Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  Jahno gazed at the rising sun, its light reflected gold in his silvery eyes.

  “‘That which you seek lies in the possession of those whose lifeblood is trade, and value the worth of a thing more than the thing itself,’” Zariya murmured. “I do believe we are bound for Tukkan.”

  Jahno nodded. “Yah.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Now our course turned toward the west, following the great western current in the direction of Tukkan, which was situated at the confluence of the great western and northern currents.

  At least this time we were not venturing into the unknown, for Jahno and the Elehuddin had sojourned there before. Tukkan was a proud and prosperous nation ruled by merchant-lords who guarded their wealth zealously, but even the poorest of its citizens flaunted whatever finery they had to display, promenading before the temple of Galdano the Shrewd and boasting of the favor they received in exchange for ostentatious offerings to the god.

  Even if our supposition was correct, Jahno warned us, we could not expect the Tukkani to hand us the missing piece of the Scattered Prophecy, but would be expected to haggle for it, something that struck me as incredibly foolish and short-sighted under the circumstances.

  “It is not sheer mean-spiritedness, my heart,” Zariya explained to me. “Galdano the Shrewd decreed long ago that the worth of a thing could only be determined through trade. For the Tukkani, it is a form of worship.” She glanced at Jahno. “And you have traded with them before, have you not?”

  Kooie whistled and signed, and Jahno nodded in agreement. “Yah, but we only ever traded stolen goods on the black market. Tukkan is not a great pirate haven like the Nexus,” he added, “but they’re not particular about where a thing came from, and they will not allow the coursers of Obid to interfere with trade. This will be different. We will have to go before the Gilded Council.”

  The Gilded Council, I learned, were the twenty-one wealthiest merchant-lords and -ladies in the nation. If such a thing as a copy of the Koronian collected prophecies existed, it would almost surely belong to one of them.

  Zariya and I went through the trunks of her belongings, selecting items from her wedding trousseau that might serve us well in trade.

  “It’s odd to think how much such things seemed to matter once, isn’t it, my heart?” she remarked wistfully, holding up a pair of dangling golden earrings with ruby teardrops. “It seems so very long ago. I wonder how Lord Rygil fares, and if my father has returned to Zarkhoum.”

  “I wonder if Prince Dozaren yet governs in Merabaht,” I added. “And how my brethren in the Brotherhood of Pahrkun fare.”

  I did not give voice to the thought that we might never see them again, but I saw it reflected in Zariya’s gaze. If we failed in our quest, the world as we knew it would no longer exist.

  In the days immediately following our flight from the shores of Papa-ka-hondras, Zariya had spent long hours dozing in her hammock, allowing her body to continue healing. She had confided to me that she was passing blood in her stool, and I knew she was in considerable discomfort. But it seemed that the Green Mother had not misled us, for day by day, Zariya’s pain eased and she grew stronger. Her breath came more freely and her stamina increased accordingly; it was, she told me, as though a painful vise that had gripped her lungs since she’d been a fever-stricken child had at long last loosed its hold on her.

  I cannot put into words how glad this made me, and I daresay everyone on the ship rejoiced, too.

  The ordeal had changed her in other ways. I had always known Zariya to be kind and thoughtful, and those qualities had deepened to a new level of maturity. I noted it particularly in her dealings with Lirios, for she set aside the unease that his relentlessly enthusiastic ardor evoked in her and treated him with a more characteristic degree of openness and respect; in turn, it had a calming effect on him.

  “I know my queen does not love me, Khai,” Lirios said to me in his earnest manner. “But I think she understands now that this is well enough; it is our way, the way of the children of Selerian the Light-Footed, not your way, with your Sacred Twins. Your way … in her heart, it will always be you that she loves best, and although it is strange to me, I know it is so.”

  I smiled wryly.

  At the moment, Zariya and Jahno had their heads bent together, poring over his journal. Since my realization in the wake of the terror that I might lose her on Papa-ka-hondras, it had struck me that I bitterly regretted having kissed her only the once as a sweet affirmation. It seemed in hindsight a lost time of innocence and possibility, when it would have been unthinkable for a princess of the House of the Ageless to consort unveiled with a man who was not kin to her and prophecy was merely the stuff of daydreams, not a deadly reality.

  Though if I had dared more, perhaps I could not have endured her betrothal. Either way, it was a thought I had kept to myself.

  “We are Sun-Blessed and shadow, our destinies twined at birth, and only death can break that bond,” I said to Lirios. “Zariya’s life and her honor are more dear to me than my own. But I think that is a thing both deeper and different than mortal love, my brother.” I nodded at Zariya and Jahno. “She has the heart and mind of a scholar, and they are well suited to each other.”

  Lirios gave me a sidelong glance, his aquamarine eyes glinting. “I think you are mistaken.”

  I shrugged. “There are greater matters at hand.”

  “This is very true,” he agreed.

  Just how great, we learned some ten days into our journey to Tukkan when it seemed the entire world … shuddered. I do not know how else to describe it. I felt it, the sea-wyrms felt it, we all felt it, the impact as profound as Tarrok’s thunderclap of a shout, only infinitely more vast.

  Somewhere in the world, something had happened. We exchanged wild looks, all of us.

  “What was that?” Evene demanded.

  No one knew.

  A day later, the skies darkened, a cloud of ash blotting out the sun and raining down upon us, covering our ship’s deck and drifting in gritty piles, making a dense film on the surface of the water.

  “‘And the skies shall grow as dark as night and ash shall rain from the sky,’” Jahno quoted, reading from his journal. “‘And the world shall know that the Abyss that Abides is no more, for Miasmus has risen.’”

  “Does it say what form Miasmus will take, my darling?” Zariya inquired.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  She fixed her gaze on the western horizon. “Well, I suppose we shall find out, shan’t we?”

  For three days and nights, the ash continued to fall. Zariya and I shared our head-scarves among the company so that every member might wrap a length of cloth over his or her mouth and nose, filtering the air that we breathed. Even so, all of us were coughing and miserable.

  On the fourth day, the skies cleared and the wave struck.

  It seemed to come out of nowhere, for the sea was placid that day. When the wyrms trilled an early alarm, their senses far keener than ours, none of us knew what to make of it. Kooie dove overboard to assess the currents with his own sensitive tendrils, surfacing to scramble up the boarding ladder, whistling in urgent haste.

  “Very, very big wave coming,” Jahno translated. “Everyone hold tight!”

  A few minutes later we saw it, a wall of water rushing down upon us, blue-green and glassy, as tall as a tower. I wrapped my right arm around the ship’s mast and the other around Zariya’s waist, and she wound both arms around my neck.

  If ooalu wood had not been so extraordinarily buoyant, I am not sure we would have succeeded in riding out the impact of the wave unleashed by the violent uprising of Miasmus. It was a wave without a crest and it surged beneath us without breaking. Our ship bobbed atop its face like a cork at a pitch that felt well nigh vertical. For the space of a heartbeat we hovered atop it; then plunged, careening down the backside of the great wave into the trough below. Flung forward by the abrupt change in momentum, I strained to keep my grip on the mast,
my arm feeling half yanked from its socket, while Zariya clung to me for dear life. Our vessel jounced and shuddered as it struck the trough, cast adrift, for the sea-wyrms had dropped their bits under the onslaught.

  Behind us, the wave rushed onward. Beneath us, the sea returned to a state of calm placidity.

  Zariya released her death grip around my neck. “Thank you, dearest,” she breathed. “I expect I shall owe you my life several times over before this is finished.”

  I rubbed my aching shoulder. “Is it just the one wave, do you think?”

  She shivered. “I hope so. At least the wyrms will warn us if another is coming.”

  Counting heads, Essee whistled in alarm; Seeak and Lirios were missing.

  Without a word, the Elehuddin dove overboard to search for them. Seeak surfaced some distance from the ship with a reassuring trill; the unexpected plunge would do him no harm.

  The mayfly was another matter.

  The rest of us leaned on the railing and watched helplessly; even the best swimmers among us could do nothing to assist the Elehuddin in the water. In the end it was Aiiiaii who found Lirios, surfacing and swimming toward the ship with her head held high, holding him as tenderly as possible in her mighty jaws, his limp body dangling on either side.

  Jahno and Tarrok raced to meet her, lowering Lirios to the ship’s deck, careful to spread his sodden wings beneath him. The mayfly’s golden skin was tinged with pale blue and he wasn’t breathing. Jahno turned Lirios’s head to the side and some water came out of his mouth. “I’m going to breathe for him,” he said to Tarrok. “One, two, three, four, five, then you push on his chest, one, two, three, yah?” The tall man nodded and Jahno suited actions to words, pinching Lirios’s nostrils closed and clamping his mouth over the mayfly’s.

  Gripping the railing with one hand, Zariya slid her free hand into mine, gripping it hard.

  I squeezed back, fearful for our mayfly, whom I had begun to consider something of a brother, albeit a peculiar one.

  On the third round of ministrations, Lirios’s chest rose. He vomited forth a copious amount of seawater, gasped, and began breathing. With a sigh of relief, Jahno sat back on his heels, wiping his brow with his forearm.

  “Thanks be to all the children of heaven!” Evene breathed beside us. “He’s not terribly bright, but he’s far too pretty to die.”

  “I’m glad you have your priorities in order, my darling,” Zariya murmured.

  Evene nudged her. “Oh, you know I don’t mean it.”

  Tarrok helped Lirios sit upright. The mayfly coughed and sputtered, fanning his drenched wings experimentally. “I am sorry,” he said in a contrite manner, his voice a bit ragged. “That was more difficult than I expected.” He rubbed his hands over his face, lifted his gaze toward Aiiiaii, and offered her a Chalcedony Islander salute, thumbs hooked and fingers spread wide. “Thank you.”

  The sea-wyrm dipped her enormous head graciously and gave a low series of whistles in response.

  Jahno smiled wearily. “She says you are welcome and try not to fall overboard again. Onward, yah?”

  Onward.

  As before, we avoided making landfall. Prior to the giant wave, we had seen other ships here and there sailing the great western current and given them a wide berth as we passed, our wyrm-drawn ship capable of greater speed than those forced to rely on wind and current alone. Now we saw the wreckage that the immense wave had left in its wake, flotsam floating on the water all that was left of ships that had been swamped or capsized by it. I’d been right: We did owe our lives to the buoyancy of the ooalu wood, and the realization of what a near thing it had been was a sobering one. We kept a sharp eye out for survivors, but saw none.

  It was a grey day when we drew in sight of the tall lighthouse that marked the harbor of Yanakhat, Tukkan’s capital city, rain drizzling from the cloudy skies. The sea-wyrms signaled that the harbor was mercifully free from corruption by Mad Priests. Jahno had declared that we would take lodgings at a fine inn, something necessary to impress the Gilded Council, and I confess, even I was immeasurably glad to hear it.

  By our reckoning, it had taken three days for the children of Miasmus to follow us from the Nexus to Papa-ka-hondras. It wasn’t a great deal of time with which to work, but at least it would afford us a night or two of comfort.

  Nearing the harbor, we found it barricaded by a line of Tukkani trade-ships, and the captain of a ship with the black-and-white-striped sails of the coursers of Obid the Stern in apparent negotiation with them. A pang of excitement gripped me, and I could not help but wonder if Vironesh was aboard it.

  Considerably less pleased by the sight, Kooie whistled an inquiry to Jahno, who shook his head. “No, we’re here on trade, we’ve every right to be here and the Tukkani will uphold it,” he said. “And the coursers can’t remand us for things we might have done in the past. Not without proof, anyway.”

  Zariya was gazing intently at the coursers’ ship. “I don’t think the coursers of Obid are here on a matter of justice,” she said quietly. “Not this time.”

  She was right.

  As we drew closer, I saw that the entire ship was crammed with people; not sailors or warriors, but ordinary men, women, and children, most of them fair-skinned and dark-haired, crowded shoulder to shoulder on the deck. Some of them clutched bundles of belongings. All of them looked stricken and frightened, as though the world had dropped out from under them.

  Essee’s hands flew up to cover her mouth, her eyes bright with sympathy.

  Tarrok drew a sharp breath, the unexpected sight hitting him hard. “Ah, by all the fallen stars! Those are Traskans.”

  “Pull alongside them,” Jahno ordered.

  There was shouting as we did so, and the ship’s crew shoved passengers out of the way, coming to the starboard railing to burnish long barbed spears with which to repel the sea-wyrms. Eeeio and Aiiiaii angled prudently away.

  “We are here on a matter of trade and mean no harm!” Jahno called to the ship. “What passes here?”

  The ship’s captain pushed her way through the throng. “Miasmus has risen and Trask has fallen,” she said bluntly. “That is what has come to pass while you gallivanted about the seas, wyrm-raider.”

  Tarrok leaned over the railing. “What do you mean when you say Trask has fallen, lady?”

  The captain’s expression changed. “Forgive me, friend. The Risen Maw spews forth all that it has devoured, and I fear an army of the dead and drowned overruns your nation. The coursers of Obid do but seek to repatriate the survivors.” She spat on the crowded deck. “And these sons of bitches will take no further refugees.”

  “Tukkan has taken its share!” an official shouted from the barricade. “It is all we can do to protect our own.”

  Tarrok paled. “Have you word of the family of Alara, daughter of Kadar, and her twin sons?”

  “That is his wife and children,” Evene murmured. “His family refused to accompany him into exile. Our Thunderclap does not like to speak of it.”

  The revelation struck me like a blow to the gut. All these months at sea together, and I’d had no idea.

  The captain conferred with her crew and heads shook. “There is no such family in our manifest. Perhaps they found refuge on another ship, but I can make no guarantee. It is a time of death and chaos.”

  Tarrok bowed his head.

  The official in charge of the barricade line made a shooing gesture. “Carry on toward Khent; you may find a welcome there.”

  The captain glared at him, but she gave an order, and the ship’s oars began to churn the water, propelling it backward.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Have you word of Vironesh of Zarkhoum? He sailed among you!”

  “The purple man, the great warrior?” The captain nodded and pointed toward the west. “He fights in the vanguard against the army of the risen dead, buying time for the rest of us to rescue whom we might. Trask has fallen, but Kerreman yet holds forth resistance. But make no mistake,” she add
ed grimly, “the armies of Miasmus are coming for all of us.”

  “Not today, they aren’t,” the official retorted. “So take your wretched human cargo elsewhere!”

  Our ship drew back and we watched the coursers of Obid take their leave, navigating the swirling conjunction of the currents to head northward, our mood somber as the black-and-white sails dwindled in the distance.

  “Hey!” the official shouted at us. “Will you dawdle all day, wyrm-raiders? State your business!”

  Jahno clapped a sympathetic hand on Tarrok’s back. “We’re here on a matter of trade.”

  “Stand by to be boarded,” the official replied with a nervous glance at the sea-wyrms idling patiently in the water. “Assemble your crew. No one passes until we’re sure there are none of the afflicted among you.”

  We obeyed.

  The inspection was accomplished swiftly and the official returned to his own vessel. Oars out, the ships forming the barricade moved and parted, and the official gave us a magnanimous salute. “Welcome to Tukkan.”

  FIFTY

  Three days.

  We were acutely conscious of the limits of the time allotted to us to achieve our goal, all of us. Upon securing a berth in the harbor of Yanakhat, Jahno sought out lodgings in the finest inn the city had to offer, securing a porter for our trunks and a hired palanquin for Zariya using the funds remaining from the sale of her Barakhan wedding-cloth in the Caldera. As soon as we were ensconced, he sent a messenger to the Gilded Council requesting an audience on a matter of utmost and urgent concern. At Zariya’s suggestion, he sent it in her name as a royal princess of the House of the Ageless of Zarkhoum.

  It proved a good suggestion, for the council responded that very day, granting us an audience the following morning.

  With the exception of Essee, the Elehuddin had elected to remain aboard the ship, more comfortable in a harbor than a city. The sea-wyrms would patrol the ocean for signs of the children of Miasmus, and we had agreed that if the vanguard was spotted, they would send Tliksee to alert us and flee to the far side of the isle, where we would reconvene as swiftly as possible. Tukkan was considerably larger than Papa-ka-hondras, but a great deal smaller than Zarkhoum, and we thought we could outpace the sea-spiders by crossing overland if need be.