The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  The doors to Milaka’s opened as the final dregs of morning light finishing dripping in from over the tips of Khaim’s buildings. They always unlocked at this moment. Milaka was as precise as her springs and clocks.

  She gasped when she saw me, her sunworn face immediately lined with concern. “Sofija!”

  “It looks worse than it is,” I told her as I stepped inside. There was a clock just as precise as any of the ones Milaka made running inside my head, keeping track of how little time I had left.

  I had made a choice as I walked through the clouds of incense. I had a plan. It was dangerous. There was little time. But even before I had visited the monks of Assim it had formed as I drifted to sleep, cooled and hardened in the night, and been a heavy lump in my mind when I woke. Now I had made the choice to follow it.

  To seek life.

  “Who did this to you?” she demanded, seeing my bruised face.

  “A duke. There is nothing you can do against him.” I took her bony shoulders carefully in my hands. I hated the lie that would come, but I had to do this for my parents. “Milaka: I hate to ask you this. But you are almost my blood, Djoka is your nephew. If you share my anger, I need one of your secrets. The duke has trapped my mother and father in a pit and will not release them unless I finish a suit of armor for his son. I . . . am so sorry I have to ask for such a thing.” For what other wealth did tradespeople truly have, but their tricks and shortcuts?

  “I’m an old woman, Sofija,” Milaka said, not unkindly. “I’ve given most of my trade secrets to many of my nieces. Your mother was always generous to me, as well. Tell me what you need.”

  I sat with her among the brass cylinders and carefully blown glass globes on her shelves. “You told me once about a clockwork hand that you built for an officer who lost his arm to a sword.”

  Milaka stood up. “It was powered by magic. I cannot do such things anymore. Not without losing my head. You know this.”

  I held up my hands to placate her. “No, I’m not asking for that. I’m asking for the gears, the springs. How did you make it work? Show me that. I need to make springwork gloves.” Something neither Malabaz nor Savar had ordered for this armor, but something I needed if I was to dig through unyielding, dangerous bramble with my own hands.

  She calmed. “I can do that. Over the next weeks.”

  “I only have this morning, Milaka. Time is not on my family’s side,” I reminded her with a small emphasis on the word “family.”

  Milaka closed her eyes for a long moment.

  Then she stood up and closed the door to her store. It was the first time I had ever seen it so.

  “I will show you what you need. Come back here into my workshop. We will get you everything. You will pay me later, or if you can.”

  Now it was my turn to close my eyes, fighting back tears. “They have some food, and a little watered wine in a pack they had with them. But I don’t know how long that will last them. Or if their air will grow stale before then.”

  Milaka took my shoulders. “Let us hurry.”

  Even with Milaka’s decades of skill with coils of metal and gears, and my fine metal work, it still took a full day and night. When she succumbed to sleep I drank tea and continued on, and she would correct my mistakes when she woke with a stifled groan from her cot.

  I slipped out in the early night and evening to keep the fire in the forge glowing. Enough to pour smoke out of the chimney and allow Savar and the rat he’d assigned to spy on me to keep thinking I was inside.

  I would never be able to repay Milaka. We both knew it. But I pretended I would, and she pretended to believe me.

  I bit my lip, and did not complain about our pace. I remained gracious for the help, knowing that had I only gotten a lesson and some tools, I wouldn’t have been able to even make these clever gloves in the days I needed to save my parents.

  “Thank you,” I kept saying.

  But Milaka told me to shut up. “Would you have turned away someone needing your help to save their own blood?” she asked me.

  “No. But some would.”

  “You and I are not ‘some people,’ are we? We are family. Bound by Djoka’s blood. Not high family, like those across the river, but still family. We might be the mud by the banks, but leave us to dry, take the fine things in life, and then temper us in fire, and we are strong bricks.” She bent back over the gloves and the crimping tools. The refashioned gauntlets lay on the bench before her, palms and fingers spread out like metal spiders. When she triggered the thumb mechanism, the left one closed into a fist, snapping the firewood I held out to it and crushing it into sawdust. “Sometimes, we are stronger.”

  She showed me the mechanism, the latch near the elbow and how to lever it back and forth, as if I were winding a crossbow. The cogs and wheels whirred, the tension spreading as the gloves slowly opened. After I cranked the fists to full strength, I would have ten times the strength of any man in my hands.

  “The velvet one who lurks outside your forge. People are talking. He could be dangerous to you.”

  “He only watches to make sure I don’t try to run away. He is not very good at it. Or much of anything else for that matter.”

  “You know that no one would blame you if you did run,” Milaka said. “What are the chances your parents will live, even if you finish the suit and hand it over?”

  I slid my hand up into the gauntlet. It fit. I crooked my thumb and the mechanisms inside snapped my fingers into a fist, scraping them and making me hiss out in pain. “I imagine the duke plans to kill my parents anyway,” I grunted, levering them open again. “And probably me for causing him trouble. The armor is all he truly wants.”

  Milaka grasped the mechanical fist. “I could help you run,” she whispered urgently. “I can help you flee.”

  “You’ve risked enough just helping me,” I said. “If I were to run, and anyone knew I came to see you, you’d . . .”

  “Loti, the weaver, is the only one. She won’t speak to anyone.”

  “I won’t run,” I said to Milaka. “I have a plan.”

  She looked down at my right hand. “I notice that your hand fits inside the gauntlet perfectly. Is that part of your plan?”

  I finished cranking open my fist and reset the clockwork inside. “Savar’s hands are small,” I said. “Delicate from lack of work. Spindly.”

  Milaka wasn’t fooled. She stared at me until I blinked and looked back down at the glove. “You will waste your life as well if you attack a duke.”

  I had a sudden urge to tell her everything as she had come close to sniffing out my designs, but the words didn’t come. I feared that to speak my plans aloud would destroy my chances. I didn’t want anyone—person, demon, or gods—to know about the intentions I held in my heart. It was my own secret to bear.

  I put the gloves in a case, nestled against fur, and hugged her. “Thank you for your help, Milaka. You have done me too much kindness.

  She gave me an appraising look. “I wonder if Borzai will weigh it so, when I go before him.”

  I threw my arms around her. “He must.”

  “Be safe, my child.” Her voice cracked. “Be safe, Sofija.”

  Savar somehow found me all too quickly on the way back from Milaka’s, as I shopped for leathers early in the morning, when sellers still blinked the sleep from their eyes. He shoved at the thick, stiff material. “What is this?” he demanded.

  “Padding,” I told him as we walked through the spice lanes and my mouth watered. I had not eaten. I couldn’t. “Why are you following me?”

  “You spent a day outside the forge, you tried to escape my eyes and trick me by keeping your fires on, but I see everything, girl.” Savar moved in front of me. “You are wasting time. My family does not have time to waste. I am not here to disappoint my father. Time is of the essence. I need that armor.”

  “I’ve been getting padding,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Doesn’t look like padding to me.” Savar jabbed
at the extra leathers I had just purchased.

  “Shall I get some cotton pillows for under your armor?” I asked loudly. People stopped and looked at us. “Is armor too hard for your delicate shoulders? Maybe some goosedown for your delicate skin. . . .”

  “Shut up!” Savar hissed. “Shut up.”

  “But it isn’t protection you need, whatever you’re going to do with this armor. You need special help to compensate for your weak fighting skills. What was it going to be? A scroll that would give you the strength to hold a sword in both your hands?”

  Savar’s face reddened. I’d pushed too far. “My father has taught me. I could breathe words that would strip your skin from you and make your eyes boil,” he said.

  I looked around at the crowds. Would he dare to do anything like that here, in the middle of a crowd that would delightfully call for the censori?

  “The leathers,” I explained, holding them up and trying to redirect our words, “sit under the plate. It’s like inner armor.” And I needed to add enough to cover every gap to protect against bramble if I was going to use this armor myself, as Milaka had suspected. “If you are such an expert on what goes into armor, maybe you should build your own.”

  “Maybe I would,” Savar snapped, still angered. “But my parents aren’t the ones waiting in a pit, are they?”

  He saw me suck my breath in and he smiled.

  “Do you remember the townsmen of Horia? How they cut their own children’s throats to drink rather than die from lack of water? And when traders burned back the bramble on the road to get to the town, they found nothing but starved cannibals. Will your father drink your mother’s blood, or will she his, I wonder?”

  I swallowed the hurt. Swallowed it deep down into myself. Because I was born on this side of the river. Because it would only lead to worse.

  I ignored Savar and kept walking so that he couldn’t see the tears stinging my eyes.

  “I’m watching you even more closely, now,” he said from beside me. “Do not dare to cross a duke. Your time is running out, blacksmith’s daughter.”

  After the full day and a night at Milaka’s, I’d frantically thrown myself into work sealing up the armor’s under layer. My second day was now mostly gone. The glass on the visor—that had been tricky. But by afternoon, I’d blown glass from melted sand in the forge. It was not my trade, so it took several tries to get it too cool in the shapes I needed. They were not as clear as I’d hoped for, but after I’d glued the pieces to Takaz’s demon eyes, I could place the helmet on my shoulders and move throughout the forge.

  I had never worked so fast. The gloves. The leather underlayment as strong as the aprons worn by the men and women who burned the bramble back. The last few plates I had sewn in. My father and mother would have been proud, I thought, as I rubbed my raw hands and massaged my sore back.

  But there was another dilemma, I realized as I sat in front of the armor on its straw in the corner of the forge after I placed the fearsome helmet back on. I needed far more plates of steel to finish strengthening the armor. The leathers were a last line of defense. I needed more actual armor.

  I placed the three gold coins thrown at me by the duke on my anvil and regarded their dull glitter. Three gold pieces. I could finish the suit. I could get enough metal, barely, to finish the plates tomorrow morning. The coins gave me that.

  But it wasn’t enough for my plan.

  I needed a cart. I needed supplies. I needed to pack, and in such a way that it wasn’t obvious to Savar, or whoever got a look inside the forge.

  One coin would stay with us. I wanted something kept from this hell, some small token of profit.

  One coin, as promised, would be left for the guard captain Lukat to delay hunting us down.

  Which left a single coin to complete the suit.

  It was not enough.

  I stared at the suit. The fine engraving. The gold hammered into tiny channels, fashioned into flourishes and swoops that evoked the war demons of Kuchk. My parents were not here to tell me I couldn’t strip the frippery and decoration off the suit. Everything they’d feared about that action had come to pass. I was the one making the decisions, now. For better or worse.

  “Okay,” I said to the dark corners of the forge. It was the choices that mattered.

  I picked up a pair of fine pliers and walked to the back of the suit.

  I’ll start from where the finery sat in the shadows, I thought. I began yanking and digging out the gold to pay for the metal to finish the entire suit. Milaka always needed fine gold for her clocks.

  I could trade for her steel scrap and hopefully a little something extra. Maybe I could dance back across from the edge of this precipice.

  Milaka’s was, oddly, closed an hour early. That the workshop had been shut before sunset puzzled me. I put my ear to the door and heard Milaka’s shuffling feet on the other side.

  No locks clicked. No bolts shifted aside to welcome me.

  “You lied to me,” the old woman said from the other side of the stout doors when I knocked at them.

  “No.” My voice broke slightly.

  “You should have told me about Djoka.”

  “And then what would you have done?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Milaka replied. “You never gave me the chance.”

  I punched at the doors, rattling them. Then pulled them back and hugged myself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m desperate. My mother and father are dying in a pit, Milaka. I have to save them. I need help. I need help.”

  I pushed my forehead to the door, my eyes stinging hot with tears.

  But the doors remained barred.

  “You said my mother was kind to you. Does kindness count for nothing in these days?”

  “What is it you need?” Milaka asked.

  “I have gold. Fine gold you can use for filigree and decoration. I need steel for it. And supplies.”

  A finger tapped the other side of the door. “Sofija, you know I have seen much. Djoka may not be yours any longer, and you will not become my blood. But you are a good child. So hear me. You need to run. Take the gold you want to give me and run. Now. Get onto the road. Use it for a dowry and find a nice man who will treat you well. Leave your family to their fate. Or you will share it. That is all I can do for you.”

  “No. I have made a choice. I will follow it.” I heard her start to shuffle away from the door. “Wait! If you can’t help me, at least tell me the name of a jeweler who will take the gold.”

  Milaka stopped. Her distant voice barely made it through the door. “You’ll want Zlatan. But he will likely betray you for extra coin as soon as he is able. And no, no one else will touch your coin. They’ve all seen the velvet child’s servants shadowing you. You are tainted.”

  “All I need is a day,” I said.

  Zlatan the jeweler stood for a moment, blinking in the lantern light at me, before looking down at the dirty cloth I had the lump of melted gold in.

  “Inside,” he hissed, yanking me into his small apartment, his precise fingers digging hard into my collarbone.

  I broke free of him, shoving him back hard enough he clutched his chest and wheezed. “Do not put your hands on me,” I growled.

  “Hush!” He shoved the wooden door closed. “Do not wake my family,” he whispered. “Or the neighbors.”

  “Do you not trust your own family?”

  Zlatan shook his head as he guided me downstairs by candlelight into the back of his shop. “You are here in the dark of midnight, with melted gold. Children tell tales, wives have friends they share their secrets with, and thus the circle leaps ever outward like ripples in water. A secret is only safe with one person. It is barely a secret between two. It is never a secret between three.”

  He walked over and pulled a set of small jeweler’s scales out, taking the lump of gold from me. He inspected it, bit it, then weighed it. Then offered me a third of the lump’s worth in tradable coin.

  “That’s an ins
ult,” I said. I’d weighed it myself. I’d purchased some of it myself. “What I handed you is worth three times that coinage.”

  “This is its true worth,” Zlatan whispered. “Unless you could hand slivers of gold over to merchants yourself. Why don’t you go and do that?”

  My face fell.

  Zlatan nodded. “Exactly. You are here in the dark of night, and you don’t want anyone to know you are trading tiny slivers of gold. So you take less to get my coins, which you can then use tomorrow morning.”

  I glowered. It would barely cover the metals I needed and there would be none left over as I’d hoped. “I’ll do it. But you must give me a day,” I told him.

  Zlatan frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Before you sell the information that I was here. You have your two thirds. Wait until dusk tomorrow. That is all I ask.”

  Zlatan ground his teeth. “I did not get where I am by selling information, no matter what you may have heard from others.”

  “Please. It isn’t my life, but my mother and father.”

  “I know what has happened,” Zlatan said kindly. “The streets tell their tales. And I will give you the time you have asked for . . . if not much longer. We are Lesser Khaim, are we not? If we do not help one another, then can we call ourselves neighbors?”

  “Thank you,” I said warily.

  “Now, it is time for you to leave.”

  I walked toward the door and Zlatan grabbed my arm.

  “The back door,” he said firmly. “Leave through the back door, child.”

  Before he closed the door he’d shoved me through, I looked back at his brown face flickeringly lit by the candle he held. How long before he would truly give me up? How long would it take for word to trickle back to Savar?

  I had made a choice, but I could feel the coils of the clock winding down for me.

  Zlatan shut the door and latched it behind me, and I was on my own in the city’s deep night.

  Savar shouldered his way past me to look at the suit the moment I opened the doors at dawn. I fought panic as I stepped in front of him.