A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  The rest of his shouting involves his dearest wish that we be violated by amorous oxen.

  After the dungeon and its foul miasma, the burnt air of Talala Fouz is almost a relief. I lower the handkerchief and confront the king.

  “How soon until your dungeon staff are informed of my visiting privileges?”

  “I’ll remain here to make sure of it now,” he replies.

  “Thank you. And Hennedigha? How will you handle him?”

  Melishev Lohmet shrugs. “He knew going into this that you might not be fooled, and I’m delighted you weren’t. There won’t be any trouble from him.”

  “Good. Allow me time to confirm, but I can offer you this now: A greensleeve will arrive here in the next few days to help us with a project on embassy grounds. He’s of my clan, so he will be more agreeable than others might be to consider your offer. When he’s finished with his work, I’ll bring him to you to discuss the matter. I can’t speak for him or guarantee his cooperation, but I can guarantee you the opportunity to make your case.”

  “That suits me well. Good evening, Ambassador Ken.”

  * * *

  —

  My new office has bare floors and walls and has yet to be stained. It’s raw, but the sawdust smells refreshing compared to the ruin outdoors. There are a couple of chairs in there, upholstered silverbark brought along on the ship, and I have a basic tea set, nothing like the fancy one I left behind as a gift to Ambassador Par. The hearth is finished, at least, the stone a lovely Raelech granite, and there’s a kettle boiling water. I grin foolishly at ben Fos as I light candles.

  “This is going to be a splendid room someday. For now we’ll have to content ourselves with imagining its future splendor.”

  “I am a fan of future splendor,” he says. “Bare winter branches become spring’s buds, summer’s fullness, and autumn’s spectacular celebration.”

  Once we have our tea and have seated ourselves happily, I ask him about what he discovered in Khul Bashab, confident that the room is soundproof if unadorned.

  “I got to meet the beast callers—two of them, anyway. The third had been captured and tortured to death by the viceroy there.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “The girls are wonderful, though. I don’t know how they’re being portrayed among the Nentians, but they’re kind souls who want a new government to care for their people.”

  “So the rebellion thing is true?”

  Mak nods. “They’re trying to stir it up for sure.”

  “What do they want in its place?”

  “When I left, it was still early days, and it might have evolved since then, but they’re going to call it a clave republic. They vote for leadership, like the Raelechs do, but they don’t have the same hierarchy of councils. There’s a district council that represents citizens, a clave council that represents business, and then an executive they want to call the city minister. This would be repeated at the national level if they succeed, with a citizen council, a clave council, and a national minister.”

  “How many people are on these councils?”

  “Five on each for two-year terms, and they are limited to serving no more than five terms.”

  “Interesting. And the city minister?”

  “A single five-year term.”

  “What’s the focus on the claves?”

  “A young man named Tamhan Khatri is the thinker behind all this. He argues that behind every rich person is a group of exploited labor and pillaged resources. He wants to radically change the way businesses are owned and operated. No business can be owned by a single person unless it really is a single person. Ownership is always equally shared among the employees, with the original owner able to have a double share and management earning one and a half shares.”

  “That sounds similar to our clan business structures.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s going to kill foreign investment.”

  “That’s the idea, yes. They profit from a distance while people in the city are starving, and that is morally indefensible in Khatri’s view. And he points right back at us and says we’re doing just fine with our insular economics. He says the land of the Sixth Kenning can manage its resources as well as the Fifth does. And with all employees getting an equal share, they’re going to be rewarded for their work instead of trapped in poverty.”

  “The rich and powerful are going to hate this.”

  “They already do. But it’s amazing, Mai. They’re ideologically aligned with us. Jes says if we can throw in with them and make it work, we’ll have a powerful ally and quite probably a huge new market for our clans to move into.”

  “I need you to go back there,” I tell him.

  “What? I just got here, and I’m supposed to go upriver.”

  “You can go upriver later. The clan staff can be kept busy doing something until you get back. I’m under some political pressure here and also want things to go well for us—and the kids—in Khul Bashab. I…wait. Hold on a moment, please. I need to think through something.”

  “Of course.” He sips at his tea and waits, and I’m grateful. What I worry about is that I’m moving too rashly and perhaps with some selfish bias. Is what I’m about to suggest truly what’s best for the Canopy, or is it merely best for me, to prolong Mak’s time in Ghurana Nent? Am I putting myself first here?

  But no. The kids need to win, and the Sixth Kenning must grow to its full potential if we of the Fifth Kenning are to reach ours. That it benefits me by keeping ben Fos in-country a bit longer is ancillary. I smile at him and continue.

  “We need to make the king think we’re on his side but tell those kids we are really, really on their side. So after you grow the treehouse for us here, I’m going to take you to the king and say you’ll do a lot of things you won’t actually do and send you back down there with a reply for Jes Dan Kuf.”

  “Right now?”

  “No. Right now…” I pause, take a deep breath, and exhale. There is nothing in this for the Canopy or the clan. For once, this is all about me. Mak waits. “Right now I feel the need to discuss personal matters. We are here for such a short season, and the sun is not long for this sky. I would eternally regret it if I did not inform you while it shines on us that, if it be to your liking, I would like to bask in its light…together. And if you have any reservation, then of course I shall not question or—”

  Mak is suddenly no longer in his seat and his lips are a mere inch from mine.

  “Yes,” he says, and then again, as a question. “Yes?”

  “Yes.” Our mouths crush together, and I try so hard not to just chew him up. I think it’s the same for him: We are both so hungry.

  * * *

  —

  “I’ll stop there, since kids are listening,” Fintan said with a chuckle.

  I made a mental note to ask someone with a firmer grasp of trade than I had about Tamhan Khatri’s insular economic system. At first glance I thought it would be wrong for us to adopt such laws; we were desperate for foreign investment at the moment, to help us recover from our national disaster. It would be fine to protect workers from exploitation, however; surely we could do something along those lines.

  The bard drew out another seeming sphere and imprinted it, holding up his fist, calling out to Survivor Field and the city of Pelemyn. “Are you ready for more Daryck du Löngren?”

  The response was a very loud affirmative.

  We found the bony bastards after another week. Far more of them than we wanted.

  We were about to make camp for the night ourselves when we crested a rise and beheld a vast sprawling field of raggedy tents spread out among the small trees and scrub of the coast. Their boats were anchored offshore, bobbing in the Northern Yawn. We saw their campfires and the silhouettes of their
fleet by the light of a full moon. As before, they’d made camp next to a river emptying into the sea.

  “There will be sentries,” I said, huddled up with the crew, only nine of us now. “Maybe hunting parties too, so watch out for bones gleaming in moonlight, and don’t let your eyes get drawn to those flames.”

  “What are we doing?” Mynstad Luren asked.

  “We are scouting only. We’re not attacking.”

  “No picking off the outliers? Getting back some of our own?”

  This needed to be addressed. “There’s nothing I’d like more. But look: We’re the only ones who can confirm that this army is here, and the pelenaut needs to know it exists. We have to walk out of here alive. If we start picking off sentries or send some arrows in to the edges, they’re going to know we’re here. You’ve seen how long their damn legs are; they will catch up. That risks the mission. Because the mission is to confirm this army is here and its size and where they’re going. That’s it.”

  “We don’t know where they’re going, though,” Luren pointed out.

  “We know enough. They’re following the coast west, stopping to camp at rivers,” I said. “They could be headed for Rael or even Ghurana Nent. Maybe they’re looking for a nice place to build a settlement. Maybe they’re even going to stay here for the winter. But I think we can safely say they’re not intent on coming down through the Gravewood after us. We’re a couple weeks west of Fornyd now, so they’re not coming down for another go, unless we give them reason to. We definitely don’t want to do that.”

  “I hear you, Gerstad, but it sure does deflate my dingus to think about leaving them alive.”

  The others grunted assent with the mynstad, and I saw that it would be wiser to expound rather than simply give orders. I needed them to be on board. And Mynstad Luren was being a clever bog lynx here, letting the band listen in to our conversation and the thinking behind the orders before I gave them.

  “Look. Somebody down south found papers like the ones we found on that sunburst-bearded guy, and the pelenaut got them translated by a Kaurian scholar. It was from those papers that we learned this army might be up here. We just confirmed that intelligence was correct, because, hey”—I waved at the camp—“there they fucking are. That’s incredibly valuable info by itself. It means if we can find more written intelligence, it’s well worth picking up. We have a guy who can read it because they’re not using a code. They’re just using a language they think we can’t read. So the stuff we picked up could be gold. The information in those documents might tell us all we need to know, and we can trust that it’s true. The last thing we want them to think is that we survived the invasion down south. Because these guys left at the same time as the other invasion forces but with a different mission. They don’t know that their armies weren’t entirely successful in wiping us out. Or at least I hope they don’t. We don’t want to be the ones that give them a clue about that.”

  “So we’re not going to kill any of them?” Luren said.

  “No. It risks our safety and the mission. This information is far more important to Brynlön than killing a few giants, Mynstad. And not giving them any information is just as important. Right now we know plenty and they know nothing. I know we’ve lost some people, but in terms of gathering intelligence it’s been a good reconnaissance mission so far, and I’m proud of you all. But if we go down there and kill some of them, get them stirred up and get killed ourselves, then it’s all been for nothing. We fuck ourselves and our people with a kraken cock. Is that clear?”

  “Aye, Gerstad.”

  “Good. I want it understood that we will get our revenge. Think of this recon as setting the table for the feast to come. Sören, I want you to slip out into the sea and get a better look at what’s in the boats. Are there provisions, equipment, weapons, what? But be as quick and stealthy about it as you can. We might need to run at any moment.”

  The rapid nodded. “Want me to scuttle any of them?”

  “You can do that? Silently?”

  “Yes. Gently invite the ocean overboard to fill those flat bottoms. They sink.”

  I considered the risk. There was little chance they’d catch him in the act. They wouldn’t discover that they were missing ships until they decided to set out again. That would seriously hamper their efforts to move west, and that was good. But it might also tell them that we were out here, and that would be bad.

  “Scuttle exactly one. One they can write off as an accident. More than that and they’ll suspect sabotage and someone’s out here doing it. But before you scuttle it, look for any documents you can steal and keep dry. If they have navigation charts, maps, anything, I’d like to see them.”

  “Aye, Gerstad.”

  He crept down to the ocean and I turned to Mynstad Luren. “Pick three mariners and carefully scout the far edge of this camp. How far does it go? Because I think we’re only seeing a portion of it from here. A good portion, but probably not the whole thing. Be silent and invisible and watch for sentries. Our victory lies in being undiscovered. Return here as soon as possible. We will depart on your return or at dawn if you’re not back.”

  Luren took three mariners with him and they crept off into the scrub, leaving me with Brön, Gyrsön, and the last mariner. We didn’t move but rather took our time counting campfires and estimating numbers based on what we saw. Sören returned within an hour.

  “Nothing of note on the ships, just rope and barrels of salted meat. No documents on the ones I searched. One on the periphery’s been scuttled.”

  I wanted to send him back out there to scuttle more, because Luren wouldn’t be back for another hour or two at the least. But they’d be looking for us if we did. And they might sweep south, figuring that job needed to be done; I could bring them back to threaten our cities by going beyond my orders.

  I had him wait with us for Luren’s return, and when Luren got back with some numbers to report, we struck south immediately, trying to put plenty of distance between us before dawn. Hopefully the Bone Giants weren’t very good trackers or would not even realize there was someone to track. And hopefully we’d be allowed to do more than simply scout the next time we encountered them.

  I’m still thinking of Nudge and chewing over his words. We will repair our civilization over time. We will endure this invasion and wipe out the invaders. And we will build new defenses to make sure this can never happen again.

  After my shift at the kitchen—it was all fish stew, and it would be fish stew for the foreseeable future, just to make sure what we had went as far as possible—I swung by the Roasted Sunchuck to see if it was still open, and it wasn’t. The sign on the door said to check back tomorrow.

  WE WILL OPEN ON DAYS WE CAN OFFER SOMETHING BESIDES FISH.

  So it was back to the dockside fishblade again, and it was busier than I’d ever seen. It was one of the few places still open, and what they had was fresher than what was at the market, so everyone was there. Fintan and I had to take our food to go and work elsewhere.

  While we stood in line, people chatted Fintan up. There was a lot of nervousness at the thought of the Bone Giants in the north. More than one person demanded to know what happened there, because it had been months since Daryck du Löngren had found them. If they were camped for the winter and now it was spring, did that mean they were on the move again? If so, where were they headed? Were they moving down toward the river cities? Should Fornyd be warned?

  Fintan was able to put them off by promising that Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll would make an announcement about it when the tales began that day, and it wasn’t his place to say anything until then.

  And when we got to the wall, the second könstad was waiting. She was going to speak before Fintan’s song. I nodded a greeting at her, wanting to ask if the Wraith or Approval Smile had talked yet, but I knew that I couldn’t.

&nbs
p; Fintan activated his kenning and signaled to the Second Könstad that she could begin. If he started, people might decide to tune him out before they heard the important stuff, so she needed to speak first.

  “My friends and fellow citizens, this is Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll. Please listen to a few important announcements from your government.”

  Everybody stopped what they were doing on Survivor Field and looked up. I imagine it was the same within the city walls. She had saved the lives of practically everyone there; lending an ear was the least we could do.

  “The pelenaut and I remain vigilant in defense of Pelemyn, as do all our military. I know there is some concern about the Eculan forces to the north discovered by Gerstad Daryck du Löngren and the Grynek Hunters. While there have been some developments over the winter—developments the bard will no doubt share with you in due course—there is nothing to fear from them at this time, and the quartermaster of Fornyd is staying on top of the situation. If that changes, please trust us to let you know.”

  She paused to clear her throat. “In the meantime, all should know that there are opportunities for settlement elsewhere, should you wish it. Göfyrd is being built anew by the Raelech stonecutter Meara, and we are sending a new quartermaster there now along with seed. We would love to see that land farmed again and that city to flourish once more. We need farmers, period, in every city, and the incentives to become one remain in place.

  “Other cities that are either now open for resettlement or remain open for relocation include Möllerud, Festwyf, Fornyd, Tömerhil, and Setyrön. We will be sending a new quartermaster to Möllerud via ship with seed and supplies very soon. If you would like to be on that ship or get more information on anything regarding resettlement, please go to the new resettlement ministry, opening as we speak next to the city gate. You will see a wide booth and a banner with four lines, where you can make inquiries regarding moving to certain cities and the incentives for each. I probably do not need to tell you that the overpopulation of this city is putting pressure on our ability to feed everyone, so resettlement, now that it’s available, would be best for us all. Rest assured that if you relocate to one of the coastal cities, you’ll have the same access to the bounty of the sea you have here, and in all likelihood much better, since there will be fewer overall bellies to fill.