A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  No one cheered my speech. But no one chose to leave either, and no one volunteered to lead. Perhaps they did not want to seem too eager. Perhaps they didn’t know how to live any other way and had never thought of living differently. No matter; there would be plenty of time for those coals to blaze up. I was sure they would eventually.

  For my part, a new hope kindled in my breast—not of mere escape, but that a dream might actually come true.

  * * *

  —

  Fintan introduced yet another new character, and I moaned that I was missing it. It was the viceroy of Khul Bashab, Bhamet Senesh, whom I’d never heard described before. I remembered that Lohmet had seemed contemptuous of him and that his cousin was also the viceroy of Batana Mar Din, downriver from him. Beyond that, all I knew was that he hadn’t seemed receptive to the idea of the Sixth Kenning being present in his city.

  People think I walk around and present my ass to be kissed all day by merchants and river barons and clergy. But that only happens at fancy dinners. They stroke my ego then and smooch away—metaphorically, at least. That is not the reality of leadership, however. The reality is that I must field complaints all day, every day, and settle squabbles. Every settlement inevitably creates one of three kinds of people: enemies I must crush later, nobodies I can safely ignore, and friends I can rely on for support when needed.

  I keep lists of all three—yes, even the ones I think I can ignore. Just to know where to look for trouble and where to look for help, and if one of the people I thought I could ignore turns up in either of the other camps later, I want to know that I got it wrong and figure out why. My father taught me that. He said suffering setbacks and encountering obstacles were inevitable in life, but being surprised by someone you should have known would cause trouble? That was inexcusable. And true. Because when he finally got surprised, it was fatal.

  This surprising situation with the Sixth Kenning is the sort of thing he’d grudgingly excuse, however. No way to see that one coming. But now that I know these kids calling themselves “beast callers” are out there, I need to find them and ruthlessly remove their ability to undermine my rule, before they can surprise me again. That, my father said, was the key to keeping power. And it’s worth doing most anything to keep it, because not having it is always, always worse. One need only look at the dregs living down by the river to see the truth of it.

  My cousin has sent me some of his reserves from Batana Mar Din to find these kids, but Kalaad damn Melishev Lohmet for not sending me any help. He’s a shitsnake sitting on vast reserves of disposable muscle but refuses to send me any of it.

  Well, I will do something about these kids on my own. Khul Bashab isn’t the size of Hashan Khek, so they can’t hide forever. Eventually we will shine a light into whatever hole they’re cringing in and this threat will end.

  For they are a threat. I don’t need the river barons and church men to tell me they are, because I’ve already lost cavalry and guards to them, but they’re telling me anyway. Almost daily.

  “You get taxes with every river fare,” a river baron says to me. “But it’s the animals of the plains that make that all possible. How are you going to tax people walking in and out of the city if they don’t have to fear for their giblets?”

  “Our religion is based on Kalaad,” splutters Dhanush Bursenan, the patriarch of the church perspiring in such profusion that I had to have someone mop the floor after his audience, for fear of causing the next person to slip in his sweat puddle and fall to their doom. “If the Sixth Kenning is real, then where does Kalaad fit in this?”

  “Why are you talking to me?” I ask him. “I’m not a member of the church hierarchy. You’re obviously going to need to make some shit up, and isn’t that your business?”

  He gets the angry sweats after that and points a moist round finger at me. “Our business is pacifying the populace so your regime can continue without rebellion. If there’s no need for Kalaad, then you don’t have a pacified populace of exploited laborers willing to suffer the enormous piles of khern shit you heap upon their backs every day. You need to get rid of this problem before it spreads, or face the consequences!”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m merely pointing out that these kids are. Deal with the threat.”

  In my mind, Dhanush Bursenan will forever be known as Threat Sweat. He may be repulsive, but he is not wrong. He is an oozing call to action.

  All the people on my friends list want the kids removed, and some on the enemies list are clamoring for their clave to be approved; that settles it in my mind. These kids need to run onto the sharp end of a spear so we can all get back to business.

  But they’re not easy to find. I don’t even know all their names. There’s some kid with a yellow stripe of hair, who killed a gate guard with a kholeshar viper, and a girl named Hanima, who killed another with bees. There’s a second girl, whose name and talents are unknown but might have something to do with horses; the fourth, Tamhan Khatri, claims to have no talent at all and so far has exhibited none. But he went out with all the seekers, and I’d have him in a dungeon and his fingernails in pincers if his father wasn’t supplying all my chaktu meat.

  He’s been somewhat forthcoming, at least under pressure from his father. He says the boy who discovered the Sixth Kenning is a hunter named Abhinava Khose and he’s the one who killed my cavalry. That’s an easy morsel to give up since this Khose kid is gone and his family is dead, which leaves me no leverage. I think he knows more—like the names of the other blessed kids—but I can’t force it from him. I must rely on what scraps his father’s frowns can elicit from him. He only got his boy to confirm, reluctantly, that one of the girls is named Hanima, since we supplied it. We heard it in the rumor mill; she had been a well-known mute beggar, but now she can talk to bees and humans alike.

  The city watch is looking for them. Spies—both ours and the church’s—are on the lookout. I think they’re hiding in the shadows with the river folk, since Tamhan recruited the seekers from their ranks. This Hanima person was certainly one of them. She’s most likely the leader. Find her—squeeze the wastrels until they give her up—and we’ll find the others. We’ll snuff them before they become anything more than an inconvenience.

  Then we can have a nice dinner and Threat Sweat can dry himself off and pucker up. I’m going to reestablish control, damn it. With knives and clamps and blunt force trauma. Complaints and squabbles might be tiresome, but being in control is far preferable to being told what to do. And having one’s ass kissed, metaphorically or otherwise, isn’t so bad.

  I spent a cold and largely sleepless night in the dungeon, and in the morning they gave me toast. Dry, unbuttered dungeon toast. But I got to enjoy it, if such a thing could be enjoyed, without interruption. I thought it a rather cruel way for the world to give me what I wanted.

  And then two longshoremen came to ask me questions. I welcomed them, as Föstyr had led me to believe that I wouldn’t be getting out of there without being questioned first.

  “Master du Alöbar,” one began. He was probably my age, more than a bit jowly, deep lines around the sides of his mouth. Were he to grin, it would be heavy lifting to part the curtains of his cheeks. “The quicker you answer our questions, the quicker you can leave.”

  “Or not,” the other said, a rake-thin man with an even thinner smile. I disliked him immediately.

  “Fine. I’m ready.”

  We sat across from one another at the table.

  “Have you ever done any work for another government?”

  “No.”

  “Has your wife ever worked for another government?”

  “What?” I almost commented that the question was offensive but then remembered Sarena talking to me about interrogations and confined myself to answering “No.”

  She’d been exh
austed after a trip to Forn, during which she endured a tedious grilling by Blue Moth Clan security, and I asked her how she coped. She demanded that I fix her a cocktail first, and I gladly did so. Once she’d taken a sip, she beamed at me and said, “Plenty of questions in an interrogation are asked merely to see your reaction. If you splutter, question the question, do anything but answer, that still tells them something. If you know what they’re looking for, you can try giving it to them. But usually you don’t know what they’re after, and reacting to provocative questions will only prolong the interview and might give them the wrong idea. The best thing is to answer the questions as quickly and as freely of emotion as you can.”

  “Won’t they think that suspicious too?”

  “Of course. But they’re going to think everything is suspicious anyway. You’re under suspicion or they wouldn’t be interrogating you in the first place, right?”

  “I see. So answering quickly speeds things up?”

  “Maybe. Sometimes. They might also ask you everything again and again until you snap. They look for inconsistencies and then pounce. Don’t lie if you can help it. Answer with the truth and they can’t trip you up. Answer without emotion and they can’t use those emotions against you and ask why you seemed excited or distressed or whatever earlier.”

  I kept that in mind as Jowls and Rake spent at least an hour asking me more about Sarena’s missions than about recent events. When they did get to current events, they asked about the stolen journal and what I’d written about it, what I’d shared with Fintan about it, and whether I’d communicated anything to the Wraith about Clodagh’s threats. And then they asked me about Gerstad Nara du Fesset, rapid-fire questions regarding her loyalties and her missions and whether I had ever seen her do this shady thing or exhibit that suspicious behavior.

  I was getting powerfully thirsty but didn’t want to ask for water, because whenever I did, they would think it significant. When we asked him about the gerstad, he asked for water instead of answering, they would say, and instead of considering that I might be genuinely thirsty, they would think I was stalling and hiding something.

  * * *

  —

  “Right,” Rake said after what felt like another hour, standing up abruptly and waiting for Jowls to join him. The bigger man lumbered to his feet and turned to the door without saying anything more. “Wait here.”

  “You say that like I have a choice,” I said to his departing back. The door clanged and the cold metal silence settled over me once again, and I shivered. I wasn’t sure I was ever getting out. The shuffling steps and creaking of other doors, the jangling of keys, and the squeaking of rats all rattled my nerves and played on my insecurities. I wondered how many prisoners Rölly had down here and whether they were all suspected spies. How much spying was going on, anyway? Especially in countries that were supposed to be our allies? I used to think it was just Sarena and a couple of her acquaintances involved in it, but I was beginning to feel that Brynlön’s primary occupation was spying rather than fishing or anything else.

  The keys eventually jangled at my door again, and when it swung open, Föstyr du Bertrum stood in the hallway with Gerstad Nara du Fesset. She looked as rough as I felt.

  “Come on, Dervan. You get to see the sun again.”

  I didn’t waste my breath asking if it was really true. I just rose and moved as quickly as my knee would allow to get out of that cell.

  “You have the pelenaut’s deepest apologies for the necessity of keeping you here and enduring those interrogations,” the lung said as he led us out of the dungeon. “And mine as well. But we needed to be sure. We thought we could trust the Wraith, and he showed us how foolish that was. In any case, beyond our apologies, you have our thanks for your loyalty. But we’re not going to just say that.” He handed us each a pouch of coins. “Material proof of our gratitude for your service to Brynlön.”

  None of that mattered to me. “What of the Wraith?” I asked. “Did you get him?”

  “Oh, yes. He is most definitely got. And his accomplice—what did you call her?”

  “Approval Smile.”

  “Yes. They were invited to visit the pelenaut—the sort of invitation they couldn’t refuse—and led into a darkened room that, once lit, proved to be made entirely of thick glass and surrounded on all sides—floor and ceiling too—with water. A sort of reverse aquarium. The wraiths cannot escape those bodies now and possess anyone else. They’re locked in there, and the door through which they entered is an actively maintained wall of water.”

  “You just imprisoned them? Why not drown them?” Nara said, and since that was exactly what I’d been thinking, I added, “Yeah!”

  “We have questions first.”

  “You can’t trust anything they say,” Nara pointed out.

  “No, that is true. But we can attempt to verify.”

  “I want to see them,” I said.

  “Impossible, I’m afraid.” The lung shook his head for emphasis.

  “But I have questions too.”

  “Perhaps at a later date. Right now they are testing their prison and will not submit to any questioning. When they are ready to talk, our questions are going to take precedence.”

  “How do you question them if they’re surrounded by water?”

  Föstyr grinned. “Astute! Either the pelenaut or the second könstad relays written questions on a tray through the water wall. They create an air pocket and float it through. At no point is there an avenue for them to escape.”

  “Won’t they run out of oxygen eventually?”

  “We refresh the air while they sleep. We have a Kaurian cyclone available who’s helping us with that.”

  “But then that’s an avenue of escape,” the gerstad said. “They’re going to figure it out eventually and wait for that air recycling to occur, however you’re doing it. Then one of the wraiths escapes, possesses someone, and we’re boned, so to speak.”

  “We’ve thought of that too, I promise. We had months to plan this prison and figure out the logistics. But here are the conditions of your release—fully revocable should you violate them.” The lung paused in front of the dungeon exit and turned to face us to make sure we were paying attention. We were.

  “Not a word to anyone about your absence yesterday. Not to the mynstad,” he said to Nara, referring to Mynstad du Möcher, “and not to Fintan. The existence of the Wraith—and his treason— must remain a secret for the short term. The pelenaut will make it public eventually, and when he does, you will be free to share anything you wish with anyone. For now, make what excuses you can live with that keeps our country’s secrets. Are we clear on that and on what will happen if you talk about this?”

  We both nodded.

  “Then I thank you again and I promise to contact you as soon as possible if we can get you to see the Wraith in captivity.” He opened the door and allowed us to precede him into the sunlight. It looked to be near noon.

  “Dervan, if you wish to meet the Raelech bard and catch up on your tales, you can meet him at the Kaurian restaurant you’ve visited together before.”

  “Thank you.” I nodded a farewell to Nara and she returned it. We couldn’t say anything we might have wished at that point, but I had no doubt we’d find time to speak later.

  I returned home and looked carefully at the manuscript. It was all where I’d stored it, but it had clearly been reviewed. Someone had removed it, read it, and put it back. Due diligence, I suppose.

  I took my materials and limped, scowling, to the Kaurian restaurant. Fintan’s face was a mask of relief and concern when he saw me enter.

  “Dervan! You’re here! Thank the goddess. Please, sit. Are you well?”

  “Yes, I’m well.”

  “I was worried.”

  “Sorry about that. Nothing to be done.”

  “What kept you,
may I ask?”

  “It’s personal, sorry.”

  “Oh, well, that’s fine. Totally fine. But you look unhappy and that distresses me.” That only cemented my belief that I am ill-suited for espionage, since I cannot even begin to hide inner turmoil.

  “Rough morning,” I explained. “There was a problem with my toast. Puts me off my mood.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I get that way about almond pastries sometimes.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “When you love a thing and you anticipate how wonderful it’s going to be when you get to enjoy it and then something ruins it—that’s what I mean. I get it. Your thing is toast. Mine is almond pastries.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Your city has absolutely zero almond pastries, Dervan. I checked.”

  “We’re starting to zero out on a lot of foods. I imagine even toast is endangered.”

  “As is sanity and civilization. And swamp duck aficionados.”

  “Ah, poor Jahm!”

  “Indeed.” We placed our order after that from a much-reduced menu and got to work. There was quite a lot, since I was trying to catch up on two days of tales. We didn’t quite make it through everything before it was time to go to the wall, but Fintan promised we’d be able to catch up entirely the next day.

  When he took his stage, he let everyone know he was going to share another Kaurian wind chime, because he was going to tell us what happened next with Gondel Vedd. That perked me up, not only because Gondel was one of my favorites but because Rölly had told me he’d left Brynlön months ago and we needed him right now. If Fintan was going to share something new from him, how’d he hear of it? I shelved that question for later and enjoyed the song.

  When I walk abroad in the world

  I am moved to awe and wonder