Jane Carver of Waar

by Nathan Long

  I looked up. Sai and Lhan were eyeing me, worried. I shrugged. “Sorry. Uh, apology accepted.”

  Sai bowed his head and crossed his wrists. “My thanks, Mistress. You relieve me.”

  A twinge of guilt ran through me. From here on I was tricking Sai, pretending to help him. When we got to Ormolu for the showdown I was going to cut to the head of the line and kill Kedac before Sai got a chance.

  For a second I felt like a heel, but there was more than one way to look at the situation. On his best day there was no way Sai could kill Kedac, right? So if I killed Kedac first I was actually doing him a favor. I was saving his life for fuck’s sake—not to mention getting Kedac out of the way on the marriage front. Once the dust cleared and everybody had time to think about it, Sai and Wen-Jhai would thank me. They’d probably send me postcards from their honeymoon.

  I let out a breath and put on a big smile. “So, okay. What about disguises?”

  Lhan looked relieved that the tension was over. “Sai and I are easily disguised. A change of costume will be sufficient. You as I said before, pose more of a problem.”

  I pinched my arm. “Right. Wrong color.”

  Lhan smiled. “That is actually the least of our worries. There is a paste I know of from my service in the navy. Our spies used it to stain their skin a deeper shade when traveling incognito among our southern neighbors. The ingredients are easily obtainable and the formula simple.”

  “Great. So it’s just everything else about me you can’t fix.”

  He shrugged. “It requires some thought, is all.”

  Sai’s head popped up. “Soldiers? Mistress Jae-En is certainly warlike enough.”

  Lhan shook his head. “True, but armor will not cover her more, er, feminine attributes.”

  Sai blushed. “Yes. Of course. Er, scholars? Surely a scholar’s robes would cover, er, all difficulties.”

  Lhan’s eyes lit up, then faded again. “A good suggestion, but no. Robes would cover everything but her height.” He looked at me again. “And the color of her eyes. Hmmm, this may prove more difficult that I anticipated.”

  No shit. The problem was that there were just were no six foot women—and very few men—in this neck of the woods, no matter what color they were. I stuck out like a giraffe on a gerbil farm.

  Sai raised a hopeful finger. “Circus performers?”

  Lhan coughed. “You forget, Sai, that they are looking for circus performers.”

  Sai blushed. “Oh yes.”

  We all got quiet after that, trying to think. I don’t know why I bothered. What I knew about Oran society you could write on the back of a matchbook. All I could think of was putting on a fake moustache and sombrero, but I was guessing there weren’t many of those to be had around these parts.

  Finally Sai groaned and threw up his hands. “’Tis impossible! What disguise will make her shorter and... er, smaller of frame? If only we could just put her in a sack.”

  I snarled at him. “Funny, I was just thinking the same about you.”

  All of a sudden Lhan clapped his hands together. “A sack! I have it!” He was grinning from ear to ear. He leaned forward. “Earlier this evening, while you were sneaking into women’s bedrooms, I was drowning anxiety in a jar of tisol downstairs. Among my fellow imbibers were a group of Andag priests and their hulking guard.”

  Sai made a face. “But...”

  Lhan turned to me. “Andag is a country of barbarians to the far north. Their priests wear sack-like masks and clothing that covers their entire bodies.”

  Sai pouted. “And they smell terrible.”

  “Which means they have a private room, since they’re not allowed in a roost. And when I saw them last they were well on their way to unconsciousness.”

  ***

  The priests were sprawled out in their room like a crime scene photo. They were all big guys by Oran standards. Guess they grew ’em large up north. Lhan picked the two smallest and started to peel them. He pointed to their bodyguard, propped up in a corner and snoring like a freight train. He was gigantic. Well, about my size actually. I got to work.

  It should have been Sai doing this. I hurt so much I could barely move, but Sai couldn’t have shifted this big bastard with a forklift, so I got elected while Sai watched outside the door.

  Ugly smelled pretty ripe even before I stripped him; equal parts piss, booze and herd animal, but when I got his armor off, a wave of B.O. that would have dropped a horse came up and smacked me in the face. I gagged. “You sure this is a good idea?”

  Lhan grinned, wicked. “Think how much Sai will enjoy it.”

  I chuckled. After the shit Sai had put me through that night he deserved to stink, even if it meant me stinking too.

  “Er, Mistress Jae-En?”

  I looked up. Lhan was giving me a strange look.

  “Mmm?”

  He hesitated. I’d never seen him this nervous. “Er, I... once, in the past, I too had my person... violated against my will, and I know the shame and rage that follows.”

  I froze, what was he leading up to here?

  He blushed. “I only want to say that I understand, in a small way, your anger, but hope, for Sai’s sake, that you’ll not do anything—rash.”

  My face got hot. I couldn’t look at him. “Don’t worry, Lhan, I’m over being rash.”

  Lhan let out a breath. “My thanks, Mistress. You ease my mind.”

  Christ. Now I was lying to Lhan. What a piece of crap I was.

  ***

  Sai must have guessed that we were getting a little tired of his whining. He put on the priest’s reeking rags without a word, but Lhan and I could see him shuddering. We could hardly keep from laughing.

  Before I could get into my gear, I had to paint myself up. Lhan went out and came back about an hour later with the makings; fat black berries, some kind of alcohol, a special sort of clay. He mashed it all together in the chamber pot, but I had to do the painting by myself. Gentleman to the core, Lhan wouldn’t think of laying a hand on me while I was naked, damn it.

  He left the room with Sai and I smeared the stuff all over, even in my hair, which turned a dark maroon, making it at least a little closer to the usual Waarian purples and blacks. I had to bind my boobs too. Lhan had found a length of sailcloth and I strapped down as carefully as a butch taking a straight girl to a Baptist high-school prom. I ended up looking like I had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pecs. Good for intimidation I guess.

  After a lot of groaning and swearing I finally got my banged-up and bound-up self dressed. The rags fit. Too bad they had a funk like a week-old dead cat. A long cloak went over a bulky, knee-length coat of leather plates like dragon scales. Under that I wore a shirt and leggings and boots that were a little too big. My mask was a curtain of fine chain mail mesh. I could look out through the links, but no one could see in, like standing inside a screen door on a sunny day.

  I called Sai and Lhan back in. They were dressed in long robes so dirty you could barely see the twisting tribal designs embroidered on them, and witchy leather masks like something out of a goth fetish ball. We all had a good laugh at each other.

  ***

  On the way to the shipfield at daybreak, Sai told Lhan about overhearing Vawa-Sar and Kedac. Lhan nodded, thoughtful. “So Vawa-Sar dabbles in politics? Likely ’tis your sister Shayah who pulls his strings. That rube has never had the sense of a krae, while she has always had an avaricious heart. Shayah would not be content with Vawa as he is, a rustic with an inheritance of rocks and cliffs. She would want him to make something of himself, and so sends him to play at court intrigue.”

  Sai tugged on his mask. He was having trouble seeing out the eye holes. “But what do they plan? What of all that talk of loans and construction and provisions?”

  “Perhaps Vawa merely builds a hunting lodge for Kedac’s pleasure. Game is the one thing Vawa-Sar’s wasteland is rich in. As for the loan, ’tis not clear from your story who borrowed from whom. Vawa-Sar could be in debt to Kedac-Zir
.”

  Sai seemed a little disappointed that he hadn’t uncovered some kind of plot. “Well, it sounded mysterious.”

  Lhan patted him on the shoulder. “It may well be. We shall investigate once you settle your affairs with Kedac-Zir.”

  I couldn’t see Sai’s face through the mask, but he seemed to shrink at the mention of the fight. We went the rest of the way in silence.

  ***

  The good thing about smelling like a diseased buffalo is that people leave you alone. There were navy thugs snooping all over that ship-field for Sai and me, but nobody came near the two filthy priests and their huge “man”servant. The bad thing about it was we almost didn’t get our spot on the merchant ship.

  The captain was a tubby, balding guy with a little fringe of hair that made him look like a monk. He sure didn’t act like one. When we came on board he was tearing everybody within earshot a new asshole; the guys in the rigging, the guys lowering cargo into the hold, the guys filling the gas bag with “levitating air.” His skin was a deep purple, but he got so red in the face when he screamed that he looked like a black cherry. We were the last straw. “I care not what your bill of passage says. I take no outlanders on this ship. Especially no maku-sacrificing heathen priests, and particularly no stinking lamlots who don’t know what water and a scraper are for! Now get off my ship before I report you for spreading the pox.”

  I balled my fists. I wasn’t in the best of moods. I was still sore from last night’s panty raid, I hadn’t slept, and the Andag armor was hot and heavy and infested with things that bit me in places I only let very good friends bite me in. I started forward, ready to twist baldy’s fat, cherry head off.

  Lhan held me back. He bowed and scraped like a bellhop. He put on a funny accent too. “Accept, please, our basest apologies. We understand that our sacred stench is less than pleasant to untutored pagan nostrils. Therefore allow please some small restitution for your trouble in the form of honest Oran gold.”

  The captain waved back his muscle boys, who had been closing in during Lhan’s speech. “How much honesty do we speak of?”

  Lhan took out his money pouch. “Perhaps half again the original price of passage?”

  The captain nearly popped a blood vessel. “Half? Three times the amount would barely repay the misery of my crew. Not to mention the cost of delousing them all at journey’s end.”

  Lhan bowed again. “Noble captain, it is against the precepts of our faith to bargain, yet how can I pay more than I have?”

  After five minutes of back and forth, we ended up paying double, and had to settle for sleeping on the deck. The captain wouldn’t let us go below decks for any amount of money.

  Afterward, there was time to watch the sky-caravan get ready for lift off. The ship-field was a huge grassy meadow, crowded with all kinds of ships: man-o-wars so big they needed two side-by-side gas bags to fly, smaller destroyers with slim balloons and hulls like spearheads, that were mounted all over with giant crossbows that looked like they used telephone poles for ammo. There were fat merchantmen that didn’t look like they could get off the ground and little trading ships like ours, no bigger than a metro bus. They were all packed so close together I couldn’t see the sky. It looked like we were in some huge room with gigantic pillows on the ceiling.

  Under that weird marshmallowy roof guys scurried around like ants, loading cargo, food, water, and “levitating air,” which came from huge brass tanks mounted on wagons and pulled by teams of krae. They looked like fire extinguishers the size of eighteen wheelers.

  By the military ships, a crane was loading big cages onto the man-o-wars, the same cages I’d seen on the roof of Kedac’s castle. They were filled with giant, scary pterodactyl-things with big leathery wings, heads like woodpeckers, teeth like crocodile’s, and, like all the animals I’d seen here except for the men and the insects, a third set of limbs. On the pterodactyls they looked like some kind of steering system: little arms with flying squirrel skin-folds tucked under the big wings. The craziest part was, they all wore saddles.

  “What the hell are those?”

  Lhan looked where I was pointing. “Skelsha war birds. Skelsha cavalry ride point, looking for danger, and defend the big ships.”

  “Fighter planes.”

  Lhan raised an eyebrow. “You wax obscure, mistress Jae-En.”

  “Sorry. Don’t mind me.” My eyes wandered. Far from the warships, I spotted Vawa-Sar and a bunch of guys in hooded capes getting on board a ratty little ship that was being loaded with heavy crates and lumpy bundles. “Hey, Sai. Isn’t that your brother-in-law again?”

  Sai and Lhan looked where I was pointing. Sai nodded. “Vawa-Sar. Yes, so it is. You see, Lhan?”

  Lhan bobbed around, trying to see through the rigging and people in the way. He turned to Sai. “There may be something in your suspicions after all, Sai. Though they hide ’neath cloaks, I believe I spy among Vawa’s friends Korec-Bar, chief builder of Kedac’s navy, as well as several of his aides.” Lhan nodded to me. “Many thanks, Mistress Jane, for your sharp eyes. This is most interesting.”

  Sai looked eager. “Is this a weapon we can use against Kedac?”

  Lhan gave him a sharp look. “The only weapon you will use against Kedac-Zir is your sword. Using politics to settle matters of the heart is beneath you, Sai. After your duel with Kedac-Zir, if he lives, then is the time to raise embarrassing questions at court.”

  Sai wasn’t listening. He was staring past Lhan.

  We turned. A column of marines, four abreast, was marching through the crowd to the biggest, classiest merchant ship. Behind the column came an open carriage. Wen-Jhai sat in the back, ramrod straight, as regal as the Queen of fucking Sheba. Beside her, all in black and purple, was Mai-Mar, Kedac’s creepy cousin, and riding on a krae beside the carriage was Kedac himself, as smug as a Georgia state trooper. He was ruler of all he surveyed and he liked it, a lot.

  I wanted to peel that smile off his face with my teeth. I had to physically hold on to the rail to keep from jumping ship and charging him. Not yet.

  Sai stood up straight and stuck his jaw out. He turned to Lhan. “Should... I face him now, Lhan?”

  Lhan grinned. “Loath though I am to dissuade you while your fire burns hot, I would not advocate it. The purpose of the duel is twofold; to defeat Kedac-Zir and to impress Wen-Jhai. Dressed and smelling as you do now, you would fail utterly in this second objective. Fear not, Sai. There will be plenty of opportunities for honor when we reach Ormolu.”

  I felt another sting of guilt. I was going to nip all of Sai’s opportunities for honor in the bud and piss off Lhan to boot. I couldn’t look at them. Instead I kept my eyes on Kedac and the carriage. At the ship Kedac dismounted and walked Wen-Jhai and Mai-Mar up the gang plank. He made his good-byes to his fiancée with a kiss on the cheek as dry as your Aunt Mirna’s.

  Lhan and Sai exchanged a glance as Kedac rode with his men back to the big man-o-war.

  Lhan smirked. “Quite the romantic, this Kedac-Zir. Traveling separately from his betrothed so that their reunion will be all the more ecstatic.”

  Sai surprisingly came to Kedac’s defense. “He merely looks to her comfort. There is little room on a man-o-war, and none of it suitable for an Aldhanshai. Also, he is sensible of propriety. He travels apart from her so that the purity of the Aldhanshai will be unquestioned.”

  I could think of some other reasons. “Maybe she never floated his boat in the first place.”

  Sai and Lhan shot me a look. Sai looked annoyed. “Do you still harp on what we spoke of last night?”

  I shook my head. “No no, you set me straight on that. A guy’s gotta get his kicks. But what if maybe he just plain doesn’t like her.”

  Lhan was shocked. “What you say is impossible.”

  Sai was horrified. “Then why would he marry her?”

  Were they kidding me? “Well, she’s a princess, ain’t she? That’s gotta be a rung up on the social ladder, even for a muckety-muck li
ke Kedac.”

  Sai and Lhan turned white. Sai’s voice was cold and hard. “Mistress Jae-En, here in Ora, love is the only reason to marry. Romance is our ideal, our second religion. This is why the Sanfallah is tolerated: because ’tis thought that no boundaries of wealth or clan should stand in the way of true love, and that a true lover is willing to fight and die for his love.”

  True love but you got to fuck all the peasants you wanted. Okay, whatever. “But didn’t you tell me that the Sanfallah came down to the strength of your arm, not the strength of your heart?”

  Sai looked grim. “There is that flaw. The old ways say that a man’s love will make his arm strong. I... I am proof this is not the case. But that does not impugn Kedac-Zir’s honor, just my lack of skill. Though my rival, I would not suggest that Kedac-Zir does not love Wen-Jhai, only that he cannot love her as I do.”

  Lhan spoke up. “To doubt a man’s love is the greatest insult on Ora.”

  Well, that showed me. “This goes back to that thing you wear under your belt, right?”

  Sai nodded. “The Balurrah. Honor demands that a man wear the colors of his true love whether her family be at war with his, whether she be another man’s wife, an Aldhanshai, servant, slave, or whore. Any man not willing to risk the embarrassment of discovery cannot truly love. His lover would shun him.”

  I laughed. “Man, the divorce rate back home would be sky high.”

  Sai frowned. “Divorce? I know not this word.”

  “It’s my homeland’s second religion.”

  The man-o-war blew a signal and all the wagons and longshoremen backed away. Time to go.