The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  In short, challenge the system at the risk of your eternal freedom.

  Other than being regularly invaded by Chattelry Office agents in pursuit of escaped slaves, the Eastern Shore was essentially left to its own affairs, however, meaning it bore but a superficial resemblance to the standard human sprawl of urban trade, labor, appointed offices, and law enforcement. Rulers were determined through typical norren process, i.e. their murky theo-philosophical sparring grounds. But East Dollendun was special among norren cities in that it was the only one to be truly massive in the way Setteven was massive, or Bressel, or (of late) Narashtovik itself. This allowed for a phenomenon unique among all the Norren Territories and thus probably the world: the Nulladoon.

  "Oh come on, you can't just stop there," Blays frowned. "You wouldn't be telling us if it wasn't important."

  "It would take too long to explain," Mourn said.

  "We won't reach Dollendun for nearly a day."

  "That's what I just said."

  "Then be brief," Dante said. "It might be important."

  Mourn screwed up his face. "It's like...a game of dice."

  "That doesn't sound that involved."

  "That runs the city. And instead of the exchange of money, it determines the exchange of items and nulla."

  Blays glanced away from the grassy riverbanks. "Nulla?"

  "How can I explain the Nulladoon if you don't even know—" Mourn interrupted himself to sigh and lean his heavy arms upon the Boomer's railing. "It means...craft-favors. IOUs, sort of, but instead of money, it can be whatever the norren making the promise is famous for—swords, tapestries, dances."

  "Dances?"

  "I told you, it's complicated."

  Even this bare attempt to summarize the Nulladoon put Mourn into one of his moods. Dante had spent enough time in the territories to know what nulla were, but he had little inclination to attempt to wheedle, cajole, or flatter Mourn into explaining exactly what the Nulladoon was, particularly when belowdecks smelled like bandaged blood and infection, evidence of nearly a dozen wounded warriors suffering from everything from scrapes and bruises to deep sword wounds and one broken arm. By the time Dante finished treating them, the warrior's arm was free of its sling. Stitches were trimmed from slashed arms and bellies. Sweaty brows cooled and relaxed. If it came down to it, he expected each one could lift a sword by the time they debarked in Dollendun.

  The leadup to their arrival was an uneventful passage of forested shorelines. Through the bare branches, metal clanged and axes chunked. After the frost, bitter winds, and shadowed pockets of snow on their long descent from the hills, the hard, cool sunlight of Dollendun felt like a tepid relief. So too did the return to a proper city, even a foreign one. Docks choked the river on both its east and west, and the smoke of countless chimneys mingled into a single cloud above the river, but otherwise the shores of Dollendun looked like two different countries. On the west, wood cottages sprouted on the outskirts, often built right on to the walls of preexisting houses. Past a high stone defensive wall, the buildings leapt to three and four stories in height, crowned by the high, snow-shedding peaks typical of Gaskan construction. Houses stood wall-to-wall, so straight and narrow an arrow shot through one window might well pass straight through another on the far side. Except on the hastiest houses, those that leaned like beer-blinded longshoremen, the windows were ovals, ringed by dark wood that stood out from the blond pinewood walls and occasional splash of whitewash. Three hills stood at a reproachful distance from the urban crush, lush green courtyards visible between round-towered manors of clean white limestone.

  There were no such manors on the eastern side. No defensive walls, either. In fact, there appeared to be very little of stone at all, aside from some homes dug straight into the sides of the hills. Rather than cottages and shacks, the space between the surrounding meadows and the city proper consisted of tents, yurts, and other nomadic repositories. Sophisticated multi-family shelters with patterns and illustrations stitched into their oiled leather sides mixed with the crudest of pine-branch lean-tos. Further in, the round-windowed wooden houses rarely rose above two stories.

  "Hey Mourn, your people's side looks like shit," Blays said.

  The skin crinkled around Mourn's bovine eyes. "Hey Blays, your people's side looks like it uses the people from my side as beasts of burden."

  "I'm not criticizing."

  "Well, I am."

  Varlen and crew guided the Boomer to a a dock big enough to tie the barge up. The clan had all but completely unloaded their gear by the time Dante finished reexplaining the situation to the stout captain, who was affronted that Dante couldn't be more specific about how long they'd spend in town than "a day or several." The river smelled of sewage and mud, sludgy vegetables and used cooking oil.

  To preserve the ruse they were a common barley barge with the usual assortment of random passengers, Dante stayed onboard along with Blays, Mourn, Lira, and Gala, who stood just under six and a half feet tall—practically a dwarf by norren standards. Despite her stony muscles, she was almost thin, too. With the rest of the Clan of the Nine Pines departing through the streets to camp out on the edges of town, the Boomer shoved off, tacking across the river to tie up at another dock and discharge its remaining passengers. Dante and crew donned hooded winter cloaks and descended the pier to the streets of Western Dollendun.

  The city was, at a glance, no different from all major cities. Men and women rushed along with a haste that seemed absurdly self-important to the outside eye, particularly when most of them were probably on their way to hold foolish discussions over too much tea or to broker business deals they would regret the moment they lay down to sleep. It was the sort of jostling, steaming hustle that exasperates everyone involved, leading to behavior that ranges from the annoying: people slinging elbows; carriage wheels throwing mud; what self-important pricks—to the potentially lethal: the reckless, wild-eyed speed of the horse-teams, who could easily crush a man if he didn't hear the driver's shouts, and who drove as if arriving thirty seconds early to their appointments would make the difference between laughing from the castle's roof and dying in the shit-caked gutters. Annoying or outright dangerous, these conditions struck Dante with equal irritation.

  Dollendun was, in short, exactly the same and exactly as different as every big city in the world. It was unique in its particular blend of spices, smoke, and waste. It was identical in its bustle, the urban pace someone from nowhere would dismiss as a fine place to visit but not live, while visitors from other big cities would peg as interesting, in its own quaint ways, but not half so much as wherever they were from. In Dante's case, it wasn't as large as Bressel or as historically, almost mythically charged as Narashtovik. Still, it was a city in the way all non-cities aren't, and he breathed the air as if it were the vapors of a cleansing tonic, observing shops and citizens as if they held secrets he'd never uncover. By the time Blays selected an inn entirely at random, Dante was already regretting a departure which would inevitably come too soon.

  The three-story structure's eaves and cornices were heavy with elaborate Gaskan Old Empire leaf-carvings, but the inside was drafty and stained. Perfect for maintaining appearances on a limited budget. Dante and Blays got pleasantly drunk, which is what one does in new cities, particularly when plying locals and regular passers-by for information, but learned nothing revelatory about Perrigan the beefer, other than that he resented the slang term for his profession and that he lived on Sounden Hill. Dante woke with the sun nearly full overhead. His mouth tasted like soured beer. Mourn watched reproachfully from the common room, munching on bread and celery. Dante dispatched a letter of introduction to one of the messengers trotting up and down the boardwalks, then returned upstairs to wake Blays, a task every bit as dangerous as wandering into a pirate's ambush.

  Their subterfuge was simple. They'd pose as Mallish aristocrats resettled in Gask in the hopes of trebling their fortunes shipping tea from the valleys of Gallador to the busy southe
rn ports. All they needed was labor, which they'd heard the norren provided in spades. Perrigan replied via messenger that evening for a meet on the following day.

  "It's been so long since we've been somewhere proper," Blays said that night, as if he'd needed a full day to absorb the shift from wind-swept grass and birded hills to bustling city. "The clan won't mind if we dawdle on their cousins, will they? What's three more days in chains to people who expect to spend their whole lives in them?"

  Mourn gazed over the foamy tower of his beer. "If Vee heard you, she'd split you like a log. Not a log she liked, either."

  "Well, Vee's not here, is she?"

  "I'm making a decision in my capacity as leader." Dante glanced at Gala, who hadn't said four words since they'd stepped onto the docks. "I declare this beer is for enjoying, not arguing. We'll see what happens tomorrow."

  Beyond the greasy oval windows, wagons hauled grain and clay and stone and hay to the houses on the hills.

  The carriage arrived on schedule the following noon. Mourn and Gala held the doors while Dante and Blays seated themselves on the hardwood bench. The norren gave slight bows, then circled to the back of the carriage and stepped onto the running boards. The vehicle's body groaned and lowered under their weight.

  "Why can't they sit in here?" Dante said.

  Blays peered at him from the corners of his eyes. "Because they'd squish us to death? Oh yes, and they're slaves?"

  "It was rhetorical." Out the screened window, humans came and went, hopping over piles of horseshit and stopping outside of teahouses to snag passing friends by the collars and grin in their faces. Around them, silent stooped men carried sacks and letters, faces grim and grimy. Norren strode on errands, too, bearded lighthouses among the seas of humans. The giants' cheeks were cut close or shaved bald, showing shiny pink lines, letters and simple icons.

  The carriage swung uphill. Gala and Mourn stepped down to trot along behind. A paper fluttered from a high window. In a narrow gap between houses, a norren sat in the mud, clutching his bloody face. The road leveled out. The crush of structures cleared out in favor of wide lawns, green shoots pushing past the brown of winter. Dante pressed against the carriage door as the driver swung onto a cobbled road. Ahead, the pavement reeled straight toward a white stone manor that could have served as the keep of some towns. Whip-thin trees lined the path and the house's front, their branches blue-green and needly.

  A bald man in outdated formal wear received them in the echoing foyer. Mourn and Gala were seen to the servants' quarters. Sunlight gushed through the windows, illuminating swirling dustmotes. Two fires snapped in the manor's central hall. Dante accepted a padded red seat in front of one hearth, where he warmed his hands and gazed across the wall tapestries: stitched portraits of middle-aged men, most of whom showed grass-green eyes and regally aquiline noses. Their beards were a timeline of high Gaskan style: trim, pointy triangles; then aggressive, full-face snarls that would have driven off a bear; finally the cut of the previous generation, square sideburns which continued perpendicular from the earlobe to connect to a straight, manicured mustache.

  "Warm enough?" Behind them, a tall, green-eyed man clicked across the stone, his padded coat clinging smartly to his chest. His coat was green as his eyes and divided into neat squares by glossy black stitching.

  Dante rose. "Lord Perrigan."

  "Lords Winslowe and Lionstones," he greeted Dante and Blays in turn. Dante quashed his frown at the names Blays had given. "I'm honored you'd look to me on your expansion to Gask."

  "The loftiness of your reputation competes with the peaks of the Junholds," Blays said, entirely straight-faced.

  Talk turned for some minutes to the common ground of all wealthy strangers—whether they enjoyed their trip, had they yet been to Dollendun's Frozen Gardens, the shortsighted taxation policies of their respective rulers. Perrigan's self-deprecating discourse on the nature of success in business, which he compared to a blind shepherd repeatedly driving his flock off a cliff, then crowing in triumph after one of his fallen sheep broke open a vein of gold, was charming enough that Dante temporarily forgot the lord had built that fortune on the literal backs (as well as hands, legs, and sinews) of hundreds if not thousands of norren slaves.

  "Fifteen or twenty," Blays said once the topic finally turned to their own business, specifically the number of laborers their tea-growing operation would require.

  Perrigan raised his thin black brows. "Then you hardly need even my modest expertise. You could fill that order at the backmarket on your way home."

  "That's just for the initial outlay," Blays said. "It's all about feasibility, you know. The sustainability of the strategy. We could wait another three or five years and plunge whole-barrel into the operation, but who knows how diluted the market will look by then, you know? Whereas if we start know, well, the leverage cranks itself."

  "Of course."

  "In which case we'll need a regular supply of bodies," Dante said.

  Perrigan gazed across the faces of his ancestors on the wall tapestries. "Strong backs are always in demand, of course. But we may be able to arrange an annual contract."

  "Not all of our investors are as confident as we are. We were hoping to make a strong initial splash."

  "Nothing opens a man's eyes like having water dashed in his face," Blays added. "We heard you were in possession of the entire Clan of the Green Lake."

  "Ah." The man leaned back in his padded chair, smoothing his rich green coat. "Fearsome warriors. Their ploughshares are as fierce as their swords."

  "So you have them," Dante said.

  "No."

  Dante's face fell. "Do you know who does?"

  "Naturally. I'm the one who sold them."

  "We were hoping to make the buyer an offer. With workers such as those—"

  "I'm afraid not," Perrigan cut in with a regretful smile. "Let's leave it at that."

  "We're all gentlemen here." Blays drew back his head, shoulders straightened. "Surely we can make a gentleman's agreement not to tell any other men, gentle or otherwise, that the name of a certain other gentleman was disclosed here."

  "It's easy enough to earn money. Much harder yet to earn a reputation. I bank on my integrity more deeply than any credit. The deal was made in private, and there it must remain."

  "There must be some arrangement we can make," Dante said, thinking quickly. "We're not just men of business. We're men who make things happen."

  "Oh, no doubt. So when I say the matter is closed, it is with trepidatious hope you do not use those powers to do against me."

  Along the walls, the eyes of the tapestries swung to focus on Perrigan. Their gazes grew steely, glaring; beards bunched as jowls soured into frowns and sneers. Their lips began to move, muttering silent condemnations, the dark rhythms of curses. The movement caught Perrigan's eye; he did a double take, staring expressionlessly at the displeasure of his ancestors, their shaking heads and curled lips. Like that, they stopped, once more still stitching hanging from the wall.

  "You don't see that every day," Blays improvised. "How often do all your relatives agree on anything?"

  The last wisps of nether fell from Dante's grasp. "That depends on who is convincing them."

  To Perrigan's credit, he met Dante's eyes, his cheeks and brows showing mere hints of strain. "What is this supposed to prove?"

  Blays smiled. "How crummy your afterlife would be if you suddenly joined them."

  "It's not a threat," Dante said. "Just a display of the powers we could put at your disposal."

  "I'm a wealthy man." Perrigan smoothed his mustache, and with it his face. He gestured to the high stone walls, the snapping fires, and finally the tapestries, where his gaze lingered, hardening into a resentful scowl. "My face isn't beside my ancestors'. That's because the only one worthy of capturing my likeness to hang along my forefathers refuses to do so on account of the grounds by which I made the wealth that would pay her. Her name is Worring. She lives on the east side."


  "And if we acquire her service?" Dante said.

  "You'll also acquire the buyer's name."

  Their departure was as chilly as the air outside the manor. A servant closed the groaning doors.

  "You know, we could just ask one of them," Blays gestured toward the servant. "They'll usually respond to beatings."

  Dante buttoned his coat to the collar. "The few who know would probably be killed for speaking. Let's see Worring and see what happens."

  Their carriage waited. As Dante piled in, Mourn leaned in to the norren driver and exchanged a few words. The horses trotted down the path, wheels grinding loose pebbles. From the hilltop, Dollendun stretched for miles, bifurcated by the silvery band of the river. The carriage swung a sudden left down an alley of tight-packed houses and descended another hill into a wide plaza of packed dirt and trampled grass. At the square's fringes, humans jabbered to each other, scribbling notes, exchanging them, frowning, and then scribbling a fresh note, often to the exact same reaction. Behind them, norren crouched in cages of thick wood and pitted metal. Many were half-naked, others shoeless. A fat man lumbered forward, leaning against the weight of the bucket hanging from his hand. Water splashed over his shoes. He slopped the bucket across the floor of one cage, rinsing waste onto the muddy ground, then turned and waddled back toward the fountain at the plaza's center.

  Men in padded cotton coats milled about the grounds, pausing in front of occupied cages. Then, with their hands on their hips or chins, they appraised the captive subjects from tip to toes. Equally well-dressed sellers approached to point out abundances of muscles and teeth. As their carriage cornered down another alley, an eye-patched man, accompanied by two others brandishing spears, swung open the bars of a cage and shouted its occupant into the sunlight. Blays, who rarely stopped talking even after years of travel together, didn't speak until the carriage wheels clicked onto the mortared stone of the bridge.