attention to put anywhere else."
"I see."
Then the work on his side grew. If someone had been caught, it would come out that the bandits were soldiers of the enemy kingdom. Once matters reached that point, the Margrave of Bern might well see through it and come looking for Anri.
The traces have to be erased.
He took the hat from the chair beside him, set it on his head, and stood.
"Once the last of the goods is done, there will be no contact for a while. Our house will step back first and wipe the trail."
"What!"
The man barked it, then flinched and dropped his voice. He glared, ugly with it.
"What are you playing at? You mean to throw us away?"
"Not throw you away. Only no contact, for the time being. Surely you don't want the two of us caught and dying side by side."
"But this is the middle of the enemy's country. Without you, we—"
"Don't be a fool. You're bandits now. Then behave like real bandits, and hide. This country is at war. It hasn't the hands to spare for bandits. Wipe the signs that you're soldiers of the enemy kingdom, and you'll find places enough to lie low."
"But—"
The man clamped Anri's hand to the tabletop. It hurt. A soldier, ignorant and nothing but strong.
Anri stirred a little wind around his own wrist. The grip eased. A paltry gift, but it helped at moments like this.
He drew his hand free, leaned in slightly, and said,
"I'll be out of this country for a while. Don't come here. You'll only get your tail caught."
"Don't order me! Money-grubbing merchant!"
Anri took the low insult with him and walked out of the restaurant.
He had heard that the bandit captain, the man from earlier, and several of the others were nobles of Tyrone. To a noble, a merchant looked base even in the same rank and the same cloth. And yet it was nobles who had taken money from such base merchants and sold their titles.
Ridiculous men.
He went back to his lodgings and packed. Against need, he changed into cheap clothes as well.
Strip away the feathers called clothing, and he was a very plain-looking man. He dressed showily on purpose in ordinary times, so a change of clothes and hat was enough to alter him completely. In that he was unlike his younger brother in every way: showy in the face, filthy in his habits.
He pulled a hat of common wool down over his eyes and left the lodgings.
The place for receiving the goods was already fixed. The man had said it was as arranged, so the shipment would be there. Even if one of the bandits had been taken, there was still time. He had to hurry all the same.
Crossing the square on his way out, he saw the family from the restaurant. The child was darting everywhere. The couple walked slowly, watching her.
A high-rank fire mage. Shall I see, just once, how far the skill goes?
He left the square and walked the avenue. After a while he studied the alleys. Around here there were vagrants who would do anything, so long as they were paid.
They asked no questions. Pay them and tell them to take a hundred blows, and they took them. Tell them to jump from a height, and they jumped even if it broke a leg.
Anri stepped a little way into an alley where the traffic had thinned. Not too far. The alley was a kind of exchange, and it had rules.
A man bringing a request went in only to the point still barely in sight of the avenue. That far was safe. Everyone obeyed the rules laid down by the vagrants who held the alley.
Beyond that line it was lawless ground. They would take every coin and every stitch, leave you naked, and the people who lived in the back of the alley would beat you to death.
Even the city guards did not enter the vagrants' alleys. That was how dangerous the place was.
What lay past the mouth of it, who lived there and who had died, only the people inside would know.
When Anri stopped in the alley, several men peeled themselves off the shadow of the wall and came toward him.
"Sir. Some business?"
"Bring someone. A certain man, farther in. It will be easy if you use his child, or his woman. Hmm. Make it the man and the child. Bring those two here."
"And after?"
"Only that. What you do with the man and the child is yours to decide. I merely want that man to go farther into this alley."
"Easy work, sir. Where is he?"
"In the square."
"That's…"
The men looked at one another.
"We try not to touch people in the square. Touch a place like that, and this city won't leave us be."
Anri opened a small pouch and let them see. One gold coin lay inside.
They traded another look, then asked,
"Is the man from here? Or a rich merchant from abroad, maybe?"
"No. He should be neither."
"Then we'll take it. But if he turns out to be a merchant, or from this place, we stop the moment we know. Same if he isn't in the square. Either way, the money doesn't come back."
"Agreed."
"The marks, then."
"A child with a magical beast sitting on the head, and the child's father."
He dropped the pouch into the open palm. The men wanted a few words that might help. He remembered the child eating pomegranate as if it were the best thing in the world, and he told them so.
One of them went off somewhere. For a pomegranate, perhaps. The one who remained asked,
"You want proof?"
"No."
He did not need proof. If the man was a high-rank fire mage, as the bandit had said, Anri would know even without a clear view of him. The inside of that alley was not a place a person simply walked back out of. He would have to use magic.
"Thank you for the trade, sir."
They bobbed their heads and went deeper in. Anri turned and came out.
There was no point worrying that they would break the bargain. The alley's rules had held from long ago until now. So far as Anri knew, they had never once been broken.
To the people inside, money dropped by outsiders was a lifeline. Let trust fail even once, and no one would believe them again. No one knew that better than the ones who lived there.
He found a place with a decent view of the alley mouth and stood. A little time passed. Then he saw the child.
There were so many people. Dorothy ran this way and that, and she saw a man crossing the square in an enormous cloak, carrying a wooden barrel. A strange outfit.
She had been racing ahead. She spun and dashed back to Dad and Mom.
"Dad! There's a weird person over there. A great big cloak with a face stuck on it!"
Mom and Dad looked. Both of them wore the face that meant they did not understand. Dad didn't seem to know what a cloak-person was. Neither did Mom.
A man passing by laughed.
"Child, that's a traveling privy. While the customer does their business, the cloak hides them."
"Huh?"
Strange. You could just go on the ground. Why go inside a cloak? It was so strange that Dorothy chased the traveling-privy cloak-face. It went this way, and she went this way. It went that way, and she went that way.
The cloak-person sighed and shook the barrel hard. Eek! The smell!
She turned to run, and far off she saw a child.
A girl. She wore small clothes tight on her body, the way Dorothy used to. A pomegranate was in her hand.
"Ah!"
That was really, really good. The thought filled her mouth with spit. Should she ask Dad to buy another? Mom would say no for certain. Earlier, watching Dorothy eat the pomegranate, Mom had cried a little.
Then the girl took a bite and held the fruit out toward her. It looked like sharing.
She's a really good kid!
Her body moved before the thought finished. She threaded through the grown-ups.
The girl smiled a little, turned, and started to run. She was going to give it and then not give it? Dorothy went flat, and her steps slowed.
But the girl ran only a little, stopped, and held out a piece again. The pomegranate looked so good it seemed to call her. Come on, Dorothy. Eat me.
Dorothy broke into a run once more. Oz, up on her head, cried pii.
"Okay, Oz! I'll give you a bite too."
She wove after the girl, and before she knew it she was out of the round square and standing on a strange street. Narrow. It smelled. Like the cabin in the mountains, from before she met Dad and Mama Lizzie.
Huh. Where was this? She looked around in a fright, and the girl, a little way off, said,
"Come here. I'll give you this."
She held out the red pomegranate. A little more running and Dorothy could touch it. But…
She remembered what her second mother used to say. A child like that, better to throw her away.
What her dead father had shouted every time seemed to sound right beside her ear. Useless girl. If you'd been a boy, I'd have raised you for a hunter.
Dorothy spun around. She had to go to Dad. She had to get back before Dad decided he didn't need her. Hurry, Dorothy. Mom and Dad might go off with just the two of them. She would be left alone in a city she didn't know, in an alley she didn't know.
She was about to run when someone rose up in front of her. He must have been hiding in the shade. A very thin man. And he looked really, really scary. His face was less scary than Dad's, and still it was scary.
He reached for her. Her body shrank before she could stop it. Oz cried pii. Right. Be brave. Dorothy had Oz. They were Dorothy and Oz.
She turned again. She would run the other way. But there was a man behind her too.
No. They were going to catch her. Tears sprang.
"No! Dad, Daaad!"
That was when she shouted. It was still day, and a pitch-black shadow fell over her head.