One Man

by Harry Connolly

  It was a bold plan. Risky. It had earned him the cautious approval of the nobles who visited the family compound to curry favor with his mother.

  But it was fake. For his real First Labor, Kyrionik had something more daring in mind.

  The captain approached. Her hair was clipped short and her face deeply tanned. She was probably around fifty years old, close to Aratill’s age. Although this was supposed to be Kyrionik’s mission, she addressed his bodyguard as much as him. “I expect we’ll dock at Vu-Dolmont by midmorning.”

  “When will it come into sight?” Kyrionik asked, glancing ahead of the ship.

  “It has already, your virtue.” The captain pointed off the starboard side, to the north. Kyrionik turned around and he saw it, a broad, squat, hazy gray mass on the northern horizon.

  “That’s Vu-Dolmont?” Aratill asked.

  This time, it their guide who answered. “It is,” Selso Rii said. He cringed from the look the captain gave him. It was not his place to answer questions. Wringing his hands nervously, he stepped back against the rail.

  “Captain, I wonder if I might ask a question of you,” Kyrionik said, then plunged forward without waiting for permission. “Wouldn’t it be faster to sail on a beam reach and approach directly?” He kept his tone light, as though this was a classroom and she his tutor.

  Still, when she answered, it was with a tone that suggested his remarks were tiresome. “We dare not approach so directly because the waters here are treacherous. There are pillars beneath the waves that would tear out our hull, and Fair Season is not maneuverable enough to pass through safely, even if we traveled under broad sunlight. According to your guide’s pirate map, we’ll have to sail beyond and approach from the southwest at broad reach. With luck, we will sail into the bay at Childfall without incident.”

  Fair enough. “Thank you, captain, for sharing your expertise.”

  She bowed, glanced at Aratill—who pretended not to pay attention—then left to speak with her first mate.

  Selso Rii stepped forward nervously. “Not a pirate map, your virtue. We were never pirates. Never that.”

  Oblifell looked at him with undisguised disgust. “Smugglers, then.”

  Rii addressed Kyrionik as though he had spoken. “Your virtue, we were traders. Humble folk in search of our way in the world, such as fortune and the law provide.”

  “What concerns me,” Kyrionik said, “is the accuracy of your map and your story.”

  Selso Rii stepped closer. “The map is good, your virtue. The captain has said that it matches her charts. She has said so, your virtue. I think you may have heard her. I hope you have, your virtue. I also hope my humble map might add slightly to her charts, if it’s not too bold of me to say, your virtue. And I would hardly have come all this way, among such stern, dangerous fighting folk, if I had not told my story true. I will keep to my part of the bargain.”

  “And I mine. If you lead us to our prize, and we sail safely away with it, I will see you brought to a Salashi hospital and made healthy again.”

  Selso Rii absentmindedly touched the thin cloth cap over his balding pate. Beneath it was a growing cancer, common enough in a man exposed too long to the sun. “Your virtue’s word is as good as a chest full of golden coins, of course it is,” he said, as though he suspected otherwise but didn’t dare admit it. “Of course it is.”

  Aratill took hold of Rii’s upper arm and began leading him away. “You just be ready to come ashore with us tomorrow.”

  “Ashore?” Rii squeaked. “Good sir, what do stern fighting folk like yourself need with a man like Selso Rii? Will you need someone who is handy with a mop? Or a needle and thread?”

  “Of all the humankind on this ship,” Aratill said, “only one has ever set foot in Childfall itself and survived. I want that man with us.”

  “But good sir—”

  “Our arrangement,” Kyrionik interrupted, “was for you to lead us to the spot.”

  “And I have, your virtue!” Rii sounded offended. “I have! The map is clearly marked.”

  “If all I needed was a crude smuggler’s map, we would have left you in that tavern in Spillwater. Our arrangement was that you would lead us to this prize. If you renege, I will be disappointed but not surprised.”

  Selso Rii’s mouth twisted with resentment, and he bowed low, where his expression could not be seen. “Oh, no, your virtue. I would never want you to be disappointed, your virtue. Never that.” He backed away.

  Aratill watched him go, scowling. “That one is not to be trusted,” he said gruffly.

  Kyrionik snorted. “I picked up on the subtle clues as well.”

  Aratill and Oblifell both barked out a loud laugh. Everyone on deck turned to look at them, and Kyrionik felt a flush of pride.

  He glanced northward again at the distant island. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?”

  Just before sunset, the captain changed course, and sailors doubled their efforts, untying ropes and letting out slack. Their sails swelled, as did their speed. Kyrionik’s mother loved the open ocean—had, in fact, captured two pirate ships sailing out of The Free City of Koh-Alzij for her First Labor—but he’d never felt the same call. But he had a healthy respect for the difficulty and complexity of the work.

  The first mate climbed up into the bow. “Dinner is served in the captain’s mess, your virtue.”

  Kyrionik knew when he was being asked to make space for working folk.

  At dinner, he, Aratill, and Oblifell discussed the next day’s itinerary with the captain. Shulipik, who had removed his armor for dinner, also joined them, although he had little to say.

  Could the ghostkind have followed humankind this far and settled on the island? Aratill thought that unlikely, but the idea cast a pall. The reports that the island was infested by bloodkind or shadowkind were not taken seriously. Bloodkind were well known in Koh-Salash—they had lived in abundance on Salash Hill before humankind drove them underground—and not greatly feared. Shadowkind were rumored to be in all sorts of places, but for hundreds of years, they had been nothing more than rumor. Sensible folk believed they had been left behind in the west, if encroaching ghostkind armies had not destroyed them.

  It was the ullroct that everyone was concerned with. There was little doubt that one had once lived on Vu-Dolmont. The Harkan people had tried to settle the island fifty years before, but a single ullroct had destroyed the settlement. Kyrionik had studied the records carefully—what he could access in Suloh’s Temple, at least. For the benefit of the others, he repeated once more what he’d learned.

  The settlement had been established with a garrison of three hundred soldiers and a work crew twice that number—many with their families—dropped there by a small fleet of ships. After six months spent clearing the lowest plateau and building a walled town upon it, a “creature of iron and flame” emerged from the jungle. It destroyed the settlement, driving the people to the ships. Those that could not make it, children included, were driven off the cliff onto the rocks below.

  Some sources claimed The Harkan throne provided a glitterkind to the settlers, but that seemed extremely unlikely. If there was one on the island, it had to have been there when the settlers dropped anchor. Since it was common knowledge that ullrocts destroyed glitterkind on sight, it would take a wild stroke of luck for them to arrive at the island and find it still there. Still, Selso Rii had seen it, and not long ago.

  Their meal finished, the ship’s steward cleared the table and the captain laid out the map. Vu-Dolmont was an irregular blob forty miles across at its widest point, with a high, curving ridge that ran from the northwest to the southeast. There were no beaches, nor did it have a rocky shoreline that could be approached with a skiff. The entire island was surrounded by cliffs, the lowest being the edge of the western plateau where Childfall had been founded. Beyond the settlement, the land rose sharply to the ridge. The Childfall plateau and the ridge behind it were perhaps fifteen percent of the island’s total su
rface. No one knew what lay beyond.

  Their main concern was simple. Was the ullroct still living on the island fifty years later? And if so, what did that mean for the prize they’d come to find?

  Because four years earlier, Selso Rii had been part of a landing party desperate to find fresh water and wood to repair their ship, and he had looked deep into the jungle and seen a spray of rainbow colors there.

  The people of Koh-Benjatso did not hide their glitterkind behind high walls and locked gates. They were kept in public squares, among the finest greenery the city can provide. Selso Rii had seen sunlight reflect off of glitterkind skin many times in his life. In that distant city, the creatures’ healing magic was cultivated in secrecy, but creatures themselves were displayed like temple monuments.

  And on that day in the ruins of Childfall, Selso Rii had happened to be standing in just the right spot, at just the right time of day, to see that same flash of light and color that he’d seen hundreds of times before in his home city.

  Perhaps the ullroct was dead. Perhaps it was still there but hadn’t yet found its prey. Perhaps Selso Rii was lying for reasons of his own, or simply mistaken and there was no glitterkind there, waiting to be plucked out of the jungle like pirate treasure.

  Tomorrow, they would find out.

  The sun rose to reveal that the waters around Vu-Dolmont were infested with hunting jellies. The captain ordered baskets of shit prepared. For months, the whole crew had been relieving themselves into clay pots. Now those pots were strapped into tightly woven baskets, cracked with a hammer, and hung over the sides.

  Aratill was amazed. “This drives off hunting jellies?”

  The captain’s expression was grim. “Usually.”

  Stairs had been carved into the cliff face leading from the water to the plateau above. It was only seventy feet, but Kyrionik still found the height forbidding. Even though the day was a calm one, the captain wouldn’t bring Fair Season near the cliff face. The landing party had to approach on a skiff, six at a time. Aratill insisted they carry their armor in packs, and that Kyrionik come in the next-to-last boat, which he did, although he thought he would be more comfortable on the broken stone stair inside his armor rather than feeling the weight of it pulling his shoulder.

  His skin tingled. He’d never faced real danger before—not when he faced the bandits, or competed in the dueling yard, or raced his stallions. Not real danger. Not like this. It was intoxicating.

  “What was this settlement called before it was destroyed and renamed?” he asked as he negotiated a crumbling switchback. “I assume the Harkans picked something more optimistic, but I couldn’t find it in our records.”

  “I’m not sure anyone knows.” Aratill answered.

  “Probably erased for political reasons,” Oblifell said. “We’ve never been friendly with Harka.”

  Kyrionik glanced down at the churning green water and the rocks just below the surface. A person might survive a leap from the top of the cliff, but only if they hit the water in exactly the right spot. His own cousin, the Imsyel heir, had drowned after jumping from a third of this height, striking a rock and breaking his back.

  He glanced up and imagined men, women, and children leaping into the air above, hoping that the fall would be luckier than the thing chasing them. Children.

  “Why ‘Childfall’ then?” Kyrionik shifted his pack higher. “If so many people leaped from the cliff and died, and so many were children, shouldn’t it be ‘Childrenfall’?”

  “Because,” Oblifell said, “one dead child is tragedy enough. The death of a single child is like the end of the world.”

  Something in his voice suggested there was something important behind Oblifell’s words. The older Kyrionik got, the more complicated other people seemed to be. This was something he should ask the older warrior about someday.

  Just thinking about it spoiled the tingling thrill of the adventure they were undertaking. He turned his attention to the stairs and climbed in silence.

  Childfall was moments away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Before leaving the empty casino, Kyrioc summoned his cloak of mirrors.

  Dawnshine earned its name because it was built so close to the Upgarden deck that it received daylight only in the earliest hours of the day. It was now midafternoon, so Kyrioc was safely out of the daylight and could call up his cloaks.

  He moved with the crowd. No one paid him any attention. Whenever someone did glance his way, they did not see a scarred man in black clothes. He wasn’t sure what they saw—it would be different for each of them—but it would be unremarkable.

  He followed the crowd toward Undertower and caught the lift down.

  Kyrioc circled the lift platform to stand in the shadow of the central shaft. Despite his stillness and his reluctance to make eye contact—which helped him avoid attention and therefore aided his cloak—his heart was pounding in his ears. He wanted to stampede through the crowds. He wanted to leap over everyone’s head. He wanted to shout his throat raw.

  He’d seen his family. He wasn’t supposed to look up, but when his younger brother shouted, You there! Kyrioc had done what reflex demanded and looked Culzatik in the eye.

  Kyrioc stepped off the lift at the Shadetree deck. It was upcity from Woodgarden, but this Undertower lift didn’t connect directly. Shadetree was widely considered a “safe” district. It was mainly a residential space for tradefolk, laborers, and merchants with modest ambitions. The buildings down there did not need carved skywood panels hung above the lintels. They were constructed from real wood harvested in the north, and the figures—sails, stalks of wheat, cresting waves, owls, or leaping fish—were carved directly into the building.

  The lift had been slow, and Kyrioc could not maintain his concentration forever. Dropping his cloak of mirrors, he hurried south along the boulevard. Shadetree was not known for street thieves, but its axe handle–wielding citizen patrols could be so much worse.

  The fastest route back to the anonymity of the pawnshop led through Gray Flames, but that was the home of the city’s administrative bureaucracy and it was thick with constables. Kyrioc doubted word of his pursuit would precede him, but he’d also thought he could slip through his own funeral unnoticed. The safer path was the longest one.

  His heart was still thumping. For the past few months, he’d spent long hours in the pawnshop, learning to suffocate that response with stillness and remorse, but it was never far below the surface. As he moved farther into the deck, in this place where sunlight rarely shone, he thought he heard a familiar birdlike chittering from the darkened alleys…

  No. It couldn’t be. It was just his imagination filling the shadows with memories.

  Still, he readied his cloak of iron and hurried on.

  Kyrioc passed into the busier, more public part of the deck. Most everything was closed for the holiday, of course, but a few cafes were open. The people working there, as well as most of the customers, were mostly light-skinned foreigners. They probably observed the funeral customs of their homelands and had no use for Mourning Day.

  Some people didn’t wait to grieve.

  Suddenly, the unfocused anger drained out of him and he stopped in the center of the promenade. He hung his head, letting his shaggy black hair cover his face.

  All he’d wanted to do was honor those who had died in his place, but he’d only brought chaos. The faces of his guard came back to him, along with the sounds of fires in the jungle and the screams of the dying.

  Eventually, a woman stepped out of her tea shop to ask if he was okay, and Kyrioc could only nod and walk on. He knew the way home from there.

  It took nearly an hour to make his way back to Woodgarden. At the top of the ramp that connected the decks, he stumbled onto a mini-caravan of mule-driven carts loaded with barley. The guards traveling with them carried shields emblazoned with the Safroy bull. They turned westward onto a boulevard without taking notice of him.

  The Safroy family owned wareh
ouses in the darkest, westernmost end of Shadetree, but they were typically rented out to small businesses. Why would Mother—he meant the Safroy parsu—store a shipment of grain there instead of the safer warehouses in The Folly?

  Unless she was preparing for a siege.

  But the problems of a noble family had nothing to do with a commoner like Kyrioc.

  Back in Woodgarden, the young street toughs who haunted the plankways were absent. Maybe they had lost a few of their own this past year and stood vigil for them. The only people out were the ironshirts—who were always on patrol, holiday or no—and families moving between Mournings. A few vegetable shops were open, but their goods looked picked-over.

  He passed around one of Yth’s abandoned temples to an intersection outside his building. There he heard a loud slap, then a shrill voice. Three people stood in a little circle. Two were constables, who were listening to a woman with her back to him. He didn’t know her, but he knew the type—a woman in a tattered robe who was outraged, outraged, at the state her neighborhood had sunk to.

  “What do we pay taxes for? Huh? Why are we paying your salaries when you can’t even keep these little thieves down in Mudside where they belong?”

  She shifted position, revealing a boy of about ten who was probably her son. Beside him, in the center of the circle, was Riliska, child of Rulenya. There was no bright smile on her face now.

  “What are you doing in this district?” the woman shouted. She slapped the back of Riliska’s head. “You’re probably not even Salashi, huh? Right?” She struck the girl again. Riliska hunched down, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  One of the ironshirts laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Good madam, you must stop hitting that little girl.”

  The woman ignored her and shoved Riliska on the side of her head. “Don’t you glare at me! Didn’t your mother teach you not to stare at adults?”