The Thirty-Eight-Hundred Bone Coat
By R.K. Duncan
Even if they did not study history, all the people of Ranzak knew one story older than their grandmother’s time and newer than the legends of the Prophet. Navid had learned it when he was no higher than his mother’s knee, and he was reminded often.
Four hundred years ago, when Ranzak was a more important city, a people whose name was burned from the scrolls and forgotten rebelled against the king-of-kings. This was Arlashan the fifth, of the third dynasty before the present king-of-kings, and he was called in later histories Arlashan the Cruel. The rebel army massed at Ranzak, and Arlashan defeated them. Many who had fought with the rebels surrendered when the battle turned, throwing themselves on the mercy of the great king. He ordered their hands cut off and thrown into the river, which was called the Winter Serpent. He had the handless rebels yoked like oxen to pull wagons and plows, and their hands sank into the silt of the riverbed and did not rot.
Now, when Ranzak was passed by far to north and south by the courses of trade from the east, people came to the city for two things: to buy the iron that came down in small loads from the mountains east to the east and was collected there for caravan and canal boat, and to buy wards of bone. The echo of dead spirits still clung to the hands of the dead rebels. Coats and necklaces hung with their bones made powerful wards, and they could be made nowhere else.
Navid was a bone diver, sinking through the cold currents to pull hands out of the silt. His father would boil them in lye to strip them to the bone while he recited poems from the book of the Prophet for protection, and when they were clean he would drill holes into them with a steel needle. Navid’s mother wove and sewed and stitched the bones to her finished coats. The whole city knew she was the finest weaver in the quarter of the Waning Moon. His sister was the smart one. She kept the books and haggled in the market for thread and for the potions and powders Father needed. She would run the house and the business after Mother. Navid was brave and steady, at least. That was good for diving, but he had no head for business.
He was not diving today. The currents were changeable at the end of spring. He might go in later, if the river seemed calm or the sun warm enough. For now he was casting coppers on the riverbank with Sepehr and Tandis, his diver friends, and with Rasam the potter’s boy, and Mehri, who ran messages and guided foreigners through the city in caravan season. Navid was only passing time, and he did not have money to waste, so he threw five sticks each time his turn came. He could make the thin, flat coins land in The Closed Hand pattern each time and keep his stake. Tandis was more ambitious. She threw nine sticks, trying for Heaven’s Stair. She had lost a week’s earnings and won it back again twice already. She bent over the game avidly, and the others caught her fire.
Navid relaxed onto the sun-warmed stone of the riverbank. Some old king had built a walled channel to contain the Winter Serpent’s floods and wanderings, but these blocks on the bank were all that was left. The wall had been torn and eaten by the water. The Winter Serpent was too strong for men to tame. Only the light of the Prophet’s temple restrained it enough to protect the city.
Navid lost the thread of the game and drowsed the late morning sun, listening with half an ear to the sound of the currents for the midday calm that might let him dive. It would be good to try. Spring was a bad season for diving and a good one for selling, so his father only had a few bones ready if another order should come. His friends let the turns pass him. He was good enough at throwing the Closed Hand that his sitting out wouldn’t change their winnings one way or another.
Haleh, who sometimes carded for the wool merchant on their street, came running up puffing and shouting.
“Navid!” She bent over and took a deep breath.
“What’s going on?”
“Someone important’s gone to your mother’s house. I saw the procession: guards in gold-wash armor, and criers, and a palanquin with red curtains.”
A noble at to his mother’s house. That might mean a special commission. Something important certainly.
Navid jumped up and ran for home along the wide streets where goods came down the canal docks. He breathed in a wash of coriander and almond from one stall, rose and honey from the next, blending with the flowers of the honeysuckle vine slowly dismantling a cracked brick wall.
The Waning Moon quarter was quieter. Like his family’s, most of the workshops there would not be busy until the currents slowed at midsummer and the boats came upstream for the canal trade. The street that led to their front door was filled with the procession Haleh had told him about: criers, heralds, servants, and soldiers in the gold-washed armor of the king-of-king’s army. Only diplomats or high nobles commanded those soldiers. The red-washed palanquin had been set down in front of his mother’s door. Whoever was so important was already inside, being received by Navid’s mother.
Navid went one more street and came inside through the narrow alley behind the house. He peeked through the crack of the unlatched kitchen door into the main room.
The guest sat next to the door in the high chair that was only uncovered for nobles. He was dressed in red robes embroidered with serpent-dragons in white and yellow thread, and his skin was pale. He had to be one of the easterners that came from Chin to the court of the king-of-kings, who were sometimes called ambassadors and sometimes exiles.
His mother, Farzah, sat opposite the easterner, only a little lower, wearing her best blue robe with the silver braid, as straight and poised and dignified as a queen in her throne room. His father, Balam, and his sister, Dorre, sat on low cushions at Mother’s feet. There would have been a place for him there too, if he had been in the house when the guest arrived. Father’s lips moved silently, praying for fortune. He was looking down so the easterner would not see.
The easterner raised a black and gold lacquer cup in toast, wafting coils of steam in front of his face. Mother mirrored him and drank. The tea and the cup would have been his guest gift, the water heated over the house’s flame to offer hospitality. Navid had come in as the courtesies were finishing, just in time to hear the negotiation.
“Be welcome in my house and share my fire, Honored Su Linzhe,” said Farzah. “You raise us up and brighten our home with your presence, coming here from the great light of the king-of-kings.”
The easterner tapped his fingers on his cup, clearly impatient with the dance of welcome. You could never guess which nobles would demand it and which become bored, but Mother said it was always safer to choose too much courtesy. Nobles might be annoyed by it, but they could not demand punishment.
“I have come to buy a bone-ward,” he said, voice clipped and quick. “The men in Charces who buy for the court say that your house is best, so I have come here.”
“You honor me to say so, Sir.” Mother bowed her head to acknowledge the compliment. He should not have admitted hearing that so soon. It would make it hard for him to bargain a good price.
“Your honor remains to be seen. I wish to purchase a thirty-eight-hundred bone coat. I require it delivered before I leave the city in twenty days. Can you do this?”
There were nineteen long bones, suitable for sewing into wards, in a human hand. Nineteen-bone charms were sold at crossroads in the busy trading months. The cheapest coats were two-hand coats, with thirty-eight bones sewn around the collar and over the shoulders. The heaviest coats Navid’s father ever made without commission were ten-hand coats, with one-hundred-ninety bones weighing down their cuffs and hems. One of tho
se would sell for enough to keep the household for a month. Once, he had made a three-hundred eighty bone coat for the son of the city viceroy, who was afraid his half-brothers meant to kill him for his father’s seat. That coat had been strong enough to turn aside daggers and burn poison from the prince’s wine.
A thirty-eight-hundred bone coat was almost past imagining. Su Linzhe would be able to walk unharmed through the grand battles of a hundred thousand soldiers that rumor said were common in his home. Maybe such a ward would even turn aside the thunderbolt arrows of the king-of-kings.
It was a mad request. There weren’t even stories about a coat like that, and even if it could be done, it could never be done so quickly. Navid could see his father’s frown. He wanted to refuse, to admit the job was too much and step away from it. Prophet grant that Mother disagreed. She could demand enough for it to change their lives, enough to buy Dorre a stake in a trading house, enough that Father could study the Prophet’s book instead of boiling bones in a stinking shed.
Mother kept her face calm despite the easterner’s rudeness. “That is a very short time. I could not promise work of the quality you deserve so quickly.”
The easterner snorted and set his cup down with a bang on the arm of his chair. “Ten days more then, if you must have it. Thirty days. It will be summer by then, and I am expected in Charces.”
Thirty days. That was still a crazily short time for such a large work, but even Navid could tell the easterner would not offer more. Father rested his head on his chest, signing to Mother that he wished to refuse the offer. Dorre’s hands were neutral on her knees, no vote, but they trembled with fear or hope or something in between the two. She knew even better than Navid what the price of a thirty-eight-hundred bone coat could buy them.
Mother held out her hands, palms up. Agreement. “I can accept such a contract. The price will be eight thousand sticks of silver.”
Navid stifled a gasp. That was ten years of their income, enough to invest, enough to buy businesses and live off them. More than anyone would pay for a coat. The easterner could haggle her down to half, and they would be happy.
“Done. You will have it if you deliver to my satisfaction. I will pay nothing if the coat is not perfect.”
He stood and placed his hands in Farzah’s, and the contract was sealed. For a long moment, Navid could barely breath. This Su Linzhe had just promised more than one of the great trading houses saw in a year’s dealing, without a pause. He must be a high prince in his own country, high as the grand nobles who attended the king-of-kings in Charces and never dirtied their robes with the dust of a city as old and low as Ranzak. One of his servants already had the tablet, written as the deal had been spoken, and Su Linzhe rolled his seal into the clay himself. Mother placed it into the hearth to bake, and bowed low. He went out with no word of farewell.
When the last servant was gone Navid rushed into the room, smiling wide at his mother.
“What have you done to us?” yelled Father. “We cannot make the coat in time. We will ruin ourselves trying and have nothing when he leaves us with a half-finished ruin no one will ever buy.”
“It’s not impossible.” Dorre talked with her hands. She always did that when she was calculating, moving invisible beads while she made the numbers agree in her mind. “We have enough in hand to by thread and ornaments for a noble’s coat.”
“It will have to be double layered,” said Mother, “to hold so many bones.”
“Still, we have enough, and we have credit if we need it. It is a fine season to buy thread, and Father has worked fast enough before to finish that many bones in the time we have. Can you find them quickly enough, Navid? We don’t have many left in the store.”
“I can. Of course I can.”
It would be more than he usually found in the last month of spring, but he could do it. He had to. He wouldn’t be the weak one.
“It is too dangerous,” said Father. “Navid will be diving long hours, risking himself, and it will bring an army of ghosts into our house. Even a ten-hand coat is hard enough to bind and balance. This thing will be hung with haunts and curses if we try to make it, double if we rush.”
“Balam, we are committed.” Mother laid a hand on Father’s shoulder. “Our reputation is at stake now, and we will deliver. I can weave a robe that will carry thirty-eight hundred bones in the time we have. You can boil them and say your prayers. We will make good. You can have a year of rest when we are finished.”
That was the end of it. They might complain at times, but Mother was a queen in her own house, and she was fire that lit the way for all of them. Navid was happy to follow her orders this time and not to be held back by Father’s caution.
The Winter Serpent got its name for good reasons. It was cold and it was wild, with strong, unstable currents and unpredictable floods that made its channel shift and shook the foundations of the waterfront quarters. Every storm over the eastern mountains meant flood and commotion in the city.
The river felt alive when Navid was diving. It had moods, and you had to learn how to read them and how to let them guide you to be a good diver. He was very good. He dove the proper way, blind in the black water, feeling for hands just under the surface of the riverbed where the constant churning of the silt would bring them up. Some divers drank ghost liquor brewed from the dregs of the stuff used to clean bones, with alchemists’ powders that made the lye safe to drink. They said it let you see under the water, see spirits who could show you where their hands were waiting. Sepehr and Tandis used it sometimes, but it was dangerous. Divers who used too much got pale and shivered like they were cold all the time. Navid didn’t need it. He knew the river, and it knew him. They were old friends.
He left his clothes on a sunny stone and went in with nothing but his bag, tied on with rope he wet first in the river so the fit wouldn’t change while he was diving. He went in slowly, feeling the river’s mood. It was steady today, fast and biting cold. He usually didn’t do much diving until later in the summer, to build up their stock for the canal boat season. He let himself drift down gently, feeling for eddies and deeper currents that could be dangerous. The main current would carry him some distance before he had to surface for a breath, and then he would climb out and walk back to his starting point and dive again, until he was done with that section of the river for the day and moved upstream or down.
There was nothing to alarm him as he drifted, so on the second dive he went straight to the bottom and began to play his palms across the silt. You could read the patterns of it, if you were careful; follow the mounds and troughs to where anything heavier would fetch up. He felt the river’s muscles flex around him, pushing him this way and that as the currents stretched and settled. He let them take him. Fighting would only make him tired.
He dove all day, working steadily down the river. No one else was diving this stretch today, so there was no concern about territory. He dove and sifted steadily, letting the current slide him, surfacing when the water coiled tight around his chest. He found a hand on his third time down, a good one, with none of the flesh gone from long exposure to the water. He found a second before his first break, when he lay in the sun until he was warm enough to welcome the cold touch of the Winter Serpent again. You had to rest and sun yourself or the water would steal all your strength before you’d done a half-day’s work.
He found ten hands before the sun sank low enough to leave the river shadowed, and he walked home with his bounty. Ten hands in a day was more than he usually brought up in spring, but he usually didn’t dive all day until the summer currents slowed and made it easy. If he could keep up a pace like this, there’d be no trouble finishing Su Linzhe’s coat in time.
Making the thirty-eight-hundred bone coat was like trying to fit a whole season’s work into thirty days. Dorre was buying the red thread for the body of the robe while Navid did his first day’s diving. Mother began the weaving that night, after the evening meal. They all sat in the weaving room for a whi
le, watching her and growing drowsy to the clack of her shuttle. Father recited the verses of Stepping from the Precipice and Falling to a Good Beginning from the Prophet’s book, and Dorre and Navid hummed the proper temple rhythms under his words.
The next day, Father began boiling bones in the shed against the side of the house, burning incense over the altar flame to drive out the scent of meat and tar and lye from the boiling kettle, reciting the verses of Peaceful Repose and of Turning from the Darkness Toward the Sun’s Flame to ward off any unquiet ghosts that might have followed their bones from the river. Dorre went back to the market, to buy white and gold embroidery thread, and silver ornaments and clasps, and buttons of carnelian to finish the coat once it was cut and sewn. Mother kept weaving, and she smiled. She always smiled when she was making something beautiful.
The whole city was loudly wondering why an eastern prince would need the heaviest ward ever woven in Ranzak. Wits said it was to survive the spiteful glances of a haughty princess he meant to woo, and doomsayers said he meant to overthrow the king of Chin by sorcery and vengeance would come back to Ranzak when he failed. Navid stayed out of those discussions when his friends started them. Su Linzhe would pay, so the family would make what he demanded.
Navid dove every day, from an hour or two after dawn until the sunset chilled the riverbank too much for him to keep on working. He had to work long and hard to find enough. He hadn’t dived so much at the end of spring before, and maybe this was why. After that first day, he dived long hours for just a few hands and walked home stumbling and shivering. The heat didn’t come back to his blood until he sat with his back against the chimney bricks and drank warm broth and honeyed tea.
The days stretched out. Mother finished the cloth and cut it. In another city, where weavers and dyers were known and merchants came to buy cloth that people could boast of at home, she could have kept her household with weaving alone. But no one came to Ranzak to buy cloth or coats that weren’t hung with bones and the whispers of unquiet ghosts.
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