Missing Piece

by Robert Priest

  He took another sip of the mead. He could feel the compass in him whirl toward her. The giddy spinning could just about have set him stomping off zombie-like through the black thorn forest between here and her. But first, in the bliss of his liquor and the rush of his hope, he felt a gush of gratitude well up into his core, and he wanted to thank the frictionless borough of Shissillil for what it had done to him. For dashing him apart. For dashing him through her. He might have spent all of existence entirely hollow, but he had been a temple to the piece. He must kiss the road of Shissillil as a sign of his infinite gratitude.

  Looking around first to make sure he was still alone, Torgee lay his sword on the ground, went down to his knees, put his head through the portal, and leaned his lips lightly down to the road. It was like kissing the surface of a rapidly flowing stream.

  It took only one hand to do what was done next. Originally it had been the hand of a man who had stolen another man’s goat. For that long-ago crime, as was the law in those times, he’d been sentenced to have his hand removed and flung into the bog. But now in its new life the hand had taken on a much larger purpose than thievery. On long grey fingers it hurtled toward Torgee’s rear end as he knelt there. Torgee flopped forward onto the frictionless surface, and with barely a grunt he was gone.

  16

  Icrix Sails

  With five older brothers, Prince Icrix had always deemed it a safe bet that he would never have to suffer the rigours of kingship. He had a passion for science, and though he respected the institution of kingship and the arts of war and was accomplished in them as any of his lineage, he would much rather have been just one among many empirical truth seekers.

  The luxury of pursuing the life of the mind every day of his life, however, had been torn away from him after the loss of his five brothers, all felled by one girl, a girl with five stones. The story had rippled around the known world. The humiliation of it rippled still through the Cyclops nation. He felt it deeply himself. To compound the tragedy, it had fallen to him to right the terrible dishonour of it — but not under his own terms. With swift new steamships, he could’ve gone in and done battle at a time of his choosing, but his father had opted for quantity in his purchases for the Royal Navy. So now he had a fleet of cumbersome, wide-hulled old-style sailing ships. Fortunately he was familiar with naval strategy. He had maps and charts of the tides and he knew what those fools he was going to have to capture and enslave were too superstitious to know — that the tides would be extra long this year. And for the next fortnight they would open up on the seabed a great beach where, from the hundreds of smaller oar-driven boats hidden in the larger vessels, he could disembark his five thousand swordsmen and pikers and mountain climbers, his five hundred scaffold-makers and siegemen, and the eighty Pathan night troops he had employed at great expense to the treasury. His plan was smart and overwhelming and therefore quick, which was good because he wanted to get it over with and get back to his experiments.

  Just to stay in touch with this important work, he had brought along a smaller vessel, the Greralia, which he now sailed solo out in front of the fleet. His private sloop, it could be raised and lowered down to the sea from the royal caravel to give him solitude when he needed it. It was the most modern ship in the fleet and had a lateen sail that enabled it to tack into the wind. It also had places below decks for twenty oarsmen if needed, but he didn’t use it that way. He needed that space for his experiments with the dogs.

  He looked back at the fleet behind him, visible on this cloudy night only by the light of their flickering lanterns fanning out in both directions farther than his telescope could see. The wind was picking up. It was speeding the whole fleet exuberantly over the coal black sea. In the old days they would have said it was a sign of “The One’s” goodwill. He smiled knowing it was actually the sign of a well-researched military strategy.

  He felt like tightening the mainsail now and just sailing on way ahead, but the wildness of the wind was rocking the boat and the dogs were starting to shriek down below. That probably meant they were straining at their sutures and that was potentially a big problem for the experiment. He would have to head back. It gave him a chance to use that fancy swinging boom. He ducked down and it shot by overhead as he deftly turned the elegant craft and returned to the mother ship.

  17

  The Leeching Cup

  Tfter taking the child, Beren, to the infirmary and alerting iMr. Stilpkin to the condition of the spellbinders by the Great Kone, Tharfen set off back to her ship. She was irritable, but it was not the clash with the glomerant or the nasty exchange with Torgee that was disturbing her. It was the Xemion piece. For that was what it had become again. A solid piece. She, too, had shaken Vallaine’s red hand five years ago, and she also knew that very distinct sensation it imparted. Was that what had caused the fusing of the piece inside her? Ever since that moment when the charge had leapt into her hand and up her arm, it had become solid. The piece was now ricocheting around inside her like a fragment of stone or the tip of a tooth. Ping ping. It was like a fly trying to get out of a bottle. It was like a shark trying to get out of a net. It bounced off the inside of her ribs back and forth. For a while it seemed to settle in her neck, so solid she could actually feel it there pressed against the vein.

  She wanted it out of her so badly she considered pinching it and using her knife point to gouge it out right there as she walked. But even as she compressed it between her fingers it slipped and she felt it go pinging down into her belly. For a while it settled in her wrist very close to the big blue vein and again she considered cutting it out. But she knew if she nicked the vein she would be in trouble.

  How it repelled her. It was a piece of him. She remembered that time five years ago, on their first day in Ulde when she had encountered him in the morning. She had shot a stone with her sling at a pigeon on a rooftop and missed. Since then she had taken a thousand shots, including the five that had brought down the five Cyclopes, and she had never missed once. But tonight she had missed again. Yes, it had been just after the sight of him, but it had been the piece inside of her that had thrown her off. It was a liability. She had to get it out of her. She considered turning around and going back to Mr. Stilpkin and asking him to exculpate it with his surgical instruments, but he would be far too busy with the spellbinders and poor Beren, and by this time she was almost back at the mouth of the tunnel.

  As she emerged from the gateway at the bottom she could see that there was still no mainmast on her galleon. She smashed her fist into her palm and her loud curse echoed across the bay. She stomped to the dock where the ship was moored. The bo’sun, a rotund man with a sallow face, saluted her as she came aboard.

  “Where is my mainmast, Mr. Japes?” she asked him quite fiercely.

  The bo’sun did not flinch. He tilted his head to one side and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “They haven’t so much as even begun yet, sir.”

  “Why not?” she shouted, and again her voice echoed through the night and off the surrounding cliffs of Phaer Bay.

  “There are no trees of sufficient height left anywhere hereabouts is what I’m told.”

  “Well, why wasn’t I told?”

  “I was only told myself a half-hour ago, sir.” His face almost expressed the outrage that this statement obviously aroused in him. “They will only take it one vessel at a time. As per their rules.”

  Again Tharfen cursed. “Who do I have to hang from the yardarm to get a mainmast here then?”

  “Well, sir, they say they believe there is a tall enough tree on Wheatley’s Aight, about seven mile off.”

  Tharfen just glared.

  “They say if we can cut it down and bring it here they’ll keep our place in line and they can have the mast up before tomorrow evening.”

  “You should’ve told me that right away,” she chided him. “Do not dare toy with me, sir, as I am not above having even an old
man like you flogged.”

  The bo’sun just shoved his jaw out and tilted his head to the other side, keeping her gaze. He blinked quite slowly.

  Tharfen spat over the side of the ship. “I detest this place,” she said before heading to her cabin.

  The moment her foot hit the first step leading down to her quarters, she yelped in pain. The piece had suddenly positioned itself at the bottom of her heel. She almost punched the wall of the staircase, but instead flung open the door to her spacious cabin and sat down on the chair at her desk, fuming. She took a match from the drawer and lit a candle. She sat for a moment, a grim expression on her face.

  Then her eye caught the leeching cup she had acquired in Kelorth. A thin copper spout with a small suction cup on one end was attached to a red bottle with a plunger on top. She had acquired the cup from a trader in north Arthenow, a relic of the ancient practice of blood-letting for the reestablishment of “good humours.”

  She would have to move quickly in case it sensed what she was up to and moved somewhere else. Casually she removed her boots. She then grabbed a red headband from the desk, lifted her right foot onto her left knee, and quickly tied the band tight around her ankle. She felt the base of her heel, and yes, the piece was still there. Only now, as her foot slowly turned red with the tourniquet pressure of the band, did she allow her eyes to glance back over at the leeching cup.

  Leaning forward, she pulled back the little lever to set the spring and pushed the suction cup on the end of the tube tip over the bottom of her heel. When it collapsed inward, she released the spring and the sharp slanted end of the hollow tube slid into her heel. It hurt more than she thought it would. She pulled up the plunger on top of the red bottle and the blood started to drip down the tube and into the sealed red cup. It hurt even more. She couldn’t see through the red of the cup so she couldn’t tell how much blood had been let, but she wanted to be sure the piece was out of her so she let the blood flow a long time, biting her bottom lip until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Finally, she released the plunger, let air in under the rim of the suction cup, and quickly withdrew the point from her heel. The puncture was so small she could barely see it. She pressed her thumb into her heel. Nothing. She stood up. There was a little pang from the puncture, but she couldn’t feel the piece anywhere. She took in a long breath and stilled herself. Then she slowly exhaled, allowing her awareness to rove through her body in search of the piece. She was starting to believe it was gone. She lifted the cup to her ear and shook it, half expecting to hear a pinging sound of the piece rattling against the inside of the cup. Though there was a surprising amount of her blood sloshing about in there, she heard no other indication that the piece was inside. She put all her weight on her right heel. Nothing.

  Tharfen smiled. Relief flooded through her body and a feeling of goodwill spread through her. Even when the piece had been dissolved evenly throughout her body, even when she was half the world away from this island, the thought of the piece had disturbed her. Just to be rid of it now made this whole little excursion to the Phaer Isle well worthwhile. She opened the porthole on the starboard side and dumped the contents of the leeching cup into the waters of the bay. The moon was still shining big and bright, and looking up she saw its yellow light streaming through that gap in the battlements on the clifftop across the bay. She shook her head knowingly.

  “Mr. Japes!” she called, “I need you!”

  Soon there was a knock at the door and Mr. Japes opened it at her instruction.

  “I won’t be sailing with the ship to Wheatley’s Aight tomorrow.”

  The bo’sun nodded. His face expressed nothing.

  “I’m sure I can entrust my vessel to you long enough to get a single tree cut down and brought back here by tomorrow’s eve.”

  “Of course you can, sir.” The bo’sun could not entirely hide his pleasure at this turn of events.

  “That will be all.”

  The bo’sun turned to leave.

  “Oh, one more thing, Mr. Japes. Have a message sent to Governor Lirodello informing him that I do intend to be present at the meeting tomorrow.”

  18

  One Girl and One Churl

  Lirodello and the young woman whose name, she told him, was Zila, sat across from each other at a round wooden table, a candle burning between them. She responded to his enthralled stare with the occasional smile, but otherwise kept her attention fully on the steaming plate of fish and potatoes before her. She ate delicately, lifting small portions to her mouth, sitting up straight and mannerly, but when she finished her first plate she turned into the light a little and gave him a good look at her dark, shining eyes.

  “Enough?” Lirodello asked solicitously.

  She shrugged, her eyes still centred on his. “I feel like I could eat the world and still it would not be enough.” The night was deepening and a cool, misty breeze was coming off of the sea. She shivered a little.

  “The world, coming right up,” Lirodello quipped — his first joke in half a decade.

  He opened his larder and returned with some bread and something he’d been stashing for a special occasion. “The world of cheese,” he said, placing the food before her with a flourish. Keenly aware of her penetrating stare, he took his well-sharpened dagger from his hip and cut first a slice of bread and then a slice of the cheese, letting it slide off the side of the blade neatly onto the bread. “I wish I could offer you butter, but I’m afraid the whole city is butterless.”

  “Are you sure you can spare this?” she asked. Before he could answer, she had it in her hands and was delicately but rapidly consuming it. When she was done, he cut another slice and then another and another.

  “I feel like I haven’t eaten for years,” she said when the bread and cheese were finished. “I hope I haven’t exhausted your larder completely.”

  “No, not at all,” Lirodello answered, shrugging his shoulders to signify that the food was no matter to him.

  “Do you have such a thing as a nightingale?”

  “Well, not on me,” Lirodello joked, pretending to frisk himself.

  “But, in one of your cupboards?”

  “A nightingale? In a cupboard?”

  “Yes. Or a fresh nightingale from a cage.”

  “But—”

  “And it has to be red.”

  “You are joking, surely?” She looked at him straight on, affronted. “We … my people … we do not keep songbirds in cages … and we certainly do not eat them.”

  “Well, my people do, and I want one. Badly.”

  “I see. I understand. I cannot get you a nightingale. Certainly not a red nightingale … not tonight, anyway, but …” Lirodello bowed and spoke in a mock dignified tone, “I shall get my astrologers searching the skies for one immediately.”

  She smiled and her face became suitably regal. “I shall try to overlook it just this once. In the meantime, show me your quarters,” she said playfully as though they had agreed that she was queen and he a serf.

  “Certainly, Your Majesty.” He bowed again. Holding the candle before him, he ushered her into the next room, still maintaining his mock gentility. “Not much here,” he said. In the flickering light, his unmade bed was the only other item of furniture in the chamber.

  “This is where you sleep?” she asked.

  “Me and me alone,” he answered, his heartbeat increasing slightly. The smell of peat was growing strangely intoxicating. And her rich black hair in the rippling of the candle shadows summoned up images of dark weeds waving from the bottom of a pond.

  “I hope it’s comfortable enough for you,” she said, giving him a sly smile.

  “As long as I don’t turn over in the night,” he retorted with a grin of his own.

  “Oh, yes, it’s so small,” she said. He placed the candle on the little table beside the bed and she sat on the edge of the feather-filled
duvet, nodding approvingly. “Why, Lirodello, such luxury!” She crossed her legs and leaned back on it, her arms spread wide, her knees still bent over the edge of the bed. He remembered what she had said about owning nothing but her cloak and his heart thumped hard.

  “Feel free to lie on it if you are weary,” he said.

  “Oh, Lirodello, what have I done to earn such kindness from you?” Again there was that flirty slightly teasing tone in her voice.

  “Please,” he said with only a slight squeak. “You are my guest and you are weary.”

  “But aren’t you weary also?” she asked. She pulled herself up farther onto the bed and lay down properly, her hair splayed about her, so long it reached both sides of the bed.

  “I don’t need a lot of sleep,” he answered.

  “But what are you saying?” she demanded.

  His nervousness quickened, not sure if there was offence in her voice.

  “Well, you are my guest and I would feel a complete churl if I did not offer you the small comfort of lying down here.”

  Her laugh was high-pitched, pure and thrilling. “One girl. And one churl.”

  He laughed. “Would-be churl,” he corrected her with a shrug.

  “I think you mean won’t-be churl, don’t you?” she joked.

  “Never-be churl. Certainly not to you,” he answered with another bow. “But please take your rest. It is far too dark and dangerous for you to be going anywhere tonight.”

  “Oh, Lirodello, you are so gallant.”

  “Don’t worry. I often lie on the floor by the window to catch the breeze coming in off the sea. It would be no discomfort to me tonight.”

  Then she said the unexpected. “But your bed is not so small. Look.…” She leaned over to the far side of it. “There would surely be room for both of us … which would, of course, be warmer.”