The Sacred Band a-3

by David Anthony Durham

  Because of this curse, he was sitting on a bench in the center of the maze work of canals, listening to the gurgling fountain and watching the slow-moving piscine forms gliding through the water beneath him. He was exactly where the queen wished him to be. He knew it, and he could do nothing about it.

  Rhrenna sat beside him, scribbling notes on a sheaf of parchment. “A successful trip, I would say. The queen will be pleased with you.”

  Barad pulled his gaze from the water and rolled his eyes toward her. The effort of moving the stone orbs was considerable. It fatigued him more than moving his large frame through the world, and if he moved them too much he developed headaches that lasted for days. There was an advantage to them, though. At times they saw with a clarity his old eyes never had. It was not a matter of visual acuity, really. It was more that they translated the truth more completely, as if he read emotions and thoughts as clearly as he saw the features that hid them.

  He cleared his throat to avoid responding to her comment. He would have told her that he hated the queen, not cared that she be pleased. He would have spat at her and called her a servant of suppression, a deluded tool of an evil mistress. But none of it would come out as he intended.

  “Did you meet any of your former conspirators? Any of the Kindred, as you called them?”

  “In Manil, yes,” he heard himself answer. “Hunt came down from Aos.”

  “And?”

  “He thought me insane,” Barad said.

  Rhrenna smiled, an expression that pressed her pale blue eyes nearly closed. “Yes, but for an insane man you speak such wisdom. I’m sure that’s what affronted him.”

  “What affronted him,” Barad said, “is that the Kindred has crumbled. He blames me. Word of my support for the queen spreads beyond me like a disease.”

  “More like a cure, a contagious cure.” Rhrenna folded her hands on her writing board and studied the sky. Thin strips of cloud scalloped the blue. The air had a touch of cold in it, the chill that passed for autumn on the island. “The queen will be pleased with you when she returns.”

  Barad noticed that one of the slivers of hard charcoal Rhrenna wrote with had fallen to the bench. While she still looked up, he placed his large hand over it. “When will she return?”

  “A week or two at most. Her campaign was a complete success. I got a bird last night. She is recovering from her exertions and will soon be on her way back. She would have been back sooner had she not fallen ill after destroying the Numrek. It was quite taxing on her. You should hear the things people are saying about her now. She destroys whole armies. None can stand against her.”

  “Is that true? Can none stand against her?”

  Rhrenna wrinkled her sharp, small nose before answering. “None that I know of.”

  She massacred your people, he thought. He knew better than to try and say it, so he just held on to the thought and stared his stone gaze. He tightened his hand around the charcoal until he held it in his fist.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Rhrenna said. “You’re not the first person to have to bend to her will. We all do. You should find peace with it. I have. Barad, we live in truly wondrous times.” Rhrenna set her parchments to the side and stood. “You may not love our queen, but if anyone is capable of leading us now, she is. Look, we have princely visitors.”

  Aliver and Aaden entered the gardens. Barad had not yet seen Aliver, but he knew him instantly. Uncle and nephew walked side by side, talking softly, with the winged creature a few steps behind them. The princes saw them, waved, and quickened their pace. The creature hung back, moving off along the edge of the canals, peering into the water as she stepped gently, like some benevolent hunter. Barad knew she was a wonder spoken of all around the empire, but it was the risen prince that truly fascinated him.

  He looked just as Barad had imagined him. Young. Slim and leanly muscled, his posture upright and his motions casually regal. He wore the same face Barad had seen breaking through his mist dreams years ago, as the rebellion against Hanish Mein grew in power. He knew that when he spoke it would be with a voice he already knew, the same one that had encouraged him with the power of the truth. If any man had ever been his king, this one had.

  Barad did what he did then without even knowing he was about to. Barad the Lesser, he who had spoken for years of the fallacy of monarchal rule, fell forward. He landed hard upon his knees and bent farther still, until he pressed his face against Aliver’s thin boots. He heard the prince bid him rise. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “Really, Barad, you have no need to bow to me.”

  “He should too bow,” the young prince, Aaden, said. “He was my mother’s enemy. We could have killed him!”

  “ Was,” Rhrenna stressed. “He was our enemy but is not anymore.”

  “No,” Aliver said. He touched Barad on the shoulder, worked his fingers under him, and pulled him to stand. “He was never an enemy. Not truly.”

  Barad looked up at the prince’s face. He wanted to tell him that he had heard his voice in his dreams many times. Years ago, his voice had saved him, had given him purpose, had spurred him to rise to revolt in Kidnaban. He wanted to admit all these things. Instead, he said, “Praise to the queen, for she has brought back the dead.”

  This seemed to underwhelm Aliver. “Barad,” he started, but then thought better of it, glancing at Aaden. “Yes, praise the queen. She brings much life, doesn’t she?”

  “You should see how she made water in the desert,” Aaden piped.

  Barad took his seat on the bench again and sat listening to the easy banter between Aliver and Aaden, with Rhrenna playing the third. Aaden reported that he had just shown his uncle Elya’s eggs. They were near to hatching, he thought. He even saw them move inside the hard casing of their shells. “They’re just waiting for Mother to return,” he declared.

  The thought of that return ran a shiver of dread through Barad, but he knew it did not show on the outside.

  Aliver reminisced about when he was a boy and had swum the tunnels that connect one pool to the next. He had discovered that the pools were all part of one system. If he held his breath long enough, he could vanish in one area, swim through the darkness, and emerge in another canal, one that looked from above to be separate.

  “I could do that,” Aaden said. “My breath is good.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Aliver said, sizing him up. “I was older than you before I tried it.”

  “But I’m a better swimmer.”

  “How, exactly, do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  Aliver made a sour face. “Perhaps a wager is in order.” Aaden jumped at the suggestion.

  “It’s too cold!” Rhrenna said. “He’ll catch a chill. It’s nearly winter, Your Highness.”

  Aliver blinked at her and whispered, “The pools hold the summer’s heat a little longer than you’d expect. One last swim won’t hurt anyone.”

  As the two princes talked through the details, Aliver pointing and gesturing, pacing a bit as he recalled the way the tunnels worked, Barad wondered why the queen had brought him back to life. Surely not just to play with her son. Was there some part of her that was truly willing to face Aliver’s ideology of the world? He could not imagine that. Perhaps she had changed him already, made him into yet another mouthpiece to speak her words. He saw none of the hesitation with words that he himself felt, no hint of frustration. Barad peered at him, bringing the full pressure of his stone gaze on him.

  There was something beneath the skin of his face. Something not physical and yet tangibly there, features that slipped beneath Aliver’s facade like another face pressed against the thin barrier of his skin. Just for a moment, and then it was gone. Beneath the prince’s face there was another face. Or another version of his face.

  “All right, then, Aaden, let’s settle this bet,” Aliver said. He began unbuttoning his shirt. In nothing but his breeches a few moments later, Aliver dove into the water, much to Aaden’s delight. The boy le
aped in, so near the prince he would have landed on him, had the man not ducked under water.

  Barad turned to Rhrenna. He tried to say out loud the words his mind would not let him form in his head. He knew what he had seen and should have been able to speak it. It was Corinn’s doing. Another abomination. It was just there. If he could point it out to her, she would see it, too. He grasped her by the wrist and said, with all the gravity he could muster, “The queen’s work is a blessing to us all.”

  No! That’s not it! He tried to slam his hand down on the stone, but only managed to gesture vaguely toward the princes.

  Rhrenna nodded. “Isn’t it amazing? Life from death. Makes you wonder what else Corinn will do.” She gently pulled free of his grasp, gathered her things, and walked away, crisp in her steps, looking official once more.

  Alone on the bench, Barad remembered the charcoal. He was not a very skilled writer, having learned to read only later in life, but he knew enough to scratch a brief message. He began to write, Prince Aliver, we are both enslaved! He imagined letters forming on the stone. He saw them side by side, spelling out his true intent. When he finished, he could feel his heart beating in his chest. This could do it. He had only to wave Aliver over and have him read the message. That would break through. He knew it would. He tried to catch Aliver’s eye, but the prince did not see him. He would have to stand. He did so, glancing back at his message as he rose.

  He froze, only half standing. The words he had written were: Prince Aliver, we are both saved!

  Barad lowered himself back to the stone. He smeared the words with the flat of his hand and let the charcoal fall from his fingers. His heart, which had been so profoundly happy a moment before, seemed to die within him. He watched the princes swim and splash each other, dive, and chase fish. Aaden shouted the impromptu instructions of a newly imagined tunnel game. Aliver added to them with enthusiasm, looking like a boy of exactly the same age.

  Watching Aliver’s face as he treaded water, Barad saw the vague motion beneath his skin again. Aaden could not see it. Nobody could. Only he with his accursed stone eyes. Not even Aliver knew. He doesn’t know that he is trapped inside himself, and I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anybody.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Melio Sharratt watched Clytus exit the tavern. The thatch hanging from the roof brushed his hair as he emerged, leaving him no more or less neatly coiffed for it. Clytus strode over and stood beside Melio. With his thick arms crossed and shoulders bunched with muscle and his weathered face one notch down from a full scowl, he seemed more like a figure to fear than like one who needed to be cautious. Once he had been one of Dariel’s close friends, a brigand then and still now. He said, “He’s here.”

  Melio asked, “Will he talk?”

  Clytus cleared his throat and brushed the hard knuckles of one hand along his chin. “Yeah, he’ll talk,” he answered, sliding his gaze over to study a group of children playing a betting game with seashells.

  Melio nearly said that nobody on the street was paying them the slightest bit of attention, but this was not his territory. He had been out of that since Corinn sent him south on the Ballan, all the way around the Far South and back up along the western coast of Talay in the company of some of Dariel’s old brigand crew. Clytus captained the ship now, with old Nineas still as the chief pilot, and Geena in command of the crew. Strange the way the passing of time made enemies friends, folding one thing in upon another so that it was hard to imagine the old order of things. Dariel, going by the name Spratling, had once pirated the coast south of here, a criminal in the eyes of Hanish Mein’s authority. Now he was a prince of the empire, and the brigands who had once been his lawless crew sailed in service to the crown. Although now he was an absent prince, missing in a faraway land, perhaps no longer among the living…

  “All right, come in,” Clytus said grudgingly, as if it were against his better judgment. “Let’s get this over with.”

  As he slipped beneath the overhanging thatch, Melio reflexively grasped for the hilt of his sword, to rest his hand there and feel the tilt of the sheath trailing him like a tail. He had to settle for gripping his leather belt instead. His sword was back on the Ballan with the rest of his things. Prominent weapons were not allowed in the taverns of the Coastal Towns. He did, however, carry a smaller one, unseen by the eyes of the tavern guard who looked them over as they passed.

  Melio followed Clytus back through the dim room, lit only by the candles at each table and torches along the rear wall, where young men poured ale. The air oozed with the scent of it, mixed with pipe smoke and the pungency of garlic.

  The table they stopped at was no different from the others, a circle centered around a thick-wicked candle. The yellow glow lit two men in sharp highlights. One of them rose and moved away when they arrived, without so much as a glance up. Clytus turned and followed the man, only turning back when he had seated himself at another table. The second man had stayed put. Large bone earrings, shaped like primitive fishhooks, dangled from his ears. His beard covered only his chin and had been oiled to a curving tip, something he kept shaped with caressing fingers. His face, behind all that, was forgettable. If Melio had turned away and had to describe him, he would only be able to recall the earrings, beard, the oily fingers.

  “This is Kartholome Gilb. Formerly a small ship pilot for the league. Now… what are you now?”

  “I’m between employers at the moment. Working for myself.”

  “A brigand, then.”

  Kartholome dipped his head in acceptance of the title. “Clytus already told me who you are, Sharratt. If you want a drink you’ll have to get it yourself. Ale only. We don’t drink the league’s wine here.” When neither man moved, he leaned back on his stool and motioned with his hand that they should feel free to sit.

  “So… Clytus says you’ve come all the way from the monkey’s pucker itself. What brings you to Tivol? If it’s whores you want, you’ve come to the right place. Though I’m disappointed. I take it the princess doesn’t do the… interesting things. Royalty can be like that. With a little coin any girl in town will play the princess for you, though.”

  Melio threw an angry look at Clytus. “I thought you said he was ready to talk.”

  “He is. Kartholome, stop shifting crap with your tongue and let’s get on to what we discussed.”

  “But it’s not every day one meets the mighty steed a princess rides. He doesn’t look so-”

  Melio lunged across the table so quickly that he had completed his attack and sat back in his seat before Kartholome knew what had happened. Kartholome touched his nose, the tip of which bloomed with a thin line of blood that quickly began to drip onto the table. He murmured a curse, but seemed more impressed than angry or pained. Melio’s hand lay on the wood, resting over the hilt of the short knife he had just cut Kartholome with.

  Clytus glanced around the tavern, and then broke the short silence. “Calm heads. Calm heads. Look, Kartholome, Melio Sharratt isn’t only a Marah; he trains Marah. Understand that? He moves different, yeah? Walks upright and is… a little delicate with his hands.” Melio cocked an eyebrow. “But don’t think that just because he talks like a toff that he couldn’t remove your liver, cut it up, and feed it to you before you knew what you were eating. He’s not to be trifled with, and the princess is not a topic he’s interested in discussing.” Clytus leaned forward. Through gritted teeth, he said, “He’s here in the service of the queen.”

  Kartholome shrugged. “I was just making conversation.” He pinched the tip of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and seemed, if anything, more curiously amiable than he had been before receiving the injury. “All right, assuming you let me keep my nose hairs, let’s talk about what you want to.”

  “I want to know what happened to Prince Dariel in the Other Lands.”

  “You don’t ask much.” Kartholome let go of his nose and dabbed it a few times, then put pressure back on it. “What I heard is that the prince was an offerin
g. A deal sweetener. The Auldek just weren’t in the mood for making nice. Grouchy buggers they are.”

  Melio stared at him. “What in the Giver’s name are you talking about?”

  Kartholome rolled his eyes and began again. “Fine. Try to follow, though. Sire Neen didn’t care a pear about Dariel, or about the Akarans. No leagueman does. He also didn’t give a pear about the Lothan Aklun. Hates them, truth be told. Neen came up with a grand plan to get rid of both of them. Kill the Lothan Aklun with some poison or something, and then he would go direct to the Auldek. You see it? Figured he would control both sides of the trade-quota or mist or whatever it was going to be. But, like I said, the Auldek didn’t like the look of him. Their chieftain chopped Neen limb from limb and took a bath in his blood. Wouldn’t have minded seeing that. You?”

  “You see any of this with your own eyes?”

  “Nah. I never went across. I worked the Outer Isles, the Thousands, mostly. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened. Thing like that, people talk.”

  “And Dariel?”

  Kartholome, finally satisfied his nose was no longer bleeding, released it and sat back. “The prince. He was there when it happened. Neen was offering him to the Auldek, sort of a token of good faith. ‘Here, have a prince. Do with him what you will.’ He’s probably dead. Though-mind, I don’t really credit this-one of the Ishtat who survived claimed to have seen someone grab Dariel. Not Auldek. Not Ishtat. Just someone. Guy that looked like a boar. He was standing near the prince, he said, and the guy knocked into him as he passed.”