Vesteal 01 – 01 – Ghost in the Yew

by Blake Hausladen

  The next afternoon Merit and I took those who would be staying on a tour of Urnedi’s surrounds, and by the end of it they had all picked the place where they would build their homes, workshops, stores, and warehouses. Merit was most pleased by the result. Most of the plots from both his phase one and phase two plans for Urnedi needed to be used, and the neighborhoods he had envisioned were kept whole. The large market that was the centerpiece of his phase two plan took on the name Merit Square.

  It was roundly agreed that several large warehouses should go up first so all of their tools and wares could be gotten out of the weather. We also agreed that every man would do nothing but build until every structure was completed—the order of building thereby rendered irrelevant. A few were unhappy they would not be able to move into their finished homes until all of the structures were finished, but they were in the minority.

  That same day, Gern’s cousin impressed us all when he delivered nineteen massive yellowtails for the evening meal. Barok was credited with the timing of his endeavor, and I could not speak against it. Good fortune favors the prepared.

  The days that followed were more of the same. The mason’s new well proved clean and deep, all nine warehouses were raised in a third as many days, and the hours between work and sleep were spent planning how to satisfy the needs of so many burgeoning enterprises. My cellar became the center of the hive. Men with coins and ideas arrived every evening, and the bookkeepers Selt finally returned to me were doing everything they could just to keep track of it all.

  I had never been so busy or distracted. Each good work done reminded me of what was missing—reminded me of Darmia. The rider Haton had sent to find her family’s farm in Abodeen would not bring word of her for at least ten more days. Pondering what might have happened to her was maddening. I attacked the work instead.

  When the dockwrights returned with their recommendation for a harbor the next day, I read it happily, but the event pounded forward the most obvious of Urnedi’s problems. Barok had still not shown himself to the town. The wrights’ proposal would spend a great deal of his gold, and that needed his stamp. Other items waited similarly, but it was the promise of a harbor that had brought so many to Enhedu. Its construction could not be delayed, and I would not make his mark for him this time.

  I brought Gern with me and found the prince in his room hunched over his manual of sword. I knew his affliction immediately.

  “Hmm? What?” he said when I greeted him. “No, thank you.”

  I stepped closer.

  He looked up and asked, “Has Dia returned?”

  I ignored his question. “You cannot keep reliving the fight. You have been four days at it already.”

  “What? Hmm, yes. I am getting close, but so much of it is not here.”

  “A sword never moves quite like it does when it needs to.”

  “Not like that. The fight I made against the Hessier was not my own.”

  “The ghosts’?”

  “Perhaps. I think one of them may have possessed me for a time, but I cannot get hold of the memory. The fight I made relied on none of what I know. I think, I think I used my left hand. Cowards fight with the left.”

  “Is that what is troubling you?”

  “No. I would welcome it if it advanced my skill, but I cannot make my memory match the wounds I inflicted. I cannot dream of my body moving how it must have. It was almost as if I did not attack, but instead invited theirs—a fool’s defense, a paradox of defense. It is very troubling.”

  “Can I suggest an alternative?”

  “Please. You know of another study of sword?”

  I handed him the dockwright’s proposal.

  “This is not what I had in mind.”

  I folded my arms. “If you do not get out of that chair, I will name the dockwrights your tutors and have Gern pull you from this room by your hair.”

  “Get out,” he sneered.

  Gern said back, “Twice is once too many times for us to have this conversation. What would Kyoden say about your lingering?”

  He shot us the black ice of a Yentif glare, but it melted almost instantly. He gripped his knees for a very long moment, and then looked around as if confused.

  “Where did you say Dia was?”

  “I didn’t. She has gone north with Fana and Thell on a tour of the villages.”

  “Gone? For how long? Why?”

  “I am not clear on the reason.”

  Gern answered, “The villagers needed to better record their land. Too few know how to write. It was my idea.”

  “Hmm, yes. Rot.” Barok slapped his thighs sharply. Then he stared darkly at his hands for a long moment before he stood from his chair and accepted the offered page.

  His posture straightened as he read, and he asked urgently, “Where are the dockwrights now?”

  “At the bay. They are expecting us.”

  64

  Arilas Barok Yentif

  Leger led us west down the straight road. My bodyguards followed.

  “When is Dia due to return?” I asked Gern.

  “I am not sure,” he replied. “Their tour will take them to every village. Another twenty days would not surprise me.”

  “She should have said.” I looked at my hands again. Had I hurt Dia? I wrapped my hand around my forearm and squeezed. The flesh screamed with such startling pain, and I worried for a moment that I had broken a bone.

  “My lord, are you hurt?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  Will Dia be coming back at all?

  I had hurt her. Why else wouldn’t she say goodbye? I could not even think who to ask. The Dame maybe? Did Dia have a close friend in town? There was the one girl, the clothier, but I had not seen them together in a long time, so it seemed they must have had a falling out.

  “Any word of your girl?” I asked Leger, hoping somehow she was in Urnedi and would be as aware of Dia as Leger was of the Chaukai.

  “None yet,” was the extent of his somber reply. I let the topic be and increased our pace.

  The stone road turned north along cliffs where Fells pulled up yellowtail and descended smoothly to a sandy beach at the southwest corner of the long bay. The tall wall of jagged gray stone that sheltered the bay hid the ocean from view. We found the dockwrights gathered around an organized camp they had built in the trees crowded around the beach. They grinned like they had all just won a bet. I had read the reason in their proposal, but saw it for myself. The wrights had already marked with wooden pegs and rope along the beach the various buildings of their proposal. The simple log raft they had used to make their sounding map was pulled up on shore. The tide was out, and the black tops of ancient dock pilings poked above the placid water.

  “A working harbor by next summer?” I greeted.

  “Well, my lord, we keep hearing about Enhedu’s mild winters but have not accounted for it.”

  “And if it is a warm one?”

  “If we can have access to the proposed number of capable laborers, you can invite ships to this shore for the first day of spring.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  The senior man led me north along the beach. “The old pilings go out a great distance farther than the length of dock we have proposed, and there is a second set of them a hundred paces farther up the beach. Do we know who might have built them?”

  I ignored his question, asking instead, “How many galleys could dock on the pair?”

  “With a good harbormaster and a wide enough face for traffic, I would say well over 300 merchant ships, my lord. That kind of construction would take many years, though.”

  A thunderous sound erupted behind me. I spun to see the splash and spray of a monstrous wave that had crashed upon the southern end of the arm of rock that sheltered the bay.

  “Every forty-eighth is a monster,” one of them informed. “A very peculiar rhythm. The island is the culprit.”

  On their map a thin island outside the bay was labeled “sandbar.” I cer
tainly had a great deal to learn about the sea. Kyoden would be ashamed. I tried to find his memories of it all, but only managed to summon the smell of salt, wet rope, and oil. The ghosts were as tired as I was.

  The morning waned as the dockwrights explained the proper layout of buildings, avenues of traffic, the weaknesses of building on sand, and methods for conquering them. They led me on a long hike around the north side of the bay and up onto the high ridge that stabbed south around the mouth of the bay. The trail up was hazardous, but we managed to climb up onto a smooth and rocky knoll—the very picture of a lookout point. The dockwrights had already driven a thick flagstaff into the rock that would signal passing ships. We could see south along the rocky arm of the bay and down the sharp edge of the cliffs where Gern’s cousin pulled up thrashing amberjacks, and to the north was a long and rocky shoreline and the crinkled folds of thick forest that slowly evened onto the grasslands and fields of Enhedu’s largest village. To the west, the sea reached out as though it had no end.

  A gust of wind snapped through my hair, and like a rushing spear, its cool taste stabbed deep into my heart. Kyoden and his kin crowded suddenly and vividly into my head. But they were calm. Gone was their rage and longing, their sorrow and despair. They saw the ocean and rejoiced. I was drowned in the sense of peace the view brought them.

  “I am sorry I did not come here sooner,” I said.

  ‘This is where our bones belong,’ the seaman king wept while I learned a hundred lives of mastery over the sea. The breadth of their visions did not exhaust me as they had before. Each memory of ship an sea poured in like a drink of cool water after a hearty meal. The ghosts were soothed, and a resounding confidence stiffed my bones.

  I turned to Leger. We said to him, “Put my mark upon their proposal. Assemble the laborers the dockwrights need and deliver them at dawn. Spare no expense and suffer no delays. I will ride out each morning after and will expect to hear what three things are most likely to delay us and how we are guarded against each.

  “Impress me with your progress, harbormaster.”

  The man and his fellows bowed, and the crisp declinations were made of none but utter confidence. I recognized, Kyoden recognized, the large satchel the senior man bore. It was a flagman’s bag.

  “Do you have yellow over white?” we asked him, pointing at the flagstaff.

  “Yes, lord—I am impressed. You know of such things?”

  “I do. Will you be marking the old pilings so ships won’t accidentally run onto them when the tide is in?”

  The man looked to his fellows with a bit of happy humor. “It is one of the first things we intend. The tides here are even harder to predict than upon the shores of the Bergion Sea.”

  “Very well. Raise the flag then, sir,” we answered and watched him raise the large, long triangular flag that declared simply: safe harbor. It was the neighborly thing to do, letting what few ships that made their way around my peninsula know they could seek shelter in our harbor, but just as potent was its advertisement of our intention. No ship that passed would miss the bright marker. With luck, every merchant within range would know we were here by spring.

  Kyoden and his kin were saddened when I turned for home, but the promise of many returns was enough for them to leave me in peace.

  The watch must have spotted our approach because Selt was waiting in the hall with the pages that needed my attention laid out in neat piles upon the wide, oak tables.

  I could not have been more pleased, and I got straight to it.

  I expected the stacks to contain the usual benign requests. They contained none of those. Each thin sheet of vellum was a vital document. The first stack contained all of the pledges, appointments, and authorizations my signature would make official. Leger, Sahin, and Erom had signed the covering recommendation, so I read only one in ten and rejected none.

  The second stack was from those who wanted to spend, buy, or trade. Most were from the master craftsmen who hoped to purchase large quantities of Enhedu’s resources, or additional plots of land to start additional businesses—derivatives of their professions that could be better supported by what was found in Enhedu. The fourth-generation rug weaver wanted to make sacks and baskets out of wheat shafts and willow shoots. Haton’s cadre of wine merchants wanted to brew beer from my barley until they could secure a new supply of wine from the vineyards in the east. Sevat’s silversmith claimed he could also work copper—something Enhedu had far more of than silver. The man who specialized in making sheepskin vellum and the trio of glassmakers who worked for the chandeleur wanted to produce quicklime and slacked lime that would serve as mortar for the mason, curing agent for the tanners, bleach for the clothiers, fertilizer for the farmers, and purifier for the dye makers.

  The pages from the locals were pointed toward simpler, more utilitarian enterprises: flax sacks to hold the autumn’s crop of wheat, wooden eating bowls and utensils, fish oil for our lamps, and soap enough to keep us clean.

  Satisfying Urnedi’s needs seemed to have become something of a sport.

  Leger, I must mention, had snuck a page of his own into the stack. Urnedi needed inns, he argued. The men who visited our shores would need a place to sleep and quiet spaces to have conversations with my craftsmen. I could not agree more with his argument or his plans—one in Urnedi, one in Ojesti, and one at the harbor, each taking up massive plots of land adjacent to Haton’s taverns, complete with a stable, kitchen, large common spaces, and even a courier’s office. The land I gave him for the projects, put together with the portions he owned of all my larger enterprises—wheat, horses, honey, pigs, timber, and stone—made him by far the largest landowner in my province. But that was only fitting.

  I thanked Selt and Leger when I was finished, and the Dame arrived with a meal I did not make the mistake of refusing.

  I made my way up but did not like the empty apartment I found. The bed was cold. I spotted the vase upon the mantel and crossed to retrieve the bracelet hidden inside. My father be damned. I would give it to Dia as soon as she returned.

  Sleep came quickly. I dreamt of strong ships cutting across an endless sea.

  65

  Matron Dia Esar

  Aunt Burti

  “I’m so nervous,” Fana whispered as we rode toward Hippoli, the sixth stop on our tour in the quiet morning of our third day away from Urnedi. The tiny village was tucked between two hills astride a meandering stream. Our ride in crossed a wide field of full-grown wheat edged with more of the tall, thick trees. The place was beautiful. It was also Fana’s and Gern’s hometown.

  “When was the last time you were here?” I asked.

  “We visited once last summer for my cousin’s wedding, but other than that, not since I was nine.”

  “You have grown up a lot since then,” Thell smiled.

  “Tell Aunt Burti that,” she blushed. “She still thinks I’m four years old.”

  I did not need to guess who Burti was from the crowd that emerged to greet us.

  “There she is,” the paunchy woman cooed, and as Fana dismounted she wrapped the girl in an enormous hug. “How long are you staying?”

  “Not even through the morning, unfortunately,” I said so Fana could get a breath. “We have another village to get to today.”

  It was the horses that distracted her, though. “My, they are big.”

  Clever and the pair of Hessier Akal-Tak were ever the stars of our little show, and as we led them into Hippoli, everyone followed.

  “Thell, how about you show the lads here how to mix feed for a hot blood while we set up? Here perhaps?” I pointed to a wide, simple structure, a tavern it seemed, with two tables and chairs set under a narrow awning.

  Fana had escaped her aunt while she gawked at the horses and then at my dress. The quick-footed scribe made good her getaway behind the tables. I took the one on the left, and we had ink stones, books, and brushes out and ready before Burti had a chance to sit down opposite her niece.

  “You
first?” I asked her as she was beginning to look a bit ruffled at our haste.

  “Wonderful,” she smiled. “A census ... it is so exciting. I have so many stories to tell about our family.”

  Fana had already started brushing Burti’s name into the book but stopped when she got to the column for birthday. She looked up at me, terrified.

  I turned to her aunt and smiled. “No time for stories, Burti, though I would love to hear them. We have only a few questions.”

  I casually exchanged my ledger for Fana’s while her aunt fussed with her skirt.

  “Your birthday, dear?” I asked.

  “Fana,” she complained suddenly, “this census doesn’t sound very fun at all. What other secrets are you going to demand of an old woman?”

  “Auntie, it’s not like that at all. A census is a big story. We record everyone’s parents and where and when they were born. When you put it all together, it can tell the whole history of the village.”

  “Oh, yes. My, what fun that would be to see. Important, is it?”

  “Very,” Fana said soberly. “And we need your help getting everyone organized.”

  “Oh, how can I help, darling?” she asked approvingly.

  “Is everyone here?”

  “Almost. A couple of the farmers thought the idea was silly when Thell’s man brought word of your trip. They decided to stay home.”