by Stephen Deas
‘Be gone, Baros Tsen. Let your name be forgotten. Find your ship and sail away and let our paths never cross again. Just remember that I will not forget. When someone comes to ask a favour of you in my name, no matter how great, remember this day.’
Tsen watched the gondola rise and leave them by the roadside. Lin Feyn had said little about what might happen next among the great and the mighty of Takei’Tarr. Perhaps he shouldn’t care. It no longer concerned him, after all, a simple ordinary citizen looking for a way across the storm-dark to visit a business partner at the Sun King’s court; but he thought about it anyway. Couldn’t not. Red Lin Feyn would be on her way to Khalishtor and Mount Solence to repeat her Arbiter’s judgment, but he’d have wagered a deal of what little he had that she’d go to the Dralamut first and the navigators there. Hand in hand, the navigators and the Elemental Men steered the great ship of Takei’Tarr towards whatever destiny awaited it. They did it quietly, and the sea lords barely noticed, but Tsen had had his eyes opened these past months. They were the guides and the enforcers, the helmsmen and the first mates.
The desert air was still. Cold enough to make him shiver. He’d not easily forget the corpse he’d seen at the Arbiter’s feet in the Queverra.
‘We’d do well to be away from here,’ he said and took Kalaiya’s hand. A change was coming, was it? A catastrophe? If he was honest, Tsen didn’t much understand the meaning behind things like cracked Godspike needles and necropolises and the dead not staying dead, wherever they happened to do it, nor of skin-shifters trying to steal dragon eggs, or oblique insinuations about the Crimson Sunburst; mostly what he knew added up to being very certain that he didn’t like the looks of any of it, and should do best to keep as far away as he could. He started to walk then, meaning to do exactly that, setting an easy pace because they were still a mile from the bridge and some twenty more from the city itself, and walking would take the whole day, and there was no point in exhausting himself before lunchtime, not that either of them carried any food. He could barely remember the last time he’d actually walked anywhere. If you didn’t count traipsing about the desert after the skin-shifter Sivan, at least.
‘There were two villages here once,’ he told Kalaiya as they followed the dusty old desert road, arrow-straight with the sunrise building behind them and the last dawn stars fading as the sky ahead turned a deep deep blue. ‘A long, long time ago before the Splintering. Each grew and prospered, one each side of the Jokun estuary, both rich from all the trade around the southern tip of the Konsidar. The desert wasn’t so much of a desert back then.’ He chuckled. ‘Isn’t it quite bizarre? Almost everything from before that cataclysm was written into a single book by a secret conclave of half-mad priests. The Rava. All their lore and knowledge, the very speaking of which summons death by Elemental Man. What else do we have? A handful of scraps. A detailed document on the merits of the various Xizic regions, a complete inventory of the treasury of Uban, a description of a town that one day became this city …’
Kalaiya squeezed his hand and laughed. ‘“A town full of rich merchants, and all are large. Bread and meat are abundant, though you cannot find wine or fruits. Melons and excellent squash are plentiful and there are enormous quantities of rice. There are many sweet-water wells. There is a square where on market days huge numbers of slaves are sold, both male and female. A young girl of fifteen is worth about six talons, a young man almost as much; small children are worth about half as much as grown slaves.”’
Tsen stopped. He held her hand tight and pulled her close. He was shaking. Sobbing, almost. He didn’t really know why. Relief, probably. Just to hear her. To be with her still, after everything they’d endured. To talk, for once, about something entirely dull and mundane and ordinary.
‘It is the story of every town that was once a part of the desert!’ Kalaiya laughed. ‘It is Uban, Hanjaadi, Shinpai, Sarrai. All of them. A story we keep because it tells us of a way of life we once knew, but no longer. A kinder life than the desert gives us now.’
‘The Splintering put an end to both towns.’ Tsen stared off at the Jokun in the distance. ‘Traces remain on the western bank, but most of whatever was there was long ago washed to the sea in the spring floods.’ He looked at the boats drifting up and down on the river. Night or day made no difference to the endless flow of commerce. Little Xizic boats, the sort he’d come to know all too well as the skin-shifter Sivan’s prisoner. Vespinese barges, armed and armoured and all well guarded, carrying silver and silks and food; more barges going the other way, laden with gold and sand for the enchanters of Hingwal Taktse. The best sand came from the beaches of Qeled, they said. A desert full of it just a few miles behind him, and the Vespinese brought sand across the sea from another world in ships. He wondered what that said about his people, his race. Perfectionist? Obsessive? Just plain daft?
They crossed the pontoons of the Bawar Bridge, waiting a while for the structure to assemble itself between a gap in the river traffic before they could pass. The desert road where Red Lin Feyn had left them was empty, hardly used, but the road that ran beside the west bank of the Jokun was busy even at dawn; as he and Kalaiya stepped off the far side of the bridge, teamsters and drovers and sailors paused and stared to see who it was coming out of the Samim. Tsen bowed his head, trying to hide his face, and then realised that doing so probably only drew even more attention.
Stupid t’varr. None of these people will know you.
After another hour, as the sun started its morning climb, he left the road and walked to the riverbank. He squatted there and scooped up handfuls of water to drink, then took off his sandals and walked out up to his ankles. The Jokun came down from the mountains; the water was fast and cold, and his feet were hot and sore. The Xizicmen of the river claimed that the Jokun tasted sweet; that was simply because there were no cities to foul it from Vespinarr all the way to the sea, but right now, though his mouth might say the water didn’t taste of anything much at all, his feet thought it was delicious. He stayed a moment, savoured the sensation, and looked at his reflection. He wore a plain white tunic, the usual dress of a slave except that his was so badly ripped that he had to hold it together to stop it from falling off him. He had a belt and some wooden sandals. Apart from that, he had almost nothing. Kalaiya beside him wore a plain white robe, a gift from Red Lin Feyn since they were close enough the same size. She had the silk nightdress she’d been wearing when Sivan had snatched her from the eyrie, filthy now, and she had a sword, stolen from one of Chrias’s men. Her feet were bare. She didn’t even have any shoes.
We’re free. He couldn’t stop thinking it, over and over. Was that what sword-slaves thought when they got their second brand and were no longer beholden to any master? When they were no longer owned?
A Xizic boat came drifting close to the shore. Its three sailors looked battered and worn, old skin weathered into leather, hair grey and tangled. No long braids, no bright colours, no feathered robes or cloaks. Kalaiya jumped up and waved as they passed.
‘We’ve been robbed!’ she cried. ‘Will you take us to the city?’
The boat idled on, but after a hundred yards it shifted its course and came to shore, and the men inside stood up and beckoned. Kalaiya ran to it. Tsen followed as best he could, holding his tunic around him.
‘Bandits on the road,’ Kalaiya gasped. ‘Not that we had anything to steal, but they tried to tear my husband’s clothes from his back. He knocked a man down and took his sword and chased them away!’
The sailors had a Xizic dullness to them. Their eyes stared into space, but they helped Kalaiya climb aboard and Tsen too. They were fishermen between their workings among the Summer Moon trees of the Samim, and after they pushed away from the shore and returned to their drifting, one of them asked Tsen for his tunic, and it took a moment for Tsen to understand that, far from wanting to rob him, the man had a needle and a thread that he used to repair nets, and was offering to st
itch the garment closed. For the rest of the morning Tsen sat naked as the boat drifted on, lazy with the current, no hurry, just a little nudge here and there to steer its way, all in all a rather fine way to pit oneself against the vicissitudes of life. As the afternoon heat rose the sailors took it in turns to doze. Tsen dozed too, Kalaiya resting her head on his chest.
They reached Hanjaadi as the sun was setting, damp wooden huts strewn along the muddy shores, a scattering at first, then packed tight and close as the boat drifted towards the sea docks of the Jokun. Tsen could see the heart of the city further down the river, blocky warehouses, ships moored by the dozen in the estuary, a leafless winter forest of masts and spars, a smattering of stone watchtowers and a few of gold-glass, all lit aglow by the setting sun. The skyline was low and higgledy-piggledy, a haphazard pressing together of stone and glass and damp muddy wood, of merchants and craftsmen and kwens and t’varrs and mud and salt and dirt, siphoning off what wealth they could from the endless flow of the river and all-powerful Vespinarr.
The Xizicmen guided their boat to the shore by the shanty-town slums and let it ground on the muddy bank. Tsen reckoned the three sailors had said no more than a dozen words between them across the entire day, but they’d saved his legs some walking and stitched his tunic well enough that he didn’t have to hold it all the time, and so he thanked them and wished he could give them something more; but when Kalaiya tried to offer them her stolen sword their faces hardened and a flare of anger lit their eyes. They scowled and turned their backs and heaved up their baskets of cheap Samim Xizic-tears.
‘I don’t understand,’ Kalaiya said as she and Tsen walked away. ‘It was all we had.’
‘It was far too much, and what use do they have for it?’ He cocked his head. ‘Shall we carry a sword with us through the dark alleys of this city, looking as we do, walking as we must among men for whom hunger is a daily companion?’ A sword was good money, a great deal to a fisherman or Xizicman. But a sword carried meaning and intent. He took the blade from Kalaiya and threw it into the river.
‘Tsen!’
‘The less attention we bring to ourselves, the better.’ He turned away and set off squish-squashing through the river mud by the water’s edge. His feet sank with every step, and he’d barely gone six paces before he’d lost both his sandals. No matter. The feel of mud squeezing between his toes was oddly pleasant, and at least here on the shore he could see who was coming at them. Better to be filthy and stinking than nervous and scurrying through the animosity of alleys unlit and unfamiliar. Fat old man like you must be rich, eh? What you got? Where you hiding it? And then the inevitable disappointment when they found that he had nothing at all.
So close to the sea. So close to a ship and a way out. A new life, the two of them. He wanted to sing for joy, but best not, not now, not here; and so he kept himself to holding Kalaiya’s hand and squeezing it hard, and now and then turning to look at her, a bright smile on his face even when she didn’t look back.
They reached the river docks of Hanjaadi. Tsen walked through them, mucky as a beggar, with such a smirk on his face that Kalaiya kept asking why he was so cheerful when they had nothing, only their filthy clothes between them, and how were they going to get away and get a ship, if that was his plan? And he merely smiled, which annoyed her all the more, but a childish part of him wanted her to see for herself, for the surprise to come without warning. He took her into a seedy sailors’ tavern, the Golem, and almost got thrown straight back out for the river stink he brought with him until he asked to speak with someone who was dead; and Kalaiya must certainly have thought him taken by madness, but after a short pause a sail-slave came from the back and ushered them through a curtain and into a dark passage, and then through another curtain and left them to wait, and after a few minutes more an old Taiytakei came and sat with them. He was carrying a small wooden box. Tsen told the old man a story about a fisherman who lost a silver ring in the sea and spent ten years searching until he found it in the belly of the last fish he ever ate, how he choked on it and died. The old Taiytakei listened patiently and then handed Tsen his box and left. Inside the box was a glass sliver etched with words that would grant whoever carried it passage on any ship to any world. Underneath the glass were six small bars of silver and a purse of jade coins. Tsen smiled at Kalaiya. It was hard not to grin. ‘Three in every city,’ he told her. ‘One never knows why and where they might be needed.’
A quiet smugness suffused the days that followed, a happy contentment over an undertow of exhilaration. As far as he could, Tsen kept himself out of sight. He bought himself some decent clothes and some for Kalaiya too. He made discreet enquiries at the sea docks as to what ships would be leaving until he found one, the Scavenger, bound for Brons in the Dominion of the Sun King. He found the Scavenger’s captain and showed his glass sliver. He took Kalaiya to a bathhouse and bought a bottle of apple wine, and they spent their afternoons together soaking in the water, steaming in Xizic oil, talking about the life they were leaving behind, giving it its own funeral and then casting it away like an old shed skin; and he told her about the waiting Dahat villa and the future he thought they would have, full of lazy days, of peace and calm, of baths and apple wine, of no sea lords or enchanters or killers, and definitely no dragons; and the more he talked, the more he wondered at the ambition that had driven him these last years. A change is coming. We’re best away from it, as far away as possible. Just the two of us. He looked back at what he’d been, at the life he’d led, at who and what he’d thought to become. It had made perfect sense in its moment, but now it seemed like madness.
He bought them each a small travel chest and let Kalaiya fill them with whatever she thought they might need or took her fancy. He bought a pair of sail-slaves, two old men who had once come from the Dominion, three silver clippers for the pair of them, cheap as dirt because they were far past their prime. Maybe it was sentiment, being far enough past his prime himself, but once his sail-slaves knew they were going home they worked hard enough. He saw when he bought them that they hadn’t really believed it, how they feared some fate far worse – fodder for some sea lord’s jade ravens or to have their flesh murdered and their souls sucked into an enchanted golem perhaps – but as they carried his chests towards the waiting carriage that would take them to the docks and the Scavenger, he saw them change. Their faces. That stricken look of anguished joy and hope. Forty years as slaves and they still remembered their home. He’d let them go, he decided, once he’d settled in the villa. A little thing. A touch of goodness to set against what his dragon-queen had done to Dhar Thosis.
The carriage took them to the docks. Tsen paid in jade, a smattering of wafer-thin squares carved with an image of the Hangpoor Palace of Zinzarra where they had been minted. There was another carriage beside the jetty where the Scavenger’s boats were waiting. A small gang of men – Taiytakei sword-slaves taken from the desert tribes – sat playing dice and chewing Xizic. Tsen didn’t think anything of them until he started onto the jetty and one got up and stood in front of him, blocking his way.
‘Baros Tsen?’ the sword-slave asked.
Tsen stopped dead, bone-frozen by his own name. The other sword-slaves regarded him. How did they know? He bit back a reply, but knew he’d already given himself away. And he supposed he ought to do something like turn and run, but what was the point?
‘Get out of the way.’ He tried to push the sword-slave aside, to brazen it out, the sort of angry righteous gesture of a wealthy Taiytakei confronted by an upstart slave who didn’t know his place. The sword-slave gut-punched him. As Tsen doubled up, the other slaves jumped to their feet. Kalaiya screamed and ran, but they caught her at once. Hands had hold of him, hauling him to the waiting carriage. The door opened and his heart sank. There were two men inside, and he’d seen them before. They’d come to his eyrie months ago with his old friend Vey Rin T’Varr of Vespinarr, who had left as no friend at all.
&nbs
p; ‘Help!’ he cried. ‘Help! Kidnap!’
His slaves ran away, dropping the chests they were carrying and racing off down the docks. He ought to be angry with them, he supposed, but mostly he applauded. Well done. Well done for staying alive. Because really? What could they have done? The sword-slaves bundled him into the carriage and slammed the door. He lunged for the window. ‘Kalaiya!’ They punched him and held him down, but he refused to stop struggling. One got out a knife and waved it in his face as though that might shut him up. He barely noticed. ‘Kalaiya!’
The carriage door opened again. The sword-slaves had Kalaiya held between them like a wriggling carpet. They had shackles on her wrists and ankles. They bundled her through the door while the two men inside pulled and dragged and forced her to sit between them.
‘Now shut up,’ snarled the man with the knife, ‘or I will cut her, not you.’
‘I know you.’ Tsen forced himself to be still. He couldn’t stop his racing heart or his heaving lungs, but he stopped his struggling. The second man tossed Tsen a pair of shackles. They landed in his lap.
‘Put them on,’ said the man when Tsen ignored them. ‘Or she gets cut.’
Tsen put the shackles around his wrists. ‘You came to my eyrie. You saw my dragon.’
The man with the knife nodded. ‘Surprised we weren’t beneath your notice, a great t’varr like you. Not so great now.’ He closed the blinds on the windows.