Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  I suspect you did—or at the very least you probably wouldn’t admit it if you didn’t—but I had to try, didn’t I?

  If you have surmised by now that our Eduin campaign is a heap of tedium mixed with a generous helping of squabbling officers, you would be correct. I’m afraid that without a change in the wind, so to speak, we shall have to retreat at the end of the season and strike out again next year. I’m of a mind to create aforementioned wind, though it is as likely to see me discharged dishonorably—if I survive—as congratulated for breaking the Eduin knot. But if I say more, you’ll be as much at fault as I, and if either of us is going to come to ruin, it really ought to be me.

  I was thinking, as I spent yet another day in my waterlogged tent listening to bored soldiers bet each other how long it would take their boot prints to fill with rain, about those days we spent sailing down the Alencio last year—and how neither of us could stand more than a moment without being busy at some sort of task or another. I can still perfectly picture the poor captain’s face when he caught us taking knot-tying and sail-mending lessons from the second mate. And yet I would choose the monotony of an endless river over the sheer madness that comes with a siege. I swear I have lost half my mind already, and the other half has begun to trickle out of my ears with every drop of rain.

  And then I think of you, laughing as the wind whisks your broad-brimmed hat from your head and sends it wheeling overboard. You, watching the riverbank for green herons and pointing out each and every bumpy log or rock that might have been a carrion lizard. You, smiling at me, your hair strewn across that pathetic excuse for a pillow, your touch burning my skin as we try—and fail—not to wake the sailors in the berth next door. And I know that I could be anywhere, Eska, besieging or besieged, and I would be content as long as you were there, too.

  Dig well, my love. I hope you find a lost civilization—or at least an interesting tool or piece of pottery from which your remarkable mind can glean astounding things. I may be fighting for Arconia, but you are a far greater champion of our city and what we Arconians are capable of.

  Yours, always,

  Sascha

  Chapter Nine

  “I know that duty well.”

  “Something he ate, I think.”

  Eska looked down at the soil samples spread out on the worktable in front of her.

  “Something he ate?” Cedric repeated. “But he was at the dinner last night.”

  Eska made a questioning noise but did not bother to raise her head. The soil in the tallest glass rod was a beautiful reddish-brown in the upper layer, transitioning to crumbly brown, then dull and sandy followed by chalky, sludgy clay, and, at last, black streaked with richly-colored silt.

  “You ate that dinner, too, my lady. “

  Actually, Eska hadn’t, but rather than take the time to explain her dining companion and the late-night meal shared with Alexandre, she merely said, “And yet Chancellor Fiorlieu is ill and the rest of us are not.” Eska finally looked up and shrugged at her dig master’s droopy mustache and skeptical eyebrows. “Cedric, let us take advantage of the fact that I am not needed in negotiations today due to the state of the poor Chancellor’s bowels. We have a lot to do. Now, tell me, the deepest sample came from where, exactly?”

  As Cedric pointed out on his map of the site where each sample had been taken, Eska was already thinking ahead to the dig plan for the day, making minor adjustments to what Cedric had relayed to her.

  “We’ll want to aim for just below the clay, I expect,” Eska said when Cedric had finished speaking. The dig master nodded in agreement. “We’ll start with a test trench running south-east from here to here,” she drew a line with her finger on the map, “taking these quadrants on an angle. And then repeat that here.” Another line. “But in addition to the two trenches, I want to try digging a series of probing holes here and here.” This time she pointed to the southern-most quadrant, away from the river. “It’ll be a good task for the new recruits, give them some experience, and if we’re lucky, they may stumble across a refuse pit. The Onandya often placed those to the south of their gathering sites.”

  “Very good, my lady. Shall I see to the set up of your work tent?”

  “I’ll do that, Cedric. You may direct the crew to begin.”

  Eska’s tent was, on the outside, not unlike the rest of the Firenzia tents. Three-sided when the door flaps were pulled aside, made of thin canvas, and smelling faintly of the starflower oil that was lightly brushed over the tents between expeditions to protect the material from the elements. Eska’s tent featured a large worktable that occupied the entire length of one side. A cot rested at the back wall, draped with a simple, striped blanket. A trunk containing books, rolls of blank drafting paper, and a hodgepodge of miscellaneous pieces of equipment sat at the foot of the cot. Her tool case had been placed on the worktable and three straight-backed folding camp chairs leaned against the tent’s center post.

  Eska went straight to her tool case. She unbuckled the sturdy leather straps and undid the metal clasps, then lifted the lid, revealing neat trays of brushes and metal instruments of all shapes and sizes, and a set of knives on the top layer. Grasping handles at both sides of the trunk, Eska lifted the trays up and out, extending them over the worktable. Below, Eska kept drawing and writing materials, her favorite spade and pick nestled in protective cases, more brushes—one can never have too many—for sweeping away loose soil and cleaning artifacts, as well as a small obsidian sculpture that traveled everywhere with her.

  Eska unwrapped the black fox from its fleece nest and smiled. It had been a gift from her uncle for her eleventh birthday and it had accompanied her on every expedition she had led on her own. Slightly abstract in design, the angled planes of its form gloriously smooth to the touch, the fox was the animal disguise of the ancient Mehathuen god Nehar. After receiving the fox from her uncle, Eska raced to the Lordican at the earliest opportunity to learn about it, finding, to her unending delight, that Nehar was a god of knowledge and discovery, a wanderer who explored the world.

  She visited Mehatha once, or the place it had become, known to the world now as a small principality under the watch of its larger, more powerful neighbor, Irabor. Not quite independent, not quite a province, Mehatha was still a place proud of its once prominent position. Everywhere she looked, the old gods were remembered, though now placed below the Iraborean triumvirate, and the ruins of palaces, temples, and monuments from the golden age of the Mehathuen empire were still visible, a reminder of a time when Mehatha had ruled a vast stretch of land that nearly reached as far northwest as where the walls and towers of Toridium now stood. The wanderer god of Mehatha would have seen much indeed.

  Eska brushed her thumb over the fox’s face and then placed it on her worktable where the god could watch over her labor. Returning her attention to her tool case, she withdrew a blank sheet of paper, a bottle of ink and a pen, and the tray containing her most-used brushes and metal tools, and then closed the case up and placed it beneath the table. Unfolding one of the chairs, Eska took a seat to compose a letter to Albus.

  There was little to report—especially if she decided not to mention Alexandre de Minos’ presence in Toridium—but she would add to the letter over the next few days of excavating and send it back to Arconia once she filled a few pages. And there was, of course, the incident in the harbor. Albus might claim to only be interested in the findings Firenzia Company would make, but even he couldn’t resist the allure of the feud between the rival companies and a riveting, and possibly slightly embellished, account of Manon Barca’s attempt to sink the Argonex. Eska happened to know, though she would never tell him, that Albus sometimes read her more exciting letters to his fellow librarians.

  After she finished writing a dozen lines, Eska put the pen down and leaned back as far as the stiff chair would allow, her mind turning to the object she had obtained from the Iron Baron and left in Albus’s care. The strange bronze disc with its pattern of markings and
hedgehog tendencies tugged at Eska’s imagination. She had yet to formulate any realistic theories about its origin or purpose, but it had been hidden inside a reliquary once belonging to the Alescuan dynasty, a reliquary that was as famous for being difficult to open as it was for being one of a set of six lost after the fall of the dynasty. That alone was reason for excitement and speculation, and Eska never imagined, when she deduced that the Baron might possess one of the reliquaries, that it might contain something so unusual and unexplained. She hoped Albus had made some discoveries about the disc in her absence—and that he would relay them to her in writing.

  As for her own letter, her progress was interrupted by a deafening explosion in the distance.

  The blast startled her so thoroughly she bit her tongue. Springing from her chair, Eska tasted blood as she rushed out of the tent.

  A cloud of dirt drifted away from the eastern edge of the site, where work on the first trench had begun. Dirt and dust that was a strange green color hung like a haze. Shouts filled the air. Even from a distance, Eska saw two, maybe three, figures on the ground. A fourth was on hands and knees.

  Eska ran. Others followed. She was aware of Bastien at her side, of Cedric a step behind.

  She got there in time for the second explosion.

  The force of it threw Eska into the air, hurling her into the tall grass. She landed hard on her right side, all air escaping her lungs, wrist twisting torturously beneath her, head ringing with a terrible silence. Still unable to draw a full breath, she tried to lurch upright but found she was too disoriented to do anything other than lie with her face in the ground. Her heart thundered away in her chest, the only sensation she was truly aware of, but at last other sounds came to her, voices—distant, murky, indistinct—and a hissing sound she found she could not name but which instilled fear in her nonetheless.

  A hand on her shoulder. A voice in her ear. Words, words she could not understand. A face thrust into her vision, blurry and gone as quickly as it had come. Then two hands cradling her shoulders, turning her so she lay upon her back. More distant shouting, still faint but shaping into something Eska could almost believe to be words.

  Her hearing came back to her in a roar.

  “My lady?”

  The face belonged to Bastien. Blood trickled from the side of his head. Behind him, the air wobbled, like heat rising from a desert. No, no, that wasn’t right. Couldn’t be.

  “Can you hear me? Are you badly hurt?”

  Eska struggled to sit up and Bastien steadied her as she shook her head.

  “Fine.” Her mouth formed the word reluctantly. “I’m fine.” Eska remembered the hissing sound she had heard and she struggled to convey her fear. “Do you,” she paused, her head spinning, “do you hear that?” Eska grabbed Bastien’s hand. “Air escaping,” she managed. “There might be more.” She tried to push at Bastien, tried to make him understand, but her hand swiped uselessly at his chest. “Get everyone away!”

  Bastien frowned, but then Gabriel’s voice cut through the chaos as the engineer echoed Eska’s words and ushered everyone back. Bastien got Eska to her feet and together they made their way to a safe distance, Eska leaning on the young man for balance, Bastien clutching her arm as he hobbled in obvious pain.

  The third explosion was quieter and smaller. The earth shuddered under Eska’s feet, but far less dirt was flung in the air and when the dust settled, the ground no longer hissed.

  But there was no sigh of relief escaping from Eska’s lips. Not while she had eyes to see the prone body, limbs askew, that lay where it had landed after the first explosion.

  She was not the first to reach him. Several crewmembers got there first, and for a moment Eska looked down on the dead man from over their bent heads, her skull still ringing, her wrist throbbing with pain. And then the crew parted and Eska knelt, hand reaching out to hover over the caved in chest, the tangle of organs. Behind her, voices murmured in sorrow. Nero. His name was Nero.

  Forcing herself to rise, Eska searched out Cedric. The dig master was covered in a faint layer of dust, but appeared unhurt. He hurried to Eska’s side.

  “Are there others?”

  He shook his head.

  It did not make Eska glad. “The injured will need tending,” she said. “Those with the gravest injuries must go straight to the city. The Vismarch will help.”

  The dig master nodded. “Your wrist, my lady.”

  Eska looked at it for the first time, trying to think beyond the pain and assess the extent of the injury. “I’ll be fine.” She swallowed. “We’ll need to prepare Nero’s body for burial.”

  “Of course, my lady.” Cedric moved away to take a count of the injured.

  Eska, still looking at her wrist, called for the engineer. Her voice was weak and cracked, but Gabriel appeared quickly.

  “Air, my lady, pestilent air. Trapped beneath the earth. Not hidden very deep, and seems to have caught a spark while Nero was heating the rods for the soil samples.”

  Eska nodded. She tried to take a deep breath and found she could not. “We must know if there is more.”

  The engineer nodded his agreement. “I will do what I can.”

  Eska looked Gabriel in the eye, hoping to find comfort and seeing none. Turning back to the scene of the explosion, Eska was relieved to see Cedric had moved the crew away, back toward the tents. All but one walked under their own power. Two crewmembers wrapped Nero’s body in canvas. The air was very still and quiet.

  “We are fortunate, my lady,” Gabriel said quietly. “In a matter of moments, another ten crewmembers would have been working on the trench.”

  ***

  The visitors from the city arrived quickly, as she had known they would. Eska stood just outside the medical tent, far busier than it had ever been on any of her previous excavations. The wagon bearing the four most grievously injured crewmembers had departed moments before, crossing paths with the two riders from the city as they neared the site.

  Eska answered the questions of the Toridua officials as best she could. No, it was three explosions. No, she did not know if the site was safe. Yes, they were working on it. No, they could not have known there were pockets of lethal air beneath the surface. No, there was no fault, no blame.

  Except Eska did find fault—with herself. As the officials returned to the city, satisfied for the time being and promising to send assistance, Eska looked at her injured workers, men and women under her care, and knew guilt and shame.

  “I know that look.”

  Alexandre’s voice, soft and full of understanding, came to Eska from over her shoulder. She hadn’t seen him arrive.

  She didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to look him in the face and bear the weight of his compassion. But she did.

  “You must not blame yourself, Eska.”

  She ought to answer him, ought to accept what he said, but she could not muster any words.

  “I know you. I know that it would be fruitless to tell you that you could not possibly have prevented this. I know that now, in this moment, is when your logical mind fails you.” Alexandre took a small step closer to her, almost close enough to touch her. “Don’t eat yourself alive, Eska. Please.” When still she said nothing, he gave a small nod. “My men are at your disposal. I have already asked some to help with the wounded, but whatever you need, it is yours.”

  He turned to go and at last Eska summoned her voice. “Please stay.” The words came unbidden. She had intended to thank him. She had intended to do so calmly and without letting him glimpse the storm that raged in her. Instead, she felt hot tears fill her eyes, felt her breath hitch in her lungs. And then she felt, as though from a great distance, Alexandre take her by the hand, the left one, and lead her to her tent.

  His innate sense of what she needed might have irritated her under different circumstances, but her exhaustion and the touch of his skin on hers drained her of the last of her resistance. As they walked, Eska let Alexandre keep ahold of her hand. They duc
ked inside her tent and Alexandre lifted her onto the worktable. He left for a moment, returning quickly with two rolled bandages. After instructing Eska to hold out her wrist just so—earning him a string of curses for the pain—he wrapped it first with a delicate linen and then with a sturdier, fibrous material. When he finished, Eska experimented and found she could make only the tiniest movements.

  “Well you’ve succeeded in trussing me up.” It felt wrong to speak such lighthearted words, but she did not trust herself to broach what was truly on her mind.

  “That’s very dramatic,” he said, laughing. “You’re hardly a pig being sent off for slaughter.” He examined his work, deemed it satisfactory, and glanced around the tent. “Would you like something for the pain? Where is that bottle of brandy you always keep around?”

  “There’s harrow root powder in my trunk,” she said without thinking.

  Alexandre turned sharply. “You said you would give that up.”

  Eska closed her eyes and stretched out on the worktable. “And you said my love was more important than your pride. But that turned out to be false as well.” He didn’t deserve such condemnation, of course. But for a moment Eska was able to direct her resentment at a target other than herself—and it felt good. She heard rather than saw the change in him. A subtle shift in his posture, the soles of his boots brushing through the dirt as he drew himself up and squared his shoulders. The whisper of his sleeves against each other as he put his hands behind his back. The uneven exhale he could not disguise. If she looked at him, he would be every inch the soldier: stiff, uncompromising, and, well, proud. Eska chose not to look.

  To his credit, and despite her harsh words, Alexandre did not leave. He remained by her side throughout the afternoon, helping as he was able, writing up her dictated report of the incident for the Vismarch’s officials and a second copy for the Firenzia records.