“We -”
“I know, you haven’t paid him for the lodging. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that too. It’s the least I can do, you know. We’ll get everything organized faster than you can blink, and then we’ll have you on your way.”
The reason for Losywa’s generosity with the provisions and lodging became obvious half an hour later when we made our way down to the docks and she proudly showed us her vessel. It was a wooden raft a little over twenty feet long and maybe eight wide. A small lip around the edge kept water from sloshing over the deck. Or at least limited the amount.
Any one of the ten coins Legion had offered her would have bought the boat outright.
“No sail?” I asked.
The blonde gave me the kind of look usually reserved for halfwits. “The wind blows the wrong way, Judge Minos. We pole down to the Muddy, then it’s oars. The current does most of the work. Oh, you’re thinking about that sailboat on Vadlo’s sign, aren’t you? That’s, um, what do they call it, artistic license. You can’t sail on the Shining.”
“How do you get it back upriver?”
“We pay a steamship to haul it, or hire a wagon in a caravan. Sometimes both. There are plenty of ships up the Muddy, not so many that come all the way up the Shining.”
So at least some of her profit would be consumed getting the raft back home. Still, I had no doubt the ambassador had grossly overpaid. Would that have been from ignorance? Not likely, given how clever the wraith had shown itself to be. Then… demonstrating that the Hellguard could be generous masters.
I turned to Legion. “All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.”
The wraith grinned and dipped its head. “My masters have much to offer.”
“I’m sure they do. Just look how happy your guards are to be in their service. Practically bursting with joy. Let’s get on our way, shall we?”
Losywa looked confused, but she and her brother began shifting the gear aboard. She had been right about the horses, if clearly self-serving; there was no way we could have brought the animals onto the raft.
I had no real experience with boats, but this one was simple enough. It was simply a set of logs lashed together, kept afloat by nothing more than the buoyancy of the wood. Once Ram cast off from the dock, he and Losywa began shoving the raft out into midstream with long poles, and the current quickly caught it. There was some maneuvering to make sure the clumsy craft was pointed end-first, and then the water did the work.
The shore crept by at a walking pace, perhaps fifty feet away on either side. “How long does the trip usually take?” I asked.
“Ten days or so. On a good day we can make a hundred miles, if we use the poles and the oars. We’re not going very fast, but we go all day and all night. Why, are you in a hurry, Judge Minos? Because you didn’t say so, but -”
“No, no particular hurry.” And there wasn’t. I had no reason to rush to my encounter with Legion’s masters. But I wasn’t looking forward to ten days in a little boat with the wraith and its soulless bodyguards, either. I sighed. “No. No particular hurry.”
Dee, Tess, Cat, and I took up a position at the front of the raft. Legion and its men gathered at the back. Ram poled at the front left corner, Losywa at the right rear. There wasn’t much to do. Tess and I watched the shore go by, sometimes holding hands, and that was pleasant. Cat eyed Ram intently, as if trying to decide if he was edible. The paleo seemed oddly fascinated with him. If being stared at bothered him, he gave no sign.
Dee, however, quickly grew bored. He drifted to the back of the raft and struck up a conversation with the captain, with nightmarish results. Between the two of them, the buzz of voices was nonstop. Literally. You would have thought that at some point one or both would run out of either air or topics of conversation, but apparently not. Tess and I glared at them, with no more effect than glaring at rocks.
Legion strolled up to us. “I could silence them,” it suggested. “Permanently.”
I looked up at the wraith. “Here’s the thing, Ambassador. We don’t kill people for being annoying, or you wouldn’t be around anymore. And in case you think it’s your guards keeping you safe, let me assure you that Cat could gut them all before you even thought of giving them a command. As for you? Well, let’s just assume you’re beyond my power to control. I have no doubt Tess can hold you, and I have other ways to deal with the Darkness. So let’s not have you threatening any of my people.”
Its face went very still, but I could sense the thoughts behind the mask. I’d had something like Legion inside of me, or maybe I’d been something like it. Maybe at our darkest core, all of us were something a little bit like the wraith.
The ambassador pasted a smile back on, though fangs showed through its parted lips. “Of course.” And it returned to its own end of the boat.
Ram turned to me. “That thing wants you dead, you know.”
He hadn’t lowered his voice. And it occurred to me that just because Losywa did all the talking for the pair of siblings, that didn’t mean her brother was slow.
When night came we slept in shifts. Ram or Losywa stayed awake to guide the raft. Tess, Cat, or I joined them, to make sure our guests from the Darklands behaved themselves. Dee didn’t take a shift, since he likely would have fallen asleep and certainly would have been useless in a fight even if he was awake.
The dark water of the river glowed in the moonlight. Ram poled occasionally, ripples spreading and fading. “Quiet out here,” I said softly.
He nodded. “Mm hm.” He didn’t seem to feel a need to talk, and to be honest, neither did I. The rest of the group dozed silently, except for Prophetess, who snored. Despite the unpleasant company at the far end of the raft, it was one of the most peaceful moments of the past two years. Until we reached our destination, there was nothing for me to do. I smiled a little to myself. Like I’d said to Losywa, I really wasn’t in any particular hurry at all.
Night turned to day. The river flowed on, farms and occasional towns lining its banks. We drifted by. Dee and Losywa never seemed to run out of topics of conversation. I didn’t mind anymore - I’d learned to ignore them. There were little notches along the side of the raft, and Losywa set simple fishing poles into them. Every now and then we caught something big enough to eat. The captain assembled a small metal tripod in the center of the boat, with two bowls in it, the lower one filled with charcoal. The roasted fish made a nice change from our dried provisions.
Late that night it rained, but it wasn’t one of the torrential downpours that sometimes scoured the plains, and it stayed warm. I don’t think anyone minded being wet - although of course the water ran off Legion as if the ambassador were coated in oil.
The next day Tess and I were sitting together, watching the water slide by and enjoying the sun when the raft abruptly ground to a halt. Ram and Losywa had sunk their poles into the riverbed. I couldn’t see why. We seemed to be safely in the center of the channel. We were just beginning to pass under a bridge arcing over the river, but it seemed no different from a dozen others we had floated past.
“Toll,” Losywa explained.
“Toll? For what? It’s not like anyone’s maintaining the river.”
“No, but it’s also not like we want to be shot with fire arrows or have our boat sunk with rocks. And that’s what happens if we don’t pay the toll, you see. It’s really… well, it’s a toll, isn’t it?”
“It sounds more like robbery,” Tess said.
A tin bucket came down from the bridge on a rope. A pair of heads peered over the edge. One of the men smirked at me and hefted a bow.
“It really isn’t a problem,” Losywa said. “You see, there’s a system, we just put a coin into the bucket, and -”
The bucket clanked onto the floor of the raft. The bowman tipped over the side of the bridge and fell wordlessly, splashing into the river five feet from the boat. A dark stain spread on the water.
I knew instantly what had happened. I’d seen it
before.
“Dammit, Legion!”
“You’re welcome,” the wraith said, its little smile firmly in place.
“You do not murder citizens of the Source!”
“No? Even ones who are robbers that prey on commerce? That is not the sign of a well-ordered society. Your ancestors theorized that the first necessary building block of society was safety against threats both external and internal. The second was rule of law. You appear to be lacking both. You will find that my masters are not.”
“The third building block in that particular theory, if I recall, was liberty,” Dee said. “Which I believe your masters’ society rather lacks.”
“But the first two are essential precursors to the third. The third, in the absence of the first two, leads to a failed state. Do you preside over a failed state, Judge Minos? Do you aspire to nothing more?”
My hand itched to draw my katana. I was seething with fury, and I couldn’t have honestly said whether it was at Legion, the murdered robbers, or myself. Losywa was staring in horror as blood drifted down the current, surrounding the bowman’s bobbing corpse.
“Um, what just happened? Because I really -”
“Pole on,” I snapped.
“Well, no, we’re not going to do that. Because if we do they’ll shoot us from the bridge like I said. And I really -”
“They’re all dead, Losywa,” I said. “No one’s going to shoot at us because they’re all dead.”
“How -”
“The ambassador here infiltrated the Darkness into them and, I can’t be sure, but I’m assuming probably broke down the cell walls of their carotid arteries. Maybe severed some nerves too so they couldn’t get off a shot while they were dying. Depends how careful our guest here was being.”
The wraith’s smile widened. “You are very familiar with the technique.”
“Of course I am. You know what I’ve been, and who I’ve been with.” In my defense, I’d usually used the Darkness to choke my enemies into unconsciousness, rather than killing them. What Legion had done was much more Yoshana’s style, both in methods and motive. She hadn’t liked being robbed either.
But, to be fair, I’d killed plenty of people too.
I think for the first time, Losywa realized what she was transporting, and for the first time, words failed her. Tears started from her eyes.
Ram gave the raft a push with his pole, nudging us downriver again. He carefully set the long stick on the deck, went to his sister, and put his arms around her. “It’s okay, Loo.”
She snuffled and whispered, “I think this was a bad idea, Ram.”
He replied, “I told you so, Loo,” but he smiled when he said it. She smiled back.
The raft drifted on, leaving death behind.
“Don’t do that again,” I said to Legion.
The wraith hadn’t stopped grinning. “As you say, Judge Minos. But I fear my masters will be disappointed in you.”
“I certainly hope so.”
Provoking. Testing. Collecting information it could pass on to the Hellguard. Roshel had been absolutely right about what Legion was doing. I stared at the sleeping ambassador and wondered again if I’d been wrong when I’d refused her suggestion that we kill it.
Ram and I were again the only ones awake. The heavyset man followed my gaze to Legion, then looked back at me. He opened his mouth but closed it again without speaking.
“What?” I asked.
He just shook his head. I didn’t press the point.
The river meandered through a series of long, slow switchbacks. Ram steered us around sandbars with his pole. Then, almost from one moment to the next, the banks to either side disappeared in the distance and we drifted into what seemed like an infinite expanse of black water.
“What just happened?”
“We’re on the Shining now. The eastern fork of the Muddy.”
The border between the Source and the Green Heart, my childhood home. As Ram guided us into the center of the channel, I could make out flickering lights in the distance.
Losywa came up next to me. She must have sensed the change in the river. “There are towns on both banks. But they’re walled. And sometimes it’s really a pain to get customs permits to dock and trade. Especially if there’s fighting between the Source and the Heart. You know, like a few years back. We can stop, but we’ll waste a lot of time on paperwork. And, uh, they may not like your guest.”
That was a good bet, especially on the Green Heart side, where they’d suffered an invasion by Yoshana and the Hellguard. If people were suspicious of the Darkness - and rightly so - in the Source, where the Darkness Radiant had taken over the local military, then we’d certainly get an unfriendly reception in the Heart. Which made me wonder what Legion expected us to do in Delta City.
I asked the wraith the next day.
“We have agents in the city,” the ambassador said smugly. “They will take us the rest of the way to the Darklands. Loyalty is easily purchased in a port such as Delta City - another weakness of your human regimes.”
Sometimes the best answer is none at all. And sometimes you just can’t think of a good response. I let the wraith’s comment pass.
In daylight we could see the towns we passed. On both sides of the river they were heavily fortified with high, brick walls and cannon emplacements. It was another sad commentary on the lack of unity in the human nations that the Source and the Green Heart were more worried about defending against each other than the threat of the Darkness or the demons. Legion didn’t comment, but it seemed to me that he smirked even more than usual.
Steamboats began to appear on the river, huge things like leviathans, driven by paddle wheels at the back or sides of the ship. The river was wide enough that we could stay well away from their churning wakes. It was also too deep now for the poles to work, so Losywa and Ram paddled with oars instead.
A day later the eastern fork of the Muddy met with the northern branch, and the river grew wider yet. “We’ve made good time,” Losywa announced. “More than halfway there.”
Tess moved a little closer to me. “Remember when we came up this way?”
I nodded. It had been a simpler time, before there’d been armies to command, before I’d even dreamed of being what Roshel called a factor. Of course, we’d been chased by paleos and drelb, and then an angry Reborn preacher had nearly unleashed a mob on us, and we’d had to cross this river on a bridge that really wasn’t meant for humans to walk on, and then we’d nearly frozen to death…
Simpler, yes. Better, not necessarily.
“Who would have thought, huh?” Tess asked.
“That people would be looking to us as leaders? Or that we’d be alive?”
She chuckled. “Both. And that we’d be together.”
“Well. That part I was definitely hoping for, even back then.”
She smiled, then turned serious. Very softly, she said, “I’m not sure we’re doing the right thing now. Going with that… thing.”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure either. But I’ll say this - after all the people I’ve killed, and all the others I’ve sent to their deaths, I’m not going to pass up a chance to avoid a war.”
She squeezed my arm and at that moment, at least, I was convinced I had in fact done the right thing.
6. The Road to Hell
Four days later we drifted into the massive, sprawling harbor at Delta City.
The Muddy and the Whitewater came together into a messy tangle. The main channel of each river emptied out into Brown Bay, but upstream little rivulets and creeks spun out into a sweltering, mosquito-infested bog between the two. Delta City sat on a low rise on the eastern bank, the shops and warehouses and residences rising high enough that they didn’t flood when the river spilled over its banks. At least, not very often.
Docks spanned the range from rickety gangways that probably got swept away in the current every few years to massive structures on thick pilings, big enough to handle the Muddy’s largest
steamships and sailing vessels from around the coast of the Warm Sea.
It was unpleasantly hot in the late afternoon sun, but the wharfs still swarmed with activity. I’d never been to Delta City before, but it bustled like a kicked ant hill compared to other ports I’d seen. In addition to thousands of humans jostling each other and shouting in half a dozen different accents, there were bleating sheep, lowing oxen, and hordes of raucous seagulls circling overhead scanning for scraps.
“Lots going on,” I said to Losywa.
“It was quiet for a couple of years,” she replied. “Well, you know, first there was the Shield invading the Green Heart. That dried up most of the traffic from Seafields. And then the Monolith’s mercenaries were attacking shipping on the Whitewater. But it’s all pretty much back to normal, right now. And normal here really means there’s quite a lot going on. Look over there. That’s a steamship from way up the Whitewater, west of Oldtown. And just look at that ship there with the sword design on its mainsail…”
I stopped paying attention. There certainly wasn’t peace on earth. As far as I knew, Rockwall and the Monolith still hadn’t settled the status of the disputed land between them. And Roshel had made it clear that the Green Heart and the Shield were still glaring at each other across the Paint. But for the moment, commerce was thriving. And that meant a chance for human progress, if we could prevent another outbreak of war.
“Dock at Pier 26A,” Legion commanded. “We will transfer to another vessel for the next stage of our journey, and I will make the rest of your payment.”
Losywa shook her head. “I literally can’t dock at 26. It’s a deep water pier. We’d have to tie on to a piling and climb up it. And I really don’t think you want to be climbing up a wet piling with no handholds. I can bring us into Pier 18, and then it’s just a short walk to 26. Most of the rafts dock up here, farther upstream, and then the steamboats farther down, and then the big sailing ships from the Warm Sea. Some of it’s a question of depth. The water’s shallower here and the deeper draft ships can’t make it this far up. And really I guess some of it’s just custom, too…”
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 82