by J. C. Staudt
Sigrede’s hand found his. “Give me to the fates, my brother. Tell Shonnie and Harlais I will be with them again.”
Lethari’s hand did not shake as he drew the knife from his belt. Sigrede nodded. The cut was smooth, and the blood pulsed forth until his heart ceased its beating.
“What have you done?”
Lethari looked up to find Cean Eldreni standing above him, dripping with seawater, gaping at Sig’s open throat.
“I have sent Sigrede to meet the fates,” Lethari said, rising to his feet.
A shepherd emerged from between two nearby flatbeds. He gave a start when he saw them and ran off into the darkness.
Cean looked from the pale-skin to Lethari, then again at Sig’s body. “You have killed one of your own, and yet the enemy lives? What is this treachery?”
“Sigrede was in pain,” Lethari said.
“And yet I stood here and watched you take his life.”
“Then perhaps you also heard him make that request of me. He was dying, Cean.”
“I heard no such request. I only saw him die by your hand.”
“I tell you again… this shepherd had all but slain him. Turn him over and see for yourself; see the knife in his back.”
“Stand away,” Cean insisted, jabbing the air with his sword.
Lethari withdrew a few paces. Others in his feiach, come to help clean up after the battle, were gathering around to see what was happening. They all watched as Cean turned Sig’s body over.
“This is no lathcu blade,” he said. “This blade is one of ours.”
“It was not mine,” Lethari insisted. “See? Mine is here…” He showed him the knife he had used on Sig, still stained red. The one in Sig’s back was of the same kind—no manufactured lathcu blade at all, but one wrought by hand in a smith’s forge. The pale-skins carried them from time to time as tokens to show they were slayers of the calgoarethi. It was rare, but it seemed Lethari was unfortunate enough to have found one.
“Silence your lies, warleader. You have slain your loyal captain.”
Lethari raised his voice. “You have the wrong of it, Cean Eldreni. I am no traitor, and I do not answer to your judgment.”
Cean’s eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps you will answer to the king. Challenge the fates on your own, Lethari. I will not serve a traitor. I take my men and ride for Sai Calgoar at dawn.”
“You serve only with my favor,” Lethari shouted. “You have forfeited that favor now. Guards, take him. Bind him as a prisoner and throw him in the cages. A man who will not serve his master is no better than a lathcu dog.”
Cean broke into a run, but Lethari’s men caught him and dragged him down. When they had bound his wrists and ankles, they picked him up to carry him away. “You will answer for this, Lethari Prokin,” Cean screamed, kicking and squirming against them.
“One more thing,” Lethari yelled. The men halted. “If he speaks again, gag him. If he tries to escape, remove his feet.”
Cean fell silent as they dragged him away.
As soon as the battle was ended, but before the victory celebrations began, Lethari turned his men loose in the shallows to search for his sword. A torturous half hour passed before Aerlan Relisteri emerged from the waves holding Tosgaith high above his head. Starlight glinted on the blade, running in silvery streams along the wet steel. Lethari breathed a sigh of relief, thanking Aerlan and offering him a share of his spoils as a reward.
By the time morning came, the pale-skin shipping crates were empty and the slave cages were full. Lethari’s men lined up the flatbeds and drove them into the sea, cutting the horses loose where they could and leaving them to drown everywhere else. They had come as far south as they dared; the lands south of the Causticlaim were too hostile to face in such small numbers. They were just as likely to run afoul of pale-skin raiders or land-bound corsairs as they were to find more trade caravans for the taking.
Lethari awoke the next morning under a cloud of misery. A single battle had claimed two of his best captains. Cean’s imprisonment was already breeding dissent among his men, who had spent half the night swimming toward the pale-skin camp to strike the decisive blow and ensure the attack’s overwhelming success. Sigrede’s men, too, were ill at ease under the sting of their captain’s death, and rumors of Lethari’s questionable actions were spreading.
His feiach was disintegrating before his eyes. His reign of terror over the lathcui had come to a rapid end, and there was little he could do about it. The important thing now was to clear his name. To do that, he would return to Sai Calgoar and prove his innocence. But I am not innocent, he reminded himself, removing the goatskin record from his pack.
If only he could find some way to dispose of it. Whether there were still viable targets on the record or not, he had no further use for it now. If anyone caught him with it, there would be no question of his disloyalty. And who knew how long it might be before some contingent of Cean’s or Sigrede’s men banded together and rose against him.
Lethari would bring the feiach to the steel city before he went home. He would orchestrate no further attacks until they arrived there. If he could get to Diarmid Kailendi and his men before their loyalties were tainted, Diarmid would offer him protection. All he needed to do was keep the feiach together—and keep them from turning against him—until they arrived.
CHAPTER 24
The Open Wastes
Toler Glaive had taken neither smoke nor drink since he’d left Unterberg, and it was starting to wear on his nerves. The starwinds were descending; he could hear them whining in his ears—feel their wrath in the pit of his stomach. His captors had forced him onto his horse despite his malaise, and every hoofbeat felt like someone driving a nail through his skull.
When the morning’s ride was done, it was all he could do not to fall from his saddle before they helped him down. They camped among sand dunes as tall as mountains. Time passed like a fish through mud; hours, months, seconds—all the same. His head swam with visions. He didn’t remember them laying him down and pitching a tarp above his head to block the heat, but that was where he found himself.
A bushcat prowled the scrub, staring out at him through slivered yellow eyes. Jallika Weaver saw it too. She knelt and put her palms to the ground. The animal darted away, but the earth opened up and swallowed it before it could take three steps.
Toler was confusing reality with hallucination now, though he could hear the animal screaming beneath the surface. The sand stirred. Weaver lay there until long after it went still and the muffled screaming stopped. Or maybe she was only there for an instant; Toler couldn’t tell.
She plunged her fist into the sand and came up with a bushcat, limp and hanging. Then there was a fire, and the smell of seared meat. She was pushing something into his mouth. It was greasy and hot on his lips. He chewed, and it tasted good. He drank, and the liquid was stale and warm.
Weaver was kneeling again, and a deep hole the size of a sand tire was opening in the ground before her. Water bubbled up to fill it. Toler’s waterskin was full again, and when she pressed it to his mouth, the water was cold and clear and fresh.
He slept, woke, slept again. Hours passed, but they didn’t resume their travels. The sky darkened; a brown pillar was spreading across the western horizon. Night was far away, yet there was no sign of the light-star beyond the thick muddy haze coming closer, closer.
Lokes was shouting, holding his hat with one hand and chasing the tarp, stumbling after it while the wind howled. Toler could hardly see. Then Lokes and Weaver were there, huddled beside him, while the wall of sand came rushing toward them.
Weaver shouted something. Lokes shouted back. Toler couldn’t hear them above the wind. The woman was kneeling in the sand again. Everything was about to go dark. Just as the storm reached them, there was a deep, tuneless gulping sound, as if something big had swallowed them.
The rush of sand parted like a curtain. The wind swept harmlessly around them, as if they were a boulder pl
aced in the path of a stream. All was quiet but for the sound of the wind scraping by, and yet Toler could hear no words when his companions opened their mouths to speak. He looked up and saw the curtain of calm lancing the storm like a blade, taller than the sky. A soft breeze ruffled his hair. He wanted a cigarette. He felt the sand between his fingers and ached for a cigarette.
This woman is a sandcipher, he realized. Dax found a sandcipher and sent her to protect me. To protect me from a war he started himself. And to bring me right to him, that fool. Doesn’t he know that’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for? If he thinks he can change my mind, he’s going to find out the hard way how wrong he is. As strange a thought as it was, Toler couldn’t wait to kill him. When I do, my life will finally be my own again. No more deceits. No more manipulations. The tide of these battles we’ve been fighting with the nomads will turn back in our favor. Then he would deliver the Glaive Industries shipping crates to Vantanible, a small measure to make right the damage he’d caused. And yes, my life will finally be my own again.
The sandstorm raged on, but within the safe haven of Jallika Weaver’s cipher, the raging of his need was worse. He wished the wind would turn to smoke; he would sooner have died burning in a field shaggy with sweetleaf than endure another moment without its soothing tang in his lungs. His head throbbed with the longing, throbbed with his starwind sickness, throbbed from the two heavy-handed blows Lokes had given him.
After what felt like hours, the sky cleared. The stars were out, Infernal no more than a memory in red-gold sheets on the horizon. Lokes and Weaver went about their nightly routines as if nothing had happened. They’d lost half a day’s ride, and Lokes was eager to explain how unhappy this made him.
“How long did that southerner say he was gonna wait for us if we didn’t show up on time?” he asked, cracking a stick in half over his knee and tossing it onto the fire.
“He didn’t say,” Weaver replied meekly.
“In that case, we ride through the night.”
“And how do you propose we get this dway moving again? You really gonna to tie him off to that old smooth-mouth of his and drag him along behind us? He’s been witless as a woodrat since you cracked him upside the head.”
“I don’t much care whether he’s half-dead or fixin’ to run a footrace. He gonna come along, one way or the other. I ain’t lettin’ nobody stop us from getting him there—him least of all. You know as well as me what’ll happen if we don’t get our hands on that hardware.”
“That’s why we ought to be more mindful of keeping him alive than dragging him there on his last legs,” she said. “You reckon the southerner is looking to mend fences with his dead brother?”
“I reckon you ought to shut your yap, woman. You keep blabbering away like that, I’m liable to wind up sicker’n ol’ Shep, over there.”
“I’m trying to make plans with you. Figuring on what we’re gonna do.”
“Will you let me handle things for once? I know you a sand-licker and all, but you gotta cool it, Momma.”
“Let you handle things, huh? Like the way you handled him swiping your sweeties right out from under your nose?”
Lokes marched over, flushed with anger. He leaned forward until his face was inches from hers and began to yell. “You didn’t see it comin’ neither, did you? Or were you just playing coy so you could hang ol’ Lokes out to dry and never let him hear the end of it? Huh? That why you always gotta remind me of everything I done wrong? Every mistake I’ve made? So you can forget how much you hate yourself? Make yourself feel like you ain’t such a screw-up?”
Weaver stood in silence while Lokes boiled over. When he paused to take a breath, she wiped the angry globs of his spittle off her face and said in a quiet voice, “I swear… trying to have a conversation with you is like scratching an itch with a razorblade.”
After that, it all happened too quickly for Toler to take in. They both began to yell and scream, their voices overlapping in manic chorus. Lokes shoved a finger into Weaver’s face. She grabbed it and pushed it away. His hand snapped back and slapped her across the cheek. She went for him then, her fingers closing around his throat and shoving him backwards until they both tumbled to the ground.
Lokes pried her hands free and drove a fist into the side of her head, hard enough to send her rolling off him. He climbed onto her back and grabbed a fistful of long black hair to yank it by the roots. She screamed.
Clapping his other hand around her chin, Lokes brought his face close beside hers. There was a rage in him so fierce he was shaking. Toler wanted to help her, but when he tried to push himself up, the strength went out of his limbs and his belly churned like stones in a drum. His head spun, throbbing with every heartbeat. It was all he could do to keep his wits about him, let alone stand and stop Lokes from brutalizing the woman he claimed to love.
When Lokes jammed his elbow into Weaver’s spine, she let out a gasping cry. An instant later, the ground opened up and swallowed them both. The sand quaked, a larger pile than the bushcat had managed. Even through the layers of earth, Toler could hear Lokes shouting and Weaver crying out in pain. A rectangle of sand caved in like a collapsed grave, and their muffled voices turned to choking sounds.
The sand shifted again and went still. Toler waited a long time, fading in and out of awareness. He tried again to stand, but the horizon tilted and he sat down in a heap.
Soon there was a rumbling, and Weaver rose up out of the sand like a creature surfacing from the sea. She stumbled forward, coughing and hacking as the grit fell from her clothes and drifted in the wind.
Next Toler knew, a hand was clawing its way up, and then a face, and Lokes was gulping air and sputtering through the torrent of sand falling from the brim of his hat. He pulled himself out to the knees before sprawling onto his back, panting. Sand spumed from his lips when he cleared his throat. To Toler’s surprise, the gravelly noises coming from his mouth turned to laughter.
Weaver glanced over her shoulder at him, looking as surprised as Toler felt. Lokes was wheezing with laughter now, a dry rasp like wood on asphalt. “I done been got,” he said. “You learned me a thing or three, honey. Just when I think things is as fun as they can get, you go on and show me how to have a good time.” He coughed, a pitiful little noise that somehow managed to elicit a hint of sympathy in Weaver’s expression.
Fun? What world does this dway live in? Toler wondered. And what is she doing?
Weaver was moving toward him, hesitant at first. Lokes spread his arms in surrender. When she knelt beside him, he reached out and touched her hand. Then she was cradling him in her lap, sobbing and hugging him and covering his face with kisses.
Later that night, when the fire had burned low, Toler could hear them making love beneath the blankets. He turned his head away and piled his jacket beside his ear, but nothing seemed to drive away the soft sounds of whispered giggles and the smack of lips on skin. It was too much to bear. A man like that ought to catch a beating, he thought. Ought to suffer. He’s lucky I’m in no shape to make him…
The night sky was alive with shimmering patterns, brighter still than all the nights before. These were some of the worst starwinds Toler had ever seen; they made the dead of midnight feel like some cold, peculiar dawn. The sandstorm that had ravaged them that day was only the first of the starwinds’ terrible aftermath, he knew.
By midmorning the next day, Toler had begun to feel better. His mind was dull and muddled, and his whole body felt pulverized, but he had at least gathered the strength to stand and move around. Still, every motion made him wish for a drink to soothe his aches, and every breath reminded him of the cigar box on his nightstand back home, in which his pipe and stash lay regrettably undisturbed since his departure.
While Weaver went off into the scrub to wash and gather the horses, Lokes cleaned up the camp and packed their things, whistling a tune. When he was done, he climbed the dune to stand beside Toler and look out across the wide expanse before them.
“Not much further now,” he said. “That’s what she tells me, anyway.”
“She’s a sandcipher.”
“And a Calsaire, at that. She’s a firecracker, ain’t she?”
“A Calsaire? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lokes turned to look at him, his busted lip and bruised cheek shining like violet pearls around that mouthful of yellowed teeth. There was a pendant of some sort hanging from his neck. Toler had never noticed it before, but somehow Lokes had let it slip outside his tunic when he’d dressed that morning. “Never came up. ‘Sides, you’re a smart dway. You figured it out for yourself.”
“I never would’ve tried to escape if I’d known.”
Lokes shrugged. “Live and learn, Shep. That’s why your brother hired us. Can’t no regular folk keep you safe from them savages.”
You’ve done a great job of keeping me safe, Toler wanted to say. He rubbed his head, feeling the two large welts Lokes had put there. “How long have you known her?”
Lokes wrinkled his lip, thinking. “Long time. Dunno, exactly. Day we met, she got me out of a real bind. Lawman was fixing to end ol’ Lokes. She spoke up and convinced him not to. We been pallin’ around ever since, she and I. That one’s somethin’ else, I reckon. Some people’ll tell you they never forget a face. But there’s some faces you never forget, no matter who you are. Hers is one of ‘em.”
“Why are you doing this?” Toler asked.
“Doin’ what?”
“Talking to me like we’re buddies.”
“Ain’t we?”
“The only thing you and I have in common is the weather. You took me away from my girl, and I’m in a heap of trouble because of it. By the time I get back, my whole life will be in shambles. Beyond that, I just don’t like you. Truth be told, I don’t much like either of you. The fact that you’re the type to keep company with my no-good brother says a lot about the kind of people you are. And I see the way you pull her strings. You’re manipulative. You remind me of my brother that way. You’re not going to pull my strings, so quit trying.”