Players of the Game
The third instalment in the Shadow of the Storm seriesJeniche and Alltud have been on an adventure for nearly three years. Now, the time has come for them to go home.But as they leave their hostel in the dead of the night, these plans are thwarted. The Qasireu of Alboran awaits the two travellers with a quest: they must move an item of great value, whose identity is to remain unknown.Carrying this item across the dusty moutains, they make a chance encounter: a woman from her past, who seems to know a great deal about the amulet around Jeniche’s neck and the power it possesses.Yet, the amulet isn’t the only secret the travellers carry with them. For little do they know, the item they are moving could pose a threat to the entire world.
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Players of the Game
Book Three of Shadow in the Storm
GRAEME K TALBOYS
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Graeme K Talboys 2017
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017; Cover design by Mike Topping; Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Graeme K. Talboys asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008103576
Version: 2017-01-17
For Susan Murray
Table of Contents
There was no escape. Even on the high balcony, the smothering heat and dry, stale air sapped energy and sense. Jeniche rested a moment against the parapet to gather herself and looked out over the city of Alboran with a half-seeing eye. Beside her, a cat waited out the heat with the patience natural to any predator, head down and paws tucked in. Little had changed since she had last stood there. The sun had moved a fraction further west, hanging like a polished bronze plaque in a smoky room, but there were still no shadows anywhere in the city, just an umber gloom, a perpetual twilight that waxed and waned.
It was three days since the dust storm out of the south had passed. The heavy stuff had settled straight away, dark like dried blood. It had covered the rooftops, piled into corners, tainted wells, and coated the streets. Women had swept it from their steps; men had shovelled it into carts and taken it away to goodness knows where. The river had become sluggish, exuding a dull, underground stench and the sea had changed colour from translucent blue to a wine darkness that was only now starting to fade. But the fine stuff that got in their noses and mouths and made their eyes water, that stained their clothing and laced the air and their food with a stale flavour of metallic salts, that was still there.
It gave the city, spread out before her, an ancient and otherworldly feel, as if it was a painting made by an artist who only had the colours of earth to work with â ochres, reddy browns, clay yellows, silty greys. The sprawling complex of buildings that she could see from her vantage point dropped away in the south to the landward city walls. To the north, had she been able to see it from the balcony, the view was across rooftops all the way down to the docks and the coast. The wealthy quarter of the city was in the west where they could enjoy evening breezes; the poor lived in their maze of streets and alleys on the eastern slopes where the sun would wake them early.
She was reminded of Makamba, the place she had come nearest to thinking of as home. Mud-brick buildings, hot desert air carrying the blended aromas of ten thousand cooking fires, quiet afternoons and the whole place coming alive in the evening with lamps burning in the souks and alleyways; a roofscape that called out to be explored. Makamba, she added to herself, before the Occassans invaded and tore it apart in their search for her and the treasure she wore. She wondered how the city was faring, unconsciously fingering her pendant through the thin cloth of her tunic.
A faint movement of air made the cat sneeze. It cost a lot that breeze. Not as much as it would have in one of the shady, north-facing rooms up here on the top floor, but expensive enough. Too expensive. She turned and stepped back into the room. The cat jumped down from its perch on the balcony wall and followed her, waiting patiently until it was let out. It went and sat on the landing and had started washing behind one ear as she closed the door.
