by Marc Secchia
Mister Pirate absconded from her bedroom window leaving several parting instructions. “Clean your feet. Check the carpet for splodges of mud. Islands’ sakes, take a bath or whatever you rich girls do, and get rid of those muddy clothes in a place your maidservants won’t find them. You don’t want any lamko stink to betray your night’s entertainment.”
She mimed booting his departing backside. “Whatever you rich girls do? Shoo, slug face! And take your insufferable lamko pong with you.”
Tytiana decided she would indeed take a long, steaming hot bath in fragrant, bubbly luxury. She would wallow in the warmth with her selection of the finest bath salts and think about that boy shivering somewhere outside in the chilly mists, waiting for the working day to begin. While she indulged herself, she would work out exactly how to punish him for his sudden attack of snark. No way was that golden-eyed upstart getting the better of her!
She had a new mission.
* * * *
If only he knew which way the wind was blowing with her. Tytiana seemed his best friend one moment, his muse the next, and the terrible Red when the mood came upon her. Her tongue was whip-edged, and well and often he experienced it. Why were women so confoundedly changeable, he wanted to scream? So bewildering? If they had but one personality, life would be simplicity itself. More like a man, say. Then he would have been able to prepare himself. Learn the map. Understand the lay of the Isles. But, how brave a soul dared to venture into that cesspit of unpredictability? No chance. Tytiana seemed more like five people inside that simmering flame-addled brain of hers, and those five people seemed to have a great many debates and disagreements. That alone would have driven him loopier than a quadruple rainbow.
“But no,” he grumbled to himself as he jogged home some evenings. He would kick a stone or a fallen branch. “She apparently takes pleasure in contrariness. ‘Here Jakani, have some fruit for your lovely family – you lousy, snotty-nosed lamko monkey!’ ‘Come help me inside this cage – so I can try to exterminate you, you festering little rodent!’ And then one sugary smile and everything’s supposed to be bolts of silk between us. Well, I’m not having it! Too dratted gorgeous for her own good. Festering plague rats, you’re a hopeless case, Jakani. When will you learn to accept your lot in life?”
When the White Moon turned pink, say.
Or when he actually understood that bewitching girl in the slightest measure!
“Which happens to define the word, ‘never.’ ” He belted an unsuspecting tuft of grass with one highly aggrieved toe. “Train, train, train. What am I even training for?” A swish of an unseen sword at an enemy. “Never even held a blade. What’s the point?
Jakani knew he was also owed a long-overdue dressing down from his parents, but they did not seem in any rush to address the issue of his undeniably disastrous regard for the Choice of the House. Thankfully her work took her away now for days at a time as she assessed the season’s crop, thread quality and woven products, and plied her trade to the greater glory and wealth of House Cyraxana.
Much easier to be separated.
He could keep his dismal self perfect company.
The High Master strolled across the courtyard between the mansion and the arboretum one day, actually whistling a merry ditty.
Jakani checked that the suns were still in the sky. Apparently the Island-World had not just turned cartwheels in shock. Right. Time to go haul some more water. They really should build a pump system for the arboretum … now there was an idea. He would put it to Tytiana when she was not in quite so much of a bite-everything mood.
Right now, he heard her before he saw her. She was chewing out one of her father’s administrative assistants at a dizzying volume as she strode across the courtyard, her vermilion dress with a short lace train in the Fra’aniorian style swishing across the ruddy sandstone flagstones. The poor man had to trot to keep up with her storming progress.
He cocked an ear, annoyed that her explosion had disturbed her younger sister’s harp practice up in the main House. He had once or twice seen the reputedly exquisite Choice Quiraeli walking in the gardens from afar, and he assumed that she was the harpist. One might ask, but questions about the High Master’s family and especially his children were perilous ground for any Dirt Picker. Best keep the head down and any curiosity to himself. Magical voice, though. She sang like a nightlark.
Aye, there it was. Apparently someone had tried to slip substandard second-quality silk bolts amongst the firsts, and Tytiana was through with dealing with gibbering morons! Bad luck for them. Tytiana was not known to be gentle with idiocy, and far less so with outright fraudulence.
Spying him directly upon entering the arboretum, the heiress whirled, shoved a bundle of scrolls and books and equipment into his hands, and barked, “You! Island’s sakes!”
“Sorry, o – o Choice, I –” Jakani blathered. They had just zapped each other again. His hand buzzed as if an evil wasp had stung him repeatedly across the palm. Four spots. Exactly where her fingers had touched him.
“Shut your rancid trap, boy. Try to handle a quill pen properly next time! You!” She waved her cane dangerously. “Get over here and take notes faster. I don’t have all day.”
Poor fellow. He was feeling the heat literally and figuratively. The rubescent evening suns seemed to strike the arboretum with especial strength, turning it into a hothouse despite all the vents being thrown wide open. Jakani surreptitiously watered his own feet and calves just to enjoy the cooling sensation, while Tytiana worked up a fierce glow as she flame-grilled the administrator on what she expected his team to have accomplished by the following morning.
Dismissed, he departed at a run, clearly having to hold back tears.
Feeling smug, Jakani?
Tytiana’s burning gaze lit upon him. “Dirt Picker. Bring me water.” She kicked off her slippers and stretched out both feet, shuttering her eyes. “Infernal weather. Stop sniggering this instant, you encrustation on a rat’s ulcers. You would not believe the levels of mendacity I had to put up with today. Oh! What are you doing?”
Her squeal hit a pitch of astonishment as Jakani watered her bare right foot.
“Oh come on, Choice, don’t be a baby. Admit how nice this is.”
“Umm.”
“Water your head while I’m at it?”
She waggled her fingers lazily. “Death.”
“Is that how it is?”
“Your mother was so lovely. Can’t imagine how she raised a son like you.”
“What was your mother like?”
“Don’t speak about my mother! Don’t you – get out! Go!”
She turned, she snapped, but the raw fury in her voice was what moved Jakani to obey. Her pain was all too clear. Whatever had Isimi said or done to stir such grief within this troubled young woman?
He walked quickly away from the white beast of a House, thinking how it spread its influence throughout Helyon Island like a monstrous fern with delicate yet insidious tendrils. He passed through the rolling ornamental gardens, landscaped and manicured to within an inch of their lives, which he had learned held another whole range of unique and exotic botanical specimens, some of which Tytiana was still struggling to identify. Floral puzzles. Unidentifiable scents. Probably yet another thing that enraged her. Here was a copse of trees with blue-edged, razor-sharp leaves, and there, a towering stand of what he understood was called jazaraki or giant bamboo from the far South of the Kingdom of Kaolili – the faraway, sprawling Island Archipelago from which his family and so many of these serfs had originated. It grew incredibly fast. The twenty-foot stems looked good for building, he adjudged. Hard, smooth, perfectly straight. Maybe they could ask the Choice for some cuttings to grow experimentally?
His feet found the smaller paths now and he darted down that long, long decline with feet as fleet as any windroc, obeying an impulse that for many long minutes he did not understand. Danger? He sensed danger in the wind. He could not run fast enough. Five miles seemed like fo
rever, a nightmare in which one fled endlessly from a terror that was never quite seen; where the dream world seemed to clutch its victim and refuse to let go.
Faster! The fenturi trees flashed by, burgundy skyward-thrusting fingers topped by gleaming silver fruit clusters, often up to two dozen nestled together, each fruit the size of the ball of his thumb. As he ran, the evening drew in, great streaks of pastel reds and yellows striped between several low-lying cloudbanks. From the slopes, Jakani could see beyond the Island’s edge, not two miles from his home, and everywhere he looked, the orchards and towers seemed peaceful. Dragons patrolled the skies. White threads of smoke from cooking fires were very different to the dark, billowing pyres of draconic destruction which had periodically dotted Helyon over the last year.
Ease up. He passed several uniformed overseers on their way home. One made a half-hearted threatening gesture in his direction. He bowed respectfully on the run and vanished down the path.
No hint of trouble in the village. Light grey smoke curled from his chimney, bringing the scent of roasting beans to his nostrils. The hole blasted in the roof had been neatly repaired. The patch of thatch there was darker and less mossy than the rest of the roof. Several lower-slope neighbours’ children were walking down to the stream with buckets.
Thinking upon that fire, Jakani chewed upon his lip. Could it be that the oftener he and Tytiana touched, the less the magic sparked between them? That made sense. Over the course of a year a huge charge had built up. KABOOM! The magic had been dormant but had most certainly not left them. Yesterday, there had only been a slight tingle when she bumped into him accidently, but mostly, the Choice had learned perhaps through painful necessity to keep herself to herself. Besides, touch was forbidden. He should not even be contemplating, say, touching her daily to keep the charge from growing in crazy ways.
He peeked inside. Mom on her knees at the hearthside, roasting beans in a battered iron skillet. Mayoko busily whittling some purple tuber into their pot for lamko-standard vegetable stew. Airi balancing perilously on a chair back as she tried to reach for the last weave of garlic cloves hanging from a rafter … toppling!
He flashed into action before the accident even began. Hurdling the table, Jakani caught the chair in his left hand before it struck his mother’s back, snaffled Airi into his right arm and switched legs mid-air to catch the weave neatly atop his left foot as he balanced deftly upon his right.
Chair, sister, garlic – all safe.
His sister yelped, “Jaki!”
Isimi stared. With an insouciant grin, he flipped the garlic weave into the air with his toes. Popped a kiss onto Airi’s cheek. Depositing his sister safely back in her chair, he caught the garlic again, and placed it with aplomb in front of her. “Your garlic, o Princess most fair. Mother.”
“Scamp,” laughed Isimi, but allowed herself to be caught up into a big hug. Suddenly, her arms tightened almost painfully on his neck. “You being careful out there?”
“Aye, mother.”
“Did she ever explain –”
“Not really. Choice Tytiana does not explain herself much, unless it relates to how best to cultivate fruit or prune a vine.”
“Hmm. Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Mom! Don’t you?”
His mother gave him one of those motherly looks that was more loaded than any cart ever bound for market.
He smiled, “Alright, you win.”
Isimi stroked his cheek. “There are times I feel life is so unfair, I want to weep.” She punched his shoulder lightly; Jakani tightened his grip beneath her twisted legs to better support her. She was so light. Bird-like. “No, you silly ralti-head. Don’t start sighing in expectation of the inevitable parental lecture. Don’t tell your father, but –” she breathed into his ear so that his siblings could not hear “– I believe that destiny is a strange and fickle wind that blows where it pleases, and cares little for the absurdities of Human behaviour and strictures. This is my prayer for you, my son: That you will gather your courage and integrity and ride that enchanted wind to whichever destination it will take you, for I sense in my heart it will take you far. Farther than you can imagine.”
He exhaled gustily, feeling as if he had just been socked in the gut.
“No whispery-whispery,” Airi sniffed.
“But from a mother’s heart – just you be careful, alright?” She pinched his ear and indicated the hearth. “Fire is extraordinarily alluring.”
They both knew she was not referring to those flames.
* * * *
“Something’s not right,” Zihaeri whispered in the darkness. “Father met with one of the Dragons last night, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t one of the mercenaries.”
Tytiana came fully awake. “Hey. You’re shivering.”
“Ah …”
“Come on, then.”
Her sister slipped beneath the covers. “Dancing rainbows, you’re like a private furnace.”
“What’s bothering you, Zihaeri?”
“Well, I’m … it’s just not like father to be cheerful, right?”
“Right.”
“He actually kissed me before bedtime tonight. It has been four months, two weeks and five days since he – aye, laugh if you like, but I … I just can’t help myself.”
“Sorry. You’re as bad as me with my work.” Tytiana hugged her sister closer. “Silly pollen-fluff. If we’re counting hugs and kisses around these parts, I’ve got some serious catching up to do, haven’t I? Hey! Feel this.”
“The egg? Oh! Aye … definitely something alive, tapping away inside there. You sleep with it?”
“Just keeping it warm.”
“Not a problem for some people around here. Oh, here we go again, tap-tap-tap,” Zihaeri chuckled. “I bet it’ll be awfully cute, whatever it is. It seems to like it when you start talking. So, you definitely agree father is up to something?”
“Obviously.”
Worse, their father was ambitious in ways that Tytiana was not sure her sister truly understood. Zihaeri could be a little naïve. She always thought the best of people. Well, she herself did not know the lay of father’s plans, for his nature was to be as guarded as a Dragon’s treasure hoard, but she had participated in enough business and political meetings with her father to know that he had few scruples about how he achieved his ends. The point was always to win. What moved him was a lust for wealth, influence and bragging rights. Now, what could he be after this time? What would make a man like the High Master so strangely happy?
“Want to help me find out what it might be?”
Tytiana nodded quickly. “I’m in. But what can we do? Oh – Zihaeri already has a plan.”
“Naturally,” said her sister, trying the ‘innocent as a kitten’ look. “So, here’s the lay of the silk. First of all, you are going to take an expedition to the hot springs to see how your tiger cub is doing.”
“I am?”
“Aye. Now, wrap your devious little mind around this idea …”
* * * *
Jakani awoke with an odd feeling he should not be sleeping. Memories of a chaotic dream faded into nothingness. He had been sweating. Thrashing about. Probably attacking the bedposts in his sleep.
Very quietly, he sat up. His was the top bunk, so the roof was very low overhead. He sniffed. Smoke? Did he smell smoke? Perhaps mother had not banked the hearth fire properly. Dangling his legs over the edge, Jakani slipped cat-footed to the floor. His youngest brother slept just below him, and Sokadan had the bottommost bunk for ease of access. He made no sound as he stole out of the bedroom. The fire was fine. Just a slight glow. After automatically checking the egg’s location, now bare, he – huh?
The egg was back.
Sitting on the hearthside.
Beautiful as a living jewel, innocent as an infant.
His first reaction was that Tytiana was going to open his guts for immediate examination. The second, was to puzzle over how this egg had once again managed to d
isobey basic physical laws. It travelled? Of its own volition?
No sooner had he thought this, than the egg wriggled urgently and he had the strongest feeling that something was not right. Outside.
No time to think. Grab egg. Stuff into pocket. Slip the latch and dash outside.
A glance at the stars told him it was two hours before dawn. There was no hint of daylight, so why the peculiar glow over the hills – Jakani sprinted up to the watchtower, his feet pounding the track double-time. Past the topmost hut of the village. Up the short incline. What? Where was the watch? Narrowing his eyes, he peered up at the platform. He saw the dim figure of a man up there, silhouetted against the stars, but he was slumped over the edge in a posture that unmistakably screamed ‘dead!’
He climbed fast, two rungs at a time.
The fellow was … “Ugh!” he coughed violently. “Oh, oh mercy …”
His throat had not just been slit. It had been completely torn away, leaving the white of his spine – Jakani vomited. Heaved again. He had to avert his eyes. Then he forced himself up the last couple of rungs to the platform. He gazed around at the still hills of the estate, but his attention immediately skipped across to multiple locations where patches of orange glowed unnaturally amidst the trees.
Fire! Fire in the orchards!
But the pattern was not natural. Looking out there, he saw a couple of dark shapes darting away from the nearest fires, upwind of his village. Strange time to be setting fires, he remembered thinking, for the season was not dry enough for the orchards to burn as they sometimes did from random lightning strikes, but the fires seemed to grow and spread before his eyes. Fuel. Someone was deliberately setting those fires, and they would be sweeping toward his village on the night breeze any moment now. He could already see flames leaping over the treetops, feeding greedily upon the highly flammable fenturi bark.
The gong! Where was the gong? The new installation had been ripped away, he saw, but it was dangling below the platform, held by a couple of bent bolts. What force could have done that?
Those moving shadows – were they coming toward him? Aye!