Soul of the World

by David Mealing

  “Arak’Jur,” the shaman said, sounding winded, tired, now that he was finished speaking on behalf of the spirits. Ka’Vos’s hair had long since gone to gray, his skin tough and creased with the lines of age.

  “Ka’Vos,” he said, returning the nod of respect. In his time as shaman Ka’Vos had presided over generations of peace with their neighbors, good harvests, and bountiful births. It was not so easy to disregard a lifetime of service, whatever Llanara wanted to think.

  “Walk with me,” the shaman said. Arak’Jur complied, settling into an easy stride beside the old man’s long walking staff.

  “I have seen a vision,” Ka’Vos said quietly. “But I do not know what it means.”

  Arak’Jur turned, eyebrows perked with interest. “Would you speak of it with me?”

  “Yes. A scaled creature, in the company of a fair-skin. It drank deep from us, filling itself, but with the blood of our enemies as much as from our strength. And then it vanished.”

  “A troubling vision,” Arak’Jur offered. “Could it be another great beast, so soon after ipek’a?”

  Ka’Vos clutched tight to his staff as they walked, but kept his eyes forward, focused on the path ahead. “The land has teemed with them of late. But I do not think so. This creature was different.”

  Arak’Jur slowed, eyeing Ka’Vos as the old man paced beside him, waiting for more. The shaman looked fragile, the gray in his hair seeming to echo the lines beneath his eyes, the creases in his skin.

  “What of the fair-skin?” Arak’Jur asked when the shaman did not continue. “Is the creature some sign of their magic? A warning from the spirits of things-to-come?”

  Ka’Vos shook his head. “I cannot be sure. The creature drank from us, but from our enemies as well, enemies come from a great distance. And the fair-skins have not stirred from behind their barrier since the destruction of the Tanari.”

  Arak’Jur nodded. He knew the stories. The Sinari people had fought great wars against the Tanari tribes for generations, in the time of his grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather. Much blood had been shed on both sides, until the fair-skins arrived from across the sea. The strange foreigners had made useful allies, but when the war was done they erected their barrier and multiplied behind it, building cities of iron and stone on lands that had belonged to the Tanari, and to still more tribes, extending far to the south. The fair-skins were many now, but few among them dared to leave the lands they’d claimed—they had no shamans, no guardians to protect them from the great beasts of the wild.

  “Perhaps these are the visions the other tribes’ shamans have seen,” he said.

  “Perhaps. But our bonds with our fellows are not so strong as they once were. I fear it, Arak’Jur. I fear if war comes, it will not be so easy to divine our enemies, even with the spirits’ guidance.”

  The silence stretched on as they walked the winding paths through the woods near the village. Each of them deep in his thoughts, considering the implications of what Ka’Vos had seen.

  Until Ka’Vos froze mid-stride in the center of the path.

  “What?” Arak’Jur asked. “What is it?”

  “He comes.” Ka’Vos’s voice was cold, pained.

  “Who?”

  “The fair-skin. The scaled beast. They come now!”

  With wide eyes, Arak’Jur turned and ran back toward the village.

  Arak’Jur rushed into the clearing, where a strange man stood at the head of the path, alone, as if waiting to be greeted. He wore a red coat, bright like the sun at the height of the season of fire, a hue so bright it shone despite the overcast skies. Light hair to go with his light skin, and pale blue eyes like none Arak’Jur had ever seen on a tribesman.

  The rest of the tribe had withdrawn into the village at the fair-skin’s coming. Without the hunters and traders present they were ill-equipped to deal with a threat. Better to wait for their guardian to handle this strange newcomer. Only Llanara had stood her ground, curse her for a fool. She stood in the center of the gathering place, watching the strange man with an intense gaze. Yet neither moved. For all her bravery, she was not fool enough to approach the man unbidden. And the fair-skin seemed content to wait.

  Arak’Jur was not. He strode toward the man and raised his hand, calling a cautious greeting in the fair-skins’ tongue. He’d learned enough to make himself understood, when the hunters met with the fair-skins at the openings of their barrier, though he would not trust his words to settle matters of import. Perhaps it would be enough to learn why the man had come.

  Yet when the red-coated man replied, he spoke the tribes’ tongue perfectly, without accent or inflection. Odd. Perhaps the man was a trader, accustomed to dealing with his people. But even among their traders, he had never heard of a fair-skin brave enough to approach a village without escort.

  “Hello, guardian of the Sinari,” the man said. “My name is Reyne d’Agarre, and I bear an offering of peace to you and your people. Peace, and power.”

  The man nodded to something unseen beside him, and a crystalline serpent materialized, as if from thin air. Its scales were flushed a deep blue, and it craned its head to look him directly in the eyes.

  A voice sounded inside his head, strange and foreign.

  Peace, and power. The power to protect your people, Arak’Jur.

  7

  SARINE

  The Five Cats Tavern

  Maw District, New Sarresant

  The bustle of men storming into the tavern made her flinch by instinct, though thankfully not enough to have her reaching for Faith.

  She sat alone at a table opposite the main door, the flaking crust of a meat pie decorating a pewter plate in front of her. A treat and a delicacy, given each pie cost a full silver mark since the onset of the war. But Madame Guillon made the best pastries in the Maw, even if she did it with scraps left from the supply wagons before they headed south. And the woman ran a clean tavern, brooking little in the way of nonsense from the district’s citizens. It had always been a safe place when she’d needed one, even as a child, and all the more so now with the coin from her uncle’s stipend in a bag hidden in the bottom of her otherwise empty pack. She was tasked with finding foodstuffs for the chapel’s kitchen, and made it a point to delight her uncle with better fare than bread and cabbage when she could.

  “There’s been another theft,” the men were saying, passing rumors as they crowded round a table at the center of the room. “In the Market district.”

  Only a handful of patrons other than herself had occupied the taproom prior to the men’s entrance, but the commotion drew every eye, hers included. Better if she went unnoticed by anyone, especially when she had coin. But she caught sight of the object of the men’s exclamations—a rag linen newspaper, brandished like a torch—and she couldn’t help but crane to try to hear them read its contents.

  “Two days past,” a man at the center of the group read aloud to his fellows, most of whom doubtless couldn’t have read it themselves. “A store of supplies intended for the army reported missing after a commotion with the city watch. Four constables upbraided for dereliction of duty, seen fleeing their posts prior to the robbery of three hundred pounds salt pork, forty-eight muskets, and six casks of beer intended for delivery to the southern front.”

  “What’s this then?” Madame Guillon, the proprietress of the tavern, joined in over top of the men as she strode in from the kitchens.

  “Another theft, mum,” one of the men said.

  “I know where they can deliver those casks of beer,” another man said.

  “And I know where they got them,” Madame Guillon spat. “Raiding our larders, for the benefit of the crown’s soldiers. A tax, and I call it theft. Can’t steal what’s already stolen.”

  Murmured agreement passed among the men before they moved on to the next piece of news, a murder reported on the deck of the Fleur-Gascon. Sarine didn’t listen. Four constables of the watch charged with dereliction of duty, running in fear from their po
sts. And then a robbery. She’d seen the same scene play out in the Harbor, overseen by the man in the red coat. A chill passed down her spine as she remembered the look in his eyes when he’d stared at her, even shrouded behind her Faith tethers.

  A half bushel of carrots dropped to the table across from her plate and Madame Guillon slid into the seat opposite her.

  “This is all I can spare, even for Father Thibeaux’s charity,” Madame Guillon said. “It’s been a hard winter, and no sign of getting any easier now the snows are gone.”

  Sarine reached for the carrots, quickly stuffing them into her pack, though more than one of the men listening to the day’s paper caught a glance before she got them out of sight.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Everything helps. Uncle will include you in his prayers, I’m sure.”

  “I’d as soon he urge his congregation to drink from my taps, if there are any left who can afford it. And it’s eight silver pennies this time.”

  “Eight?” That was more than double what she’d paid for half again as many carrots not two weeks prior.

  Madame Guillon held up a hand to forestall the argument she had to know was coming. “It’s eight or nothing. The Duc-Governor’s quartermasters are bleeding me dry, me and every farmer in riding distance of the city. High time we chop the forests, or push out the barrier, take some more land from the savages. But until we do, you pay what I pay. Not an ounce of profit in it, I swear on the Veil’s truth.”

  Sarine frowned, but fished up the coins just the same. Madame Guillon wasn’t one to slight the Gods. But if the army was seizing goods at the rate Madame Guillon claimed, her excursion today would be less fruitful than she’d hoped. At this rate she’d need to sell twenty sketches a week just to pay for their meals, over and above the stipend they got from the Basilica.

  So it had been, and growing worse in the months since the crown had declared its war on Gand. Though the wines and cheeses never seemed in short supply on the palace green, or in the townhouses and salons of the Gardens district, she was sure. The nobles had to expect the people to lash out, to organize thefts of precisely the sort executed by the man in the red coat. The papers had made no mention of him in the Harbor, nor again in today’s news of the panicked watchmen in the Market district. But it sounded too similar not to be the same man. Curiosity once again gnawed at her, the same as hunger would if prices kept driving themselves northward. Perhaps they’d all be thieves before the end.

  “Our thanks, again,” she said after Madame Guillon had taken her coin.

  “And mine,” Madame Guillon replied. “Take care of yourself, child. And give my blessings to your uncle.”

  She collected her pack, bowing as she licked the last scraps of her meat pie from her fingers. The men at the center of the common room were reading a story about an accident at a Southgate munitions factory—six workers dead, and half a warehouse burned beyond repair—but two of them had taken notice of her, first when Madame Guillon delivered the carrots, and then again, just as intently, when she’d produced the coin to pay for them. A quick check of the leylines showed Body aplenty, and Faith, as there always was near the Five Cats. She could escape their attentions easily enough, if it came to it. The Maw was never a kind place, but she hoped it hadn’t yet descended to assault and theft in the light of midday.

  Thankfully the men didn’t follow, or if they did they waited too long, and she pushed through the doors and vanished into the crowds lining the streets outside the tavern.

  A makeshift farmers’ market made for the second stop of the day. No more than a city block lined with wagons of foodstuffs deemed unworthy of the Gardens or Southgate—else why cross the river to sell them in the Maw—but she could ofttimes find surprises nestled among the bags and bushels in the farmers’ carts. Today she’d managed three cabbage heads and a half-rotten onion to go along with Madame Guillon’s carrots, and reckoned the lot a treasure weighed against the empty bags of too many in the crowd, stalking between carts seeking food they could afford.

  “Corn heads and bean sprouts!” a farmer was shouting, and Sarine shook her head as she passed him by. From the look of it his corn had already been picked over by wild birds, and his sprouts were more grass than anything edible.

  She passed two wagoneers packing up empty carts, preparing to hitch mules and leave their spots along the thoroughfare, before a basket of red apples caught her eye.

  “How much?” she asked over the din, shouting and pointing to make herself heard.

  The farmer eyed her with a squint before replying. “Two silver coins apiece. No worms; fresh picked.”

  “Two silvers? Each? I could have your wagon for half your basket. That’s—”

  Green.

  A chill passed through her as Zi’s voice sounded in her head.

  “Bugger off, girl.” The farmer waved her away. “They cost what they cost.”

  She glanced up the street, toward a swelling crowd that would have betokened no more than well-stocked carts at that end of the market if not for Zi’s cryptic thought.

  “What does that mean, Zi? ‘Green.’ Is that related to what you saw in the Harbor?”

  “I said bugger off, girl!” the farmer bellowed, gesturing for her to move along.

  That was Yellow, Zi replied as she moved toward the crowd. This is Green.

  She frowned, as much for her companion’s sake as the commotion at the far end of the street. Last time she’d followed that sort of prompting it had ended with her almost trampled by fleeing sailors and a glimpse of the man in the red coat stealing crates from a warehouse. The same man who had to have been behind the theft she’d heard reported in the daily papers.

  Prudence suggested she take her pack and head back to the Sacre-Lin. But curiosity had lingered in her mind since the Harbor. There she’d been alone on the street; if the man in the red coat was a binder—or had binders with him—he could have traced her tethers in an eyeblink. Here she’d be safe, hidden in the crowd. If it was him at all. She’d never heard Zi give a color as a warning before, but twice in as many weeks was too much to give to chance.

  She moved around the press, keeping her pack clutched tight for the sake of pickpockets no doubt working the street. Men and women packed the way ahead of her, those on the periphery drawn by the presence of the crowd itself, as she had been, craning their necks and passing questions as to what was going on. She wouldn’t get close trying to wade through their number. Instead she ducked down an alley, found the familiar red motes of Body and white clouds of Faith, and scrambled up an iron gate adjoining the roof of a block of shops until she had a vantage overlooking the whole of the square.

  As she looked down on it, the crowd was thicker than she’d imagined, running the length of two city blocks at least, extending past the farmers’ market and spilling into side streets in every direction. But it seemed to be centered on a wagon surrounded by a circle of clear space, two streets ahead.

  A running leap bridged the gap between the roof she’d scrambled up and the next one, and she caught sight of the man in the red coat.

  It was him, sure as her uncle’s sermons.

  Standing at the heart of the crowd, with men in plain clothes surrounding him, handing some sort of parcels to those who approached. Yet for all the buzz of whispers and jostling on the streets around his crates, those who reached him seemed docile, orderly, willing to wait their turn. They came forward one at a time or in pairs, received whatever it was they were being handed, then spoke with the man in the red coat, bowing and genuflecting as though he were a priest offering blessings of kindness and salvation.

  No, not blessings. And not parcels. He was handing them slabs of meat and loaves of bread.

  Her jaw pried itself open at the sight of it. Gold marks—hundreds of gold marks’ worth of food, at a time when silver bought rotten vegetables and brass bought dirt and shoe leather. And the people clustered around his wagon—Maw folk, the sort who would split your skull for a half-empty pu
rse if they thought no one would see—shuffled forward like lambs, accepting their gifts and moving on without comment from those still waiting to approach. Women and children, even street children in rags and filth, carried treasures past men who could kill them with little more than a square kick to the ribs. She’d dodged men like that for years before her uncle had taken her in. And no one had ever handed her a loaf of bread and slab of pork.

  Green, Zi said again. And then, a moment later, Yellow.

  She stared, her companion’s voice almost beneath her notice.

  “I don’t understand, Zi. How is he doing this?”

  Force, against their nature. They respond to sympathy.

  “What does that mean? He’s doing something to keep them calm?”

  Zi appeared at the lip of the roof, lolling his head over the side as his scales flushed green and white. It might have been a nod; it might have been silence. Gods but he could be infuriating.

  In spite of Zi, her pack felt suddenly empty, weighed against the prizes being given out below. Did she dare join the throng, to try to secure a parcel for herself? Her uncle would be beside himself if she came back with that sort of bounty, but then again the district would have less need for the Sacre-Lin’s charity in coming days than it ever had before. A gnawing feeling suggested she should want nothing to do with whatever was going on in the square, but the rest of her—

  Thunder sounded from a block on the opposite side of the square. A guttural roar, ringing from the sides of buildings, that gave way to screams.

  She pivoted around, but saw nothing to indicate the source, only the crowd rippling in on itself. Smoke rose from an intersection one block south of her place atop the roof as that street cleared, leaving a handful of figures huddled on the ground, with a few more standing stock-still, staring, frozen while their fellows ran.

  It took another instant—and the emergence of blue-uniformed city watchmen through the haze of the smoke—before she understood. That hadn’t been thunder; it was gunfire.