Free The Heart of the Mirage by Glenda Larke Page B

anyway?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know the details. I was never told. I was just an orphaned Kardi child Gayed came across somewhere. As I said, he and Rathrox were recalled to Tyrans soon after the victory following the betrayal, and I went with them.’
    ‘You are probably the child of one of those noble families.’ He snorted. ‘The Magister Officii and the General would have loved the irony of that.’
    ‘I don’t suppose for a minute my father knew who I was, or cared. In a war, children get separated from their parents all the time. They get orphaned and abandoned. And it certainly doesn’t matter now. I am Tyranian, and glad of it.’
    Brand looked back at me, expressionless. ‘And now the Magister Officii wants you to put down the beginnings of a rebellion against Tyrans. One would almost think the ordinary people of Kardiastan are not grateful at being freed from the oppressive rule of their nobility.’
    There was no inflection of mockery in his voice, but I stirred uneasily nonetheless. Suddenly nothing was as it had been; I was questioning things I had never questioned before: Aemid’s love, Brand’s loyalty, Tyrans’s strength…I shivered and rubbed still harder at my palm.
    ‘Legata!’
    I turned to see the Flying Windhover ’s seamaster trying to draw my attention to something from where he stood inside the wheelhouse.
    ‘Sandmurram!’
    I followed the line of his pointing finger and saw the brown blotches of a town against the dusky blue of the coastline. With an unexpected feeling of wonder, I realised this might have been the port I hadsailed from some twenty-five years earlier. Perhaps I had stood on the deck of a ship similar to this one and had seen this same scene recede just as I would now watch it approach.
    In theory, I was coming home—but to Ligea Gayed, this had never been home, and never would be. Why then did I feel fear: not of Kardiastan, but of what it would tell me about myself?

CHAPTER FIVE
    Sandmurram: the main port of Kardiastan. A bay that was a natural harbour, with the port buildings tiered from its edge; a town on flatter land beyond. Flatroofed, two-storeyed houses of brown adobe, unplastered, unpainted, squatting along the streets like cattle dozing in the sun.
    I saw it all with the eyes of a stranger; I had no recollection of ever having seen it before. Beside me, Aemid gripped the rail and stared, her emotions and the avid hunger of her gaze so intense they startled me.
    The seamaster flag-signalled my presence on his ship as soon as we approached the port, so I was met at the dockside by a legionnaire escort. The officer in charge offered me a litter ride to the Prefect’s house, but I preferred to walk. I wanted to survey this land, not because it was the place of my birth, but because the hunter needed to know the haunts of her prey.
    ‘See to the luggage,’ I told Brand. ‘And keep an eye on Aemid.’
    He nodded, and I set off on foot with the officer.
    My first impression was one of monotony. The streets were unpaved and narrow, the brown of theirearth a mirror reflection of the plain brown walls of the houses. Burnt-sienna brown everywhere, unrelieved by any other colour. No paint, no ornamentation; no grass even. Trees were misshapen gnomes with thick gnarled trunks, arthritic limbs and spindled leaves, growing only where the lanes swelled to become public well-squares—where, greedy for water, they could nestle up to the well itself.
    The only flashes of colour were in the clothing of the local people, people who were always walking away, turning their backs, retreating into houses, closing doors. The brown streets with their brown houses were unnaturally quiet. There was no noise of hawkers, no whine of beggars, no litter carriers jostling for custom. Even the pack animals—strange, dullbrown creatures—padded along on soft unshod feet. Once or twice I did catch a glimpse of an inner courtyard, and had a brief impression of flowers, of laughter, of