Hawkspar

by Holly Lisle

  I must have looked worried, for Marit said, “It is the way of things. We all know it. We renounce possessions, we offer ourselves in service. We do not seek advancement; advancement chooses us. You know this, as does every woman here. You were chosen, they will accept.” She shook her head slightly and added, “You must stay focused on your purpose.” And she held up her left hand.

  On her palm, she bore a mark similar to mine. She put the hand back down quickly, but tipped her head to one side and said, “Do we understand each other, then?”

  I raised my own left hand and presented my palm to her. And raised my eyebrows. And shrugged.

  Her head nodded almost imperceptibly. Yes.

  “We understand each other,” I said.

  She was not one of my fellow conspirators, which suggested she was one of Hawkspar’s conspiracy.

  I wondered how many of us there were, what parts the others would play.

  “Shower,” she told me and smiled slightly. “As you usually do.” And she left.

  A chill ran down my spine. How many people knew about my magic?

  Five years earlier, when I ascended from junior penitent to following penitent, I found myself in the class of Sera Rosestone Hano Sha, who gave us an overview of magic systems, including the Tonk Shield and View training.

  The View is … well … everything. In Comparative Religion, we learned that to the Tonk it is nothing less than the body and soul of the universe. But that is because some Tonk are able to move within it, to work with it. To most other peoples, the View is the part of magic that will swallow and destroy the unwary. The Sera Rosestone explained to us how Tonk warriors banded together to enter the View with their minds, and how they used the energy they found there as weapons of offense and defense. She explained how other peoples who worked magic learned to create shields to protect themselves from the View, which was seductive and powerful, and which called in and swallowed the unwary.

  She showed us briefly how to create a shield, and discussed how Tonk warriors discovered that they could reach into the View.

  That day five years earlier, an idea I’d held in my mind about water and where it ran—how it always ran down, how it all ran to the sea—came together with bits of Tonk magic I had been taught as a child, bits of Ossalene magic I’d managed to pick up from watching older penitents and acolytes practicing, and from the discussions and demonstrations of Shield and View.

  That day, for the first time, I bound magic to water and begged for rescue. I’d felt terribly clever.

  Five years later, considering the breadth of the conspiracy I was discovering, I realized two things I had never considered before. That particular Sera Rosestone had a tattoo on the palm of her left hand. Not the same as mine. But similar.

  And that she had given me exactly the information I needed to discover that I was one of those Tonk who could find the View—and exactly the demonstration I needed to protect myself while using it.

  Five years earlier, I had felt terribly clever.

  Five years later, standing in the icy shower building and binding my plea, I realized that it was entirely possible that the Sera Rosestone had taught my group as she had, hoping one or two of us would find our way into the View without getting ourselves killed doing it. That someone would do what I had done.

  Had Hawkspar seen my actions? Could she see such a thing in the future?

  Penitents were not permitted to use magic unsupervised, of course. And we were carefully and constantly watched, even when we were to all appearances completely alone. The Seru Onyx did not hear our thoughts, perhaps, but through the magic of their Eyes, they saw our every move, even through walls. They would descend like black-robed vultures upon even the least transgressor.

  I’d used the shield Sera Rosestone had taught us, thinking it protected me from their watchful Eyes as well as from the View. Perhaps the protection I had derived from it had been other than magical in nature. Perhaps use of that spell had only put me under the protection of those who worked with Hawkspar to further her secret cause.

  I felt uneasy as I created a glowing blue sphere in my mind’s eye and wrapped it around myself, preparatory to moving into the View.

  I was reaching for magic while facing for the first time the fact that within the month, I would become subject to the agonies through which the oracles and the seru suffer in order to share the magic of the Eyes. I had my own magic. Why couldn’t I escape with my eyes intact and use that magic to seek out Oracle Hawkspar’s invisible enemy hand?

  I drew in breath, and imagined my toes sinking into the stone floor, digging roots down to the center of the world like the strong roots of a tree. I imagined pulling water up through my roots, drinking it in as trees drink, as flowers drink—drawing it up in a steady stream. I imagined myself filling with this water, filling until I was full to bursting, until I was like the statues in the gardens that spewed forth water from eyes and mouths and noses, from toes and fingertips and nipples and navels. And when I could feel my summoned magic stream through me as strongly as if it were the shower, I bound my will thrice around the water, and thrice times thrice bound spirit-water to real water, and when it was bound, in my mind I called out to whomever might hear me: Come. Save us! Hurry, for we suffer and we die. For love of Jostfar, by the hands of the Five Saints, rescue us!

  And I sent my spirit-water and the real water pouring out the drain, through the pottery pipes of the Citadel, out of the Citadel and down the cliffs on which it sat, down into the bay, out into the sea. I sent it wherever it might go, praying with everything in me that someone with a strong arm and a fierce courage would hear my plea and follow my spell and my call back to me. To the Citadel. To rescue not just me, but every girl and woman within the thick Citadel walls who yearned for escape.

  And while I was praying, all I could think was that I wanted my freedom.

  I wanted to flee.

  At that moment, I wanted more than anything to renege on my word to Hawkspar, and take my allies and escape from the Citadel before any more of us were bound to the Ossalene Rite. I had no doubt panic suffused the plea I sent out.

  When I stepped out of the shower, I got myself under control.

  With my shower taken and my body clean and presentable, and with my magic done, I wiped down the shower, then put on the new and unfamiliar garb of the acolyte.

  After underthings, I first donned the allar—which means deceiver. It was a shirt of the same cut as those worn by the Ossalenes, made of pale, heavy green linen and worn beneath the sleeveless tabi. It had long, full sleeves snugged tight at the wrists with long cuffs and a tall, padded collar called a tera that was designed to protect the throat, and I fumbled putting it on. The sleeves and their tight-buttoning cuffs initially resisted my attempts to fasten them, and when I’d hooked the tera closed, I felt as though I would choke. Rumor had it that fighting seru—the Obsidians and the Onyxes—as well as the oracles, wore a layer of hammered metal within the layers of padding in their tera. I tried to imagine inheriting a metal-lined collar, and my mind fled back to being chained in the darkness in the hold of that slave ship, lying between the dying and the dead. I wondered if Redbird would wear such a collar. I wondered how she would find the courage to put it on if she did.

  I did not mind the pants. Except for the pale green color, acolyte pants were the same hakan-allar as those worn by seru and oracles. The hakan-allar were tremendously full and not bound at the ankles, the better to hide a fighter’s movements.

  Over shirt and pants, I put on a tabi and rayan like those I had worn as a penitent. But these, like all other acolyte garb save the cepa, were pale green. The color signified rebirth, according to the seru. While slaves wore the dark, dreary gray of dead ash and penitents wore the brown of freshly tilled earth, acolytes represented pale seedlings pushing their way out of the earth to become … well, whatever we were to become.

  The seru wore colors that matched the Eyes they received. So both Obsidians and Onyxes
wore black—though the Seru Onyx had white trim on their garb, and white bos to make them stand out. The Seru Rosestone wore rich fuchsia, the Seru Beryl had garb of deepest green, the Ambers put on rich yellow-gold, the Bloodstones deep red trimmed with black, the Moonstones white, and the Granites the many grays of doves with pale shading into dark, and edged with black.

  I dressed with difficulty in the new and more complicated robes of the acolyte, then tossed my penitent tabi into the laundry bag, and stepped out into the common room and waited while Redbird tied up her second baruti.

  “I suppose we have to go out there now,” she said.

  I didn’t want to, either.

  A group of acolytes, spending a few moments talking together before the bell sounded final prayers, stopped talking and turned to watch us walk in. Some of them nodded to us in silent greeting. Others frowned and turned away. Two of them were allies of mine, promoted before me but now ranked beneath me. To them I would tie a knot-message that we still worked toward our plan.

  The previous Marit, now made Betsin, waited apart from them. She stepped toward us. “I must give you both your duties,” she said. “Come with me.”

  She told us the lists of chores bound to the Marit and Alsa cells, all of which had to be completed before sunrise each day. Redbird and I repeated each chore thrice, assigning each chore to a separate finger and marking an image of it in our minds. From the time we are slaves, we change duties so often that the seru teach each of us this technique for remembering what is expected of us. Beatings are the other way they enforce memory, but the seru first give us the opportunity to learn without pain. Those of us with some sense of self-preservation take advantage of that opportunity.

  As Betsin told me my last chore, she handed me a message tube that would hold a rolled knot-net. The tube bore the unbroken seal of Hawkspar. She said nothing as she handed it to me, nor did I say anything as I accepted it. If the oracle was choosing to send me a knot-message, it would be something that not even Betsin would dare to say out loud, if she even knew what it was.

  The bell for prayer sounded, and Betsin said, “You’ll find your prayer mat on the bottom shelf, next to your coal brazier. Be sure to remember to burn your prayer incense.” And with a finger, she tapped the message tube.

  So she did not think me a fool who on my first night as an acolyte would forget how to say my prayers.

  I was, instead, to burn the knot-net when I had read it.

  “It is tradition for the Marit to take prayers with the Alsa the night before the Marit takes Eyes,” Betsin said.

  We parted without another word, and Redbird and I entered my cell for the first time. I opened the door to my balcony, and a nearly full moon shone its light into my quarters. I went out to light my oil lamp from the central lamp on the floor. In the penitent cells, lamplighting had always been a Ghoteh duty, setting up the altar had always been the responsibility of the room Jara, preparing the incense had been the duty of the Fawi, and leading prayers had fallen to the Ter.

  But after that night, where Redbird and I split duties silently, I realized that for as long as I was in the Citadel, all the duties of the cell would fall to me.

  That night, though, I put out my prayer mat before the room’s altar, while the sounds of the seru singing the “Office of Night” floated across the Citadel grounds. Redbird set the brazier on the center of the stone-topped altar, and opened it. A slave had cleaned it and filled it with fresh kindling and perfumed, fatty tree knots. I lit the kindling from my oil lamp, and dropped my wax incense into the little pile.

  Then we both assumed the stance of prayer—kneeling, toes in our split-toed soltis splayed to let us rise quickly, knees forming the base of a wide triangle for balance, hands clutching the message tube—for in all things we remained a warrior order, and never chose positions of vulnerability. I broke the wax seal as the song “First Order of Night” ended, and the sera who sang first voice began the “Chant of Spirits.”

  I pulled out the carefully rolled knot-net, and unrolled it, and hooked the knot-stick that formed the top border on the hook that was at the edge of the altar for that purpose. Sometimes, after all, acolytes had to read the prayers they were to memorize before they learned them well enough to do them from memory.

  And with my fingers sliding along the knots, with the moon shimmering fat and pale down on me, with the sweet first voice singing the solo “Chant of Spirits,” I read:

  Oracles Sunspar and Windcrystal have expressed doubt that you are the true choice of the Hawkspar Eyes, and have asked that you be put through full trials. You will be brought to the tower tomorrow without other warning, so that the oracles may decide your fate. Prepare yourself.

  Redbird had been reading the order after me. I turned to her, terrified, and saw my expression reflected on her face.

  Oracle Sunspar was the Eyes of Secrets. Oracle Windcrystal was the Eyes of Justice. I recalled the history of the Ossalene Rite, and the lists of succession for the oracles. Very few nominations were ever sent to trials, and almost none were overturned, for oracles have long memories. The histories recounted a handful of violent successions, where a challenged heir, upon obtaining her Eyes, promptly removed those who had sent her to the trials. Methods of removal varied, but not in their cruelty or violence.

  Our Order’s oracles were mostly older women, closer to their own deaths, and guarded about their own survival, I supposed. Both Sunspar and Windcrystal were young, though, and from all rumors, zealous in their worship of Vran Vrota and consumed by their devotion to the rite established by our long-dead founder, Seruvra Ossal—which meant Watcher of the Hand of Gods. Ossal was the blessed daughter of Vran Vrota who’d created the oracle Eyes, and many of the seru Eyes.

  If those two oracles stood against me, then the Seru Onyx, the Eyes of Discipline, who policed the slaves, penitents, and acolytes, would stand against me, for Onyx served at the command of Oracle Windcrystal.

  And the seru Bloodstone, the Eyes of Order, who knew everything everyone did, or found ways to find out, stood against me as well, for they served Oracle Sunspar, the Eyes of Secrets.

  I was in deep trouble.

  6

  Aaran

  “Where, then, is your ship docked?”

  Aaran, sitting in the suite’s captain chair, interviewing yet another potential officer he hoped to recruit, said, “I am still seeking a suitable vessel.”

  He didn’t add that he hadn’t yet been paid his shares for his previous voyage, and so had nothing but pocket change with which to purchase his vessel at the moment. For three full days, he’d been trying to put together a crew, and for three full days, Haakvar’s malice had thwarted him. It seemed that every good Tonk sailor of officer potential had already heard about the madman who had abandoned a ship and crew that needed his skills to seek the opportunity to hare off into the Dragon Sea in search of death.

  Aaran did his best to present the demeanor of a sane and capable master-tracker turning captain; he did his best to present his voyage as the heroic rescue of kidnapped, enslaved Tonk children, with a good secondary potential to bring back significant treasure in the process.

  It didn’t matter. First they came to the open call, or because Tuua, out actively looking for crew, had sent them, and they offered their skills and credentials. Second, they asked about his ship. Third, they put his name and mission together with Haakvar’s “madman” label. And fourth, they walked out the door. Whether they did it laughing that they had allowed themselves to see the madman face-to-face, or whether they did it annoyed that they had wasted precious time that might have been spent elsewhere was the only variant he’d yet experienced in the play.

  He sighed, and to save face, told the man before him, “Unfortunately, your qualifications don’t meet my needs, so we don’t need to take this discussion any further.” He stood, and the prospective officer stood, too, awkwardly, and left with a bewildered expression on his face.

  That was the first new
type of exit Aaran had seen in three days, and he almost had to think it an improvement, because he got to be the rejector, rather than the one rejected.

  He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes. The Tonk captain’s uniform he wore itched—it was new, and the fabric was stiff, and it fit him uncomfortably. He thought he looked very good in the rich emerald greens and blacks of the thing. But the uniform had not yet been tempered by the sea—and he began to fear it never would.

  A boy poked his head through the door. Aaran, weary and dejected, recognized him as one of the two young wharf rats that Tuua had signed on as captain’s runners. The boy was bright and cheerful, happy to have a place, and Aaran wished he could recall the boy’s name.

  He struggled with it for a moment, because a good captain knew every soul on his ship by name, and Aaran intended to be a good captain even in the small details.

  Neeran. It was Neeran.

  “What is it, Neeran?” he asked, and saw the boy’s shoulders straighten with the acknowledgment that a ship’s captain knew him by name.

  “Keeper Tuua sent me with a message for you.”

  “Bring it in then, boy,” Aaran said.

  Neeran handed him a wax-sealed note, stamped with Tuua’s seal.

  The Windsteed ’s cargo has been sold, the captives counted and sent off aboard ships back to Hyre, and our shares are to be divided in the morning. Get here earliest.