Unquiet Land

by Sharon Shinn

  When the place had emptied out except for the two workers, she stepped in and said, “I want to make a promise.”

  “Excellent,” said one of the young men. He was sleek and deferential and looked about Leah’s age. She had to wonder what he thought of his job—what kinds of declarations he had heard over the years, which ones had moved him, which had appalled him, which had made him silently snicker to himself. It was the sort of job that would lead you to great compassion, she thought, or complete cynicism. “Would you like to make a public recording that anyone may see for the asking, or a private one, that will not be released until you grant permission or are declared dead?”

  Leah hadn’t even known there were options. “Public,” she said.

  “And do you want a copy for yourself?”

  “I do.”

  “Then come with me to the table where we keep the public records, and I will fetch materials.”

  In a few moments, she was standing beside him watching as, in extraordinarily beautiful handwriting, he inscribed a simple sentence in one of the oversize volumes: I will be a mother to my daughter, Mally. She watched with equal intentness as he wrote the words a second time on a sheet of heavy paper. He added the date to both documents, then had her sign them.

  “Sealed or unsealed?” he asked when she was finished.

  If the paper was unsealed, she could look at it anytime she wanted. If it was sealed, she could hand it to Mally at some point in the future and say, Here is the proof of how long ago I swore to cherish you. “Seal it,” she said.

  “And do you have a signet ring that you would like to use to mark the wax?” he asked. “If not, we have a variety of stamps you can choose from.”

  Who would ever have expected to make so many decisions for a simple promise? “What kind of stamps?” she asked helplessly.

  “The most popular ones are the letters of the alphabet. Perhaps an L or an M,” he suggested. “Other people choose blessing glyphs, particularly if one of their own seems appropriate. Otherwise we are happy to stamp the wax with our own seal—certainty—which our family has used as its motto for generations.”

  “Honor,” Leah said, almost before he finished speaking. “That’s one of my blessings. And that’s what I’m going to do. Honor this promise.”

  “An excellent choice,” he murmured.

  A few moments later he had rolled the paper and closed it with a seal made of green wax, which he had chosen after ascertaining that she was torz. She handed over three silvers for the transaction, thanked him gravely, and tucked the scroll into an inner pocket of her tunic before leaving the shop.

  Now she was really restless, on edge. Making the promise had left her even more unsettled, not less so, though she thought the emotion glittering through her blood was a form of determined elation. I will keep my promise. I just have to figure out how. It was as if she wanted the night to shrink back, the morning to leap forward, so she could more quickly get started on the rest of her life.

  Pointless to head back to her lodgings while she still had this much chaos clamoring through her brain. She would just keep strolling through the Plaza until she wore herself out or until all of the shopkeepers covered their goods, locked their storage bins, turned down their gaslights, and went home.

  She had just paused outside of a money-changer’s booth to shake a rock out of her shoe when she spotted a face that looked vaguely familiar. By habit, she shrank back into the shadows so she wouldn’t be seen until she decided whether or not she wanted to be recognized. At first she couldn’t put a name to the woman who was stepping out of the booth with her fingers fisted tightly in her pocket. It could hardly be more obvious that the woman was carrying a large amount of money that she didn’t want anyone to steal. Don’t be stupid, Leah thought. Move your hand.

  The woman turned to the man accompanying her and said something in a low voice. Leah couldn’t hear what she said, but her face was full of excitement. She was short and somewhat stocky, wearing a tunic and trousers that looked expensive and well-cared for, but Leah didn’t think the woman was a daughter of the Five Families. It was hard to say exactly why. Her companion looked wholly unfamiliar to Leah, though he wore similar clothing and a similar expression.

  Like children setting out to do something naughty, Leah thought. And they just traded a bunch of big coins for smaller ones so they could spread out their payments over a long evening.

  Just then the woman turned her head and the gaslight from the overhead lamps set something in her hair to sparkling.

  Glass beads. Part of her coiffure. The woman from the Karkades, Leah realized. Seka Mardis, that was her name. She’d changed into Welchin clothing so she could blend into her surroundings more convincingly, but she hadn’t bothered to comb the jewels out of her hair. And she stopped by the money-changer’s booth to swap Karkan coins for Welchin ones, Leah thought. So what is she planning to buy?

  Leah was sure Darien Serlast would like her to find out. And in her current state of mind, an adventure perfectly suited her mood. She hovered in the shadows a few moments, watching the Karkans confer. When they finally walked forward in a purposeful fashion, she followed them.

  They circled halfway around the Plaza of Men before pausing in the shade of a horse-trading booth that had been shut up for the night. Moments later, they were joined by a third figure whose movements were even stealthier than theirs. The shape was tall enough for Leah to assume the newcomer was a man, though not a particularly robust one. Although he a wore a hooded cloak, which obscured his face and completely hid his body, he still gave the impression of being almost painfully thin. She couldn’t tell anything else about his physical characteristics or style of dress. But Seka Mardis and her companion were definitely Karkan, so Leah was guessing he was, too.

  A man taking extraordinary pains to make sure he was not seen—or, if seen, not recognized. Could this be the crown prince Darien believed had arrived secretly in Chialto?

  Seka Mardis and the two men continued their circuit of the Plaza, staying out of the light as much as possible. Leah followed suit. Eventually they veered onto the walkway connecting the Plaza to the closest loop of the Cinque, where traffic was heavy even at this time of night. If they’ve got a smoker car waiting, I’ll never be able to keep up, Leah thought.

  But they didn’t. They idled over to join a ragtag group waiting for the next public transport; when it wheezed into view, they hopped on. Leah had to scramble to cross the road and swing onto the omnibus before it took off at its typically sedate pace.

  The transport was large enough to hold thirty or forty people—some seated, some standing—all of them swaying in unison with the vehicle’s movements. A few, like Leah, clung to handles welded to the exterior and planted their feet on the low ledge that ran around the sides and the back of the vehicle. The interior was dimly lit, so she peered in through the window to see if she could get a better look at her quarry. Seka Mardis and her male companion still looked furtive and excited; she continued to hold her hand clenched firmly in her pocket. Their tall friend kept his hooded head turned away from the others, as if he was staring out the window, watching the city glide past. Leah looked away so they wouldn’t catch her staring.

  They had started out on the northwestern edge of the Cinque and were traveling steadily south, very soon passing the Plaza of Women. Leah remained poised to jump off the transport as soon as the Karkans disembarked. But they stayed on board through the neighborhoods populated mostly by young unmarried men, where the crown prince might have gone seeking companionship if his tastes ran that way. They kept to their seats as the vehicle lumbered past the poorer neighborhoods where a wealthy visitor could purchase almost any type of hallucinogen or narcotic. The Karkans didn’t get to their feet and ask the omnibus to stop until it was halfway down the long, nervous section of the Cinque that overlooked the southside slums. Then they exited as one tig
ht-knit group and began striding straight south, Seka Mardis giggling a little.

  Leah jumped down from the transport, hastily fading into the closest shadows but hesitating a moment before cautiously following. Five years of living on the fringes of Malinquese society had taught her to never leave her lodgings without a weapon, and she hadn’t managed to shake the habit since she’d returned to Chialto. But she wasn’t really armed for self-defense in the southside ghettos. She had a pretty wicked blade strapped to her ankle, but no backup weapon and no real desire to be in a situation where she might need one. She almost couldn’t believe the Karkans had really intended the slums to be their destination; she was tempted to run after them, a kindly stranger warning them that they must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  But she remembered Chandran’s letter, where he wrote of the debauchery and excesses of the royal family. Maybe the crown prince was looking for something he didn’t think he could find anywhere else in the city, though it was hard to imagine what he could obtain here that he couldn’t procure elsewhere under less perilous circumstances. Well, Leah would follow them as long as she felt safe.

  She bent to retrieve her dagger from its sheath and melted behind them through the chilly darkness.

  It was probably a couple of hours before midnight, and the southside was just waking up. About half the buildings she passed were dark and shuttered, apparently wholly abandoned, but the other half were pulsing with life and noise. Light spilled out through broken windows and half-hung doors. Everywhere were the sounds of men arguing, women laughing, glass shattering, bodies falling. Every shadow Leah passed seemed to have two or three darker shadows hiding within. When she looked quickly enough, she could catch the gleam of eyeballs before the lurkers hurriedly glanced away. There were no gaslit streetlamps, as there were throughout the rest of Chialto. The only illumination came from the windows of those taverns and flophouses. Leah stepped carefully, not wanting her feet to land in piles of refuse or puddles of unidentifiable fluid.

  The three Karkans kept moving steadily ahead of her, sticking to the middle of the heavily potholed road. Leah was a little surprised that none of the locals had crept up behind them, attempting to lift a wallet. Then she caught the glint of metal in Seka Mardis’s hand. Ah. So the clever little envoy had left off clutching her pocket full of coins and was now openly displaying a dagger. A much smarter posture in her current environment.

  Leah was so focused on her quarry that for a moment she forgot to pay close attention to her surroundings, and she felt the brush of light fingertips along her left arm. She spun that way, showing her knife, and a child-size shape tumbled back from her and disappeared. She cursed under her breath and hurried to catch up with the Karkans. They were just rounding a corner and veering to the left when she spotted them again. She warily followed.

  Nothing ahead of them but more broken houses, ruined pavement, and desperate souls. In fact, the farther they got from the Cinque, the worse the streets looked. Fewer and fewer buildings showed any evidence of life; if any commercial activity was going on, it was of the most unsavory kind and taking place behind triple-locked doors. It wasn’t hard to imagine scenes of horror behind any of those dilapidated walls—drug-addled bodies writhing on filthy mats, rooms full of underfed orphans waiting to be sold into slavery. Leah felt her shoulders itch with revulsion. Her dagger suddenly seemed flimsy and unconvincing in her hand.

  Seka Mardis and her companions slowed their pace. They peered into the narrow spaces between buildings, the alleys between streets. The young male Karkan even bent low to check behind empty barrels and under squat bushes. They weren’t looking for a specific address then, Leah surmised. They were looking for . . . something they would know when they found it.

  Leah was pretty sure she wouldn’t like whatever it was they found.

  The Karkans went another broken block before they came to an untidy halt and whispered among themselves. Leah slunk back to huddle under the eaves of what she devoutly hoped was an empty building. She was close enough to hear the sound of Seka Mardis’s feet tapping across the pockmarked pavement, the low tones of her voice as she bent to address what looked like a bundle of rags on the edge of the street.

  “Hello,” she said in Coziquela. “How would you like to make a little money?”

  There was silence for a moment. The bundle of rags might be dead, Leah thought, or so juiced on drugs that nothing else registered. But then the pitiful pile stirred and gathered itself into what might be the shape of a sitting creature.

  “How much money?” it answered. The high, thin voice was that of a teen girl or a somewhat younger boy. Leah was betting girl.

  “Two quint-golds,” Seka Mardis replied.

  The pile seemed to consider, then shook its head and sank back into an amorphous puddle.

  Seka Mardis glanced back at the crown prince, who made a sharp gesture. Try again was Leah’s interpretation.

  Seka Mardis’s as well. She leaned over again and said, “Five quint-golds.”

  The girl levered herself to a half-sitting position. “To do what?”

  “Come with us and see.”

  “How far?”

  “Very close.”

  The girl held her hand out and Seka Mardis carefully balanced five glinting coins in her palm. The girl tucked her hand into some hidden pocket, then pushed herself with some effort to her feet. Seka Mardis stepped close enough to take the girl’s wrist in one hand, putting her other arm around the girl’s waist. Even from where she was hiding, Leah could tell that the creature stank of vomit and feces and urine. But Seka Mardis did not hesitate or flinch as she guided the girl to where the others were standing.

  “Where to?” Seka asked.

  The male pointed behind them. “We passed a place about a block that way. Door was half open, but it looked empty. I’ll go in and scout around.” He glanced at their new employee. “Take you a while to walk that far, anyway.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” the crown prince said to Seka, speaking for the first time that Leah had heard. His voice was surprisingly deep and resonant. “For protection. For anticipation.”

  Leah felt serpents of horror slither up her spine. What did they intend to do to this poor child?

  The young man stepped briskly away, swiveling his head from side to side to watch for danger. The rest of them followed. The prince had taken the girl’s other arm, so now the two of them were helping her down the street with an almost unbearable solicitousness. Leah let them get a few paces ahead, then silently trailed after them.

  Should she stop them? Whatever the Karkans were planning to do, it had to be carried out with the greatest stealth. That didn’t mean it was something terrible, she supposed, just something they didn’t particularly want their foreign hosts to witness. And as long as they had paid the young girl—as long as she was willing—

  Almost as soon as Leah had the thought, the Welchin girl seemed to change her mind. She stumbled and appeared to try to pull back against the hands that held her. Leah heard her voice raised in a ragged question, heard Seka Mardis’s comforting response: “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

  “No,” said the girl, growing more agitated. “No, I don’t want to. No—”

  Seka Mardis uttered an impatient oath and yanked the girl forward. The girl started wailing and moaning, thrashing her body about, trying to get free. Leah glanced around quickly, wondering if anyone might hear and come to her rescue. But there were no royal guards in the southside slums. No one to call on for help. She might scream her throat raw and no one would even glance her way.

  The crown prince raised his voice above the girl’s keening, asking Seka Mardis a question. “Right there,” she answered, pointing at one of the nearby abandoned structures. Leah assumed that was where their third companion had slipped inside to prepare for the night’s activity. The prince nodded, took a stronger grip
on the girl’s arm, and began dragging her in that direction with no more pretense of gentleness. The girl cried out and fell to her knees. The Karkans pulled her roughly off the street and through a sagging doorway into darkness.

  Leah could still hear the girl’s desperate cries. She had to do something.

  A whiff of acrid smoke tickled her nose, and she jerked her head around to track the source. Three young men had gathered around a barrel and were passing a grimy bottle from hand to hand. Their faces were partially illuminated by a small fire they seemed to have started deep inside the barrel—possibly to stay warm, possibly to cook whatever drug they were sharing now.

  I can work with that, Leah thought.

  She glanced back at the one-story building where the Karkans had taken cover. It was so ancient and tumbledown that it looked as if it might collapse on top of them if they accidentally bumped into the walls. Leah thought she saw a brief flash of light within, as if one of the Karkans had struck a match or lit a candle. Illumination so they could see whatever they planned to do next.

  She took a deep breath, balanced on her toes, then crashed through the darkness, straight at the young men around the barrel. She grabbed their contraband bottle before any of them realized what was happening.

  “Hey!” one of them shouted, swiping at her arm. But she backed away, spun around, and ran for the building the Karkans had occupied. There were more yells behind her and the sounds of footfalls racing in pursuit. She burst through the door, the addicts right behind her, and then everything turned to mayhem.

  Seka Mardis screamed, the prince let out a yelp of surprise, and suddenly there were bodies everywhere, punching, flying, staggering, rolling across the floor. There was barely enough light to see, and there was so much commotion that it was impossible to tell who was landing a blow and who was taking it. Someone crashed against the wall with such force that the whole place shivered. Someone else must have gotten sliced across the arm, because Leah could see a figure holding up a hand and crying, “I’m bleeding!” Leah hurled the bottle all the way across the open room and heard the satisfying sound of glass shattering against wood.