When he wasn't securing their path, Dante studied both the swamp dragon horn and the ether. No matter how he approached it, the horn's nether remained immobile. Yet its presence reminded him of the shaden. He had a wild idea that if he learned how to access the stored shadows, he might be able to make himself resistant to nether, just as the dragon had been, but for the moment, that remained no more than sheer speculation.
He had better luck with the ether. He could still only command a highly limited portion of the light, but he seemed to have unlocked a more precise control of what he had to work with. The night after they'd gotten back on their way, he broke a small twig, leaving it dangling from the branch, then let the emptiness fill him. The twig glowed, straightened, and reattached itself to the tree.
The following day, one of his dragonflies entered a clearing. Another raft-village was spread across a broad expanse of paddies and docks, protected by the two-part net fences. A team of soldiers watched from the shade as villagers waded into the shallows, cast strange plow-like objects into the water, and dredged up loads of silt, constructing a new paddy.
Every time a worker crawled out of the water, leeches spangled their legs and trunks. The soldiers watched impassively. If a worker took too long resting in the shade, they were dragged across the dock and shoved back into the water. Dante didn't tell Volo what he'd seen.
Dawn came slow, the sky oppressed by black clouds. The air was as still as crystallized ether. Two hours into the day's voyage, the clouds opened as if they'd been slit. Rain slammed through the canopy, battering Dante's scouts to bits. He tried slaying a small pink fish and sending it ahead of them, but it couldn't see far enough through the water to be worth the effort.
Abrupt flashes of light speared through the rain-racked trees, followed by the boom of thunder. Rain gathered in the bottom of the canoe, obliging them to bail it out with a bowl.
With hours of daylight left, Volo guided them onto the shore of a nondescript island. "You get out here."
"No offense," Blays said, examining the trees, "but your people didn't choose a very glamorous spot for their capital."
"The capital's two miles from here, fool. That's why you have to get out now."
"You'll have to forgive me. When we hired you to take us to Dara Bode, I stupidly assumed that meant you'd take us to Dara Bode."
"If I did that, they'd catch us. And all three of us would wind up in the dungeons. Or was that how you planned to meet your friend?"
Dante brushed a strand of damp hair from his brow. "Why don't we try the same trick we used to get out of Aris Osis?"
She gave him a look like he'd suggested an archery contest using themselves as targets. "Is your head full of mud? What business would I have bringing two dead hari into the capital?"
"Then what are you going to do instead?"
"Tell you to get out and wait here. Only I hadn't planned on you being defiant and ruining everything."
Dante pressed his lips together and debarked, bringing his gear with him. Once he and Blays were ashore, Volo gave them a nod and shoved off, disappearing north into the driving rain.
They strung their cloaks between some shrubs and huddled beneath them. After an hour, Dante went down to the banks, slew a water strider, and sent it skimming a few hundred yards in the direction Volo had gone. As it surveyed the waters for incoming boats, Dante cursed himself for not sending a fish to follow Volo into the city.
Their cloaks sagged with rain, dripping on them. A short while later, one tore free from the shrub, exposing them to the downpour.
Dante sighed, crouching in the muck. "How long do you suppose we should wait here?"
"That depends," Blays said, "on how long it'll take you to build a boat."
"Why am I the one doing the building?"
"Would you trust me to build a boat? I'd probably build the keel on the top and the deck on the bottom. In fact, I don't even know what either of those words mean."
Thunder rumbled sporadically, like the rantings of a drunk man who kept falling asleep mid-sentence only to snap awake and continue his ravings a few seconds later. As the gray skies dimmed, a large outrigger canoe appeared in the water strider's sight. The boat was painted bold yellow and trimmed with pale blue. It sported a figurehead of an angry-looking fishing bird with a crested head. Lean men in yellow jabats paddled on through the rain.
The outrigger came to a stop within a hundred yards of their island. The captain of the vessel stood and peered about. He bore a delicate mustache. Wispy as it was, it was the most facial hair Dante had seen since entering Tanar Atain.
"Sirs Pendelles and Smallhorn!" the man announced. "My name is Bo Tuin. I have been sent by Volo to retrieve you." He gazed across the hazy swamp. "I'm getting soaked, sirs. Might want to come out before I decide to go home and dry off."
Keeping the nether in easy reach, Dante moved from behind a tree. "Over here."
The canoe made landing. Bo had brought clean jabats for them, powder blue with a shovel-shaped icon on the breast. They changed behind a shrub. They came back to find the captain gazing up at the rain-lashed branches.
"The trees protect us from storms such as these," Bo said. "Give us fruit and such, too. You could say the trees seem to care for us. If so, suppose we've got any obligation to care for them?"
Dante and Blays exchanged a look. Blays cleared his throat, deciding it was his turn to handle the dana kide duties—or, possibly, he just wanted to. He did seem to get a kick out of discussing things he didn't care about in the slightest.
"Depends, doesn't it?" Blays paced thoughtfully, sandals squelching in the mud. "If a man comes by my house and steals some old firewood I'd been meaning to get rid of, he's done me a favor. But do I really owe him anything for it?"
Bo pursed his lips. "So we'd have to figure out if the trees intend to help us. I'll have to ask them sometime!"
He grinned, opening a knapsack. The greeting seemed to be over already. Either Bo wasn't much for formalities, or he didn't think they had time to indulge in them. He produced a pair of looped ropes.
"Pardon the shackles," he said. "But you're escaped hari, being returned to the estate of Do Riza, your master." The man grinned wider. "Don't worry, sirs. The Do is a very merciful man."
Frowning, Dante allowed himself to be bound. Men with the bearing of bodyguards helped them into the canoe. The bodyguards tossed Dante and Blays' cloaks into the water and slipped their swords onto their own belts.
In soft Gaskan, Dante said, "Are we being arrested for real?"
"These days, I've been arrested enough that it doesn't bother me," Blays said. "But if he says he's sorry, but he has to pretend-kill us, that's when I'll complain."
The rowers pulled hard, racing to the north. Once they were underway, Bo made his way back to them, holding onto the mast for support. "Stay quiet through the gates. Your questions will be answered at the Do's estate."
Dante nodded. "Who is this Do Riza? What's his interest in us?"
"I am but an agent of the hand, sir. Have you ever seen a talking hand?"
"One time," Blays said. "I've sworn off Galladese gin ever since."
Dante sat back and resolved not to worry about anything until they'd arrived at their destination. The way forward soon grew littered with rafts and the half-sunken wreckage of them. It was still raining hard as the trees opened before them and they looked on the great city of Dara Bode.
The city was composed of a series of concentric rings. The outermost was a stretch of open water about four hundred feet across. Where it touched the forest, the branches were neatly chopped back. Large round areas were enclosed with nets; Dante suspected they were fish pens.
They came to another ring of two net-fences. A gate stood across the outer net, wide enough to allow the entry of one of the big barges they'd seen wallowing through the waterways. Bo spoke to the green-uniformed guards there, who gave Dante and Blays a close look, then added a few knots to the little string-board they used to k
eep records.
The guards waved them through the two sets of gates and into the next ring, a sprawling patch of aquatic farmland. Paddies of the teardrop-leafed plants alternated with stands of short green-trunked trees growing in tight clusters. These bore extremely long, rectangular leaves, some of which had tattered into thin strips. Squat green fruit grew in heavy bunches—bananas. Dante had seen them in the Plagued Islands. Even in the rain, a skeleton crew of laborers was out among the plants, using bone-headed hoes to uproot purplish roots from the paddies. Others inspected the banana trees. Wherever they spotted fruit starting to turn yellow, they hacked down the entire tree and cut loose the bunch.
The canoe navigated through the farms and into a manic sprawl of rafts. People sat under roofs of banana leaves, sheltering from the rain as they passed around bowls of food, tossed dice (which seemed to exist in every land Dante had visited), and fooled about with cubic wooden frames strung with innumerable threads and shiny glass beads. If not for the rain, the noise of their boisterous arguments would have been deafening.
Dante crinkled his nose, but the smell of the city was oddly minimal, and largely overpowered by the scent of the rain. Clear lanes were maintained through the raft-slums. They sliced forward, coming to another ring of wooden platforms supporting simple homes and shops. There was a general lack of smoke. In the few places it was rising, people waited in line carrying covered clay pots and strings of uncooked fish, waiting to make use of the communal kitchens.
After so long on the water, Dante could smell the damp earth ahead. Past the platforms, manors of dark brick stood on artificial islands, protected from unwanted traffic by brick walls. Wooden watchtowers rose from the corners of the islands. Further ahead, stone towers defied the stormy sky. The canoe pulled up to an island dock. The men hopped out and helped Dante and Blays, who were still shackled, debark without falling into the water.
They were brought through a wooden gate and into a courtyard of ludicrously-hued flowers. There, Bo passed them off to a servant named Ki, who brought them to a sparse sitting room and informed them that the Do would see them shortly. Ki removed the ropes from their wrists, but didn't yet return their swords.
Blays took in the pastel hangings and the bamboo benches along one wall. "This room's a little too nice to hack us to bits in, isn't it?"
"Whoever the Do is, he hasn't brought us here to murder us," Dante said. "He'll want something from us. Something he can't do for himself."
"Pick his own crops?"
The door opened. A guardsman entered, followed by a slim Tanarian in a tailored yellow jabat and black sandals with straps that rose to his knee. A second guard brought up the rear. Dante offered a shallow bow to Riza, but the man waved him off.
"What good does bowing do for anyone?" Riza said. "I know my place. Do I need you to show it to me? If I need you to bow, doesn't that imply I wouldn't be a lord if you didn't? Doesn't that grant you power over me?"
"Sure," Blays answered. "Right up until the moment you remember the extra special power granted to you by the armed gentlemen you brought into the room with you."
The lord smiled. "I am Do Riza. And I expect you're wondering why you're here. The answer is simple: I desire more connections with Mallon. I understand you carry some very strong ones."
"We don't represent King Charles," Dante said. "Nor any of the major lords."
"Glad to hear it, since I was to understand you work with merchants. Just as you had trouble getting into our nation, some of us have trouble getting things out of it. I'm not talking about anything untoward. I'm talking about simple trade."
"You can't do this through Aris Osis?"
"I should be able to, shouldn't I? They're my goods. I should have the right to sell them where I please."
"That's what most of us believe."
Riza clasped his hands and paced across the room. "Yet shouldn't a king have the right to govern what comes in and out of his kingdom? When there's a dispute between these rights, shouldn't the king's will prevail?"
"If I answer yes," Blays said, "does that mean the two of us illegal foreigners should leave? Forgive the suggestion, but isn't this the sort of thing you should have worked out before you smuggled us into your manor?"
"I'm about to make a vital decision. How can I be sure I'm making the right choice if I don't test my beliefs against other arguments?"
"Well, let me know when you've worked it out. In the meantime, got any wine?"
Riza smiled thinly. "I have decided that a king doesn't necessarily make decisions based on what's best for his kingdom. Sometimes, he makes decisions based on what's best for himself. We will proceed. Regarding Aris Osis, trade through its port is highly regulated. For a person in my predicament, it's made much easier if outsiders approach my agents seeking trade."
Dante nodded. "What if our employers were to come to Aris Osis looking for something only you can provide?"
"Then I would be well-positioned to secure the right to provide it. We can start small. Once the stream's flowing, it'll be easier to divert it into other areas."
"Our superiors would be happy to expand their reach into Tanar Atain. But isn't it dangerous for you to be working directly with a pair of outlaw hari who've infiltrated the capital itself?"
"That depends on what you intend to do here."
Dante was suddenly aware that he didn't know how much Riza knew. "Right now, we don't even know why our associate was arrested. Once we've determined that, we might be able to broker a deal with the authorities. But we'll need a go-between."
"Or I could get you a permit to speak with them yourselves."
"There are permits for this? Why didn't they tell us this in Aris Osis?"
"Because it requires the favor of a Do, which I'm guessing you lacked. Even then, it would have been difficult to acquire until you were here in person."
"Get us our permit, and we'll get you your partners in Mallon."
Riza grinned and entwined his fingers with Dante's in a way that suggested the braid of a rope—either this was the Tanarian way of shaking hands, or Riza was crazy. He made various promises about beginning the process of securing them a permit, then left them in the company of Ki the servant, who showed them upstairs to a pair of rooms decorated with dyed pieces of glass and wall hangings that vaguely resembled harps made of dangling knotted strings.
"Okay, I'll ask the obvious question," Blays said once they were alone. "Do we trust him?"
Dante picked up a green glass figurine shaped like a rearing swamp dragon. "He was awfully fast to help."
"That makes you less suspicious?"
"There are political rifts here. We've seen them firsthand. If we're lucky, we just might be able to get Naran out of here without a fight."
"Are you betting on that vanishingly unlikely outcome? If so, hold still while I find some dice so I can part you from the rest of your money."
"I'm not counting on it. In fact, I'm going to explore other options right now."
Dante sent for Ki, asking where foreign prisoners were typically held. After Dante repeatedly reassured Ki that he wouldn't use that information to go running around the city unescorted, Ki informed him that foreigners of note were kept in the Blue Tower, which was within bowshot of the Bastion of Last Acts, all of which was a little bit to the north. Before leaving, Ki noted that even if Dante did try to sneak out, he would find it impossible to reach the tower.
Dante's mattress was elevated on a short wooden platform, presumably to reduce his exposure to bugs. He poked around underneath it and found an oval-shaped red beetle. He killed it with a pin of nether and bound it to himself. He was afraid it was going to have to make the journey on foot, but when he opened the shutter, he discovered the rain had slowed to a manageable rate.
He sent the beetle north. It gained altitude slowly, fighting hard against the rain. It trundled over sloped rooftops speckled with water barrels. Dante had seen a number of cities from above in this way and the view never ce
ased to delight him: the way the neighborhoods blended and shifted, the patches of greenery, the spokes and veins of the streets (or, in this case, waterways). What it exposed was that there was no single unifying plan, yet there was order nonetheless, one that emerged as the people who lived in a place built on the past and each other, forming everything from miserable slums to the soaring spires of cathedrals.
Ahead, the islands and manors stopped cold. They weren't in the innermost ring of the circle. There were three more: a narrow band of dirt, another stretch of open water, and then, in the very center of the city, a walled fortress several times larger than the Sealed Citadel.
This, presumably, would be the Bastion of Last Acts. A dock extended from its front gate, but even though there was no real way to deliver siege engines to it, the painted iron doors looked strong enough to outlast time itself.
Rather than the brick used elsewhere in the city, the fortress' walls were made of faintly blue granite blocks. There was both an inner and an outer curtain wall, regularly spaced with towers, along with a generous bailey and an intimidating keep. It was all very impressive. Really, given the general lack of large-scale fortifications elsewhere in Tanar Atain, its scale struck Dante as a little ostentatious.
As soon as he looked for it, the Blue Tower was obvious: a tall building of stone so blue it had to be dyed. It was set apart from the main fortress by a span of twenty feet. A wooden crane-like object had been erected on the Bastion's nearest tower. It appeared capable of lowering a wide plank across the gap to the Blue Tower.
Windows ringed the tower's periphery. Little more than slits, but plenty wide enough for a beetle. Dante went from cell to cell. In Narashtovik, the dungeons only held a handful of souls at any given time, but here, each cell held at least one prisoner, and usually two to four, which hardly give them the space to all lie down at once.
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 127
