Knight of Stars

by Tom Lloyd

  Lastani shook her head. ‘You underestimate yourself. I don’t think the Mage Islands are prepared for someone like you. I wouldn’t bet against you myself.’

  ‘What about the Cards and these tattoos?’

  ‘A trial we have to endure first, perhaps. You say there’s a place for me here, but I disagree. Life with the Cards might be more dangerous, but staying in one place and making a name for myself is just asking for trouble.’

  ‘Teshen said they’re wise to snatch teams round here.’

  ‘Normal ones yes, but I think the Militant Orders might make an exception for us. We’re special, remember?’

  ‘Yeah. And can you think of anyone worse than me to be special?’

  Lastani’s brow furrowed. ‘Plenty. If I threw a stone out of that doorway, I’d likely hit one.’

  She stood and straightened her dress, embroidered with linked circles in the local fashion. Lastani looked nothing like a mercenary now, bar the short sleeves revealing white tattoos on her arms. Sitain guessed that was the point and resolved to buy herself some alternatives too.

  ‘Come on,’ Lastani said, waving Sitain forward. ‘The sooner we find answers to our questions, the sooner we get our lives back.’

  Sitain gave a bitter laugh. ‘Those are never coming back. The best we can hope for is the chance to control what comes next.’

  ‘Let’s do that then,’ Lastani said, jerking open the door.

  On the other side was Toil, frozen in the act of knocking. The relic hunter blinked once at Lastani then gave them a suspiciously wide smile. Behind her slouched Paranil, her tame academic, who bobbed his head, and Aben, Toil’s burly lieutenant, who offered a crooked smile.

  ‘Just the pair I was looking for.’ She beckoned and started walking away down the boarding house walkway. ‘Sitain, Lastani – heel!’ Toil called over her shoulder.

  ‘Ah yes,’ Sitain muttered. ‘Controlling my own destiny, that does sound nice. How does it go again?’

  Toil headed to the south terrace where, by the noise, it was clear half of the Cards were stuffing their faces. Leading the pack was Lynx of course, but she’d seen the company attack breakfast after a hard night’s drinking before. The rest were hardly any more elegant in their approach.

  ‘I need some volunteers,’ she announced to the group. When the laughter had died down, Toil looked to see who seemed least likely to puke the moment they stepped on to a boat. The selection wasn’t great, but she only needed two.

  ‘Teshen and Layir, finish up and get your kit. We’ve got work to do.’

  Without a word Teshen stood, his expression tense and distant. Layir on the other hand groaned loudly.

  ‘Why us?’

  Toil smiled. ‘I only really need Teshen given I’ve got Aben to watch my back already, but you’re coming as window dressing.’

  ‘Didn’t think I was your type, Toil!’

  ‘I like a man in a skirt as much as the next girl, Layir. More important though, I need Teshen to hear what the locals are saying and give me a nod if there’s anything amiss. You just need to look pretty beside him so it’s not obvious Teshen is listening in.’

  The young man gave her a crooked smile, squinting as the sun reflected down the centre of the lodging. ‘I feel like I should be offended by the waste of my talents, but at least you admit I’m pretty.’

  ‘Whatever gets you moving, boy. Jacket, gun and sword, on the double.’

  ‘Aye, Princess!’

  As Layir heaved himself off his seat and sauntered back to his room, winking at Toil as he passed, Lastani set herself in front of the woman.

  ‘What’s going on? We were due back at the Shard’s Rest today. There’s plenty more work to be done there.’

  ‘Like I said, we’ve got other work to do right now.’

  ‘More important than understanding these tattoos?’

  ‘You remember you’re part of the Cards now? Meant to follow orders?’

  ‘Don’t give me that, this isn’t part of the arrangement.’

  Toil scratched her cheek as she considered Lastani’s words. It looked an unfair match-up between them, Toil being taller and bulkier, but while Lastani was no fighter, she’d proved herself quick on the draw. Life with the Cards had brought home to her just how potent a weapon her magic was and the young mage was shedding her meeker self.

  ‘You say that but dammit, little grasshopper, if you aren’t acting just like the rest of these pig-headed mercs. I’ve not forgotten what you are, just as you shouldn’t forget who I am and what the Cards are doing for you.’

  Toil took a step forward and pointed a finger at Lastani’s face, ignoring the sudden drop in temperature that followed. In the background, the mutter of the Cards lowered too as they stopped to watch the confrontation.

  ‘We’re all in this together,’ Toil said, ‘and like it or not there’s an army that would love to kill or capture us. So long as you’re enjoying the protective company of the Cards, you better accept that sometimes you need to make like a soldier and follow orders.’

  Lastani’s eyes flashed white. ‘Just so long as you remember that we’re not normal soldiers and we’re not to be hired out like them.’

  ‘Girly, at some point you should probably accept I’m not a fool and don’t care enough about money to take any random job. You may not get the how and why, but I don’t act on a whim. I’ve got a job to do and sometimes that’s going to need your involvement. If you don’t like it, walk away. Until then just remember who’s in command.’

  Lastani didn’t speak for a while, but then she nodded and the chill in the air vanished again. ‘Very well. I agree we’re all in this together, so don’t let your agenda drive us apart.’

  Toil gave her a wolfish smile. ‘If my agenda fails, you’re every bit as screwed as me. Spending the rest of your life in a Charneler sanctuary is the best you could hope for there.’

  She stepped back and glanced at Sitain who was quietly watching them from the side-lines with Toil’s two long-time employees, Aben and Paranil.

  ‘Now we’ve got that all sorted, let’s get to work.’

  Collecting Teshen and Layir, Toil led her party through the winding streets to a ferry dock on the lagoon. A line of five huge sloths moved with deceptive speed alongside them, keeping to the brisk walking pace of their handler without seeming to hurry their long limbs.

  As the sloths were being unloaded on to a barge, Teshen set about securing another for passage across the city. Sitain watched him only idly, more interested in the bustle of commerce going on around them. Auferno was the smallest of the four main districts of Caldaire with dozens of small and mid-sized Holdings or Consortiums. It looked like candles were being unloaded from the sloths, but she could also see a Masts crew guarding a shipment of silver, while bundles of linen, jars of oil, and parchment, all stood on that small dock.

  Their watchers were back, Sitain also noticed, and not making any great effort to remain unseen. It was a pair of women this morning, an older one with braids in her hair and a Vi No Le sash at her waist alongside a teenager with untattooed arms. Both were armed with staves, the red tips indicating mage-charged balls could be inserted.

  The sight made Sitain look down at her new belt, one that she’d picked up a few days previously. In a city of mages it hadn’t been difficult to find a leather-worker with one for sale, six metal pouches worked into the belt’s design. She hadn’t yet mastered the technique of charging the balls, not reliably anyway, but three of the pouches contained her own efforts, Lastani and Atieno donating the rest. When he’d seen the belt, Lynx had waddled off to buy one for himself. It was empty as yet, but Sitain had promised to sell him some balls when she could.

  Before long, Teshen was waving them towards a narrow barge with a six-man rowing crew. They settled in while Toil spoke quietly to the barge-master, a slender, whiskered man of sixty at least. He raised an eyebrow at what she said, but didn’t pause before barking orders at his crew and pushing off. Once t
he barge set off into the lagoon, Lastani broke her silence at last, asking where they were going.

  ‘Cliffbase,’ Toil replied, eyes on a tysarn that was circling just ahead of them.

  There were off-shore gardens on either side, a channel of water leading out into the open lagoon. Once they were clear, the crew pulled hard until they were out in the current and could ride it towards a pair of great stone pillars that marked the deep water shipping lane.

  ‘The slum?’ Lastani called.

  She didn’t get a response at first. Both Sitain and Toil watched the tysarn, a full metre wingspan, drop suddenly into the water and vanish from sight. Only when it returned to the surface, fish in mouth, did Toil seem to remember what they were talking about.

  ‘It’s not like these districts,’ Toil admitted, ‘but there are people with money there all the same.’

  ‘Not much money,’ Teshen said. ‘Not many who’ve got it.’

  ‘One’s enough.’

  Sitain exchanged a look with Lastani. They knew well enough who in Cliffbase had the money to hire them, but neither was keen on working for him.

  ‘Is this why you didn’t tell us until we were on the boat?’ Sitain asked.

  Toil’s wolfish grin told its own story as the tysarn flailed for a moment on the lagoon surface, then hauled itself up in the air. The double set of wings had been a strange sight at first, but there were so many of the beasts, big and small, in the air around Caldaire, Sitain was already getting used to it.

  ‘It wasn’t clear what the job is,’ Toil said eventually. ‘I received a note with his guild’s seal, but most likely I’ve got you to thank.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘All three of you. What you told the Shard must’ve made an impression.’

  ‘What she told us about Tanimbor also made an impression,’ Lastani said icily. ‘Why take the job? You don’t need the money.’

  Toil glanced back at the white-haired young academic. ‘It’s not about money. I’m in the business of spending that, remember? If I’m not interested I’ll pass and we’ll head back.’

  ‘The ambitious master of a mage guild will just let us say no and walk away?’

  Again the wolfish grin. ‘When the seven of us are doing the saying? He’d better.’

  She broke off as they reached deeper water, standing high in the prow of the barge and staring forward. Sitain followed her gaze then gave a yelp as a dark shape moved through the sun-kissed lagoon.

  ‘Shattered gods! Are we going to hit it?’

  The barge-master laughed loudly at her animation, saying something in the local language that had no need of translation. Ten or more yards long with great blade-like wings pushing at the water, the beast was clearly deep enough that the barge could slip over it without either disturbing the other. Still Sitain held her breath the entire time and had to fight the urge to draw her gun.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’re in the lagoon most mornings,’ Teshen said, scratching his shaved head before settling a cap over it to protect it from the sun. ‘Making for the sea hunting grounds. It’s rare they stop for a snack on the way.’

  ‘Piss on you,’ Sitain muttered, ‘don’t even joke about that.’

  He laughed. ‘I ain’t joking. Cut your finger and trail it through the water if you don’t believe me.’

  Sitain snatched her hand back from the edge of the boat and stared into the distance, trying to ignore the warmth that filled her cheeks. The barge made good time to the deep-water channel and darted straight across, fifty yards ahead of a large merchantman that was making for the sea. Sitain looked over towards their destination, but it was still hidden by the foliage of the spice islands. The great chimneys in the heart of the lagoon dominated everything, but they were barren and lifeless.

  She found herself more fascinated by the great ring of city blocks that comprised Caldaire. The high outer perimeter that deflected the worst of wind and waves rolling in – and the strange network of mage-carved stone. Yellow rock studded with dark shadows and patches of green, overlaid with flashes of red, orange and blue. The skirt of garden-islands dark against the bleached pebble beaches and pale blue lagoon shallows. The tysarn dark against the sky.

  The narrow shore of the Siym Holding soon came into view, hired guards in Consortium livery patrolling the beach and overseeing loading and unloading. It looked peaceful enough, the lifeblood of trade once more able to flow as debts were covered.

  Teshen’s former home of Vi No Le was a huge multi-level district punctuated by vast stone tors that had been hollowed out in generations past. Even from the lagoon, she could hear the increased babble of sound as they skirted Vi No Le, the population there bigger than any other district. Teshen’s face was stony as he regarded his past. Whether he was looking for threats or looking for that crewleader, Sanshir, she couldn’t tell.

  Man’s always been a closed book, she thought, but there’s got to be something going on in that head, right? He must feel something, whatever Llaith says.

  The steady progress of their barge quickly brought the Etrel Cliffs around to view, Cliffbase district little more than an afterthought beneath them. The huge rocky wall towered over the city, running for many miles south-west from the cut-away of the canal.

  The cliffs were a sharply-sloped slab of whitish yellow, the shattered face of an enormous rise of land. Having arrived down the Duegar canal, Sitain had seen how far that rise went – an abrupt finale to the leagues of savannah of the north.

  The entire city of Caldaire could fit a dozen times inside that great outcrop she guessed, perhaps more given she could only glimpse how long the cliffs were. Caves peppered the cliff face itself. From those the tysarn emerged or sat on high shelves of rock to sun themselves, but it was the dark maw of the great cave that dominated the entire view – a black opening that looked all too familiar for Sitain’s taste.

  ‘That’s really a Duegar canal? I hadn’t heard they built them in tunnels.’

  Lastani nodded. ‘It’s believed so. There is a near-exact tunnel mouth in a nation called Ael Diu two hundred miles north-west of here.’

  ‘They don’t know for sure?’

  ‘The long dark,’ Toil called from the prow. ‘That’s what Wisps call it. I’ve heard relic hunters call it the entrance to the underworld, which I guess it is so long as you don’t mind the fact you’ll die horribly on the journey. I don’t know of anyone who’s attempted it in centuries.’

  ‘Is that why we’re here?’ Sitain asked alarmed, but Toil only roared with laughter.

  ‘Gods-in-shards, do you really think I’m that mad?’

  Sitain hesitated, seeing by the looks on their faces that her comrades weren’t entirely sure either. ‘Um, no?’ she hazarded.

  Toil continued to chuckle, she was glad to see. ‘Okay, I’ll give you that one, but the answer’s no. The Labyrinth of Jarrazir, by the seven hells yes! Once I’d got someone likely to open it I was there as fast as I could, treasures or no. It was dangerous, but danger’s just a problem you need to fit into your plans. The long dark though? That’s gods-burned suicide – everyone says so and I’ve never read a thing that suggests different.’

  ‘So we’re not going there?’

  ‘It’ll be a short fucking conversation if your friend does want that. I’ll wave him off myself, but the biggest tysarn inhabit that and probably all sorts of other nasties besides. I’ve heard tell of wreckage coming floating out, but that’s all. No one has ever come back, not in recorded history. Not even the Wisps come to trade with Caldaire these days, the shore is too dangerous.’

  Sitain shivered, despite the dark places she’d survived in the last few months. She felt the tunnel mouth’s presence even as she tried to focus on where they were going. Cliffbase was a district of two islands. Separated by a channel wide enough for shipping, both were oddly flat compared to the rest of the lagoon city. The right-hand island had two small rises where she could see homes and streets on multiple levels, but nothing here was eve
n as tall as the palace of the Siym Holding.

  While the buildings were mage-carved, few extended above two storeys. But still there were people and small boats docked at jetties, the shoreline still half-obscured by garden-islands. What she couldn’t see was holdings, however, nothing that could indicate the presence of kabats in charge. Two or three larger houses faced the lagoon with some space or a perimeter wall between them and their neighbours, but nothing to indicate real wealth.

  The barge-master took them past the smaller of the two islands and across the channel that led to the long dark. All heads turned briefly towards it, Sitain noticed, even those of the rowers. As they passed, the crew put in an extra burst of effort, as though some horror might burst out of that wide, empty place. Sitain flinched as something did all of a sudden, but it was just a large tysarn flying out of the darkness and climbing well above their heads.

  The barge turned in behind a small copse of fruit trees, no more than twenty in all but all heavily laden with oval pinkish fruits and tended by a pair of mud-spattered labourers. Behind it was a small bay, shallow judging by the clear pale water, flanked by two wooden jetties. Sitain saw a multitude of creatures in the water beneath them. Octopuses darted through the fronds of green or red plants while long blue claws could be seen protruding from burrows. Small clusters of silver fish swarmed around it all, while more than a few bones lay discarded and half-buried in the sand.

  The barge pulled in at the jetty on the right. Sitain looked up from the water to realise with a jolt that two of Tanimbor’s mages were waiting for them. The pair stood oddly formally amid the dirt and chaos of the dock, hands behind their backs and wearing long grey coats of thin silk that bore the colours of their guild.

  ‘Mistresses Toil and Ufre,’ one called, ‘welcome to Cliffbase.’

  Chapter 20

  The nearer mage offered one hand to Toil, his other remaining tucked behind his back. After many years as an agent of Su Dregir and more than a few bar fights, she just eyed him suspiciously until he withdrew it. In her book, any man who offered one hand and kept the other hidden was asking to get a knife in the eye.