by Fiona Patton
Kaptin Nateen of Turquoise Company rubbed at her temples with an irritated expression as his words brought on a murmured conversation across the command table. “Discussions about prophecy give me cluster headaches,” she complained. “Let’s just assign Estavia’s Champion to the aqueduct and have done with it. I have four dozen archery delinkon to train who don’t know their arseholes from their target centers and if I don’t get them trained up soon, I won’t know it either.”
Marshal Brayazi raised an eyebrow at her as Kaptin Alesar burst out laughing. “We don’t assign troops because of the young’s anatomical confusion either, Kaptin,” she said dryly. “Or because of their commanders’ confusion.”
“Then do it because of a young God’s confusion.”
The gathered immediately silenced as Spar fixed the entire council with his infamous dockside glare.
“Graize is key to Hisar’s alliance,” he said bluntly. “He was Its first abayos and he swore his oaths to It on the grasslands just as I did. Graize’ll come to kill Brax and to take Hisar away from me. And if he calls to It, Hisar just might go to him.”
“Oracle Freyiz said you were the key to Hisar’s heart,” Kaptin Liel pointed out.
“I am, but Graize is the key to Its bollocks.”
Kaptin Alesar burst out laughing again. “Meaning what, young one?”
“Meaning you want Hisar to join with the Gods of Gol-Beyaz when It gets old enough to take Its version of Its adult vows. With Graize at large, there’s too great a risk that It won’t.”
“And with this Graize neutralized, do you have enough influence over Hisar to convince It to join with the Gods?” Kaptin Nateen asked gently with a just hint of indulgent condescension in her voice. “Do you truly command the new God of Creation and Destruction to so great an extent, Sparin-Delin?”
Spar gave his familiar one-shouldered shrug. “No. But then, I’m not trying to. I want It to make Its own decision.”
“I’m not so sure I feel any more confident about that,” she replied.
Spar just shrugged again.
Marshal Brayazi leaded back in her chair. “Returning to the salient point, which is that Graize is a danger to Anavatan,” she said firmly. “With which I agree. How many people do you think your trap will require, Ikin-Kaptin Brax?”
“One Infantry troop on guard at the aqueduct,” Brax answered at once. “With myself to lead them and Spar to guide us. He’ll come by night, so we lay the trap by night.”
“And where will Hisar be when the trap is sprung?” Kaptin Omal demanded. “If you can’t count on Its alliance where Graize is concerned, how will you keep It from entering the conflict on his side?”
“Because I will give It a choice,” Spar answered. “And so It will choose not to.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“I have built this.”
“But you haven’t seen it.”
“Enough.” Marshal Brayazi raised her hand. “Brax’s troop is assigned to the aqueduct for now. As Yashar says, it will have the added benefit of satisfying the demands of the Northern Trisect,” she added in a wry tone. “In the meantime, Spar-Delin, you will discuss a proper strategy regarding Hisar with Kaptin Liel and will report back to me before you take up any position on the aqueduct.” When Spar frowned at her, she gave him a stern expression in reply. “You’re still a delos. Your safety is the responsibility of this temple and I will not allow you to take part in any form of combat until I know that responsibility has been addressed.” She returned her attention to Brax. “You have your assignment, Ikin-Kaptin. You are dismissed.”
On the sentinel platform, Brax felt the now-familiar buzz of metallic wings across his cheek as Hisar whizzed by him. They hadn’t spoken since Brax had charged Hisar with the mission of saving Graize, but the young God had visited Havo-Cami at least once every night since they’d taken position. It hadn’t actually manifested, not yet, but Brax knew that eventually It would overcome whatever was keeping It at bay. Something was on Its mind; probably Graize.
He turned. “Feridun, go and get yourself a hot cup of tea. It’s going to be a cold and wet night.”
“Yes, Ikin.”
Once his fellow ghazi had descended the stairs, Brax lifted his face to the rain once again and waited. It was only a few moments before he felt another buzz of wings, then suddenly Hisar appeared before him in His golden-seeming in what felt like a pop of displaced air.
“That’s new.”
Brax studied the young God dispassionately. His hair and the golden tunic shot with green threads that He’d chosen to wear in this form was disheveled, and His face was sheened with a thin layer of silver light, almost like sweat. If He’d been a physical being, He would have thrown Himself down, panting with excitement. As it was, He hovered, vibrating, in midair for several minutes before He was able to speak.
“I have a worshiper,” He blurted out, then grimaced sourly at Brax’s surprised expression. “All right, not a real worshiper, but almost, maybe, she said she might, maybe, if it worked out, so I want it to work out, but I don’t quite know how to make it work out, and I would’ve asked Spar’cause I told her I would, and I will, but I can’t right now ’cause he’s doing seer work that he won’t talk about yet, he say not yet, but he will soon, he promised, but I need help now.”
Brax narrowed his eyes, trying to sort out this unusually fast flow of words.
“You want what to work out?” he asked finally.
“What she wants help with.”
“Who?”
“My worshiper; weren’t you listening?” Hisar asked impatiently.
“I was, but none of it made a lot of sense.”
“I’ve met someone.”
Brax blinked. “That makes less sense.”
Hisar blinked back. “Why?”
Brax shook his head. “No reason, never mind. You’ve met someone. Where?”
“At my temple site. She brought me a piece of marble. She brought me one before. She was actually the first person ever to bring me something like that,” Hisar explained somewhat more slowly.
“Ah. She brought you an offering,” Brax said, understanding begining to dawn.
“Yes. And she said she needed my help. And I want to help her, but I don’t know how.”
“What does she need your help with?”
Hisar spelled out what the youth had asked for and Brax frowned.
“Well, first off, I wouldn’t try using destruction to influence anyone to fall into the strait. Most people are sworn to one God or another and They take offense at losing their followers that way.”
Hisar nodded. “Everyone phrases it like that,” He said with a frown. “They need to stop.”
“As for Zeno; that’s easy enough. Have Yashar speak to the garrison guard kaptin in the morning; they’re old friends.”
“And they’ll let him go?”
“They should. Like you said, it’s your temple site. It’s not trespassing unless you say it is.”
“What about the safe?”
Brax leaned against the wall, more or less out of the weather. “That’s trickier. The Gods don’t usually find actual homes for people; that’s generally the job of Their priests like the Abayos-Priests of Oristo. I suppose you could ask them.”
“But if I ask them, then Oristo’ll get all the credit,” Hisar replied in a petulant tone. “And besides, she asked for my help, not the Hearth God’s.”
Brax shrugged. “Then I guess you better figure out what you can do that the Hearth God can’t.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with a grimace. “So, why are you all bent out of shape about helping this one person out, anyway,” he asked curiously. “The boat-master asked for—what was it—the strength of Creation for her boat and the weakness of Destruction for something else, didn’t she?”
“Purses,” Hisar answered absently. “That was different. The boat-master was just talking, making conversation. She wasn’t really asking. This person was.
She left an offering and she offered oaths back. Maybe. If it worked out.”
“So that was the difference, then, oaths?”
Hisar frowned at him. “No, I told you, the difference was that she actually asked. For real.”
“But you’d like her to make oaths?”
“Well, sure I would, stupid, I’m a God. If someone offered you a . . . meal, or sex, or something like that, wouldn’t you want them to follow through?”
Hisar looked so indignant that Brax couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yeah, I guess I would,” he admitted.
“Well, so would I. But it’s more than just that.” Hisar stilled. “She made me want to help her,” He continued in a quieter voice. “She made me feel like I should help her. Like it was . . .” He fell silent, unsure of how to put these new feelings into words.
“Like it’s what you do,” Brax supplied.
Hisar nodded.
“That’s because it is what you do. Like you said, you’re a God. That’s what the Gods do, They help when They’re asked to. Maybe she needs for you to just be there, listening. That’s also what the Gods do. They let you know you’re not alone; that They’ve got your back; that They’ve always got your back.”
“What did you do?”
“I took them away from you.”
A shiver ran through Brax as he remembered the terrible, aching sense of emptiness and loss he’d felt on the grasslands and, deep within him, the Battle God’s lien responded, echoing his pain back to him, equally damaged, equally frightened that it could happen again.
“They’re not all-powerful,” he said quietly, more to himself than to Hisar.
The young God gave him a disbelieving look. “This coming from you?” he retorted.
Brax gave one of Spar’s one-shouldered shrugs. “I never thought Estavia was all-powerful,” he replied. “The Gods have limits just like people do. I always knew that.” He stared along the dark, rain-pocked waters of the Halic-Salmanak, feeling rather than seeing the silver glow of Gol-Beyaz in the distance. “But I guess I forgot.”
He returned his attention to Hisar. “The Gods probably forget, too. They probably want to forget; so do Their worshipers. But we can’t forget, and you better not either. So go help your new worshiper however you can, but just remember that you’re not perfect. You’re going to make mistakes sometimes.”
“But how?” Hisar repeated. “I can hardly do anything physical.” He sounded so much like an unhappy child that Brax pulled himself out of his own thoughts with a deliberate shake.
“Well, you have some kind of seer abilities, don’t you? Sort of like Estavia does?” he asked gently.
“Sort of. I have visions sometimes, like Spar does. And they are getting stronger.”
“Then keep an eye on the future streams like Spar does. If it looks like this person or her crew need help, go get help, and don’t worry about who gets the credit. Just be there. That’s what most important, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They fell silent for a long time with Brax leaning against the wall and Hisar hovering in midair a few feet away. Finally, the young God cocked His own head to one side.
“Graize thinks you had his back,” he said. “All those years ago.”
“I know,” Brax sighed. Spar had told him Hisar’s story of Graize’s memory, of their supposed first meeting in the dockside doorway, but he couldn’t remember it. If truth be told, he actually had very little memory of his early childhood. He remembered being cold and hungry in winter and hot and hungry in summer. He remembered fearing the garrison guards of Estavia and the abayos-priests of Oristo and fearing the spirits that whispered over the streets like mist, seeking the unsworn. He remembered being caught out on those streets as the sun went down more than once and running for shelter, his heart beating so fast and so hard that it drowned out the pounding of his feet on the wet cobblestones. He remembered the cold, biting rain on his face, and the faint scratch of ethereal claws against his ankles. But he had no memory of leading a priest to another boy crouched in a doorway on Havo’s Dance. His first memory of Graize had been of a sneering, cocksure little street thief, standing beside another boy, Drove, too big and too able with his fists for Brax take on.
It bothered him that he couldn’t remember what had obviously been so important to Graize.
Spar had shrugged it off. “It’s his memory, not yours. It means something to him, not to you. We use it or we ignore it. That’s all.”
Brax wasn’t so sure.
“So go to a Priest of Oristo and have them dredge it up for you.”
“No.”
He could no more let an abayos-priest scrape around in his head than Spar could. It would have to be as his kardos had said, they would have to use it or ignore it.
“No, what?” Hisar asked, pulling him from the memory.
“No, nothing, I was just thinking.”
“Me, too.”
“Yeah? What were you thinking about?”
“That if it’s hard for me to be there for one worshiper, it must be really hard for the older Gods to be there for all of Theirs.”
“Yeah.”
“But I still want as many as They have,” Hisar added, a gleam in His eye.
Brax gave an amused snort. “Of course you do,” he agreed. “That’s also what the Gods do: They collect people.” He turned as Feridun’s footsteps sounded on the stairs behind them. “Looks like a fog’s coming in,” he said in a more conversational tone. “Why don’t you go check on this potential worshiper, then go talk to Spar. He knows more about this sort of thing than I do. Better yet, go talk to Kemal and Yashar. They’ve been around longer than both of us. If I come up with anything else, I’ll, I dunno, shout for you or something.”
“All right.”
Hisar flowed reluctantly into Its dragonfly-seeming, and as Feridun stepped carefully onto the rain-slicked platform, It took wing over the Halic. Watching until It disappeared behind the rooflines of the Dockside Precinct, Brax just shrugged at the older man’s questioning glance, then returned his attention to the dark shoreline below.
To the west, Hisar headed across the water, feeling for the line of obligation that linked It with Its new, potential worshiper. As It reached the opposite bank, the restless stirring of the spirits in the cistern beneath It made It check in midflight, but It made Itself carry on. Not yet, It told Itself sternly. Soon, but not yet. It needed more strength.
It found the line, so fine that It hardly dared touch it for fear it would vanish, on the edge of the Western Dockside market and followed it, on silent wings, until It hovered above a crumbling three-story dwelling in the Tannery Precinct. Then, changing to Its golden-seeming, It fluttered down, catching hold of the worn wooden shutters with its tiny claws and peered inside. A dozen lives besides the youth’s own lit up Its vision; all young, all unsworn, with no ties of obligation except the line she’d extended toward Hisar and the tower symbols that splashed across the entire building like a spray of stars.
It stayed there, watching, “being there” as Brax had put it, as tendrils of fog wove their way inland from the Bogazi-Isik Strait, driving the rain before it and covering everything, physical and metaphysical in a thick, concealing mist.
10
Seers
AS THE MORNING SUN bathed the horizon in light, Panos knew she dreamed. She stood balanced precariously on the edge of a sand-colored cliff, thick with wild grapevines. Behind her lay the island of Thasos; below her, its main harbor bustling with activity, a fleet of warships, their sails a brilliant white against the water’s blue, preparing to make way. The light, spring breeze lifted the fine hairs along her arms, and she raised them to its embrace. Too often her dreams were peopled with sight and sounds of a purely symbolic nature, but this dream, with its scratch of bracken against her feet and the taste of salt and anticipation on her lips, held a worldliness that only came from the present.
Her father was preparing to set sail.
Changing
to the form of a white seagull, she took wing off the cliff, racing the wind to the waves. The royal trireme rose up before her and she circled it once before alighting upon the mast. Below, King Pyrros struck a dramatic pose for the benefit of his sailors, his feet planted solidly on the polished wooden gangway, a map in one fist, his sword pommel gripped in the other.
Behind him, the court oracles clustered about like a flock of self-important geese. This was an auspicious day to begin the move against Gol-Beyaz. In concert with the Sorcerers of Volinsk, they had planned it to be so. As the strongest of their number raised his head to look into her eyes, she gave a single cry before taking wing for the north.
The wind whistled through her feathers. A tall tower rose up before her, then vanished. The gray-green grasslands rushed past her in a blur. The rain-quenched brilliance of the Halic-Salmanak glowed beneath her and she paused to kiss herself on the brow before continuing on her way.
Graize sat upon the bank nearby, oblivious to the rain falling all around him. Staring into the dawn, making plans. She sent him the image of the Skirosian fleet, then shot out across the water and over the northern hills. They grew steeper, became mountains, became cliffs, and then she was free of the fog and the rain and flying over the icy waves of the Deniz-Siya. As the brown hills of Volinsk appeared in the distance, She reached out for Illan. He, too, stood aboard a royal ship preparing to sail. He, too, was surrounded by oracles for whom this was an auspicious day to mount an attack.
She touched his mind, felt his response, and then her dream changed as the symbols of her prophecy rose up, demanding her attention. The landscape grew fluid, and then stiffened to become one of Hares’ beautiful maps, the cream-colored vellum splashed with colored ink. Gol-Beyaz flattened to a strip of silvery-blue, dotted with pale towers, and flanked by lines of cowled crows.