by Dave Duncan
“Look at the dust!” she said. “Someone moved these tapestries to get at whatever was underneath. Over there, where things have not been disturbed, the dust is thicker. And there are fingermarks.”
“Not very recent ones.” Veer was being wonderfully patient, considering that she had still not explained.
“He grew up in this house. You can’t have a small boy not explore a cellar.”
“Of course not. Darling—”
“But he was here last winter. When he came to stay for a week, remember? He knew exactly what he wanted and where to find it.” And that was what she should have foreseen. “It’s full of black pebbles. Give me one and bring another.”
“You’ve been overworking. A Source Water poultice on the forehead …”
“Stop trying to be funny. This is deadly serious.”
“They’re sticky,” Veer complained, but he did as he was told.
Irona hobbled back to the stair and hauled herself up, one step at a time, all the way to the second floor and her study. She sat down. Her hands were filthy and she might have cobwebs in her hair. Veer pulled up a chair and tossed the black pebble from one hand to the other. She gave him the one she had brought, so he had two to play with.
He shouted, “Goddess!” and dropped them both as if they were hot coals. They stuck together even after they hit the rug. “It’s maleficence. A fix!”
“No.” She explained as she had explained to old Knipry a dozen years ago—not the Dread Lands, but tiny Kadowan Island, mating rocks, how sea hunters and fishermen used a piece of such stone to find north. Veer took some persuading, but eventually he picked them up and examined them again.
“You see that they will only mate one way?” she said. “The other way they repel each other. The effect works even through cloth or a thin board. They’re not interested in other types of stone. Nor metal. I’ve tried every kind I could get my hands on: lead, copper, silver, gold, tin, even quicksilver. The mating rocks mate only with each other.”
“Or quarrel with each other. Are you hinting that Podakan stole a piece of this and … and what, Irona?”
The sudden anger in his eyes made her wonder if even Veer might denounce her to the Seventy as a witch.
“When I was a child, I found a few tiny pieces my father had hidden away, just as my child must have found these. I discovered what they did, and my father swore me to secrecy, telling me he would be sent to the sea death if I talked and I might go with him. But I remembered, and even on the day I was chosen, twenty-six years ago, I wondered if the miracle was faked.”
She had mentioned it then to Zard 699, she remembered. She hoped that he didn’t, or he might start wondering what had happened today.
“How?” Veer asked.
“A big piece of black stone underneath the goddess’s bowl, and one special token with another piece inside it. Think back to when you made your pilgrimage; you reached in the coffer to find a token, and what happened?”
“What do you mean, ‘what happened?’ I picked up a token from a heap of them in there. What else could happen?”
“Hands inside the box forced mine on me, love. My tutor said that the priests had simply been refilling the basket at that moment, which could be true, but I suspected that a special token had been intended for the boy in front of me. A girl had fainted and thrown the count off. The priests had taken a bribe. … Perhaps only two priests, or a few of them. One priest identified Dvure and somehow signaled to another in the coffer. They daren’t cry foul, of course. And they won’t today, either. But now they have two ‘special’ tokens.”
Veer had turned pale. “First you, by accident. … Then you faked it for your son?”
“I certainly did not, but that’s what they’ll all think. If the priests denounce Podakan or me, they’ll bring the whole Empire tumbling down. No miracles. Caprice is a fake. They are charlatans. The Seventy are frauds. Total disaster.”
She could see his mind rejecting what he was hearing, building walls of denial.
“I think you’re misjudging your son, Irona. You drive yourself hard, and you’ve always been too hard on him. The goddess knew what she was doing when she chose you to guide her city. Today she chose him.”
Irona shook her head and produced the canteen that Podakan had given her. “Ever seen this before?”
Veer did not bother to take it from her. “Don’t think so. But there are thousands like that, made from a tube of hide off an animal’s leg. Tan it, turn up one end, sew it tight, seal it with wax. Put a mouthpiece in the other end, add a cord. … Thousands.”
“And cut a slit in one side to make a pocket out of it? You can slide your hand inside it, see—what sort of water bottle is that? He went to the choosing last year, remember. We all thought he was trying to bluff his way in at fifteen, but he went to see exactly how it was done. He has very large hands, so he probably took two tokens from the box, tossed one out to the goddess, and palmed the other. Then he hollowed it out, or something, and glued a black stone in it. He made this fake water bottle to smuggle it into the temple. When his turn came, he pulled the token out, again hidden in one of those big hands of his, and pretended to take it from the coffer. And finally he couldn’t resist giving me this evidence because he wanted me to know how he’d outsmarted Caprice and the Empire.”
Veer sat silent for a while, playing with the pebbles.
“How is it done, Irona? If there’s a mating rock under the bowl somewhere, then the token may come to it wrong-side down. Then it won’t stick. It’ll just about jump off, but it won’t stop.”
For a moment she was stumped. Then she saw. “It will work if the rock underneath is big enough. If the one in the token is the right way up to stick, it will stick. If it’s the other way up, it will stop and not slide any farther. So it stops either way.”
No, he just could not believe that everything he had been taught to believe was a lie. And she could not stop believing it.
“Or perhaps,” he said, “the goddess set the device up centuries ago and nobody knows how it works except you. Or you may be completely wrong and the choosing has nothing to do with black rock. Caprice made a good choice when she chose you, and today she chose Podakan. His efforts to cheat may have amused her. She is capricious above all. And, while your son has been a pain in my ass for years, I can admit that he may make a very good Chosen, and perhaps one day even a great First for Benign.”
“Podakan?” She thought Veer must be joking, then saw that he wasn’t.
“He is quite a lad, Irona. He was a hero before he was even a man. Now he’s a Chosen, and you had best respect the goddess’s decision.” Veer stood up, laid the two black stones on the table, and left the room.
She wanted to scream. Now it was all so obvious! Obsessed by guilt that he was the cause of Irona’s two-year exile in the hellhole of Vult, Vlyplatin had succumbed to Maleficence and had passed the curse on to her in his seed. In Didicas, whatever sentience had possessed the Beru had willingly abandoned that “vessel” so it could occupy Podakan. That was why the boy had lived and the monster had died. Now Maleficence was one of the Seventy.
Irona 700 met Chosen Podakan 725 again the following evening in the Scandal Market and was relieved to see that he was on his best behavior, accepting congratulations graciously and modestly, Your Honoring everyone. She hardly recognized him, all scrubbed and close-shaven, wearing a newly made, large-size sea-green tunic. Of course she received congratulations also, but they were guarded: Had the goddess just given her a reward or a reprimand? No one was sure.
In the meeting that followed, the novice listened intently, said nothing, and voted as his tutor did. Long may that last! Just once he caught Irona’s eye with a knowing look. She made an effort and smiled in acknowledgment.
At the last meeting of the Seven that Irona would attend during her term, Ledacos presented a report from
the Treaty Commission regarding the Elbrus problem. Navy had been concerned for years that pirates were openly using ports there as bases, and lately had taken to preying on shipping almost as far north as Benign itself. The Seven had referred the matter to the Commission, which now responded that Elbrus, being part of the Three Kingdoms, was not within its mandate, which bore only on treaty lands within the Benesh Empire itself. Relations with sovereign states, it added, were historically handled by the Seventy, on the advice of the Seven. But, it concluded, if the Seventy should decide to send a special emissary to the ruling satrap of Elbrus, then he, or she, ought to be backed up by a significant show of strength.
That “or she” was a pretty broad hint as to which “he or” they had in mind. Somehow Irona 700 had become the Empire’s hunting dog. But a summer voyage to Elbrus was not without appeal. She might even drag Veer along with her and stop worrying about Podakan.
Suretamatai 683, a Ledacos crony, pointed out that Seven Irona would be laying down her current office tomorrow and would be an excellent choice for emissary.
Hands slapped the table in applause.
Ha! “Your Honors, grateful as I am for this flattering show of confidence, I must point out that men of the Three Kingdoms treat their women as fine jewels. A woman is never even seen by any man other than her father, her husband, and her juvenile sons. To send a woman, and a crippled woman at that, will be interpreted as an insult of the highest order.”
“Excellent!” boomed Banahaw 688. “That is exactly the message you can convey.”
A recommendation to the Seventy was approved unanimously, and so was Irona’s nomination for the post. She could look forward to visiting that fabled land and receiving quasi-royal honors as Benign’s emissary.
The realm that the Benesh contemptuously dismissed as the Three Kingdoms was in fact an empire both larger and richer than their own, an amalgam of many peoples and races. The two had clashed several times in the past, but a maritime power and a continental one could never deliver decisive blows on each other. All their conflicts had ended in mutual recognition that the border between them must run through the Gulf of Berutarube, although this agreement had rarely been stated in formal treaties.
When Irona got home that evening, she found Veer relaxing on a chaise longue out on the terrace, with one hand clutching a goblet of wine and the other vaguely beating time to music drifting over from the neighbor’s. A private orchestra had been the price that Ledacos’s latest mistress, a buxom singer, had demanded as compensation for the loss of her virtue. In fact, a spell as a Seven’s doxy would advance her subsequent earning potential tremendously.
Veer was probably not concentrating on the melody, though, for his thoughts rarely strayed far from painting.
“Ah!” he said as Irona sat down where his feet had been an instant before. “Good meeting?”
“Interesting.” She held out her hand for the wine and took a long draft. What she needed for her ambassadorial state was a convivial escort. Veer, regrettably, boasted of never having left the shores of Benign and never wanting to do so. “I am about to undertake an ambassadorial visit to Nabro.”
“Where’s that?”
“It is the capital city of Elbrus.”
Veer reached under the couch for the wine flask. “Which is?”
“The most westerly of the many provinces of the Three Kingdoms. Nabro is an ancient city famous for the beauty of its setting and the grace of its art and architecture. Especially its many towers.”
He knew what she wanted. “Give it my love, love.”
Hopeless! Veer was a very atypical Benesh, completely uninterested in politics or war. But she knew the endless trouble other female Chosen had with consorts trying to meddle. Veer was a pure diamond and she must not complain.
“It will be a long voyage but should be very pleasant in summer.” Coming home close to winter might be less appealing.
He raised the flask to his mouth again and then lowered it. He frowned. “And I suppose you will enlist some husky sailor to help you on and off with your leg brace?”
Irona sighed. “I thought of that, but it won’t work. The navy is very fussy about watches and time off and so on. I shall need more than one. I fancy a husky, hairy-chested type to assist me in the mornings, and another—probably of the lithe, youthful, nimble sort—for evenings.”
Veer took a drink, then wiped his mouth with his wrist. “When do we sail?”
Thanks largely to Irona’s nagging over the years, the fleet now included sailing ships of several types, all classified as barques. Some were small, but some were as long as galleys, because length brought speed. They were less maneuverable than oared craft, but could travel in rougher weather and carry more cargo, making provisioning the fleet less dependent on unreliable local sources. A week after her appointment as admiral-ambassador, Irona raised her flag on the galley Invincible and led out a fleet of fifteen war galleys and a dozen support craft. Keeping such a collection together would be impossible, and she did not even want to try, lest word of the approaching force reach Elbrus ahead of her. She ordered all vessels to rendezvous at Aoba, the most southerly city in the Empire, and promised bonuses for the first to arrive.
Daun Bukit went with her, of course, and even Sazen Hostin, who had officially retired to enjoy the remarkable fortune he had amassed in thirty years of working for starvation wages. It would be just like old times, and even better with Veer to brighten her nights. But the goddess was still capricious. Eager as Irona was to see the shining towers of Nabro, she was fated never to set eyes on them.
She came within a few hours of Aoba, one blazing afternoon, when sunlight glittered off a sea of blue silver too bright for human eyes. The smoke-toned hills of Hertali lining the northern skyline had not seen a cloud in weeks. Irona sat in her personal chair beside the steersman, under a canopy on the afterdeck, talking strategy with Commodore Chagulak, who was standing. Veer was stretched out on a blanket, leaning back on his elbows, and seemingly engrossed in a staring match with a white seabird on the rail.
Indomitable had caught up with Invincible a couple of days earlier and was following, hull down. Both bosuns were setting a fiendish pace in this, the final leg of the race.
Chagulak was a heavyset man with arms as thick as his legs and a head like a granite bollard. He stopped speaking in midsentence, gazing ahead. “Bosun, is that a sail off the port bow?”
“Aye, sir, it is!” The younger man—his name was Turfan—sprinted along the catwalk to the mast and raced up it like a squirrel. In a moment he shouted down, “Friend, sir. Benesh galley under sail.” If she was under sail, then she was heading roughly in their direction. In a moment, he added, “She’s seen us, sir. Turning our way.”
The commodore said, “Permission to clear for action, ma’am?”
“Granted.”
Veer sat up as pipes began to shrill. “I thought he said it was one of ours?”
“He meant that it looks like one of ours,” Irona said. “We’ll believe it when we’re close enough to smell them.”
Veer pulled a face, as if to say that he was currently downwind of Invincible’s own overheated crew.
The newcomer was indeed another ship of the fleet, Insurmountable. By the time she was identified, Indomitable was hove to a couple of oar lengths aft of Invincible and the race to Aoba had been suspended.
Bringing two galleys alongside in the open sea was tricky, but well within the navy’s competence when the sea was as calm as it was that day. Insurmountable’s Captain Garbes leaped across the gap easily, but a younger man who followed him almost fell back and had to be grabbed by hasty hands and hauled aboard. The two then headed aft toward Irona, while three crews waited to hear their fates.
Garbes was the most junior of the captains and thus very eager to prove himself, although he already had a reputation for being sharp and ever eager for
a fight. He saluted. His younger companion dropped to his knees.
“Report, Captain,” Chagulak said, meaning he must explain why he had disobeyed orders by either leaving the rendezvous without permission or turning back before reaching it.
Seemingly unworried, Garbes told how he had taken Insurmountable into Aoba the previous day, only to find two of the supply ships already there. Later that evening, a third barque had arrived, having rescued a man adrift in the sea, clinging to an oar and in great distress. This, Captain Garbes confidently announced, must be the hand of the goddess at work. He nudged his companion with a horny toe.
He was, the lad recited in a nasal Lenochian accent, Jalua Fayal, deckhand on the trading ship Albatross. Two days ago, they had been chased and boarded by pirates. Knowing that their fate would be death or slavery, the crew had resisted. Most of them and some pirates had died in the fight. Fayal himself had been disarmed but had jumped overboard with an oar, preferring to face sharks or drowning rather than the pirates’ vengeance.
Commodore Chagulak looked thoughtfully at Irona. “Miraculous! This indeed sounds like the hand of the goddess, ma’am.”
She nodded and waited to hear more.
He turned back to Fayal. “You don’t happen to know where they planned to take their prize, do you, sailor?”
“Kell, sir. I heard them say so. That’s a big pirate port and slave market, sir.”
More questions: Describe the pirate. Describe Albatross. When could a skeleton crew bring her into Kell … ?
Back to Garbes, who was wearing a very satisfied expression.
“You did think to bring a local who knows Kell?”
“Two of them, sir. Both good pilots.”
“Kell is one of the smaller islands, is it not?”
“Yes, sir. They tell me there’s only one port. On the southeast coast.”
That pretty much decided it. From his look of alarm, even Veer could tell how the wind was blowing, and Irona knew it was set fair for Kell. She hated giving orders sitting down, but she was not steady enough to stand on a rolling deck. “Your recommendation, Commodore?”
