Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  ‘We should get our bags and find a room for the night,’ remarked Laska, shaking off the reverie that had stolen over them all. ‘The streets of Cherk Harbour are no place to wander after dark. We’ll continue our search in the morning.’

  They had just retraced their steps through the lines of desolate cages when someone called out to them from behind in fluent Argosian.

  ‘Laska! What luck, old boy! I thought it might be you, but I wasn’t sure.’

  They turned to see a Lantrian hurrying down the aisle: a sallow, nervous-looking individual in merchant’s robes. He was enveloped in a long cloak trimmed with expensive furs and glanced anxiously about him as he spoke, as if he expected or perhaps dreaded an encounter among the slave pens. He held his hand out to the captain in a companionable enough greeting, however.

  ‘Yago, good to see you.’ Laska shook the proffered hand. ‘I’m glad to find a friendly face in this city. Things have changed since I was here last. I recall more spice stalls, and fewer of those.’ He pointed to the cages.

  ‘It’s atrocious; we’ve been pushed out completely,’ complained the man named Yago, lowering his voice to a whining whisper. ‘The market for Treespice bottomed out back home and all the great and good want now is fodder for their mines. But what have we here? Travelling in company, I see.’ He ogled the two young Grafters with transparent curiosity.

  ‘I was considering starting my nephew and niece up in the business,’ answered Laska evenly, ‘but it seems we’re too late. Tell me, Yago, what’s got into the Governor? He used to be interested in expanding ties with the Freeholds. Now it’s all about welcoming pirate scum and resettlement ships. He closed down the temple. What happened?’

  The merchant grimaced, shrinking into the folds of his cloak. ‘Hush,’ he muttered. ‘Ears in the bark. Come on, we’ll talk in my stall. I was just finishing up.’

  They followed him through the market to a little booth in the northern quadrant of the bazaar. The front display area was dismantled but the square canvas pavilion at the back still stood. He let them through a flap in the wall into a room stacked with sacks and crates, fragrant with the smell of Treespice. A smooth-skulled scribe was seated at a table in one corner, making notes on a ledger; his appearance was so similar to the flunky in Omni Salassi’s office that Tymon had to look twice before he realised it was a different man. This fellow, thankfully, was dressed in a floor-length robe. He rose with a quick bow as they entered, his long eyes barely registering a flicker of surprise at his master’s unusual guests, and glanced away with the obsequious respect of the Lantrian underclass.

  ‘We’re done for the day, Shammas.’ Yago shooed him out of the tent with a paternal pat on the back. ‘You can finish those up tomorrow, first thing.’

  The scribe bowed once more and left the tent. Yago fetched some stools and made his visitors sit down before throwing himself into the scribe’s seat and heaving a petulant sigh.

  ‘Atrocious,’ he repeated. ‘The whole town’s gone to rack and ruin, or will do soon if things go on this way.’ He retrieved a small tray complete with a hardwood flask and several tumblers from the bowels of his desk. Tymon caught the acrid scent of kush.

  ‘There are new powers about,’ said the Lantrian, filling one of the tumblers and handing it to Laska. ‘When you visited last, my friend, this was a businessman’s paradise, a place where a body could buy and sell pretty much anything. I’ll grant you that we probably did buy and sell a few too many things. But we didn’t deserve this. We didn’t deserve him.’

  Laska accepted the tumbler politely but did not drink from it. Yago was about to offer Tymon and Jedda their own when the captain waved the flask away impatiently.

  ‘Him?’ he prompted.

  The merchant leaned over the table. ‘The Reaper,’ he mouthed, in a thick whisper. ‘No one knows his real name. Where he goes, death follows. He just appeared about three years ago, out of nowhere. The resettlers used to be privateers, if you remember.’ Laska nodded. ‘Well, now they’re his. They’re organised. Actually, they live in fear of the man. Oh, supposedly there’s a board of shareholders, all fully legit, with the Governor and some of his blue-blood friends back home. But everyone knows who owns this town. The Governor’s no more than a puppet.’

  ‘Now I begin to understand why we were just called in to the palace,’ ruminated Laska. ‘The Governor is under orders: he has caved in to pressure. This is most unfortunate.’

  ‘Unfortunate? It’s a nightmare!’ exclaimed Yago, before hastily lowering his voice. ‘I can’t get anything done without becoming a member of their New East Trading Company. A monopoly, that’s what it is. Crippling fees. Total control of distribution. Ties with foreign powers.’ His eyes darted to Tymon as he said this, sparkling with undiminished curiosity. ‘The Company appeared about the same time as the Reaper, out of thin air,’ he finished, draining his tumbler and thumping it back on the table for effect. ‘I’ve never seen such sudden and complete success. It’s black magic, I tell you — filthy, monopolising, credit-grabbing sorcery.’

  ‘So it seems,’ answered the captain, guardedly.

  ‘He — the Reaper — always appears in the company of an Argosian priest gone bad,’ hissed Yago meaningfully. ‘Strange things happen to anyone who opposes them. I’ve heard tales. Sudden disappearances. Sickness on board. Consignments gone missing.’ He shuddered. ‘Unseasonable storms.’

  ‘That makes our position all the more clear.’ Laska stood up, placing the untouched tumbler back on the tray. Tymon and Jedda rose to follow him. ‘There are no prospects for us in Cherk Harbour. We should go home. Thank you, Yago. You’ve saved us much unnecessary trouble.’

  ‘You’re going home?’ squeaked the merchant, rising too abruptly himself and colliding with the scribe’s little table. The contents of the tray rocked dangerously. ‘Right now?’

  ‘Well, not right at this moment. I don’t like flying by moonlight.’ Laska grinned. ‘We’ll fetch our bags and find a place to stay for the night. Perhaps we’ll drop by tomorrow before we leave, to say goodbye.’

  ‘Try the Rambling Rose,’ said Yago, accompanying them to the entrance of the tent. ‘They accept foreigners.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice, friend,’ noted Laska. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  Jedda groaned with disgust as they walked away from the Lantrian’s booth. ‘Foreigners,’ she muttered. ‘As if the Eastern Canopy weren’t our home.’

  ‘He probably meant well,’ suggested Tymon doubtfully.

  ‘He meant no such thing,’ said Laska. ‘Yago is a spy and a sell-out.’

  The two young people stared at him in surprise.

  ‘Oh, he’s harmless, because he’s useless,’ qualified the captain. ‘But I know the man. He has less backbone than the Governor. There’s no way he’d stand up to someone like the Reaper. I should imagine our names and whereabouts are being reported as we speak. The quicker we collect our bags and get off the streets, the better.’

  3

  When the three travellers made their way back to the air-harbour, however, they found the gate to the boardwalk closed off for the night.

  ‘Wonderful,’ muttered Jedda, as they gazed dejectedly through the hardwood bars. ‘The Governor couldn’t have called us up at a better moment. Now we can’t even get our bags out.’

  ‘Well, let’s not wait here for worse trouble to find us.’ Laska beckoned them away from the darkened docks. ‘We’ll spend the night at an inn and discuss what to do next.’

  ‘Are we going to try the Rambling Rose, like Yago said?’ asked Tymon, as they followed the captain through the streets once more.

  ‘That den of snakes?’ Laska smiled. ‘I don’t think so. I have another place in mind. I visited it a few years ago, when I came to Cherk on business.'They plodded on in weary silence, down the main road west of the docks, where a few shafts of evening sun still lingered. They passed two sailors’ taverns with fronts open to the street, the clamour of merriment drifting
through their doors. One bore a sign depicting a green-petalled flower and the name ‘Rambling Rose’ painted in bright red letters on its facade. Laska carefully avoided the place and led them instead to a smaller establishment in a side street behind the customhouse.

  As his companions pushed through the half-open door into the taproom of the inn, Tymon halted on the doorstep, bending down to adjust one of the laces on his boots. As he did so a dim instinct, like the sound of a faraway voice calling, caused him to glance toward the entrance of the alley. His blood froze as a figure in a black hood stepped around the still sunny corner and melted into the shadows behind a garbage container.

  They were being followed, after all! The figure glimpsed in the market had not been an illusion. Once again, he caught a whiff of the peculiar burning smell. He hastily pushed his way through the inn door and stumbled into the taproom, his heart pounding.

  He was prevented from immediately telling Laska and Jedda what he had witnessed, for he found his companions already negotiating with the Lantrian proprietor at the bar, a seedy character who eyed the two Nurians as if this clientele were far beneath him. The man did not see Tymon as he entered.

  ‘We’re not that sort of place,’ he spat out in coarse, insinuating Argosian, in answer to Laska’s unheard request. He replaced a carved tumbler on a shelf and lifted his chin contemptuously in Jedda’s direction. ‘I suggest you try the Rambling Rose: they accept lady callers after dark.’

  ‘I must say, no one’s ever called me a lady before,’ observed Jedda.

  Tymon noticed two pink spots of embarrassment on her cheeks; it was the first time he had ever seen her ill at ease. The other punters in the room nudged each other and leered at them.

  ‘This is my niece.’ Laska attempted to place a protective arm around Jedda’s shoulders, which proved to be difficult, given her height.

  ‘We’re from the Freehold of Sheb. I’ve been here before. I stayed with you a few years ago on my way to do business in the Fringes.’

  ‘Right.’ The innkeeper gazed at them, unmoved.

  Tymon took a deep breath and quelled his misgivings, as well as a twinge of unbecoming amusement at Jedda’s plight. His friends needed him.

  ‘What’s going on here? Is there a problem?’ he said, marching briskly up to the counter. The innkeeper’s sarcastic glare swivelled around to rest on him, then widened with surprise as he took in his nationality.

  ‘This is my Nurian business partner and his young family-member, whom I have permitted to travel with us,’ Tymon pronounced, with as much authority as he could muster. He made an effort to speak impeccably, adjusting his accent, which had softened in recent months, to a priestly crispness. ‘We’ll need at least two rooms for the night, if you have them. That is, one room with three beds,’ he amended hastily, catching Laska’s urgent shake of the head. ‘Three single beds if you please, innkeeper.’

  He could feel the other customers’ eyes on him, hear them whispering amongst themselves. The innkeeper gawped at him in astonishment. ‘Come along, my dear man, don’t take all day,’ Tymon added, for good measure. ‘We’ve had a long journey in abominable weather and just went up to his Lordship’s offices to negotiate a spice contract. We will have supper in our rooms — ah, room.’

  The mention of ‘his Lordship’ apparently clinched the affair for the proprietor of the inn. His hand drifted down to his logbook and a reed pen appeared from an embroidered waistcoat pocket to take down their names. Suddenly, the innkeeper was all smiles and flattery, begging their pardon for having kept them so long from their rest and assuring them that he had just the thing for them: a lovely room on the top floor, very warm, and would they mind shillee stew for their dinner as that was all he had left, and would they please follow him upstairs now, right this way.

  The room he led them to was furnished with four narrow straw pallets, boasting besides these a chipped hardwood washstand, a cupboard with no doors and a creaking table equipped with folding chairs. As soon as the oily man had left, apologising profusely as he backed out of the door, Tymon blurted out his news.

  ‘We were followed to the inn,’ he said. ‘I thought I saw someone earlier, but when we arrived here I was sure. Someone’s trailed us from the market.’

  Laska’s face grew grim; Jedda frowned unhappily. ‘This is most disturbing,’ muttered the captain. ‘It changes everything. You didn’t see a face, did you?’

  When Tymon shook his head and described the figure in black, Laska rapped his knuckles on the creaking table, as if he had made a private choice.

  ‘That does it. We’re leaving tomorrow, just as I told Yago,’ he announced. ‘I wasn’t sure at first if it was the right thing to do but I am now. I don’t like what’s happening here: this Reaper fellow, and now a trail from the market. We’ll head back to the Freehold first thing and send Oren a message.’

  Tymon felt a swift stab of disappointment: he would not be starting his Grafting studies after all. He saw his frustration mirrored in Jedda’s face.

  ‘Surely it’s worth at least having one more look for the Oracle, in the morning?’ she objected. ‘We’ve come all this way …’

  They were interrupted at that point by their host once more, who in a whirlwind of talk and activity brought them their meal, told them at length how insufficient it was, hovered in the hallway outside while they ate then bustled in again to clear away the empty plates. At long last he departed, and they were able to continue their conversation in peace.

  ‘What if it’s only a thief?’ resumed Jedda, when they were left alone at the rickety dining table. ‘Someone who scoped us out in the market? If he was truly dangerous, he wouldn’t have let himself be seen. Maybe we should just stay calm and watch our purses a little better tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ replied Laska. ‘There are too many unknown factors at work. I don’t want to risk your safety.’

  ‘What if Yago was lying, or mistaken?’ put in Tymon. ‘You say you don’t trust him. Maybe things aren’t as bad as he says.’

  ‘Anyway, aren’t we forgetting our own resources?’ Jedda chimed in. She seemed far more amendable to Tymon now than she had been in the market, smiling at him as she enlisted his support. ‘Tymon and I could find out where the Oracle is through a Grafting trance. I’ve never tried it myself, but I know it can be done. We could contact her right now …’

  At that, the young man bit his lip with dismay. This was exactly the area of expertise he so conspicuously lacked. He could not control his powers. In fact, no inkling of the Sight had visited him for weeks, not since the Argosian attack on the Freehold. He had no illusions that he would be able to enter a trance at will. It was mortifying to say so in front of Jedda.

  ‘No, we couldn’t,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t know how. I’m sorry, Jedda. If you want to do that you’re on your own.’

  She slumped back in her chair, crestfallen. ‘Alone, I’m not yet strong enough,’ she admitted irritably. ‘It seems we both need the Oracle.’

  The window of the room overlooked the alley outside the inn from a high vantage point, but although the three of them took it in turns to watch and wait by the shuttered casement, no dark shape detached itself from the shadows behind the garbage container. They agreed that each of them should keep watch in three-hourly rotations for the night, and placed the fourth cot with its legs wedged under the handle of the door, as the room did not have a lock and the captain had decided that circumstances warranted extra precautions.

  Tymon and Jedda slept while Laska took the first watch. When the captain woke Tymon, the moon had risen to bleed white through the open slats of the shutters.

  ‘Barely a cat down there,’ he told the young man, before bundling himself up on one of the cots. ‘Your hooded fellow might have disappeared into the garbage himself.’

  Tymon leaned on the wall by the window, blinking through the shutters at the moon-washed alley below. After a while, Laska’s snores rose quiet and steady behind him. He ya
wned, counting the bark pavings in the alleyway to keep himself awake, and fell to thinking of Jedda’s suggestion of the thief. Had they been scoped out for nothing worse than a robbery? The idea caused him to remember Wick’s pendant, hidden up till now in his belt-pouch.

  He retrieved the polluted orah from his pouch and inspected it. The rod lay smooth and dully gleaming in his hand; he placed the cord attached to it about his neck for safety, next to his own carved pendant, wondering as he did so whether he ran the risk of contaminating the second piece by proximity. He had no idea how the orah worked. Any esoteric threat however seemed to him to be greatly outweighed by the real danger of losing the pendant to a cutpurse. The rod felt cold against the bare skin of his chest, but after a few moments the sensation receded and the pendant took on his body’s warmth.

  ‘Peculiar stuff, isn’t it.’

  Tymon spun around to see Jedda raised on one elbow on her cot, watching him. Her fair head was crowned by the light seeping through the shuttered window. Tymon returned her gaze cautiously. He had thought she was asleep. It crossed his mind that she might have some further sarcastic observation to make about his abilities: he was not about to give her any encouragement.

  ‘You mean the orah?’ He indicated the pendant. ‘It’s not mine. I have to bring it to the Oracle.’

  ‘So I heard,’ she said carelessly. ‘Though I’ve never seen such a large piece before. May I take a closer look?’

  Tymon drew the pendant out with deep reluctance. He found himself unwilling to pass it on to someone else. It was his responsibility. It had been given to him. He hesitated to hand it to her; she however did not wait, but rose from the bed to pad over to him, plucking the cord and the rod from his fingers to hold it up to the light from the shutters. He scrutinised her every move. There were no panes of hardened sap in the windows of the inn and a slight breeze stirred her hair as she swung the pendant in the moonlight.