Raven's Ladder

by Jeffrey Overstreet

  At Thesera’s blunt refusal, Partayn had taken the goblet—a gift to welcome him home—and thrown it into the fireplace. “If Bel Amica has no gratitude for my rescuer,” he said softly, “then I will leave this house as quickly as I’ve returned. And Cyndere will go with me. We will fulfill Deuneroi’s vision on our own, somewhere else if need be. For if my father’s house no longer leads in courage, I want no part of it.”

  So, with the sharp knife of fear, Thesera carved herself a tiny room in that troubled, confused, ailing mind. In that room she could resist the Seers on this one small matter for the sake of her children. And when the Seers challenged her, she roared as if she might become a beastman just to hold her ground.

  She agreed that her children could offer Jordam gifts in thanks. But she begged them not to throw the house into turmoil by presenting a beastman to the people. Further, she convinced them that Ryllion and the Seers would find a way to harm him, and they should keep their meetings secret. If they would do this, she would protect their endeavors to keep Deuneroi’s vision alive.

  Cyndere had seen the beastman again. She had thanked him. And Jordam had promised that Partayn was only the first of his rescues.

  In the queen’s chamber, with his beard grown back, Partayn suffered his mother’s embrace, then suffered further as she begged him to bring back that youthful, beautiful face.

  “That face no longer exists,” he sighed. “You saw the scars.”

  “The Seers could erase those scars,” she whined.

  “I’ll wear what life has written on my face.” He pulled a scrap of parchment and a piece of seachalk from his pocket. “The honesty…of scars…” he murmured, scratching that down.

  “You’d write a song for everything, wouldn’t you?” Cyndere laughed affectionately. “You would speak in song if you could.”

  Mimicking the Seer, he raised his hands and crooned, “Why not?”

  How she loved that sparkle in his eye.

  “Mother thinks Ryllion should govern the survivors. I disagree. I—”

  Partayn interrupted, the sparkle flaring into a blaze. “I also disagree!” He turned to the queen. “Listen to me.”

  “Here we go again,” sighed the queen. “Things you learned in captivity. Can you speak of nothing else? Gloom, gloom, gloom.”

  “I learned among the prisoners there—prisoners from Abascar, from the merchant roads, even from our own house—that in order to help others, you must know them. You must take the time to imagine how the world looks to people without homes or how it looks to one who carries the burden of the Cent Regus curse. Otherwise, they won’t trust you. Nor will you learn anything from them. And think of all we can learn from Cyndere’s beastman.”

  “Cyndere’s beastman,” sneered the Seer. “Some animals should never be pets.”

  “Get out!” Partayn snapped. The Seer did not move.

  “Let me speak to my children,” said the queen with a note of surrender. “Alone, Tyriban.”

  The Seer bowed to Thesera in an extravagant show of deference, then departed in a flurry of feathers. As she passed, white dust clouded behind her and settled on the mantel and on the floor.

  Cyndere quickly snatched a broom from beside the fireplace and began to sweep up the dust. Partayn joined her, taking a cloth from the washtable, folding the fine white grains into its fabric, then tossing the bundle outside the chamber.

  “If we want to avoid making enemies of those survivors,” said the heir, “we need to work with someone who knows them well.”

  “You’d appoint someone from Abascar? How could you trust such a one?”

  “Their captain, Tabor Jan, is a good man. He has the people’s respect. He led them out of Barnashum.” Partayn glanced at his sister. “And he won’t let Ryllion push him around.”

  “I will not give someone from another house a position of privilege in ours.”

  “I agree,” said Cyndere. “And I have a better idea. We appoint someone we know and allow that person to appoint an advisor from among Abascar, who will be given limited privileges and remain under close watch.”

  “Now we come to it,” Thesera snapped. “Speak the name you’ve clenched between your teeth all morning.”

  A bell rang at the curtain.

  Her cast thumping with every second step, Sisterly Emeriene limped into the chamber. “Forgive me for my lateness, my lady,” she said to Cyndere. “But the courtroom had to be swept and the places at the tables all prepared.” Blushing, she bowed to Partayn, then stepped forward to kneel before the queen. “I am at your service, as always,” she said. As she did, a strand of long black hair fell loose from her headdress.

  Queen Thesera and the whiskiro stared down in the very same blank-eyed astonishment. “Oh,” they said.

  20

  A PRECARIOUS BEGINNING

  When the girl handed Warney the bowl of supper, he scowled as if she’d just sneezed into it. “What is it this time?”

  “Wild rice and jewelfish with sea beans, all wrapped up in surfgreen.” She squirmed on tiptoe. “You pick ’em up and eat ’em whole.”

  A spasm seized Warney. He put the bowl down and examined the crowd in the dull green light of the sun-warmed tent. Many were wrapped in blankets and shivering from the contagious chill. Warney’s years in the wild had toughened him against such affliction. But he shuddered anyway at the thought of chewing something that had recently wriggled along the ocean floor.

  “Have anything…simpler? Gorrel stew or bread with honey?”

  The girl thrust out her chin. “Eat, or don’t.” She reached for the bowl. He gave it to her.

  Ryllion and his troop had herded the Abascar travelers for days through the forest, then out across hills dense with fields where the wind cast up purple dustclouds, through orchards and vegetable patches, and at last over ridges that lay like the backbones of dragons. Then Warney had seen a discomforting spectacle.

  The earth ended. To the west there was nothing but water, water stretching out of sight—violent water that seemed intent on devouring the coastline. To the north he saw the Rushtide Inlet cutting a deep wedge from the land, welcoming the waters of several converging flows. “So that’s how rivers die,” he moaned.

  The sight of House Bel Amica was even more distressing. That great island of stone engulfed in cloud seemed larger than five House Abascars.

  When Krawg, transfixed by the sight for a long time, turned to face him, his expression was almost as startling as the landscape. “Isn’t that better than great?” Krawg cackled like a crow. His mouth—a cave of yellow stalagmites—closed, the smile replaced by concern, and he put his cold, hard hand on Warney’s shoulder. “Too much to see for a one-eye?”

  “Send me back to Barnashum,” Warney had whispered.

  The survivors were then driven onto broad floating platforms to suffer an unsteady passage through the inlet. Warney had marched what felt like an endless trek—up a rickety stair, across a damp wooden deck, through a border of long, whispering grass, through a gate in a fence made of fish bones, to the array of white tents, their walls and ceilings sewn from the broad leaves of an undersea tree.

  Through the night Warney had tossed and turned, terrified of the waves’ constant murmur, the sound of the end of the world. While the blankets provided by blue-robed “sisterlies” were as soft as any he’d known, he regarded their puffy, perfumed fabric with suspicion. He’d slept better among rags on Barnashum’s hard floor.

  He and Krawg shared a tent with the oldest survivors and the children. “Those less capable of serving the spirits,” a soldier had muttered as if Warney could not hear him.

  Krawg was gone, having cleaned his bowl within moments of its delivery. Warney hated it when Krawg went off suddenly on his own.

  He slipped to the tent flap and peered outside. The evening’s azure gleam cast golden sparks over the inlet. A low wind moaned through wildgrass beyond the fish-bone fence. Krawg was down there—a dark blue cape, his arms lashing abo
ut in the air. He had kept himself from frustration by narrating story after story to the survivors. Now he had a new audience—a crowd of Bel Amican youngsters, their hair windblown into tangles, listening in awe.

  “I thought it was just a season, your storytelling fit,” Warney muttered, stepping out. The monitors were all busy delivering bowls of soup, so he wouldn’t be missed for a while.

  When he reached the fence, he saw that its upper edge was a line of razor teeth.

  Krawg was making up some nonsense about the last stand of Captain Ark-robin during House Abascar’s collapse. But Warney was quickly drawn in by the dramatic conclusion. He became so enthralled he hardly noticed the clouds of yellow sea froth that the wind carried up from the inlet surf or how that lacy foam shattered when it hit the fence and alighted on and around him like lodes of sparkling jewels.

  The children beyond the fish-bone fence clapped at the tale’s conclusion and asked for another.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Krawg asked.

  “We’re s’posed to wait for the Red Oceandragon,” said the eldest boy, with the fishing pole and the stitches on his cheek. “When it gets here, we gotta clean it.”

  “Ocean…dragon?” Warney whispered.

  “It’s a boat, you old sheepskull,” Krawg muttered. “Okay, another tale then. Have you ever heard of a girl called Auralia?”

  The children looked at one another as if Krawg had introduced a foul smell. “Don’t tell that story,” said a girl, crossing her arms.

  Krawg put his face through the open jaw of some sharp-fanged fish. “Why not?”

  “Auralia stories are for naughty kids to try to scare them into behavin’.” Krawg laughed. “That’s not the Auralia story I was gonna tell. I knew the girl myself.”

  “The Red Oceandragon!” shouted a scrawny, shirtless, mud-smudged boy. The children rose and leapt down the muddy slope to the sand, where they ran to the dock as a slow ship approached, sails painted full of light.

  “You keep wandering off,” Warney growled.

  “I’m not your hound,” Krawg snorted.

  “We’ve been partners since you started teachin’ me how to burgle. And now you’re done with me?”

  “I came back for you when Cal-raven called me to—”

  “You keep starting things without me. You venture into some crazy storytelling contest and almost get us killed.”

  “They weren’t gonna hurt—”

  “And now you keep makin’ off to rattle ’n’ spin big crowds with broke-brain stories about tricksters and stuff, and where do I fit? What happens to me?”

  “I know what I’m for,” Krawg barked. “At last. I been thievin’ and berry pickin’ for well about fifty-three years. And I plan to live quite a mess more. Some got their healin’. Yawny had his stewpot. Auralia had her colors. But me? I may not know what’s happenin’ in the world, but I can think of what might happen. And to me, that’s a stitch more interesting. Don’t even plot it out ahead of time. I just picture the people, and off they go a-talkin’. It’s like reachin’ up and snatchin’ stray threads from the air that’ll weave a perfect jacket. Now I know how Auralia felt.”

  Warney was silent while Krawg caught his breath. Then he sighed, “Well, why don’t you just kick me in the teeth for sayin’ anything at all.”

  They sat in a long silence as the golden sky faded to a muddy yellow over the sea.

  To the north, rail tracks of the delivery trains, market platforms, ancient statues of eagles—all these intricate details of Bel Amica—vanished in shadows. Lights emerged in constellations as if the rock was a glowbug hive.

  Over all this, the copper moon shone, brightest of all evening lights.

  Krawg sighed. “Warney, have you ever seen anything so…”

  “Frightening?” To Warney, the people disembarking from the ship looked like beetles marching out of a nest for some kind of itchy business. The line passed along the strand, slowing when one of them pointed up the slope toward the tents. Warney felt as if they were looking at him, those dark shapes that had come from the sea. Then the line broke, and two sailors approached. “I’m goin’ back in before these buzzin’ waternippers decide to drink my blood.” Warney stood as if to depart.

  “Please yourself. I’m stayin’,” said Krawg.

  “You two!” came voices from the approaching men. “Are you from Abascar?”

  The sailors clambered over the embankment, approached, and knelt at the fence. Both were lean and muscled from lives of hard labor. The one with the sharp eyes and thin beard held a wrench. The other, his grey shock of hair blown back as if he spent all his time at the top of the ship’s mast, carried a coil of rope over his shoulder.

  “We’re from Abascar too!” said the bearded one.

  “We didn’t know until recent days that so many of us were left alive!” exclaimed the other. “How did you all survive out there?”

  The first man, Wilsun, his hands hardened by years of driving Abascar’s mine-hammers, had found work and quick success as a repairman on the ships. The other, Willup, once a brewer of Abascar ales, now managed shipments of Bel Amican ales and wines to the islands.

  “Have you been out on a boat yet?” Willup seemed made of enthusiasm. “Once you’ve sailed, you’ll never stay landbound.”

  “Really?” Krawg sighed.

  “It’s a fine life,” agreed Wilsun, “so long as you don’t get caught up in that moon-spirit nonsense. My lovely Clayre’s here too. She works on the rock.” He gestured to House Bel Amica. “Teaches children about the history of Abascar and the kings and queens of its past. She’s strong as a bottle of hajka.”

  “We’re on our way to find out about the council,” said Willup. “We’re hoping the queen’s assigning hunters to patrol the inlet.”

  “Hunters?” Krawg’s hands opened and closed like birds snapping at bugs.

  “We lost a boat last week.” Wilsun’s face turned grim. “Here in the harbor. Something attacked from the water. Third time since the season’s first red moon. Boat was smashed open. Something left a nasty black stain on the wreckage.”

  Warney dug his nails into Krawg’s shoulder.

  “Council’s also going to decide what to do with you!” exclaimed Willup. “And who’s going to be in charge.”

  “I want to work with you!” Krawg exclaimed. “Give me a task on the ships!”

  Wilsun glanced skeptically at Willup, who seemed ecstatic about the idea. “I’ll recommend you!” he rejoiced. “What can you do?” Wilsun asked.

  “I’m…” Krawg glanced at Warney. “A storyteller. Well, and I’ve had a lifetime of work as a harvester.”

  “You might learn to harvest fish, then,” Wilsun mused. “It’s not like Abascar; no one’s standing over you shouting the rules. You’ll have to prove yourself. You’ll sink or you’ll rise.”

  “Hey, what’s the word on the healer?” Willup asked.

  “Healer?” Krawg glanced back at the tents. “Say-ressa?”

  “Is it really Say-ressa? She came with you all? She taught my wife, Marey, everything she knows back when we were just Abascar Housefolk! We heard she was sick.”

  “Haven’t seen her since we arrived,” said Warney sadly. “They wrapped her in a blanket and carried her off.”

  Wilsun elbowed Willup. “Time to go. Sunup’s gonna be here all too soon.” He turned apologetically to Krawg. “If we’re not at the dock by first light, others will talk their way into our place. We have to be the best at what we do, or we get kicked down the ladder and have to climb again.”

  “And here,” said Willup, “fastest has a lot to do with best. Sleep tight.”

  Krawg and Warney were alone again at the fence.

  “What’s gonna become of us, Krawg?”

  Krawg shrugged. “We’ll have to fend for ourselves here.”

  “It’s like we’re gonna be Gatherers all over again, isn’t it?” Warney snatched at the grass as if he’d tear it out and cast it away,
but the roots held tight.

  “It’s nothing like being Gatherers,” said Krawg. “As Gatherers, we lived in the woods with beastmen behind every tree and vermin all over everything. Here, this is how people are supposed to live. With water and sky. It’s restful.”

  “Restful? Gotta disagree. The water never rests. And just look at them birds. Scary.”

  “They like it here.” Krawg stood up, towering over Warney with a scowl. “Can’t blame ’em. The forest is better than Barnashum. But this is better than the forest. I like these stones. And the sound—it’s washin’ away all the thoughts I don’t need. Never been here before, but somehow I’ve come home.”

  Warney stared out at the horizon’s faint halo. “I keep hearin’ that things’ll get better. But we get where we’re going and find it’s time to start climbin’ all over again. Everywhere is steep.”

  Krawg seemed hypnotized by the activity around the Red Oceandragon. “I can learn to get up early again. Learn to pick fish from the sea like berries from trees. Learn the stories that sailors like to hear.”

  “And what about me? What’m I for?”

  “You’ll answer that in Bel Amica.”

  “I just want the sort of busy that feels like play. You remember, don’t you? Like we did when we were less than several years old. String and pebbles and wimple-ball and Stamp the Tootle. Play, Krawg. Like Auralia did all day.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “What do I want to do? Ballyworms, Krawg, I don’t even know what I can do. Every place I go, I hear my sisters screamin’, ‘You’re not even fit to pick apples.’” A horizon cloud infused with purple light from the vanished sun drew his eye. “I got nothin’ on the inside.”

  Krawg did not reply.

  Warney shuffled back to the tent.

  From one of the benches along the side of the long rowboat, Tabor Jan eyed the rower. “For a fellow who defends a house by the sea, you sure seem afraid of the water.”

  Bel Amica’s Captain Ryllion kept his gaze fixed on the dark waves. Across his knees lay an unsheathed trailknife, a massive broad-bladed tool typically used to blaze paths through thick brush. The fact that it was Ryllion rowing them—alone—was clearly meant to intimidate and aggravate Abascar’s people.