The Wound of the World

by Edward W. Robertson

  "At least we know he's alive."

  Amazingly, this calmed Dante down. He crossed a bridge, gazing into the waters beneath them. "And we know what city he's in."

  "I know that sound! That's the sound of someone who wants to get arrested."

  "I doubt Naran was dumb enough to do anything genuinely illegal. I'm thinking he might have accomplished what he came here to do."

  Blays tipped back his head. "You think he found Gladdic."

  "Whether or not Gladdic's here, Naran's ship and crew were driven off. We're the only ones he has left. We have to free him."

  "No arguments here. But let's be extra careful not to cause any more international incidents, shall we? Or if we have to cause them, can we at least blame them on the Mallish?"

  Dante headed for the docks. In another port, it might have taken hours to locate the Finder of Secrets, but among the Tanarian sailing canoes and boxy longer-range vessels, Vita's well-kept cog stood out like the lone orange in a pile of apples. Dante found her overseeing the offloading of the ship's cargo.

  "We've got a lead," he told her.

  She glanced up from her work. "And you tell me this why? To brag?"

  "The local government won't appreciate us looking into it. If something happens to prevent us from getting back here, I'll send my rat. It'll have a message tied to its neck."

  "You have a trained rat? And you trust it to deliver a message to a place it has never been before?"

  "It's exceptionally obedient."

  "May I see it?"

  "Uh," he said. "Maybe later. It's resting now."

  She glanced across the city. "What are you getting into that might require the skills of an extraordinarily trained rat to bail you out?"

  "Our friend's been arrested," Blays said. "We're going to un-arrest him."

  "You don't sound very troubled about this task. Is it common for you to have to 'un-arrest' your friends?"

  "Well yes. But it remains an open question as to whether that's because we have bad friends, or because the people who run prisons just can't stand to see exceptional people having a good time."

  She smiled, running her finger along the brim of her cap. "If I didn't have a House to answer to, I would go with you. Stay out of trouble, yes? You still have a job to do for me."

  Dante made a vague promise to be careful, then made his goodbyes and headed down the waterfront.

  "Where are we going?" Blays said. "Please tell me it involves lunch."

  "Back to see DaNasan. He seemed sympathetic to Naran. He might know how to get us in contact with the capital's magistrate."

  As they made their way along the piers, he kept an eye out for anyone following them—Yata had claimed all foreigners were watched—but he was still having a difficult time telling Tanarians apart at a distance. As best as he could tell, there were no obvious spies.

  DaNasan was out on business, requiring them to hang around for half an hour before he returned and invited them out back to his deck.

  "So?" the robed man said. "Was the Bureau of Interlopers any help?"

  "Naran's been arrested," Dante said. "He's being held in the capital of Dara Bode. Apparently, he committed crimes against the state."

  Blays tapped the pommel of his sword. "In other words, the sort of thing you charge someone with when you don't like their face. I'm starting to think we need to pass a law banning laws."

  "The bureau told us we're not allowed to leave Aris Osis. We can't even contact anyone in Dara Bode. We're going to need to—"

  DaNasan held up his right hand palm-out. "Stop."

  "You haven't even heard—"

  "And I don't want to. It would only endanger me."

  Dante gritted his teeth. "Do you want to know who's actually in danger? Naran! The one imprisoned in a forbidden city!"

  DaNasan tucked his chin, glaring at Dante from beneath his eyebrows. In the gap in conversation, Dante heard an insult shouted from the shore of another island, reminding him that while they were removed from the eyes of the street, they weren't exactly in private.

  "I owe you nothing." DaNasan's voice was quietly firm. "It would better me personally to hear you out, agree to help you, and then turn you into the bureau. My reward for such service would be substantial."

  "But you won't," Blays said. "Because you're a good man with the heart of a modern-day Lyle."

  "My gut isn't the only part of me that's soft." The merchant chuckled, then grew sober. "The truth is, I don't care for the bureau. Nor the government it's a part of. I find it needlessly controlling and opaque. Even so, I am no revolutionary. Just a man who enjoys grumbling. If you want someone who will help, speak to Undan Walan."

  Dante scratched his jaw. "I know that name. Naran was in talks with her. I take it they're friends?"

  "Safer to say your interests will align with hers. Now go. I wish you luck, but I don't want to see you again."

  Dante shook the merchant's hand and left his property. The grounds of Undan Walan were located three islands further southeast along the sweep of the shore. Her docks bustled with double-hulled canoes and long, narrow rafts that didn't look remotely seaworthy.

  Dante found a foreman and inquired after Undan Walan. He and Blays were directed to a gazebo next to the water. The finest netting Dante had ever seen enclosed the structure from the plentiful insects.

  After they'd spent many minutes sitting around listening to stevedores insult each other, an older woman walked up to the gazebo and swept aside the netting. While DaNasan had been a foreigner—Parthian, maybe, though quite possibly from a land Dante had never heard of—Undan was a thin, pale Tanarian, her dark hair shot through with silver stripes. Her eyes had a particular smolder that Dante most associated with self-proclaimed prophets.

  "Who are you?" She swiveled her head between the two of them. "You have the look of an iron fist hidden inside a velvet glove. Drakebane's men? But foreigners, so this can't be so. The personal swords of a foreign king, then. Mallon?"

  "We don't represent King Charles," Blays said, happily falling into his routine of the casually decadent nobleman. "But we are representatives of another Mallish institution which, if I may be so bold, is hardly of lesser standing. We understand you're acquainted with one Captain Naran, recently of the Sword of the South?"

  "The captain and I know of each other."

  "We understand he's run afoul of some sort of trouble. Dreadful business—arrested and taken to the capital. Sure to be a simple misunderstanding. You see, we are in the service of his creditors, and would like to clear this up so that Mallon and Tanar Atain can get back to the business of making great heaps of money together."

  "Creditors." She said the word as though it was the start of a magical incantation. "I have owed credit, and given credit, and in each case, I wonder: what do I have? What do I owe? In what sense does the debt exist? Can you point to it? Can you pick it up and put it in your purse, or lock it in a chest for safekeeping? No. Because it's no more real than a child's belief in fairies. Does that make you representatives of nothing?"

  "If so, it's the most powerful nothing in the known world." Blays brushed a speck from the front of his doublet. "Returning to the matter at hand, it turns out we have a problem."

  "You can't go to Dara Bode," Undan stated. "Or speak to those who are there."

  "Precisely. I understand this might be a delicate matter, but it was suggested that you might be of service in navigating this dilemma."

  "You speak prettily. You powder your words and dress them in frills. These aren't the words the gods gave you. Speak plainly, or your words are as nothing as your credit."

  Blays scrunched up one eye. "We need to get to Dara Bode. We'll pay you for it. And if we're snatched up along the way, we'll swallow our own tongues before we tell them who helped us."

  Undan smiled toothily. "That feels better, doesn't it? Now tell me of Naran, so that I know you know him."

  The two of them provided what Dante hoped was a credible amoun
t of personal detail without veering too deeply and exposing that they were more than partners in trade. His fears evaporated when Undan began to negotiate a price. They arrived at a sum that didn't quite deplete everything Dante and Blays had brought with them.

  Before they shook hands, Blays cocked his head. "As long as we're talking in truth-drenched god-words, I get the impression what we're proposing is highly illegal. So why are you willing to help us? Is it just the money?"

  "If you get what you want," Undan said, "does it matter why I do what I do?"

  "If you're doing this in service of a demonic master who's going to use our silver to fund his campaign to devour the world, then that might be relevant."

  "When you choose to live among others, you choose to give up your freedoms. There is only one power that can regain those freedoms: the weight of money." The older woman flashed her teeth again. "Besides, the risk won't be mine. It will fall on my agent."

  "Who's your agent?" Dante said.

  "She will tell you her name for herself. She is young, and that makes her dumb. But that dumbness is good: if she was smart, she would never agree to this."

  "How long will the trip take?"

  "Four days, five. Depends on how clear the canallers have kept the water. You will meet your guide in two days at the Frog Vault. Arrive at dusk. She will have a boat, and carry a blue feather on the collar of her jabat."

  "Jabat? Is that what you call your…" He gestured in a circle. "Tunics?"

  Undan nodded. "I will send for your coin tomorrow night. If you miss your meet after that, your money is forfeit. We have never seen each other, and you don't know my name."

  Dante shook her hand and left her pier. Dogged by paranoia, rather than heading right back to the Keeper of Secrets, he wandered inland from the docks, glancing behind them for pursuit. "She was a bit odd, wasn't she?"

  "I think she's just the right amount of crazy: too skewed in the head to be trying to set us up, but not so insane that she'll forget to do everything we just agreed to."

  "Do you suppose when you let people speak anything, it causes them to think anything? Resulting in the creation of more eccentrics?"

  "I think you should test this idea in Narashtovik and find out."

  Dante had no intention of doing any such thing, yet he hadn't spent more than a day in Tanar Atain and he was already beginning to question whether he might relax some of the strictures in Narashtovik. Particularly those around certain heresies. After all, his experience in the Plagued Islands had already proven that some of the church's beliefs were incomplete at best, and possibly flat-out wrong. It seemed less than saintly to punish people for holding different beliefs on other matters when he was no longer wholly convinced they were wrong.

  And if there was a silver lining to all the running about he'd had to do in the last nine-odd months, it was that visiting new places had exposed him to certain imperfections in how he governed his realm. Despite the time he'd lost away from his people, when he returned, perhaps he could do a better job in ruling them.

  Once he was convinced they weren't being followed, he quit meandering and returned to the Finder of Secrets. Vita stood on the deck swigging wine with her crew.

  "We have a way to get to the capital," Dante told her. "But they'll evict you from town before we can get back from it. Can you get customs to extend the length of your visit?"

  She tucked down the corners of her mouth. "They are strict. But I could return to Cavana, then bring more goods here, giving me a second stay. Do you know how long you will require?"

  "Two weeks. When you come back, stay ready to shove off at a moment's notice. If things go the way they tend to, we'll be running all the way."

  She offered them wine, toasting their journey. It tasted like crisp apples.

  After a couple of cups, Blays motioned Dante over to the side of the boat. "Two weeks is enough to fetch Naran. But what if we find out Gladdic's somewhere out there, too?"

  Dante let out a long breath. "We'll see what Naran thinks. The Collen Basin is safe. Gladdic's failed too much to have any sway left in Bressel. It might be better to get Naran out of here and walk away from the rest of it."

  "Could leave Raxa and Sorrowen in Bressel until Gladdic comes home. She could get to him."

  "Not too fond of him, are you?"

  "On the scale of things I detest, he ranks somewhere between spider orgies and explosive hemorrhoids."

  Dante frowned and drank more wine.

  The following day was quiet. Two hours after nightfall, a man came around to collect Undan's payment. Dante handed over the money with the same oily pang he always felt when he wasn't dead certain he was spending wisely.

  If it wasn't a scam, though, he was greatly relieved they'd finally run into a problem that could be solved through the direct application of cash rather than a convoluted scheme to depose or kill a rival, retrieve a lost artifact, or kick off a war. That was the result of how they'd presented themselves, wasn't it? If he'd swept into town as Dante Galand, High Priest of Narashtovik and nethermancer supreme, Undan no doubt would have asked him to resurrect her dead husband or overrun an enemy merchant with a horde of zombies.

  But since he'd arrived as a simple financier, money was all they thought to ask from him. Barring life and death danger, he pledged not to reveal his powers to another soul until it came time to extract Naran.

  The following afternoon, Dante and Blays made their way to the Frog Vault, a small island whose north end featured a particularly slack and shallow portion of water. The croak of the frogs drowned out the din of arguments and insults from the surrounding islands. Dante and Blays waited in the shadow of a yellow-trunked tree that was propped up on its roots, as if it was trying to escape the pungent waters.

  The daylight in Aris Osis had a blurred, dull quality, and as the sun neared the horizon, blocked by towers and haze, it felt like the city was sinking below the surface of a vast, shaded pool. As the minutes went by, Dante grew concerned that DaNasan had decided to turn them in after all, or that Undan's love of silver had talked her into running off with their money and giving them nothing in return. After all, if she'd reneged on a conspiracy to commit a crime, what recourse would they have to get their money back?

  Before his stomach could knot itself too tightly, a gentle paddle stirred the water. A canoe resolved in the gloom and glided smoothly toward shore, lodging in the mud there. Seated in the hull, a girl of about eighteen years regarded them with curious, unafraid eyes. Two blue feathers hung from the collar of her jabat. She was as slender as a child's first hunting bow, but her arms and shoulders had the look of pale cuts of wood being shaped into something that would last.

  "You two don't look as dumb as I thought." She lobbed a packet at Dante. It bounced off his chest. Blays caught it before it could fall into the murky water. The girl jerked her chin at the packet. "One bulb each. Chew them good."

  Blays fished out two purple-spotted plant bulbs, passing one to Dante.

  Dante held it to his nose, smelling onions and capers. "What is it?"

  "Eni rio. We'll need it to get out of here."

  Blays crunched his down. Dante followed suit. The bulb tasted so strongly of onions—though a strange kind Dante had never encountered before—that it made his eyes water.

  "What's it do?" Blays said. "Give you strength to paddle longer?"

  "Nah," the girl said. "It kills you."

  Dante stared at her, then spit messily, but he'd already swallowed almost all of it. He stuck his finger down his throat and gagged.

  The girl rolled her eyes. "Idiot. If I meant it kills-kills you, would I tell you before you were dead? Eni rio makes you act dead. When the Watchers of the Water look you over, you'll be so dead-faced they'll pay me to haul you away." She slapped the side of the canoe. "Now get in. And if you tip us over, then you have to ride underneath."

  Dante scowled at her. "Have you done this before?"

  "If I said no, would you walk away?"
/>   He grunted, waded into the water, and climbed over the side. It was an awkward maneuver and he probably would have spilled them if the girl hadn't planted her paddle in the muck for balance. Blays hopped in as lightly as a dragonfly alighting on a cattail.

  She pushed off, spun them around, and paddled leisurely toward the northeast, making no more sound than the occasional drip of water. Low laughter drifted from islands and collections of rafts moored together; people lived on their boats, Dante realized. Likely, that was true of all the laborers who couldn't afford a scrap of land.

  Once the fullness of the night had crouched down on the city, the girl paddled toward a stone bridge, veering toward its abutment. Crossing under its shadow was like sailing into another world: water echoed on all sides, smelling as musty as a cave. The girl pulled the canoe parallel to the abutment. There, a shelf of stone rose a few inches from the water.

  "Get out," she said.

  Blays tipped back his head at the arch above them. "Oh, are we in the capital already?"

  "Change into these." She got a sack from under her bench and tossed them each a jabat. "Two dead outlanders smells like three-day-old fish. But two dead hari won't lift an eyebrow."

  "Hari?"

  She made a searching gesture. "Foreigners who stayed. Trash-people. No one cares if their bodies stop living."

  Light spilled in from either side of the bridge, giving Dante enough visibility to undo various laces and clasps. And for the young woman to stare at them with utter shamelessness as they stripped down. To Dante's annoyance—which didn't make a ton of sense, considering he had no intention of romancing her—she seemed far more interested in Blays.

  With an inner sigh, he adjusted the jabat on his shoulders and cinched its thin rope belt. As stupid as it looked, it did circulate the humid air rather well. He strapped on sandals and returned to the canoe.

  Blays tied his belt in a stylish loop and jerked his chin at the girl. "Now that you've seen my ass, you could at least tell me your name."

  She grinned. "Volo. Back aboard before the eni rio hits you."

  Blays reembarked. They wadded up their old clothes and hid their swords beneath it. Volo resumed paddling, faster this time. Soon, though her arms didn't seem to be working any harder, they seemed to be going faster yet, the lanterns on the shores leaving long trails of light behind them. Dante's tongue felt huge in his mouth.