by Jude Fisher
The mercenaries melted away, to regroup up by the stempost. ‘So?’ Knobber asked impatiently. ‘What did it say?’
‘Sadly it seems the captain’s last bird didn’t make it through,’ Mam grinned. ‘The Lord of Forent is most displeased with the lack of information he’s received thus far and is demanding news of the whereabouts of the shipmaker by return.’
Joz grinned. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said laconically. ‘He won’t be making old Lazlo very happy when we get back and he’s still received no word of Danson.’
Lazlo, the captain, appeared to be rather unhappy already.
Mam looked suddenly and unaccountably delighted. ‘We may not get our pay for this one, but for my part I’m really quite looking forward to seeing his lordship’s face when I tell him his precious shipmaker’s been kidnapped by the Rockfall clan!’
Joz and Knobber exchanged glances. Here was an unexpected snippet of news. There were times when they suspected that the way Mam managed them so efficiently was by withholding crucial information from them. After all, as she kept pointing out, knowledge was power, and somehow she always seemed to have more knowledge than the rest of them.
Erno rose before the dawn, every muscle stiff with the anticipation of what he must do that day. He ducked out into the grey light of a world balanced precariously between night and day and as quietly as he could, given the crunching of the pebbles under his boots, made his way across the little shingle beach and down to the water’s edge. It was a chilly morning. In it he could sense the leading edge of winter: something he had never previously experienced in the southern continent. It would be a lot milder here than it was at home, he mused, watching his breath ghosting out into the air. They probably had no snow at all in this area; even sleet would melt away as soon as it touched ground that had been charmed by the sun all summer long. Whereas in the Westman Islands the snow came down in flurries, tumbling out of the sky in a great swirling chaos as if Sur himself had upended a gigantic sack of eider feathers all over the world, and settled itself determinedly across the land for a whole season at a time. As a child, fostered by Aran Aranson at Rockfall, Erno would be the first to rise in the mornings before any of the rest of the household were stirring, always knowing with some inexplicable primal instinct when snow was in the air. He loved to stand out in the enclosure with his face turned up to meet those first spiralling flakes, to feel them brush the warm skin of his cheeks and gather like moths on his hair and cloak. Winter was when Rockfall was at its most beautiful, when snow covered the fields and the uplands in a perfect, clean, enveloping swathe of white that shimmered and sparkled in the early light and ice bound both land and water, turning lakes and ponds and even the fringes of the coastal sea into a churned, wrinkled, translucent solid that would bear the weight of gulls and geese and seals and even, if you were lucky, the weight of a boy moving quickly on long wooden shoes bound with hide and greased with walrus-oil. The purity of a Rockfall winter had never ceased to amaze him, even living with it as he did every day, surrounded by others who complained about the bitter cold and the smoky hall and the dried meat and salted fish that became their sole diet in those hard months and spun yearning tales around the fire at night of lands where the sun shone constantly, things called pomegranates grew on trees and the wheat came as high as your shoulder. But for Erno, nothing could match the sight of the sky above the Blue Peak as the sun set on a Last-Moon afternoon: how it gave way from a luminous pale blue that mirrored back the white of the snow at the crest of the mountain to the delicate purple of budding heather and thence to a rose-pink so fragile that the bowl of the sky looked as though it might shatter like an ice skin if even the smallest bird flew across it. Once, feeling foolhardy, but driven by some inner compulsion he could not name, he had climbed up onto the slopes of the Blue Peak just as the sun was finally dipping out of sight, even though he had known he would have to make the long, dangerous descent in the dark. Seated on a granite boulder, as close to the top of the world as he had ever been in his life, he had taken out one of the skeins of twine he carried with him for such purposes and tied into it the knots that would forever remind him how smoky trails of scarlet streaked the blue sky; how the low bank of cloud that hung over the western end of the island was limned with a deep, firecrest gold; how plumes of vapour from the hot springs below him had streamed out across the frozen peat-hags and ancient, laval outcrops like the spirits of the island, released into the darkening air.
He fingered that twine now, braided as it was around his left wrist, where he had tied it on that long-ago night, and remembered the scene so clearly that he could almost feel the hairs in his nostrils prickling with ice.
It was time to go home to Eyra.
‘He’s where?’
Rui Finco’s voice, normally so well modulated, so controlled and refined, rose to a howl of outrage.
Mam leaned back in her chair, tilted it so that the two supporting legs screeched on the polished wooden floor and rudely swung her feet up onto the Lord of Forent’s priceless Gilan oak desk. Her boots – vast, unstructured and covered in seven kinds of unnameable filth – made a striking counterpoint against the neat piles of books, the carefully tied rolls of parchment, the map set square with the lower righthand corner; the single ink dish and pot of cut quills.
‘Rockfall, my lord, in the far Westman Isles, home to Aran Aranson and his clan.’
The Lord of Forent frowned. ‘Aranson?’ A vague memory stirred – a dark man in a temper, with piercing eyes, a close-cropped beard, long dark hair shot through with grey and an arrogant manner. ‘Aranson . . . whose daughter we burned? The little witch who climbed Falla’s Rock?’
Mam nodded grimly. She saw no advantage to be gained in telling him Katla Aransen had survived that ordeal; was informing him of the likely whereabouts of the shipmaker precisely because there was nothing he could do about it, Rockfall being so very remote across the expanse of the Northern Ocean and so out of his reach.
Rui paced the room, digesting this new piece of information. Then he turned back, his face dark with fury. ‘And get your damned feet off my desk!’
Mam cocked her head sideways, gave him a slow, indolent smile, then very carefully and deliberately removed her feet. Little scuffs of mud and who knew what else marked the pristine surface of the desk. The lord was hardly likely to stoop to clean up after her himself, but it gave her a small, childish pleasure to think of him having to call a slave in to do it, and for that slave to intuit the circumstances whereby a significant smear of dogshit had made its way onto the prized furniture of this Istrian noble.
Rui crossed to the desk and studied the map intently, trying to keep his temper at bay. It was an old map he had helped himself to out of the great library at Cera; where it had lain so dusty he doubted anyone would notice it was missing. It was a beautiful piece of work, and so antique that it referred to Jetra as Ieldra, the ancient name for the Eternal City before the Istrians had crossed the Tilsen River during the Long War and driven their enemy out of that rich agricultural land, ever northwards until there was nowhere left for them to go other than to take ship and head out into the unknown. No islands were marked, of course. Beyond the northernmost tip of Istria, at Hedera Port, there was nothing but a pale parchment wasteland marked, unhelpfully, ‘uncharted waters’. He looked up to find Mam watching him, one eyebrow raised quizzically.
He glared at her. It was insupportable to be made to feel a fool by a common mercenary; and worse, so much worse, to be made to feel so by a woman. He rolled the map away hastily and took a deep breath.
‘So why did you not pursue them to this . . . Rockfall . . . and take the man by force?’
‘My orders were to return here with the shipment before Bast’s Day, which is, by my reckoning, three days hence. To have pursued the Rockfallers to the Westman Isles and thence back to Forent would have added at least another ten days to the voyage; besides, it was only rumour that Morten Danson was taken there: it could have be
en pure coincidence that the Rockfall contingent and the shipmaker disappeared at the same time.’
The southern lord’s expression told her exactly what he thought of that line of reasoning. ‘And did you not stop to think for a moment that it was hardly worth the expense or the trouble of bringing the damned armaments back here without the man to build us the ships so that we might use them?’
Mam’s eyes gleamed. ‘As a mere sell-sword, my lord, I am paid to fight, not to think; and since your lordship did not honour me with any explanation as to the link between the two cargoes I was sent to fetch, I carried out the commission as best I was able under the circumstances.’
The Lord of Forent gritted his teeth. ‘I should have known better than to trust such a task to an ignorant barbarian.’
‘So your lordship thinks he might have achieved his goal had he sent a team of loyal Istrians in to the northern capital, does he? Who would, of course, have been as unobtrusive as whores at a temple—’
‘Get out!’ Rui roared.
‘Not without our pay.’
‘Your pay?’
‘I will not ask you for the entire sum, but given that we have brought half the shipment back as contracted, I am sure your lordship will concede that he owes us half the monies due—’
‘You shall have not a single cantari from me for this fiasco. You’ll be lucky if I do not have you flayed alive and your remains dangled over the harbour for the gulls to pick at.’
Mam took a step forward and thrust her face at him. ‘If I’m not out of here and back to my men unscathed by the hour of the Second Observance, Joz Bearhand will be seeking audience with the Duke of Cera to offer him information in the matter of your relationship to the northern king . . . My lord. I am not so sure the members of the Ruling Council will welcome you so warmly if they feel your ambitions and loyalties do not tally closely with their own.’ She had been nurturing this suspicion ever since the night of the Gathering, when she had unceremoniously dumped Ravn Asharson in the Lord of Forent’s pavilion, made her own keen observations and overheard a conversation between the two men that she could never have been intended to understand. She had stored that conversation away, and like a magpie sifting through the shiny things it had collected for its nest, had brought it out again and again into the light until she thought she had made sense of it all. It was a calculated risk, to name her suspicions now so baldly, and to trust that the Duke of Cera was not one of the Lord of Forent’s inner circle; but all she had heard of the leader of Istria’s Ruling Council led her to believe the old man was too straight a traditionalist to be involved with an ambitious chancer like Rui Finco. She had had dealings with men like the Lord of Forent all her life: she knew the sort of cronies they made. It was a high card to play for what might seem an insignificant trifle: but the eight thousand cantari the man owed them was no small matter. Nor was that where it ended.
With intense effort, Rui maintained the coolest demeanour he could manage. He cursed himself for underestimating the woman’s intelligence, and her nerve. He would have to play this one very carefully indeed. His mind spun through the possibilities. Call her bluff and order the castle guards to run her through here and now? He’d had the good sense to have her disarmed before she entered his chambers; but he suspected she could still take down his personal guards with her bare hands, and likely him as well, even if she did not have other weapons concealed about her person (and no Istrian was likely to want to soil their hands searching a barbarian woman too closely: Falla knew what dubious crevices such a woman might hide a small blade in). And if she meant what she said about dispatching her man to the Duke of Cera . . . Haro would surely never take a sell-sword’s word against his own, unless . . . Perhaps he should pay her what she demanded, then send an assassin to do away with her and her small troop in the night. Yes, that would be best. That lanky hillman from Farem, the one with the ritual tattoos on his face. Persoa: that was his name. Varyx had used him to remove that entire family in Sestria when they had defamed him . . . He would not come cheap, but he could recoup the money from what he was to give the woman now. Eight thousand? He was tempted to give her the lot to make her go away, but if he did not bargain hard enough she would surely suspect him.
He mustered a rueful smile. ‘Well, maybe you have some of the right of it. You can’t possibly expect me to hand over a full half for such a miscarried job, though—’
‘Eight thousand,’ Mam said firmly.
‘I’ll give you six.’ He could not be bothered to play out this scene again.
‘Eight.’
Rui took a huge key out of the desk drawer, strode across the room and unlocked a brass-bound chest in the alcove beneath the shrine to the Goddess. He came back to her bearing three bulging bags of coin.
‘For Falla’s sake, woman, take the six and think yourself lucky.’
Mam gave him her best grin, the one that exposed the silver-capped molars with the double points. ‘Done.’
The Lord of Forent watched her saunter from the room, braids swinging. The coins chinked with every step she took.
‘You will be,’ he promised grimly. ‘You will be.’
Nine
Quietus
Selen Issian pushed the hair out of her eyes and struggled to wake. Lately she had been finding it hard to rouse herself; harder still to forsake the comfort of the thick cloak that enveloped her and face the prospect of dragging herself out into the cold dawn air and down to the cove’s edge to check the fishlines Erno set every night. What little light that seeped through the small cracks in the shelter the northerner had rigged for them from the upturned boat, the close-packed wall of stones and the handfuls of moss and fern that filled the gaps was this morning grey and thin and particularly uninviting.
Selen turned over, pulling the cloak more snugly around her shoulders, closed her eyes and tried to catch the trailing fringes of the dream that had wrapped her. In that other place she had been sitting on the top of a steep hill with a tall stone cold against her back and the wind whipping her hair back and forth, which made her aware that she wore no veil. She was watching a black dog trying to herd a flock of straying sheep which veered crazily first to the right, then sharply to the left as if they owned but a single mind between them, and every time they dodged like this, the dog howled its irritation and bounded at them, snapping its jaws furiously. She had been drowsily watching the animals zigzagging across the cropped turf – tiny white running stitches in a great, undulating cloth of green – before surfacing from her sleep, and had noted how when the dog ran too fast or barked too loudly it sent its charges into such panic that she had wanted to go down the hill to the dog and calm it, speak to it in a soothing voice, persuade it to slow its pace and break the mad pattern of chase and flight it had set up. Now, the dream beckoned her back, pulling softly at her consciousness and she let it take her. A moment later, the air felt thinner, less easy to breathe: it made the blood rush to her cheeks. It was very clear, very sharp: superreal. Details lurched up at her: moss and stone and twig; the virid green of the pasture, the unnatural size of the dog. She got to her feet and felt how the world felt tilted and skewed, as if it had suddenly become a less welcoming place. Standing up, the wind howled around her and she realised that she was wearing nothing but a thin white shift which plastered itself to her body, revealing every jut and contour. The dog stopped dead in its tracks and watched her and the flock milled around, not sure what to do with themselves now that they were no longer being chased. The black dog’s scrutiny was avid: disturbing. Selen felt concern; but her feet carried her down the path towards it even though her mind urged her to turn back, to wake up. Only a body’s length away now, she saw how the dog panted and rolled its eyes: strange eyes for a dog – too expressive, too . . . human . . . The whites that presented themselves on either side of the irises, which were a deep, rich brown flecked with gold, were bloodshot and yellowing, like the eyes of a man deep in his cups and fighting mad. Flecks of white foam
showed at the corners of its mouth. Despite her terror, she found herself reaching out to touch the beast’s head and it snarled at her, elastic black lips curling back to expose jagged teeth; and it was then that she noticed the collar of sardonyx it wore, all rust and brown. Something jagged in her memory. As it sank its teeth into her, she remembered where she had seen that banded chalcedony before. She opened her mouth to scream and then the black dog had her by the arm. She felt the points of its fangs jar the bones in her forearm, felt its jaws bear down . . .
A moment later, she was cast to the ground, and there was another dog standing over her: a white dog, larger than the first, and she cowered away in terror.
This time Selen came properly awake.
In her mind, she could still feel the dog’s hot breath on her and hear the snarl in its throat; but here, in the sheltering faering, the only hot breath was her own, and the only sounds she could hear were the distant cries of gulls as they wheeled across the bay and the gentle susurrus of the waves. Even so, the anxiety remained with her as a small, tight feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something was different. Something was wrong.
She crawled outside the shelter, convinced that some disaster had befallen Erno; but when she stood up and scanned the cove, there he was, at the far end of the beach, gazing out to sea as still as a stone carving of himself. She saw him glance at her and then away, which did not make her feel any happier. Sighing, she made her way down to the water’s edge. Behind the rocks there, she squatted out of his sight and relieved herself. Then, hoicking up the red dress, now streaked with dirt and ragged around the hem, she walked into the lapping waves and washed herself as thoroughly as she could manage. The salt would dry and streak, but they did not have enough fresh water to spare for such luxuries as washing, as Erno so frequently reminded her. She washed her face and tasted the brine. She ran wet fingers through her sticky, wind-roughened hair. Then she scooped up a handful of water and washed carefully between her legs. As they had these past two months and more, her fingers came away unsullied by the blood she would usually have expected to see on the day before the moon was full.