Savage Bounty

by Matt Wallace

  Taru thought they were there to discuss going to war.

  As Staz has explained it, the Rok have no rulers or bureaucracy, as a Crachian would understand the concept. Anyone can convene a gathering to discuss an issue they feel affects the island as a whole, and anyone who wishes to speak may have a voice. Islanders tend to let the captains of Rok ships speak for their crews and the villages from which they originate.

  “That seems highly chaotic and disorganized,” the retainer had told Staz.

  The old woman had only shrugged and replied, “It seems to work out well enough.”

  Taru has spent a week under the Islander captain’s roof as her guest, and in that short time, the retainer has decided Rok is the island of their heart. They have never felt so at ease or readily accepted in a place and by its people before.

  Taru almost feels guilty about asking Staz to convene this meeting, but they cannot abandon their friends to the chaos and war in Crache without trying to aid them.

  The repeated thud of wood pounding against wood rises above the scattered conversation and arguments over spices. A woman only slightly younger-looking than Staz steps to the middle of the largest gathering, holding a staff made from a beautiful piece of polished driftwood.

  “Let’s get to the meat of this thing!” she declares. “We’re here to talk about the ants and their in-fighting!”

  “That’s Captain Florcha of the Razor Fin,” Staz whispers to Taru. “Bigger idiot than my sister.”

  “My position is simple!” Florcha proclaims.

  “Much like the woman herself,” Staz adds.

  “The time has not yet come!” Florcha insists, voice booming to the longhouse at large.

  “Our fleet is ready!” another voice shoots back.

  “That is not the point!”

  “Your metal is as weak as your brine soup!” an elder voice complains.

  Florcha waves her driftwood staff. “My brine soup is as sour as it needs to be, you fillet-butchering hag!”

  “You were saying,” Staz cuts in, a surprising amount of bass and power in her voice for such a tiny, aged thing.

  “Yes!” Florcha answers, getting back on track. “Our power has never been in our fleet. Our power has and always will be this island. Once we leave it, we are no longer fighting our fight. We will be fighting theirs. We will be fighting the way of the ant.”

  A great many in attendance appear to nod while others outright holler their agreement with that position. Those are met with the dissenting Islanders, and in a few moments a more heated argument than any of the ones over cooking techniques has erupted throughout the longhouse.

  Taru sighs, certain this is all going nowhere, and it may still take forever to get there.

  The sniping and yelling prattles on for another few minutes before Staz, who has remained relatively quiet, appears to have had enough. She rises from her grass mat, slowly, standing to her full five feet. Taru is surprised to find the incessant clamoring die down almost immediately. It’s clear their new friend commands respect far beyond the deck of her ship.

  “This island is parent and partner to us all,” Staz tells the abruptly silent Islanders. “It is also a pile of rocks and timber. Rok’s grit is not in its sand. It is in its people. In us. Crache did not learn to fear an island. They did not fail to tame an island. Crache learned to fear the Islanders of Rok. But it is a lesson they always seem to forget. They will forget again.”

  “Then we will defeat them again,” Florcha says. “Here, where we are strongest.”

  “For how long? How many times? They can afford to attack and be repelled a hundred times, a thousand. Ours is a battle that can only be lost once. Just once. If the shores of Rok are ever taken, they will be lost. This has always been true. We will finally and forever become part of their great eating machine. And all of your worst fears, Florcha, all of those things knotted in your guts that are making you want to stay here where you feel safe, they will all come true if that happens. This island will not save you. It will not save any of us.”

  Taru watches Captain Florcha, and then scans the faces of many in the crowd. They look truly shaken and taken aback by these words.

  Eventually, Florcha musters a retort, pointing directly at Taru. “You ask us to go to war on the word of a stranger.”

  “You have never sailed your ship into a Crachian port. I have entered the bay of their Capitol a hundred times. I doubt I would have lived to speak of it without this one and their masters and mistresses.”

  “And if you are wrong?” Florcha demands.

  Staz cocks her tiny head at her fellow captain. “Why do you ask questions with obvious answers? If I’m wrong, we all die.”

  That sets the crowd to chattering again, and that begins to boil over into the same battle of voices shouting over one another.

  Staz sighs, and it is more like a low growl that rumbles in her throat. “I am tired of speaking. This is my final word. There will never be a better time than now for Rok to strike against our greatest enemy. This rebellion of Savages will not come again if it is defeated. You are wrong, Florcha. This is our time. Right now. At my age, the next great battle I choose will be my last, live or die. This is the fight I choose. My crew joins me. Those of you who captain ships may also join us as you choose. If I have to go alone, so be it. I promise our old enemy will remember my name long after I am dashed on the great reef.”

  With that, Captain Staz of the Black Turtle tucks her tiny, withered hands back inside the seemingly endless folds of her coat. She glances down at Taru and the retainer swears they see the little old woman wink at them behind her shades.

  Taru watches Staz pad slowly across the crowded floor of the longhouse, apparently heading for the nearest exit. The retainer quickly rises from their own grass mat and strides to catch up.

  Taru follows their Rok Islander host out into the night, hearing the voices rise high and hotly behind them inside the lodge. “What do you think will happen now?” they ask the Captain, somewhat breathless after the last few minutes.

  “They will argue for another few hours,” Staz answers calmly. “They’ll drink. Fists will probably fly.”

  Taru waits.

  “And then?” they press.

  “They will agree to go to war with the ants,” Staz replies, smiling in the moonlight.

  FIRE OR THE KNIFE

  THERE IS A DELICATE PERCH that sits atop the stone archway above the main entrance to Xia Tower. A small oriel window there looks out over the bridge leading to the towers and the bazaar of the Gen Circus beyond.

  When they were children, Lexi and Brio could both kneel upon the perch and watch the goings-on of the day. They would see Brio’s father, clad in the one fine new tunic he allowed himself every year, converse with the noodle makers and sellers in their little stands. They would watch Lexi’s mother shop for groceries. Their parents would both be largely ignored by the members of the other Gens, who looked down upon the lowly Gen Stalbraid ekeing out their existence in the Circus, serving as pleaders for the wretches of the Bottoms.

  Now, as an adult, Lexi can scarcely manage to balance atop that same perch alone. She has to crouch to fit far enough inside the oriel window in order to see outside.

  It appears to her to be yet another way she has outgrown these towers.

  From her vantage, Lexi watches Shaheen. Her “ward” walks among the fruit and vegetable stands pockmarking the edge of the bazaar. The handle of a basket is cradled in the crook of her left arm. She didn’t fully explain her plan to Lexi; Shaheen merely told her a needed distraction would be created in the bazaar.

  Lexi cannot spot the Aegins loyal to Kamen Lim and Burr whom Shaheen has assured her keep a constant vigil on her tower. She has no doubt they are among the many Aegins patrolling the Circus. She studies each one she can make out from her window, strutting and preening or shuffling along tiredly in their green tunics and dagger-bearing leather baldrics.

  Lexi finds she truly loathes t
hem, all of them, whether they are in the pocket of the Protectorate Ministry, as the ones who attempted to kill Daian, or that of the Ignobles, as Daian himself was. At best, they are the cheap, purposeless thugs who tormented Taru in public for pleasure.

  Shaheen, meanwhile, stops to admire a pyramid of dragon fruit erected atop a pallet outside one of the vendor’s stands. She selects a particular sphere of the rainbow-colored delicacy, examining it for freshness and bruises, testing the firmness of its skin.

  Satisfied, the young mother places the piece of fruit in her basket, preparing to move on. She pauses, however, appearing to reconsider. She reaches back into her basket and removes the dragon fruit, considering it anew.

  It all looks perfectly natural and forgettable to Lexi, just an indecisive young person changing their mind in their selection of groceries. Shaheen replaces the dragon fruit among its fellows and makes her way from the fruit stand. The whole dull business passes in less than a few seconds.

  Perhaps because of that, it is even more surprising when, a few more seconds later, the pyramid of dragon fruit explodes.

  There is no fire, only a sudden, thunderous booming and enough concussive force of some unseen origin within the pyramid to send every piece of fruit flying. More than half of it is reduced to a hail of shredded peel and pulp.

  The noise more than anything is the catalyst for the ensuing chaos. The patrons of the Gen Circus bazaar in their fine, colorful tunics and wraps are sent scattering. One would think the rebellion itself had come to their staid little market.

  Lexi watches them flee and wilt in panic. She wonders if she was ever truly that docile and afraid and so deeply unfamiliar with the violent and the chaotic. She no longer remembers a Lexi who didn’t know all the things that can and do go hideously wrong in the Capitol, and in Crache as a whole.

  Every Aegin in the vicinity rushes into the bazaar to both investigate the event and attempt to calm and control the crowd. Shaheen, for her part, has disappeared among the thick of the confusion. Lexi can no longer spot her in the bazaar, or on the edges of the Circus common.

  “May I help you down, Te-Gen?”

  The voice startles her to the point of nearly toppling from her perch. Lexi strains to peer over her shoulder, finding a ghostly Protectorate Ministry agent gazing up at Lexi from the foyer, black cape draped over one shoulder of her equally black tunic. The woman is gaunt and remarkably pale. More accurately, she’s white as a corpse. Her hair is only a shade lighter, and cropped high and tight to her scalp. Eyes the blue of a glacier, sharp and clear, swim in the middle of all of it.

  Her eagle’s eye pendant gleams in the light pouring in around Lexi from the oriel window. It is enough to blind her for the briefest of moments as the reflection streaks across her face. She didn’t even see the agent enter her tower.

  “I’ll manage,” she replies calmly.

  The agent bows her head respectfully, taking several paces back.

  Lexi clambers from above the entrance’s arch in a most undignified way, descending the features of the masonry with unrefined practice. She touches down on the foyer floor and turns to scrutinize the features of the Protectorate Ministry agent.

  “I know you,” Lexi says.

  A moment later it hits her that she is indeed looking at a ghost.

  “You do not, I assure you, and you never will. That is what I am, and what we do.”

  Lexi stammers, taken aback. “No… I… I watched you…”

  A sudden darkness overtakes the agent’s expression. “Yes?”

  Lexi shakes her head. “It’s impossible.”

  Shaheen rejoins them in the tower, carefully peeling a dragon fruit and biting into it. Lexi watches the girl stroll through the main entrance with the most carefree of airs. If nothing else, her presence breaks the spell of memory that has been cast on Lexi.

  The agent seems willing to let the moment pass, as well. “Thank you, Shaheen,” she commends the girl.

  Shaheen bows respectfully. “Only to serve,” she says, as if reciting the lyrics of a poem.

  The agent returns her attention to Lexi. “Is there somewhere we might speak comfortably and privately, Te-Gen?”

  Lexi manages to nod. She still feels rattled and unsure of her own voice.

  They adjourn to the receiving parlor. As Lexi walks past the two to escort them, she notices the handle of the Protectorate Ministry agent’s dagger. It has been carved from obsidian, complete with its pommel.

  “I seem to remind you of someone,” she says as they enter the comfortably furnished space.

  “I must be mistaken,” Lexi insists.

  “My name is Strinnix,” the agent stonily informs her. “You may find it interesting to know my twin is also an operative of the Ministry. They have been missing for quite a while now. In fact, they vanished around the precise time you chose to take this mysterious sojourn of yours to parts unknown for what I’m certain was rest and recreation. I hope you attained plenty of both before returning to us.”

  Lexi’s breath feels trapped in the center of her throat. The beating of her heart seems to have doubled with every word spoken by the pale woman. Ginnix. That was the other one’s name.

  Lexi remembers now. She is gazing at the mirror image of the Protectorate Ministry agent Lexi watched Daian duel and kill in this very room. Though no less stricken, at least she knows the woman is not a ghost.

  Strinnix lowers herself into one of the plush parlor chairs, gloved hand encircling the obsidian-handled dagger sheathed at her belt. “We were adopted by the Ministry as babes,” she explains, though Lexi did not ask. “We were raised there for the whole of our lives. We have always served.”

  “You must be… very close.”

  Strinnix smiles, but there is no joy in the expression. “In our way.”

  Lexi has no idea how to proceed. Fortunately for her, the Protectorate Ministry agent does.

  “You have, I imagine, many questions.”

  Lexi demurely seats herself on a chaise facing the agent’s chair, regaining her composure. “All I do these days is ask mysterious people many questions about mysterious affairs I don’t understand, it seems.”

  “Not all you do,” Strinnix remarks.

  “I do not take your meaning.”

  The agent spreads her arms magnanimously. “You are the matron of the Bottoms. You spend your days feeding the underfed and tending to those in need. Full days, from what I have heard.”

  Strinnix glances up at Shaheen, who stands removed from the two, silently and patiently attending their discussion. The girl smiles gratefully, bowing anew.

  “By the way, didn’t you announce your plans to become the new pleader for the Bottoms?” Strinnix asks Lexi.

  “I became sidetracked, unfortunately.”

  “And yet the Gen Franchise Council has stopped hounding you and Stalbraid. Did you make some new friends, Te-Gen?”

  Lexi frowns. “I feel as though you are asking me questions to which you already know the answers.”

  “They are, I am afraid, the only kind I ask.”

  “Then how do you ascertain new information?”

  “Generally, I demand it.”

  Lexi feels a churning in her stomach. “I see.”

  Strinnix offers her nothing else, at least for the moment.

  “How did she come into your service?” Lexi asks, speaking to Strinnix yet boring her gaze into Shaheen. “That is my most searing question at the moment, or at least the one that baffles me the most.”

  Her ward stares back openly, offering no defiance nor appearing defensive because of the accusation laced into Lexi’s question.

  “You brought Shaheen to us,” the agent tells her. “The Ministry has had you under our own surveillance since you returned and long before you disappeared. We received a full report on your first encounter with young Shaheen here. You were quite taken with her then, by all accounts.”

  “I didn’t know—” Lexi pauses, her head spinning slightly
. “I did not know how people like her lived, not really.”

  “Yes, well, as it became apparent your status among the rabble in the Bottoms was increasing, as well as galvanizing the populace there, it became incumbent upon us to monitor you closer than on a surface level. Naturally, placing an operative in your service seemed the best way to accomplish this. I would have preferred to enlist your retainer, but they did not seem… amenable. Even to my methods.”

  “You are correct about that.”

  “I took Shaheen and her daughter from the Bottoms myself. We indoctrinated her, put her through some intensive training.”

  Lexi studies her ward. She appears to take no issue with terms like “rabble” and “indoctrinate” being applied to her.

  “She appears to have progressed very far very quickly,” Lexi observes with disdain.

  “We are quite adept at producing needed assets from raw materials, and rapidly. The Ministry has perfected the process over centuries.”

  “She was coerced then? You mucked about with her mind?”

  “I have as much freedom of will as you, Te-Gen,” Shaheen insists. “Now, anyway.”

  “We do not control minds, Te-Gen. We simply recondition them. With someone as young and desperate and intelligent as Shaheen, it proved quite easy. You would think intelligence would inhibit such a process, but quite the opposite is true.”

  Strinnix sounds as though she’s discussing a unique feature of the seasons rather than retraining a person’s entire being.

  “In any case, the situation… deteriorated before we could effectively place her. After the murder of several Aegins acting on our behalf, and learning you were harboring a rogue Aegin as well as sensitive information in the form of certain documents, the decision was made to bring you in. That obviously didn’t work out.”