Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  Finally the trail led, like a fuse, to the memory where it all started, the one that had repeated in his mind, agonizingly, for days. He held a long-bladed knife. It had been sharpened and resharpened till its blade was thin; he had used it so many times. He pushed the point through the skin of Goth’s chest; then, sawing back and forth, cut a long gash just under the ribs. He thrust his hand into the raw-edged hole, there among the warm organs, the blood running down his arm. He thrust upward through slippery things till he found the heart, beating, and squeezed it till Goth screamed.

  “Blessed Ashte!” he gasped, sitting bolt upright, his own heart racing. “Did I kill him?”

  Tway rose from a seat nearby. They weren’t in Windemon’s cabin; this place was much smaller. Tway’s face looked strained, as if she hadn’t slept in days. “Harg,” she said, “you didn’t kill anyone. You’ve got to stop talking about it.”

  Harg knew she had told him this before, too. But the memory was there, so clear. “Is he alive, then?” Harg asked.

  “As far as we know,” Tway said wearily.

  An alternate version was trickling into Harg’s mind. He couldn’t reconcile them. It occurred to him that perhaps one was true, and one was true. He closed his eye, feeling overloaded, exhausted. No wonder they all wanted to gouge out his eyes. He put a hand up to feel his face; it was tightly bandaged.

  “We didn’t capture Talley’s ship, did we?” he said dully.

  “No.”

  “The war would be over now if we had.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It would be, Tway. With Talley prisoner, we could have negotiated. Now a lot of people are going to die.” He looked up through a haze at her familiar face. She looked a little thinner, but still had that Yoran look, like someone who would always know where the land lay, no matter how far to sea life might blow her. He said, “It was like a riddle. If you could prevent terrible carnage and save your country by killing the person you love most, would you do it?”

  Only it wasn’t that simple, or that noble. No, somewhere in him there was a part that had wanted to use that knife for years.

  She was looking down at him with such an expression of compassion that it finally occurred to him that she was really there.

  “Tway,” he said. “What are you doing here?” He tried to think when he had last seen her. In Tornabay, on that terrible night, and not since. “I was worried for you. Where have you been?”

  She took his hand, and squeezed it. “In Lashnish. I came as soon as I heard you were in trouble. I’ll always come if you’re in trouble, Harg.”

  Gripping her hand, he raised it to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. She was his oldest, most faithful friend. He lay back against the pillows, unable to let go of her hand. “Where are we?” he asked. The cabin looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “We’re on the Ripplewill, heading for Lashnish.”

  It was the last answer he had expected. “Lashnish?” he said. “What for?”

  She sat down beside him. Her face was grave. She reached out to feel his forehead, then said, “If I tell you what’s happening, will you remember this time?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “We had to get you away from the Navy, to some place where you couldn’t come to any harm. Or cause it.”

  He sat up, certain now that something serious had happened. “Who’s in charge?” he demanded.

  “Of the Navy? Joffrey.”

  He gave an inarticulate sound of protest.

  “Look, Harg, he may not be a great hero, but at least he’s prudent and sane.”

  As opposed to me, Harg thought bitterly.

  “And it’s a rotting lucky thing he came along when he did,” she said.

  “Did he get to Vill in time to rescue the land party?” Harg asked.

  Tway shook her head. “I’m sorry, Harg.”

  “What happened?”

  “They were captured. Probably even before your ships were attacked.”

  There was a twisting feeling in Harg’s gut. “Barko?” he said.

  “Executed,” Tway answered.

  Harg looked away. He could see Barko’s face so clearly, hear his voice, his sense of humour. To think of him executed like a hundred others by people who didn’t even know him—it was unjust, unworthy of the world. Harg had relied on Barko for so much, trusted him so implicitly. It had almost been like having a brother.

  In a tensely controlled voice, Harg said, “So what has Joffrey done?”

  “Retreated. Pulled back to regroup.”

  It was the opposite of what Harg would have done. He would have pressed on, hunted down Corbin Talley with a ferocious implacability. He would have done anything it took to catch the man, then killed him gladly with his own bare hands. For a moment, murderous fantasies flooded his brain. How would he do it? With a knife? A garrotte around that patrician throat? A pistol shot to the eye would be just. Or hang him from the yard of his own ship till the life was choked out of him, and the crows pecked at his eyes.

  His mouth was dry. He realized that Tway was gazing at him in alarm. Something must have showed in his face. He took a long, shaky breath. “Why are we going to Lashnish?” he said. “Why not Harbourdown?”

  Gently, she said, “We were at Harbourdown for a while. That’s where the Inning doctor treated you. But we had to leave. It wasn’t safe for you.”

  “What do you mean?” Harbourdown was his haven, his adopted home, Barko’s home. The place on earth that loved him most.

  Tway took his hand between both of hers, and pressed it. “Harg, you have no idea what trouble you’re in. The story of what happened aboard your ship has spread everywhere. There’s not a fishwife in all the Isles who hasn’t heard that you ordered your crew to kill the Heir of Gilgen. If Katri hadn’t disobeyed, your life wouldn’t be worth the air you’re breathing.”

  It was all wrong, all backwards. The story was true on the surface, but deeply false underneath. He started to say, “But if I had—”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of ifs,” Tway broke in. “If it hadn’t been Goth. If you’d just had a pint or two more blood in your brain at the time. It all would have been different, if. But that doesn’t matter to anyone else, you see. All they hear is, you tried to kill the Heir of Gilgen. And that means you’re doing the work of the Mundua and Ashwin.”

  He couldn’t believe her. She was exaggerating to justify what they were doing—putting Joffrey in charge of the Navy, spiriting him away to a place where he could be put under the thumbs of the Lashnura. It was the Grey Folk behind this. They had sent his oldest friend to lure him back so they could correct the insult to their power.

  He threw aside the covers and swung his legs out of the bed. Tway said, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going up on deck,” he said grimly. “We’re not going to Lashnish.”

  He tried to stand, and almost immediately had to sit again. His legs were weaker than they had ever been, his balance was gone. Fighting a wave of vertigo, he tried again, and failed. Tway just sat watching him as frustration and embarrassment at his helplessness took over. Even his own body was betraying him.

  “The crew won’t take orders from you anyway, Harg,” she said at last. “No one will. Torr was the only captain in Harbourdown who would even consent to take you, and his crew are just as scared of you as everyone else. They didn’t want to have a tool of the Mundua on their boat.”

  He stared at her, appalled that she would say such a thing of him. A human who collaborated with the Mundua and Ashwin was an object of loathing and fear, fit only to be destroyed without pity. “Tway,” he said seriously, “I’ve made no bargains with the Mundua and Ashwin. You know me. I’m telling the truth.”

  Her expression softened, but her voice was still firm. “I don’t think you in
tend to work for them. You don’t even realize how the pain has built up over the years and given them a way to manipulate you. They’re sneaky, Harg. They creep into our hearts without our even knowing it, and start to control us. When it happens to ordinary people, they just make their families or villages miserable. But you’re not an ordinary person. When you start making decisions out of pain, it’s a danger to us all. The Mundua and Ashwin don’t need to do anything, you’re doing it all for them. You’re a force of disorder all by yourself.”

  She was the person most loyal to him in all the world, and even she mistrusted him. It felt like nothing was solid underneath him. Not only was his strength gone, and his eye, and Barko; so was everyone’s belief in who he was.

  It was only days ago, it seemed, that a whole fleet of ships would have followed him past the edge of this circle. And now, not even his best friend trusted him. The suddenness of the reversal made him realize, bitterly, that no one had been following him; they had all been following his shadow, cast larger than life by the light of his victories.

  Tway reached out and put a hand on his arm as he sat motionless. She said, “It breaks my heart to see you like this, Harg. You’ve got to let your friends help you, don’t you see? You’ve got to admit you need it.”

  All the weight of his past had settled on him at once. He couldn’t hold his head up any more. He sank back on the bed, staring wordlessly at the beams above him, wondering why they had bothered to save his life.

  *

  When they came in to Lashnish four days later, Harg was up on the foredeck to catch his first glimpse of the fabled Sleeping City. He had never been here before, and as the Ripplewill passed down the deep, pine-curtained inlet, it felt as if he were drifting backwards in time, to some moment isolated from change and the concerns of the world. When at last the city appeared before them, cascading down the mountainside, tiered like a frozen waterfall, he felt uplifted by its ancient grandeur. This was his heritage too, he thought, as surely as the humble Adaina villages of the South Chain. This place of soaring architecture was something his ancestors had done, and it was worth saving, worth fighting to defend. He looked over at Tway, standing beside him, but she wasn’t looking at the city; she was looking at him. He reached out and squeezed her hand.

  He had woken that morning with some of his optimism revived along with his strength. He had decided not to write off his life until he had had a chance to talk to Tiarch, and hear her diagnosis of the situation. It was hard to believe that he couldn’t still salvage something.

  When Tway had changed the bandages on his face, he had even steeled himself to look in the mirror for the first time, and it had almost killed his spirits. His face was horribly disfigured by the wound, the empty eye socket still inflamed and raw. He had quickly asked her to cover it up again. It was not that he had ever thought of himself as handsome, but at least his own body had always been familiar to him. He had trusted it, and liked it; it had never let him down. Now it felt like he was walking around in someone else’s face, someone scarred and hideous. The kind of person fit to be branded as a pariah.

  Torr and his crew didn’t want to go ashore, so Gill, Tway, and Harg unshipped the jolly boat and got in, with Gill rowing. He brought them to land at the base of the broad ceremonial staircase that rose from the water’s edge to the marble promenade that lined the waterfront. As they climbed the steps, Harg looked up at the archway towering over them, thinking for an awestruck moment that all the great Isons through history must have entered this very way into their capital city.

  The quayside street was crowded with peddlers, sailors, children, fishwives, longshoremen, all jostling past, some staring curiously at his bandaged eye and weather-beaten uniform coat. A Navy man standing on the doorstep of a corner building across the street was staring at him, and for a moment Harg feared he was going to call out; but he only turned to say something to a companion standing inside, pointing the stem of his pipe at Harg.

  “Let’s go straight to Tiarch’s palace,” Harg said to Tway.

  “It’s up this street,” she said, and led the way.

  It soon became obvious that he had been recognized, and that word was spreading of his presence. As they headed up the Stonepath, people emerged from shops and doorways to stare superstitiously at them, and when Harg glanced back over his shoulder, he saw that quite a few of them were following. Alert now, he scanned for a sign of police, but there was not a uniform in sight. He forced himself to remember his old way of walking, before he had been disfigured, before he had doubted their support.

  “This is not good,” Tway said at his side.

  “Just ignore them,” Harg answered.

  But they were getting harder to ignore. Farther up the street, a block was lined with a knot of young men who broke into cheers and whistles when Harg came in sight. There was something belligerent in their voices. He realized that they were all Torna, and the cheers were aimed not so much at him as at the Adaina who scowled silently from across the street. All the ingredients for a riot were there.

  The crowd was getting denser as the street swept uphill between buildings. Harg saw again some faces he had already passed; people were circling around by the side streets to overtake them, swelling the crowd. They were getting noisier and angrier, as well—at each other, at him. Harg kept walking grimly, winded by the unaccustomed exercise. It had been a mistake to come ashore; he had not understood the city’s mood, or how volatile it was. Now there was nothing to do but go on. The Isonsquare where Tiarch’s headquarters lay was only a block ahead. Then half a block. He had to get there before the wave broke.

  As yet, no one had dared confront him. But on the very edge of the Isonsquare that changed. An ancient Adaina woman in a shawl stepped forward to block Harg’s path. As he tried to sidestep her, she cried shrilly, “Get out of this city! We don’t want servants of the Mundua here. This is sacred ground, where we honour our Grey Folk.”

  Harg wanted to ignore her, but too many were listening. “I honour your Grey Folk as well, mother,” he said. “I’ve got no quarrel with them.”

  She pointed a finger at his eye. “That’s your punishment,” she said loudly. “Mora has branded you so all can see what you are.”

  “I got this fighting for your sake,” he said. “If it’s a brand, it’s an honourable one.”

  “It’s the mark of the Mundua!” she cried.

  She was grandstanding for the crowd. Swallowing his anger, Harg pushed on. But as they passed, someone jostled Gill belligerently. Harg heard the scuffle behind him and instantly turned and snapped, “Stop that.” The men drew back, but a wad of spittle landed at Harg’s feet. He didn’t bother to look for its source, but merely turned and walked on.

  Still there was no sign of any police. By now, Tiarch could not possibly be unaware of Harg’s presence on her very doorstep. He could scarcely believe she would not let her soldiers protect him.

  When he emerged into the Isonsquare, his heart sank to see that Tiarch’s doors were shut, her shutters closed, against the crowd. His arm around Tway, he pushed through to the steps leading up to Tiarch’s door and mounted them. When he tried the knob, the door was locked. He pounded on it; there was no reply.

  When he turned around, he saw that the crowd that had followed him up the street nearly filled the Isonsquare. He could feel their dangerous mood like an electric force: touch it, and it would discharge.

  Gill was standing with Tway at the bottom of the steps. “Harg, we’ve got to get out of here,” he said.

  There was nowhere to go. All around the square, the only open door was the one into the Pavilion cloister.

  A missile sailed out of the crowd and hit him hard on the shoulder. With the pain, anger surged into Harg’s brain.

  “The Innings would laugh if they could see you now!” he shouted, clutching his smarting shoulder. “What a victory for
them to see the kind of thanks I get for walking the road to death for you. Out on the seas, they can’t beat us. But you—you can do what they can’t, and how they’d love you for it! You idiots, the Innings are your enemies, not me!”

  A deep man’s voice boomed angrily out of the crowd, “The Innings aren’t tools of the Mundua and Ashwin!”

  Harg pinned the speaker with his eye. “If the Innings win, you’ll have no Heir of Gilgen,” he said. There was a surge of noise at the name. Harg plunged on: “You’ll have no Ison, and no dhotamars, and in the end no words even to tell your grandchildren what they once were.”

  There was an incoherent roar from the crowd. Harg knew he was not calming them down. But now he was started he couldn’t stop. He heard some cries of “Murderer!” and wheeled around to answer them. “What you don’t know is that we could have won the war that day,” he said. “We could all be safe now. Only that one man’s life stood between us and victory. And because we didn’t sacrifice him—because I let him live!—we may all die now, and our memory will vanish, and our islands will be scoured by invaders. You’re throwing stones at me for having set the Isles above any one man’s life. But no one’s life is more important than our country’s—not mine, not yours, not the Heir of Gilgen’s.”

  “The Heir of Gilgen is the Isles!” a woman cried out. A roar of assent passed like surf through the crowd.

  “No!” Harg shouted back. “You are the Isles. Every one of you. You are what we’re out there fighting for.”

  For a few moments there was no reply. Then the man with the big voice yelled, “A man who goes against mora can betray us as well!”

  The anger in Harg’s head sounded like wind in the rigging. “How dare you say you know where mora lies? What makes you wiser than we who have been out there facing Inning guns? We have been giving our hands and limbs and lives for you. The Innings got my eye, and my best friend’s life. Do you dare stand there safe and tell us we’ve gone against mora? I’ll give you this answer: what we’ve been doing is dhota. Even if our skins aren’t grey. We’ve been giving dhota for all of you, and all of the Isles, and we thought you were our bandhotai, to cherish us for what we did.”