by Glenda Larke
“That’s hardly likely to be the case if you are buying up all of the nutmeg harvest here!”
He grinned. “Exactly. Spice Winds is no longer my target. The other ships of the fleet will have a nicely varied cargo. Ideally, we sneak away before any Lowmian ship arrives here, lurk around the Spicerie until we can capture one or two of their fluyts, put our own sailors on board to sail them back to Throssel, and everybody goes home happy.”
“Fundamentally flawed reasoning. The Lowmians will be extremely unhappy.”
“Which worries me not the twitch of a kitten’s tail. My liege will be delighted.”
“You are incorrigible. So you want me to take the longboat out and start patrolling the horizon?”
“You can be very obtuse, witan! If I wanted anyone to do that I’d choose someone who knows a cleat from a clewline. I want you to use your fobbing witchery, you ninny. What better lookout is there than a bird way up in the air, miles out to sea?”
“I can’t exactly talk to them, you know. What do you expect me to do? ‘Excuse me, Master Seagull, can you go look for Spice Winds and then come back and tell me the precise latitude…’ ”
“Tush! Of course you can. Talk to them, I mean. Ask nicely and they do all sorts of things for you! I’ve seen it, remember?”
He sighed. “You have no idea how difficult it is. I might get them to look, but how can they tell where the ship is afterwards? ‘It was next to the most delicious shoal of minnow, and not far from some floating bladderwort.’ ”
“I have every faith that a witan of your intelligence will overcome any minor flaws in communication,” Juster said blithely. “How long will it take before you have some birds on the lookout about twenty nautical miles from here?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Find out, will you?” With that, Juster disappeared to check the stowing of another load of nutmeg.
Exasperated, he slapped his palm down on the bulwark. “Beggar it, Sorrel. He’s making a privateer of me.”
Sighing, she said, “Nothing is clear-cut any more, is it? I discovered that when I killed my husband. The waters are always murky to me now.”
“To me too.”
“Look–Ardhi has met someone on the beach.”
He shaded his eyes. “A woman. Let’s hope it’s a friend who’ll be able to talk him out of this wish to sacrifice himself.”
“I think I want to go ashore,” she said.
“That’s not a good idea. We don’t know enough about these people, and your grasp of the language is still fairly rudimentary. I can’t go with you, not if I have to help Juster.”
She rolled her eyes. “Witchery…”
“And what if anyone here with a sakti witchery can see through your glamour? Ardhi can!”
“Yes, but I can spot folk with witcheries too, don’t forget. And tailor my actions accordingly.”
“Don’t go alone, Sorrel. Wait until I can go with you.” He pulled a face. “Right now I have to chat to some birds, although how I’m going to persuade them to tell me what they see, I’ve no idea.”
“Tell them to come back and waggle their wings, or something.”
“Wait for me and I’ll go with you.”
He didn’t wait for her reply, though, and she pulled a face at his retreating back. Vex you, Saker, I don’t always have to do what you want and I don’t believe you are any older or wiser than I am!
Ardhi reached the shore and waded up onto the sands, squinting as the glare dazzled him. He felt behind his back to make sure he still had the kris, wrung out the cloth of his sarong as best he could and turned to look back at Golden Petrel. Juster was right. It was a beautiful vessel. However, its array of gunports, each one hiding a cannon, meant it could also be deadly. He must never forget that.
All this time I accepted that I was going to die… that it was necessary. What if Sorrel is right? Mentor Istanel had said something about superstition once. He’d called it the assassin of common sense. If you can’t see it, touch it, hear it, smell it, taste it or prove it exists, then begin to wonder about its reality.
Standing on the beach, he watched the prau and canoes making their way from the port at the other end of the lagoon to where the ship was anchored while he considered all Saker and Sorrel had just told him. A sorcerer manipulating a princess so his son would one day sit on the Basalt Throne. A sorcerer who obviously hadn’t bargained on the princess having twins. A sorcerer who probably had something to do with the Horned Plague. A sorcerer who had a financial interest in a fleet being built to trade in spices. Oh, Saker and Sorrel could talk of a Lowmian threat to Chenderawasi integrity, but what of an Ardronese one? It had never occurred to any of them that he would be just as worried about Ardronese incursions as Lowmian ones.
How could Chenderawasi fight ships with cannons and men with muskets? He shook his head in disbelief. Sometimes these Va-cherished folk could be so… so imperceptive.
He slipped the kris out of its sheath. The gold of Raja Wiramulia’s plumes was as bright and as alive as ever–which meant that the sakti within was as powerful as ever. He touched the blade, seeking wisdom and thought he heard a whisper in reply; not words though. Never words.
“Ardhi?”
He whirled, the kris still in his hand.
And was stilled.
Lastri.
She smiled. “Are you going to stab me with that?”
Hastily, he tucked the dagger back into his waistband. “You? Never!” The words were husky, not at all the way he’d wanted to sound if he ever saw her again. And not the words he’d played in his mind all those years, either.
She was older, of course. A woman now, her face matured, calmer, but still as beautiful. His gaze dropped to her figure and his comprehension jolted him as he assimilated its implication.
She was pregnant.
“You–you’re married.”
She nodded. “This is our second child.”
Oh, sands… There had been a time when they’d both thought her children would also be his. We were seventeen. An age ago…
She said calmly, gesturing at the protuberance of her abdomen, “I wanted you to hear it from me. I heard you were back.”
He was speechless, wondering if she meant she wanted to save him the pain of hearing it from someone else–or revel in his pain when he heard it. In shock, he realised he had no idea which was true. She was no longer the person he’d known. He couldn’t even guess whom she had married.
He forced a smile. “You didn’t tell me you’d wait. I hope you’re happy.”
An odd expression that crossed her face told him that she was the one at a loss now: she didn’t know whether he was being sarcastic or genuine.
He gave a low laugh. “I’ve had four years to know this moment would come, Lastri. I loved you deeply once, but we were very young, and the tides have changed many times since. I hope you walked softly with the wind in those years.”
“I wasted time in bitterness,” she said. “But the waves come and go, and children change everything. The wind is kind now, as I hope it will be to you.”
“Who—?” he asked, even though he knew the question should be irrelevant.
“Eka. He was always after me, even when you were here.”
He blinked. Eka? Who never bothered with schooling, who cared for nothing but fishing and playing sepak takraw on the beach with the other village lads?
He was about to reply when they both heard the call of a Chenderawasi echoing over the forest, and they looked up to listen.
As the sounds faded away, she said, “My grandfather demands your death now that you have returned. Don’t listen to him, Ardhi. He’s a bitter old man who resented having to craft a sakti kris for a foolish young man.” She nodded towards the ship. “When they leave, sail with them. There’s nothing for you here, and you don’t deserve to die.”
“This is my land.” The lump in his throat was large enough to make breathing an effort.
“Not an
y more,” she said.
She turned on her heel and walked away.
Sorrel, leaning against the bulwarks, watched. When the woman left, Ardhi did not move for a long time. He just stood there, looking after her as she headed towards a canoe pulled up on the edge of the lagoon a couple of hundred paces away. He continued to watch while she paddled away towards the town without looking back.
Sorrel turned her mind to hitching a ride on one of the prau returning to the shore, hoping her grasp of the language would be enough to arrange to be deposited on the beach.
One last walk down the forest trail between the village of the metalworkers and the lagoon, avoiding the port and the town and its bustle…
He dawdled, stretching his life for extra moments of memory. On the edge of the village, he paused for one last look at his childhood. Another village then, of course, in the south, but not so different. Men at their jobs, chopping wood, oiling their tools or cleaning their forges, the women pounding the red hot lada in the mortars, or grinding the rice flour–not in their kitchens but outside under the fruit trees where they could chat to their neighbours or watch the children play their games on the beaten earth.
He remembered a time when both his parents had been alive, and he’d been a child like that one playing there, wobbling along on the two half-shells of a coconut with the aid of cord he’d made himself from husk fibres.
Unseen, he watched the empu walk from forge to kiln and back again. He had aged more than four years warranted. Not only had the furrows in his face deepened and his hair thinned, but his back had bent almost double and his hands were so crippled Ardhi doubted he could still craft any kris, let alone a sakti one. The old man hobbled with the help of a cane, and stopped dead when he realised who it was watching him. Ardhi came closer, but the words of greeting dried up in his mouth.
Villagers began to gather around them, alerted by the bright-eyed children who’d seen his approach. Their silence was strange; even the youngsters were quiet. No one greeted him; no one even met his gaze. Except Damardi.
Fixing Ardhi with a glare from under the wild thicket of his eyebrows, the empu said, “So. You’ve come back. Wearing my kris still.”
“The one you made me, certainly. But it is mine, empu, and it knows my hand. It has crossed many oceans and many lands since it left your forge. It has done all that was asked of it, and more.” He’d kept his tone even, polite and–he hoped–unflinching.
“Give it to me.”
He made no move to obey. “You told me that for the sakti in this kris to come to life, it needed my promise to die. I gave that promise. You said it was this kris which would drink my blood when I returned.” He drew it from the twist of cloth at his waist, turned it over and over in his hands. “You crafted it, yet it was also my sweat that dropped into its molten metal. If it wants my life, so be it. But be careful, empu, for it has a mind of its own. Do not go against its wishes.”
The old man snorted. “You mannerless boy! You would tell me what to do?”
“A warning in good faith can be neither bad-mannered nor an order, empu.” He handed it to the bladesmith, hilt first, and knelt on the bare earth. He knew how executions were carried out: a blade driven behind the collarbone downwards into the arteries to the heart.
A quick death.
Damardi stepped forward and placed a hand on his right shoulder, as if to hold him in place.
A stir ran through the watching crowd. Not voices, but rather a shuffling of feet, an unsettling catch of breath that ran like a contagion from person to person. They knew his guilt, they knew of the promise given, yet still they dreaded an execution. Death was never to be taken lightly. Nonetheless, he knew no one would intervene. This was between him and the blademaster–and Sri Kris.
Or so he thought, until a voice rang out, clear and imperious, coming from the line of coconut palms behind him. He turned his head to look, but saw no one there. The blademaster glanced around as well, his expression more annoyed than worried.
The words had been clear, if strangely accented, and they were immediately repeated. “Do not kill him!”
He recognised the voice but for a moment he couldn’t place it.
And then, a third time, “Do not kill him!”
Recognition came, and with it, horror. Splinter it. That’s Sorrel. He finally located her standing next to a coconut palm, blending herself into the trunk. She was holding a fallen coconut, and while he watched, she lobbed it towards the blademaster. It fell with a thud and rolled to his feet. To the villagers, it must have appeared to fly upwards without cause, before falling out of the sky.
There was a stunned silence, then one of the children screamed, “Pontianak! Ghosts!” Youngsters squealed and fled in every direction, but most of the villagers just looked around in bewilderment, still seeking to know who had called out the prohibition.
Sorrel stepped out from under the palms. She was still using her glamour, this time creating a curtain around herself, supposedly of golden plumes, and within the centre, instead of her own form, she had approximated the outline of a giant kris. The whole creation wavered and undulated as if she found it difficult to manage. The result was mesmerising.
Ardhi groaned, wincing. She was as foolish as a cross-eyed crab! Damardi would never forgive her if he saw through her witchery.
A chorus of voices yelled warnings: “Adua! Hantu! Lari! Look out! Ghosts! Run!” Some of the watchers scattered, disappearing into their houses and closing the doors. Others, braver, remained to stare.
The empu looked back at Ardhi, suddenly uncertain. “Is this your doing?”
“Of course not. It might be Sri Kris, though.” In a way. Oh, Sorrel, have you any idea how much danger you are in?
Of course she did. And I’ll wager she’s relying on me knowing that I have to stay alive to make sure she escapes. The devious, sneaky, duplicitous…
Damardi, refusing to look at the glamour, eyed the kris and opened his grip on the hilt so that it lay across his palm. The blade writhed there like a living serpent, the wisps of a plume catching the sunlight.
Ardhi smiled and held out his own hand, palm up. The kris flipped from Damardi to him, landing its hilt on his palm without any further action from either of them. He raised his gaze to look at the empu. “Do you want to try again?”
Damardi glanced around. A couple of the village elders and some of the young men were still out in the open, but all of them were standing well back. Sorrel had dropped her outrageous glamour and was once again blending into her background, as well concealed as an octopus on the reef.
“No,” Damardi said. “The kris has spoken. I heard it speak.” He turned and hobbled away, his head bent.
Ardhi took a deep breath. Pity for the old man shivered through him, but he did not linger. He slipped the kris back into its sheath and headed off the way he had entered the village.
As he walked past Sorrel, he did not look at her, but said, “That was such a lack-witted thing to do!”
“Wasn’t it just?” she asked as she fell in next to him, still maintaining her glamour. “And it worked, too.”
“It wasn’t necessary.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Do you mind if I speak Pashali to you? I want to be quite clear in what I say.”
“If I don’t understand, I’ll tell you. But I’d rather use my own tongue to say things.” She smiled at him. “I think it works better that way.”
“So do I.”
“What do you want to tell me?”
He looked back over his shoulder. There was no one about; no one had followed them. He said, “It was always the decision of the kris, Sorrel. Always. We have to follow the sakti, because that’s what is best for our islands. And what is best for our islands is best for us. If the kris wanted me to die, I would have, gladly, knowing it was the right thing to happen.”
“Oh, you are unbelievably irritating! I could never think that way. I have a will. Your sakti might hav
e got me here, to your islands, but it can’t tell me what to do. That’s my decision. Just as it was yours, just then, to walk away.” She dropped her glamour. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if you’d died and I’d just looked the other way.”
He stopped dead. “So you just left the ship and followed me? Just like that? I still don’t understand why you would do something so–so foolhardy!”
“Because you are a friend! Why else? Friends look after one another.”
“Yes, but knowing me has cost you so much. Chenderawasi sakti has taken you away from your world. I–I’ve always thought you must hate me and were just too polite to say so.”
She started laughing. When she regained control of her amusement she said, “Believe me, I’m rarely too polite not to say what I mean. Too scared, yes, often, but never too polite. You are the polite one.”
It was his turn to laugh. “No. I’ve always been the ill-mannered lad who didn’t respect his elders the way he should. If I’ve held my tongue, it was because I–like you–was scared.” He heaved a sigh. “I think I’ve been scared ever since Raja Wiramulia died. Out of my depth, trying to swim with the current, yet not understanding the tides.”
“That–that’s just the way I feel too. It wouldn’t matter so much, except… except there’s Piper.” Her voice caught and wobbled.
“I’m not sure I know how to help her,” he said sadly.
“I’m not sure we have a right to ask you to do so.” They exchanged a look and she slipped a hand into his. “I think all this has cost you more than anyone should have to bear.”
“It was all my fault to begin with, so I’ve no right to complain.”
“The woman on the beach just then—”
“She married someone else. It was all a long time ago now. We were little more than children growing up together and making silly promises to one another. That was before I sailed away to Pashalin. Afterwards, we met again, and perhaps something could–would–have come of it if–well, if I hadn’t been responsible for the death of the Raja. Leaving her broke my heart, and possibly hers too, but hearts are easily mended at that age.”