by Kage Baker
He was listening to Lord Ermenwyr talk, smoothly, persuasively, and what a silky manner the lordling could summon when he wanted to!
“…assassins, without a doubt hired by my father’s enemies. Professionals, artfully disguised. Why, you hadn’t any idea they weren’t simple traders, had you?”
The Housekeeper was moaning apologies.
Smith opened his eyes and looked up at the Yendri doctor, who was stitching up Smith’s scalp. At least, that was what he looked as though he were doing. Smith could neither feel the jab of the needle nor any other sensation. He tried to speak and discovered that he was limited to fluttering his eyelids. The Yendri noticed his panic.
“You can’t move because the darts in your arm were poisoned. We got them out, and I gave you an antidote. The paralysis will go away, in time. You’re a fortunate man,” he said, and resumed his task.
“A very fortunate man,” agreed Balnshik, looming at the doctor’s elbow. “Do hurry and recover, Caravan Master. I’m going to thank you personally for your act of heroism.” She caressed him in a way that suggested something very nice indeed, and Smith’s heartbeat quickened.
“What, is he conscious?” Lord Ermenwyr leaned over him from the other side. “Bravo, Caravan Master! Yes, you certainly don’t want to die before you’ve been personally thanked. Nursie’s quite talented. Have you ever heard of the Dance of Two Feathers and One Piece of String?”
Balnshik smiled gently and, placing her open palm on the lordling’s face, shoved him backward. The doctor looked horrified. She leaned low into Smith’s line of sight, and he almost felt the weight of her breasts.
“You have the gratitude of his lord father,” she crooned, and kissed Smith. Of all times to be paralyzed, he thought. That was all he knew for a while.
“The boys have sworn up and down you’ve been our caravan master for years and that you’ve never even been near Karkateen, so all that rubbish about a charge of theft has been dropped,” Mrs. Smith told him, exhaling smoke.
“What about Flowering Reed?” Smith asked, speaking with difficulty.
“Not a trace of him,” she replied in disgust. “Slithered out into the night like a snake and must have gone over the wall like a shadow. Bloody backstabbing greenie. No way to tell if it was him set those assassins on you, as they’re all dead, but it seems likely. You’ve made some enemies in your day, haven’t you, dear?”
“They were all members of the Throatcutters, did you know?” Burnbright said. “I saw their tattoos. They cost an awful lot to hire. That’s why I can’t think they were after you, see; they must have been after whatever Parradan Smith had in his case!”
“Were the carts broken into?”
Mrs. Smith shook her head. “The boys had a good look. Everything’s secure. Nobody else hurt but you, and at least you were spared the Mixed Grill and creamed woodpeas.”
“So, you see? Everything turned out all right,” Burnbright concluded cheerfully. “The Yendri says you’ll be on your feet again in another day or two, and we can push on. And think how much more room there’ll be in the carts, now we’re down two passengers!”
However, a solitary traveler came forward on the day Smith was well enough to leave and bought a passage to Salesh-by-the-Sea. His name was given as Mr. Amook, his occupation was given as Mercenary, his race was indeterminate, and he gave no address. He was very large and said very little. He took a seat in the cart just forward of Lord Ermenwyr’s baggage cart and slouched there with his arms folded, and the screaming of the Smiths’ baby didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
Smith staggered out to the cart leaning on the Yendri doctor, who helped him up to a sort of couch the keymen had made out of the flour bags from Old Troon Mills.
“You must continue to take the infusion each night until the new moon,” the doctor told him. “Your cook has the mixture; she promised me she’d make it up for you. When you reach Salesh, go to the hot baths in Anchor Street and ask for Levendyloy Alder. Tell him you need a detoxification, the full treatment. You should feel much better afterward.”
“What’ll it cost me?” Smith asked crossly, trying to find a comfortable position. He had just settled accounts with the Housekeeper, and was very glad his cousin had a business expense letter of mark.
“You can pay for it with this,” the doctor replied, pressing something into his hand. Smith squinted down at it. It was a pendant of some kind, a clay disk on a woven cord. He slipped it about his neck.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Be careful, Smith,” said the doctor.
“I will be,” Smith assured him. “Flowering Reed’s still out there somewhere. You know, for all your people’s talk about how much nicer you are than us, I always thought you were probably right. It’s a real disappointment to find out you’ve got hypocrites just the same as we do. Or does your religion permit murder?”
The doctor made a wry face. “Hm. Not my religion, Caravan Master.”
“How’s a man like Flowering Reed become a killer, then?”
After a long silence the doctor answered sadly, “Who knows what is in his heart? But love can leave more death in its track than the most ardent hatred.”
Smith nodded. He had learned that lesson elsewhere, long since.
“Go in peace, Caravan Master,” said the doctor, and touched Smith’s forehead briefly in blessing.
The carts jolted forward as the keymen hauled them into the ruts. The watchmen worked the gate capstans. There was a last-minute boarding scramble. Burnbright trumpeted their departure from the Red House. They rolled away into the forest of bright leaves and left that place of smoke and death behind them.
It was rough going, uphill and down, and the keymen pedaled until their bulging calves seemed ready to burst outright. The red stone road was uneven here and there too, or buckled and cracked from the roots of trees, imperfectly patched with cement. Sometimes it crossed the faces of high hills, hairpinning and skirting breathtaking drops into gorges far below; sometimes it ran through the bottoms of valleys, following watercourses, and cool air flowed with them as they shuttled along through willows going bronze in the frosts.
The black mountain loomed still above the red leaves. Smith, watching it from his elevated position mile after mile, had the eerie feeling that it was watching him in return.
Sometimes he thought he could make out structures at its peak, when no slate clouds obscured it: black walls and battlements, sharp obsidian spires, megalithic giants scowling blind in the sunlight. Sometimes he could see nothing but tumbled stone, a high field of basalt and fallen stars above the tree line.
But no one descended howling from that vast height, and when they made camp at night a profound stillness ringed them in. Even the Smiths’ baby seemed subdued. Smith took to sleeping by day as much as he could, to watch the shadows beyond the trees after dark. Only once, one night, was there a distant scream that cut off abruptly. It might have been an animal. There was no sign of anything untoward having happened when they broke camp next morning.
Mr. Amook neither said nor did anything suspicious, but rode in stolid silence. He had no tattoos that Burnbright could spot, no matter how much she lingered near the watering huts. She was half-mad with curiosity about him.
The day came when the road began to slope downward again, a little obscured by drifts of leaves, and there was undeniably more light and air getting through the ancient branches. Not only that, the black mountain began to diminish behind them. They could glimpse the smoke of distant cities below on the plain, and far off a level horizon so perfect, it could be none but the sea itself.
Smith was roused from his jolting nap by Burnbright signaling with her trumpet. He leaned up on his elbow to peer along the road, and sought in his memory for the signal codes. As she trumpeted again he identified the message: another caravan sighted. In the next few seconds he sighted it too, racing along the floor of the valley into which they were just descending.
It was immen
se, fully sixty carts long, coming on with speed and power. The runner pacing before it was a sleek muscular goddess, the steel hats of the keymen (and there were dozens of keymen) were polished, the carts were freshly painted with a flying dragon logo and loaded with cargo of every kind. Even the passengers looked prosperous, gazing out from blank dust-goggled eyes with cool indifference.
They came charging smoothly up the hill toward Smith’s caravan seemingly without the least effort! And there was their caravan master, sitting tall in the foremost cart, arms folded on the front of his long duster. No pistolbows for him; a long-range bow was displayed in its own rack on the side of his high seat, and a quiver just visible over his shoulder showed the red feathers of professional-quality hunting arrows. Smith gaped, and the caravan master acknowledged him with a majestic bow of the head as they came up on him and sped by.
The Smith children shrieked with excitement and waved. Even Mr. Amook turned his head to watch. Nobody could take their eyes off the grand spectacle, it seemed; and so everybody saw the last cart hurtling toward them with its outsize load, construction beams bound athwart the cart, protruding outward over its side just far enough to catch the protruding cargo net full of violet eggs on their last cart.
“Hey—” said Smith, watching in horror over his shoulder, and then it happened.
With a sound like a bowstring snapping the net was yanked away, the cart was jerked completely out of its ruts and came down at an angle so it toppled over, dragged along on its side after the rest of the caravan flaring sparks, and the eggs it had held went spilling, bouncing, tumbling out and down the embankment.
“STOP!” howled Smith, but the keymen had already seen and were manfully braking. The other caravan, meanwhile, had cleared the top of the hill and gone racing on all unmindful. The cargo net fluttered after it like a handkerchief waving good-bye.
As soon as the carts had ground to a halt, Smith slid down from his couch and staggered, groaning as he saw the extent of the damage. Lady Seven Butterflies’s holistic containers were bobbing end over end down the hill into the bushes. The cart lay on its side, still disgorging eggs at a slow trickle. Under its wheels one egg had smashed, and lay flattened on the road. Smith hobbled over and picked it up. Fragments of bright glass sifted out, bits of iridescent wing fragile as a dry leaf, colored like a rainbow.
Smith said something unprintable. He slumped against the cart and stared at the wreckage.
Crucible and the other keymen leaped from their seats and came running back to inspect the cart, hauling it upright.
“Watch out for the eggs, you lot!” shouted Mrs. Smith, making her way along the line. “Oh, no, did they break? Bloody hell.”
“That’s it,” muttered Smith. “We broke goods in transit. My cousin will lose Seven Butterflies Studios as a client. Two passengers gone and a client lost! So much for this job.”
“Now, now, young Smith, this sort of thing happens all the time,” Mrs. Smith told him, but there was a certain awe in her face as she looked around at the devastation. She took out a small flask, uncapped it, helped herself to a good shot of its contents, and passed it to Smith. “Drink up, dear. Despicable Flying Dragon Lines! I saw the way they had those beams loaded. Rampant heedlessness.”
“Don’t hang yourself yet, Caravan Master,” Lord Ermenwyr told him, approaching in a cloud of purple weedsmoke.
“You’ll find yourself another job in no time.”
“Thanks,” said Smith numbly, taking a drink from the flask. The liquor burned his throat pleasantly, with a faint perfume of honey and herbs.
“Let’s just get this mess collected, shall we?” said Lord Ermenwyr, peeling off his tailcoat. He draped it over the next-to-last cart and started down the embankment, then turned to look balefully up at the passenger carts. “You! Horrible little children. Get off your infant bottoms and be of some use. We’ve got to find all of these eggs for the poor caravan master!”
With yells of glee, the three older Smith children jumped from the cart and ran obediently down the embankment to him. Burnbright came running back to help them. They set about hunting through the bushes for the remaining violet eggs, most of which had stopped rolling around by then.
“The wheel assembly’s undamaged, sir,” Crucible reported. “Both axles sound, but the hitch is wrecked.” He held up a hook-and-rod twisted like a stick of Salesh Sweetvine. “We’ve got spares, of course. We’ll just replace it, sir, shall we?”
“Go ahead,” said Smith. He had another gulp from Mrs. Smith’s flask, watching the children following Lord Ermenwyr about like puppies. He had stripped off his shirt, and they were putting all the eggs they found in it. “This is good stuff. What is it?”
“It’s a cordial from the Abbey at Kemeldion,” Mrs. Smith informed him. “The Father Abbot’s own private receipt. We invented it together, he and I, when we were a good deal younger and less spiritually inclined than we are now.” She groped in her pocket for her smoking tube and lit it. “Lovely man. Always sends me a barrel at the holidays. Nothing like it for a restorative when one travels, I find.”
“Think it’ll stick glass butterflies back together?” Smith wondered. “Maybe if we pray a lot?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to pray. Don’t worry, Caravan Master.” Mrs. Smith kissed his cheek. She smelled of amberleaf, and food, and good drink. It was a comforting kind of smell. “Whatever happens, I’ll fix you a dish of fried eel when we get to Salesh. You’ve certainly earned it.”
“My cousin won’t think so,” said Smith morosely, and had another drink as Lord Ermenwyr clambered up the bank toward them, accompanied by the Smith children with their arms full of violet eggs. He carried a great number of eggs in his shirt. His bare skin was pale and fine as a girl’s, though he was otherwise quite sinewy and masculine.
“You know, Caravan Master, I don’t believe this is quite as bad as we thought at first,” he said. “None of these seem to be broken at all.”
“So maybe only that one smashed?” Smith felt his mood lifting, or perhaps it was the cordial.
“I saw a man get his foot crushed in a wheel rut in Mount Flame City once, and there was just nothing left of it even to be amputated,” said Burnbright encouragingly. “No wonder that one egg broke! I’ll bet the rest are fine, though.”
“Perhaps it’s Lady Seven Butterflies’s ballocky holistic packing method saving the day yet again,” said Mrs. Smith.
Lord Ermenwyr threw his head back and laughed, in the fox-yipping way he had. Smith felt Mrs. Smith stiffen beside him and catch her breath. He looked at her, but she had turned her head to stare intently at the young man as he emptied his shirtful of eggs into the righted cart. When he had added Burnbright’s and the Smith children’s contributions, they started back down the embankment again for more, and Smith leaned over and murmured, “What’s the matter?”
“Remarkable thing,” Mrs. Smith said, more to herself than to him. She followed Lord Ermenwyr with her eyes as he waded through the bushes, barking orders to the children. “May not be important. I’ll tell you later.”
To Smith’s immense relief, it turned out that only the egg that had been ground beneath the wheels had broken. The remaining violet eggs, all 143 of them gathered from the embankment, proved to be whole without so much as a crack. The cart was repaired, a spare cargo net tied down over the surviving eggs, and they were on their way again.
That night at the camp, after the passengers had retired and the fire was beginning to think about settling down to coals, Smith edged over to Mrs. Smith. She sat regarding the autumn stars in silence, sipping a drink. She had been uncharacteristically silent all that evening.
“What did you see today?” Smith inquired in a low voice.
She glanced aside at him. “It had been nagging at me the whole journey, to be perfectly truthful,” she told him. “Something about that big strapping wench. Something about that dreadful young man. Rather amazing sense of déjà vu, though I could not, simply cou
ld not place what was so familiar. This afternoon it all came back to me.”
“What came back to you?”
Before she replied she fished out her smoking tube and packed it expertly, one-handed, and lit it. Exhaling smoke, she said, “It must have been fifteen years ago. I was working for the Golden Chain Line then; they ran the Triangle Route, from Salesh to Port Blackrock to Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees and back to Salesh. So just skirting the Greenlands, you see? Close enough to have that mountain glowering down at us half the trip.
“We took on new passengers in Konen Feyy. A family. Just like the Smiths over there, in a way. Father and mother and a handful of little children, one of them a babe in arms. Bound for Salesh-by-the-Sea, too. But they were quite wealthy, these people. A whole retinue of nurses and servants and bodyguards they had with them. Dozens of trunks! And a private pavilion that was quite outrageously grand.
“They called themselves Silverpoint. He was a big bearded blackavised man, didn’t speak much, but you should have seen his servants leap to his least word. And she was—well, she was simply the most beautiful woman anyone in the rest of the caravan had ever seen. She wore a veil, but even so, half the men in the party fell in love with her. Even with a little screaming child on her shoulder the whole way.”
“Their baby cried too?”
“Incessantly,” Mrs. Smith said, with a grim look across the fire. “Half the night, every night. Until he stopped breathing altogether.”
“He died?”
“Nearly. Four or five times, in the course of the journey. I don’t know what was the matter with the poor tiny wretch. Perhaps he simply wasn’t strong. Sickly, whey-faced little thing with limp curls, he was. Big wide eyes that looked at you as though he knew he wasn’t long for this world and was keenly aware of the injustice of it all.
“It was the fifth night out it happened. The child had some sort of fit, turned quite blue, and died. Not a breath in him. Their servants howled like mad things, drew their own knives and started hacking at themselves! The other children woke and started to cry, and their mother reached out a hand to them, but in a distracted sort of way because she was praying, quite calmly you’d think from the look on her face.