"There was no need to seize it at all. We had another way to close off the port!"
"And there was another way to deal with Senator Alder of Kaline," she said. "Yet you chose the method that would guarantee your course forward."
"There was no guarantee Poloa wouldn't call your bluff! What then?"
"What does it matter? We did as was needed to obtain everything that we needed. Our work is finished."
He jabbed a finger at her chest. "What you've done has sacrificed my city's future relations with Poloa and damaged my reputation with everyone else. Worse yet, you used me. Again."
She chuckled dryly. "It is easy for you to criticize our decision. It wasn't your land that sat with its flank exposed. There was no guarantee your gambit here would succeed, or that it would have been honored by the other party."
"We knew exactly how to get it done. As for the other party, at this point, I trust them more than I do you."
"I did what was necessary to secure the safety of the people I am sworn to serve. I won't apologize for saving them."
"I know," Dante said. "And I know you're happy to sacrifice us for them. You may have gained your security. But you've lost a friend."
The Keeper blinked. "What will you do? Will you tell Poloa the truth?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"If you do, you will undo everything we've fought for. The lives of everyone Gladdic killed in Collen will have been lost in vain."
He clenched his teeth so hard the points of his jaw ached. Hating her for her callousness toward her allies. Hating the fact that yet again, she'd used him like a figurine on a Nulladoon board.
And hating that she was right.
"I won't threaten Collen's safety." He stood. "And I won't see you again."
"I spend a lot of time thinking about where I'll end up," Blays said to her. "I can't see the future any better than anyone else. But I hope I never become like you."
Already on his way out of the chamber, Dante didn't see if Blays' words had any impact on the old woman's heart: but they cracked something in his own.
~
"I spoke to the Keeper," Dante said, keeping one eye on Vita's sheathed sword. "There's no undoing what's been done. Collen's deal with Cavana will stand."
Vita swore and paced about the room, boots punishing the wooden floor, her wedge-shaped cap pulled low over her eyes. Dante had requested to meet her somewhere more appropriate, such as the Osedo estate, or one of the city's more refined public houses, but she'd gone with his messenger straight back to the inn.
She stopped abruptly, turning on him. "Then I will also do what can't be undone. I will kill her."
She made for the door. Blays seemed to float between it and her. "Stupid question: what will killing her solve?"
"My anger!"
"If you really want her dead, I'm sure time will take care of that soon enough. Old as she is, it might get to her before we've got our boots laced up."
"Yet there is satisfaction in doing work with one's own hands. Step aside."
"You don't have anything to be angry about," Dante said. "We still need your help."
She thumbed her cap up her brow. "How so? Collen has won Cavana's friendship. What more does the Basin want from us?"
"We're not working for the Basin any longer. Your House owns a number of sailing vessels, doesn't it? We need to book immediate passage."
"I thought this friend of yours owned a ship. The dark man."
"Captain Naran left this area at the same time we did to look for someone in Tanar Atain. Six weeks ago, he went missing in the port of Aris Osis. We need to find him."
Vita gave her head a sharp shake. "This cannot be done. If he went missing in Tanar Atain, there will be nothing for outsiders to find."
"That's for us to worry about. Take us there, and I'll honor our original deal to find out where House Itiego is getting its spices."
"An offer of garbage is only tempting to the swine. Do you think I am a swine?"
"If so, Arawn's not going to like hearing about the atonement I need to do. What's wrong with our deal?"
"It's proposed by you. And you are either a liar yourself, or too foolish to know when you consort with one. Either way, I will not trust my family's fortune to your care."
"You have nothing to lose," Dante said. "Whether or not we find our friend, as long as you help us try, I'll find the Itiegos' source of spices."
"You do not understand. He who makes deals with known fools gets spat on by the gods."
Weary of guarding the door, Blays plopped down in a chair. "Tanar Atain's only a few hundred miles from here, isn't it? Why don't we just grab some horses and ride there? We'll get there sooner than we'll finish this ridiculous argument."
Dante raised an eyebrow at Vita. "Last chance. Turn us down, and we'll ride out within the hour."
She batted at the air. "Bah! You would never make it through the Hell-Painted Hills."
"Hills? We've crossed mountains so tall that your head gets dizzy from being so close to the fixed stars."
"They were full of monsters, too," Blays said. "Beasts like a horse made out of armored bears and also it was immune to magic."
Vita glanced between them, eyes narrowed as she hunted for signs they were mocking her. "I don't care who you are or what else you have done. No one crosses the Hell-Painted Hills."
Dante shrugged. "We don't have a choice. We have to find our friend."
"To suggest this only proves you are the fools I fear you are. You can't do this."
"Sure we can. And when we get back, we'll tell you exactly how we did it."
She bit her lip, her youthful face creasing with worry. "If I could trust your intentions, I would take your deal in the flicker of a fly's wings. But I cannot, or the gods will see how I defy their law, and I will be cursed—along with the family I'm sworn to serve."
Dante forced himself to maintain a neutral expression. It sounded like she could be convinced, but that it was going to require the kind of favor-doing and trust-building that would take days or even weeks to accomplish. It had already been so long since they'd heard Naran had first gone missing. The thought of spending even more time letting him dangle in the wind—or rot in prison, or writhe under a torturer's blade—made Dante's stomach twist on itself like a sponge.
"Do you know about the Chainbreakers' War?" Blays said.
The corner of Vita's mouth twitched. "Wars are like the fire that burns down the forest. An ugly thing, but opportunity for new things to grow. Including commerce. Those of us who live by its flow know wars like a navigator knows the tides."
"Wonderful. Then you know why we fought the war?"
"To free yourselves from the yoke of the Gaskan Empire. And justly so: the torrent of trade it unleashed from Narashtovik and Gallador proves it was favored by the heavens."
"Yeah, that became part of it," Blays said. "But mostly, it was because of a promise we made years earlier to a single norren who'd helped us on our way: that we would free his people. If we kept a promise that absurd, why do you think we'd shrug off the one we're making to you?"
She straightened, heels tocking together, then swept her cap from her head and slapped it against her thigh. "Damn me! We will go. Our voyage is not long. I can ready our ship by the morning."
"Our?" Dante said. "We?"
"If we have struck a deal for you to find the Tallas Route, then you are my investment. And I always look after my investments."
Dante thought the plan to be loaded up, crewed, and ready to sail in less than a day was an optimistic goal, but by the following morning, they assembled on the Finder of Secrets, a single-masted cog with a deck, an aftercastle, and oar slots. By ten that morning, they'd cast off, maneuvered from the Cavana harbor, and struck south, keeping within sight of the rugged coast.
Vita had a cabin, but she preferred to observe their progress from the vantage of the castle. Dante joined her there to ask how long the voyage would last.
She glanced at the sail
s, then at the blue-gray waves slopping against the hull, which seemed to be flowing to the northeast. "Fair wind, a less fair current. I say it is four days."
"Is it that close?"
"You don't even know the location of the place you travel to?"
"That would be the deciding reason I hired someone to take me there."
Vita laughed brightly. Traveling seemed to agree with her. Then again, perhaps it was the rekindling of her dreams of smashing House Itiego's stranglehold on the tallas trade. Whatever the cause, she'd spent the early morning stalking about the Finder of Secrets yelling garrulous orders to the crew, and now that they were underway, she watched over her ship like a general about to send his troops into righteous battle, a gleam in her eye and a wind-painted flush to her tan cheeks.
"Come," she said. "I have something to show you. Maybe it will make you feel less like you are sailing over the edge of the world."
She led him down from the aftercastle and into her cabin. This was cramped and sparse, as they tended to be, though a window let in light and air. She moved to a wooden dresser nailed down on one side of the cabin and opened a drawer, shuffling through documents and maps. With a note of satisfaction, she withdrew one of the maps and spread it on the top of the dresser, which doubled as a table.
"Here, we see the world outside that window." She motioned to the glimpse of cliffs beyond the cabin, then down to the vellum map. "This is Alebolgia. Here is Poloa, south of Collen—to its great misfortune. Here is Cavana on the coast, and the other cities of the Strip."
She moved her finger southeast across a swath of short, jagged bumps just south of Alebolgia. "These are the hills you wished to die within. And on the other side, Tanar Atain. Here is Aris Osis." Vita tapped a tiny illustration of a city on the Tanarian coast. "Three hundred miles from Cavana. An easy trip."
Dante leaned further over the map. Tanar Atain took up a roughly triangular mass between the hills to its north and something called the "Ashlands" to the south. If the map was at all accurate, Tanarian territory stretched for roughly a hundred fifty minutes along the coast, and extended inland all the way to the mountains that formed the southern extension of the impossibly vast Woduns. Its territory was covered in light scratches of ink that might have been trees or waves.
"Aris Osis is the only city?"
"Not at all." Vita indicated the large triangle of territory. "All belongs to Tanar Atain."
"But there's nothing there."
"When you look at a map, and you look out at the land it shows, are they one and the same? This map was not drawn by Taim or Silidus. It was drawn by one who could only record what they had been able to see. There is much to Tanar Atain that isn't Aris Osis. As to who and what this muchness is? The only ones who know are the Tanarians."
"The interior is closed to outsiders? Are they afraid of foreigners?"
"A person with the correct business in Aris Osis may berth in Aris Osis. But that is as far as we may go. The Tanarians are much like cats. You know cats?"
"Cats?" Dante said. "I think I've heard of them."
"Cat are friendly, pleasant to be around. Yet if you overstep yourself with them?" She jumped toward him, hand outstretched, fingers bent like claws. "They pounce you."
"What about the authorities? Will they help us locate Naran?"
"If he stepped over a line, don't be surprised if it is the authorities who have disappeared him."
She returned to the aftercastle to question the navigator about the weather. Dante watched the distant cliffs pass by. He had always enjoyed traveling, and especially sailing; the experience of being out in the middle of the sea made it easier to grasp the true size of the world and your place within it.
At that moment, however, it was hard to be on a ship without being reminded of the Sword of the South. During his acquaintance with the ship, it had already lost one captain. There was a chance it had already lost another—and that the ship itself had been lost as well.
The day passed unremarkably. The morning saw slack winds, but Vita promised they'd pick up as the sun climbed, a prediction that proved true. With the sun hanging high and the sail swelled, Blays swore loudly from the port side of the cog.
Dante jogged toward him, following his stare out to the horizon. At the sight of the hills, Dante's foot seemed to forget how to stay stuck to the ground. The pitch of the ship finished what was left of his balance. He landed on the deck, scraping his palms.
Across the water, the hills glowed red and yellow, shaded with orange and white and blue, as if they were aflame for miles. But there was no smoke. No flicker of fire, either. Rather than being rounded, the hills looked like they'd been pinched into peaks, like the dough of giant bakers, as craggy and sharp as the pocked black rock they'd seen in the Plagued Islands.
"Ah," Vita said, approaching. "So you see why one cannot simply ride into Tanar Atain!"
"Let me guess," Blays said. "The Peaceful Sheepy Hills Where Nothing Untoward Has Ever Happened?"
Dante gripped the wooden railing. "What caused this?"
Vita moved beside him, leaning her forearms over the rail. "It is said that, long ago, these hills were wooded, bountiful with animals and fruit. It was here that the Yosein lived. The ancestors of the Tanarians, the Yosein were peaceful shepherds and scholars. For generations, they roamed the hills, marking the arrival of each season with an offering of sheep to their gods.
"One year, there was a famine. A sickness of the grass that bloated the sheep until they fell dead and made the fruit fall from the trees before it was ripe. Though each month the famine worsened, still the Yosein made their spring offering, and then again in summer. By autumn, they walked like skeletons dressed in skin: even so, they made their offering. Yet by winter, they were so dizzy from hunger that they feared making the sacrifice would kill them. They asked the priests if they could wait until spring. The priests said the gods agreed, so the Yosein made no offering.
"A fortnight later, the skies filled with strange light clouds. The Yosein thought it was a storm sent to cleanse the grass, but they soon saw they were wrong. The strange clouds were a plague of enormous locusts, a million and a million of them. As pale as grubs and as large as dogs, they ate not the crops—but instead, the flesh of every living thing they could find. Sheep, geese, and human alike. Where they went, they left bones behind. The Yosein tried to flee, but the locusts followed, wolves with wings.
"Seeing that they would be hunted until they fell from exhaustion, and would then be too weak to fight, back the Yosein sent their greatest sorcerers back to do battle with the plaguebeasts. Knowing that to fail would mean the death of all their people, the sorcerers held nothing back, smashing the locusts with pillars of fire, one strike after another, laughing as they too were burned by the powers they channeled against the pale horrors.
"For each locust they killed, another seemed to take its place. After forty days of fighting, with their own losses mounting, they knew there was only one way to stop the plague. And so they scorched the hills. Melted and blasted their homeland until poison belched from the rifts and killed the fruit trees and the animals that had fed the Yosein for so long. Still the sorcerers brought down their power, until the earth buckled and moved like the ocean, and the air shimmered with fire, and the sorcerers burned to dust that blew out to the sea.
"But the poison the sorcerers had called from the earth killed the locusts, too. Their bodies fell from the sky like the rains of nightmares. They were the last living things to touch these hills. The surviving Yosein descended to the swamps to the east, where they mingled with the people there, and became the Tanarians. They are the ones who called the hills 'Hell-Painted.' No matter how many years pass, the hills remain as poisonous as the first day they were fouled. All who enter? Dead. Dead like a fish taken from the water and tossed on dry sand."
Vita had a troubled expression on her face, as if she were considering ordering the helmsman to take them further out to sea in case any unseen fumes w
ere rolling down from the hills. Dante frowned. The hills looked otherworldly, yet he wondered about their origin, and if they were as hostile as they looked at a distance. Even the great sorcerers of the Rashen, forefathers of Narashtovik, hadn't been able to cause devastation like that, or they would have in order to protect themselves from the marauding Elsen.
Which wasn't to say the land wasn't toxic death for all who stepped within it. Rather, he suspected the story of how it came to be was no more than a story. Then again, weren't the hills worth studying either way? If the story was true, such an ability would make for a far more effective barrier against your foes than the one he'd erected in Collen. Sure, apparently the process would require the sacrifice of a few monks. But if it was the choice between that and being invaded and destroyed utterly, he was sure said monks would be dedicated enough to make the right decision.
Past the hills, the air started to warm, arriving at the cool side of neutral. Dante killed the remainder of the voyage asking Vita about the history of Alebolgia and House Osedo. She was well-versed in both, which as it turned out was quite impressive, considering that the alliances between the Strip's cities shifted faster than island weather, and that there seemed to have been a new war, uprising, trade dispute, or replacement of the ruling dynasty every two to four years. It made his own turbulent history in Narashtovik feel a little less absurd. And made him jealous that, aside from the occasional Scour of Arawnites or war on Collen, Mallon had enjoyed centuries of a peaceful, almost boring tranquility.
In return, Vita asked him a great deal of questions regarding the Chainbreakers' War and his talent with the nether. He wasn't sure if her interest was because she enjoyed his company, or if she was thinking about how to bolster her House with sorcerers of her own.
The painted cliffs and hills ended abruptly, replaced by the flattest land Dante had ever seen. Forests sprawled to the horizon, disappearing in the haze. Through gaps in the thickets, wintry sunlight glinted dully from slack expanses of water. Vita announced they'd arrive in Aris Osis within three hours. It had been four days since they'd made way from Cavana.
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