The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Ndeza was highly prized by the sign makers in Khaim, farther up the hill and close to the Mayor’s Palace. With their various mixtures they could create glowing signs that fetched a premium price. Particularly, my dad said, for signs to places that I shouldn’t know anything about.

  As if children didn’t also fear the kiss of bramble, and being sold by families who couldn’t afford to care for their ever-sleeping bodies to the brothels for the men of Khaim to do whatever they wanted to young, unmoving bodies.

  “Get the helm ready, Mother,” I said. I grabbed the brush from my father, my hand shaking slightly, and dipped it into the bowl. I bit my lip, swirled the brush around, and then began to paint the breastplate with the light touch I’d been practicing for weeks, using milk-water to delicately paint whitewash onto bone, metal, or any substance I could find to practice the skill that might make or break us. Mara, steady my hand, I prayed. For Mother, Father, Child.

  Eyes narrowed, I laid the bare minimum of a yellow glaze down, the brush a feather in my fingers. A breath of yellow on the fine steel my father had spent so much time hammering, smoothing, polishing.

  My mother passed the helmet over. A fearsome thing, patterned to resemble the face of Takaz, with many serpent-headed faces thrust forth out of the helm. Fangs jutted out from it, and my father had tapped out fine scales throughout the entire surface.

  A more difficult surface to paint, and I had to twist my hand to dab, tap, daub, and pack glaze into the crevices and crooks of the helm.

  And then, all too soon, there was nothing left in the tiny bowl.

  “Did I do it?” I asked, setting the brush down.

  Neither of my parents answered me. They moved as one toward the kiln, holding each object in tongs. The breastplate they lowered in first, canted up on its side. Should it fall over, all this would have been for nothing.

  Next to it soon sat the demon-faced helmet, only a hair’s width apart, and then they shut the door as gently as they could.

  There was nothing to do but sit and stare at it. To watch over the next hour as the vitreous ndeza and yellow iron oxides burned hot in the furious fires, and a dull yellow gleam began to seep around the edges of the kiln’s door.

  My father laughed out loud and clapped his large hands together. “We did it.” He grabbed both me and my mother by the shoulders and pulled us in close. “I told you the extra coin we gave to Assim were worth it.”

  He smiled. That coin would have fed us, I thought as my stomach grumbled. But I had gone with him to the Temple of the Merciful and Sly Assim, where the four prophets slept. We had left the coins with a monk by the steps, and my father had said his prayers.

  My mother usually fought about my father’s adherence to the monks. Assim had not saved their town or families from the creeping bramble, she would say. But tonight, tonight she said nothing and just smiled.

  Hugged together against them both by the fires of our furnace, the searing heat of the kiln playing across our backs, I could close my eyes for a moment and feel safe and happy.

  When we pulled the two pieces out after they had cooled in the early dark of morning, they still glowed a malevolent yellow. My father set them on the straw dummy. My mother wrapped an old cloth into a ball, and then ran twine around it to create a linen head we could put the helm on.

  We sat and looked at our weeks of work.

  The breastplate, shiny and muscular, was a new addition to Jhandparan armor. An imitation of the exotic kestrel-made armor the Czandians wore, each piece carved to mirror the human body it fit. Our breastplate sat over the Coat of a Thousand Nails. A hundred years ago, the coat would have been made out of silk so strong and light, men could run easily across a field while wearing a long armored coat. Today we sowed each protective armor plate into a coat of linen.

  It was heavy, but Savar did not stand all that much taller than me. I had pulled the coat on myself to test the weight. I could move quickly enough around the forge, and raise my hands over my head with a forge hammer still in hand. And dance in half circles around the fire, the heavy waist of the coat slapping against my legs.

  The gloves and steel sleeves, the greaves, and the entire coat remained poignantly dull and unlit. It was almost worse to have glazed what we could, I thought in the gloom. It highlighted what we were not able to glaze. What we couldn’t afford to glaze without more money from the duke.

  “Why yellow?” I asked, staring at the three quarters finished armor. I hadn’t dared asked Savar or the duke himself. I’d forgotten to ask until now, staring at it. “Isn’t their house color green?”

  My parents turned as one to look at me as if I had turned into a river-gull and burst scrawking through the doors of the forge.

  “Girl, what do you think the color of yellow mixed with blue makes?” my father asked slowly.

  “Green,” I said.

  Obviously.

  I stood there and stared at my parents, and they stared back.

  Then the flame rushed to my head, and my eyes widened with hot understanding. “Blue,” I said.

  “Blue,” my mother repeated.

  The blue from the magical sentinel braziers of Khaim, across the great river. Blue that clung to anyone using magic, fingered them for anyone to turn in to the Majister. The same blue that had clung to the corpses of Malabaz’s uncles, cousins, and nephews when he turned them over to the Majister. A color that turned to purple as his robes dragged across the blood of his family’s as he rose to become the head of his own house and lands.

  Malabaz was a hungry duke, eager to expand his lands. He jostled with the other velvet families of Khaim. Sometimes they would spill blood in the streets, out in the dark, away from the prying eyes of the Mayor and the ever more powerful Majister Scacz.

  If Malabaz wanted to protect his son, why not a suit that would glow with his house’s color when tainted with the mark of blue?

  “By the faces of Mara,” I muttered. “If the Majister ever finds out we did this . . .”

  For a moment I imagined being thrown out of the half-built floating palace that hung over the highest point of Khaim, its stone bulk held aloft by the clouds beneath it that glowed blue whenever the winds were still and the smoke of the braziers became pillars that rose toward their heights.

  “Malabaz is favored by Majister Scacz,” my father said flatly. “There was no way to refuse him.”

  “We could have taken what we had and run for the trade roads,” I suggested.

  My mother’s face darkened. “And risk raiders?”

  “They haven’t had the strength to reach Lesser Khaim in many years, not since the rise of the Executioness,” I snapped.

  “Or face roads choked with bramble,” my father added softly.

  And just like that, he pulled the winds out of the two storms brewing in the room.

  “Do not forget,” my father said, his voice soft like flour and silk. “When you were just a tiny thing we could carry you around, we watched the bramble grow and grow until it choked the town we lived in. People fell into sleep every day. Just a touch, you know just a touch, would leave you bereft of sense. And then another touch, and then another, because it lurks in the corners of your pantry, or under the door latch. Brothers, aunts, uncles—they would all sleep. The curse of Jhandpara lies all over the lands beyond the two Khaims, Daughter. Never forget that. And never forget that the Majister has beaten it back, now. This isn’t like Alacan, where they magicked themselves to death, spreading the bramble around because they couldn’t stop themselves from risking magic’s curse. The Majister and his favored are strong and powerful men, but they have made a great city for us that is safe. Do not forget that.”

  I flinched from the steely anger in his voice. “I do not forget.” I could never forget. My parents never let me forget.

  “Good.” He relaxed, seeing his words take root in me. “Now go get some sleep. You’ve been working through the night. The duke and his son will be here soon enough. And then we will see whe
re we stand.”

  I thrashed and kicked when I felt a hand on my brow. My mother pulled back from my bed, hands raised against my fists. “Hush,” she said, “it’s just me. Hush. The duke has arrived.”

  Wild-eyed with fear, I took a moment to hug my blankets close to me and looked at her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My dreams tore at me.”

  I rubbed at my crusty eyes. In some ways, just getting a few hours of sleep hurt more than if I’d just stayed up. Maybe that was why such horrors had come to me.

  “What did you dream?” my mother asked.

  For a moment I didn’t want to tell her. But then I swallowed. “I dreamed about measuring Savar.”

  Her face darkened, but she tried to make light of it for a moment. “But your father and I have been talking to Ivica and Anshoula. At your request! If we should be talking to the duke . . .”

  But I was no mood for her false smiles. She’d named Djoka’s parents, the man I’d hoped to join our houses with. Djoka was a large man, larger than my father. Born of a long line of farriers, he was large enough wrestle an unruly horse that objected to being shoed.

  Djoka’s family lived at the far end of the street, and just sitting under their roof often made me feel safe. Like I had journeyed to a land of giants. Like the stories of Okenaide, who had hurled boulders at the army of Jhandpara during the conquest of the northern forests.

  “Savar leered at me. All I did was dream of it. He didn’t touch me.” I shrugged. “I dreamed that he leered at me, and then cut my throat and threw me into the Sulong. I dreamed I was lying there, drifting under the great bridge and the blue smoke. Bleeding into the dark, cold water. My head bobbing along just like the head of Malabaz’s wife. You know he betrayed her to Majister Scacz for magic, right? Even as she stood amongst the rest of her family’s bodies?”

  “By all the gods, child. Don’t say such things.” My mother’s smile burned away, replaced with worry. “Get out to the forge with me. We will stand by your father and see what the duke’s word brings.”

  I grabbed my heavy leather apron from the hook on my side of the common room and shouldered it on. My mother cracked the thick and heavy door to the forge, and I heard the duke’s word right away.

  “You idiot,” he snarled at my father. He pointed at the armor standing in the corner of the forge like a straw man-at-arms. “I don’t care about your coin problems. I gave you gold, Blacksmith. I gave you all the gold you said you needed to make my son a suit of armor.”

  “My Duke,” my father said, bowing as far as his protective leather apron would let him. It boiled my blood to see him do it. But what choice did he have?

  “My Duke, my Duke,” Savar mocked him by repeating the words. “That won’t bring you mercy, Blacksmith.”

  “Please, lords,” my mother said, also bowing as she stepped forward. Malabaz looked at us, seeing us for the first time. His lip curled slightly and my heart beat faster with fear. I felt like a rabbit cornered between a patch of bramble and a dog when he looked at me.

  His pale, wrinkled skin sagged under his ratlike eyes as he looked my mother up and down. “What?” he spat.

  “We cannot buy vitreous ndeza easily in the city, not in the amounts you need. It’s not about the gold, it’s about how little of the yellow we can make. You know that it is harder and harder to get things from the other cities. Bramble chokes the roads, kills the sources of what we need. The last shipment of ndeza arrived a month ago, the sign makers hoard it. We purchased all we could, but the price rises each week. We need the other half of the promised pay for the armor, and even then, we will not break even, but craft this armor in your honor. Please, my child goes hungry.”

  Malabaz sneered. “I don’t care about your brat. Your inability to run your business effectively is not my problem.”

  Savar moved to look over at the armor. And leaned in to see the fine engraving and detail. The house sigil’s swoops of gold.

  His lust showed clearly in the sickly yellow light.

  Ever sensitive to the manner of a sale, my father leaned in. Seeing opportunity, he became a merchant artisan again. My pride bloomed. “Look at the craftmanship your son admires, my Duke. That fine work, you won’t get that anywhere else. I’m a strong blacksmith, and I can tame the heavy metals. But my wife’s family were jewelers who hailed from Paika, and together, no one can make finer, stronger things than our small house. And my daughter’s hand has been trained by both of us.”

  “Takaz pisses on your bloodlines,” Malabaz snapped while Savar laughed, turning and watching on. Malabaz simmered, and I struggled to understand his rage. The offer my parents made was fair. He could see for himself that most of the armor stood before him. It was true we feared the velvet folk on Malvia Hill. But now that I saw a human, and a wrinkled old one at that, before me, the awe had fled.

  Yet, this flabby-skinned creature could kill us all. There was an evil mind there.

  And as I struggled to understand it, that same cruel face pinned me with sudden attention.

  “Your daughter, your daughter,” Duke Malabaz whined. “You keep mewling about her. But there’s your solution.”

  The anger in his eyes changed to satisfaction as his lips quirked.

  “My Duke?” my father asked.

  Duke Malabaz pointed at me. “Sell your daughter.”

  My mother blurted a wail that she quickly stifled, and my father shook his head. “I don’t understand. You want to buy my daughter?”

  “That’s why I’m a duke, and you’re a tradesman,” Malabaz hissed. “You’re slow in the head. Sell your daughter. She’s squat and muscled like stone, you’ll hardly get a good bride price. Sell her to the soft men. Prick her one night with bramble, and she won’t even notice. She’ll fall asleep, and there will be hard men who want a stone troll like that. Like the ones who clear my fields of bramble. No one will blame you when they see her in the bramble sleep.”

  Savar snorted and looked at his father.

  “It won’t be the first time a family has done this,” Savar said with a knowing smirk, “for the chance to stay alive on this side of the river.”

  My father opened his mouth, but I put my hand on his forearm.

  Malabaz was pleased with his solution. “I will be back in two sunrises, blacksmith. There is no more gold for you. You will complete the armor. There is a deadline. If you do not, I will have your head decorating a pike. I will ask it of Majister Scacz himself.”

  My father shrank back from the invocation of that name.

  “Good,” Malabaz said. “I see you know who I mean. Scacz will be here in Lesser Khaim, to oversee the clearing of some land that he will be gifting the Duke Borka for his new hold. If my armor is not ready, you will die at the hands of the Majister himself. I promise you this.”

  He slid his way out of the house, and Savar, with one last look at the armor, followed him.

  I closed and barred the door behind the trailing edge of Savar’s cloak.

  We all looked at anything in the forge but one another, or the armor.

  “He spoke pure truth when he said there was no more gold for me. He never intended to pay the other half for the armor,” my father muttered to himself, a realization spilling out of him. “That’s why he was so angered we came so close but could not finish, and why he refuses to give us any more.”

  My mother brushed at the tears on her cheeks. “He is a murderous bastard son of a lesser duke who married his way into power. Borzai piss on his bloodlines.”

  “I’m a fool,” my father said, sitting on his bench heavily. “I’m a fool.”

  “Just to have come even would have been a boon,” my mother reassured him. “How could we ignore it? We never had a choice, he was a duke.”

  I watched them, but didn’t join. My own family suddenly didn’t feel like a warm and safe place for me. I could only think of the prick of the bramble brushing against my skin in the late night, for what other choices might my parents have? “I have a thought,”
I said.

  And they turned as one to look at me, a faint sliver of hope in their eyes.

  2

  I SAT AT IVICA AND Anshoula’s forge. Ivica scratched at one of his mustaches thoughtfully while Anshoula poured red wine into crude wooden cups. It muddled my head a little, as I hadn’t eaten today yet, and the red was not watered down at all.

  Djoka sat with his legs wrapped around a wooden bench, it creaked as he shifted.

  “Why aren’t Cedomill and Natazia here to ask?” Ivica finally asked me in his deep rumble of a voice, naming my father and then mother. His voice sounded like a poker being drawn across iron coals to me.

  “They don’t know I’m here,” I lied, trying to look him in the eye. “It is my idea.”

  Anshoula sat next to me. “Oh, my little berry.”

  Djoka remained a mountain of calm, his corded forearms wrapped around his oak-barrel chest, drinking me in. I had to look away from those eyes. It had been just a week since I sat watching the Sulong, confessing my fears about my father’s latest project to him.

  “It’s never a good idea to take up with the velvet ones,” Djoka had said then, with a conviction stronger than the deep, dark currents of the Sulong.

  Now his eyes showed that his worst fears had come true.

  But there was no anger. Only sadness.

  “We can’t do this,” Anshoula said to me, so very sadly but firmly. There was agreement in Ivica’s face. “We give alms to Mara, as parents, to ensure that you will be parents as well. It’s not coin for you. It’s coin for the god. Not everyone can save this gift, and they risk bad judgment for eternity, a risk we who are less fortunate take. And that is why this is so special, and why I can’t give it to you knowing what your family will do with it.”

  I balled my hands into fists and dug my fingers into my palms to keep my composure. Anshoula saw it, and made it worse by leaning forward and wrapping me in a giant hug.