The Lascar’s Dagger

by Glenda Larke

  He went to work every day at the Lowmian Spicerie Trading Company, taught the factors and sailors every day, saw Ardhi every day, learned more about Kesleer and his company every day. What he couldn’t do was leave. He should have gone back to Vavala to report to the Pontifect; instead he wrote her a letter, which he gave to Loach to send with his normal reports. This time, though, he told her about the dagger, about Ardhi, about the Chenderawasi plumes and how his moment of foolish acquisitiveness had imprisoned him in a future he didn’t want. He used coded words the Pontifect would understand and couched it all so vaguely it wouldn’t do much harm if the letter fell into the wrong hands, but even so, he didn’t commit to paper his intention of robbing the Regal. He wasn’t that boil-brained. Besides, it was better she learned that after the fact.

  Five or six days after he’d accepted the wretched plume from Ardhi, he was leaving the offices of the Lowmeer Spicerie Trading Company when he realised Ardhi was right behind him. He looked over his shoulder and scowled.

  Ardhi made a regretful face. “I’m sorry about what I did to you,” he said in Pashali.

  “No, you’re not,” he growled, making a point by using his own tongue to put the lascar at a disadvantage, then feeling petty and childish because he had. “You were sent to do something and you’ve handed the task over to me, so if anyone hangs for this, it’ll be me. Blister you, why didn’t you steal the fobbing feathers on board ship before you got here?”

  Unfazed, Ardhi continued in Pashali, saying, “Rather hard to hide stolen goods on a ship, and even harder to leave the vessel carrying them. Forgive me, Mynster Heron, for catching you in the net of my problems, but I was manipulated into this just as much as you were. The sakti Chenderawasi is like that. We need to talk. Come with me.”

  He wanted to walk away before anger got the better of him, but Ardhi had asked him to follow, so he could do no less. Damn his hide. “This sakti of yours is an evil thing,” he said as he caught up. This time he spoke Pashali. “I am your slave. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

  “The sakti is not evil. Just as your witchery serves your people, mine serves the people of my islands. I won’t give you any orders that don’t further that aim.”

  “And if the interests of the Chenderawasi clash with the interests of the Va-cherished lands?”

  “Does Ardronese witchery go to war with Lowmian witchery?”

  He shook his head. “In self-defence, perhaps. You…” he searched for the correct Pashali word, “you equate your witchery with ours? Do you serve Va?”

  Ardhi shrugged. “Va is just a name.” They’d turned down a deserted wharf, bare of cargo and ships. Even the warehouse along the landward side was shuttered tight. Their footsteps rattled on the boards and the only other sounds were squabbling seabirds and the lap of wavelets on the pilings. “Let’s sit here. No one can hear us,” he said. He removed his clogs, then sat on the edge of the dock with his feet dangling.

  For a moment Saker thought he was going to throw the wooden shoes away into the shipping canal, but instead with a sigh he placed them at his side and said, “I think you must accept that what the kris and the sakti Chenderawasi want is the same as what the Way of the Oak and the Way of the Flow want.”

  “So my being hanged for theft would benefit the world?”

  “You wouldn’t have been chosen if your chances of success were not high.”

  “That’s bilge rot!” He sat down on a coil of hawser rope, put his back to a bollard and rested his arms on his bent knees. Nearby, two small grey and white seagulls preened and watched him in an interested way. He scowled at them. They took no notice. Their stomachs were full, and they were content. If they were cats, he thought, they’d be purring now.

  “I made a few enquiries,” he continued, “through friends in the clergy. The castle guards check everyone who enters the outer wall. I may be able to penetrate that far, disguised as a tradesman. But then there’s another layer of checks, a much stricter one, by different guards, for everyone entering the inner bailey. Then there’s a gateway into the keep. After that, who knows? Worse, I have no idea where the plumes are kept and no idea how to find out.”

  When Ardhi said nothing, he added, “Was it Kesleer who gave the three plumes to the Regal?”

  “Yes. When the men who killed the bird of paradise died on board ship, Captain Lustgrader took the feathers from their belongings. When the ship docked, Kesleer saw them and seized them. He gave them to the Regal to win his favour – not knowing the implications of what he was doing. He might have realised something was odd when he handed them over, though. Giving them away rips out your soul.”

  “That’s ironic,” Saker said drily, “because I felt I’d sold my soul to you when you gave yours to me. I wonder if Kesleer ever made the connection between the plume and the Regal acceding so readily to all his requests for commercial and trading concessions.”

  “Perhaps by now he has.”

  “These feathers are diabolical!” Saker resisted an urge to shake the lascar to rid himself of his pent-up anger.

  “They aren’t normally given to anyone, you know. I was the exception because three of them were stolen. Listen, at the moment it’s possible the Regal doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. But he’ll realise one day, and the result could be bad. He could, er, give the feathers to the King of Ardrone and tell him to do anything.”

  Like hand over his treasury to Lowmeer … or abdicate in favour of Mathilda’s son … Or … Oh, pickle me sour, what if someone like Valerian Fox obtained the plumes?

  Panic ripped through Saker. He stared at Ardhi, aghast. He’d been so riled by his own predicament, he hadn’t thought of all the possible implications. He drew in a deep breath. “And with those words, you’ve just told me how to escape from under the spell myself.”

  “Yes. You could pass the plume on to another. You’d be free of me – and someone else would be enthralled to you, until they worked out how to enthral someone else.”

  “Why tell me that?”

  “I think you’re a decent man, and you’ll see how important it is to get the plumes back, so we can return them to where they belong. You won’t do to someone else what I did to you. You’ll help me.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “Yes.” A fleeting expression of anguish crossed the lascar’s face. “I needed to be sure…”

  “Damn your eyes. You could have passed the plume on to – oh, I don’t know. Kesleer. You could have ordered him never to send another ship to the Summer Seas. You could have ordered him never to give the plume to anyone else. Or something!”

  “And you think that would solve the problem – passing on power like that to a man like Kesleer? I’d be dead in a heartbeat, and he would think of a hundred ways to circumvent whatever commands I’d given. What would happen when he died? He could leave the plume to his son, with instructions on how to use its power.”

  “You’re sure I won’t use their power like that?”

  “You have a witchery now, and I’m told that’s only given to those who are deserving. You could have betrayed me in the warehouse the day we met, but you didn’t. I believe you will want these plumes rescued and returned to their rightful owners, where they will do no more harm.”

  “And the rightful owner is your raja?”

  “Yes. And his family.”

  “I might appreciate what you are doing more, if I knew more. I know you haven’t told me one tenth of what I need in order to understand your world or your power or your history. I don’t know who you are. Or why you were chosen for this task. Or why the feathers mean so much to your people. Why do you need them back? They will harm us, not your people.”

  “The plumes are sacred to us.”

  Not the whole truth, Saker decided. “Who was it who asked you – forced you – to come here? And why you? You can hardly have been more than a lad when you went up the gangplank of a Lowmian ship into a world you knew nothing about!”


  “Just turned eighteen. And I knew more than you think. My people are not ignorant savages living in the forest. I was schooled in Javenka.”

  He was thunderstruck. “In Pashalin?”

  “Yes. At the Javenka Library. I went there when I was fifteen, and stayed three years.”

  Dear Oak. The greatest centre of learning the world had ever seen, so some said. He almost choked. He would have given much to have had that privilege. “I’ve heard of it,” he said drily.

  “My people are mostly fishermen and hunters and farmers, it’s true. But there are also scholars and traders and shipbuilders and explorers. The only reason you don’t know of us is because we are a peaceable people. Until now, our sakti Chenderawasi has kept us safe. Now we are threatened as never before.”

  “By whom?”

  “By your hemisphere’s traders! Where do you think your spices come from?”

  “From the Spicerie islands.”

  “Yes. But all nutmeg and mace comes from Chenderawasi.”

  “All?”

  “All. Until the ship Spice Dragon came to our shores, our nutmeg crop was sent, by our sailors aboard our boats, to Kotabanta. That’s a port on one of the Summer Seas islands. It’s not one of our island group, or even in the group you call the Spicerie. There, we all sell our spices to Pashali traders.” He heaved a sigh. “The trouble with you folk of the Va-cherished Hemisphere is that you think the Summer Sea islands are all the same. You even bundle us together and call us lascars – that’s a meaningless word to us. We are different islands, with different tongues, different customs.”

  “Oh! That’s … very ignorant of us.”

  Ardhi sighed. “I suppose we are no better, if I am honest. If the Rani had understood that I’d have to come all the way to the Va-cherished Hemisphere, and that it was such a different place to Pashalin, I doubt she would have sent just me, alone.”

  “It does seem, um, overly optimistic, sending a mere lad on such an important quest to the other side of the world. And you sailed on the Spice Dragon, aboard the very ship responsible for the death of your ruler? Ardhi, if you want my unqualified help, tell me the whole story.”

  “You don’t need to know everything. Just that I was arrogant and stupid.”

  For a moment Saker thought that was all he was going to hear, but then Ardhi said, “I was in Kotabanta. I was on my way home from my studies in Javenka, waiting for any boat from Chenderawasi that could take me the rest of the way. The Spice Dragon was in port and they heard that the only source of nutmeg was Chenderawasi. One of their factors learnt that I was from Chenderawasi, and he offered me a free passage home if I’d show him where the islands were. He said, why do we all pay Pashali traders when we could cut out the middleman and deal direct? I trusted him, and I guided them to our islands.”

  He sat very still, gazing out towards the Ust estuary, where ships and boats and wherries cut through the choppiness of the waves, but the faraway look on his face spoke of other oceans, other climes. Saker remained silent, afraid to break the thread of the story.

  “One night on the voyage they plied me with grog. I wasn’t used to it. They thought it was funny, laughed at me. I was drunk, and I told them – some of the sailors – about the beauty of the Chenderawasi plumes. The next morning when I woke up I didn’t remember much. I didn’t remember that I’d told them where to find the Chenderawasi. The birds.

  “We sailed into the bay of our main port. Hardly more than a fishing village by your standards. But beautiful. Tranquil. My home. They bought our nutmeg and paid well for it. But there was trouble afterwards. The sailors went ashore, and they didn’t respect our customs. Several women were hurt. A man was stabbed when he protested.

  “The village elders were angry. Captain Lustgrader apologised, people were compensated and the ship sailed. He left some of his factors behind. That’s what they do; did you know that? The factors stay and they build their warehouses to store the spices, so the next time their ships come back, they have the cargo ready.

  “But my people were angry. And they were afraid the Raja would be angry too, because they had not consulted him. And now there were Lowmians living on our soil. They sent a man to ask the Raja what was to be done.

  “My grandfather is one of the elders of my island, and he ordered me to speak to the factors to find out all I could. I knew them from the ship, you see, and I could talk to them in Pashali. The factors told me the Spice Dragon wasn’t going straight back to Kotabanta. Captain Lustgrader had wanted to hunt wild pigs first to restock the ship’s meat supply, and he was putting in to a bay I’d told the sailors about. That was when one of the factors laughed and said he had no doubt the sailors – the ones who had got me drunk – would go hunting there for Chenderawasi feathers…

  “I felt as though I would never breathe again.

  “I ran to my friend who had a boat. She sailed me to that part of the island, and then I ran some more. And ran and ran. I was too late.”

  There was a long silence. Saker waited, dreading what he was about to hear.

  “Every afternoon,” Ardhi said softly, “the Raja went to a forest pool to bathe. They’d found him there, alone, and they shot him for the feathered regalia he wore.” He looked back at Saker then, pain pooled in his eyes. “It was my fault.”

  His grief hit Saker in the gut.

  “And you went back to the Spice Dragon?”

  “Not then. The kris had to be made first.”

  He pulled out the dagger and laid it on his palm. “The hilt was made from the Raja’s body.”

  Saker swallowed. “It’s bone? I thought – I thought it was horn.”

  “Raja Wiramulia’s body is in the hilt, and his blood in the blade. The gold you see comes from part of the regalia the murderers left behind. After the kris was crafted, I sailed to Kotabanta on board a trading korakora. That’s a Chenderawasi boat. I caught up with the Spice Dragon there, where she was loading other cargo. Those who sailed with me asked Captain Lustgrader to return the plumes. When he wouldn’t, I signed on as a crew member.”

  Saker floundered for a moment, knowing he still wasn’t hearing the whole truth. There might have been no lies, but there was something missing. It was annoying that they used the same word for their witchery, their island and their birds of paradise, and he wondered if he had the interactions clear. His mind boggled at the whole idea of a raja – who was like a king, if he understood correctly – wearing regalia that consisted of plumes almost as tall as Ardhi himself … to go bathing in a forest pool?

  Perhaps the bathing was some sort of ritual cleansing?

  He decided not to ask.

  Ardhi said, “I may not live, but the mission will not fail, not if the Chenderawasi want its success.” He shrugged. “If they don’t, then nothing matters.”

  “You killed the sailors who were responsible for the death of your raja, didn’t you?”

  “One vanished while on watch. Another lost his footing aloft on a stormy night and fell to the deck. The third died in a knife fight ashore in Karradar on the way home.” He shrugged. “Sailors die all the time. It was impossible to steal back the plumes, though. There’s no private place on board a ship to hide anything.”

  He swung his legs up to sit cross-legged, facing Saker. “I’m sorry. I don’t like what I have done to you. You know I can scale a wall like a – like a house lizard. That’s my sakti. Climbing. Agility. Squeezing through small spaces. I can get you inside the castle over the wall.”

  “If I steal the feathers, will I be under anyone else’s spell? Kesleer’s? Regal Vilmar’s? Because they once owned them?”

  “No. The plumes have to be gifted for that to happen, not stolen or found.”

  “Let me make sure I have this quite straight. You’re ordering me to steal the feathers back because the magic of your people, through the medium of the kris, chose me. Even though the only advantage I have is that I can pass for a Lowmian, and you can’t. Then, assuming I’m successful,
you don’t want me to give you the feathers – because that would give me ascendancy over you. Instead, you want me to go to Chenderawasi with you so I can personally return the feathers – all four of them – to your new raja. I will do this, you assume, in order to rid myself of your power over me, and to ensure that the plumes don’t wreak more havoc among the Va-cherished by being gifted to others.”

  “Er, yes.”

  “I have a better idea. If I steal the feathers, I give you all four, we call it quits, and I walk away. I won’t use their power. My word as the Shenat witan I once was.”

  “I – I can’t take back the one I gave away.” He had paled, as if the idea of that made him sick. “I gave it to you. The feather would never stay with me. It would just find its way back to you.”

  “Like the dagger.”

  He nodded, subdued.

  “And I can’t give it to anyone else, because I am a decent fellow. Would it matter if I kept it for ever? Or maybe I could destroy all four.”

  Ardhi blanched. “You won’t live for ever, Witan Heron. And on your death, then what? These feathers can’t be destroyed. You can’t burn them. Their potency lasts for generations. The only person who won’t be affected by their power to enslave is the rightful owner. The new Raja.”

  “We’ve always been told that people with witcheries can’t use them to commit crimes.”

  “What I’m asking you to do is not a crime. I am asking you to correct a terrible wrong that was done.”

  “Right now I don’t feel like a decent fellow. I’m angry enough to murder you. I loathe this revolting witchery of yours.”

  “You are dying to see my islands, though, aren’t you? Come, let me buy you an ale and we’ll talk about the Summer Seas.”

  For one treacherous moment he pictured islands in an emerald sea; he savoured the perfume of nutmeg trees and imagined the taste of fresh coconut cut from the palm trees he’d heard about. Sailors’ tales. Pashali stories.

  And the story he’d never heard: of birds that must be impossibly beautiful.

  His daydream didn’t last long. Inside a taproom five minutes later, the conversation was all about an outbreak of the Horned Death in Ustgrind. Over in one of the tradesmen’s districts along the River Ust…