The Gods Return

by David Drake

  The secretary gestured again with the scroll.

  “—were invaluable. He was always very appreciative of my efforts for the company, in fact.”

  Ilna kept her face blank as she digested what she’d just heard. The words alone could’ve been bragging—very possibly truthful, but bragging nonetheless. Ingens’ tone, however, was either bitter or sarcastic. Or both, she supposed; there was no reason it couldn’t have been both.

  She looked to her left—the boat’s right; starboard to a sailor, she knew, but she wasn’t a sailor. They were well into the channel, so she could see the far bank despite the blur of mist which the sun even now hadn’t completely burned off. The trees and brush were gray-green, indistinguishable save by shades of color that she perhaps alone would note.

  “You were a friend of Hervir?” Ilna asked. Her fingers started to knot a pattern that would give her the answer, but she paused to let the secretary speak. She supposed she was being polite.

  “Master Hervir was my employer,” Ingens said. “He was a considerate employer who paid me a fair wage and who was both in public and in private appreciative of my efforts for the company. As I said.”

  He considered Ilna for a moment, either choosing his words or choosing the words he was willing to speak to her. “We were not friends, no,” he said. “The relationship was not a personal one.”

  “You didn’t sail to Caraman with Sairg in the first place?” Ilna said.

  “I hired Captain Sairg on Blaise when I reached the river,” Ingens said. “He’d made the trip up the river twice already before. We sailed to Pandah on the prevailing wind; downstream we’ll use the current. The sweeps are mostly for steering.”

  The river was a muddy brown picked out by patches of scum and flotsam. The debris was mostly vegetable, including a large tree whose roots, washed clean by a flood, wriggled in the air like an ammonite’s tentacles. Ilna saw the corpse of a dog, though, and a sheep so bloated that it looked like a fleece mattress.

  “We went overland from Valles,” Ingens said. “Hervir’s plan all along was to find a suitable ship for our return via the river. I simply followed his intentions. Though without the saffron, of course.”

  And without Hervir, which is all that concerns me, Ilna thought. She wondered if it concerned Ingens. There was nothing in his words or expression to suggest that it did, but on the other hand he had started back to find his employer immediately after delivering word of his disappearance.

  “The channel is constantly changing, Sairg says,” Ingens said. He pointed with his whole arm toward the near shore. “Even I can tell that. See that stand of cypress?”

  “Yes,” said Ilna, when she was sure that she did.

  “There’s only three trees left,” the secretary explained. “I remember counting seven when we were coming upriver. Four were undercut and fell into the river. I don’t think the others will survive much longer. The whole world is still in flux.”

  Ilna sniffed. “Trees have always fallen into rivers,” she said. “Things have always died.”

  “Yes, but everything is new now,” Ingens said. “This whole river is as new as the lands it drains.”

  He paused, then added, “Hervir was adamant about that. He said there was no end of what a bold man could achieve in this new world. Hervir was a very ambitious man. Marrying the sister of an Ornifal nobleman was barely the start of it.”

  “Are you a bold man looking to better yourself, Master Ingens?” Ilna said, watching the secretary’s face. How he chose to respond to the question would tell her more than the mere words he used.

  He snorted. “Me?” he said. “Boldness isn’t enough, mistress, if you don’t have money to back it up with. I have my salary; which is adequate to my needs, but not the sort of stake I’d need to set up as a spice merchant on my own.”

  “Did you think of asking Hervir for a loan?” Ilna said. “You say that he valued you and respected your abilities.”

  “Hervir valued me as an employee,” Ingens said. He didn’t try to hide the bitterness, perhaps realizing that he wouldn’t succeed anyway. “He saw no benefit to himself or to Halgran Mercantile in having me as a rival. He laughed, in fact. ‘I haven’t spent six years training you, Ingens my boy, in order to have you undercutting me with my suppliers.’ ”

  The secretary’s face worked; another man would’ve spit into the brown water. “Him training me,” he said.

  “I see,” said Ilna.

  She might’ve said more, but at that moment Sairg chittered an order to the crew. “He’s telling them to move us farther out into the channel,” Ingens translated. “We’re over a flooded forest here, and brushing a treetop the wrong way could tip the boat over.”

  The oarsmen quickened their stroke. One started what was obviously a chantey even though Ilna didn’t understand the words. Her mind flashed bright with an image of Chalcus bending over the stroke oar, his tenor voice floating, “To me, way, haul away—”

  And Merota’s clear soprano answering, “We’ll haul and hang together!”

  Ilna wasn’t crying, she didn’t cry; but she closed her eyes and rubbed her face in the sleeve of her tunic until the moment was past.

  WHEN LIANE SAID she needed to meet with him and Rasile, Cashel asked her to do it sitting on the walls of Pandah. He was about as comfortable here as he would’ve been in any city: he could look out and see green. It wasn’t the right pale green of the sheep-cropped meadows south of Barca’s Hamlet, but it was close enough he could pretend.

  There hadn’t been a lot of building here on the west side because the ground was so boggy. There were tussocks of grass and sometimes willows, but the road to the North River had to be the next thing to a bridge for most of its length. Crews had laid tree boles for stringers and pinned cross-logs to them with treenails. Putting up houses would’ve taken pilings, or maybe boats.

  “Dariada is the largest city-state in Charax,” Liane said. She’d opened her little portable desk and had three unopened books and a scroll laid out on it. “It’s not the capital, though—the island, the region it is now, doesn’t have a capital. There’re seventeen states, and for the most part they don’t get along well. Usually some of them are at war with one another.”

  Pandah was growing so fast that if the army—there was a city watch, but they weren’t up to the job yet and the army was here—hadn’t kept the battlements clear, there’d have been folks camping on them and in the streets below, for that matter. Lord Tadai wasn’t going to have that, which Cashel was glad of for as long as he had to be in the city. For right now, a squad of troops blocked the staircase to the tower Liane had picked.

  Cashel smiled at a thought. Given half a chance, folks’d pack in as tight as sheep in a byre. Since sheep ate grass instead of meat, sheep manure didn’t make near the problem human manure did. It was a good thing it rained a lot in Pandah, but that was another reason not to build in the bogs which storms washed the streets into.

  “That is . . . ,” Liane said, angry because she hadn’t been as clear as she thought she ought to be, “that was true of Charax during the first three hundred years of the previous millennium. What we in our day call the Old Kingdom, though the cities of Charax were independent at the time. That’s the situation since the Change, too.”

  Rasile watched Liane intently, which bothered Cashel a little to see: it reminded him of the way a vixen tenses toward a tuft of grass that she’d just seen move. As for Cashel himself, well, he was listening. He’d learned long since that not much of what folks as smart as Liane said made a lot of difference to him, though.

  People didn’t expect Cashel to talk politics or philosophy. The sorts of things they did take up with him, well, those weren’t a problem. He knew how to deal with them, good or bad.

  “Dariada is the most important city of the region, though, because the Tree is there,” Liane said. “It’s sacred to all Charax, but it’s still in Dariada.”

  “Ma’am?” said Cashel, because trees
were something he understood. “What kind of a tree, if you please?”

  Liane scrunched her face up over an unhappy thought. “I don’t know,” she said. “The ancient descriptions—”

  She lifted the scroll from the table and waggled it.

  “—aren’t clear, and my agents haven’t been permitted within the separate enclosure within the city walls. From the accounts, the Tree Oracle is a pod with the face of a man, and it gives responses to questions. The priests choose who can address the Tree, but the petitioner him or herself puts the question.”

  Cashel frowned. “Rasile?” he said. “Do we need to talk to the oracle, or are we just going to the city to start out with? Because I don’t guess they’ve seen a lot of your folk on Charax, Coerli I mean. And it seems like they may get, well, perturbed.”

  One thing Cashel learned the first time he came into a city is that people in cities talked a lot; really a lot. Also stuff took a long while, especially if there was a lot of people needing to agree before things happened. What with one thing and another, it seemed like the pirates might be up to the city walls before a shepherd and a Corl wizard got anybody to listen.

  “I must speak to the oracle, Warrior Cashel,” Rasile said. “I did not understand why I saw a tree on the path till you told me that.”

  Her smile didn’t disturb Cashel now that he’d gotten used to it, but he hoped she wouldn’t try it on suspicious strangers in Charax. They were going to have problems enough as it was.

  “Cashel,” Liane said, setting down the scroll she’d picked up as an illustration. “Wizard Rasile. I will be accompanying you on your journey. Neither of you—”

  “Ma’am?” Cashel blurted. He blushed when he realized he’d broken in on a woman talking—and her a lady besides—but he’d just had to! “You shouldn’t be doing that. It’s not right.”

  “It’s not only right, it’s necessary,” Liane said. She didn’t snap the way Ilna would’ve done if somebody talked to her like Cashel just had, but he didn’t hear any more give in Liane’s voice than there’d have been from his sister. “To begin with, neither of you can read. It’s more than probable that you’ll need to read in the course of this business.”

  “Ma’am, I know you’re right,” Cashel said. “But a clerk could do that.”

  He wouldn’t like it even if she wasn’t Garric’s girl, because she was nice and this wasn’t going to be a nice business. He’d seen what happened to women in Ombis when the pirates got through the hole in the walls, and what the male pirates were doing wasn’t the worst of it. “Or an officer, I didn’t want soldiers but maybe that’d be a good idea.”

  Liane was Garric’s girl. Cashel wasn’t going to take her along!

  “And as you’ve already understood, Cashel,” Liane continued, her voice smooth as polished diamond and just as hard, “we’ll have to negotiate with the priests of the Tree. Neither of you are suitable for that task. I am the best person for it in the government, with the possible exception of Prince Garric. Even Garric would have a great deal to learn in a short time, though, and I’m already familiar with the business.”

  “Ma’am . . . ,” Cashel said. He felt awful, his guts twisting themself tighter every time he breathed in. He couldn’t think of anything to say that would change her mind. Nothing he said: Lady Liane said she was coming, so she would come.

  He sighed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Female Liane,” Rasile said. She’d never stopped looking at Liane, and Cashel hadn’t seen the old wizard’s expression change from beginning to end. “I will take Warrior Cashel and myself to Dariada by a shorter route than walking through the waking world. If you come with us, you will take the same route.”

  Liane looked at her coldly. “Thank you, mistress,” she said, clipping the words in a way Cashel hadn’t heard her do before. “I am familiar with wizardry. My late father was a wizard himself. I’m not concerned with the means by which you accomplish the task in which I assist you.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Rasile said quietly. She looked at Cashel. “I would like a wooded grove for my incantation. Can you lead us to such a grove, warrior?”

  “There aren’t real groves anywhere near the city,” Cashel said, mulling the question in his mind. “There’s been too much building going on, you see.”

  “The palace has a roof garden,” said Liane. “Will that be adequate?”

  “It will,” said Rasile, wagging her tongue in agreement.

  Liane rose to her feet. “I have more business to attend,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the palace.”

  Cashel offered Rasile a hand, mostly for courtesy. She was spry enough she didn’t really need it. They didn’t speak as they watched Liane disappearing down the stairs into the guard room below.

  It was true that Liane knew about wizardry: her father had trussed her for a sacrifice. If she was willing to go where and however Rasile led, then she was even braver than Cashel had already thought.

  Chapter

  5

  CASHEL HADN’T BEEN here in the garden before. There were three small trees in pots: a weeping willow which must’ve been a trial for the servants carrying water to it and a pair of silver birches. The grape arbor was nice, and there were terracotta planters with flowers.

  Anyway, Rasile seemed satisfied as she placed the yarrow stalks she used to lay out her figures. Cashel was used to being around animals whose legs bent the wrong way so it didn’t bother him when she hunched, the way it did some folk looking at the cat men. When Rasile stood up, though—well, a sheep never did that.

  Liane stood like she figured to be hanged by midday. She wore sturdy tunics that must’ve been from Ilna; nobody else Cashel knew could weave cloth so practical and still have designs that seemed simple until you looked at them close. The sleeves and torsos mated perfectly.

  “These myrtles seem full grown even with being so small,” Cashel said quietly.

  It took a moment for Liane to understand he was talking to her. When she did, she jumped like he’d poured ice water down her back.

  She flashed a wide, embarrassed smile. “Yes,” she said, “they’re a dwarf variety from the mountains of Shengy. One of Mistress Gudea’s tutors grew this kind. It’s hard to imagine a pirate with the same tastes as Mistress Lassa, but I suppose it makes a change from drinking blood and cutting people’s fingers off.”

  Cashel laughed. He had a notion of what it was like in Liane’s head right now, and it wouldn’t have been right to let her wallow there. If she’d been Sharina, Cashel would’ve put an arm around her—or more likely, Sharina would’ve put an arm around him. Cashel wasn’t comfortable doing that, but sometimes it was the best thing there was.

  “I guess,” Cashel said. “I think I’d rather have peonies, though.”

  He kept on smiling, but mention of pirates made him think of Ilna’s friend Chalcus. They’d never talked about the things Chalcus had done before he met Ilna, but you could read from the scars all over his body that he hadn’t been the kind of sailor who took a tub from Shengy across the Inner Sea with a load of oranges ripening aboard.

  Had Chalcus cut off fingers and drunk blood? Not without a reason for it, but Cashel guessed there wasn’t much Chalcus wouldn’t have done if he’d had to. Because Ilna wouldn’t have been happy with a man who wasn’t that way, since she surely was herself.

  “Cashel?” Liane said, looking at his smile and maybe seeing what was behind it. She was smart, just as smart as Garric.

  “I was thinking about my sister, ma’am,” Cashel said. He didn’t talk much, but he’d answer a question if somebody asked him. It was easy when you were willing just to tell the truth. “She’s gotten a lot mellower since we left home—even after she lost Chalcus and Merota, I mean, though for a while there she was something else. But you still wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her.”

  “No,” said Liane, “I wouldn’t. But I don’t think anybody could be a better friend.”

&n
bsp; Cashel smiled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But she’s not a good friend to herself.”

  Rasile got to her feet, looking like a toy unfolding. “Are you ready, Cashel?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Rasile’s eyes were a little harder as she turned them on Liane. The expression reminded Cashel that the wizard’s jaw was long and full of pointed teeth. “And you, female Liane?”

  “Just Liane, please,” she answered pleasantly. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Then join me in the heptagram, Cashel and Liane,” the wizard said. “The star of power, we of the True People call it.”

  She waggled her tongue in the equivalent of a grin. “We will see if it has enough power,” she said.

  “The power . . . ,” said Liane as she stepped over the jagged line of yarrow stalks. “Is in you, Rasile, not in your symbols. And you have power enough.”

  “The wizard Tenoctris trusts me more than I trust myself,” said Rasile. “But in this, I think she is right.”

  There was room enough in the star for Cashel with the two women, but it was pretty tight. Since there was time, Cashel counted the points: there was a handful and two fingers. It’d seemed like more just to look at; it must be that the yellow stalks were tricking his eyes.

  Rasile began to chant, wagging her slate athame side to side in front of her. She sounded like a catfight instead of wizardry unless you paid attention to the rhythms, but if you did that, you knew it was just the same as Tenoctris.

  Liane was standing really stiff. Part of that might be how close they were together, but she relaxed a trifle when Cashel gave her a slow smile. She carried a bag of waxed linen with a broad strap over her shoulder. It wasn’t big, but it looked heavy. Cashel would bet anything that there was books in it.

  Garric generally carried a book with him, too. Sharina said that she read for pleasure, but her brother was the real scholar of them. That was another way he and Liane were well matched.