The Burning Isle

by Will Panzo

  “I don’t work for Cinna anymore.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I came to talk,” he said. “I’m going to Lowtown tomorrow. If you told Cinna that I was defecting, how would he react to that information?”

  “You’re a madman. You know what his response will be.”

  “I meant what would be his response to you. Seems he might reward someone who came to him with advance knowledge like that.”

  “Might reward me if I gave him your whereabouts as well,” she said.

  “You’d be giving up Lucian, too.” He paused, let his words sink in. “They’d want to know who was helping me. They’d torture me. I would talk. I wouldn’t want to, but I would.”

  “I could tell them to wait in ambush for your carefree ass. No interrogation, just a simple hit, and everyone could go on with their lives as though you’d never set foot on this island.”

  “Would you help Cinna kill me?”

  “I might,” she snapped.

  “I wonder what he’d do to me if he caught me. Maybe behead me in the Grand Market for all to see.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Give me over to Cinna, and sure as I’m standing here, there’ll be gold in it for you. But I wonder if you wouldn’t be cheating yourself in the long run.”

  “Cheating myself how?” she asked.

  “There are debts; and then there are debts.”

  • • •

  The barkeep was singing. He sang a sailor’s chantey that listed a number of ports, then listed a number of women. Cassius entered the bar from the pantry just as the song was turning to tales of a jail cell.

  “Cassius, old boy.” The barkeep filled his mug from a wine bottle. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “That was quite a song. Were you once a sailor?”

  “No. I’ve never been anywhere.”

  “What about the mainland? You lived there.”

  “A long time ago,” Lucian said. “And I didn’t travel much then.”

  “Only to Scipio.”

  “Yes. When I was a little younger than you. I still regret that. I should have seen the world. Or at least the Republic.”

  “You’re not too old to travel,” Cassius said.

  “I’m old enough to have lived here too long. Old enough to be stuck here.” The barkeep slid his mug across the bar. “Here. Have some of this.”

  Cassius drank. The wine was warm and sweet.

  “Are you all right? When’s the last time you slept?”

  “I slept a bit today.”

  “And before that?”

  “Not since I slept here.”

  The barkeep shook his head. “Are you hungry?”

  “Very.”

  The barkeep fetched a half loaf of stale bread and a bowl of cold chicken thighs from the kitchen. He set the bowl down before Cassius, and they sat in silence as Cassius ate.

  “I’ve got a bit of business in the morning,” Cassius said after he had finished half the chicken. “I wanted to see you before I left.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Lowtown business.”

  “Like your business in Lowtown the other day?”

  “You heard about that?”

  “I told you, boy. I hear everything.”

  “I didn’t do that to that girl,” Cassius said solemnly. “I didn’t lay a hand on her.”

  The barkeep nodded.

  “And if I did—” Cassius checked himself. He took a deep breath. “If I did a thing like that, you wouldn’t talk to me anymore, right?”

  “Why are you asking that?”

  “It’s important to me. I need to know you’re not like the others, Lucian.”

  “What others?”

  “Like everyone else on this island. You’re not numb to it. You wouldn’t eat with a man who did a thing like that, would you?”

  “Of course not.”

  Cassius peeled the flesh from a thigh and popped the tough meat into his mouth. He washed it down with a sip of wine from the barkeep’s cup. His hand began to tremble, spilling wine into his lap. He set the cup down and lowered both hands beneath the table.

  “That was a bad piece of business,” the barkeep said. “I warned you not to get involved in this sort of stuff. This isn’t your fight.”

  “I know how to pick my battles.”

  “And this bit tomorrow?”

  “I think this will be the worst yet,” Cassius said.

  “How so?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Because you don’t trust me?”

  “Only because it’s a thing you shouldn’t say aloud.” Cassius reached into his cloak and withdrew a small pouch, cinched tight with a knotted drawstring. He tossed the pouch onto the table, and it landed with the sound of coins clinking. He nodded to the old man.

  “What is that?” Lucian asked.

  “A bit of money. Not much, but all I could spare. It’s in case you need to leave here suddenly.”

  “Why would I need to leave?”

  “There are people who want me dead.”

  Lucian snorted. “Not such an exclusive club, I’d imagine.”

  “There will be a lot more after tomorrow. And maybe they’ll want to hurt people who were close to me.”

  “I’ve had my life threatened before, boy. And anyway, why would they come looking for me?”

  “They might learn you were giving me shelter.”

  “Where would they hear that? Only you and Sulla know.”

  “And what of Sulla?”

  “Never.” Lucian shook his head. “She wouldn’t say a thing.”

  “For the right price, she’d tell. The woman’s a wolf. You’re a fool to think otherwise.”

  “She’s had some trouble recently.” The barkeep lowered his gaze. He looked as though he was nerving himself up to say something.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “She won’t tell me. But I think she’s into someone for a lot of money. That doesn’t make her dishonest, though. She’s loyal. To me at least.”

  Cassius nodded. “So what if I’m the one who gives you up?”

  “Would you do that?”

  “If they were torturing me, I might.”

  “Who’s they? And why would they torture you?”

  Cassius did not respond.

  “It’s no crime to house a man,” the barkeep said. “Even if he does get into a bit of trouble. And if I did need to leave, I have my own money.”

  “There’s a note in there also.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “It has instructions on where to go once you’re gone. Places on the mainland I know to be safe. A few names.”

  “Will it be that bad tomorrow?”

  “Maybe,” Cassius said.

  “When will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know. So I need you to take that to put my mind at ease.”

  The barkeep took the pouch and made a show of clenching it.

  “Thank you for this,” he said. “But I still trust everything will go well.”

  “And if it doesn’t, you’ll get your chance to travel.”

  ADAPTATION IS YOUR ONLY ORTHODOXY

  In Quirthoge, they called him Olivetto. A boy of sixteen, he was two years into his training on the Isle of Twelve when he made his first trip outside the Republic. He played the part of a novice priest of the Curio order, a fanatic who had traveled across the Ebon Sea to bring the yellow light of his god to the heathens of the Southern Kingdoms. In truth, he came only to bring fire and death.

  Olivetto was excited to see a foreign land, especially one as renowned as Quirthoge, with its mosaic walkways and gilt fountains. Quirthoge was famous for its fountains. Thous
ands of them adorned the city, each bubbling with water dyed a unique color. No two fountains shared a color, and legend held that if a man drank from every fountain in Quirthoge, he would live forever. Olivetto had not come to chase immortality, though; he had come to learn about destruction.

  As a second-year initiate, he was seasoned enough to accompany older initiates on their annual appraisals. The Masters had taught him advanced spellcasting, had gifted him with a basic ideology of victory and conquest. Now it was time he learned these lessons firsthand.

  He traveled with Master Keno and initiate Alaric, who in only a few short months would graduate to peerhood. They had reached Quirthoge by boat, after a stormy two months at sea, and landed during the height of a plague. On every street corner and in every dusty lane, Quirthogi children sang the rhyme of the Weeping Sickness. Red as a beet, Dry as a bone, Blind as a bat, Dead as a stone.

  The Weeping Sickness had swept into the city on the hot winds blown up from the witchlands, or so said the old men who sat playing senet on the harbor front. To the Quirthogi, the witchlands birthed every illness and malady in the Southern Kingdoms. There, hidden in sunless valleys, Blood mages hatched endless curses in their bid to reclaim the land they had ruled for thousands of years. The old men were certain of this, they told Olivetto. They were less certain of how to stop the sickness.

  Some told the boy to smear boiled onion paste on his chest, others to stuff bits of dried clove in his nostrils. Most everyone in the city had taken to sleeping with veils over their faces, silk if they could afford, cotton or linen for the poor. The old men agreed the veils helped keep away unclean spirits, but it was the only thing they agreed on. That and the fact Antiochi gods were powerless here, and the help of these outsiders was unnecessary and unwelcome.

  Master Keno agreed. He had no intention of helping the sick. The Masters cared only for wealth and power, and the opportunity for both had brought them to Quirthoge. As Olivetto understood it, the head of a local merchant concern had purchased the services of two experienced spellcasters, Master Keno and Alaric, to help cripple a rival. The merchant had no idea he had enlisted the aid of the famed Masters of the Isle of Twelve.

  Appraisal missions were clandestine affairs, often arranged under aliases so as not to attract attention and because botched assignments could tarnish the reputation of the Masters. These missions served to teach initiates how to behave while on contract. Master Keno was here to observe the ways Alaric interacted with his employer, how he dealt with the locals, how he overcame his enemies. More importantly, Master Keno ensured that Alaric did not betray the Isle’s secrets.

  Olivetto aided his companions with both their real mission and their cover mission. He spent the first three nights in the city wandering its streets and its public gardens, practicing the language, eating savory pastries of goat meat spiced with cumin, and eyeing dusky, dark-eyed girls in sheer gowns. He preached on street corners to orphan boys who made his heart ache for his friends of old. And all the while, he bore witness to an expert lesson in crushing your foes.

  His fourth night there, Master Keno asked him to burn a granary.

  No easy task; Olivetto had to enter the compound where the grain was stored, destroy it, and escape with his life. Olivetto had done all three without being noticed, but that night, lying awake in bed, he wondered what good came of burning a granary during a plague. It was not his place to worry over such things aloud, so he kept the question to himself.

  “How long did it take you?” Alaric asked the next morning. As a senior initiate, he was expected to assist in the training of junior classes and to discipline them for any transgressions.

  “Less than an hour,” Olivetto said.

  They bunked in a small room on the upper floor of a tavern. The tavern owner had worried that these outland priests would shame his customers away from drink and whoring and gambling, but Master Keno assured him that Curio priests cared only about aiding the sick and the poor. They liked to travel amongst outcasts and lived in squalor to better serve their god. The tavern owner thought them mad for pledging themselves to a god who kept them destitute, but he accepted their coin without complaint.

  “How did you get in?” Alaric was in his early twenties, tall and thin-boned, with a long face and an aquiline nose that hinted at a strong Antiochi heritage. Nearly bald, he clung to the few tufts of light brown hair still atop his head, brushing them forward to cover his scalp in a way that seemed pleasing to him alone.

  “I dressed as a laborer, snuck in under cover of night.”

  “Where did you buy the clothes?”

  “A market on the far side of the docks.” Olivetto kept his answers short and vague. He knew Alaric’s debriefing had little to do with assessing his performance and more to do with doling out punishment, warranted or not. Alaric would use the boy’s words against him, to prove him inept and unworthy, regardless of his actions. The Masters taught that cruelty was the secret to power and obedience. Alaric was a believer.

  “So someone in the market saw you.”

  “I hired an urchin boy to buy the clothes. The merchant dealt only with him.”

  “So the boy saw you?”

  “The boy saw someone in a cloak. He could not identify me.”

  “I see.” Alaric ran his fingertips through the front of his hair. He sat at the room’s one small table, a pitcher of water and an earthenware mug set before him. A small rucksack lay at his feet, open enough to expose the butt of Master Keno’s lash. “How did you get past the guards and to the granary?”

  “My disguise got me into the compound. To reach the granary, I used a spell of illusion.”

  “And the spell worked?”

  “No one saw me.”

  “No one stopped you,” Alaric said. He spoke softly, never made eye contact. “That doesn’t mean no one saw you. You might have been followed all the way back here.”

  “I didn’t notice anyone following.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” Alaric reached down and retrieved the lash from the rucksack. It was a fearsome thing. Half as long as a man’s arm, made of Murondian thornwood, ringed by bands of iron for added weight, with a corded grip and, at its head, twelve strips of scored leather. The sight of it turned Olivetto’s stomach, but he refused to give Alaric the satisfaction of seeing his fear. “How did you burn the granary?”

  “A spell of hot embers carried on a slow breeze.”

  “Did it burn quickly?”

  “It did.”

  Alaric rolled the lash in both hands, as though savoring the feel of it. “Much faster than a simple arson, would you say? So fast that reasonable men might suspect the work of a spellcaster?”

  “I performed my task successfully.”

  Alaric brought the lash down onto the table. The pitcher spilled, the mug clattered to the floor. The noise rang, then the room fell silent.

  “That was not the question I asked you,” Alaric said.

  That night, Olivetto snuck down to the harbor. He sat watching great ships from the far corners of the world as they sailed under the glow of a bone-white moon. Akhaian triremes and Murondian trader-cogs and even a few large junks from the far east. His back ached from the lash, throbbing with raw pain. He thought about leaving.

  It would be simple enough to find work on a ship and sail out of the harbor in the next few days. He was able-bodied, could learn to tie knots or mend sails or cook or clean as well as anyone. Or maybe there was a ship in need of a spellcaster. The boy was without his gauntlets—Master Keno kept them on him at all times—but he could still prove his abilities if put to a test. He could sail away from it all, the Isle and the Masters, the fear and the lash. High adventure was waiting for him out on the seas.

  All he had to do was run.

  He had run once before. He still relived that night in his dreams. Not every night, but often enough that he never
forgot. There was no shame in running then, he was just a boy. Weak. Helpless. But he had determined to grow strong. He had made promises.

  The lash didn’t make him strong. Even in his short life, he knew enough of pain to know it only diminished, never strengthened. But if he could bear the lash, the secrets of the Masters were open to him.

  It was a warm night. The sweat from his back made his wounds sting. He shut his eyes against the pain.

  Pain. He had been dealt a strong measure of it during his time on the Isle. Pain was not the goal of the Masters though, he knew that much. Pain was their tool, the instrument by which they molded, same as a sculptor’s hammer and chisel. It was this pushing and shaping that wore on him the most, the sensation that he was losing something of himself, some small part he tried to keep locked safely inside but which the Masters seemed always to be reaching for, flaying him open so that they might touch it. The question then was not whether he could endure but whether he could adapt.

  He did not know the answer to that question. He did know he had suffered the lash tonight, and still the part of him locked inside had remained locked. The Masters had not gotten to it this time. That was a kind of victory. And maybe that was all he could hope for. One small victory a day, every day, until this was finished.

  On his way back to the tavern, he passed a fountain bubbling with coral-colored water. A withered beggar wrapped in loose robes sat beside the fountain and cried out to the boy as he passed.

  “Mercy,” the beggar shouted in Antiochi. “Mercy.”

  The boy had forgotten he was wearing the robes of the Curio. He fixed his cowl and approached the beggar, kneeling down to say a brief invocation over the suffering man. He placed a hand on the man’s head and began to speak a blessing when a beam of moonlight caught the beggar’s face. Olivetto saw the man’s flushed cheeks, his cracked lips, his rheumy eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

  Red as a beet, Dry as a bone, Blind as a bat, Dead as a stone.

  “Help me,” the beggar muttered. “My eyes. I’m nearly blind.”

  “There now, friend,” Olivetto said. He drew the small square of silk he carried with him from his pocket and wiped the man’s eyes. “Have a drink of water. Try to get some rest.”