Under the Crimson Sun

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Interrupting Cristophe before he started going on at length about his travels—the second-most boring subject in the world to Vas, coming up only behind whatever Tova might be yelling about at a given moment—Vas added, “I was also cheated by a textile merchant last season, so I’ve made it my business to know the real thing when I see it. I don’t like being cheated, and I’m never cheated twice.” Softening his tone, he asked, “So how much?”

  “Two coppers a foot.”

  “How—wait, what?” He had been expecting an unreasonably high price and then expected to haggle—that was how things worked at the bazaar—but two coppers a foot was actually reasonable.

  Then Karalith added, “For the linen. But that Tyr silk you keep fondling is a silver a foot.”

  Vas smiled. “A Raam silver or a Tyr silver?” While ceramic coins had become commonplace, each city-state minted its own coins, and often there was a markup if one traded back and forth among different locales’ currencies.

  Karalith let out a light chuckle. “It matters not. We’re in Raam, so we expect Raam currency, but we’ll accept the coin of any city in Athas. The price, however, remains the same. We find our customers prefer the simplicity of keeping prices constant, and we’ve found that it evens out in the end.”

  “Very enlightened,” Vas said, not expecting that level of consideration to the customer from any merchant, though he was appreciating more and more how the Serthlara Emporium wasn’t just any merchant …

  She shook her head. “Don’t know why we call it a silver anyway. It’s just a ceramic coin with a mark on it that says it’s silver.”

  “Used to be lotsa silver,” Cristophe said. “Long time ago. The ceramic coins, they were just supposed to be a stopgap until they found more veins of the real thing. That never happened, of course. People are stupid—why I remember—”

  Again, Vas interrupted his former tutor. “Regardless of how one pays for it, I have no interest in purchasing any more silk. I have more than I know what to do with. Lovely to the touch, but horrendous to wear out of doors.”

  She leaned forward and ran a finger along one of the bolts. “I would think a man of your station would have plenty to do indoors.”

  He leaned forward as well. “Yes—and plenty of silk to wear on those occasions, believe me. The linens, however, can make for more practical wear.”

  “I can’t imagine that anyone of your status would have much use for anything practical.”

  The words were a bit harsh, but in that voice, they were teasing.

  “The problem with status is that it doesn’t actually give you much to do. It’s why I come to this place.” He stood upright. “I wish to do something. Travel, have adventures, or at least see more of our world.” And also get away from Tova, but he decided not to even mention to Karalith that he was married. “And that, my dear Karalith, requires linens.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Karalith said, and that time she held the smile longer, though she did not show her teeth. It made the smile all the more seductive. “What manner of adventures were you thinking of—”

  “Karalith!”

  The half-elf’s face fell into a frown, annoying Vas to no end. He was actually enjoying himself. Turning around, he saw a thri-kreen skittering hurriedly toward the table. A female member of the insectlike race, she was clutching a rolled-up piece of parchment between her upper left pincers, while gesturing madly with her middle pincers. She had a pack with straps wrapped around her thorax.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Tricht’tha, not again.”

  The thri-kreen was standing upright on her rear two pincers, which thri-kreens generally did when they were among bipedal races. Among their own kind—or out in the open where there was more freedom of movement than in a crowded bazaar—they would often move on all six limbs, their bodies parallel to the ground. When he was a boy, Vas had thought thri-kreens to be other animals, but Cristophe had taught him otherwise in very short order. It was the old tutor’s opinion that they mainly walked upright when dealing with other races precisely because so many of those others made the same mistake Vas did in thinking them not to be intelligent.

  Her voice clicked three or four times—a sign of the Chachik tongue that thri-kreens spoke, and one sufficiently unlike other forms of speech that it added to misconceptions like Vas had as a youth—before she said in Common: “You do not even know what I am going to discuss.”

  Karalith put her hands on her hips. “Tricht’tha, you’re holding the map right there.”

  Tricht’tha lowered herself to stand on her middle and back pincers. After a few clicks of Chachik, she said, “Very well, I am, in fact, here to discuss the map. It—”

  Holding up a hand, Karalith said, “There’s no point, Tricht’tha. We’re not going to buy it. Even if I had a momentary lapse and decided to go ahead and take it from you, Mother and Father would have my hide for wasting their coin.”

  “You cannot make decisions for yourself? You are of age, are you not?”

  Vas looked at Karalith, hoping that the answer was affirmative, otherwise the flirting he’d been doing was going to get uncomfortable. That was the problem with half-breeds, you could never determine their ages …

  To his relief, she said, “Of course I am, but it’s not a question of being able to make decisions, it’s being able to explain the stupid ones. And buying your map would be stupid.”

  Again, the thri-kreen straightened. “Do you doubt my word, Karalith?”

  “No.” Karalith was starting to sound frustrated, a feeling with which Vas could sympathize. This Tricht’tha woman was getting in the way of his purchase. “Look,” Karalith said after taking a breath, “I don’t doubt that the map is genuine. You’ve never steered us wrong before. In fact, that set of icons you found us made us all considerable profit.”

  More Chachik for a bit, then: “Yet you do not trust me now?”

  “It has nothing to do with trust.” Karalith gestured behind her, bracelets sliding against skin. “Look at us, Tricht’tha. There are six of us crammed into this carriage, trying to sell things to people. How’re we supposed to make use of a map like that?”

  “Excuse me,” Cristophe said, and only then did Vas notice that he was staring at the parchment the thri-kreen was clutching.

  Tricht’tha clicked in Chachik, to which Cristophe, unsurprisingly, responded in kind.

  Then the thri-kreen handed the parchment to Cristophe.

  “What is it?” Vas asked, moving to stand behind his former tutor.

  “It is a map that leads to the treasury of Sebowkan the Elder.” Tricht’tha spoke almost reverently.

  As Cristophe unrolled the parchment, Vas scratched his forehead. “Who the Elder?”

  “He ruled a kingdom near the Ringing Mountains during the Green Age,” Cristophe said distractedly. “Massive treasure, he collected, as part of his bounty—but nobody ever found it.”

  Vas looked down at Cristophe. “You know of this Sebowkan?”

  Cristophe nodded. “I read one of his commentaries. It was in a private collection in Makla—belonged to an eccentric who liked to collect every piece of parchment he could get his hands on, never mind that he couldn’t read half of them. In fact, he paid me to recite some to him back in the day.”

  Waving off yet another tiresome reminiscence, Vas asked, “And you say this Sebowkan collected treasure?” He yanked the map out of Cristophe’s hand. It showed the Ringing Mountains and the Great Alluvial Sand Wastes to the east of them, and led to a particular spot that wasn’t far from where Kled was now. “You’re saying this is a map to that treasure?”

  “Of course it is.” Tricht’tha had been sounding outraged throughout the conversation, but for those four words, she kicked it up a bit, as if the very notion that they were discussing anything other than a treasure map was absurd.

  “Which is why we can’t do anything with it,” Karalith said with a sigh. “Believe me, we’d love the treasure—and I’d love to go and d
ig for it, it sounds like tremendous fun—but we’d need digging equipment, shelters, receptacles for the sand, and people who actually know what they’re doing.”

  Without even thinking, Vas asked, “Can’t you just hire people?”

  This time, Karalith’s smile was more sardonic. “You make it sound so simple, Vizier Belrik. We make enough coin to survive in this world, to feed ourselves and our mounts, and to maintain our carriage—but just that. Even if we had the spare savings to mount an expedition to find this treasure, we could not spare the time. We’d lose our spaces in bazaars like this, not to mention—”

  Vas held up a hand. “I understand, believe me.” He smiled. “Of course, I have no such impediments.”

  Tricht’tha gazed upon Vas with her large red eyes as if seeing him for the first time. “Are you saying, sir, that you might be interested in purchasing this map?”

  “I might,” Vas said quickly. He was hardly about to commit to anything, though the notion of hunting for treasure was a very appealing one. In fact, in his mind, he was already starting to plan the expedition. He knew some colleagues of Tova’s father who had done some digging, and he knew where he could get a good deal on the equipment. He’d have to borrow some of Torthal’s bodyguards, but that wouldn’t be a problem. Mentally thinking over his roster of slaves, he wasn’t sure how much use they’d be for something like this. Maybe he could hire some mercenaries?

  Best of all, he could get away from Tova for months.

  Realizing he was getting ahead of himself, he turned to the thri-kreen. “The first question I must ask, however, is why you’re selling the map? Why not take the treasure for yourself?”

  Making several desultory clicking noises, Tricht’tha said, “For similar reasons to that of Karalith. I do not have the means to avail myself of the map’s bounty. And—” she hesitated, and clicked a few more times, “leave us say that it would not be healthy for me to be seen anywhere near Kled in this lifetime.”

  Nodding, Vas regarded the map again. “I can give you ten gold for this.”

  The thri-kreen let out a burst of clicks, with some spitting thrown in for good measure. Vas wouldn’t need Cristophe to translate that. “Sebowkan the Elder’s treasure,” she finally said in Common, “is reputed to be six thousand gold. That’s real gold, not ceramic that claims to be gold. At the very least, I deserve twenty percent of that.”

  Vas had been afraid she’d ask for the full six thousand, at first. Or even more, since six thousand in metal gold was actually worth more than the equivalent in ceramic coins. “Twelve hundred gold? For a piece of parchment that I don’t even know is real?”

  “Oh, it is real,” Cristophe said in as excited a voice as Vas had ever heard him use. “Or, rather, at the very least, it’s from the time period in question. You see, during the Green Age, most of the parchments that were created in the region near the Ringing Mountains had an impurity. If you look closely, you can see it.”

  Cristophe was pointing a bony finger at the upper portion of the map. Peering at it, Vas saw that there was an odd marking in it that didn’t match up with the rest of the map. Holding the map up toward the sunlight, he saw that it was in the parchment itself.

  Handing the map back to Cristophe, he said, “So that dates it to the right period?”

  “Absolutely. And that treasure was never found. If nothing else, this is a valuable piece of history.”

  Vas snorted. “Of what use is history, old man? It’s the treasure that interests me.” Looking at the thri-kreen, he said, “I’ll give you five hundred for it.”

  “Eleven hundred is a very fair price, given the reward.” Now Tricht’tha had folded her upper and middle pincers together in a defiant gesture.

  Karalith was staring at the thri-kreen in something like amazement. “Are you brain-baked, Tricht’tha? You’ve never even seen five hundred gold in your life. Take it and have done with it.”

  Tricht’tha seemed to bridle at that. “I think that at the very least I should get a thousand gold.”

  Vas had been hoping she’d go for something closer to seven-fifty. Raising any more than that would widen eyes all across Belrik Hakran stables. But even if he paid the thousand, and then another couple of hundred for everything he’d need, he’d come out ahead once the six-thousand-gold treasure was located.

  In truth, just being able to get away from the chaos—both the larger chaos of Raam and the at-home lunacy of Tova—for several months was probably worth paying upwards of fifteen hundred gold.

  “All right,” he finally said, “a thousand. Let’s arrange to meet back here at sunrise tomorrow.”

  Again, the thri-kreen bristled. “Why the delay?”

  Vas laughed, but it was Karalith who responded. “Honestly, Tricht’tha, do you think that a fine gentleman such as Vizier Belrik would carry around that much coin with him?”

  “With all respect to the fine wares of the Serthlara Emporium,” Vas said with a quick bow toward Karalith, “there isn’t anything here, generally, that is worth a thousand gold.”

  “Generally.” Tricht’tha emphasized the word heavily. She also all but yanked the map out of Cristophe’s surprised hands. “I will, of course, hold onto this until we meet tomorrow.”

  “Of course.” Vas turned to Karalith. “And I’ll also take thirty feet of the linen.”

  “Excellent.” Karalith favored him with her brightest smile—though again, no teeth.

  “Also,” Vas added, “an invitation to dine with me after I purchase the map tomorrow morning.”

  Karalith lowered her gaze slightly. “I have obligations, Vizier Belrik. While I am flattered, I doubt that my parents would be overjoyed at my shirking my responsibility to the emporium to indulge myself with you.”

  Somehow, Vas managed not to comment on how much indulgence he wanted. In truth, he was hoping that she would agree to come with him on his treasure hunt. She had said that it might be great fun, so maybe—just maybe—he could convince her to take a leave of absence from her family business to aid him in his hunt. He might even give her a small percentage of the treasure, which she could give to Serthlara. A finder’s fee.

  But that was for tomorrow. For tonight, he needed to convince the accountants that he needed a thousand gold ceramic coins.

  It would be difficult, and a massive risk.

  That was secondary, though, to the fact that it would be an adventure—exactly what he’d been hoping for.

  He’d just have to endure a great deal of Tova’s yelling tonight.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  The jerky tasted like ashes in Fehrd Anspah’s mouth. Gamely, he chewed on it anyway. He had little choice. The salt and protein were necessary for when they started walking again. The midday sun was beating down on their white canvas tent. It would be at least another hour before the sun came away from its zenith and the Great Alluvial Sand Wastes would be passable again. Only a fool traveled the Alluvial at midday, and Fehrd and his friends never considered themselves to be fools.

  Of course, plenty of other people had different opinions.

  “Hurry up,” Gan Storvis said. “I want to get moving.” He was fidgeting, constantly adjusting the silk patch that covered the hole where his left eye used to be. Had the tent more space, Fehrd suspected that Gan would have been pacing, but there was barely room for the three of them to sit in the thing, especially with the layers of wrapped linen that protected them from the elements bulking them all up.

  Fehrd blinked. “Are you out of your mind? We can’t go out there for at least—”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  Throwing up his hands, Fehrd said, “Fine, go ahead, burn to a crisp. I’m gonna stay here in the tent.”

  Gan started gesticulating wildly with his jerky, to the point that Fehrd was sure that he’d throw it against the tent flap—which would be a waste of perfectly mediocre jerky, in Fehrd’s opinion. “We’ve already lost a day because of that sandstorm yesterday. At this rate, we
’ll never make it to Raam in time to meet up with Feena and the others.”

  With a sardonic smile, Fehrd said, “Well, if we had mounts, we might make better time.”

  Pointing an accusatory finger, Gan said, “That was not my fault.”

  “Really?” Fehrd chewed on the last of his jerky and then folded his arms over his barrel chest. “How is losing our crodlus in a card game not your fault, exactly?”

  “I was cheated!”

  Fehrd rolled his eyes. “Here we go again.” He looked over at the third member of their party. “Rol, you want to chime in on this?”

  Rol Mandred looked up from his canteen and stared as if he’d never seen Fehrd or Gan before. “Hmm? I agree with both of you.”

  “We don’t agree!” Gan cried.

  Shrugging, Rol said, “Fine, then I don’t agree with either of you.”

  Gan leaned forward. “Do you think we should head out now?”

  “Are you out of your mind? It’s hot out there.”

  Unable to help himself, Fehrd burst out laughing.

  “Look,” Gan said, pointedly ignoring Fehrd’s outburst, “we’re only about two hours’ hike from the Great Road. I just want to get on that. The sand will be easier to walk through there, and we might come across some other travelers.”

  Fehrd sighed. Gan’s points were well taken. They had been moving generally northward through the wastes, but not on any major thoroughfare. Today, though, was the day they would reach the Great Road. It would lead them to Dragon’s Bowl Road, which would take them northeast to Raam. The Great Road itself continued northward to Urik.

  “I don’t want to risk missing Feena.”

  That prompted another sigh from Fehrd. “Look, I know you miss your sister, but she’ll wait for us, won’t she?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know for sure. And even if she does, I don’t want to hold her up because we moved too slowly.”

  “Well, we would move a lot faster if we had crodlus.”

  Gan threw up his hands. “I’m telling you, I was cheated. That wasn’t my fault.”

  “Some facts, Gan.” Fehrd leaned forward and started enumerating points on his fingers. “Fact: you played a game of frolik in a gaming house that has a reputation for dishonesty. Fact: your opponent in the game was Hamno Sennit, who has a reputation for hustling frolik. Fact: you, bluntly, are dreadful at frolik. Fact: you chose to bet our crodlus when you had a hand that, in your words, ‘could not possibly lose’ which then proceeded to, well, lose. With these facts in play, tell me—how is this not your fault?”