by Adrian Selby
“Hope he got out,” I said. Valdir’s path was straight through the east edge of Cusston, continuing the direction he was setting fires in so’s not to run into the havoc he created.
Bense had gone quiet, being led along and not much caring for the reunion. I pulled us up.
“He’s cold,” I said, a word we used for when we were out of what we were fixed on and were getting so bad we were giving up.
“What do you need, Bense? Betony? More agave, given you don’t seem to care much what’s in a belt so long as you can snuff or suck it?”
Shale dug about in his belt and took a thumb of the paste and held it out for Bense. He grabbed for Shale’s hand quick, sucking the paste from it and then using his own finger to rub it over his gums. His mouth was working furious to get the rise and it began with a sagging of his shoulders as he started up.
“Bense, we need to move, got to meet Valdir before we can head off an’ rest somewhere quiet. Got the fall comin’ too, feelin’ sick,” said Shale.
Bense slowed us, but we had no company as we pushed east a few leagues with some luta to help us see enough to keep up the pace through the woods we were in. It was as the light broke the edges of the sky east that we saw the first of those rising for their day, coming out of a hamlet of woodsmen and ’jackers further on. Shale left us tucked under a ridge of earth while he sought out Valdir. My guts were starting as I fell from the Honour. I was glad Bense was quiet for the trembling come on so’s I couldn’t have stopped him if he decided to make a fuss. We heard some voices in the clearing ahead. This was a sparse bit of the woods and the men about were getting ready to head out. I heard Shale’s song then, a birdcall too precise in its repeating to be anything other. Shortly I heard a call back, similar chirping what were made with a mouthpiece.
Some men from the camp passes by us, dawn now on enough to see them. They were cursing out one for calling rain later that day based on what he tasted of the milk he got from his goat.
Bense seemed to be sleeping, the hard march too much for him.
I shut my eyes for a while, wore out with my shakes. Sometime later it was, as I come to, I saw Bense creeping through the trees to where we were hiding. He was looking at me, smiling, which was curious given the state he was in going to sleep.
“Where you bin?” I asked.
“Nowhere, Gant, been here.”
“I just saw you, where’d you go?”
“Easy, Gant, I’m not shitting by the fire am I.” He had a bit more life about him. Looking back I wishes I thought more about it, but like I said, I just come to and was thinking as much of my own pain. Valdir I heard moaning then, half carried by Shale who was himself in pain with paying the colour. Valdir fell down next to us and was fighting for his breath. Shale give him a few kannab leaves to suck on and a stick to bite as his first full rise on the Honour and the specials, such as the luta leaf and oaksap, in near twenty winters was being paid. Seemed like the smoke from setting fires got in him too.
We had a smoke while he and Bense slept a bit.
“Got to risk buyin’ some food, Gant, we were light fer the prison break but according to Valdir if we’re goin’ to get to Mirisham we got to get to Lake Issan up the Forstway an’ that in’t goin’ to be easy.”
“The folks about’ll have something, but we needs horses. Prisoners’ll be caught and start yapping about us,” I said.
Issan was the big inland lake what cut over the base of the mountains around Issana’s and Jua’s borders. There was no going over the mountains and no going around the lake without losing some weeks. We needed a boat.
I hissed with a stabbing pain in my guts.
“I got some cotton an’ gum while I was out in Cusston, let me sort you out so’s yer can sleep a bit,” said Shale.
I come to later that day to the rasp of crows and other birdsong that filled the trees in the misty yellow of the waning sun. A child stood before us as we huddled under our skins. He was a dut of six or seven summers, long brown hair and smelling and looking like he’d been killing chickens, his hands, legs and feet dirty with the work. In his hand was a carving of a figure, me, in the wool tunic and boots of a ’jacker or somesuch. The carving was like paper in its delicacy. I had a beard, thick head of hair from before soldiering but a big belly. I was dancing a jig.
The boy smiled at me then and the sun seemed to light him up. It was like he was pleased to see me. He held the figure out, a gift for me. I reached out for it then come to as though I was dozing. Same as before the sound of the birds, but the boy wasn’t there. I shut my eyes to see him still.
“Gant, what is it?” said Shale. He glanced about. “What are you cryin’ for?”
I didn’t rightly know.
Chapter 14
Kigan
I put here the remainder of Kigan’s accounts of killing those of his former crew that he could find.
Goran
Cassica was only a few weeks’ ride from Handar, though the season made it more treacherous. Monsoons and storms tore through the jungles and renewed the plains of the lands I crossed as I headed back to Coral Bay. It was a spectacular journey as the world about me came to life with fierce splendour.
I had joined the Twenty shortly after I had left the Juan Academy of Flowers, garlanded for work with the agave plant. They exploited little of their kingdom’s great wealth and diverse commerce, arrogance the disease of their research, their methods stifling. I brought a recipe book to that academy that had been my father’s gift, a book that taught me more than any of the scrolls and parches their drudharchs revered. He sailed most of his life, my father, a keen cooker that filled my childhood with his excitement, experiments and their aromas of the wild world beyond the port I grew up in. I would describe him now but it was one more thing I no longer knew on my recovery from the Droop. I remember only heavy brown hands guiding mine, slicing through roots or helping me to mix up brews he would sell for a few pennies to those who could afford no more. During the months he was away my sister and I ate little but oats, rice and eggs and whatever offcuts we could get from the butcher’s with the purse our mother was left with till he returned. Then a knock from one of the other women to tell us his ship was in and we’d join wives and other children rushing down the street to meet our fathers off the boat. Every time he would bring us wood-carvings his shipmates made of the strange animals they saw, and once or twice I saw others he would show my mother that would elicit a shriek of laughter and were hidden away from us. His richly illustrated recipe book was embellished further with each visit his boat made as a factor for the larger Juan galleys, putting in at ports as diverse as the Virates and even the Kremen Run. My mother I recall only moments of, snatches of a long skirt and red hair remain, the singing and humming of old tales with him home. Then the sea took him and she sang no more.
I recall this here because for the little I remember, I miss him, my first teacher. Then, at some point after, my sister was gone. I have one memory of her. I want to miss her as I should a sister, but that part of me, somehow, for being blank, cannot. Her name is still lost, yet I recall us huddled in the bed we shared as children, our breath’s mist visible in the cold moonlight that we opened the shutters for, and she would share with me, under our blanket, oatmeal biscuits the baker’s boy would give her. We would frantically brush the crumbs out from the bed so our mother wouldn’t find out. Another memory I have, of my beating the ground and screaming while my mother pulled at me, must have been at her burial.
I was left making mixes and brews from that book of my father’s, to earn a sum to keep my mother and I fed. Word of my work spread. The book my father gave me, with his teaching, secured my future. The book was taken from me at Snakewood, having survived all those years and campaigns in the field. It was the reason I was a better warrior-drudha than Ibsey, who could never improvise as well, and the reason also that Kailen took me on though his crew doubted I would have the guts for their life. I saw no better way to learn the use o
f plant than to pit myself against the work of drudhas we opposed; no better way to prove my excellence than in keeping soldiers alive against the odds, making them quicker in thought and action, stronger and yet to pay less of the brews’ claim when the fall began.
No drudha paid the colour like Ibsey, except Lorom Haluim himself. I was surprised Ibsey wasn’t yet dead, for there were few occasions he wasn’t brewed up and shouting at the phantoms his imagination had conjured. He had the hardiness and appearance of a wild thorn with his colouring. I should not have been surprised he could withstand the abuse better, but to find he was now working for the Post on a route through the Cassican jungle, no doubt for dye and gum, was remarkable and yet pathetic.
The Post worked the one port where they had built a measure of goodwill, merchants dear to the throne keeping them out of the others for the sake of Cassican ships not being undercut in their southseas trade.
Most ships moored here therefore flew the red sails of Post galleys and cogs. A cooperative captain spoke despairingly of Ibsey, though apparently he managed what few could not in engaging the cousins of the Etil in trade for some dye and obscure peppers afforded only by the wealthier citizens of the Old Kingdoms in preserving and flavouring meat.
I took a path west to the jungle, which may or may not have been continuous in some way with the vasts of Hanwoq. Here at least there were well-used paths that were maintained through the thickets, the tribes heavily involved in this trade, dependent on the Post to supply them the vices they needed. Usually the Post laced bacca with red opia to make it both sweeter and more addictive than beeth. I saw no beeth chewers among these Rivers, but men and women smoked from bowls and pipes made from the hardwoods about them. Only through pointing at my own skin did they know I was seeking one like me, my Etil dialect unknown here.
I caught Ibsey’s camp just before dawn, the guard dozing, no more than six beneath a few worn shelters. I put a sporebag into the ground near the ashes of their fire and prepared some darts. I started with the guard nearest to me, killing him. I then killed another that had choked and risen to seek the cause of his pain. As the rest came awake I moved position. They made too much noise for me to need to place my steps like the Etil hunters did. I took one more down before stepping out. It was like playing with children. Before me Ibsey was blocking his nose up and putting on a mask. The others weren’t so prepared and he watched them choke and collapse with little more interest than I.
“Ibsey.”
He looked me over. He twitched more these days; his head and shoulders behaved as if pinched or stung constantly.
“Well I’ll be fucked, Kigan in Cassica and you’ve grown. What you been eatin’? You’re not here to take my purse or my juice. Not either here for my side in Mholcar feathers. Not Post nor bandit neither. So why all this?” He coughed. His chest sounded bad, his voice squeezing out what air he could exhale.
“We need to talk about Snakewood, where we met after Kailen had disbanded us and sent us south with our final purse. This just makes it easier.” I guestured to the bodies.
“This ship has to sail, Kigan,” he said, gesturing to the packs they would have all been carrying back to the coast. “You don’t want to cause the sponsors a heed or there’ll be word out. Those lads was likely expendable to you but I ain’t to the Post.”
“There’s nothing the Post can do to me, Ibsey, I disappeared at Snakewood and I’ve only just come back to the world.”
“They did it then, they got rid of you. Let me sit if we’re goin’ to do this, it’s fuckin’ early and I need a brew.” He started fussing with the fire and sat a pot on it, poured on some water from a flask and put some tea leaves in it.
“Was it Mirisham and Valdir?” I asked. I walked over and pulled one of the dead men away so I could sit nearer to him.
“And the others. I thought they’d killed you. Would’ve been cleaner, I’m guessing. Good to see you looking so well though.”
He sat down, undid his mask and breathed deeply now the spores had cleared.
“Bloodroot, something else, fierce too. You got a tip or two ’bout that recipe? I expect too you’ve got a tale to tell me?” He rooted around in his pack, took a salve for his gums and forgot me for a moment as it soaked through him like the betony did me back in the Twenty.
“You don’t need to know what happened to me, Ibsey. I was enslaved, I escaped, I’m here. It was not only Mirisham and Valdir betrayed me?”
“The ephedra’s got you, hasn’t it? Can’t trust it. Some stalks you press have so much more juice in them and you don’t see it brewing them. Surprised you lived, never mind remembered what you have. Well, you were blabbin’ about your purse, had the bairns of that king with you, and fine plant like rosary, fireweed and so on. It was a fuckin’ fortune, Ki. Miri had us all thinkin’ we should be rid of the bairns, bump that final purse and get the fuck out of fighting. A few others like Shale, The Prince, Valdir and that agreed. We all thought it was pointless givin’ it to the bairns. Sounded like a fair spark to me that plan, anything to keep on a rise. Didn’t think you’d buy it though, you were always a bit of a stiff cock ’bout that sort of thing. Lacked the flexibility.”
“It was a purse. We always kept to the purse. We were all tight enough to respect that.”
He laughed then, shook his head and slapped his legs. He seemed inured to his spasms. “Were we, Ki? All tight enough? They fuckin’ hated you an’ I was just too soaked most of the time to care enough for what was happening with those you did your experiments on, so long as we were making recipes that kept the purses flowing. And a purse you say that boy and girl were! It was a fortune, Ki, a true and proper fortune, the wealth of a nation, not a purse. Fuck, what do you want, to get revenge all this time after ’cos you were done out of money what wasn’t yours?”
“What did you make from it, Ibsey?”
He chuckled, a stuttering wheeze, the rise making him drowsy.
“You were in on it then, Ibsey? Getting rid of me and the children for the money?”
“Yes, you stupid fuck. I would have got you to lose the bairns. We’d have found a way. I passed out at some point, must’ve. Next I come awake I was in some filthy little room, alone but for Kheld, and you were all gone. Seems I was cut out too, Ki. I haven’t spent years cryin’ about it.”
“No, you ended up on a Cassica plant run for the Post, Ibsey the warrior-drudha. I suffered the lot of all slaves and nearly died more than once. I’ve been to the heart of the Hanwoq, worked plant you could only dream of.”
He laughed hard then, his hand up as though conceding a good cut in a debate. I despised his ridicule and was now glad he was alive, just so I could kill him.
“Yet you’re here in Cassica, Kigan, one of the great drudhas of the age, spendin’ his life it seems chasin’ mercs over acts of betrayal? Sounds like you should be greet for that turn of events brings you here with a book full of Hanwoq recipes. You look good, Kigan, younger than a drudha should look after the life we had. Fuck, you could make a living like I do just selling flasks of the Honour, though the fulva’s hard to find this far south.”
He shook his head, risen fully and serene in his account of his life. His spasms were settling to tremors.
“I kept up with Kheld for a while, Milu, Bresken, those came west. Digs, Connas’q, Stixie, they stayed east, went home I expect, plenty of trouble at home for them round the Ten Clan, Red Hills and Virates to make purses out of. Dithnir went back to Tarantrea, never sure ’bout him though.”
“What about the others, Mirisham and Valdir? What of Shale?”
He shook his head. “Shale was fierce, so fierce, but him and his man Gant, quiet, too fuckin’ serious. Bresken I see regular, she’s with the Post and all, Coral Bay, guarding wareshouses. We have a drink and a few pipes when I’m back at the bay. Others are lost, Ki, no word. Say, let’s do a fuckin’ pipe fer the old days, eh?”
He rolled onto his knees to rummage through a pack nearby, oblivious to his d
ead ’vanners as much as the pot he’d put on the fire for his tea. He was worn out, the plant had taken more than the Drudha’s Share. Like all those countless people who soak too long in their brews and cookings he had a greenish, mossy dampness to his skin, his limbs trembling like a doll being worked by a drunk puppeteer. He had a year or two at best, or would have had.
“I would have taken a pipe with you, Ibsey, would have been a good way to bid you farewell. You’ll be dead before you finish it though. Poke your tongue out.”
He paused, turned his head slightly towards me, then started shaking it. “You didn’t, Ki.”
“There was a day you’d have recognised it. You could tell from nose to the air across your tongue what was about you, what a brew had in it.”
“Fuckin’ aconite.” His tongue flicked out a few times to confirm it. He continued to dig out his weed, struggling to control fingers trembling more now. He turned and sat to face me, tears filling the corners of his eyes.
“Give us a flame, Ki, me hands are gone.”
I left him and his coin with the other bodies and got back to the coast.
He was right about Bresken. The only woman Kailen had challenged to the duel was working the wareshouses of the Post. I watched her head off her shift, going for the tavern nearest with another of the guards. She was a great swordfighter once, naturally capable with both hands and a match for Sho wielding two blades. One of the memories I recovered from the skytrails I followed in the Hanwoq was her duel with Kailen. It was, apart from Shale’s that we never saw, the closest. On a full brew she went in side by side with Harlain, Shale, Sho and Gant and she was inspiring. She wore only the one sword now, and shuffled slowly as though in pain. I followed her and the other guard into the tavern, found a place to stand that I could watch her from. The first two cups were drunk quickly and in silence. They seemed welcome to her. She had become a soak. For a time they spoke, but he left after another few cups. I sat beside her when he’d gone. She was about to tell me how little interested she was in company when she recognised me.