A Bloom in the North

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  And then there was Hesa.

  I must have sighed, for the keeper looked up at me from where he was adjusting the hem of the pants. "Missing someone, ke emodo?"

  I smiled. "Was it so obvious?"

  "Maybe to someone who's paying attention," he said, smiling too.

  He made no more overtures and showed no regret when I mounted my rikka that afternoon. I thanked him for his help and then I was away... once again dressed in the uniform of tyranny and oppression and heading back to the city I swore I wouldn't enter again until I could do so without lies. Fate's humor has a mocking touch.

  Het Kabbanil had not changed in the few weeks of my absence, and yet it felt different to me. I couldn't have described the difference: the city felt both too small to hold me and too large to encompass; it was home and yet not safe; it was a part of me and I wanted no part of it. I arrived near midday and rode to the barracks, where I dismounted and went inside. I paused at the door to my office—steeling myself?—but when I looked inside everything was as I'd left it. I frowned and turned to leave, only to walk into a body slamming me back against the wall. Suker shoved the door closed with a foot and pressed into me, teeth bared. There was a knife at my collarbones. A naked one.

  "Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you," he hissed.

  "That perhaps I should know the reason I'm dying before you cut my throat?" I answered, ears flattened.

  "As if you need me to tell you," Suker said. His anger was cold... too cold. I could see him doing it, leaning into the blade until he opened my neck. "My most dedicated worker, who spent two months investigating a House that vanished overnight and took him with them! Whose bed were you warming, Pathen? Darsi's? Or did it go back further? Have you been involved with Laisira since Jurenel?"

  I made a face and said, "If you're going to impugn my honor, ke Suker, at least have the grace to pair me with someone worthy of the attention."

  He hesitated, his frown growing more pronounced.

  "You know better," I said. "You know me, ke emodo." I smiled crookedly. "I have better taste."

  "That doesn't change facts," Suker said, studying my face.

  "You don't have the facts yet," I said. "You have circumstantial evidence."

  "Fairly damning circumstantial evidence," he said. "We've arrested people for less."

  "Yes," I said. "We have. Haven't we."

  He leaned back from my expression. Slowly, very slowly.

  "Let me go, ke Suker," I said. "And let's go to your office. And talk."

  "I want answers," Suker said.

  "You'll have them."

  He searched my eyes and I let him, and as he did I studied him in turn. The fatigue lines beneath his eyes told a harsh story when combined with his leaner-than-usual body and the naked knife, a knife that should have been wrapped while in town. He'd been investigating the truedark kingdom for weeks before I'd gone with Laisira, and I'd guessed correctly that he'd been involved with the operation. But seeing him this way made me think he'd only just gotten home himself.

  He withdrew the knife as abruptly as he'd threatened me with it, tucking it into his sash. "All right," he said. "But I am not happy with you, Pathen."

  "I know," I said. "Please, lead the way."

  As the senior overseer charged with managing the teams of Claws that policed the southwestern corner of het Kabbanil, Suker had a larger-than-average office in the center of the barracks. He had never cared to decorate it, so it remained furnished with the basic amenities of any such office: a desk and several chairs, an expensive map drawn onto vellum and tacked to the wall, and a small shelving unit. Suker used it for storing slates and otherwise left it bare. It was one of the first things I'd noticed about him, that he had failed to personalize his office. He didn't personalize his uniform either, though as a senior he had earned the right not only to use his own sashes but also to add trim.

  I remained convinced that he'd never done so because, like me, he didn't really want to be here. Watching him stalk into his office, I hoped I was right while wondering if his anger meant I was wrong.

  Suker opened one of the drawers of his desk and took out a bottle and two cups. Pointing at me with a finger extended past one of them, he said, "Sit."

  So I sat and watched him pour the liquor. For himself first, then me. He started drinking before he finished sitting. I took a sip myself and it ripped my tongue off.

  "Not exactly a pot of keddif," I observed.

  "This is not a pot of keddif conversation," Suker growled.

  "Not exactly fifty-coin either," I said.

  "And if I could afford fify-coin I wouldn't be wasting it on this conversation," Suker said. "This is wreck, fresh from the barracks' still."

  "There's a still in the barracks?" I said, amused despite the situation. "I never heard anything about it."

  "That's because it's only for senior overseers who are forced to resort to it in order to live through the disgraces of their subordinates," Suker said.

  "My," I said, touching my chest. "I believe I'm bleeding."

  "You should be," Suker said. He set the cup down and said, each word curt, "Do you have any idea, Pathen, what it looked like to have the entirety of House Laisira vanish after we'd put it under a special investigation?"

  "I suppose it must have been... awkward," I said, studying my cup.

  "Awkward!" Suker said, so angrily I flinched. I had never seen Suker angry. It wasn't pleasant. He leaned forward and said, "You could have gotten me killed, Pathen. Killed. To have a failure that extreme happen on the heels of that mess with Rapuñal? And under the same Claw!" He scrubbed his face with his hands and I noticed then that they were trembling. "Void enfold it, Pathen. I would have been executed."

  "But you weren't," I said. "Why?"

  "Because I lied my mouth bloody," he said. "I told them you were investigating Laisira because you suspected they were about to defect. That I'd ordered you to go with them so we could follow you."

  Small wonder the Claws who'd met me on the hill had been so willing to let me ride off in "pursuit" of the stragglers. I'd told them the story they'd already heard.

  And then it occurred to me that it might not have been a story. "Was it true?" I said, fighting dismay. "Did I lead you to them?"

  Suker waved a tired hand, refilled his cup. I hadn't even noticed him finishing off the first serving. "No. Well, not directly. I found out where they'd be by following Ajul, not your waywards from Laisira."

  "Ajul!" I exclaimed. "But he was made a slave! What could he possibly have..." And then I trailed off. Suker watched me a look both grim and satisfied as I finished, "Of course. There were others in Rapuñal. Others involved with the dissidents."

  "Right," Suker said. "And once Ajul was marched north to the end of the Birthwell road they started making arrangements to free him. After that it was a matter of finding out who and asking the right questions."

  "So you really were the one responsible for finding the rebels," I said, staring at him. "You helped burn the settlement down."

  "Of course I did," Suker said, and drank. I watched him this time. How fast he did it. The twitch of his lower eyelid. The tremor in his wrist. When he put his cup down, he said, "What else was I supposed to do? Let them go free? The empire's enemies? My job is to take them down. I'm one of Roika's Claws."

  "A job you don't want to do," I said, quiet.

  "Pathen," he said, warning.

  "Did you just get back?" I asked. "Have they decorated you yet? When's your public ceremony planned?"

  Suker covered his face.

  "Are you ready to accept the rewards and thanks of a grateful empire on the public dais they use to torture people?" I said. "A thanks you earned for enslaving and killing several hundred innocent Jokka?"

  "They were the empire's enemies," Suker said, but he had not lifted his face and his voice was muffled.

  "You had no choice," I said. Suker looked up then, angry. I held up my hand. "I didn't say it to start an ar
gument. I'm saying it because it's true. Isn't it? If your choice is between your own death and someone else's, is it your fault for choosing yourself? Or the empire's, for making you choose?"

  Suker sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. "You. You're one of them now."

  "Suker, we were always one of them. Both of us," I said, quiet.

  He looked away. Then said, "Well, it hardly matters anymore, does it? There's no 'them' left to be part of."

  I said nothing as he looked inside his empty cup, shifting it to watch the dregs. When I didn't answer, he looked up at me and frowned. "There's not. Is there?"

  "I need your help," I said.

  He stared at me. And then shook himself and said, "No. No. I just finished telling you how much I don't want to die, Pathen. And whatever you're about to ask for is going to get me killed."

  "It's less likely to get you killed than it will me," I said, and tried another sip from my cup. How Suker had put down two servings of this in a single swallow I couldn't imagine.

  "It will get me killed if they trace it back to me," he said, acerbic.

  "Then let us get you out," I said.

  "Because Rapuñal did such a fine job of that with Ajul," Suker said.

  "Because House Laisira did such a fine job of it none of us realized they were half-gone by the time they kidnapped me during the fetes," I said. "And had you not already known the location of the settlement thanks to Rapuñal's mishandling of the situation, you would never, ever have found them, Suker. Because nothing House Laisira decides to hide is going to be found."

  Suker said, incredulous, "Half the House? The entire House?"

  I had forgotten he didn't know that story. "Gone," I said. "Out from beneath all our noses. And they would have gotten away completely during the fete had I not accidentally opened one of their crates while loading the wagon and discovered a Jokkad hiding in it."

  "But you were investigating them," Suker said. "If you saw that something might be wrong, why wouldn't someone else?"

  "I only saw something worth investigating because I thought Darsi was an idiot and I couldn't imagine Jurenel choosing him for a successor," I said. "And the only reason I knew that, Suker, was because Jurenel was..." I trailed off and said, "He was a friend."

  And that was true, amazingly enough. All this time and I had never realized it, since our antagonistic roles as the empire's enforcer and a Head of Household had masked the evidence. But I had liked Jurenel and enjoyed his company. And I think he had enjoyed mine.

  "He was a friend," I said again, more confidently. "And I knew him well enough to realize that he would never have left Laisira to someone like Darsi. If I hadn't had that insight, Suker, I would never have known something was wrong. And at the end of the summer fetes we would have discovered House Laisira empty and never known when or where they'd gone." I met his eyes. "If you want to leave, Suker... I can get you out."

  Suker sighed, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand. "And where would I go, Pathen? And what would happen to the Claws under me? I'm their protection from the ministry. If I go, who'll make sure we don't end up doing the really heinous work?"

  "Maybe we shouldn't have to do heinous work," I suggested.

  "And how exactly is that going to happen?" he snapped. "I just finished burning the little "truedark kingdom" to ashes, Pathen, and what's left of it won't win a war against the Stone Moon. Is that what you want? A war?"

  "No," I said. I didn't even have to think about the answer. "Too many Jokka would die and the Stone Moon would still be standing at the end of it. We can't afford an open confrontation. We couldn't, even when the settlement still stood... they must have known, or they would have tried it."

  "Maybe they were planning to," Suker muttered.

  "No," I said. "No, I think they knew better."

  "You think?" Suker said.

  "I didn't meet their leader. Thenet," I said. "That was its name." At Suker's expression, I said, "You didn't kill it. It's gone east to meet the emperor."

  "What?" Suker said, stunned. "Why?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Apparently there's something in the north that both of them want, and for some reason this Thenet believes the Stone Moon emperor, who's set himself against it at every turn, is going to let it go with him."

  Suker frowned, but it wasn't worry. Speculation, I thought. "Interesting," he murmured. "I had heard... but you never know with rumors." He met my eyes. "So if you don't want a war, Pathen, what exactly are you planning?"

  "Are you sure you want to know?" I asked.

  He looked away, exasperated. "I'm drunk."

  "Your fault," I offered, allowing myself the luxury of humor for the first time since our conversation began.

  "Yes," he said. He pointed. "Drink. Then tell me your foolhardy plan."

  I managed the entire cup under Suker's amused eye and then set it aside. "I need you to give me credit for finding the dissidents."

  "Mmm-hmm," Suker said. "Why? You want the reward?"

  I grinned. "You see? Not so foolhardy a plan. Go on."

  "And then you will use the money to fund a rebellion?" Suker said, dividing the remainder of the bottle between our cups.

  "Close," I said. "I'll take the remaining dissidents with me to establish a House in het Narel. And then we'll do what House Rapuñal did such a bad job of, except we'll do a good job of it."

  "So you will bring down the empire from within," Suker said, turning his cup. His fingers were remarkably steady for the amount of liquor he'd consumed.

  "Or transform it quietly," I said. "It depends on what happens with the emperor. If he never comes back..."

  Suker stared at his cup. Then said, "I think this is a truedark dream you're chasing, you know. Winning against the Stone Moon." He flipped his ears back and sighed again, and I began to speak to convince him otherwise when he finished. "But I knew it was a matter of time before you made the attempt."

  "What?" I said, shocked.

  He chuckled. "Finally surprised you, didn't I," he said. "Please, Pathen. You never fit your uniform. I was waiting for the day you gave up trying. Most of us just wanted to go unnoticed by the Stone Moon... you never stopped resenting it for being unjust."

  "Like you?" I said. The wreck improved when warm. Or at least, it was more drinkable that way.

  "Not me," Suker said, tired. "I gave up a long time ago. I just wanted to work myself into a position where I could protect someone. Anyone. Myself included." He tilted his head. "Tell me something. Those rumors about you and Laisira."

  "Which rumors about me and Laisira?" I said, dry.

  He looked up at me. "Those rumors about you and Hesa Laisira-emodo."

  I lifted a brow. "Yes?"

  "Should I ask?" he said.

  "Depends on how you'd feel about the answer," I said.

  He leaned back and looked at me more fully, and he seemed far too sober. So I made my final gamble and said, "It wasn't in Darsi's bed. And it wasn't in mine then. It is now."

  Suker dragged in a long breath and closed his eyes.

  "So, ke Suker," I said, quiet. "Will you betray me to the empire's torture? Or will you help me?" I set my empty cup down and pushed it across the desk to him. "Your choice."

  "My choice," he rasped.

  "Your choice," I said. "Unlike the Stone Moon, I'll give you one."

  He started laughing. "Void, Pathen."

  I grinned and offered him my hand across the desk. He glowered at it, then clasped me, palm to palm. "Hope you like public appearances."

  "Let them hang their accolades on me," I said. "I'll use them to make safety for those who need it. Us included."

  That night I rode around the city's border, my rikka loping alongside the rumpled cropfields with their tall stalks of shuñe and ufi grains, only a few weeks from threshing. I could smell their malty fragrance on the early autumn wind, a scent liberally mingled with that of water and turned soil. Het Kabbanil remained the richest of Ke Bakil's settlements... in fo
od particularly, for it had been the first het to benefit from the Stone Moon's agricultural innovations. The cones of the granaries sunk into the ground were black silhouettes among crops silvered by starlight.

  No, nothing would be gained by a war. I couldn't imagine this Thenet wanting one or Ilushet and Barit would surely have mentioned it. The eperu must have hoped for a peaceful resolution of Ke Bakil's warring philosophies to have willingly ridden off to meet with its worst enemy. With Hesa's help and a good situation in het Narel, we could put together a network the eperu could use when it returned to overturn the empire without having to destroy it. And then we could keep the good the Stone Moon had done without having to spill blood for it. There were so few of us already... we couldn't afford to kill one another off. Even Roika had known that. Almost all crimes in the Stone Moon were punishable by fine or forced labor. Death was reserved for treason, and the very rare crimes of perversity.

  At the furthest eastern point of the city I found the ruins with the frieze. I set my token on it: a sash of Laisira's own silk, white as blood with translucent yellow flower petals hand-painted down the last third of its length. There would be no more Laisira cloth entering the markets, but the silk they'd already sold earlier in the season was still available. Hesa would laugh at being given its House's own work, I thought... and later it could tie its hair back with the scarf. The colors would work with scarlet curls.

  I pulled myself back into the saddle and looked east. Somewhere down that road the ruler of all Ke Bakil was advancing toward a meeting with his one true enemy, a meeting apparently engineered by the avatars of the gods. I didn't know that I believed in gods, but these Jokka had surely had good reason to think something useful would be accomplished by the meeting. Certainly the emperor had been dedicated to funding the voyage north. I hadn't heard a great deal about it, only enough to know it was happening. But somewhere east of us, the ultimate fate of our struggle was being decided. All that was left was for those of us left behind to put together the framework the winner would use to implement that decision... or fight it.