Burdens of the Dead

by Mercedes Lackey

  The admiral took a deep breath. He was an old man, and there was much in the way of punishment that the Venetian senate could mete out to him. On the other hand less than they could do to a young and ambitious captain. And Lemnossa could see the scars of combat on the Genoese vessels. They’d lost comrades, been lucky, and come crawling to an old enemy. “You can sail under our flag,” he said gruffly, wondering why he did this.

  By the look on the face of the Genoese captain he did too. But the admiral had a fleet full of refugees, and still had a Baitini prisoner below decks. “We may need extra strength. There has been some hint of trouble. We’ll reprovision, water the vessels and sail. The merchants and the whores are going to be very unhappy with us, Captain. A good part of the fleet will stay at outside the port. Unsettled times. We can part company once we’re in Byzantine waters.”

  “Thank you, m’lord. We’ve…we’ve got a fair number of wounded aboard. And some damage.” The captain swallowed. “We could pass some of your ships through Byzantium under our flag. It’d would save you a great deal in tariffs.”

  “That way our respective masters who are far away and safe might just be more understanding,” said the admiral. “Is there any other help we can render?—seeing as we’re both probably going to have to explain our actions. Me to the Senate, and you to your duke.”

  “And his council,” said the captain, sourly. “Well. They’ll be angry enough about the loss the ships and cargoes. My thanks, M’lord, we’ve got a chirurgeon, and work on the ships may have to wait until we have a safe port. We’ve done what we can, and just hope we have no more storms or encounters with these…pirates.”

  The admiral noted the pause. “Ah, so you think not, then?”

  “There were too many of them, and their vessels were too alike. In Crimea the Mongols pay tribute to the north. We’ve been trying to make a treaty with the voivode of Odessa to allow us to trade up the Dnieper…” He realized that he’d said too much and shut up.

  “But no deal, eh?”

  “No. Not even vessels into Odessa,” said Captain Di Tharra.

  The admiral knew the Council of Ten in Venice were very pleased that they had a spy in the city of Odessa. It hadn’t seemed that valuable to Lemnossa before. Well, he’d been wrong. And he wondered if Venice heard from their man, and how?

  * * *

  The two fleets proceeded together. Two days later they sighted Cape Sinope—a truimph of good luck over navigation, the admiral knew, but he was willing to take the credit for it. It helped to have the sailors believe in his ability. The Genoese vessels had struck their colors and now flew the Winged Lion of Venice. The admiral didn’t ask how come they had such a flag. He had a Genoese red cross in his flag locker too.

  Lemnossa had the remaining Baitini prisoner brought up to him. The man had apparently been very sea-sick. He still looked ghostly-pale. “Do you want to go ashore?” the admiral asked, as if the prisoner was one of his captains, and this was just a casual question.

  The prisoner tried to gather spittle.

  “Now, now. I made you a perfectly reasonable offer. We let your companion go when he accepted it. And, as we have not been attacked, he kept his side of the bargain. We did explain you would be…dealt with if he failed us. He must be fond of you.”

  “You lie, unbeliever.”

  The admiral shrugged. “We will let you go when we leave port. All you have to do is as your friend did: tell them we make sail for Theodosia, and then the shipyards in the Dnieper.” It was unlikely that this minor foot soldier would even know where those places were.

  “Why are you telling me this?” demanded the Baitini, suspicious, his voice harsh.

  The admiral raised his eyebrows. You really didn’t have to be very clever to take orders to murder. In fact, being clever was probably a disadvantage. “It should be very obvious even to you. We’re not. If you tell your people that, we let you go. And we will free the crew of the boat that carried you, if you keep your word.” The admiral knew just what value the Baitini would place on those fishermen’s lives. He gambled however that the Baitini would not know that he knew. “They helped you. It would be fair and honorable.”

  The assassin took a second or two to grasp all this. “Very well. You will let them go?”

  “What use are they to me? They will complain to the sultan if they get home, but I will be far away. I’m not coming back. This is my last convoy.”

  “I will do this,” said the assassin with his best attempt at looking sincere.

  The admiral wondered if he’d taken to religious murder because he was a failure at selling unsound horses. But he said nothing, and had him taken below.

  “What was that about?” asked his captain, when the man was back in the tiny cabin they’d kept him in. It would take a while to clean it, after the Baitini had gone, they both knew.

  “Well, he’ll run to his masters here in Sinope, and tell them what he knows—which is nothing more than they know—we’re here, we did not take a heading out across the Black Sea. At the very least, he’ll end up having his companion killed as a traitor. At best they won’t be expecting us to a dog-leg to sea—towards the north. When and if they work that out—they obviously have some way of communication with the pirates, they may conclude we really are heading for their lairs and boatyards. It’s an outside chance, and they may wish to send vessels back to defend them. Whatever. We lose nothing, and we sow a great deal of distrust about the value of their information. Eventually that’ll help us.”

  “You should be directing the Council of Ten, M’lord.”

  The admiral smiled. “If they don’t take my head, if we get back in one piece, I hope I’ll be allowed to join them one day. It might be less tricky than this. Anyway, how goes the re-watering?”

  “Fast, M’lord. We’ll be ready to sail by tomorrow. The bey doesn’t like the way we’re doing things, though.”

  “Then I shouldn’t be surprised if I am summonsed to an audience. Probably tomorrow. It would be today but I must be ignored for a suitable amount of time. And I expect some of the Baitini will try to kill me. So I would like you to know what I have planned.”

  “We should be ready to sail tonight,” said the captain firmly.

  The admiral smiled. “While I don’t believe you, let us do so. We can cope with less water for a day or two. I’m a little behind on confessions and penances, and I’d like the opportunity to sin a few more times before my final reckoning is made.”

  PART II

  October, 1540 A.D.

  Chapter 16

  Constantinople

  The dogs of Hekate lived, as she did, in a place between, where time has little meaning. She walked the world at the crossroads, her dogs at her side. There were many crossroads and she could choose to walk any of the roads away from them. She only ever took one way—to the place between, which is not below but is down. The place between there is neither life nor death. The place where everything and nothing is possible, the place of shadows. The place where there is nothing to long for. No want.

  Or hunger.

  But…although they were not moral dogs, hers partook somewhat of the nature of all dogs, and dogs are by nature hungry. A cat will turn up its nose at food unless it is what it wants, but a dog is always willing to eat. But in that half-world of shadow and nothing that she had kept to, they had, perhaps forgotten that part of themselves, as she had forgotten so much but grief. It had been many years since her faithful hounds had eaten, until the mortal at the gate had fed Ravener. It had been many years too since Hekate herself had noticed food; perhaps that was why. Her power was, in a way, a reflection of her dogs’ devotion; their care was all for her, single-minded, and when she forgot things…so did they.

  Yes, there were cults that worshipped her name, in darkness and secret. But that was not the lady of the gateways and crossroads, of the three faces. Such cults worshipped her because she was believed to be powerful in magic. This was true, but they misunderstoo
d her power. And their homage added nothing to her. But the love of her dogs did, and she gave back to them, in full measure. Her needs were theirs; theirs were hers. And now…

  They were hungry. She was too. And she was stirred to give back to them what they wanted, even though they did not, precisely, need it.

  So she went back to the cross-roads. To the gate that failed. To the great city that even though it was a long way from its former glory, never quite slept. It never occurred to her that she might not get from the mortals here what she wanted. True, she might be forgotten, but when they saw her, they would know her, and remember her. They would know what was owed to her. They would give her food—for her and the dogs. They had always given her sacrifices. It was her due.

  So she came to the gate, and passed through it into the world of mortals. And found that having exerted her power at walking unseen and untouched for many generations meant that it was very, very hard now to be seen or touched. A drunk lying in an alley saw her. But he cried in fear, and fervently hoped that she was an illusion. The face he saw was not a kindly one. No one else noticed her. She paused. This could present a problem. She could not take food; it had to be given, sacrificed by a willing mortal. Those were the rules, the ancient rules by which her kind lived. Mortal things for mortal creatures, unless they gave these things willingly.

  So Hekate went in search of the man who had fed Ravener, or at least she set her dogs to the task. There was nothing under heaven, or under the earth, that they could not nose out for her if she wanted them to. They sniffed the air and found the scent…their ears perked, and they quivered with eagerness to speed away. Ah, how they loved the chase. She’d forgotten that. Forgotten so much in her anger and bitterness. She had been queen of the hunt long before Diana, once. Now, as then, she loosed them, and followed, fleet of foot and unhindered by her robes.

  They ran him to earth, of course. They had the essence of the man, from the well-wishing he’d put on them, and that was far more pervasive than mere scent to Hekate’s dogs. She called them off, as soon as she saw him. They liked him, yes. But they were hunters, and they had been hunting, with him as the quarry. They needed to cool a moment so they might remember again he was a man that they liked, and not the prey to be pulled down.

  He was with two men in a rather noisome alleyway. They did not see the dogs, but he did. She stepped back around the corner—there was always a corner where she wanted one—and she called the dogs back to her. That was politeness. He had not insulted her, he had given her dogs respect and well-wishes. She could be polite. Besides, she was curious, and that was something she had not felt in a very long time.

  She was almost sure he hadn’t seen her. He’d been busy handing a small pouch to one of the two men. A small, heavy pouch, by the looks of it; that meant money in her experience of mortals and money in dark corners generally meant trouble. They looked like warriors. They carried swords of iron. She willed herself to hear what was being said. It would do little good to her dogs if the only man who seemed to see them was killed; they were hungry now.

  “That of course would be the initial payment. A token of our trust. You can check that the rest is held by Isak BenTelmar, at the Rialto bridge. He will give it to you when you present him with the whole amulet. And don’t even think it, Captain. I don’t have the other section of it. You’ll be given that when your side of the bargain is kept.”

  It didn’t sound like murder to Hekate. Murder was no stranger to her. Crossroads were a good place for murder, and one of her three faces looked often on death. But the man sounded cool, unperturbed. And she did have some idea of the power he wielded. The other two warriors probably did not. She thought, all in all, there was no cause to worry.

  A little later she wondered if she had been wrong about that. He bade the warriors farewell, and walked down the alley to where she stood, her cloak of darkness gathered around her. His hand was on his knife hilt, as if he expected trouble. Trouble—from the place where she stood. It was a steel knife, and her power was stronger over bone and stone. Her people had not had much bronze, and no iron when the Earth-Shaker had broken the gate and flooded her lands.

  He was a creature with bone within him, of course. Steel knife or no, she could kill him without effort—but that would rather defeat her purpose. She allowed him to approach, and he peered into her corner, into her shadow.

  He seemed rather taken aback to see her there with her dogs. He plainly recognized those. “Lady. I…”

  If she’d been a man, by his posture, he would have had that knife out and thrusting. Well, if the bitch Ripper had not growled at him, which she did. But she was not what he had been anticipating, not at all, and the presence of the dogs he knew set him further aback.

  He gathered himself. The hand was still ready, but he had plainly decided to talk, or at least talk at first. “Your dogs, lady?”

  She nodded. It had been eons since she’d last spoken to anyone.

  “I’ve met them before. I thought they looked too cared for to be strays.”

  She was indignant. That startled her into speech and nearly into action. “Of course they are not stray animals! How dare you!”

  He seemed to have missed the threat, or at least the indignation, and was reaching out the back of his hand to them toward be sniffed, and Ravener, the faithless hound, was wagging his tail. “I’m glad. Dogs need people.”

  That was true, too, she had to agree, and she softened to him a little, a little. Well, she needed them and they needed her. “They are mine, and mine only. They may wander afar, but they always return to me and always will.”

  He looked at her, and then at them, his face inscrutable. Reaching a decision suddenly, he said: “This is not a good part of town, Lady, dogs or no dogs. There are people here that’d kill them for stew, let alone what they’d do to you. Let me escort you back to your home, or at least a better part of town. I mean no harm. Ask your dogs,” he said with a smile.

  “I am Hekate,” she said, putting him firmly in his place. Harm? Him or any other mortal? The Earth-Shaker Poseidon had not been able to harm her. He had destroyed all she loved. Taken her children, yes. But not harmed her.

  All that plainly meant nothing at all to him. And he was absent-mindedly petting her dog. “Where do you live?”

  * * *

  It had been alarming enough to realize that he was being watched.

  Antimo had always known—a prickling at the back of his neck—when he was being spied on. He’d learned to act on those instincts. And paying off a captain of Alexis’s mercenaries was not a good time to be watched.

  He’d come back this way to kill the watcher.

  And found firstly that she was a woman. A very odd looking one. Antimo had an eye for detail. He had no interest in women’s fashions, but he could describe precisely what they were wearing.

  He’d never seen anything quite like her robes; they looked like something he’d have likely seen on an antique vase, and who wore that sort of thing, even in Byzantium? Well…the women did wear a sort of all-enveloping garment that wasn’t a cloak, sometimes, but not the fashionable ones. Nor did women wear what—in the moonlight anyway—looked like the gold and jet jewelry that she was wearing; heavy, simple, somewhat crude by the standards of Constantinople, where the goldsmiths prided themselves on the delicate granulated-gold work even the least-skilled could produce.

  Then, there were the dogs. A man might walk abroad with dogs to protect him; a woman, never.

  There might be whores working this alley. But they weren’t wearing gold, or being guarded by red-eared dogs. These dogs liked him…but he knew, instantly, by their posture that these ones would defend her, or die trying, even against someone they liked. But who was she, and what was she doing here, watching him? She seemed to think he’d know who she was.

  “We came to seek you out,” she said. “I am She of the Gateways and these are my hounds.”

  If that was a name for some particular district he
re, he didn’t recognize it. Could there be a Great House here known as The Gateways?

  Her hounds… They were hunting dogs of some kind, he was sure, looking at them again. Some breed of coursing hound that he just did not recognize. Strange looking animals. Hungry ones, too, by the way the one was sniffing at his bag. She looked at him through slightly narrowed eyes, plainly waiting for a response. Unfortunately, he had no idea what she expected. So he smiled and patted the sniffing dog again. The other had also come forward, stretching its head and nose towards him. Yes, he knew that one too, the female, more suspicious than her brother or mate, whichever he was. The fur on her back was still slightly raised, but that was almost a wag of her fur-feathered tail.

  “Who are you?” she asked, as the second dog came closer.

  She’d just said she’d been looking for him…how could she not know his name? But he spoke, without meaning to. “Antimo Bartelozzi, of the city of Ferrara.” As the words came from his mouth, he started. What was he doing? He never gave his name, his actual name, when he was out working, let alone where he came from. What had come over him?

  * * *

  This was all something of a rude shock to the guardian of the crossroads. Firstly, the mortal did not know just who he was speaking to. She had been sure that once she spoke her name, he would know her for what she was! That even if he did not worship her, he would at least know to give her respect and her due!

  She had no grasp of how many eons she had been mourning. Time had not touched her, and as a goddess the changes of such things as language were of no consequence. She knew, vaguely, that she had no true, direct worshippers except the dogs now, that she only retained her power of that and because in between, nothing decayed, not even grief. And the loss of power given by worshippers had meant little to her in the face of her terrible grief.