Cordimancy

by Hardman, Daniel

  As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. How could she offer something like that, when she had no idea if it would be possible? Three months from now, these mountains would have snow, and travel would be hard. Three months from now, she might be consumed with caring for an ailing father-in-law while her husband spent his days attending to clan business or fighting battles on the border. Three months from now, she might be morning sick. Besides, for all she knew, Toril would be as controlling of her travels as Father had been of Mam’s. She wasn’t in a position to make plans right now.

  “When could you visit?” Tupa asked, a note of hope creeping into her voice.

  “The truth is, I’m not sure,” Malena admitted. “How about I contact you by Voice in a few weeks, and we can talk about what would be practical?”

  Tupa’s expression slumped.

  Malena kissed the top of her sister’s head. “I know that’s not much of a promise. But it’s the best I can do right now. I promise we’ll talk.”

  “Soon?” Tupa asked.

  7

  war council ~ Toril

  When Toril reached the Royal Guard’s headquarters in Bakar, he saw that he was interrupting. He’d ridden hard and arrived at the appointed time, despite his encounter at the pass. He felt his face flush. Why had they started without him?

  A dozen men crowded around the table, with the shimsal presiding as Gorumim’s stand-in at the head. She wore the traditional robes, and her head was shaved in accordance with her unique function.

  Shimsals were particularly gifted Voices, capable of non-stop proxying rather than just periodic messages. Sometimes they could even relay visual impressions in addition to what they heard. They worked in pairs—one at either end of a connection—and usually the pairs were twins, for maximum congruence.

  All Voices knew enough secrets to be dangerous, though they took stringent vows of discretion. But as representatives of the most wealthy and powerful, shimsals got extra respect; they relayed attitude to their clients, not just words.

  “Where is Hasha?” the shimsal demanded, speaking in a low parody of the words Gorumim was no doubt uttering far away. “A lieutenant has no standing here.”

  “I am Toril ur Hasha, chief of Kelun Clan, my Lord,” Toril responded, trying to keep his voice matter-of-fact. He held out the staff he was carrying so it could be seen clearly.

  The shimsal’s face blanked as she concentrated on relaying what she saw, but the men around the table stirred in surprise. “He had no right to appoint you!” one exclaimed.

  “I was not appointed,” Toril said. “I took the staff by challenge.”

  A long pause followed as this news sank in.

  “Hasha was clan chief when I reached him last night,” the shimsal snapped, rejoining the conversation. “What nonsense is this about succession? Have you killed your own father, boy?”

  Toril gritted his teeth. He was no “boy,” and internal clan business required no justification to outsiders. But Malena and his father had both urged restraint...

  “The hakufu won’t go home like the treaty requires. They say there’s no food, after the disastrous weather in their homeland. They’re planning to spend the winter rains here,” one man said. “They’ve built tent villages on the outskirts of some of our towns, and it’s making my people nervous. Women don’t want to travel the road if they’re going to be surrounded by yolk suckers. Even some of the merchants are reluctant to approach with their caravans.”

  That claim seemed a little far-fetched to Toril. “We have not seen much difference,” he observed.

  “You wouldn’t. The half lives are more interested in lowland crops and game than timber and copper mines. They feed off our bounty while they work in our fields. You have less that’s edible.”

  A ripple of snide laughter ran around the table. Toril knew that the speaker was a poor manager of his farmland, burdened with debt and chronically irresponsible—but he settled for a mild blink instead of the comeback that leapt to his tongue.

  The shimsal cleared her throat. “Enough talk.” she said. “I have kept the peace at the border since your great grandfathers were babes. Sometimes I have negotiated with our southern neighbors. Sometimes I have enticed. But I fear that this crisis demands more decisive action. I have information that I need to share.”

  The table grew quiet.

  The shimsal snapped her fingers at the guards stationed by the door. “Bring in the prisoners,” she said.

  They saluted and turned on their heels.

  “I told you to arrive without fuss,” the shimsal said. “This prevents ordinary folk from becoming alarmed. But more importantly, it hides our meeting from certain factions within the osipi leadership—factions that are planning a full-blown invasion of Zufa.”

  A low whistle and a buzz of whispers shot around the table.

  “Two days ago a tale came to my ears. A border scout sent word that he’d seen osipi patrols approaching the pass. They were heavily armed, and instead of fighting one another, they appeared intent on crossing into our own territory.

  “I sent a company to intercept them. Last night they ambushed one of the patrols that was on its way here, to Bakar.”

  The door to the room opened, and a string of golden prisoners filed in. Their wrists and ankles were manacled, and they were chained together to limit mobility. Each wore an ivona, and despite the constraints, they moved with the rapid fluidity that characterized their race.

  Several men around the table lurched to their feet. Others cursed.

  Toril, who had been expecting this revelation, analyzed the warriors more objectively. Three limped, one quite badly. Several were bruised or scratched. One held his fingers gingerly, as if his hand were injured.

  “You took them all alive?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the shimsal confirmed. “We surrounded them with archers. They knew better than to fight.”

  Toril wondered if others would match his own surmise. They hadn’t fought with sword or spear, but these warriors had certainly been in a scuffle recently. He visualized Oji’s broken arm.

  “I recognize this one,” accused the Pavilshani chief, pointing to the first man in the line. “He’s Luim.”

  “Indeed he is,” said the shimsal. “The senior warrior of the eastern tribes.”

  The diminutive leader stared back with no apparent fear. Like most adult osipi, his age was difficult to judge, but his ivona was full of beads—more so than any of his peers. Each represented another warrior he’d bested in ritual combat; he’d been a dangerous man for years.

  “Ahu are not supposed to cross the border at all,” another clan chief snarled at him. “Let alone as a group. What were you doing here?”

  The osipi did not respond.

  “He hasn’t been willing to talk,” the shimsal said.

  “We can change that,” said one of the guards.

  The shimsal shook her head. “You have not negotiated and travelled among our southern neighbors as I have, so you may not know as much of Luim as I do. This one is not just ahu. He is aiki ahu.”

  The clan chiefs all flinched.

  Despite their size, the reflexes of osipi made even their ordinary warriors fearsome; the Guard considered them the equal of two normal men. Those who wore the ivona—the ahu—were far more dangerous. But aiki ahu—they were the stuff of legend.

  Osipi were incapable of manipulating magic directly; it ran in their veins and defied conscious intent. But sometimes an osipi so mastered the rhythm and flow of his body that he could deepen the magical effects of his heritage for a brief time.

  By pushing himself into an aiki trance, an ahu became faster, more coordinated, more osipi than his fellows. That was why the council chamber suddenly reeked of fear; unchained and focused, Luim could probably kill everyone in the room with his bare hands.

  By good fortune, aiki ahu were exceedingly rare. Aiki was difficult to learn and came at a terrible price. It burned up the practitioner, eras
ing weeks or months of vitality from an already short life, and causing profound agony. An aiki ahu would not yield to torture; he’d already mastered worse.

  “We have a whole patrol,” one of the chiefs said. “Even if the leader won’t talk, someone will.”

  “I told my men nothing,” Luim said calmly. “They cannot answer your questions.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the shimsal said. “Their plan is obvious. Their harvest was flooded out, and now they are desperate. They cross the border because they mean to seize the southern part of Zufa. They’re sending their best warriors.”

  “What do you mean, ‘seize’?” demanded the man at Toril’s left.

  “I mean they will abrogate the treaty and simply sweep you out of your cities and durgas. They’ll kill anyone who stands in their way.”

  “That makes no sense,” Toril said. “Moving fast, they might be able to take a city or two, or even much of the border. But they could never hold it.”

  “Once they’ve got a stronghold, many more soldiers will come,” the shimsal responded.

  “But starting a war with winter on the horizon cripples them,” Toril objected. “We all know how they’re affected by the cold and wet. And they cannot expect to feed themselves in the spring, if the whole land’s embroiled in battle. They’re guaranteeing their own starvation.”

  The shimsal shrugged. “There’s logic in what you’re saying, Kelun, but my spies are quite sure. When there’s a choice between starving now and starving later, I have no trouble believing they’d delay the inevitable.”

  “Walk us through your plan, then,” said the chief of Navala Clan. “You’ve had some time to ponder.”

  Toril blinked, willing his eyes to stay open. He’d been awake for far too long, and his body and mind were sluggish. He fought a yawn.

  “I have a basic question to ask,” he said. “Suppose we proceed with the general’s proposal, and we are able to push the osipi across the border. What then?”

  “What do you mean?” asked one of his peers.

  “Well, if the osipi are truly facing starvation, their troubles won’t end when they get home.” As soon as the sentence left his mouth, he regretted the sarcasm that he heard in his voice.

  “That’s their problem.”

  “Is it? If we push them south and pay no attention to their pleas for help, we become the cause of their suffering—at least in their minds. Do we expect them not to take drastic measures? What if they attack in full force? What if they join forces with the brigands that we can’t seem to eradicate?”

  Toril turned to the shimsal. “How many troops do you need from us? A thousand? Ten times that number? It seems to me that all-out war must follow any enforced migration. How long before you’re back asking for more men?”

  The woman stared at him, and Toril sensed Gorumim’s unexpressed fury behind her eyes. He remembered Malena’s warning about the general.

  “Your question is irrelevant,” the shimsal said crisply. “We fight as long as it takes. Or we surrender your land. Those are the options. Let us vote now on a strategy, and be done with this useless argument.”

  “I respectfully disagree, my Lord,” said Toril. “Maybe we approach the osipi leadership with a demand that they migrate, coupled with an offer of food. I doubt a little generosity would cost us more than a war. Or maybe we invite them to stay, but in a place of our choosing and under conditions we control. Maybe we trade some land in Merukesh for land of our own.”

  Again the shimsal’s eyes bored into him. A slight smile played on her lips.

  “I wish we had the luxury of indulging such idealism,” she said. “But those of us with more battle scars know better. Power is the coin that buys safety, and power is a slippery thing; if we relinquish some to our opponent, they use it against us. If we run from our fears of conflict now, Zufa will mourn our cowardice.”

  Toril opened his mouth to give an angry retort, then saw a warning glance from one of his peers, and swallowed hard.

  “I beg you to be patient, my lord. If my ideas are naïve, teach me, so I can benefit from your wisdom.”

  “Enough,” the shimsal said flatly. “This is a war council, not a remedial strategy class. I’ve carried four rajas’ banners on this border, and I claim a threat is imminent. Will you unite to protect yourselves and your raja?”

  Toril closed his eyes against the faces around the table. What would his father do?

  “I’m ready to vote,” said one man.

  “Yes, let’s get this over with,” agreed another.

  “Who will heed my call?” the shimsal asked.

  One by one, Toril heard men stab knives into the spruce.

  “Kelun?” the shimsal said.

  When the silence became deafening, Toril opened his eyes. No one had kept their dagger sheathed. They were all staring at him.

  Toril swallowed. “My answer is no,” he said, a faint unsteadiness in his voice. “Kelun might muster men for other plans, but not this one. In a crisis, pre-emptive harshness will just deepen the misery of our neighbors and make them permanent enemies.”

  The chief of Navala clan leaned forward. “Think, Toril! How will you feel if the osipi attack and you’ve done nothing?”

  “I didn’t say we should do nothing.”

  “You fool no one!” sneered another man. “You talk nice, but in reality you’re just a boy who’s too cowardly to make tough decisions or ride into battle yourself. You want us to spill our blood while Kelun hides.”

  Toril pounded his staff on the granite beneath his boots, producing a crack that made everyone jump. “I am no boy!” he said through clenched teeth. “I am chief of Kelun clan. I have a right to be heard and to vote in this council. None of you has given my ideas serious consideration; do not complain if I disagree with yours.”

  “Navala is wise,” the shimsal said, her voice growing soft. “Remember that although a clan can refuse the raja’s call, such choices have repercussions.”

  “I understand,” Toril said. “If the clans and the raja find my vote offensive, Kelun can be punished.”

  “If we find your vote offensive? You are a poor judge of character, indeed, to wonder how your vote is received,” the shimsal said, her voice becoming still quieter. “We can implement this plan without your help, but it places more burden on others at this table. And you defy my express counsel as the commander of the Royal Guard.”

  “Don’t blame me for a burden that you are eager to carry!” Toril shouted. He saw the shocked looks on the faces of his peers and suspected he’d gone too far, but the anger he’d tried so hard to repress came tumbling out. “You arranged this conference at the worst possible time, hoping Kelun wouldn’t come at all—or that if we did, it would be in the form of some puppet whose strings you could pull. You’ve given rumors of a threat, not proof. And you want an irrevocable commitment to an open-ended war. Well, Kelun does not dance at your bidding!”

  Toril stopped.

  He listened to his breathing against the silence around the table, and grew sick.

  He cleared his throat. “I am sorry. My feelings got the better of me. I have no wish to be defiant, only careful and kind. I trust the raja to understand that when he hears me out.”

  The shimsal slowly stood. “As far as you’re concerned, I am the raja,” she whispered. Her eyes were locked on Toril’s; she kept them there until he blinked uncomfortably. “You’ve heard our plan to protect the raja’s subjects, and you refuse to support it. How much zufan blood will pay for your foolishness?”

  Then she glanced at the other members of the council. Her lips tightened. “Nevertheless, you are young, and I have no wish to punish a whole clan for your inexperience. I am willing to give you some time—a brief time—to reconsider.”

  She gestured to the guards at the door. “Take our young friend here to a place where he can ponder. Treat him well, but do not let him wander. Those of us with the stomach for battle have further plans to make, and for now h
e doesn’t get to hear them.”

  8

  sacks of barley ~ Malena

  Malena’s first hint of trouble was a whiff of smoke. She was leaning on a balcony overlooking the courtyard outside her new living quarters when a stray breeze brought the smell.

  It wasn’t the odor of a cooking fire. This was more acrid, more dirty. She scanned the sky, thinking she might see evidence of flames where they didn’t belong.

  A moment later, she heard shouts beyond the walls of the compound.

  She dropped the daisy she’d been fingering all morning and hurried down the long, half-open hallway, nearly colliding with the Voice who sprinted out of an adjoining room at the same time.

  Sidestepping one another wordlessly, the two women mounted steps in a rush and emerged onto a terrace that overlooked the town.

  A dozen rooftops away, smoke billowed from thatch. A crowd was gathering in the streets, buckets dangling from several hands. The main structure would not burn—like most of the town, it was adobe—but the roof appeared to be smoldering everywhere.

  They should wet the roofs around it, Malena thought. Sparks will travel.

  It was too late. As if her worry had been a curse, Malena saw fire rise in two new places. The air filled with more shouts, now tinged with fear.

  “What can we do?” she asked, turning to the Voice.

  The woman’s answer was a bewildered stare. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. It took Malena a full five heartbeats to notice the arrow protruding from the Voice’s side. By then the woman’s knees were buckling, red blossoming near her elbow. She slumped into Malena’s arms, still eerily silent.

  Malena felt for a pulse with shaking, sticky fingers. Nothing. Then, realizing how exposed she was on the terrace, she glanced around in terror. Where was the archer? Somewhere south of the fire, judging by the angle of the arrow...

  She crouched and ran toward the nearest merlon. Just before she skidded into safety in the lee of the granite, she glimpsed a trio of men at the eaves of the paoro beyond the wall of the durga. Two had ropes in their hands; one gripped a longbow.