Hawkspar

by Holly Lisle

  Aaran clapped the boy on the shoulder and said, “Good news at last.” The tiny silver coin he pressed into the boy’s hand earned him a delighted smile. “Go,” he said. “Spend it or save it. On the morrow, we’ll find ourselves a ship. Crew should come easier then.”

  He slept poorly, his dreams laden with vague portents of disasters. But the hotelier woke him early as he’d requested, so he shook off the nightmares, put on his master-tracker uniform, and jogged most of the way to the dock.

  He got onto the Windsteed before the night watch shifted to day, and announced himself to the watch. They greeted him warmly enough.

  “Captain said if you came aboard, you were to wait on the deck,” one of the two men said.

  Aaran had worked with both of them. They were decent men. One liked his ale too well, the other fancied women of inexpensive virtue when he was on land. But both were honest. “Captain still angry that I’m leaving?”

  “He hasn’t found a decent tracker yet, and has talked to one or two dozen of them. He vows you won’t find ship or crew, and you’ll come back with him when your foolish attempt to go against him fails.”

  “So … yes.”

  “If you want a clap on the back and a good-fellow-well-met from him, tell him you’re planning on staying aboard after all.”

  “No.”

  “Then once you’ve got your share, you probably want to put a bit of distance between yourself and him. He hasn’t said anything to any of us, of course, but he’s been loud enough to his first.”

  Aaran waited, walking the deck with the watch, leaning on the rail watching the sun rise, hearing the familiar creaks and groans of the Windsteed as she sat at rest. She’d been home to him for years, and it was hard to think of having her sail away without him aboard; hard, too, to consider that he might never see any who sailed with her again.

  But if he closed his eyes and used the Hagedwar to feel his way across the sea, he could find the girl who had called to him, and the others with her. He could feel that faint, gut-held promise of Aakasha after so long. He might cross the ocean and crawl his way through the Fallen Suns and for all of that, he could rescue the girl and discover that all he got from her regarding Aashka was a clue, a hint … or maybe even nothing. Even if that was the case, he was still going. He could not bring the captain with him; he’d tried. So now he had to take his chances on his own.

  At last Haakvar came on deck. “I heard you were here. I’m doing shares in the common room. Come on.”

  Aaran followed him belowdecks, and into the central area where crew ate, played cards, whittled, talked about their lives, and told lies about women and fish. The armed day watch stood guard over two large strongboxes. Aaran hoped both of them were full.

  The captain gave the common sailors their shares first, then graded sailors, and then specialists like Aaran and Tuua. He was paying in horse cash, which would make the money easy to spend anywhere. Tuua got a wad of horse cash thick as his wrist, and a bonus of half again as much. Both of the other specialists received the same.

  Aaran did not. He got his share, but no bonus.

  He looked Haakvar in the eye and said, “I tracked that last slaver across the sea through a storm the likes of which we’ve never sailed in before. The trackers on all three of the other wolf-ships lost their lines on it as soon as the weather got bad. I was the only one who managed to hang on to it throughout the whole chase. The only one, Haakvar. Without that ship, we would be out near a hundred children and every bit of treasure that you looted. So where’s my bonus?”

  “I’m saving it for when you sign your next set of papers with me, Aaran.”

  “You can’t do that and you know it.”

  “I can.”

  “You want me to sign on with you again, you follow the track I found up to the northern Fallen Suns. The only reason I’m leaving now is that you won’t do that.”

  “I won’t do that. Didn’t fancy the idea of dying in those hells when you shipped it past me, and I don’t fancy it now.”

  “Then I won’t sign on with you.”

  Haakvar stood and rested his palms flat on the table, his nose shoved in Aaran’s face. “Then you have what you’ve earned. Get off my ship.”

  “The rule has always been share plus bonus for the specialists, and an extra half bonus for the tracker. Supposed to be a half bonus pitched in by any pack ships that benefited from the tracker, too—so considering my pitch-in would be three half bonuses from the others and a half bonus from you, I’m looking at missing my regular bonus, and two full extra bonuses.”

  Aaran grinned at him, and stood, and rested his own hands flat on the table. Eye-to-eye with Haakvar, who outweighed him two to one in hard muscle and heavy bone, he said, “You sure you don’t want to pay a bonus to the tracker who won you and three other ships in your pack your richest prize of the voyage. You, who are supposedly in desperate need of a new tracker. Because, I swear, if word gets out that you shorted the man who got you where you needed to be through a ship-eater of a tempest, you’re likely to never have another tracker worth the name step on board a ship with you again.”

  “You threatening me?”

  “Simply trying to help you see your way to good business practices—ones that wouldn’t leave you shorthanded and blind your next voyage out. I like the Windsteed. I’d hate to see her get left behind by ships with eyes.”

  They stood that way for a long time, with Haakvar glaring and Aaran not blinking, while all around Aaran a sense of creeping danger grew tighter and keener and closer. He wondered if Haakvar meant to have him killed when he stepped onto the docks, or maybe before; if he’d hired someone to rob him; if the captain planned to drop him in a weighted bag and throw him over the back of the ship right then.

  But Haakvar said, “Three bonuses for him. Now,” and one of the guards counted out the money. It was a huge pile.

  “Understand this,” Haakvar said. “You’ll have no good name from me to any man who asks it. No aid from me or mine if we cross paths and you’re in desperate need. Were you ablaze, I wouldn’t piss on you to put you out. Do you understand?”

  “Well enough,” Aaran said, putting his money into his bag and shoving the bag down the front of his pants. “You’ve been quick enough to put a bad name on me already, and you’ve cost me good officers and good sailors. But I’ll take my chances with the men who’ll take their chances with me. For my part, I’m satisfied with that so far as you go no further with it. If you’re threatening me harm—that I’ll have to deal with. If you’re satisfied with trying to give me a bad name, knowing that if I find what I think I’ll find, you’ll brand yourself a coward and a fool—and I’ll help with the branding, I swear it—we can part in peace, and I’ll wish you no ill will.”

  “Oh, if wishing’s to be a part of it, I hope you’re lining the bellies of a hundred cannibals by year’s end. I wish you no end of hurt and suffering, and a bad death as a bow on the box. But I’ll do nothing to bring your troubles about.”

  Aaran walked to the door. “Then, for all you wish me, I wish you twice as much.” He left, and after him came the other specialists. None of them, including Tuua, said anything to him, nor he to them. Haakvar’s ship wasn’t the place, and right after that exchange wasn’t the time.

  All the men walked together, though. They would travel the docks togther to watch each other’s backs until they’d put their money where it would be safe. And after that, Aaran and Tuua, with a payout that would let them invest in a sound shipwright, would take the next steps in their voyage.

  “You didn’t tell Haakvar you were leaving?”

  “For all they know, I’m giving my time and future earnings to a nest of whores,” Tuua said. He was unpacking books into one of the bolt-and-lock storage boxes the inn provided to patrons. Most of the books Aaran recognized as being Tuua’s work. A few others were not.

  “Does Haakvar know you took your books?”

  “No. I didn’t remove a single
thing that I did not own—but I’ll be dipped in oil and lit for a wick if I let him have things I have paid for. Or worse yet, things I’ve written. He didn’t sign me to contribute to his temple, just to maintain it and serve its users.”

  Aaran studied his cousin with worry. Tuua was taking chances, and Aaran didn’t want to spend any of his share of money or Tuua’s paying off local justices and guards. He said, “Any chance he’ll have you served for theft, whether you have a right to these or not?”

  Tuua said, “Any keeper would walk into his temple and see that all the necessary books are in there. And a few oddities. It’s a whole library even without these books, and Haakvar will have no cause for complaint. But Ethebet has a temple here, and keepers who fought the Feegash. And the Sinali. We’re a brotherhood, you know—as tight as any of Ethebet’s own. They’ll not let a dozen new works fall into oblivion. Some of these replace works lost in the Feegash Purge.” He smiled and added, “Captains may stand alone, but keepers don’t. And Ethebet’s keepers carry swords.”

  Aaran wanted a dockside war not at all. But Tuua had every right to fight for what belonged to him, and if it came down to swords, Aaran would be right there, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

  “The Ethebettans have taken a message to Haakvar by now, telling him that they’ll be replacing me with another member for the next voyage. He has no real say in the matter. The temple rarely exercises its right to recall us, but it has that right.”

  “I fear we have such officers as we’re going to get from these parts, anyway. Want to help me sign crew?”

  Tuua flashed a grin at him. “Was it not Ethebet herself who said, ‘Let the champion lead the warriors, and let the warriors follow’?”

  Aaran looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You tell me.”

  Tuua headed for the shower. “Would I make up such a thing?”

  “Yes.”

  Tuua laughed. “I’ve no wish to lie to crew. Enjoy the power of captaincy, my dear cousin. I’ll help you look for a ship when you’re ready, since apparently I’m to pay for half of that. In the meantime, however, I plan to go out in search of companionship of a feminine nature. It may be the last I’ll ever have.”

  Acolyte

  Two Obsidian seru woke me from sleep.

  “I—it’s still dark,” I said, which was perhaps not the cleverest thing anyone has said to a sera. At least it wasn’t something that would get me in trouble.

  One sera was pulling items off my shelf—in the dark I could not see what exactly she was getting. Without the benefit—or hindrance—of sight, she had no trouble finding what she needed. The other said, “Get up. Dress in your best. We have little time before you are to go before the Oracles to be tested and confirmed.”

  “I thought acolytes were only to face trials after their oracles had a chance to train them.”

  “Generally that would be true. However, everyone has heard that Hawkspar is near death, and rumors have reached certain oracles’ ears that you were not the sort of penitent who would ever have been chosen by Eyes of any rank, and certainly never by the Hawkspar Eyes. So you are to face trial, and if you fail, Oracle Hawkspar will also face trial.”

  I was frightened. Redbird, who had been away for much of the night, finally slept in the cell across from mine. I could hear her steady breathing. And in the two other cells, the Betsin and the Arna tried to sound like they were sleeping as well, but both clearly weren’t.

  “What am I to do?”

  The Obsidian who held my garb said, “You are of very little importance in this matter, overall. From time to time the oracles challenge each other in order to change alliances and shift power among themselves. You are merely seen as a weakness in Oracle Hawkspar’s previously unbreachable wall. The matter is, in fact, about her, not you.”

  “Yet I’m the one who will die in trials if I fail.”

  “Being disposable is never a pleasant experience,” the other Obsidian said. I could hear no sympathy in her voice.

  I dressed hurriedly. When I was finished, I asked, “Have I time for bread or a drink of water to settle my stomach? I’m afraid.”

  “You have no time for anything. They have demanded your presence in the Tower.”

  At mention of the Tower, fear coursed through me. I had never been in it. It was a place where only those who sought the assistance of the oracles, or those who had displeased them, ever trod.

  We walked through the dark toward the Oracle Tower, cutting across paths, walking through gardens and over grass, taking the quickest route possible. The dew soaked through my soltis and chilled my feet, and made the hems of my hakan-allar heavy. I found myself missing my neat, easy-to-keep-dry penitent pants.

  I did not know if the hour was late night or early morning. Weariness clouded my vision, and fear my thoughts. Outside the Citadel I heard the cries of small animals, and looked up to see the stars that glittered overhead. So far away, so very cold. If I survived, if I became Hawkspar, I would miss the stars, too.

  We passed Oracle House and turned onto Tower Path.

  Before me stood Oracle Tower. Unlike the gray stone from which the rest of the Citadel—from walls to halls to temples to outbuildings—had been built, the founder of the Ossalene Rite had created that tower entirely of a single block of deep green volcanic glass, carved at the base to mimic vines climbing its surface, and farther up, to show the faces of men and women peering from between the vines.

  The faces often seemed alive, and always seemed to be watching, peering down on us from their high vantage. I’d noticed more than once that they never seemed to be in the same place, either. I hated walking past Oracle Tower, nor could I think of a single slave or penitent I had ever known who did not. The air surrounding it tasted like pain and fear.

  It is a part of the magic of the Tower that only when someone who belongs within is present does it have doors. It is an otherwise solid mass of glass—no army could force its way inside uninvited, for there would be no inside to the tower. Nor could any who had no business there pass. The slaves and penitents have all heard this, as I had heard it. Yet I did not understand what that meant until the Obsidians pushed me forward.

  “Touch the wall,” one said.

  I touched cool, smooth glass, and felt a vibration beneath my fingertips.

  The glass curled away from me, shaping itself into an arching doorway. Light began to glow within the tower, and by it I could see stairs forming themselves in front of me, spiraling upward around the inside of smooth, glossy walls. I took a step back, frightened—the air that rolled out from the tower had a stink to it that drove like a spike straight into my brain. Something obscene waited inside, and I would have offered anything to be spared walking through that arch or up those stairs.

  One of the Obsidians behind me said, “We may not pass.”

  The other said, “I was instructed by the Oracle Hawkspar to give you a single piece of advice. Hawkspar said: To the damned, courage is better than truth.”

  I turned to stare at her. “What does that mean?”

  “I could not say,” she told me. “You’ll have to discover its meaning on your own.” And then she put her hand to the small of my back and shoved me forward. “Go. You are to wait until the Oracles join you. You would be well advised to pray.”

  I stumbled though the arch just as the seru rang the bells of Basmam, third quarter of dark, and I felt the doorway suck itself shut behind me. I refrained from turning only out of sheer willpower; I knew if I saw there was no longer a door behind me, I would panic. I would run. In the faintly green-glowing darkness of Oracle Tower, I sensed that panic would have consequences I could not imagine, and would not desire.

  I had a long wait ahead of me before I could hope for the presence of the oracles. They rose at Noesmam, the last quarter of dark, and would be unlikely to enter the tower before the bells rang Dalmam, the first quarter of light.

  From the chapel across the green, seru began chanting the “Prayers
of the Dreaming Vran Vrota.” These songs become so much a part of us that sometimes I dreamed them. They are beautiful, but like meditation and prayer and so many other things in our cloistered life, they take us away from who we are … and after time, I suspect they take who we are away from us.

  Which is probably why they exist.

  Within the glass walls, the chants were distorted, and the voices singing them sounded inhuman, as if they were sung by sharp-voiced angels. Or demons.

  I did not look behind me, but slowly trod the steps.

  I felt vibrations beneath my feet, heard liquid sounds all around me, and knew that beneath me, the stairs folded in upon themselves and the walls bled back into solidity, while before me, new stairs formed just out of my sight.

  Around me, voices whispered.

  To the damned, courage is better than truth.

  I did not know, even yet, what the oracle had meant in sending me that message. But I knew to keep my hands close to my body, for the walls beside me rippled as I ascended, and faces flowed upward in the glass, watching me, and glass hands formed and reached out to touch me as I passed, then melted back into the surface again as I moved away. I knew not to look behind me, for as long as I did not look back, I could imagine a clear retreat still lay behind me. I knew to breathe slowly, as I had been trained to do since my days as a slave. I knew to cast a shield around myself as if I were going to do magic.

  I knew to pray. But not to Vran Vrota, the hybrid god of people from a world far away from my own. I prayed to the Tonk god Jostfar, through Ethebet, the patron saint of warriors.

  I reached the top of the stairs and found myself in a featureless open space that glowed with its own inner light. I settled myself on the floor, assuming the stance of prayer. I prayed for myself, and for Redbird who at first light would be taken to the Arena for Gata Ossala Shen, the Ceremony of Taking Eyes.

  I prayed for rescue. I prayed that if I were to die, none of the rest of the penitents and acolytes, and even the sera, who had joined with me in our plan to win our freedom, would be punished for my sins. I prayed to live. I prayed to see my parents again.