by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler
Wrapping her mind around Fretian, Katin spoke in that tongue. “What land-the you from?”
“The Center Kingdom. And you?” His next words eluded her. Then came a phrase almost straight from scripture. “sailing beyond the Moon?”
“We from Marth.”
The captain leaned down. “You can understand him?”
It was a relief to switch back to Marskuth. “Some. But we haven’t said anything complicated yet.” Beyond the Moon . . . did they never sail past here?
“Ask how far behind them the land is.”
Katin nodded and painfully stitched the question together in her mind. “Land-the, how far?”
“Five days.
Katin reported this back to the captain. She looked past him to the part of their boat that the navigator inhabited. “May I hope that we are going to continue on?”
“That’s what you are paying us for.” He stroked his chin, staring at the sailing ship. “Ask them if they have any charts they want to trade.”
“What will we offer in exchange?”
The captain studied the ship. “Show him a glowdisc.”
#
The city seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. Glass filled windows in the walls and even in the roofs of buildings. In some places the walls seeemed to be nothing more than thin pieces of metal existing solely to hold glass upright. The wealth on display staggered Katin, but the people in the port paid no heed to it. They walked past the docks on their business paying no more attention than if they had passed simple stucco at home.
Their ship, on the other hand, attracted notice. As the crew worked to tie it up, they used a mixture of sign language and grunts to communicate with the dockworkers. Even the ships here had glass set into the cabins. Their own ship, the Maiden’s Leap, seemed dark and squat next to the ships of Monde.
The captain stood by her shoulder. “Is it a festival day?”
“Sorry?” She turned from studying the dock to face him. His frown had grown deeper the closer they had gotten to Monde, the city that the Seven Sisters must have departed.
“The banners. Every ship is flying a red banner, sometimes two or three.” He nodded toward the crowds. “And see. People with arm bands in the same red. What does it mean?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” Now that he had pointed it out, the scraps of red were obvious, fluttering behind people as they walked. She had been so distracted by the variety of costume that she had not noticed that common thread. She pointed to a man with a blue armband who walked behind two burly men who appeared to be bodyguards, clearing a path. “Not everyone has the red bands.”
“Hm. I thought this was supposed to be your homeland. Weren’t you keen to come back so you could practice your religion freely? So you ought to know, even by the calendar, if this is a festival day.”
Katin shook her head. “It’s not. But we’ve been gone so long . . . Perhaps they added festivals?”
“You sound uncertain.”
“And how am I supposed to be certain? I have not set foot upon the land.”
He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Fair enough. Shall we remedy that now?”
Katin took a breath to steady herself and nodded. The captain led the way to the gangplank which stretched from their boat to the pier. At the foot of the ramp, the first mate was speaking heatedly to a man who blocked his path. The man wore a blue armband and, like the one they had seen before, had two enormous bodyguards. They each carried a short sword with a strange grip in a small sheath at the waist. Even the men obviously engaged to be fighters wore dark blue silk. Across their chests, little mirrors had been sew into the fabric and flashed light with each breath.
Tucking his hands behind his back, the captain stopped behind his mate. “What is the problem here?”
“Blamed if I know, sir. They won’t let us off the ship, that’s clear enough, but I can’t make a seabound dog of anything the fellow is saying.”
Katin wanted to retreat up the gangplank before the captain could turn to look at her. She did not speak the language, for all that he thought she did. She took a step backwards and stopped herself. It would do no good to hide and likely she was the best chance for understanding what they blue gentleman wanted. “Perhaps I can help?”
“I would be grateful if you would try.” He turned sideways so she could slip past him on the gangplank.
Clearing her throat, Katin marshaled the Old Fretian in her mind. “I give you greetings.”
The man stared at her and said something very rapid. She could not even tell where one word ended and the next began. His voice slipped like oil upon the water.
“Speak slowly please.” She slowed her own speech to demonstrate. “I do not understand.”
His lip curled and he spoke slowly, mockingly, as though she were a damaged person. Still she caught only a few words. “Name” and “travelers” and then “ox-tail.”
“Did you say ox-tail?”
“Yes. Show me your ox-tail.” Then his speech exploded into a confusion of words. “Ox-tail” again and then “Center” or perhaps “Middle.”
“I am sorry. I do not understand.”
The man threw his hands up into the air in an obvious sign of aggravation. He turned to one of the bodyguards and gestured toward the ship imperiously. He spoke only two words, and the meaning would have been clear even if Katin hadn’t, finally, been able to understand him. “Take it.”
The bodyguard to his left stepped forward, unsheathing his sword— Except it was not a sword. It was a hollow tube, which he pointed at the first mate, who still stood at the bottom of the gangplank.
“Move” The bodyguard gestured roughly, making his meaning clear.
The captain put a hand on Katin’s shoulder. “What is happening?”
“I—” She did not know. This was not what she had studied for. Katin turned to look over her shoulder at him. “They want something. He keeps asking for an ox-tail. Maybe it’s an offering of some sort? And now, I think— but I don’t really understand. It sounds like they want the ship. But I might be wrong.”
The gangplank shifted as new weight stepped upon it.
Behind her, the first mate shouted, “I said you aren’t coming aboard my ship.”
Katin grabbed for the rough rope rail as the gangplank shuddered. She turned back in time to see the first mate shove the bodyguard back. The huge man looked astonished and angry. He pointed the tube at the first mate and then—
There was a flash and a clap of thunder. Smoke billowed of the end of the tube. On the docks, people screamed and pushed away from the sound.
The first mate took a step backwards and then sat heavily. The back of his jacket was staining red. He toppled to the side and fell into the water.
“Gnistin” The captain stared at the spot where his first mate floated face down in the water. Blood curled around him in the water. “I need a lifeline!”
As a crewman ran to get rope, the captain pushed past Katin, never taking his eyes off the first mate. What had happened? She did not understand what had happened.
The blue man on the dock said something and it took Katin a moment realize that he was speaking to her. “I do not understand.”
“No one move. Tell them.” He spoke with exaggerated care.
Swallowing, she said, “Captain. He wants everyone to stay still.”
“No. I have a man down.” He turned and bellowed back to the ship. “Where’s that rope?”
A crewman ran to the edge and wrapped a coil around the rail. His fingers tightened a knot.
The blue man spoke again, in that strange sliding Fretian. “I said, no one move.”
“A man drowns!” Katin pointed at the first mate. The water was so red.
“Dead. Already.” He snorted and turned to the bodyguard. “Make it two.”
The weapon flashed and thundered again. Katin covered her ears, shrieking at the noise. Below her, the captain jerked and stumbled. He grabbed the rope railing wi
th both hands.
“No!”
His feet went out from under him and he dropped to his knees, still clutching the banister. Katin found herself behind him, pulling him back from the water as the acrid smoke curled around him.
She wrapped her arms around him, feeling the blood soak into her tunic. Her scarf of office fell across his chest. “Stop. We do what you say.”
“Good.” The blue man’s teeth glinted in the sun. “Good.”
#
The square of sunlight in the prison wall sent a harsh beam across the wood floor. Katin could not think of it as anything other than a prison, for all that it had large windows overlooking a center courtyard. The guards made their status clear. The ship’s crew was held in a dormitory, quarantined from the other prisoners.
Katin sat by Captain Stylian’s cot and dipped a cloth in the dish of water she had begged from Proctor Veleh. “The guards tell me that we will have titam and kalcoist this afternoon for lunch.”
He grunted and shifted on the cot. “Dare I ask what that means?”
“Titam are potatoes and I think that kalcoist is lamb. At any rate, it seems to share a root with kalca which is the word for sheep. Ist should be a diminutive, so . . . lamb. I think.”
A man came every day to give them language lessons. Proctor Veleh was patient to the point of seeming a machine, but she was the only one of the crew that made any effort. The others all muttered about escape, as though getting past the guards and their hollow tubes was a possibility.
“Any luck finding out what our crime is?”
She shook her head. In the fifnight since they had been taken, her grasp of Setish had improved enough to almost understand why the others were being held. Almost. It was so clearly descended from the same roots as Old Fretian that learning it had been easier for her than for shipmates.
Still, she only almost understood. Or rather, she understood the words, “shy of an ox-tail,” but the meaning eluded her. “When I ask what an ox-tail is, Proctor Veleh says that it is the tail of an ox.”
“Next time I’ll have one pickled.” He shifted again on the bed and hissed. Stylian closed his eyes, breathing held between tight-pressed lips. He let it out slowly. “So . . . lamb tonight, eh?”
“Yes.” She dipped her cloth in the water again and looked across the dormitory. Porit, the navigator, stood in a tight cluster with three other crewmen. One of them seemed to be blatantly counting the number of times the guard walked past the door. “Proctor Veleh says that they would normally provide a translator so we could answer for our crimes, but no one knows Marskuth. Or Old Fretian for that matter.”
Porit broke away from the group and crossed to the captain’s cot. “I can take over, if you like.” It was not an offer.
The captain raised his eyebrows at her tone. Katin bit her lips and put the cloth back in the basin. “Of course.”
She stood and strolled away, trying to linger long enough to hear what they were going to talk about but the captain said only, “Katin tells me that we’re having lamb tonight.”
Scowling, she squatted by one of the walls and smoothed her scarf of office. With her arms crossed, she took the ends of the scarf between her hands, symbolizing the path the Seven Sisters took through the heavens, and began rolling the beads between her fingers. Each sister had a separate role in guiding a person’s behavior through life. Katin appealed to Zo, the middle sister, to grant the Captain resiliency. He must get well and do nothing foolish.
“What are you doing?”
The man’s voice called her back to herself. She opened her eyes, ready to frown at the crewman who had disturbed her before realizing that the question had been in Setish. Proctor Veleh stood in front of her. It was not his day to teach.
“I am praying.”
He frowned. Lines creased his face more deeply than they should have in one so young. “No, you are not.”
“What—? I— Yes. Yes, I am praying.” She held up her scarf. “This is how we pray where I come from.” Or rather, it was how the followers of the Seven Sisters prayed.
“I have studied all six of our provinces, and no one prays to the moon squatting.”
“It’s not the position, it’s the—” Katin bit her explanation off. If she drew attention to her scarf of office, they might take it from her. “I have told you. We are not from one of the provinces. We are from the other side of the sea.”
He lifted his chin. “Stand. The Apex Councillor has decided to hear what you have to say.”
#
The council sat in a squat room, not at all grand, with a broad table in front of them. Yet even here, in the most utilitarian of chambers, great windows stood behind the councilor and cast light across his table. Stacks of paper crowded the surface in front of his aides, piled in neat right angles, every corner squared to the edge of the table.
On either side of the door, stood guards with tall spears. Tassels hung from the shafts, making the weapons look almost ornamental, but the light that gleamed from the edges made it clear that these were honed and sharp. Their breastplates were painted with a lacquered rendition of the moon, with silver rays blending into the metal of the armor. The velvet of their livery was a blue so deep as to be almost black. Tied around their upper arms were blue armbands which appeared light only in contrast
As Katin was brought into the room, the councilor shifted a pile of paper closer to himself. “You have been accused of being shy of an oxtail. How do you respond?”
“I do not know what an ox-tail is”
Silhouetted by the window, his face was not visible, but the sharp jerk of his head was unmistakable. “Do not toy with me.”
“I am not! I have no understanding what you are speak of.”
“Every citizen must have an oxtail to travel outside their city of birth.”
“Perhaps that is the problem. I am not a citizen. We are from Marth, across the sea.”
The councilor broke into laughter at this. “Even if there were something across the sea, there is no way to navigate outside the light of the eternal moon. The fine for being without your ox-tail is not so egregious that you must make-up fairy stories.”
“I am not! We have been trying to explain since we got here that we are explorers from the other side of the world. Where I come from, an ox-tail belongs firmly on an ox.”
He cocked his head. “Are you saying ‘ox-tail?’”
“Yes.” Katin slowed down and tried to adjust her speech so it was more accurate. “That is what the man at the ship asked us for.”
He uttered a noise that sounded as though he cursed. “You were supposed to have had language lessons.”
“I did.”
“From a historian. Your province speaks a particularly backward form of Setian.” He rubbed his forehead. “Still, that might explain some of the confusion. You are saying ‘ox-tail’ but what I mean is ‘oxtail.’”
Aside from a slight change in emphasis, Katin could hear no distinction. “What is the difference?”
“One is the tail of an ox. The other is a license to travel.”
She gaped at him. The first mate who had been shot . . . “One of my shipmates was killed because we couldn’t understand what the man at the dock was saying.”
“All provinces have the same requirements. You should have undertaken this before leaving your home. “
Katin lost her temper and felt the touch of Fahra on her soul. “I told you. We are from across the ocean. We could not possibly have gotten an oxtail before leaving because we didn’t know that there was such a thing. If you tell use where to go to get a license, I’m sure we’ll all happily pay the fee.”
One of the aides scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it to the councilor. He studied it for a moment. “Why she do you keep insisting on this fiction? Navigation is not possible out of the sight of the blessed moon.”
“We navigate by the stars. Really, have you had no one else visit your shores?”
�
��Castaways from one of the darker islands.” The councilor stroked his chin. “The stars move, how do you propose that one navigate by them?”
Katin faltered. She knew nothing of the subject beyond seeing Porit do it. “I . . . I am not certain.”
“Because it cannot be done.”
“No. Because I am not a navigator. If you were to ask her, I am certain she could explain. I am here solely because I have some ability with your language.”
“And to what do you attribute that?”
“It is related to our holy language. I am a priest and required to be versed in it.”
With her words, something in the room changed. The councilor became very still. By the door, one of the guards shifted his hands on his spear.
The councilor leaned back in his chair slowly. “I will grant that you are not a native speaker of Setish. That much of your story appears to be true. So it is possible that you mean something else by the word ‘priest’.”
Katin reviewed what she had said and worried the inside of her lip. She had taken the word from Old Fretian, and it was possible that the meaning had shifted. “I mean a holy woman, or man, dedicated to the service of the Seven Sisters.”
“Who?”
“The . . . the Seven Sisters.” She raised a hand to her scarf of office and held the beaded ends out to him. “Our holy book says that they came from across the ocean and we—”
“Are you saying that this is a religion?”
The sweat on Katin’s hands clung to the scarf, adding to the dirt from fifnight in the prison. She lowered it and wiped her palms on her leggings. “By my understanding of the word, yes. It is possible that the language has shifted.”
“Do you worship these Seven Sisters?”
“Yes.”
“So brazen.” The councilor barked a laugh. “Ironic that the most damning piece of evidence against you is the one that convinces me your story is true.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Every year, the Council of Purity finds someone misled by one old cult or another and takes steps to correct the poor soul. These misled fools have turned their back on the eternal moon and, knowing that it is wrong, they try to hide their depravity. Yet here you stand claiming allegiance to goddesses that no one has ever heard of as though there would be no consequences.”