Whatever spell bound them seemed to break, and the crew went back to their breakfasts as if it had never happened. They didn’t go above-decks, and none of them said anything about it. For that, Yat was grateful: she didn’t have words for the subtle wrongness pressing in from all sides, but she knew she didn’t want to face it. She sat with her tea, and watched Sibbi and Ajat leave alone, together.
“It’s a shitshow, I know,” said Sibbi. Ajat didn’t say anything. They walked through the olive grove, and the trees stared at them. There were more than last time. Sibbi cursed herself: she’d left it too long again. She’d made time to come out, but then time had gotten away from her. One of the trees mewled as she passed it, and she felt its pain right in her sinuses. She was a good ten feet away from it, but its root network must’ve spread tangled up with the mycelium somewhere. No good gods-damned awful nature at work again.
Dergula loomed in the distance: the tottering wooden pirate palace towering over the city beneath it. It had been built piece-by-piece over the centuries, in a dozen different styles. It was one of the only buildings that had withstood the burning, mostly because the dense root network woven into its structure refused to let it fall down. In Hainak they would’ve had an alchemist running the show but here it just … happened. Even the memory of it hurt her. The bruised, flesh-pink roots started growing one day and any attempt to remove them failed, until they became a part of the structure and removing them would do more harm than good.
A man came out to meet them as they walked. Richly-dressed, but not too richly: the sort of palace attendant who worked out in the streets. Nice clothes and hair, but no jewelry that could be easily snatched. The one concession was the golden pin in his hat: the symbol of the Fezaken. Nobody would steal it: it would be impossible to fence, and wearing it was a life sentence. He had been training his whole life for this moment, for the Kopek to appear on the horizon. She didn’t recognise him, but he looked almost fifty. Gods, it had been a long time since she’d come back.
“Mighty Eternal Empress,” he said, “it is with great hon—”
“Uh huh,” she said, and waved him away. He froze as though he’d been slapped.
“The uh,” he said, stammering, “the uh, the King wishes to speak with you before you go to the great tree. It has been many years since we’ve been graced by your august presence and—”
“Look,” said Sibbi. Her head hurt, and it wasn’t just from the trees. “I quit that job. Never really earned it in the first place. Some jobs you can stumble into without blood on your hands, but lord ain’t one of them. I’m not destined to come back and save the islands. If you’ve gotta call me something nice, call me Captain. I run a boat these days, and it does me fine. Who’s king these days anyway?”
“The serene and powerful King Razakat IV of the Golden—”
“Enough,” said Sibbi. She didn’t mean to cast, but all the threads of the olive grove pulled towards her. The trees cried out and rolled their eyes and gnashed their teeth. It was an awful racket, but it was better than the sound they made when they were quiet: the sound the wind made when it rustled through their branches. The attendant cried out and took a step back. Ajat grabbed Sibbi by the arm and squeezed, and it brought her back into herself. She didn’t have time to treat with kings, but it didn’t seem like she had a lot of other options. She sighed.
“What is your name, fezaken?”
“Eshat,” he said. He’d fallen on his arse, and got his nice uniform covered in dust from the road.
“Rise, Eshat of the Fezaken,” she said. “You have done your duty.”
He rose, and dusted off his bum.
“A thousand thanks, Eternal E—Eternal Captain. You honour us with your presence.”
They set off down the road. She looked at Ajat, who was trying not to smirk and doing an awful job of it. They performed a quick eyebrow semaphore while Eshat led them down the road: unspoken but understood.
Is he serious?
Don’t ask.
Okay but—
She mouthed the word Empress.
Oh, hush.
I love you.
I love you too.
It was comforting, but Sibbi could tell the trees unnerved Ajat. She’d been told about them, of course. It was another thing entirely to see them up close. The crew didn’t know, and that was fine: they were kept secret, mostly by being too mad to tell: it was a ghost story sailors would spin when deep in their cups—half-sighted through the fog, while sailing off the coast. It made it less real somehow: people were talking about it, and clearly those people were unreliable, which meant it couldn’t be real. The thousand-year plague, a sickness that stubbornly refused to kill its victims, or let them die. They’d kept it under wraps from their own people for centuries, but there were too many of them now to keep in the royal conservatory and they’d spilled out into the olive groves. Farmers moved amongst them, picking olives from the actual trees, careful to stay out of grabbing range of the infected. Many of the farmers wore masks over their nose and mouth, though that wasn’t the danger. It was proximity that did it: poisoned the air, called to you in your sleep, made you go out into the forest, sink your feet down into the dirt, spread your toes and become one with nature. Folk could pull you out if they were quick about it, but once the changes set in you were done for—you belonged to the great tree. It got hungry if she didn’t feed it, and she hadn’t fed it in a long time. She had been pretending to be good for too long: she had forgotten her obligations, and her past. She had wanted desperately to forget them, to stop them from pulling her back. There hadn’t been this many trees last time.
“I hear they do good coffee here,” said Ajat. There was a slight tremor in her voice. It wasn’t clear who she was speaking to. She was looking ahead at the spire of Dergula, and very aggressively not-looking at the olive grove on either side of the road.
“The very best!” said Eshat, “and of course, the servants of the Great Empress Tiryaźan may drink as much as they’d like. More coffee than you’ve ever seen! More coffee than exists!”
“That much, huh?” said Ajat. She raised an eyebrow.
“Even more than that!” said Eshat.
She didn’t argue about servant—she must’ve been terrified, though she was doing a good job of not showing it. It almost made Sibbi want to reach into her, share a memory, calm her down. But no, they had a deal. It was hard enough to get privacy without living in somebody else’s head. She wished she could just squeeze the woman: to love her as easily as she loved. Instead, she canted her head slightly, leaned in and pushed herself against Ajat’s side. Ajat didn’t recoil, but she didn’t accept it either—she kept walking forward, not looking at the trees, as the shadow of Dergula fell over them.
The top level was a ship, improbably speared by the central stone pillar of the tower. Its guts had been emptied out and filled with a plush audience chamber. Every inch of the place was gold or deep red carpet. There was no wood visible, presumably to cover the awful pink it would be stained by the vines holding it in place.
King Razakat lounged in his throne. He looked like an echo of a pirate: somebody who had been hearing stories about pirates all his life but never actually met one. It must’ve taken the Ladowain miners months just to decorate his fingers. They used to just steal it but lead made a good insulator, and it could buy a lot of Lion Gold. It also made bullets, and gods knew the Lion had use for those. Razakat looked strong, but like he’d never made use of his strength. He could probably chop a training dummy clean in half. His great-grandfather had been a hell of a reaver, and the worst man Sibbi had ever loved. Those days were behind her: those days were behind everybody.
The Lion had burnt the whole island to the ground in living memory, and now they were friends, because palaces don’t burn as well as fields. War has rules, if you can afford them. A good price on lead, an agreement not to raid the wrong coast. What’s
a few thousand homes in the scheme of things? There was more money in the assembled court than in the rest of the country put together. They’d been a counsel, once: bright-eyed, talking about spreading the responsibility, about working for the good of the islands. Year by year, they’d slid back to a king, and made themselves comfortable nobles.
“Empress,” said Razakat. He gave a mock-bow. He did not say witch, but it was written on the back of his tongue, in the way he stood, in the fire that ran between his neurons. People gave themselves away in a million little ways, if you knew where to look.
“King,” said Sibbi. Her knees weren’t in any state to curtsey, nor was she in any mood. She gave him a bow in return: deep, respectful, filled with as much venom as she could give it without letting the court see.
“You’re smaller than I expected,” he drawled, “though less ugly. Are we sure it’s her?” That got a titter from his attendants. They had been hearing stories for their whole lives about the Witch-Empress, who tore the world in half and stitched it back together poorly. They were starting to realise, perhaps, that they were dealing with a woman. In the bad old days, she’d have disabused them of that notion by spreading one of them over the wall. There were stains in this room they’d never managed to get out, covered now by banners and carpets. She bit back her rage, and smiled.
“Many expect a monster,” said Sibbi. “I aim to disappoint.”
“Then you have exceeded yourself,” said Razakat. Another titter. The vines around the building tightened, and it groaned. She didn’t even realise she’d been pulling on them. The king’s entourage didn’t even notice. She breathed deeply, and inhaled Ajat’s perfume. Her wife’s presence had a way of calming her down. She hadn’t wanted her to see this place, but she was grateful she’d asked to come.
“Why have you called me here?” she said. “I could do the ritual on my own.”
Razakat laughed, and stood. He filled the audience chamber. The gold and furs added another forty pounds, but he wasn’t a small man to begin with.
“I hear strange stories, dear Empress. The north has fallen: a spider-city roams the taiga; our own land springs forth new poison every day; there are lights in the sky over Ladowain, and we haven’t had a new shipment from them in weeks. Another war rocks the Eastern Shelf, and there are whispers, with the weapons they bring to bear, that it might be the last. I am told the world is ending, and I’m told of a witch who would be the one to shepherd it in. ”
There it was, out in the open. Fucking prophecy. She’d seen enough of history not to trust prophets. Even the good ones weren’t more accurate than a coin toss. Throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick. She’d refused to sleep with one ratty man five hundred years ago, and was still paying for it. Woe is me, my dick goeth unsucked, it’s the actual end of the world.
“And what do you want me to do about it?” she spat.
“Nothing,” said Razakat. “You are to do nothing. You are to cease the ritual at the great tree. Your ship will be provisioned, then will leave port and never return. Orders have been given to fire on any vessel flying your colours that comes north of the Sawhead Reef. The council of wise masters have met, and decided that you are more trouble than you’re worth. You and any—”
He cast an eye at Ajat, and sneered, “—associates are exiled, and stripped of title. We have rather outgrown the need for an empress. It is time for us to decide our own fate.”
She reeled. The ritual had gone too long already: another ten years and the damage would be irreversible. She could feel them in the mineshafts that honeycombed under the islands and under the channels between them: growing, septic, poisoning the earth. They would strange the life out of Dawgar. The council had voted on suicide. Not just their own, but that of everybody in the nation. Sibbi realised that she was breathing heavily, that heat was moving up her arms, that her head was spinning. Her next words came out as a hiss.
“You can’t stop me,” she said. She reached into the vines around the palace, tugged.
The room shook, then twisted violently. Pandemonium erupted. The counsellors scrambled to keep their footing. A man in an ermine robe crashed to the floor, weighed down and taken off-balance by his own chains of office.
Razakat’s laugh was a roar. He slumped back into his throne as the room spun. He fucking clapped. “There she is!” he said. He grinned, his eyes filled with victory and malice. “There’s the witch from the stories. There’s the little mort du terre.”
The counsellors were shaken, but not as much as she’d expected. Gods, they’re used to this. The growth is out of control, and that’s just normal now. The carpets are padding. Their world is dying, and they’re investing in better palliatives.
“Fuck your stories,” said Ajat. It was the first time she’d spoken in hours, and her words came out in a panicked ejaculation. “You’re all mad. Sajti is trying to help.”
“Her help is not needed,” said Razakat.
“According to who? To a man in a rickety tower? When was the last time you were on the ground? This place is falling to pieces: sooner or later, that ground is gonna rise to meet you.”
“I am a king,” said Razakat, “and I do not take counsel from degenerates. I do not take counsel from foolish men who fear their own manhood.”
Then Sibbi saw it, written in every crevice of his mind. The faith had reached this place, too. He didn’t even realise it: he saw himself as beyond the priesthood, more evolved. They’d reached him anyway. There’d always been pockets of the faithful, but pirates were impossible to govern or unite, and had been happy to leave folks as folks. They’d laughed at anything that told them what to do, or who to love. There it was, plain as day: degenerate. It stung worse than witch. A witch was frightening, a degenerate was disposable. Something to be washed away with the rain. She wanted very much to pull the life out of him: grab ahold of the cord of his soul and yank it out, eat it, make herself strong again. She couldn’t, because she’d seen his backup plan. More than that, when she’d seen it, he’d seen her looking. He grinned.
“I knew there was nothing I could do to stop you killing me,” said Razakat. “If you wanted to come in, you would. Can you say the same for your crew? No spotters on-deck, tsk tsk. The explosives provided by our wonderful friends in Ladowain really are miraculous: impossible to locate, until they’re suddenly absolutely everywhere. You’ll never find all of them before my men set them off. You will leave here at once, or your crew will feed the little fish. Take your freak husband and go.”
“My wife,” said Sibbi. “And I will go without incident. I will go, but I leave you with a warning: the next time I stand in this room, you will die. I am going to bring this tower down on every single one of you. You will choke on your own blackened tongues. Be warned, king: the next time I stand here, I will break heaven and bring down the fucking sky.”
It felt good to say; it felt good to spit venom. It meant nothing. It was the woman she’d left behind, in another time. It was a woman who emerged shrieking in a fisherman’s net. It was a woman who’d burned more fields than she dared to count. She wasn’t that woman any more.
“And then,” she said, “I am going to save this place. I am going to find a way to help my people thrive. I’m going to make a world without people like you.”
“Bold words for a woman who holds no cards,” he said. “My tongue remains unblackened, my tower remains intact. We both know you won’t do it.”
He was truly lost, but he was right. She tried to search his mind to find where the bombs were, but she knew it was hopeless: he’d given an order to somebody who’d given an order to somebody who’d given an order and by the time she followed the chain, it would be too late.
“I have another home to save,” said Sibbi. “But I’m coming back, and when I do, you are going to die.”
“That makes two of us,” said Razakat. “Now go.”
&nb
sp; She had not felt so powerless in a long time. She turned to Ajat, put a hand around the back of her neck, then pulled her face down and kissed her deeply. It was more a performance than a kiss, but they both got into the role quickly enough. When they broke apart, Sibbi turned to King Razakat, stared deeply into his eyes, then spat on his pretty carpet. An attendant—a eunuch boy no more than 14—tugged at her sleeve, leading her towards the exit. She did not fight him.
Yat stared out to sea, and the setting sun. They’d turned the ship around two days ago, and were heading back towards Hainak with the easterly behind them—whatever business they’d done in Dawgar was long complete, and most of the crew had been told to remain in the galley during their stay. Yat couldn’t shake the unease she’d felt when she’d entered the mast: she could feel the vast weight of the sea beneath her. She’d thought it was empty, but maybe what she’d really been feeling was the pull—all magic going down, through the bottom of the sea and out to the world of the dead. Sibbi was behind the helm, steering them back from the far-away islands, back towards home. Yat was smoking a cigarette: the woman with red hair had offered, and they were smoking together in silence. The ship’s prow cut through the waves, carving apart the soft white crests, rising and falling with a satisfying slap of wood on water. It had become a familiar drumbeat over the last few days, and it calmed Yat: it felt like an echo of her own heart.
The woman beside her was deathly pale, and her skin was heavily tattooed. The tattoos moved beneath her skin—some sort of living ink. Yat had never met a real northerner before: in the stories, they were more of a force of nature than anything else—ferocious cannibals who came to loot and burn. The Iron Cult had turned the place into a wasteland in their endless search for more fuel for their great furnaces. Only a few cities remained up there, mostly those like Crow Hearth, protected by stout walls and electric fields. Varazzo liked to play up his northman credentials when he wanted to seem tough, even though he was from the Eastern Shelf: Accenza was in the northeast and dealt with the occasional raid, but there were juicier targets, closer to the tundra and poorly-protected. Accenza was a city with ports, and merchants, and books, and peace. They mostly just fought themselves. The real North didn’t even get a name: it was a place beyond words, where the Old Iron roamed. The woman’s name was Cannath. That was all Yat had been able to get out of her. She was a tall, stout woman, and she looked strong. Some of her tattoos ran on top of scars on her face—whether she was concealing them or painting them deeper was hard to say.
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