The Plains of Kallanash

by Pauline M. Ross

  Tanist and the new Council had taken over one of the main administrative buildings for their meetings, and had issued a series of edicts, outlawing all Trannatta but allowing their bonded servants and Slaves the option to stay. They formally freed the Silent Guards and offered an amnesty to all those with criminal pasts sent across the border. A few former barbarians had already crossed back into the Karningplain, and the border Karningholds had begun organising wagons to transport them to their homes, while a committee had started registering them as full Karningers. Another committee, this time of Karningholders, had been set up to devise the best way to deal with the vast number of Skirmishers no longer needed now that the barbarians were returning. The border would still need to be protected from outside threats, but for a while there would be peace.

  The tower seemed disconnected from all these momentous events, hearing them second or third hand, but it was not without its own developments. Two of the Nine had ventured outside the walls onto the boat dock, enjoying a moment of winter sunshine. Although they had not crumbled to dust, they reported extreme fatigue within a very short time, so it seemed likely they would have to stay within the tower itself and the short stretches of tunnel with glowing walls. Beyond that, the fatigue returned. They also found, quite by accident, when one of them tripped over, that they could walk about the Hall of Magic without raising the men with batons.

  “Perhaps you created them,” Dethin suggested. “They remember you.”

  “Well, that would be ironic indeed,” Sylinor said, “since we recall nothing of them. But it may be so.”

  Strangely, the effect held even when others were there, so one or other of the Nine would be called upon whenever large groups or injured men needed to pass through.

  Sylinor was thrilled. “At last! Something useful we can do.”

  There were many injuries from the clashes before the encounter at the Great Temple, and the occasional outbreaks after that, and the Ring’s main infirmary sent the worst of them to the tower. The infirmary was on the lake shore directly opposite the tower’s great doors, only a short distance away by boat.

  Most of the Trannatta had left the tower, but Cristo was not one of them. He and a small number of healers had apartments on an otherwise unoccupied floor, and mostly he kept out of the way, but occasionally Mia would catch sight of him. One day she was helping to change sheets in the infirmary room when he appeared with a pile of fresh linen. When he saw her, he avoided her gaze and lowered his head, setting his burden down quickly and turning away. But then he turned back to her.

  “I wonder… if I might talk to you,” he said in diffident tones. His voice was low, the accent more pronounced, and all the ebullience gone, so that Mia would hardly have known him. But still, however subdued, he was Cristo, and she ignored him. After a moment he made her a little bow and withdrew.

  “It might help to talk to him,” said the healer Keyramon, who was working with Mia.

  “Who would it help?”

  “Him, a little. He wants to apologise to you, I think. But it might help you, too.”

  “Can he give me back my dead child? No? Then I don’t think we have much to say to each other, do you? Will you smooth that corner a little more?”

  When Mia thought about it, however, she realised that it might be a good idea to hear him out. It was irrational to blame him for following orders, and he had been very helpful to Tanist, giving him what little information he knew. She arranged to see him in the tower’s wide entrance hall, public enough for her to feel safe, yet large enough to provide a private corner. She sat on a scarred wooden bench under the great doors, hands resting in her lap. Dethin, fully armed, stood nearby and Killin and Cristamond, his two Captains, lurked across the hall.

  Cristo appeared from the upper floors, walking down the ramp instead of jumping. Diffidently he settled himself with plenty of space between himself and Mia, head down.

  “I – thank you for seeing me,” he said quietly. When she said nothing, he continued, “I know you can never forgive me for what you have suffered – I do not blame you. I could make excuses, but – what is the point? It is done, and though I deeply regret my part in it, nothing can make you recompense. I have done what little I can to help your people, and First Councillor Tanist dos Arrakas has generously given me permission to stay here – in the Ring.”

  He lifted his head to look at her, but still she was silent. What was there to say? He was her enemy. Yet without the arrogance, he was different. Younger, somehow. Perhaps he was no older than her, a young man caught up in affairs without fully understanding them, just as she had been when she started asking about the tunnel.

  He was speaking again, more rapidly. “I should like to stay, of course. Finish my research. The scholars – I have been told they can find a place for me. But…” A long pause, chewing his lip. He shifted a little on the bench. “If it would upset you, I will leave. Go back to my people. It would be fitting, would it not? I sent you into exile, and now you can do the same to me. I will do whatever you wish.”

  He lowered his head again, but even without opening her mind, she could hardly miss the roiling emotions within him. Fear, mostly.

  “What will happen to you, if you go back to them?” she said.

  His head lifted sharply, eyes flashing. “Nothing good! I am a traitor now, I suppose, and I have no breeding value. But – but I will leave if my presence still distresses you.”

  “Why are you so afraid of them? They’re your own people, it’s your home – isn’t it?”

  He looked at her, his mouth working, as if debating how much to say. “They treat us the way we treated you. The rules, the fear, the interviews – all of that. They come here every year to check up on us, and give us their instructions. If we go back now, having failed in our mission—”

  “Your mission?”

  “They want to find the secret of magic. Once there were immensely powerful mages, powerful enough to build this tower, to change the world. They are gone now, but we still have these – connections, you call them. Little puffs of magic in the world, but if they could be combined, used in harmony, amplified…” He looked down again, hands twisting, so that the tattoos on his palm slid in and out of view. “That is what my people want, above all things. With such power, they could rule the world.”

  “Then it’s better for all of us that your mission failed,” she said crisply.

  “Yes! I agree! But if we go back now, having failed, I do not know what will happen to us.”

  Another sharp burst of fear spiked through him. Nothing good would happen to him, he had said, and Mia could well believe it. A ruthless people indeed.

  “No.” She spoke louder than she intended, making him jump, for her mind was filled with his fear. Dethin stirred, and his hand strayed to the hilt of his sword. “No,” she said, more quietly. “There has been enough blood spilled, one way or another. Let us have no more of it. I daresay it will not be easy for you here, marked as you are…” She pointed to his hands, the tattoos visible.

  He spread his hands out, palms upward. “They will fade. On us, tattoos are not permanent. But I will always be different in other ways.”

  “Your looks, you mean?”

  “That, and the accent, and the different beliefs. It is hard to shake off the customs imbued since birth.”

  “There is no reason why you should,” Mia said. “Different doesn’t mean wrong.”

  He beamed at her, looking almost childlike. “You are very generous, Most High. I am grateful.” And he bowed, hand to chest.

  As he leaned forward, she caught a flash of silver chain at his neck, and was reminded of Dondro’s pendant, still sitting in the bag at her waist in its soft velvet pouch. Did they all wear one, then? On impulse, she pulled the pendant out and dangled it by its chain so that it spun and sparkled in the light.

  Cristo gasped. “Grash’on chaylan! It is Dondro’s, is it not?” She nodded, dropping it into his cupped hands. He held it reve
rently, murmuring a few words in his own language. He looked at her with glowing eyes. “Thank you, thank you! This is his chaylan, a part of his spirit. Now I can send it back to his—”

  “Family?”

  “No, we do not have family as you do. I do not know the best word – court, perhaps. His court. They will be very happy to have it, so they can hold the proper rituals for his spirit. Thank you!” Another burst of his own language, then he rose and bowed again, more deeply.

  Mia rose too, shaking out the creases in her tunic. “That’s settled then. Stay, if you wish. Do your research. One day, perhaps, I may even forgive you. But for now, I don’t want to be reminded.”

  He shot to his feet. “I understand. Thank you. Thank you so much!” He was bowing again, a low submissive stoop, but she walked away without a glance, as Dethin fell into step behind her.

  ~~~

  Hurst returned late one afternoon with Tanist and Klemmast, trailing a great swarm of Skirmishers who wandered wide-eyed around the tower, and amused themselves by racing up the ramp and then jumping over the edge.

  “Why did you bring so many?” Mia said, as she helped Tenya carry an extra haunch of meat from the store room. “A little warning wouldn’t have gone amiss, either. Meat will be late, now.”

  “No matter, there’s plenty of wine. But you know Tanist – he likes to include everyone.”

  Tenya glowered at him. “They’ll all be dead drunk before the food arrives, and I’m not carting them off to bed.”

  “Leave them be,” Walst said, passing around jugs of wine. “They’ve been camped out in the barrens for weeks, in the snow and wind, and there’s been fighting too. They need some relaxation.”

  “I’m very happy to leave them be,” Mia said. “Shall we take our own food to the apartment?”

  “And drink,” Walst said. “Don’t forget the drink.”

  But it proved too difficult to extract Hurst from his many relatives, so they ate in the kitchen, Hurst surrounded by an increasingly raucous crowd, Mia and Dethin squeezed into a corner. The moon was rising before they were able to get Hurst to bed, where he instantly fell asleep. Mia joggled him as she climbed in beside him, but he was oblivious. She turned to Dethin.

  “Well, you can’t complain that he’s too far away, can you?”

  He chuckled, and, tossing his shirt to the floor, slipped into bed alongside her.

  ~~~

  Mia was thoughtful after her talk with Cristo. Before that, thinking about him had brought all the painful memories flooding back, so she had deliberately set him – and all the Trannatta – out of her mind. If she had thought at all about Tanist’s plans for them, she’d supposed they were getting exactly what they deserved. The Karningplain would be better without them.

  Now she was uneasy. The reality of the rebellion wasn’t quite as rosy she’d hoped. It was true that few people had died, so her fears of a terrible massacre had been unfounded. Nevertheless, there were rifts that would never heal – with her own father, for instance. She had shed many tears over that. She didn’t regret her choice or doubt the rightness of it, but it had made an enemy of him. That was like a spear in her heart, a wound that would never completely heal.

  And if some of her own people were now enemies, some of her enemies turned out to be less villainous than she’d thought. Even Trannatta were people, too, with their own feelings and conflicts, struggling to do the best they could in difficult circumstances. Not all of them were evil. There was good and bad everywhere. The war had been won; their society had had a rotten heart, and the putrid, infected flesh had needed to be incised from the body of the Karningplain. Now history would judge them by how they managed the peace, whether they kept that body in good order or allowed it to fester again.

  The following day, Mia waved Tanist over when she spotted him at the morning meal. He beamed at Mia, grinned at Hurst’s bleary-eyed state, and then cast a calculating eye on Dethin. He filled his plate with cold meat and fruit, stepped over a couple of forms fast asleep on the floor then came and sat opposite the three of them.

  “What’s on your mind, Mia?”

  “The Trannatta. Are you determined to send them all away to the north coast?”

  “Well, apart from a few helpful ones, yes. Now don’t get all soft-hearted on me, Mia, by the Gods. This is war, you know. There’s no room for sentiment.”

  “I know. But we went to war because they sent us into exile. Now we’re doing exactly the same to them.”

  “That was only part of it. The fear, the torture, the unspeakable things they did to us – to you, Mia. They killed your child and took away any chance of having another.”

  Tears prickled, but she blinked them away. “And if you send them back to their people, those things will be done to them.”

  “Good. Mia, you were not so squeamish over Dondro.”

  She looked down, smoothing her tunic. “I know. I was so angry, then. Besides, there were few options. He couldn’t be released, and we could hardly keep him locked up for ever, not out there, in the middle of a war. He had to be executed, I can see that. But I didn’t like the manner of his death. I understood the desire for revenge, but it’s not civilised, Tanist. Is that how you want to begin the new era, by adopting the methods of the old regime? Can you really be happy sending thousands of people away to be tortured? Meanwhile, you’re leaving all the non-Trannatta Slaves in place, even though many of them were complicit in these crimes, and you’ve opened the borders to every murderer and rapist and thief in the Karningplain.”

  Tanist shifted in his chair, watching her. Then he tossed his knife down, and leaned back, folding his arms. “And what would you have me do? Show mercy to the people who kept us in subjection, while refusing it to our own people - our own people – who may or may not have committed crimes in the past? May I remind you, these Trannatta are not Karningers at all. Their craft town here and their lair under the Great Temple are outposts of their empire on the north coast. They get their orders from there, they come and go as they please, they don’t belong here.” He glared at her, then added, “Anyway, it’s not thousands. A few hundred, maybe. A thousand at most. Not much more, anyway. Gods, Mia, what am I supposed to do with them anyway if they stay?”

  “What they already do. Run the sky ships. Make clocks and silver jewelry and locks. Drain the swamps. Research, like Cristo.”

  Tanist frowned. “You’ll never convince me they’re all law-abiding honourable folk.”

  Mia smiled at him, patting his hand. “Of course not, no more than Karningers. But if you give them the opportunity, you might find plenty that are. Let them choose.”

  “So they smile and say, yes, of course we’ll behave and the next thing is we have a revolt on our hands.”

  Dethin leaned forward. “They don’t fight. And we have the swords, remember?”

  “Make them swear an oath,” Hurst put in. “Like we did when we became Skirmishers, swearing to defend the Karningplain. Although – we swore on the Book of the Hours.”

  “It’s still the official religion,” Mia said. “But that won’t work for Trannatta. You’d have to get them to swear on something else – their chaylan, maybe. The silver necklace thing.”

  Tanist raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. So we let the Trannatta stay if they swear an oath? You think that would work?”

  Mia nodded. “Why not? But not just the Trannatta. It should be the same for all of us – every Karningholder, every Slave, every merchant and farmer and brewer. We should all be required to swear loyalty to the new Council.”

  A broad grin broke on Tanist’s face. “I like that idea. I am the face of the new Council, so everyone has to swear allegiance to me. I’ll put it to the other Councillors.”

  58: Karninghold (Hurst)

  The next morning Hurst woke to find Mia gone, and only Dethin in the room; the first time such a thing had ever happened. Dethin was rummaging in his box, sorting out plainer clothes.

  “Is Mia up already?”
Hurst said.

  “Some time ago,” he answered without looking up.

  “How about you? You all right?”

  Dethin’s head lifted sharply. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “No second thoughts? Not torn, even a little bit?”

  “About what?”

  “Going to find your family. We can wait, you know. There’s no rush to leave here, and there’s a storm of paperwork to be done before Mia can go home anyway.”

  “Oh, that.” Dethin sat back on his heels, then turned round to face him fully. “Look, even as a boy, I never had much in common with my family. They would spend whole days huddled indoors with their books, and all I ever wanted was to be out in the air with a sword in my hand. Well, I got more than I bargained for in that way, but all those years as a barbarian haven’t made me any better suited to their way of life. You are my family now, you and Mia. You called me brother, Hurst – you can’t imagine how much that means to me.”

  His eyes blazed with fire, and Hurst had to look away for a moment before answering. “Good, because that’s how I see it, too.” Then, after a hesitation, “Look, I wasn’t sure about you at first, for obvious reasons, but… well, you’ve looked after Mia.”

  Dethin nodded. “I always did, although I appreciate it might not have looked that way. When I first saw her at Third Section – I couldn’t leave her with Bulraney, I just couldn’t. It was unthinkable. But then, having rescued her from that – that animal, I had to do exactly what I’d tried to protect her from. I had no choice. I felt I had no choice.”

  “We’ve all had to do unthinkable things, these last few weeks,” Hurst said gently. He’d never heard Dethin speak so openly, with such feeling.

  “I know. But I hated it.” Hurst raised an eyebrow, and Dethin laughed. “All right, I’m only human. Sex with Mia is always good.”

  “And you love her.”

  “Of course. Who could not love her?”

  “Jonnor!” Hurst said in a heartbeat, and they both laughed. He felt again the warmth of comradeship he should have felt with Jonnor but never had. He slapped Dethin genially on the shoulder. “And she loves you, brother.”