by Shannon Page
Reikos thanked Dolous and started down the inclined deck, but stopped and looked back at the aft companionway, remembering Matilda with a shock. “Wait! My parrot!”
He started toward the ladder, but Dolous was there before him. “I can get her faster, Captain! You get in the boat!”
This was only sense. Reikos nodded at the man’s retreating back and continued toward the lifeboats. By the time they had him in and situated for the drop, Dolous was back, holding the cockatiel’s cage at arm’s length as the agitated parrot shrieked, “Damn bird! Damn bird!”
Reikos saw a grim smile or two as Molian called, “Lower away!”
For all their effort to be gentle, Reikos embarrassed himself by crying out again, along with Kyrios, as their boat hit the water. Then they started heading from Fair Passage’s side, two able men to row per boat. As they departed, Reikos gazed back sorrowfully at his lovely brig, already riding almost to the cheek in water at her bow. You were a quite a beauty, Reikos whispered to her in his mind. I failed you too. I’m sorry.
It was predictably slow going, of course, and they’d hardly gotten up to speed before House Sark’s little fleet was all but on them. Reikos looked down at Matilda, who stared up at him as if to ask exactly what all this was for. “Kiss me, beauty,” she croaked softly.
Reikos shook his head. “No reason you should go to jail too, my dear,” he said, lifting her cage with his good hand. “They’d probably just eat you. Savages.” He turned to Dolous. “Help me with the latch, will you?”
The man did easily what Reikos couldn’t do at all with just one hand, then leaned away, clearly nervous of the bird as Reikos swung the cage door open, and shook Matilda out of it. She plopped onto the deck, ruffling her feathers at such rude treatment. “You’re free now, dear,” said Reikos. “Go find a real boy bird somewhere. I’m no good for you.”
She only waddled about across the swaying planks at their feet. “Damn bird! Damn bird!” Reikos took a gentle swat at her with his foot, which just made her flap up onto the bench. “DAMN BIRD!” she screeched in outrage.
“Dolous, throw her over the side, please,” Reikos said.
“Sir? … She bites, sir!”
Rolling his eyes, Reikos stuck his hand down to pick up the bird himself, and sure enough, she stretched her neck and bit down on the skin between his thumb and forefinger as if trying to crack a nut there.
“Gods!” Reikos yelled, flinging her spastically aloft, spattering Dolous beside him with drops of blood in the process.
The bird fluttered in the air, then spread her wings and glided off across the surface — only to return a moment later, flying round and round the lifeboat squawking incoherently. Until the first of House Sark’s sloops arrived, whereupon she lit out for the distant shoreline, screeching, “Damn bird! Damn bird! Damn bird! …”
“I no doubt deserved that,” Reikos said, proffering his bloodied hand to Dolous as the sloop luffed its sails and came around to pull up beside their boat. “Could you tear a strip off of that shirt, and plug this as best you can, lad?”
“Captain Reikos?” asked a voice that he was startled to recognize. “What in hell were you trying to accomplish back there? Are you gone mad?”
Gaping, Reikos peered up through the darkness to see Sergeant Ennias gazing down at him from the other boat. “Oh …” he groaned, hanging his head, and struggling not to cry. “All of this. For nothing.”
“Captain …?” Sellas asked. “Do you know this man?”
“I thought … Everyone who’s chased us here tonight wanted us dead,” Reikos said, not just to Ennias, but to anyone who’d listen as he struggled to explain it to himself. “Alkattha just took off the way you came from, after trying to sink us.”
“I know,” said Ennias. “We saw him.”
“Then …” Reikos looked up in confusion. “You didn’t try to stop him?”
“He’s not really that important anymore. It’s the Factora-Consort we must have. Is she in the other boat?”
“No. She’s not here at all, obviously.”
“Then what’s happened to her?” Ennias looked back in obvious concern at Fair Passage, which had already rolled onto her side, almost half submerged. “You didn’t leave her on —”
“We never had her, Sergeant! That was just my first mate — in a dress.”
Now it was the sergeant’s turn to gape. “Why in the name of every wayward —”
“We were trying to draw enough attention from Home’s shoreline so that Pino could get the Factora-Consort and Sian ashore! They’ll be somewhere back on Home by now, I hope. Maybe even at the Factorate already.”
With an incoherent growl of frustration, the sergeant slapped a hand to each side of his head. “I’ve been chasing you the whole damned night, Captain! For nothing!”
“Well, aren’t we the pair then,” Reikos sighed. “I have three badly injured men on these two lifeboats, Sergeant. And a broken shoulder of my own, I believe. If you’re sailing back to Home now, might we catch a ride?”
Reikos watched as portions of the Factorate House still smoldered atop the hill above them. The streets not blocked by fire were strewn with injured soldiers and civilians, not to mention wreck and rubble. But the fighting itself seemed finally to have ended.
“As you can see, it’s mostly mop-up now,” said Ennias as he and Reikos left the wharves behind in one of the two-man runner-carts House Sark’s officers had generously arranged for after they’d come ashore. “I’d be quite surprised if the former Census Taker isn’t far to sea already. The tide turned decisively against his forces well before I went running after you.”
Ennias had caught Reikos up on the course of his own day as they’d sped back to Home. Reikos’s injured crewmen had been brought to Apricot for medical attention in a quayside treatment camp set up there earlier that day, though it appeared they might be forced to wait there quite a while for it. Apparently, the Temple Mishrah-Khote had suffered an extremely ill-timed internal uprising of its own that morning, precipitating a serious shortage of priests to tend the brief war’s countless wounded.
Soon after Reikos and Pino had left Ennias on Home, to go look for Sian on Malençon, the sergeant and Hivat had followed a rumor of her recent arrest and gone to seek her and the Factora-Consort on The Well — only to find the massive temple compound sealed against outsiders as its own small civil war raged on inside. Very ugly, from what we’ve heard, Ennias had informed him. Alizar was just one great pile of dry tinder, eh? Who’d have guessed it?
Fortunately, a number of the priestly healers had been spread throughout the island chain on other business when their temple had imploded that morning. Enough to assemble a small force to triage and treat the mounting number of wounded as the day had progressed. There were clearly nowhere near enough of them to keep up with demand, though.
Happily for Reikos, one of the Sark fleet’s captains had happened to possess a quantity of marvelous powder to kill pain, which was making Reikos rather sleepy now, but had him not all that bothered by his wounded shoulder anymore. Given this temporary relief, and the dreadful shortage of physicians now, he had elected to forestall further treatment of his shoulder until after they’d found Sian. Of course, if they found her, he’d likely need no temple physician at all … The thought seemed self-serving — every time he thought it. So he kept dismissing it. His shoulder really didn’t seem so bad anymore. Perhaps it was just a bad sprain, after all.
Having spent the remainder of this punishing day fighting first beside the Factor himself, and then beside his chief of security, Hivat, Ennias was by now a veritable font of fascinating information. He’d confirmed the death of Viktor Alkattha, though his government had won the day, it seemed. Reikos had thought immediately of the Factora-Consort. Not to have been there, or even aware at the last. No chance to say goodbye … There was too much pain to deal with here, and very little of it truly his. He was a foreign seaman who hadn’t even known most of these people even w
eeks ago — excepting Sian, of course. He’d had to keep reminding himself of that, though the pain powder helped him set things down as well …
Perhaps most interesting of all was another fact, uncovered by Hivat that afternoon, according to Ennias, as some of Escotte Alkattha’s more reluctant co-conspirators had begun to get cold feet. It seemed the Census Taker had dressed Lord Orlon’s house troops up as Factorate guard the night before, and ordered them to blow up his own Census Hall that morning! When Ennias had first informed him of it, Reikos had responded with an uncertain laugh — assuming that his powder had prevented him from understanding some kind of joke. Only once the sergeant had explained that it’d been done so that Viktor would be blamed for starting these hostilities while Escotte Alkattha cultivated public support as the innocent victim, did Reikos understand what a truly sick man they’d been dealing with. If Escotte had won, the sergeant had conceded, it might have worked. But as the war had gone against him, and the truth leaked out, that strategy had apparently come to backfire quite spectacularly. The Census Taker’s name seemed destined now to become a new obscenity in Alizar’s rich lexicon — or so the sergeant claimed.
“So … you don’t think there’s any truth to his claim that he was just a pawn of some other usurper?” Reikos asked as their cart runners struggled uphill through all the chaos.
The sergeant shook his head. “Just another of his endless lies, I’m sure. From what Hivat could determine, by the time I left to chase you down, at least, of all the houses who opposed the Factor, only Orlon did so willingly. The others were apparently coerced against their will by the Census Taker — which likely has a lot to do with why he lost. Escotte had threatened to expose things that I guess they thought too ruinous to survive — last night, at least.” The sergeant shrugged. “I’m betting things will look pretty different to a lot of them this morning.”
“Why did Orlon go along with this?”
“He’s been an angry man with big ambitions for some time. He probably kept on fighting so long after others had surrendered because he knows his head will fall first and hardest.”
Reikos sighed and looked up at the choking crowds ahead of them. They were going to have to leave this cart soon, he expected. There’d be no getting past whatever all of that was up there. “If only we had known this … Any of it, just a couple hours earlier,” he murmured, as much to himself as to the sergeant. “My crew would never have been injured. I’d still have my ship. And … I just hope the Factora-Consort and Sian have gotten here as safely by now.” Oh please, please, please … he begged Sian’s god through the fog of his new medication.
“We’ll know soon enough,” said Ennias. “We’re almost to the top.” He leaned forward to call up to their runners. “Gentlemen, I thank you, but we’ll just get out and walk from here, I think. Do you know what all those people are about?”
“Oh, they prayer lines, General,” said one of them, clearly mistaking his rank. “Come from everywhere tonight. They say Our Lady of the Islands at the Factor House!”
“By all the gods, I hope so!” Reikos said, rising to step carefully down from the cart, assisted by the other runner, who came rushing up to help him. “Let’s go, Sergeant.”
In less than optimum condition to be elbowing anyone aside himself tonight — or this morning, rather; he saw the horizon beginning to lighten — Reikos followed Ennias uphill, through the press. It took them almost fifteen minutes to wade just another street or two up through the chanting, cheering throng, all waving candles and exclaiming jubilantly about the Factor’s victory. The dead Factor’s victory, of course. Reikos doubted Arian was celebrating much tonight. Though, if Sian had healed her son by now …
“By all the gods …” Ennias gasped ahead of him. “Reikos, look at this!”
Reikos pushed his way carefully to the sergeant’s side, and gaped as well. Filling every inch of ground for at least five hundred yards ahead of them, a solid mass of people stood all but motionless, bathed in candlelight, fanned out in all directions, every face turned toward the island nation’s tortured house of government. There was no cheering here. Just the mighty, rumbling chant of countless voices raised in … prayer, he supposed, though he could not make out a single word of what they said — if they said words at all. Their chanting was a massive, rumbling sea of sound that swelled against the house’s walls, and slid away again. “What is this?” Reikos said in awe, too softly to be heard even by Ennias. Are you in there, somewhere, Sian? he wondered. Is it you they sing to? Or to something larger?
She swam through waves of light …lakes of fire. Carried on a rushing, luminous current that compelled her ever forward, neither eager for, nor frightened of, whatever waited at its end. She was meant to go there. Quickly though.
She spread her arms, trying to swim faster. Or to fly. Faster than the river flowed. ‘Don’t fight the current,’ something told her. ‘Ride it. There is time. You always try too hard.’
She thought she knew what was meant, though not from whom these thoughts were coming. It did not occur to her to ask. She just listened, with understanding, and fell still, allowing herself to be carried on the moaning, rumbling song this fire sang. Such sad music. So much suffering. So much hope. So filled with —
We’re here.
Where?
Wake up. We’re —
“… here, Sian. Wake up, my dear.”
Sian opened her eyes to find Arian leaning close with an apologetic smile. They were in some small room … Or, no. Curtains. They were closed inside a litter; she remembered now, and knew something else as well. Something she had learned — or remembered — inside the dream already fading. “Trying too hard …” she murmured, more to herself than to Arian.
“Trying … what?” asked Arian.
Sian pushed herself upright. “Where are we?”
“At the Factorate, finally.” Arian looked at her curiously. “Or nearly there, at least. I just peeked through the curtains, and saw it up ahead. But there are too many people now to move at all. They’re shouting that the war is over, and that … the Factor has won. They … don’t seem to know he’s … Do you think the rumors could be wrong, Sian? Could Viktor be alive still?”
Before Sian could answer, Rothkin’s cautious voice came through the curtain next to her. “Our Lady, you awake? … Can you hear me, Our Lady?”
“Yes. Can we get out of here, please?”
“Our Lady, we all but there. I can throw a rock and hit it. But I don’t know how we get you to the building. There a swarm of marchers like the beehive out here now. The litter already make everybody look, but they don’t let us through. … Unless maybe I tell them who inside.”
“Well, if you’re going to tell them that, then we should just get out and walk,” Sian sighed. “Arian thinks her husband’s won the war already. Is that what you’re hearing out there?”
“That what we hear, yes,” he said uncertainly. “But …”
“Then, who’s going to try hurting us right here at the Factorate — in front of all these witnesses? Do these people seem angry at me or Arian for some reason?”
“No, Our Lady. No. They seem … They wait for you, I think. If one of my folk tell them, I cut the bastard’s tongue out, but I don’t think so, Our Lady.” There was a lengthy pause. “I think … maybe …” He sounded almost frightened. “Can the god tell them, you think?”
“I don’t know what the god might do any more than you do, Rothkin, but if these people don’t seem to want us harmed, then it’s time you let us out.”
The curtain beside her slid open just an inch or two. “Look out here,” Rothkin said just loudly enough to be heard. “Tell me you sure about this first.”
Sian leaned to peer through the crack.
For a second, she recalled the lake of fire from her dream, and sucked in a startled breath. But then she saw that it was only candles, thousands of them, and a sea of marchers, just as she’d been told. Don’t fight the current. “I think i
t’s time,” she said — sure neither of what it was time for, exactly, or to whom she spoke anymore. She swept the curtain open. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Rothkin. I’m very grateful, but we’ll just walk from here. You’re free to go, or stay, as you prefer.”
“I go nowhere, Our Lady!” Rothkin said, reaching up to lift her down. “I guard you ’til you inside the Factor House, at least.”
A number of those around them had been watching for some time, it seemed. Before Rothkin had Sian’s feet on the ground, someone nearby gasped, “It’s her!”
“He called her Our Lady!” Sian heard someone exclaim. “She’s come!”
From all directions, faces turned.
“She’s over here!” shouted someone else. “Our Lady of the Islands!”
Rothkin put his back to Sian, a hand falling to his machete as Bartolo and Stoke rushed to flank Sian. “Stay back!” he shouted.
Worried by the fear in his voice, and what it might portend, Sian leaned up and said into his ear, “It’s all right. The god didn’t bring us this far just to let his own followers stop me now.”
In truth, she had no idea what would happen, or whether they might hurt her. But though she recognized the thrill of fear within herself as well, it was being held down, kept far away, by some much closer, stronger … not quite compulsion, or just resignation either, but … surrender. To what she was now. What she had become. And to the certainty that all she’d been through since that young priest had seized her life and beaten it into this inscrutable new shape would finally come to some resolution here. She just wanted this thing done, whatever it was. How it happened, or what was done to her now, no longer seemed to warrant her attention.
“Make a path, you all!” cried Rothkin, still sounding fearful, but letting his hand fall. “Our Lady of the Islands got to get inside the Factor House! That why she here! In the god’s name, let her through!”
As the four men she’d healed on her way set the litter down and gathered around her as well, the nearest watchers seemed unsure of what to do. The cries still rippled outward through the crowd, growing louder as they went. Our Lady of the Islands! The Lady’s come! …