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“Yes, my lord. Thank you.” The vendor passed a coin purse to a guard, who gave it to Thomkin.
Thomkin counted the gold. “Get him out here.”
“To the front, scum,” the front right guard said.
The vendor walked around the stall to the guards.
“On your fucking knees,” the guard said, sword half-drawn, “and get that fucking hood off.”
The vendor did as he was asked, revealing a crudely drawn tattoo of god-knows-what on the back of his shaved head.
Less painful than a brand, but just as ugly.
“Do you take me for a common fool?” Thomkin said.
“No, my lord.”
“Tell me again how many coins there are in this purse.”
“Thirty-seven, my lord.”
“There are thirty-five.” As Thomkin shouted, the guard thrus
t the pommel of his sword into the vendor’s face. The vendor shrieked as he hit the floor, blood leaking from in-between his fingers. The surrounding vendors slunk behind their stalls while the shoppers jostled for position to watch the spectacle, no doubt hoping for further violence.
Silas felt sorry for the vendor. Two fucking coins. Yet another reason to take pleasure in killing this bastard.
The middle and rear guards now faced outward, backs to Thomkin, hands on swords.
“Would you stop whining and get up,” Thomkin said.
The vendor struggled to his feet, hands still clasped over his bloody nose.
The guard’s armour clunked as he faked a step forward. “On your fucking knees.”
The vendor dropped, letting out a muffled sob.
“It will be one hundred and twenty next week. Fail to pay, and you will be evicted.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Get him out of the way.”
Brown and yellow powder puffed into the air as the vendor was pushed into his stall. He lay there in a ball, both hands over his face. Thomkin and his wall of steel moved forward. Silas turned his back to them and took a handful of chilli powder.
“Move, peasant,” a guard shouted.
Silas ducked forward as if to cower away. He let the first guard pass, then span, planting the powder into the middle guard’s eyes, who reeled backward. Silas drew his blade as he sprung forward, then felt the warm blood spray onto his hand as Thomkin’s throat peeled open. The job was done. He looked toward his exit through the gap between the young and front guard and paused.
Mara crouched on top of a stall, smiling. He still wore the woollen clothes Silas had given him. What the hell? Why are you here?
The front guard’s metal elbow crunched into the side of Silas’s head. He stumbled into the young guard, the collision pushing a half-drawn sword back into its sheath. Head spinning, he staggered toward the chicken cages. Then let out a scream at a burning pain in the back of his right leg.
His daze flushed away by the pain, he pulled an elderly vendor into the guard’s path, then toppled over a pile of cages in the same direction, their feathered contents screeching as they fell. A few more steps and he looked back. Mara was gone. He had to move, the first of the guards already kicking his way through the cages.
Out of the market, Silas needed to find somewhere to hide. His trouser leg clung to him, the pain increasing with every step. He forced the lock of a warehouse-door and pulled it shut behind him. Dimly lit timbers lay stacked in long, high rows. He rubbed along them to a dark corner and dropped his trousers. “Bastard.” The gash was a few inches long, just below his arse cheek, blood running in a constant stream below it. He’d need stitches.
He pulled off the turban, ripped off a few long pieces, and wrapped them around the wound. He slid down the wall and sucked in a long breath. It couldn’t have been him, impossible. A similar-looking boy? A twin? No. I must have imagined it. He had to admit to himself he’d thought about Mara an awful lot since he’d left him. Had it become an obsession? Enough to hallucinate? Surely not? His eyelids sagged. Just a few minutes.
