Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  “Fine. Just remember it’s me who’ll end up dying first.”

  “Well, of course. That’s your job.”

  Shaiveh gave her a sidelong look and got to her feet. Ivah allowed herself a brief grin, behind the noekar’s back. The point was to her, this time.

  The Northrons unloaded their ships in the shallows or ran them aground on the log-hardened muddy shore of the river bay that had given birth to the Landing. They were long, graceful craft, but wide-beamed and capable of holding an astonishing amount of cargo for their draft, with stem- and sternposts curving up graceful as a swan’s breast. They had masts, but much of their travel up and down the river was done with their crews at the oars, or even towing, wading in the shallows or on long-trodden paths on the shore. They were as fitted to their element as an eagle to the air, a salmon to sea.

  “Mooning over these little ditch-boats again? Someday, you really need to see a seagoing knarr, or a longship.”

  Pakdhala jumped and looked around. She had been so caught in watching a ship heading upriver, the following wind—Kinsai’s blessing the crew would call it—filling the square brown sail, that she had not noticed Varro prowling up behind her. Caught in sudden memory, the boat lifting beneath her, bouncing over the waves as she coaxed the wind up, Oto—no, it was some other Blackdog, and she some other Attalissa, a young woman laughing, saying to an old man, Careful, you’ll have us over.

  “You keep saying that, Varro, but you never offer to run away to the North with me.”

  “You only have to ask, ‘Dhala darling.”

  She folded her arms and leaned back against his warm solidity, affecting a pout. “I thought your heart was given to what’s-her-name in Marakand.”

  “What’s-her-name?” Varro scratched his beard. “Which one?”

  “You know. Your wife. That apothecary, the one with all the giggling girls.”

  “Ah, her. I’m sure she’d understand. And they don’t giggle any more than you did at that age, young ‘Dhala. It’s the nature of small girls to giggle.”

  Pakdhala sighed. “Still, I’d love to be on a ship like that.” For a ship to be so much a part of the water…the soul of beauty, form and function in perfect unity.

  “You can clamber over one tonight, if you like,” Varro offered. “They’ve got her hauled up on the upper beach.”

  “Who does? Friends of yours?”

  “Cousins,” he said smugly. “Well, some of’em’s cousins. My cousin Ellensborg is crew on her cousin Ulfhelm’s ship, and she’s just married his steersman, so there’s a bit of a celebration tonight. She said I could bring a friend or two.”

  “Or the whole gang?”

  “Well, Tihmrose and Django drew watch at the caravanserai, Tusa has disappeared and Asmin-Luya’s looking at all the soothsayers and diviners for her, the boss and your father are meeting some bard who’ll be taking Doha’s stuff and his pay home to his kin, Great Gods bless his soul with a short journey, and I think Gaguush has plans…” Varro waggled bushy eyebrows at her “…for later.”

  “Does she?” Pakdhala grinned. “But my father won’t let me go off to a brawl like that without him.”

  “’T’isn’t a brawl.”

  “Oh, a gang of Northrons celebrating a wedding? You really think that’s not a brawl?”

  “The brawl comes later.”

  Pakdhala grinned. “I’ll come, if I can get away from him.”

  Ivah wandered through the many small rooms of Lizath’s teahouse with Shaiveh a sullen shadow at her heels. No one paid them any heed; she had made sure of that. The diners sitting on cushions around the low tables carried on with their conversations, or looked up, smiling vaguely, and returned to the plates of tiny filled dumplings and the delicate porcelain cups of clear Nabbani tea, forgetting them at once.

  “And how do we make this Gaguush actually talk to us, now that we’re so conveniently beneath notice?” Shaiveh grumbled.

  Ivah ignored her, backing out of yet another room with a friendly smile at the group of old men reminiscing there.

  Gaguush was in the next room they tried. The gang-boss had obviously found a bathhouse; she looked a good ten years younger, with the dust scoured from her skin and her hair glistening, freshly braided. She leaned over the table, looking half like some devil of An-Chaq’s tales, all jagged shapes of red and black, as the flame of the lamp swirled. She spoke too quietly to overhear, handing what looked like a purse, its neck lead-sealed and stamped, to an older Westgrasslander woman, a bard, with the bright scarves of her calling wound round her head and her long-necked saz at her back.

  And the Blackdog Westgrasslander was there, too, sitting at the caravan-mistress’s side.

  “Tell his sons he died fighting,” the Westgrasslander said suddenly, addressing the bard as she rose and tucked the purse away in some inner pocket, but his eyes were on Ivah, his hand on the sabre across his lap, and he already had one foot under him, to rise. She almost thought, in the shadowy room, that his eyes reflected the lamplight green, like a cat’s.

  There were two other members of the gang there as well, the Stone Desert man she had noticed before and a skinny, faded little woman whose folk Ivah could not place, and all four were scrubbed and sober. Lizath would not let caravaneers into her house if they had already begun the drinking that followed any return to civilization.

  Ivah was already doubting her choice. Maybe later, once the gang-boss had started drinking too, would have been better. And she should have listened to Shaiveh, gone to the bathhouse first and combed and rebraided the two fat plaits that fell to her knees. She had wanted to look hard-living and dusty, someone who could keep up with a caravan, not be a burden, but now…His eyes weren’t green, but mottled light brown flecked green and yellow, like sunlight on a pebbled stream in the mountains. Hot though, not brook-water cool, burning like the glare on the water, watching her. She had an impulse to freeze there, motionless, as though that would make his notice pass. Instead she smiled and stepped aside to allow the bard to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” Ivah apologized, breaking the threads that made a one-handed cat’s cradle on her left hand, hidden in her pocket. “I was hoping to talk to Mistress Gaguush.”

  The caravan-mistress whipped her head around, raised her eyebrows.

  “Where did you come from?”

  Ivah gestured apologetically towards the door. It was a stupid question, but she wasn’t about to point out a caravan-mistress’s lack of attention, not to the woman’s face, the gesture said.

  “If you could spare me a moment…” Ivah let her voice trail off hopefully.

  “No. Do I know you?” Gaguush frowned, looking them both over as though she was fairly certain she did not want to.

  “Bad news travels fast,” the Stone Desert tribesman murmured.

  Gaguush smiled in a manner not at all friendly. “Is that it? I’m not hiring, and this is a private supper.”

  “Oh, I know. I really don’t want to interrupt. But Master Baruni spoke very highly of you and…”

  “I said, I’m not hiring.”

  Ivah gave the little formal bow, hands clasped before her chest, which she could get away with, being so Nabbani in appearance. “No, of course not. I should introduce myself. I’m Ivah, a diviner with the Nabbani coins, and my companion is Shaiveh. I want to head back Over-Malagru way, so we’re looking for an eastbound caravan to join. We can earn our keep.”

  “Why us?” the caravan mistress demanded. “We’ve barely come in, we don’t have a contract south yet, Great Gods alone know when we’ll be pulling out. Heard we’re short-handed?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.” Ivah looked surprised. “Have you…if you’ve had losses this run, I’m truly sorry, I meant no offence to the dead. It’s just, we travelled west, originally, with Master Baruni, some years back, and he spoke well of you. And,” she smiled, shrugged, “we happened to see you coming in. We liked the look of your outfit. Shai here helped you unload.”

  Gag
uush snorted.

  “If you could just let us know, once you’re preparing to leave? We could even pay something towards our escort. I know we wouldn’t be as much use to you as experienced caravaneers, but Shaiveh’s handy with weapons, she’s worked as a mercenary before, and I can make myself useful. You wouldn’t find us a burden. We’re putting up at Benno’s inn, for now.”

  “Yes, fine, Benno’s inn,” Gaguush said. “Now out.”

  “Thank you.” Ivah offered both hands, Marakander fashion. Gaguush, with a weary look, was nevertheless forced by common courtesy to rise from the table and take them. Ivah gave her another bow. The Nabbani symbols painted on her hands in oil, hardly there, flared with warmth as she pressed the gang-boss’s skin with her own. Then she elbowed Shaiveh back and closed the door behind herself.

  “Oh, that went well,” Shaiveh said. “Now can we just—”

  Ivah slapped Shaiveh’s shoulder, touched her lips for silence.

  “She’ll decide she wants us along before the week’s out,” she whispered, hardly above a breath.

  “Hey, you, Nabbani! Ivah!”

  Ivah turned, not needing to put on a look of surprise. Gaguush stood in the open doorway, inviting her back into the lamplit room with a jerk of her chin. There was some agitation at the table now, the Westgrasslander scowling, the little woman patting the back of his hand as though she meant to soothe him, the tall Stone Desert man looking amused. Gaguush leaned a shoulder against the wall, studying Ivah, head to foot.

  “A diviner? Holla-Sayan here says he’s heard rumour you’re a wizard.”

  A lie, no doubt. The Westgrasslander knew, he saw right through her, a yellow-green fire behind his eyes…Half a panicked moment, and Ivah found her innocence again. She had expected him to know. She put on a cautious smile, timid and hesitant.

  “Not really. I’m just a diviner, what they call a soothsayer up here, but I suppose that means I have some talent, it’s true. I can read the oracle coins, and I’ve studied Nabbani spell-symbols.” She swept her lashes down. “I’ve been doing readings here, at Benno’s. If you want to ask someone about my skills, if you want me to do a reading for your journey, I’m sure there’s people who’d speak for me…” She raised her eyes, met the Westgrasslander’s cold-eyed gaze head on. Prove she had no reason to fear him, saw nothing unusual in him to fear. “Holla-Sayan? Who was it told you I was a wizard?”

  “Market rumour,” he said, with a shrug, when it seemed the gang-boss was also waiting for his answer. He lied without taking thought to make it credible. He’d barely been in At-Landi long enough to pass through the market.

  “Do you know enough magic to teach another?” Gaguush asked.

  “No,” the Blackdog said. Gaguush frowned at him.

  “I…I could,” Ivah admitted, feeling her way cautiously. “But it’s necessary to be born with the talent, you know. Magic isn’t something that just anyone can be trained in.”

  “The girl’s got some talent of some sort,” Gaguush said, looking unaccountably pleased with herself. “Fine. I’ll take you along, Ivah. You pay what you can, we’ll get the rest out of the pair of you in labour, and you can do some teaching. Holla here has a daughter who deserves more education than she’ll get from him.”

  “I can certainly teach her the basic principles,” Ivah said. “You’ll be wanting to find her a proper apprenticeship in time, of course, if she’s skilled, but I’ll give her a good start.” The gang-boss’s face was so easy to read.

  “You have your own camels?”

  “Horses.”

  “No good. You can’t get horses across the Salt and Stone Deserts, unless they’re your only goods and you’ve a camel-train carrying water.”

  “Yes, I know. I came west from Over-Malagru,” Ivah reminded gently. “We’ll trade them for camels at Serakallash. I hear they value good Grasslander horses there these days.” And she could see a need for swift horses, at the end of her journey.

  “Up to you, I suppose.”

  “She’s a wizard,” the Blackdog repeated, as though he thought Gaguush had missed the point somewhere. “You can’t—”

  “I damn well can. You can’t keep ‘Dhala a baby forever. What’s wrong with her learning a few elementary skills from Ivah here, before she goes off to a real apprenticeship? Cold hells, I’d think you’d be pleased, Holla.”

  “She’s not…You’ve got no right—” And then he lurched to his feet and walked out, shoving past Ivah and Shaiveh as if half-blind. Maybe he had been drinking already, after all.

  “Another restful evening,” murmured the Stone Desert tribesman. “Welcome to the gang, girls. I’m Kapuzeh, this is Thekla, the best cook between here and Marakand, and that was Holla-Sayan. You’ll get used to him.”

  “You didn’t really expect him to stay here long, with ‘Dhala off drinking with Bikkim and Zavel?” The gang-boss slumped down on her cushions again, all the fine lines of worry and desert winds returning to her face. “Ivah, Shaiveh, we’re at Attapamil’s caravanserai. We don’t need you yet, you’re on your own till we pull out. We’ll send word to Benno’s. Now out, go away.”

  Ivah bowed and left, towing Shai.

  “It’s the goddess,” Shaiveh said, as soon as they were in the street. “She was the only young girl with them. They want you to teach wizardry to the bloody goddess.”

  “Shut up about the goddess!” Ivah looked around, but there was no man lurking in the dark street, no great black dog, either. She couldn’t keep back her grin. “I told you she’d take us on. I didn’t expect it to be the moment we met her, though.”

  “Yeah, but teaching the—all right, all right. And that monster doesn’t like you.”

  “He can not like me all he wants, so long as you don’t go giving him a reason not to. We’ll be fine. Just don’t let on you’ve ever been nearer Lissavakail than the desert road, and we’ll be fine.”

  “Last trip, anyway, praise the Gods,” Shaiveh said, and flung an arm around Ivah’s shoulders. “Home. Beds without bugs and no more kowtowing to peasants for pennies and sour beer. How about we get a jar of wine and take it back to Benno’s, to celebrate?”

  “Wine and aged cheese and sweet saffron bread,” Ivah said. Both the latter were Northron delicacies she had developed a taste for. Anything that might get the Blackdog’s burning stare out of her mind.

  The noise of the feasting at Varro’s cousin’s ship carried half a mile up the river from the landing beach. Pakdhala continued on, until the noise had died away and there was nothing but river and wind. Nobody came looking for her. She had told her father flatly that she was going and he did not need to follow, that yes, she’d be sensible, yes, she’d be careful, yes, she’d stay with the others—and she had meant to. But she had told Varro and Judeh she’d be along later, and assured them no, she wouldn’t walk through town alone in the dark. And then she had eluded Bikkim, with Zavel tagging him, when he came looking for her around the caravanserai.

  And had walked through town alone in the dark and out of town. The beached ships bypassed, she had pulled off her boots and walked along the shore, mud oozing between her toes, avoiding the sharp shells of freshwater mussels, ignoring and ignored by the leeches that infested this soft-bottomed stretch of the Kinsai-av.

  Eventually she found a convenient rock and sat, dangling her feet in the water.

  Sister Kinsai, lend me your strength. It was contact with the water kept her going, all through these years, Kinsai’s strength and that of the little goddesses of the desert wells, and what blessing distant Sayan could give, not any power of her own.

  “Little sister.” Kinsai herself rose from the water, human-solid, bumped her over with a hip and joined her on the boulder, dripping.

  “I have to go back.”

  “To the party?” Kinsai asked, and chuckled. “I’m tempted to drop in myself. That Ellensborg’s a lovely thing.”

  “You can’t seduce a bride on her wedding night. It would be rude.”

&n
bsp; Kinsai sniggered. “The amount of mead they have down there, she’d never notice the difference. And the way her Olav is drinking, he won’t be able to do anything for her by the time they get the pair of them off to bed.” Sobered, eyeing her sidelong. “Nothing’s changed.”

  Pakdhala shook her head. “No.”

  “What was it like, before? When you grew into your strength?”

  Pakdhala shrugged. “I think…gradual at first. Growing stronger, while I was a child. And then, one day, it would all come back. I would be a woman again, I would be able to contain it.”

  “Why humanity, anyway?”

  “So that I remember better than to seduce a bride on her wedding night.”

  “Hah, you’ve never seduced anyone. Have you, little sister of the lake?”

  “Hm.”

  “What’s ‘hm’?”

  “’Hm’ is none of your bloody business, Great Kinsai.”

  “Thus speaks the caravaneer. Such language. Have you?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would hardly be right,” Pakdhala said primly. “If I was their goddess. To…pick favourites, that way.”

  “Great Gods above, girl, don’t be picky, then they’ve got nothing to complain of.”

  “My father raised me better than that.”

  “He’s one to talk.”

  “This is not what I came out here for.”

  “No?”

  “I wanted to think.”

  “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Don’t be insulted. Stay.”

  Kinsai patted her back. “Little sister, don’t be so serious. You’ll be old before your time.”

  “My people are slaves—bondfolk, it’s the same thing. The Serakallashi are slaves. It’s my fault. I failed to defend them. They’re waiting for me. You’ve heard it, you hear the stories carried along the river.”