Now she did fall, blood pumping down the front of her dress, but she laughed at what she saw. The birds drove him down to the floor, the ravens on his head stabbing with their black beaks tore up gouts of watery jelly; the seagulls on his chest raked and gouged at his lips and then his tongue; the petrel sank its claws deep in his groin; the sparrows darted in and out above his blood-splattered hands. He sank down writhing under them, sending up desperate cries. She laughed, her hand to her throat where the blood streamed down. She would not live beyond this, but she rejoiced at it. The door crashed open, and now Oto came in, and his eyes popped and his jaw sagged. And she laughed.
* * *
Oto goggled at the room before him; he saw Mervaly first, slumped on the ground, covered with blood, and laughing. The feathery heap in front of her heaved and kicked and he saw Broga’s hand and knew it was his brother. Oto started forward and the mass of feathers and eyes and claws rose up and attacked him.
He leapt backward through the door and slammed it. His breath came in sobs. He could not form sense out of what he had seen. He could still hear her laughing. He retreated to the far wall, needing the support.
Jeon came up the stair past him, gave him a hard look, and went on into the room; he did not open the door first. Oto blinked. His mind would not move. The door swung open from the inside, and Jeon stood there, his face frozen.
Behind him, Mervaly lay on the floor in a tide of her blood. The birds were settling around her, their piping like bells, their wings soft. They curled in her hair; they sang into her ears. Oto went cautiously to the threshold. The slab of bitten meat on the floor, still wearing tatters of Broga’s clothes, twitched here and there, but it was dead, too.
“My Queen,” Oto said. His crown.
“Let the birds mourn her,” Jeon said. “They loved her. She is where she belongs.” He nudged Broga with his foot. “Get this out of here and bury it.”
Oto was collecting himself, pieces sliding back into place in his mind, where this might lead, what he could make of it. He said, “I am King. I will give the orders.”
Jeon came out onto the landing past him. “Whatever you say, Oto. Just do it. I’ll send up the guards.” He went on down the stairs. Without looking into the room, Oto reached out and drew the door shut.
* * *
Oto had the men carry his brother’s body out the gate and down the road to the little graveyard where the meadow widened. Erdhart was buried there, among a few older graves, and beside his place the soldiers began to dig another hole. Oto stood watching all this, pretending to pray.
The priest was gone. Oto himself would have to speak the necessary words, which was proper, anyway. He would say something about this place now forever Imperial, because of the golden blood here buried. Castle Ocean would be saved yet.
Around him the soldiers in a line stood at attention. Two men laid Broga in the hole, on his back, his sword in his hands. Oto said his words and shoveled the dirt back into the grave; the soldiers all shouted, “Glory! Glory! Glory!”
Oto rubbed his hands together. In spite of what he had said, he did not see any glory in this, and he did not want to look behind him at the castle. Instead, he turned, and stretched his gaze out over the edge of the cliff, out over the sea.
The fleet would come. Perhaps the winter storms had held it up. But this warm and gentle weather would surely bring the fleet here, and then he would have power again.
Someone was standing behind him, making subtle noises to draw his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder: it was one of the pikemen. With Oto’s eyes on him, he saluted and said, “My lord. Glory to the Empire.”
“Glory,” Oto said. He flung a broad look over the other men, still gathered by the grave, not wanting to see how few there were: so few that now he saw them as separate men.
“My lord,” said the soldier in front of him, “we’ve had some more desertions. Dawd is gone, sir.”
Oto said, “Dawd? Who is Dawd?”
“The sergeant, my lord.”
“The sergeant.” Oto realized he had been looking for the sergeant: the one he gave orders to. He said, “Where did he go?”
“He’s just disappeared, my lord. Another five gone, too, my lord.”
Oto swallowed; he wanted to walk into his chamber, shut the door, feel the solid walls around him. But to do that he would have to go back into the castle.
“Request permission, my lord, to speak.”
Oto straightened, frowning. “Briefly. Yes.”
“If Dawd is gone, am I the sergeant now?”
Oto grunted at him. “I now appoint you sergeant, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, my lord.” Marwin flexed in a deep bow, and saluted. “Waiting for orders, sir.”
* * *
“The birds killed him. Not before he had killed her, but she saw him die.” Jeon sat down on a rock, looking out across the bay toward the town. The wind was blowing hard off the sea and the bay waters were choppy with whitecaps. “It was Broga who killed Luka. She got our revenge. Some of it, anyway.”
Tirza had stopped crying. She folded up her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, and scowled at him. The tears had streaked her dirty face and her eyes were startlingly blue. She let out a reel of noise, mostly clicks.
He could tell she was angry. He said, “This is how it’s going to be, Tirza. There’s nothing I can do to change it.”
One hand lashed at him; she sputtered and looked away. Another grimy tear went down her face.
Jeon put his hand on her arm and shook her a little. “Don’t put up your back at me, Tirza. You need me now. Everybody else is gone.”
With the heel of her hand she scrubbed at her eyes. Stubbornly she refused to look at him. Still gripping her arm, he leaned in closer to her, his mouth to her ear.
“You know—they have an enemy. Somebody is attacking them. The pirates—whoever it is. Somebody is killing them.”
In his grasp she stiffened. He reached into his wallet, and found the little green stone.
“What is this?”
She saw it, and she twitched all over. She struck at his hand, and the stone bounced away, but he did not need it anymore.
He said, “Everywhere, every attack, was a place you had been.”
Slowly she brought her gaze around to meet his eyes. She growled at him.
He said, “I think you know who they are.”
She shook her head.
“I think you do. Maybe you can even summon them.”
She shook her head, over and over, and her eyes widened. She was afraid. He gripped her tight. She did know something, which frightened her, but which he could use. He let go of her with a little shove.
“Bring them here, Tirza. Whoever they are.”
She shook her head. Her eyes were blazing blue, brighter than the sky.
“Bring them. I need them. I have no army. I need some force. Or Castle Ocean falls.” He bent, and spoke into her face. “Keep faith with me, Tirza!”
She jumped, her mouth falling open. He got up. “Do as I say. I am head of the family now. Obey me.” He walked off down the Jawbone.
* * *
Curled in her hideaway beneath the rock, she made herself dream of the dragon. Always, carefully, she remembered that she was dreaming.
With her sleeping eye she made the world around her, the beach, as she remembered it, the sheer cliff on one side and the blue-green purling water on the other; the memory swelled her heart, as if she had been happy there. And in front of her, sprawled out comfortably on the sand, was the dragon, red as sundown.
He turned his huge eyes on her. His voice rumbled like a rolling barrel. He said, “You ran away, coward.”
She said, “You are only a dream; you can do nothing to me.”
He gave his cold chuckle. His tongue flicked out. “I was always a dream. What do you want?”
“My brother needs your help.”
The great red eye shimmered, fixed on her. “I h
ave no interest in helping your brother.” His voice lowered to a sensuous growl. “You know what I want. Tell me a story.”
She sat down on the sand, her arms around her knees, and thought a moment. It was the Empire he needed to know about. “Once there was a man who refused to stop eating.” She went on, describing how he ate up everything he had and then began eating everybody else’s. The dragon listened, his reptile lips curved into a faint smile. She said, “He ate the beasts and the harvests and he ate the people and their houses and all they had, and after that, he went on to other places, and devoured them, too. Fatter and huger he became, but still he would not stop eating.
“At last in all the world there was nothing more, everywhere he looked. Then looking down he saw his own feet, and he ate them. And then he ate his legs, and then his body, until nothing was left but his head. And now the head rolls around the world, searching for anything else to eat, but there is nothing left.”
When she was done the dragon said, “Whatever you mean by this, you do not need me to solve it.”
“My brother—”
The dragon was rising to his feet. His great tail lashed once. The sun gleamed on his magnificence. He said, “I don’t care about your brother. Listen to your own story.”
“In my story,” she said, “you do not eat me.”
That made him laugh again. His eyes blazed. “Then, for once, you have lied. And I am very hungry, and you are here.”
His head swiveled toward her, and he lunged, his jaws parting. She looked for an instant past his ivory white fangs, down into the red tunnel of his throat, to a darkness that went on forever. For an instant she teetered over that abyss. She turned and ran. He was behind her; terror consumed her; she flung herself on. She made the dream end. She was lying on the sand in her refuge, in the broad daylight, and she turned her face against the warm sand, so glad to be alive that she cried.
15
Jeon knew Oto thought of killing him. So when he heard in Undercastle that the wild boar had come back to Terreon, he went out there.
He took his bow, and a vial he found in his mother’s room, a little alabaster bottle in the shape of a twining octopus. When he got to Terreon, the people were disappointed he was not Luka and did not give him much of a welcome.
He found a townsman who had a sow in heat, and got some boys to coax and beat and push her out to the far edge of the barley fields. There they staked her out and Jeon climbed a tree.
The sow fretted, pulled on her rope, snorted, and soon a few pigs appeared at the edge of the trees. They crept up closer to her, grunted, and ripped at the ground with their front hooves, but they did not go to her. Even when she swung her backside to them and squatted down, her curly tail stiff above her back, they only called and panted and pawed.
More came, all through the day. Jeon sat out on a strong branch to watch. With each new boar he thought, Is this the one? But none went nearer to her than the edge of the trees, although she begged in her pig voice, showered them with scents, and winked at them with the eye under her tail. Where she walked back and forth at the end of her tether she wore a trench down into the loose dirt of the field. But none of them would approach.
At last, with the sun going down and the boars packed in shoulder to shoulder before the whining sow, the biggest boar Jeon had ever seen stalked up out of the woods.
All strut and bristle, its tusks like swords, the boar minced along on tiptoe past the others, out onto the flat field. Jeon dipped an arrow into the opening of the octopus vial, and laid the arrow to the string. Out there the sow crouched, her tail up, and the boar lowered its head and rushed her, and Jeon shot.
He missed, slightly; the arrow sank into the boar’s side, and not its neck. The huge pig bellowed. It plowed to a stop and wheeled toward Jeon, and he scrambled back toward the trunk of the tree as the pig charged.
The arrow was stuck still in its side. Maybe its skin was too thick there. Maybe the vial was not full of poison. Maybe even poison couldn’t kill it. Squealing, the boar hit the tree, and the trunk shook. Jeon lost his footing, and flung himself across a branch to keep from falling. The stench of the boar filled his nostrils. Kicking out frantically, he got himself up into the fork of the tree. He kept hold of the bow and the vial, but four of his five arrows slipped out of the case to the ground. Another terrific blow slammed into the trunk. He wrapped his arms around the tree and held on as the tree shuddered all over.
One arm still hooked around the tree, he opened the vial. Below him, the boar drew back just far enough for a good running start and launched itself at the tree again. Jeon tightened his grip on the trunk, holding the vial in that hand, the arrow in the other. The tree jolted against him. A ringing crack went up through the trunk and the leaves above rustled. He held his last arrow out well away from him, and turned the vial over on the head.
Nothing. He drew a breath; the tree boomed under another crashing assault and he pressed himself against the trunk to stay on. Then on the lip of the vial a drop formed. He did not wait for it to fall but stroked the arrowhead through it. The tree was slowly tilting. He dropped the vial and unshouldered the bow, looking down.
Directly below him, the boar was looking back. Its enormous head tipped up, its damp snout twitching at the air, smelling Jeon. A deep rut of a scar crossed its snout like a new mouth. It pawed at the tree with one trotter, and then stood up against the tree, snuffling. Jeon drew the bow, and aimed at that old wound, only a few feet below him.
The arrow sank in to the feathers. The boar bellowed, and its tusks sliced the air just below Jeon’s feet. The pig’s hindquarters gave way and it struggled to push itself up again. With a long sigh, it fell over on its side.
Jeon went cautiously down, the tree groaning under his weight and sagging farther. The first thing he did was pick up his dropped arrows. The boar lay crumpled on the ground, its forked hooves still treading at the air. It was only a pig, after all. Jeon said, “That’s how to do it, Luka.” He felt a loose satisfaction, all over like a glow, and a sudden urge to piss. The vial shone at him from the grass, and he picked it up, and put it carefully into his belt pouch, went to his horse, and rode back to Castle Ocean.
* * *
Oto had decided it was better to count everything. That way he knew if anything changed. Coming down the steps to his chamber, he said the numbers under his breath. When he stopped, just for a moment, an uneasiness swept over him and he stepped back down again, counted, “Fourteen,” and went on.
Where the door to Broga’s chapel had been, which had been sealed up, the stones were falling out.
“You did a bad job of that,” Oto said. “Make it stand.”
The new sergeant said, “My lord, I live to obey.”
“I will review the troops this afternoon, in the gate yard.” They were walking across the round antechamber to the great hall.
The sunlight was pouring in across the terrace, hot and bright as molten metal. The sergeant paced along beside him, and Oto gave him orders, making a neat stack of words, dividing the day into work. “You will assign new guards, especially outside my chamber—”
Oto’s eyes came to the high seat, on the side of the room, behind the black table. He stopped. Luka was sitting on the high seat.
Oto caught his breath, every hair stirring up. Luka was staring at him, not in anger: more puzzled, as if he was trying to remember who Oto was.
“My lord,” the sergeant said, puzzled.
Oto jerked his attention back to the soldier. “Do you not see—” He flung his arm out, pointing, toward the high seat.
Luka was gone. Oto flexed his arm back to his chest. The sergeant was watching him sideways. “My lord?”
“I’m sorry. My brother’s death. So distraught.” Oto put his hand to his face and shook his head. “I shall go back to my chamber and pray for him.” He turned his back on the high seat. He would never come into this hall again. “But first, come, and we shall set the day’s watches.”
* * *
The soldiers filed steadily in and out of Oto’s chamber, saluted, took orders, and went out, and then more came, and he did this awhile. It was the same men who came in, over and over, but he pretended not, and gave them each detailed instructions, and sent them off. Whether they did what he commanded he did not see, or even care, so long as they took his orders.
Jeon came in. He had been gone, somewhere, his jacket dusty, his feet shod in riding boots. Oto remembered what Broga had said, that the boy conspired. Oto did not believe this; Mervaly had thought him something of a fool.
Now he had more pressing matters. He said, “I saw your brother.”
Jeon stood there, in the middle of the room, and showed no surprise. “Luka. Yes. You will.”
“Will he—does he—I did not kill him. I am innocent of his blood.”
Jeon smiled. “Don’t mind about him. They do no harm. They aren’t much interested in us.”
“I see your sister. The little one.”
“Tirza.” Jeon’s smile widened. “Well, my lord, you are keen sighted.”
“Broga. My brother.” Oto came a step closer. Broga, for some reason, he dreaded most of all. “Will I—will he—come back?”
The boy shook his head. “No. Didn’t you bury him in the land? No. The dirt gives up nothing.”
“Aha,” Oto said, and straightened, his hands at his sides. A sense of triumph filled him. He had forced valuable knowledge from the boy. A knock sounded on the door. “Wait!” Oto shouted. To Jeon, he said, “Can I not … drive them away? Some exorcism?”
“My lord, you are safe. Especially here.” Jeon waved his hand at this room, with its walls of cut stone. The knock sounded again.
“My lord,” came muffled through the door. “My lord—”
“Well, then, come in!” Oto shouted.
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