Isles of the Forsaken

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  A gunshot went off, and in a moment of sheer instinct, Harg grabbed for his officer’s pistol, an elegant flintlock which, as soon as he had it in his hand, he recalled was loaded but not primed. It didn’t matter; the sight of the gun had the necessary effect. The marines both froze. On one knee over Jory’s rigid, quivering body, Harg paused with the gun in his hand. Seeing an opportunity to calm the situation, he said in a commanding tone, “No one move, and we can work this out.”

  The soldiers both obeyed, but the instant Harg thought everything was under control, something barrelled into him from behind, knocking the gun from his hand and the breath from his body, laying him out on the ground. He had forgotten the overseer, twice his size and three times as angry.

  The marines sprang to life again, laying into him with their truncheons, so that all he could do was try to shield his own head from the blows. As several more marines, summoned by the gunshot, came racing up, they wrenched Harg’s arms behind him and tied them with some sort of twine to his ankles. Four men picked him up, and he saw the box with the epaulette fall from his jacket into the sand.

  “Gill! Bonn! Take care of Jory!” he shouted at the Yorans, who stood frozen, appalled at the explosion of violence on their beach.

  After that, Harg saw only the sands of Yora passing under him as they carried him off to the brig.

  3

  Prisoners of the Past

  The city of Tornabay was wedged into a crescent between the mountain and the sea. To a ship approaching from the east, it seemed to rise nearly vertical from the water, the conical peak of Mount Embo at its back.

  It was a smoky, hodgepodge city that climbed the mountainside in an architectural tumult, clutching for toeholds on the steep slope. Neighbourhoods butted aggressively at each other; their boundaries looked like the results of fierce haggling sessions like the ones that went on in the markets by the waterfront.

  Tornabay was a trading city, always in the market for something new. In its chameleon history it had incorporated every wave of migration that had washed over the isles. The smoke-darkened, geometric mass of its stone palace, built on a rocky spur that bisected the city, was proof that the Altans had once found something there worth guarding against, though what it was no one knew. When Alta fell in the time before history, the town became a sleepy Adaina settlement of timber, woodsmoke, and net reels, clustered along the bay. Then the industrious Torna had immigrated and transformed it into a busy, brick-and-beam emporium organized around a hundred markets. When the Innings conquered the isles, they spurned the ancient capital of Lashnish and made Tornabay their colonial headquarters. They cleared away whole tracts to impose an island of rational order on the mercantile hubbub.

  It was just after dawn when an imperial frigate flying the red-and-white standard of Inning moved into the bay between the black, knife-edged headlands. It was a grand sight in the morning sun. Forty guns ranged on two decks, sails piled to the sky to catch the morning breeze, it walked the water with authority. As it cast anchor in the harbour, the only sounds that drifted to the piers were the faraway rattle of anchor cable and the occasional muffled bark of orders as the sails came down and the ship swung downwind of its mooring.

  The captain had brought the ship in at dawn for a reason. His orders were to transport the prisoner into the city before many people were abroad. The vessel held only one passenger. The fewer who knew of his presence, the better Governor Tiarch would be pleased.

  The captain and three marines escorted the passenger on deck. His grey Lashnura skin was gullied deep with wrinkles, and his hair was white; but he stood erect, taller than the stocky Tornas who guarded him. His face, lean with years of hardship, held an expression of unfathomable sadness. It was a face a little like the barren mountainside behind the city—rough and sheer, beyond control or comprehension.

  A six-oared scow with an enclosed cloth awning in the stern bumped up against the ship’s hull, and the men turned to it. Now the prisoner’s head bowed again. One of the boatmen put out a respectful hand to help him step from the accommodation ladder into the rocking scow. Though the help was not needed, the old man murmured a word of thanks. The boatman, an Adaina, gave a gesture of respect and murmured, “Ehir.” The Torna commander frowned at this. He ushered the old man under the awning, and pulled the curtains tight.

  On the maps, Tornabay lay at the mouth of the river Em; but the river had long ago disappeared underneath the crowded buildings. Where it once had met the sea, Tornabay had extended long wooden fingers into the bay, spawning warehouses and shops over the water. By now a boat could sail far into the mazy waterways between buildings, and the sense of where the land ended and the sea began was hazy. As they pierced deeper into the watery lanes, the smells of the city changed: from the salt and seaweed of the harbour, to the fish and oily rope of the outer wharves, to the rancid tar and offal of the inner wharves, to fresh-baking bread and wood smoke as they neared the inner city.

  They landed where a flight of slippery marble steps descended to the water from a broad plaza lined with the stately houses of Inning authority in the Forsakens. They crossed toward the centre of the grand colonnade that faced the bay. Seagulls and pigeons competed in the broad, empty square. The building dwarfed the five men as they climbed the wide steps and passed beneath the pillars. The great bronze doors stood open.

  The captain did not recognize the Navy Office functionary who met them. “I was to report to Tiarch with the prisoner.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” the official replied. “Commodore Joffrey will be taking charge from here.”

  “My orders came direct from the Governor.”

  “There is a new commander of the Fourth Fleet. You should have been informed.”

  There had been a letter, but the captain hadn’t thought it would affect his mission, hatched in the utmost secrecy. It appeared that much had changed in Tornabay in his absence. Some Fluminos flunky no one had ever heard of thought he was taking over the reins from Tiarch. “Very well,” he said, standing aside. Then, under his breath, “We’ll see how long this lasts.”

  The official cast a curious look at the captive, but the old man was gazing off into the distance. He followed abstractedly as the official led the way through the broad, quiet corridors of the state house.

  Commodore Joffrey was working in the bright, high-ceilinged room he had chosen as an office. The tall windows faced south into a courtyard where imported Inning plants bloomed in the brief Tornabay summer. The arms and trophies of war decorated the opposite wall, marshalled in columns. In the centre of the room, a mahogany table was set in gleaming silver for two. When the old man was shown in, Joffrey rose from his desk. He was a young Torna officer, so newly promoted that the ink was still wet on his commission. He had seized this situation away from Tiarch to prove a point about his authority; but in fact he had very little experience dealing with Grey Folk.

  “Factor Goran,” he greeted the prisoner. He had decided to use an Inning title to avoid acknowledging Goran’s real station; but now that he heard it, it sounded absurd. To cover his unease, Joffrey spoke forcefully: “May I welcome you again to Tornabay.” It sounded more like an order than a greeting.

  The old man did not move from the doorway. Putting on a more urbane tone, Joffrey said, “I see they have already supplied you with proper clothing. Breakfast will be served shortly. If there is anything else we can provide, please ask.”

  Still the prisoner did not speak. His prolonged silence was beginning to seem disrespectful. Perhaps the old man did not realize he was in the presence of the commander of the Fourth Fleet’s Northern Squadron; perhaps he did not care.

  “Please come in and sit down,” Joffrey said stiffly.

  Goran turned his strange, silver eyes on Joffrey. “Why have I been brought back here?” His tone held none of the arrogance Joffrey had expected, only resignation.

&n
bsp; “For your own protection, Factor Goran,” Joffrey answered. “We feared that unscrupulous people would try to use you for bad causes.”

  “I have managed to prevent that for forty years,” Goran pointed out wearily.

  “In uneasy times, extra caution is needed.”

  “Is this an uneasy time?”

  Was it possible, Joffrey wondered, that the man did not know of the impending Inning occupation of the outer chains? If so, best to keep him ignorant. “The isles are as quiet as always,” he said. “We merely wish to keep them that way.”

  “I see,” Goran said.

  Joffrey was finding he had to prevent himself from falling back on the old superstitions he had learned from his mother. In spite of all his Inning education and years in the navy, Joffrey felt a secret fascination at facing a man who had been born to give his lifeblood for the isles. There was a more familiar excitement as well—the knowledge of political power in his control. In the Forsakens, this meek old man could create kingdoms.

  He showed Goran to the table where a samovar of tea sat waiting. The servants entered with breakfast almost as soon as they sat down. There were five courses to the meal; Goran stared as the servants set them out in gleaming dishes, and Joffrey had to invite him to help himself. He did so awkwardly, picking up the linen napkin and the heavy silver utensils as if they were outlandish and strange. “Your pardon,” he murmured to the Commodore’s curious look. “I have not touched a fork in thirty years.”

  “Your exile must have been harsher than anyone intended,” Joffrey said, helping himself to smoked mackerel and hot scones. “I’m sure they never meant you to leave behind civilization altogether.”

  “I didn’t,” Goran replied. “But I did leave forks behind.”

  As he reached out to set down a serving dish, Joffrey glimpsed his lean arm, covered with a patchwork of white scars from elbow to wrist. Joffrey caught himself staring.

  The old man saw his gaze, but made no effort to hide his mutilated arm. Instead, he gazed at it, as if the sight transported him somewhere else. Joffrey, watching closely, realized the old man was struggling with some intense emotion. He wondered in alarm if the stories might be true, and Lashnurai separated from their bandhotai could pine away to death.

  When the meal was cleared away, they sat together over some rich imported tea. Goran awkwardly cradled the translucent porcelain cup in his large, hardened hands, his face still tense with the effort to keep his emotions under control. Joffrey realized now that his guest was not silent from artifice or pride, but because he could not trust himself to speak.

  In a casual tone Joffrey said, “I thought the Heir of Gilgen did not need to perform ordinary dhota.”

  Goran seemed to be steeling himself to answer. “That is true. The Black Mask did not compel me. I chose to give dhota, of my own free will.”

  Chose it? Joffrey wondered at that. Who would choose pain and slavery?

  “It was very foolish of me,” Goran said. “But I never thought I would have to leave them. I never thought you would want to . . . protect me.” There was a momentary note of irony in his tone, gone so swiftly Joffrey could not tell if it had truly been there.

  “We did not wish you to be the victim of the first misguided demagogue who fancies himself leader of all the isles,” Joffrey said.

  Goran put down his cup. For an instant, a steely firmness glanced from his light eyes. “You did not need to worry. I do not grant dhota-nur merely to raise one leader or another to power. I grant it only if the balances are in danger, the cause is justified, and the leader is of the stature to restore harmony to the world.”

  In spite of himself, Joffrey felt a twinge of awe. And that, he told himself firmly, was where this man’s political power originated. The leader to whom he gave dhota-nur attained a sanction that was nearly divine. “Yet your father gave dhota-nur for a hopeless and foolish cause,” he said, “trying to prevent the Innings from governing the Forsakens.”

  “It was hopeless, I grant that. Perhaps foolish as well. Dhota-nur does not prevent foolishness, or it would prevent heroism as well. But if the Torna had not sided with the Innings, there would have been no invasion.”

  “If your kind hadn’t stirred up the Adaina, there would have been no resistance,” Joffrey said stiffly.

  Goran shook his head as if the argument were not to his taste. “I cannot defend my father’s choice, or condemn it either. I was only a child when Orin’s War ended. They say I was captured at Sandhaven; I do not remember that. I do remember what happened after I was in the Innings’ power. I was imprisoned for six months until the last of the Inner Chain surrendered. And then I was held for fifteen years. Here, in the palace at Tornabay. When I was twenty-four years old they told me to go and lose myself in the islands, and forget who I was. I obeyed them; I always have. But it seems I did not flee far enough. I forgot who I was, but others remembered for me.”

  “The Inning authority has known all along where you were. We traced you even when you fled to that flyspeck island in the South Chain.”

  “Yora,” Goran said distantly.

  “That’s right.”

  “The eye of Tiarch sees far,” Goran said.

  “Factor Goran—” Joffrey started; but the old man held up a callused hand.

  “Why do you call me Factor?” he asked. “I have never owned Inning property. If you must give me a title, then give me the right one.”

  “Onan?” Joffrey said stiffly. “That title has been abolished.”

  “I have not earned it anyway, not until I give dhota-nur. If I am simply a citizen, call me Goran. Or better yet, give me my real name, Goth Batra.”

  It made Joffrey uneasy to hear him speak of dhota-nur as if there were still a chance he might give it, since that was what he had been brought here to prevent. “I hope that you may be the first Heir of Gilgen in many centuries to avoid the curse of dhota-nur.”

  “At any rate, I will be the last.” To Joffrey’s cautious look, Goran said, “I have no children. I long ago decided I could not inflict on another human being the life of persecution I have led.”

  “So you intend your line to perish, after all these centuries?”

  Joffrey watched him closely, wondering what was going on in his involuted Lashnura mind. At last the old man said, “There is a tradition that someday the Lashnura burden will be transferred to other shoulders. When that day comes, we will have paid our debt and at last we will be free.”

  He paused so long that Joffrey asked, “You think that day is coming?”

  “I cannot tell,” Goran shook his head. “After all, we have been hoping for six centuries now.”

  By the time the guards arrived to escort the prisoner up to the palace, Joffrey was relieved to relinquish charge of his guest. He had learned less than he had hoped. The old man’s mind was a paradox, he told himself angrily as he poured a glass of wine to wash down breakfast. But the paradox that truly bothered him was in himself. Deep down, his mother’s primitive reverence still persisted. It made him feel ashamed.

  He sat down at his desk to resume the delicate task that had been interrupted by the prisoner’s arrival—composing a letter to his commander, Admiral Talley. Joffrey had to strike just the right note: tell his superior enough about the curious situation in Tornabay to make him appreciate the skill it took to cope with it, but little enough that he didn’t feel compelled to arrive on the scene.

  The offer of promotion to Commodore of the Fourth Fleet, the new name for the Native Navy, had come as a surprise to Joffrey, because his background was not in field command. He had been in military intelligence. His job had been to spy on the officers of the Inning Navy for Admiral Talley, and report back on their opinions, their loyalties, and their competence. It had led Joffrey into the intricacies of Inning politics, a subject for which he now had a
deep appreciation. It was not until he had arrived in Tornabay that he had understood why Talley wanted someone of his background in the post.

  During the war, the Northern Squadron, stationed in Tornabay, had grown lax and corrupt. Far from the fighting, it had become a haven for Inning officers who enjoyed the easy life as aristocracy of a provincial capital, and it had served as a trough of patronage for the worthless sons-in-law of wealthy Torna merchants. Joffrey had arrived to find the payroll packed with people who barely worked, and had no loyalty to anyone but Tiarch, the governor who had gotten them their jobs. In fact, the Northern Squadron had ceased to function as a navy, and more closely resembled a thuggish private security force owned by the merchants and the governor, with a few indolent Innings enjoying the kickbacks. It was a cozy little private party—Innings, Tiarch, and the merchants all in bed together, and Joffrey had been sent to break it up.

  Which he had no intention of doing.

  And therein lay his dilemma. His previous job had given him a vivid appreciation of how thin was the ice upon which the Talley family walked, with their crowd-pleasing penchant for reform. They were riding high now all right, but it would not take much to make the wind shift, and when it did Joffrey wanted to be in a position to trim his sails a new way. He could not afford to make enemies of the Tornabay cabal. Accommodate, adapt, accept the situation: that was how he had gotten ahead in the Native Navy. And at the moment that meant keeping the Admiral far away and in the dark.

  He was almost relieved when his adjutant looked in to announce another visitor. But when he heard the name, Provost Minicleer, he gave an inward groan and steeled himself for the encounter.

  When Minicleer strolled into the room, he looked perfectly at ease—as he should, since this pleasant office had been his until two weeks ago. He was one of the Inning officers who had resigned their commissions rather than serve on an equal footing with islanders; but unlike the others, he had not gone away. Instead, he had pulled strings to secure himself a civilian appointment in Tornabay, though what a provost did was a mystery to Joffrey. It apparently involved attending parties, gambling, and sleeping with a great many merchants’ daughters. No matter; Joffrey had to get along with the dissolute fellow, since there was nothing he could do about him.