"I think," he said. "The bulbs."
"Lie down," she said without looking back. "If you fall in, you won't be able to swim."
He eased himself back, elbows shaking beneath him. Blays did the same; the canoe was built for multiple people, but they had to do some rearranging to reach a point where there weren't any feet in faces or elbows in ribs.
As soon as Dante quit moving, he felt as relaxed as the moment when you fell asleep. For a minute, it was immensely pleasant, like flying might be; the canoe skimmed through the water without so much as a single jolt. He wanted to laugh, but he didn't seem to know how.
The world got faster and faster. He tried to blink, but his eyelids wouldn't budge. Towers raced past them. The only thing that wasn't moving far too fast was the stars, so he fixed on them. His breaths grew further and further apart. So did the beats of his heart. Among his last clear thoughts was the realization that if someone was going to kill him, he would be utterly powerless to stop it.
Towers and bridges blurred past them. He felt as cool and still as a stone at the bottom of a lake. And then—were they stopped? A man's voice called out, half bored. They were stopped.
A light neared. A man stood above them on a stone walkway carrying a spear and a lantern, dressed in a green jabat. "Who's in the water?"
"Volo of the Maggots," the girl said. "Got a delivery."
"What've you got tonight?"
She shrugged. "Pair of dead hari."
The sentry leaned close, shining the lantern into Dante's face. "You didn't kill 'em, did you?"
They both laughed.
"Smelled bad before they died," Volo said. "Thinking I'll take them to the Garu Marsh."
"Why bother? D'you think they have souls?"
"Hari? They look like people. Must have souls of some kind. But they're probably bad ones."
The guard laughed again, the light of his lantern whirling. He crouched down for another look at Dante, crinkling his nose. "Why would the gods give them souls they knew were bad?"
Volo looked down at the "corpses" with mild disgust. "Maybe they're not so good at making souls. Some of them come out bad. Have to put 'em somewhere."
"But most of the world is worse than hari. That means the gods must be awful at their job!"
"And our leader says he's appointed by the gods. Makes you think."
The guard nodded sagely. Looking preoccupied, he leveled his spear and poked Dante in the ribs. Pain ripped across his side. If he could have screamed, he would have.
The soldier scrunched his mouth and stood. "You're right about the smell. Get 'em out of here. Clear waters."
"Clear waters," she said back.
She paddled away from the wall and toward a high stone arch, letting herself coast to a stop. In Dante's peripheral vision, he saw a net being drawn away from the mouth of the arch, opening the way forward. Volo waved in the direction of a lantern and paddled through the gate.
All towers and structures disappeared, replaced by blank sky. Within a short period of time—Dante still couldn't gauge it any better than that—dark branches grasped together, crowding out the stars. Insects whirred so loudly it was as if they'd burrowed inside his skull.
The lights were long gone behind them. Things weren't speeding by so fast anymore, but even the stars seemed to be moving now, hovering below the trees, winking on and off. As Dante fought to understand how this could be so, one of the stars drifted over the canoe. Volo batted at it: it was a bug, carrying its own light, as if it had a torchstone embedded in its ass.
He might have fallen asleep for a while. When he came back to himself, his limbs and face were tingling. He found that he could blink. Beside him, Blays was twitching. Overhead, the branches weren't moving at all. The insects were still whirring. Out in the darkness, something splashed softly.
"Keep wiggling," Volo said.
"Will it help?" Dante slurred.
"It'll help stop you from being eaten by everything that wants a piece of you."
He wiggled harder. As his floppy limbs and wobbly joints began to cohere into something resembling a functional body, Volo chipped at a flint, spraying sparks onto a wooden cage. Something caught inside, lighting with a soft oily whoosh. Though the lantern was mostly made out of something that looked like wicker, only the parts that were supposed to burn were currently doing so. Volo hung it from a pole in the prow of the canoe.
They were floating in a clearing of sorts, a patch of open water surrounded by thick-trunked trees. Hundreds of wicker cages hung from the black boughs. Inside, white bones rested in untidy piles. Other bodies still carried flesh on them, the skin sloughing off, what lay beneath glistening darkly.
Blays sniffed. "Wish my nose had stayed paralyzed."
"What is this place?" Dante said. "A prison?"
Volo gawked at him. "You imprison your dead?"
"Of course not. We bury them. Don't you?"
"You bury them? In ground? That's disgusting!"
"Oh yes, much cleaner to hang them in gibbets to get eaten by bugs and drip juice on you when you pass under them."
"Ground is for growth, not death. Here, we elevate the dead above the waters so they don't have to be afraid anymore."
"Is that what you do?" Dante gestured at the cages, then in the direction he thought might possibly be Aris Osis. "Ferry the dead here?"
"That's right. I'm a Maggot."
"Hey now," Blays said. "You seem like a perfectly nice person."
"It's an honor to be a Maggot. I'm one of the only parts of the body that isn't of the body." Volo gave them a look up and down. "You two aren't merchants, are you? You're soldiers."
Dante kept his expression neutral. "What makes you think that?"
"You have swords. And you're doing something you're not supposed to. Something you could get killed for. Merchants don't put their lives in danger. They use money to get other people to do that for them."
"You're right. We're soldiers for the same people Captain Naran works for."
"Not like those common ones, though," Blays said. "We're the elite. Double-elite, really. The normal elite would have you believe otherwise, but that's because they're jealous."
"Like the Knights of Odo Sein?" She considered them. "Does that mean you're going to kill me?"
"Why would we kill you?"
"So I can't tell anyone who you are. Or maybe you only became soldiers because you like killing people, so you'd sword me just because you can."
Blays flexed his hands, working out the last of the sluggishness. "If we were the type to do that, would it be a great idea to plant that thought in our heads?"
"It doesn't matter. You've already thought of it." Volo narrowed her eyes. "And you wouldn't tell me what you're really doing here, either. Are you going to kill the Drakebane?"
"We barely know who he is," Dante said. "Why would we want to kill him?"
"Because he tells people they're free, and then he enslaves them."
"I have about as much interest in getting dragged into the affairs of Tanar Atain as I do in spending any more time hanging around beneath these thousand corpses. We have a job to do, Volo. Let's get to it."
She looked disappointed—Tanarians seemed to have endless patience for conversation—then got out a stoppered gourd. Using a piece of reed, she scooped out a portion of spicy-smelling red paste.
She shoved it under Dante's nose. "Eat this."
"What is it this time?"
"Keeps the bugs away. Unless you want the bugs to come."
"Why would I want to attract insects?"
"Don't ask me. You're the one who doesn't want to eat it."
He swallowed the paste. It was spicy enough to singe his tastebuds, but that didn't seem to be masking any unpleasant flavors. Or poisons.
"These are the rules of the water," Volo said. "Don't leave the boat. Don't make splashes. And don't eat any bugs."
"I don't think you need to worry about us eating any bugs," Dante said. "Ever."
"How are we going to be able to move around the capital if we'll be arrested on sight?"
"Are your ears decorations? When you're in the capital, you can go where you want. You'll look like just another hari."
Blays eyeballed a large blue frog croaking away from the banks of an island little bigger than their canoe. The frog's eyes were downcast, almost rueful. Seeing it, Dante felt a sudden and inexplicable sadness.
Blays tore himself away from the sight. "Why stop us from traveling around, anyway? What are your leaders afraid we're going to do? Accidentally spend money on your goods?"
Volo went quiet for three seconds. "I shouldn't say. It's a crime."
"We're already committing bundles of them, aren't we? What does one more matter?"
"They say it's for your safety. That the swamps are too dangerous."
"And is hiring guides considered unholy?"
"Yes," she said, deadly serious. "Because that would let you see how things really are here."
She fell into a moody silence. The swamps rang with the cries of birds, frogs, and insects. Sometimes Dante heard the whine of mosquitos, but none of them seemed to be landing on him. Either the red paste was doing its work, or the mosquitos didn't like foreigners any more than the people did.
His eyes darted to every furtive splash. The place was spooky, he'd give it that. Yet over the next hour of travel, he didn't see anything that looked especially dangerous. At least not to anyone who wasn't in the habit of sticking everything they saw into their mouths and swallowing it live. Once, he saw a large pair of cat's eyes gleaming from the branches of a tree, but it didn't look like they could be attached to an animal any larger than a badger. Whatever danger the king was worried about befalling foreigners out in the wild, his fears appeared overblown.
It was immediately clear, however, that if anything happened to Volo—or she decided to abandon them—he and Blays would be completely and utterly screwed.
The canopy was too dense to make out more than fleeting stars; he couldn't glimpse a single constellation to get his bearings by. When morning came, he could orient himself to the sun, but even then, he had no idea which direction Aris Osis was. The only thing they could do was paddle south or west until they struck the coast. Assuming they still had a boat. If they didn't…well, he supposed they could steal one from an innocent person, but he didn't want to go down that line of thought.
He had no idea how dedicated Volo was to keeping them alive. Probably, she saw this as a job, nothing more. Certainly nothing worth putting her safety at risk if they got into a mess. Quite suddenly, her continued well-being vaulted to the top of Dante's priorities.
A few minutes after he'd reached this conclusion, Volo directed the canoe to a wedge of turf barely keeping itself above the water. She ran them aground and hopped out.
"Time to kiss some dirt," she said. "Help me set up camp."
Dante looked around them. "We're stopping already? If you're tired, one of us can paddle."
"Just needed to put some distance between ourselves and the city. Not good to travel at night. The light attracts things."
"Like what? Bloodthirsty moths?"
"Want to find out?"
Frowning, he brought ashore bundles of cloth that turned out to be hammocks. Volo went to work stringing them up.
"Hammocks?" Blays said. "The ground isn't so sacred we can't sleep on it, is it? Otherwise, you're going to want to have a word with the worms currently befouling it."
Dante tied a rope around a branch, testing his knot. "I imagine there's less snakes this way."
"Less snakes? Meaning there are still some snakes?"
"I expect it's better to have a few snakes around than having to deal with a bunch of snake-eaters."
Dante tied the other end of the hammock and gave it a tug, wincing as the movement tore something in the spot where the guard had poked him with the spear. He'd thought about healing it with the nether, but Volo seemed fairly sharp-eyed. The last thing he wanted was for her to pick up on the fact that his wound was mysteriously healed.
Fortunately, it was only a small cut, but he was so used to healing any bruises and nicks he'd picked up over the course of the day that the small pain felt magnified and strange. Beyond that, he'd spent all of his adult life not particularly concerned about any wound short of a lethal blow. To be reminded of the vulnerability he'd once felt—one that nearly everyone else in the world lived with—was unsettling.
They ate a meal of dried fish and a bready fruit Volo found on the little island. As she chewed, she flicked a piece of rind into the water. Something broke hard against the surface, vanishing as quickly as it had struck.
"We won't be alone tomorrow," Volo said. "People of the teeth will be out fishing. Legs will be out delivering goods. And the eyes will be on patrol."
Dante fished a seed from between his teeth. "What do we do if we run into a patrol?"
"You can hide. Or we can poke out their eyes."
He stared at her, completely uncertain if she was serious, or just letting her mouth express every idea that crossed her mind. "For now, let's stick with hiding. There's going to be enough trouble as there is."
"Then what if that's a sign that we should cause more?"
"It isn't."
She gave him a reproachful look. "You say no too fast. When you kill all of your ideas while they're still infants, none can grow up to work your paddies—or defend your castle."
Dante crawled into his hammock. He was soon asleep. During the course of the night, he woke more times than he could count. It was more than the chorus of creatures. He felt uneasy, as if something were slowly drawing closer, and every time he nodded off, it took another step forward. Was it the green crush of the forest? He didn't think that was it. He'd been in intensely wooded areas before. The jungles of the Plagued Islands were so lush you couldn't traverse parts of them without following game trails or hacking your way forward a foot at a time.
It was more than the claustrophobia of a forest. It felt like the swamp was breathing. Like it was alive.
Volo rousted them at first light to pull down the hammocks before anyone could see them. They'd barely gotten the canoe underway when voices bleated out ahead. Two men were arguing heedlessly, voices ringing through the trees. Something about nets; fishermen, likely berating each other about whose turn it was to untangle the skein.
Before Dante and Blays could conceal themselves, a raft swung from behind a shaggy stand of trees. Two men pushed it forward with long poles, paying much more attention to their discussion than to where they were planting their staves.
"Can't be so," the older man said. "Ain't no way that Sadi Lono, the man who caught the wind with his bare hands, is sluggish enough to let himself get netted."
The younger man swatted at something. "But say it's Ura So doing the netting. She smiles at him, dazzles him with her ruby teeth, then catches him up."
"Right, and what happens when he snaps out of her spell? He goes at the net with the Knife That Can't Be Sheathed."
"Won't help. The weave is too tight."
The old man guffawed. "You're telling me the knife that cut a hole through the earth can't cut a net?"
"This is the net that dragged down the moon! There's no way—" Finally noticing Volo's canoe, the man broke off mid-sentence.
Volo paddled onward, skirting around a snag protruding from the water like the hand of a drowning man. As the raft sailed by, the two men stared at the foreigners. Dante did his best to look like an obedient servant.
"I say he's stuck fast," the younger man muttered, turning back to his partner. "As if she's going to just stand there while he fumbles about for the knife?"
Their voices faded into the forest. Volo made a thoughtful noise. "If the wrong person sees you, they
might turn you in. Next time, you should probably try to hide."
Though it was still a couple of weeks until spring, the air was warm, intensified by the heavy dampness of the air. Ropes of vines and threads of moss hung from the trees. Another canoe emerged from behind a lumpy little island; again, it was too close for Dante and Blays to try to hide themselves in the bottom of their boat. The man inside the other canoe glided past, watching them from the corners of his eyes.
They'd barely started out and Dante was already doubting they could reach Dara Bode without someone turning them in to the authorities. He considered killing one of the many, many flying bugs and sending it ahead of them to scout the way, but there wasn't a singular path forward, meaning he'd have to maintain a small fleet of flies to cover whichever way Volo took them. Anyway, if he did see a patrol coming their way, he couldn't alert Volo without exposing his abilities.
With no better option, he and Blays flattened themselves against the bottom of the canoe and covered themselves in hammocks. Water thumped gently against the hull. Dante felt jumpy and irritable. Blind. More than that: like he'd lost both his arms. He was so used to being able to call on his powers that being without them made even simple tasks feel abruptly overwhelming.
He dozed on and off. Early that afternoon, Volo guided the canoe out of the main waterway and found an outcrop of ground where they could stretch their legs and eat lunch.
"I don't suppose there's another way to the capital?" Blays said. "Preferably something that ends each day with an inn, a fire, and kegs of exotic beverages?"
"There are some towns along the way." Volo glanced at a fish leaping from the water. "But the problem with towns is they're full of people."
Too soon, they were back in the canoe. Dante took his time in lying down. Before, there had been any number of gaps in the growth, but here, the trees, brambles, and vines had grown into an interlocking wall. They were traveling more or less down a tunnel. One that looked as though it only existed due to constant maintenance.
The Wound of the World Page 33
