by Mike Brooks
Tila shifted position uncomfortably, surreptitiously trying to unstick the fabric of her dress from her side. Kiburu ce Alaba didn’t even really have a winter, as a Naridan would understand it. Perhaps it was the constant heat that had unhinged their brains when it came even to simple matters like men and women.
“High Lady,” Captain Kemanyel said deferentially, stepping up alongside her. He was a bluffly handsome man, with his dark hair in one thick plait that hung to the small of his back. “Will you want your possessions taken ashore when we make port?”
“There’ll be no need for that, Captain,” Tila replied. “This lady shouldn’t need to remain here long.”
“As you wish,” Kemanyel said with a half-bow, and moved away. Perhaps he’d hoped to get his cabin back for a few nights, but he’d be disappointed. Tila had no intention of trusting herself to an Alaban boarding house. After all, she was essentially two potential assassination targets in one, although for very different reasons.
One of the reasons Tila was so feared in the Naridan court, the reason her nickname was “The Veiled Shadow”, was because many suspected she was in some way ensuring that events elsewhere occurred as Narida wished, but no one understood how she managed it. The closest scrutiny of finances, had anyone attempted it, would find no money travelling out from the Sun Palace into the world that might be used to pay spies or knives. Even Tila’s own money—allocated to her as, somewhat laughably, a ward of her brother, the Crown—wasn’t used for such things.
Or at least, the money everyone thought was hers wasn’t used. But Tila was, quite literally, more resourceful than even the most suspicious courtiers could imagine.
The Princess of Narida couldn’t travel to Kiburu ce Alaba on a merchantman, stroll ashore and hire some local knives to kill a local family. It was a ridiculously unsafe proposition, not to mention politically disastrous. So it was just as well that, so far as anyone knew, Princess Tila Narida had taken a leave of absence from court, as she was sometimes wont to do when the spirits seized her soul and dragged it downwards. It was well known she was still keenly affected by the violent death of her father, the old God-King, at the hands of a Morlithian border patrol when she was seventeen. It was, after all, why she still wore her mourning veil everywhere outside her own chambers twenty years later. Every now and then, her old misery reared up and caused her to partition herself off from the world, leaving the courtiers to quietly edge around each other and expand their little influences until she returned to put the fear of Nari into them again.
And she would. But first she had business to attend to here, in the warm, humid north.
Tila wore no veil on the deck of the Light of Fortune. Captain Kemanyel was transporting Livnya the Knife, the undisputed head of Idramar’s criminal underworld and the very last woman he wanted to cross, especially since he was a smuggler. Tila had been living her peculiar double life since her father had died and, so far as she knew, there was still no one who’d realised the truth of it. No one who ever saw Livnya’s face was likely to get close enough to Tila to recognise her beneath the veil, neither woman had to keep hours to suit anyone else, and Tila had never needed much sleep.
It meant Livnya’s considerable wealth—built up from her “inheritance” of a criminal empire from a man named Yakov, who’d eventually died with her knife in his eye socket—could be diverted to ensure the interests of Tila’s country were protected through the most unofficial of backchannels. Money Livnya made from smuggling, or stole from rich merchants and nobles, paid for Tila’s eyes and ears, her bribes and knives. It was an untraceable ghost tax, and all that was required for it to work as intended was for Tila to continually outwit two different social circles containing some of the most ambitious and ruthless people in all of Narida.
Easy.
Young Barach, formerly Little Barach, was lurking by the main mast with his burly arms crossed. He was twenty-two summers old and had been Livnya’s bodyguard and personal enforcer since his father, Big Barach, had retired two years previously. There was a lot of his father about him in his face and build, but Young Barach struck Tila as a touch more thoughtful than his sire.
“How do people work in this?” he asked mournfully, staring at the sky in general. “Your man thought this may’ve been the work of sea spirits, but it’s worse now we’re approaching land.” He was stripped down to a short-sleeved linen shirt, which stuck to his torso in damp patches, and his breeches. Most of the sailors were bare-chested in the humid air, a fact that bothered Tila not at all, but Barach seemed possessed of greater modesty. She found it almost endearing.
“The Alabans are used to it,” she told him. “They’re a thin-blooded people, and the heat doesn’t bother them.”
“It’s not just the heat, it’s the air,” Barach muttered. “It’s like trying to breathe in a river.” He looked up again as thunder rumbled ominously. Heavy clouds were building, and had already obscured the sun. “Rain soon, then.”
“This lady imagines so,” Tila replied. “She hopes we’ll make port first.”
They didn’t make port first.
There were long-necked water dragons darting between the wave crests outside the East Harbour of Grand Mahewa, each beast as long as the Light of Fortune’s twelve-person rowboat. Tila and Barach stood at the rail watching the scaled heads, little bigger than their own, appear and disappear as they came up to breathe, when the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. Tila considered getting her cloak, but any protection it offered from the rain would have been nearly outweighed by the sweating she’d have endured from wearing it. She let the rain wash her down, occasionally wiping it from her eyes.
East Harbour was in a natural bay, the mouth of which had been narrowed by twin breakwaters of mortared stone. A watchtower stood on each, tall and proud, and Tila could just make out the skeletal shapes of ballista atop them.
“Do they expect an attack?” Barach asked, eyeing the ballista somewhat nervously. The notion of being on a ship while bolts as tall as he was rained down clearly did not appeal.
“Alaba controls the Throat of the World,” Tila told him absently. “Any sea trade from the lands to the north comes through the channels between these islands, and the Alabans take their tax for the privilege of using their waters. Over time, others have taken exception to that.” She laughed. “Or Alabans from other islands have decided that they should be the ones reaping the rewards. Either way, East Harbour’s had need to defend itself over the years. But with these,” she gestured up at the watch towers, “the war fleet within, and Lesser Mahewa behind us to send ships to aid them, you’d have to be a fool, a god, or the commander of the greatest navy the world has seen to attack the city from the sea.”
Captain Kemanyel was barking commands, and his crew were reefing sails, but Tila doubted it was due to the weather. Heavy though the rain was, and despite the thunder, this was no violent storm pushed by a gale; it was as though the air simply couldn’t carry its moisture any longer. However, the Light of Fortune was definitely slowing as it passed through the harbour’s mouth.
“Captain!” Tila called. “Is there a problem?”
“We must wait for a harbour guide,” Kemanyel replied to her, pointing off the starboard bow. “One approaches now.”
The harbour guide was a small rowboat with six Alabans working the oars and another sitting in the bow, scudding towards them across the rain-battered waters of the harbour. Tila watched it approach until it came alongside the Light of Fortune, whereupon Kemanyel ordered a rope ladder tied to the railings and tossed overboard. The Alaban in the bow seized it and began climbing, and only then did Tila notice only one leg protruded from the bottom of their flowing lower garment. It didn’t seem to arrest their progress much: they lurched up the ladder, bracing their single foot against the rungs and pulling themselves up with their arms. When they reached the top they swung their leg over the railing and rested against it.
“Blessings be,” the harbour guide said in
their own tongue. Tila knew some of it, a strange mix of courtly Alaban and the rough language used by sailors and associated thugs she’d dealt with in Idramar’s backstreets. As a result she could handily welcome someone to a palace, or tell them to perform a lewd act on their own mother, but her ability to conduct a more regular conversation was limited.
“Blessings be,” Kemanyel replied in the same language. “Light of Fortune, out of Idramar.”
“Cargo?”
“Naridan ale.”
The harbour guide nodded. They had no beard, and the stocky figure under their clothes could have belonged to either a man or a woman. Tila knew enough about Alaban culture to make no assumptions.
“Do you know the fees?”
Kemanyel passed them a small leather pouch. The guide undid the drawstring and tipped the coins out, then nodded again in apparent satisfaction.
“Everything seems in order. Follow to your mooring, then wait for inspection.” They stowed the purse somewhere in their robes, then swung back over the side and onto the ladder. Tila half-expected them to miss their footing and fall, but they descended just as nimbly as they’d ascended. The rowboat turned and made off across the harbour, and Kemanyel called his crew to take up oars and follow.
East Harbour, as it slowly became revealed through the rain, was enormous.
Idramar sat on the northern bank of the Idra estuary, the mightiest of all Narida’s rivers, and its docks were both large and busy with trading traffic. However, Tila quickly realised as she looked around, it paled in comparison to East Harbour.
The bay looked as though a giant had taken a bite out of the side of the island, and must have been a mile across. It was not a truly smooth circle, but wasn’t too far from that, with the breakwaters further narrowing the open side. All shores were packed with wharfs and jetties, and clustered behind them was the city itself.
“It’s a fair sight, isn’t it?” Captain Kemanyel offered.
“Truly,” Tila agreed. She’d understood, to an extent, the level of Kiburu ce Alaba’s influence, but it was a different thing entirely to see it. And this was, she reminded herself, just one of Alaba’s many ports. None were so large as Grand Mahewa’s East Harbour, it was true, but the sheer amount of wealth that must flow through these islands was absolutely staggering.
“We’ll moor near the Naridan Quarter?” she asked the captain, who nodded.
“Aye. Slip the guide a few extra coins and they’ll ensure you get berthed near your potential buyers. Stint them, and you’ll end up where no one’ll find you.”
Tila snorted in amusement. That was good business sense.
“High Lady,” Kemanyel said tentatively. “This captain wonders… so he may best assist you… what is your business in East Harbour?”
Tila smiled to herself.
“This lady needs to find a Shark.”
SAANA
“WHAT IS THIS?” Daimon asked dubiously, studying the small wooden cup. It contained a measure of pale liquid, poured from a miniature cask the clan had tapped especially for the meal.
“It is shorat,” Saana said. “You do not have it?”
“Not by that name,” Daimon replied, sniffing it. He recoiled with a startled cough. “Not at all, this lord would wager!” He looked around the walled yard, which Saana had learned was the first of three protecting the home of the Blackcreek men, and those who served them.
Saana had struggled with the notion of serving-people. Tjakorshi who yielded in battle owed their captors service for a year and a day, as was proper, but the idea there were people who made their living serving others was hard to get her head around. There even seemed to be different importances: the high table, where she and Zhanna had been seated, was clearly the place of greatest honour, yet there were at least two servants here. A man called Osred was a steward, a chief-of-servants, with long black hair that fell past his jaw in scraggly waves, and shot through with the same grey that touched the stubble on either side of his chin. The plump, balding Kelaharel was a reeve, whose apparent role was to ensure everyone in the town behaved as they were supposed to. Also present was Aftak, a priest; large for a Naridan, and in his middle years, with ferocious eyebrows and a dark beard almost fit for a Tjakorshi.
It wasn’t lost on Saana that apart from her and Zhanna, everyone seated at the high table was a man.
“Your people drink this?” Daimon asked, sniffing his drink again.
“It is good for cold nights,” Saana said mildly, throwing hers back in one. She was used to the burning liquor, and her eyes watered only slightly. Daimon narrowed his eyes, but imitated her.
A moment later he was clutching at his throat and coughing uncontrollably. Saana laughed despite herself, while Zhanna emitted a sort of strangled snort, but then the steward Osred stood and pointed an accusing, bony finger.
“Poison! Poison!”
Saana stopped laughing abruptly. She and Zhanna had been seated in what was apparently the guest of honour’s place to Daimon’s left, but there were plenty of Black Keep folk all around them. What was more, many faces had looked up at the steward’s shout. All the Naridans had a metal dagger or knife to cut their food, and suddenly the yard looked less like a feasting area and more like an under-equipped battlefield.
“Wait!” Daimon spluttered, struggling to his feet and waving a hand frantically at Osred. “Wait!” He coughed again, then wiped his streaming eyes and raised a voice slightly hoarser than before. “This lord commends his steward’s vigilance, but this lord simply swallowed something the wrong way!”
There was general laughter from the Naridans, and most turned back to their meals. Saana’s folk hadn’t understood either the steward’s shriek or Daimon’s response, but most of them also seemed to realise that whatever problem had arisen was gone now. Ristjaan didn’t dive back into his food, though, instead raising his eyebrows at her in an obvious query. Saana shook her head slightly at him in response, to tell him that everything was fine. He shrugged, but then turned back to the tankard of foaming brown liquid in front of him that the Naridans called ale. Saana’s was only half-drunk: she’d found it unpalatably bitter.
“You did not swallow that wrong, did you?” she said in a low voice, when Daimon retook his seat.
“How do your people grow so tall, with drink of this kind?” the sar said with a grimace. “This lord’s throat is on fire!”
“It takes everyone like that at first,” Saana admitted. A young Naridan girl came up with the shorat cask and, at Daimon’s gesture, poured another cautious measure into each of their cups. Saana sipped hers more gently this time, enjoying the slow warmth. “You get used to it.”
“This lord cannot imagine why you would want to,” Daimon replied, but managed another sip with only a slight splutter. “Nari’s teeth, that is strong!”
“You have said that name before,” Saana said, taking a bite of dark bread. “Nalon said he is your god, but also he was a man.”
“Nari was the first God-King,” Daimon said. “He lived many years ago.” He stabbed a piece of meat with his knife. “Some say he will return to us one day, reborn into a child, but they also say that his return will herald an age of ruin, for many will resist him. This lord would not wish to see such times.”
“But you have another God-King now?” Saana asked. “You spoke of one earlier. Is that a different one?”
“Nari was the first, but his lineage lives on.” Saana didn’t recognise the word and her incomprehension must have shown, because Daimon elaborated. “His son, and then his son’s son, and then his son’s son’s son, and so on. Nari saved us from the Unmaker, drove her demons from the land, and founded Narida. Our current God-King is Natan Narida, the third of his name. He is named for the entire country, as this lord is named for Blackcreek, the land over which his family rules.”
Saana frowned. “And a king is… a chief of chiefs?”
“You have no king?” The notion seemed to shock Daimon.
“Tjakors
ha just has chiefs,” Saana replied, plucking a piece of meat from the bone. “A chief may have powerful clan, may conquer another clan, but no chief is above other chiefs.” No mortal chief is, at any rate.
“Are you sure?” Daimon’s eyes were focused on her, uncomfortably scrutinising. “You seem uncertain. Is this why you could not stay?”
Saana grimaced. “There is… Nalon said your closest word was ‘demon’, but that he had not heard of such a thing here. We call it ‘draug’. Draugs can take the body of a sick person, or a dead person if the proper rites not done are, and wear them like clothes. It has been killing chiefs, breaking the clans.”
“This lord thought you worshipped demons,” Daimon said, taking a small sip of his shorat. Saana stared at him.
“Why would we do that?!” She held his gaze for a moment, then dropped her eyes. “Well, this man hears some of the broken clans worship this draug, think of it as a god. They are… Their thoughts are… not right?”
“Crazy?” Daimon offered.
“Perhaps.” Saana would have to ask Nalon the word later.
“What is this demon called?” Daimon asked. “Have you seen it?”
“No,” Saana said vehemently, shaking her head. “We have not heard that anyone knows whose body it is, but we know the draug is terrible and fell in battle, and the witches say it cannot be killed. We know it only as The Golden.”
It had seemed like a Long Night fire tale, at first. Only a few of the clan could remember the last time a draug had managed to possess someone, and that had been a weak thing that the witches had driven out. When the rumours came of this being calling itself The Golden, the clan had dismissed it as Easterner nonsense. But the rumours kept coming, and then they’d heard about how the Skua clan had seized The Golden during a raid, taken it back to their lands and hanged it like the worst of criminals. Half a day it had hung, and when its followers had arrived to cut it down, it had pulled the noose from around its neck and gotten up to open the throat of the Skua clan’s chief itself. What could you do, against a being like that?