The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  After that, even the air seemed cleaner, less tainted by ash. The oubliette seemed less cold, the blanket thicker, the night less dark and long.… Trei even found he was actually looking forward to the next day’s dawn, although he knew very well there would be nothing at all to look forward to in that day.

  But he was wrong. Because the next day … the third? Or could it already be the fourth? … Whatever the day, he heard the sound of voices from the free air above, and muffled cursing, and someone hauled the heavy iron grate away from the top of his oubliette.

  Trei rose to his feet and stared upward. Maybe Master Patan had persuaded the provincar to bring him out? Trei did not want to show anyone dragon magic … but …

  The ladder rattled down across the bricks, and Trei, as though moving through a dream, stepped forward and reached up to put his hand on the nearest rung.

  Then the light was blocked, and he saw that he was not meant to climb up at all: someone was coming down. The disappointment was intense. Trei took his hand off the ladder and stepped back to give the newcomer room to come down. The man came to the end of the ladder. He twisted around, peering into the dimness and feeling with one foot beneath him for a rung that wasn’t there.

  Trei swallowed. He knew this must be a prisoner. But he did not know why the Tolounnese were putting this man here with Trei. He was much bigger than Trei. He looked strong. Trei wanted to be glad of the company, but maybe he should be nervous instead.…

  When the man did not at once jump the small distance remaining, Trei said cautiously, “It’s only about two feet. The ladder doesn’t come down all the way.”

  The man grunted and jumped. He landed awkwardly, took one quick step, and put a hand on the wall to steady himself. Then he turned slowly, inspecting the oubliette and finishing by frowning darkly at Trei.

  It was Anerii Pencara. The novice-master of Milendri’s red-winged kajuraihi stood in the Teraican oubliette, his crystalline eyes glinting even in the dim light, his heavy jaw set in harsh disapproval.

  Trei had never been so astonished by anything in his life.

  The novice-master sent a summing look around the oubliette shaft and the scowl deepened. “Well,” he said heavily. “You’re well otherwise, are you, Trei?”

  “Yes …” Trei’s voice trailed off into incredulity. He blurted, “But why—how—why are you here, sir?”

  “To recover you, of course.” The novice-master’s gaze returned to Trei’s face. “Am I not the master of novices? And are you not a novice? Genrai managed a fairly coherent account of your … stunt. I came as soon as I could.” He threw another disgusted look around the oubliette. “For what good that seems likely to do. Like to indulge their tempers, these Tolounnese provincars, do they?”

  “But …,” Trei managed. “You don’t even like me!”

  “I didn’t trust you,” the novice-master corrected. “That isn’t the same thing.” He met Trei’s eyes. His heavy features could not easily express embarrassment, but Trei thought he was embarrassed. He said formally, “I was wrong. I apologize for my mistrust, Novice Trei, and I acknowledge you are an Islander and an asset to the kajuraihi.”

  Trei felt heat creep up his face. Taking refuge in his own formality, trying not to let his voice shake, he said, “Please set any error aside, sir, as I assure you I will.” Formally correct or not, this answer seemed presumptuous. He added quickly, “Anyway, I know I can’t have been, um. Easy to … um.”

  “Easy to manage?” Novice-master Anerii’s mouth quirked upward. “No, not notably. All novices bend the rules from time to time. I cannot at the moment recall any novice showing quite your broad enthusiasm for breaking the rule against venturing, however.”

  Trei laughed, then caught himself. But the novice-master didn’t seem offended at all. He even grinned briefly, a flash of teeth in the dimness.

  “Come,” he said, gesturing an invitation. “Come sit down with me, Trei, and tell me the tale, if you would. I shall be fascinated to hear it.”

  “Genrai—”

  “Yes, I’ve had it from Genrai. And from your cousin—who is an interesting young woman, and I gather that a disregard for rules runs in your shared blood, so I suppose I can’t blame your Tolounnese heritage for your wide actions.”

  Trei stared at him.

  The novice-master lifted an ironic eyebrow. “She seems well enough. Everything considered. She is afraid for you, of course. But tell me how this wind unrolled from your view, Trei, and I—fair trade, you see—will tell you all the news from the Islands.” He sat down and patted the floor beside him.

  “I have a blanket,” Trei offered, and spread it out for both of them.

  Master Anerii listened attentively. He asked few questions. At the end, when Trei tried, fumbling for words, to describe his last flight and his struggle to throw the dragon’s egg into the furnace, he said quietly, “So we all do what we must. You did well. I see I will need to have you taught the art of using the wind itself to stop your fall so that you won’t again need to ruin your wings in cushioning a violent landing. Were the dragon feathers broken, do you know?”

  “Yes—all the primaries were destroyed.”

  Master Anerii nodded. “That’s best, if a Tolounnese artificer has the wings.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. You were right—”

  “Huh.” Master Anerii caught Trei’s arm in a strong grip and shook him gently, giving him a stern look. “No. I said: you did well. Now, go on. After that?”

  Trei tried, haltingly, to explain the part with the artificer, and then the explosion, and then the provincar. He didn’t try to describe that last walk to the oubliettes. But he asked, “What happened after that, sir? There was a much bigger explosion. Was that … Did I do that?”

  The sun, high above, glinted in the master’s kajurai eyes. He was not exactly smiling; his expression was too grim to be called a smile. “Yes, in a rather convoluted fashion. Or so I gather. You, and your cousin, and the mage Tnegun, and, ah, Ceirfei.”

  Trei thought Master Anerii had only just stopped himself from saying “Prince Ceirfei.” He said, “Ceirfei? What did he do?”

  “Tell me, Novice Trei.” The master sounded stern at last. “Did you and Novice Genrai deliberately leave Ceirfei behind when you conspired to commit this, ah, exploit of yours?”

  Trei winced at this question. “Was he very angry with us? We were sorry to do it that way, but we couldn’t … You must see that we couldn’t possibly tell him.…”

  “Indeed not.” The master sounded much less stern. He patted Trei’s arm. “No, indeed. That was also well done, Trei. I vow before the Gods, you and Ceirfei between you will turn the rest of my hair dead white. If I understand correctly, he and that mage Tnegun together acted to send one of our own dragons here. Where it turned—don’t ask me how—from a dragon of sky and wind into a fire dragon, shattered the earth beneath the Tolounnese engines, released the fire beneath the earth, and rescued the young dragon you left stranded in the, speaking relatively, cold of the failed furnace. Incidentally destroying roughly half of Teraica in the process.”

  “Oh,” Trei said after a moment. His voice sounded odd even to his own ears. Destroying half of Teraica. That was … that was horrible. He had never intended … never thought …

  “Don’t repine,” Master Anerii said briskly. “This also left the Tolounnese on Milendri stranded and willing to reach an accommodation. Now: I came here to offer an exchange of prisoners, Trei. The provincar did not seem favorably disposed to my offer, however. So I do not know.…”

  It was like suddenly getting a perfect wind after struggling in dead air. Trei stared, arrested, at Master Anerii. “You came here as an ambassador?” he asked, and heard his own voice tremble. “You came here as an ambassador and asked to trade for me, and the provincar had you imprisoned in an oubliette?”

  The master stared back at Trei. “Obviously, yes,” he said after a moment. “Does this signify in some way?”

  Trei jumpe
d to his feet and strode back and forth across the oubliette shaft. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to shout up the oubliette shaft, call the guards. They might even answer. Probably not, but they might. He spun back to Master Anerii, who was still staring at him in astonishment.

  “You don’t—” Trei broke that off and began again, trying to keep his voice from rising in hope and in the terror that hope might fail. “Novice-master, please. Tell me. Exactly what you did, and what you said, and to whom, and what the provincar answered.”

  Master Anerii folded his hands across his knees, sternly calm. “Have I failed to understand something important?”

  “I don’t know,” Trei said. “Please tell me—”

  “I came down in the courtyard of the provincar’s palace. I gave my name and told them I had come from the king of the Floating Islands to discuss matters of mutual concern. I told them there are thousands of Tolounnese soldiers trapped in the Islands and said I wanted to discuss the disposition of the young kajurai they were holding here—”

  “Told who? Courtiers? Soldiers?” Trei leaned forward urgently.

  Master Anerii blinked in surprise. “Well, a soldier, first. And then an officer of some kind, I suppose, and then the provincar himself. I thought I was polite enough. He has a temper, that one, and he doesn’t take reversals well. He put a good deal more bluster than thought into his responses, it seemed to me.”

  “Did he shout? At you? At the soldiers? There were soldiers present, weren’t there?”

  “As I recall, he shouted at everyone. Certainly there were soldiers, Trei: an officer with a red-hilted dagger and a file of men.”

  “A teruann. A company commander, and at least some of his men. So you said there were a lot of soldiers left on Milendri, and the provincar answered, what? That he would redeem them? Did he say that?”

  Master Anerii tilted his head in intense curiosity. “No, he did not. He said … let me see. He said Tolounn was well rid of any men who would surrender, and he said he would bargain with the Floating Islands when Tolounn itself mounts into the sky, but he’d hear an ambassador if one came as a supplicant to hear terms. He warned me that when engines have been built, they can be rebuilt and said I could carry that word back to my little Island king. So I asked, what about you? And he said, well, a great many unconsidered things, and I wound up demanding you be put into my hands, and …” The master shrugged. “Here I am.”

  “The provincar is a fool,” Trei said, not really paying attention to this last.

  “Well, and?”

  Trei stared at him. It seemed incredible anyone would not know—but then, the provincar himself seemed blind to the obvious. He said, “Sir, Tolounnese soldiers are the best in the world.”

  “So they generally declare,” the master said drily.

  “No, sir—they really are the best in the world. Everyone knows that.”

  “Spoken like a true citizen of Tolounn. No, forgive me for interrupting, Trei, and make me understand what you mean.”

  Trei paused, trying to gather his thoughts. He said at last, “Tolounnese soldiers are the best in the world. That’s because they always obey orders. Even if they hate their commander, even if their orders are to march forward and die, they always obey orders. Except …” He tried to think how to put this.

  “Except?” Master Anerii prompted quietly. He seemed to understand Trei’s excitement now, even if he didn’t know whether he should share it.

  Well, Trei himself didn’t know what would happen. But he said, “He’s a fool. Because he threw blame on the men when the first engine exploded, even though that wasn’t their fault, and then he did it again when the dragon came. And he threw those men away. He said Tolounn was well rid of them? He might as well have accused them all of cowardice! They weren’t cowards—were they?”

  “No,” Master Anerii said fervently. “Not at all. By no means.”

  “Of course they weren’t. They had bad luck, and maybe bad planning, because everything depended on those engines and the provincar didn’t plan for what he’d do if Tolounn lost those. He can’t have, can he? Even though he ought to have known the Islands would try anything to ruin them. So he put the blame for the first explosion on me and sent me here to die forgotten, which wasn’t truly honorable—” He saw Master Anerii didn’t understand what he meant, and tried to explain. “I might have ruined his engine, but if your opponent makes a brave counter to your attack, it’s not honorable to hold it against him, is it? If you’re going to attack people, it’s only natural they should fight back. You can execute a brave opponent, but it’s not right to punish him, do you see? So the soldiers didn’t like the provincar sending me here, but he didn’t see that or else he didn’t care. I thought then—but Tolounnese soldiers always obey orders. But then you came to negotiate, and he wouldn’t hear you and he threw away all those men, and he sent you here, which is very dishonorable, because you aren’t a soldier or a spy, you’re an ambassador whom your king sent in good faith—he did, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did. So … Trei, am I to understand that you expect the provincar to cause his own men to mutiny?”

  “He’s not honorable. And when he fails at something, he puts the dishonor on the soldiers. He’s a fool,” said Trei passionately. “When Tolounnese soldiers decide to throw over a commander, they all decide to do it, all at once. They send to the Little Emperor and demand a different commander. Sometimes they send him pieces of their previous commander, too. If the Emperor’s wise, he picks somebody much, much better. It’s happened four times, and the last time all the armies joined together and unseated the Little Emperor himself and made the Great Emperor put in a man they approved. That was Medraunn enna Gaourr, great-great-grandfather of our Little Emperor now. My tutor taught me that. Did his teach him nothing?”

  “Some men are not capable of learning anything that does not agree with their own opinions,” the master observed quietly. “And what will this mean for us, if the soldiers here overthrow the provincar?”

  “Oh, they’ll let us go, of course. At least, they’ll take us out of here and treat you as an ambassador, but probably they’ll just let us go without asking anything at all.”

  “They’ll do that, will they? Even after losing half of Teraica?”

  “Well, that’s awful,” Trei said honestly. “I wish—they’ll think—” He caught himself, swallowed, and went on, “They’ll be angry, of course they will. But it was war. They won’t blame us for doing that. It’s just stupid to blame an opponent for fighting back. They think I was brave, and of course you were, sir, to put yourself forward as the Islands’ ambassador. And you did it to get me back, which is honorable. The soldiers will like that; they’re Tolounnese, after all. Of course they’d let us go without demands. That’s exactly what they’d do. They’d expect your honor, sir, and the king’s, to make you treat your prisoners decently and negotiate in good faith for their return.”

  After a pause, Master Anerii said in a dry tone, “Well, I’m grateful to have a half-Tolounnese novice kajurai to explain Tolounn to me. I don’t think I understood half of that, for all I’m supposed to be an emissary.”

  “But—” That’s all obvious, Trei wanted to say. Except clearly it hadn’t been. He was still amazed that Master Anerii hadn’t seen it all plainly himself, but he could hardly say so.

  “Oh, I knew almost everything you said. I remember that tale, about the Little Emperor’s overthrow. But I knew it academically. I wouldn’t have—didn’t—put that all together with our situation the way you just explained it.”

  Trei nodded. That made more sense. He looked wistfully up toward the light, wishing again, desperately, that they were in some tower prison where they could see.

  Master Anerii got to his feet at last, stretching. “Cold down here for a man my age,” he commented. “Earth-cold, stone-cold; not like the high winds at all, is it? I wonder why that is?” Then he gave Trei a sharp look and asked, almost as though he expected him to be able to
answer, “I don’t suppose any such mutiny, if it comes, will happen today, however?”

  Trei guiltily brought his gaze down from the circle of light above. “No, sir, I don’t think so.”

  The master smiled, a little grimly. “Then perhaps we shall have time to discuss your landing style and the manner in which control of the winds can be used to compensate for overenthusiasm. I must conclude from your report that your skills in that direction are gravely lacking. Even in a pit such as this, the winds are not absent,” he added when Trei stared at him. “Merely attenuated. Now, name for me the five principal qualities of the wind and explain, if you please, the nine methods by which a kajurai may influence each of these qualities.”

  Trei laughed. He couldn’t help it. But that was all right, because the master laughed, too.

  14

  Araenè thought at first that after the unnatural Tolounnese strength was broken and the dragon’s magic of sky and wind freed, everything would be over. Master Tnegun might have collapsed, but that wouldn’t matter; he would rest for a while and then wake, the Tolounnese ships would meanwhile take all the Tolounnese soldiers away, and they could all go home.

  She knew very well that some of the towers and underground buildings at the edge of Canpra had been damaged; she knew that there had been fighting and that people had died. There would be a lot of work to do to fix everything. She knew that. But that’s all she thought it would be: a lot of work, and tears for those lost, and then they could all go on with their lives.

  At first, nothing interrupted this hopeful idea. She and Prince Ceirfei together arranged Master Tnegun in reasonable comfort by the edge of the pool.

  “He will be well; he passed the edge of his endurance, but I think he needs no more than rest. No place in the Islands is safer than this, and he may perhaps have useful, or at least interesting, dreams,” the prince said to Araenè.