Islands of the Inner Sea

by L J Chappell

  ‘You think they might act against all Arrento, because you were rescued? Maybe they don’t feel as strongly about it as you do.’

  ‘The Tributes may be dry history to you, but they are still very real to us – they are part of who we are now, not just who we were. The Twelve Islands have a nervous fear of the Empire. There is almost a sense of relief each time we hand over the Tribute: it means we’re safe for another four years …’

  ‘I don’t really know about it,’ Lanvik shook his head. Kiergard Slorn had mentioned something about the history of the hostages back in Darkfall, but only an outline. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Of course,’ Vander said. ‘Your memory. I keep forgetting – you hide it very well.’

  ‘I just try to keep quiet when people are talking about things I don’t remember. Which is most things.’

  ‘Arrento is one of the “Twelve Islands”,’ Vander told him: ‘the sixth largest. We are not vassal states of the Empire, but they only allow us our independence in exchange for a hostage, a Tribute, every four years. Most of these hostages become normal citizens of the Empire, often rising to positions of prominence and importance. Sometimes they go on to argue our interests at court in Emindur and Arafel. But every twelfth year, the Tributes become part of the sacrifice in Darkfall.

  ‘This arrangement is part of a peace treaty that was forced upon us.

  ‘Six hundred years ago, we fought a war against the Empire – a trade war. The Twelve Merchant-Princes raised a fleet of warships and defeated the Imperial fleet in a huge naval battle. I’ve no idea what we were thinking: as soon as it turned from a trade war to a fighting war, then we should have backed down. Perhaps it was a political calculation … obviously we couldn’t take on the Empire, couldn’t defeat them in any sustained campaign, but if we could score one victory then they might decide that a war would cost them too much and it would be cheaper and easier for them to deal with us through negotiation.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But if that’s the way we were thinking, then we misread the situation completely. As soon as the Empire suffered that defeat, they stopped communicating altogether. They used diplomatic pressure to prevent other nations from trading with us, and then they sailed their entire Western Fleet from Scarthann right round the Northern Reach and down to the Inner Sea. They blockaded every one of our ports, and began to gather an army – an army larger than our entire combined populations.

  ‘And as they slowly starved us, they swore they would take each island, destroy every settlement until not one block was standing on another, sell every man, woman and child into slavery and spread salt on the land so that nothing would grow for a hundred years.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And just before they attacked, they gave us one single opportunity to surrender: to agree to their terms without parley or negotiation. Of course we accepted: we had no choice. And the hostages, the “Tribute”, formed part of those terms: part of the humiliating treaty that we were forced to sign to avoid utter annihilation.’ He paused, and then added: ‘It surprised us that the Empire acted so forcefully six hundred years ago, but I do not think it would surprise anyone if they acted the same way a second time.’

  Vander sounded genuinely troubled by the possibility, and Lanvik wondered if that was really the world they lived in – a world where extreme violence lurked just beneath the surface, even between nations.

  ‘And you?’ Vander changed the subject. ‘I know what you told Captain Redwolf, about being ill and your hair falling out. But I’ve heard some of the others call you “Master Wizard”, when they forget that I’m not one of them. Are you really a wizard?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But because Vander had told his story, Lanvik felt obliged to tell his. About how Kiergard Slorn and his Company had rescued him from prison in Urthgard, and how he had no memories at all from before the prison. About how they’d called him a murderer and a wizard while he was locked up, but he had no way of knowing if either of those was true. About how he’d travelled with the Company to Darkfall and helped them rescue Vander, and how he still had no memories of who he was or where he came from or whether he was really any kind of a mage.

  ‘But you’ve decided to stay with the Company?’

  ‘I think so, yes. For now. I hope my memories will return, but until they do I feel safe with the Company. They may not be good people, but I trust them to look after me if they consider me to be one of them. And I have nowhere else to go. Without my memories, I have no idea if I should be somewhere else, or be with other people: a family, perhaps. Or I might also have a secret lover,’ he half-joked, ‘waiting for me somewhere …’

  Even as he said the words, his thoughts drifted unbidden to the red-haired woman who had appeared in his dreams. The woman he thought he had probably murdered.

  Chapter Five

  Fellow Travellers

  1

  When they left the ferry in Marsalea, Lanvik found himself feeling slight sick and giddy on land again, though not as badly as he had when they first landed in Harrata. There was a boat from Marsalea to Carissola three times a week, so they only had to layover for one night: they were assured that this service was genuinely direct, with no extra stops.

  In Marsalea, Lanvik noticed another party of Light Elves at the docks. Some were dressed smartly and others wore little more than rags, but all of them had a listless, aimless look about them. They were mostly young adults but there were some families with children. A number of armed guards stood nearby, though it was unclear whether they were there to prevent the group from leaving the quay or to protect them.

  He mentioned them to Vander. He was from the Inner Sea and was surely familiar with such groups: who they were, and what were they doing.

  ‘They’re refugees,’ Vander explained. ‘Refugees always come to the Inner Sea – we have a reputation as a place where everyone is at home, so long as they have something to trade: goods, skills, whatever. Mostly the ones who come with money are able to make a new life here, but the Guard have to deal with the rest – either picking them up one by one in the towns, or else stopping them at the harbour unless they can support themselves.’

  ‘What happens to them next?’

  ‘They’re shipped back to Mehan’Gir, unless someone can vouch for them or take them in.’

  ‘Where in Mehan’Gir?’

  ‘Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Couldn’t they be sent back where they came from?’

  ‘Why would they want to go, and who would pay for that? They come from all over. Sometimes they’re from Ruthin, though not so many as in the past, but these Terevarna are mostly from the Confederacy. By the time they reach the Islands, they’re usually destitute, dispossessed and homeless.’

  ‘What do they want? What are they looking for?’

  ‘Who knows? A new life I suppose, a different life, but I don’t know why they think they can find it in the islands. There’s nothing here except what they’ve brought themselves. They keep coming to all the larger ports, even though we try to ship them out as soon as they arrive. They probably don’t know themselves why they’re here – they just don’t want to stay where they were before.’

  Rather than settling his mind at all, Vander’s answers disturbed Lanvik even more. Surely transporting these people to random places on the northern shore simply moved the problem to someone else and it didn’t help the refugees at all. It was no wonder they looked so drained and lifeless.

  But then, the island authorities were under no obligation to sustain or provide for these people, and certainly not to solve their problems for them.

  Although the journey to Carissola was a little further than they had just travelled from Sherron, it took them only three days. They landed in Vallierta, on the west side of the island and caught a smaller boat round to Perastia almost immediately: there were dozens of ferries serving the coastal towns, as well as taxi boats advertising fixed tariffs for a range of journeys.r />
  After some searching, they found a slightly upmarket hotel with seven adjacent twin rooms available for the next week, and Vorrigan negotiated a price. ‘This contract is costing us more and more,’ he remarked. ‘We should have asked for a higher deposit.’

  ‘Why did we spend so much here, then?’ Lanvik asked: they would only be two to a room, and surely could have found something cheaper.

  ‘At this time of year, accommodation is cheap and widely available, so it makes sense to indulge ourselves a little,’ Karuin explained, ‘especially if we’ll be here for a week. In the balance between cost and comfort, we normally tend towards cutting our costs. Vorrigan may be grumbling, but he knows it makes sense to spend the money we’ve saved on any good value opportunities that present themselves.’

  The rooms were on the ground floor – Lanvik would share with Ethryk, Kiergard Slorn with Bane, and so on. Vander would share a room with the brothers Ubrik and Garran: being in a room with two others made it easier to ensure that someone was with him at all times, hopefully without him feeling suffocated.

  Once they had checked in, unpacked and relaxed a little, most of the Company had a quick look around Perastia before returning to the hotel for something to eat.

  From what Lanvik had seen, Vallierta was a large city that sprawled across a wide coastal plain. Perastia was far smaller but must still have numbered forty or fifty thousand souls: it was built around a wide bay and gradually rose towards low hills inland. The further uphill you walked, the more impressive the views were across the crystal clear blue sea. The town’s skyline was low enough not to intrude on those views: low white buildings with flat or barrel roofs, instead of the red-brick and orange tiles of Harrata and Sherron on the Isthmus. Lanvik had seen a similar style in Vallierta to the west as well as in the towns on Marsalea.

  ‘Well, we have six days to wait,’ Kiergard Slorn addressed the others later, yawning and stretching as they ate their evening meal. ‘Despite all that nonsense with the boat from Sherron, we made good speed down from Darkfall earlier.’

  ‘Wasn’t our appointment very ambitious?’ Lanvik asked. From what he had seen, they could easily have been detained a few days longer on their route south, especially if they hadn’t managed to travel with Captain Redwolf and his fast pirate ship.

  ‘Yes,’ Vorrigan agreed, ‘but this is only the first of several dates that we agreed. We have a number of other possibilities over the next few weeks, in case either we or our employer is delayed.’

  ‘Well, these six days will give us an opportunity to continue your musical education,’ Lisamel assured him.

  ‘Oh no,’ Ubrik groaned. ‘Not more tambourine!’

  ‘And more lessons with the short pipe,’ Lisamel smiled.

  Two or three of the others groaned even more dramatically and began to suggest that the Company should be split across more than one hotel for the duration of their stay.

  So Lanvik spent much of his time over the following days in swordplay lessons with Ubrik, Garran and Thawn, and music lessons with Lisamel and Tremano. For all the others complained, he was surely improving at both – admittedly very slowly, but still … improving. He had also noticed that, although the rest of the Company sometimes joked and laughed at him, at least half of them also spent time training and practising when they stopped to rest. Menska, Vrosko Din, Ethryk and Karuin often had weapons training with the Dog Clan members or with Bane; and several of them seemed to be learning how to play a variety of instruments. It wasn’t that he was completely incompetent and they were perfect, which was sometimes the way he felt: but rather that they were all at different stages of incompetence. Or different degrees of perfect, he supposed.

  He spent the rest of the time pacing the streets or else sitting on one of the low walls that ringed the beach, simply staring at the waves and trying to let his mind to go blank. Sometimes images came to him – a house, children playing on a similar beach somewhere, indistinct voices talking to him – but he had no way of telling whether these were snatches of memory or just inventions of his mind. At times he had a picture in his head of the red-haired woman, but that definitely seemed to come from his dreams rather than be a fresh memory.

  He also found the name “Uvellia” coming to mind, but he couldn’t tell whether that was a person or a place – it sounded more like a place. Probably. Even if it was a person, he didn’t associate it with the red-haired woman.

  Vander meanwhile spent his time in Perastia sitting in the square outside the hotel or simply gazing out the window, scanning the faces of the people who passed by. At other times, when he could, he walked around the streets with some of the others. He was obviously hoping to catch sight of Aruel, but he didn’t; or, if he did, then he didn’t admit it to anyone. Given their earlier conversation, Lanvik didn’t believe that he would have been able to keep such news to himself. Although it was supposed to have been in confidence, Lanvik had reported most of their earlier conversation to Kiergard Slorn, particularly with regard to Vander having no desire to leave them until he had been re-united with Aruel.

  ‘Yes, I assumed that would be the case,’ Slorn said, but his orders remained in place and Vander was watched every hour of every day. If, by some chance, he did spot Aruel, then he might easily choose to slip away unseen to join her. If that happened then the Company would likely not be paid and, as Vorrigan had indicated earlier, their initial retainer had not been enough to cover the substantial outlay already incurred.

  Lanvik hoped for Vander’s sake that it was the girl called Aruel who had ordered his capture and delivery, and not some enemy of his. If this was the type of work the Company did, then they wouldn’t have asked too many questions. With mercenary work, he presumed you had focus on the money instead of allowing yourself to care. He’d grown to like Vander over the past month, however, and now found it difficult to contemplate simply handing him over to someone who’d paid for him to be kidnapped: someone whose motives and intentions they were ignorant of.

  It was easy to think of Kiergard Slorn’s Company as a band of carefree adventurers, but that was only part of the story. The hard truth was that they were mercenaries and they largely traded in violence and potential violence, in exchange for money. He remembered what Karuin had told him, about members of the Company sometimes being killed – “Edron”, for example. Given how close a group they were, he wondered how well the surviving members dealt with that kind of loss and the effect it must have on them, over and over again.

  On one of his walks, he found Magda sitting on a low wall in the harbour.

  Normally he avoided the harbour, after deciding that it smelled bad: he hadn’t established exactly why, but a large number of harbours and ports seemed to reek of an unpleasant odour that sometimes made him want to retch. The same smell didn’t seem to exist elsewhere along the shore – beside the sandy bay, for example – and he hadn’t noticed it on any of the boats they’d travelled aboard. But it was definitely there in harbours.

  On that particular day, he was seeking out unusual sights and sounds to jog his memories. Magda was watching the quayside, where busy dockworkers were loading and unloading a procession of cargo vessels.

  ‘You’re not working?’ he asked her. She was a thief, a professional thief, and her clan was Crow. He thought that a crowded area like this, full of strangers coming and going, might have been the perfect place for her to practice her craft.

  ‘No. It would be too obvious here, and not if we’re staying for a few more days. I stand out too much, as a stranger.’

  ‘You think the authorities will spot you?’

  ‘The authorities?’ she smiled broadly. ‘No. But there are already a number of locals working the harbour area. I would point them out to you, but they wouldn’t thank me for that.’

  Lanvik briefly scanned the people in the harbour, trying not to move his head and not to be obvious, but he couldn’t see anyone that stood out as a pick-pocket, cutpurse or other opportunistic thief.
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  ‘So, what are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Watching the boats, and the people coming and going. Studying them: seeing what I can tell from the way they walk and stand, and what they’re wearing, and what they’re carrying. That’s all.’

  ‘And what have you learned?’

  ‘I’ve learned that there are a lot more soldiers travelling around the Inner Sea than there used to be,’ she told him, ‘and I’m wondering why. It was the same in Darkfall – I have no idea why there were any soldiers there.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re expecting a war,’ he joked.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps they are. And if there are soldiers everywhere then, sooner or later, there will be a war … and gradually there seem to be soldiers everywhere.’ She was sad, and sounded depressed about the whole thing.

  She saw the concern on his face, and laughed: ‘Sorry. I should have told you that I like to watch the shifting light on the water. It’s pretty.’ Then she added: ‘There’s no open water where I grew up: no lakes or seas or harbours.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘Sometimes, but it wasn’t an easy place. My family were very traditional: they only ever thought of me as a burden. They taught me everything I know, and I was expected to bring in money each day from when I was four years old. I used to sleep on the floor beside the fire in the kitchen, which was far too hot when it was lit but freezing at night. And they used to beat me, and worse, all through my childhood.’

  ‘They can’t all have been bad,’ Lanvik said.

  ‘No,’ she softened slightly. ‘Not all of them. My brother and my aunt treated me better, but they were weak: ineffective.’

  ‘Do you ever want to go back?’

  ‘The only thing I ever wanted to do while I was growing up was to get away,’ she told him. ‘But the longer I spend on the road, travelling, the more I miss it. And there are matters waiting there for me that I will eventually have to attend to. So yes, I will go back. Probably some time soon.’