by Rye Sobo
My eyes soon adjusted to the darkness, and I discovered the source of the stench—a corpse in the next cage over. I craned my head to get a better look at his face. He was not one of the crew. Why capture us? Why not kill us at sea?
I shifted my weight and brought my arms in front me. It sure as hell wasn’t the first time someone had left me bound and alone. At least this time I still had my clothes. I used my teeth to pull apart the knot and release my hands, then my feet, and rubbed at the marks on my wrists.
I closed my eyes and tried to search for sources of energy as I had done before on the ship. One by one the threads of the Fabric revealed themselves. I could see the cage and the shack. The threads ran to the body in the cage next to mine. Where the crew each had a glow of the yili within them, however faint, this man had no light within him. He was dead.
I scanned the threads further. To my surprise I found I could see beyond the walls through the threads, at least six or seven fathoms out. Some threads revealed other sources of life, men—pirates—walked around the camp. There were several other small shacks in a line. Within each was a huddled group of three to four people. How many captives did they have? We aren’t the only ship they’ve come across, if this man is any sign.
A fire burned only a few fathoms from a line of shacks. Three men stood near the fire, huddled together. Their yili glowed with the same golden energy as those in the shacks. I could make out their forms but could not see what they were doing.
We’re in some encampment. The door-latch on the shanty shifted, and my vision raced back into the material world as I jumped in terror.
The sky outside was dark. Had it been a day since the pirates approached? A dark figure stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the fire. As they stepped into the shack, I could tell that it was an older woman. She was pale skinned, like the pirates. She wore dark furs, her long, gray hair matted and dirty. She carried two bowls of stew. The stench of the bowls overpowered the putrid scent of the dead man.
“Who are you?” I asked as the woman set the bowls down on a table and picked up an iron bar.
“What are you doing with that?” I shouted as the woman moved toward the cages. She prodded the dead man with the iron bar and frowned.
“He’s dead,” I said. “Your people killed him.”
The woman pointed at me with the iron bar. My face pressed against the bars as I shouted at her. “Where are my friends? Have you killed them too?”
She pointed at me again and made a swatting motion with her free hand. I took a step from the bars, and she grabbed a bowl from the table and slid it into the cage. The smell of rotted fish assaulted my nostrils. The woman mimed eating and pointed to the bowl then turned to leave.
“Please,” I begged. “Don’t leave me in here with him.” She may not understand my words, but she could understand the tone. I pointed to the corpse in the next cage.
The woman nodded as she stepped through the door and closed it behind her. Once again, I was alone in darkness with the smell of a corpse, and now rancid fish stew.
***
A few marks after the woman left, the door to the shack slammed open again. The door flew back with such force the cage shook, spilling rancid fish stew on the wood slats of the floor. A large man stood in the door, his wild hair glowed in the fire behind him like a terrible aura. He wielded an iron bar like the one the woman had used.
The man thrashed the bar against my cage and said something in a language I couldn’t understand. I pressed myself against the back of the cage, my eyes wide. With a laugh, he moved to the cage with the corpse and prodded the body with the iron bar. The bar pierced the chest of the dead man with a sickening sound. The large man gagged in disgust, looked over his shoulder, and shouted out the door.
A moment later a second, younger man entered the shanty. The younger man winced as the stench hit him. The larger man pointed to the body and said something to the younger. They grabbed the body, iron bar still protruding from his chest, and carried him from the shack.
For a moment I could see through the door. I tried to commit as much of the scene to memory: two women and a man next to a bonfire, a row of wooden shacks across the fire from my own, a group of ramshackle houses on a rise.
The large man returned and slammed closed the shanty door. The putrid stew spilled on the floor boards once again, a welcome cover to the morbid aroma.
My thread visions had been right. There was a fire beyond the door with people huddled around it. If that was true, then perhaps the people in the other shacks were real too. The rest of the crew may still be alive.
Comforted by the thought my friends may be safe, if trapped in a cage, I leaned against the cold bars and considered my options.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In my fifth year of formal study at the Imperial University, Ignis allowed me to leave campus when I wasn’t in classes. I often found myself in one of the many public houses just beyond the walls of the campus, gathering the latest gossip from the older students with my midday meal.
I had nestled into a booth away from the crowded bar, captivated by a history of Fadlan’s travels.
The shadows of the dim room and the general apathy of the barkeep at this establishment would, in a few years, make it easier for a gnome of twelve years to order a tankard of ale with my older classmates. For the time I settled for a platter of figs, goat cheese, and the relative peace of the back booth.
Fadlan, renowned as the first Drakkan to travel the remains of the Eisig Empire after the Azurean Wars, had just reached the continent of Nivalis and was recounting his horror with the sanitary habits of the Eisiger people. A young boy almost tall enough to look over the table, with shaggy black hair, stood at the end of the booth staring at me. I tried to shift and ignore the dirty-faced child.
“I don’t have any money to give you,” I said. It was the truth. Shari, the owner of the public house, was a client of the Empire. She offered food, drink, and a place to sleep for a reduced price when Zori’s men came with the monthly invoices.
“Don’t want your money,” the boy said. “I work for my own.”
I returned to my book. He continued to stare.
“Why are you staring? Go away,” I said.
“Never saw a small man before,” he said. “Can I draw you?”
“Gnome,” I corrected. “Can you do it without bothering me?”
“Sure. It’ll cost you.” He sat on the bench across the table from me and pulled a piece of paper and a box of charcoal from a satchel he wore across his chest.
“I thought you didn’t want my money?”
“Don’t want your charity. But I’ll take your money for work. Copper half knot for a sketch.”
I laughed. A child no older than me, and he had already perfected his hustle. I reached into the coin purse tucked inside my tunic, felt for a half knot, and handed it to him.
He palmed the coin and it disappeared to somewhere on his filthy person. He opened his box of charcoal and marked the paper. Content he would stay quiet, I returned to Fadlan’s horror at Eisiger’s tendency to bathe only once a month.
A few moments later the child slid the paper across the table for my inspection. The portrait was a striking likeness of me slumped over my book.
“This is really good,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. “Name’s Dem.” He flagged down Shari as she moved between the tables in the front and the kitchen in the back.
“I already told you. If you don’t have money, you get no food. I’m not a Panean,” Shari said with indignation. “And get out that boy’s booth. You leave him alone.”
Dem held up the tarnished half knot he received. “Can I get that stew now?”
“Are you hustling my patrons?”
“It’s alright,” I said.
Shari studied the filthy boy through narrow eyes for a moment, then plucked the copper piece from his tiny hand and headed to the kitchen.
“I’m surprised that you ca
n read,” he said.
“Of course I can. Can’t you?” I asked.
“Nah, that’s one of those things for rich people and the smart folk behind the walls of their school,” he said. “I don’t have much need for it. So which are you?”
My face must have conveyed the confusion. Shari arrived and placed down a steaming bowl of goat stew and half a loaf of warm bread in front of the filthy child.
“Are you smart? Or rich?” he asked.
“Both,” Shari said.
I shot a cold glance at the tavern keeper. She shrugged her shoulders, picked up an empty coffee cup from the table, and headed back toward the kitchen.
Dem nodded a grunt of approval. Her answer seemed to satisfy his question. He ladled a spoonful of the stew into his mouth.
“So what are you reading?” He asked between bites of bread.
“History of Fadlan’s first journey,” I said in a tone I hoped conveyed my disinterest in further conversation.
“Who’s that?”
“A man who sailed north a long time ago.”
“I heard there were nothing but bad people in the north. They eat people.”
I snorted. “They aren’t all bad people. And they aren’t cannibals.”
Dem munched on a chunk of bread while he considered his next question.
“So what do you study at the school behind the wall?”
I closed my book, convinced I wouldn’t be able to read any further. “Mostly about dead people. Sometimes we get to read about dead animals too. If we’re lucky, we get to read about dead civilizations.”
“The priests say too much fascination with the dead is a dangerous thing, especially when the people with the books do it,” he said.
“It’s important to know what others have already learned. Otherwise we would go nowhere as a society,” I said. “Are you actually comparing the study of history with necromancy?”
“Necro-what? The priests just say fiddling with dead things is bad.”
I let out an exhausted sigh.
“Yeah, a lot of people say that I can be tiring. I can leave if you want.”
“No, finish your meal.”
By the time we had both finished our food and left the tavern for the evening the sky was already dark. It was the first time I had to climb over the great walls of the college in the dead of night, but it wasn’t the last. From that day when I was eight-years-old, Dem and I were inseparable.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was still dark in the shanty. The cold, damp air carried the smell of a fire over the putrid smell that still permeated the shanty. The bolt on the door shifted, and the door opened.
Beyond the door, the encampment was dark. Fires glowed both here in the slave camp and in the shantytown on the rise. Is that what we are, slaves?
The old woman who brought the bowl of rotten fish stew the night before entered. She carried her iron bar in her left hand—retrieved from the corpse dragged out last night—and a wooden platter with a slice of bread and a charred fish. Once again, she swatted at me with her bar, and I pressed my back against the far side of the cage.
“What time is it? What day?” I asked.
She ignored my questions and slipped the platter between the bars of my cage. How long had it been since I had actual bread instead of hardtack? As she stepped back from my cage, I attacked the bread. She watched me with curiosity. The bread was stale, but better than the fish stew that still lingered in the air. I picked at the charred fish, it was a type I couldn’t recognize. The sweet meat was still warm if lacking in spices.
Satisfied I was eating, the woman stepped out of the shanty and closed the door behind her.
***
I tried my best to move about and stretch my aching muscles. Several turns after the morning meal it was still dark. I remembered hearing stories of lands in the far north of Nivalis where the sun would not rise for months at a time. But we aren’t that far north…are we?
The bolt on the door shifted, and the door opened. I expected the woman to bring a midday meal, but instead found Tolek, the pirate captain, at the door.
“Your wounds are healing well,” he said in his accented Imperial.
“Is my captain still alive?”
“Everyone is still alive.”
“Not everyone,” I said as visions flooded my mind of Tredway’s body, throat slashed and bleeding on the deck of the Fritzbink. The air still heavy with the stench of death only amplified the memories for me.
“Your captain is still alive,” he said.
“So go talk to him.”
“Ger is…” he paused, selected his words with care. “Persuading him to talk. I wanted to speak to you.”
“There is nothing I can tell you, I was an apprentice until the day you found us. I hadn’t been first mate three turns before we spotted your sails on the horizon.”
He laughed but didn’t take his eyes off me. “What can you tell me about your cargo?”
“Why are you so obsessed with the cargo? It’s farming equipment headed to an outer island,” I said.
Tolek roared with laughter. “It would take months to plow a field with these.”
He pulled a shining sword from a scabbard at his waist and threw it on the floor in front of my cage.
I sat and stared at the blade. It was new, not a blemish on it. It bore the markings of a Drakkan smiths guild.
“Your surprise is genuine,” Tolek said. “You honestly didn’t know you had a hold full of weapons?” He hefted the blade and slid it back into its sheath, then leaned against the table.
“Like I said, I was an apprentice, a midshipman on a merchant ship,” I said. “Until a few days ago I was studying charts and attempting to tell my starboard from larboard. When the first mate died following the storm, the captain appointed me as first mate.”
“But if you are as green as you claim, why promote you?”
“Because I was the only one who survived,” I said. The painful truth hung in the shanty’s silence with the smell of death and rancid fish stew.
Tolek gave a hearty laugh, “In my culture, the one who survived is the one to be feared. You are a tiny man in a tiny cage though. Should I fear you, Lieutenant Blanco?”
Lost in my thoughts, I stared at the wooden slats of my prison.
“There is nothing to fear here,” Tolek said as he stood and moved toward the door. “Only a broken, small man.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In the turns of solitude inside my prison I focused my attention on the lock of the cage. With the threads I could see the mechanism of the lock, the tumbler, the pins. For what seemed like days of concentration I set my sebi on the lock and demanded my agoti to move the lock.
There is a school of magic dedicated to the ability of an arcanist to move the objects with their agoti. When I was still a student in the University, I used to watch the Kinetimancers practice. They crafted enormous granite towers in the University’s courtyard without ever touching the stones.
In the darkness of my cage I searched my memory of the Ancient Tongue, the words many arcanist uses to manipulate the Fabric. I tried the arcane words for turn, break, yield. None seemed to work, though a cockroach surrendered, tiny arms raised in capitulation before it scurried away.
When arcane means failed, I moved to more mundane methods. Viewed through the Threads I maneuvered a spoon, slick with the oily fish stew, through the wide keyhole to the pins. I twisted the spoon left, then right, then with a final twist, CLICK.
My heart leaped in my chest with the sound. The door to the cage slid open with only a faint sound. My excitement overwhelmed my sebi and my sight again filled with the decrepit shack, this time from the other side of the cage.
I need to plan this with care. If I rush this, it won’t end well for me. I stepped back into my cage, careful to lock the door behind. I waited.
***
That night after the old woman brought a fresh bowl of rancid fish stew, I watched the cam
p through the threads. Thin fibers of reality stretched out in all directions, taking the shapes of structures and people. It was several turns before the movement in the camp slowed as my captors turned in for the night.
With deft skill I crammed my spoon-turned-lock pick into the tumbler and once again I was free. I moved to the door of my wooden prison, spoon in hand, slid the bolt, and opened the door.
High cliffs surrounded the encampment on three sides. Not cliffs, walls. That explains the constant darkness. They built the camp, a small village of ramshackle buildings, on a rise inside a massive cave. Ten wooden shanties made a halfmoon around a large bonfire on a lower level of the cave.
I slipped around the side of my prison and into the dark shadows cast along the cave walls. In the dark I skulked to the next shanty where I could still sense three men in cages.
Only two of the pale-skinned pirates watched the shanties after the evening meal. One had fiery red hair, the other light gold. Both wore furs over their clothes. The two engaged in a heated debate in their strange language. While the guards argued, I moved to the front of the shanty, pulled aside the latch, and entered.
Inside the air was thick with the scent of sweat and feces. The smell made me gag.
“Who is there?” A voice said from one cage.
“It is Fer—Lieutenant Blanco,” Jabnit replied.
As my eyes adjusted the darkness once again, I could see three men crammed into the same small cages they used to hold me. In one was Jabnit. Another held Majid Al Din Din, the ship’s cook, and the third held a man I didn’t recognize.
“Blanco? Who is Blanco?” Majid asked.
It was then it occurred to me that humans had difficulty seeing in the dark.
“It’s me, Majid,” I said. “We need to get out. Do you know where the others are?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “How did you know we were here?”
