Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “Thank you,” Ka’Inari said. “I will treasure it, for as long as it lasts.”

  She felt a touch of heat in her cheeks, as she always did when anyone complimented her work. “What word from Axerian?” she asked. “Has he finished his negotiation?”

  “He says he has, though the Chappanak shaman did not look pleased to me, when I left. Axerian sent me to find you. He says it will be settled in time for us to leave today.”

  “Good,” she said, and felt a flare of emotion in her chest. Too strong to be hers; she fought it down as she always did when the Veil showed herself, and kept outward sign of it from showing in her face. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

  The Chappanak had greeted them with nocked arrows when they’d first arrived. Now they stood arrayed like diplomats in the Rasailles palace gardens. Two rows of men in ornately stitched tunics and necklaces of clamshells and what looked like animal teeth stood on either side of the shaman in the center, with a single woman observing, standing halfway between the men and the heart of their village. A hundred more pairs of eyes not officially part of the shaman’s retinue watched her and Ka’Inari approach, hovering near boxlike wood houses not altogether unlike those in the residential blocks of the Maw. Axerian stood among them at the center, and Acherre, who held the reins of their horses twenty paces back.

  Quiet hung in the air as she came forward, the men in the shaman’s retinue watching her with looks that made her aware of every step.

  “We have an agreement,” Axerian said when she approached. He was dressed in his usual black leathers, though he must have found time to clean them before the day’s business. “The shaman has agreed to exchange our horses for one of their war canoes, though he wishes to assure us we are fools, and he laments the loss of their boat when we sail to our certain deaths.”

  The tribesmen nodded, eyeing the shaman at their center without looking toward her or Axerian. The shaman—who’d refused to give his name, so far as she was aware—was the only one to meet her eyes, though he stayed silent, watching her with a wrinkled glare that reminded her of her uncle when she’d come home well into the small hours of the morning.

  “He also insists on one further condition, before we make the exchange,” Axerian said. “You must speak privately with one of their women. So far as I understand it, the deal is final only when the women approve.”

  “That’s it?” she asked. The men seemed uncomfortable as soon as she spoke, taking shuffling steps away from her, still avoiding her eyes.

  “That’s it. I managed to convince them of the value domesticated horses might bring—they’d heard of the beasts, but thus far no herds have made it this far west.” He said it with a glimmer in his eye, as though there was some joke nested there, though she didn’t understand where it would be. “As to the rest, they value their boats as highly as you might value a chapel or a ship-of-the-line. So imagine my having negotiated the sale of Paendurion’s Basilica, or the flagship of the New Sarresant Navy, if you want a sense of what I’ve managed here.”

  “Fine work, then,” she said, and Axerian gave an almost-mocking bow. She ignored it, looking through the assembled tribesmen to where the lone woman stood, watching from higher ground. She had to assume the woman was there to meet the terms of their deal, strange as it was. “May I?” She directed the question toward the shaman and Axerian both, gesturing to make clear her intent to pass through their line.

  The shaman looked offended, and broke eye contact with her at once.

  “Tell her she may pass,” the shaman said, delivering it to the rocks instead of her or Axerian.

  Axerian maintained his grin. “By all means, my lady, you may pass.”

  Sarine trudged up the hill toward where the tribeswoman stood, unmoving. Clearly she’d managed to violate some taboo, though beyond a prohibition on Chappanak men speaking with women at all she couldn’t fathom what it was. Perhaps it was only speaking to foreign women; to hear Axerian tell it, the coastal tribes here had never seen anyone from the Old World. But it wasn’t as though she was all that different from Ka’Inari—certainly his ways were at least as divergent from the Chappanak as hers were from his. Then again, Axerian alone among their party had been welcomed to speak with their hosts, and she’d been sure Green had played no small part in that.

  “Your man claims you speak our tongue,” the Chappanak woman said when she reached her, blunt and clipped, with nothing in the way of introduction.

  “After a fashion,” Sarine said. She intended to stay deferential, but there was no reason to cower. “He and I possess a gift, a bond that allows us to—”

  The woman hissed. “Keep your secrets, girl. Is your man using you here? Are you in distress, in need of rescuing from his keeping?”

  “I’m not in his keeping, first of all. And second—no. Traversing the Divide was my idea, not his. Your shaman said we had to speak, in order to finalize our exchange.”

  “You are a fool, then.”

  She felt the stirrings of anger and fought it down by reflex. Whether hers or the Veil’s, this was no time for emotion.

  “Why?” she asked instead. “Why does it make me a fool?”

  “This is a thing young men do,” the Chappanak woman said. “When a lover scorns them, when an elder refuses to apprentice or teach too quickly. There is only death waiting for you there, foreign woman. Whatever gift you think you have, whatever magic has befouled your skin to turn it pink, there is no spirit that can traverse the shadows. To reach them is death. To touch them is death. All women know this, and any man who is not a fool knows it as well.”

  “I’ve watched the sea since my coming,” she said. “You have tides and waves and currents, the same as there are in the East. Fish come and go, and birds; I’ve watched gulls fly into the shadows of the Divide, and emerge again from it.”

  “Are you a fish? A bird?” The woman paused for a moment, as though the question was more than rhetorical, then spoke again with disgust in her voice. “Think better of this foolishness. You are young; you should be thinking of suckling children on your teats, of lying down with pretty men, if they will have you. I will find you a place in my house, if needs be. Only—do not take one of our boats and sail into death.”

  “I don’t mean to die,” she said, and another surge of emotion came; this time she was certain it was the Veil’s. “I mean to fight. There is evil there, across those shadows. I mean to find the way through.”

  “And just so, the man who leaps from the cliffside means to fly.”

  Quiet fell between them, and the Chappanak woman’s face returned to stoic calm, touched with mild irritation.

  “May we make our exchange, then?” she asked when the woman offered nothing further.

  “For one more price,” the woman said. “Your name.”

  “Sarine.”

  “Sarine,” the woman repeated, making a thorough butchery of the syllables of the Sarresant tongue. “Sarine.” She tried it again, no closer. “Sarine. I will remember you, when you are dead.”

  With that, the Chappanak woman turned and hiked up the hill toward the village, leaving her to retreat back down the hill.

  “Come,” the shaman said. “We will deliver you our part of the exchange.”

  Sarine fell in line as they walked toward the shore. The path traversed the cliffs to end at a rocky beach, where a row of boats lay with the bottoms facing up. Each canoe seemed to have been cut from a single massive tree; the evergreens and redwoods surrounding the Chappanak village made clear the potential for such scale, though the largest of their canoes must have weighed as much as a building, broad enough to seat forty and taller than any tree in sight of the shore. They stayed well clear of those, coming instead to a smaller craft perhaps five armspans in length, situated at the end of the line.

  “You will require aid in launching the craft?” the shaman asked, and Axerian waved him off.

  “No, honored friend,” Axerian said. “Your part of the bargain is fulfi
lled. Go in peace, with the blessings of the Ka spirits to guide you to plenty.”

  The Chappanak eyed him with distrust, but backed away, the three men retreating as swiftly as they’d come back up the winding path toward the village, leaving Sarine, Axerian, Ka’Inari, and Acherre alone on the beach.

  “What do you suppose they would do,” Acherre asked, “if we tried for one of the bigger ones?”

  Axerian laughed. “Rain arrows on us, I expect, or stones at least.” He gestured above.

  Faces were already visible, peering out over the cliffside. More than just the men who had gathered to make the exchange; there were dozens, perhaps a hundred or more lining the bluff, watching them.

  Sarine glanced between the Chappanak and Ka’Inari. “They’re a suspicious people, aren’t they?”

  “What did the woman speak to you about?” Acherre asked.

  “Warnings of doom, I’m sure,” Axerian said cheerfully. “Seeing as we are more than likely about to sail to our deaths.”

  “Why are you coming along, then?” Sarine said.

  Axerian strode to the head of their boat, single-handedly gripping and turning it over on the beach, accompanied by a prompting of Red from Anati.

  “Because,” he said after the boat had lurched over, faceup, “I’m dying already. And you may well be right. There’s hope here, if we can breach the Divide and suppress the Regnant’s champions. Paendurion would call me a fool, but that’s never stopped me before. In dire times, sometimes boldness is required of us all.”

  “None of you have to come with me,” she said, turning to face Acherre and Ka’Inari while Axerian hopped inside their canoe, working to fix the wood pole in place at the center to hoist the cedar slats that made the sail.

  “You’re as mad as Reyne d’Agarre if you think I’d miss a chance to see what’s on the other side of this Divide,” Acherre said. “I’ve already seen half the world since leaving the city; the Nameless take me if I’d pass up a chance to see the rest.”

  Axerian snicked loudly at her invocation; it took a moment to remember he was the Nameless, or at least the basis of the myth.

  Ka’Inari faced her with a serious expression on his face. “We will survive the crossing,” he said. “The spirits of things-to-come have seen it. And beyond it lies a greater shadow. I will be at your side to face it.”

  Me too, Anati thought to her, materializing already coiled around the mast as Axerian hoisted the sail. I swore to protect you. My father wouldn’t like it if I left you behind.

  “A finely built craft,” Axerian said. “Sturdy and swift to launch, by the standards of any age.” He stepped outside the canoe, gripping the side and bracing himself against it. “Assuming we’re all coming along, now’s the time to go.”

  Acherre took a place opposite Axerian, and Ka’Inari did the same, suddenly enveloped by an aura of a great bear as he hefted the canoe’s mass. Red flowed through Sarine from Anati, and she helped roll the boat down the smoothly polished stones toward the shore.

  The water stung like ice as it lapped against her calves, then her knees and thighs before they jumped inside together. Axerian distributed oars to row while the wind was calmed by the cliffside, and soon their tiny craft was pushing through the waves, slicing a path atop the water toward the roiling black fog stretching out on both sides of the horizon.

  39

  TIGAI

  A Private Tent

  Isaru Mattai’s Warcamp

  An arm stirred him from sleep, draped across his chest when he’d drifted too close to waking. His sleeping pallet lay opposite the fire burning in the center of his circular tent, and the whole of it smelled of sweat and sex. He reached a hand in reciprocation around his partner. He couldn’t remember her name, but she’d smiled at him sweetly over milk-mead the night before. Now she lay entangled in his limbs, the Natarii clan tattoos running the length of her temples and cheekbones giving her an exotic look in the dim firelight. He studied her for a moment, gently gathering her straw-colored hair and pulling it back to reveal her face. Almost Perasi or Hagali features, though her skin was pale where it would have been dark as coffee beans if she’d hailed from either of the southern provinces. The Natarii were from the far north, farther even than the Ujibari clans, and this one had made love with the wild abandon of the beasts from which he knew their clans took their names.

  After a moment studying her, and another spent caressing her lower back in hopes she might wake with an appetite for more, he eased himself free of her grasp and knelt closer to the fire. His teapot still had water from where he’d filled it with snow the night before, and he hung it over the fire as he rummaged for leaves to both fill his cup and scent the air. The warcamp’s tents were built in the Ujibari style, circular yurts with raised centers of their roofs to allow smoke to vent, but the space was still confined, and scents tended to linger, bad and good, unless replaced by something fresher.

  His tent flap lifted before his tea was done, blasting cold wind across his skin, enough to wake his Natarii lover and almost to douse the fire, if Tigai hadn’t been hovered over it with his cooking.

  “Mmm,” the Natarii girl said, at the same moment Mei pushed through the layers of hide, spattering snow across his entryway.

  “You could have given a signal,” Tigai said. Wind spirits but it was bloody cold outside; the sting of ice hung in the air even with the thick hide flaps closed behind her.

  Mei paused, looking between him and the girl rousing herself in his furs. “I wouldn’t have been offended, if I’d come in while you were …” She gestured with her head, letting the innuendo finish her sentence.

  “I’d have invited you to join us,” Tigai said, keeping any sign of wit from his voice. “Only, it’s bloody cold out there. Your delicate parts would likely be frozen shut.”

  Mei gave him a disappointed look. “Really?”

  “Who’s this?”

  The Natarii girl had risen, half-seated and half-awake, and blessedly less than half-covered by his sleeping furs, in spite of the cold.

  “I take it her parts were in working order,” Mei said.

  “Ignore her, ah … my dear,” Tigai said. “This is my sister by marriage. Harmless as a garden snake, however much she looks the part.”

  “Oh but you must introduce us,” Mei said.

  Tigai suppressed a scowl, and the Natarii girl pulled up a blanket to cover her chest.

  “I am Yuli,” the girl said, sparing him the ignominy of having forgotten her name. “Twin Fangs Clan Hoskar.”

  Mei lowered herself without invitation, folding her legs into a seated pose beside his fire. “Forgive me, Yuli Twin Fangs Clan Hoskar,” Mei said, “but I am ignorant of how talents are reckoned among your people. Which Great and Noble House had claim on you, before you came here?”

  “I was sworn to no Jun house,” the girl said. She had a thicker accent than Tigai remembered from the night before, slow and drawling. “My clan pledged me to Lord Isaru at the turning of the season, and so I came here, for training.”

  “Then you’ll be as delighted as Lord Tigai with my news,” Mei said.

  “What news?” Tigai asked.

  “He’s back. The Divide has opened again. By midmorning Isaru will have returned, and Dao along with him.”

  She said it as though she’d proclaimed the Yanjin House debts settled with the Shinsuke Bankers, and he knew he should have received it with at least a spark of unfeigned delight. Yet he’d found it hard to rise to more than drink and sex since coming here, to this camp as good as chiseled from ice. They’d made the passage from Kregiaw and been waiting here since, with no sign of Mei’s new supposed liege, or of his brother. Perhaps it was only the anxiety of waiting, and all would be well once the wait was done. He’d have his answers as to what was going on here, and begin the search for Remarin in earnest.

  “Good news,” he said finally, and Mei echoed it back with vigor.

  “Yes, it is good news. Now dress yourself and let�
��s go to greet him. Lord Isaru will head for the common hall as soon as he’s in. I mean for us to be first to receive him.”

  The sun was still sleeping by the time he and Yuli were dressed, and they emerged into a fresh sheet of frost encrusting the camp, the tents and ropes all draped with miniature icicles that would be broken up as more men and women woke to begin the day. Mei led the way in snowshoes lashed to her boots, wide wicker nets that dispersed her weight across the permanent layer of knee-high snow. He and Yuli wore the same; standard issue at the camp, though, blessedly, new layers of snow had been rare since his coming. The one storm he’d survived had been a night of blackness and howling gales, and a morning of digging out pathways and resituating tents atop the ice. Wind spirits knew what awaited them when the seasons grew colder, though he meant to be gone long before then.

  The common hall was no larger than four yurts jammed together, but devoid of sleeping furs the space seemed wider, enough to accommodate the revelers that gathered there to drink and begin the process of pairing off for the night. It seemed wrong to be there before nightfall, but Mei stopped at the entrance, kicked the snow from her shoes, and removed them before stepping inside. Tigai let Yuli go next, intending to follow behind. First he paused, looking west to the horizon, where Isaru Mattai and his brother would be coming through the hell that marked the separation of this warcamp and the rest of the world. Amazing how the terrifying could become commonplace, sleeping in its shadow.

  Mei already had a pot of cider simmering by the time he’d removed his shoes and stepped inside the common hall. She’d stayed bundled in her coat, and well enough for it, given they were alone apart from one of Isaru’s lieutenants. Absent a crowd, the tent lacked its usual heat, and even the two fires being tended near its center were far from adequate to warm the space.

  “How long?” he asked when he came to sit next to Mei and Yuli by the larger of the two fires.