Kei's Gift

by Ann Somerville

  That was their signal to stand. Arman was glad of the god’s mark on his face, but it itched rather unpleasantly. Reminding him of the bargain—a continent’s subjugation for the glory of the gods.

  The priest bowed to them and withdrew. Arman also bowed to the captain. “A propitious beginning, Ard Peku.” It was always good to show proper respect to the man who held your life in his hands, at least while they were on the water. Besides, the captain was the best and most senior in Her Serenity’s navy. Nothing had been left to chance on this campaign.

  “That it is, Sei Arman,” Peku rumbled. “A fair wind, a clear sky. Lord Quek smiles on this work, and on your journey.”

  “I can only hope he does,” Arman agreed. “Right, Jozo, I’m going below to get some rest. I’ll join you for lunch if you haven’t tossed your guts by then.”

  Jozo was looking a little green around the gills, it was true, and he gave Arman a sour look. “Do you have any weaknesses at all? You don’t get hangovers, you’re never sick, and you love the sea. It’s unnatural.”

  Arman laughed and clapped his shoulder. “It can’t be unnatural if the gods have willed it thus. Go, drink some wine, it will clear the stink from your mouth.”

  Jozo grumbled, but headed in the direction of his cabin, very likely to follow the advice. Poor Jozo. He was more set in his ways every year. Arman was very fond of the older man, who had been his mentor and who had pushed for his promotion to the rank of general at a ridiculously young age. Arman’s family background had helped him win the sovereign’s favour and thus promotion, but that hadn’t been all there was to it. He worked hard not to dispel Jozo’s faith in him, or to show any weakness that might make an observer question his fitness for the role. Seems I do too good a job, he thought wryly, if Jozo thinks I have no flaws. He had plenty. He just didn’t believe in giving ammunition to his enemies.

  He knew well enough what to expect by now when he reached his cabin. Fortunately, he wasn’t revolted by the smell of sickness. Loke, poor lad, had missed breakfast, but still hadn’t held onto the little that was in his stomach. The odour of vomit hung in the air. Arman covered the bucket with a drying cloth, which cut down the smell, then poured out a small glass of wine and moistened another cloth with clean water. He sat down on the bed next to his suffering page, stroking back his sweaty blond fringe off his pale face. Loke’s eyes told him eloquently of the misery he suffered, and he shivered as Arman wiped his mouth and face clean. And this was on a good trip. Loke on a ship in foul weather was possibly the most pathetic creature that could ever be seen, but there was nothing any physician could do about it. Arman had discovered letting him ride it out and rest was the best thing for him, and he usually recovered quickly enough after the journey.

  “Here, rinse your mouth with some wine.”

  Loke gave him a queasy look but let Arman help him up long enough so he could rinse and spit into the bucket. Arman urged him to take another swallow, because he was convinced it would help settle him a little, and then got Loke to put his head on his lap so he could stroke his hair and keep the cloth on his face. “My sad little landlubber.”

  “Sorry,” Loke whispered, thick misery in his voice.

  “Don’t be a fool. Even General Jozo gets sick on a boat. Just rest and we’ll have you on dry land soon enough.”

  Loke stared back with a bleary confused expression, clearly not entirely himself at that moment. Arman made him close his eyes and began a careful massage at the base of his neck which he hoped, at least on past experience, might let Loke sleep out the worst of his seasickness. It seemed to work, the tense unhappiness in Loke’s face easing and his body going limp. Arman got comfortable, leaning against the back of the bunk. He had nothing else to be doing right now, nowhere else to be for the next few hours, and he’d had little sleep. The stuffy warmth of the cabin soon had him dozing too, but his dreams were troubled, and his rest less than restful. He hoped this didn’t bode badly for the rest of his journey.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Kei reached out to wave his fingers close to the little fireball floating above his bare chest, using his gift to see if he could make it change direction. He could, but only a little—he had more luck altering its shape slightly, forming a long bright peak above the main orange ball. “I wish I could do that,” he said drowsily.

  “Make fire? Damn useless power. I can light my path, or start the stove, or a pipe. That’s about it. Not like you, healing people.”

  Kei got his fingers a little too close to the flame, but Reji snuffed it out before he could get burned. Immediately, another sprite formed, this time over his belly, and was joined by another which orbited it gracefully, merging and splitting from it in a unrepeating pattern. Kei didn’t mind being the stage for the dance of fire. The warmth from it was curiously pleasant, and he trusted Reji not to set fire to anything important. “It’s so beautiful, Rei-ki,” he murmured. “No one can see what I do inside a body. This...this makes people happy.”

  Reji floated the sprite up Kei’s body until, with a slight whoof of air, it popped out of sight right in front of his nose, making him laugh. “So I see,” Reji said. Kei felt too lazy to shift and look up at Reji’s face to check, but he knew he was smiling. “But is it worth the price?”

  Now Kei did twist, and found Reji looking back at him with an odd expression. “Huh?”

  “I saw you when I mentioned the Lady’s pregnancy, little brother. It still bothers you, being an infertile, doesn’t it?”

  “And it doesn’t bother you?”

  Kei felt Reji’s shrug as much as saw it. “I’ve got used to it. Not having ties has its advantages too, you know.”

  Kei kissed his lover’s broad chest, and licked off a little of the salty sweat raised by their lovemaking. “Why do you come back? I mean, to Ai-Albon. There’s so much more for one like us in Darshek.”

  The matter was even stranger when one considered Ai-Albon was only Reji’s adopted home. He’d moved from his birth village even before he’d reached his majority, offering to himself as apprentice to the traders in Fedor’s clan with whom his own family was loosely related by marriage. He’d never gone back home after that, and had in time, become the main trader for the village, the older ones having decided to settle down and farm quietly after thirty years of travelling.

  Reji tangled his hand in Kei’s hair and tugged him up for a kiss, and then to settle him more comfortably in the crook of his neck. “More what? More of this? Any more of ‘this’, and my balls would fall off from overuse.”

  Kei pinched him and made him yelp. “Don’t be a fool. But that’s along the lines of what I mean. There are more of us, more chances for...love, more companionship. Here, there’s only you and me.”

  “Is that not enough, Keichichi? You and Myka, my dearest friends, a task I’m good at, the chance to kick up my heels every few weeks in Darshek—what more do I need? The crying shame is you are not there, my friend. You belong at the academy.”

  Kei sighed. “I’m needed here. I’m happy here with Myka.”

  Reji tilted his head up. “If Erte had not died, you wouldn’t be here,” he said in a low, serious voice.

  Kei pulled his chin out of the gentle grasp. “If Ma were alive, I wouldn’t be needed. I can’t leave Ai-Albon or Myka. I don’t know what your point is.”

  “None, except every argument you make to stay, I can make to stay. This is my home, I have a necessary function, and I have people I care for. Darshek is fun, but it’s not my home. Ai-Albon is, more so then ever Ai-Darbin was. So, have you finished with this silly line of questioning?”

  Reji was always wiser and more quick-witted than him. He doubted it was just the extra seven years of experience that made it so. “Sorry. I suppose I’ve been thinking today how much I wished I had access to the academy library, but knowing I need to be here. I was projecting my own impatience onto you, and seeing discontent where none existed.”

  Reji chuckled and hugged him closer. “That’s all r
ight. If you were always sweet-tempered and logical, I would find it boring and then I might have to flee to Darshek for my fun.”

  Kei put an exaggerated pout on his lips, as he slid his hand under the blankets to see if there was any chance of another round before they fell asleep. Ah, and it looked like the extra seven years wasn’t slowing Reji down at all. “Shall we make sure you’re not bored, old man? I wouldn’t want you to up and abandon me, after all.”

  Reji growled suddenly and pounced, making it very clear that ‘old’ and ‘bored’ were not words he wanted applied to him any time soon, and in a very short time Kei would feel very ‘abandoned’ indeed.

  Chapter : Darshian 5

  It was a habit Arman never mentioned to his fellow generals, but he liked to walk through the camps of an evening. Wearing a cloak to cover his hair and his uniform, he passed unobtrusively through the lines to measure the mood of his troops, to see what concerned the common soldier, what were their fears, their hopes, their complaints. Aware he was treading close to actual spying, he made it a point of honour to never hold a grudge against a man he heard grumbling about the generals, or to treat them any differently. He had certainly heard enough comments about his own person to keep his ego in check, although he didn’t mind particularly being considered a ‘tough bastard but fair, mind you’. He’d discovered Jozo was well-liked, and criticised only for his occasional conservatism. Ritus suffered more harshly, being described variously as ‘a silly old ditherer’ and ‘an old maid’, neither of which was particularly fair to the seasoned general. Arman liked the old man a good deal, but his good points admittedly weren’t appealing to the ordinary foot soldier.

  Tonight he passed silently through the rows of tents as his men sat around campfires, eating their supper. He heard several soldiers complain they had not kept any food down at all that day. He hoped any effects of seasickness would not linger, for they had a long, hard march ahead of them tomorrow. Most were simply concerned about filling their bellies, too hungry and tired to talk much, but Arman came up in the shadows behind a small group who had finished their food, and were smoking a last pipe before retiring to their tents to sleep.

  “I hear them Darshianese got men who can fry your eyeballs when they look at you,” he overheard one say. “I heard they got men who can throw stones through the air bigger than a jesig, and throw fire like the rest of us would toss water from a bucket.”

  “And where did you hear this rot, eh, Rokus? Been listening to that woman of yours with her imagination again?”

  “She heard it from her sister, who owns a bakery right here in Urshek, you bastard. Them Darshianese are wizards, everyone knows that.”

  “Some wizards,” an older, deeper voice rumbled. “The Prij took them over pretty quick, and they don’t fight back hardly at all.”

  Not, Arman thought wryly, strictly true, but these soldiers were perhaps apt to dismiss the now-quelled rebellions in some of the minor towns and rural areas, although they were bloody enough at the time.

  “Yeah, but look what they did at Kurlik Pass. Blocked it for an eternity. That’s wizards for you.”

  His companion cuffed Rokus’s head. “They triggered a landfall, you fool. And that was the lot—they never did anything to get south Darshian back, did they?”

  “Maybe they don’t want it. Maybe they’s hoping we’ll cross them mountains and fall into a trap. I heard the desert is full of ghosts, and them desert folk, they can talk without moving their mouths.”

  The rest of them scoffed. “You’ve been drinking green beer again, Rokus.” The apparent leader of the group stood. “I’m for bed, had enough of wives’ tales,” he said with a stern look at the unfortunate Rokus. “One thing’s for certain. Them Darshian folk are heathens and the gods protect the Prij, not them. I never seen no ghosts, or people throwing fire and until I do, my lad, I’ll trust my own eyes and no one else’s. As for the rest of it, Lord Niko minds Her Serenity, and Her Serenity minds us, and that’s all I need to know.”

  There was a rumble of agreement, and although Rokus’s expression was discontented, he didn’t argue with the speaker. Arman drew back, and slipped away before they noticed him lurking.

  Interesting. He’d heard these rumours of men with supernatural powers before, of course. The Darshian myths were part of their primitive animistic religion, and Arman had long dismissed them as unfit for an intelligent person to pay any attention to. So, apparently, did the Darshianese, who had readily adopted the religion of their masters as self-evidently superior. Arman was only concerned if these myths were to affect morale in any way, but he found it encouraging that his soldiers’ common sense overruled the fanciful.

  However, he knew something they did not. The blocking of Kurlik Pass had not been a simple rock fall. The pass had been mined with powerful explosives and when the Prij had invaded and taken over Urshek, the mines had been triggered by the retreating northerners, sending thousands of tons of rock into the narrow pass, effectively cutting northern Darshian off from contact with the south, save by sea, which traffic the Prij dominated with ease.

  The loss of the land route had been a blow, but the temporary setback had proved in the end most beneficial to the Prij in closing and defending the border. Nonetheless, it had irritated Her Serenity’s father, then sovereign, that the Darshianese had a weapon the Prij did not. He had ordered, as had his daughter after his death, that all efforts be made to discover the nature of the mysterious explosive, one far more powerful than the uko powder the Prij used in small bombs and their ship cannons. In the twenty years since the pass was blocked, the Prijian armourers had not been able to recreate it. It was thought to be the same explosive which powered the huge cannons which overlooked Darshek’s harbour and which, together with the natural mountain barriers to the sides and behind Darshek, made the northern capital impregnable while at the same time allowing it to dominate the trade to the north, especially with Andon.

  At least until now, Arman thought grimly as he walked back to his tent, keeping to the shadows. The discovery of a previously uncharted route through the southern range had suddenly made Her Serenity’s long-held ambitions possible, and a plan had been drawn up by the Lord Commander to choke off Darshek’s supply routes from the interior to its south and from the sea. Arman’s forces were the first phase of the attack to secure control of the main inland trade route and the seven large settlements along it which acted as trading centres for the surrounding farming lands. Rare mineral ores were mined at Albon, Darbin and Vinri which were important to Darshek. Through these settlements and the access through the Kislik range to Darshek plain, the Prij would control both grain and mineral trade, as well as communications between north and south. Once these had been taken into Prijian hands and the supplies diverted south to Urshek and beyond that, to Kuplik, a siege would commence seawards, with the Prij navy creating a blockade outside the range of the mighty cannons, preventing goods and boats from Andon and other ocean trade routes entering the territory.

  It was a long-term strategy, but a sound one so far as it went, and Arman’s qualms were for after the success of the siege and Darshek’s capitulation, rather than the possibility of that capitulation. He had his orders and he would obey them. They were to sweep forward through the trade route to Kislik, the last village before the northern mountain range some hundred miles from Darshek, where a defence fort would be established under Jozo’s command as a northern barrier against incursions from Darshek itself. Troops would be left at the villages between there and the southern border, and thus communications and supply lines would be crucial as they would be stretched over thirteen hundred miles. They had a thousand men to command and to control initially. Once defence posts were set up, more would follow, and yet more would sweep across the continent to bring the law of Kuprij, once Darshek fell.

  Even the first thousand soldiers needed a lot of lem flour, equipment, and pack animals, all of which had to be squeezed through this new pass through the mounta
ins. Arman wondered if it would not have been better to put that manpower to clearing Kurlik pass, even if their engineers were unable to divine a method of doing so at this moment in time, but the army were committed now to the present course of action. Time and the will of the gods would tell if Her Serenity’s judgement was correct.

  He pulled back the hood of his cloak before approaching his tent and got a perfectly ordinary salute from his watch. Inside, all was orderly and quiet, his pallet tidily made and ready for occupancy, his papers stacked neatly on a travelling desk, Loke waiting patiently for him in welcome. He had to admit that despite his misgivings, having his page with him was a wonderful luxury. He felt much more at home in this rough army tent than he ever would in a house run by Mayl, and here he had warm eyes and a welcoming smile to greet him. Here he was wanted for himself.

  Supper waited for him too. Loke took his cloak from him, and gave him a cloth to wipe his hands and face before he sat down to a meat stew, fresh bread and a mug of the local honey beer which smelled inviting and tasted even better. Loke, serving himself and sitting cross-legged on the rug to eat, had colour in his cheeks and fell on the food with a good appetite too, apparently none the worse for the long day on the boat and his seasickness. At least they would all eat well for the next few days, until the fresh meat and vegetables were replaced by hard rations for however long it took to obtain new supplies from the villages and farms on the other side of the mountains.

  “So, are the men ready for the march?”

  “They seem in good heart. Some fanciful notions about the Darshianese, which you might expect. Tell me, if I said I’d seen a man throwing fire, would you believe me?”

  Loke grinned and put his chin on his hand to look at him. “No, but I would believe you believed it. I would then be forced to find Lord Blikus and ask him to have you taken into custody for your own protection.”