by Rob May
Kal bent down to examine them. They looked like the remains of deer, foxes and badgers. Kal picked up a large thigh bone and examined it. There were curious scratches scored into it.
‘Is it safe?’ Deros asked. He was hopping up and down in excitement.
Kal tossed the bone aside. ‘It’s safe,’ she declared.
Deros ran to crate, flipped off the lid, and whooped in joy. ‘Kal!’ he said. ‘We’re rich!’
She went to look. The chest was indeed filled with chunks of glittering gold.
‘If we’re rich,’ Deros said, ‘does that mean we still have to go to school?’
Kal picked up a piece of the treasure. ‘We’re not rich,’ she told him.
He looked bewildered. ‘We’re not?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Come on, Deros, did you really believe that the treasure map just floated into the village and blew into the woodpile at the side of my house? It was put there so that we would find it! There are marks carved into the trees outside this cave: hunters’ marks. People have been here recently; probably our fathers on one of their expeditions. And the bones in this cave aren’t the complete skeletons of animals that have died here: they’re a random assortment that someone must have collected from off the forest floor, or saved after skinning a haunch of deer. One of the bones had knife marks on it!’
Deros looked crestfallen. ‘But …’ he said, holding up his gold plaintively.
‘It’s fire iron,’ Kal said. ‘Otherwise known as fool’s gold. I bet it was my dad’s idea. Something to keep us busy for an afternoon. He will probably try and make out that it’s some kind of lesson or something.’
Deros tossed the iron away and they trudged back down the tunnel, abandoning their treasure. ‘So now what?’ he said.
Kal looked up as they stepped back outside. The sky was darkening in the east; the eastern slopes where bright and tinged with gold; the western slopes were in grey shadow, but there was still a bit more daylight left. She had forgotten what time they were supposed to be home by.
She turned to Deros and said, ‘Want to go on a real adventure?’
II.ii
A Slippery Deck
Kal and Lula stepped up on deck, hand in hand, to a silent world of darkness and flame. Kal couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing, but Lula squeezed her hand excitedly. ‘We’re here,’ she said.
Of course: the coral maze. This was the closest Kal had ever got to Port Black before; she and Lula had dived for shells here some three years earlier. The Auspice Islands were protected from the violence and terrors of the Silver Sea by a ten-mile-wide barrier reef, through which a labyrinth of narrow channels had been cut by hand. The paths were marked by torches on poles, but the correct route through them was a secret, and any vessel or monster taking a wrong turn would end up jammed in an ever-narrowing dead end.
Dead Leg stood at the prow, holding out a lantern in each hand to signal to Jako. The Swordfish progressed carefully through the maze under oar. They passed the occasional sandy cay that glittered like diamonds in the moonlight. The night was balmy, and a hot wind blew in their face, bringing with it the distant sound of calypso music: steelpans and catgut guitar.
‘The Reaping Wind,’ Lula said. ‘Every night it blows across the islands, puts the weak and ill to rest, and carries away the souls of the dead. It’s too bad we didn’t sail in on the Paradise Wind in the morning. That would have been a more auspicious start, breathing new life into the Islands, and cleansing away bad karma and jinxes.’
‘No,’ Kal said. ‘This is more appropriate. I bring death. I always have.’
They cleared the reef, and entered waters as still as a mountain tarn. Kal could see a haze of lights ahead: red, green and yellow. Port Black was a lazy sprawl that covered a flat peninsula that jutted out of the largest of the Auspice Islands. There was no natural harbour: the town was surrounded on three sides by white beaches, and backed by jungles and mountains.
Dead Leg clapped his hands loudly. ‘That’s far enough! We’re safely through. Drop anchor and ready the boats!’
‘Safe from sea monsters,’ Kal remarked to Lula, ‘but not from zombies. I’ve a longing to stay on board, in bed in your cabin, for a few more weeks.’
Lula held up her palm. The white stain was almost touching her fingers. ‘If you do,’ she said, ‘you’ll be sharing your bed with a zombie before long. Come on, let’s grab our things to take ashore.’
A group of four of the crew came up on deck, holding Che up on their shoulders. They were calling him Lucky and promising him a night to remember at some place called the Blue Mahoe. They piled into a launch that was half-filled with barrels—to be refilled with fresh water ashore, Kal guessed—and set off for the town.
Quarter of an hour later, Kal found herself at the oar of the second boat, with Lula, Dogwood and the Swordfish’s boatswain—a tall blond woman whose job it was to keep the ship in good repair. Kal didn’t know her name, since everyone just called her Bosun.
‘We’ve rented the whole east wing of the Blue Mahoe,’ Lula said as they pulled through the dark water. ‘You’ll like it, Kal. The food is excellent. Especially the crabs!’
Bosun snorted in laughter.
‘What is this Blue Mahoe I keep hearing about?’ Dogwood asked.
‘It’s Port Black’s premier brothel,’ Bosun told him. ‘I can’t wait to get back there, myself. They have this one fellow, he’s so good you can only visit him once while you’re in town.’
Kal raised an eyebrow. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you can’t walk for a week afterwards!’ Bosun chortled.
Dogwood’s face was grim. ‘I’ll be seeking accommodation at the governor’s mansion,’ he said haughtily.
For some reason, both Lula and Bosun found this hilarious, and fell about laughing, almost threatening to capsize the boat. Kal put all her effort into getting them to shore as fast as possible. What with the four of them and a dozen barrels in such a tiny boat, the gunwall was lipping astern. The barrels were full, Kal realised, possibly with that fishy substance that Dogwood had sniffed out earlier in the voyage. One more mystery to solve, when she got the chance!
They hit a soft sand bar, and had to drag the boat through the shallows and up to the strandline. Would there ever be a time when Kal’s breeches weren’t soaked? There were bonfires burning on the beach, and as her eyes adjusted to the glow, Kal could make out people and palm-thatched huts, smoky barbecues and strings of coloured lanterns. People were shouting, singing and chanting, and a crowd gathered around the boat, making aggressive or challenging remarks in several languages. Kal saw a man whose jet black skin was painted with a white skull and bones, and a woman with a skirt of fish scales and a clam shell brassiere. Another man had a jacket made of black crows’ feathers that contrasted with his white skin; another woman wore no brassiere at all.
She fought down a wave of panic as the strange crowd pushed closer. What kind of fresh hell had she wound up in now? But then the crew from the first boat came down the beach to help haul away the barrels, and Lula took Kal’s hand and pulled her through the crowd. Bosun lifted Kal’s sea chest high above her head and followed.
‘Every night is carnival now in Port Black,’ Lula explained as they shoved their way through a throng of customers at an open-air bar. ‘They drink and dance and screw, all in the name of Vuda, hoping that she will lift her curse.’
Kal looked around as they left the beach and entered sand-swept streets where the wooden buildings looked only slightly less temporary than the huts. In the heaving nightlife she saw dragons and sea-nymphs, satyrs and elves. One woman was painted entirely red, with a fantastic pair of minotaur horns sprouting from her head. ‘At least I don’t see any zombies,’ Kal shouted to Lula over the noise of a marching band.
‘They put a palisade up around the town to keep them out,’ Lula said. ‘We’ll go out into the jungle tomorrow to look for some! Listen, Kal, I have to go and wrap up some business in to
wn. Follow this street all the way up the hill until you reach the Blue Mahoe. You can’t miss it! I’ll meet you there later.’
She whirled away and vanished into the crowds, leaving Kal standing alone. Dogwood had been lured away by a nearby gaming house, its cosmic racing tables spilling out into the street. Bosun and the crew had carried off the chests and barrels elsewhere.
Kal patted her pocket to make sure she still had Ben’s letter of marque. That was the only thing she couldn’t afford to lose. She looked up the street; did Lula really expect her to turn in early and keep the bed warm for her?
Not a chance in hell! Kal decided to follow her friend and see what she got up to in her home town. She fought her way through the crush in the direction she thought she saw Lula go. It was a difficult pursuit: Kal was harassed by the leader of a procession of dancers, who presented her with a crown of paper flowers. A naked man coated head to toe in sugar cane syrup and wearing cat ears gave Kal a spontaneous kiss and a bouquet of real flowers—bright purple orchids. His eyes were dark too, and Kal recognised the signs of a Sirensbane user. She found herself unconsciously licking her lips. Then she spotted Lula darting down an alley between a grog shop and a vudu charm emporium. Holding her flowers to her face, Kal followed close behind.
She emerged in a plaza where a crowd had gathered to watch a troupe of fire-eaters. Kal saw Lula enter a tent on the far side, so she hurried on over. This should be Dogwood’s job, she thought, investigating the smuggling operation. She looked back to check that the Guard captain wasn’t actually on Lula’s tail too. Then she yanked the tent flap and stepped inside.
Whatever she had expected to find inside the tent, it wasn’t this. A thin man sat at a small round table, slowly shuffling an oversized deck of cards. The tent was cool and dark, lit only by two tall red candles on sconces either side of the table. Swathes of coloured silk hung from the roof, as did hundreds of tiny curious charms: glass globes, wicker dolls, silver stars, and small cloth bags, contents unknown. The candlelight made the man’s brown skin glow orange. Lula was nowhere in sight.
‘Sit down,’ the man said.
Kal remained standing. ‘Have you seen a girl?’ she asked. ‘Long black hair. Good looking.’
The man shook his head. ‘Sit down,’ he repeated.
Kal shrugged and took a seat opposite him. He slid the top card off the deck, and flipped it over with a long, thin finger.
The Six of Swords. It was an illustrated deck, and the card showed a ferryman punting a barge towards a distant coast or river bank.
‘You have travelled here over water,’ the man stated in a toneless, uninterested voice.
Kal flashed him her best smile. ‘You think I got this pasty face from living here?’
He didn’t smile back. The next card wasn’t a numbered card. The deck was obviously an expanded deck, with all the Major Arcana cards that were used mainly for divination. The new card was the Tower, and the illustration was of a stone turret being smashed by lightning.
‘You bring calamity,’ the fortune teller said, sliding off another card. ‘And death …’
The third card showed a man at the end of a rope, but the card had been dealt upside down. ‘The Hanged Man, reversed,’ the fortune teller said, prodding the card with his finger, ‘meaning that you bring death to others. Let us see how many lives you will take …’
He turned a fourth card: a man carrying a bundle of wooden staves. ‘Ten …’ he said.
‘Is that all?’ Kal tried to joke. She was getting impatient with this charade. ‘I’ll be finished by tomorrow lunchtime then.’
But the man wasn’t finished yet. He placed another card on top of the last: the Ten of Cups. ‘Twenty …’ he counted.
Kal’s mouth was dry, and a prickle of dread was creeping up her spine. Don’t let him get to you, she chided herself.
A third card was placed atop the previous two: the Nine of Pentacles. ‘Twenty-nine,’ the fortune teller announced with some finality.
Kal wasn’t going to stand for this nonsense. ‘This is bullshit,’ she said. ‘Did Lula put you up to this? You claim to know all this, but do you even know my name?’
The man said nothing. He let the cards do the talking, riffling them with such speed that Kal, who had a practiced eye for catching out cheating card mechanics at the gaming tables, couldn’t see any way he could have stacked the deck.
He dealt two cards. The first was the Moon. The second was the Three of Swords.
The illustration on the Three of Swords was three blades skewering a large red bleeding heart.
II.iii
Zombie Nation
Kal stepped outside the tent. It was just as uncomfortable outside as inside; the hot Reaping Wind did nothing to cool the sweat that had broken out over her body. Her clothes unbearably clingy, and she tugged at them for some relief. Supernatural weather and ominous prophecy! Not to mention the prospect of battling zombies in the alien jungle outside of the town. Why had she agreed to come here again? It would have been safer back in Amaranthium: at least the scheming politicians and underworld denizens there were human.
She struck off uphill, heading for the top of town, where the buildings were bigger and spaced further apart. The mansions and commercial buildings were painted bright cool colours—white, pink and lime—with oversized louvred windows to let in the air, and high ceilings to take up the worst of the tropical heat. This part of town wasn’t exempt from the chaos of the carnival though, and as the night’s revelry reached a climax, other more violent and sinister aspects of Port Black revealed themselves: Kal could see a building on fire across town, and as she rubbernecked and walked at the same time, she almost tripped over a corpse lying in the street. Everyone else was just passing around it as if it were a just a puddle.
Where is the law? Kal wondered. Back home, the City Watch would break up any altercation, often before it had even begun (sometimes with more violence than either transgressor intended to mete out upon each other in the first place, but still …) Here, though, Kal had not seen anyone in any kind of official uniform since she had stepped off the boat.
When she made it to the top of Main Street, she found out why.
Kal stood at the foot of the driveway that led up to the governor’s mansion. The gardens on either side were wild and overgrown, and the massive three-storey brick building had been given a slap-dash coating of red paint, which was already flaking off, revealing patches of the original white underneath. A sign hung from a metal post where Kal stood, but instead of displaying the name and title of the Republic’s representative here in the Auspice Islands, the sign showed a crude representation of a thick male member. Scrawled along its length were the words: The Blue Mahoe.
No wonder Lula and Bosun had laughed when Dogwood declared he would be staying at the governor’s mansion.
The mansion was now the biggest den of iniquity in Port Black.
* * *
Kal stepped through the front doors into an enormous entrance lobby. Pink stucco walls and white balconies and stair rails provided a clean, cool backdrop to a riot of potted palms, gilded furniture and brightly-coloured chaise longues. A thousand candles made a crystal chandelier glow almost brighter than the sun, and in this artificial daylight smooth, perfumed courtiers mingled with hairy, filthy sailors.
Jako went by with two women on each arm. One was young and plump, the other skinny and in her sixties. ‘Kal!’ the navigator exclaimed. ‘I appear to have my hands full here. Care to help out?’
‘Not tonight, Jako,’ Kal said. ‘So … the governor runs a brothel now?’
Jako shook his head. ‘The governor was run out of here last summer. He’s holed up in the fort on the edge of town with what’s left of his garrison. No one’s seen him since.’
A year? Kal was surprised. Someone had obviously kept word from reaching Amaranthium on the other side of the world. It had only been the discrepancies in the governor’s accounts that had alerted Ben of trouble brewin
g here.
‘So … who’s running the town now?’ Kal asked.
The girls either side of Jako simultaneously made the sign for warding off evil: raising their index and little fingers in the shape of the Dragon’s horns. Jako looked irritated. ‘We don’t talk about him while we’re having fun, Kal. Or indeed at any other time, if we can help it. You don’t want to draw his attention. Just enjoy yourself while we’re here. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Lula says we’re going on a zombie hunt.’
And with that, he took his girls upstairs.
Kal followed him up at a respectful distance, trying to blank out the shouts and squeals coming from all around her. She was dog-tired, and craved the kind of comfort that only Lula’s bed and glass pipe could provide. Kal was so absorbed in her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the couple sitting together on the first floor landing.
‘Hey, man,’ Che said, wafting away the smoke from a giant reefer. He was with a pretty girl with ringlets in her hair. She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen.
‘Che,’ Kal said. ‘You made it here, then. I bet Port Black has changed a bit since you last saw it.’
‘Mos def,’ Che agreed. ‘I never knew Rose that time. She new here, and lucky me is her first ever customer.’
‘And also my last!’ the girl said, gazing up adoringly at the albino. ‘I’m quitting this place tomorrow. I didn’t expect a man to be so … gentle and caring. It was incredible.’
Kal smiled. ‘Depends on what you like, I guess,’ she said, painfully aware of Bosun’s screams floating down from the rooms above. She bid farewell to the new lovers, after declining a toke on Che’s ‘herb’, and headed up to the top floor of the east wing. She knocked on Lula’s door, having got the room number from one of the Swordfish’s crew she passed in the corridor.
This time Lula didn’t come to the door. ‘Get some sleep, Kal,’ she called. ‘Your room’s next door. I’ll see you in the morning.’