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TRADERS AND TRAITORS

T HE LIGHT SCUFF of footsteps was her only warning.

In the kitchen garden, Ronica froze where she crouched.

The sounds were coming up the carriageway.

She seized her basket of turnips and fled to the shelter of the grape arbour.

Her back muscles kinked protestingly at the sudden movement, but she ignored them.

She’d rather be careful of her life than of her back.

Silently she set the basket at her feet.

Unbreathing, she peered through the hand-sized leaves of the vines.

From their screening shelter, she could see a young man approaching the front entry of the house.

A hooded cloak obscured his identity and his furtive manner proclaimed his intentions.

He climbed the leaf-littered steps. At the door he hesitated, his boots grating on broken glass as he peered into the darkened house. He pushed at the big door that hung ajar. It scraped open and he slipped into the house.

Ronica took a deep breath and considered.

He was probably just a scavenger, come to see if there was anything left to plunder.

He would soon find there was not. What the Chalcedeans had not carried off, her neighbours had.

Let him prowl through the ravaged house, and then he would leave.

Nothing left in the house was worth risking herself.

If she confronted him, she could be hurt.

She tried to tell herself that there was nothing to gain.

Still, she found herself gripping the cudgel that was now her constant companion as she edged towards the front door of her family home.

Her feet were silent as she picked her way up the debris-strewn steps and through the glass fragments.

She peered around the door, but the intruder was out of sight.

Soundlessly, she slipped inside the entry hall.

She froze there, listening. She heard a door open somewhere deeper inside the house.

This villain seemed to know where he was going; was he someone she knew, then?

If he was, did he mean well? She considered that unlikely.

She was no longer confident of old friends and alliances.

She could think of no one who might expect to find her at home.

She had fled Bingtown weeks ago, the day after the Summer Ball.

The night before, the tension over Chalcedean mercenaries in the harbour had suddenly erupted.

Rumours that the Chalcedeans were attempting a landing while the Old Traders were engaged in their festivities had raced through the gathering.

It was a New Trader plot, to take the Satrap hostage and overthrow Bingtown; so the gossip flew.

The rumour was enough to ignite fires and riots.

The Old and New Traders had clashed with one another and against the Chalcedean mercenaries in their harbour.

Ships were attacked and burned, and the tariff docks, symbol of the Satrap’s authority, went up in flames yet again.

But this time, the fires spread through the restless town.

Angry New Traders set the elite shops along Rain Wild Street aflame.

New Trader warehouses were torched in vengeance, and then someone set the Bingtown Traders’ Concourse alight.

Meanwhile, the battle in the harbour raged.

The Chalcedean galleys that had been resident in the harbour masquerading as Jamaillian patrol vessels made up one arm of the pincers.

The Chalcedean ships that had arrived bringing the Satrap made up the other half.

Caught between them were Bingtown liveships and trading vessels and the larger fishing vessels of the Three Ships immigrants.

In the end, the rallying of the small boats of the Three Ships folk had turned the tide of battle.

In the dark, the tiny fishing vessels could slip up on the large Chalcedean sailing ships.

Suddenly pots of burning oil and tar shattered against the hulls of the ships or were lobbed onto the decks.

Abruptly the Chalcedean ships were too engaged in putting out fires to contain the ships in the harbour.

Like gnats harrying bulls, the tiny boats had persisted in attacking the ships blocking the harbour mouth.

Chalcedean fighters on the docks and in Bingtown were horrified to see their own ships driven from Bingtown Harbour.

Abruptly the cut-off invaders were fighting for their lives.

The running battle had continued as the Bingtown ships pursued the Chalcedeans into the open water.

In the morning, after the sounds of riot and insurrection had died away, smoke snaked through the streets on the summer breeze.

Briefly, Bingtown Traders controlled their own harbour again.

In the lull, Ronica had urged her daughter and grandchildren to flee to the Rain Wilds for shelter.

Keffria, Selden and the badly injured Malta had managed to escape on a liveship.

Ronica herself remained behind. She had a few personal tasks to settle before seeking her own asylum.

She had secreted the family papers in the hiding place Ephron had devised long ago.

Then she and Rache had hastily gathered clothing and food and set out for Ingleby Farm.

That particular Vestrit family holding was far away from Bingtown, and humble enough that Ronica believed they would find safety there.

Ronica had made one brief detour that day, returning to where Davad Restart’s carriage had been ambushed the night before.

She’d left the road and clambered down the forested hillside, past his overturned carriage to Davad’s body.

She had covered him with a cloth, since she had not the strength to take his body away for burial.

He had been estranged from his extended family, and Ronica knew better than to ask Rache’s help in burying him.

This last pitiful respect was all she could offer a man who had been both a loyal friend for most of her life and a dangerous liability to her these last few years.

She tried to find words to say over his body, but ended up shaking her head.

‘You weren’t a traitor, Davad. I know that.

You were greedy, and your greed made you foolish, but I won’t ever believe you deliberately betrayed Bingtown.

’ Then she had trudged back up to the road to rejoin Rache.

The serving woman said nothing about the man who had made her a slave.

If she took any satisfaction in Davad’s death, she didn’t speak it aloud. For that, Ronica was grateful.

The Chalcedean galleys and sailing ships did not immediately return to Bingtown Harbour.

Ronica had hoped that peace would descend.

Instead, a more terrible sort of fighting ignited between Old Trader and New, as neighbour turned on neighbour, and those with no loyalties preyed on anyone weakened by the civil discord.

Fires broke out throughout the day. As Ronica and Rache fled Bingtown, they passed burning houses and overturned waggons.

Refugees choked the roads. New Traders and Old Traders, servants and run-away slaves, merchants and beggars and Three Ships fisherfolk; all were fleeing the strange war that had suddenly blossomed in their midst. Even those abandoning Bingtown clashed as they fled.

Taunts and insults were flung between groups.

The jubilant diversity of the sunny city by the blue harbour had shattered into sharply suspicious fragments.

Their first night on the road, Ronica and Rache were robbed, their sacks of food spirited away as they slept.

They continued their journey, believing they had the stamina to reach the farm even without food.

Folk on the road told tales that the Chalcedeans had returned and that all of Bingtown was burning.

In the early evening of the second day, several hooded young men accosted them and demanded their valuables.

When Ronica replied that they had none, the ruffians pushed her down and ransacked her bag of clothing before flinging her belongings contemptuously into the dusty road.

Other refugees hurried past them, eyes averted.

No one intervened. The highwaymen threatened Rache, but the slave woman endured it stoically.

The bandits had finally left to pursue wealthier prey, a man with two servants and a heavily-laden handcart.

The two servants had fled the robbers, leaving the man to plead and shout as the thieves ransacked his cart.

Rache had tugged frantically at Ronica’s arm and dragged her away.

‘There is nothing we can do. We must save our own lives.’

Her words were not true. The next morning proved that.

They came upon the bodies of the teashop woman and her daughter.

Other fleeing folk were stepping around the bodies as they hurried past. Ronica could not.

She paused to look into the woman’s distorted face.

She did not know her name, but recalled her tea stall in the Great Market.

Her daughter had always served Ronica smilingly.

They had not been Traders, Old or New, but humble folk who had come to the gleaming trade city and become a small part of Bingtown’s diversity.

Now they were dead. Chalcedeans had not killed these women; Bingtown folk had.