“Sorry about this,” he said to the landlord.
The Dead Man stepped to the side. The alleged fisherman lunged with his filleting knife. The stringy-haired fellow went wide, trying to flank him.
The Dead Man parried the knife with the cushion. Sawdust showered. The Dead Man gave the deflating cushion a twist, trapping the knife in a swirl of threadbare corduroy. He yanked it to the side, catching the second man in the ribs with an elbow. A wild swing cuffed his ear, leaving his head ringing.
He went to one knee. And used the momentum of the drop to drive the same elbow into the second man’s groin, resulting in a popping sensation and a gratifying cry of dismay. The second man doubled over and kept going, landing on the floor in a position resembling an overcooked shrimp.
With a mighty jerk, the first man got his knife back. He drew it up, underhand, a trained knife-fighter’s grip. The Dead Man, scrabbling, stretched the rapidly deflating pillow between his hands, braced his boot toe, and lunged.
It might even have worked.
It didn’t have to.
The landlord cracked the clay bottle over the ersatz fisherman’s head. It didn’t knock him cold; alas, such things only happened in staged plays and melodramas. But it did drive him to his knees, and he relinquished his hold on the knife hilt. The fillet knife fell to the floor with a clatter. The Dead Man dropped the ruined cushion and dizzily scooped it up.
Getting old. He touched his ear in dismay, sliding his free hand under the veil. Blood came away on his fingertips.
He looked from the blood to the knife.
The ersatz fisherman crumpled forward, both hands laced over his occipital region, and pressed his forehead to the floor. He wheezed out a terrible, suffering moan.
The door to the street flew open. In rushed two men in the livery of Mrithuri’s soldiers, led by a young woman with flour on her tunic and caked up to her elbows. From this, the Dead Man deduced that the kitchen had its own door. The woman’s hair was raven-black, and would have been blue as a wing if it had not been so greasy with sweat.
Definitely a daughter, the Dead Man judged, unless the landlord had hidden talents.
“Take these men back to the palace,” the Dead Man told the soldiers. “Careful with them. They might be enemy agents, and they are definitely willing to kill. If they can.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the higher-ranking of the two.
He nudged the ersatz fisherman with a toe. The ersatz fisherman moaned.
“Don’t you dare throw up,” the Dead Man said. “I’m still going to eat that bread, and I don’t want to smell your vomit.”
“I don’t want to clean up his vomit!” the landlord said.
“Well, you’re the one who hit him so hard.”
The landlord looked at the shards of clay bottle in his hand and shrugged. “I guess I need more practice.”
The Dead Man turned the fillet knife over in his hand. “It’s a good tool. Do you need it?”
“Isn’t it evidence?” the landlord said.
“I shan’t require it. I think I just declared martial law.”
“Well,” the landlord said judiciously. He rubbed his bald spot. “I suppose my wife might.”
By the door, the lovely young woman beamed.
17
The Gage was not without experience of deserts. He had been born in one; been forged in one; died—after a fashion—in one. He had crossed an uncounted number in his time.
Even by his refined standards, this was an impressive example of the kind. It was not a desert of wind and sand, trackless, ever-moving, the whisper of worn grain on grain. But rather a desert of contradictions: a vast and canyoned badland, blasted as if by fire, rutted as if by water. A crackling glaze of bubbled green lay over the wasted soil, snapping under his every step. He knew he must be getting close to the poisoned city of dead dragons.
He had long since sent Mrithuri’s vulture away again. No flesh could sustain itself in this place.
The burned earth glowed at night.
The sky was black at first, dusted with those lonely distant stars, deep as a well and so full of echoes. He followed the Dragon Road into smoother terrain, though no less blasted.
The scars on the land here were old, however. This was earth that had been scorched, and scorched again. Picked at by wind and burned by suns of unimaginable fury.
The sky changed. Night reigned still, but the stars that speckled it were bright and close-seeming, and three enormous moons obscured them. The smallest was brilliant ivory in color, and it moved across the sky so quickly the Gage almost felt the desire to race it. The second in measure was dappled with the colors of rust, ochre, and old blood. And the third was a vast arc of blackness visible by the lack of stars that lay behind it, a shimmer of silver at its edge, the faint violet highlights of a kind of opalescence within its curve. It loomed, and made the Gage feel small: a sensation he was not used to.
A sun like a grain of millet rose white and blazing behind the moons, casting a light that was more than starlight but less than the light of the ivory moon. It moved across the sky as the Gage walked, and that smallest moon passed two more times. There was plenty of light to see by.
Deserts are not without life, and terrible though it was, this one was no different. He saw the tracks of serpents, and once or twice their heavy, calligraphied-looking bodies. He saw a frondlike web of low plants that seemed to grow out of a skeleton like coral, and whisked back inside as quickly as polyps if he moved toward them.
The sun set, and the sky began to pale. The opalescence dancing across the face of the black moon brightened, so the Gage realized it must be reflected light. That moon had not moved at all in the sky.
A second white sun crawled into the sky, followed by two others so small that the savagery of their light astounded. They washed the stars away; washed all color from the heavens. Bleak and weird—one red, one blue—they were linked by a curve or veil, like two dancers holding the ends of a filmy scarf and whirling around one another.
The blue one burned what its light fell on. So searing was that one that it heated the Gage’s brass hide until the patched robes he wore smoked and charred in places.
The dimmer red companion, bloated and soft-edged, mercifully eclipsed the blue sun now and again. The white light streaked to follow or precede the primaries, like a small child or an even smaller dog.
Ancient Erem. These were the suns of the city of ghulim; the cursed and monstrous city whose ghost still lay not too far from Messaline. These were the suns of an ancient and disastrous land. He could not mistake them. But these lay a sea and two continents away from where they should have been.
He began to find the corpses then.
They were like no corpses even he had seen. Vast metallic skeletal architectures rose against the black and changing heavens: horned skulls pitted with sockets like wind-caves, rib cages grand as palaces, spines like pathways paved with boulders, long and grasping fingers that reached farther than the stretch of these bodies from nose-tip to tail … but constructed not of bone. They were, instead, mighty edifices of silvery metal that might have rusted, if there were any moisture here … latticed with the oil-green transparency of polished olivine. Tattered leathery shreds clung to a few of the fresher corpses, rustling dryly in a ceaseless wind.
The light of the terrible stars fractured through the olivine, sparking dazzling gleams that might have blinded the Gage, if the Gage had eyes. In the darker times, when the wrestling suns dipped below the horizon, sometimes the skeletal fretworks gave off a patchy glow similar to that of the poison glass crackling underfoot.
Dragonglass.
And dragonbones.
Did they war here? the Gage wondered. If they did not kill each other, then how did they all come to die, and poison this land?
He was still wondering this when he saw something along the horizon move.
The size of it was indeterminate. Vast, he thought, and that was with the judgment of so
mebody who for … days?—he could not be certain, when the suns seemed to follow no reasonable pattern—had been walking among the sprawled bodies of dragons. It scuttled, or seemed to scuttle, on uncountable legs moving with the rippling coordination of a millipede’s. But if that was what it was, he was chasing after an insect the size of a city.
Unless, of course, it was chasing him.
The Gage was largely made of brass. But that was not to say that he did not have some steel in him. Literally, as well as metaphorically. There were gears and pins and shod edges within, bearings that needed to wear hard, connecting rods and contact surfaces. Metallurgy was his flesh.
And that was how he discovered that the enormous skeletons had a magnetism.
It was not a terribly strong magnetism. It did not bring them hurtling across the desert to thump into him, leaving ringing dents in his metal hide—or, given the size of some of the remains, drag him skidding through a broken crust of dragonglass to ring in turn against the bones.
But it did tug at him, evoking strange, subtle sensations he had thought lost to him along with the frailty of human flesh and skin. The perception was more akin to how he might once have felt a breeze rustling against skin, or a cool current of water. Or the way fine hairs might horripilate on nape and arms when encountering a static charge.
The Gage kept expecting the snap and sting of a spark to follow, for all he had not felt such a brief, bright burst of pain in decades. It made him recollect being human and fragile. He did what was in his power to pretend he did not feel that way.
Magnetic dust had weathered off the bones. Ash-fine, it drifted now in clouds on every breeze, combined with the pale green poison dust of the crushed dragonglass, and perhaps even the plain beige dust of the mundane earth that must lie somewhere below.
These three dusts dulled his mirrors until he, too, was plain and beige. Just as well: the massive insectoid object was less likely to see him glinting in the sun.
It did not, however, coat him evenly. Because of the magnetism, the dust arrayed itself in precise patterns and alliances, almost like a decoration. It clung, and made a map on his brazen skin of all his inner workings. All of those that held some trace of iron, anyway. On his arm, he could see the internal linkages outlined.
He should bring some dust back for Ata Akhimah, if only it would not poison her. She would be fascinated by its revelations.
Along the horizon, the first vast insect scuttled out of view.
The Gage bent down and picked up a fragment of skeleton. It was definitely not bone, but some alloy of iron studded with … well, with crystals of peridot. Studded? Veined, rather. “I wonder,” he said, though there was no one around to speak aloud to. Those wonderings were not so shaped or formal as words. It was just that he noticed a pattern, a similarity between these jewel-and-iron bones … and the coral-colored sapphire bones and veins of the sorcerer’s victims.
It was only a matter of a few hours before another leggy, walking silhouette—equally massive and equally unsettling—hove into view above the horizon. Maybe it was the same one, at that—though it had come from a different direction. If it was not a second—structure? revenant? animal?—then the first one had moved extraordinarily fast once it left his line of sight.
This one was moving toward him.
He missed the company of the vulture. It had joined him again for a little while after he left the ruins of Ansh-Sahal. But then he had entered this other poisonous place, and it had had to leave again.
All flesh was so frail.
Tented hide stretched over gaunt bones surrounded him.
All flesh. So frail.
* * *
Iri was successful, and Himadra found himself shepherding a much larger column of people home to Chandranath than he had departed with. But at least the rest of the journey was largely uneventful.
Feeding everybody was as difficult as anticipated. More than one horse was sacrificed along the way, but they came to the river before starvation claimed any among the baggage train except the weakest. It was not ideal, and even Himadra was thinner than he should have been—but it was better than losing everyone.
The Mother River, when they reached her, was low. Long mudbanks, pale and silty, curved beside her. They showed soupy footprints of wildlife and perhaps even livestock showing up to drink, and Himadra’s hunters managed to bring back a buffalo or two within hours. They camped by the river for longer than Himadra felt was tactically sound, honestly. But people needed food to get them safely back to Chandranath.
When they set out again, he rode between Navin and Farkhad. Farkhad, looking back along the column, shook his head. “We’re going to have to start raiding north, to feed this many.”
North was a problem. North was into the mountains, and there were bandit princelets in the hills who thought themselves, and not Himadra, ruler of their own small fiefs. There were also Rasan towns and villages, and Himadra could not afford to bring the wrath of the whole wealthy Rasan Empire down upon his poor little mountain principality. He and his men raided south, toward Mrithuri’s territory, entirely because it was the softest border and the safest direction. He almost wished she had come to him for advice; she could have used a much bigger army. And her farmlands were rich enough to support more taxes, to keep such an army fed and mobile.
Armies did quarrel, though—with each other and worse, with civilians. They needed constant tending. And having a big one could induce a person to start wars, as with Anuraja. An army was an expensive, destructive pet.
Himadra looked fondly over his people, newly salvaged and long-term loyalists, and sighed. They were his responsibility. “Well, it’s a good thing we’ve got a bigger army, now. Iri’s not going to like it, though.”
Farkhad glanced around, making sure the nurse was not close enough to overhear. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t find out until it’s too late, then.”
* * *
Farkhad’s campaign of dissembling was successful enough that Himadra didn’t get confirmation until after they got home to Chandranath that he’d been right. Iri didn’t like it. Iri did not like it so thoroughly that she lay in wait outside of Himadra’s morning room and caught him being wheeled in his caned chair toward breakfast. She stepped in front of him, blocking the doorway.
“I could have you flogged for that,” he said mildly.
“Better than the floggings of my conscience if I do not speak!”
She had a way about her, all right.
“Is there a problem with Drupada’s housing or the facilities for his care?”
It interrupted the tirade that seemed to be rising in her throat. She choked for a second, then spat out one word. “What?!”
“Have we,” he said, plainly and slowly, “given you what you need to do your job?”
She gaped at him. “That’s not what I am here about.”
“Right,” Himadra said. “You are also between me and my breakfast. Have you eaten yet?”
She had not, he was pretty sure. She must have gotten up early just to beard him so. His pain left him frequently sleepless. He often rose before sunset, and ate his breakfast at the hour when the servants would usually be gulping tea and bread before their day began. He was aware that it made him a difficult master, but there were worse ones in the world.
Anuraja, for example.
“No,” she said, in a small, slightly confused voice. Excellent. People were easier to manage if you had gotten the wind out of their sails.
“Well, then, come and dine with me. And we will discuss it. Whatever it may be.”
He was brought to his low table, and a plate was set before him. Another was found quickly and brought for Iri. They were metal, circular, with many small caches for different sauces and small tastes of highly spiced dishes. The menu tended toward a great deal of pulses and alliums: in his heart, Himadra was the sort of person who preferred plain fare, and not too much fuss over the serving of it. He knew how to acquit himself at a banquet,
of course. But sometimes, you didn’t want to bother. Sometimes, you just wanted to eat, and enjoy what you were eating.
The tea was poured into small red clay cups. It was milky and strong, sweetened with sugarcane and spices. Himadra amused himself by nibbling pieces of the clay rim like a peasant as he drank. He could hear the tiny cracks and crunches as Iri did the same.
She watched him through lowered lashes to see how he handled the bread and the small portions of spicy food, and in copying him handled hers adroitly. She nibbled at first, but when he seemed to take no notice of her she relaxed and began to eat with a fair appetite.
He was kind, and waited until her mouth was empty and she had swallowed her tea before asking, “So. There is a problem about which you wished to confront me.”
“Ah.” She looked up, nervous again. But not cowed, he was glad to see. “I am not sure I would use the word ‘confront,’ Your Competence.”
“Ah,” he echoed. He wiped a morsel of soft, slightly charred bread through a sauce that brought tears to his eyes. “But you see, I have met you. And I choose my words with care. So what is it?”
“You are sending your men to raid. Innocent farmers, herders. Crofters. And among your men are men I talked into joining you. Old friends and acquaintances. My fellow subjects of Ansh-Sahal.”
Her voice trailed off, but her expression was alight with defiance.
He waited a moment to be certain she was done. Then: “You have seen Chandranath?”
“Your Competence?”
“You have seen Chandranath.”
“Only in that we rode through it, my lord.”
“What did it look like to you, my land?”
She hesitated.
“You will not offend me. And I know you come from Ansh-Sahal, which has its own poverties. Does Chandranath seem to you a rich land?”
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 27