"We barely know who he is," Dante said. "Why would we want to kill him?"
"Because he tells people they're free, and then he enslaves them."
"I have about as much interest in getting dragged into the affairs of Tanar Atain as I do in spending any more time hanging around beneath these thousand corpses. We have a job to do, Volo. Let's get to it."
She looked disappointed—Tanarians seemed to have endless patience for conversation—then got out a stoppered gourd. Using a piece of reed, she scooped out a portion of spicy-smelling red paste.
She shoved it under Dante's nose. "Eat this."
"What is it this time?"
"Keeps the bugs away. Unless you want the bugs to come."
"Why would I want to attract insects?"
"Don't ask me. You're the one who doesn't want to eat it."
He swallowed the paste. It was spicy enough to singe his tastebuds, but that didn't seem to be masking any unpleasant flavors. Or poisons.
"These are the rules of the water," Volo said. "Don't leave the boat. Don't make splashes. And don't eat any bugs."
"I don't think you need to worry about us eating any bugs," Dante said. "Ever."
"Then you've never been hungry." Volo picked up her oar and started paddling, leaving the cages of the dead behind them. "Watch for patrols. If they catch us, they'll arrest you for trespassing."
"How are we going to be able to move around the capital if we'll be arrested on sight?"
"Are your ears decorations? When you're in the capital, you can go where you want. You'll look like just another hari."
Blays eyeballed a large blue frog croaking away from the banks of an island little bigger than their canoe. The frog's eyes were downcast, almost rueful. Seeing it, Dante felt a sudden and inexplicable sadness.
Blays tore himself away from the sight. "Why stop us from traveling around, anyway? What are your leaders afraid we're going to do? Accidentally spend money on your goods?"
Volo went quiet for three seconds. "I shouldn't say. It's a crime."
"We're already committing bundles of them, aren't we? What does one more matter?"
"They say it's for your safety. That the swamps are too dangerous."
"And is hiring guides considered unholy?"
"Yes," she said, deadly serious. "Because that would let you see how things really are here."
She fell into a moody silence. The swamps rang with the cries of birds, frogs, and insects. Sometimes Dante heard the whine of mosquitos, but none of them seemed to be landing on him. Either the red paste was doing its work, or the mosquitos didn't like foreigners any more than the people did.
His eyes darted to every furtive splash. The place was spooky, he'd give it that. Yet over the next hour of travel, he didn't see anything that looked especially dangerous. At least not to anyone who wasn't in the habit of sticking everything they saw into their mouths and swallowing it live. Once, he saw a large pair of cat's eyes gleaming from the branches of a tree, but it didn't look like they could be attached to an animal any larger than a badger. Whatever danger the king was worried about befalling foreigners out in the wild, his fears appeared overblown.
It was immediately clear, however, that if anything happened to Volo—or she decided to abandon them—he and Blays would be completely and utterly screwed.
The canopy was too dense to make out more than fleeting stars; he couldn't glimpse a single constellation to get his bearings by. When morning came, he could orient himself to the sun, but even then, he had no idea which direction Aris Osis was. The only thing they could do was paddle south or west until they struck the coast. Assuming they still had a boat. If they didn't…well, he supposed they could steal one from an innocent person, but he didn't want to go down that line of thought.
He had no idea how dedicated Volo was to keeping them alive. Probably, she saw this as a job, nothing more. Certainly nothing worth putting her safety at risk if they got into a mess. Quite suddenly, her continued well-being vaulted to the top of Dante's priorities.
A few minutes after he'd reached this conclusion, Volo directed the canoe to a wedge of turf barely keeping itself above the water. She ran them aground and hopped out.
"Time to kiss some dirt," she said. "Help me set up camp."
Dante looked around them. "We're stopping already? If you're tired, one of us can paddle."
"Just needed to put some distance between ourselves and the city. Not good to travel at night. The light attracts things."
"Like what? Bloodthirsty moths?"
"Want to find out?"
Frowning, he brought ashore bundles of cloth that turned out to be hammocks. Volo went to work stringing them up.
"Hammocks?" Blays said. "The ground isn't so sacred we can't sleep on it, is it? Otherwise, you're going to want to have a word with the worms currently befouling it."
Dante tied a rope around a branch, testing his knot. "I imagine there's less snakes this way."
"Less snakes? Meaning there are still some snakes?"
"I expect it's better to have a few snakes around than having to deal with a bunch of snake-eaters."
Dante tied the other end of the hammock and gave it a tug, wincing as the movement tore something in the spot where the guard had poked him with the spear. He'd thought about healing it with the nether, but Volo seemed fairly sharp-eyed. The last thing he wanted was for her to pick up on the fact that his wound was mysteriously healed.
Fortunately, it was only a small cut, but he was so used to healing any bruises and nicks he'd picked up over the course of the day that the small pain felt magnified and strange. Beyond that, he'd spent all of his adult life not particularly concerned about any wound short of a lethal blow. To be reminded of the vulnerability he'd once felt—one that nearly everyone else in the world lived with—was unsettling.
They ate a meal of dried fish and a bready fruit Volo found on the little island. As she chewed, she flicked a piece of rind into the water. Something broke hard against the surface, vanishing as quickly as it had struck.
"We won't be alone tomorrow," Volo said. "People of the teeth will be out fishing. Legs will be out delivering goods. And the eyes will be on patrol."
Dante fished a seed from between his teeth. "What do we do if we run into a patrol?"
"You can hide. Or we can poke out their eyes."
He stared at her, completely uncertain if she was serious, or just letting her mouth express every idea that crossed her mind. "For now, let's stick with hiding. There's going to be enough trouble as there is."
"Then what if that's a sign that we should cause more?"
"It isn't."
She gave him a reproachful look. "You say no too fast. When you kill all of your ideas while they're still infants, none can grow up to work your paddies—or defend your castle."
Dante crawled into his hammock. He was soon asleep. During the course of the night, he woke more times than he could count. It was more than the chorus of creatures. He felt uneasy, as if something were slowly drawing closer, and every time he nodded off, it took another step forward. Was it the green crush of the forest? He didn't think that was it. He'd been in intensely wooded areas before. The jungles of the Plagued Islands were so lush you couldn't traverse parts of them without following game trails or hacking your way forward a foot at a time.
It was more than the claustrophobia of a forest. It felt like the swamp was breathing. Like it was alive.
Volo rousted them at first light to pull down the hammocks before anyone could see them. They'd barely gotten the canoe underway when voices bleated out ahead. Two men were arguing heedlessly, voices ringing through the trees. Something about nets; fishermen, likely berating each other about whose turn it was to untangle the skein.
Before Dante and Blays could conceal themselves, a raft swung from behind a shaggy stand of trees. Two men pushed it forward with long poles, paying much more attention to their discussion than to where they were planting their staves.
"Can
't be so," the older man said. "Ain't no way that Sadi Lono, the man who caught the wind with his bare hands, is sluggish enough to let himself get netted."
The younger man swatted at something. "But say it's Ura So doing the netting. She smiles at him, dazzles him with her ruby teeth, then catches him up."
"Right, and what happens when he snaps out of her spell? He goes at the net with the Knife That Can't Be Sheathed."
"Won't help. The weave is too tight."
The old man guffawed. "You're telling me the knife that cut a hole through the earth can't cut a net?"
"This is the net that dragged down the moon! There's no way—" Finally noticing Volo's canoe, the man broke off mid-sentence.
Volo paddled onward, skirting around a snag protruding from the water like the hand of a drowning man. As the raft sailed by, the two men stared at the foreigners. Dante did his best to look like an obedient servant.
"I say he's stuck fast," the younger man muttered, turning back to his partner. "As if she's going to just stand there while he fumbles about for the knife?"
Their voices faded into the forest. Volo made a thoughtful noise. "If the wrong person sees you, they might turn you in. Next time, you should probably try to hide."
Though it was still a couple of weeks until spring, the air was warm, intensified by the heavy dampness of the air. Ropes of vines and threads of moss hung from the trees. Another canoe emerged from behind a lumpy little island; again, it was too close for Dante and Blays to try to hide themselves in the bottom of their boat. The man inside the other canoe glided past, watching them from the corners of his eyes.
They'd barely started out and Dante was already doubting they could reach Dara Bode without someone turning them in to the authorities. He considered killing one of the many, many flying bugs and sending it ahead of them to scout the way, but there wasn't a singular path forward, meaning he'd have to maintain a small fleet of flies to cover whichever way Volo took them. Anyway, if he did see a patrol coming their way, he couldn't alert Volo without exposing his abilities.
With no better option, he and Blays flattened themselves against the bottom of the canoe and covered themselves in hammocks. Water thumped gently against the hull. Dante felt jumpy and irritable. Blind. More than that: like he'd lost both his arms. He was so used to being able to call on his powers that being without them made even simple tasks feel abruptly overwhelming.
He dozed on and off. Early that afternoon, Volo guided the canoe out of the main waterway and found an outcrop of ground where they could stretch their legs and eat lunch.
"I don't suppose there's another way to the capital?" Blays said. "Preferably something that ends each day with an inn, a fire, and kegs of exotic beverages?"
"There are some towns along the way." Volo glanced at a fish leaping from the water. "But the problem with towns is they're full of people."
Too soon, they were back in the canoe. Dante took his time in lying down. Before, there had been any number of gaps in the growth, but here, the trees, brambles, and vines had grown into an interlocking wall. They were traveling more or less down a tunnel. One that looked as though it only existed due to constant maintenance.
He dozed off. Some time later, something jabbed him in the ribs. Before he could yell out about snakes or swamp rats, a hand clamped over his mouth.
"Trouble ahead," Blays said. "Dressed in green."
Dante peeked over the gunwale. They were stopped at one end of a hallway through the trees. At the far end, roughly five hundred feet away, a house-raft had been stopped by a double-hulled canoe bearing what appeared to be a roof. This would have been puzzling if not for the green paint on its hull and the piles of soldiers spilling from it onto the raft. It was a military vessel, and the roof was a shield against arrows.
Dante rubbed grit from the corner of his eye. "Can we go around?"
"No other routes. Growth's too thick." She curled her lip. "Just how they want it."
"No sense trying to hide. They're searching that boat."
"We could always act like we have nothing to hide," Blays said.
"And pray that they've chosen today to quit enforcing their laws? The ones they're clearly in the process of enforcing right now?"
"You never know when someone's going to make a mistake on your behalf." His tone went arch. "Besides, if they look at us cockeyed, we can always just kill them all."
For Volo's sake, Blays presented the idea as a joke, but Dante took his meaning clearly: they could, if necessary, brute-force their way through the situation. But that would mean revealing himself, not to mention massacring a score of soldiers, an event that was likely to be investigated by an even larger force of soldiers.
"We can't turn around now. It'll look like we're fleeing them." Dante gripped his temples. "When they're done with the raft, will they come over to inspect our boat? Or are they holding a static checkpoint?"
"Sharp eyes don't sit still," Volo said. "They'll come for us."
"Then Blays and I will swim over to the shrubs and hide there until they check the canoe. There will be nothing for them to find and they'll be on their way."
"But you don't get in the water. Not unless there's no other choice."
"Ah," Blays said. "There isn't."
At the far end of the tunnel, the soldiers had climbed off the raft and back into their war canoe. It was already paddling forward, heading toward their much smaller boat. Dante grabbed his sword from the bottom of the canoe and rolled over the gunwale.
He landed with a soft sploosh. The water was the same temperature as the air. He'd expected to be able to touch the bottom, but his feet kicked through empty water. He dropped below the surface. It was so murky he couldn't see anything except a vague sense of the light above him.
He swam hard toward the gnarl of trees hemming them in to the right, keeping one hand in front of him to ward off any submerged branches or rocks. His fingers caught in something slippery. He jerked back his hand, giving a short, bubbly shout.
He kicked on until he was out of breath, then broke the surface. The war canoe was shockingly close, as if it had teleported halfway across the tunnel through the trees. Praying none of the soldiers had spotted his head, he dropped back under the water. He passed under the deeper shadow of the wall of shrubs. Stray twigs and thorns dangled in the water, grabbing at his arms as he broke through them.
He emerged into an oval of relatively clear water surrounded by trees and undergrowth. Blays popped up next to him. Bits of leaves and flowers tumbled from the branches in a steady shower. Across from him, a giant fallen log rested in the water, its bark coated with green moss and orange mushrooms. Out in the waterway, the war canoe was backbeating its oars as it approached Volo, who now looked very alone and very small.
Dante was treading water; try as he might, he couldn't avoid making a few small splashes. With no dry ground in sight, he pushed toward the log. Most of its bulk was underwater, but at twenty feet long and close to four across, it could easily support both his weight and Blays'.
He grabbed a knob on the log's side, searching for a nub of branch to haul himself up with. Despite the time it had spent soaking in the water, the log's scaly bark was so hard it nearly cut his hands.
"What the..?" Blays whispered. "Stop!"
Dante glared at him. Blays was gesturing hard for him to back off. Baffled, Dante turned back to the log. A yellow circle had appeared near one of its ends, barely above the waterline. In its center, it was marked with a smaller black circle.
He was staring into a giant eye.
The beast jackknifed, lunging for him. He saw fangs, a gaping throat like a hole through the fabric of the earth. He grabbed for the nether, but the jaws were already snapping closed around his chest, pulling him under the surface of the water.
20
The black carriage rattled through the streets, its driver yelling and swearing at any pedestrian who dawdled in its path. Inside, Raxa settled into the velvet seats. The air wa
s awash in rosy perfume.
"My apologies for the wait you had to endure." The woman across from her spoke Gaskan at a rapid clip. She sounded like one of the aristocrats from back home, but to Raxa's relief, she bore a light Mallish accent. "The guards who were assisting you were under the perverse impression that I value sleep more than the execution of justice. Needless to say, they're being flogged as we speak."
"Ah," Raxa said. "Thank you."
"My name is Maura of Boscayne. I am going to ask you some questions. And then I am going to help you."
The carriage's sashes were open, letting in plenty of light. Lady Maura was fifty years of age and her face was tan even by Bresselian standards, but as she gestured, Raxa caught glimpses of lighter skin around the collar of her dress. Spent a lot of time outdoors for a noble. She had thin, quick fingers. Deep laugh-lines entangled her mouth and eyes, although she looked and sounded like the sort who never belly-laughed, and settled instead for a constant state of low-level amusement.
Raxa had no idea who she was, but she could already tell that the lady would want something from her.
"You are from Gask," Maura said. "But Gask is so large its own weight caused it to collapse. Which fragment of the whole is yours?"
"Dollendun," Raxa said. "The Jorrelun family."
"Unfortunately, it has not been my pleasure to make their acquaintance. Most of my summers in the former empire have been spent at the lakes of Gallador. A picturesque place. Do you know it?"
"When I was younger. But not in years. Like you said, Gask is a big place."
"Large enough that one could tour it for decades without running out of new sights. Why, then, would one need to travel to Bressel?"
"It's not a pleasant story."
"Most true ones aren't. But in the sharing of them, we understand that we are all bent beneath the same burdens."
The carriage rocked through a pothole so deep Raxa's rear left contact with the bench. "My husband is the youngest of four brothers. With no fortune guaranteed to him, he had to make his own. The war that cracked Gask into fragments—as you put it—also opened the door to opportunity. You know about norren art?"
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 123