by Mike Grinti
But though her mind was free, her body wasn’t, and after many years—or was it merely hours?—she was forced to take off the mask.
Without it, the world seemed gray and empty. The seconds dragged across her mind like stone scraping against stone. She ate without tasting. She slept, if the fitful tossing and the nightmarish visions could be called sleep.
“You’re getting that faraway look again,” Marjani said. “And you’ve stopped eating. You promised me you’d eat today.”
Jala started. She’d forgotten Marjani was there. She looked around. They were in a small, round chamber deep in the palace. There were no windows, only candles on the walls and a small table with two stools. There was food laid out in front of them.
Nearby, the sound of rushing water filled her ears, and she wondered how long before she could wear the mask again.
Azi stood at the bow of the ship and watched the Constant City draw near. He’d been raiding many times but had never been to the Constant City itself. In the past, some kings had made sure their sons went trading in the Constant City instead of raiding, but his father hadn’t been that way. He imagined Jala standing on her ship watching the city just as he was now.
Where are you? Azi wondered, just as he had every day since he’d left. He’d been impatient to reach the mainland then. Now, a part of him didn’t want to know. What if she was dead? What if it had all been for nothing?
But what if she wasn’t? What if he could help her? His mother would tell him he was being a fool, that like all men he thought the winds only blew if he was there to help them. Well, maybe he was a fool, but he’d rather be a fool than live the rest of his life wondering if he could have made a difference.
“Captain! There are grayships in the harbor,” called one of the sailors.
Azi’s heart rose as he squinted in the direction the spotter pointed. “Can you tell whose ships they are? Is one of them a Bardo ship?”
“One of them looks like the Bardo grew it,” the sailor said. “The others look like Gana ships to me.”
Azi sighed and sank down to his knees. He laughed. It had all been for nothing. She hadn’t needed rescuing after all. He was a fool, just like his mother said, and he didn’t care.
“Go to them. Call out to them,” Azi said. “I have to see her.”
The sailor glanced at the captain. She nodded, and the sailor called directions to the navigator. Slowly, far too slowly for Azi, the ship turned. They were spotted long before they were close enough to be heard. Azi could see the sailors on the deck pointing.
“Peace and good wind,” one of the sailors on the Gana ship called when they’d drawn close.
Azi didn’t wait for the Whaleshark’s crew to shout back a greeting of their own. “Where’s Jala?” he shouted across the shrinking gap between the ships. “Where’s the queen?”
The sailors glanced at each other, but none of them spoke. Azi’s chest felt hollow. “What happened to her?” he demanded, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
By now the Whaleshark had drawn up beside the Bardo grayship. On each ship, four sailors pulled out oars and held them out for someone on the opposing ship to grab, as much to keep them from colliding as to keep them together. The ship lurched from the sudden shift in momentum, but Azi was ready for it after years aboard ships. That wasn’t what made his legs unsteady.
“What happened to Jala?”
“They left her behind, my king,” said an old man sitting on one of the benches nailed into the shipwood for rowing. “Not that she gave them any choice.”
“Left her? Where? Why?” Azi didn’t wait for them to answer. He placed one foot on the bulwark and jumped. He cleared the gap and landed heavily on the Bardo ship’s deck. The ship rocked from the impact.
“She wasn’t herself anymore,” one of the sailors said.
“She put the mask on and it’s like she was gone,” said another.
“They would have killed us all.”
The sailors were all talking at once now. They fell quiet as he met their gaze, but they didn’t look away. It wasn’t guilt on their faces but exhaustion and defiance. Whatever had happened, they weren’t happy about it—but they would do it again.
“She was Bardo,” one of the sailors said, as if she could hear his thoughts. “We don’t leave family behind easily.”
“But she’s still alive?” Azi demanded. “Somewhere?”
“She’s alive,” the old man said. “But it’s a long way to the city of the river people, my king. I can help you find her, though.”
Azi focused on the old man. “Who are you? You’re no sailor.”
“Askel, my king. A sorcerer from the fire island, though I hope to make my home on a more hospitable isle after this. She promised me, my king.”
“If you can help me find her, I’ll make sure my uncle knows what you’ve done.” Though I don’t know if he’ll thank you for it, Azi thought.
“Thank you, my king. I ask only that and one other thing . . . a small thing.”
“First I have to find her,” Azi said pointedly.
The sorcerer smiled and reached into his dirty robe. He pulled out a bound rag, then carefully unrolled it. Inside was a shriveled lump of black and red.
Blood. Fingernail. It was a finger—Jala’s finger, Azi realized, recognizing it somehow in spite of its hideous state. Before he’d thought anything else, he found himself grabbing hold of the sorcerer’s robes and throwing him over the side of the ship. Azi didn’t let go of the man but let him hang, bare feet skimming the top of the water, his skin sliced open as he bounced against the sharp sides of the ship.
“What did you do to her?” Azi hissed.
But the sorcerer just laughed. “She did it to herself. She did it all to herself. If you’ll set me down, I’ll explain it all, and then I’ll tell you how you can use this same magic to find your queen again.”
Azi felt a hand on his shoulder. “My king, he’s telling the truth,” one of the sailors said. “She cut her own finger off, though it was for this one’s magic. Captain Natari was there. He’ll tell you.”
One of the other grayships was already pulling up beside the one he stood on, and the sailors greeted their captain across the water.
Azi forced himself to breathe. Carefully, he pulled the sorcerer back into the ship and set him back on the bench.
“I’m sorry,” he said, mostly meaning it. “It’s not really you I want to hit. I don’t know who to hit, in fact. If you can help me find her. . . . I think you and Captain Natari need to tell me everything. Then show me how the magic works.”
He reached out his hand, palm up, and the sorcerer placed Jala’s finger on it. Blood oozed, slow as mud, from the dried stump.
Azi closed his fingers around it carefully and listened. The sorcerer, with unasked-for help from the sailors, told Azi what had happened in the city of the Hashon. He told Azi about the masks, about the war between the followers of stone and the followers of water, about the Hashana River that flowed through the lands and the people. He told Azi what Jala had done.
“There might not be anything left of her by now,” Askel whispered. “Only the mask. Only Lord Water. Do you still want to go?” Azi nodded. “The magic works in reverse. Hook your finger around hers, the way two children might when making a promise. Close your eyes and still your mind. Feel the weak pulse in the dying flesh? Feel the way it pulls you in her direction? Just like one of your grayships pulling toward the reef that grew it.”
“I feel it,” Azi whispered, his voice hoarse.
“Then your queen’s body still lives, and the magic has not yet faded. As for her mind and spirit, I make no promises.”
When the sorcerer was done, Captain Natari offered Azi the Queen’s Earring. “She might need this,” he said. “I hope she does.”
Azi shook his head. “I hope she does as well, but I can’t take it with me. I may never come back. Take it to my uncle when you’re back on the Five-and-One. If we ever make
it back home . . . then we’ll see.”
Captain Natari nodded. “Then I hope a strong wind fills your sail, Azi of the Kayet.”
Azi returned to the Whaleshark, Jala’s missing finger clutched in one hand. “I’ll take whatever supplies you can spare and trade for more in the city. I want to leave tomorrow as soon as there’s light to walk by.” He glanced around at the sailors who had fought by his side on the Fifth Isle, at Captain Darri, who’d taken Paka’s command when the man had died. He’d gotten used to giving orders, he realized.
“You don’t have to come with me,” he added. “I’m not your captain, and I don’t know if I’ll still be king when I return. If I return. I can’t command you to go with me. And after what we all saw, what we survived, you deserve better than to have me ask you to risk your lives again when there’s only two lives on the line and not an entire island. But I’m asking you anyway. Come with me. Help me bring Jala home.”
“Three lives,” a woman said. “Her friend who went with her, Marjani. She stayed behind too. I heard the Bardo talking about it. So that’s three lives.”
“I heard what the queen did,” a man said. “And I see the way you look at her. I’ll go.”
“We saw what you did, too,” Captain Darri said. “Even if we could only help one villager, you went with us on the Fifth Isle. Three lives isn’t so little. I’ll stay by your side, king or no.”
“I get a feeling, sometimes,” an older sailor said. “Like this is the last storm season I’ll see aboard a ship. I think I’d like to look at the mainland one more time, just in case I’m right.”
In the end, four sailors stayed behind to watch the ship and sail it back to the First Isle if they didn’t return. The rest set out for the mainland for supplies. There were Kayet traders there, just as Azi had expected, and they managed to get enough to start them on their way, though it was less than he’d have liked. They even managed to get hired out as guards on a merchant’s caravan. Here Azi’s scars seemed to impress them almost as much as their swords.
“Who are we supposed to be protecting them from?” Azi asked.
“Islanders,” the old sailor said, with a laugh.
They left the next morning, just as Azi had wanted. The journey was a long one, strange and boring at the same time. They ate what they were given as payment, sparing their own limited supplies. When they talked among themselves, the merchants and other guards gave them strange looks, so they talked little.
For a while, the caravan drove them closer to their goal. But eventually they turned down a road that led away from Jala. Then Azi and the other sailors left in the middle of the night, taking some of the better food with them. No caravans wanted anything to do with a group of armed, road-spattered men and women, and none of the sailors knew enough of any common language to convince the caravans otherwise. They walked alone, the food supply slowly dwindling.
One night, they were attacked by bandits, men that looked even hungrier than they did. They fought in the night by the light of a dying fire, both sides shouting curses their enemy couldn’t understand. Two sailors died and three bandits. The rest fled into the night.
“There’s no water here, and we can’t take them with us,” Azi said, looking down at the bodies of those who had died for him. “What do the mainlanders do with their dead?”
“Bury them in the ground,” the old sailor said. For all his talk of being old, he’d managed to escape the fight with only a shallow cut across his arm.
They didn’t bury them. It didn’t seem right for a sailor to be trapped in the earth. Overhead, birds were already circling, so they left the bodies there to be eaten. There was nothing else to do. The next morning, they pressed on.
Finally, Jala’s severed finger led them to the great wide river the Bardo sailors had spoken of. They had no one who could speak the language here, but these people were sailors too, of a sort. Once they had made themselves understood, they managed to get work rowing on a barge heading up river.
They worked and ate and slept and stayed silent.
Sometimes as he rowed or laid on the deck watching the stars and waiting for sleep, Azi listened to the foreign language whispered around them. Most of it was meaningless, but a few words he thought he recognized. One of the words for water was close to the island word for fresh water. The word for palm was practically the same. Their word for rain was nearly the island word for a clear sky. Maybe the speaker had only meant to be sarcastic.
Azi had been to the mainland many times, but he’d never listened to the people there. Of course, mostly they yelled or screamed or cried.
Now, they talked and argued and laughed. The next time the river-sailors played one of their gambling games, he watched. The next night, they offered to let him play. He did, and laughing they won his dinner, his shirt, and his sword. The next night he won them all back, along with a few battered coins. They laughed at this, too, and shared their wine with him.
When they asked where he was from, he told them he was from the Constant City. He knew enough sailors’ stories of the place to pass off as his own, but his attempts to tell them mostly led to mockery. His accent was thick, and he didn’t know the words for simple things. But he told the stories anyway, gesturing and laughing with them, and whenever they understood what he was speaking of they taught him the Hashon word for it.
By the time they saw the city in the distance he was able to speak well enough to trade with some of the fishermen, and he turned his winnings into some rope and a hook, and then he paid the man to shave their hair with a clean, sharp knife so that they wouldn’t stand out so much among the straight-haired Hashon.
They were close to her now. Azi could feel her nearness when he held the withered finger hooked around his own.
They entered the city among the fishermen and farmers and traders and travelers. In an alley behind a tavern, an old man drunk on wine Azi bought for him told stories about the palace. He’d been a rat-catcher, a kitchen boy, servant, now a gardener—or at least that’s what Azi thought he said. His speech was slurred and it made him even harder to understand.
“Tell us—where—” Azi waved his hand in front of his face, trying to act out the word for mask. “Tell us where. A map.”
But the old man hardly seemed to be paying attention to them. “My favorite garden. Little, hiding in the corner. Why even build it? Lords never go there. But the island queen does. Her favorite goes there too, sits and looks up at the stars.”
“Island queen?” Azi asked, his heart suddenly beating so fast he could hardly breathe. “Where is the garden? Show me. Map.” Then Azi took the man’s hand and pressed one of the last silver coins they had into it.
The old gardener stared at it for a moment as if not understanding, then he laughed and spoke words Azi didn’t know and began to draw in the dirt.
They waited for a moonless night, when the streets were dark and the stars clear, then gathered in an alley across the street from the palace walls. Captain Darri was with him, and the old sailor, dressed in rags like a beggar so he could go unnoticed and act as lookout.
Every few minutes a pair of guards passed by the wall. Both wore tall helms with eyes painted on. They had long knives at their sides and clubs in their hands. One of them carried a torch. Azi had to turn away and shut his eyes to keep from being blinded and losing his night vision.
Azi waited for the guards to pass several times, counting the seconds between rounds, letting them settle into the night’s routine and hoping Jala hadn’t come and gone already. Finally, as the torchlight disappeared around a corner, Azi and Darri ran to the wall. Azi threw the hook up. It scraped against the top of the palace walls, then fell back down with a crack. They stood still, breathless, but no one came running.
Darri counted softly under her breath. “Forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five.” Azi threw again. It held for just a moment, but when he tried to pull himself up it slipped.
“Back!” Darri hissed.
Azi gathere
d up the rope as quickly as he could, then together they ran back to the alley and waited for the guards to pass once more. This time when Azi threw the hook it caught the first time and held his weight. There were iron spikes at the top of the wall, but they seemed to be more decorative than anything else. Azi ducked and waited for Darri to climb up after him. Then he pulled up the rope and tossed it to the ground on the other side. It landed with a soft thump just as the light from the guards’ torch appeared again.
Azi quickly slid down off the wall, catching himself with his fingertips for just a moment before letting go entirely. His hands and feet slid over the stone, and then he hit the ground and rolled. The ground was soft here, but the fall still winded him.
When he could breathe again, his nose filled with an overpoweringly sweet scent. A flower garden, just like the old man had said. He was in the right place. It was a small nook, half the length of a grayship and just as wide. At one end was a plain wooden door. Flickering yellow light seeped out from between the door and the frame.
Darri was already by the door, listening, a knife in her hand just in case. Of course, if she had to use it, the whole thing was almost certainly lost. Even if they managed to kill a guard without him shouting, they had no way to hide a body. But no guards came. In the thin light Azi managed to make out the shape of a tree. It was shorter than the palm trees of the island but was covered in thick leaves.
Azi climbed up into the tree, high enough that it would be hard to see him from the doorway. Captain Darri followed after him and found her own branch.
They waited, perched awkwardly, trying not to cause too much rustling.
Azi held the severed finger in his hand. The pull was strong here, but he couldn’t tell if it was coming any closer or not. He hoped she hadn’t picked this day to skip visiting the garden, that she hadn’t felt ill or gone to sleep early. He’d go looking for her if she didn’t come, though he had no idea how he’d avoid being found out then. But it had always been a fool’s plan.