by Ben Blake
*
It was astonishing, really. Love was not usually a part of marriage, whatever the poets and bards might claim in their songs. Daughters of noble houses married to secure alliances and treaties, while poor women married to find a measure of security in a harsh world. Love was a matter of chance.
That she had found it, and in such a man, made Farajalla feel like the heroine of one of those bards’ tales. Her heart went on thumping for a full minute after Calesh had slid down the ladder, and that after nearly three years of marriage, when she should surely be used to being near him. She turned back to the bow and the land ahead, to hide her face from the crew. She was sure her feelings must be written in her eyes in letters of fire.
It was three years ago now, when he had ridden through the open gates of the fortress at Harenc. Madai warriors had been roaming the countryside for days, testing the Duke’s defences, which were weaker that spring than ever. There were simply not enough men, not enough warm bodies and willing hearts to hold the lands the All-Church had taken. Farajalla, half Madai and half conquering Gallene, wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Calesh had brought two hundred soldiers, all of them clad in the distinctive black and white livery of the Hand of the Lord. Piebalds, the other Orders called them, usually with a sneer. Attracted by the hubbub of their arrival, Farajalla came to the top of the steps just as Calesh swung down from his horse, a big raw-boned animal that stood calm and serene in the dust. The rider was big too, at least as tall as she was, and wearing armour of silver mail, dusty and stained from long travelling. The armour of a fighting man, made for hard use and not for show. His head was bare, and he was barely on the ground before he turned and his eyes met hers, and everything changed forever.
She had thought her father would have to acknowledge her publicly as his, before she could hope to find a noble-born husband. And that had never been likely. He might tumble the servants when the whim took him, but he would not admit the consequences. Few nobles would. That meant Farajalla would have to find a Madai man, assuming there was one on the earth who would not mind the pollution of foreign blood in her veins. She had been resigned to it: women faced worse, after all. Her mother had, not least when the lord of Harenc had laid his roving eye on her, and then his hands. Women in the castle called Sevrey the grunter, and from the whispers, grunting was the least of it.
Yet now here Farajalla was, standing at the prow of the Promise of Plenty, a ship of the Tyrian Sea-Fish guild about whom so many stories were told. Here she was, five hundred miles from her old home and less than a mile, now, from the new one she had never seen. She had come here with her husband, who was not a noble but had proven himself so much more. What she had told him was true: home was wherever he was. This ship was home, while he was on it. A roofless crofter’s hut would be home if he was there.
The harbour was closer now, three curved fingers of stone jutting out into the waves, filled with masts. Beyond them the town spread out, a mass of narrow streets and alleys between houses roofed with reddish slates. Not much different from home, really, except that in Tura d’Madai the roofs were yellow, or grey. Further away she could see the indistinct shapes of rocky hills, marked with ribbons of road which led to the places Calesh had told her about: the Margrave’s seat at Mayence, and the Hidden House, and the Academy Farajalla had heard of even in Tura d’Madai. To her ears they sounded like names out of myth, fantastical places she would never see, but now she was going to. If they were still there.
She turned and looked to her right, along the line of ships. They had started to straggle as sails came down, some managing the shift better than others, but they were still quite close. More were strung out to the other side, making nearly a hundred of them put together, and all within sight. The captain said that was a result of good weather throughout the journey, and very unusual. Normally the fleet would be scattered like waterholes in the desert, and would limp into Parrien in twos and threes over a week or more.
Farajalla thought that perhaps it was fate. Whatever the situation was in Sarténe – and it might all be over by now – the little army would face it together. She was thinking that, and studying the town ahead for any hint of danger, when boots rattled on the deck behind her.
“Lady,” Captain Seba greeted. He stopped a yard from her, his feet planted wide on the deck. The sea was calm today, but that stance would keep him secure in all but the most savage wind. It was habit to him, and just as horsemen walked with a bow-legged gait, so sailors moved with their feet splayed outward when they were on land, like crippled ducks. “We’ll make land in a few moments.”
“I see that,” she said. “It’s been a good voyage, captain.” Farajalla had never set foot on a ship before leaving Tura d’Madai, so she didn’t really know how good the voyage had been, but there wasn’t anything to complain about. Nothing except the shifting deck and the unsettling creak of timbers in wind, anyway, and there was no way to avoid that. At least there had been none of the sea monsters the crew all swore lived in the deeps. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Seba said. He squinted at the harbour. “It looks pretty full. We might have to put you off on the outer quays.”
“That will be fine,” she said, thinking again of the stories told about the Sea-Fish. They knew how to reach harbours no one else could find, it was said. They possessed charms to ward off the sea monsters that preyed on other ships, and knew where sirens waited with their come-hither songs to lure unlucky sailors onto rocks. The best of them could sail to where the sun sank into the waves every evening, and trade for shells and corals with merpeople. Seba had said nothing to suggest such claims were true, of course. If the Sea-Fish captains chattered, their secrets would not be secret very long.
The captain scratched ruminatively at the three-day stubble on his chin. “I can still hardly believe it, you know. It doesn’t seem possible, whatever your young lord says.”
“It’s possible,” she said. “I saw the letter myself, when it reached us in Elorium.”
She had seen Calesh open it, come to that, slicing through the envelope with a slender silver knife. They had been laughing over some joke or other across the remains of breakfast, a few forgotten figs and olives and the last of the fresh-pressed lemon juice. She was wearing a loose robe, not yet dressed for the day, while Calesh lounged in a wicker chair with crumbs on his shirt. Another ordinary morning, on a terrace in the rising sun.
He had gone pale, the paper crumpling in his white-knuckled hands and laughter dying on his lips. Less than an hour later he sent riders galloping out of the city to all the Hand of the Lord garrisons, ordering every man in Tura d’Madai to pack their gear in preparation for departure. They were leaving the holy city they had fought and bled for these past fifty years. Some of them were married, as Calesh was; some had fled problems at home, and others had invested money here in Tura d’Madai. It didn’t matter. They were leaving.
Nobody could countermand the order; the Hand answered to the Margrave of Mayence, sometimes, and to the Hierarch in Coristos, but they were both hundreds of miles away. So was the Lord Marshal, the only officer senior to Calesh. Not even the King in Elorium could order the Hand to stay. Farajalla had sat alone for a long time, watching the sun climb over the crowded buildings and streets of Elorium, before she picked the letter off the floor and read.
Someone murdered a priest of the All-Church on the Ferry Road by the river Rielle ten days ago. The Hierocracy will use it as a pretext for war.
Come if you can.
The paper was expensive but the script was an angular scrawl, as clumsy as the writing of a child just learning to join his letters. Or as the work of a man determined not to be identified. There was no signature, nothing to say who had written it, save a strange glyph at the bottom that she thought must be some kind of a code. The envelope, when Farajalla checked it, contained only her husband’s name and position in the Hand, in the same awkward letters. But the letterhead was an ornate cr
oss flanked by lions, and even Farajalla knew what that meant. Every woman and child in Tura d’Madai knew.
Come if you can.
“I have to go,” Calesh said from the doorway. She hadn’t heard him return. “We’ve been hearing rumours of trouble at home. I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course we don’t,” she said, with emphasis.
He looked at her. “Sarténe isn’t much like your home.”
“I am your wife,” she said, “and Sarténe will be my home, as long as you’re there.”
That was two months ago now. It had taken over a week for the five thousand men of the Hand to pack up and ride out of Elorium, following the winding road that led through rocks and dust to a coast bedecked with lavender. Half the city came out to see them go, Madai and Crusaders alike. They watched in total silence. Not even the Justified called out, though usually they took every chance they could to toss insults at the Hand of the Lord. Another fortnight for the journey itself, and then ten days waiting for enough ships to carry them all to be hired and gathered in the busy harbour at Jedat. The rest of the time was spent sailing, crossing the sea from east to west, with the desert of her home further behind every day.
The mainsail came rustling down, and the Promise slowed. Several sailors hurried below decks to work the long sweeps that would guide the ship to harbour, vaulting through the hatches with the ease of long years aboard ship. A cluster of fifteen soldiers watched them go, but made no move to help. Captain Seba had made it clear that his crew needed no assistance from men who didn’t know what they were doing. Farajalla supposed that was fair. The Hand of the Lord would not appreciate the aid in battle of a gang of sailors with marlinspikes and no clue how to stay alive.
“There are stories,” Seba said after a long silence, “of a group of people long ago who sailed away from the world we know. Away from Gallene, and Alinaur, and Tura d’Madai. Sometimes I think we should do the same ourselves.” He scratched his chin again. “Find a place to start over, without anyone to tell us what to do and what to believe.”
“That’s a dream,” Farajalla told him. She thought it was strange, that the Tyrian Sea-Fish told the same tales of others that landsmen did of them. “I’ve heard the story, but I can’t imagine there’s any truth to it. After all, if they went, why wouldn’t they have sent a ship back?”
“Well, now. There’s two things I’d say to that.” Seba rested rope-callused hands on the rail. “First is that if I’d run from someone, I’d think long and hard before I let them know where I was. Second, oceans aren’t like deserts, Lady, as easy to cross from west to east as from east to west. You might be on a lee shore, with the wind always against you, or the currents might not be right, or maybe something I’ve not thought of. Anyhow, it might be easy enough to sail to a place, but damn near impossible to sail away from it.”
Soldiers began to pass baggage out from the hold to their colleagues on deck, shifting it from hand to hand to be piled close by the port rail. Farajalla watched, trying to seem only idly interested. She relaxed when a brass-bound chest of black wood was hauled out, with much grunting from the sailors, and lifted safely onto the deck. The rest could be replaced. That chest could not.
Calesh clambered out of the hatch right after the chest, favouring his right leg a little. He wore a coat of age-green copper armour, plated like the scales of a lizard, which her father had given him for a wedding gift three years before. Expert smiths in some deep, long-ago cavern had treated the metal to make it harder even than iron, something modern metalsmiths couldn’t replicate. Giving it away was as close as Sevrey could come to acknowledging her as his daughter, she knew, but as Calesh buckled the sword belt around his waist she hardly thought of her father. In the evening sunshine Calesh looked so much like the man she’d first seen in her father’s courtyard that her breath caught. For an instant she could smell the hot sand of the desert, and hear camels snorting in their pens within the walls.
“The inn must be somewhere in that row of buildings behind the harbour,” Calesh said as he joined her. He brushed her hand with his fingers, the way he often did. “Kissing the Moon. Fool name for a tavern.” He was grinning as he spoke. “Raigal never did have any taste.”
“And of course my husband does,” she murmured.
He chuckled. “Of course I do. I picked you, didn’t I?”
“I thought it was me who picked you.”
“Was it?” he said. “I had to all but tie you down before you’d talk to me.”
“Oh, you liar,” she said, and fisted him under the ribs. He’d put on his armour though, so all she did was skin her knuckles, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her wince. “If you tell these friends of yours that, you’ll be sleeping on the couch, I swear.”
“Cruel, love,” he laughed. “When we’re about to sleep in a bed for the first time in weeks. I crave a proper bed, the same way I crave a good mug of ale.” His eyes became dreamy. “I haven’t had a decent tankard of ale since I left here.”
“Then you should indulge yourself,” she said. She didn’t bother to add but not too much: Calesh knew that anyway. His grin widened though, and she tried not to sigh.
Two
Kissing the Moon
One of the other vessels reached the harbour before the Promise of Plenty, steering neatly on a course that brought her alongside the nearer breakwater. Calesh was unsurprised to note that it was the Quiet Return , recognisable even at distance by the irregular patch of crimson canvas that had been used to mend a split brown sail. Time, he had decided, turned all sails brown in the end. Perhaps it was the sea air, or the salt that flew in sprays in even the lightest winds. It didn’t matter.
He was home, and what matter if Amand had got there first?
Promise cruised in just astern of Quiet Return. The name augured well, Calesh supposed, but he rather doubted their homecoming would ever be described as quiet. Already work had come to a halt across the harbour, as bare-chested men stopped to shade their eyes and peer at the incoming fleet. Even for a port as busy as Parrien, the sight of so many ships arriving all at once was unusual. It spoke of the peace that had lasted here for so long that nobody panicked, or ran shrieking for the Watch to come. Nobody sounded the rusty iron bell that hung above the harbourmaster’s office. Instead people pushed forward for a better view, crowding to the edge of the wharves and onto the jetties themselves. Not all of them were longshoremen or sailors, Calesh saw. Many looked like ordinary townsfolk, to judge by their clothes, and some were women. He even saw a few children.
“If the attack comes, these people will be torn apart before they know it,” Farajalla said.
He nodded. It was true. “The attack will come. But it hasn’t yet. They wouldn’t be so relaxed if it had.”
None of them had known, sailing west, if they would be in time. They might sail into the burned-out harbour of a ravaged town, to find nothing there to save but memories. Light winds had pushed them along the whole way; it made the journey comfortable, and was better than a dead calm, but still Calesh had paced up and down with frustration at the delay. Now, one brief glimpse of the waterfront of Parrien made him sure that the All-Church had not attacked. His relief must have shown: Farajalla reached across to put her hand over his on the rail, and he smiled gratefully.
The captain of Quiet Return shouted a leather-lunged command, and the last of his sails came down in a flutter of canvas. The ship slowed abruptly. She drifted towards the outthrust quay, and Calesh was sure for a moment that she would stop before she came alongside. Then a wave pushed her sideways, just hard enough to nudge her into the jetty with a soft bump. Calesh glanced back to see Seba scowling furiously.
“No need to try to match that skill,” he called back to the aft deck. Relief had begun to give way to a rising joy. I’m home. “I wouldn’t expect it of you, captain.”
“Mind your manners, landsman!” Seba growled. He lifted an arm. “Sails down on my order!”
&
nbsp; “Now you’ve done it,” Farajalla said. He grinned at her.
Seba shouted, and the sails on each mast came down as though cut. Sailors scrambled to furl them, or seized ropes ready to throw to men waiting on the quays. Promise of Plenty slowed with the curious lurching motion Calesh had come to associate with changes of speed, either faster or slower. He didn’t really understand why that should be, but he wasn’t Luthien: some answers he didn’t need to know.
Longshoremen shouted warnings and sprang back from the edge of the breakwater, just before Promise of Plenty struck with a crack. The port bow scraped along the stone with a sound like glass dragged across teeth. Two sailors fell over, to the accompaniment of ironic cheers and catcalls from their fellows. Several more stayed upright and flung ropes to the men ashore, those who had stayed close enough, who snatched them from the air and wrapped them around great stone posts set into the quay. Labourers leaned in to take the strain, muscles bulging. The Promise lurched like a straining horse, then settled back. Water gurgled around her stern.
“Well,” Calesh said. “The journey was excellent, captain, and thank you. But you need to work on your landings.”
The reply blistered the air, but Calesh only chuckled. He was home. Already seamen had run out the gangplank, and he nodded to the soldiers on deck to give permission for them to cross. He wanted to himself, quite badly. He wanted to find some of Sarténe’s rich black earth and dig his fingers into it, bury his nose in it, and absorb the scents of oranges and olives and all the long generations of love. But the eagerness on the faces of his men told him they felt the same, and the joy that bubbled inside had put him in a generous mood. With what he knew was about to descend on Sarténe he shouldn’t be happy, but he couldn’t deny what was in him.
Some of the crowd peered curiously at Farajalla, but probably more for her fine clothes than the colour of her skin, or her uncovered, braided hair. Parrien had always had its share of outlanders. The entrepot city drew traders throughout the year, many of them from the Jaidi people in the south. To an untutored eye, the Jaidi were almost indistinguishable from the Madai. Certainly they fought just as hard.
Well, that part of his life was over. Strange, that he had left this land to fight the Madai, in the name of religion, far across the world. Now he returned, married to a Madai, to fight former comrades in the name of religion, if he had to. He supposed the Lord Marshal of the Hand of the Lord might have something to say about that, but whatever he said, Calesh would not stand by while this land was burned.
“Do you mean to wait there all day?” Farajalla asked.
He came to himself, suddenly aware again of the sunshine on his face, and the people now crowding onto the breakwater itself. Most of the ship’s soldiers were ashore now, forty men in armour with their surcoats on top, one half black and the other snowy white. In the centre was a circle in which the colours were reversed. It was the symbol of the Duality, the worship of God and fear of the Adversary, a struggle fought in the soul of every living man and woman. For more than a hundred years the All-Church had never understood what that emblem meant.
Now it did, and they would kill over it.
“No,” he said, and smiled. Even that thought wasn’t enough to dent his good mood. “Shall we go?”
Further along the quay, soldiers from the Quiet Return had formed a line, to stop townsfolk pushing in while their comrades began to unload cargo. Most important were the horses, which had been kept below decks without a break for weeks now. Simply feeding them and mucking out the stalls had kept the men busy, but Calesh didn’t envy them the task of bringing the irate animals ashore. Three sailors were already swinging the big winch into place, with the sling hanging below. Others worked to lift sections of the deck aside. All that made the Promise of Plenty rock, and Calesh went down a gangplank that creaked alarmingly as it shifted.
“Oh,” he said when he stood on the solid quay. It seemed to be moving under his feet. His injured knee grumbled as he tried to find his balance. “I think I need to sit down.”
“Not here, husband,” Farajalla murmured.
He looked at her, then at the crowd, and understood. The Hand of the Lord had come home, and if war had not invaded Sarténe yet, the rumour of it would certainly have done. It wouldn’t do for the Commander of the returning heroes to sit down with his head between his knees, right where everyone could see. Calesh wanted to, though. What made it worse was the sight of Amand, striding up the breakwater with the confident steps of a man who could keep his feet in the middle of a landslide. Calesh sometimes thought that when the Hand was gone and forgotten, Amand would still be there, as reliable as stone and harder than baked cactus.
“Commander,” the older man said as he came up to Calesh. His hair was shot with grey, and his face so cadaverous that it seemed he must not have had a sip of water for days, but his salute was perfect, right fist to left shoulder. He had managed to iron his uniform too, somehow. On a ship under sail, and every crease was perfect. Calesh didn’t know how he managed that.
“Captain,” Calesh acknowledged. “Good to see you.”
“And you, sir.” Behind Amand his men had raised a standard, of the same design as the men’s surcoats and kite-shaped shields. It would tell the other companies where the rally point was, wherever they found berths. Already ships were nosing up to the other breakwaters, slowing as they approached. “I trust you are well?”
“Well enough,” Calesh said briefly. “Here’s what I want, captain. As I remember it the Hand has two estates just outside Parrien. Pick out two groups of men and have them ride to those estates at once. Hire horses; don’t wait for our own animals to be unloaded. They’ll be disorientated for a while anyway. Tell whoever is in charge of those farms that the Marshal Commander of the East requires that all their supplies and facilities are turned over to him. Send each Chapter to its billet as soon as you find one. Make it clear that I will be happy with their treatment or I will know the reason why.”
“Understood, sir.” Amand didn’t make notes. He never needed them. “Sir, there is a boy in the crowd who says he knows where Kissing the Moon is. Shall I send him through?”
That made Calesh blink. Amand was always efficient, but he’d truly outdone himself this time. “No need. I’ll go to him myself.” He gripped the other man’s arm as he walked by. “Well done, Captain.”
“How must it be,” Farajalla said softly as they moved away, “to so easily win the hearts of men, I wonder?”
He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“Perhaps that’s the answer,” his wife said in musing tones. “Perhaps it only works for those who genuinely don’t know.”
“I look after the men, and in return they go where I say.” He was finding his balance now, as his legs grew used to solid ground beneath them again. His knee ached horribly though. “That’s really all there is to it. I’ll leave it to Luthien to come up with some bafflingly complicated explanation. Which I don’t doubt he will.”
“You’re being disingenuous.”
“Ah,” he said, and let a smile widen. “Now I am distraught. My lady is disappointed in me.”
Amusement glimmered deep in the pools of her eyes. “Hardly.”
Then they reached the double line of soldiers across the quay, and a ragged-trousered youth of fourteen or fifteen who waited just inside the cordon. That made him almost old enough to join the Hand, and hardly the boy Amand had called him. Beyond the soldiers townsfolk clustered, all trying to peer around one another’s shoulders to see what was happening. There was a panicky snorting from the deck of Quiet Return, out of sight above them, as the first horse was coaxed into the sling.
“Is it true?” someone called as Calesh and Farajalla came up, and suddenly everyone was shouting.
“Is there going to be war?”
“Have you come to fight for us?”
Calesh raised his hands for quiet, but he still had to shout over a restless stirring. “There’s no war to
day, at least. The Hand of the Lord will stand with you if one comes. Beyond that, I need to talk to the Lord Marshal before I know what will happen. Now, I suggest you go about your business. A lot of horses and men are going to be using this jetty for the rest of today.”
There was a renewed burst of muttering, but Calesh turned to the youth. “What’s your name?”
“Japh.” His dark hair was cut in an untidy line. “I work in the stables next to Kissing the Moon.”
That was a stroke of luck, though perhaps finding a lad shirking work to gawk at ships and soldiers could pass for normal. “Does Raigal Tai still own the inn, then?”
Japh blinked. “You know him?”
“I do.” He tossed a coin to the youth, glinting silver as it spun. Japh snagged it out of the air and goggled: it was a full sester, probably more money than he’d earn in a month. “Take me to him.”
“For this I’d take you to the Margrave himself,” Japh said.
Calesh chuckled. “No need for that, lad. Just take me there. Though if all this ruckus hasn’t been enough to pull his beard out of his own beer and move his bloated arse, I’m not sure anything will be.”
“He doesn’t have a beard any more.”
“Found a razor, did he?” The inner joy was back, lighting him from within. Raigal was here, and close. “Never mind. Take me there.”