by Holly Lisle
“He’s got a good hand with a pen, and he can read Trade, though he has no idea what to do with Tonk yet. I’m teaching him now.” Tuua frowned. “I’m surprised to find a scrawny little wharf rat like him so well spoken, too.”
“Has he told you anything about himself?”
“Not a thing, beyond that he’s twelve and he’s never going back to Midrid as long as he lives.”
“We’ll, we won’t make him. He works hard?”
“Does everything I throw his way, doesn’t complain—I get the feeling if I asked more of him, he’d find a way to do it. I like him.”
“He tell you he wants to be Tonk?”
“He mentioned to me that he told you that. Did you explain to him that becoming a Tonk isn’t like becoming an Eastil?”
“I told him.” Aaran grinned over at Tuua. “I also told him you’d teach him. I figure if he’s in the chapel with you all the time, he’ll have at least a chance to learn what it means to be Tonk. If he wants it enough to work for it, you and I can bring him into our clan.”
It wasn’t usually done that way. In the rare instances when a morii earned the honor of becoming Tonk, a taaklord or clan chieftain usually did the honors. But a captain of a ship or a keeper could do it, too.
Below, the men finished scrubbing the deck clear of blood, and officers started carrying the wrapped and weighted bodies of the dead crewmen up from the crew commons, where they had lain in state.
Aaran and Tuua went down to the deck to give them a send-off fitting of Ethebet.
Hawkspar
I dreamed of him—the beautiful man who came to rescue us. He sailed across the sea in a glorious ship that sparkled like the sun. He was tall and powerfully built, forceful and admired by his men. But when he turned, I could not see his face.
He came to me, and touched me with his hands and with his lips, and I embraced him. In my dream, he thought me beautiful. In my dream, he yearned for me in the ways that men yearn for women—all the ways the Ossalenes are quick to scorn, and to deny, and to forbid.
But when he came for me, I would no longer have to pretend to be an Ossalene. I could become a Tonk and claim the birthright that had been stripped from me, and I could discover the secrets of a man’s body, the pleasures that I knew of only as the sins that Vran Vrota did not permit to Ossalenes.
When I woke, I knew that he was coming. I could not feel his touch as I could in the dream, but something existed between the two of us that had not been there before. I could see the line of magic that swirled out from me like a glowing thread. I could follow it through the sea. I could follow it beyond the point where I could actually see, to the point where everything became a uniform blur of even density. And then, if I held myself above the flow of time, I could follow it all the way to a ship that raced toward us across the sea.
He was there. Hawkspar had not lied to me. He came for us, following my plea for help. He came to me.
Awake, I was grateful to have a form of vision back, even if it was an uncomfortable form. To look at a person and see her as layers, as air pockets and watery tissue and solid bone, made people unpleasant to look at. I could not see only the outside, no matter how hard I tried.
I could not see just a surface of anything anymore.
That had advantages.
I called Redbird to my chapel.
When she arrived, I wrapped the chapel in the shield that blocked other oracles and seru from seeing me or what I did.
“He’s getting closer,” I told her. “With his ship.”
“I understand.”
“We’re going to go into the passages under the Citadel. We have to start getting ready.”
Redbird said, “You have your vision now?”
“Finally. It came to me while I dealt with the prince.”
“Then you know we cannot hide what we’re doing down there. There is no place within the Citadel that the seru cannot see,” the Obsidian said. “Save those things hidden within shields like this. But you cannot shield the corridors and the catacombs.”
“I don’t intend to. Secrets are not our problem. What we’re doing, we’ll do publicly. I am an oracle, and I will make it known that I do not wish to live as my predecessor lived. I want to be surrounded by riches. By treasures. By things that are fine and lovely.”
Redbird laughed. “Why? You cannot see things that are fine and lovely. Everything is darkness, always. Texture and smell and scent are treasures to us, but gold and gemstones and great works of art are as valueless as common rocks and metals and wood polished but unpainted.”
“We need not value treasure. Others do. This will be a final gift we give to the Ossalene Order on our way out the back passage, Redbird.”
“Oh, Mouse,” she said, and hugged me. “I had feared your power had changed you.”
“No.” I said. Not yet, I thought.
“You will gather all our people together, and all the little Tonk slaves who will be going with us. When rescue comes, we will have to gather them in a short time and get them to the ship under terrible, deadly conditions. So you and I will walk together now, deciding what route we will take. And I will tell you how we will help our friends and destroy our enemies in the process.”
I shut down the shield around the room, and Redbird and I went out to walk together. We paced through the gardens—flowers lacked much appeal when they were only shapes and smells. The eye delights in their forms and colors and hides away small flaws and imperfections that become clear when they are viewed in layers all at once. Still, a walk through a garden with the sun on my face and the sound of falling water in my ears and the fragrances of so many warmed blooms in my nostrils soothed me.
That I could walk on my own comforted me even more. I found pleasure in the fact that I was no longer helpless. These were good things, and I accepted them.
The walk took us in the direction I wanted to explore. South of the Seru Garden, between the laundry fountain and the root cellar, there sat a tiny circular stone storage building with a locked door. Redbird had keys and unlocked the door for us, and we proceeded into its cool shelter.
In the floor, hidden from normal sight, lay a trapdoor. It was wide enough to permit the passage of two people at the same time—or perhaps three if they were small. And it required descent down a steep stair in order to take the traveler to the passageways beyond.
“Is there another way into this series of tunnels?” I asked Redbird.
“The cliff,” she said. “The storage room in the kitchen.”
“The cliff will not help me. That’s an egress, to my way of thinking. Is the storage room entrance any bigger?”
“No. It’s the same as this.”
That would be a problem. It meant that I would have to have an excuse to have most of the people who would be leaving already in the passages when trouble started. Timing would be tricky, and explanations trickier. I would have to give it thought. Hawkspar had told me what I would have to do—but this far into the future, her guidance had been more vague. I would have to determine on my own the best way to accomplish my goals.
Beyond the bottleneck of the trapdoor, the cellars and passageways were spacious. We walked along the main corridor, heading south toward the cliff and the island’s secret second harbor. The corridor was roomy and clean, carved out of bedrock. In shelves along its sides, the seru had stored dried herbs, root vegetables, cold-storage fruits, and such commodities as a community of nearly eight hundred needed to operate. Much of what the seru kept down there could rightly be called siege stores. We passed dried, smoked, and salted meats, jars and vats and bolts of cloth, weapons, utility items like ropes and string and nails, tools, spare cages and cage-making materials, and other common supplies. But we also passed several enormous storerooms filled from floor to ceiling and back to front with treasures: boxes and crates and trunks filled with gold and jewels and items that I guessed to be art objects collected by previous oracles.
The treasures were w
hat I had come to see.
“We have great riches,” Redbird agreed when I noted some of the contents of the cellars. “I do not know that we are wise to keep them in this fashion.”
“We’ll find them useful.”
“Truly? I would think such things could only be a useless burden.”
Hers was a good observation, and I smiled at it. She could no more see a smile on my face than I could see one on hers, of course. But she would discover how true her words were soon.
The corridors went on for a long distance, and I imagined the Obsidians leading whole flocks of children and young women at a run to safety while pursued by those who would be trying to stop us. There would be pursuit; I had no doubt of it. And some of our number would likely fall.
How best, then, could I hope to save the majority? Those who were risking their lives to trust in me—and I never forgot my own trial by rats, or the fates that would await those who tried to escape but failed—deserved the best chance at freedom.
At last we reached a small door carved into the end of the stone corridor. Beyond it, I could feel the narrow paths that wound down to the small, hidden dock where I would attempt to direct our rescuers.
Little girls were going to be running in a herd down the two paths, and if they did it in the dark, they were going to pitch over the cliffs and die shattered on the rocks below. If our rescuer could arrive in the daylight hours, we would not lose so many.
Some … we could not help losing some, I thought. There was no rail on either path. The paths could certainly be wet toward the bottom if the tide was low, and could be slippery all the way from the top should we have a storm.
I needed to find a reason to meet with all the young women who would be escaping with me—and at the same time, not one by one. I needed to meet with my predecessor’s conspirators, too. I had to find an excuse to bring all of them—but only them—together at the same time.
I needed to think. To move over the currents of time, to search for a clear direction.
“We have to be getting back,” I told Redbird. “I need to think about this. Make sure the doors lock and hinges stay well oiled and that a key is down here, hidden someplace where you and I both know to look for it.”
“I will.”
Sunspar and four Obsidians waited for us when we stepped out of the round stone entry room.
Sunspar strode up to me and shoved her face so close to mine I could tell she’d eaten leeks, and worse, that they hadn’t agreed with her. Her perfumes, soaps, and skin oil added layers of sweetness that made standing so close to her even more unpleasant.
“I would know,” she told me, “what you and a Sera Obsidian were about down in the storage cellars.”
I took my coldest tone with her. “You would know about us that which we have no interest in sharing. A goddess of war owes nothing to a goddess of secrets. But we do not speak our business to such as you.” And then I turned to Redbird and said, “We have indicated that which we would have for our chambers. Bring all of it immediately; get such help as you require from the slaves. Do not tarry, Sera Obsidian, for our temper is short and our wrath long.”
And with that, Redbird and I pushed past the Oracle Sunspar, who stood silent and furious.
I had little interest in making a friend of Sunspar. My people and I had not much time in which to accomplish a great deal.
When we were well out of earshot, Redbird said, “The oracles have lost the warring spark they once had, and I think none save Sunspar will stand against you in what you plan; they will do as you direct. But not all here will let you act unhindered. Among the seru, Order and Discipline will present problems. Individual others may, as well.”
“Some may.”
“Yes. Order and Discipline wield much power over others, and as well, over … darker things. Not all value the idea of freedom, for themselves or for anyone else.”
We walked in silence while I considered that some of the Ossalenes would constitute a deadly threat to me and mine. Not only did we have to protect the innocent who would stay behind from the storm that was about to descend on the Citadel, but we would have to protect the innocent who would flee against their own people, as well as the dangers of that same storm.
The sun had set—I could not feel it on my skin, nor could I find it in the sky. To my eyes it had seemed huge and powerful. To my Eyes, it was a tiny dot, confusing in its composition, spherical instead of disklike, with a powerful weight that seemed to pull me toward it. No chariots drove it through the sky, as I had been taught by the seru. How it had changed seemed to me a symbol of how everything had changed. It had moved outside of the realm of what I knew to be true, and forced me to see that I did not know much at all.
14
Hawkspar
I watched Redbird and the Tonk slaves toiling in the cellars. I had told Redbird to make sure the largest and heaviest and most costly of the treasures were moved toward the front of the tunnel, and to have them placed where they could be clearly seen.
Small, easily portable treasures, as well as particularly fine costumes of state that had been worn by previous Hawkspars and other oracles, I had put all the way to the back, next to the secret door. These would be kept conveniently near the key, and covered with rags and ropes and other things of no importance so that, until we needed them, they would be inconspicuous.
My story to the oracles was that I intended to have the gaudy, grand treasures placed in my quarters. To give the story a bit of verisimilitude, I made sure that some of the Ossalene hoard actually did arrive there.
Over the next two days, I acquired hanging tapestries, a gilded jewel-encrusted bed with tall posts and heavy hangings all around, and thick soft carpets—those I actually liked. I took off my shoes and walked around on the floors in my bare feet, and my mind pretended that I was a child again walking on soft earth and thick grass.
All the while, I could feel my rescuer coming closer. Closer. Racing trouble.
Meanwhile, across the water, in islands not so far from mine, I could feel Sheoua engaging the Chevaks in battle, disengaging, running. Sheoua and his fleet took drubbing after drubbing, ran and hid, were found out again, lost more ships and more men, and fled yet again. Each time they fled, their path took them in our direction.
This was as it needed to be.
Every shower I took, I sent desperate words to the rescuer who followed the trail I had made: Hurry, for there is not much time, and Come by the back stair, and Keep secret, keep hidden.
A magic wind carried the man who answered my call—one his men created themselves—so that when the sea fell still as glass, his ship sailed on. He would reach us. But would he arrive when we needed him? He had to reach us neither before nor after Sheoua turned his surviving ships into our main harbor.
It was all very delicate, all too precise. I needed our rescuer to arrive in the daylight, at the same time as Sheoua; I needed good dry weather and not rain; I needed conditions that I was not likely to get; and everything that did not go my way would cost little girls and young women their lives.
I sent word to the villagers—Trouble comes. Take that which you value and hide in the low caverns.
Sheoua and his men would find the village deserted. They might burn roofs, and some furniture, but the village was carved of living stone. They would accomplish little before, in frustration, they brought their fight to the Citadel.
I could find no comfort where their fates were concerned. We save who we can save, I told myself when worry kept me from sleeping. I wanted a way that would make everything come out right. And no such way existed. So I repeated my mantra: We do what we can, and acknowledge that no matter what we do, we cannot save them all.
It was not enough, even if it was true.
What sort of a world is it where some must die so that others might live? What sort of world is it that demands the blood not just of the willing and the evil, but of innocents, that freedom might be gained?
In my c
hapel alone, having set my plans in motion, I could do nothing else. So I prayed. I did not pray to Vran Vrota, nor even to Jostfar. Instead, I prayed to Ethebet, the Tonk saint of war and childbirth, who was a stranger to me. I prayed that she would keep the little slave girls safe as I stole them away, and that she would protect the penitents who had trusted me, and that the seru who joined me would find their way to safety. And that I would survive this as well. I had paid for the freedom of others with my eyes, and with pain and nightmares and lurking dread—but at the very least, if the Eyes were to haunt me for the rest of my existence, I wanted them to do it away from this place with its rat tortures and beatings and all the rest of its pious horrors.
In my chapel, I formally renounced Vran Vrota and consecrated myself to Jostfar through Ethebet, using what little I knew of the ritual, making up what I didn’t. I had a bowl of incense and wood shavings, water, and scented oil. I had a swatch of hair I’d clipped from my head; I understood that pulling was the preferred method of sacrifice, but my hair was still too short to pull. I burned incense and hair, prayed my prayer, and stood afterward hoping that my prayer would be heard.
And to myself, I hoped Ethebet of the Tonk was not a saint who admired fear.
Aaran
Aaran paced the deck, feeling the Taag drawing near its destination.
They had crossed a windless Dragon Sea, and by the time islands came into sight again, both windmen were weary. Aaran wished he could have lured a third on the trip so that during bad times, each could have taken a shift for work, a shift for sleep, and a shift for relaxation. As it was, the two men had little more than time to throw food down their throats when they woke, and time to do the same before they fell exhausted into their hammocks at the end of their shifts.
They were unhappy, the men in general were unhappy—they had expected adventure in crossing the Dragon Sea, and that they had found. But they had wanted glorious riches, too, and wondrous prizes for all their efforts.