Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  Jes-hawk glanced back to see miners gathered in rapt attention around tables made of broad slices from tree trunks larger than any he’d seen. Ale boys and barmaids scurried about, placing coins on the edges of the tables.

  As the barmaid walked by again, Jes-hawk saw her face. He grabbed the edge of the bar to steady himself. “What’s your name?” Surely it was the drink doing this. Surely his eyes were deceiving him.

  She did not look at him, not even when Cesylle said, “Visitor’s asking your name, woman.”

  “How much is he willing to pay for it?” she snapped, bending to draw a clean tray from a stack under the counter.

  “Hey,” Cesylle laughed, “give him a chance. This penniless straggler might be the best—”

  “Ask her if she’d like to see a hawk,” said Jes-hawk. He thought of his father, Jes-wick, and his mother, Say-julan. “A hawk, or a wick, or a julan flower.”

  The woman spun around in amazement.

  “Turn!” Runekere, the overseer, shouted the command. At once, the miners turned their coins, stamping them down on the tables.

  “Call!” Runekere shouted. “Full moons?” Several miners, burly men and formidable women, raised their coins high in the air. “You have first dig of the night. Be ready when the horn sounds. Any half moons?” Another chorus and coins raised high.

  “Lynna.” Jes-hawk’s eyes were locked upon his sister’s. He nearly jumped over the bar to embrace her.

  But Lynna moved quickly around the bar, and standing behind him, she leaned in. “You,” she whispered. “Don’t. Know. Me.”

  He answered loudly, with a garish grin, “Why, thank you. I find you rather attractive as well. Tell me, how does a barmaid stay safe around so many amorous men?”

  “Test my temper,” she snapped back. “You’ll find out.”

  “There’s a lot I’d like to find out,” he laughed. “Let’s find a quiet table.”

  With a glance to Cesylle, she said, “I’ll give you one chance to make your case.”

  Cesylle’s eyes bulged. “You,” he muttered to Jes-hawk, “are my new hero.” He made a gesture as if he wished to erase them from his sight. “But you’ll never have Bel Amica’s most beautiful. Emeriene, sisterly to the heiress. She’s all mine.” He emptied his glass and spoke to the bar. “She’s waiting for me back home. And here I am. Here I am.” Something like regret entered his voice. “Moon-spirits. They’ll wring you out.”

  Jes-hawk’s sister took his arm and pulled him through the assembly. Jealous gazes followed them.

  Too many half-moon coins had appeared on the table. Too many miners would assemble for the night’s second shift. When accusations of cheating began, someone threw a mug into another miner’s forehead, inspiring a barrage of beer glasses.

  But Jes-hawk clasped his sister’s hand beneath the tabletop, unnoticed in the corner.

  “Lynna.” It felt good just to say her name. “I kept watching for you at Barnashum.”

  “I’m sure you have your reasons for hiding in a cave, but I’d rather have a life.”

  “This?”

  “I want to be a Seer’s apprentice.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand and nodded back toward Cesylle. “It certainly hasn’t done him any favors.”

  “We suffered enough in Abascar. I deserve better.”

  “And this is better?”

  “You know how many fought for this job? My moon-spirit saw my determination. He—”

  “Your what?” Jes-hawk laughed but quickly wished he hadn’t, for it struck her like a slap. “Forgive me. It’s just…you’ve changed. Why work here and not in Bel Amica?”

  “This is where fortunes are won. I made my reputation fast.”

  “Can’t imagine how.” He withdrew his hands.

  “Make your words count, Brother. We may not be ignored for long.”

  “Come with me. Cal-raven’s leading us out of Barnashum soon. We’ll build a new home.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. It’ll be better than Bel Amica.”

  “Have you ever seen Bel Amica, Hawk? I’ll eat from the sea and have my pick of a hundred eager suitors. My moon-spirit tells me I’ll be famous.” She looked past him, her eyes gold with reflected light. “They could use you on the fishing boats. Put your bowstring to work firing hooks into a grey giant, a seawyrm, or even an oceandragon.”

  “I get seasick just thinking about it.” Jes-hawk drank the mug dry. “Always preferred the sun to the moon anyway.”

  “The moon is subtle. It draws the eye, sets us dreaming, sends wish dust down on everyone. We breathe it in, we dream great dreams, and we learn what we were meant to become. In Bel Amica a beggar one day is a hero the next.”

  Jes-hawk ran his hands across the tabletop. “Wish dust? Is that what they’re mining?”

  She smiled. “I heard a story. Moon-spirits fought over power. In the struggle a box full of their power broke and fell into the forest. Others say the spirits wanted to test the people of the Expanse to see whose desire ran the strongest, so they buried a lode of wish dust here. They’ll bless the one who gathers most.”

  He reached for her again, but she withdrew.

  “For the first time, Hawk, I have everything I need.”

  Staring into his empty mug, he felt the cords of his mind slackening. “The old Abascar’s gone. Cal-raven pays attention to his people. You can have the full attention of a king.”

  “Ever heard of Captain Ryllion?” Lynna poked his knees playfully with her toes. “He’s gonna be king someday. He always gets what he wants. And I’ve seen him watching me.” She started bouncing the way she’d bounced while watching their father frost a cake.

  “I think you’ve been sipping too much of what you serve.”

  She reached to squeeze his hand. “Still want to protect me, huh? I guess that’s a brother’s job.” She leaned forward and suddenly seemed concerned. “You said Abascar’s coming out of Barnashum soon?”

  “Soon.”

  She looked down into her hands. “I’ll think it over.”

  Something struck him across the face. “Oh!” he gasped. Then again, and he fell sideways to the floor. “Oh!” Once more, as if someone were smacking him with a platter. He cried out again, and the world seemed to spin.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw his sister’s face—or rather several images of his sister’s face—fading in and out of focus. She was laughing. “Somebody served you Six Hard Slaps.”

  The hostess’s voice rose. “We have time for a game before the horn. And it’s my revelhouse, so it’s my choice. Storytelling it is!”

  With a mix of groans and applause, the crowd drew back from the table in the center, and a few men made their way into the open space, bowing to the hostess.

  Jes-hawk ignored the proceedings, too grateful to see his sister’s face to be distracted.

  So when he finally noticed that Krawg had entered the contest, it was too late to interfere. He felt a sudden dismay, as if he had fired an arrow that sailed clear of the target to strike the judge of the contest instead.

  Any child in the Expanse could have narrated the first tale of the evening’s contest.

  A rebel, Tammos Raak, rises up against an oppressor. He rescues his children from slavery. He conspires with birds and dragons. He flees, blazing a trail of fire over mountains no one has ever crossed, escaping southward into the Expanse. With newfound power beyond anything the tyrant has known, this rescuer raises up a fortress from the very stone of its foundations. From its fourteen towers, archers can defend it against any siege.

  Justice and freedom. That’s what gave the conclusion such a punch. As Tammos Raak’s children inherited varying measures of his gifts—stone-mastery, healing, wildspeaking, thoughtspeaking, firewalking—the revelhouse roared with approval.

  Through Warney’s vision, already blurry from drink, the place seemed a riot. Crowds loved this story, willfully forgetting the tragic chapters that followed. Warney had always
loved it too. Somewhere in his heart he was like the enslaved children, his plague of sisters was the curse, and Krawg was Tammos Raak, leading him to a new life and freedom at last.

  Warney tried to catch Krawg’s gaze. But Krawg seemed lost in thought, tracing lines on the wooden tabletop.

  The next miner told a story of a blind Bel Amican child who was beaten and robbed and left in an alley for dead. Descending from the sky, a magnificent moon-spirit found him there. The boy’s devotion to that guardian spirit led him to give his last coin in a dying gesture. The moon-spirit took the token and blessed the boy with sight, with healing, and with justice.

  Warney felt he might just lose his drink. The mirrors seemed to be swinging on their hooks. He had never been to sea before, but the revelhouse seemed a Bel Amican ship carrying him out on the waves.

  The hostess called for Krawg.

  11

  THE SIX TRICKSTERS

  Once in a night-skied world,” Krawg began, “six boastin ’n’ thievin’ tricksters flew between stars. They rode astride dragons of fire ’n’ bluster, creatures they’d made from pieces of the pillage they’d snatched from a hundred worlds.”

  Warney snapped the handle from his mug.

  Staring into golden space as if through a window open only for him, Krawg continued. “Thieves of riches, stealers of spells, their saddlebags were stuffed full of power ’n’ oddments. Cloaked all thickly with stuff from their hideouts… Oh, did I tell you ’bout the tricksters’ hideouts? They draped themselves in dustclouds, way out beyond the stars.”

  The drinkers were blinking up into the ceiling and scratching themselves.

  “They wanted to dazzle each other, those tricksters. With flash and with startlements, all kinds of shocking. So when they faced each other in open space, all ’round some great floating table as vast as the Mystery Sea, they cast the tools of their sorcery across its jeweled surface. They were fit to show, you see, that they could make great things with materials common and plain. Their contests always aimed to prove which spellcaster was best and bedazzledest.

  “All six had met on many occasions, out where none of them night-sky dangers could snap at them nor any hunters track them down.

  “One by one they’d send up flares—storms of fire ’n’ lightning. Smoke from their displays trailed out in rivers ’cross the sky. Ships they’d raise would sail in the clouds, and sometimes they caught a current of wind that would carry them gleaming in great streaks of light that scorched the space between stars.”

  Among the listeners, rumors rumbled. “I’ve seen such things. Great streaks of light from one end of the night to the other.”

  “But the dragons,” someone shouted. “How’d they make dragons?”

  “The tricksters’ secrets would be unbrainable for you or me,” Krawg whispered. “But they’d show off those dragons—oh yes they would. They’d set them after each other in fiery chases and violent clashings. For them dragons were flown like kites on their masters’ strings, swift to jerk and leap at whispers ’n’ cues.”

  Krawg’s mouth sagged open as he stared into the ceiling’s dark rafters, great arcs of rib bone from a seabull. “Still, among those six battleful illusionists, no two could agree on who was the greatest. They’d each count the others down—five to one. But they’d never admit no lesserness. Not for a hummingbird’s wingbeat.

  “On this pertickler meeting, a seventh contender appeared. Not a one among them would admit surprise, for none dared seem lesser of mind or experience. The stranger, he didn’t seem to think his presence was anything unusual either. Seemed right at home in their company.

  “He was not much like them. His clothes were snatches and left-aways. Smelled like a forest, he did. Smiled all younglike in a keen way of mischief. Hands? They were knobby and raw from some hard labor or perhaps a disease. He spread out his tools as each of them had done.” Krawg moved his hands over the tabletop. “Took dust from the ground, unprecious stones, and some twigs. Took a flask of water, poured it into a clay bowl. Them other thieves, their smiles went crooked. How could so much nothing help the boy play against them?

  “And so they went about their contests, lighting up the dark with blazes and lashing each other with curses. A fight broke out over a firework, for one claimed another’d stolen his colors. A second row rose over a certain song of thunder. But they never did each other no harm, for they feared to group the others against them. They focused on showing themselves superior in craft, each aspiring to be the master of all they saw. And while they agreed that the newcomer couldn’t best them, each one worried, for he seemed so calm ’n’ ready.

  “That stranger didn’t say much, but he seemed to enjoy the contenders’ shows. One sent stars a-dancing, and he applauded the idea. One gripped the edge of a cloud-sewn canopy, and in a flourish like a servant shaking out the sheets, he whisked it away to reveal an army all decked out for battle, and the stranger laughed in surprise.

  “But when it came the stranger’s turn, he smiled ’n’ nodded ’n’ opened his hands. In them lay a boy and a girl, all dressed up in colors like unfinished dolls.”

  Krawg hesitated. He seemed startled at his own announcement. Then, cautiously, he continued. “The tricksters guffawed, for each of them had fashioned puppets that could sweep their floors and sew up their shoes. And they scoffed, for these children were smaller than small, poorer than poor, simpler than simple.”

  Krawg paused for a long time. His hands were trembling. He stared down at the table. Revelers fired anxious glances about the room as if watching a sudden incursion of grasshoppers. Krawg trudged ahead.

  “But then this newcoming trickster, he plucked two golden hairs from behind his ear. He took them and threaded needles fashioned from bone. Then he thrust those points right through the hearts of the boy and girl, stitching them round about until they pulsed. He drew those needles right up through their throats and on through the cords of their voices, then ran them through their minds in mysterious tangles.”

  Some of the listeners pressed their hands to their hearts, others to their throats.

  “The raggedy boy, he yelped at that piercing sting. And he leapt up so fast he startled his maker. The stranger laughed and hugged the boy, and they danced, each thumpin’ a drum. It weren’t a dance meant for show. It was just a burst of happy and hooray. And them tricksters that watched, they forgot about the contest. For a few forgetful moments, they were accidentally happy as well.

  “And then the maker turned to that raggedy girl he’d made, and the boy got nervous and picked at his stitching. The girl sat up and sang out a song that set her maker to laughing. The tricksters’ smiles, they faded fast, for they were baffled ’n’ vexed. How could inventions surprise their own maker? How could a doll know gratitude or make up a tune?

  “This troubled them as the raggedy boy struck sparksticks that flared into light, as he painted his hands many colors and then painted the maker’s as well. The raggedy girl, she touched the tricksters’ faces and spoke a poem. The words she crafted meant many things at once. The tricksters felt she had pulled out their stuffing into the light, and it was muddy with sadness and shame. This scared them, for how could anybody’s puppet know such stuff?

  “The girl’s maker touched her shoulder lightly. ‘For your kindness,’ he said, ‘I’ll show you a secret.’”

  Krawg suddenly clapped his hands together and laughed.

  Warney gasped, struck with a wild notion he had never dared suppose. Old Krawg was making all this up. This wasn’t some old story he’d refashioned his own strange way. No, old Krawg was weaving a tapestry all on his own.

  A tang of sweet smoke tainted the air, but Warney gave it no heed as Krawg continued.

  “Much to the girl’s surprise, wings unfolded from her shoulders. She took to flitting about, swimming around the stars quick as a fish in the sea. Her maker smiled like an old grandpa at play with his children. He needed no more fancy stuff. The game, you see, was done as a bun lef
t too long in the oven.”

  The hostess, interrupting Krawg’s story with a sharp curse, scuffled her way back to the kitchen. “Nectarbread,” somebody muttered.

  Krawg would not be distracted. “But the raggedy boy,” he lamented, “well, he’d picked at his stitches too long, and his insides were coming out. ‘Why can’t I fly too?’ he asked. ‘Oh, I’ve got something else special for you,’ said the maker. But that was no good for the boy. ‘Make me fly!’ he cried, and the maker, he breathed a deep one. Then he snapped out a stitch in the boy’s sewn back. Wings sprang out, and skyward he flew. The boy and the girl, they laughed and they danced. But the boy laughed too loudly, and as he swooped low, the tricksters, they noticed a wrinkle, right there between the boy’s brows.

  “‘That’s all for today,’ said the maker. But it was clear he’d shown only a spark of his magic. This threw them all mad into fits. All the six tricksters’ cold and cruel inventions did only what they were told. Creatures flown like kites. Machines with wheels that turned. Spells that did as they were designed and never surprised. But who could invent such a creature, with a mind and heart of her own? And all the girl’s ways with words and mystery! What of their devising could imagine such surprises, could say one thing and mean another?

  “‘How is it,’ they asked, ‘that you fashion such life? What treasure have you dug up?’”

  Krawg leaned forward as if he’d stopped at the edge of a precipice. When he exhaled, it was the sound of a well gone dry.

  But then his eyes widened. And he rubbed his hands together as if contemplating a perilous dive.

  “The stranger, he smiled without fear. With a fatherly affection, he said, ‘Don’t you have a notion by now? I’ve come to call you home with me. Give up your boasting. Don’t waste more days on thieving. Come back…’” Krawg choked, looking down into his empty hands. “‘Come back home, my friends, and you’ll have all you need. I’ve missed you there. I’ve drawn golden threads of will through hearts like these before. Yours were the first that I threaded.’”