“We found him in the forest,” Zornin said, indicating the shroud-wrapped body on the litter.
“Who is it?”
“Let’s go. Come.” Zornin hustled True and Rafil off the beach and up the steep trail. The two seamen, not conditioned to mountaineering, wisely saved their breath and their questions.
They reached a natural rock outcropping that overlooked the forest. Here the Altyns built a stone tower for a greater vantage, and the three men clambered up to its observation deck. Zornin passed Kepten True a telescope and pointed toward the forest.
“Not the tallest tree but the one just north. On the harvest platform. Do you see?”
True exhaled as he turned the tubes of the scope and the circular field of vision tightened. “Holy horses,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Rafil said.
“Another body.”
“Dead?”
“I can’t tell. Wait. I think he just moved.”
“How the fuck did he climb up there?”
“He didn’t,” Zornin said. “He fell out of the sky.”
Kepten True lowered the telescope and looked at the Altyn. Dark liquid eyes peered back from the rugged, lined face, the gaze unwavering as Zornin reached into his tunic and drew out his closed fist.
“We found this with the corpse,” he said. His fingers opened to reveal a silver ring in his palm. Beautifully carved in the shape of feathered wings that curved around the wearer’s finger. Between the wingspan was the head of a horse.
True’s eyes widened, flicked across the valley, then back again. “It’s a kheiron up there?”
Zornin nodded. “Look on the inside.”
True took the ring and tilted it so he could read the engraving behind the silver wings.
Rafil’s far-sighted eyes squinted over True’s shoulder. “What’s it say?”
“Tehvan il-Kheir.”
“What?”
True passed the ring to the boatswain. “It belongs to the Horselord’s son.”
“Fuck me,” Rafil said softly. “I thought he was dead.”
“We sent the messenger birds out right away,” Zornin said. “Two caracaros to you and two to Nyland. We counted on you being closer than the Horselord.”
The slimy anxiety coiled in True’s stomach dissolved, replaced by hard, bright purpose. He knew his job now, knew why he’d been summoned. Nothing on earth rivaled the height of these Nye trees. Nothing except the mast of a ship built by giants. If you needed something retrieved from an old harvest station in the spice canopy, you didn’t call for a mountaineer.
You called for a mariner.
A good kepten took the helm and brought his ship to and from the coast, when things had the most potential to go wrong. He shouldered the blame ahead of time. It was the True Way, and Ikharus viewed the Nye tree no differently. He climbed first and climbed alone, establishing the route and tying the lead rope as he went.
His minoro crew watched from the lookout station, telescopes pointed up and out, like a many-headed, long-nosed monster. Among them was an inquisitive galley cook called Seven.
True took little on that first ascent. Two thick blankets strapped to his back. A waterskin. The kheiron’s ring in his buttoned pocket. In another pocket, a bead of a powerful narcotic called fadara. No bigger than his little fingernail, yet if sold on the black market, True could purchase a house.
“Put it under his tongue,” the Altyns’ witch told him. “Let it dissolve before you give him water.”
True also carried pen and paper, for once he got to the kheiron, the fastest way to communicate to the ground would be by caracaros. One circled the tree now, watching as branch by branch, choice by judicious choice, Kepten True climbed the mast of this earthly ship. He paused often to rest and think. Several times he stretched his arms around the mighty trunk, as far as they could reach, and inhaled the faint scent of Nye.
Right now I am a flower, he thought. A single flower on a tree that used to bloom in love. I must be the goodness the forest can no longer give. And what is good and beautiful in this world?
Respect. Friendship. A job well done.
“And stories,” he said under his breath, hauling himself at last onto the harvest platform. “They’ll be telling this one forever.”
On hands and knees he crawled to the foalboy sprawled on the warped, splintered wood. His hair was white, his face dirt-streaked, bruised and battered. His torso was bare, the skin over his bones blue with cold. Loose breeches twisted around his human legs and through the bloodied canvas poked the evil edges of broken bone.
One of his rings came off, True thought, unrolling the pack from his back. His wings retracted. The passenger, whoever he was, fell to his death. The kheiron aimed for a platform, took the brunt of it with his legs.
He shuddered at the unprotected edge of the deck. It was a miracle the kheiron hadn’t landed and rolled right off again.
He draped the blankets on the foalboy’s shattered legs, touching them as little as possible. He took off his thick blue coat and tucked it tight around Tehvan’s arms and chest.
“Tehvan,” he said. “My one, can you hear me?”
The kheiron’s head flopped side to side. He moaned softly, but didn’t open his eyes.
“I’m here, lad. I’ve come to take you home.”
The cracked lips parted, loosing a single sound. “Da?”
True’s throat constricted. It was a saying among his people that Da was the most giant of giantwords. It meant more than just father. It meant the steel-hearted courage required to be a father.
“It’s I, Tehvan,” he said. “Kepten True. I’ll get you down and take you home. I’m taking you back to your Da.”
Two years, he thought. Sevri il-Kheir has been taking the world apart two years looking for him.
He got the fadara under the foalboy’s tongue, then scribbled a note for the waiting falcon: Alive. Both legs badly broken. Start my men coming up.
“Fly, my beauty,” he said. With a scream, the caracaros launched to the ground. True got some water down Tehvan’s throat, then sat cross-legged and took Tehvan’s cold hand between his large, warm palms.
Men have a right hand and a left hand, each with five fingers. Kheirons, my legantos, have nine fingers. One for every branch of the great Tree of Life. One for each star that held those branches to the sky, until the god Truvos stole them for his lover, Khe.
Khe, the father of the first kheirons.
Instead of right and left, the nine-fingered kheirons orient themselves toward their fourhand or fivehand. Kepten True blew his warm breath on the bare thumb of Tehvan il-Kheir’s fivehand, then he slipped the lost ring from his pocket and returned it solemnly to its owner.
“You’ll fly again, my beauty,” he whispered.
It was twilight when the litter holding Tehvan il-Kheir was loaded onto one of the Cay’s longboats. An icy rain had moved in, and Rafil unfolded the oiled leather cover to shield the foalboy.
True watched with Zornin as the corpse was loaded onto a second longboat. “I hope we can find out who he is. Was.”
“Whatever you do, don’t look in that shroud,” Zornin said. “Whether he fell out of the sky or fell out of the tree, he broke every bone in his body. And that was before the wolves came to feast. If the boy has a mother, she’d die of a broken heart.”
“Gods,” True muttered, the enormity of the day dropping a heavy fatigue on his shoulders. “Any idea which way they came from?”
Zornin rolled his lips in tight. “Both have slave brands on them. You do the geography.”
True didn’t need a map. The northeast corner of Minosaros was the last outpost of human trafficking on earth. It both bewildered and angered him that a place so wretched had such a poetic name: Arcodolori. It meant “arrow of sadness.”
“We sent
out new caracaros toward Nyland,” Zornin said. “Telling the Horselord that Tehvan’s on the Cay. You should send him your own birds as well. Strange things are afoot, Ikharus.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mother called upon the pegasos for help. They wouldn’t come.”
Kepten True hadn’t the slightest idea how one would call upon the mysterious winged steeds, but it made a certain sense the elusive Altyns would know how to contact the most invisible of the Horsefolk creatures.
“They refused?” he asked. “When Tehvan’s own dam was a pegaso? He’s practically one of them, how could they not come?”
Zornin tugged at his chin hairs. “They didn’t so much refuse as decline with deep regret. Mother said it wasn’t that the pegasos wouldn’t come, but they were forbidden to come. She has the same feeling about the birds we sent toward Nyland. Meaning it wouldn’t surprise her if none of them arrived.”
“But my birds might?”
The Altyn nodded. “It’s as if something wants you to be right here, right now.”
True snorted. “You haven’t taken up smoking fadara, have you?”
“I don’t touch that shit. But speaking of which…”
Zornin pulled a small, paper-wrapped package out of his tunic. He unwrapped a corner and showed True a small block of kyrrh—the rare resin that dripped from the Altynai’s evergreen trees, known for both its healing properties and its high price. After Nye and fadara, kyrrh was one of the most valuable things in the world and it was not simply given away.
Yet Zornin handed it over like a bit of lunch. No price, no negotiation, no haggle, no expectation of anything in return. “Spread it on the wounds if he can stand it,” he said. “Mother says you can shave a bit into hot water and make a tea. It won’t obliterate the pain as well as fadara, but it won’t fix him with a habit, either. Godsdammit, what that foalboy needs is Nye.”
For a moment, the experienced, worldly Kepten True stood lost and bewildered, as if the sun had reversed direction in the sky. Then he reached an arm out to Zornin, elbow bent with fingers high, offering the ritual handshake called gelango.
Zornin clasped True’s hand. Their palms shifted and slid to hold forearms. Each free hand rested on the other’s shoulder and their brows came together for a single, shared breath.
“Take him home, Ikharus.”
And so, legantos, Kepten True sailed out of the inlet with a very different idea of the Altyns than when he arrived.
From the Most Private Journal of Pelippé Trueblood
Rafil is the oldest person on the Cay. He is seventy-seven and has been at sea since he was ten. My grandfather was Rafil’s commander and Rafil knows just a little bit more about the Cay than my father does. When Da has to make important decisions about sailing or fixing the ship, he will ask Rafil’s advice.
Rafil is the only person on the Cay allowed to call my father by his first name. Sometimes he calls my father “lad.” But only in private.
Rafil used to be the boatswain, which is a hard job and takes lots of time. He got too old to do it and now he just takes care of the rope for the ship. The giantword for this job is ŝnuromastisto, which is the dumbest word anywhere, ever. I like rope master better.
Rafil is an especial wonderful rakontistos. He knows more stories than stars are in the sky. I asked how he knows so many and he told me it’s because he listens.
I try to listen to things carefully because I would like to tell stories someday.
The Cay was anchored in Zeuxis, a port in Sanpago. Before this region was annexed by Nyland, Zeuxis was a crossroads bazaar of slave and drug trafficking. The invasion by Queen Nysiema and Sevri il-Kheir—a conflict commonly known as Tehvan’s War—had rid the city of its worst vices. Ten years after the hostilities, Zeuxis’ reputation still preceded. Especially the penchant for young boys.
Kepten True kept a strict curfew in Zeuxis and forbade sailors under the age of thirteen from leaving the ship. Older minoros and majoros had to stay in pairs or groups. Nobody walked around Zeuxis alone. No excuses, no exceptions. Any sailor who broke the restrictions got thrashed. And not a private hiding in the kepten’s study, but nine bare-assed lashes in front of the crew.
One such beating happened only yesterday and Trueblood’s stomach still hurt thinking about it. One day he’d be Kepten. He’d make rules and when they were broken, he’d be holding the strap and leaving welts on naked skin. His ears would have to shut out howls and moans, ignore snot and spit dripping on the deck as the offender sucked in air and cried between stripes.
A lesser boy might have relished such a prospect.
“What’s troubling Trueblood?” Rafil said.
“Nothing.” Trueblood shivered back to the present. He and the twins were on the weatherdeck with Rafil, sorting out and inspecting rope. On the wharf below, a vendor was selling nuts and seeds. The air was full of birds, scavenging, begging and thieving. A particularly cheerful goldfinch flew laps from the vendor to the Cay and back. It perched on the rail to warble and Rafil perfectly mimicked its song.
“The larks bring souls of the newborn to the earth,” the old sailor said. “But finches return souls to the moon.”
Lejo went statue still, holding out his six-fingered hand. The finch regarded him a moment, then flew into his palm. Trueblood watched with sour jealousy. He could hold his hand out for three days and no bird would come to him. But all animals seemed to love Lejo.
Lejo brought his palm close to his thoughtful gaze and a finger stroked the bird’s bright yellow head.
“Where do they keep the soul?” he asked. “In their beaks?”
“They carry it in their feet,” Raj said.
Lejo glanced at Rafil for confirmation. If Raj didn’t know the answer to a question, he didn’t hesitate to make something up.
“Now goldfinches,” the old man said. “They carry souls of the righteous. Live a good life and a goldfinch will take you back to the moon when it’s time. Live an extraordinary life and a charm of them will bring you home.”
The little bird was sitting on Lejo’s shoulder now. “What about redfinches?” he asked.
“Ah,” Rafil said. “They deliver the souls of the damned.”
“Deliver them where?” Trueblood said.
The old boatswain sighed as he finished coiling a length of rope. He eased himself to sit on the bulkhead. “Once,” he said, “redfinches took souls of the damned to Nydirsil, the Tree of Life. Nyos would bury them in the roots so they could learn.”
“Learn what?” Raj said.
“Where they’d gone wrong. When they atoned, Nyos would send them back.”
Lejo’s eyes rolled up as the goldfinch walked across his head. “Back where?”
“Back here,” Rafil said, spreading his hands. “On the wings of a lark, newborn with a second chance.”
Trueblood squinted his eyes at this information. “You mean, some people walking around have been here before?”
“It used to be. But when Nydirsil was broken off her roots and lost, souls of the damned had nowhere to go.” Rafil held out his wrinkled, rough hand and the goldfinch flew onto it. “Live a good life, lads,” he said. “Because when Truvos took Nydirsil away, it was the end of second chances.”
The goldfinch flew away, leaving a quartet of sober men on the wharf.
“I’ll tell you something about your father’s soul, Troubled,” Rafil finally said.
“What?”
“When your Da brought Tehvan il-Kheir home to Nyland, the Horselord was so grateful, he made an extraordinary promise. He vowed when Ikharus-Lippé True died, il-Kheir would take his soul home.”
“Really?”
“He can do that?” Raj asked.
Rafil nodded. “It used to be il-Kheir always took souls home to the moon. Until there got to be too many people. So he got the fin
ches to help him and soon they were doing it for everyone. But sometimes, for a rare soul, il-Kheir will take it himself. It’s a great honor.”
The twins wore identical expressions of awe. Trueblood, on the other hand, had mixed feelings. Pride that his father was a rare, righteous and extraordinary man. Trepidation that one day, not today but one day, his father would no longer be there.
Kepten True conducted business swiftly in Minosaros. He liked to anchor early in the morning, offload and settle accounts before the sun was overhead, then take on new cargo as fast as possible. With a ship the size of the Cay, they could be at sea a little after sunset if everyone hustled without stopping and snatched bites of dinner between jobs.
Attendance at the evening story hour was sparse, most of the crew already fallen into their bunks. Only the most indefatigable souls showed up, or the sticklers for routine no matter how exhausted. Trueblood sat at the big round table with his most private journal, trying to write a few words about the day. He was behind in his “People I Love” entries.
“Merevhal, you read us a tale tonight,” Abrakam said.
A tiny rumble of hands thumping the floor as the Cay’s boatswain chose a book and took the place of honor in one of the big chairs. Minoros pushed and shoved for the prime spots on the arms and at Merevhal’s feet.
Merevhal is the boatswain, Trueblood wrote in his especial penmanship. Which is the second-most important job on the ship. When my father is busy or resting, Merevhal is in charge. She is the first woman to be boatswain on the Cay in the whole history of the world, anywhere, ever.
“Settle down, twerps,” Merevhal said. She glanced up at Sixten, who leaned over the chair’s back. “Gods, lad, if you’re going to breathe down my neck, close your mouth.”
Loud laughter, which Trueblood didn’t share. His relationship with the boatswain was complicated. He felt strange giving her an entry under “people I love” when he wasn’t even sure he liked her.
He wrote, Merevhal is a good sailor and an important person, but I must tell the truth and say I am a little afraid of her.
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 4
