Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  “The twins wish to encourage trade,” Essa said. “They’ll be back this way.”

  “Not anymore,” Skiff said. Her little laugh made the upright hairs strain upward as though they would flee Essa’s skin.

  “You killed them,” she said. “Or . . . your dog did. But why?”

  “Why did I do it? It wasn’t easy to lure one in without the other,” Skiff said. She rubbed an arm across her sweaty face as though trying to wipe away weariness at the same time. “Why would I want this place to become what Tabat is, where to do anything, be anyone, you must have money? You have not explored this place, but there is so much bounty that they have leisure to do what they like. And you will bring in Merchants who want the equations and numbers to add up, and there is no number in their equations for workers for anything other than eating and sleeping and worshipping your gods as they trample us underfoot to make us into coins.”

  A spasm of surprise widened Essa’s eyes. “You killed them so you would have leisure?”

  “You are not even trying to understand,” Skiff said. “To you it is right and proper that the people with money do well, because you believe your gods love them, that they love the gods and are rewarded. And certainly they love the gods, for those gods justify all sorts of things for those who do not understand things in the same way, and that is anyone who is not a Merchant and capable of using them.” She bit her lip. “Perhaps you are incapable of understanding.”

  It was as though the reeling of the ship underfoot had overtaken her again. She took a step back, throwing her arm up between them as though to ward off the heat, the truth, the shame of Skiff’s words. To avoid questioning her existence in a way she never had before, despite years and years in Merchant school. No maxim had prepared her for this moment.

  And the dog took that gesture as attack.

  Its weight bore her down in the darkness, its jaws seized her forearm, and she felt the flesh tear and the bone snap. She clawed at its eyes with her free hand, tried to draw up her leg to kick it off her, but everything was pain and shoving and brutal movements and the dog’s heavy breaths while Skiff watched in silence. She collided with something cold, soft, and heavy, and rolled away from it with a shriek.

  Then the dog recoiled, loosing her, staggering away. She pulled herself into a ball, tried to gather herself. She heard Skiff’s wordless question, her steps. Essa raised her head to see the dog on the floor, convulsing, barely visible in the tangle of shadows and colored moonlight.

  The beetle poison, she thought, just as Skiff turned, her child’s face a grimaced mask of rage, and screamed, “What did you do?”

  Essa staggered to her feet, trying to gain the advantage of height. Feet thundered along the corridor outside, and Sfeo and Ava were in the doorway with torches, light finally showing what Essa had suspected: the twins lying where they had died, one on top of the other. No more words for them.

  They took Skiff—Doralina, she corrected herself—away, and brought someone to tend her wounds.

  Essa taught them papermaking before she left, and reaped the benefit of that on her last night: a soft, crude volume, handstitched, that any bookbindery in Tabat would have sneered at. The cover was cloth, printed with flowers. Maybe she’d start a fashion.

  Sfeo had declined to come with the expedition accompanying her down to the port, not for anger or bitterness or anything but his ardor cooling. She’d learned from some of the women that he was always interested in newcomers, but was not bold enough himself to travel.

  What the villagers had done with the girl was not something they were inclined to tell her. Essa had not seen her again, nor had she ever been mentioned. It was as though all memory of her had vanished.

  The final night, before she left, Essa tried to write down what she remembered of Doralina and Yadi, here where the memory would be freshest. But try as hard as she could, the Trade God maxims could not contain everything Doralina had said. At their heart, everything was coin, and some of what the child said could not be broken down like that.

  Not that she had been right, of course. Without the Trade Gods, the world would fail. All would be chaos. But perhaps Essa could add things in, somehow. With enough time, with enough thought and study. She had years in which to do it.

  Years for the memory of the contorted dog’s body, the child’s sobs, to fade. Or not fade precisely, but be bulwarked against by good works, perhaps?

  To begin with, Diahmo accrued profit, certainly, but she’d seen him reckon up vengeance for the twins and their Ligurian. Other additions might be performed, and things added to what a human being was due from the way of things.

  But still she chewed her pen all that night and had yet to put any of it into words.

  KEN SCHOLES

  WHEN SHAWN ASKED ME TO WRITE FOR UNFETTERED III, I KNEW THIS was the story I wanted to tell. While I was crafting the Psalms of Isaak between 2006 and 2016, I left lots and lots of tidbits behind intentionally like a bread crumb trail for future stories. In Canticle and in Requiem I dropped some teaser sentences about Rudolfo and Gregoric—middle-aged characters during the events of the series—sailing with the pirate Rafe Merrique (another character) in their youth. I’ve said for some time that I would eventually come back to that, and Shawn gave me a great excuse to put my toes in those waters. It also gave me a chance to explore Gregoric’s point of view as we never get to experience it in the series.

  Of course, right away it was obvious that I could only tell some of the seafaring adventure I hinted at in the Psalms of Isaak. There is more to tell, as this story suggests, and I suspect a novella or two may show up down the road.

  If you enjoy this story, you may want to look into more of my work at KenScholes.com.

  Ken Scholes

  Of Anchor Chains and Slow Refrains and Light Long Lost in Darkness

  Ken Scholes

  The first bell chimed softly in the dim-lit Androfrancine lobby, and Gregoric looked up from the corner where he waited. The sky had been a predawn purple when the Grey Guard had admitted him to the Office of Acquisitions and Travel thirty minutes before.

  The early hours of these offices astonished Gregoric. He’d spent his twenty years living in the Ninefold Forest, set apart from the rest of the Named Lands in the distant northeast, where customs were far more relaxed. In the Forest, no business was transacted until well after sunrise.

  And now I’m waiting on an arch-something and a king before my first cup of chai, he thought.

  Gregoric had half expected to find his king snoring in one of the lobby’s plush chairs, reeking of peach wine and perfume, grinning at having proved his friend wrong.

  “These ladies,” Rudolfo had told him last night in one of the city’s less restrained quarters, “only require my attention for a few short hours.” Gregoric had protested both the practicality of the proposed venture and the underestimation of the time available before dawn, but Rudolfo was king and general, after all.

  Of course I’ll be on time for the meeting. Of course I will have slept and bathed. The offense upon Rudolfo’s face at the mere suggestion that he might not be either of these things had Gregoric’s eyes rolling even in memory.

  But Rudolfo hadn’t been waiting, and so his first captain had initially paced the room, then finally succumbed to the chair, where he fidgeted and fussed at a state uniform he’d worn only once before.

  At the next bell, Gregoric sighed and stood. He’d made his second turn in a new round of pacing when the doorknob rattled. Beyond the door, he heard a familiar voice.

  “Thank you, good sir,” Rudolfo said as the door opened to the Grey Guard captain stationed at the building’s main entrance. “Oh, Captain, is it? Yes. Then sir seems certainly apropos. Ah. There he is.” Rudolfo strode into the room, met Gregoric’s eyes, and laughed, the Grey Guard just behind him in the doorway. “My own captain, whom I assume you’ve met?”

  Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses and General of the Wandering Army, stood a full hea
d shorter than most of the men of the Named Lands. Barely nineteen years, his beard was coming in wispy and thin. That, combined with his own state uniform and the green turban of office, lent him a comic quality that he seemed at ease with.

  Gregoric saw it as a possible blind spot—not taking things seriously and then not being taken seriously—but then again, he saw blind spots everywhere.

  Because it’s my job to see what he can’t see. It’s what you did when your best friend was also your king. And if he stumbled, you picked him up and carried him if you had to.

  The Grey Guard captain’s face betrayed the slightest bemusement as he pulled the door closed and Rudolfo crossed the room to clap Gregoric’s shoulder. “Well met, First Captain Gregoric,” he said with a wink. “And good morning.”

  Gregoric smelled the faintest trace of perfume but little of the wine he’d expected, and his friend’s uniform was surprisingly well put together. He raised an eyebrow and opted for the military title. “Good morning, General Rudolfo.” He lowered his voice. “You’ve slept?”

  Rudolfo chuckled. “After a manner.”

  Gregoric let his curiosity lift his eyebrows even farther. “And?”

  “It seems the Androfrancines do not tend to all of their flock with equal grace and magnanimity,” Rudolfo said with a grin. “Our assistance in certain earthly matters was long anticipated and greatly . . . appreciated.”

  His words would’ve been more suave than boastful except that he blushed as he said it; Gregoric pretended not to notice. “Good then,” he said. He wouldn’t say more beyond that, and hadn’t any of the other times.

  Rudolfo, Lord of the Ninefold Forest Houses and General of the Wandering Army, had come late to his awareness of his body and the bodies of the young women around him. Far later than most young men, and Gregoric saw its arrival over the last year as a welcome change.

  It seemed a much healthier activity than brooding on the observation deck while listening to the screams of repentance beneath the Physicians of Penitent Torture’s knives. Not that Gregoric blamed his friend for that streak of darkness. Nearly all of the penitents had been followers of the Heretic Fontayne and those who’d harbored or aided them—those responsible, directly or indirectly, for the murders of Rudolfo’s parents.

  They had grown up together, Rudolfo and Gregoric, mostly in the vicinity of Rudolfo’s father’s Seventh Forest Manor and the unnamed town that had sprung up around it. Gregoric’s father, Aerynus, had been Lord Jakob’s first captain, and from his earliest memory, Gregoric had assumed he would serve Rudolfo in the same way. But no one had expected it might happen so soon.

  The sudden memory ambushed Gregoric. His closest friend, covered in his parents’ blood, eyes red but fierce, as Rudolfo barked his first commands. He’d gone from twelve to thirty in seconds, and Gregoric still saw it in his eyes some days. Wrath and sorrow twisting and turning to find a purpose. They’d both gone with Gregoric’s father to hunt Fontayne down, but only Rudolfo had participated directly in the interrogations led by Chief Physician Benoit.

  No, Gregoric thought, the stream of dalliances was a welcome change. Let him chase pleasure for a season rather than pain and penitence.

  Rudolfo dropped himself into one of the chairs. “How are the men?”

  Gregoric snorted. “They’re sleeping, I’ll wager. But they’ll be ready to ride at your command.”

  Rudolfo nodded. “Excellent.” He opened his mouth to say more, but a smaller bell chimed and the inner door opened to admit a young man in a long white robe lined with threads of blue that marked him as an acolyte.

  “Lord Rudolfo? His Excellency Arch-Archaeologist Tobin will see you now.”

  Gregoric watched his friend incline his head and then made to follow him as he left the waiting area.

  “I’m sorry, Lord,” the acolyte said, raising his hand. “But it is more appropriate for your aide to wait here.”

  Gregoric felt a flash of anger and gritted his teeth. Rudolfo chuckled. “Actually, it would be utterly inappropriate,” Rudolfo said. “But if my first captain is not permitted beyond this door, I’m happy to receive His Excellency here in his lobby.”

  The acolyte turned purple and said nothing. Rudolfo winked at Gregoric as the acolyte turned to lead them into the office.

  Swallowing that moment of anger, Gregoric followed his king.

  The walls of the Office of Acquisitions and Travel were largely undecorated. Tobin was third in command, and that gave him a lush office on the ground floor with a window overlooking a meditation garden now gray with morning.

  The arch-archaeologist waited by a small table set with chai. “Good morning, Lord Rudolfo.” He glanced disapprovingly at Gregoric and then to the acolyte, whose face still looked flushed. “Will your officer be joining us for chai?”

  “Certainly.” Rudolfo looked to Gregoric and raised his eyebrow. “You’ve not had your chai, I’ll wager?”

  Gregoric knew better than to say anything and instead sized up Tobin. He was portly but powerfully built, his hair close cropped and iron gray. He wore spectacles—something Gregoric had only seen once before, on another Androfrancine passing through: pieces of glass fit into wires and worn for vision by those whom the various powders and magicks available in the Named Lands could not heal.

  The arch-archaeologist gestured for another chair, and the acolyte fetched it before pouring out chai in three spotlessly shined silver mugs.

  Once each had sat and taken a first careful sip of the steaming liquid, Rudolfo dug into his pocket and drew out a letter. “This is a Letter of Credit from the Tam Banking Concern that I’ve had drawn up for your consideration. It is the Forest Houses’ honor to serve the Order and to underwrite our service to the light, as is the custom of kin-clave.”

  Tobin took the document, opened it, and scanned it. “This is a liberal Offer of Underwriting, Lord Rudolfo.”

  “I am very specific in the offer I am making.”

  Tobin nodded, and Gregoric waited. They’d spent years talking about this moment, in their boyhood. It was around the same time that they’d discovered the secret doors and hidden tunnels that networked the Seventh Forest Manor. And not just the Seventh, but all of the manors they’d visited before the day that Rudolfo’s childhood burned down.

  “When I’m king,” Rudolfo had said in those lighter days, “I’ll get the Order to help us find him, and we’ll join his crew.”

  Gregoric couldn’t remember the circumstances, but he remembered the words with absolute clarity. They’d spent the entire summer pretending that houses were ships and sticks were swords

  He forced his attention back to Tobin, who’d handed back the letter. “We have valuable work for you to do, but we have no control over some portions of your offer.”

  Rudolfo nodded. “But he is available for hire, and the Order does have the ability to contact him?”

  Tobin returned the nod. “Yes. And your entire letter may underwrite half of the offer you propose.”

  Gregoric waited and held his breath. Now you surprise him.

  Rudolfo drew the small box from his sash and placed it on the table. “I think he will be interested in this portion of my offer.” Opening the lid, he slid it toward Tobin.

  The Androfrancine’s eyebrows went up behind his spectacles. “It’s a brooch,” he said.

  “No,” Rudolfo said. “It’s the brooch.”

  And Gregoric smiled when he saw the recognition upon the arch-archaeologist’s face. It had taken some work to figure out the details, but Rudolfo’s intelligence officers had earned their promised lands and titles.

  Tobin swallowed. “The brooch?”

  Rudolfo nodded. “The same.”

  They’d read about the brooch in Hyrum’s Pirate Lord of the Ghosting Crests. Certainly much of Hyrum’s tales scribed during the scholar’s year with Merrique were embellished, but the brief conversation about regrets during the seventeen days they spent shipwrecked in the Ghosting Crests seemed starkly r
eal. And the pirate lord’s singular regret, voiced to the Androfrancine in a moment of raw honesty, was a brooch. There was no additional explanation. But over the course of this last year, Rudolfo had put himself and his kingdom’s vast resources to determining what the brooch was and how to acquire it as bait.

  And now, Gregoric thought, we catch ourselves a pirate with it.

  Rudolfo smiled. “Did you know that it was an heirloom that had been stolen from the Merrique family?”

  Tobin held the brooch up to the light. “Yes,” he said. “I do not know how you came to possess it, but I’m certain the Order could . . .”

  His words trailed off at Rudolfo’s upraised hand.

  “No, Your Excellency, I’m afraid it’s specifically for Rafe Merrique, and we intend to deliver it to him personally.” His grin caught Gregoric off guard with its ferocity. “It’s my gift to him for his service to the light.”

  For a moment, Tobin said nothing, then he placed the box on the table. He looked up and met Rudolfo’s eyes. “We’ll make the arrangements. Captain Grymlis will have the Letters of Introduction for you once they’re executed by the office clerk. By then we’ll also have instructions from Captain Merrique, should he accept your offer. It will be a simple retrieval from the Churning Wastes if he is inclined to serve as transport.”

  Rudolfo inclined his head. “Thank you, Your Excellency.”

  He slipped the box back into his sash. “And please forward our gratitude to Pope Introspect for his hospitality and endorsement.”

  Now the arch-archaeologist inclined his head. “I will tell him.” He stood. “Now, gentlemen, please finish your chai. I’ve another matter to attend to.”

  Once he and the acolyte left, Rudolfo grinned again, and Gregoric tried to resist doing the same. His king and best friend raised his eyebrow, and only then did Gregoric notice the lip rouge on his neck. “What say you, Gregoric? Are you ready to test your sea legs?”