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‘Mingsley’s overtures of peace are a farce, a distraction to keep us busy while they muster their forces.

They know of the Satrap’s escape, and probably in more detail than we do.

Also, I am certain the Vestrits have been involved in this from the beginning.

Consider how that old woman tried to discredit us at the Traders’ Council meeting!

It was to shift attention away from her own treachery. ’

‘Mingsley –’ Serilla began.

‘Is not to be trusted. Rather, we shall use him. Let us allow him to make overtures of truce. Let us appear even eager to meet him. Then, when we have drawn him out far enough, let us chop him off.’ Roed made a sharp gesture with his hand.

Serilla summoned all her courage. ‘There is a discrepancy. Ronica Vestrit has cautioned me not to trust Mingsley. Surely if she were in league with him…’

‘She would do all she could to appear not to be,’ Roed finished decisively. His dark eyes glinted with anger.

Serilla drew a breath and stiffened her spine.

‘Ronica has urged me, often, to structure a peace in which all of Bingtown’s factions have a say.

Not just the Old Traders and the New, but the slaves and the Three Ships folk and the other immigrants.

She insists we must make all a party to a truce in order to achieve a fairly-won peace. ’

‘Then she is damned by her own tongue!’ Roed Caern declared decisively.

‘Such talk is traitorous to Bingtown, the Traders, and Jamaillia. We should all have known the Vestrits had gone rotten when they allowed their daughter to marry a foreigner, and a Chalcedean at that. That is how far back this conspiracy reaches. Years and years of their plotting and making a profit at Bingtown’s expense.

The old man never traded up the Rain Wild River.

Did you know that? What Trader in his right mind, owner of a liveship, would forgo an opportunity like that?

Yet, he kept making money, somehow. Where?

From whom? They take a Chalcedean half-breed into their own family.

That looks like a clue to me. Does that not make you suspect that, from the very beginning, the Vestrits had abandoned their loyalties to Bingtown? ’

He stacked his points up too quickly. She felt bludgeoned by his logic. She found herself nodding and with an effort, stopped. She managed to say, ‘But to make peace in Bingtown, there must be some sort of accord reached with all the folk who live here. There must.’

He surprised her by nodding. ‘Exactly. You are right. But say rather, all the folk who should live here. The Old Traders. The Three Ships immigrants, who made pacts with us when they got here. And those who have arrived since, in ones and twos and families, to take up our ways and live by our laws, while recognizing that they can never become Bingtown Traders. That is a mix we can live with. If we expel the New Traders and their slaves, our economy will be restored. Let the Bingtown Traders take up the lands that were wrongfully granted to the New Traders, as reparation for the Satrap breaking his word to us. Then all will be right again in Bingtown.’

It was a child’s logic, too simplistic to be real.

Make it all go back to the way it was before, he proposed.

Could not he see that history was not a cup of tea, to be poured back into a pot?

She tried again, forcing strength she did not feel into her voice.

‘It does not seem fair to me. The slaves had no say in being brought here. Perhaps –’

‘It is fair. They will have no say in being sent away from Bingtown, either. It balances exactly. Let them go away and become the problem of those who brought them here. Otherwise, they will continue to run wild in the streets, looting and vandalizing and robbing honest folk.’

A tiny spark of her old spirit flared up in her. She spoke without thinking. ‘But how do you propose to do all this?’ she demanded. ‘Simply tell them to go away? I doubt they will obey.’

For an instant, Caern looked shocked. A shadow of doubt flickered through his eyes.

Then his narrow lip curled disdainfully.

‘I’m not stupid,’ he spat. ‘There will be bloodshed. I know that. There are other Traders and Traders’ sons who stand with me.

We have discussed this. We all accept that there must be bloodshed before this is over.

It is the price our ancestors paid for Bingtown.

Now it is our turn, and pay we shall, if we must. But our intent is that it shall not be our own blood that is spilled.

Oh, no.’ He drew in a breath and paced a quick turn about the study.

‘This is what you must do. We will call an emergency meeting of the Traders – no, not all of them, only the Council heads. You will announce to them our grievous tidings: that the Satrap is missing in a Trehaug quake, and we fear he is dead. So you have decided to act on our own, to quell the unrest in Bingtown. Tell them that we must have a peace pact with the New Traders, but specify that it must be ratified by every New Trader family. We will send word to Mingsley that we are ready to discuss terms, but that every New Trader family must send a representative to the negotiations. They must come under truce, unarmed and without menservants or guards of any kind. To the Bingtown Concourse. Once we have them there, we can close our trap. We will tell the New Traders that they must all depart peacefully from our shores, forfeiting all their holdings, or the hostages will pay the price. Leave it to them how they manage it, but let it be known that the hostages will be set free in a ship to join them only after all of them are a day’s sail from Bingtown Harbour. Then…’

‘Are you truly prepared to kill all the hostages if they don’t agree?’ Serilla could find no more strength for her voice.

‘It won’t come to that,’ he assured her immediately. ‘And if it does, it will be the doing of their own folk, not us. If they force us to it…but you know they will not.’ He spoke too quickly. Did he seek to reassure her, or himself?

She tried to find the courage to tell him how foolish he was.

He was a large boy spouting violent nonsense.

She’d been a fool ever to rely on him for anything.

Too late she had found that this tool had sharp edges.

She must discard him before he did any more damage.

Yet she could not. He stood before her, nostrils flared, fists knotted at his sides, and she could sense the anger seething behind his calm mask, the anger that powered his so-righteous hatred.

If she spoke against him, he might turn that anger on her.

The only thing she could think of to do was to flee.

She stood slowly, trying to appear calm. ‘Thank you for bringing me this news, Roed. Now I must take some time to myself to think it through.’ She inclined her head to him gravely, hoping he would bow in his turn and then depart.

Instead, he shook his head. ‘You have no time to debate with yourself on this, Companion. Circumstances force us to act now. Compose the letters summoning the Council heads here. Then summon a servant to deliver your messages. I myself will take the Vestrit woman into custody. Tell me which room is hers.’ A sudden frown divided his brows.

‘Or has she swayed you to her cause? Do you think you would gain more power if you allied with the New Trader conspiracy?’

Of course. Any opposition to him would prompt him to classify her as an enemy. Then he would be just as ruthless with her as he was prepared to be with Ronica. The Vestrit woman had made him afraid when she stood up to him.

Had it been Ronica in the hall? Had she heard the warning and understood it? Had the old woman had time to flee? Had Serilla done anything to save her, or was she sacrificing her to save herself?

Roed’s fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides restlessly.

Too clearly, she could imagine his brutal clasp on the Trader woman’s thin wrist. Yet she could not stop him.

He would only hurt her if she tried: he was too large and too strong, too fearsomely male.

She could not think with him in the room, and this errand would make him go away for a time.

It would not be her fault, any more than Davad Restart’s death had been her fault.

She had done what she could, hadn’t she?

But what if the shadow at the door had not been anyone at all?

What if the old woman still slept? Her mouth had gone dry, but a stranger spoke the horrifying words.

‘Top of the stairs. The fourth door on the left. Davad’s room. ’

Roed left, his boots clacking purposefully as he strode away from her.

Serilla watched him go. After he was out of sight, she curled forwards, her head in her hands.

It wasn’t her fault, she tried to console herself.

No one could have come through what she had experienced unscathed.

It wasn’t her fault. Like a rebuking ghost, Ronica’s words came to her: ‘That is the challenge, Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it, instead of being trapped by it.’