Tabula Rasa(48)

The boy began to sniffle again. “Will you tell my da?”

“I shall tell him,” Tilla promised, “that you are a sensible boy and you have been very helpful.”

“Will you find Branan now?”

“I will do my best.”

Once Inam was safely home, she would go straight to the fort. It was possible that Conn had been fobbed off at the gates and that Branan had indeed been seized for spreading malicious rumors. Yet, why send only one man, and why trick the boys into thinking it was not an arrest? It was not the Legion’s way of doing things.

Something about it was very, very wrong.





Chapter 26

“Ah!” exclaimed Ruso, pleased to see the familiar figure getting up from the stool by the pharmacist’s table. “It’s today you’re back.”

Nisus, a man who parted with words as if he were obliged to pay a fee for each one used, responded to this statement of the obvious with silence.

“How was leave?”

“Good, sir.”

“Sit down, man. I need a word with you.”

Nisus perched back on the stool with his body slightly turned toward his table, as if he were waiting for the conversation to end so he could get on with his work.

“Our clerk’s gone missing. I’m hoping you know where he is.”

“I see, sir.”

Remembering Nisus’s tendency to answer the question you asked rather than the question you meant, he said, “Any idea where he might have gone?”

“Far away, I hope, sir.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps you could tell me . . .” Ruso paused, then rearranged the sentence. “Why is that, Nisus?”

“He talked too much.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you, ah . . . threaten him in any way?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ruso left it there for now. He needed to know about the supplies that Nisus had agreed to try and pick up while he was over in Coria.

“Did you get hyssop?”

Nisus pointed to the bowl he was weighing on the scale.

“And honey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Rue?”

“Yes, sir.”

Fortunately, when not obliged to converse, Nisus was very good at his job. It was not surprising that he had been irritated by Candidus’s slapdash attitude and incessant chatter. Ruso said, “Figs?”

“Some, sir.”

“Enough?”

“No, sir.”

“We’ll have to wheedle a few out of somebody’s kitchen.”

Nisus assumed an expression like a wet winter afternoon. Ruso said hastily, “I’ll do it.” He had never thought of himself as a man with charm—that was Valens’s job—but even he could do better than that.

To his relief, the struggling conversation was put out of its misery by a barrage of noise from behind the office door. It sounded much as Ruso imagined a large bear might sound if it were trying unsuccessfully to dislodge something disgusting stuck in its throat. He peered around the door to see a huge soldier standing by Candidus’s rickety stool and trying not to knock over stacks of writing tablets and scrolls arranged in a semicircular wall around him as he coughed and waved one arm in an attempt at a salute.

When the man had finally regained control and snatched a drink from his waterskin, Ruso asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m your new clerk, sir. Gracilis.” The man looked Ruso in the eye as if daring him to laugh. Ruso remained solemn, largely because Gracilis had the sort of physique that would be useful for hiding behind in the event of an oncoming cavalry charge. If his parents had chosen to call him “Slender,” it was none of anybody else’s business. “Sorry I didn’t notice you before, Gracilis. Welcome. We’re not used to having anybody sitting there, as you’ve probably guessed.”

The reply of “Don’t worry, sir, I’ll sort all this out” was the sweetest sound Ruso had heard in a long time.

It was swiftly followed by another sound, one that made the muscles of his abdomen clench: the distant wail of a native horn summoning reinforcements. He had not heard it for a couple of relatively peaceful years, but it was a sound that no soldier who had served during the last rebellion would ever forget.

Tilla had insisted on going to the farm alone. He should have made her promise to take someone. Anyone. Better still, anyone and a large dog. Relations with the locals had gone seriously downhill, and now it sounded as though they were gathering to make trouble.

“Sir?”

He returned his attention to the clerk. “Sorry. What did you say?”