Players of the Game. Graeme Talboys K.

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СКАЧАТЬ his bed, had long since stopped watching her go back and forth. The constant movement of her diminutive form was too wearing, had started to make him feel queasy.

      ‘That won’t get us out of this predicament,’ he said to his hands where they clutched his knees.

      Jeniche shrugged, her back to him.

      He saw the twitch of her shoulders from the corner of his eye and his hands tightened their grip. ‘I’m not doing this on purpose, you know.’

      ‘No?’ she asked, turning.

      ‘It’s not my fault our money’s gone.’

      ‘Really? Stay in a cheap tavern, I said. More than once. Down by the harbour. Plenty there to choose from. But, no, you said. If we are looking for well-paid work, we need to keep up a front. Look respectable. But there isn’t any work, is there? Not up here. Not anywhere. Not for strangers, anyway. Not for outsiders. We’ve had that made clear enough on more than one occasion. Too many displaced people drifting in from the south with their families and not enough trade. Not enough goods coming up from wherever it is all those people have abandoned.’ She was back at the open doorway to the balcony long before she had finished.

      ‘I wasn’t to know that. Any more than you did.’

      ‘So, instead of having several more weeks to look for work or decide to move on, we’re here. In our fine little room. Putting on a front. But now we’ve nothing left to pay for our time here and virtually nothing left for buying food. And your answer? You want me to climb down a sheer mud wall. In the dark. With all our gear. While you saunter out the front door as if you owned the place. And then we go sneaking off in the night.’

      Alltud looked up from his hands and surveyed their lodgings. Given how basic the room was – four square and simple, just big enough for a solid lockable door, two beds, a washstand, a lamp, a balcony, and room to pace up and down – it was difficult to imagine how bad a cheaper lodging could have been. Difficult, but not impossible. They had done cheap. They had done filthy. This was quiet, clean, secure and relatively cool at night. He didn’t regret the decision and Jeniche hadn’t fought that hard against it at the time. But he wasn’t going to bring that up. He didn’t have the energy. He didn’t have the heart.

      ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I really am sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.’

      Jeniche turned in the balcony doorway and glared into the room. ‘I’m tired of it. I don’t like cheating people. It’s all wrong. And you needn’t look at me like that. Yes, I was a thief. And a good one. But I only stole from those who could afford to lose it. And I only did it to survive.’

      ‘What about that place in the south of Kamar? Oh, come on; don’t put on an expression of outraged innocence. I know you too well. Besides, it doesn’t suit you.’

      ‘I had nothing to do with that. I had very little to do with…’ She shrugged as she passed him on the way to the other end of the room. ‘All right,’ she added as she turned. ‘So I redistributed his wealth a bit. But that’s just my point. He was a bastard. Cheated his customers, including us, and treated his staff like something you’d step in after the cattle had been driven through. Which is why I don’t want to run out on this one.’

      ‘We don’t have much choice.’

      She leaned against the wall by the washstand and rubbed her eyes. ‘Well at least you’ll look after your purse more carefully in future.’

      Alltud looked up at the ceiling, perhaps well beyond. ‘I knew you’d bring that into it.’

      ‘Well, you had the rent money,’ she said, ‘and you would insist on taking it everywhere in that fat, fancy, tempting purse. I told you to keep it out of sight, but no. And some light-fingered guttersnipe gave up resisting the temptation. Which is pretty much the reason you are now proposing I climb out in the dark.’

      She pushed away from the wall.

      ‘Be that as it… Would you stop!’

      She stopped.

      ‘We couldn’t have left earlier,’ he continued. ‘Wherever we had stayed. Nobody was going anywhere during that latest storm. Nothing left the harbour and no one was venturing out on the roads. Besides. Where would we go?’

      Jeniche looked down at him with a frown and wiped her face again. ‘I thought you wanted to go south,’ she said.

      ‘Only because you did.’

      ‘Me? When did I say that?’

      ‘You’re the one that suggested that boat out of Haynja.’ He looked up, her frown mirrored on his face.

      ‘Only because I thought that gang from Kamar had caught up with us and it was the only boat taking on crew that didn’t look like it would infect us with something deadly before it sank and drowned us. What are you sighing for?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      Jeniche shook her head slowly and went back out onto the balcony. She rested her forearms on the balustrade and closed her eyes for a moment, aware of the deep ache in her limbs. They had been bickering all through the afternoon heat when everyone else, at least anyone who had any sense, was resting or sleeping. The whole thing had been conducted in angry whispers, like sparring snakes. Quite aside from the fact it was far too hot to engage in an all-out shouting match, they were anxious to avoid drawing attention to themselves. At least that had gone in their favour.

      She leaned out over the mud wall at the end of the balcony to get the benefit of the faint stirring of air before it expired. From there she could see four floors down to the narrow, crooked alley that ran along the side and back of their lodging house. Out of habit, she looked for a route down. She had done it as soon as they had arrived a fortnight before. Checked that the locking bar on the door worked and couldn’t be opened from outside; checked for ledges and handholds on this outside wall. Had ambled out into the alley and looked it over from ground level. But it was as well to be certain. There might not be time to think about it when she made the climb later on. As she knew she would.

      When she eventually stepped back into the room, Alltud was still sitting on his bed, only now he was staring at the floor between his feet. His hands, which had been resting on his knees, were otherwise occupied – holding up his head.

      For the first time it really struck her just how grey his hair had become, how white his six-day growth of beard. And it wasn’t desert dust. That and the fact his once-rangy figure now simply looked half-starved drew the fire from her frustrated anger. She felt her own bone-deep tiredness again. Alltud looked every day of his fifty or so years. She was in her early thirties, as best as she could calculate, but with all the aches and pains she might just as well be the same age as him.

      ‘“Anywhere green,”’ he said, ‘“with a flagon of good white wine, fresh bread, a mature cheese, sweet apples and students courteous enough not to pester me while I doze.” Remember that?’ he asked and looked up, slowly straightening his back.

      She managed a flat smile and nodded.

      ‘I’m feeling my age, Jen,’ he went on, as if he had read her mind. ‘It’s been two years or more since we left Ynysvron.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Nearly three. It was fun at first. I had finally achieved the goal of uniting the tribes and sending the Gwerin back to where they belong. Something I СКАЧАТЬ