by Holly Lisle
Aaran gave Tuua a look, and the two of them started to turn away.
Makkor laughed. “Don’t leave. Walk with me a bit, and let’s talk about this. I don’t like men who threaten me, so I’ll listen to you two crazies just to give that arrogant Haakvar a bony fish to stick in his craw.”
The shipwright was so bald that not only had he no hair on his head—he had neither eyebrows nor eyelashes. His ebony skin sheened blue in the midday sun. He had sons Aaran’s age and older, but he didn’t look old enough to have fathered the oldest of them. In Midrid, he was a minor legend. Evidently he was famous for one story that got longer and wilder every time Makkor told it. And as he’d been telling it for nearly forty years, it had evidently reached the point where it required a breakfast, a midday, and a full sit-down dinner with wine to get through.
Makkor walked them along his private dock. “I hear you pissed in Haakvar’s beer, and now he has it in for you.”
“That about sums it up,” Aaran said glumly.
“I hear that you’re on a fool’s mission into the heart of calamity, with a date for your own demise.”
“So we’ve been told,” Tuua said.
“Going after a hundred stolen children, and them that stole them.”
Aaran heard a change in Makkor’s voice, and the hope in him that he’d thought dead twitched once. “Yes.”
And Makkor looked at them sidelong, and walked to the far end of the dock without slowing at any of the piers in between. He stepped onto the last rickety finger pier, and said, “Follow.”
Halfway to the end of Makkor’s last pier, lined with ships that were, to a one, clearly salvage, the shipbuilder stopped. “Before I show you what I got, you tell me what you want. Just so I know which side of the stories is true.”
Aaran took a deep breath. “We need room for a hundred passengers, though they can be close-berthed. We need room for a full complement of crew, a full complement of marines—I’d like to run with fifty crew and fifty marines if I can. Maybe more. We need arms storage, we need treasure storage, we need a good galley and berths for cooks for all shifts. We’re going to be running hard through ugly waters and danger, so speed would be a good thing. We don’t give a cold damn about looks.”
“You really are going up the Path of Stars, through the Fallen Suns, and into the Dragon Sea.”
“If we live long enough to get that far,” Aaran told him.
“I have your ship. You won’t like her, because you’ll know her. But she’ll do what you need her to do.”
They walked all the way down to the end of the pier. The last ship.
“She’s drowned salvage. An older Tonk wolf-ship—bigger and slower than the current builders are making them, but with a good knife hull and plenty of room for cargo. I’ve already done structural repairs on her, but haven’t had time to shine her up or add any extras.”
Aaran did know the ship, and Makkor was right—he didn’t like her. She had been the Kytaak Haar, the Loving Daughter, and she had gone to the bottom of the sea in unknown circumstances, taking all hands with her, plus a rumored thirty rescued captives.
Tonk sailors did not salvage sunken ships. A ship that had betrayed the lives of those onboard once was not given a second chance.
But there were no more shipbuilders in Midrid, and not likely to be any other ships that would meet Aaran’s needs in Makkor’s shipyard, else he would have shown them.
Aaran and Tuua walked up the ramp, and stood on the deck, smelling old wood and new wood and drying varnish and the sea. And beneath them, mold and mildew and decaying food and some incredible stink that Aaran couldn’t even put a name to.
When he stepped between the worlds, the Hagedwar would shield him from the spirits of the ship’s dead. But the men aboard would feel their weight. They would know they sailed with the dead, and that the ship carried the curse of the despoiled grave.
“There won’t be another one,” Tuua said.
Aaran kept staring at the ship, feeling the presence of the disturbed dead pressing close to him. “I know.”
The wolf had good lines. She’d been built a hundred and fifty years earlier of the best Tandinapalis timbers, peg-and-joinery fitted; hers was old-school craftsmanship that had taken a crew of artisans a good year to build.
Until a poor captain had taken her helm, she’d faithfully served a score of better captains and good crews.
Her stint beneath the waves showed, though. Aaran could see places where the decks had worn seaweed and barnacles, where paint had bubbled, where seaworms had worked the wood, where scum had established footholds. She smelled like death, and to more than just his nose.
Makkor said, “She’s sound. Now. I got her hull back in shape, replaced bad timbers, got her seaworthy. She’s not lovely, but with a good crew you could have her gleaming again before you left the harbor.”
“Isn’t the crew decides that. Any crew is good with the right captain.”
They worked their way up to the captain’s deck.
The shipwright ran a hand along the cabin door to the captain’s quarters, a faraway look in his eyes. “So. You want to take my ship to the Fallen Suns?”
“You going to double its price when we tell you we do?” Aaran asked.
“No. For the right promise, I’ll even give you a deal like you’ve never had.”
He opened the door, and Aaran looked in. Death assaulted him and filled his nostrils. Aaran crossed the threshhold reluctantly and looked around. The quarters held the captain’s berth, which was big, plus two small berths with cabinet-style privacy doors up in the loft for runners, a mapping table, and a spiral staircase down into the captain’s attable. Mattresses had been replaced. Everything else had been wiped down, but not scrubbed. The stink would take muscle and sweat to clear.
“What promise?”
He and Tuua followed Makkor aft to the officers’ quarters and the steersman’s castle.
“Here’s the thing. I sailed down here from Bheki with my brothers when I was not much more than a lad, with a shipload of friends looking for adventure. We came down through the Fallen Suns. Quite an adventure, that. I’ll have to tell you the story. But coming through, I picked up a wife for myself.”
Aaran felt his skin tingle at Makkor’s mention of the Fallen Suns. Nobody had said his wild sailing stories were about the Fallen Suns.
“My wife died fifteen years back,” Makkor continued. “And there’s not another woman in these parts fit to kiss the ground where her feet walked. I’m a lonely man, and I want another wife. You bring me a girl from the Fallen Suns who speaks Terkak, a good, big dark-skinned girl with some fight to her who would like the looks of me and is willing to take a rich old man as a husband and keep him warm and happy nights, and I’ll give you the ship for the cost of the repairs I’ve put into it. If you survive to get back here, of course.”
Tuua and Aaran looked at each other. “The cost of repairs?”
“You don’t want to try to cheat me, though, son. I’ve got friends in places you cannot imagine, and if you don’t find me a good wife, you’ll owe me the value of the ship—and that’s a lot, even if she’s a drowner. Not all captains or crews are as picky as the Tonk.”
Aaran was looking around the officers’ quarters. They were roomy enough, with decent storage, double-berth cabins, adequate light. They didn’t have anything he could think of as luxuries. But the officers wouldn’t be swinging in hammocks shoulder-to-shoulder in an open hold with forty other belching, farting men, either. He said, “It sounds possible, if you can tell us where we might hope to find the girl you’re looking for. We’re in a hurry, so the trip up we’re doing at a dead run. The return trip, though, we should be able to make some time to stop off and look.”
Makkor grinned broadly. “I have charts, I have our ship log, I have souvenirs … what the little piss-pants girls-in-beards around here don’t realize is my two brothers and I and five of our best friends and a single master did that trip they won�
��t even think about—every bit of it just as I tell it. We took my ship straight down the middle of the Fallen Suns, just because we could. I’ve been there, lads, and lived to tell the tale. Have no desire to go back. But by Hkukguh, they make good women in those parts.”
They toured the rest of the ship. It was a good ship, with passenger quarters below and separate sleeping quarters for sailors and marines, with generous holds, a large, serviceable attable and cooking galley, and a reasonable, livable design. Makkor hadn’t lied when he said getting the insides livable was going to occupy the crew during their free hours, though. The drowner stink clung to every board, and it would take stone polishing and good soap and oil rubs and hours upon hours of muscle and sweat to eliminate.
But the price was right.
So Aaran and Tuua sat for Makkor’s story. It was a good story, hair-raising and chilling, and it had a ring of flat truth to Aaran. They took the charts Makkor offered them. They looked through the log.
And Aaran faced facts. Drowner or not, the whole of the ship had good lines. A thoughtful layout. Enough space for everything he had to have. It would do what Aaran needed it to do, or kill him in the process. It was the only ship he might hope to buy. He either took it, or turned his back on those slaves trapped in the Fallen Suns. And, his gut whispered, on Aashka.
So they paid Makkor earnest money on their promise—a hefty fee, a hundredth the value of the ship, much of which Makkor would give back at the end of the journey if they met their end of the bargain—and signed the contract that would give them the ship for his expenses, already enumerated and more than paid with earnest horse cash, if they survived the voyage and brought to Makkor a wife fitting the description he gave them.
They took the charts and the log to the local Ethebettan temple to pay scholars to copy the lot and have the whole back to them in a single day. They returned the originals to Makkor, and took possession of the ship.
They still had to pull together their crew.
As he carried his belongings onto the ship, as yet unnamed, Aaran could feel the girl calling to him. When he looked down at the water, he could feel her close to him. Desperate. Terrified. If he did not reach her in time, he might never find his sister. Even though he had no way to prove it, his damnable gut insisted that Tonk slave was the first true chance he’d ever had to find Aashka. He had no trouble believing she could be his only chance.
All he could think was, Hurry.
“It’s bad luck to take a ship to sea unnamed,” Tuua said when he came up the gangplank. “You have to call her something.”
She couldn’t carry her drowner name. “Every name I can think of speaks of danger and disaster,” Aaran told him. The ship stank. She reeked. And though she might have been sound, all he could think of it was that he wished he could have afforded something new, something that did not carry with it the voices of the dead. He feared going to sea in a cursed ship.
“I know a name for her.”
Aaran looked at him.
“You’re all the talk in the harbor. So is your ship. And so is this journey. You’re the Madman now, Aaran. In five languages, one need only say that word, and your voyage leaps into the conversation and silences all others.”
Aaran watched the few sailors he’d hired coming aboard. Watched his two Tonk officers, of the minimum of twelve he’d need, walking down the shoddy finger pier, looking for him, looking for the ship in which they would be risking their lives and careers, and then recoiling.
“We can’t call her Madman. Sookyn is no name for a ship.”
“No,” Tuua said. “That would miss the spirit of this venture. Call her Taag av Sookyn.”
“Taag av Sookyn?” Aaran thought about it for a moment, as he watched Neeran, the boy he’d taken on as a runner, come trotting along the pier. Neeran caught sight of him and waved and grinned. He, at least, was unbothered by the look of the ship.
Aaran nodded. “The Dare of the Madman, eh? That works.”
He put his hands on the rail. “We sign the rest of the crew here. We accept as officers the exiled once-Tonk we talked with yesterday. We take anyone else who will sign papers and sail with us—Tonk, Eastil, Kadino, Marqali. We make it clear that Tonk and non-Tonk alike earn full shares. We berth as officers any who are qualified and will swear oaths, whether they are Tonk or not.” He heard Tuua gasp. “Oh, that’s not all. We declare Trade the official tongue of the voyage, not Tonk, though among such as speak Tonk, Tonk will be permitted. Our complement will be as mixed as the cities of the Eastil Republic, if need be. But we put out the final call today, we offer what we must to fill our berths, and we sail tomorrow.”
“You are a madman,” Tuua said.
“I might be,” Aaran agreed. “But we’re going to the Fallen Suns by the shortest route and the fastest pace. I’ll stand by such men as will stand by me in my madness, and they’ll need not be Tonk to earn my loyalty.”
8
Acolyte
They kept me in a private cell away from everyone for three days. I was permitted prayer. I had regular food and water. But no one could speak to me, nor could I speak to them. I had no news of Redbird. I had no word from Hawkspar. I had only the silence of the cell, punctuated by the ringing of the bells, the songs of service, and from time to time, the sharp rap of a sera on the door, letting me know that it was my time to follow her to the shower.
On the fourth day, shortly after sunrise, I opened the door to find half a dozen of the Seru Onyx, instead of just one.
It was time, and I was not ready. I would never be ready.
Whatever reckless courage had driven me to volunteer myself as rat food was gone. The oracles who had spoken in my favor had seemed to take my volunteering as a sign of the Dyad speaking through me. Those who had spoken against me seemed, to my surprise, even more convinced.
Only I was near certain that I had been stricken by a passing madness. Fear had replaced courage, and brought with it a panicked strength. My eyes were clear, my legs were steady, and the thought foremost in my mind was that I could fight the Seru Onyx who surrounded me as we walked toward the Arena.
I could get in one good kick, perhaps, smash the nose of one sera. The others would try to subdue me, but I was skilled enough at the fighting arts that I thought I would be able to force them to kill me.
Death by Onyx would be a quicker, more merciful end than rats.
The Seru Onyx were usually silent in carrying out their duties. But the one walking at my right hand broke with expected taciturnity. Curiosity can become too much even for the Eyes of Discipline, I suppose. We were almost to the Arena when she asked me, “How come you to face the rats, Hawkspar’s acolyte?”
“I volunteered,” I admitted.
Around me, all the Seru Onyx stopped as one. Faces turned toward me, and black stone eyes without the faintest hint of life or light all seemed to focus on me.
“You volunteered,” the same sera repeated in a flat, disbelieving voice. I realized she and I had been slaves together—I could see little of her face for the folds of her black hood, but her voice I knew well. “Why?”
They stood around me, all of them tall and strong and fierce, ban-muhan-ri staffs—the longest and most dangerous—resting on the ground. I could feel their astonishment and their disbelief.
“I cannot say,” I said. “The oracles were arguing among themselves, and I was listening to them. Four wanted to see me tried by rats before they would confirm me. Well, one said she would not confirm me, no matter what, while one said she did not care what happened to me, but she thought it proper to support Windcrystal and Sunspar in their votes. Four said they would confirm me without trial. My oracle said she could call for a vote right then; that she would cast the final vote herself and guarantee the majority.” I sighed. “And when the matter was nearly decided in my favor, I volunteered to face the rats.”
“Why?”
I shook my head. “They were challenging Hawkspar’s honesty. Her devotion to the O
rder. They thought to try her for naming me her successor. It seemed like the right thing to do. At the time, at least. Now …” I felt my hands clenching in spite of my wishes. I took deep breaths.
The seru took small steps away from me. In case my madness was contagious, I supposed.
One said, “And the oracles still insisted that you face the test of rats?”
“They were prepared to reverse themselves once I volunteered,” I said. “But they had already as much as called the Blessed Oracle Hawkspar a liar. She insisted that I be permitted to face the trial they had requested. She claimed the right to declare the consequences for those who challenged her if I succeeded.”
The air around me changed. It was like stepping outside on a hot day, breathing in, and smelling a storm coming on the breeze. But there was nothing to smell, no breeze, nothing I could point to and say, There. That was different.
I had never felt such a thing before.
“Such as we can do to make the coming ordeal less onerous for you, we will do, Chosen of Hawkspar’s Eyes and Vran Vrota,” one of the Onyxes said.
“We are duty sworn to present you naked, weaponless, and bound before the audience in the Arena, and to see you in that fashion into the cage,” a second said. “Please remember when you are Hawkspar that we acted not out of malice or agreement, but out of regretful obligation.”
I considered that as we walked toward the Arena.
The Seru Onyx said nothing else. All of us togther proceeded to the staging area just beneath the main gate into the arena floor.
Someone had already carried out the rat cage. I could see it from where we stood, and all of a sudden I could not keep myself from shaking.
The rat cage is a box big enough to hold one large woman and perhaps fifty rats, if one cares little for breathing room. It is made of sturdy, close-woven wire to keep the rats in, bound over thick iron bars—to keep the victim in. The cage has one-way drop holes at each of the four top corners. The drop holes are short tubes with hinged doors in the middle; the hinges swing only one way. In. The rat-keepers on the outside can shove rats from their carrying cages into these tubes, and the beasts will slide down the metal and through the door without being able to gain purchase or crawl back out. They will drop on the girl or woman waiting for their arrival, teeth and claws ready when they land.