by Jordan Reece
“I saw . . .” Elario gasped. He was holding his pistol. So overpowering was his panic at the dervesh that he had no memory of pulling it free of his clothing. “It was a der-”
Nostrils flaring in agitation, Westen hissed, “You are going to see them here and there in the golden ring, and you cannot shriek like a madman and wave around your pistol when you do! They cannot hurt you in that form unless the bearer of the spelled object turns it upon you, which there is no reason to do.” Westen let go of Elario’s arm with a little shake of warning.
“I have just come from a haunted city in which I saw them slaughtering people,” Elario argued. “You cannot expect me to-”
“I can expect and I will expect,” Westen said forbiddingly as Hobbe guarded the mouth of the alley. “Nobody sees them but you. Nobody! They see a man acting like a lunatic upon the road. Unless you would like to spend time locked in an asylum or a jail, or given to the hands of soldiers, put that pistol away and hold your tongue!”
Acquiescing with a tight nod, Elario stuffed the pistol out of sight. “What kind of dervesh is made of blue rock? What does it do within a spelled object?”
“Made of blue rock? It’s a dwellos.” With a perturbed quirk to his lips, Westen checked both ways down the alley. “Dwellos energy supplies physical strength and protection when placed in a spelled object. That man’s body looks strong, but it is the dervesh acting through him. Only the strongest dervesh knackers wielded that energy, and the rings they crafted are worn with unwanted consequences.”
“What are they?”
“To embrace the corruption of a dwellos within your own body is to have yourself corrupted. By the Troubled Times, few would have anything to do with the dwellos either as maker or wearer. It was whispered that King Denelan in his boyhood wore one of those rings and lost his sanity to overuse, but that may not be true.”
“And in a haunted city, what would it do?”
“We cannot stand here talking!” They went to the exit, Westen whispering, “A dwellos chooses some structure or street to protect within a haunted city, and attacks all who come near. You need not know the manner of death; it is no more pleasant than anything we witnessed in Sable. Come! There’s a trolley!”
Riding by trolley proved to be a pleasant affair, if less helpful at getting them straight across Cathul. They took up a row of seats far back from the driver and sat quietly as the trolley zig-zagged through the city. When it began to circle back to its previous stops, they switched to another trolley and went on. There was rarely a time that the seats and aisle were not full to bursting, people even hanging out the sides with a hand clamped to a bar.
Elario held his satchel and stared out past Hobbe and Westen to the open side of the trolley. They were weaving among the tallest of Cathul’s buildings and stopping at every corner to drop off and pick up passengers. The only color upon these streets was in the clothing people wore and the goods on display in shop windows; all else was in shades of gray. Westen read a sheet of a newspaper that someone had dropped upon the trolley’s floor; Hobbe looked over Westen’s head to Elario and touched his cheek with a grin.
“Court & Ave?” Elario asked.
“Court & Ave, sir,” Hobbe said proudly as they slowed for another corner.
“Was it a Male Model #6?”
“Oh, no, sir, I haven’t seen one of those in decades. That was a refurbished Male Model #10 pulling a cart. Those were the last evolution before the makers closed.” The mechanical man in question appeared off the side. There was a resemblance to Hobbe in the frame and face, though the eyes were more expressive.
The trolley stopped. A young noblewoman with a pinched nose swung aboard in the empty row ahead. Her green, silver-threaded hoop dress spread over all three seats and her hat was a gargantuan display of fruit and flowers and feathers. Elario’s neck ached to look at it. She was the first noble he had seen upon a trolley. A nobleman was traveling with her. He tried to sit down, but she insisted that he stay off her dress.
The fellow had a beaten-down look for all of his flounces and fineries. Pinning a gaily-wrapped gift to his chest, he took hold of the bar to hang out the side. The driver got down from his perch to assist a man in a wheeled chair to board. The noblewoman sniffed and went on a hissed tirade to her companion about having to wait.
His lips puckered from holding back his temper, and finally he turned on her as Elario eavesdropped shamelessly. “Then let’s go back and wait for the carriage! It’s probably just held up in traffic!”
He soundly ignored her after that, but she continued with volley after volley of objections. They could not continue to wait for the carriage and there were none for hire; nor could she walk around in search of one and risk tanning her skin. The wooden seat was too hard and the trolley smelled badly; the driver should just leave the man in the wheeled chair on the sidewalk to catch some other ride. Westen sighed loudly at that last assertion but she was oblivious. From there she segued into the guest list of the party at the Rubem’s top floor, and how someone named Satila should be too embarrassed to show her face in public.
“Why are nobles so miserable all the time?” Elario whispered. “Are they all like that? Whenever we pass them on the road, they are complaining about something.”
“There is no worse curse than nobility,” Westen answered in his normal speaking voice. The woman’s natter abruptly ceased and she sniffed in pointed disapproval. Just as she had ignored Westen’s sigh, so did he ignore her in turn.
If anything, his voice grew louder. “You see, Senert, when everything is done for you from cradle to grave, it is a great trial to have to do anything for yourself. There is an old joke of how many nobles does it take to boil an egg? Shy a servant to do it for them, they would die of starvation.”
Passengers snickered into their palms. In embarrassment, Elario elbowed Westen, who went on merrily. “Utterly helpless people, the entire lot, and I have seen the truth of this for more years than you can fathom. Some do not even wipe their backsides on their own, the higher you climb; they call for a servant to do it for them with a moist towel. Oh, yes, you think I fabricate, but no. There was an official title once in the royal homes: Attendant of the King’s Necessary.”
Blood stained the woman’s neck at this outrageous and indecent remark. The trolley started up again, the nobleman clutching the gift tighter and a dour expression on his face at his seat being preempted for a dress. Her brother, perhaps. There was no affection between them of husband and wife, and he had a similarly pinched nose. At the lurch into motion, she gasped dramatically and grabbed onto the bench for balance. “Elequa, have mercy!” she cried.
“You are much braver about your first time on the trolley, Senert,” Westen said.
Elario snorted. Poking fun at the ridiculous woman in front of them was rather enjoyable. “I am sure there is no more dangerous means of travel than the trolley.”
“There are a few trolley deaths every year, but in most cases, it’s due to foolishness. People cross trolley tracks without bothering to see first if a trolley is upon them, or the driver is the one not watching when he or she starts up. Now and again, someone flies off at a sharp stop, or else it’s a person running to catch it who gets hit by another kind of traffic.”
The smell of meat from a market in a square made Elario’s mouth water. Their breakfast at the brothel had been filling, but it was afternoon now. “We will have to disembark somewhere to eat.”
“Here.” Westen leaned forward, his hands rising to the hat. The brother was looking into the market, where stalls were swarmed with shoppers. Westen deftly disengaged an apple from its wire wrapping in the hat and scooted back in his seat. The woman took no notice.
He offered the apple to Elario, who ate it as they traveled along. Once it was reduced to a core, Westen snatched it away to return it to the hat. Squeezing the wire shut around what remained, he was back upon the bench by the time the woman’s head turned. The trolley was stopping again. The b
rother let go of the bar and dropped into the road; clutching at her bench and the one in front of her in a death grip, the woman inched after him and got off. The apple core waved among the flowers.
“I cannot believe you did that!” Elario cried once she was gone. “Now she will know it did not fall off but somebody ate it and put it back with her unaware.”
“And it will ruin her day,” Westen said in satisfaction. “That will be the talk of the party she is about to attend, and every party she attends for years to come. There is no finer entertainment than anonymously tweaking the temper of nobility. But, no, they are not all like that. Some of them are worse.”
Pale gray buildings with columns wound in Hallowmas greenery were upon all four corners of the intersection. Scattered amongst the columns were soldiers, most inattentive, two staring idly out to passerby. Through the windows upon the upper floors were massive shops of clothing, kitchenware, and musical instruments. The topmost floors were fancy common rooms, musicians positioned in the windows and servers trotting about with plates of food.
How would Elario explain any of this to Yens and Nyca? These were such utterly separate worlds. As the trolley drove past the buildings, he asked, “Have you been to all of these places?”
“I have been almost everywhere in Phaleros,” Westen said. “For a hundred years, I walked it from north to south to east to west.” His voice was quieter, though no one showed interest in their conversation. Swells of chatter were lifting from the trolley passengers and the pedestrians down on the road; the trolley itself was making noise and the bench before them was empty.
“Right after the Troubled Times?” Elario asked. “Why did you do that?”
“It was not then. I worked for the successive generations of the Inamon family for two hundred years after the Troubled Times, up until the Sanish sank beneath the waves. Sickness, accidents, infertility, and other misfortunes had greatly whittled the family’s numbers, but it was the sinking of the Sanish to end them for good.”
There was a distant familiarity to that name. “A royal cutter,” Elario remembered. “It ran into rocks and everyone died, including a Crown Prince of the land.”
“So they do teach you something in the south. However, the Sanish was not part of the royal fleet. It was the property of the Duke of Edenwell, Antonin Zariah, a top-notch pleasurecraft reserved for royals and peerage. Edenwell was a province in the north; the name and borders are gone now. Its cities were never as great as the Great Cities in their heyday, but they were not all that much behind.”
“It wasn’t upon the Avys the accident occurred, but another river, as I recall.”
“The Norra cuts down from the northern shore and steers to the Wyn mountains, and it was upon this river that the Sanish set sail. To receive an invitation to the Sanish was coveted among nobles. It sailed only thrice a year, in late spring, mid-summer, and late summer, a floating festival upon the water. Those aboard traveled from dock to dock along the Norra to enjoy the finest playhouses and brothels, bathhouses and jubilees. At the time the invitation arrived, I was in the charge of Lord Calus Inamon, married a year to his wife Isabet. No invitation had ever been issued to the Inamon family, as lowly lords, so it caused quite the stir in the household to receive one.”
A flush of incredulous joy overtook Elario, the dragon’s eye dipping into the past to retrieve the emotion. “It was the late spring sail,” Elario heard himself say, feeling the sharp edges of the invisible invitation in his fingers. “The least favored of the three voyages, due to the lingering chill, but to be invited at all was miraculous.”
Westen’s eyes slipped to the patch. “You tell my own story.”
“Only this part. Please tell me the rest.”
“Very well. For weeks, he memorized jokes and labored with me to improve his card skills, and she splurged upon a fresh wardrobe of the latest fashions so that they would not shame themselves. A silly pair of souls, those two, yet profoundly kind, so that one did not mind overmuch the silliness. She insisted I call her Isabet, not Lady, for with my long life I was more an Inamon than any of them, and I liked her for that.”
The sinking of the Sanish was a brief historical note to Elario, void of details and stripped of its life from the tale’s vacancies. To hear it personally recounted from one who had been there gave him goosebumps. Forgetting the pangs of hunger still in his stomach, forgetting even to look out to the marvels of this giant city, he listened raptly to the human relic at his side.
Westen shifted his gaze to the empty bench. “She was pregnant with their first child as we set off north that cold spring. Bridging on too far along to safely travel, but only upon a deathbed did one refuse the invitation. There were several pregnant women on board every year, and babies born upon the Sanish became the honored god-children of the highest-ranking royal passenger. Isabet hoped that her child would be decreed god-child of Crown Prince Tetomo, renowned for his wit and handsomeness, and he was rumored to be attending. I believe she favored the prince in her heart, but settled for my lord. Back then there were dukes and earls and barons, last of all lords, but lord was as high as her arm stretched. But never mind all of this old man’s natter.”
“I would like to hear it,” Elario said. “Your life is a strange thing to me.”
“No stranger than it is to me. Are you bored, Hobbe?”
“No, sir. I am looking for mechanical men.”
“Then continue doing so while I bore Senert.”
“You do not bore me!” Elario protested. “Withhold the story if it troubles you, not because you fancy I am bored.”
“These things ceased to trouble me long ago.” The lie was there in his eyes, and Elario impulsively slipped his hand atop Westen’s. To lose and lose and lose was his fate, and the cruelty of that was unbearable. This had to be the curse of a dervesh to strike Westen. Most delivered a grisly death to their victims, but one delivered the grisliness of an eternal life.
Westen looked down in bafflement, as if to have a hand upon his in comfort was a foreign thing. “You shouldn’t waste kindness on me. In time, you may hate me.”
“Do you act with reason, wherever it is we are going?”
“I act with the greatest of reason, in the belief that we will set a wrong to right, but you may fall victim to my reasoning. I will do all I can to spare you, but I am limited.”
“As are we all.”
“My secrets will come to light soon, and my limitations, once we are in Ruzan. Or before, should your eye choose to reveal my intentions.”
“It reveals little but fragments from your boyhood to manhood, and a mad panic in a road as you called for O . . .” Elario bit off the name. “Forgive me. I spoke without thinking.”
“Olan. It is all right to speak his name. I lost him in the Troubled Times as all of us were trying to escape. But you have distracted me; we were speaking of the drowning of the Sanish.”
The last was said sternly, blaming Elario for Westen’s own verbal wanderings, but Elario understood. The dragon’s eye nudged him. “You boarded the cutter in sour weather, you and the lord and lady, and it grew sourer with storms along the voyage. Some days either the fog was too thick or the water too tempestuous to set sail, so you weathered an extra day or two in harbor.”
Westen nodded. “How strange, like you were there at my side. It was unusual to have so many storms at that time of year, and of such violence and duration. Our progress downriver was pottering, and we stayed below for music and card games in the boardrooms. The lord did himself justice, winning enough to earn respect, and losing with grace. Likewise did Isabet charm the ladies; she had a deft hand for braiding and a swift tongue for stories as she worked around the swell of her belly. She went into labor, and gave birth to a baby boy in Port Kerehen. A little early but healthy, and duly named god-son of the crown prince. The shine in her dark eyes! She and the lord discussed quitting the voyage for home, but a scant week was left before we drew up to the mountain port for a last revel
ry. Why not stay? Mother and infant were well; all was brought to them in bed. Then, three days later, we shipwrecked.”
The trolley lurched to a halt. They were quiet as passengers filtered through the benches. The commerce district was ending, and with it much of the traffic. The driver called back to the remaining handful of passengers, “Last stop is Legrin and Belder, coming up next!”
“Will we check on security at that snake station, sir?” Hobbe whispered.
“We will,” Westen said. “I expect it will be no better there than anywhere else, but we can slip by and walk the ghost tunnels through Yuvula.”
“Is that dangerous?” Elario asked.
“Not at all. They are underground snake passages no longer in use, and they’ll take us all the way into Betala, where we have to walk aboveground to Ruzan. After that will be the hardest part of this journey.”
I despair of this task, Westen.
Despair not. Yes, you may fail, but someone, somewhere, will one day succeed at this. Someone will collect the eye, and after that will be the hardest part of this journey.
Are you so eager to die?
They were not voices in Elario’s ear but words scrawled by candlelight upon parchment, sent back and forth through the post. “You can’t die,” he said distantly.
Westen mistook his comment. “And so one soul survived the sinking.”
The trolley was moving. “It must have been terrible.”
“It was, and unnecessary.”
“Why?” Elario knew why all of a sudden. “The captain should not have set sail that last day, with the weather so poor, but the prince was eager to reach Twolee Harbor.” His vision went white. It was fog drawing tight around the cutter like a woolen cloak. The current was choppy, his feet rocking with it and his stomach tossing.
“The current was rough,” Westen said. “The passengers were sick from it and retired to their rooms. Many things the captain should have done, despite the agitations of the prince, but he did none of them to our peril. He misjudged our position upon the river and ran the cutter into the Staves, a dangerous area of shallows. The Sanish struck rocks, ripping out the hull, and we took on water rapidly. We were miles from shore, and still several miles from our destination.”