by Martha Wells
Ilias grinned at her. “You just want an excuse to travel.” He hadn’t been around the farm during the past winter season much himself; he had been working at hauling cargo, staying overnight in the city with Andrien relatives. This season he had made enough extra money to buy copper earrings for himself and a second set as a gift for Giliead, and a matching armlet for Irissa.
“What’s wrong with wanting to travel?” Irissa waved toward the ships. “Mother and father can take care of our land. There’s plenty of time before I have to worry about it.”
Ilias knew that Irissa didn’t have many real friends except for them, and the people of Andrien village. There weren’t any single men her own age she had much to do with. Thinking of some of the spectacular mistakes he had seen other women their age make in the husband-choosing area, he said, “Waiting to pick the right person is better.”
Irissa evidently appreciated the support. “That’s right.” She flung her arms in the air in frustration. “I should just marry Ilias. Save us all a lot of trouble.”
Over the past season or so, Ilias had been privately thinking that that would be a wonderful idea, but the fact that Irissa had brought it up, even as a joke, struck him so much that he couldn’t reply. He had lived at Andrien House with them for more than ten seasons, but he wasn’t Giliead and Irissa’s brother by blood. It was apparent from their looks; Ilias was inland Syprian, short, stocky, and blond, and Giliead and Irissa were both olive-skinned, with straight chestnut hair. Giliead was a couple of seasons the younger but he was already taller than both Ilias and Irissa, broad-shouldered and strong.
Unimpressed, Giliead said, “It would be cheaper. And after that thing with the trader’s daughter, mother will be lucky to get more than three chickens and a diseased goat for him-- Ow!”
He made a retaliatory grab for Ilias, who had punched him in the back. To forestall further violence, Irissa slung an arm around Ilias’ neck, throwing her weight on him to make him stagger out of reach.
Instead of pursuing them both, Giliead turned away and shaded his eyes to look out over the harbor. Ilias followed his gaze, trying to see what was so interesting. There was only one ship coming in, a merchant with black and white square designs painted on the hull and a single red sail. A dark-clothed man holding the tiller shouted orders as others scrambled to take in sails. “Hisian,” Giliead said, as if he wasn’t aware he had spoken aloud.
Ilias had spotted the bare prow too. Hisian ships never had eyes, so they were just dead soulless wood, like a raft or a dinghy. It was stupid to put to sea on a ship like that, especially for the long distance down the coast from the nearest Hisian port. Still leaning comfortably on Irissa, he said, “Let’s watch the Portmaster search her.”
Irissa nodded, but added, “I bet they didn’t bring any women. They aren’t that stupid anymore.”
Hisians treated their women like slaves or worse, so Syprians rescued them whenever possible. There were several women who had been Hisian living in Cineth now, known by their skin, which was the color of bleached parchment, and the tribal scarring on cheeks and forehead. The woman who ran one of the smaller provisioners on the harbor front had been a Hisian once.
They started down toward the stone piers, where the ship was being awkwardly brought into dock. Someone else must have shared Giliead’s suspicious interest in the newcomer; Ilias saw a patrol galley appear at the mouth of the harbor, the three rows of oars working as it followed the Hisian in.
They reached the slip as the ship was still tying off. Giliead and Irissa’s father Ranior was there, waiting with the Portmaster Hadria, an older woman with gray woven through her dark hair. The men who would search the ship for her stood around by the pilings, speculating on what they would find.
When Hadria went to talk to a cargo factor, Giliead asked Ranior, “Will the Hisians agree to the search?”
Ranior nodded. “Hadria said they seem to be reasonable.” He glanced at Giliead, his smile turning concerned. Ranior was tall and olive-skinned like Giliead, his red-brown hair almost all gray now, though he still wore it long like a younger man. “Why? What’s wrong?”
His eyes still on the ship, Giliead shook his head, his face a little bewildered. “I don’t know. It just gives me a strange feeling.”
Ilias tried to see what Giliead saw. “You mean a strange feeling like it’s a trick to get into the harbor, or a strange feeling like something...else?” He found himself not wanting to say “cursed” aloud.
“I don’t know,” Giliead said again, sounding annoyed now. “It’s not a curse, not on the ship. That I’d be able to see. Or I should be able to see it.” He shrugged, almost angrily. “I can’t tell if this is a real feeling or I’m just imagining it.”
“Maybe Gil should go aboard.” Irissa looked at Ranior hopefully. Ilias was fairly sure that meant that Irissa thought she should go aboard and that Giliead would be a good excuse, but he couldn’t blame her; he wanted to see the foreign ship too.
But Ranior’s expression was serious. “I’ll talk to Hadria.” He added, still watching Giliead, “Don’t say what you’re looking for, don’t even imply it, not with a look, not with a word. Not unless you’re certain.”
Giliead hesitated, a flicker of unease crossing his face, then he nodded. “I understand.”
Hadria agreed to let them go aboard with the searchers, probably thinking Ranior wanted to see the ship for himself. But once Ilias stood with Irissa on the deck, he admitted to some disappointment. The ship was just an ordinary merchant, her shallow hull stuffed with bales of fur, some millstones, and other goods. There was no cabin on the deck for shelter, just a section of tarp to rig up as protection from the sun. The small crew were mostly young boys, and the dark-clothed shipmaster was a lean old man, his tribal scars so puckered from age and weather they were nearly impossible to read. He stood beside the mast, weary and resigned, and the young crew mostly huddled nervously near the water casks. They all wore dark colors, as Hisians usually did, and had already stripped to the waist to prove they weren’t trying to conceal any female captives. They looked like what they said they were; a family of merchant Hisians coming along the coast to trade for wine and olive oil.
His expression of mild interest fixed, Giliead wandered around the deck as the Portmaster’s assistants climbed through the cargo. The Hisians barely noticed him, and were more occupied with trying desperately not to look at Irissa. They treated their own women like dirt and then killed each other for looking at them; they seemed slow to get the idea that with Syprians, it was all right to look, just not to be rude about it.
The youngest, scrawniest boy snuck a glance at Irissa, then accidentally made eye contact with Ilias. He twitched and hunkered down closer to the deck in terror. Ilias was highly conscious of the need to keep from betraying the fact that Giliead was looking for curses, and in trying to keep his face blank, he felt he probably looked far more forbidding than he meant to. He tried to relax, telling Irissa in a low voice, “Doesn’t look like anything’s wrong.”
“No,” she agreed reluctantly. “Gil needs to go with Menander, to get some real experience.” Frustrated, she added, “Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if Menander remembers that Gil is a Chosen Vessel at all.”
Ilias knew reading the Journals and listening to Menander’s stories was all well and good, but Giliead needed to work with a real Vessel, to see a hunt for himself, and to help with it. Yet now he found himself wanting to argue with Irissa that Menander was right, that putting it off was best. “Some Vessels just travel alone.”
Irissa pointed out bluntly, “Yes. Usually the ones who die quickly.”
Ilias didn’t have an answer for that. The Journals had shown it over and over again, that Chosen Vessels who hunted alone tended to come to their ends far more quickly than those who didn’t. Though it was risky either way, and usually the companions died faster than the Vessels. Ilias had meant to be Giliead’s companion as long as he could remember, but with Menander putting o
ff Giliead’s training, it had been easy to pretend it was never going to happen, that their lives would be normal.
He looked away, even more uncomfortable now. Something in Ranior’s face when he had told Giliead not to even hint that the ship might be cursed had made Ilias uneasy. That Giliead might be wrong and innocent people die, or be given curse marks and ostracized.
Chosen Vessels were supposed to prevent that, it was the whole point of having them. Hisians didn’t have Vessels, and accused each other of being wizards constantly, and killed each other like animals.
In the Poets’ stories, it all seemed so simple. Except Ilias already knew nothing was simple.
“Harbormaster, I hope there’s no trouble,” someone said, and Ilias looked up to see a man he had taken as part of the crew addressing Hadria. “I’ve been on the ship since Ancyra, and these are good people.” He was young, with a tangle of dark hair cut at the shoulders. Under the coating of sweat and grime, he wasn’t as pale as the other Hisians, but he was dressed like them with a black wrap around his waist. Ilias squinted at him, trying to decide if he was Syprian or not. It was hard to tell, but his Syrnaic had an inland accent and he had spoken to Hadria first. The Hisian shipmaster had kept trying to talk to Ranior, who had just eyed him silently until the man forced himself to speak to Hadria.
“Are you a trader?” Hadria asked him.
He smiled, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “My name is Delphian, from Syrneth. I’m a poet.”
* * *
The arrival of a new poet was an event, especially one from Syrneth, which was the largest city-state in the Syrnai and the home of the matriarch who ruled over the loose confederation of cities. Halian, who was currently lawgiver with his wife Erinni, had invited Delphian to perform the next night. Ranior was a friend of Halian’s and so the Andrien family got an invitation to the lawgiver’s house to watch.
Despite Giliead’s position, and Ranior’s former status as lawgiver, the Andriens didn’t usually see much of the more prominent families in the city. Ilias knew them by sight, the way most people in Cineth knew each other by sight, but Karima had always preferred the company of people from Andrien village, or her friends and relations from nearby farms. Ranior had a large acquaintance from all through Cineth’s society, but most were as eccentric as he was. When Giliead had been Chosen by the god, it had isolated the Andrien family to some extent; people were afraid of wizards and curses, and some of that fear carried over to those who fought wizards and curses.
They reached the plaza before sunset and entered the lawgiver’s house, finding the lamps already lit along the broad portico that framed the atrium. A dozen or so dining sets, low tables surrounded by cushioned benches, had been set out under the portico. Ilias had been a little nervous at the idea of going to a formal dinner at the lawgiver’s house, though he would rather have died than admit it. He was a ward of Andrien, but his birth family, the Finan, were much further down on the social scale. But Erinni’s large family was already there, along with a few of the more important heads of household in the city and their husbands and families. They all stood around talking and laughing, and children played among the tables, and he didn’t feel unpleasantly conspicuous.
Karima had made them all wear their good clothes, and Ilias thought that Irissa looked the best. She wore a dark blue dress and a purple stole with gold painted designs, and a necklace of braided leather and silver beads, with polished bluestones.
Oblivious to his sister’s beauty, Giliead commented, “The food smells good.”
“We could get the same at home,” Irissa said, her tone bored. “Better, in fact. Ignias has the best recipe for duck sauce I’ve ever—”
Giliead eyed her in annoyance. “Could you just enjoy yourself for once?”
Irissa’s lips thinned. “We’re not here to enjoy ourselves. Mother wants us here so I can look for a worthless husband and so women with more money than the merchants and cargo-haulers can get a look at Ilias.”
Frustrated, Ilias contemplated the darkening sky. To hear them talk you would think he was the biggest slut in Cineth. But one thing everyone was right about was that he had honed his flirting abilities over the past season. He hadn’t tried applying them to Irissa, but maybe that had been a mistake. He gave her a half-smile. “I thought you were going to marry me.”
Irissa tried an aloof stare, but couldn’t keep her face straight and started to smile. Giliead then ruined it by saying, “When you say ‘mother’ do you actually mean our mother? Because I don’t know what house you’ve been living in but—”
Irissa turned to him impatiently. “Well, you’re a lost cause, since Chosen Vessels don’t marry.”
“I didn’t realize you were the Chosen Vessel,” someone said. It was the new poet Delphian. Dressed in a dark red shirt and dyed leather, his hair braided and clean, he looked more like a traveling Syprian poet and less like a Hisian seaman. He had been given a room in the lawgiver’s guesthouse, and Erinni must have paid for his new clothes as part of the reward for his performance. Delphian carried a battered leather case slung over one shoulder, and Ilias remembered he had had it on the Hisian ship; it looked incongruous now next to his good clothes.
Giliead regarded him uncomfortably. “Yes, I’m the Chosen Vessel.”
Delphian didn’t seem to take Giliead’s reticence for rudeness. “What poet did you choose to tell your stories? Perhaps it’s someone I know.”
“I haven’t chosen a poet yet.” Giliead looked away, still distant, though the cause was more obvious now. “I haven’t killed any wizards, so there aren’t any stories to tell.”
Delphian smiled, shrugging it off as no consequence. “You’re young yet.”
Giliead’s mouth tightened. “I’m older than I look.”
Ilias knew there was no good way out of this conversation. Hoping to change the subject, he asked Delphian, “Have you told stories for other Chosen Vessels?”
“Once, for a Vessel called Lydae, from the Bistrai Island.” Delphian’s lips twisted as he tried to suppress a wince. “She was killed, and I told that story.”
Ilias willed his expression to stay noncommittal. It was like praising water over the bodies of the drowned, but Ilias supposed there were few others Delphian could talk to who might understand. Everybody seemed to know Chosen Vessels died often; few of them seemed to realize that Chosen Vessels had families and friends. Irissa didn’t react either, and just said, “The Bistrai Island, is that where you come from? You’re a long way from home.”
“I was born there, but I’ve been living in Syrneth.”
“How did Lydae die?” Giliead asked, watching him sharply.
Delphian hesitated, looking as if he wished he hadn’t spoken. “On her first hunt.” He gave Ilias and Irissa an apologetic look. “Excuse me, I think Erinni needs to speak with me.”
As he walked away, Irissa took a deep breath. “I hope no one asks for that story.”
“That would be all we need,” Ilias agreed, his jaw set. “Then people could come right out and say ‘why isn’t your brother dead yet?’“
Irissa frowned at him. “I don’t think he meant that.”
“He didn’t mean it, but...” Ilias shrugged, giving in. He didn’t know what he was trying to say.
The dinner was uneventful, and afterward Delphian stood to speak. Everyone moved to arrange themselves in more comfortable positions on the couches, or put cushions down on the tile floor to sit on. Ilias, Giliead, and Irissa went to sprawl on the grass in the atrium with some of the children and other young people, though they sat at a distance from the others.
The battered case Delphian carried was explained when he opened it, drew out a cloth-swaddled object, and carefully unwrapped it to reveal a panpipe. The pipes gleamed white, and seemed finely carved, and he obviously prized it. Ilias heard Giliead groan faintly, and grinned to himself. Old-style poets tended to accompany themselves with an instrument, which Giliead thought was dead boring. Ilia
s didn’t mind it, though he did prefer Bythia’s unaccompanied style.
The story Delphian told turned out to be an old one, about the Isle of Storms just off the coast. The island was far enough out to sea to be out of the god’s reach, and it had been wizard-haunted off and on for ages. Their curses had trapped mist and clouds around it, to make it easier to draw ships to ruin, and even though the wizards who had done that were long dead, the clouds lingered. But what had always caught Ilias’ imagination were the stories of how there had been a great city there once, built inside the rock of the island itself and under the sea around it.
When the poem was done, and the rest of the audience called out appreciation and approval, Ilias rolled over on his side to regard Giliead and Irissa. Giliead sprawled face down, pretending to be unconscious. Irissa hadn’t gone quite that far, but she didn’t look rapt with enthusiasm either.
Ilias said, “He wasn’t very good, was he?”
Irissa nodded absently. “I thought he spoke well enough, but something was lacking.”
Giliead lifted his head. “I would rather have heard Bythia.” He looked around, his expression sour. “But everyone else seemed to enjoy it.”
The rest of the guests were getting up, milling around, talking, and the servers were bringing out warmed wine.
“Let’s go.” Irissa pushed to her feet, suddenly impatient. “Where’s mother?”
Ilias suspected Irissa wanted to avoid attention from the young men of good families now wandering around the atrium. That was fine with him. “I’ll go look.”
He made his way through the crowd on the portico, dodging cushions and tables, slipping between people. Everyone was talking about Delphian’s performance, as if it had been the best poem they had ever heard; Ilias thought they must have had too much wine. He saw Erinni, still sitting at her couch, with some of the other heads of families, but Karima wasn’t there. He ducked into the indoor dining room, finding it empty except for a couple of children playing on the floor, then went through the interior door to the receiving room.