She straightened, heels tocking together, then swept her cap from her head and slapped it against her thigh. "Damn me! We will go. Our voyage is not long. I can ready our ship by the morning."
"Our?" Dante said. "We?"
"If we have struck a deal for you to find the Tallas Route, then you are my investment. And I always look after my investments."
Dante thought the plan to be loaded up, crewed, and ready to sail in less than a day was an optimistic goal, but by the following morning, they assembled on the Finder of Secrets, a single-masted cog with a deck, an aftercastle, and oar slots. By ten that morning, they'd cast off, maneuvered from the Cavana harbor, and struck south, keeping within sight of the rugged coast.
Vita had a cabin, but she preferred to observe their progress from the vantage of the castle. Dante joined her there to ask how long the voyage would last.
She glanced at the sails, then at the blue-gray waves slopping against the hull, which seemed to be flowing to the northeast. "Fair wind, a less fair current. I say it is four days."
"Is it that close?"
"You don't even know the location of the place you travel to?"
"That would be the deciding reason I hired someone to take me there."
Vita laughed brightly. Traveling seemed to agree with her. Then again, perhaps it was the rekindling of her dreams of smashing House Itiego's stranglehold on the tallas trade. Whatever the cause, she'd spent the early morning stalking about the Finder of Secrets yelling garrulous orders to the crew, and now that they were underway, she watched over her ship like a general about to send his troops into righteous battle, a gleam in her eye and a wind-painted flush to her tan cheeks.
"Come," she said. "I have something to show you. Maybe it will make you feel less like you are sailing over the edge of the world."
She led him down from the aftercastle and into her cabin. This was cramped and sparse, as they tended to be, though a window let in light and air. She moved to a wooden dresser nailed down on one side of the cabin and opened a drawer, shuffling through documents and maps. With a note of satisfaction, she withdrew one of the maps and spread it on the top of the dresser, which doubled as a table.
"Here, we see the world outside that window." She motioned to the glimpse of cliffs beyond the cabin, then down to the vellum map. "This is Alebolgia. Here is Poloa, south of Collen—to its great misfortune. Here is Cavana on the coast, and the other cities of the Strip."
She moved her finger southeast across a swath of short, jagged bumps just south of Alebolgia. "These are the hills you wished to die within. And on the other side, Tanar Atain. Here is Aris Osis." Vita tapped a tiny illustration of a city on the Tanarian coast. "Three hundred miles from Cavana. An easy trip."
Dante leaned further over the map. Tanar Atain took up a roughly triangular mass between the hills to its north and something called the "Ashlands" to the south. If the map was at all accurate, Tanarian territory stretched for roughly a hundred fifty minutes along the coast, and extended inland all the way to the mountains that formed the southern extension of the impossibly vast Woduns. Its territory was covered in light scratches of ink that might have been trees or waves.
"Aris Osis is the only city?"
"Not at all." Vita indicated the large triangle of territory. "All belongs to Tanar Atain."
"But there's nothing there."
"When you look at a map, and you look out at the land it shows, are they one and the same? This map was not drawn by Taim or Silidus. It was drawn by one who could only record what they had been able to see. There is much to Tanar Atain that isn't Aris Osis. As to who and what this muchness is? The only ones who know are the Tanarians."
"The interior is closed to outsiders? Are they afraid of foreigners?"
"A person with the correct business in Aris Osis may berth in Aris Osis. But that is as far as we may go. The Tanarians are much like cats. You know cats?"
"Cats?" Dante said. "I think I've heard of them."
"Cat are friendly, pleasant to be around. Yet if you overstep yourself with them?" She jumped toward him, hand outstretched, fingers bent like claws. "They pounce you."
"What about the authorities? Will they help us locate Naran?"
"If he stepped over a line, don't be surprised if it is the authorities who have disappeared him."
She returned to the aftercastle to question the navigator about the weather. Dante watched the distant cliffs pass by. He had always enjoyed traveling, and especially sailing; the experience of being out in the middle of the sea made it easier to grasp the true size of the world and your place within it.
At that moment, however, it was hard to be on a ship without being reminded of the Sword of the South. During his acquaintance with the ship, it had already lost one captain. There was a chance it had already lost another—and that the ship itself had been lost as well.
The day passed unremarkably. The morning saw slack winds, but Vita promised they'd pick up as the sun climbed, a prediction that proved true. With the sun hanging high and the sail swelled, Blays swore loudly from the port side of the cog.
Dante jogged toward him, following his stare out to the horizon. At the sight of the hills, Dante's foot seemed to forget how to stay stuck to the ground. The pitch of the ship finished what was left of his balance. He landed on the deck, scraping his palms.
Across the water, the hills glowed red and yellow, shaded with orange and white and blue, as if they were aflame for miles. But there was no smoke. No flicker of fire, either. Rather than being rounded, the hills looked like they'd been pinched into peaks, like the dough of giant bakers, as craggy and sharp as the pocked black rock they'd seen in the Plagued Islands.
"Ah," Vita said, approaching. "So you see why one cannot simply ride into Tanar Atain!"
"Let me guess," Blays said. "The Peaceful Sheepy Hills Where Nothing Untoward Has Ever Happened?"
Dante gripped the wooden railing. "What caused this?"
Vita moved beside him, leaning her forearms over the rail. "It is said that, long ago, these hills were wooded, bountiful with animals and fruit. It was here that the Yosein lived. The ancestors of the Tanarians, the Yosein were peaceful shepherds and scholars. For generations, they roamed the hills, marking the arrival of each season with an offering of sheep to their gods.
"One year, there was a famine. A sickness of the grass that bloated the sheep until they fell dead and made the fruit fall from the trees before it was ripe. Though each month the famine worsened, still the Yosein made their spring offering, and then again in summer. By autumn, they walked like skeletons dressed in skin: even so, they made their offering. Yet by winter, they were so dizzy from hunger that they feared making the sacrifice would kill them. They asked the priests if they could wait until spring. The priests said the gods agreed, so the Yosein made no offering.
"A fortnight later, the skies filled with strange light clouds. The Yosein thought it was a storm sent to cleanse the grass, but they soon saw they were wrong. The strange clouds were a plague of enormous locusts, a million and a million of them. As pale as grubs and as large as dogs, they ate not the crops—but instead, the flesh of every living thing they could find. Sheep, geese, and human alike. Where they went, they left bones behind. The Yosein tried to flee, but the locusts followed, wolves with wings.
"Seeing that they would be hunted until they fell from exhaustion, and would then be too weak to fight, back the Yosein sent their greatest sorcerers back to do battle with the plaguebeasts. Knowing that to fail would mean the death of all their people, the sorcerers held nothing back, smashing the locusts with pillars of fire, one strike after another, laughing as they too were burned by the powers they channeled against the pale horrors.
"For each locust they killed, another seemed to take its place. After forty days of fighting, with their own losses mounting, they knew there was only one way to stop the plague. And so they scorched the hills. Melted and blasted their homeland until poison belched from the rif
ts and killed the fruit trees and the animals that had fed the Yosein for so long. Still the sorcerers brought down their power, until the earth buckled and moved like the ocean, and the air shimmered with fire, and the sorcerers burned to dust that blew out to the sea.
"But the poison the sorcerers had called from the earth killed the locusts, too. Their bodies fell from the sky like the rains of nightmares. They were the last living things to touch these hills. The surviving Yosein descended to the swamps to the east, where they mingled with the people there, and became the Tanarians. They are the ones who called the hills 'Hell-Painted.' No matter how many years pass, the hills remain as poisonous as the first day they were fouled. All who enter? Dead. Dead like a fish taken from the water and tossed on dry sand."
Vita had a troubled expression on her face, as if she were considering ordering the helmsman to take them further out to sea in case any unseen fumes were rolling down from the hills. Dante frowned. The hills looked otherworldly, yet he wondered about their origin, and if they were as hostile as they looked at a distance. Even the great sorcerers of the Rashen, forefathers of Narashtovik, hadn't been able to cause devastation like that, or they would have in order to protect themselves from the marauding Elsen.
Which wasn't to say the land wasn't toxic death for all who stepped within it. Rather, he suspected the story of how it came to be was no more than a story. Then again, weren't the hills worth studying either way? If the story was true, such an ability would make for a far more effective barrier against your foes than the one he'd erected in Collen. Sure, apparently the process would require the sacrifice of a few monks. But if it was the choice between that and being invaded and destroyed utterly, he was sure said monks would be dedicated enough to make the right decision.
Past the hills, the air started to warm, arriving at the cool side of neutral. Dante killed the remainder of the voyage asking Vita about the history of Alebolgia and House Osedo. She was well-versed in both, which as it turned out was quite impressive, considering that the alliances between the Strip's cities shifted faster than island weather, and that there seemed to have been a new war, uprising, trade dispute, or replacement of the ruling dynasty every two to four years. It made his own turbulent history in Narashtovik feel a little less absurd. And made him jealous that, aside from the occasional Scour of Arawnites or war on Collen, Mallon had enjoyed centuries of a peaceful, almost boring tranquility.
In return, Vita asked him a great deal of questions regarding the Chainbreakers' War and his talent with the nether. He wasn't sure if her interest was because she enjoyed his company, or if she was thinking about how to bolster her House with sorcerers of her own.
The painted cliffs and hills ended abruptly, replaced by the flattest land Dante had ever seen. Forests sprawled to the horizon, disappearing in the haze. Through gaps in the thickets, wintry sunlight glinted dully from slack expanses of water. Vita announced they'd arrive in Aris Osis within three hours. It had been four days since they'd made way from Cavana.
Blays strolled out beside him on the deck. "Given any thought to our cover story?"
"We obviously can't be ourselves, the mighty rulers of Narashtovik," Dante said. "If Naran has gotten in trouble with someone—be it local authorities, or an outlaw outfit like Raxa's—they'll be tempted to kill us, or hold us hostage. We'll pose as ambassadors. Then they'll be afraid that if they hurt us, they'll call down the wrath of Narashtovik."
"If we put Narashtovik on their brain, somebody might recognize us for who we really are. We ought to say we're Naran's creditors and we're looking to find out what happened to our money. If he's in trouble, and they think we're just as mad at him as they are, they'll be freer with the truth." He glanced at a fish as it leaped from the waves, followed by a much longer and vicious-looking fish. "Not to mention less prone to think we're there to do something stupid, like breaking him out of prison."
"That's a genuinely cunning idea. How did you come up with it?"
"Don't forget I spent years trying to bankrupt the Gaskan Empire. Lord Pendelles became quite the expert on business and investment. As a matter of fact, if we ever retire from gallivanting around saving some people while killing some other people, I'd give some thought to becoming Narashtovik's lord of finance."
"You? Lord of finance? You spend more money than a crew of sailors making port!"
"Who better to decide how we use the city's money than the person with the most experience spending it?"
The Finder of Secrets veered slowly toward the coast. The forest pressed to the edge of the water, the trees propped up on dense, finger-like roots. At once, the land pulled inward, revealing a placid bay. Across the water, towers thrust into the sky. Not just the occasional spires of churches or keeps, but scores of them, as thin as reeds, the tallest more than two hundred feet in height.
"What's that about?" Blays said. "Don't like to get their feet wet?"
"In Tanar Atain, there is always more water than land," Vita said. "They must make use of every piece of ground they have."
She ordered her crew to strike the sails and row the cog into the bay. A rocky jetty extended from both sides, protecting the interior. A tower rose from the end of each jetty. Vita guided them to a pier at the base of the tower on the right.
Three men waited at the end of the pier, two of them armed with long bows and a rack of arrows that resembled thin harpoons. The third man was unarmed. All three wore pine-green tunics trimmed with white and plain jerseys beneath them. The buttons of their tunics were made of bone and the collars and sleeves of their jerseys were laced with finely braided strings of obvious quality.
All three had a faint green tinge to their pale faces that might have been a trick of the light. They had long faces, eyes that were almost colorlessly gray, and short but pointed chins. The soldiers' faces and hands were tanned from being out on the water, but glimpses of their sleeved arms and collared necks showed skin that was paler than Alebolgians, Colleners, or the Mallish.
The unarmed man cast them a pair of ropes, which the cog's sailors tied to the ship's cleats. The man grinned in a way that wasn't particularly happy, but nor was it threatening.
"Of the north?" His Mallish was lightly accented.
"Alebolgia," Vita said, injecting serious pride into the word. "I have been here before. I am Vita of Osedo, and this is my ship, the Finder of Secrets."
From his light coat, the man produced something that looked like a cross between an abacus and a small harp. With deft fingers, he tied tiny knots into a few of the strings.
"The Finder of Secrets," he mused. "Does naming it that make it better at its duty?"
"Perhaps it does. It can't hurt to try, can it?"
"What if its name makes you falsely confident in its abilities? If you think it's that great at finding the secrets you're after, won't you be more willing to overlook any mistakes you make along the way, justifying to yourself that it's destined to get there anyway?"
"If I am slack-witted, perhaps it could." She tugged down the end of her triangular cap. "But it can also serve as a constant reminder of my duty, honing my vigilance and always bringing me closer to my goals."
"Hmm. If a proud name brings you closer to your goals, shouldn't you call it The Ship of Greatness That Will Bear Its Captain to Massive Riches and Eternal Glory?"
Vita's mouth fell open in horror. "In my land, we depend on ships like a nomad depends on his horse. If you don't give your mount a respectful name, how can you ever expect it to serve you well?"
The official nodded deeply. "I've heard other people say that they talk to their ship or their bow or to their raft. And I think, if it talks to you, then it must be a person. And if it's a person, then shouldn't you let it go? Or at least pay taxes for owning slaves?"
Vita tilted her head a few degrees to the right, cupping her hand to her ear. "If so, my ship tells me that it is happy to remain mine, and that it does so of its own free will. And also that it wishes to make port."
&
nbsp; The official narrowed his eyes, as if ready to say more, then glanced down at his abacus-harp. "Of course. Of what part are you?"
"I belong to the legs."
"What do you carry to Aris Osis?"
"Spice—and iron."
Eyebrows raised, the official added new knots to his record-keeping instrument. "Then you will be very popular. May I see it?"
She gestured to the deck. "Naturally."
He came aboard, accompanied by one of the soldiers. Vita showed him to the hold. Witnessing the ingots of iron there, he and the soldier returned up the stairs and crossed back to the pier.
There, the official handed Vita a yellowed bone the size of a knife handle. It was inscribed with a few glyphs Dante had never seen before.
"You are permitted entry for one week," the official said. "You are not permitted to travel inland from Aris Osis. Violating this dictate will result in your immediate imprisonment. If you need more time in the city, speak to the Bureau of Interlopers. When you are ready to depart from the city, please notify the same bureau."
"Naturally." She motioned to her sailors, who untied the pier's ropes from the ship's cleats.
"And if you'd like to tell me more about your talks with your boat," the official said, "then I will be right here."
Vita smiled in a way that promised she would do no such thing. The oarsmen pushed away from the pier and stroked toward the city's many docks, stirring brackish water and the scent of waste and rotten things. Greasy purple seaweed floated just below the surface.
"That," Blays said, "was one of the weirdest customs interviews I've ever heard."
Vita grunted. "Most of his questions had nothing to do with his duty. The Tanarians, they talk. And talk. And talk. At least when we Alebolgians get long in the tongue, it's due to wine. The Tanarians, they argue as if it were a sport."
A few other oceangoing boat were docked at the piers, yet the vast majority of the ships there were rafts, barges, and double-hulled canoes, with or without sails. Dante homed in on everything with a tall mast, checking for the Sword of the South, but didn't see the sleek vessel anywhere. The air smelled of raw fish and beached seaweed. Porters and stevedores unloaded cargo and lugged it into the city of towers. Most were human, but a few were neeling, small and gangly, their faces round and amphibian.
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