Salvation's Fire

by Justina Robson

  “Enough,” she said. “I am beaten. Enough.” She let both her blades fall out of her hands. They went clattering onto the deck and her hands remained high and visible. Her vibrant skin had gone a sickly shade of khaki, the paler parts grey.

  “Whut?” Nedlam said thickly. “Why?” She straightened, lowering her hammer. Her opposite number let his thunk down and he turned to see what was going on. He looked as confused as she did. “You were winnin’. Nearly,” Nedlam added and squinted through sweat and blood to Celestaine who nodded and waggled her hand—maybe.

  Bit by bit they relaxed.

  “Your Tzarkomen masters have won,” the Ystachi said, humbly. “It was anyway a bit of a foolish gamble. Fug is an idiot anyway but once you start, you start. We surrender. Unconditional.”

  A couple of the Valuti hissed and chittered angrily but she said more insistently, “Surrender, damn you. Now is not the moment for your blood debts. Later. Later. Or all your debts will be paid out for you when you are tossed to the fishes.”

  They grumbled but obeyed, and went about to tend to the wounded.

  Celestaine felt the deep ache of a gash in her leg starting to make itself known. She stepped back and looked for Lysandra, to find her right there, arms folded. In the slowly improving light she was the colour of a fully fledged bruise, the pale lustre on the surface of her skin giving her a pearly sheen so that she could have been undead herself.

  “You must be the Captain Kalliendra noted in the ship’s log,” she said to the Ystachi. “These Cheriveni never can stop taking notes even when they’re pirates. Whatever your deal was with Captain Vakloz here it is ended. Time is short so there will be a new bargain. Your crew and the remains of his will stay here and guard this vessel until we return when you will sail it where we wish to go.” She made a gesture and the unhappy figure of Bukham appeared, waxy and pale even on his darker patches, sweating as he carried the body of the Captain up into the light. They stood aside and he set it down, weapons and bits of finery still attached.

  “I will consider your treacheries paid out if you agree. And if you try to cross me you will feel that you are burning with the fire of a thousand suns until you return to my will. Whether this is agreeable to you or not is not important. Only that you understand.”

  “Tzarkan monsters!” The man who had first screamed out, did so again, this time accompanying his words with the cast of a harpoon directly at Lysandra. He had a good arm and it flew true, faster than Nedlam or Celestaine could have intercepted.

  Heno was raising his arm, and moving—he may have got to deflect it—but before he could do so Lysandra made a gesture as if she was swatting a fly. The harpoon flared brilliant gold and then fell in blackened, smoking chunks to scatter around her feet and knees. The metal head, a melted lump, smacked into Heno’s forearm guard and then onto his foot. At that moment the man who had cast it, Fug, made a sound like a soft thump and became a man who was made out of fire.

  His scream didn’t even make it beyond an intake of breath before his form had disintegrated to white ash as fine as powder. It skirled and scattered around before being blown out to sea by the breeze. There was a scorched indentation on the deck in the precise shape of his two boot soles, and no more.

  “We could have dealt as friends,” Lysandra said calmly as everyone stood in silent shock. “But you decided it could not be. I wish you no harm and there is no shame in being bested by a superior combatant. Only keep this ship safe.”

  Kalliendra swallowed hard, her throat bobbing and the shroud of skin there puffing half up and then down again as she mastered her desire to rebel. Slowly she let her hands come down to her sides. She blinked with both sets of eyelids, one pale and quick, one heavily scaled and armoured. Her natural colours began to return. “I never heard of any Deathmaster having friends. You said my crew, but what of me?”

  “You will guide us through the islands to the mainland where the Wanderer’s faithful have their settlement at the edge of the ice. You will wait there for our return. Did you bring your own ship?”

  “I have a skiff. It is in the lee of this islet.”

  “Prepare it, we are leaving immediately. You may take whatever you wish from this ship’s cargo. I care not.”

  That made Kalliendra’s eyes widen again and her stance eased a little. She went to check her crew and Lysandra turned to Celestaine.

  “I have no skill for mending the living. Are you well enough to travel?”

  Celest looked at her and there was doubt in her face, mistrust vying with necessity to gain a foothold, but she nodded. “There must be supplies on the ship to deal with it. We will fix ourselves up.”

  “Maybe your Guardian master will help you.” Lysandra’s brow quirked upwards at one side, her smile gentle but distinctly mocking.

  Celestaine opened her mouth but nothing came out. She closed it with a nod. “Maybe. Is the girl all right?”

  “She is very well,” Lysandra said, slightly mollified. “You three maintain order up here. I will see to what passes below. We leave as soon as you and this Captain Kalliendra are ready.”

  “Wait,” Celestaine had her hand out, sword loosely held, point down in it. “I don’t… what happened to you?” Her gaze was searching, puzzled beneath her sweaty fringes of hair that had sprung free from the braids attempting to rein it in, but regarding Lysandra as a person and an equal for the first time.

  “You mean how did I move from being as mud to as I am now?”

  “I guess…” Celest nodded and Heno, wincing with each movement, paid close attention. Only Nedlam unconcerned, moving to pick up her opponent’s sledge by the grip and hand it back to him as they talked.

  “I learned,” Lysandra said. “From watching you.”

  “Hur hur hur.” Nedlam was laughing although Celest didn’t find it funny, at first. Then she saw Lysandra’s face was holding back a smile.

  “See,” Nedlam said to Kalliendra as they all began to move around one another with caution. “Tzarkomen have friends. Yorughan too. Let’s go investigate what’s on this ship. I fancy I smelled some ora. These little fishies and bunnies won’t need that. And if it’s free then it’s twice as good.”

  “The other crew will wake up eventually,” Heno said. “Then what?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lysandra said. “They all mind the ship or they burn. Let them sort it out between them for something to do while we’re gone.” She turned and went below.

  Celestaine looked at Heno. “I’m like that?”

  Heno glanced up from examining his leg wound and grunted, “You’re nicer about it.”

  “So yes.”

  “I like her,” Nedlam said. “Gets to the point of things.”

  Celestaine looked around, making sure Lysandra was out of earshot. Under the moaning of the wounded she moved to the blackened spot in the deck and touched it with her foot. “She torched that guy. Pfft. Like he never was. Is that what she’s going to do to us if we get on the wrong side of her?”

  “Well, would you?” Heno asked.

  “No,” she said firmly, because incineration seemed very unfair to her and the unfairness sat unpleasantly. “But I’d want to. You don’t use your magic lightly.”

  “I used it enough,” he said and the groaning Valturi snarled at him, their burns raw.

  “Shut up and be glad for your life,” Kalliendra snarled at them. “Tifi, go for the medicines and bandages. Tufi, make some of that tea for the pain. Get moving.”

  They reluctantly obeyed and two of their fellows, a husky, silent human and a particularly small Valturi with a wizened hand, took the Captain’s body by the feet and dragged it away behind the capstans to loot it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THE SKIFF THAT Kalliendra had brought was nothing like the ship the Captain had owned. It was a raft with a nearly invisible draft beneath the waterline and barely more than a bit of shape bent into its prow to show that this was the front. It rode easily on the water behind the tw
o huge animals that pulled it. They were like nothing any of them had seen before, and only Murti knew what they were by a name; their strange long heads, their dragonish faces, their huge array of fins that looked like arcs and tufts of seaweed as they lifted and lowered them in the salt water, snorting and dipping their snouts not to drink but to breathe.

  “Seahorses!” Kula was glued to the sight immediately, held back by Lysandra to prevent her plunging into the water to meet them.

  They were beasts, but peaceful ones, and intelligent enough to recognise Kalliendra’s return. She had a way of speaking with them which was perhaps not a surprise had they known anything about the Dragonspeakers, which they did not, other than that they had something somehow to do with dragons and these fish were a little like that. There was a rough hut at the centre of the skiff which provided a small amount of shelter, and a single mast towards the front with a tilted sail that was furled now. Ropes held everything together. The bulk of the thing was built from huge, reedy bunches and it looked much more precarious than the wooden ship but they all boarded and were able to stow their few possessions.

  It was nearly nightfall, but the Ystachi captain assured them the dark was no trouble as her creatures knew the way, and in any case navigated by currents and tides. They found themselves sitting together as the stars came out, the water riffling past them, islands in the chain now visible as dark blots against the rose and metal coloured skies. It was beautiful, although it was cold. Bukham, left alone with the food, had mastered the potbellied stove with a little help from Kula and was cooking patties of crabmeat. Nedlam and Heno were chewing ora and looking at the sky. Celestaine was enjoying herself. Although it was far from true, it felt like they had left everything behind them, and that in doing so it had vanished. There was a lightness to that evening she would have kept on with, sailed on and on and not bothered doing any more things, if she’d had the guts for that; but it turned out she was convinced by Murti and Lysandra’s stories and running away wasn’t her kind of thing. She did enjoy thinking about it though.

  As they wove slowly northward two more of the Valuti came swimming up from the darkness, fish baskets in tow, and joined them. After a bit of chatter they seemed to settle on the notion of what was going on and speared their catches to add to the day’s roasting.

  “We should have Ralas, for a song,” Nedlam said and tried to sing until they all made her shut up.

  “You’re scaring the horses,” Kalliendra said, and it was true, they had picked up a lot of speed.

  Once the food was cooked enough they began to share it out and at this point the Valuti abandoned their apparent shyness and came forward to claim their shares. In the glow of light afforded by the open stove and the single deck lamp their features seemed much more human and less animal, although they were far less human than many and Celestaine did not know what to call them—they seemed as much otter as person. They talked, although they had a way of quickening through the words that made them hard to understand.

  “Valuti own all archipelago, all lands and waters.”

  When asked about the hole in the sea they were thrilled and hateful at the same time, pouring curses on it and calling up the wrath of various named leviathans. “Signanush eat it up. We have offered things. It still there. Hate it. Hate it. Take all and give nothing. Sometime a creepy crawling come up and out, sometime go down. Shadows in the water. Shadows everywhere. Hungry. Nothing make it go. Badplace.”

  “And you don’t know how it was made?”

  “Big grey ones come,” the female Valuti said, stabbing a blunt, clawed finger at Heno. “Like this. Onna ship bigship. Stole it thinks me, because smell all wrong. And purple people.” She pointed at Lysandra and Kula and then proudly counted on her fingers. “One, two, three, four five of them, so.”

  “And what did they do?”

  “Yah, not sure really but boat sink there, all on, all in, sink there. Pfoom! Down. Thing came big shadow took boat down. All gone. Finish. Like that. No more. Wrecksink. Gone.”

  “Were there any survivors?”

  “Yah, no, swum away a bit. Drown. Few. Some reached islands but islands belong to us. Ettem. Notwaste. Ettem. You want bones I got bones big smalls. Heads. Hands. All medicine bones. Gottem. Trade good.”

  “All hands on deck, eh?”

  They were all startled, but Celestaine the least, by the elegantly raddled older man coming out from behind her shoulder, his face a kindly and concerned picture to complete his wry words.

  “Deffo,” she said. “What brings you here?”

  “Actually, I have a purpose not involving yourself,” he said. ”I’ve come for those fingerbones if you have them, Gurt.”

  “Esya gots my butter?” the Valuti said, her whiskers vibrating in anticipation.

  “There is a barrel of butter, over on that main vessel which your Captain will soon have as her own,” Deffo said.

  “We already owns that butter, thissm said so,” Gurt said with a little snarl, showing her needle teeth as she indicated Lysandra who was watching quietly as she made a comfortable spot for Kula to rest among the coiled ropes and the lashed crates at the wall of the hut. “What else?”

  “I have dried riverfish.”

  “Yuksum.” The Valuti spat in contempt.

  Deffo looked at Celestaine. She shrugged at him and winced, her bound-up shoulder aching.

  “Now really I have to get them. They’re not for me you understand, they’re for Fierce. For Tricky.”

  Gurt looked cross, her whiskers suddenly all at sharp angles, nose wrinkling. “I give two. Tell her no trick me. But you no trust you. I ax her when see her if you. If not I find fixwitch, send you good badtime. Wait.” She dashed off and after a few strides leapt easily over the side and vanished beneath the surface of the sea.

  Kalliendra came back from the prow, the seahorses swimming steadily. “More god bothersome interfering?” She looked at Deffo with disgust and then checked around to see where Murti and Lysandra had got to. “Get off my boat.”

  “I came for…”

  “I said, get off my boat.” She stepped across to where Deffo had appeared, cowering, and picked him up bodily, shoving past Celestaine and Nedlam before throwing him, kicking and yelling, over the side.

  He splashed down and went briefly under before bobbing up in their wake, receding quickly.

  “Gurt will find you easier in there,” Kalliendra shouted after him, dusting off her hands. She cast a grim look at Celestaine. “What?”

  “No, no,” Celestaine held up her hands. “You carry on.” She heard Nedlam and Heno chuckling with that deep rumble of mountainsides moving that adult Yorughan had and smiled.

  Kalliendra pointed at her eyes and then at Murti. She threw her dislodged cap back around herself and went back to her driving.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ATOP THE RAMPARTS of Nydarrow, amid the black and louring stoneworks where the untouched battlements ranged against the starry sky in defiance of all that was holy, a small cottage with warmly glowing windows was set, complete with a wagon outside and four sheep chewing amiably in a rickety bamboo pen. Inside the Bounteous Domicile of Hule Dr Catt sat in an armchair with his feet up by the fireside and opposite him, in another chair, sat Dr Fisher, his satchel and stave beside him.

  “Lords, Fishy, I thought I’d never get out alive,” Dr Catt was saying, adjusting his bread on the toasting fork to get a better angle for browning. “But it was worth it.”

  “I hope so,” Fisher said, sniffing. “Where did you leave them?”

  “Locked in her old study I believe,” Catt said. “Not to worry. She’ll get out of it. Then they’ll go down and not up here, probably.”

  “No time to do otherwise,” Fisher said gloomily. “Look what I found in Tzark.” He undid the satchel flap and reached inside, drawing out an old clay tablet, broken off at one end, its face covered in the angled stylus marks of ancient Tzarkish. It predated the coffer and the language used on the coffe
r by a long way.

  “Where was that?”

  “Tomb of Xaxtaris II,” Fisher said. “One of the first graves of the civilisation, upon which all others were modelled right up until…”

  “But what does it say?” Catt put down his fork, propping it on the fireguard, and was reaching out although Fisher twitched it away, proudly, for a moment to give it a quick whisk with a horsehair brush. Fine sand pattered out of it all over the carpets.

  “It says that all that is remembered shall live again and that the dead must not be forgotten.”

  Catt peered and then gasped with eagerness as Fisher let him have it. He rotated the tablet and studied the signs. “But… there isn’t any magic here is there? I thought you would have brought something significant, some great…”

  “Do you remember the Kinslayer, Catty?”

  “What? Well, yes. Not personally. Not in detail. I… what are you getting at?”

  “The Tzarkomen rituals are all about being and unbeing, memory and forgetting,” Fisher said slowly. “Underneath Nydarrow there’s a place that’s opened up to Vadakh, the undoing, you say.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it. Seen that creature from there.”

  “And the Kinslayer trashed The Book of All Things, which wasn’t a book at all, it was memories inside living people’s heads.”