Shadow and Betrayal

series I’d like to spin up, and some short stories I’ve promised to write. I think I have enough to keep me off the street corners for a while yet.

if you enjoyed
    THE LONG PRICE look out for THE COMPANY by K. J. Parker

Chapter One
    T he boatman who rowed him from the ship to the quay kept looking at him: first a stare, then a frown. Pretending he hadn’t noticed, he pulled the collar of his greatcoat up round his chin, a perfectly legitimate response to the spray and the cold wind.
    “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” the boatman asked.
    “Wouldn’t have thought so,” he replied.
    The boatman’s frown deepened. He pulled a dozen strokes, then lifted his oars out of the water, letting the back-current take the boat the rest of the way. “I do know you,” the boatman said. “Were you in the war?”
    He smiled. “Everybody was in the war.”
    The boatman was studying his collar and the frayed remains of his cuffs, where the rank and unit insignia had been before he unpicked them. “Cavalry?” the boatman persisted. “I was in the cavalry.”
    “Sappers,” he replied. It was the first lie he’d told for six weeks.
    He felt the boat nuzzle up to the quay, grabbed his bags and stood up. “Thanks,” he said.
    “Two quarters.”
    He paid three - two for the fare, one for the lie - and climbed the steps, not looking back. The smell was exactly as he remembered it: seaweed, rotting rope, cod drying on racks, sewage, tar. It would’ve been nice if just one thing had changed, but apparently not.
    As he walked up the steep cobbled hill, he saw a thick knot of people blocking his way. Never a good sign. It was just starting to rain.
    It was as he’d feared. The short, fat man in the immaculate uniform was almost certainly the harbourmaster; next to him, two thin men who had to be his clerks; the old, bald man had the constipated look of a mayor or a portreeve. Add two guards and a tall, scared-looking youth who was presumably someone’s nephew. At least they hadn’t had time to call out the town band.
    No chance of slipping past. He didn’t look at them directly. At ten yards, they stood at sort-of-attention. At five yards, the presumed harbourmaster cleared his throat. He was actually shaking with fear.
    “General Kunessin,” he said, in a squeaky little voice. “This is a tremendous honour. If only we’d had a little more notice . . .”
    “That’s perfectly all right,” he replied; his polite-to-nuisances voice. “Listen, is there somewhere I can hire a horse and two mules?”
    Looking rather dazed, the harbourmaster gave him directions: through the Landgate, second on your left, then sharp right—
    “Coopers Row,” he interrupted. “Thanks, that’s fine.”
    The harbourmaster’s eyes opened very wide. “You’ve been here before then, General?”
    “Yes.”
     
    One thing that had changed in seventeen years was the cost of hiring a horse in Faralia. It had doubled. All the more surprising because, as far as he could tell, it was the same horse.
    “Is this the best you’ve got?” he asked. “I’ve got a long way to go.”
    “Take it or leave it.”
    The horse shivered. It wasn’t a particularly cold day. “Thanks,” Kunessin said. “Forget the horse and make it three mules.”
    The groom looked at him; cheapskates aren’t welcome here. Kunessin smiled back. “How’s your uncle, by the way?” he asked pleasantly. “Keeping well?”
    “He’s dead.”
    Two things, then. “Not that one,” he said, “it’s lame.” He counted out two dollars and nine turners. “Thank you so much,” he said.
    The groom handed him the leading reins. “Do I know you?”
    “No,” he replied, because at six and a half turners per half-dead mule per day, he was entitled to a free lie. “I’m a perfect stranger.”
     
    Climbing the hill eastwards out of town, his feet practically dragging on the ground as the mule panted mournfully under his weight, he thought: hell of a way for the local hero to travel. And that made him laugh out loud.
     
    Because he took a long loop to avoid Big Moor, it took him two and a half hours to reach Ennepe, at which point he got off the mule and walked the rest of the way, to save time.
    No change, he thought. Even the gap in the long wall was still there, a little bit bigger, a few more stones tumbled down and snug in the grass. Seventeen years and they still hadn’t got around to fixing it. Instead, they’d bundled cut gorse into the breach