Isles of the Forsaken

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  “A Lashnura?” Spaeth asked, interested.

  “Yes. His name is Anit. I’ll take you.”

  Wanting Spaeth safe but reluctant to let her go, Harg looked around for Tway. She was already at his side. “I’ll go with her,” she said.

  “Thanks, Tway.” He was still holding Spaeth’s hand. He forced himself to let go. “Be careful,” he warned. Spaeth had been perfectly magnificent in there, facing down Holby Dorn, but far too incautious. Her sense of invulnerability could get her in trouble.

  Calpe gave a piercing whistle, and a man came out from behind the bar, drying his hands on a towel. Calpe gave him a series of curt orders, and he nodded, glancing curiously at Harg. Then she said, “Follow Noll,” and turned to shepherd Spaeth and Tway toward the door.

  *

  For Spaeth, leaving the Green Lantern was like escaping a furnace. She had not realized how the presence of so many uncured souls had overtaxed her senses till she breathed in the cool night air outside. She stood, gratefully relaxing her mind, as Calpe gave some instructions to the burly man by the doorway.

  She felt much farther than a day’s journey from Yora. From her first glance of Thimish’s pine-covered hills, she had known it would not be a friendly island. It eyed her from under its cloak of forest, old and crafty, wearing Harbourdown like a tawdry bangle. She remembered how Mother Tish had always said that people were not meant to go from island to island, because they might get tricked into trusting one that wasn’t theirs.

  Coming to the Green Lantern had been repellent and mesmerizing. She had never encountered so many people in various sorts of pain, psychic and physical. They were damaged in ways she had never seen, and could barely understand. She had felt the tantalizing tug of it from all sides. It was like smelling a hundred spices competing for her attention, waking her desires. There was a complexity, a depth of adversity in these people; each one was a landscape of wounds that would take months or years to explore. She could dive into the souls here and never surface.

  “Are you all right, Grey Lady?” Calpe asked.

  Shaking herself out of the memory, Spaeth said, “Yes.”

  The noise of pirate revelry died away behind them as they went down the alley. A gusty wind awakened a hollow rattle of rigging from the moored boats in the harbour. The streets were very dark, and the lantern Calpe carried cast a sickly light. As they began to climb uphill, buildings closed in on either side—silent, crowding shapes of brick and timber.

  After a time they reached an open square. Against the northern stars ahead, Spaeth could see the symmetrical outline of the ancient fort that dominated the town. It lay atop a steep ridge of stone, its five bastions spread out like a reaching hand. She could see pinpricks of light where a late caravan climbed the switchback road to the citadel.

  Calpe fell back by Spaeth’s side. “That is the Redoubt,” she said. “Perhaps you have heard of it.”

  When Spaeth shook her head, Calpe said in a low tone, “It was built in the time when the great lords of Alta ruled. No one knows what use they made of it. Now and then our young men would try to stay the night, but they said it didn’t want them there.”

  “It looks inhabited now.”

  Calpe nodded darkly. “The Innings stationed soldiers there.”

  Spaeth peered up at the ancient pile. “It doesn’t look ruined.”

  “It isn’t. The Altans built it in such a way that no piece of it decays. They say the whole thing would shatter into slivers at a single blow well aimed, but until that blow comes, no part of it will break.”

  They crossed the square and began to thread their way up a cobbled alley aromatic with trampled spices and rotting fruit. Now the buildings of brick and wood gave way to ponderous stone. The grim, dilapidated masonry still had an air of magnificence; the houses soared three stories, taller than Spaeth had ever seen.

  It was strange being near so many people, and yet alone. Beyond each wall, Spaeth could tell, people swarmed like ants: talking, smoking, loving, swearing, dying. Yet outside the boxes of their houses, the street was like a desert.

  They stopped at last before a tall, shuttered house with gaping, empty upper windows. A rustling came from a garbage bin across the way. When Calpe rapped vigorously on the door, a cloud of bats issued chittering from the second-story window.

  Presently they heard the rattle of bolts being drawn inside, and a tiny crack of light appeared. Calpe raised the lantern to her face, and the woman inside gave an exclamation of alarm.

  “He is ill, Calpe!” she said. “He can’t help you tonight.” She tried to close the door, but Calpe’s foot was wedged in the crack.

  “It’s your help I want this time, Lorin,” she said.

  “Mine? Why? I’m not one of them—”

  Calpe drew Spaeth into the lamplight. “We have a new dhotamar,” she said.

  The eyes inside the door caught at Spaeth with a look of fearful hope. “Ehir,” the woman breathed. The door fell open, and Calpe pushed Spaeth through.

  The room inside was snug and wood panelled. As Lorin lit the lamps, Spaeth caught her breath in wonder. The room was a fantasia of ivory carvings. Ivory fish sported among the rafters, owls perched on the cabinets, lizards lurked behind the spice-jars, mice peeked out from beneath the hearth-broom. A wreath of snow-white holly hung above the fireplace, and by the shuttered window a pot of ivory asters bloomed. The room was crowded with life, frozen into motionless immortality.

  “This is the home of Anit the Bonecrafter,” Calpe explained. “He is my bandhota. Lorin is his daughter.”

  Now that Lorin stood in the light, Spaeth was surprised to see that she was Adaina. Her brown face was framed with dark, curly hair; her body would have seemed small if she had not been many months pregnant. She greeted Spaeth and Tway with respect, clasping her hands together with the index fingertips touching. “You honour our house, Grey Lady.”

  An old man’s voice called out from the next room, and Lorin turned like a shy, wild thing to the doorway. “Calpe has brought us a guest, Father,” she called. “A dhotamar from another isle.”

  There was a thump and some shuffling steps, then Anit appeared at the doorway, dressed in his nightshirt and walking with a cane. His grey face was entirely circled with a bush of white hair that hid his ears and chin but left his round cheeks to glow like apples of ivory. “Why Calpe, my dear!” he said, taking her hand and giving her a lingering kiss on the cheek. “Sit down, sit down,” Anit gestured them to some chairs by the fireplace. On the calico cushion of one of them an ivory cat was curled. “Here, don’t sit on Tassie,” Anit warned, and picked the cat up. “We’ll just put her by the window; she loves to look out on the street.” He placed the cat on the windowsill and shuffled back to hang a shining copper teakettle over the fire.

  “Some people claim that Anit’s creatures come to life at night, like the statues in the song of Ison Omer,” Calpe said.

  “Why,” Anit’s grey eyes twinkled, “don’t they look alive to you now?” Without waiting for an answer, he began to introduce Spaeth and Tway to his menagerie of friends. All of them had names, from the ivory goldfinch perched on a teacup to the ivory beetle under the woodpile.

  “Where is Gamin, Anit?” Calpe asked when he seemed to have finished his introductions.

  “Why, that Torna trader bought him,” Anit said.

  “I hope you made him pay dearly,” Calpe muttered darkly.

  The bonecrafter only gave a laugh like apple cider being poured into a glass. “He came here two days since, all eager to dicker his copper pots and fishhooks for my carvings. Imagine!” He ran his finger thoughtfully along the curved back of a leaping fish. “He thought he could buy the wind with a fishhook, and sea-spray with a pail. I let him have what he wanted. He said he would take them off to a fine Inning lady at Fluminos, who would put them in a glass case
. It made me sad to think of her and her glass cases. They say the Innings have lost their past, you know. I think that would be a terrible thing.”

  For the first time since leaving Yora, Spaeth felt perfectly safe. She laid her head back against the chair cushion, breathing out the collected tension.

  “You’ve been out in the town?” Anit said, eyeing her keenly. Spaeth nodded. “It’s hard to go out there,” he said softly. “So many hungry people. If you did all that was needed, you’d have no blood left. I stay close to home these days. We all do; to go out would be tempting madness.”

  “Are there many Grey Folk here?” Spaeth asked.

  “No, not many; there aren’t many anywhere any more. We’ve lost our taste for keeping the race alive, I think. I know I did. Would you want to bring a child into this world only to inherit the kind of life we lead? It’s a cruelty I could not commit.”

  Tway was looking at Lorin, puzzled. “I thought—”

  “Ah, but you see her mother was Adaina,” Anit said, taking Lorin’s hand fondly. “The half-Lashnura don’t always inherit the disease, or the gift, or whatever it is.”

  Spaeth said, “Goth always said the isles were full of half-Grey children, but they were only born Lashnura if their parents truly wanted it.”

  Anit chuckled. “Goth, whoever he was, was only telling half the story. Can you ever say, with perfect certainty, what it is you truly want? Eh?”

  The kettle was boiling. Lorin went to the hearth to pour some tea, and Calpe moved silently to Anit’s side. He looked at her with a radiant, doting smile.

  “I can’t stay,” she said softly.

  Anit shook his head in disappointment. Calpe put her palm on his cheek and turned his head to her, then kissed him slowly, open-mouthed. Their bodies pressed together, a picture of inflamed desire.

  Lorin had frozen, watching them, with the kettle in one hand. Then she banged it loudly down on its wrought-iron stand.

  Anit and Calpe broke apart. Calpe squeezed his hand, then turned to leave. The old man’s gaze followed her longingly; when the door had closed behind her he turned to Spaeth. “My daughter’s a prude,” he said in a loud whisper.

  “She preys on him,” Lorin said to Spaeth, as if her father weren’t in the room. “Every week, sometimes twice. He can’t deny her; he’s besotted. It will kill him one of these days.”

  Lorin’s helpless rage was achingly attractive.

  “We have one like that on Yora,” Tway said.

  Lorin handed Spaeth a cup of tea with a look of yearning. “But now you are here,” she said. “If you stay, you can take some of the burden off him.”

  “Oh, for shame, Lorin, to put such an obligation on a guest,” said Anit. “Pay no attention to her.”

  To Spaeth’s relief, Lorin turned away then and began fetching blankets to make up beds for the guests. Spaeth sat wondering if there were any place where she could escape the desperate needs of humans.

  *

  After Calpe departed the Green Lantern with Spaeth and Tway, the men trooped up the stairs at the heels of the bartender, Noll. He showed them to a small room under the eaves, and left with the promise that their dinners would be up soon.

  Torr said, “Holy crap, that’s some magic you’ve got, Harg. Calpe never gives away food.”

  “I thought she was just the barmaid,” Harg said.

  “No, she owns this place, and runs it like a Torna drill sergeant.”

  Harg filed away that useful information in his head. It made him realize that, mentally, he was already recruiting. He frowned, trying to stop himself from thinking that way.

  Barko said, “I’m sorry about Holby Dorn, Harg. I didn’t know you and he had a history.”

  “Neither did I,” said Harg.

  They settled down around the small table. Harg could see from their faces that they were wondering how angry he would be. He decided to dismiss what had happened and skip ahead. “Why don’t you tell me about your situation?” he said.

  They crowded round to fill him in. It turned out there were already two of Tiarch’s ships in Harbourdown: a frigate guarding the harbour and an unarmed troop transport that had brought the soldiers and arms to re-man the fort on the hill. The three additional warships en route from the Inner Chain were due to arrive in about three days. The Thimishmen had good intelligence on them: the largest was a two-decker with forty guns, the others had twenty and sixteen. Once they arrived, the pirates would be outgunned more than two to one.

  “Which route are they using?” Harg asked.

  “The northern one,” Barko said significantly.

  “So they’ll have to go through Rockmeet Straits.”

  “Right. It’s the obvious place for an ambush, but some of the pirates think it’s too risky.”

  “Fuck the pirates,” Harg said, momentarily revealing that he wasn’t as dispassionate as he seemed. “Who else do you have?”

  The others started discussing names. At last Barko said, “We could probably put together two dozen navy guys from Thimish and Romm. But we don’t have ships or guns. That’s why we need the pirates.”

  And even if the pirates were trustworthy, their boats would look like mosquitoes next to the warships. It seemed perfectly hopeless on the surface. But Harg was unwilling to let the problem go. “What about the fort? How many men in the garrison?”

  “At the moment only forty, and at least ten of them are usually stationed around town. There will be twice as many once the ships arrive. But it doesn’t take many to defend the Redoubt. Wait until you see it, Harg. It’s impregnable. You couldn’t take it without siege weapons.”

  “And what about the frigate?”

  “We could take the frigate,” Barko said, “if it weren’t for the fort. They’ve got guns up there covering the harbour. They could blow us to smithereens.”

  It was all an interlocked puzzle, and you just needed to find the key to make it fall apart. Harg couldn’t yet see the key, but he was sure it must be there. People were always fallible; they left some loose end hanging. There were only three days to find it. Once the ships were here, the military options would be even more limited.

  He had fallen into an intense, focused silence that the men who had served with him recognized, and knew better than to interrupt. But before he could emerge from it, the food arrived, and all of them set to demolishing it.

  They were still eating when Calpe came in to check on them. Harg said, “Everything okay?”

  Calpe nodded. “She’s safe, don’t worry.”

  When the food was just a remnant of its former self, Barko leaned back and said, “So what do you think, Harg? Are we screwed?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Harg said. “I need to look it over myself, in the morning. But it depends some on what you want to accomplish.”

  The man named Cobb said, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, do you just want to get their attention? Do you want to turn the boats back? Or do you want to actually capture them?”

  They all looked at each other. Finally Barko said, “I’d settle for any of those.”

  “Okay,” Harg said. “Say the object is to get their attention—that’s most realistic. Then you’ve got to ask yourselves why we don’t have their attention already. Seems to me there’s two reasons, and only one is solvable by military means. First, they think we’ve got no power. Second, they think we don’t have anything to say. We’ve got to show them they’re wrong on both counts.”

  Barko gave a slow grin. It made him look like a banshee. “You just stopped saying ‘you’ and started saying ‘we.’”

  Irritated, Harg said, “It was a slip. I told you, I can’t get involved.” It was sounding less convincing every time he said it.

  Barko poured him some more beer. “Okay, then just theoretically.
If you were involved.”

  “You need to pull together some demands—things the Innings could imagine themselves doing. Something short of ‘Get the hell out.’”

  “Like what?” Cobb said.

  “I don’t know. Giving us an Adaina governor with power equal to Tiarch’s. Appointing Adaina officers. Giving us full citizenship rights. Whatever you want.”

  They were all frowning at the prospect of coexistence that Harg’s examples seemed to imply. “They wouldn’t do those things,” Torr said.

  “How do you know unless you ask?”

  There was a sceptical silence. This was the larger problem, Harg thought: they had gotten so used to being conquered that they couldn’t think any other way. The Adaina could only think as far as rebelling, not as far as ruling. They needed people who could plan, and talk, and organize. People who could communicate with Innings. What they needed was Torna help.

  “Barko,” he asked, “are there any Tornas in Harbourdown who might support you?”

  “Are you crazy, man?” Barko said. “They’re all for law and order. They support anyone who will control the pirates.”

  “But we’re not pirates. We’re people sticking up for the rights of the South Chain.”

  “I don’t want Tornas involved,” Cobb said. “They’d just take over. This is about us, the Adaina.” There was a murmur of assent from the others.

  Harg stared off into the darkness beyond the candles on the table. Calpe was still sitting there, in the shadows by the wall, listening. He said slowly, “Didn’t you hear what Spaeth said down there? This isn’t just about us. It’s about mora, and the balances. That means we’ve got a duty not to lose.”

  They were staring at him gravely, and he felt a qualm for having brought the Lashnura into it. He could feel the tangible power of reverence in the room, changing the whole tone.

  Barko said, “There are some Torna navy men, discharged just like us, and not too happy with the way things are going.”

  “I do shipping for some local Torna shopkeepers,” Torr said. “Some of them are saying the Innings are giving all the contracts to the big Tornabay merchants, Tiarch’s cronies, and leaving them out.”