by Tanith Lee
“I begin to think your drugs may have killed her in the first place.”
“You don’t think that, my lord. You know the truth. Should you remove the golden tore from her throat, you would see—”
“Yes,” he said. “Then you must accept my bemused wonder at your genius, mustn’t you?”
Eraz said softly, “And the child?”
“One more to swell your sacred ranks,” he said. He drank the Vardian wine and refilled the cup and drank again.
“Not so, my lord. She is not ours.”
“It’s nothing to me,” he said.
“Your daughter,” Eraz said.
“A little white slug. Keep it.”
“No, my lord,” she said, her softness now impassive. “The child must go with you.”
“Because it’s mine? The result of incest? In Lan across the water that’s nothing at all.”
“Then send her to Lan, my lord. But she shall not linger here.”
“Because of the incest, then.”
“Anackire,” she said.
“Oh, more of your stenchful snake-woman. She wants my child dead, presumably. One day old, out in the snow. And I don’t think any of my men are capable of nourishing it at the breast. Why don’t you merely kill the thing yourself? Smother it, starve it, freeze it to death here? Why did you force it to live at all?”
“Our medicines, which so offend you, will also preserve the child. She will sleep until Istris, nor will she hunger. She may lie warm, enclosed with her mother.”
“Impossible.”
“As impossible as the event you witnessed at sunrise, my lord.”
• • •
The men who brought the wooden box to the shore helped break the ice there, so the boat could put out again.
Kesarh’s guard did not complain, though the sun was down on the ocean, and all the west, sky and water, an empty savage crimson.
They rowed across the sunset and the icy sea. A little wind was stirring for the mainland and they raised the sail to take it. There was no sound save the mutter of the canvas, the touch of the waves, the pull of the oars. The island of Ankabek drew away, the last light describing it oddly, a floating skull.
Beyond the sail, Kesarh sat in the bow, with the long box. It was fastened shut, holding her close, the living child, too, asleep as if still coiled in flesh. Holes had been affected in the planking of the box to admit air. It lay at his feet and he did not look at it.
The afterglow went out and blackness came. There were no stars, only the faint luminescence of the cold, and the low far pallor, like a thread of platinum, that was the snowy mainland shore of Karmiss.
Somewhere in the black as they rode, an hour off yet from landfall. Kesarh’s soldiers heard the planking of the coffin wrenched apart, and the lid come up with a precise ripping out of nails. They said nothing. They continued to row. They had learned early on in his service what was the Prince’s concern, not theirs.
Behind the sail, Kesarh looked down into Val Nardia’s face.
Their mother’s tore with the black pearls concealed her throat. Otherwise, it was true, her beauty was unmarred, her dreadful pointless beauty. It seemed to him it would have been the same with them, if she had been ugly.
Presently, he lifted her free of the box. He left the unconscious child, a bundle of wrappings, to tumble among the rugs with which the box was lined. He did not care what happened to the child.
He held her in his arms, his sister, her head against his shoulder, the Hood of her hair shawling over both of them, dark now in the darkness as his own.
And so they passed like a ship of ghosts across the soundless glimmering sea, to Karmiss.
• • •
Rem opened the door of his lodgings and two of the visitors walked in. Two others took up casual sentry posts in the passage, and the door was shut.
Outside, the watery gusty snow of incipient thaw rippled down the benighted building, rattling the shutters. The man’s cloak was beaded with it. He threw it off and across a chair.
“I trust the money and the documents arrived previously,” Kesarh said.
“Yes, my lord.”
“And you and your men are ready.”
“Yes.”
“Baffled by it all, my Rem?”
“As baffled as you require, my lord.”
“My requirements are those I stipulated. The ship you’re to take is the Lily, Dhol’s vessel. When you reach the port of Amlan, you’ll accompany Dhol’s man to my commercial agent in the capital. She doesn’t understand,” Kesarh added, for Rem had glanced at the girl. “Nothing, in fact. She thinks the child’s her own, the dead one, come back to life.”
“Nor has anyone disillusioned her.” Kesarh looked at him, only waiting. Berinda stood in her dripping cloak, rocking the swathed thing that was the baby, smiling down on it. She looked more aware than Rem had ever before seen her. Rem said, “and I’m to give the agent in Amlan your letter, and the child. What then?”
“Come back over the water. He’ll find it a home, an obscure home, and get me word. Somewhere Ankabek can’t suss, even by magic. One day the female may be of use to me. If not, she’ll be no use either to my enemies.”
Rem hesitated. Then he said, “The child of your sister.”
“No. The child she refused to bear. They made her body bear, that’s all.”
“And the sorcery meant nothing to you.”
Kesarh smiled; his eyes were cold. Rem held his gaze, not wishing to.
“I’m not here to discuss my emotions. I’m here to leave you the brat and its wet-nurse. I considered exposing it on the shores of Karmiss, when I got it there. Your work is to remove it from my unloving grasp to Lan. You see?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Yes, my lord. You’ve always gone about like a prince rather than a bandit, my Rem. You look more like one, too. One of my girls once told me you have a likeness to the old statues of Ram Am Mon.”
Rem schooled himself. His heart disproportionately clamored, but he showed nothing. Kesarh had turned away, taken up his cloak.
“On the ship,” he said, “you’re just another minor noble, voyaging with your guard and your mistress and your favorite bastard baby. The vessel sails with the morning tide.”
When he was gone, the two escort clanking behind him down the stairs, Rem stayed where he was. He stayed there until the hoofs of zeebas rang through the alley.
He looked at Berinda again, wondering how she would react to the departure of her god. But in fact the baby was now her god. She believed in her muddled way it was hers, the life expelled in agony from her womb, cold clay, carried out as she screamed, but brought back warm and breathing. Something of her very own, at last.
Rem sat her in a chair and brought her the mulled wine Kesarh Am Xai had not bothered with. Berinda laughed down at the baby as she sipped the drink. Rem beheld only a crescent of tiny skull above the blanket. It was a white-skinned child, the pale hair like gossamer on its head, all Shansarian, it seemed, unless the eyes were dark.
It was when he told Berinda they were leaving now, as she got up obediently, lifting her bundle of slight possessions from the floor, that the blanket slipped from the child’s face.
Rem’s heart rushed again, again for no proper reason, save that the eyes of the child were not dark at all. They were like smoky golden suns.
• • •
The crossing was a matter of nine or ten days, something less, maybe, with seasonal winds rising. Once the Lannic coast came in sight on the left hand, it would be a passage of sixteen to eighteen days to reach the port of Amlan.
The Lily was a merchant-trader, a heavy ship winged by great sails. Her ship lord, Dhol, had served the Prince’s agents on business ventures in the past, and thought no more of this, housing Rem in his own unluxurious cabin.
Rem’s three soldiers slept under awning on deck, used as he was himself to rainy makeshifts. In the cabin. Rem allocated the bed to the girl and baby. He himself stretched out on the floor, something Dhol might have been interested by, had he come in to see.
The time of year was not the best for traveling. Dhol, a money-grabber, always got out before the other trading vessels of Istris. On the whole, the weather was kind to them, raining and blowing consistently, but without serious threat. The push of the wind was actually fortuitous. By noon of the ninth day, the shadow of Lan hardened behind the rain.
• • •
“The food to your liking?” inquired Dhol, eating in the cabin with them tonight, to celebrate the sight of Lan.
Rem complimented Dhol on the food.
Seated on the bed, the girl played with the baby, talking to it. As Dhol launched into their first dialogue, some inventory of sea weather, Rem’s mind drifted from him and settled by the child.
She was certainly not quite normal. He had begun to wonder if the incestuous union had brought about some flaw. Nothing so simple as, say, deafness, for sure. She heard things. Or blindness—she saw them, too, in a baby’s way of seeing. And she could make noises though he had never heard her cry. Somehow he sensed she had not cried at birth. But what was it then, this strange haunting otherness? Perhaps imagination. He had been around fewer babies than most men, having never got a woman with child.
“And by the gods, and Ashara, the king-mast cracked like a—”
Dhol was interrupted by something outside. Sudden shouting, that had nothing to do with the activities of the ship. Dhol looked at the door.
“What is it?” Rem asked. The girl paid no attention.
“I’ll see. Sighted a big fish, perhaps. They try to spear them, spear and line—can pull a craft to bits—” Dhol got to his feet. “Continue with your food, sir.”
A wave of dizziness, hollowness, went through Rem’s head. There was no warning pain, it was not really like the other times. But suddenly there was another man standing where Dhol stood, and one of the iron candle-wheels, obviously deprived of its marine balance by some malign hand, flung sideways with enormous force and struck him on the temple—Rem came to his feet and the scene cleared. Dhol was thrusting out of the door, and had not noticed.
Almost involuntarily, Rem followed him.
The deck was loud with noise, and its cause was almost instantly apparent. From the northeast a great dark shape was shouldering out of the rainy dusk, a red smear at her prow. Already she was close enough that their own port-side lights picked out two flaming eyes glaring from the murk, and, high above, the Double Moon and Dragon device of Old Zakoris.
“Pirates!”
Dhol was panting with fear.
“Can you outrun her?”
“Never. Never had to. Never seen one come this far to the south—”
Rem stared, as men hurtled everywhere about him, yelling. The black ship was like a phantom, an undead come back from Tjis to take vengeance.
His three soldiers forced a way to him.
“What orders, sir?”
“The ship lord says he can’t outrun her, and that seems likely. The Free Zakorian biremes are cut for racers. This thing wallows at the best. But no doubt he’ll try.”
“You can already feel it.”
This was so. The rowers’ stations had been alerted below. The wooden husk swarmed to a new internal rhythm. They were rowing for their lives, now.
“If that fails, as it probably will—” Rem looked through the rain at the phantom. Over the din the Lily was making, he could distinguish a thin murmur, a glad shouting from the Free Zakorian as she gained. “Since we haven’t,” he said, “sufficient wine to poison them on this occasion,” the three men grinned, “there’s a ship’s boat forward. Cut it loose and jump for it. Your priorities are the child and the girl.”
“Yes, sir.”
One minute later the Zakorian rammed them.
The shudder that took the merchantman and the howling of pleasure and fear, obscured the crash the boat made, hitting the water. One of Rem’s men swung over after it on the piece of a rope, dropping neatly, despite the turbulent rollers, amidships. Rem already had the girl at the side but, clutching the baby, she recoiled. “No!”
The Free Zakorians were boarding them like a tidal sea, pouring down the deck. Already the shrieks of dying men slit the tumult.
“Take the child from her and throw it in the boat,” Rem said to the other two soldiers. The third man in the boat was poised, ready to catch. “Don’t make a mistake. You know whose child it’s supposed to be.”
The second soldier nodded, reached out and gripped the baby. Berinda started to scream.
The other man spun, brought up his sword and sliced with it, and pirate blood rained through the rain. Rem turned in time to stop a knife going through his back. He hit the Zakorian between the eyes and as he reeled drove his own knife into the man’s armpit, where his tattered mail left him bare. Even as he went down, four others sprang over him, trampling on him as he died, to come at Rem. The second soldier twisted his blade from a mass of hair and sinews. Rem half noted the girl had stopped screaming. “The Kidling’s safe in the boat,” the second soldier murmured, almost confidentially, ripping a man’s palm open. “And the girl, too.” He finished speaking as one of the Free Zakorian knives slammed through his throat. As he fell, the other Karmian fell on top of him, a pirate crouching on them both to retrieve his dagger.
Two Zakorians hammered at Rem; the other would rejoin them in a moment. Hideous and boring, the fight had only one predictable outcome.
Rem drew his sword and slashed off a man’s ear. Throwing away his knife into someone’s wrist, he seized the knife-hand of the nearest Zakorian and keeping that pinned, pulled the man against him. Grappled, his Zakorian shield cursed him, rather entertained by the move, flexing to free his armed hand, the other punching again and again across Rem’s spine. Rem threw himself back against the ship’s side, the Free Zakorian going with him, loosening a little all over at the impact. Rem managed to crack the man’s knife from his hand and broke their grip. Now Rem struggled upward, but found after all the Zakorian was tenacious, had him again. He would have to take the man with him. Rem felt the rail, kicked desperately, and then the air gulped beneath him. The Free Zakorian, still scrabbling, lay on him in the air, then rolled away.
The sea, when Rem struck it, was itself like a blow, the coldness seeming to suck all the strength from him in one huge gasp. As he came up, he heard the Zakorian splash down not far off.
Rem fought to reach the tossing thing ahead which must be the boat.
His hands closed on the wood at the same instant the swimming Zakorian’s hands closed on him again. Then one hand lifted. Rem knew it was the backswing of another knife. He tried to kick once more, but in the freezing water he could not seem to make it happen. Then his third soldier leaned over him and ran the pirate through.
The soldier hauled Rem into the boat.
“You should have got away,” Rem said. His teeth were chattering from the cold and he could barely enunciate. “Thank the gods you didn’t.”
But the third man, his sword still slimed from the pirate in the sea, was already leaning again to the water. It parted to accept him. There was a black arrow-shaft where his eye had been.
Rem pushed himself up and over on top of the moaning girl, the silent child. “It’s all right,” he said to them. “Keep still. It’s all right.” And nearly laughed.
More arrows flickered about the boat, but hit nothing. The ocean was more choppy now; it was getting rough and they were drifting, away from the ships.
Eventually he raised himself. No one else had come after them. Only a little convention of corpses, drifting too, bobbed on the sea. The ships, locked like fighting kalinxes, were half a mile away. The Lily was al
ready burning.
Rem unshipped the oars and began to row for the memory of land to the east.
• • •
The boat took water, but somehow failed to sink. Rem rowed, rowed, and time ceased. He lost track of everything but the grinding tear of his muscles, the squealing of the boat, the vicious teeth of the cold. He rowed in a dream, or a nightmare, and did not wake up until they ground on a beach of silken ice. The rain had stopped.
He herded the girl inland with him, having sketchily hidden the boat in case the Free Zakorians decided to pursue them after all. In the scoop of a low hill he made a fire. Day was beginning to melt the darkness, and show him Berinda’s face. Her eyes were full of a fear that seemed unable to go away. She watched him, afraid of him, clearly, as of all things. She held the child pressed close, and in the end exposed her breast to the searing cold in order to feed it. Despite the temperature, this act appeared to calm the girl. Rem was glad.
He lapsed back on the hard ground, and looked toward distant hills, a dark soft blue still chalked by snow, and beyond these higher forms yet, mountains found by the light of dawn, then fading away into it. They would have to move soon. Northern Lan was unpopulous. They were miles from anywhere that might give aid. The land smelled empty as a clean blue bowl.
Above the globe of the woman’s breast, the eyes of the child had fixed on him. They seemed to see him distinctly. Between sleep and reality, he felt again the strangeness of the child. What is it? he thought. As if now, of all moments, that was relevant. And yet, it almost seemed he came to understand . . . She called him. Somehow she spoke to him. There were no words. Gradually he became aware of some profound thing, some purely spiritual hugeness, trapped there in the small and helpless soft shell.
The soul was in the eyes. And though it was the frame of a baby, it was not the soul of a baby at all.
And then sleep washed over him. His consciousness went away.
When it came back, the girl and the child were gone.
• • •
Berinda crooned to her infant as she walked. She told it stories. Her own discomfort was nothing to her now. She felt more hopeful. The disasters of the night had been an error. She had left them behind with the dead fire and the sleeping man. Now she would seek her lord, her dark and beautiful lord who cared for her, who was the father of her child, and he would make them safe again.