Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  “It’s a far cry from my father’s dig sites.” Perrin Barca, standing at Eska’s elbow, had hovered over the work since her return. “Where he knew only speed, here there is structure and precision. I can’t imagine my father taking delight in anything someone else chose to throw away.” This last was said with a smile, which Eska mirrored.

  “It comes with the territory, I’m afraid. The scholars of the Lordican taught me to respect my work and the sites I was privileged enough to be responsible for. It’s been hammered into my very bones that I should cherish intellectual gain as much as material.” Eska moved to the water shelter erected close to the refuse pit. She reached for a tin cup and ladled clear water from a barrel into it, then handed it to Perrin before filling her own.

  “It’s admirable,” Perrin said. “So many succumb to the promise of a tremendous payout. My family chief among them.”

  Eska took a drink and made herself meet Perrin’s eyes over her cup. “Mine too,” she said. She went on, though she could not have said what prompted her to admit such things to a Barca. “My uncle places more value in the object he unearths than in the story of how it got there and to whom it once belonged.” She turned her profile to Perrin and filled her cup once more. “I should not speak ill of him.”

  “I think anyone who never speaks ill of a loved one is lying. To themselves and to the world.” Perrin’s voice was quiet but tinged with just enough good humor to elicit a smile from Eska.

  “Has the de Caraval family ever known Carrier blood?”

  The question, unexpected and accompanied by a sudden intensity in Perrin’s eyes, caught Eska off guard. She took another drink of water. “It has.” She made no attempt to disguise the edge in her voice.

  Perrin Barca seemed unperturbed. “But not recently.”

  Eska was quicker with her answer this time. “Not in the past five generations.”

  “Manon was the first,” Perrin said, his gaze distant, the intensity gone. “First known Carrier in my family, that is. But we do not trace our family history back so far as that of de Caraval. Perhaps I have grandmothers and grandfathers many times removed who Carried. I have no way of knowing. If so, they were fisher folk and weavers, their skills turned to common tasks.” A hint of a smile turned up the corners of Perrin’s mouth. “Most likely a pirate or two in the mix as well. We always were a disreputable lot.” The smile vanished. “I sometimes wonder what might have been different if Manon had not been born with such a talent.”

  Before Eska could respond, she spotted Bastien hurrying to her, a piece of paper in his hand. Dreading a summons back to the city, Eska sighed.

  “My mother?” she asked.

  Bastien shook his head and thrust the paper at her. “From the Lordican, my lady.”

  Eska brightened. “Albus. Delightful.” She glanced at Perrin. “If you’ll excuse me.” Wiping her hands on her trousers, Eska took the letter. She didn’t make it more than five steps in the direction of her tent before a startled gasp drew her back. Retracing her steps, Eska bent over Dea, who, white-faced, fingers trembling, was reaching into the hole.

  “Don’t!” Eska said. The girl froze. “Not with your bare hands. It’s far too delicate. Let me show you.” And so Eska, Albus’s letter forgotten, her right hand aching with the effort, demonstrated before half a dozen watching faces, the proper technique for extracting a piece of bone from the earth.

  ***

  “It’s human.”

  The sky was dusty pink by the time Eska was able to contemplate the discovery in the lantern light of her tent. Cedric, Perrin, and Gabriel stood around her worktable, all eyes fixed on the pale pieces of bone spread out on a sheet of linen on the table. Five in all, three of them meant to fit together. Others would come, Eska was sure, but this was what they had taken before running out of light.

  “How do you know?”

  It was Bastien who asked the question, though he was meant to be eating the evening meal with the rest of the crew. The young man, hands folded in front of him sheepishly, stepped into the lantern light from where he lurked at the entrance. Eska was too excited to reprimand him.

  “It’s a knee joint.” She pointed with a gloved hand to the three pieces set close to each other. “Male, I think. And damaged. The two shards are harder to identify, though likely from the shin bone. We’ll know more when we find the rest.”

  “The rest.” Perrin this time.

  “Surely you don’t think we’ve found a single knee joint and nothing else? There’s a skeleton waiting for us down there.” Eska stripped the gloves from her hands.

  “The location is strange, my lady.” Cedric hunched over the table for a closer look.

  “Agreed. The Onandya did not place human bones in their refuse pits. Another question we can only hope to answer the further we dig.” Eska rubbed the back of her neck. “Cedric, I don’t know if I’ll be called to the city in the morning. If I am, your sole task tomorrow is to uncover as much of our mystery skeleton as you can. I am entrusting it to you.” The dig master’s mustache quivered as he accepted with a bow. “Gabriel,” Eska went on, turning to the engineer, “that makes you responsible for everything else. And finally, Bastien, I want you to take a message to Arch-Commander de Minos in the Vismarch’s palace. I have need of his opinion.”

  Bastien hesitated as he glanced first to Cedric and then back at Eska. “My lady, the Arch-Commander is gone. He came to the site earlier, but when he learned you were in negotiations and unavailable, he did not wait.”

  An inconvenience, that was all. He was not the only person who could tell her if the knee joint might have been smashed by a blunt weapon. And Eska wasn’t irked by the fact that she hadn’t seen him one last time. Certainly not.

  “No matter. Take a message to my mother instead. Tell her I won’t be spending the night in the city. If I am needed come morning, she knows where to find me. I mean to spend every moment I can with these bones.”

  The Firenzia tents were quiet by the time Eska turned her lanterns down and straightened from the hunched position she had occupied for far too long. Wincing as her back and neck uncurled, Eska put aside her magnifying glass and tools and blinked rapidly, forcing away the dryness that had laid claim to her eyes as she worked.

  Turning away from her worktable, Eska frowned at the tray of food—cold meat, bread, fat green grapes—sitting on her cot, unsure when it had arrived or who had delivered it. Cedric, most likely. Sighing, Eska poured herself a glass of pale wine, drained it quickly, and refilled it to the brim, her parched throat clamoring for more liquid. She lowered herself to sit on the cot, thought better of it, shifted the wine to the crook of her elbow, and balanced the tray precariously between her ribcage and her forearm.

  “This won’t go badly at all,” Eska murmured to the empty tent. Taking up one of the lanterns with her free hand—sloshing wine onto her sleeve in the process—Eska slipped out of the tent and made her way to the river. A gently flickering light in the distance—south and east across the excavation site—assured her of the presence of a crewmember on watch. Pleased with herself for not spilling a second time, Eska set her tray down among the roots of the willow under which she and Alexandre had sought escape from the sun—was that just two days ago?—and leaned back against the trunk.

  The night was cool and clear, the stars twinkling behind the willow’s branches, the river rushing by in the dark in that quiet way rivers have. Eska breathed deeply, relishing the stillness, and smiled. She had been to more excavation sites than she could readily count, but while they were all marked by the same sights and sounds and smells, she could remember them all and each of them were as unique in her mind as the snowflakes she had caught on her tongue in the Vachon Valley as a child.

  “What will define you?” Eska asked, her question weaving among the willow branches. “Let it not be death,” she said, her mind turning to Nero. She rested a hand on the root at her side, as though the earth could hear her plea. “Porcini had the eagl
es. Armexes the mud. Urilla the mineral-rich smell of the hot pools.” She took a deep breath. “Let Toridium and the plains of the Alencio not be remembered only for death.”

  She could, perhaps, upon later reflection, be forgiven if she had succumbed to the belief that a vengeful deity or the spirit of the Onandya people was working against her. After all, when one speaks of death and then, less than a heartbeat later, nearly loses an eye—and a life—to a knife hurtling out of the darkness as though cast by an invisible hand, well, one can be inclined to believe any number of things.

  For better or for worse, Eska was inclined to believe that knives could not be thrown by invisible hands.

  She threw herself to the ground, sending the wine spilling across the earth, her heart pounding in her ears, the knife lodged in the willow’s trunk without so much as a quiver. Her face pressed against the ground, Eska tried to seek any sign of movement, any whisper of sound to betray the assailant’s position, but the willow merely whispered around her and the river answered with its endless song.

  North. The attacker had to be to the north, along the riverbank, given the angle of the knife’s approach and subsequent impaling of the tree. Eska cursed silently at the friendly glow of her lantern, just at the periphery of her vision. She did not dare move to snuff it out, but nor could she allow her vision to be hampered by it.

  She also could not linger. Not when every moment gave the assassin the chance to approach and strike a deadlier blow. This thought jabbed repeatedly at her mind, harsh and insistent, until at last Eska, her fingers scrabbling at dirt and grass, forced herself to crawl on her elbows, her body a useless weight behind her.

  Her progress was torturously slow, made all the worse by the fact that she could not move silently. Sure she was as obvious as a wounded, fat wood pigeon fluttering in the brush, Eska emerged from behind the willow’s curtain and began to drag herself toward the tents, desperate to believe there was safety to be found there.

  She did not cry out, not when the distance between her and the nearest tent was so great. Calling for help seemed a sure way to attract a second knife, this one thrown true.

  It was not, in the end, a second knife she needed to worry about.

  She heard the bounding footsteps, scrambled to her hands and knees, lost all breath as the man’s weight forced her back to the earth, the impact sending a spasm of pain through her chest and the wrist she had injured in the explosions.

  She fought. Of course she did. Writhing, flailing, her free hand reaching back for the face she could feel pressed against her neck and shoulder as the man waited for her to tire, his solid bulk a Bastian of certainty, one arm a vice around her torso. Eska lifted her head to cry out—a mistake. Her assailant’s other arm snaked around her neck, clamping her jaw shut, cutting off her scream before it could leap from her throat, and Eska felt panic rise from her stomach and flee through her limbs.

  “Quit struggling, or it’ll hurt more,” the man growled quietly into her ear, his beard brushing against the hollow under her jaw. The words, the tangible proof that this was merely a man, did what her fear could not. Eska went still, her breath coming hard and fast through her nose, aware suddenly of the smell of soap on his forearm, of the way his feet were rendering her legs immobile, and, yes, of the object pressing into her side, the object that had the shape and feel of the hilt of a knife.

  Not that this knowledge mattered. She couldn’t reach it. Suddenly she very much wished she had taken the knife from the willow.

  It was as Eska berated herself for this oversight that she felt the man’s grip on her torso relax.

  For a moment she thought she imagined it, but when that moment spawned a second, and then a third, Eska knew, with as much certainty as an archaeologist who had never before been in a grappling match for her life, her opportunity was close—and close enough to pass her by as swiftly as an owl in the night if she didn’t seize it.

  “That’s it,” the man said. “The Iron Baron will be pleased to know you went quiet like.” He began to slide his arm out from under Eska’s stomach, his weight still heavy on her, but his attention—Eska could feel it—on the knife at his belt.

  Bucking her hips, Eska twisted in his grasp, her fingers tearing at any part of him she could reach, the Iron Baron’s cold eyes flashing before her. Using the fraction of space she had earned for herself, she brought her knee up into her assailant’s groin as hard as she could.

  The awkward angle did not achieve the satisfying impact she had hoped for. It was enough, however, to make his eyes roll back and the sound he emitted was rather like, she realized later, an angry camel. Most importantly, his grip slackened and Eska seized her chance to scramble away.

  No sooner had she stumbled to her feet, her voice croaking for help, aware of movement behind her, than a dark shape hurtled out of the night and tackled her assailant, sending both men sprawling across the earth.

  She had expected Gabriel.

  The engineer was a strong man, courageous and quick to act. She had seen him spare little thought for his own safety for the sake of others.

  The sight of Perrin Barca on his knees, snarling at Eska’s assailant, his features twisted into something wild, a knife flashing in his hand, while her attacker bled from a gash across his chest—it was something Eska knew she would never forget.

  With a scuff of dirt and a whisper of grass, the two men got to their feet, each prepared to strike, each with eyes only for the other. The hesitation in both was borne of calculation as they shifted their stances and grips in preparation for the other to attack.

  The assailant moved first, lunging for Perrin. The younger man twisted aside nimbly, his feet quick and sure, and countered with devastating speed, knife slicing into the stranger’s elbow. The man grunted, his hand dropping to his side, pain marring his face. He grasped the bleeding joint with his free hand, forearm dangling uselessly, gaze narrowing in surprise.

  They never had the chance to test each other again. Voices among the tents broke the deadly silence. The man risked a quick glance at Eska and then he was gone, racing through the darkness, disappearing as quickly and quietly as he had come.

  Perrin was at Eska’s elbow before she tore her gaze away from the empty night.

  “Are you hurt? Eska?”

  She found Perrin’s face, saw the wildness fade into worry, saw the knife drop to the ground as he took her forearms, his gaze searching over her for signs of harm.

  “I’m all right,” she heard herself say, her words undermined by the shaking of her hands.

  And then Gabriel was there, Cedric, others, faces alight with lantern-forged shadows, voices rippling with concern and questions. She relayed what had taken place, the words a poor echo of the experience. Gabriel ordered for the watch to be tripled, and for each crewmember to be armed, as Cedric fretted about who would order such an attack.

  “Thibault de Venescu,” Eska said, her voice stronger and clearer than before. She looked into the darkness where the man had disappeared. Gabriel muttered an insult. “He was sure of himself, sure of success, admitted the Iron Baron had paid him well,” she said. “I imagine he will pay just as well for his failure.”

  “Should we go after him?” Cedric asked. “Search for him?”

  She wished for Alexandre in that moment. Wished for his experience and decisiveness. It was Perrin’s eyes that steadied her.

  “No,” she said. “It would be a waste. He will be long gone. It is enough to know who paid him.”

  If Eska slept that night, it was a fretful and fleeting sleep. After the crew dispersed, hushed voices trailing into what remained of the night, she lay on her cot, eyes staring up at the canvas overhead, her lantern flickering diligently on her worktable until it burned up the oil, leaving her in darkness. Eska closed her eyes, willing herself to find sleep, but within moments she was up, first pacing around her tent, then drawing aside the flap and staring out at nothing.

  In the end she spent the night at her table
. She wrote an account of the attack, copied it onto a second sheet of paper, then signed and dated both, leaving room for Cedric to sign as witness to the events. They would be sent to her father and the Firenzia Company lawyer as proof of what had happened. She added a note to the lawyer’s copy requesting that he begin researching the private and business dealings of Thibault de Venescu—quietly, of course. She did not want the poor lawyer to earn himself a share of the Iron Baron’s wrath. But if she wanted to bring him to justice, if she wanted to build a case against him that would overpower the blackmailing and bribing and violence he would enact in self-preservation, she needed to sort out the rumors from the truth. And the rumors were myriad.

  She also needed to follow the law to the letter. It wouldn’t do to have her case shredded because of misplaced paperwork or a failure to comply with the most obscure regulations. But Eska wasn’t concerned about that. Pierro Gustini was nothing if not meticulous, scrupulous, and possessed of one of the finest legal minds in the Seven Cities of Bellara.

  Eska emerged from her tent at the first hint of dawn, finding strength in her resolve to reveal the Iron Baron as the criminal he was whispered to be. But there was another strength she could avail herself of—if he would agree to help.

  She was not surprised to find Perrin Barca awake. Nor was he startled by her appearance at the flap of his borrowed tent. He sat on his cot, still fully dressed, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, waistcoat unbuttoned, boots unlaced but not removed, hair decidedly ruffled. He seemed older than the young man she had met. Worn.

  “Are you all right?” Perrin stood and went to the bottle of wine waiting on his small table. “Wine?”

  It was either very early or very late for wine, but Eska found she did not much care. She nodded and waited until Perrin placed a glass in her hand before speaking.