A Plague of Giants

by Kevin Hearne

  “Incoming fish heads!”

  I rose and drew my steel, all merriment gone, and that alerted everyone that something serious was happening, including the mariners who were supposed to protect us sitting at the neighboring table. They sprang up to intercept the fish heads, and the other two mariners stationed at the door fell in from behind. Four on four—trained soldiers against undisciplined meat. Inwardly I was relieved. They’d probably never reach us, and if they did, their numbers would at least be reduced. As the hired men and the mariners fell to it—a quick flurry of blows and grunts and howls of pain accompanied by a chorus of alarm from the lunchtime crowd that scrambled to both get away and get a better view—I noted that none of the attackers was Nentian. They were unwashed types who took on dirty jobs for quick profit, and there was an abundance of them to be found these days. And because I was riveted to the brawl at the front of the house, I completely missed seeing the man with the axe until the blade sank into the table where Fintan had been leaning forward. The axe already had been employed judging by the blood on the blade, and if I had to guess, I’d say someone in the kitchen was dead since this stout, grizzled man hadn’t come through the mariners. He was definitely the Nentian bruiser we’d been warned about, his coppery skin and straight dark hair giving away his homeland. He had sent the fish heads in the front door to absorb the brunt of resistance, leaving him a clear shot at Fintan.

  The bard, fortunately more aware than I, had jerked back to avoid the axe and drew a dagger from his belt. He threw it inexpertly at the Nentian, and the handle bounced off the man’s chest. I swung at him, and he ducked underneath it, drawing his sword. I had nowhere to run. I was effectively trapped where I was in a terrible stance, and my swing had made it clear to the Nentian that he had to go through me if he wanted another shot at Fintan—and he did.

  I batted aside his first strike but fell for a feint on his next pass as he twisted his wrist and thrust at my belly. When did other people get so bloody fast? I tried to dodge out of the way, but we were in close quarters and I felt the cold steel shiver through my left side, followed by white-hot pain. I cried out, and he yanked the blade, slicing me open further, and I toppled sideways onto the bench as my knee buckled. Fintan was wide open and defenseless now, and the Nentian raised his sword. I weakly threw mine at him; that made him flinch and pause but did nothing else. The mariners were still occupied with the fish heads. It was two against one now instead of four on four, but regardless, we’d have no help from them.

  “Under the table,” I said to Fintan, but I might not have enunciated well; it might have come out as more of a constipated grunt. I clutched my wound with my left hand and tried to push myself up with my right, thinking that a hot bowl of chowder in the genitals might slow the Nentian down if I could throw it in time. But I couldn’t.

  As the assassin’s muscles bunched for a killing blow, his right ear fairly exploded with a gout of blood and then bits of brain, and he collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.

  “Oh! Gah! Wait! What just happened?” Fintan said.

  “I happened,” the gerstad said, stepping into view, her mouth set in a tight line. Her clothes were spattered with the Nentian’s blood.

  “You did that? How?” Fintan asked.

  “I’m a rapid,” she explained. “I pulled all the water in his head to me through his ear. Tends to destroy the brain on its way out.”

  “Brain chowder,” I mumbled, treading water in shock and edging toward delirium.

  “Sorry I wasn’t here to catch him before you got hurt, Dervan,” she said, and her eyes trailed to the carnage near the front. “Or before I lost those men. If you can walk, we should get you to a hygienist to clean that up.”

  Only one of the mariners survived the encounter, though he was wounded as well. The sword hadn’t punctured my stomach or guts, so it was just a painful muscle tear I’d have to live through. And stitches. And Fintan’s guilt.

  “I didn’t mean for those men to die,” he said as we limped to the hygienist’s hall. “Or for you to get hurt.”

  “There’s not a bit of blame for you here,” I replied. “Or anywhere.”

  “I can’t help feeling responsible, though.”

  “Nonsense. We’re all Seekers of one kind or another,” I said. “If it’s not a kenning, then it’s something else we seek. And there are thousands of people who seek to hear your story for these few who seek to silence you. I think you should grant the wishes of the thousands.”

  “Oh, I’m going to keep doing my job. I’m just thinking about how our causes have trouble seeing their effects until it’s too late to do anything but mourn them.”

  Gerstad du Fesset, helping the wounded mariner to the hygienist alongside us, looked haunted by that already, lips still pressed together in regret.

  “You’re not the cause of this. Reactionaries from Ghurana Nent are the cause, and we are faultless.” That was aimed more at the gerstad than the bard, but I’m not sure if it helped. She probably was locked in a cycle of guilt about how much better everything would have turned out if she hadn’t felt the need to wash her hands, imagining scenarios in which none of the mariners was killed, ignoring the great possibility that it could have gone much worse if they had had a chance to get closer before attacking.

  The hygienist we visited, an elderly lady with gray hair and bright eyes, examined my wound and ensured through her kenning that it wouldn’t get infected before sewing me up. I would be in pain for a while but not bedridden. Gerstad du Fesset accompanied the bard and me to a quieter locale and guarded us on high alert while he dictated yesterday’s tale to me and I wrote as quickly as possible. We had to hurry to the wall after that, and the bard began by getting them all to stomp their feet and clap on alternate beats. He was determined to lighten everyone’s mood with the day’s song.

  You can collect a troubled bag of burdens and brood upon them long

  You can dwell upon the woes that curdle in your sour mind

  But instead of wasting precious time on things I cannot change

  I’d rather gather up my joys and leave my sorrows far behind

  (Chorus)

  I’d rather gather up my blessings and my love and all my wealth

  And share them with my family and friends and wish them health

  I’d rather gather all the people I respect and I admire

  I’d rather gather you in my arms and hold you close beside the fire

  You can store up your resentment cold or feed a yearlong grudge

  You can cower in your room a prisoner to childish fears

  You can sulk and fret away your life and I’m not going to judge

  I’d rather gather with my mates down at the pub and have some beers

  (Chorus)

  “We haven’t heard from our Kaurian scholar in a while, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t busy. Today I’d like to share with you the many discoveries he made about the enemy in that uncomfortable, windless dungeon.”

  Fintan took the seeming of Gondel Vedd, who appeared this time with a clean set of clothes.

  For want of a better name, we have taken to calling Saviič and his people Bone Giants. They are certainly not Hathrim or even related to them. They have no kenning of fire, though they have heard of it. They have heard of all the kennings, including one we have not found and another that remains a mystery.

  I have made excellent progress in working out Saviič’s language, but it is not fast enough to satisfy anyone, least of all myself. We moved rapidly through children’s language cards that taught me the words for basic nouns and verbs. Most abstract concepts are still difficult to grasp, however, and I am often thrown off by the syntax of his language. He loads up the front ends of his sentences with nouns and objects and modifiers, and they seem to hang there, suspended and inanimate, until the verb and its modifiers are tacked on to the end. I find myself waiting for the verb so much that I lose much of what went before and have to ask him to repeat: Who died again?
Where and how?

  Today I thought I had learned enough to speak of where Saviič had come from. Instead of bringing Zanata Sedam with me into the dungeon, I brought a map of Teldwen. An incomplete map, apparently, that I was very anxious to fill in. Not least because I have been asked every day by Teela Parr where his home might be. I wonder what will consume the court’s curiosity after Saviič points off the edge of the map and says, “I live over there somewhere.”

  For that is essentially what he did. I showed him the map and pointed to Linlauen so that he could see where he was, and after reviewing the words for directions and distances, he estimated that his country was roughly due east of Keft and off the edge of the map, far past the point where creatures of the deep would pull ships down into the dark and snack on the sailors before they had a chance to drown.

  It is called Ecula, and his people are Eculans. (That being said, I doubt the “Bone Giant” nickname will go away anytime soon since the court has spoken of little else for days. It is difficult to look at him and think of anything but his stature and starved appearance. After his first gluttonous meal, his food intake has shrunk to birdlike levels.)

  Saviič pointed to the archipelago between Forn and Kauria and indicated that Ecula was much like that: a series of islands with no overwhelmingly large landmass. He drew a tight cluster of five islands, named each, and claimed that there were floating bridges spanning the straits and nets at either end to keep man-eaters out of their “civil waters.”

  “What are the man-eaters?” I asked. He sketched pictures of bladefins and longarms and two different monstrosities that could only be classified as krakens, and I nodded, grinning.

  A whole new country! Islands connected with floating bridges and protected waterways! What a sight that must be! Obviously they had a rich religious life, so think of what else they must have to offer. What did Eculan art look like? What did their music sound like? And how would we ever enjoy these things if we couldn’t cross the ocean?

  That inspired a new host of questions for Saviič. How did he survive the crossing? Why did he dare it, and why dare it alone?

  His answer to the first question was rather flip: he survived because nothing ate him. But his answer to why stretched the limits of credibility. He claimed to be a merchant interested in trade. That would bring joy to the monied interests in the court, no doubt, but Saviič did not dress or behave like any merchant I have ever seen. For one thing, he still preferred near nudity. The merchants I know like to be dressed head to toe in the finest clothing they can afford, which is a public projection of their success as much as it is a taste for luxury. And most merchants tend not to be starved and sunburned skeletons but rather fleshy, sedentary things with jowls and wattles and jiggling bellies. They also have actual goods to sell or are willing to spin tales of what they can bring you in exchange for a bag of coin. Saviič, however, feigned weariness when I asked for details of his trade and asked to be left alone until the morrow.

  I’d been expecting him to say he was the lone survivor of a larger ship pulled down by a longarm or something like that—some kind of plausible lost-at-sea story—but instead he claimed to be seeking new business all by himself across the ocean. I was beginning to think Saviič imagined me to be infinitely gullible.

  Since I had the name and approximate location of his country, which was all the court really cared about, I was willing to let the matter drop. I wanted to consult with Teela Parr in any case on how I should proceed in the face of Saviič’s bald lies. If he wasn’t a merchant or a refugee, we had to wonder at his true purpose. I didn’t wish to leap to conclusions, but here is what I had noted to that point: he was a desperate man with a deep and abiding love for his religious text. Hunger and zealotry are dangerous on their own, but combine them? Reinei bring us peace!

  On a completely different note, I discovered during a lunch break that Saviič doesn’t care for mustard. We may not get along very well much longer.

  There is so much to learn, and it is difficult to suppress my academic urges in favor of a cold political goal. I wish to map out the morphological drift between the ancient language and modern Eculan, but I can only do bits and pieces while doggedly trying to eke out some answers from Saviič.

  Teela Parr took my map and a summary of my discoveries to the mistral and I assume a coterie of assorted courtiers, all brightly dyed and coiffed and brimful of sage advice. And I must chastise myself for mocking them, for what came back was not an immediate call to send out boats or even a tempest to find the island nation of Ecula but a reasoned request for more information and some pointed and relevant questions to put to Saviič as soon as possible. Teela Parr invited me back to the posh Silverbark Room to discuss it.

  “There’s no reason we should discuss such things in a windless dungeon,” she said, and I couldn’t agree more. Someone from the palace kitchens came in with tea—our native leaf from the Teabush Range; no exotic Fornish blends served here. I actually preferred it. There were also some cakes glazed with sugar frosting drizzled with an orange clove sauce that nearly made me swoon.

  “Oh,” I said around a mouthful. “Mm. If this is my reward for my work, I consider myself well paid.”

  Teela smiled. “I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments to the chef. I’m sure we can convince her to make them again.”

  “Please do. Her work makes me glad to be alive.”

  “And your work is very important, too. Mistral Kira asked me to relay her personal thanks for your efforts.”

  “I’m grateful she trusted me with such a project. What news from the court?”

  “Anyone who’s seen the Bone Gi—I mean Eculan—knows he must be lying about being a merchant. That’s agreed. But the reactions to the lie are mixed. The merchant families now have serious doubts that Ecula has anything to offer. If Saviič thought we would believe he’s a merchant—if being naked and destitute is a representative sample of their merchant class—then there’s not much opportunity there.”

  I snorted. “The opportunities are endless! Why, we could start out by selling them pants. Are you telling me no one wants to become the Pants Baron of Ecula?”

  She indulged me with a polite smile at my joke but pressed on. “I think the greedy lights in their eyes snuffed out once the military minds spoke up. They wondered aloud what he’s really hiding. It’s most likely not something we would welcome. You don’t lie that badly when you want to be friends.”

  “No, Saviič is certainly not a trained diplomat.”

  “Precisely. The question is what he is trained for.”

  “So I need to get him to admit he lied and tell the truth? I’m not sure we could trust anything he says.”

  “Agreed. Direct confrontation on that point probably won’t work. The mistral suggests that you delve into his religion since he seems so fervent about it. His zealotry may make him reveal quite a bit, and he may be less likely to lie about it. And of course we would all like to know more about the Sixth and Seventh Kennings.”

  Those were my orders, but Teela reassured me that they weren’t going to rely on me alone thanks to the mistral’s military adviser, Zephyr Bernaud Goss. “The zephyr believes—and the mistral concurs—that Saviič is part of an overall strategy to find a path over the ocean that is not plagued by krakens. He feels that dozens of small craft, perhaps a hundred or more, were sent out in hopes that a few would make it across to somewhere. It’s an old idea, but no one has ever done it because if you are seeking a quick death, you might as well seek a kenning, and few people wish to volunteer to be kraken chow. So we’ll be making queries up the coast, asking if anyone else has seen someone like Saviič. We might have some answers in a few weeks.”

  And so, fortified with tea and cake, I descended into the dungeon to resume my language lessons. Saviič’s sunburned skin was peeling and blistering in places. A healer had paid him a visit and given him some ointments or creams or whatever: greasy smelly unguents that might provide him some relief. He
preferred one over the others and had been given more, but that dead skin had to flake off at some point and dry, papery ridges of it crested all over him. I asked him how his skin was feeling, and after inspecting his arms, he grunted.

  “Hot. Burns,” he said, then pushed down the air with the flat of his hands. “Lower. Better.” He pointed at me. “You burn sometimes?”

  “No,” and then I broke eye contact to compose my sentence for him. He was used to such pauses by now. I had to not only come up with the proper words but order them in Eculan syntax so that a simple sentence such as “I stay inside” was phrased as “I inside stay.”

  His next question surprised me. The words were, “Skin you black why?” and it took me a moment to realize he was asking why my skin was dark. It was a telling query; it indicated that not only had he never seen people with darker skin, he had never even heard of them before. His entire experience of the world was pale—or pink, I supposed, if they burned so easily.

  But that made me wonder how he could have a religious text purporting to know about seven kennings and somehow not know that the majority of people blessed with them had dark skin of one shade or another.

  I frowned at him and said, “Most people have dark skin.”

  He scrunched up his face. “Here only, most?”

  “Not here only. In world.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No. Most skin like mine.”

  That made no sense unless he knew much more of the world than we did. “Ecula only?” I asked.

  “No. World.”