Steelflower at Sea

by Lilith Saintcrow

  He bled out in moments, the hot spray splashing my face and hands, just as the tide shifted. Tower bells along the perimeter of the harbor sounded, marking the change. Many ships would be leaving soon, most braving only the western coast of the Lan’ai. It was late to be sailing across the Shelt, but there was still profit to be made until the ice-wind began to blow and it was time to do naught but scrape hulls and repair nets.

  Tis the giant we want, and fat is the reward.

  I sagged against the small table, covered in blood, my knees suspiciously watery. I had to think, but my head was full of a strange buzzing. Gavrin, still pale, wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand again, nervously. He kept glancing at me as if he expected to be next. No doubt the scene would offend Janaire’s tender mercies as well.

  Think. There are things to do next. You must do them, nobody else can. My lips moved, soundlessly, and I hoped the blood did not carry disease. It was a strange worry, one I had never felt before, but it loomed larger and larger until blessed silence filled my head. It was a relief, that quiet, and I did not care so much that it would shut the other G’mai out, including Darik. What mattered was I had some space, some calm.

  First, there was the blood to deal with, and the corpses. Then there was enough of Ammerdahl Rikyat’s bloody Shainakh gold to travel, and everything in the trunk the Head had been holding for me to be packed afresh.

  Then, there was leaving Antai. I could not think of a direction likely to give us much in the way of comfort, but outside the city, I could be fairly certain of Redfist’s safety. At least, as far as the Guild was concerned. The commission did not extend past the walls.

  That was the only piece of knowledge he had resisted giving me. A credit to the Guild, and perhaps there was another Sorche left to grieve him. He was old enough to have an apprentice or two.

  “Gavrin.” The word was harsh; I switched to a collage of Pesh and tradetongue to make certain he could understand. I meant to thank him for his presence, perhaps, but something else came out entirely. “Will you write songs of this?”

  He shook his head, the low uncertain light gilding some threads of honey among the muddy strands. His big troutfish hands cupped his sharp elbows, and he hugged himself like a child.

  “Good.” My head fell back, my braids resting against the wall. “I am...sorry for it.” This is a sellsword’s life. I left anything else behind long ago. The words curdled, I shook them away. “Go down to the cellar. Tell them it is safe enough, for now.”

  He nodded. His face firmed, but for a moment I saw a glimpse of the child he must have been in Pesh. Young, attractive slaves are much prized...but also in certain kinds of danger, and no wonder he left his homeland when he was manumit.

  Of course, what Pesh slave would admit to escape?

  It took determination to pursue Gavrin’s chosen course, with his instrument and his wits, such as they were. A minstrel would be useful wherever we went, but he could supplement the household’s earnings here, and when spring came, he could split the remaining funds with the remaining G’mai and the little one, and go on his way. A winter’s worth of shelter was what I could offer, and to do so, I would have to move quickly.

  He moved uneasily for the door, and when he had reached it, I spoke again.

  “You are a fine minstrel.” I did not know what else to say. Perhaps he even understood, but he did not halt.

  Straws In Your Storm

  The corpses were piled outside the gate as dawn reddened the east, a bloody sunrise swelling like my wounded face. Darik examined me for a long moment in the courtyard, looking almost as tired as I felt after the night’s festival. The bow in his hands was not as elegant as a G’mai’s restrained, deadly curve, but it had served him well. He did not ask needless questions or gainsay me.

  I was grateful, but the warmth could not escape the invisible wall surrounding me.

  “Bastard Dunkast,” Redfist said, in the kitchen, looking at his hands. “Had I thought him capable of this, I’d never have set sail with ye.”

  I nodded. “I know.” We gazed at each other for a long moment, and his large shoulders stiffened as if I had shouted. “You might as well tell me, Redfist.” I had guessed, of course. I had traveled too long with the ruddy giant not to suspect.

  Guessing or suspecting is not the same as hearing it aloud, though.

  “I return to the highlands.” His ginger-furred hands slowly curled onto themselves. “Dunkast will meet me in the rounds, to answer for everything. Crae or not, law or no, I’ll nae stop until I have his head.”

  “Very well.” I glanced at Darik, who held a cup of blessedly hot chai in both hands, his hair wildly disarranged and his cheeks still painted with heat from the night’s efforts. There was a fresh knife-slash on his jerkin, and his weariness made my own that much more savage. Thankfully, the strike had only caught fabric, not the skin underneath. “D’ri...”

  “Your battles are mine,” he said, softly. “When do we start?”

  I was almost sorry he could not feel my own deep, nervous relief. “Today. Now. There is little time, we must have horses and travel gear, and be outside the walls by dusk.”

  Redfist tapped the table twice, lightly, as if he wished to pound upon it. “I could go alone. I should go alone, seeing as how I’ve endangered every one of you.”

  “You could.” I watched the steam rise from a fire-blackened kettle, Gavrin hunching over it and rubbing at his hands as if they pained him. “But you will not. I will at least see you to your homeland safely.”

  Janaire, her arm bent and bound to immobilize it while healing sank into the bone, shook her head, managing to express pain and mutiny in one slight motion. “You cannot be serious. You cannot.”

  “You will stay here,” I repeated, in that same remote, flat tone that was all I had the endurance to voice. “In spring you will take the small one to G’maihallan, and foster him.”

  Atyarik studied me curiously. “He is no s’tarei,” he said, finally, but spread his hands when Janaire darted him a scorching look.

  “Nevertheless,” D’ri said quietly, and Atyarik bowed his head. To his credit, he was loyal to my Dragaemir princeling.

  Was there a story I did not know, between them? Now I had no time to find out.

  “As soon as we are past the walls the assassins will cease their visits.” I accepted another hot bowl of chai from Gavrin, whose hands shook slightly. “Wintering here is not so bad.”

  “Kaia, these are your people—” Redfist began. I took a sip of chai, glad of the warmth, and stared at him over the rim of my bowl. Gavrin kept ladling, and Janaire winced, awkwardly accepting hers. She was thinner than when we had met, and her cheeks had hollowed slightly. It did not make her any less beautiful, but she was no longer the girl she had been.

  “Yes.” I regarded him steadily. “But I left my homeland.” And you are my fellow sellsword.

  “I do not ask ye to come.” He had paled, and was almost transparent. It was a change to see him so grave, and of all of us, he was the one left unwounded.

  And the minstrel, of course. Gavrin’s quiet was unnerving. Had he finally seen enough of sellswording to understand it was not to be poured into silly couplets?

  “I know.” I longed to shut my eyes, savor the chai, pretend.

  “Your training is not finished.” Janaire did not relent. “I am your teacher, Kaia. You could harm yourself—”

  Not as much as I will harm others. “Yada’Adais.” Very formally. “You have been kind to me, and I honor that. I am unworthy to be your student.” I forged ahead, wishing I could climb the stairs and fall into the bed I would not be using this winter. “The last thing I will ask of you and your s’tarei is to keep our friend Redfist safe until I return with the horses.”

  Her chin lifted. “You do not care who you break, do you, Anjalismir Kaialitaa. We are all as straws in your storm.”

  It was meant to sting, especially in G’mai. I did not bother to tell her tales of s
traws buried in stone walls by a furious sky god’s breath—I had seen such things, on the rim of the Danhai plains, once or twice. When the sky-dancers begin to whirl, any shelter is as dangerous as the open grass-sea itself.

  My shoulders bowed under a fresh weight, and I accepted it as I would so much else that day. “Then it is best I am as far from those of different metal as possible, Yada’Adais.” I set my chai-bowl down and left the kitchen on a tide of raised voices, Gavrin attempting to be heard over Atyarik, Janaire seeking to silence them both, and Redfist desperately seeking to restore some peace.

  Any assassin who wandered in would probably be talked to death.

  My head was already full of the next task I had to accomplish, and the next. D’ri followed me through the hall and up the stairs, and when we reached the dubious safety of my—our—room, I found myself forced to say something, anything, to break the purely physical silence. The taran’adai was a humming cord between us, full of the careful distance two people who do not agree can leave between themselves and a looming problem.

  “You do not have to—” I began.

  “Nor do you,” he pointed out, catching my wrist. His fingers were warm, and gentle, and he gazed into my swollen face as if the discoloration and puffing did not bother him. “But you will, Kaialitaa, and I am your s’tarei.”

  “If you ask me to turn aside, to let him go...” My throat was too dry. “If you asked that of me, Darikaan, I would.”

  There. It was said. So much for the intangible I had carried to stiffen my back since I left Anjalismir’s high white spires, the determination to chart my course alone. If I was the only flawed G’mai, then I would be worthy of such an insult from the gods themselves. A twisted manner of pride, a child’s determination.

  Who was I, now? Once that determination was taken away, who was Kaia Steelflower?

  His hand softened, and instead of my wrist he held my hand, our fingers interlacing as if they had been shaped specifically to do so. Even our calluses matched. “How long would it be before you hated me, if I did?”

  There is a word in G’mai for the dart that strikes the heart but does not kill. It is a small, sharp word, and it pains one even to hear it. I had never understood its full intricacy, the depth of its meaning, before. He lifted my hand, pressed his lips to my bruised, battered knuckles. I had not even washed tile-dust from my face or hands, and my braids were probably a rumpled mess. He did not seem to mind.

  “I could not hate you.” Who was the woman using my voice? She sounded almost as young as Janaire, and almost as soft.

  “Even so. I shall find the horses. You may want a bath before we go.” He hesitated, his breath warm against my stinging knuckles. Touched them again with his mouth, very softly, as if to ease a child’s scrapes. “Redfist says the North is a cold place.”

  I should have told him he was weary as well, and might want a soaking as well. Instead, I stood like a statue, and he disappeared through the door before I could summon even the pretense of a protest. Was this what it meant to have a s’tarei, or was I simply becoming lazy?

  I did not know.

  Certain Proprieties

  It began to drizzle, a chill dispirited prickle-rain Clau sailors call moonbreath, for they believe her the source of all cold, as the sun is all heat. I hunched, watching the paved expanse of the North Road from the shelter of a cranyon tree’s bulk, its branches not yet naked but full of painted, dying leaves in their last vibrancy. Antai simmered in its cup, down to the liquid glitter of the harbor, smoke-haze frothing like the foam on well-whisked chai. The ponies—shaggy beasts with wise eyes and mischievous dispositions—were much smaller than any I would have selected. Redfist, however, pronounced them the best choice for the North in this season. There were no Skaialan drafts in the markets; the farmers in the hinterlands prizing them too highly to send them down into the bowl. Our giant was too big for the ponies, but his legs had carried him from Hain to a battlefield, then back to Vulfentown and over the sea. Once we were through the Pass, he said, he could find a mount if he wished.

  He laughed when he said it, a bitterly amused snort, and I was too tired to ask why.

  A little farther up the Road, well out of even crossbow range, a slatternly tavern leaned against its gray-weathered stable. No doubt it was crawling with fleas, but safe enough for Redfist to sit with a tankard for a short while.

  A few hours along the North Road was the farthest I had gone in that particular direction from Antai.

  Just as the Danhai plains were the farthest I’d gone from the Rim itself. I was too exhausted to suppress the shudder that always went through me when I dwelled too long on those two years.

  Even through the chill, rising mist, I sensed the heat of approaching murder. I stepped away from the tree, my dotani ringing from its sheath. We were lucky the commission had not been high enough to interest a daykiller. Those are almost impossible to halt, and their price reflects as much.

  No, this Dunkast perhaps did not understand Antai’s Guild, or there was a reason he wished Redfist murdered in the dark. He had paid in pale Northern gold, not the good ruddy gloss of Shainakh Rams, or so the smoking, stinking, reeking wreck of an assassin had told me. The hand that had carried the gold and the sealed packet of instruction was none other than Corran Ninefinger’s; the blond giant could have been simply a stupid catspaw. Soon enough they would hunt him down, too, if they had not already. Redfist did not say what had prompted the blond giant to come south.

  Put your worries away, Kaia. They are not needed here.

  I took my position in the middle of the North Road’s flagged expanse. Later, mud would creep across the stones in slow rivers, and here above the bowl, away from the harbor’s breath, it would freeze. A pale cloud puffed from my mouth, drops flashing through it, and the shadows moved on the other side of the crumbling arc of walls that had been witchery-strong in the Pensari’s day and manned with archers and guards during the warlord years that followed.

  It had been a long while since the great city had needed its shell upon the hilltops, though.

  Dusky rainlight turned them into cloak-wrapped enigmas, kerchiefs over their mouths, hoods dripping with moisture over dhabris. Hands folded inside wide sleeves, three of the Guild eyed me. I returned the favor.

  One of them would be a representative of the clan who had sent last night’s courtiers. One would be sent directly from the Head and the Council, to make certain proprieties were observed. The third would be a witness from another clan, one most likely not allied with the first. No doubt I would have to pay double-dues next tithing-season—if I returned. Most commissions have a provision for interference, but hopefully it was not large enough to tempt anyone outside the walls with winter fast approaching.

  We eyed each other, and I tensed, my dotani rising slightly. Scuffling sounds, high fast breathing, and movement behind them. Two shadows, with a third held awkwardly between them.

  They held thiefcatchers, long wooden spars age-darkened and banded with iron. Each had a prong, like a yueh rune that had lost half a leg to battleground injury; the shorter half ended in a hocta-knot around the prisoner’s neck, the spare loop snugged under the armpits. The longer was attached to the girdle, and walking inside that contraption was unsteady at best and bloody at worst.

  They call it the Chastity, for the short spikes on the inside.

  She was forced to her knees before the three senior Guild members, and a muffled curse told me who it was. A chill spread over me.

  Even if I forgave Sorche Smahua’s-kin, there was still this to face. In another place, she might have chosen a sellsword’s path instead of a clan, or had it chosen for her. Even if the first assassin had taken it upon herself to avenge Sorche’s thiefmother, the elder woman should have restrained her. Not only had she robbed the clan of the investment her little thiefling had represented, but the clumsiness of said little thiefling had warned me to be wary and perhaps cost the Smoke—or another clan—part of a fat commissi
on.

  It was not the potential death of a Guild member in good standing they would punish her for. It was the loss of profit. There are many temples in Antai, many gods from both the hinterlands and abroad, but the one who rules beneath, above, and throughout them all had been disobeyed, and would take due vengeance.

  One of the elders moved forward. Pointed, and the two with the thiefcatcher forced Sorche to her knees. A murmur was probably the delivery of the sentence in old Pensari, and a long silence showed where that word, the one that was never uttered, fitted into its contours. The sibilants carried, and a breeze shook the cranyon tree’s leaves. A rattle as some fell, the wet gleam of a blade.

  “Mother!” Sorche cried, just before the most senior clanmember, the one in the middle, wrenched her head back. She might have fought, too, but the other two had her arms and the thiefcatchers were braced. A high spattering jet of arterial blood, and I did not look away.

  Some are children their entire lives. Hot rancid fluid boiled in my throat. There was no chai that would wash away the taste.

  They watched as I strode for the wall-line; I felt a burst of concern—D’ri, wedged in the cranyon tree’s upper reaches with his bow, as I moved forward and into bow-range from the crumbling stone. My left hand moved for a pocket, and I halted just on the other side of the invisible boundary.

  I held up the Shainakh red Ram, its shine visible even in this darkness. The Moon hid her face behind a passing cloud, and I flicked the gold off my fingers in the thieves’ way, the metal describing a high spinning arc before a dark-gloved hand blurred out to catch it.