Hal - The Duellist #1

Chapter Fourteen - Dancing

Cara clapped her hands in delight. "You're certain it's Léac's daughter?"

"No doubt, Ma'am. Sat behind them in The Emperor, I did. Then I followed them back after they left. I was careful, mind. They didn't know I was there, they were so wrapped up in each other. They went back to Léac's place. I followed them several times. It's Meracad alright."

Cara fell silent for a moment, stunned at the intelligence. She had caught the bitch out ─ just as she had embarked on the riskiest liaison of her life. It was all there: the potential for scandal, for public ruin, not to mention the prospect of a double revenge. For the girl's coward of a father would no doubt watch the whole sorry story unfold without raising a finger to stop it. His reputation was, after all, of greater value than the girl's. She almost burst with the news.

"Here, take this." She handed the spy her promised fifty shillings. "I'm immensely pleased with your work. I take it you won't mention what you've seen to a soul?"

"My word's good, Ma'am."

"Excellent. I may require you to repeat what you have said to someone, but all in good time."

"I understand."

"Thank you. Goodbye."

The girl left the room, and Cara turned immediately to her writing bureau. There was not a moment to waste. Léac was in the North, she had heard, and it might take him several days to return. Pulling out a quill, she began to pen a letter.

***

Hal sat on a wall beside the fountain in the main square, thankful for the refreshing sensation of water as it billowed out into spray behind her back. The day's merciless heat had transformed unpaved streets into dusty tracks, rendering stonework and masonry so hot they brought blisters to the fingers of those who touched them. The evening shade now provided some welcome relief against the cruel intensity of the sun, and Hal closed her eyes, inhaling the heady sounds and scents of early dusk: the perfumes of rich women as they crossed the square, perhaps on their way to secret assignations, and the constant ebb and fall of voices coming, it seemed, from every corner of the city.

To her left, a cluster of poor musicians struck up an impromptu melody. She caught the strain of a fiddle working busily above the low-plucked harmonies of a lute, and when she opened her eyes a couple were dancing before the minstrels. The woman's scarlet and olive dress flared out as she swayed and twisted to the music. Her partner, dressed in linen shirt and ragged canvas breeches was clearly another poor arrival from the provinces, seeking to make his fortune in the city.

Hal leaned forward, cupping her face in her hands as she admired the carefree agility with which the couple moved, as if dancing were as natural an activity as breathing for them. Her attention wavering, she turned to the opposite side of the square, squinting hard against the sunlight filtering down between rooftops and buildings. No sign of Meracad. And she had promised...she had promised! With a nervous little tapping of her feet, she gazed intently at the wide boulevard which linked the square with the merchants' district. Perhaps Meracad had persuaded herself that meeting in such a public square carried too great a risk. But surely there were few better places to remain concealed than in a crowd? Besides, they could always head over to her quarters on Riverside or to The Emperor.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder and she started in surprise at the sudden interruption to her thoughts.

"Not like you to sit around idly, Hal."

Hal froze. That was not Meracad's voice. "Good evening, Orla." She forced her lips into a fixed smile before twisting round to face her former lover.

She was blinded briefly by the last rays of sun as they fell across her line of sight. Orla's face was shadowed, and Hal shielded her eyes with her hands, tracing the lean, wiry outline of the soldier's silhouette. The light dropped away altogether, giving way to the grainy haze of dusk. Orla's hair hung loose, plastered to her forehead with sweat, her angular features tanned to golden brown by months spent fighting rebels on the empire's southern frontier.