Free Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) by Juliet E. McKenna Page B

Jilseth retreated into the shadows and wrapped a veil of air around herself. Walking out unseen into the torchlight, she headed for the nearest door.
    A dutifully generous trio were being ushered past two broad shouldered and thick necked acolytes by a prosperously plump priestess whose charcoal silk robe could have been sewn by Mellitha’s own seamstress. Even twenty paces away, Jilseth’s wizard senses told her that the rubies in the golden amulet hanging around the woman’s neck were of the finest clarity and colour.
    ‘May Poldrion see you safe to Saedrin’s threshold if that’s your fate in the year to come.’ The priestess peered into the bowl to see the suppliants’ offering. She looked up with a complacent smile. ‘May you see many more midwinters before Poldrion’s summons comes.’
    Jilseth approached, using another swathe of elemental air to muffle her footsteps on the white stone. Master Resnada’s words echoed in her memory. How long was she prepared to wait for a chance to slide past these mercenary guardians unseen when Kerrit was in sore of need of whatever healing lore might be held within by more genuine priests?

 
    C HAPTER S IX
     
    Halferan Manor, Caladhria
    Winter Solstice Festival, 3rd Evening
     
     
    A T THE FAR end of the manor compound, beyond the storehouses and the drying ground for laundry, Hosh rubbed at his face and grimaced. The cold gnawed at the deep dent beside his broken nose and woke the lurking ache on the toothless side of his jaw.
    He ran his tongue carefully along his gums. He could no longer feel the empty sockets where he’d recently lost two more teeth and he couldn’t taste or smell the foulness of pus. The chewing herbs which Doratine pressed on him were keeping such corruption at bay so Hosh was daring to hope he might yet keep his remaining teeth. If only the wise woman had something as efficacious for the pains he suffered.
    The only way to find any relief would be to go somewhere warmer. Where could he wait until his loving mum had eaten and drunk her fill with her friends in the great hall? The village women would still be sharing the burden of each other’s sorrows and losses as well as taking comfort in his mother’s joy at his unimagined return. It would be close to midnight before she would be ready to go home to the village beyond the brook.
    Hosh looked around the storehouses and contemplated their cellars, bins and lofts now filled with the season’s tithes from the farms which paid their dues in kind rather than coin. He liked to make these circuits of the compound, alone and unobserved, to reassure himself that this wasn’t some tantalizing dream. Every day when he woke, he still had to remind himself that he was truly safe home in Halferan where the manor had risen, better than new, better than ever before, from the ruination left by the corsairs.
    He walked past the well-house and the smithy and contemplated the barracks beyond the steward’s residence. A lantern glowed in the window of the wide hall and the door stood ajar. Doubtless a handful of troopers had retreated there to drink ale warmed through with white brandy while they shared choicely obscene stories.
    He wasn’t about to join them. Those who hadn’t shared in that final assault on the corsair island would pester him with questions about that terrible night. Those who had followed Corrain alongside the guardsmen from Licanin, Tallat and Antathele would be happy to relive their own elation at surviving what had seemed like certain death.
    Hosh could repeat himself till his tongue withered, insisting that he had no wish to remember that night. The other troopers still demanded to hear how he had cut down the black-bearded corsair who had murdered the true Lord Halferan. How he wrestled with the blind trireme master who had commanded that unconquerable raiding fleet, apparently by means of insights into heavenly omens, in truth thanks to the wizardly spells held within weapons and