I surprised myself by moving into the middle of them all. I spoke. “There is a true place for us. It is with each other. I am human, raised human, yet many would consider me broken in mind. But I will not give up. Nor should any of you. Broken we may be, in a broken world—the middle world, between the godly and the hellish. But we can work together and put a little of it back together.”
I took Inga’s hand, placed it on Alfhild’s, and put both of theirs together on Rubblewrack’s. “Make this promise. Not to kill one another for a year. Give yourselves that long to become friends. Or if not friends, then peoplewho- will-not-kill-each-other.”
“Is that a word?” Alfhild sniffed.
“It should be,” Inga said. “I agree. What about you two?”
“Very well,” Rubblewrack said. “A year.”
“At best,” Alfhild said, “I will indeed become people-who-will-not-killeach- other. I think the uldra would do well to stay out of human business. But . . . we will see.”
I asked Walking Stick to undo the chains. He consulted Squire Everart, who looked suspicious but in the end gave his consent.
Together we joined the procession of rafts the army was making to take us to the monastery on the cold mountain, there in the middle of our isles.
For this reason, when Inga and I make our final book of stories, I will put this in the center. The stories should speak for themselves. The end is already written. But sometimes it’s good to know why people put stories together, why we need them so much. So we can meet in the middle.
CHAPTER 45
PEACE
Clifflion, Grand Khan of the Karvaks, looked with satisfaction upon the siege of Maratrace. These people, dwelling on the border between the Wheelgreen and the Efritstan desert, were said to revere both beauty and pain, and well could he see it, with their lovely adobe buildings amid the twisted towers made by the torment-worshipping Comprehenders. The Lady of Thorns, their young ruler, had a philosophy that braided the good and the bad in life, but Clifflion knew it was destined to be replaced by simple, clean Karvak rules. She and the other rulers would be purged, the population ravaged, and those who had useful skills taken as servants or slaves.
The Maratracians had good fighters, and they had magic—Clifflion’s army had been savaged by efrits and night angels and more disturbing things. The Grand Khan had long since put aside his scruples about retaliating with human sacrifices from among the captives. Indeed, their screams, greeting the purple dawn, had a certain music. Of course, unimaginative gods like Mother Earth and Father Sky had no love of such offerings, so he had to make them to such entities as his resourceful wife had made him aware of, the Herald of the Red Fountains, the Eye in Nightmares, or that which dwelled in the Pit Where Light Screams. Their services were even now in play. Above the city walls swirled heads severed from their bodies, singing sweetly eerie chants. A vast orb hovered above the largest tower, tendrils descending into windows, vaguely manlike shapes sliding gently up through the pulsing extensions to vanish into the eyelike mass. And now and then a warp in reality would open, dark like infinite space but with misty nebular teeth, to snap up one citizen or another. Clifflion sometimes wondered why Jewelwolf, to all reports, rarely employed these entities, preferring to let her husband practice the summonings. He also wondered why he never felt rested and could no longer remember his dreams.
When the strange, twisting shadow dropped out of the skies, Clifflion at first assumed it was something he had summoned, and so he paused upon his horse, squinting, raising his hand to forbid his bodyguard from loosing an arrow. Was it a mockskulk, a lostbeast, a reality scar?
He was disappointed to see it was only a magic carpet.
“You have my gratitude,” it said in the language of the Karvaks.
“How so?” the Grand Khan asked.
“Ultimately you are merely a pawn. But as a creature torn between good and evil, I have long sought a path in life. And now I have it, as a playing piece in the great game. You have my gratitude—for you are the first pawn I’ve removed.”
The voice was so chilling and yet so calm that Clifflion had no true sense of danger until the carpet engulfed him. Distant shouts of alarm reached his ears, but these did not prevent him from knowing sleep at last.
CHAPTER 46
SUMMIT
What Joy decided to call a “summit meeting” occurred one week after the battle at the Chained Strait, and one day after word came of the Grand Khan’s assassination. A rider had arrived bearing General Ironhorn’s message that he and his forces would withdraw to the continent, and that he would offer no battle if none were offered him. Steelfox had replied that when all the invasion force had either departed—or defected to Steelfox’s personal banner—Jewelwolf would be released.
Peace had come, but like many a peace, it was near to boiling into fresh conflict.
So Joy had invited them to the summit of the monastery’s mountain.
Here was a grotto just beneath a snowy peak, with little waterfalls of snowmelt from the fledgling summer. Standing in that peaceful place, Joy studied the Runemark upon her hand. It had not faded, though her dragonfueled powers had. Now she was just a pugilist with classical training. Yet it seemed the land still wanted her to play a role. Perhaps the dragons knew her now. Very well. She would decide for herself what it meant to be Runethane.
Meteor-Plum offered her a cup of tea.
“You don’t need to do this,” Joy said.
“It is my pleasure to serve tea to our guests,” he said. “It is my pleasure to do anything at all! By rights I should have ceased to exist. Yet by some miracle I now am corporeal. I have aches and pains! This tea scalded me! I am destined to become old and decrepit. Truly it is a time of wonders! Now I will leave you alone.”
The gathered leaders were Joy, Snow Pine, Steelfox, Corinna, Alfhild—and Hekla, lover of Huginn Sharpspear, robed in black, sent as a delegate from Oxiland.
Rubblewrack was an unofficial voice of trolldom. Eshe of the Fallen Swan was present as an observer for Kpalamaa. The team of Peersdatter and Jorgensdatter was there, Inga to keep the peace, Malin to record events.
“Well, here we are at last,” Snow Pine said, raising her tea, vapor rising from the cup. “Six leaders from East and from West, arranging the peace.”
Steelfox said, “Joy, where you see six leaders, I see five town-dwellers arrayed against a Karvak. Where you see East and West, I see nomad country ringed around by sea-going powers. We have hard matters to discuss.”
“Well,” Joy said, staring back at her, at the others, particularly Corinna and Alfhild, who’d so recently tried to kill her. “I see we have a lot of ground to cover.”
In the end no one wanted war. Not even when Steelfox announced her new khanate.
“I have made up my mind,” the Karvak princess said. “My father’s empire is in chaos. With the death of the Grand Khan we will have years of squabbling over succession and perhaps open war. But I want no part of that. I no longer wish to follow in my father’s footsteps. Yet to those Karvaks willing to join me, and to Northwing’s people, who’ve always stood by me, I have an obligation.” She made a fist. “So there will be a new realm, along the seas of the north. The Khanate of the Endless Ice. It will extend from Spydbanen to the Mirrored Sea, and beyond to the realm of the True People. It will be my realm, and I will guard it well.”
“You can’t simply carve Spydbanen away from us!” Corinna said.
“That’s Kantening country!” Hekla added.
“No longer,” Steelfox said. “Their jarldoms submitted willingly to the Karvaks, and I claim them. I think the surviving trolls will cooperate.”
Rubblewrack grumbled, “I think you’re right.”
“And,” Steelfox said, “Northwing is learning that the Vuos shamans in the farthest reaches of Spydbanen have much in common with the True people. An alliance seems only natural. No, respected Kantenings, much as you would like to see my people vanish, we are here to stay. In
time you may be grateful. For my first enemies are likely to be fellow Karvaks.”
The rest was detail. The Karvaks would depart Svardmark and Oxiland. Alfhild announced the uldra would be disappearing from human affairs. Corinna’s standing as mightiest ruler of Svardmark was unchallenged, and Oxiland wanted a closer alliance, much as the idea pained Hekla. Corinna herself owed a great deal to Squire Everart and his peasant army. Much was going to change.
That led to Joy’s own announcement. “There is one more thing I would say. It is a thing Innocence Gaunt, Persimmon Gaunt, and Imago Bone have asked of me, and I owe them too much not to bring it to your attention. It is about slavery.”
“Thralldom?” Hekla said. “What of it?”
“It should end.”
“As I thought!” Corinna said. “You are imposing foreign ways on us. Soon you will have us kowtowing and reciting your Eastern classics morning to night. You should know, Runethane, that Soderland has led Kantenjord in diminishing slavery, and that process will continue.”
“Diminishing,” Joy said. “Not eliminating. And you have influence over your neighbors.”
“Ah, so you are ready to trample those smaller realms.”
“Aiya! You immediately see all proposals as hostile! Why? Do you hate me so much?”
As if Joy’s anger proved some obscure point, Corinna seemed serene. “It is because I have an obligation to see the future.” She gestured to Snow Pine. “You are the daughter of a mighty power, Joy. Perhaps,” Corinna continued, with a slight nod to Eshe, “the most powerful on the Earthe. And we were nearly conquered by other Easterners, the Karvaks. We will have to tread carefully. Even if you come in friendship, you may overwhelm us.”
“You misjudge us,” Snow Pine said.
“Intention is not all that matters. Potential must be weighed. Nevertheless, if you are merely advising that slavery be ended . . . I agree. But it will happen when we decide.”
Hekla said, “I lack Corinna’s fear of you, Joy. I hear your words. But thralldom is essential to our livelihoods. Oxiland lives on the edge of poverty as it is. We cannot give up our farmhands.”
“Don’t give them up then!” Joy said. “Free them! Pay them!”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Perhaps. It may be the Runethane’s job to be naive.” Joy took a deep breath. “Nevertheless, any escaped slave who reaches my island will be considered free and under my protection.”
The meeting broke up with a silent, stony sipping of tea.
Eshe came to Joy afterward. “You have the wolf by the tail.”
“You think I shouldn’t have pushed?”
Eshe shrugged. “I’m just a bureaucrat. I do what people tell me.”
“Including assassinating the Grand Khan?” Joy whispered.
“There are many conflicting accounts of that event.”
“Some of which you authored?”
“If I did have something to do with that,” Eshe said, looking directly into Joy’s eyes, “I hope the Runethane would note the positive effects. Any other way of ending the war would have cost even more lives. That is the burden of knowing things, and in a way I grieve for you, that you will share that burden. I have studied the Chart of Tomorrows, which might aptly be titled A Journey to Kantenjord, and I had the language skills to fully understand it. I have thus perceived how fragile the world really is, and how many alternate timelines lead to doom. I will give my agents their respite. But sooner or later, I will have work for them.”
Joy stared after Eshe as she left, wondering. But Snow Pine joined Joy and hugged her, dismissing thoughts of dooms.
“I am proud,” Snow Pine said. “And afraid. You don’t have to come with me. You’ve made a challenge you may have to back up.”
“Life is short, Mother. I want to help you get to Qiangguo. I want to see it at least once.”
“Well then, I will not presume to argue. On this matter. I look up at the moon over Kantenjord and know it for the same that shines upon our homeland. And I, who once hated Qiangguo, long to return. I hope Corinna’s fears are true in one respect, and that this truly is an Air Age—or Aeolian Age, as your stepfather-to-be would have it. Then we may see each other often, after you return.”
“Agreed.”
They descended the path. Looking down to the newly constructed harbor, they saw Anansi readying itself for departure.
“What?” Joy said. “So soon! They wouldn’t!”
“Go,” Snow Pine said. “You can get there much faster than I.”
Joy quickened her chi, leaping downslope as fast as she could.
She passed Eshe, glaring at the spymaster as she went.
She passed Steelfox, who stood beside Jewelwolf on a cliffside, Karvak soldiers thick around them. She couldn’t linger to discover the meaning of the gathering.
She passed Corinna, who had met Haytham ibn Zakwan. Joy nodded curtly and continued. She would always dislike the queen of Soderland, but from now on she would have to control her feelings.
Except with Innocence. He was about to get an earful.
“You will not stay with me, inventor?”
“I am tempted more than I can say, O queen. But I fear—”
“Yes? I think there is no fear we could not face together.”
“My fear is of a different nature than you think. There is a quote of a distant land that keeps ringing in my ears. ‘I am become death, the devourer of worlds.’ It was my inventions that brought war to these lands.”
“And your inventions that can ensure the peace! I will need vessels of the air to guard against those of the Karvaks. And sooner or later such craft will arrive from elsewhere, the Eldshore, Qiangguo, Kpalamaa. . . .”
“Yes. That is exactly it. I developed my balloons for exploration, and I dared hope they would bring a perspective that would literally elevate humanity. Instead they’ve become tools of death. I do not know how to respond. But building more warships is not the way.”
“Then do not build warships. Build art. Build toys. Build castles in the air. But build them near me, my dear inventor.”
“I . . .”
“I see. I am surrounded by people who now think I’m hateful. I’d hoped you were not one of them.”
“I . . . have wondered what you really think of me, Corinna. For I am, from a certain point of view, also an ‘alien.’”
“No one understands. . . . I saw the destruction of my land, Haytham. Not from any fault of ours. Because foreigners were simply much stronger. I do not fear Easterners for being different. I fear being erased.”
“Please try, Corinna, to see them as people, with their own quirks, wants, and needs, not simply as a threat.”
“If I can do that, will you stay?”
“Whatever I may feel, whatever my admiration . . . you tried to kill my friend. She who only wanted to help you. I am going, Corinna. For a long time. But I will listen for word of how you deal with matters in Kantenjord. Perhaps, one day . . .”
“I understand.”
“You got your way. You’ve come to gloat.”
“I’ve come to talk, Jewelwolf.”
“I will inevitably return to the homeland, sister. I will inevitably come out on top. I’ll determine how you killed Clifflion.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“And I will come for you and your rebel khanate.”
“That is what I get for sparing you. But I would do it again. You are my sister.”
“You are a fool.”
“Perhaps. I am summoning delegations. Swanlings. Followers of the Undetermined. Scholars of the All-Now. Many others. I think it’s time I considered the world’s faiths.”
“You abandon tradition.”
“No. But I am open to new ones. I need a way forward that includes mercy. I cannot do without it.”
“It will be your undoing.”
“Perhaps. But it seems to be working so far. We will speak again, sister. I will never give up on you
.”
Gaunt saw Joy approaching through a spyglass. She passed it to Innocence.
“She looks angry,” he said glumly.
“I would be too,” Gaunt said. “I warned you.”
“Women,” Bone said, “in my experience, do not like good-byes. But they hate vanishings much more.”
“I was not vanishing,” Innocence said. “I was respecting her new station.”
“You are in trouble,” Bone said. “I promise to morally support you, in silence.”
“Don’t taunt him, Bone.”
Joy leapt onto the ship’s deck. “You!” she said to the three of them. “You were going to leave without saying good-bye.”
Bone said, “It was actually all his idea.”
Innocence sputtered. “You said you would be silent!”
Gaunt said, “Innocence truly didn’t want to hurt you, Joy.”
“It is hard to say good-bye,” Innocence said. “I thought you would feel the same way.”
“Yes, I do. But—it’s all so much, Innocence. We never asked for those powers to toy with us. I don’t know what they wanted with us in the first place. Why choose champions from beyond their borders?”
Gaunt said, “We might never know. But good came of it, I think. At any rate, Joy, our family needs time to itself—away from powers, empires, wars. We are going to Oxiland. We will try farming for a little while, until Eshe decides to send us on a mission.”
“Which will probably be all of three days,” Bone said.
“Why Oxiland?” Joy said. “You spent some time there, Innocence.”
“I like the scenery. It suits me.”
“Is there a girl there?”
“Bone,” Gaunt said, “let’s go check in with Eshe.”
“But I still see her up on the mountain. . . .”
“Walk with me, Bone.”
They walked.
“There is a girl . . .”
“I knew it.”
“And I do want to speak with her again. Maybe it is something, maybe it is nothing. But that’s not the main reason.”
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