by K. Johansen
City gates, and the bridge over the Noreia. Torches burning in iron cages, and the watch, wakeful. Hearing their approach already, coming out from the guard-house, two men and a woman, leather jerkins and broad spears, not expecting real trouble, but…
What in him plotted the swiftest way through, right side, left, saw them falling, was wrong, was what he would not be, and the crossbow was still in its waterproof wrapping, which had been a choice, back at the Heron.
Didn’t mean he was going to stop and argue with them till daylight brought the hour of the gates’ opening, though.
He’d been taking back the wizardry that had once been his, slowly, so slowly, over the years. Disentangling it from the fear, the history behind him.
He would rather have made a dance of this, weaving a patterned knot, sword in hand. Paced it out in his mind instead, felt it in breath, in heartbeat, in the blade’s edge cutting the air…
Wind. Breath of the typhoon off the sea, sweeping down the broad street, gathering dust, rattling shutters and latched doors. Torches were snuffed out. Roaring. Rain, sheets of it, pounded, mowing like a scythe as it swept in wild gusts, wind-driven. Something shrieked, tiles lifted, falling, shattering, timbers cracking—gates twisted and that shriek was metal pulling clear. He whooped, rush of—damned, sheer delight, like the dogs racing, barking, tumbling in the first snow of autumn. Wished Ghu were here, now…Voices yelled, faintly, lost in rain and wind-roar, figures scrambling for shelter ghost-mist faint, and the camels in panic ran, were halfway over the bridge before he had Scorpion under some control of the nose-rein again, but at least the sides were high and the storm died behind them in a rising fog.
Laughing insanely and cold hells that made him hurt, but he couldn’t stop.
Hair wasn’t even wet. A waking dream, most of it. Not all. They might find a few tiles down in the morning. And the city would need to replace its riverward gates.
Ailan was still aboard the camel, clinging for his life. Sensible. The ground was a long way down.
Sobered, Ahjvar set the camels to a more sensible pace. They needed to get off this road, which headed for Two Hills, find the hill paths that might wander a way back up to rejoin the northerly route of the caravan road while missing the obvious road itself. Put some miles between themselves and the city.
Figure out what he was going to do with Ailan. That, too.
Ahjvar found his way by something that was instinct as much as ancient memory, feeling, almost, by sheep-paths and country tracks, never certain where he meant to go till it opened before him. If he thought, tried to search memory, to reason, he lost his certainty. Stopped a couple of hours before dawn, when he noticed Ailan was having trouble staying put, nodding, sliding, jerking awake. They were down in a narrow valley then, a rocky place, no human souls near, no distant village smoke flavouring the wind. Ailan fell in his eagerness to be down, not waiting for the camel to kneel, but he didn’t try to bolt off into the darkness, which Ahjvar half expected. Crouched out of the way with his arms wrapped close about him, shivering. Night blind and terrified.
“We can’t make a fire,” Ahjvar said. “I don’t know that anyone will follow, but we don’t need to help them along if they do. Probably depends on whether or not the survivors of your priests blame the fire on us.”
“Not my priests.”
“Good to know.” He didn’t offload the camels. Told them to stay, as he might the dogs. As Ghu might, expecting obedience. They settled into sleep at once. He went to drink at the shallow stream that chimed between the stones. Ailan, warily, followed, stumbling. Ahjvar washed his face, wincing as he bent to the water. Shirt was stuck to his back now.
“Get some sleep,” he ordered. “I’ll keep watch. I wouldn’t sleep anyway.” Not with a stranger lying near and the possibility of hunters behind. “We’ll be off before the sunrise.”
Ailan didn’t answer, but he did lie down, curled up, making himself small. Defensive. Or just cold. Ahjvar rootled in the baggage, which tore the scabs again. Set his teeth against the pain. Stripped off his coat and shirt while he could, though, and felt around, teeth clenched. A cut of several inches, deep, but not, he thought, into anything that should have been immediately fatal, had he been mortal natural man still. Hit ribs and didn’t make it through. Bad enough. Ghu, were he here, would be muttering about sewing him up again. Wasn’t going to draft Ailan for that. Likely heal by morning, anyway, if he could just leave it to do so. That wasn’t any gods’ blessing, the way he recovered. The curse a goddess had woven with her heart, hatred in it, stolen by Ghu and made his own.
Necromancy.
Of a sort.
He found a blanket and threw it over Ailan, who grunted thanks. It reeked of camels. Since Ahjvar was started, he refilled the water skins, then used the ruin of the shirt to wash his back. Ended up soaking his trousers, of course. Enough of cleanliness.
Restless. He sorted out his long coat of black-lacquered scale, the armoured boots and gloves and his helmet too, with its crest of ribbons, black and sky-blue. Ailan slept, and woke to cough, and slept again.
If they were going to be fool enough to come after him…let them have second thoughts. Nabban was not something the Taren Confederacy wanted to offend. It might save having to kill, if anyone official did catch up, if he looked what he claimed to be. Rihswera of Nabban. God’s champion, god’s sword in the world, with an ambassador’s sanctity.
Also, crossbow quarrels bloody well hurt.
Ahjvar never did sleep, but he lay down shirtless on his front, head on folded arms. Waiting. Listening. Feeling the night around him. Autumn noises. Crickets. Two owls, call and answer. Foxes.
The air smelt—not like home. This landscape had not been home in a long, long time. Smelt like childhood. The right trees. The right grass. Even the crickets sounded—right. Different crickets in Nabban, different song. He’d never really noticed before.
It wasn’t right, though. Nothing was. As if his shadow were rooted elsewhere…Felt as though he might fly, like a swallow to her nest, if only he turned back to face Nabban. Pulled home.
Touch on his skin. Back of the neck. Down his spine. A hand lying over the wound, till the ache and sharp flare of it eased. The slow rhythm of a calmer breath, warm, stirring his hair. Body lying pressed alongside his own.
Dreaming. Almost.
When the night began to thin to grey he stirred, no catch in the muscles of his back, no pain. Found his spare shirt and dressed before he shook the young man.
“Time to wake.”
Wan and shivering, coughing in the morning chill, but he didn’t sound so bad as he had in the night. Ahjvar should feed him as well as the camels. Not much to offer either. He turned up some hard biscuit. Ailan made no complaint.
“Getting to the market was the point of going into Star River Crossing,” Ahjvar said, watching as Ailan gnawed at it, with water in the battered silver cup that had been fine, once, some gift to the god from the lords of Choa, but they lived in a cave and wandered on horseback or by canoe and fine didn’t last undented long. Silver endured the road better than pottery or wood, and could be sold at need. “Your own fault there’s nothing to eat. You any good with a sling?”
Wide-eyed look. Astonishment that he would even ask. “No.”
“Me neither. I’ll see what I can buy on the road, if we meet a caravan. Best we avoid the villages, not leave much trace of ourselves where bored people will talk.”
“Oh.” Ailan tried soaking the biscuit in the water.
We. Where was “we” in this?
“You’re not actually very good at seduction,” Ahjvar observed. “Maybe try something else to earn your bread?”
Ailan shrugged, contemplating the soupy mess the biscuit had left the water in. Drank it. “Do what I have to do,” he said then, turning the cup in his hands. Wondering what he could sell it for, Ahjvar suspected. “Have, since—a while, now. Don’t need to be good at it. Always someone’ll buy you in the end. They’
re not out prowling by the gates in the twilight ‘cause they want a friend.” A shaky sigh. “Worse at thieving than whoring. Obviously.” Spread his right hand, with the old character that could be read “thief” seared into the meaty root of the thumb. Offered the cup back, defiant of that brand.
“Rinse it. Goes in that goatskin bag.”
“I’ll hang if they take me before the magistrates again. Probably whether I’ve done whatever they say or not. The law-speakers, they’re s’posed to speak for you but they don’t care, not if you’re poor. Nobody brings in a diviner to say whether you’re lying or not. At least selling yourself’s not against the law, if you put your name on the books and pay your quarter-tax.” Ailan washed the cup, dried it on his gown, which might undo the good of washing. Crept up on Spider, peacefully chewing her cud, as if she were a fanged demon, and packed it away as ordered. “Had to borrow to pay that, last quarter-day. Moneylender pretty much owns me.”
“You could have left the city.”
“To do what? No trade. No kin. Never been outside the gates in my life till last night, that I remember. I s’pose I must have been once. I wasn’t born there. I went to the sanctuary, once, kept a vigil. Asked. Nori said I wasn’t hers, not from the city, not from up the river. All she could tell me. Told me I’d be better off leaving, wouldn’t say why, or couldn’t.” He shivered, clenching his hand closed. “Don’t know where my mother came from, why she ended up selling herself at the gates. Except she’d known something better once. Everyone says that, don’t they? But I think it was true. She spoke—well. She could read. Don’t know who my father was. Don’t suppose their families’d claim me, either of them, even if I did know where they were. And leave to do what, anyway? Spin? Herd sheep?”
“Worse ways to earn your bread.”
“Who’d think I was worth teaching?”
“You never know. Wouldn’t end up dead in the mud of some back alley.”
“Like my mother? Worn out and stupid with poppy-smoke, beaten to death arguing over a half-lily’s worth of copper? No. I was careful. Thought I was. You can tell who’s just wanting flattery and a bit away from what’s at home, who’s travelling and lonely and wants someone to listen to them almost as much as a willing body in their bed for the night. Who’s…bad. I thought I could. Thought I’d learnt. Timon was so…I could have paid off the moneylender, paid my next quarter-tax, still had enough to live a few weeks without working, on what he said they’d pay, and only to get you into the mission-house, into that room. Wouldn’t even have to get undressed, he said. Look—” He met Ahjvar’s eye. “It wasn’t—he said you were—he said you weren’t human any more and weren’t even alive. Not…not a live person at all. He said it would be a mercy, not murder.”
“You’d have ended up dead. Like them. Tell me about your priest.”
“Timon.” Ailan swallowed. “They’re strange, the red priests. They come to the city last year, opened that mission. I go round once in a while. They keep a kitchen; they feed you for free, anyone who comes in. Porridge, soup, not much, but that’s something. Talk at you about their All-Holy, about the road to the Old Great Gods being destroyed by the devils, about how our souls will all be lost when we die, how their All-Holy’s the only bridge to the heavens. Some people started going to their daily prayers, forswore Nori—” He meant Noreia, Ahjvar presumed, the goddess of the river, who interacted little with her folk the length of her valley, so often at war with one another through the years. “—and promised themselves to the red priests’ All-Holy, got the tattoo. I never did. Don’t like the way they act—the priests. Like they’re masters and we’re all servants, or children, maybe. Expect you to do what you’re told. Priest Timon, he knew what I was. He started coming down to find me by the bridge. That’s where I am, mostly. A couple of months ago, maybe, the first time. It’s one of their sins. They’ve got so many. But he was—he came looking for me a lot. One of the lonely ones, you know? He never hit me. Only once in a while he’d get angry, bring a jar and drink, and then he’d cry because he was weak and deserved to be damned and cast out by his god. He was so—happy, about this. The Holy One showing him the way to redeem himself.” Low-voiced, he added, as if he had to make it real to himself, “I killed him. He wasn’t too bad, really.”
“Wasn’t too bad” seemed a bleak thing to mourn, if Ailan were mourning. Ahjvar couldn’t tell. From what he saw, the priest had been trying to murder him to keep his own little secret, amid all their performance of the devil’s wizardry.
“Wasn’t too bad” echoed things Ghu had said. Ahjvar wasn’t the only one who had had an occasional dark night, over the years.
“Your priest was trying to kill you. Remember that. There’s no guilt in having defended yourself. No murder. Here. Up. We need to be moving.” He kept a leading rein on Spider. Deal with teaching the man to actually ride once he decided what to do with him. If it came to that. Would need to find a proper saddle, not the pack-frame…Keeping him? He didn’t want a youth at his heel. A city-bred failed thief, failed whore, failed tool of his enemies…Absolutely did not. Who in the cold hells ever would? “When did he start talking about me?”
“A week ago, maybe. Been watching for you. I wouldn’t have picked you out to go after on my own, that’s for sure.”
“One of the bad ones?” Ahjvar suggested, looking back.
Ailan was concentrating on trying to balance without clutching at either the camel or her burdens. That got a glance up, even a flicker of humour. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“What did he say?”
Ailan settled for one hand on a strap. “About you? His god had blessed him with dreams, a chance to serve, prove he was worthy. Atone for his sins, because the All-Holy knew how corrupt he was, breaking his vows. Blessed him, because he saw a way and I would be blessed, I could serve too. Easy, nothing to do I wasn’t doing already. Just find this traveller who’d be coming into the city by way of the eastern gate, a big blond man who looked like a tribesman and talked like a Nabbani out of the empire—’cept you don’t.”
“Would you understand me if I did?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t speak much Imperial.”
“Well, then.” Any at all was—surprising, really, in an uneducated man.
“He said, a man who liked—sorry, not just men, but pretty young men—”
Ahjvar snorted.
“It’s what he said! All I had to do was get you to the mission-house, tell you it was where I lodged, that back room—take you round and in that side door, say I was a servant there or whatever, tell you anything to get you over the threshold, and once you were inside, I could go, I wouldn’t have to do anything more. I asked why, said I wasn’t being party to robbery or murder, whatever he intended. I did, Nori my witness, I swear it. I thought—I thought probably they were Westron spies, trying to trap some enemy, a Marakander spy or something. I said they should hire an assassin. That’s when he told me an assassin wouldn’t be able to do anything, that you weren’t a human man at all but a necromancer’s creation it was their holy duty to destroy. The sixth-circle priests—there were three of them new-come from Marakand—had powers like wizards, they’d be able to do it. He said their All-Holy had blessed them with the knowledge.” Laughed, too shrill. Agitated, his speech had echoes of someone who wouldn’t have expected her son to need to find his livelihood up against the wall in some back alley. Or to die that way herself. “They were really wrong in that.”
“It might have worked if I was what their master thought. Maybe. I don’t know Westron wizardry. They didn’t strike me as very skilled or talented in themselves, as wizards go.”
“You’re a wizard?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look like one.”
“No.”
“What about—the rest of it?”
“Better you just think what you guessed first was right. They were Westron spies out to destroy an enemy. There’s some truth there. I’m a priest of the god
of Nabban. The nameless god, or whatever he calls himself now, away in the west beyond the deserts, is our enemy.”
“You don’t seem much like a priest, either.”
“No.” Ahjvar considered. Offered, as explanation, though why he thought Ailan needed one…“Used to be an assassin of Gold Harbour.” And Noble Cedar Harbour, and Sea Town, and…A smile he knew full well was predatory. “The best.” Conceded, “A long time ago now.”
“Oh.” Ailan rode in silence a while. “I can’t go back, can I?”
“Wouldn’t advise it. I doubt the fire killed them all. They’ll question you, now he’s dead, if people knew about your priest—”
“They don’t. He had to sneak around. If they’d caught him—I don’t know what he told the others about how he knew where to find me.”
“Sounds like all he’d have had to say was he had a holy dream.”
Ailan actually snickered at that.
“I wouldn’t stake my life on that, though, if I were you. Do you want to go back?”
Scared. Scared both ways. Wanting both, too, Ahjvar saw. Maybe not his, that understanding. A trap that had held the man and maybe this was its noose loosening, and maybe that was only in order for the club to descend on his head…
“You can’t go back, Ailan,” he said. “People saw you talking to me at the Heron. And then I break down the city gates after someone kills a house of priests, even if they aren’t Star River Crossing’s priests…Even if the magistrate’s runners don’t want to talk to you, there’ll be other red priests around, or the converts…If their god talks to some of them in dreams…”
“Yeah.”
“Caravan?” Hand the young man over to someone heading safely east…
“Me? What would I do?”
“Learn.”
“Like they’d take me. I’m useless. Not any decent gang-boss, and the others…what d’you think they’d want me for? Just more of the same and no getting away from them, day or night. No.”
