The Cycle of Galand Box Set

by Edward W. Robertson

  When the time came, starving and half frozen, she limped down the staircase to the beach.

  "Well?" Yona asked. "Did you find any answers?"

  "Yeah." Raxa accepted a blanket from her. "Maybe all I can do is shadowalk. Maybe I won't ever be able to use the nether."

  "Careful, Raxa. This world isn't as firm as you think. Sometimes, believing something is enough to make it true."

  Raxa nodded, but she didn't believe that. Adults weren't always right. Especially the ones here. They were weird. And cruel. She thought they liked hurting kids. She hoped a giant wave came and washed them all away.

  A few days later, while she was outside hanging wet laundry, Luru stole up beside her. Luru's eyes were all lit up like when people had a fever.

  "Raxa." She reached for Raxa's arm. "They're sending me to the Fingers."

  Raxa clipped another dress to the line. "It's not that bad."

  "Not that bad? I already been up there once. I got stung so many times." She lifted her shirt, revealing a dark crater in the skin below her ribs. "It still hurts. When I tried to drink the water, it made me so sick I saw things. I thought I was going to die."

  "But you didn't. You won't die this time, either."

  "You don't know that! It isn't just the Fingers, Raxa. It's making us swim in the cold without any clothes. It's making us work all morning and practice until night comes. I hate it. We have to leave. We can run away together."

  "How? There's no way out from here, you dummy."

  "We can find a way down the other side of the cliffs. Or try to swim around them. We have to try!"

  "We can't," Raxa said. "We agreed to this. We vowed it. 'Sides, if we try to run away and they catch us, don't you think they'll hurt us even worse?"

  Luru stared at her, eyes awash with some inner fire. She turned and ran away.

  They sent Luru to the Fingers the next day. The day after that, as Raxa and Yona stood on the beach practicing the same old things for the two hundredth time, something fell from the cliffs to the north. It hit the rocks with a hard smack.

  Yona's face went as gray as the waves. She took off at a sprint. Raxa followed. And saw Luru's body, bent and bleeding, draped over the rocks.

  Yona bent over her, nether swirling to her hands and flowing into Luru. As she worked, the redheaded woman who bossed everyone around ran toward them from the caves. Face twisted in a grimace, she drew a knife and cut open her arm, showering the body with blood. Raxa yelled out in horror:

  Clouds of nether surrounded her. Far more than Raxa had ever seen. But when they went away, Luru was still dead.

  They sent Raxa back to the Fingers the next week. She walked to the far end where the cliffs overlooked the prairies below, then walked north until she found a staircase carved into the rock.

  And then she ran away.

  ~

  "Raxa. Hey, Raxa!" Vess snapped her fingers under Raxa's nose. "You listening, girl?"

  Raxa glanced at the book spread across the desk. "Sure."

  "Then repeat to me the words I just said?"

  "Some boring stuff about some boring guy."

  Vess scowled at her, then chuckled. "Not wrong. But if I have to suffer through this, so do you."

  Vess cleared her throat and continued reading. Raxa quit listening almost immediately. It had been sixteen years since she'd left Pocket Cove; she'd only been a child. They'd taught her to enter the world of light and dark. She gave them credit for that much.

  She'd tried, and mostly succeeded, to forget everything else they'd done to her.

  As Vess droned on, Raxa frowned. When the redheaded woman had cut herself, shedding her blood over the body, Raxa had thought it was some perverse ritual, a way to prepare the body for death. Or maybe to profane it. She'd never been sure.

  But a line from the Cycle echoed in her mind: "Kamrates spilled his blood, and the darkness flocked, and his foes fell before it."

  Raxa rubbed her jaw, then got out one of her knives—at that moment, she was carrying four—and pressed its point to the back of her arm, same as she'd seen the redheaded woman do. The steel bit through her skin, cold as a winter dip at Pocket Cove. Blood welled from the wound.

  Vess looked up from the book. "What's that?"

  "It's a red fluid known as blood. Don't want to alarm you, but your body's full of it."

  "Why get out your blood?"

  "Got a hunch," Raxa said. "Either that, or listening to this book all day has scrambled my brains."

  The blood slid down her arm, gathered, and fell, hitting the wooden floor with a sound like a finger tapping at a door. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  After returning to Narashtovik, it hadn't taken her long to realize how useful her Pocket-honed talents were. Moving in and out of the shadows, she could steal as much bread and vegetables as she liked. When she got a little older, and tired of the simple food they sold at the markets, she started to sneak into homes and churches to steal pastries and fresh-cooked slices of venison and beef.

  One day, coming out of a cobbler's with a new pair of moccasins—ones she'd paid for, not stolen, though if you wanted to get technical, the money had come from stolen goods—she bumped into a tall man with a grim face, his hair tied back behind his head. Casually, wordlessly, he cuffed her, knocking her down.

  The blow gave her a good look at his wrist. And the spider tattooed there in black.

  She waited for him to go on his way, then followed, heart beating hard. There was fear in it, but there was something else, too. The man had a club on his hip. People got out of his way without seeming to know they were doing it. He headed for the Sharps, one of the neighborhoods Raxa tried to stay away from. He took long strides and sometimes she had to run to keep up.

  In a square that smelled like pee, he stopped to watch the people come and go. After a while, his eyes set on a young girl. Dirty-faced and stringy-haired, she couldn't have been more than five, and was trying to use that to pry loose a few iron coins from the people going about their business.

  After scoring a handout, she smiled and ran into an alley. The man with the spider tattoo followed. Raxa trotted after him, entering a tight space carved between two tenement buildings. She'd only meant to watch him, but as the man drew the club from his belt and closed on the little girl, anger clapped through Raxa like thunder.

  She speared into the nether and broke into a run, silver motes winking past her face. The man was almost upon the girl. As he reached out and grabbed her blouse, she broke back toward the mouth of the alley, spinning him around.

  Raxa leaped into the air and back into the plain old world. She had a knife in her hand. Iron. Nothing special. It punched through his chest all the same, sticking in his heart.

  He gawked at her. Tried to say something. The knife twitched once, twice, a third time. With a rattle of lumber, the man collapsed onto a pile of scrap. Blood leaked from his chest, hitting the boards beneath him.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  "Girl," Vess said.

  Raxa heard her, but it didn't register. She was still in the alley, watching the man's blood drip from his chest and onto the boards. It was scary and it made her want to faint.

  But it also made her feel like maybe she could be scary, too.

  "Girl!"

  Raxa nodded vaguely at Vess.

  The man with the ponytail had been the first. He hadn't been the last. She followed the next one she saw back to an old building deep in the Sharps. Everyone there had the spider tattoos. Later that week, in the middle of the night when they were too drunk to wake up, she burned the place down. That got rid of most of them.

  The survivors went to ground. It was a couple months before they turned up again. Raxa hunted them down one by one. After five deaths, they left the city. It had been twelve years since then. She hadn't seen a spider tattoo since.

  "Raxa!"

  Vess shoved her so hard Raxa staggered to the side. The other woman was on her feet, jaw dropped. The room was so dark that, for a moment, Raxa
was afraid she'd walked into the shadows without meaning to, exposing her secret to Vess.

  Nope. Wasn't the netherworld. The nether was in their world, flocking around her blood like bees on honey or flies on shit, climbing up her arm to reach the blood still trickling from her vein.

  "Look at that." She smiled at Vess. "The Citadel's got a problem on their hands."

  10

  Itiego's words hung in the air, as final as the turning off of a hanged man.

  Boggs rose, eyes as hard as flint. "You can't take it with you, Itiego. All that money won't do you no good on Arawn's grassy hill beneath the stars."

  "Arawn takes us all," Itiego said. "But Carvahal finds those who spent their lives to spread the light."

  The members of the Hand filed out of the room. Dante gave Blays a small nod, stopping at the door.

  Alone, he turned on Itiego. "I get why you're not interested. For all the times that Collen's rebelled, it's never held onto its independence for more than a few years. Why would this time be any different? And when Mallon brings them back into the fold, and sees you gave them a hand, why wouldn't you be next?"

  The Prime Navigator of Cavana gave a small shrug. "There are many reasons I have declined your deal. That is among them."

  "A good leader protects his people. Always. But what's happening now will be different. Just as it was for Gallador. The Norren Territories. And for Narashtovik."

  "I know your record, Galand."

  "Then you know what happens to those who cross swords with me."

  Itiego's gray eyes stared into his. "They say you summoned the sea against the Mallish. Drowned them all. I wonder the terror they felt. The pain of it. Crushed under so much water. Helpless to swim back to the sunlight. If Despot Boggs truly cared for my soul, he would not have brought you into my home."

  The merchant-prince bowed over his knee, drawing his right hand to the side. Dante walked away.

  "Well?" Blays said once Dante caught up in the courtyard. "Any luck?"

  "I might as well have asked him if he wanted to gargle into each other's mouths."

  Gareno angled toward them, smiling broadly. He expressed disappointment their business was over so soon, but informed them that Itiego would be happy to house them on the grounds until they were ready to depart Cavana. As soon as they were shown to their lodgings, they convened on the balcony outside Dante's room, where afternoon sunlight dazzled yellow from the blue sea.

  "So," Blays said. "That was a disaster."

  "He is a coward." Cord glared at the dome rising above the rooftops of the compound of House Itiego. "Money's made of metal, but it's so fragile it should be spun from gossamer. That's why men like Itiego love it. Even the threat of war can smash it like crystal thrown on a stone floor—and the fear of its loss gives them the excuse to throw away their principles the instant they get too dangerous to follow."

  "To him, his money is his faith," the Keeper said. "What principle can be stronger than faith?"

  "Honor. Duty. The righteousness of planting your spear against the giant and shouting 'No more!'"

  Dante folded his hands on top of the table. "Going into this, were any of you aware that Cavana follows The Gold Road? Or are you that ignorant of your neighbors?"

  The Keeper looked appropriately sheepish. "I was unaware that they were so strict. This is a bad sign. If his reticence stems from his faith, then his resolve will be unbreakable."

  Dante broke into laughter. "You really didn't get out of your shrine much, did you? People betray their faith like it's a sport. If you want to be charitable to them, you can argue that they fail because the gods make too many demands of us for anyone to follow."

  "And if I'm not prone to charity?"

  "Then we fail because we're corrupt. And every last one of us has our price."

  "That is a sad thing to think."

  "Oh sure, so our souls might be damned forever," Blays said. "But right now, we should be thrilled. Because it means Itiego's got a price, too."

  Dante nodded. "He said no. But that doesn't mean he hates the idea so much that he'd rather eat his own children with applesauce than to strike a deal with us. It only means our initial offer wasn't good enough. How do we make it more appealing?"

  "Bribery?"

  "Collen's broke."

  "And you're so cheap that when your old boots start to fall off your feet, you'd rather give up walking than by new ones. I bet the thought of coughing up enough cash to bribe a merchant-prince makes you break out in hives."

  "Itiego would never risk being funded by Narashtovik. If Mallon found out, they'd stomp him into a well-dressed paste."

  Blays grew thoughtful. "Blackmail? He probably has mistresses. Then again, hearing a noble's having an affair is about as shocking as hearing a fish has wet skin."

  Boggs sniffed. "How 'bout threats? 'Do like we say, or we'll annex your borders.'"

  "Threats are counterproductive," Dante said. "You might strongarm Itiego into doing what you want for a while. But it'll only make him resent you. As soon as you turn your back, he'll find out how many knives he can stick in it."

  "We should shame his honor," Cord said. "And if that fails, we should show him the color of his own blood."

  "I just told you, threats won't buy his loyalty."

  "Who says it's to buy his loyalty? I just want to hurt him!"

  Blays gestured to the high towers, the view of the ocean. "Itiego's already got so much money he got bored with it. We won't be able to buy him off. Not with silver."

  "Of course," Dante said. "This is the man who united all of Alebolgia underneath him. The only way to reach him is by offering him more power."

  Boggs smirked. "What've you got in mind?"

  "It's your land. What can you afford to give up?"

  "Could do like we were thinking and expand the canals. Not just to Parth. To the Strip, too. Sign him access to both the basin and Parth."

  "Make it clear he can divvy up his rights to the canals, too. No better way to buy influence with the other houses and cities than to give them special trade rights. He'll realize he can use that to play the other cities against each other, too."

  Blays kicked his feet up on the table. "Now you're thinking like a manipulative bastard."

  They drew up plans for the new canals, then a proposal for the division of their rights-of-way. In the morning, they asked Gareno to speak with Itiego again. Gareno returned to tell them Itiego would grant a second audience, but only to the despot.

  After Gareno left, Boggs grunted. "I get the impression he don't trust you all."

  "Could be," Blays said. "Either that, or he thinks you're particularly stupid."

  Boggs grinned. The following morning, he went off to make his case. He returned within forty minutes looking rather less amused.

  "He heard me out." The despot dropped into a chair, expelling a hard sigh. "But he didn't ask more than three questions. Doubt if he'll bite."

  Boggs' skepticism proved right on the mark. After lunch, Gareno returned with word that their proposal didn't suit Itiego's current needs.

  "Lord Itiego wishes to know how much longer you intend to stay?" Gareno smiled, the model of politeness. "So that he can continue to make proper arrangements, of course."

  "Of course," Dante said. "We won't trouble you more than another three days."

  The servant smiled again, bowed, and left.

  Cord swore. "I told you we needed to insult his honor. When you tell a man he has no balls, he'll act so fast to prove you wrong he'll drop his breeches in the middle of town square."

  The Keeper shifted her legs, rubbing one knee. "What now?"

  Dante met her eyes. "Unless you're willing to offer Itiego the entire basin, he'll never work with us. If he won't, we'll have to find someone who will."

  She leaned forward, dropping her voice. "You mean to depose him."

  "I mean to explore our options. A man like Itiego will have enemies. They might be able to pressure him in ways we c
an't."

  To provide lodging for their retinue, they made arrangements to hire out an entire inn down near the docks. The marine air smelled like kelp and salt. Sea lions barked from the rocks. As soon as they settled in, they went over a list of the city's other major Houses, deciding on seven that had the strength and wealth to make a legitimate challenge to Itiego. Boggs' messengers dispersed throughout the city.

  One response came back that same day. Regretfully, the House's master was indisposed. It wasn't known when he would be available again, but it was implied that it could take weeks. Two others replied the following day, stating they had no interest in such a meeting. The other Houses gave no response at all.

  "Itiego's gotten to them," Dante said. "He's poisoned the entire city against us."

  "That's a bit of an extreme move," Blays said. "Your reputation must have preceded you."

  "Cavana ain't the only city in the Strip." Boggs fetched a map from his trunk and spread it over the table, standing over it. "Could try Hemalio. Word is they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the confederation."

  "It's as good a start as any." Dante stared glumly at the map. "But whatever promises and threats Itiego made to the Houses of Cavana, he'll do the same in Hemalio."

  Boggs set to penning another slew of letters. While the servants went to the work of settling their debts and restocking their provisions, Dante went for a walk around the town, hiking up its steep streets, grateful for the coolness of the sea. He'd badly hoped that sealing off the Strip would be quick and clean, requiring no killings or fracturing of political schisms.

  What if protecting Collen required sparking a war in Alebolgia? Did he have it in him to fight another battle for a land that wasn't his? Did he even have the time for that? The snows would be falling in Collen any day. This time, if he stayed longer than he'd promised, he couldn't blame the Colleners. The fault would be no one's but his own.

  He returned to the inn without any answers. As he opened the door, he nearly slammed into a trim young man dressed in subtly expensive knee-high boots. The young man bowed and stepped aside.