A Glimmer on the Blade

by Rachel E. Baddorf

  “What about me?” Maximo said, coming forward. “I would be safe at my father’s manor.”

  Ketchkei frowned coming to sit next to Maximo. “Your dad’s Lord Bacrese, right?” He nodded. “I know your sister’s in town, but your dad is in the east right now. I don’t know if you’ll be safe at home. The bad men know who your dad is and they all know you chose to study at the temple. They might take you to hurt your dad. I want to know that you’re safe,” Sister Ketchkei explained as she ruffled his hair. “Okay for now?”

  “Okay,” agreed Maximo.

  “I’m worried about them,” Priya blurted.

  “Here, let me show you something. Priya, can you sit with your back to me? And Maximo and Hugh, you too.”

  Priya set her back against the older girl’s. Maximo and Hugh sat next to them. “We used to do this out in the fields, when we were out watching the sheep in the night. You sit back to back, so you hold each other up, conserve body heat, and you can see everything around you. You want to keep the wolves away, don’t you?” asked Sister Ketchkei. Maximo giggled.

  “All right, now we join hands and we clear our minds and we pray for the clergy.”

  “How long do we pray?” Priya asked.

  “Just until the shop opens. Then we go out to see what everyone on the street is saying about us.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Outside Esau City, Cavanii Provence

  Jonas Norsson

  Jonas Norsson finished putting his weapons in the pack, closed the bag and slung it over his shoulder. Turning to leave the room he had been calling home for the last three weeks, he stopped. Theresa Franco, formidable and angry since losing contact with her husband, stood like a monument in the doorway.

  “Where are you all going? You can’t leave us here!” Theresa commanded.

  “You and your children will be safe here. We’re going into Esau. We’ll be back in a few hours.” Norsson tried to elbow past her, but the woman glared at him in a way that reminded him of his mother and refused to move.

  “You are a horrible liar,” she said snidely.

  Clenching his teeth, Norsson backed off a step. “Look, I have an order, I have to follow it.”

  “You told the men ‘dragon fire.’ What does it mean?” asked Theresa.

  “A figure of speech,” he dissembled.

  “I’ve been married to Horacio long enough to know a code name when I hear it.”

  Norsson sighed, but said, “Fine, walk with me. We need to get moving. The afternoon is fading.”

  She stepped aside and followed him down the hall and out to the backyard of the abandoned farmhouse they were using for shelter. The yard was dusty, the chicken coop empty and falling down. Norsson’s ten men were dressed as loggers, with a team of four horses on a big long wagon full of logs.

  “When Anoni and I spoke before the prince’s birthday, we agreed on a contingency plan. If the Shaisos struck the temple, my unit was to send him a message,” explained Norsson.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Theresa.

  He climbed into the cart and took the seat next to Goran, the driver. “We make sure he can never come home.”

  “You can’t just wander into a keep and burn down the city! There are people living there,” insisted Theresa.

  “Who said anything about burning? We’ll have a proper act of the Goddess to wipe them off the map,” he said with grim determination.

  He thought back to the midnight meeting he had had in an upper room of an inn in Aquillion. It had been him and Anoni Mizrahi drinking shots of very strong liquor while discussing what they would do if everything went to hell. For hours, they had huddled around a table with a single candle, debating tactics. He remembered as the plan took shape, the darkness in that room had seemed to contract around them, suffocatingly close. When they left that room, it smelled like stale fear and he had felt ten years older.

  He tried to push the memory away as he nodded to Gorin, who clucked at the horse and set them moving. The weight of what he and his men were about to do was in his voice as he explained to Theresa Franco, “It’s revenge for the lives the Shaisos have already taken.”

  They left her there on the porch, gaping like a fish.

  ***

  Outside Esau City, Cavanii Provence

  Theresa Franco

  Theresa sat on the porch step, skirts around her, thinking fast. The men had left a few minutes ago. Norsson hadn’t lived in the keep. He didn’t know the people there; he just thought of them as Shaiso’s people. Easy targets. The keep had seemed so safe, so solid all these years. Now it seemed fragile as an eggshell. She had worked in the nursery for the last two years, tending the babes of the minor courtiers of the keep. They didn’t deserve this. Even if Shaiso had killed her Horacio.

  How? How would they destroy the city? If not burning? The city was on the river, the keep at its center, all of it in the fertile river valley kept dry by a dam upstream. The city wasn’t big, but there was a lot of trade on the Lorada River. This safe house was on the side of Yoshio Mountain, a half day’s ride north from the city. What were the easiest ways to destroy a city? Imperial history unfolded in her memory. Cities destroyed and people dead in the scores. Fire, flood, storms, poisoned water supply, army attack, and the Sawgrass Plague. The Dragons can’t create a storm and he said they wouldn’t burn the city. I doubt anyone who lost family to the Sawgrass Plague would consider putting plague-infected people in a city to kill it. Why would Norsson take the river road north? It made no sense. She thought of her son, sleeping in the upstairs bedroom. Were they safe? she wondered as her eyes fell on the old rowboats overturned against the house. There were five of them and another couple of slim one-man boats. Why would they need so many boats?

  A feeling of impending doom came over her, chilling her skin. She didn’t know how, but Norsson and his men were going to take out the dam. The flood waters would roll down like the wrath of the Goddess herself. She wished they had the communion stones to warn the people, or at least she could argue with Mizrahi to lift the order for this act of destruction. She shot to her feet as if shot by a bow. She was up the stairs and in the bedroom before she had formulated what she was going to say. Darien and Fennick were playing cards together on the floor, both with their father’s dark looks. Darien was twelve, while Fennick was a struggling nine.

  “Children, I need to talk to you,” she said, kneeling next to them.

  “Momma?” Fennick looked at her with scared eyes.

  “I need you both to stay here. I should be back by tomorrow. There’s bread and fruit and the fish the men brought to eat. Can you both be good and stay here for me?”

  “Where are you going?” Darien asked.

  “Into the city. Errands. Can you look after your brother for me?”

  Frowning, Darien nodded. “All right.”

  She hugged them tightly. They got up and helped her pack. The men had left a large half-Delkeran mule named Martin, because they thought he was as ornery and perverse as the martens who roamed the forest. He was not fast, but he could regularly haul almost twice his weight. Darien helped her load one of the light one-man boats onto the mule’s side. He looked ridiculous, and seemed to resent it. She told Darien to keep his brother and himself safe on the mountain, hugged them once more, and climbed aboard the angry mule. Taking the trail down the mountain, she prayed she was doing the right thing.

  As the afternoon waned she made it down the steep switchbacks descent to the valley floor, and another hour had her on the river. It was a wide muddy river. It looked so slow and placid now. So innocent. She headed south, toward the city, wracking her brain for what she was going to do when she got there.

  The noise of many birds came to her, echoing off the water, as she rode. The hum of a solar ship came to her next. She pulled the protesting mule to a stop and checked up the river. The ship sat low in the water, painted Shaiso colors of gray and navy blue, and was hung with many cages full of birds. She remembered di
mly that the Shaisos had their own bird farms. They bred hunting falcons, messenger birds, and even some exotic pets.

  Thinking fast, she dismounted, and cut loose her boat. She put her pack inside, got it lined up with the shore and gave the mule a slap on the rump to get him going. She got in the boat and pushed off with the two-bladed paddle. After a moment of awkwardness, trying to get the boat moving in a straight line, she went after the bird boat. Her boat glided, an elegant if delicate form of transport, she thought. A man in guard uniform came around the deck. She blinked incredulously into the dim light of the ship’s runners. It was Tuttle, the lieutenant Norsson’s men had led back to the caves, the drunken hero of Shaiso’s keep.

  “Ahoy! Who’s there?” called Tuttle.

  “Um...Can I come aboard? I need some help,” asked Theresa.

  “We can’t stop, madame. We need to get to Esau on schedule.”

  “Please! You’re Tuttle, right? I’m Theresa Franco. I got free of those bandits.” It sounded like a lame story to her own ears, but the man perked up.

  He frowned in confusion. “I thought all the hostages were free. Come, come aboard.” She brought the boat alongside and he tied its rope to the back of his ship. He gave her a hand over to the deck.

  “Are you all right? Where are the bandits?” asked Tuttle.

  “They left. But they said they were going to destroy the dam. We need to warn the city,” she said, trying to sound matter of fact, like any mother trying not to alarm a child.

  Tuttle shook his head. “What? What are you saying?”

  “You’ve got a boat full of messenger birds! Send a message!” Frustrated, she elbowed past him, making for the bow and the cages. She ran down an aisle between them, causing much fluttering and squawking among the inmates.

  “Madame! This is a shipment from up north. They haven’t been trained yet!” exclaimed Tuttle.

  She clenched her fists in frustration. “Not one? NOT ONE GODDESS DAMNED BIRD?” Theresa screamed as she shook him by the lapels.

  “There’s...” Tuttle hesitated.

  “What?” pried Theresa.

  “One. But it’s the Highlord’s prize hunting bird. He had it up north to breed with one of the champs in Erolia. I was told it was worth more than my life,” he said, panicked.

  “What’s going on here?” A man in captain’s uniform came out of the wheelhouse.

  “Which one?” she demanded of Tuttle.

  He jerked his head at a velvet covered cage near the back. She pushed Tuttle toward the captain. “You explain it to him.”

  She ran for the cage, yanking off the cover to the cursing protest of the captain. The bird was beautiful, a red-tailed hunting hawk with hood and jesses. She pulled a scrap of paper from her pack but there was nothing to write with. Searching around, there was nothing. Finally she took her belt knife and pricked her finger. The writing was crude, but effective. Once she was done writing, she rolled the paper into a tube. Wrapping the velvet cover around her fist, she opened the hawk’s cage. She tied the note to the jesses and got the bird to mount her wrist. She chanced a look behind her and saw that the captain was trying to get past Tuttle now, yelling about orders. She pulled the bird out of the cage, and slipped off the hood. She didn’t wait for the bird to notice she was a stranger, just tossed it heavily into the sky. It circled, confused. The captain caught her by the arm, but she just watched the bird, a frantic prayer on her lips. Finally, the bird soared down the river ahead of them, taking a straight shot for the city. Even after the captain had apprehended her and was hauling her into the wheelhouse, she followed its path with her eyes as the sun set.

  ***

  Tall Grasses, Safiro Wilds, South of the Isle of Asteri

  Anoni

  “Corin?” Anoni approached the prince’s man as the Dragons pitched their tents for the night. Corin was conspicuously not pitching his; instead he was strumming his borrowed guitar and humming to himself. Every once in a while he made a note in his notebook. “Corin?”

  “What? Yes?” he started.

  “I think you need to sleep in a tent tonight,” said Anoni with a gentle smile.

  Frowning, he set the guitar aside. “Why? I like the stars.” He seemed as puzzled by this as she.

  “It may not be safe.”

  “Your marvelous Dragons are suddenly going to let beasts into camp?” He raised a playful eyebrow.

  “The plains are called Tall Grasses. It’s a very dangerous place. The traders in Lyceo don’t even come here. The most I could get out of them was: ‘many things live in Tall Grasses which like humans, same way humans like chicken and beef.’ There’s no cover and little water. Dangerous things are out there,” explained Anoni.

  “Dangerous things are in here too,” he said, indicating the Dragons with a nod. “I’m a little old to be hiding under the blankets to keep the monsters away. A layer of canvas won’t keep them out,” said Corin.

  “I could order you to sleep in a tent,” Anoni said dryly.

  “You could invite me into yours,” Corin said, as he smiled like a mischievous boy.

  “Ha ha,” Anoni laughed sarcastically. Shaking her head, she left him to join the Dragons at the fire.

  Tevix was tossing vegetables into the pot with some salted pork from Lyceo. The Dragons sat around, waiting for dinner, telling stories and mending equipment.

  Because she knew them, she knew something was wrong. An undercurrent ran in their movements, an unspoken tension that grew tighter when she sat down on a log to join them. She whittled a stick to keep her hands busy.

  “So boss, what was it like?” asked Arjent while he sharpened his knives.

  She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about so she said, “Warm and fuzzy.” The men burst out laughing, the air clearing a little. Yupendra and Giovicci remained serious.

  “No really, what was it like?” Giovicci asked sharply. “Defying a Goddess. That must have taken nerve.” He was angry, but she couldn’t tell why.

  “I didn’t want to leave the quest,” she said quietly with a shrug.

  The other men had quieted.

  “Did you think about what would happen to us?” Giovicci asked, bitterness clear in his face. “You turned her down.”

  Angrily, Anoni threw down a stick. “Is this about you, Giovicci? Is it all about you?”

  Giovicci glared at her and said, “I just want to get this straight. You denied the call of the Goddess, something that has never been written of in any of the texts I read.”

  “You afraid for your soul, Giovicci? You think the Lady might take you by mistake?” she said acidly.

  “You don’t know what you’re playing with,” argued Giovicci.

  “She said I’m still the Scion. What more do you want?” demanded Anoni.

  “Parents discipline their children harder than anyone else,” Yupendra said quietly.

  “You were her chosen one. Do you think she won’t try to teach you a lesson?”

  “You think we can’t win without the Lady’s magic?” Anoni challenged. Giovicci flinched. “Well thank you for the faith, you coward.” Anoni stood, fists clenched.

  “I worked to get this far. I didn’t need the magic.”

  “But you came to Oruno with magic already. How can we know if...” Nekobashi trailed off with a shrug.

  “If I was a man, you would never say that,” Anoni said through clenched teeth. She had wanted to get this business aired-out, but this was more than she expected.

  Peripherally, she saw Corin join the group.

  “That’s a low blow,” Vansainté said to Nekobashi, trying to wave off the issue. “I have no doubts about you.”

  Anoni ignored him. She searched the other men’s faces, looking for something. “I passed the imperial examinations for the Red Dragon. I chose you. I chose you for your excellence.” She tried to appeal to each man in turn. Several glared defiantly, others would not look her in the eye. “All right, fine. Rondori then.”

&n
bsp; Arjent exchanged glances with Yupendra and said, “It’s not come to that.”

  “Oh, come on. If I’ve lost favor, come for me, and I’ll lose,” said Anoni.

  “What’s rondori?” Corin asked Vansainté in a half whisper.

  “It’s a training technique to deal with multiple attackers. A group comes at you and you take them down fast to keep them at bay,” explained Vansainté.

  “Let’s do this.” She stood, unbuttoning her jacket.

  “No!” Yupendra glared. “I’m not going to watch this happen.”

  “Very nice of you to make a stand, Yupendra,” she sneered.

  “You won’t pull your punches or your blades to make a point. I’ll be setting bones all night,” he said coldly.

  She wanted to scream with frustration. “So you still think I can fight. You’re afraid of whatever divine retribution might come for me.” She searched their faces. Closed expressions, and they wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Califf burn you! Anyone who wants to uphold their honor, and stop Shaiso from killing the emperor, I'll see you in the morning. The rest of you...I hope I’m there to spit on your grave stones.” She stalked out into the darkness, fuming. How could they doubt me now? How could the Goddess be the only reason I got this far? How could she?

  ***

  Tall Grasses, Safiro Wilds, South of the Isle of Asteri

  Corin

  Corin sat by the men as they ate in the silence borne of Anoni’s last words. He had felt the frustration in her words. She couldn’t argue them into believing her and they wouldn’t let her beat it into them. Even if she had, they would have been sullen anyway, and sullen men were not people Corin would have trusted at his back. If Anoni had been a peacemaker, she might have tried bargaining, but the Dragons were not here to make nice with the monsters of the Safiro Wilds. They needed a military leader. Bargaining negated strength. Challenging them to do their best, or worst, seemed to be her way. He wondered how the men really felt. If their faith in Anoni was so shallow, why had they followed her so far already?