Lotus Blue

by Sparks,Cat

  They pushed their way towards the masts of her father’s ship, clearly visible above the milling throng. At last the path in front of them opened. The jetties and thick-timbered walkways were forbidden to everyone not officially there on ships’s business. The guard nodded gruffly and waved them through. Everyone, apparently, knew Allegra.

  Her face remained etched with frown. “Who are all those strangers on the deck of my father’s ship?” She glanced back the way they’d come, to the cluster of sturdy buildings on higher ground. Her own balcony, now far away, was impossible to make out amongst the many.

  “Something is wrong here. Hamid will know—if we can only find him. A proper captain, or at least he used to be. I can’t stand him, but at least he can tell his elbow from his—.”

  A fight was breaking out on the jam packed walkway behind them, around a red-faced man who was apparently incensed that the jetty guardsmen wouldn’t let him pass.

  Star grabbed her arm. “Allegra, perhaps we should wait. I’ve never seen a crowd as stirred as this one.”

  “They’re all crazy. Crazy as the tankers—listen—you can hear them sounding in the distance—or you would be able to if these drunks weren’t all screaming and shouting.”

  Exasperation was getting the better of Allegra. “Best get this sorted while we’re here. If the crowd turns to fighting the Razael might get damaged—and then I’d never hear the end of it.”

  She flicked the loose end of her sari across her shoulder, and strode towards the sleek and mighty vessel. Star followed, glad of the proliferation of jetty guards, each one easily identifiable by their turbans and grim expressions. How nice to be rich. To never have to worry where your next coin was coming from.

  Allegra stopped, then grabbed Star’s arm and squeezed. “Would you look at that!”

  Star looked. She saw nothing but the magnificent Razael, with its sleek black sides of glossy sheen. Castors to match, all smooth, unlike the stone-pocked wheels of Benhadeer’s wagon, a slur of black, brown and grey. A gangway led to the main deck. A steady procession of provisions were being loaded, boxes and barrels balanced across broad backs of the crew, all wearing matching uniforms of red and white.

  Allegra’s voice blared like a horn. “Hamid—the castors are greased! What the hell is going on? I am certain father knows nothing about it.”

  The man she was addressing lowered the rope he had been coiling. He didn’t smile.

  “I am talking to you.” She gestured angrily at the sweaty men loading barrels. “What is the meaning of this? Where is my father? He does not know of whatever you’re doing here. You have no authorisation—”

  The man called Hamid strode forward with great speed. The “rope” he’d been coiling turned out to be a whip. Hamid had a firm grip on its handle.

  Allegra was still shouting at him when the tip of the whip lashed out and coiled around her waist. Star jumped back reflexively. No time to think. Not even time to scream.

  Allegra kept on shouting, her words an unintelligible flood. When Star turned to the turbaned guards for help, she found them staring at her coldly, watching everything. Doing nothing.

  Allegra shrieked as Hamid tugged the whip, an action that sent her hurtling into his arms.

  The barrel loaders had stopped and set down their burdens to watch the action on the jetty below, amused expressions on their faces.

  There were knives in Star’s boots, but they were too small here. Good for cutting food, digging roots, and climbing walls, but against a man the size of Hamid, the blade would be a mere mosquito sting.

  Hamid had Allegra by the waist. He tucked her under his arm as though she were a sack of grain, then made for the gangway, all the while shouting at the loading crews to get back to their work.

  Up against a wall of well stacked crates leaned a clump of wooden sticks. Star grabbed one. Not sticks, it turned out, but boarding pikes with sharpened metal tips and hooks affixed.

  “Put her down!” she shouted at Hamid’s back. When he didn’t answer, she chased after him, swinging the pike with all the strength she had. It landed square across his back, the blow glancing off again harmlessly.

  He stopped and turned, Allegra wriggling and screaming, her arms pinned helplessly by her side.

  “Let her go!”

  Hamid looked like he was carved from stone. Star steadied her stance, trying to remember all Lucius had ever taught her. She took a deep breath and swung the pike. Hamid caught the end of it in his free hand, then effortlessly tugged it free from her own grip.

  “Run!” screamed Allegra. “Find my father!”

  Star ran.

  Hamid shouted after her—words she couldn’t hear. Two of the barrel porters dropped their burdens and gave chase. With a pounding heart, she swerved to dodge one of the turbaned guardsmen, heading towards a row of vendors’s shacks and booths.

  Star fought her way through a tangle of flimsy nets and screens, tripping over equipment and receptacles, and barking her shins on something hard and unseen. She limped onwards till she bumped up against a barrier of solid stone, far beyond the reach of lantern light, having lost her pursuers long ago. She felt around with splayed fingers until she got her bearings. It was the “sea” wall they’d been standing on before.

  Allegra’s spyglass—she still had it, digging hard against her thigh as she pressed against the chilly sandstone wall. No guard had come chasing close on her heels. Allegra was the one they wanted. Star and her pathetic attack were of no consequence.

  She edged along the wall until she found what she was looking for: a place where the bricks were weathered and uneven enough to provide footholds. Up she went, hand over foot, grazing her knuckles as she clambered to the top.

  She crouched, despite there being no one near, nor any lights to betray her position. She watched in horror as the Razael rolled forward on its castors, mainsail hoisted, hanging limp, still protected by the cove.

  She raised the glass and aimed it at the deck. Sailors scurried about their duties, apparently as surprised as she was that the ship was moving. No sign of Hamid or Allegra. No, there she was, a flash of bright red being smothered by a dark sand cloak. Allegra fought to shrug it off, her shrieks audible even at such a distance. A big man was brought to stand beside her, hands bound at the front. Mohandas, Allegra’s father—who else could he be with his triple pointed beard and purple robe, red faced and shouting loud until someone thrust a gag into his mouth.

  The ship inched slowly towards the Black, its giant castors glistening.

  There was another familiar figure, this one in a body-hugging suit of charcoal snakeskin whose face was obscured by a helmet. But Star knew who it was. He used both hands to lift the helmet off, and thick dark curls tumbled down his shoulders. Kian. The supposed merchant prince from the far off coast. Murderer, camel thief, and liar. And now a kidnapper, too. Had the Razael been what he was after all along?

  She knew she must return to Twelfth Man to tell the others about Allegra and the ship. Benhadeer, Lucius, Yeshie—anyone who would listen. And Nene—of course she must tell Nene, even though she wasn’t ready to confront her sister about all the things she’d said. The sister who was not her sister, apparently.

  Star jumped back down into the protection and anonymity of the crowd. Benhadeer would know what could be done—if anything.

  With the spyglass stowed in the depths of her pocket, Star edged her way along the base of the wall. Many had stopped to gawk when the Razael’s mainsail caught. As it filled, experienced sailors fought to keep its castors on the Black, and the ship aimed out to sea.

  The Black: a thick, flat tongue of charcoal ice. The Obsidian Sea, some called it, though it was neither obsidian nor ocean. Most tankerjacks agreed it had been a city once, a forest of high and mighty towers that had liquefied and sp
illed like milk in the Angel wars. It had hardened fast, they said, then scratch-polished by relentless angry winds. All kinds of craft headed off upon it to the trucking sands but barely a third came back in one piece, a fact that didn’t stop any of them from trying. One dead and successfully plundered tanker could see a crew set for years. It was more than enough incentive to drive them onwards, to convince them the reward was worth the risk.

  She eased her way into the crowd and was soon engulfed by it. Half of them were still captivated by the Razael’s slow progress, others aggravated by halting gawkers impeding the flow of foot traffic. She kept one eye out for turbaned guards, but nobody paid her the slightest attention.

  Each old stone wall looked like every other, and she soon became disoriented and lost. A great surge was pushing from the back of the crowd. Every man, woman, and child in Fallow Heel seemed to be trying to shove their way onto the docks.

  She jumped up on her toes, glanced in the general direction everyone was moving. Something large was blocking the way—a decrepit heap of wood and rust she’d noted earlier that was, in fact a vessel. To have called it a ship would have been an outright lie. Its hull was hammered from mismatched scraps. Dockhands scurried around its tires like cockroaches effecting last minute repairs.

  The little she knew about sand sailing was just enough to convince her the contraption would be blown apart before it reached the one mile marker. Yet a crowd of anxious folk gathered as close to its deck and castors as the deckhands would permit. There was no way through. She would have to skirt her way around.

  The red flash of Allegra’s sari was no longer visible upon the deck of the Razael. Allegra was gone and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing but find her way back to her own people. Hopefully Nene had recovered from their journey. She’d know what to do. She always did.

  Star had pushed halfway through the throng when she spotted a familiar face.

  “Lucius!”

  The sight of a friend amongst so many strangers flooded her with relief. It was him, he’d seen her face and now he was calling out her name.

  The decrepit vessel appeared to be preparing to cast off. Its captain was an enormous man, easily twice the size of his fellow crewmates, swathed from head to toe in a sand cloak, as if like her, he’d just walked out of the Red.

  Some kind of altercation was taking place on deck. The crowd surged and Lucius vanished. Star stood upon her tiptoes, raised her arm above her head, and waved. “Lucius!”

  The press of backs and shoulders shoved her closer to the Black and the decrepit ship and the enormous man who had stopped whatever he was doing and was staring at her strangely, as if he knew her or she meant something to him. He was a stranger, though—she’d remember if she’d ever seen a man like him before.

  “Lucius!”

  Still no sign of him. He had been right there. She knew she could not have been mistaken.

  She called again, but it was hard to take her eyes off the big man on deck. He raised his left forearm and touched it with his right hand, eyes still boring into her. A searing pain shot through the flesh and bones of Star’s left arm. Pain like nothing else. Unbelievable. Indescribable. She shrieked in agony, the breath punched out of her lungs, and fell to the filthy dirt-stomped ground, convulsing. The crowd surrounding her recoiled. She tried one last time to call for Lucius, before the pain swelled up and she blacked out.

  = Twenty-five =

  Quarrel might have bought himself a crew with Nisn temple gold, but they’d made it clear they didn’t intend to trust him. Sharp eyed tankerjacks they were, dressed for the ravages of sand and sun, their torsos slung with packs and bandoliers, oil flasks and weapons, some obvious, most hidden. They kept at least one eye on him at all times as they readied the ship for cast off, as if they expected him to lash out suddenly and do something violent and unpredictable. Which Quarrel had already done, of course.

  The ship. Now there was a joke and a half. He could think of no words for the pathetic assemblage to which this easily bribed crew were entrusting their lives. He might have invested a bit more thought into his choice of craft if his mesh hadn’t been pinging incessantly.

  He glanced at the docks’ lone standing Sentinel tower. The faint resonance of buzz still lingered in his blood. He should not have given in to temptation back there at the Vulture. Addiction raged like a furnace amongst his kind. But a taste was a taste, better than nothing. Better to have loved and lost as that old prayer went.

  Loved and lost and there it was, her face again, shimmering incomplete in memory. Manthy—that had been her name, or something like it—he could never see her clearly through the mist. Mists of memory, mists of time, like plumes from the filthy weed these dockyard people smoked.

  He dragged his eyes from the dull grey metal and cast them across the crowd, scanning for pistols, rifles, evidence of firepower. Not much here to get anxious about. These people were primitives, their weapons old, their technology diluted. Brute strength was the currency of this place. Brute strength and bare-faced greed.

  The hammering of last-minute repairs was coming to a standstill, and the last of the sacks and barrels were rolled onboard and lashed down tight. The wind had risen enough to make unfurling sails worthwhile.

  This lousy ship would have to do. It would get him where Nisn needed him to go—or close enough. The crew was expendable, but their greed ensured a crude form of loyalty.

  He cast his eye across the crowded jetties, knowing instinctively that he was never coming back, that Nisn would reveal the true purpose of his mission when the ship had past the five mile marker, and not before. But somehow he knew it would not involve returning here.

  He was startled to see a face he recognised. A pale-skinned girl standing out from the crowd. The girl from the juice-drained Sentinel beside the Vulture—the one with the mesh bar in her arm. She looked frightened. Desperate. On the run, the dockside crowd slowing her in its crush.

  No Templar worth his salt and spit believed in coincidence. The girl was a sign, a message, or a warning—perhaps all three, it was better not to take any chances. A couple of red-turbaned men appeared, hot on her tail—perhaps she was their property, escaped. He’d paid enough for the ship already, and had no wish to pay out more for something—even a portent—that wasn’t his problem.

  He made his decision in a fraction of a second, the way he made them all. His head was clear but it wouldn’t last. Some days the memories came so loud and fierce, they drowned out all attempts at rational thought. What Quarrel needed, amongst other things, was backup. A contingency plan. Because he was old and unreliable, because the shunts and partitions constructed in his mind were starting to fail. He should have nabbed that girl back at the Sentinel, only he’d been off his face. Now she was on her own, and apparently on the run.

  He looked to the one he had designated as first mate, gave the signal.

  “Stand by for let go!”

  The bell clanged its castoff warning. Quarrel placed his hand upon his mesh, risking his action being noticed by the crew. But in a couple more minutes, the ship would leave this stinking port behind anyways, hurtling across the Black where nobody could stop him.

  He tapped in the initiation sequence, hoping he was in close enough proximity. The range of his mesh was untested for this kind of manoeuvre. Theoretically six metres was the limit, but so much could go wrong when heat and sand and dust were factored—

  The girl on the jetty let out an eardrum-shattering scream, doubled over, and disappeared beneath the tide of shifting bodies lingering around the docks. He moved quickly, wasting no time, running down the boarding plank, pushing roughly through the mass of them, punching and kicking strangers out of his way. He bent over, picked her up, and carried her back to the ship in his arms before most of the crew even noticed anything was happening.

&nb
sp; The girl was speechless, the whites of her eyes rolled back in her head. So very young, just a slip of a thing compared to his own aching centuries.

  “All gone and clear,” the first mate shouted.

  One of his crew—the tall dark woman—cast aside the rope she’d been coiling, and stepped forward, opening her mouth to speak. She didn’t get the opportunity. As the last bell sounded and the boarding plank was withdrawn, a man scooted up it, nimble as a goat, forced to jump the last few steps. A dark-skinned man patterned with ink, he faced Quarrel, tanker lance raised and ready to strike.

  “Give me that girl and I’ll let you live,” he said through ragged breath.

  Quarrel let the girl slide to the ground, simultaneously deflecting the lance blow with his arm, then tugging it free of the attacker’s grasp in a lightning motion. The tall dark woman ran forward to catch the girl before her quivering body got trampled underfoot.

  “What have you done to her?” said the tattooed man, in shock that his lance had been snatched from him with such ease.

  “Nothing of consequence.”

  “Hand her over and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Leave my ship now, alone, or I will kill you.” Quarrel raised his voice so the first mate and the rest of the crew could hear him address them. “Why are we not upon the open Black already? Those tankers and Angels will not harvest themselves.”

  Some of the crew were preparing to set the sails, their backs turned to the altercation upon the deck, more concerned with the proximity of small, competing vessels who would soon be heading in the same direction. Others had stopped to gawk and mutter. They averted their eyes and got back to work at the mention of tanker and Angel bounty.