Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  ‘Maybe,’ Vidu said, ‘but a few gold wheels will keep food in my children’s bellies for the next five years.’

  They fell into silence as the rain dripped and the time passed. When the moon was high in the sky, shining white on the drenched world, Rahul approached and Vidu rose, nodding at the other man as he handed off the watch to him. Krish didn’t even bother trying to speak to Rahul. He was as harsh as Vidu was kind, and he’d never liked Krish.

  When the moon was leaving the sky, Krish saw another figure approaching. With a shock of mingled hope and distress, he realised it was his mother. His father’s murder sat heavy in his gut, and knowing he’d done that, how could he tell her he was innocent of anything else?

  He thought she’d come for him, but instead she stopped by Rahul to whisper in his ear. Krish could see the pale square shapes of her teeth as her mouth moved and he heard the hiss of Rahul’s reply, like a snake. His mother spoke again, and then the pair of them turned together and walked into the darkness of the village.

  Whatever his mother was doing, it had given him a little time unwatched. He could barely see his manacles or the chains that bound them to the tree, but he felt their contours with his fingers, searching for weak points. There was one: the links binding the manacles to the chains were thin. He’d need something hard to break them, though. He crawled on his knees through the mud, searching for a rock large enough. His fingers closed on something solid and his heart pounded once, very hard, before he realised it was only the old tree’s root, exposed by the rain. Finally his hand closed around a flint barely big enough to fill his palm.

  He ran his fingers along the chains again and felt the outline of the weak link. It might work – it might – but how many blows would it take? He took a deep breath, then another. What did he really have to lose? He raised the rock—

  ‘No, Krish!’ his mother said, and he dropped it into the mud, spinning to face her and tangling himself in his chains.

  Stupid. He should have been listening for his guard to return. But after a moment he realised that his mother was alone. She dropped to her knees in front of him and put two packs into the mud beside her.

  ‘It’s not safe for you to be here, Ma,’ he whispered. ‘You need to go before Rahul comes back.’

  ‘He won’t be back, not for a while. He’s asleep in his tent.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She looked down, away, anywhere but at him. ‘I’ve seen the way he stares at me, all these years. Your da noticed. Why do you think they hated each other so much? I told Rahul he could have what he wanted if he’d let me have a little time alone with you, and he fell asleep after. I knew he would. Your father did the same.’

  Krish’s stomach lurched queasily. ‘With Rahul?’

  Now she did look at him, her expression fierce. ‘With anyone, Krish. I’d do anything for you.’

  ‘Would you, Ma? The justice says I’m a wanted man. Don’t you wonder what I’ve done?’

  ‘It’s not what you’ve done, Krishanjit, it’s who you are. The justice didn’t want to tell the others. He’s afraid they’ll realise how much you’re worth. But he asked me questions: where I’d found you, when. He knew you weren’t mine.’

  ‘Then who am I? Why does the King’s justice want me?’

  ‘Because you’re his son. The King’s, I mean. He’s been looking for you a long time.’

  He stared at her, trying to see the joke, but she seemed in deadly earnest. ‘You’re saying … but then why have me arrested? Why treat me like an enemy?’

  ‘There was a prophecy, before you were born. It said you’d kill your father.’

  ‘Kill my father?’ He laughed harshly at the awful irony.

  ‘Yes. And so the King tried to kill you, but someone stole you from your mother’s belly and got you away. They hid you on a riverbank, and that’s where I found you, seventeen years ago.’

  He studied her face closely and finally saw what should have been obvious all along. ‘You knew. You’ve always known who I am.’

  ‘It was the talk of the lowlands when I went there. I didn’t want to stay with your da. I’d never planned to come back to him. You’d not think it now, but I was beautiful then. I’d meant to run away from him and find myself a new man down by the Five Stars. They say it’s warm there, Krish, all the year. And the crops are tall and fruit grows on the trees sweeter than you could imagine. But then I found you. The King had it put around that your mother killed herself and you, but the moment I saw you I knew he must have lied. Anyone else who saw you would know it too. Everyone at the Five Stars would know it. They’d look at your eyes and know who you were. So I brought you back here, to the edge of the world. Back to your da. It was the only place you could be safe.’

  ‘But why didn’t you ever tell me?’

  ‘I wanted to.’ She sighed and touched his face. ‘First you were too little. And then – you’re so angry, Krishanjit. I was afraid of what you’d do.’

  Angry? He’d always thought he was afraid, but as soon as she said it he understood that anger was the hard knot at the heart of all his feelings.

  ‘And then you did it anyway. If only you hadn’t killed him, Krishanjit, the justice would never have come. You could have lived your whole life in peace.’

  Of course she’d known that too. She was his mother. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, hanging his head. ‘For everything. Now you’d better go. The next guard will be coming soon.’

  ‘No, I’ll not let you be sent away to die. I saved you once and I’ll do it again. I don’t care what they say, you’re my son.’ She fumbled in one of the packs, pulling out first a hammer and then a metal chisel she must have stolen from Isuru.

  He stared at them, suddenly weak with relief. ‘You can’t, Ma. They’ll know it was you. They’ll kill you.’

  She shook her head even as she gently took his hand and laid it flat against the ground so that she could reach the chain, awkward with her injured arm. ‘We’ll both run. My sister will put me up, and they won’t follow me. It’s you they want.’

  ‘No, we’ll go together. I won’t leave you.’

  ‘I can’t get over the mountains. I’m not strong enough, and that’s where you need to go. You have to leave Ashanesland. I looked at a map once, before I came down to the lowlands. The Fourteen Tribes live to the west, and they don’t obey the Oak Wheel. I’ve packed food and warm clothes for you. There’s your da’s knife, and I’d saved a few anchors. You’ll be all right, Krishanjit. You’re stronger than you look. You always were.’

  She raised the hammer and struck the first chain from his arm. Then she grabbed his other hand, placed the chisel on the chain and that one was gone too. Only the manacles remained around his wrists. He was free, but the sound of the blows had echoed loud in the midnight silence. He could already hear raised voices from the village.

  ‘The goats!’ he said in sudden panic. ‘Who’ll take care of Snowy?’

  ‘They’ll be taken in. Goats are valuable – they’ll always find a home. It’s people who don’t get shown any kindness.’ There was the memory of pain on her face.

  ‘I’ll find you again, Ma,’ he promised her. ‘I’ll find you and take care of you.’

  ‘Just take care of yourself’ she said, thrusting one of the packs at him. ‘But listen to me, Krish. You can’t run for ever – the King will find you and kill you. He’ll hunt the whole earth for you if he has to. That’s how much he wants you dead.’

  ‘Then what can I do?’

  ‘You can fight back, find people who’ll fight for you. There’s many that hate King Nayan. When you were born I heard talk – shiplords who’d rather have followed you than your father. You need to find them, Krishanjit, and you need to raise yourself an army and you need to make yourself the king you were born to be. It’s your only hope. Now go!’

  This time he didn’t hesitate. He pressed a kiss against his mother’s grey hair and ran into the darkness and away from everything he knew.
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br />   11

  Nethmi had taken to starting her mornings with a walk round the shipfort’s battlements. The cold was profound, but wrapped in her new furs she found it bearable. And it kept anyone but the scattered sentries from joining her. They saluted her silently as she passed and left her to her thoughts.

  At least her anger kept her hot. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. She hadn’t wanted this marriage, so why should she care if Thilak didn’t want her? But she did. She’d accepted that he might think of her as a prize to be displayed, but that she wasn’t even that to him … How dare he! Her father had tamed the tribes who called him lord, and now he treated Shaan’s only daughter as nothing, as less than the savage who warmed his bed!

  The rage felt like a physical thing inside her, a burning ember in her belly, and she made herself breathe evenly as she studied the landscape around Winter’s Hammer. It was bleak beyond belief. The view was the same in every direction, the rock-strewn plain surrendering in the far distance to mountains and the sky above a pure and unforgiving blue. Snow covered everything but the lee of the great black rocks. How could she have longed to return to this place? Her eyes wept with the cold and she shuddered.

  On her third circuit of the battlements she realised that the eyes of one of the sentries were following her, and on the fourth she recognised him and stopped. It was the young man who’d rowed her across the lake when she first arrived at Winter’s Hammer. Even swathed in furs she knew his face, the gentlest she’d seen among the tribesmen.

  He smiled tentatively at her approach.

  She hadn’t meant to speak, but she realised suddenly how starved she was of conversation and smiled back and said, ‘I didn’t learn your name.’

  His gaze dropped to his hand, which tightened on his sword hilt before he looked up and said, ‘Seonu In Su, lady.’

  ‘In Su. And I imagine you know mine.’

  ‘Yes. Nethmi.’ He blushed suddenly and surprisingly. She hadn’t known the tribesmen’s pale skin could colour so brightly. ‘Sorry, lady.’

  ‘There’s no need to be sorry – that is my name. Tell me, In Su, whose is the face on those rocks? None of my own people seemed to know.’

  He seemed glad to look away from her and out onto the endless snow, his eyes narrowing to slits at the glare of the whiteness. ‘He is the moon.’

  ‘The god of the moon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stared at that long, strange face. So this was the god the preacher had spoken of back in Smiler’s Fair, unknown and unworshipped among the Ashane. He’d sounded like a more reassuring being then. And now she knew how much that face resembled the worm men’s. Perhaps they really were his servants, as the boy had claimed.

  In Su turned back to her, a little bolder. ‘But dead now, lady. So they say.’

  ‘It seems strange that gods should die.’

  He shrugged. ‘All things die.’

  She supposed living here, in this icy wasteland, that was an easy thing to believe. Nothing could be impervious to the ravages of wind and snow and the terrible cold that cracked the rocks and year by year turned them to pebbles.

  ‘I heard the moon god has returned,’ she told him.

  ‘Not here. This is the last place that any come. Who would choose this of all the world?’

  It was a gloomy thought and she nodded to In Su and turned away, knowing that her duties awaited her. The brightness faded but the air heated as she reluctantly descended the stairs into the fort, the strange waters of the lake heating the lowest floors.

  Thilak waited for her at the bottom. He smiled his big, friendly smile. ‘Good morning, my lady. I’d feared you might have fallen to your death, you’d been gone so long.’

  She ignored the implied criticism and smiled politely as at a weak joke. ‘I find the fresh air helps me wake, my lord.’ He hadn’t yet come to her bed. She was dreading the moment when he would. She knew she’d smell another woman’s scent on him as he lay on top of her.

  There was a moment’s pause and his smile froze as he studied her. She wondered what he read in her face. The years in her uncle’s court had taught her to wear a mask of unconcern, but Thilak’s eyes saw a lot. ‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘You’ll be wanting to head down to the kitchens now. We’ve a patrol reporting in this evening and they’ll need feeding in the great hall. Your assistance will be invaluable.’

  ‘I shall try to be helpful,’ she said and, with another fake smile, walked down the corridor past him.

  The kitchens were unbearably hot, the air solid with smoke and the smell of rosemary and meat. Nethmi had shucked off her furs by the door, but the material of her plain dress was soaked through with perspiration. She felt filthy and useless.

  ‘This, or this?’ the head cook asked in her broken Ashane, pointing at two huge carcasses. Skinned and bloody, they could have been anything.

  ‘That one,’ Nethmi said, pointing randomly to the left-hand carcass.

  ‘Very good, lady.’ The cook bowed, but her expression suggested Nethmi had made the wrong choice.

  She’d already learned that she’d be expected to stay in the kitchens until lunch. After that, her time was her own as long as she used it for sewing. The hours crept past until the cook nodded at her, almost a dismissal, and she knew she could go. There’d be food in the great hall but her spirits sank at the thought of it. Thilak’s men would all be there, babbling incomprehensibly, and maybe that woman too, watching Nethmi with smug, scheming eyes.

  Instead, she grabbed a withered apple and hunks of bread and cheese and ate them as she walked, exploring the maze of the shipfort. From the outside, it had looked quite small; far smaller than Whitewood. But the corridors there were wide and grand, the rooms high-ceilinged and painted all over with murals of flowers and trees. Here everything was cramped, twisted and dark. She doubted she’d seen half of it yet. She set off to her left, towards what she knew were Thilak’s own rooms. But she was his wife, wasn’t she? She had the right to go there. When a guard half-raised his axe at her approach, she raised her eyebrow back at him and he stepped aside.

  The corridor beyond looked no different from the others. Lanterns hung from brackets on the wall, only every third lit. The floor was clean, the rock still rough. Unlike the ancient lowland shipforts, Thilak’s stronghold was newly built in this newly conquered land.

  She wondered if his soldiers, when they walked these corridors and saw the green wood, the rough stone and the unworn rugs, remembered that they’d been free men less than twenty years before. She imagined the silent, loyal guards rioting. She pictured them setting fire to all the wood, which would burn smoky and hot, and the fantasy made her smile.

  There were several doors off the corridor. The first led to an armoury. She spent a few moments studying the swords and bows and halberds. She touched the dagger that hung at her waist, the one which her father had given to her all those years ago. She preferred it to all the weapons here.

  The next room was just an empty chamber with scratch marks on the floor where something heavy had been removed. A bed? Perhaps this was where that woman had stayed before Nethmi had arrived. She shut the door quickly and moved on.

  The next led to a library. Aside from the great hall, it was the biggest room she’d yet seen in Thilak’s shipfort. She entered and shut the door behind her, smiling. This was a place she could while away her afternoons. It even had windows lining the far wall. The sunlight shone through them, scattered and warped by the uneven panes. A rainbow fell across the floor and Nethmi stood in it for a moment before moving to examine the nearest shelf.

  Some of the scrolls were so old she was afraid to unroll them. Others looked like their ink was barely dry. She scanned a few and found that they were accounts of the leading noble houses in the realm: their holdings, their wealth, the conflicts between their scions, who might be induced to turn against whom. It occurred to her that these were a spy’s reports and she hurriedly put them back.

  Another
shelf held big black books whose vellum pages were filled with the incomprehensible symbols of the Moon Forest folk. She flicked through them and found that many of the pages were covered with illustrations. One showed a group of children smiling up at a tall, golden-skinned woman with pointed ears who handed them daisies. Another depicted the same woman thrusting her spear through a monstrous, lizard-like creature a hundred times her size. There were pictures of boats on the high seas sailing through mountains of ice, of orchards, a device that trapped the sun. It was impossible to know what any of them meant and she put the book back and thumbed through another.

  It took her a surprising amount of time to realise that she wasn’t alone. There was an armchair in the far corner of the room, turned to face the windows and the lake. What she’d taken for a cushion was really a man’s head. Her breath caught and she told herself to be calm. She had every right to be in her husband’s library. Besides, she guessed the man must be asleep, lulled to it by the rocking motion of the shipfort on the waves.

  But when she circled the chair to get a better look at him she found two bright brown eyes staring at her. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you since your nuptials. A bad shrimp kept me abed, I’m afraid. You will forgive me, won’t you?’

  She recognised him immediately: he’d been sitting at the far end of the table on her wedding day. She’d noticed he was fat then, but he was even more grotesque than she’d realised, the biggest man she’d ever seen. Folds of flesh stretched his shirt round his waist and bulged from his thighs where the armchair squeezed his massive legs together. He seemed to have no neck, just the ball of his head connected directly to the bulk of his body. His face was round and innocent and it was impossible to tell his age, but she guessed he might be younger than her.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve been unwell,’ she said stiffly. ‘But you have the advantage of me, I’m afraid.’