by Dave Duncan
She pretended to think about it. “I’d have to find a grown-up to look after you. Would you do what he says, always?”
Podakan solemnly nodded.
“I don’t want a nod. I want a promise.”
“I promise.”
“Promise what?”
“I promise to behave and do as I’m told while we’re away.”
Fair enough. “I’m hoping to hire a new tutor for you. His name is Fagatele Fiucha. If he can’t come, then I’ll take Tidore.”
A former bosun, Tidore was her chief house guard and slave master, and Podakan probably hated him more than anyone. He snarled, but didn’t withdraw his promise.
“Where to, Y’r Honor?” the commodore asked.
The query was a formality, because he knew perfectly well where Scamper was heading as the crew swept oar blades through the surface of a mirror-smooth bay. What he meant was that the little flotilla had now officially left port and was Irona’s to command. The sun was barely up, dazzling bright in the northeast.
“Sodore and Achelone, Commodore, if you please.”
The commodore was Irona’s old colleague, Mandalagan Furnas, who had been with her at Vult and on the voyage home. He was one of Benign’s senior military men now, and the fact that his left arm was in a sling explained why he had been available for this makeshift expedition, instead of away up north, helping to loot Genodesa. His misfortune, her good luck.
Beside them on the steersman’s deck were the steersman himself, plus Podakan and Fagatele Fiucha, who was a thin, balding man, with a disagreeably smarmy manner. Irona had taken a dislike to him on sight and was quite sure that Podakan had too, but the tutor came with good references and had assured her that he could straighten out “the lad” in a matter of weeks. She had been desperate enough to agree to his outrageous fees.
He and Podakan were currently attached, wrist to wrist, by a length of silver chain. Fiucha had explained that he was a strong swimmer and would make sure “the lad” did not drown if he fell overboard. Irona was fairly certain that Podakan would be able to pull his handcuff off whenever he wanted, because it had been intended for much larger troublemakers than he, although no larger troublemaker could make any larger trouble than her dear little boy could. If Fiucha kept referring to him as “the lad,” he might find that out sooner rather than later. At the moment, though, Pod was totally entranced by being on a galley and watching the bare-chested rowers at work.
And she was already starting to relax with a long voyage ahead of her and no responsibilities other than keeping a careful eye on Podakan, which she had to do all the time anyway and would until he legally came of age in 725, Caprice preserve us!
“You appear to have started the war early, Commodore?”
“Broken collarbone, Y’r Honor,” Furnas said with much disgust.
“What happened to the other guy?”
“Nothing—yet. We were loading to ship out on Sea Eagle at dawn and a couple of men bringing a bundle of oars misjudged a turn and knocked me off the dock. Hit the deck. Just a silly accident.”
Irona had served on enough judicial benches to know hornswoggle when she heard it.
“And what will happen to those men when you meet them the next time?”
“One of them’s going to lose half his teeth and the other a kneecap, ma’am.”
“Really?” Podakan had turned to stare up at the commodore with a glow of hero worship in his eyes.
“Really. You got ears in the back of your head, boy.”
Podakan felt the back of his head with his free hand. “Have not!” he said indignantly.
The sea stayed as smooth as glass for them, ideal water for galleys, whose rowers had trouble with even a low swell. Podakan behaved better than Irona had known him to since he got his first two teeth and learned to bite her breast. She wondered how long he could keep it up and knew it could not be very long.
Neither Purace nor Severny, the two largest cities on their route, had anything new to add to the stories of lizard men raiding in Achelone. Sodore, though, at the mouth of the Huequi River, had been invaded by scores of refugees, who spoke of the Gren as monsters that couldn’t be killed and ate human flesh. The holiday mood vanished. The flotilla lingered a few days there, partly because even Benesh marines needed a rest once in a while, and partly to prepare for the journey upriver. Two hundred men would eat whole shiploads of food in the ten days or so to Achelone, and the fleeing human locusts would have stripped the countryside. Fortunately, the galleys would not need to carry water on a river, and there was a salmon migration under way, so Commodore Furnas had bought fishing nets. The banks of the Huequi were well stocked with driftwood for campfires.
It was a dangerous road for shipping, though, because Achelone’s great export was timber, and the logs were floated downstream. They were supposed to be chained together in rafts and marked by flags, but there were always strays. Galleys’ bows were reinforced for ramming, so they were in less danger than other craft, but a large log fouling a bank of oars could injure half the crew. Furnas put the flotilla in line ahead and insisted that Irona not travel in the lead ship.
She spent her time studying the bagful of record tablets she had been given by the Geographical Section. On other missions she had been able to rely on Sazen Hostin to brief her, but she could almost hear his dry, sly tones in the words, as if he had written what she was reading.
Achelone was a fairly poor province, bounded by the Rampart Range to the north and the unexplored wasteland of Grensdalur to the east. The lowlands supported large cattle ranches and the foothills provided timber, which was cut by the same slaves who provided the muscle power to haul the logs to the rivers for transport. A few Achelonians were very rich, and everyone else very poor. With much of the Empire now deforested, the colony was vital as Benign’s principal source of lumber and also an important provider of leather. The Gren, whoever or whatever they were, must not be allowed to interfere with trade.
Achelone was officially a republic, but in practice a tyranny run by, and for the personal benefit of, the longtime vice president, Sakar Semeru, who was propped up by Benesh arms. Reading behind the words, Irona gathered that he was about as unsavory a character as the Empire possessed. She had been part of the inner circle for years, so why had she never learned that imperial troops were being used to support such a horror? Because, perhaps, none of the Seventy had ever bothered to investigate: Achelone was a long way from the sea.
In theory, Semeru ought to be kept in line by the Benesh representative, but the Seventy never wasted anyone with real ability on such a posting; and the current representative, Ambassador Golovnin, sounded fairly typical. In practice, nobody would ever squander Benesh lives to support a revolution that could do very little to better the lot of serfs and slaves in what was very much a foreign land. Now the problems had all been dumped on Irona 700.
Just keep the timber and leather coming, darling.
Refugees were still trudging tediously along the dusty trail that flanked the river, or coming dangerously downstream on rafts or in cockleshells. Each evening, when the flotilla made camp, Irona had a few of these wretches rounded up so she could buy their evidence with a good meal. None of them convincingly claimed to have seen Gren with their own eyes, but almost all the stories agreed: the raiders weren’t human and couldn’t be killed. No one could tell her how far east the Rampart Range extended, but she was seriously wondering if the Shapeless had found another way out of the Dread Lands. If that idea had been suggested in Benign, it would explain why she had been selected to investigate: she was the Empire’s expert in dealing with Maleficence. Her term at Vult had been a curse she would never shake off.
She wished now that she had not brought her son with her. If Maleficence was roaming Achelone, he would know her and seek revenge. None of the human participants in this, whether Achelonian or Benesh,
would see any advantage in killing the Empire’s commissioner, but she discussed the problem with Furnas, and he agreed that she must be very careful.
The capital, Achelone City, was a dusty, dilapidated scattering of shacks set on a baking hot plain for no evident reason except that two rivers met there. Several great palaces towered above the shanties like swans among pond scum, and the largest of all must belong to the current figurehead president. The second largest, and closest to the river, was flying the Benesh flag and could be presumed to be the ambassador’s residence. Although Scamper was displaying a Chosen’s standard, there was no sign of a guard of honor at the jetty. There was no sign of anything much happening anywhere. Granted it was noon, and stupefyingly hot, with a wind like a skinner’s knife, but Irona was in no mood to make allowances.
“General,” she said, giving Furnas his onshore title, “send forty men to that red building, and bring me Ambassador Golovnin.” She did not add “dead or alive,” but she was thinking it.
“Aye, Marshal!” He had a ferocious bare-knuckle fighter’s gap-toothed leer.
Golovnin arrived at a run, bleary and unshaven, wearing a rumpled, sweat-stained tunic and, with his remaining tufts of white hair awry, generally looking as if he had been dragged out of bed, which he probably had. He was florid, corpulent, jowly, pompous, and stank of wine. Coming down the gangplank from the quay, he stumbled, and a marine caught him just before he fell flat on the gratings. Everyone from Podakan up was grinning by then.
Irona received him under an awning at the stern, having dismissed everyone else to what had to count as a respectful distance, but was certainly not out of earshot aboard a small galley. She read out her commission, which handily overrode his, but her jade collar alone did that. Then she invited him to sit down. He did, glowering at her resentfully.
“Report,” she said. “Where are the Gren?”
“Last I heard, Your Honor, they were three days’ walk from here. But they could be here in a half a day. They ride on the backs of these giant lizards of theirs, far faster than people can run.”
“And what are they doing?”
“Think they’re waiting for you, ma’am. … I mean, Your Honor. They were told that you’re coming.”
“So you can converse with them?” This was like skinning a live bull with your teeth.
Yes, he said, some of the Gren understood Benesh. He couldn’t explain how they had learned it, since no one had ever heard of a Gren until this summer, when they came storming in from the Grensdalur desert. No, he did not know how far east the Ramparts extended. Yes, it was true that the Gren ate human flesh. They had been seen doing so, and leftovers had been found.
“What are they eating now?” she asked with distaste.
Cattle, he said. They were being provided with cattle.
And what do they look like? Tall, gray, scaly. No, not human. Swords just bounced off their hides. No one knew how to kill them. Golovnin did not say he had seen any with his own eyes, and Irona would have bet her collar that he had never been closer to them than he was now.
“You can provide accommodation in your palace for me?”
Her Honor would be most welcome in the Benesh embassy.
Her Honor was heartily sick of living on a galley and camping on seashores and riverbanks. “I shall require a suite of four rooms, close together. And inform Vice President Semeru that I shall expect him at sunset.”
Um … protocol … invitation from the president …
“Arrange it,” she snapped. “Expect me at the embassy within the hour. Dismissed.”
If this wretch was the best the Empire could find to look after its interests, then the Empire was growing dangerously complacent.
Achelone “City” was almost as repellent as Vult, if not worse. There were serpents and scorpions on land, snakes and alligators in the river. The nights were hot and the days hotter, with a vicious wind. The palace was airless, although the accommodation provided for Irona was acceptable once it had been cleaned to her standards. She took Podakan and Fiucha with her and put them in the room next to hers. She used the other two to billet some of Furnas’s men, who manned a checkpoint in the corridor. No one could approach her unbidden.
Fortunately her stay seemed likely to be short, although whether she would depart alive or dead was still to be determined. On the very first night, runners were sent to inform the Gren that the imperial commissioner had arrived. The Gren rode in the following evening—causing a panic in the town—and agreed to meet with her the next morning.
If the lizard men knew anything about acoustics, Irona decided, they would not have demanded that their leader’s entrance be preceded by a fanfare of war horns. Or perhaps they did know and were deliberately trying to stun her. The cacophony seemed endless, echoes bouncing around the marble senate chamber like clouds of bats. The senators pulled faces and covered their ears. There were at least two hundred of them, an absurdly large number for a thinly populated land.
Mercifully the clamor died. The trumpeters marched out, their robes swirling around their ankles, and for a moment there was blessed silence. Irona had been given the throne, which she assumed was where the president—Sakar Semeru’s current puppet and future scapegoat—normally sat. Semeru himself was humbly seated down on the front bench, among the lowliest senators. As he had nominated them all himself and arranged their elections, they could hardly object. Even Golovnin agreed in private that he was a revolting man to support, and that the Geographical Section’s reports of his personal habits were more flattering than exaggerated.
A pair of Gren came striding in and took up positions on either side of the doorway. The agreed terms were that no weapons would be worn, but who knew what was hidden under those robes? Irona chuckled to herself, thinking how Veer would respond to that question. Goddess, but they were tall! And the trumpeters had been tall, too. Had their leader, reportedly named Hayklopevi, combed his tribe for giants, or were the lizard men all that size?
Or bigger. A group of three had halted just beyond the doorway, shadows against sunlight behind. The one in front was likely Hayklopevi himself, standing a head taller than the two behind him. He spoke to one of them, who came marching forward, stopping in the middle of the circular chamber. He might be even taller than Veer Machin.
“The noble Beru bids me say that he does not negotiate with women.”
He? The Achelonians did not regard the Gren as human. To them, Hayklopevi was an it not a he. Irona was reserving judgment. She glanced down at the back of Sakar Semeru’s head, for he had warned her that there would be endless quibbling and posturing. The vice president did not look around.
She said, “You may tell the Beru that he will not be negotiating with a woman, he will be negotiating with the Benesh Empire and its choice of negotiator is not negotiable.”
The interpreter turned and stalked back to report.
And returned to the center again.
“The noble Beru bids me say that he does not negotiate with people sitting higher than himself.”
“Tell him I will meet him on level ground if he promises to kneel, so that our eyes will be level.”
The senators cackled like squirrels. The interpreter started to turn, then changed his mind—probably a wise decision. Judging by the atrocities attributed to him, the Beru had a very bizarre sense of humor.
“That is an insulting and ridiculous answer.”
Irona was not going to play this game all day. She stood up, and the chamber seemed to hush, although it had been quiet before. She walked slowly down the stairway until she was on the second step, which put her eyes not much above the interpreter’s, in so far as she could judge at that distance.
“This should make us about level. Tell him to approach now and talk, or go back to his desert and eat rats.”
Hayklopevi took the bait. He emerged into the light, although
very little of him was visible in the swirling gray robes. Long sleeves hid his hands, and his hood came forward to shadow his face. Two companions followed him, but even they could hardly match his stride. He slowed for a moment at the center but, as Irona had guessed, he could not resist coming all the way forward to the bottom of the steps, so that he could show how much higher his eyes were than hers. She now had the option of backing up a step, but then he might follow her as far as she wanted to go and make a mockery of the meeting. He was easily a cubit taller than Veer.
The face inside the cowl was gray hued, hairless, and inhumanly narrow, as if his head had been squeezed in a vise—or it was a normal human width and he had been stretched lengthwise. The nose was prominent, but as narrow as an ax blade, and his eyes were set deep in his skull. The irises were yellow, the pupils slitted, not human at all. The tips of his upper canine teeth showed over his lower lip, but were much closer together than they should be. The effect was very disturbing. She could almost believe the Achelonian claim that the Gren were hybrids of men and the giant lizards they rode.
But the sheer hatred in that face … If ever she must look into the face of Maleficence himself, it was now.
She forced herself to ignore that burning gaze. “I am Irona 700, of the Seventy chosen by our goddess to rule our city in her name, and I am plenipotentiary for the First and the Seven.”
The interpreter translated into the Beru’s lisping speech, then his reply.
“His Magnificence says, ‘I am Hayklopevi, Beru of the Gren.’”
“Define Beru.”
“Warlord,” the interpreter said, “speaker to the spirits, father, protector. All of these. He speaks for the Gren.”
“And I for the Empire. Let us not waste words. Shall we speak here, or send for chairs?”
While that was being translated, the Beru folded his arms and she caught a brief glimpse of a gray hand with taloned fingers, but his sleeve covered it before she could count the fingers.
“I can stand as long as you can,” the Beru said, and together they lapsed into the platitudes that began all such conferences: We seek only peace … You oppress/massacre our people … You started it … No, you did … Let us heal the wounds and bind in friendship … Trade is good, because partners do not fight.