by Kage Baker
“What do you want in all this, sir?” Stedrakh waved his claw in the direction of the main camp. “If you don’t mind the question.”
“What do you want?” Gard replied.
“Us?” The demons looked at one another. Stedrakh said, “Well, it’s something to do, isn’t it? We get to eat, we get to drink. We get to fight and kill. When we win, we get to fuck somebody. The hotheads aren’t so bad, even if they do fancy themselves. It’s better than being a damn slave again.”
“Ah,” said Gard. “That’s true.”
“Were you a slave?”
“I was, yes. May I see one of your amulets?”
Redeye shrugged and, with a glance up at the main camp, pulled the amulet off over his head and handed it to Gard. The illusion went with it, like a discarded robe, and he laughed quietly and flexed his heavy arms. “Don’t look down, little hotheads. You’ll run home crying to your mothers.”
“This is a simple spell,” said Gard, studying the amulet. “This is nothing more than a formula inscribed on silver.”
“That’s right. What’s it to you?”
“I intend to make one for myself.”
They raised their heads to stare at him. “Make one?” said Arkholoth. “You’d have to be a mage to make one.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re one of—” Stedrakh fell silent. Gard raised his eyes and met his stare.
After a long moment, Redeye whistled softly. “By the Blue Pit and the Little Red Dog. Someone was a fucking idiot.”
“They were,” said Gard. “But not for long.”
Redeye began to laugh, and the others laughed too, raucous unbelieving laughter. Gard only smiled and handed the amulet back to Redeye.
“But there’s never been one of us trained up as a mage!” said Arkholoth. “Didn’t they know what you were?”
“They knew. They needed to sacrifice someone with a mage’s powers. They thought they could substitute a slave, if they taught him a little magecraft.”
“Where was this?” said Stedrakh, leaning forward. Gard pointed in the general direction of the mountain. They turned to look and shuddered.
“That place,” said Arkholoth. “The Ice Trap, we call it. You got out of there? Then you’re a better man than I am, brother, and if we were in a city, I’d buy you a drink.”
“Thank you,” said Gard. “I bought a jar of wine at the commissary this afternoon. It should be arriving shortly—”
“Here we are, little brother,” said Grattur, hurrying forward into the firelight. He hefted a wine jar, grinning. “Drinks for everybody!”
“And we brought the two boys, just as you asked,” said Engrattur. Two of the half-breeds followed him, blinking in the light, hanging back a little.
“Evening, Sergeant. Evening, sir,” they muttered more or less together. Dalbeck was the taller, young but terribly scarred: knives had gashed his chest, the lash had striped his back. He looked like a Child of the Sun, but for the fact that his eyes were those of a cat. Cheller, the shorter of the two, had thundercloud skin and a crest of hair that rose like a helmet’s decoration.
“Evening, lads,” said Redeye not unkindly. He looked at Gard. “What’s this about, then?”
“More training,” said Gard.
“Sit down, little brothers,” said Grattur, prizing the stopper out of the wine jar. He peered in. “Not enough in here to get good and drunk, if we all share it,” he said, sounding somewhat reproachful.
“We’ll share it, all the same,” said Gard.
“These are good boys to train, sir,” said Redeye. “Dalbeck’s been fighting since he was a baby. Haven’t you?”
Dalbeck kept his eyes down when he spoke. “My mother was blind. People would try to steal from her bowl. I fought off people who tried to, to hurt her. After she died I still had to fight all the time.”
“And you’re a fine stone killer too,” said Redeye. “The other one knows some fancy tricks, don’t you, Cheller? He was a foundling raised up in a runners’ mother house, would you believe it? Learned all their acrobatics. He does worse damage with his boots and elbows than most men can do with a warhammer. Got thrown out on his ear when he got too interested in the girls, though!”
Cheller squirmed in embarrassment. He looked sidelong at Gard as he accepted the wine jar, which was being passed around.
“Somebody told me you’re, er, like us. Sir,” he said, and drank.
Gard nodded. He let his spell of disguise drop away. The youths stared.
“Handsome, isn’t he?” said Engrattur proudly.
“You look a little like—,” Cheller began. “There are these people that live way back in the southern woods. They hide in the forest. I saw a couple. Yendri, they’re called.”
The word rang like a bell for Gard, but he did not let it show in his face. How strange to hear it here….
“Yes, I look like them. A little. Not enough to pass for one, any more than you could pass for a Child of the Sun. Gentlemen? Reveal yourselves, if you please.”
One by one, the old veterans slipped off their amulets and showed their true forms, blinking a little sheepishly at the boys. Dalbeck clenched his fists, but after a moment began to smile. Cheller grinned wide. “Don’t tell me we’re all demons here!” he said.
“We are,” said Gard.
“These bodies are just disguises,” said Grattur.
“He’s clever too,” said Engrattur.
“How do you hide your real self like that, sir?” Dalbeck asked. “Can you teach us how to do that?”
“Probably,” said Gard. “You’re learning well. It’s time you learned something more advanced. Do you know what meditation is?”
Dalbeck shook his head.
“I know,” said Cheller. “It’s games you play with your mind, to make you able to do hard things. The runners teach it. The long-distance couriers can run a hundred miles without stopping, because they can sort of go out of themselves and rest someplace else.”
“It’s useful for a fighter too,” said Gard. “Would you like to know what it’s like, walking without flesh?”
“Yes,” said Cheller, and Dalbeck nodded.
“Then look at me,” said Gard.
He went out of himself and pulled them after him like two kites, into the sea of stars. Dalbeck was a sputtering golden light, a phrase of yearning music; Cheller was a bright and rippling blueness, with a smell of baking bread. There were Redeye and Arkholoth and Stedrakh, stolid mountains of light, and here the twin purple gleaming that was Grattur and Engrattur.
The boys squealed like babies in their excitement. They shot away from Gard, they soared, they spun.
There are others here!
Others like us! We’re stars!
No, we’re music!
No, we’re … everything!
This is what you really are. The low rumble was Redeye. The bodies we wear aren’t real. Fun to have, sometimes, but really only temporary.
Tell them about the danger. That was Grattur.
Right. That was Arkholoth. You have to be careful, children.
One day you’ll be going along here minding your own business, and you’ll hear somebody calling you. It’ll be some mage in a casting chamber. If he’s a decent sort—not that there are many of them—he’ll offer you a body in exchange for work. Redeye’s voice darkened to a growl. But there are some sly bastards who’ll set out a feast for you, wine and meat and all good things. They’ll show you a body they’ve made for you and they’ll say, “Come wear this a little while, come enjoy yourself!”
And if you go down and put that body on—Grattur sounded woeful, he became melancholy music.
And if you eat of the good things and drink all the wine—Engrattur was a doleful counterpoint.
Why, then, just when you’re full and stupid, they’ll trick you into telling your name, said Redeye, and there was a blast of sound like an avalanche in many colors, as the old demons chorused, NEVER TELL THEM YOUR NAME!
If they know your name, they can make you a slave.
It’s like a noose around your neck.
A wire pulled tight around your testicles.
They’ll make you serve.
They’ll make you fetch.
They’ll write your name in their books, so they can catch you again, even if you get free.
You’ll never really be free, even if they die. Some busybody will go poking through the old books and find your name, and you’ll be pulled back.
Unless… Grattur whirled to consider Gard. Unless you meet someone like him.
What’s that? Redeye’s attention was like a spotlight.
We were slaves to the Narcissus of the Void, in the Ice Trap.
He stole us away from her, hid us in these bodies he made.
She can’t get us back now!
He set us free!
Now Gard was fixed in the beam of Arkholoth’s and Stedrakh’s attention.
Because you’re a mage … and yet one of us. A good master?
I am no master, Gard replied. I am your brother.
We’d serve you! cried Dalbeck and Cheller, orbiting Gard in streams of bright fire. We’d be your sworn men!
Shut up, you little fools, thundered Redeye. You don’t know what it is to be a slave, or you’d never talk that way.
Let us be a company of brothers, said Gard.
At that moment there was a disturbance in the camp; Gard pulled them back, and they sat gasping in the firelight, turning their heads from side to side as they tried to adjust to seeing with two eyes. Gard resumed his disguise; the older demons had discreetly slipped their amulets back on.
One of the sergeants from Forgefire Company came stalking up to their fire. “Hai, Disgraces! There was a spy reported on the other side of the camp, lurking in the woods. Keep an eye out for anyone trying to swim across the river.”
“We will, sir. Thank you, sir,” said Redeye.
When the sergeant had gone, Dalbeck and Cheller whooped with held breath and fell over. “Brothers!” crowed Cheller. “That’s what we are, we’re brothers! I never had any family in my life before. I never belonged anywhere before. Now I know who I am!”
“Just you take care nobody else knows,” said Redeye.
Hallock had skin irregularly patterned with stripes; Nyren’s legs were disproportionately large for his body, and he had moreover a tail. Both had been foundlings, raised by an entrepreneur who exhibited them, until one night Nyren had kicked out the bars of their cell and they had gone free. They had learned to fight for survival in the wild, and there Arkholoth had met them, on his way to enlist. He had persuaded them that a soldier’s life was better than starving in the forest, so they had come along and enlisted too.
They came now privately to Gard, asking shyly whether a darkness full of lights and glorious music, where ungainly flesh was left behind, truly existed. That night, by the fire, Gard brought them there. They were as thrilled as Dalbeck and Cheller had been, though perhaps more inclined to listen to Redeye’s stern warnings; for they had worn chains, in their brief time.
When Toktar and Bettimer came to the fire on the following night, the whole business had begun to assume an air of ritual.
Toktar was a hermaphrodite, ugly but extravagantly endowed and bosomed. In the sea of stars, he was a brilliant point of silver, a high trumpet call at dawn, a shout of joy to find himself free of his ridiculous prison.
Only Bettimer, who had been raised in Salesh by his mother and stepfather and who hated his ice-white skin, drew back from the bright gulf. He was a mere point of flame there, flickering wildly in his disorientation and terror. Where the others had seen freedom, he saw only chaos. He wept afterward at his failure.
“Don’t feel badly, son,” said Redeye. “Maybe your father wasn’t a demon.”
“Maybe he was a god,” said Dalbeck helpfully.
Gard, watching the boy where he sat staring miserably downward, said, “What did you hope to find, when you came to this fire?”
“I wanted to be something besides me,” said Bettimer. “Something besides my mother’s shame. I disappointed my stepfather. Now I’m a disappointment here. I hope I die in battle.”
“No,” said Gard. “If you could begin your life again, if you could choose, what would it be like?”
Bettimer raised his tear-streaked face. “Nobody would stare at me anymore. I could get a job in a forge. My stepfather was a blacksmith. I loved the red iron, I loved blowing the coals to bright fire. I loved the way the water foamed white when steel was tempered in it. When the coals glowed, when the place was full of red light, nobody could see my skin was the wrong color. If I could just live in a forge and never come out …”
Redeye shook his head. “You’re a Child of the Sun, inside.”
“You needn’t be ashamed,” said Gard. “Not one man here is where he ought to be, if the world were right. It isn’t. We aren’t. We make the best of things.”
Gard circled Thrang with both wooden swords drawn. The old werewolf turned warily, keeping his buckler up.
Are you silent because it’s difficult to speak? Gard inquired, going out of himself enough to address the dull amber light opposite him.
What do you think, with a mouth made like mine? Below, Thrang showed his stained teeth. No lips, two-inch fangs, and a tongue fit only for lapping water. A head made to frighten burglars, and the rest of me no use for anything now. What should I say, even if I could speak?
I’m sorry. You had a cruel master.
Light flared in the yellow eyes, and Thrang growled as he advanced on Gard. My master was a gentleman! He knew beauty, he appreciated fine things. His collection was the finest in the world. It took us years to gather it! Four hundred and seventeen cups of perfect celadon from the kilns at Ward’b, ranging in shades from apple green to virgin’s milk. A complete set of the comic figurines of Paltas Stoneward, each one hand-painted and gilded. Four matched vases of Rose Garden pattern, the last made by Thraxas of Salesh before his studio was burned. A portrait bust of Marlans the Dictator, one of only three made, in ivory white kaolin clay. A redware krater depicting Book Three of Andib the Axeman—we had found a dealer who had the ones for Books One and Two, he didn’t know the worth of what he had, if my master had lived only another week we’d have had them—but—oh—
Overcome by grief, the old creature dropped his shield, threw back his head, and howled.
Forgive me, said Gard, lowering his swords.
Lost, lost, scattered to the four winds. Fools! They won’t value them, they won’t care for them properly. They damaged the bust of Marlans when they were carrying it out to the cart. I saw the white chip fall. My heart wept blood. All my books, all my careful records torn apart and used to wrap what was sold. It was the finest collection in the world and it is gone. Everything goes. Nothing remains.
But you kept something, said Gard encouragingly. Thrang, panting, swung around to peer at him. Tears had run down through the matted fur on his face.
I did. Yes, I had to. Master sought so long for it—he dreamed about it every night for ten years, and I dreamed of it too. The rarest of the celadons, the only one known to exist in that shade of robin’s-egg green. The potter was experimenting with a new glaze and died before he could write down the formula. I hid it away from his damned sons, I brought it with me into bondage.
May I see it?
Thrang blinked at Gard. He lowered his head suspiciously, but signed that Gard should follow him and limped away to his solitary tent. There he brought out a sack and from that drew a wooden box, and opened it, and dug through fistfuls of dried leaves to produce an object swathed in furs as against the cold. He unwrapped it—his hands were fine, smooth, though the knuckles were knobbed with age and labor—and held forth at last a tiny cup of white clay, glazed with transparent blue-green, pale as seawater.
What an extraordinary color, said Gard. When I was a slave, my mistress had a set of such cups, but only in th
e green. And of course she had no appreciation of what she had.
They never do, said Thrang, shaking his head. I’m glad to know you are a gentleman of perception.
He was a little more at ease with Gard from that day, though no less silent, and even consented to join the others around the fire of an evening.
The arms lessons went well. Gard brought out his Firebow volumes and read aloud some nights, and the boys listened intently, and even the old veterans leaned close to hear. By day, training on the trampled strip of earth beside the river, they were increasingly watched by the other platoons, who mocked them less and less.
In the privacy of his tent, Gard took a silver piece and filed away the duke’s profile and, using the tip of his knife, scribed in the disguising spell he had seen on Redeye’s amulet. It worked admirably. He punched a string-hole through and wore it around his neck thereafter.
Cheller made a banner for them. It was a black field on which were scattered stars, red and green and golden.
The news came while they were at practice; Thrang heard the trumpet before anyone else, so that Gard, mounting the rise of land, was the first to see the runner coming across the plain. He went down into the main camp and joined Duke Chrysantine and his officers, as the girl in her scarlet uniform entered the camp.
“Written or spoken?” said the duke.
“Both,” said the runner, drawing a sealed tablet from the pouch she carried. “Coalbrick said: you are to know, sir, that Skalkin Salting left the coast two weeks ago and was at Kottile last night with his army. Particulars are enclosed.” She presented the duke with the tablet.
“Give her wine and gold,” said the duke to his aides, as he opened the tablet. He glanced up from it at the runner. “I’ll have messages for you to carry on to Deliantiba.”
The runner bowed her head and followed an aide into the guest pavilion. The duke read closely what was in the tablet, silent a moment or two. At last he lifted his head and looked around him for his aides.
“Send me my officers. Give the order to break camp. We’ll march this afternoon.”