by Alec Hutson
She had turned this over and over in her cell beneath Gold Leaf Temple. Her father could carry the Sword of Cho for another twenty years, at least. If a male child was born in the next few years, then there would be plenty of time to groom him to take up the ancient responsibilities of the Cho family. And she would be passed over, an insurance against a misfortune that in the end had never happened.
But she had given up her life for her family. No mandarin of the Jade Court would marry a woman who had trained with the daisun monks. She would have no manse, no estate, no life among the noble ladies of Tsai Yin.
No children.
No purpose.
And so, in the blackness of her cell, she had felt an anger growing inside her. She suspected it was what had kept her from reaching the farthest depths of the Nothing. But she had been unable to set this resentment aside.
And then the shocking news had come of her father’s death and the escape of the Betrayers. After a thousand years, the Sword of Cho was needed again.
Fate certainly had a sense of irony.
“Deep thoughts,” Jan commented, watching her closely.
Cho Lin took another swallow of mead. Her head was pleasantly light now. “I am wading through the River Memory,” she said quietly, quoting one of the old poets, “and trying not to be swept away.”
“Sometimes that is difficult,” Jan replied, also softly.
The odd edge to his voice made her glance at him sharply. “What about you? How did you end up in that tower, truly?”
Jan was silent for a moment, his fingers drumming the side of his cup in a quick pattern. It almost looked to Cho Lin like he was plucking the strings of an instrument.
“You speak of memories. Of swimming in them and trying not to drown.” Jan paused, gathering himself. “Until very recently I had only a few scattered memories. The rest were behind a haze I could not see through.”
“You were struck on the head?”
“No. They were… taken away. And the one who did that to me offered to restore them if I did something for her. I had to travel to Dymoria and present myself to its sorcerous queen. I was to hide my own power and take the measure of hers.”
“The one who stole your memories gave you this task? You should have forced her to return what she had taken.”
Jan smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I did not know she was the one who had done it. And she did not steal them… I remember everything now, and I know that it was I who begged her to make me forget.”
“Why?”
“Because I had done terrible things. I could not live with myself if I could remember.”
Cho Lin found a fresh cup of mead before her, and she took another deep draught, watching Jan carefully over the rim. “And now?”
He looked up from the table, and the pain evident in his eyes surprised her. “There is a memory I am clinging to. It is something I learned long after my mind was first purged… and after I had discovered this great secret, the sorceress did her magic and made me forget again, with the hope that this truth would remain hidden forever. But I remember now. And I will not forget this time.”
Cho Lin awoke on a bed of stale rushes, her head throbbing. She groaned and struggled to her feet, steadying herself with a handful of the frayed curtain that blocked the entrance to her tiny alcove. Her throat was parched and her lips dry. What was the appeal of drinking rice wine? She resolved to never do so again.
Pulling aside the curtain, she shuffled into the inn’s common room. The tables were empty, but the plump serving woman was there carrying two buckets sloshing with water towards the kitchen. When she caught sight of Cho Lin she smiled, but it didn’t seem to touch her eyes.
“Afternoon!” she said loudly, setting down the buckets. Cho Lin watched the water enviously.
“Good afternoon. May I have some water?”
“Of course! Let me find a cup.” She turned to go, but before she did Cho Lin noticed that her gaze flickered somewhere else.
Cho Lin followed the direction of that quick glance… to the curtain of the alcove Jan had slept in last night. It was drawn back, and Jan and his bags were gone.
“Where is my friend?” she asked before the woman could vanish through the door to the kitchen.
“I—I don’t rightfully know –”
Jan was gone.
The woman gasped as Cho Lin appeared beside her. It must have seemed like sorcery, because her face paled and her eyes went round with fear.
“Where is my friend?” Cho Lin repeated, her hand closing around the woman’s wrist.
“He left last night,” the woman said, her words tumbling out in a rush. “After you went to bed.”
“Where did he go?”
The woman swallowed. “I don’t –” She squeaked in pain, and Cho Lin relaxed her grip slightly.
“I must know.”
“I’m not certain which way he rode, but Old Jansen’s son was in here this morning, and he said he was out trying to catch frogs last night and he saw a rider going hard on the road. Might have been him.”
“East or west?”
“Well, that’s why he thought it was worth mentioning. Wasn’t riding along the Way. He was going north, and that’s not a direction most folk go.”
North? “To the mountains?”
“To what’s beyond the mountains. The Frostlands.” The woman sketched a circle in the air in front of her, some warding sign. “Where the Skein dwell.”
“Kay, look at this!”
Sella’s excited voice came from the balcony, floating through the gauzy curtains on a sweet-smelling breeze. Keilan glanced up from the strange carving he’d been examining on a shelf cluttered with artifacts—it was a block of ancient scrimshaw shaped to resemble some tentacled creature with a single staring eye, and it looked unnervingly familiar.
“Kay! Quickly!”
Seated at the room’s round table, Nel sighed and rolled her eyes, then brought the hilt of her dagger down on a large brown nut. The shell split with a crack, and in a single smooth motion she reversed her dagger and pried loose the innards.
“Go see what she wants,” she said, tossing the seed into her mouth and brushing the remains of the shell to the side.
Keilan stepped through the rippling curtains, blinking in the bright sunlight, and onto the balcony of red wood. Sella was perched on the edge of the balustrade, leaning out over the tangle of vegetation that looked poised to engulf the mansion. She was pointing at a tree knotted with vines and speckled with small yellow flowers.
“Look!” she cried. “Can you see?”
Keilan moved to the edge of the balcony, savoring the day’s warmth. They’d been waiting for a long time in the shadowy coolness of the sitting room, for a full watch at least. He tried to see what Sella was so excited about, but she appeared just to be pointing at a knobby bump growing from the tree’s gray bole.
“What is it?” he asked, searching for what had excited her.
“Watch this,” she said, showing him a nut in her hand. Then she hurled it at the vine-wrapped tree. The nut bounced off the trunk… only it wasn’t the trunk, as what he’d thought was a knot on the tree suddenly lifted and scuttled away. The crab’s mottled gray shell would be large enough to sit upon, and it perfectly blended with the bark and vines.
Sella laughed happily, clapping her hands. Keilan couldn’t hold back his own smile. He had seen this reaction from her countless times when they’d been exploring the beach or the woods—unalloyed joy at the simple wonders of the world. He’d missed her so much… after all, in the years since his mother’s death she had been his only friend in the village.
It saddened him that he would have to send her away.
“Sella,” he began, unsure of how to say what he must. “You shouldn’t have come.”
She turned to him, the happ
iness in her face vanishing.
“You don’t belong here,” he continued, pressing on before she could say anything. “You should be back on your farm, helping your da.”
One of her hands tightened on the railing as she tucked a strand of her yellow hair behind her ear with the other. “My da doesn’t want me there.”
“Yeah, he does.”
“No, he don’t,” she said, and Keilan could hear the edge of bitterness in her voice. “He thinks just like the rest of them. That I’m unlucky.”
Keilan pursed his lips. She was speaking of her mismatched eyes, one blue and the other green, and he knew that she was right. In his village, only Mam Ru would even speak with her, and Sella had confided in him before that it was the same in the farms to the north.
“You know what it’s like, Kay,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I know you do. The way everyone looks at you when a calf dies or there’s an early frost. Like it’s because you did it.”
“But it’s too dangerous for you here,” he persisted. “You don’t know what I’ve seen. Monsters and spirits and spiders big as dogs. You’re not safe.”
“Well, what about you?” she retorted, jutting her chin out. “I know you well enough. You didn’t turn into some great warrior or wizard in the last half-year.”
“I have to do this, Sella.”
“You don’t,” she said, turning away. “There’s a hundred hundred folk older and stronger and smarter than you. Almost everyone in the wide world, in fact. You want to do this.”
She was right, he grudgingly admitted. The lure of finding out the secrets of where his mother had come from was powerfully strong. It was the great mystery of his life, and the answer now seemed tantalizingly close.
“I do, yeah. But I have Nel and Senacus to help and protect me.”
“They can protect me, too.”
Keilan raised his eyebrows. “Well, Nel might not. She seems quite annoyed with you.”
Sella gave him a fierce look. “I don’t care. She’s mean. I’m not going back until you do. And since Seric said he’s not returning to Chale, I don’t think there’s anyone to take me home.”
Keilan sighed and rubbed his face. What was he going to do with her? She was right. He couldn’t simply put her on a boat headed to the Shattered Kingdoms—he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her.
“We can find –”
A door scraped open inside the manse. Sella and Keilan shared a quick glance, and then they hurriedly pushed away from the balustrade and slipped back through the curtain.
The same tall man who had led them to this room had returned, and now stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. He was one of the hairless men of the Whispering Isles, his smooth teak-colored skin gleaming like he had rubbed himself with oil. Keilan could not tell if he was thirty years old or fifty. The hairless man pursed his thin lips, his gaze traveling from Nel seated at the table to Senacus standing beside a faded oil painting of a ship in a storm to Sella and Keilan framed by the billowing curtain.
“The captain will see one of you,” he said, the cadence of his speech almost musical. “The boy who knew the girl Vera, who lived in this house for a time.”
The hairless man brought Keilan to another room in a different wing of the manse. It was paneled in more of the gleaming red wood, though here the moldings were of finer make, and bookshelves stretching from the floor to the ceiling had been built into the walls. His breath caught in his throat as his gaze traveled along the sweep of dark leather bindings—there must be a hundred books, perhaps even more. And they were not the only wonders; like in the previous chamber, strange artifacts were displayed on low tables: a barbed harpoon of some dark metal, a cracked curving tooth the length of Keilan’s forearm, and a skull that looked vaguely human… but only a single large eye socket was in the center of its forehead.
Seated behind one of these long tables in a high-backed chair was an old man. He rose as they entered, and Keilan was taken aback by the breadth of his shoulders and his imposing height. He filled the room like a storm cloud; his forked black beard was streaked with gray and bound by iron rings, and his craggy face seemed hewn from stone. He must be nearly seven span tall, Keilan marveled, and was dressed in faded finery that looked like it had been fashionable sometime in the last century. The collar and sleeves of his shirt were fringed with lace, and his vest was done up with tarnished golden buttons. Behind the old pirate a yellowed and stained map of the Broken Sea spread across the wall.
He tugged on one of his beard-forks with fingers that glittered with silver rings and studied Keilan, frowning.
“Captain,” the hairless man said smoothly. “This is Keilan Ferrisorn. He claims to be the son of the girl Vera.” Then he retreated, drawing shut the chamber’s door behind him.
The pirate lord’s face seemed to grow even darker at his mother’s name, and Keilan felt a rising apprehension. Could there have been some trouble between them long ago?
“My lord,” he said, taking a tentative step closer to where Chalissian loomed. “I am sorry to disturb you. I heard you knew my mother.”
The old man reached for a dusky bottle on the table in front of him and, with a flick of his huge thumb, removed its cork. He poured a measure of dark liquid into a cup of green glass and then sank back into his chair.
“Vera,” he rumbled, lifting the glass to study its contents. In his massive hand the cup looked like a tumbler. Then he tossed back the drink and grimaced.
“Sit,” he said, and Keilan slid into a cushioned chair on the opposite side of the table.
Chalissian filled his glass again without offering any to Keilan. “So you are her son.”
“I am. She died a few years ago.”
“How did she die?”
“She drowned.”
The old man nodded slightly, as if he had expected this. “A good way to die. I’ve seen a lot of men get taken by the sea. The water fills them up, pushing out their life, and the spirit wriggles free and swims away. Sometimes you can glimpse those ghosts at night, in the moonlight, staring up from under the waves.”
Keilan swallowed, unsure what to say to this.
“So you’ve come here,” Chalissian said, his black eyes glittering, “to Ven Ibras and my home. Why?”
“I need to know about her life.”
“‘A man must first know where he came from, in order to discover where he must go.’ Do you know who said that?”
“The… the carpenter on the road to Verayne. In Jesaphon’s book of tales.”
The old man set down his glass so hard Keilan feared it had cracked.
“You are right. And you are like her—learned. Can you believe I caught her here –” Chalissian gestured to encompass the rows of bookshelves. “– late at night, hunched over this very table? Reading.” He chuckled. “A servant! The gall of it, to sneak into her master’s study and burn down his candles when she needed to be up for her morning chores only hours later. And she showed no fear when she saw me standing in the doorway. I knew then that she was different.”
“Please, my lord. How did she come to work in your house?”
The old pirate sipped his drink. “She appeared during a storm,” he said, his voice growing more distant, as if dredging up these memories was returning him to the past. “Wet and shivering outside my door. She begged for a place to sleep and food to eat, promised to work hard. I don’t rightly know why I said yes—my heart is usually black iron, but there was something about her. Maybe it was her hair, like a stream of silver. Never seen anything like that before or since, and I have sailed all over the world.”
“Did she say where she had come from?”
The old man shook his head, the forks of his beard swinging. “Never spoke of it. But I can respect those who want to leave something behind.”
A sinking sensation w
as spreading in Keilan’s stomach. Was this where the trail ended? Had this entire journey been for nothing? “Did she bring anything with her?” he asked, hearing the edge of desperation in his voice.
“She was wearing a dress. It was old, I remember, but rich. Like a noblewoman might wear who has fallen on hard times. She was carrying a bag, but the only things inside were books. That was a strange thing, as those books were written in the old Kalyuni script. She could’ve sold them to a merchant in town for enough coin to buy her own house, but she never would have done that. They were her treasures.”
“How long did she work here?”
“A few months. I was good to her, kinder than any master should be.” His face darkened, his bushy brows drawing down. “And then one morning she didn’t appear when I rang the bell. Had slipped out during the night without so much as a farewell. Stole some food before she left, and I heard later that she had gone on a boat headed towards the Kingdoms.”
“I’m… I’m sorry. I’m sure she had a good reason.”
The old pirate grabbed the dusky bottle and upended it into his glass, spilling some of the drink onto the table. “I raged back then. I am still a captain, and there is nothing that angers me more than mutiny. Your mother, she didn’t show me loyalty when I’d done her a kindness.” The old man stood suddenly and turned away from Keilan, staring at the tattered map of the Broken Sea that covered the wall.
The sound of the door opening made Keilan glance behind him. The hairless man who had led him to Chalissian’s study filled the doorway, motioning for him to come. With a final look at the old pirate, his back still to him, Keilan hurried across the room and slipped into the hallway. The hairless man gently closed the door, his face impassive.
“The captain, he has a black temper. It will pass like a squall, but for the time it is best to let him be.”
“I didn’t mean to anger him. I just had to ask about my mother.”
The hairless man held up his hands, as if to show that he understood. “Yes. And I remember your mother as well. I was working in this house when she first came here.” He glanced at the closed door, his lips set in a thin line. “He loved her, I think. Not as a man does his wife, but as a father does his daughter. She would read to him for hours—the captain, he never learned how, but he loves his books.”