by Glenda Larke
Looking over his shoulder, Saker saw the unharmed sailor one last time through the opening of the shutter. He was outside the warehouse, hanging on to a beam of the overhang. He made some sort of hand gesture just before he swung up on to the top of the roof, as agile as a squirrel.
Saker thought it was a wave of farewell, but then he saw the flash of a dagger blade flying through the air.
Not at any of the men below, but at him.
Impossibly, it spiralled through the air, its point always facing his way. It whirred noisily as it came, and the merchants below swivelled to follow its passage. Saker hurtled himself upwards on to the roof.
Something tugged at his trousers and scraped his leg. Grabbing up the rope and the coat he’d left there, he set off at a run up to the ridge of the warehouse roof. He heard doors crash open below, followed by shouts in the streets. He didn’t stop.
He was already on the roof of the neighbouring warehouse when he heard the second pistol shot, followed almost immediately by the bang of an arquebus.
He didn’t look back, but he did look down.
The wavy dagger was firmly stuck through his trousers below the knee, and his leg was stinging.
2
The Lascar’s Legacy
“Oi, you! What are you doing here? This here’s Kesleer property! Be off with you.”
Saker, standing on the dockside not far from the warehouse he’d broken into eight hours earlier, turned without haste to confront the guard hurrying towards him. “Pardon?” he asked politely, setting his velvet cleric’s cap firmly on his head to stop it being whisked away by the wind.
After cleaning himself up and snatching a few hours’ sleep in his cheap port-side doss house, he’d dressed in a witan’s robe before venturing out to have something to eat. The long skirt irritated him, but the clerical garb gave him instant respectability – and it could cover a multitude of uncleric-like items, such as the wire hooks and lock picks in its deep pockets, and the sword swinging at his side underneath. An arbiter’s warrant recognising his years of study had earned him the right to dress as a witan; his only lie was the Lowmian medallion around his neck, which he’d just swapped for the Ardronese symbol recognised by the Kesleer boy.
Va only knows what the Pontifect will say, if I mention that incident…
He’d been careless, and Fritillary Reedling didn’t like carelessness.
“Pardon, witan,” the guard said. “Didn’t see as you were a man of Va, like. But you’re treading wrong here. This here’s a private dock, and you need permission to gawk.”
Saker took in the wickedly sharp pike the man carried. “Then it’s me who should be apologising,” he said with an assumed accent he knew reeked of the southern Lowmian provinces. “It was just that I heard a heathen lad drowned here this morning at cockcrow.” That was true enough, although the gossip at the pie stall he’d patronised had been confused as to why the man had drowned. “Was I misinformed? I thought to say a prayer for his unshriven soul. Although blessed is he who dies by water.” He fingered the wave-shaped curves of the Lowmian medallion, feeling only mildly guilty. Lowmian faith emphasised connections to water and aquatic life, and Lowmians adhered to the religious precepts they called the Way of the Flow, but they recognised the supremacy of Va the Creator and the religious leadership of the Pontifect, just as he did.
“Was there indeed a drowning here?” he asked.
“Ay. Saw him die with my own eyes. One of them darkish Pashali heathens.”
Interesting. They hadn’t recognised the man as a lascar. “Then all the more important he is remembered with a blessing.”
The guard grunted. “He stealed summat from the warehouse. Bit o’ furrin wood, looked like. Tried to escape over the roof. One of our Kesleer men shot ’im and he fell still holding it. Just missed the walkway and went straight into the water. Kept me eye on the body. Watched ’im, floating face down, till he was out of sight. He was a deader, right enough. T’ain’t no one can hold their air that long.”
“Did anyone salvage the stolen property?”
“Not as I heared. Went into the water clutched in his mitt, and by the time they roused sailors to get a boat after him, both the corpse and the bit o’ wood bobbing alongside were out o’ sight.”
“Alone, was he?”
“Don’t rightly know. Some said there was a second fellow, but nobody got a good gander at him.”
Saker shook his head in genuine sorrow. “A poor way to end his days, a thief in a foreign land. Still, he deserves a prayer in the hope that Va grants him mercy.” Resisting a desire to roll his eyes at his own unctuousness, he raised the medallion towards the estuary instead, murmuring the standard prayer for the dead. He spoke the words, but found it hard to believe the lascar had died. He’d seemed so … vital.
I don’t even know his name.
If the guard hadn’t been there, he would have reached into his pocket for the lascar’s dagger, and dropped it into the water in homage.
There seemed little point staying in Ustgrind any longer. He already had the information the Pontifect wanted. The Kesleer Trading Company had found a route to the spice islands in the Summer Seas of the Va-forsaken Hemisphere.
He sighed as he contemplated the upheaval that would cause. Talk about jiggling a sore tooth…
A map of the Va-cherished Hemisphere had graced the wall of one of his childhood classrooms, and he’d thought the land mass resembled a molar extracted from the mouth of some gargantuan monster. The crown was set in the polar ice. The body of the tooth was cracked by the borders of the five Principalities, otherwise known as the Innerlands because they lacked viable warm-water ports. The two roots of the molar, dangling southwards under the Principalities, were Lowmeer and Ardrone with their ice-free shores and thriving sea trade.
For centuries, trade into the Va-cherished Hemisphere had been at the mercy of the Va-forsaken Pashali caravanners, because only they possessed the mastodons capable of the brutal ice-cap crossing over the North Pole. Now Lowmians had proven it was possible to bypass the Empire of Pashalin via an ocean route to reach the spice islands and the Summer Seas. And the politics of that were about to give everyone the commercial equivalent of a colossal toothache.
Ardrone will be wickedly overcharged by Lowmeer, instead of by Pashalin…
Ardrone could at least attempt to compete by searching for the sea routes, but what about land-locked Muntdorn and the other Principalities? They’d be worse off, and the Pontifect, responsible for the spiritual health of the hemisphere, would not be happy.
Saker sighed and headed along the dock to purchase a berth on one of the coastal flat-boats that plied the western shore of the estuary separating Lowmeer from Ardrone. This one was due to depart with the tide early the next day, sailing for Borage at the head of the estuary. From there, he would take a barge up the River Ard to Vavala, the seat of the Pontifect in the Innerlands, to report his findings.
With the ticket token in his pocket, he headed back to the doss house to catch up on his sleep, but his thoughts were with the lascar. He couldn’t dismiss the memory of that broad, mischievous smile, or the way the fellow had so casually swarmed up a straight wall to escape. And why in all Va’s world had he thrown that dagger? To kill him?
No, more likely in the mistaken belief that drawing attention to my presence would diminish interest in his own.
And then there was the mystery of the bambu. The lascar had risked his life to obtain it. Or to obtain what was inside it. Well, it mattered little now that the man was dead. He pictured him floating out to sea, face down, the bambu bobbing beside him.
Bobbing…
His line of thought was abruptly broken when he turned down a side alley leading to his lodging, to find it blocked by a hand cart. As he came closer, wanting to squeeze past, his stomach heaved in recognition of what it was.
A death cart.
He swallowed the bitter taste that welled into his mouth, prompted by his memories of
a spotted fever epidemic when he was a student at the university in Grundorp. For years, the call of the carters had haunted his nightmares. Bring out your dead!
As he approached, two men emerged from a nearby hovel, their lower faces wrapped in cloth. They carried a middle-aged man by the shoulders and ankles. With casual indifference, they heaved his body into the cart as if he was no more than a dead rat found on a midden heap. When they turned and re-entered the hovel, a smell of spice lingered in the air. Nutmeg, he thought. And yet it wasn’t a well-to-do neighbourhood whose inhabitants could afford such luxuries.
He squeezed past the cart as best he could, glancing down at the corpse. A player’s grotesque demon mask looked back at him, a face no longer human. Eyes bulged, bull-like nostrils flared. Horns sprouted from a bulbous skull, the sharp tusk-like prongs curling backwards to dig into the top of his head. Not a mask. A man, once, that much was obvious.
Saker stared, his mouth dropping open in his astonishment. Sweet Va! What botch of nature is this?
Horror became terror as one of the man’s hands shot out and clamped tight around his wrist. Unnerved, he squawked an appalled protest. He tried to jump backwards, only to crack his head and right elbow against the outer wall of a house.
The supposed corpse, very much alive, held him in a crushing grip, pulling him off balance until his face was inches from the slobbering mouth. “Surprise!” the man cried.
Saker reeled from the foul stench of diseased breath.
“Not dead yet, am I? Lookee here, witan. Lookee on the work of A’Va, and despair! Is he not called A’Va the devil? See my devil’s horns?” He gave a demented cackle. “And you thought you was under Va’s protection!” He was still grinning as he vomited copious black bile, before collapsing on to the floor of the cart like an emptied sack. His smile died, his eyes clouded, first with despair, then with the approach of death.
Head spinning, gagging on the smell, Saker wrenched his fingers free. He was still standing there, gasping and trembling with shock, as the death rattle sounded. He ought to have been murmuring prayers for the dying; instead he was thinking, Thank Va, merciful Va, he’s dead.
When the two men emerged from the hovel, they carried a second body, a woman this time. She too was growing horns and animal teeth. She was more obviously dead, her limbs already as stiff as planks.
“I’ll be blistered,” he stammered, looking at her face as they laid her in the cart. “What do they suffer from?”
One of the men re-entered the dwelling; the other looked at him, sunken eyes bleak. “Well, well, a witan of the Faith and this is yer first taste of the Horned Death, eh? Get used to it, young’un! You’ll see plenty more, I’m thinking.” He dug into his clothing and brought out a pomander stuck with nutmeg. Holding it up to his cloth-covered face, he inhaled.
The first man returned with a half-grown child. This one was also dead, and he tossed the body into the cart with scant attention to the sickening squelch it made as it landed. Saker wrenched his gaze away, swallowing back the contents of his stomach. He looked instead at the carter. “Treat the dead with respect,” he snapped. “They may no longer be of our world, but their dignity means something to the living!”
“Not this lot,” the man drawled from behind his face cloth. “A’Va got these. The devil’s work now. Your business, I s’pose, brother witan. Not mine, fer sure. But you mark me words, reverend sorr: there’s too many twins being bore. The Way of the Flow is doomed, lest you lot tackle the sprout of evil!”
What the beggary has twins to do with anything? Or A’Va of all things?
The whole question of the existence of a demonic antithesis of Va, a being called A’Va, was moot, and in another situation he might have argued the point. However, the two men wrapped filthy gnarled hands around the handles of the cart and trundled it away down the alley at surprising speed. Saker gaped after them. “Where are you taking them?” he called out. Neither man looked around or answered.
A tendril of memory brushed his thoughts, something about the Lowmian attitude to twin births, but he couldn’t recall it to mind. He sucked in a breath of fresh air and strode after the cart, but by the time he reached the end of the alley, it had vanished into the throngs of people pouring out of the local Va-Faith chapel.
None of his business, he supposed, but the weirdness and the lack of care for the sick bothered him. Pox ’n’ pustules, the man hadn’t even been dead!
By the time he reached his lodgings, he was almost inclined to believe he’d dreamed the encounter. He was certainly too tired to think about it. Once in his room, he barred the rickety door, hooked his robe and his sword belt over the peg on the back, and lay down to sleep.
When he woke, the sun had already set, the room was dim, and there was something horribly wrong.
He lay still, alert. Moonlight shafted in from the street through cracks and knot holes in the walls, and he could hear the chattering and laughter of passers-by. Both the door and the shutter were still barred. He was definitely alone. But something had … changed.
He rose, fumbling for his tinderbox, steel and flint. His fear built as the tinder refused to catch. By the time he finally had the wick of his candle alight and could see what was out of place, he was sweating.
The lascar’s dagger. It was lying on the floor halfway between the door and the bed. He stared, his mind trying to make sense of the impossible. He’d left it inside the capacious pocket of his robe. He had, he was sure he had.
The evidence said otherwise. He must have been half asleep and careless. He shrugged, picked it up and turned it over and over in his hands. He’d studied it earlier, and it was no different now. Beautifully wrought, the curved handle was crafted of polished horn inlaid with silver filigree. The cross-guard was not part of the handle, but an extension of the top of the blade. Even odder for a throwing blade, the guard was asymmetrical, with a long and a short side. The rest of the blade was double-sided and sinuous, but the curves weren’t of even length. He wasn’t sure what metals had been used in its crafting, but they’d been forge-melded – folded and refolded – and patterned throughout with orange-gold filaments he couldn’t identify. The overall appearance was of an ornamental work of art, rather than a weapon.
And yet that had to be a faulty assessment. It wasn’t designed for cutting or slashing, but rather for throwing or stabbing. He’d seen – and heard – it whir through the air, spiralling as it went. He’d tried it himself, tossing it at the door. It wasn’t easy to throw straight, but it could be done. The workmanship and the balance of the dagger had surprised him. With practice, it might be a formidable throwing weapon. Moreover, he thought if it was used point-first to stab something, it would slide in with the ease of a hot needle jabbed into soft candle grease.
He shook his head, smiling ruefully. You’re an arrogant cockerel, Saker Rampion. Just because something is from the Va-forsaken lands, you want to scorn it, and look for proof that it’s inferior.
He stood and dressed in order to go out. He was starving.
It took the flat-boat three weeks to sail to Borage, where ramshackle buildings clustered around a small bay at the mouth of the River Ard like herd animals gathered to drink at a waterhole. The fishing fleet were out to sea, so the ship crawled into port on a light breeze at dusk and docked at an empty wharf covered in fish scales. In the distance, the last rays of the setting sun bathed an ornate manor house on a distant hill in a golden glow. Saker watched the light fade as the first passengers disembarked.
“That’s the Foxheim Palace,” a voice said at his elbow. “The Ardronese Prime belongs to the Shenat branch of that family. Rich as oysters, that lot, they say.”
Saker turned to find the captain leaning on the railing beside him.
“You can’t get to Vavala tonight, so you might want to think about staying on board, witan. There’s plague in Borage.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Va above, how can you know that?”
The captain point
ed over Saker’s shoulder. “The plague flag is flying from Signal Hill.” He shrugged, indifferent. “Probably the Horned Death. Naught to worry about. The Death pops its ugly head up a lot these days, but never seems to get much of a hold. Some folk blame A’Va and his twins. Hogs-piddle, I say. I know what happens to twins. Still, you’re welcome to stay on board.”
He opened his mouth to ask what he meant about the twins, then realised the captain expected him to know. If he didn’t, then he might be betraying his disguise as a Lowmian. He could do without the complications. “Thank you,” he said, “but I’ll stay at the Borage Va-Faith cloister tonight.” He’d been dreaming of having access to a cloister bathhouse and their herbal soaps to deal with the infestation of lice he’d picked up on his travels.
If I don’t rid myself of this itch, I’ll go mad, he thought as he strode down the gangplank a few minutes later.
He should have slept the night through. He was clean and free of vermin, well fed, in a real bed again, not swinging below decks crammed in with snoring travellers. He’d even been reassured that the outbreak of the Horned Death was confined to two families on the outskirts of the port town.
Yet he woke barely an hour after he’d retired. The room was rocking and his head spun as if his body was trying to convince him he was back on the boat. Groaning, he rolled over. He’d forgotten he always felt like this for at least a day after disembarking from a ship.
The room, actually a cell for a Lowmian monk, had a glassless window slit, and moonlight streamed in. A movement on the floor caught his eye, and when he turned his head to look, he felt he’d been turned upside down. His stomach rebelled, and dizziness prevented him from seeing straight. He struggled to regain a sense of physical equilibrium, but had to battle with the idea that he’d just seen a sinuous silvery creature slither across the floor. Like a snake. Or some kind of large worm. No, just a figment of an imagination confused by the giddy spinning inside his head, surely. Yet when the world settled down once more and his vision cleared, he stared at the patch of moonlight in disbelief. There, lying in clear view, was the lascar’s dagger. It hadn’t been there when he first woke up. He knew that. Just as he knew it’d been buried deep in his pack when he went to bed.