A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  “I’m going to be watched and won’t be able to get messages to you for a while,” he said. “So I need you to find someone you trust—someone who can’t be bought—to contact me.”

  Adithi and I exchanged a glance.

  “How? We’re poor and we only know other poor people, who can easily be bought or threatened. Plus, no one we know would ever make it to your door. We would never make it to your door.”

  Tamhan stopped. “Good point. That’s a truth, isn’t it? Something we need to change.”

  I snorted. “Add it to the list.”

  He grinned at me. “It’s getting long, isn’t it? Well, how about this: My father has a stall at the River Market. Khatri Meats. You know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll go down there early every morning when it opens, then browse the market afterward before leaving. That should give your messenger opportunity to find me. Just tell them to be careful—they might get questioned afterward.”

  “We’ll use a beggar,” I said, thinking quickly.

  “There are lots of beggars.”

  “He or she will ask for money to buy bread and honey. Then you’ll know that they can speak to us.”

  More than a week passed, and we heard nothing in all that time. We recruited old Khamen Chorous to look for Tamhan in the River Market, but he didn’t show up. Adithi and I worried but got by with a little help from my hive.

  The bees spread out over the city, looking for little gardens and window boxes and so on, but I also had them note dwellings where humans didn’t seem to be currently living. That told us where we could steal some clothes that weren’t caked in blood, and where we might find some food from the pantries or root cellars. After a couple of days living on rooftops, we found a place that had been closed up for an extended leave and we were able to break in, quietly, and become silent residents, safe from the searches being conducted by the city watch. It was comfortable and cozy and ridiculously luxurious for me. Whoever owned the house probably thought it wasn’t good enough; that’s why they weren’t there. But it had a roof and the floor wasn’t muddy. They did not understand how precious those very simple things were to someone in my circumstances. I slept well for the first time in years.

  The property was near the Fornish enclave, which was full of flowering plants, and it had a huge old tree in the backyard, and I told the queen if she built her hive up high, no one would probably even know she was there.

  She and the girls got to work right away. They needed to start making honey for the winter. Planning ahead for lean times.

  I was sitting outside in the twilight of dusk, my head thrown back with a serene smile on my face, watching my hive come home with loads of nectar, when Adithi emerged from the house to join me. She’d brushed her hair out and looked like a proper swell.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she replied through a yawn, folding her legs underneath her and grunting.

  “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah. Those bed things sure are better than rooftop shingles or alleyway bricks.”

  “So true. Beds are the best. You know what else is the best?”

  Adithi sighed and covered her face with her hands, then spread a couple of fingers and peered at me between them. “You’re going to say bees, aren’t you.”

  “That’s right! Bees are the best. I’ve been thinking about how they do things and how we do things and I think we can learn from them.”

  “We’re not insects, though, Hanima.”

  “I know. We’re not horses either, but I imagine you’d say we could learn things from them, right?”

  “Well, yeah. We should all probably get more fiber. Oats are really good for you.”

  “Granted. So hang with me on this: Look at how bees organize themselves. Everybody works, including the queen. And everybody is taken care of until they die. And you know what you don’t have? Poor bees!”

  “Well, no, but they don’t have an economy or currency or a political system—”

  “Aha! But they do have a system! And that system is organized so that all bees are valued. Same goes for termites and ants. If you want evidence of some kind of natural law, I’d say that’s it. If you’re alive, you’re worth something. The system we have says you and I have no reason to exist, because we don’t have jobs or husbands or children, and for some reason—a reason they just made up, not a real reason—that’s not natural. That’s the way somebody decided it should be, and it’s the worst.”

  My new friend blinked. “Your blanket statements always surprise me. How do you know it’s the worst?”

  “Because we’re miserable—or we were, until very recently. Desperate enough to walk into the plains and let some bloodcats bite us, right? The people we know down by the river are all still miserable. And it’s not because it’s Kalaad’s will or mere chance. It’s because that’s the system we have. It was created by folks at the top and it’s enforced with muscle they pay for, and there’s nothing about it that’s natural. They are actively choosing not to help those who need it. Letting people starve and die of exposure? Abusing poor folk for daring to exist? How is that natural? Or right?”

  Adithi shrugged. “You’re not going to get any argument here. But you are going to get a question about what you think we should do about it.”

  “I don’t know yet. But I agree with Tamhan that things have to change. If we don’t hear from him soon, we should start thinking of what we can do on our own.”

  Another shrug. “There’s nothing.”

  “I don’t believe that. We can do something.”

  “Hanima, look, I love your optimism. It keeps me going, you know? But do you think Viceroy Senesh is going to change how he does things because we ask him? No. As soon as we reveal ourselves, he’s going to throw us in a dungeon and let the rats nibble on us.”

  “Rats won’t bother us anymore. We’re blessed.”

  “You know what I mean. We can still starve and get chills and things. Swords still cause ouchies. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have to sleep during the day and skulk around at night.”

  “True enough.”

  Once the sun was down and the temperature started to cool, Adithi and I dressed in new hooded tunics we had bought with some money Tamhan had given us. We pulled them over our heads, effectively hiding much that would make us recognizable to others. They obscured our hair and faces, and we had found some used men’s boots, so we passed for men in the darkness. We weren’t the filthy, bloodstained urchins everyone was looking for. We were men doing manly things.

  We stayed out of the swell neighborhoods and took the alleys and back roads to the River District. They were unpatrolled and therefore dangerous in one sense but safe from being discovered by the city watch, which was more important. Besides, thanks to our blessing, we were both stronger and faster than we used to be, and we knew enough about the streets to recognize when someone had chosen us as a mark. So we sneaked, but with confidence.

  Confident sneaking is the best.

  We found Khamen Chorous in an alley near the riverside wall, sitting on an upturned crate outside his tent, nursing a tin cup of weak tea he’d made from thrice-used leaves. He’d boiled it over a grate stretched across a garbage fire in a metal pail. When we caught his eye—unlike on the previous days, where he’d shaken his head and we moved on—he waved us over. He flashed his three brown teeth at us in welcome and spoke in a low voice. There were a few other people in the alley, but they were spaced apart, their territory agreed upon in advance and privacy guaranteed, except for what one spoke aloud and bounced off the walls.

  “Saw your boy today, I did, I did. Much hair, very shiny, super swell he is. And look at you, all cleaned up and looking like you’ve been sleeping indoors.”

  I kept my voice low as well. �
��We are, for now. What did he say?”

  “Two whole words! He said, ‘For Hanima,’ and dropped some coins and a triangle of paper in my bowl.”

  “Keep the coins,” I said, and Khamen laughed until he coughed up something and spat to the side.

  “Already spent them. Bought bread and honey with it, just like I said. That was the best I’ve eaten in weeks.” His fingers fished into a pants pocket and reappeared with a curious wedge of folded paper shaped like a hunk of cheese. Maybe Tamhan had slept on it.

  “Did the city watch give you any trouble?” I said as I took it from him.

  He shook his head. “No more than usual. I got told to move along before lunchtime, as always. But after I pocketed what he gave me, some other swell comes over and asks what was in there. I showed him two coins and left the note in my pocket. He gave me another coin! Then he asks if your boy said anything, and I told him he said, ‘For Kalaad,’ and then he says I can earn more coin if I let him know if I see either of you or that other kid with the stripe of yellow hair.”

  He meant Sudhi. “Have you seen him?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “If you do, will you let him know he can stay with us?”

  “Of course.”

  Adithi said, “Did this man give you a name?”

  “No. Said he’d be back to check with me later.”

  I shook my head. “He works for the viceroy, Khamen. Be careful.”

  “I know, girl, I know. Anything you want me to say to the kid if I see him again?”

  I scanned the alley in either direction. No faces looking our way. “Maybe we should read this first.”

  “Sure, sure.” He regarded his garbage fire doubtfully. “You probably want a candle for that, though. Think I have one in my tent.”

  “All right.” As Khamen lumbered to his feet, I backed away and gestured to Adithi that she should do the same. She looked confused but moved with me and soon knew the reason for it. A minor explosion of flatus from Khamen’s backside detonated as he dropped to all fours and crawled into his tent. He giggled until he coughed again, but eventually he emerged triumphant, holding a small taper.

  “Sorry about that!” he said, though he clearly was not. He lit the candle over his garbage fire before handing it to Adithi. I unfolded the note, which said “Burn after reading!” at the top in a neat hand.

  “What’s it say?” Adithi demanded. I glanced at her—she was close enough to see if she wished.

  Softly, I asked, “Can you read?”

  She pressed her lips together and gave the barest shake of her head. “Only a little. Some shop signs. Not fancy handwriting like that.”

  “I’ll teach you, then.” To Khamen I said, “Excuse us a moment,” and pulled Adithi a little way down the alley, halfway to the next garbage fire, where someone was boiling borchatta soup. I read aloud, quietly:

  Hanima & Adithi—

  I am being watched constantly, so do not attempt to see me. Also stay away from Abhinava’s family home; they are watching that too.

  The viceroy wants you very badly but is trying to keep your existence a secret. We need you to be known but unseen and safe. The city needs to know the Sixth Kenning is real and that you are not doing the viceroy’s bidding. Do what you can for the river folk and they will protect you, but beware of new faces—they may be spies.

  I have a group of friends who will post broadsides about the beast callers clave and your vision for a life outside the walls. This will provoke Senesh. He will search openly for you and not be gentle and it will be dangerous. But it will stoke resentment as well as demonstrate that you are not on his side. I will not do this until you are ready, however. Are you safe? Let me know.

  It was unsigned, which was smart, in case we didn’t actually burn it. “I don’t think we should write back. It will put Khamen at risk. Too much can go wrong.”

  “I agree.”

  I lit the note with the candle and hurried back over to Khamen to throw it on his garbage fire. He grunted at the brief flare of illumination.

  “What should I tell the swell lad if he comes back?” he asked.

  “Tell him, ‘Message received. Proceed.’ That should be enough. Thanks, Khamen.”

  “Glad to do it. Good to hear you talking.”

  “Thanks.” Of the many benefits to being blessed, I prize the return of my speech above all else.

  “Say. If I got blessed, you think I’d get my teeth back?”

  I winced and sucked my teeth. “I don’t think so, and here’s why. During the seeking, we were bitten by many bloodcats. One of them actually bit off my nipple. Everything that could heal is healed now, but that didn’t grow back. I’m permanently disfigured. So I think the blessing is a repair-but-not-replace kind of thing.”

  “I see. I’m not anxious to try it, you understand. Just curious.”

  “Khamen, if you had a safe place to squat, would you go there? Nothing fancy, but basic shelter and a bed?”

  “Beds are pretty fancy for someone like me.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, sure, I wouldn’t mind if I knew of such a place.”

  “Good. Maybe we can arrange something. We’ll see you soon, all right?”

  “All right, Hanima.”

  Once we are out of earshot, Adithi asked me, “What do you think we can arrange?”

  “I have a plan, Adithi, and it’s the best. All these people without a roof over their heads?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to put a roof over their heads.”

  * * *

  —

  The last line of that tale made Hanima an instant favorite out on Survivor Field. They openly applauded when the bard dispelled her seeming. Many of the refugees had tents and whatever few belongings they had managed to accumulate since arriving, but little else. Fintan promised them more soon.

  “We’ll be back to Hanima in three days’ time,” he said.

  I wondered how Rölly and the city’s powerful and well-off had received the tale. The pelenaut is nothing like the Nentian viceroys—he truly cares, and I know he’s working to help as much as he can—but I can’t imagine anyone with power is ever comfortable hearing an open discussion of systemic change.

  “And now I introduce you to not only a new person but a new people. I had the great privilege and honor to meet Koesha Gansu myself. How and when and where—I’ll let that develop naturally. But I hope we all may see more of her people in the future. From what I understand, they live on some islands across the ocean, albeit a bit north of here, parallel with the Mistmaiden Isles. They are a seafaring people who have been seeking to cross the Northern Yawn for many years. So I take you back now to the beginning of her journey to our lands.”

  The seeming that Fintan took was definitely of a different people. Koesha Gansu might look at least somewhat like the Nentians, but she didn’t dress like them. She was in a navy-blue uniform trimmed in maroon. Her hair was black and piled or braided underneath an interesting hat like a two-tiered cake embroidered with some gold thread. The hat was perched high up on her head, perhaps pinned to her hair, allowing us to see that Koesha had expressive arched eyebrows and a forehead as yet unwrinkled by age. She wore polished leather boots that nearly reached her knees, and they matched her belt, into the front of which she had tucked two long knife scabbards, their hilts crossing so that she could draw them at the same time to either side. Her skin tone was close to that of a Nentian, sort of a sunbaked sand but with cooler undertones than the coppery hues of the Nentians.

  Fintan had her speaking Brynt with an accent that must provide hints at her native language, using shortened vowels and chopping off consonants sometimes.

  I paused a moment before giving the order to sail and beamed a
smile at my crew. We might return someday to glory, having circumnavigated the globe with our reputations cemented in history, and we might die far from home and wind up food for some dark beast of the deep, but regardless of what happened in the days ahead, we would most likely never be so well scrubbed again. Ocean voyages were not conducive to personal hygiene, and I just wanted to fix the image of spotlessness in my mind.

  “I want you all to look around and lock this in your memory,” I called out, “so that when weeks from now one of you inevitably asks, ‘Remember when we were clean?’ you can all say, ‘Yes!’ ” The women laughed, musical and light, like wind chimes in a soft summer breeze. It was truly good, a moment of pure hope.

  “Ready to set sail, Zephyr Gansu,” my first mate reported after hearing the same words from the bosun.

  “Take us out of the harbor and tack around the island,” I ordered. “May Shoawei bless our journey.”

  The bosun ordered lines cast off, sails rigged, and reeled off the myriad other commands necessary to get a ship under way. The women jumped to it with glee. In that moment we were breathing the fresh air of adventure and anticipation, an intoxicating cocktail like no other.

  Friends and family of the sailors waved and blew kisses from the quay, and we all had opportunity to wave back at least once.

  My little brother was there, weeping, and my parents were putting on a good show of looking unconcerned and happy for me because they knew it was what I needed, and they were nothing if not the best parents. They looked the same when they bade farewell to my sister, Maesi, two years ago. My sister who never returned, and whom I was determined to find.

  I was also determined to find the elusive passage across the Northern Yawn. To have the keel slice through ice melt, navigate the globe, and come back to safe harbor. To sail into the unknown and return to the known: That is a journey few have accomplished.