by Holly Lisle
And I could not imagine how Vran Vrota had refused to protect Windcrystal from Hawkspar’s fury. What were these Living Goddesses, truly, to behave as they were—and what was Vran Vrota to let them? Why would the Dyad abandon one chosen vessel while publicly favoring another? And that one a goddess who worshipped another god entirely in secret?
When I was done toweling myself off, Hawkspar said, “Walk with me.”
She and I started back to the Oracles’ Gate, and as we stepped across the sand, the drums started up again with the slow, steady booming that had characterized the oracles’ walk into the Arena that first time.
I listened to it, and felt it shiver through my bones. The other oracles stepped out of the gate as we approached, and lined up against the closed door. All of them were there.
“Observe her for yourselves,” Hawkspar said. “She has not a single bite on her. And not a single scratch. Not even a mark from Windcrystal, who was doing her best to mark the girl with her nails. The rats devoured rope and each other, but did not touch the acolyte.”
Above our heads, the drums thundered their slow pulse.
Tigereye said, “She is untouched.”
Amethyst said, “She is untouched.”
Sapphire and Raxinan both said, “She is untouched.”
This left the three remaining challengers. Emerald said, “I agree. She is untouched. I was mistaken.”
Ruby said, “I, too, was mistaken.” But her mouth twisted in a bitter line when she said it.
Sunspar held her hand over me, though she did not touch me. I felt cold penetrate my skin, felt it seep into my muscles, felt it chill and slow my blood and my heartbeat and my breath until all the world around me seemed to stop. She looked into me and through me.
The rat-keepers moved past us, removing from the Arena the cage in which I had lain.
“She is … untouched,” Sunspar said. “But I am unconvinced that it is the will of Vran Vrota, Hawkspar, that kept her untouched.”
“Once you are done with your own trial of rats, then, Sunspar,” the Oracle Hawkspar said, “you and I may pursue this further. In private. If you so desire. For your question then is not about my acolyte’s acceptability or integrity, but mine.”
“Indeed,” Sunspar said, “it is. It has been for quite some time now. So perhaps once this farce is finished, we shall meet privately to … discuss … our differences.”
The chill of Oracle Sunspar’s examination of me did not leave me when her attention turned to Hawkspar.
It clung to me, too, as the seru wheeled out the clean cages; as the oracles disrobed and permitted themselves to be bound—all save Windcrystal, who fought like a wounded animal as the leather-clad rat-keepers brought out more well-starved beasts.
I did not watch. I had been in one of those cages, and with the clang of the last door and the click of the last padlock, I could feel myself back in it again. Could feel the rats falling on me.
I heard screaming. So much screaming. The Blessed Dyad had wearied of at least one vessel and was allowing it to be devoured so that Vran Vrota could choose a more suitable one.
To my ears, it sounded like more than one.
9
Aaran
Taag av Sookyn was running a steady eight knots north-northwest without windmen’s assist, threading the passageway through the Five Brothers Islands that lay in the Path of Stars. The ship was five days out from Midrid, and Aaran thought the crew was settling in nicely.
Aaran worried about his kor, or officers. He’d managed to fill his berths, but he had not done so with men he would have chosen in other circumstances. Aaran’s kor daan, or first, was a good Dravitaak Tonk named Ves av Imaaryn, an Ethebettan with years of experience in the kor. He’d never been daan before, but he’d been raan, or second, on the Dyn Glytaak, and he came with excellent recommendations.
Aaran’s raan, Ino Tortaaknavyn, had fought in the sea lanes around Beyltaak during the Feegash Purge, and before that, he’d been a naval officer in the Confederate Forces. He had some gray to his hair, but he was steady, and with a daughter killed and a granddaughter taken by a Sinali slaver, he was motivated to see the journey through.
But Aaran’s kor wogan, or master of marines, was Ermyk av Beyrkyn; Ermyk had come to Aaran at the Buttered Bread and asked for the job when he’d heard the rumors of a trip into the Fallen Suns to rescue slaves. He brought a dozen men who’d fought under him with him. He wouldn’t say what drove him to seek out the most dangerous possible journey when setting out from Midrid that season, his clan tattoo had been stripped from him and every man with him.
Aaran had only been able to get one apprentice windman in Midrid, a lad named Besik who had limited experience. The boy had managed a good enough blow in their way out of the Midrid harbor, but Aaran couldn’t rest until, three days out, they put in at Five Brothers on the Path of Stars on the advice of one of his communicators, and took on Faryn Wo, a north Franican Tonk from one of the Pangaree Clan families up that way. Faryn said he hadn’t seen enough of the world yet.
In all, Aaran had ten officers, and four of them were Tonk. He dared not count Ermyk, who had been exiled, nor any of the other exiles, as true Tonk.
He’d been less lucky with his sailors. Aaran’s crew came from the scattered corners of the world—he had a Mixol and a Hva Hwa, a half-breed Najulite, a couple of Mindan Reformist Tonks who made a point of their pacifist bent, three Bhekians (two of them nephews of Makkor’s), and a dubious assortment of Eastil, Greton, and Kadine wharf rats without pedigrees. Mixed with those were Ermyk’s exiles, and a handful of fellow Tonk Ethebettans—but those were all Tand Tonks, mostly from the old clans. They had been stranded in Midrid without money. What they had done to get intentionally abandoned by their shipmates, they would not say. The possibilities gave Aaran nightmares. As did their taciturn eagerness to put Midrid at their backs.
The Taag had good seas that day, and good winds. The marines were scrubbing and cleaning and refinishing every interior surface of the ship, driven by Ermyk, who shared Aaran’s vision of what the ship could be. They were joined by the off-duty sailors who weren’t on their sleep shift.
The cooks were busy, food smells covered up some of the drowner stink, and Aaran was taking a break from supervising to simply catch his breath.
Ves came to lean on the rail beside him and Tuua as they cruised past one of the nameless thousands of tiny outlying islands that made up the Path of Stars.
“Fine day, isn’t it?” Tuua said. “Sailing into adventure, a wind at our backs, sun in our eyes, a good ship beneath our heels. What could be better?”
Ves shrugged. “I for one would bypass any hint of adventure in favor of a guarantee of a quiet journey with success at the end,” Ves said. “My dreams along the Path have been restless.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Aaran said.
Tuua turned his gaze from the fair islands and balmy skies and lovely blue sea long enough to say, “What fun will it be if you make your first voyage as captain with no tales to tell after?”
“I’ll still be breathing?” Aaran grinned at Tuua. “When I look in these blue waters, dead men’s eyes look back at me, cousin. I’ve a ship now, and debts to pay, and promises to keep. The voice that was calling to me—she haunts me. She’s so frightened, so desperate, in such terrible danger. Every day takes us closer to her, but every day takes her closer to oblivion. As much as we’re hurrying, we need to go still faster.”
Ves said, “If you weren’t afraid, you’d be a fool. This is not a gentle puddle-jaunt we’ve set ourselves upon. I’ve heard tell of the Fallen Suns from men who sail them. If dead men look at you now, wait until they reach up from the sea and wrap their hands around your throat.”
Aaran studied his daan with narrowed eyes. “Thanks for that,” he said. “I’m sure to sleep better at night with those words echoing in my head.”
And then, from somewhere in the belly of the ship, a man shouted, “Hey, you thieving bastard!
” And over the creaking of the ship and the wind singing in the lines, Aaran heard running feet—two pairs of them, starting from what had to have been forward storage, galloping straight to the back, and then upward.
The aft hatch burst open, and a scrawny boy shot out of it as if propelled by a catapult. Behind him, one of Aaran’s wharf rat Eastil sailors, red-faced and furious, shouted, “Grab the little stowaway!”
Tuua, Ves, and Aaran all jumped between the boy and any possible escape routes. When he tried to dart between Aaran and Ves, Aaran snagged him around the middle and held him aloft.
“Unlock a cell in the brig for me,” he shouted, and the sailor who’d been chasing the boy said, “That’s just the thing for him.”
The kid, wild-eyed, fought and kicked and scratched and yowled, but Aaran dragged him down into the aft hold, where a two-celled brig lay.
The wharf rat, whose name was Drum, if Aaran was remembering correctly, held the cell door open. Aaran walked into it with the flailing, cursing boy and threw him on the narrow oak bench.
“Drum,” he said, hoping he had the name right, “lock the door and go upstairs. I don’t want you to see what happens next, you understand? Just make sure you’re back down here next bell to let me out again.”
Drum looked surprised. Genuinely surprised, as if he expected some punishment for the boy, but nothing so severe that he might be sent way. “Yes … ah, yes, Captain.” He locked the cell door behind him, and Aaran could hear him head away.
Aaran studied the boy. Black hair, green eyes, pale skin not freckled by the sun. The boy’s clothes were filthy, too big, mismatched. He wore good-quality shoes, though they didn’t fit him.
He was a thin boy, probably about ten years old, with old scar tissue and pink, newer scar tissue around his wrists and neck. The look of the scars on such a small boy made Aaran queasy.
The boy glared at him with loathing in those green eyes.
“You’re in a bit of trouble, boy,” Aaran said in Trade speech.
The boy said nothing.
“You’ll want to talk to me. I’m captain of this ship, so there’s no higher authority from whom you can beg mercy, and I’m not in a mood to be patient with thieves. We’re in warm waters, now. Sharks aplenty here, and other things that would find someone like you tasty.”
The kid crossed his arms over his chest and turned his face away from Aaran.
“Well, see,” Aaran said. “That’s why I sent the sailor away. I don’t want him to see what I’m going to do to you if you don’t tell me who you are and why you’re on my ship.”
“You can’t do anything to me worse that what’s already been done,” the kid said. He spoke Tonk, though, not Trade. But he wasn’t Tonk.
Was he?
Aaran grabbed the kid’s left hand and pried the suddenly clenched fingers open. No clan mark.
Spoke Tonk with a good clean Hyrian accent. And yet wasn’t Tonk. Tonk was no common tongue for the non-Tonk to learn. People spoke their own language, they picked up Trade, and they’d learn one or two regional pidgins to get them through the tricky bits.
But this kid spoke Tonk like someone who’d been speaking it for years.
“There’s where you’re wrong, you see,” Aaran said, switching to Tonk. “So far you’re still breathing. But I have the right to make that not so. After all, we’re at sea, and all you’ve shown me so far is that you’re trouble I don’t want to have.”
The kid looked him straight in the eye and said, “If it makes you happy, kill me. You still can’t hurt me like they did.”
Aaran sat on the bench opposite him. “Who?”
“If I tell you that, you’ll take me back, and I’m not going back.”
Aaran laughed. “I’m not taking anyone anywhere. We’re not on a pleasure cruise, boy. We’re going to war, and I’m in a hurry to get there. I might dump you at the next civilized port if you act decent—from there you could go wherever you wanted. But there’s no way I’ll take you back where you came from. I haven’t the time.”
Arms crossed, body rigid. “Beat me. I won’t talk.”
“You think so, do you?”
“My father beats me. My uncle. Some of their friends.”
“Why?”
The kid was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Because they like to.”
Aaran knew about drunks who liked to beat their children. They grew up to be wharf rats, and then ship’s runners, and then sailors. He had a good double handful of such men onboard.
Aaran looked at the boy, sitting there on the bench in his too-big shirt. And he realized the kid had no reason to trust anyone. If a child couldn’t trust his own father, who could he trust? The name of the kid’s father didn’t matter.
He said, “All right. I won’t push you for details about what happened to you. But if you ever want to talk to me, you can tell me.” He propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hands. “So. Here you are, and you’re going to have to have food, and clothes to wear, and if you’re going to be eating, you’re going to be working. You want to get off at the next island we pass that has a town on it?”
“Not very much,” the boy said. “I want to go a long way away.”
Aaran said, “How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“I swear … hearing starts to fail when you get to be twenty-five. I didn’t hear you very well, I’m afraid. A boy can sign papers to work on a ship if he’s twelve years old. How old did you say you were again?”
The kid looked downtrodden for a moment, and then hopeful. “Twelve?” “You’re pretty puny for a twelve-year-old, you know?”
“Yessir. I’m small.” He nodded.
“But twelve? You’re sure about that?”
“Oh, yessir. I’m twelve.”
“You have a name?”
“Um … what is a good Tonk name?”
Aaran grinned at him. “You speak good Tonk, kid, but you don’t look Tonk. You’ve got no clan mark, you wear your hair short and ugly, and I bet you haven’t chosen your saint yet, either.”
“Can you make me a Tonk?”
“Only Jostfar can make you Tonk,” he said, and laughed. But the kid didn’t laugh. He didn’t have any idea who Jostfar was, of course. “We’ll see about you becoming Tonk. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, if you want it enough. First, though, we have to make you not Marqallan. All right?”
The kid nodded, puppy-eager.
“You can be Eastil. Anybody can be Eastil, and sometimes that seems not such a bad thing. For now, we can call you Eban. That’s as much an Eastil name as anything. Eban … Coopersson. The Eastils have as many Coopers and Cooperssons as they have everything else combined. And you could pass for Eastil, once we shave off that idiotic haircut and put you into a sailor’s clothes. I’ll let you sign papers to work on the ship as a …” He looked at the kid. Aaran had been almost ready to tell him he could be a rope rat—but the kid looked too frail. Within a month, rope rats knew the language of a ship, how to climb and how to fall, how to hang on, where to run when things got nasty. This kid’s hands were as soft as a girl’s. Or a keeper’s. He’d spent a lot of time being hurt, not a lot of time running outdoors in the streets with friends. He’d toughen up in time, no doubt. But Aaran didn’t want him to die in the process.
“You want to learn how to be Tonk, you think?”
“Yessir.”
“Right. I’ll sign you on as assistant keeper, then, and you can work with my cousin Tuua. You’ll be on rope-rat half pay until Tuua says you’re worth more to him.”
“I’ll get paid?” the kid asked.
Aaran could see a smile trying to show up on the boy’s face. It was heartbreaking, really. The boy—well, Eban … might as well get used to thinking of him as Eban—seemed like a good kid. That didn’t mean he was, but those rope burns and torture scars on Eban’s arms told Aaran the father’s side of the story wouldn’t be worth hearing.
On deck, the next be
ll rang. “Drum’s going to be down here any minute. How old are you?”
“Twelve,” the kid said.
“What’s your name?”
“Eban.”
“Eban what?”
“Coopersson.”
“And you want to sign articles and work your passage?”
“Yessir. More than anything, sir.”
Aaran stood up as he heard a hand on the door to the cells. “Maybe you’ll even do well, if you work at it. For now, listen more than you talk, watch as much as you listen, and stay out from underfoot. You’ll learn a lot from Tuua. First, though, you’re going to visit our kor feer. You know who that is?”
The kid shook his head.
“He’s a master healer. He’ll do things to fix the hurts your father and the other men did to you. He’ll make you as strong as magic can. The rest, you’ll have to do on your own. You have to trust him, though. He won’t hurt you. No one on this ship will hurt you. You understand?”
The kid’s eyes were huge, but he nodded.
“All right, then. While you’re with the feer, I’ll go talk with Keeper Tuuanir, and tell him he’s to have a helper.”
Acolyte
I trained with Hawkspar in diplomacy, in the uses of power, in dealing with kings and emperors and great generals. Everything I had learned of language she said was barely enough. She would throw half a dozen languages at me in as many minutes, asking how I would approach a king in one language, how I would refuse a gift in a second, how I would put a general in his place in a third.
She pushed me on the tactics and strategies of war, drilled me on the great battles of a dozen armies and two dozen navies, and demanded that I work out problems that previous Hawkspars had solved, finding good answers for them out of my own knowledge of history. She said the Eyes would give me assistance, but they could only be of true value to someone already strong and intelligent.
And she told me the near future, of the Tonk warrior who sailed to rescue us, of a power-mad prince who would come to our doorstep begging my aid, and of the dangerous path I would have to walk to take half a hundred Obsidians, a goodly handful of the Citadel’s other seru, and a hundred Tonk children away from this place.