The Lascar’s Dagger

by Glenda Larke

  Now, finally, the time had come. As he clawed his way up the wall, the touch of the kris in the air overwhelmed even the bitter chill of the rain; it drowned the moan of the wind, subdued the smell of salt swept in on the spume from the sea. He shuddered under its spell.

  The year had changed him in ways he’d not expected. He’d finally accepted the need to be inconspicuous, to wear Ardronese shoes and clothes, to trim his hair to a shorter length, to appear more like one of the Va-cherished. He’d worked hard at mastering the language, and understanding a way of life not his own. He’d watched and learned and remembered. But through it all, the loss of his kris haunted him.

  Now the anticipation of holding it once more was as painful as a fist around his heart. Soon he would have protection once again; soon he’d be enveloped in the safety of a familiar magic. He would once again smell the beaches and forests of home.

  His bare toes and fingertips gripped the rough stones of the wall, his body perfectly balanced, his strength effortless. At the top, he lay flat on the stones for a moment, careful not to offer a silhouette against the sky, even though he thought it unlikely he would be seen in this rain. Still, there’d be guards about. He’d already dodged those outside the walls on their endless trudge around the perimeter.

  Inside the wall was a garden. It wasn’t a concept he truly understood; in the islands, if you wanted beauty and a place to walk, then you entered the forest, you didn’t plant a garden. Planting was for food. He looked beyond the long hedges and the patches of lawn to the building beyond, looming huge, large almost beyond his comprehension.

  How many people must live here! He couldn’t fathom why any raja or king would need so many people about him, but it didn’t matter, so he pushed the puzzling thought away.

  Before dropping down into the garden, he pinpointed the section of the building that held the kris. The windows there were smaller and, he guessed, shuttered rather than glassed. He slipped down the wall and scuttled low through the hedges until he was crouched on the ground as close to the concentration of Chenderawasi power as he could get without another climb. There, he froze. Someone was coming.

  He resisted the urge to run. Instead he lowered himself slowly, edging down until he was no more than a dark ball at the base of a bush. His view was restricted to what he could observe by peeking out under his armpit. He eased out the dagger thrust through his belt until it was in his hand.

  Head down, a guard plodded his way between the hedges. A stream of muttered curses was testament to his hatred of the weather and his fobbing guard duties. He was holding something Ardhi guessed might have been a flintlock arquebus. He knew about those; on the Kesleer ship all the tars had been taught how to aim and fire them. He also knew damp weather could make them misfire. With his memory of Raja Wiramulia’s shattered chest, he loathed them with a bitter hatred.

  Squinting against the driving rain, the man brushed by, oblivious to his presence. When he was gone, Ardhi slowly unwound himself, took a deep breath, and began to climb the wall of the palace.

  Even in the dark, his fingertips and his bare toes were attuned to every roughness, to every tiny crack and crevice, to every unevenness. He used friction and balance with the instincts of an animal, without thinking. Walls were tougher than the rock or trees of his island home, but his natural skill and strength were enhanced. Sakti. It was with him yet. That, at least, had not left him.

  He’d hoped the first-storey window was the one he wanted, but the touch of the kris drew him on, beckoning him still higher. It was the third window up that led into the room that housed the kris. The shutters, made of perpendicular wooden planks, were barred inside against the weather. In front of it, the window ledge – a wide stone block – was exposed to the elements.

  He sat hunched over on the ledge and contemplated what to do next. He had no idea what was on the other side of the shutters; for all he knew, the room beyond could have been filled with guards.

  Drawing his dagger, he began picking at the bottom crosspiece of the left-hand shutter, loosening the wooden nails. In the dark, it was mostly guesswork, aided by the fact that he’d examined similar windows. Since his failure at the Kesleer warehouse, he’d become obsessive about things like that. Right then, he was glad.

  The rain stopped; the wind dropped and then blew with renewed vigour. In a brief appearance, moonlight broke through the cloud cover and then disappeared. He worked on, ignoring the guards who periodically crossed the gardens below, ignoring the distant sounds of drunken revelry somewhere in the palace. The shavings of wood whisked away on the wind as fast as he created them. It was three o’clock, as tolled by the bell on the palace tower. Such regimented timekeeping was foreign to the Chenderawasi, but right then he appreciated its usefulness. He had another two hours before the first stirrings of the city would make his escape hazardous.

  A single vertical board from the inner edge of one shutter came loose in his grip. He lifted it free of the inside bar and pulled it through the opening to the outside. Peering into the room, he could see nothing, although the sound of steady breathing told him the room was occupied. His other senses told him the dagger was there, unharmed and unsecured. His exultation almost stopped his breath.

  At last.

  His loneliness was over. The long months when he’d been powerless, helpless, unable to pursue his quest to seize back the stolen regalia, because without the kris he had no idea where to look. He stayed where he was, secure in the knowledge that the kris would come to him, that he would find out now why it had left him in the first place.

  Inside the room the sleeper stirred, made restless perhaps by the wind entering through the gap in the shutter. Ardhi held his breath, but the rustle of a body turning in the blankets settled down once more and the sound of regular deep breathing resumed.

  Ardhi waited.

  Nothing happened. Nothing stirred in the room. The kris did not move. The scent of its power remained exactly where it had been when he’d first arrived at the window. As the time passed, he decided the weapon must be constrained after all. Or maybe it was essential for the good of the Chenderawasi that the sleeping man die by his hand and the kris was waiting for him to enter and perform the deed.

  He subdued his exasperation. Instead, he slipped his arm back into the room and edged the bar to the shutter upwards. He had to contort himself to pull it free without dropping it to the floor, but finally the shutters opened and he slipped inside the room. He closed them behind him to shut out the worst of the wind, but laid the bar down on the floor. He might need to disappear out of the window in a hurry.

  Gradually his eyes adjusted to the increased darkness. A fire had been banked in a fireplace, so with delicate care he parted the coals, allowing them to flame. By their light, he examined the room, ignoring his desire to go straight to the kris. He needed to find out as much as possible about the man – and it was a man, he could see that much – who slept in the bed. The clothes hanging from the knob on the back of the door he recognised. He’d seen those on his journey through Shenat country. A witan’s garb.

  Silently he knelt beside the bed, to stare at the man’s face. In the dim light he couldn’t be absolutely sure, but he thought it was the fellow from Kesleer’s warehouse. He wore the same medallion around his neck. Ardhi knew the meaning of it now: the oaken symbol of Va-Faith as worn by an Ardronese man of religion.

  He bent to look under the bed. A chamber pot. A pair of boots, a pair of buckled shoes. Nearby, a chest. He prised it open: some neatly folded clothing. Books. He eased it closed. He stood to look at the things on the table in the corner. A jug, a washbasin, a towel. A flagon and a pewter mug. Some writing materials. A candle, tinderbox, steel and flint. A sword in a scabbard. An ordinary dagger – and the kris, separately sheathed. A cloak draped over the chair.

  He reached out to the kris, fingers trembling, pulled it gently from its sheath. Closed his hand over the hilt and felt again the raw power of Raja Wiramulia’s bone beneat
h his fingers. Shards of memory splintered in his mind, stabbed him to the marrow with the tragedy his stupidity had initiated.

  Raising the weapon, he touched the hilt to his forehead in obeisance and grief. His cheeks ran with tears.

  “Come,” he whispered in the language of his island, and headed to the window once more.

  The kris twisted savagely in his hand, forcing his fingers apart, wrenching his thumb backwards. He gasped as it fell free. It clattered noisily on the floorboards. Even then it refused to lie still. It skittered across the room, before sliding deep under the bed. He stood stock still, so utterly shocked at his rejection he almost didn’t react when the man on the bed erupted upwards.

  At the last moment, Ardhi flung himself backwards, hitting the floor hard. And under his leg felt the bar for the shutters. His hand groped for it, and when the man came at him again, he lashed the bar sideways into his knee. His assailant fell backwards against the stone of the wall, and was eerily silent. And motionless.

  Seri save him, I think I’ve killed him.

  He stood up, still in shock. Gathering his scattered wits, he took the candle from the table and lit the wick by holding it against the glow of a coal. The fellow was lying on the floor, unmoving. He knelt beside him and lifted one of the man’s eyelids. There was no reaction, although he was still breathing.

  Perhaps I should kill him. Perhaps the kris wants him dead.

  No, that couldn’t be right. The kris had warned the witan that he, Ardhi, was in his room.

  The bitterness he felt at the betrayal was acid in his throat. Was it punishment for his failure? He doubted that. The sakti of a Chenderawasi kris was never petty. He might have deserved punishment, but the kris was only ever motivated by concern for the greater good of the Chenderawasi.

  The message was clear. When the kris had flung itself across the warehouse, it had been a deliberate act of abandonment for him and a new bonding for it with the witan, for reasons he would never be able to fathom.

  Desolated, shattered, he knew now he should have accepted that. Instead he had crossed these strange lands for nothing. He had wasted more than a year of his time. He covered his face with his hands and dragged in a shuddering breath.

  Outside, the wind bore the sound of the four o’clock bell. He sat back on his heels, gutted. Why did the kris no longer want him? His task was still undone!

  So what do I do now, Sri Kris?

  Under the bed, the kris was silent and still.

  He supplied the answer himself. He must return to Lowmeer, to Ustgrind. He must go back to work for the Kesleer Trading Company. He must find out what had happened to the stolen regalia and retrieve it without the aid of the kris.

  He bit his lip, brushed away the tears, accepted his fate. As gently as he could, he hauled the unconscious witan back towards the bed, then heaved him up on to the mattress. The man did not wake, not even when Ardhi covered him warmly.

  He blew out the candle and replaced the holder on the table. He left the kris under the bed; it did not need him to move. Pulling the shutters closed behind him, he put his arm through the gap and manoeuvred the bar back into its place. There was nothing he could do about the board he had removed, so he left it on the windowsill.

  He scanned the garden to make sure there were no guards around, then began to descend.

  In the morning he would go down to the port and seek a sailor’s berth on a ship bound for Ustgrind. Tars could always find work.

  Saker awoke into a grey morning light, feeling cold. For a moment he lay still, wondering what was wrong. Then he sat bolt upright.

  Va curdle me, what the fobbing…

  His head spun and pain shot from the back of his skull through his brain to his eyes. He swayed and had to put out a hand to stop himself from falling back on his pillow.

  There was a gap in his shutters, and a puddle of rainwater on the floor. Moving his head slowly, he surveyed the room. The kris lay in the middle of the floor and its scabbard was empty on the table. His candle had been moved.

  Oh, spittle damn, I wasn’t drunk last night, was I?

  He vaguely recalled a nightmare. There had been a brawl, and rain, and pain in his knee…

  For the life of him he couldn’t remember anything more. He groaned and swung his feet to the floor. He was late for morning prayers.

  15

  The Buccaneer’s Wager

  Life at court continued without change as autumn crawled its way towards winter. If the King and his courtiers were worried about the plague to the north, they didn’t show it, although Saker heard that King Edwayn had sent guards to block the main roads entering Throssel to anyone who appeared sick or weak.

  If there were ever any repercussions about the dagger cut on the Prime’s embroidered banner, Saker never heard about them. When he returned from that adventure, he’d written down all he could remember from the ledgers he’d seen. He mulled it over, put it away, then considered it again. So much of what he remembered had been abbreviations. What, for example, in a ledger labelled “Resources”, did Mi.For.Okwd mean? Abbreviations like that had headed columns of tree names, followed by a number and then a value. Some kind of code, he assumed.

  Another ledger had been labelled “Lances”. It had contained lists of people grouped into tens, each group headed by the name of a place, most of them in Ardrone, although he recognised villages and towns from all over the Va-cherished Hemisphere. He estimated there could have been as many as five thousand people listed.

  He’d thought about sending his notes to the Pontifect, but had ultimately decided against it. She’d only be angry that he’d taken such a risk for so little coherent return. He’d tell her about it when he knew more.

  As for the night the lascar’s dagger had apparently tried to dig the nails out of his bedroom shutter … He thought he remembered fighting someone, but in the morning the door and the window shutters had still been barred from the inside. His window was three storeys up, and the gap made by the single missing board – which he’d found on the outer sill – would not have allowed entry to anything bigger than a cat. In fact, the events were so bizarre, and his blurred memory of them so weird, he thought it all better forgotten. Just the kris up to its usual tricks…

  He remained alert and watchful, more cautious about his personal safety than usual, while he waited for a communication from the Pontifect. As a result of his conversation with Juster, he’d sent another letter after the first, with an even stronger warning. As time passed, he wondered at the lack of reply, and sent a third communication, even though the courier’s wife assured him coldly that all his letters had been delivered to Vavala. He’d never warmed to her, but her frigid reception of his last letter made him wonder if she was furious with him for involving her husband in something she thought clandestine.

  While he waited, it was the Princess who diverted him, who brought both joy and inspiration to his days. Trailed by her grey mouse of a handmaiden, she kept him constantly at her side, although it was her future that concerned her most, not her religious life.

  “Amuse me, witan,” she said one day. “Tell me what it’s like to go to a university and study.” The next day it was a request that he tell her tales of his boyhood on the farm; after that she wanted him to relate the tales told by the Pashali traders, and describe the mastodon caravans that rode into Muntdorn through Coldheart Pass. She laughed at his silly jokes, teased him about his childhood escapades and his first love, and listened wide-eyed when he described his adventures as a sixteen-year-old acolyte taking foolish risks for all the wrong reasons.

  Every now and then, his breath would catch as she fought tears at a mention of her marriage, or lifted her chin when someone spoke of the Regal. Once, when Prince Ryce carelessly told her she would bring brightness to the Lowmian court if she married Vilmar, she’d clutched Saker’s arm so tightly, her fingers bruised him. The terror that flared in her eyes tore his heart to shreds, yet there was nothing he could do. His counsel
was trite, and left the taste of ashes in his mouth. He tried to imagine what it could possibly be like for her to have a father using her as a commodity in a business transaction, to be refused any information about her future until it was settled, to know she was to be traded away to a foreign country, to be made aware that she had to accept whatever others decided for her.

  Worst of all, he was the one who had to guide her to acceptance and submission. He agonised over whether to tell her what Juster had said about Regal Vilmar’s first wife, torn between warning her and making her acceptance of her fate even harder. Inside, he wanted to spit at the injustice of it all.

  As the days shortened and the colours of the oaks peaked, there was more news from Lowmeer about the preparation of the Lowmian Spicerie Trading Company’s new spice fleet. There’d been delays, according to the Prince, probably something to do with the shortage of cladding for the hulls against shipworm.

  “Terrible little beasties, those worms,” Juster told Saker with a grave shake of his head as they walked through the city in search of a tavern to have a midday meal. “In warm seas, they can turn good strong oak planking into wet sawdust. The Lowmians were well advised to clad their ships. Pity they had trouble finding the right metals for the job.”

  “By which I take it your ship is cladded against these worms and perhaps you had something to do with the shortage of the cladding?”

  “Me? Tush! True, my cousins do have an interest in the East Denva copper mines, but how could I possibly have had anything to do with delays?”