Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

“Your memories? You lost them in the well?”

  “But she came back anyway,” he whispered. He jabbed at Emeriene with his knobby elbow. Porridge dripped down his chin onto the napkin spread between the tray and his collar. “She’s here.”

  “No, Cyndere’s not here, Bauris. Archery practice this morning. And she had to go down to the shipyards. Those sailors thought they could buy the Abascars for slave labor. Fools, the lot of them.”

  He glanced at her directly. “This is my favorite part.”

  Emeriene dabbed his moustache and chin with the napkin. “The wind’s dusted you again. That’s what makes your eyes red, you know. There’s more of the Mawrn in the air all the time.” She sighed, gazing at the grit on her fingertips. “If only it really made wishes come true.”

  Bauris’s tray rattled. A distant rumble grew louder.

  “Look, Bauris. The train.” The sisterly pointed down at a promontory that jutted out from Bel Amica’s foundation and into the fog like the prow of a ship. The rust red arc of a train rail crossed that stony point, and the mist swirled as the engine arrived—a black swan gliding on a swift current, twin sails spread out behind like wings. A parade of wooden carts rattled along after the engine, containers piled high with newly harvested oilpods from the sea, purple and gleaming. They reminded Emeriene of the fish eggs King Helpryn had loved to slurp from a spoon or spread on cheese bread.

  Bauris’s eyes followed the blue line of Emeriene’s sleeve to her hand and then finally turned toward the train. As it disappeared again into the fog on its circuitous, spiraling journey, he nodded like a schoolboy feigning interest in his studies, then raised his eyes to the skies again. He put his hand on the pile of parchment scraps on which he had sketched image after image of simple boats crowded with vague figures.

  “The current,” he insisted. “It draws them upstream.”

  Emeriene tapped her fingers on the edge of the tray. “Currents can’t run upstream, Bauris.”

  He laughed with a warm fondness and tried to stand. “She’s here,” he announced.

  “Cyndere? No, I told you. She’s going down to the shipyards.” She scooped up another spoonful of the porridge. “What’s set you to talking?”

  “Her father tried to talk her out of it.” Bauris looked down. “But she wouldn’t listen.”

  “You’re dreaming, aren’t you?” She rested her small hand on his scarred forearm. “I have to go down to the kitchens to prepare Cyndere’s meal. But if you’re going to keep talking, I should send someone who will listen.”

  His expression seemed to mirror her own pity. “They’re not going to miss Cal-raven’s big surprise. They’re all going to be there.”

  She stood up. “Cal-raven! Didn’t I tell you? Ryllion’s messenger said that Cal-raven left those poor people of Abascar many days ago. Rode out on some kind of mission and never came back. Vanished. Just like his mother the queen.”

  Bauris pressed his lips tight together as if trying to hold on to a secret.

  A knock drew her to the door. She walked unevenly, her left leg in its permanent toughweed cast, and paused before a mirror just inside the door to brush her dark hair back over her shoulders. Her hair had grown so long that she once again looked as she had before she’d married Cesylle and borne two boys. It felt good to remember life before Cesylle, before the loneliness of being forgotten.

  When he returned, Cesylle wouldn’t notice the length of her hair. He never noticed anything. She hadn’t seen him in a long time, and he had committed their young sons to training down at the shipyards to become pilots of their own ships someday. The boys still had their baby teeth, but Cesylle had already trained them to strive for that dream and beg the moon-spirits to grant their wishes.

  As she reached to answer the door, she saw that Cyndere had chalked a small bird on the lintel.

  It opened, and a massive, muscular viscorcat burst into the room and padded right past her, whiskers sprung straight out from his face. “Black-paw!” Emeriene exclaimed. “Come to see your best friend?” The cat trotted right to the window, ears sharp and high. As the soldier embraced the cat, Blackpaw’s purr rumbled like the rail train passing.

  “Wouldn’t Deuneroi be glad to see that?” Cyndere stepped through the door and set her bow and quiver of arrows against the wall.

  “My lady! I wasn’t expecting you.” Emeriene turned and gestured to the window. “You’ll never believe it. Bauris spoke!” She took Cyndere’s cape and hung it on a hook beside the mirror.

  Cyndere looked down at Bauris. He did not look up.

  Emeriene repeated the ramblings, and Cyndere shook her head. “Strange that he’d mention Cal-raven.”

  “Maybe he heard some gossip. Maybe he dreams about leading a search party.”

  The cat had set about bathing Bauris’s face, and Emeriene remembered her duties. She took a dustbrush to the room’s sparse furniture, sweeping white powder into a pan. “Are people still shouting at you?”

  “They’re afraid. Afraid we’ll all suffer if we share some wealth with those poor survivors. But Mother is on my side. She remembers losing a husband. She wants to go to sea just to feel closer to my father. So she understands that it is my love for Deuneroi and his vision that drives me to serve House Abascar. She remembers that he died while trying to help them.”

  “But Ryllion… Isn’t he trying to ship them off?”

  “Ryllion’s king of Bel Amica in his own mind. He thinks he should be able to do what he wants with Abascar’s survivors. Have you heard him lately?”

  “He speaks of nothing but the beastmen he’s slaughtered. I heard he’s showing buckets of teeth as trophies.”

  “I don’t want to know how he managed to kill so many in such a short time. Part of me doesn’t believe he could. Part of me is sick just to think it might be true. He’s up to something.” Cyndere leaned out the window as if to catch an eavesdropper. The fog teased her short, golden hair until she drew the curtain closed. “Thank you for dusting. We can’t let the Seers hear us speaking of this.”

  Emeriene emptied the pan into a cloth bag and tightened the drawstring.

  The door opened, and two sisterlies bustled in, carrying a tray piled with steaming hot towels. “Bauris!” Emeriene exclaimed, accepting the tray and dismissing the servants. “Murfee’s on his way up to bathe you and take you for a walk.”

  Bauris’s contented expression did not change.

  “No matter how many times I tell them!” Emeriene set the tray on the table and picked up three small bowls of oil. “Don’t they know you’re too old-fashioned to bother with prayer lamps?” She handed the bowls to Cyndere, who drew the curtain open slightly and proceeded to cast the shells, one after the other, out the window. As Bauris laughed, delighted, they could hear the distant clatter of shells shattering on the rocks below.

  “I miss the old traditions,” said Cyndere, “the prayerfeathers we held as we thought of our ancestors crowded around, witnessing our lives. It felt good to ask them for their wisdom and to offer up things to them on the Memory Trees, to show them respect. I don’t know if those beliefs were true. But I think they were closer. Closer than this…this obsession with wishing for our own success.”

  “You’re not here to complain about the Seers.” Emeriene slumped down in the chair beside the door.

  “I need your help again, Em.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I can’t explain it all yet.”

  “You never do. But I’m your faithful fool. You know that. Did something happen down at the shipyard?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Dukas!” announced Bauris, looking intently at the viscorcat. “His name isn’t Blackpaw. It’s Dukas.”

  Cyndere looked at Emeriene. The sisterly shrugged. “No idea. Go on.”

  “Down at the shipyards,” Cyndere continued, “I explained that nobody’s hauling any Abascars off to the islands. Their future lies with the council. And this morning I got the vote that I wante
d.”

  “You can govern the Abascars?”

  “No, that’s not what I want. I belong to Bel Amica, not Abascar. But the council will recommend that Mother summon volunteers. She’ll choose one volunteer to serve as a principal tasker for the Abascar people.”

  “And the Seers can’t interfere?”

  “Mother promised. She all but worships the Seers, but she loves me even more. She’ll appoint a principal tasker who will report to me—and only me. This tasker will place the Abascar people in apprenticeships and tasks throughout the house until a decision about their future is made.”

  “So now all you need is a good volunteer.” Emeriene clapped her hands. “Good. That should be easy. Everyone wants a position of power, some way to climb the ladder of your mother’s favor. People must be sending up prayers to their moon-spirits already. Whoever prays the hardest.” She laughed.

  “We need someone patient and observant. Someone who will take the time to find a good place for each survivor. Someone who knows how to organize and direct a large crowd of people with efficiency and a firm hand.”

  “And I can help you find that…” Emeriene stopped. Her smile faded.

  Cyndere had that look again—that patient gaze, waiting for Emeriene to understand.

  Emeriene stood up. She sat down. She stood up again.

  “Emeriene, I want you to volunteer to be House Abascar’s principal tasker.”

  “The what? For the…who now?” Emeriene eased herself slowly from the chair to the floor, dizzy with the surprise.

  “Em, I trust no one more than you. You manage my life. You direct the staff of sisterlies. You hate the Seers as much as I do. And you have more experience fighting Ryllion than any of us. Volunteer, and the matter will be resolved swiftly and surely.”

  Emeriene pressed her hands against her pounding heart.

  “I will not let you suffer.”

  “My responsibility is to care for and protect you—as it has always been.”

  “I’m not dismissing you.”

  “Don’t try reading my mind. You’re bad at it.” Emeriene scowled, her fingers playing with the strap that bound the cast around her left thigh. “I have no ambitions. I want to serve you for the rest of my life.”

  Cyndere stood up. “Em, trust me. I’m not letting you go.”

  “But you’d have to. You change your plans every few minutes, running here and there. If I don’t chase you, you’ll miss your meals.”

  “You will be serving me. My mind is divided. I need to continue my endeavors to save the Cent Regus beastmen from their curse. We’re closer now than ever. But I also must ensure that the people of Abascar receive fair treatment. Do this for me if doing it for them is not enough. Do it for my peace of mind.”

  A netterbeak landed on the other side of the curtain. Bauris held very still, staring at the bird’s outline. Then he leaned forward and, with excruciating care, drew the curtain aside so he could see the bird more clearly. The netterbeak glanced back at him but held its perch defiantly. It shifted from one webbed orange foot to the other and clucked.

  “I miss the sky,” Bauris sighed. The bird flew, and one of its feathers drifted back in through the window and came to rest on his open palm. He looked at it, water spilling from his eyes. “I miss the sky so much.”

  Cyndere pulled the curtain back to open the whole window. “The view’s clear now, Bauris,” she said, kneeling to look into his face. “The sky is right there.”

  “The troublemaker.” Bauris reached out and pinned the feather through the hair just above the heiress’s ear. “She’s come back.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here, Bauris,” Cyndere said. “It’s such a pleasure to hear your voice. We thought that you—”

  “No,” he said, grasping at her sleeve. “You don’t understand. She’s come back. The witnesses will come in greater numbers now just to watch it happen. This is my favorite part.”

  Cyndere combed her tousled hair back with her fingertips, perplexed.

  “The sky was closer,” he said. “For a while it was very, very close.”

  “The sky’s right there, Bauris,” said Emeriene. “Right where it’s always been.”

  Cyndere went and sat beside Emeriene. “I have a smaller favor to ask you.”

  “I hope I like this one better.”

  Cyndere touched the toughweed cast on Emeriene’s leg. “I need a disguise.”

  Emeriene remembered the many times at Tilianpurth that she had loaned her cast and gown to Cyndere as a disguise, while she posed as Cyndere so no one would know the heiress was out meeting a secret friend in the woods. “You want to trade places again for a while. Is that it?”

  “I need to dress like a sisterly so no one notices me. Just for tonight.”

  “If you’re thinking about returning to Tilianpurth without me—”

  “No. No tetherwings. No beastman waiting for me in the shadows. No, this time I must slip through my father’s secret tunnels on an urgent errand. Those passages are the only way to get past the Seers unnoticed anymore.”

  “And if your mother comes looking for you? I can’t shut the door against her.”

  Cyndere thought for a while. “Mother’s head is full of celebration details—the parade, the voyage to the islands, all the madness ahead. Just remind her how much she likes birthday surprises.”

  “And are you preparing a surprise?”

  Cyndere smiled. “For everyone. And for you, perhaps, most of all.”

  18

  THE WALL THAT TALKED BACK

  Seven hundred and sixty-two stones—angular fragments of turbid green glass—puzzled the wall of Cal-raven’s prison.

  He had counted them. Reflecting tremulous light that shifted with the movement of buoyant clouds, they were a quieter sight than the world beyond the window.

  In the years since his last visit, House Bel Amica’s simple wooden boats had become larger, sleeker. Few bristled with oars. Now most were tugged by ugly seabulls, their bulbous white heads surging through the waves like boiled eggs bobbing in brine.

  He might have enjoyed the spectacle, but gulls buffeted the air about his window, seeking entrance so they could poke about for food. Farther out, the birds besieged the Bel Amican ships, frantic, fighting for perches along the masts. Fat birds. He hated them. He wished for a bow and arrow.

  Busying his mind with plans, he tried to ignore the birds’ maddening din, the ache of his bruises and wounds, and his worries.

  And there was good reason for worry. The eye of his cell opened to water in unsettling proximity, and a stiff wind would bring the waves right in; the barnacles clinging to the sill were testament to that.

  Trust Cyndere, the beastman had told him. Again and again he sought to recall exactly what the beastman had told him at Barnashum. The creature could have killed him but had saved him from a deadly fall instead and had tried to convey some urgent message. Trust Cyndere and nobody else.

  Long ago Cal-raven and Cyndere had explored rocky tide pools together while their fathers held conference along the sandy shoreline, out where the inlet opened to the Mystery Sea. Cal-raven had sworn that someday, when he was sovereign, he’d make Cyndere his Abascar queen. As they were still children and Cyndere’s older brother, Partayn, had not yet been slain by beastmen, she was not likely to inherit House Bel Amica’s crown. But they had been only six or seven years old, dreaming childish dreams. Cal-raven’s father, amused, had patiently explained to him that such rash alliances were foolish. At the time Cal-raven had not understood the bitter regret in his father’s words.

  Cyndere said she would give me whatever I need. I need to be back with my people.

  The walls moved, or seemed to. In his weariness he felt as if he were trapped in a wavering boat. Mist wafted in, sometimes in fine drifting clouds, sometimes in sudden cold spray. He sank down onto the bench and closed his eyes. The pulsing white burn in his vision seemed to be fading.

  In his mind’s eye he stood again in
the crown of Tammos Raak’s tower. Light through the farglass flowered into Auralia’s colors. He felt himself drawn to the eyepiece. Instead of seeing the piercing light, he watched a wave rise, Seers borne upon its curling crest, lashing their seabull steeds. Light passed through the wave, and he saw all the riches of House Bel Amica sweeping forward. In a moment they would flood his cell.

  He shook himself awake, gasping. Breathing deep and slow, he quieted his heartbeat. Water trickled down the black mortar between the stones to seep through the floor of porous sediment. This went on endlessly—water coming in, water draining out.

  This could drive a man into madness.

  Just inside the door lay a pitcher of water, a tray of fresh bread, and strips of dried meat.

  Others all around had awakened to rations of their own and hissed their disgust. He joined the chorus, carving a clump of rock from the wall and hurling it against the door, where it splatted and stuck in a star-shaped clod.

  To keep himself from further nightmares, he sang a Barnashum tune. He saw Merya rocking her child to sleep, saw Tabor Jan reassuring the people, saw the triplets sculpting stories. He walked among the statues in the Hall of the Lost. He imagined his own voice in harmony with Lesyl’s. Despite her frequent appeals, he had never sung along with her, not loud enough to be heard. But now he raised his voice and sang as if the words might summon her. It was good to think of her and not the constant chaos.

  Toward the end of the second day, he began to discern voices—other prisoners shouting through the pinprick pores of the wall’s solid sponge. He pressed his ear to the rough surface and listened.

  A speaker was coming to the end of a tale about hunters at sea preying upon oceandragons. “Best leave the monsters alone,” he intoned. “We were not meant to know everything. And the moment we think we’ve mastered the mystery, it will turn on us and tear our ships open to the sea.”

  That night, lulled into drowsy discomfort, he heard the voices again, this time in labored prayers; prisoners were calling to their moon-spirits for deliverance.

  Meanwhile, the bruises and gashes on his face, his ribs, his hands and feet pulsed their own aching laments.