“So, we bring her in, we get the extra money, she faces a magistrate,” Teer reeled off. “Why does it feel…foul?”
“Because this Carind added money to it, which makes me doubt everything,” his mentor admitted. “Our job is not to judge. Our job is to bring people to magistrates for judging, to face trial and punishment.”
“And the Unity wants people alive to hang over wardstones or draft for the swamps,” Teer said, repeating a conversation they’d had before. Most wardtowns would see a non-Spehari magistrate once a season—and a Spehari magistrate, charged for cases involving Spehari interests and tasked to power up the wardstones, once a turning.
Those magistrates could order people executed, which recharged the wardstones, or sent to the armies fighting the unending war against the now-dead Prince in Sunset’s former allies the Kott, lizard-like people who lived in the swamps at the northern edge of the Unity.
Kard raised a hand with a long sigh.
“I don’t like the Unity, for a long list of reasons, but their trials are mostly fair and their magistrates mostly honest,” he admitted. “That’s part of why I’m all right with doing this job.”
“And if a Spehari is involved?” Teer asked. When his hometown had thought he’d shot at a Spehari, he’d been effectively sentenced to death long before the magistrate arrived. Only Kard acting on the specific rights of a Spehari had saved him.
“Then any concept of justice or fairness dies,” Kard said flatly. “It may not be as bad with a mere Marked involved, though Carind had money…”
Their dishes went in the pot of boiling soapy water and Teer set to work cleaning as Kard stared at the fire.
“It’s not our place to judge,” he repeated with a sigh. “We deliver criminals to the courts of the Unity and leave it to the Magistrates and their truth stones to sort out the why and the what.”
“And if we don’t trust those courts?” Teer asked.
“Then we’re in the wrong business, my young friend,” Kard told him. “I don’t like it, but much as I hate the nation my father’s people built, it’s fair for most—and the criminals we hunt deserve their justice.”
Kard rose.
“I’m going to bed,” he told Teer. “We might catch up to her tomorrow and we’d better be rested. This Lora seems clever, which means she’s dangerous to us—but by the Iron Pillars, we will bring her in alive.”
Teer snorted as he put the dishes away in their cases.
“That was never in question.”
6
Their prey clearly thought she was clear of pursuit after her dip in the river. Teer and Kard found her campsite several candlemarks after setting out on the second day, easily picked out in one of the safer nooks along the river.
“She put out the fire safely, but she didn’t try to conceal it,” Kard observed as he and Teer prowled through the site. “Did she really think the river was enough?”
“She might not know,” Teer guessed. “Like you said, chip-novels.”
Lora appeared to be smart enough, but she was a townswoman. She knew enough to put out a fire, but not enough to bury it or scatter the ashes to look older. There were other fire sites in the sheltered nook she’d camped in, but they were all several tendays old.
“She took the time to rub down her horse,” Teer noted, picking up some tufts of dried horsehair. “She’s trying, at least.”
“Maybe,” Kard agreed. The El-Spehari squatted down, pulling a paper map from out of his coat and looking over it. “She’s following the river now, but there’s nothing east of here along the Carahassee. There’s a few wardtowns, but they’ll all hear about her sooner rather than later.”
“I didn’t know the wardtowns could talk to each other until you told me,” Teer reminded his partner. “She might not either.”
“Or she doesn’t know anything and is just following the water for lack of a better idea,” Kard replied. “I’ve seen it before. Can at least be sure of one thing.”
Kard whistled Clack over to him, checking the horse’s straps as he prepared to remount.
“What’s that?” Teer asked, calling Star over as well.
“She didn’t plan this,” Kard said flatly. “She’s running on panic and fear. She won’t make it far with that as her guiding light.”
“Sounds like she’s better off for us bringing her in.”
“No one is ever better off for us bringing them in,” the older Hunter told him. “World often is, but never the people we bring in.
“Come on. She’s lost ground and is only half a day ahead of us.”
A candlemark later, the trail finally changed. Teer and Kard were pushing their horses a bit now that the trail suggested Lora wasn’t pushing hers, but they had time. Star and Clack were healthy, capable creatures who could sustain a decent trot for a while.
They took the two bounty hunters across the stream feeding the Carahassee without hesitation—and the trail ended there.
Teer had to laugh.
“Water again,” he said. “But she didn’t go into the river, I don’t think.”
“No, not likely,” Kard agreed, turning in the saddle to look back at the Carahassee. It was shallower and narrower there than at Carlon, but it was faster, too. There were no shallows to ride along like their prey had taken closer to town.
“Horse wouldn’t let her,” Teer told his boss as the El-Spehari observed the water. “Loyal or no, horses aren’t dumb. It wouldn’t go in that water.”
The river would probably break the legs of any beast that tried—and the horse would realize that, even if the rider didn’t.
“So, she went up the stream,” Kard concluded. “We follow. One of us on each side of the water, see what we see.”
Teer nodded and turned Star south. Behind him, Kard took Clack back across the stream and turned as well.
They rode in silence for a while, just far enough apart to make conversation difficult as they watched the ground for the tracks that would be there, sooner or later.
Eventually, Kard started singing softly. Teer didn’t even know the language, let alone the song, but he listened carefully as they rode.
“That song?” he asked, pitching his voice to carry. “What is it?”
Kard chuckled and shook his head.
“Kott riding song,” he admitted. “Sunset Brigades picked it up from our allies. Song itself was as much defiance of the Unity as anything else.”
“What does it mean?” Teer asked.
“I don’t actually know,” Kard said. “The Kott fought with us against the Unity, but we didn’t learn much of their language. They retreated when the Prince in Sunset died under the Pillars. More of them made it out than the Brigades.”
Teer was close enough to see the shadow pass over Kard’s eyes. He only knew a little bit about the end of the Sunset Rebellions—the Brigades had been lured into a trap deep in Unity territory, under the first Iron Pillars from the original Spehari landings.
And the Spehari King in Winter had killed the El-Spehari Prince in Sunset, rumored to be his grandson, under those pillars. His armies had pinned the rebel host against the sea and ended the war in one swift stroke.