by Fiona Patton
Brax nodded. “No invading army would come this far,” he observed, chewing thoughtfully on his own piece. “Not until after they’d secured the Western Trisect, anyway. If they sent a force overland, it’d be to attack Gerek-Hisar from behind to secure the strait. The northern hills are barely passable to sheep, never mind soldiers with big enough armaments to take a watchtower.”
“But they could send a small force against the aqueduct,” Spar replied. His brows drew down. “If they knew how to access it.”
“How would they know how to access it?”
Spar and Hisar exchanged an apprehensive look. After agreeing to tell Brax about the young God’s dream, neither of them had been too eager to actually do it. Finally, Hisar gave a soft snort of impatience.
“Graize would know,” He said hesitantly.
“Yeah, he probably does,” Brax agreed. “There’d have been nothing stopping him from hiring a boat to the Northern Trisect in the old days; he always had enough shine. But why would he bother?”
Hisar and Spar shared another look, then together, they outlined their earlier conversation in as few words as possible.
Brax listened with an increasingly stony expression and, when they were finished, set off for Havo-Cami without a word.
Hisar glanced at Spar. “So, how do you think it went?” He asked in a worried tone.
Spar’s eyes narrowed. “It went fine. He’s just being pissy because I didn’t tell him before.”
“Are you sure?”
Spar shrugged. “Sure enough. C’mon.”
Primarily a farming community, the Northern Trisect had two subtemples dedicated to the God of Planting and Harvest, both of them large and beautifully decorated. The most northerly Cami was built right up against the aqueduct, its own wall extending southeast along the shore of the Halic-Salmanak, then north in a crescent arch, encompassing the Cami’s orchards and formal flower and vegetable gardens. By the time they caught up to him at the main gate—a wooden trellis covered in climbing vines—Brax seemed to have shaken off the mood. Spar led the way around the back, weaving through a line of server-delinkon bringing in the day’s supplies. As the line froze to stare at Hisar with undisguised curiosity, he caught up a large round of cheese and headed inside the kitchen door.
Used to visitors, the Cami’s chamberlain found them a guide at once, a young delinkos of Spar’s own age who smiled at him in distinct invitation, much to Brax and Hisar’s amusement. Together, they made a tour of the public chapel and meditation rooms, then fetched up before a stout, wooden door at the end of a shadowy corridor.
“Them’s the stairs leading to the aqueduct, Ghazi-Sayin,” the delinkos explained to Brax respectfully. “It’s always kept locked, ’specially now since Dimas had her vision.”
“This was her first?” Spar asked.
“Not exactly, but she’s no trained seer. She only gets flashes now and again. Says they’re more trouble’n they’re worth, actually.”
“I know the feeling.”
They shared a swift smile.
“We sent a message off to Havo-Sarayi and they sent back a seer of Incasa,” the delinkos continued. “I don’t know what was said, but since you’re here, I’m guessing they took it seriously.”
“They took it seriously,” Spar agreed.
Brax gestured at the door. “Can we go up?”
The delinkos nodded, handing him a large iron key at once. “If you don’t mind, I won’t come up with you, Sayin. I’m no good with heights. Or small spaces neither. And it might be best if the dog stayed down here, too. The aqueduct’s dangerous and the stairs are really steep.”
Spar nodded. “Stay, Jaq.”
“If he kicks up a row, feed him something,” Brax added.
The delinkos bowed. “Yes, Sayin.”
Opening the door, Brax, Spar, and Hisar slipped inside, leaving the delinkos with one hand wrapped firmly around Jaq’s collar. The stairs were narrow and shallow, ascending in a tight, stone spiral, with a heavy ship’s cable acting as a railing attached to the wall with heavy iron rings. Spar headed up at once, but Brax found it a very tight squeeze, his sword and his shoulders banging against the wall and threatening to unbalance him with every step. After his third muttered curse, Spar glanced back with an unsympathetic expression.
“That’s what you get for growing so much, so shut up, will you, I’m trying to concentrate.”
Brax gestured at him rudely, but clamped his teeth on his next remark as his sword tried to pull him off the stairs again with his very next step.
Behind them, Hisar floated serenely up the stairs in the lithe seeming of a water snake, a smug smile plastered across Its muzzle.
They reached the top a few moments later. Spar gave the door an experimental shove and it opened at once, spilling a wide shaft of sunlight down the stairs. With an explosive sigh of relief, he scrambled out onto the aqueduct itself, Brax and Hisar tight on his heels.
Eyes wide, Brax gave an impressed whistle. This high up, they had an unobstructed view of the aqueduct’s entire length; from the northwestern hills—dotted with tiny, blazing white sheep—where it emerged, then southwest along its length and across the strait to its stone reservoir nestled deep in the crowded streets of the Tannery Precinct. He looked east down the shores of the Halic-Salmanak to the watchtowers of Lazim- and Gerek-Hisars squatting on their opposite banks, then northwest through the farmer’s market and past to the high mountains which guarded the Northern Trisect from the coast. Planting both feet on a length of stone stretching across the aqueduct’s main trough like a bridge, he leaned over the edge, regarding the gardens behind the shore wall with a critical eye.
“This would make a great sentinel position,” he observed. “I wonder why we don’t have one here.”
“Oh, I dunno, maybe ’cause this is a Havo-Cami, not an Estavia-Cami,” Spar answered caustically, watching as Hisar took wing in Its dragonfly-seeming. It spun about their heads until he swatted irritably at It, then shot away to buzz the stork nest built around Havo-Cami’s stout minaret instead.
Brax glanced over. “Yeah, I guess,” he said reluctantly. “But a force, even a small one could come through that narrow pass there,” he gestured to the north with his chin, “or down the Halic here and catch the whole area unawares.”
Taking hold of an iron ring set in the wall by the door, Spar leaned out to peer in the direction Brax pointed. “Those lands are controlled by the Yuruk,” he replied. “They don’t use boats.”
“Doesn’t mean they can’t. And besides, Graize does. Still . . .” Brax sighted down the length of the aqueduct. “Seems like a pretty big target, even for him.” Leaning against the cami wall, he glanced over at Spar with a dark expression.
“So, Hisar saw me and Graize together in vison and you didn’t think to mention it?”
Spar just shrugged. “It wasn’t my vision to tell, it was Hisar’s. Now He’s told you, so get over it. But that’s not what’s got me thinking,” he added. “It’s this water sparkling in a cavernous darkness. That’s gotta be the cistern.”
“How would they get there?”
“From the hills, carried in by the aqueduct. There’re spirits in the Gurney-Dag Mountain streams. There must be spirits in the northern hill streams, too.”
“But carried into the cistern?” Brax pressed. “That would mean that there’d be spirits behind the God-Wall, right under Anavatan itself. Right now.” He shook his head. “They’d have had to have been carried in from the beginning all the way back hundreds of years ago from when they first built the aqueduct. What keeps them from swarming out?”
Spar shrugged. “Hisar said they felt waterlogged. Maybe the darkness keeps them weak.”
“Or maybe the darkness kept them weak,” Brax corrected. “Until there was enough of them to make a swarm. Just like last time,” he added quietly.
The two of them fell silent, remembering.
“Seems to me like the aqueduct’s more the danger than i
n danger,” Brax pointed out after a moment. “Or the cistern is, at any rate.”
“Maybe.” Spar shrugged. “Either way, we’re gonna find out. We’re going in, me and Hisar. We could use you with us. He saw you there, anyway.”
Brax gave an unimpressed snort. “If what He saw comes true, we won’t be the only ones; Graize’ll have seen it, too. And that brings us back to the question I had before you dropped all this in my lap. Why would Graize bother to attack the aqueduct?”
Spar stared across the Halic with a pensive expression. “Maybe he’s not gonna attack it,” he hazarded. “Maybe he’s gonna use the spirits that traveled along it and down into the cistern to attack Anavatan. Maybe he’s gonna make them swarm.”
Brax’s dark eyes narrowed. “That makes a lot more sense,” he agreed. He followed Spar’s gaze, a thought growing in his mind. “All right,” he said at last. “So, we know Hisar saw Graize in vision. So we go forward figuring Graize is planning some kind of an attack. And we move to stop him.”
Spar gave him an amused look. “How?”
“We play him like any mark in the old days. We make him be where we want him to be, when we want him to be, and we lay a trap for him. We plan a defense in a way he won’t be able to resist.”
Spar nodded suddenly understanding where Brax was going. “You command the defense. He sees you in vision and he comes after you.”
“With me there, here, actually. He’ll make his way into Anavatan from the Northern Trisect where there’s no God-Wall and no gate guards sworn to Estavia to get in his way. Graize could scale this wall in his sleep. He’ll come here.”
“I don’t like it. For him to take the bait, you’d have to stay really vulnerable since he’d see any trap strong enough to catch him.”
“Right. So, we let him see that, too. We show him the whole game, set, gear and shine at the end. We show him you lying in wait for him, too, with Hisar beside you just like in His vision. Graize’ll hate that. It should cloud his judgment if not his vision.”
Spar shook his head. “If Hisar’s gonna play a part in this, it has to be a willing part,” he cautioned, watching the young God balance on the very tip of the cami’s minaret, iridescent wings buzzing furiously to keep Its balance. “And Hisar won’t go along with anything that might get Graize killed now any more than He was willing to go along with anything that would get you killed last year.”
Brax grimaced. “Point,” he acknowledged reluctantly. “Too bad. Killing Graize’d be a lot easier.”
“I know. But Hisar’s seen you both standing together and He means to make it happen.”
A muscle in Brax’s jaw jumped. “Graize said he saw that, too, a long time ago, but that’s a load of shite; you know that. He could never really go along with it, not in a thousand years.”
“You saw it, too,” Spar pointed out bluntly. “Could you go along with it?”
The two met each other’s gaze.
“I don’t know,” Brax said honestly. “Probably not. But even if I could, could you?”
“If it keeps you from getting killed, I could go along with just about anything these days. I’m sick of worrying about you.”
“Well, I can’t be everywhere at once, even if I wanted to be. You said it yourself, I’ll crumble under the weight.”
“So, you were listening to me.”
Brax grimaced at him. “Just because I don’t like hearing that others are better warriors than me doesn’t make it any less true. I have to make a stand somewhere, and like you said before, Graize is our problem; he always has been. And we need Hisar, so we’d better get Hisar, whatever it takes. You need to talk to Him.”
Spar showed his teeth at his kardos. “Forget it,” he said bluntly. “This is your plan, Ikin-Kaptin. You want troops, you figure out how to recruit ’em.” He stared pensively down at the fresh, clean water spilling along the trough at their feet. “It doesn’t look like there’re spirits in there,” he mused. “But maybe you can’t see them in the sunlight.”
“Why don’t we just jump in and find out?” Brax offered with a grin.
Spar cast him a flat, impatient glance. “Because it’ll be freezing cold, even with the sun on it, dung-head. And it’s moving so fast, and the sides are so smooth, that you’d drown before you could even shout for help. That’s probably why they have these iron rings in the wall: to tie themselves off when they work up here.”
Crouching down, Brax plunged his fingers into the water. “You’re right,” he said with a chuckle. “It is cold.” He brought a palmful up to his mouth. “But it tastes good.” As Hisar set down beside him with a curious air, he turned. “Can you see spirits sparkling in the water along here?” he asked It.
Hisar gave a sideways turn of Its head, pleased that Brax was asking It for information. “Yes,” It answered without bothering to open Its mouth, a feral gleam glowing in Its metallic eyes.
“Are they dangerous?”
“Not to me.” With a blur of wings, Hisar plunged into the trough, rising to the surface a moment later with Its body covered in a faint, silvery mist. It splashed about for a time, dipping Its head into the water like a feeding swan, then emerged in a spray of water that splattered both men equally.
Wiping his face with the hem of his cloak, Spar turned for the door. “I have to think about this plan of yours,” he said. “I’ll meet you both downstairs.”
Hisar waggled Its tail at him, balancing on the smooth rim of the trough, Its wings outstretched to catch the light, then leaped into the air. With a shriek that sounded both pleasurable and challenging, It spiraled down to the ground as gracefully as any bird.
From his vantage point, the silver patina still clinging to the young God’s body seemed to writhe almost menacingly, and Brax watched It land in the cami’s flower garden with a frown, then followed Spar down the stairs, carefully closing the door behind him.
Some time later, they sat in the garden, Brax and Spar sharing a large helping of fried mussels provided by the cami’s chamberlain and tossing every second one to Jaq. Hisar lay nearby, delicately licking the spirits from Its flanks like a huge, overfed housecat. When they finished, Spar threw the edge of his cloak over his head to block the afternoon sun and, as Jaq laid his head on his ankles with a heavy sigh, he purposely closed his eyes.
Brax regarded them both for a moment; then, when it seemed obvious that neither of them were planning on moving any time soon, he pulled a stone and a soft cloth from the pouch at his belt and began to hone his sword.
Hisar glanced over, watching Brax’s arm move back and forth, the painted symbols on his biceps winking out from beneath his tunic sleeves. Following the young God’s gaze, Brax set the sword across his knees. He might as well start recruiting now, he thought. He lifted the left sleeve.
“Anavatan on the shield arm,” he explained, his tone similar to one he used to train the newest delinkon at the temple. He lifted the right sleeve. “And Cyan Company on the sword arm. Every one of Estavia’s warriors paints these two protections on their arms every morning to remember the oaths they swore when they first became warriors; oaths to protect and honor where they were born and the temple company they serve in.”
“Spar paints them, too, and he’s not a warrior,” Hisar noted, changing to His golden-seeming.
“Spar’s abayon are warriors and he lives at Estavia’s temple, so he paints them out of respect for them and for Her.”
“So what’s that symbol?” Hisar asked, pointing at Brax’s wrist.
“The God-Wall.” Brax twisted his arm so that Hisar could see it more clearly. “Estavia gave me that one Herself when I promised Her I would defend the Wall and keep Anavatan safe.”
“But nothing big,” Spar muttered from under his cloak, his muffled tone dripping with sarcasm.
“You have other symbols, other protections, on your chest,” Hisar added, glancing from one kardos to the other. “You both do.”
Brax nodded. “We paint the symbols of our fam
ily near the center of Estavia’s lien, in honor of those we love and those She loves.” He laid his open hand against his cuirass and Hisar shuddered slightly, His expression flickering with barely disguised hunger. “Four people,” Brax continued, deliberately ignoring the look. “Because you’re expected to include yourself.” He made a face. “And one dog. That was Estavia’s idea.”
“Dogs are beloved of the Gods,” Spar said in a smug tone. “And Jaq is especially beloved of Estavia.”
Hisar frowned. “But you’ve got six symbols on your chest, Spar. I saw them when you changed tunics yesterday. Four people, a dog, and a block or a building or something . . . oh.” The young God stopped in sudden understanding. “Oh,” He repeated. “It’s a tower, isn’t it? Is that for Me?”
Spar gave no answer, obviously embarrassed, and Brax laughed.
“Who else would it be for?” he asked. “He swore his oaths to You, didn’t he?”
“Well, yeah. But you swore to Estavia and you don’t wear Her as a symbol.”
“That’s because Estavia’s temple doesn’t require it. Every temple’s different.”
“It looks just like the tower symbols we’re finding all over the city.” Hisar’s golden brows drew down. “You didn’t tell Me,” He said to Spar, His tone tinged with accusation.
Spar gave his one-shouldered shrug. “Don’t get too excited about it. I’m just trying it out.”
“How long have you been trying it out for?”
“A while.”
“Nine months, maybe?” Brax hazarded.
“Maybe. Who asked you?”
“No one.”
“Then shut up.”
Brax returned his attention to his weapon with a chuckle, and Hisar glanced at him curiously.
“There’s a silver glow along the blade,” the young God observed. “I can see it all the time, but it goes all the way up your arm and into your body when you use it.”