Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  And when twilight came and the crew gathered to bury their fallen comrade some distance away from the river and site, under a copse of trees in the shadow of the hills to the east, he was still there.

  “All speed, Nero.”

  Eska spoke the words and heard the crew echo them back to her. A few invoked a god of their choosing, or the spirits of their ancestors, asking to bring the dead man peace or to help him gain his next life, but the rest chose to keep whatever thoughts they had for their fallen comrade to themselves. Nero, his face grey, his fingers wrapped around a spade marked with the Firenzia crest, lay in a deep grave at their feet, and one by one the members of the crew tossed a handful of dirt over him.

  Her injured hand trembling so badly she could not hide it or the pain it caused, Eska reached for a shovel, but a hand on her arm brought her up short. Alexandre took her good hand and nodded at one of his soldiers to claim the shovel, then tried to lead Eska away from the grave.

  “I can do it.” Eska’s protest was weak and pitiful. She tried again, though her very bones longed to do nothing more than sink to the ground and sleep. “Let me do it, Sascha.”

  “You’re hurt, Eska. There are plenty of hands for this task.”

  “But only mine are de Caraval hands,” she said. Grief and the weight of responsibility, of her father’s name and her family’s company, injected strength into her voice at last. “It is my duty. He lost his life in service to my family.”

  Eska tried to pull away but Alexandre would not relent. Using both arms, he tucked her against his chest.

  “I know that duty well,” he murmured into her hair. “But if you pick up that shovel now, your wrist will take longer to heal than you have the patience to withstand. Your tools will be clumsy in your hands. You will grow irritable and morose. What then will you be? What will you be to them?” He waited a moment. “They need you, Eska. But they don’t need you to do this.”

  At last his common sense permeated the brittle, angry shield she had carried around herself since the accident. As though he could feel her anger begin to seep away, Alexandre released her from his embrace, taking hold of her elbows instead. He smiled.

  “I am expected in the city, but I will stay if you want me to.”

  Eska shook her head. “You have done enough. I cannot keep you.”

  He accepted this with a nod and squeezed her elbows.

  “Thank you, Sascha,” Eska said, at last.

  And she meant it. By the time she went to her tent and slept, Eska had managed to separate the burden of Nero’s death from her mind. Not to be forgotten, not to be ignored. But so she could remain focused on what was ahead of her, not what lay behind. Alexandre was right, after all. The crew needed her to be at her best.

  But acknowledging that Alexandre was right did not stop her from burning a sachet of harrow root powder that night, and Eska went to sleep with the spicy, intoxicating scent swirling over her head, each breath drawing the vapor deep into her lungs, each breath filling her blood and heart with ideas of strength and washing away the raw pain of the day.

  Chapter Ten

  “You probably want to eat my books.”

  Albus Courtenay hated ships.

  He hated the smell of the sea air. He hated the sounds of the gulls—so happy! so carefree!—wheeling overhead. He hated the confines of starboard and stern, whatever those were. He hated how the damp damaged paper. Most of all he hated the way ships seemed to know just when to pitch about and unsettle him.

  The academic in him argued, stoically and with the most irritating superiority, that ships couldn’t possibly know anything, and yet, as Albus raced to the railing to empty the contents of his stomach—which was already quite empty, thank you—he felt he had a most compelling counter-argument.

  “The things I do for you, Eska de Caraval,” Albus muttered to the wind as he straightened at the rail, his hands clenched tight around the wood. “This better be worth a large donation to my private book collection.” A gull flapped overhead, circled, and landed unnervingly close to Albus. He shooed at it, to no effect. “You probably want to eat my books.”

  Albus tilted his face to the sky and sighed. As a librarian accustomed to spending countless hours alone in the expanse of the Lordican, he frequently talked to himself. Discussions about the properties of the water found in the great salt lakes, for instance, or a cordial debate about the relevancy and proper incorporation of works of popular history. These conversations were calm—mostly—and thoughtful. But he had to admit that he was neither calm nor thoughtful and the ship and the sea and the gulls were only partially to blame.

  The true source of his anxiety lay in a hidden pocket sewn into the lining of the small case he had hastily packed with more parchments than clothing. The item itself was innocuous—a single sheet of paper—but Albus could not say the same for the words on the paper or the man who had recently become aware of its existence, and Albus’ existence as a result. The thought was not at all comforting.

  Sylvain de Ulyssey was not a man to meet in a dark alley. But that was because he had people to go into dark alleys for him. De Ulyssey’s alleys were the private balconies of the Varadome’s spectacle hall, the counting houses of Bartok Row—six of eight, or so Albus had heard—the ballrooms of the merely wealthy, and the gold-plated pleasure ships of the exorbitantly rich. He prowled not in the dark of night, striking fear into the hearts of even the most vicious criminal by means of brute force and brass knuckles, but in the brightest light of day, yanking the fortunes out from under both unsuspecting fools and those who ought to know better. Albus didn’t really know how he managed this, never having been subjected to it himself. Knowledge, he assumed. In the right hands, information was better than any currency. Eska had taught him that. Yes, Albus concluded, knowledge and the precise tightening of some very painful metaphorical screws. Perhaps even some actual screws. It was said that everything de Ulyssey did was legal, that men and women in their right minds signed away their lives—on pages seven, nineteen, and eighty-three.

  But it was all whispers, whispers Albus had caught wind of once or twice and thought nothing of. Sylvain de Ulyssey was, after all, a patron of the arts, a lord of impeccable lineage, and a close confidant of the Archduke. Surely such whispers were the work of jealous enemies. He was nothing like the crude aristocrats who gained wealth as dirty as their reputations—say, for instance, like Thibault de Venescu, the so-called Iron Baron who fancied himself the linchpin around which the underbelly of the Archduke’s city revolved. For all his strutting, the Iron Baron was an annoying insect Sylvain de Ulyssey could crush with a word.

  And yet it just so happened that Albus and Lord de Ulyssey had both recently come into possession of one small, astonishing, very secret bit of lost knowledge, eclipsing the letter he had sent to Eska in Toridium.

  It was enough to get Albus on a ship.

  Interlude 5

  Letter from Eska de Caraval to Valentin de Caraval, dated fourteen years ago

  Dearest Uncle,

  I have met the most wonderful boy. Some might find him odd, because he would rather read a treatise on linguistics than play at soldiering or sailing, and I’m afraid he might not like me at all, but I do hope to see him again soon. His name is Albus, Albus Courtenay, and he’s apprenticed at the Lordican.

  Did you know the Lordican has apprentices? I should like that very much. Perhaps I will ask Mama and Papa if I might be allowed to undertake such an apprenticeship. I think I would choose to study under Matteo. He laughs so well. No, perhaps Lucrea. She’s the finest scholar on the Pharecian queens, no matter what that odious Gilvais says. Oh, Uncle, it would be so difficult to choose! Perhaps I can convince them all to let me study under each in turn.

  Albus says he will be a Master Librarian some day, and I do not doubt him, though some would say he is young to think so highly of himself. He’s very determined, I can see that already, and clever. I think you would like him very much, Uncle. We are very close
in age, though I am taller. He left home—a village outside Arconia—three years ago, just before his tenth birthday, though he won’t tell me why. He said I was prying, and I suppose I was, but you taught me to ask questions.

  But enough about me. How I long to hear of your adventures in Irabor! Please write to me soon—and take me with you next time! I am bored to tears with my latest governess. She insists she is fluent in Mallerean, but she has yet to catch on when I weave Mycrini insults into our conversational practice sessions. Save me, Uncle!

  All my love,

  Eska

  Chapter Eleven

  “He means nothing to me.”

  Manon dreamed.

  She knew this because her father, her dead brother, and her mother were all in a room together. Not just any room, a room that looked very much like the captain’s quarters in the sunken ship she had explored in Lake Tuomo. Lake grass grew up through the floorboards, laying claim to the rotten desk, and freshwater urchins lived in the rusting remnants of the iron chandelier. All as she remembered from that dive on a summer’s day three years ago—desperate for coin and willing to work for anyone to get it. And yet in the dream, there was no water, and her family members, one in prison, one dead, and one across the sea, gathered as though waiting for her.

  It occurred to Manon that perhaps she was dead, that they were all dead, and this was where the Barcas were meant to spend whatever comes after life. It was not inconceivable. After all, Victor was already in the family mausoleum, Julian Barca was left to rot in the Hibarium four years before, and Isoula Barca had disappeared on a ship not four days later.

  And for a moment, Manon wished it might be so because her father was smiling at her, his true smile, not the one he showed to the men who came to the Barca home late at night to discuss business behind locked doors, not the one he kept for audiences with the Archduke, and not even the one he used for Manon’s mother. She missed that smile.

  Julian Barca opened his mouth to speak.

  But it was not his voice that emerged.

  “It’s him, sir.”

  And with that Manon woke, her father’s smile, the smile she told herself she could never trust again, lost.

  “Are you certain?” A second voice, stilted, hesitant. “The Lady de Caraval named the sister.”

  Manon lay still as she cracked her eyelids at the mention of the de Caraval name. The voices were quiet, not directly outside her cell, but she made no movement, not wishing to draw their attention, even though she longed to crane her neck to try to catch a glimpse.

  “The lady is mistaken, sir. We know what we saw. The brother is the guilty one. He attacked the ship. He is the Carrier.”

  Horror froze Manon, breath hitching in her throat, mind screaming. Perrin. Perrin was innocent. How could they be so mistaken?

  “He claims he has no such skills.” The second voice again, still hesitant.

  “Who would do otherwise, when faced with such charges?”

  “If you’re certain.”

  “Completely, sir.”

  “Very well. She’s sleeping?” Silence. “Wake her. Bring her before the Vismarch.”

  Manon shut her eyes as one set of footsteps retreated and the other approached her cell. She allowed the man to call her name twice before stirring and then slowly came to her feet at his command.

  “Where is my brother?”

  The man ignored her as he opened the cell door. He was one of the two officers from the harbor patrol, the one with the sword.

  “Where is he?” Manon asked again.

  The officer indicated she was to walk in front of him. Manon stepped from her cell.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Blank eyes stared back. “The Vismarch must not be kept waiting.”

  They emerged from the cells below ground via a wide, curved stone staircase, which spilled out into a nondescript, unadorned corridor. From there they traveled up again, then through a hall undergoing some kind of renovation and a second hall, this one narrow and lined with mirrors. Manon caught a glimpse of herself—pale cheeks, dark hair falling from pins, eyes that belonged to a cornered animal—before they emerged at last out into a three-sided courtyard with the fourth open to a long, still pool lined with hedges.

  She saw Perrin first, though he did not see her. His head drooped to his chest, limbs stretched out by ropes and strung to a frame, his entire body suspended a short distance from the ground. Around him stood a few Toridua in officer uniforms and a crowd of curious servants.

  “What is this?” Manon asked, trying to keep her voice calm though she longed to scream and lash out. The officer at her back said nothing. “What are they doing to him?”

  “He has refused to speak.” This was a new voice, a woman. No, not new. Manon turned and recognized the woman who had boarded the Carribe, the one who Carried. Though now, without the waters of the harbor around her, Manon could scarcely detect the woman’s abilities. “He has refused to admit he is a Carrier. But he will show us. They all do, eventually.”

  Cold terror crept through Manon as she stared across the courtyard at her brother, her mind racing to think how she might protect him from whatever pain was coming.

  She forced herself to turn back to the woman, forced herself to breathe normally. “My brother is no Carrier. I am.” And with no more than a flicker of her thoughts, she summoned sparks to her fingers. They showered harmlessly to the ground, but the male officer had her on her knees before she could draw a second breath, her arm bent painfully behind her, his fingers tight enough on the back of her neck to tell her that it would go badly for her if he had cause to squeeze. The woman stood over her, having done nothing more than blink. Manon twisted in the man’s grasp. “See,” she hissed. “I am the one who Carries. I have the gift. I could burn you where you stand.” An exaggeration. Without an enhancing substance, Manon could probably only manage to set a sleeve on fire.

  “Manon!”

  It was Perrin. She craned her neck in the officer’s grip just enough to see her brother’s face. He looked unhurt and he strained against the ropes that held him. He repeated her name, calling out, his concern clear.

  The whip cracked, ripping Manon’s gaze away. It split the air a second time, wielded by a bare-chested man. He tested it a third time, the noise causing the crowd to flinch and Manon’s heart to drop to her stomach where it pulsed in angry, heavy beats.

  “Manon!” Perrin cried again. He paid no mind to the whip, and the fear in his voice was for her.

  “Call that fire and he dies.” The woman knelt before Manon, her blue eyes and sharp cheekbones so close Manon had to blink and try to lean away. Again she twisted to catch site of Perrin.

  “Manon! What is this madness?”

  Manon looked back at the woman, willing the next words she must speak into existence. “Why would I do that? Look at him. He is weak. He cannot even save himself. See, see, I have told you the truth. He does not Carry.” Manon raised her eyes to Perrin one last time. The anguish in his face twisted at her heart, but it was the trust she saw there that she would remember. Putting iron in her voice and speaking loud enough for all to hear. “He means nothing to me.”

  Perrin cried out.

  The man with the whip closed in on him. The arm drew back, the whip poised like a scorpion’s tail. And then a voice, the speaker unseen, said a single word and the whip was lowered to coil on the ground.

  Before Manon could see more, she was wrenched to her feet and forced to walk back toward the Vismarch’s palace, and as she stumbled, movement from the shadows in the side of her vision caught her attention.

  A man stepped out from the pillared portico of the courtyard, his arms crossing in front of his chest. He met Manon’s stare, clearly not caring that she saw him. Manon knew that face, knew that close-cropped hair, knew the Arconian badge on his coat, but could not put the name to them. But she shivered with the sudden instinct of prey who has seen the predator and understood with a rush of clarity t
hat whatever had just happened in that courtyard was a game for which only he knew the rules.

  Interlude 6

  Excerpt from a treatise on Carriers, their history and abilities, by Lumiro Papilloni and Carminina Estavilla, both of the Lordican

  The terms ‘Carry’ and ‘Carrier’ were first recorded in Arconia roughly forty years after the City’s founding and during the term of the Tribune Eracomo Volanta, though they appear to have evolved perhaps a decade earlier in Toridium and Cancalo and those cities’ surrounding regions. Earlier terminology was less consistent and often reflected local beliefs, customs, and incidents.

  Documentation from these early days of the City is scarce, and nearly nonexistent throughout Bellara prior to the birth and spread of what we now know as the Seven Cities—however, evidence suggests our ancestors were initially inclined to believe Carriers to be marked somehow by divinity. At the time, the Smith God Erasmo, along with his consort Via, Goddess of the Hearth, was the dominant spiritual presence in these lands, with smaller segments of the population following either the Twins, Toora and Taalo, or Beron, the Moon Warrior.

  We will delve into further detail later on the place Carriers held in these various populations and their social hierarchies. It is sufficient now to note that under Erasmo and Via, Carriers whose talents lay with fire were highly regarded, perhaps even thought to be, in rare cases, children of the deities, while those who shaped water were considered malignant and untrustworthy, possibly in connection to the belief that a great flood, the natural enemy of any fire and therefore the enemy of deities of forge and hearth, was foretold. For those who followed the Twins, Carriers appear to have occupied a position of neutrality, though there is evidence they were thought to possess, thanks to their gifts, inhuman insight and perception. As a result, there are some scholars (de Maris and Chiara, for example), who believe the first Wisdoms of Onaxos were Carriers. This is much debated and beyond the scope of this work. As for adherents to Beron the Moon Warrior, those who Carried were scorned and mistrusted and the source of a great deal of violence, whether born from fire or water.