Stonewiser

by Dora Machado

  “I'm not your lease and you're not my conscience.”

  “But we are one by way of the blanket. And you, you promised me truth.”

  Aye, that she had, at death's door, at the foot of the quartering block, no less. For what little credit he gave her, she tried. Misery must have been evident on her face because Kael stopped scolding her and appraised her quietly.

  “What's in Nafa?”

  “A name.” Small as it was, she jumped at the chance to make up for her lie. “I can show you if you'd like.”

  “Later, for sure.” He stood up and began to check the ropes securing their sparse cargo. “We need to go. To Nafa.”

  “I need to go to Nafa. Not you.”

  “Ah.” He crossed his arms and tilted his head, an irritating pose that begged for a good boxing to his ears. “And how will you travel the Domain without me?”

  “I was going to hire a puller.” Did he expect her to acknowledge that she was woefully ignorant and unable to navigate the Barren Flats alone, useless, like a blind and lame mule trudging through the quicksand dunes? “I don't want to fight with you.”

  “Me? Fight? Naah. You're already doing that.”

  “Kael, this isn't your battle. You're needed in Ars.”

  “They'll have to do without us for a while.”

  “You can't come. I won't have it.”

  “You can't stop me.” He paused from checking the knots around the water barrel. “Is it that you don't trust me, Sariah?”

  She spied the wounded doubt in his gaze, the suspicion she didn't think him fit or able to assist her.

  “No, nay, no. It's not that, it's just that—” She had a vision of him on the quartering block. “I can't—I won't have you hurt. Not again.”

  “I see.” The dominance of his black eye softened, allowing the wondrous glimmer of his green eye to overtake his gaze. “It turns out that behind your stonewiser's icy shell, you are made of feathers and roses after all.” He stroked her face. “Spiny feathers and thorned roses, mind you, but soft and sweet-smelling nevertheless.”

  She found herself tucked against his breast. His heart's steady beat and his laughter's muffled sound filtered mutedly through his chest. There was peace in his embrace, and warmth. How could she be willing to part from him when all she wanted was him? But how could she allow him to face his own destruction on her account when she cared only for him?

  “I'll be fine, wiser, as long as you are with me.”

  She never knew what to say when he said things like that to her. “I swear to you. I won't let the executioners have Ars.”

  “I believe you.” He tilted her chin up and met her eyes. “You're the surest bet I know, that is, unless you get yourself killed along the way.”

  “I'm going to pay you back, Kael. All that coin. In the Guild, a loan is always paid with good profit.”

  His eyes swooped down on her like a pair of hunting hawks. “You haven't heard a word I said. You share my blankets, you share my coin.”

  “In the Guild—”

  “The Guild rot to dung. I don't give a damn how it was done at the Guild. It's different now. Understand?”

  Sariah was startled by his reaction. Truth was, despite her efforts, she didn't always understand him. She had trouble conceiving a world where a stonewiser's worth wasn't measured in coin, where her failures were not penalized with debts and punishment, where her person wasn't someone's means to profit or gratification, and where truth mattered. Meliahs knew she wanted to belong to the kinder world outside the Guild, but sometimes, the break between both worlds seemed too wide to breach.

  “I can't go back to Ars, to my pupils, to Mia. Can I?”

  “Under a banishment edict you can't live among the Domainers and they can't accept you among them without incurring heavy penalties.”

  She would miss Mia and the other children. She would miss living free and among kin, even though it was new and often strange for her. A terrible thought occurred to her. “Will you incur those fines if you stay with me?”

  “I pledged as I did so that those fines don't apply to me.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “But how can they know if I speak to someone or if someone offers me shelter?”

  “They'll know. The executioners mind their stakes and they'll mind you all the better. There are many in the Domain who don't want you to succeed. They would rather live under the shadow of the past than embrace the uncertainties of the future. They're not ready to exchange the old burdens for the new responsibilities. We'll have to be very careful.”

  Sariah thought of the peril ahead, of the scars he bore, of those days when she thought he was dying. Then she thought of the eels, mostly because her worst fears were stirring all at once.

  “It's done and over.” Kael kissed the top of her head. “The next time you see an eel, you'll be the one doing the eating.”

  Sometimes, she swore he could read her thoughts. His mouth was delicious on her lips, a bit too quick for her taste, but liable to linger if she tried.

  “You know this is going to be dangerous.”

  “Aye, love,” he mumbled against her mouth. “No way out but forward.”

  The need boiled in her blood, the pervasive little flame that whooshed to rage when he beheld her with those mismatched eyes of his. Sariah thought she would scream when he stopped mid-kiss and tilted his head to listen. She couldn't detect any sounds, but her belly went to knots when she saw his face's expression.

  He scrambled to his feet. “We'd best get going.”

  It dawned on Sariah that Kael had been uncharacteristically impatient this day, restless, driven and fast at everything he had done, including making love to her, something he usually enjoyed prolonging for his benefit and hers. Weave on hand, she followed him out of the shelter.

  “What is it?”

  “They're coming.” He clipped the pulling ropes to his harness, jumped in the knee-high water and starting pulling.

  Sariah shoved her legs in her weave, donned her harness and followed him to the water. He was already pulling hard and fast, a single-minded ox at the plow. She could barely keep up with him.

  “Who's coming?”

  “The mob.”

  “What do you mean, the mob?”

  “The executioners' followers. They have their rights.”

  “What rights?”

  “As long as they paid their watching fees, once today ends, the executioners' followers can kill you and collect for it.”

  “What?”

  “It's the law. It's complicated, but the gist of it is that the executioners' followers pay dues to run markets and peddle goods during the executions. When an execution is not completed and they don't get a full return on their dues, they have a right to augment their earnings by going after the condemned and selling the corpse back to the executioners.”

  “But you paid good coin for atonement!”

  “You misunderstand atonement. The executioners only agreed because it's so damn profitable for them. We paid for a way out of the nets this day and up to nine months’ time. It was the only way to spare your life. There are no assurances. On the contrary. Atonement was granted after the executioners' followers paid their dues. That turns them into a very greedy and driven mob. There's a good deal of coin at stake here.”

  Meliahs help her. Sariah turned to spy the uneven shadows breaking the horizon's straight line. Pockets of people and decks. They were coming. She matched Kael's wide strides as best she could, propelled by dread growing in direct proportion to the night's coming darkness.

  Six

  NAFA WAS A tidy, orderly settlement, a concentric array of decks surrounding a broken ridge where a sulfurous flow of water bubbled through a travertine basin to the surface. The water flowed scalding hot, Kael had explained, but once cooled, it was safe to drink if not pleasant to taste, granting the settlement a chance to thrive in the inhospitable flats. Sariah stared at the green and purple lights dancing above the settlement's c
enter like the giant flames of an enormous hearth.

  “The gas that surfaces with the water combined with the Barren Flats’ own vapors account for the play of lights,” Kael said.

  “Amazing.” Beauty abounded even in the most wretched of places.

  Kael halted and released the claws to anchor the deck. “This is close enough. We're far away from the main approaches to the settlement here. As long as we keep dark, no one should notice us. Who is it that I'm looking for?”

  “We're looking for a man called Leandro. I'll go with you.”

  “You can't. You're banished, remember? And we don't want to call attention to ourselves, on account of the mob.”

  The executioners had made an already difficult task even harder with their banishment edict. “But—”

  “Trust me. If there's such a man as Leandro, I'll find him. Stay here. Keep your eyes open. Don't allow anyone to approach the deck. Understand?”

  “I have my stones ready.”

  “Good.” Kael stole a quick kiss. “I'll be back soon.”

  The full blow of the banishment sentence struck Sariah as she watched Kael wade through the flats until he was lost in the penumbral shadows. It was early evening. The distant sound of voices and music teased her. Irked and maybe a little jealous of Kael's freedom, she went back in the shelter. She made sure the door and windows were well-shuttered and covered by the thick hangings before she lit the lamp. No sense in revealing her location to anyone who may be following them. And better to keep busy than to dwell on her misfortunes. She had work to do.

  With practiced ease, she mixed the iron salts with a measure of tanning and water. She added some gum, soot and a touch of cobalt to make her favorite blue ink. She dipped her brush, tried out the ink on a piece of used parchment, and found it was too thin and runny. She added a bit of oil and tried it again. Still too thin. Every hall in the Guild had its own ink recipe. Sariah turned to her own hall's secrets, the ingredient that made the Hall of Scribe's ink the rave of the keep—crumbled spider webs.

  She sprinkled a pinch of the dust, stirring quickly, until the ink turned to the right consistency. She had been delighted to discover that the rot had no bearing on the host of assorted, impressively sized bugs that made their home in the Domain, including spiders. And when it came to web-spinning spiders, Sariah hadn't yet met one she didn't like.

  This time, the ink worked perfectly. She sifted through her bag of stones and lined up some eleven stones of different colors, shapes, and sizes. She had acquired these stones through trades and purchases over the last year. They presented a mismatch of tales, some more revealing than others, some boring, some exacting, some vague, all different except for one thing—they contained tales of roamers’ explorations, very important because Sariah was hunting for a particular roamer's tale.

  Her reasoning was sound. Before the wall was broken, the only ones who could have come across the people who called themselves the pure were roamers. Traditionally, roamers were specially trained Domainers who crossed the wall into the Goodlands in defiance of the Third Covenant to gather information and negotiate the forbidden trade that kept the tribes alive despite the execration's forced isolation. Kael was such a roamer. With his help, months ago, she had begun to look for stones that collected the oral traditions of the Domainers’ favorite tales.

  Her search had only become more complicated as stones, like people, began to flow illicitly through the wall's many breaches, but despite the confusion, she had discovered an active market for tales. People from different settlements traded stones which they then took for translation to the few wisers who had survived the Shield's purges in the Domain. In fact, entire festivals were devoted to telling these stories, and tale collections derived from such festivals, while not common, could be found occasionally. She had spent much time and no small amount of coin in locating such festival stones.

  Sariah picked up the last of her neatly lined stones. She had wised it before, but she wanted to make sure. It was a smallish stone, a basic black basalt, opaque, unpolished, and rather lumpy, but it reached out to her mind with a nice call that tickled her spine and reminded her of Kael's breath on her neck. With a quiet rustle, the trance welcomed her into the stone tale.

  In the tale, a stout, grizzled woman stood before a fire that enlivened the deep furrows on her forehead. “I'm Imal, Primer for Catar's festival, and I hereby give witness to the tales told at the turn of the chill gathering to the best of my recollection.”

  Imal was a prolific storyteller. The task of reviewing all those tales had been daunting. Sariah had sat for days witnessing Imal's narratives, until she fashioned a new way of skimming through the tales, a skip-and-jump approach which would have drawn a steep fine at the keep but allowed her to go from one tale to the other quickly.

  She applied this new method now, as she scanned through hundreds of tales to find the right one. The adventures Imal told were colorful and wide spanning. She had trouble remembering places and names, but she still told a good story. It didn't take Sariah long to home in to the particular tale that interested her. It related a roamer's encounter with the clawed terrors, spawns of beasts that inhabited some distant place where no one dared to go for fear of their lives.

  Sariah didn't believe in monsters. Instead, she believed in fear. Any beast, especially if unknown, became a monster in the eyes of the frightened. Imal didn't grant a visual tale of the terrors because she had not seen them, but she did mention that on a roamer's account, these monsters guarded what she translated from the old tongue as the purity of the land.

  It was a wild tale, most likely based on hearsay, probably embellished by someone's vivid imagination, but Sariah's heart still raced when she heard it. It was the only allusion vaguely related to the pure she had been able to find, and she had searched hard and thoroughly. If she hadn't been able to confirm a source, she may have overlooked the tale as a coincidence. Instead, she deepened her recognizance.

  “Back.” She pressed beyond the tale. “Beyond Imal.”

  It took a great deal of effort and strength to press a tale. It wasn't something the Guild taught. On the contrary, it was a forbidden skill, one she had learned from Zemi, the intrusion who had led her through the seven twin stones’ wising. Her efforts were rewarded again. Sariah witnessed the storyteller who had first told the story to Imal, standing on the roof of a deck shelter, surrounded by an attentive audience and reciting the tale of the pure. A mother sheltered her child's ears when the man told about the monsters, but most people grinned and giggled when he spoke.

  “Back,” Sariah commanded. “Beyond Imal, beyond this storyteller.”

  A sharp whistle pierced her eardrums and screeched in her mind. Pain stabbed at the back of her eyes. No wonder the Guild prohibited the practice of tale pressing. A less experienced wiser could be fatally hurt. Not Sariah. She would sport a headache akin to a canundro hangover tomorrow, but she would be fine after that.

  The tale buckled and swayed, torn from its hinges, revealing a tenuous scene where the storyteller spoke to yet another man, a pale and ashen fellow whose face sported the rough stubble of a scruffy beard and strange, anxious eyes. Indeed, his tightly contracted pupils were encased in small black and gray irises, swimming aimlessly in a web of busted capillaries.

  “I tell you the truth,” Leandro said. “I saw it with my own eyes. Monsters, I say, to protect the pure.”

  “Come on, man, you want me to add a wild tale to my range?” the storyteller said. “My audience will know your tale for a fake. My reputation will be ruined.”

  “It's not fake, I tell you. Truth. All truth.”

  “Did you find them?” the other man asked. “Did you find the pure?”

  Leandro's lips drooped. “Them monsters. Wouldn't let me pass. All truth. All the others. Dead.”

  “It's a strange tale,” the storyteller said, “but I'll be fair, I may use it someday. A little horror always works up a crowd around the fire.” He dropped a ta
rnished coin in the man's dirty hands. “Don't bet the whole of that coin. Get something to eat and hang on to your wits if you can. Be well, my friend.” The already tenuous tale blurred. The link began to fade.

  “Back.” Sariah's mind pressed harder, against the pain, above the screech. “A name. A place.”

  There was a bump in the link, a halt on the flow and an unhealthy reverse that squeezed Sariah's stomach. The storyteller's face reappeared on the tale like the dead recalled from Meliahs’ yonder. His lips moved out of step with the sound. “Be well, my friend,” he stuttered. “Be well, my friend, Leandro of Nafa.”

  The stone dated to a recent festival. Examining the tale's contents and fashions, the exchange between Leandro and the storyteller seemed recent as well. Sariah exhaled slowly, allowing her mind to relax. She dipped her brush in the ink and set it to the parchment to record her wising. A very faint noise interrupted her concentration.

  A ripple's quiet murmur. A silent dribble of drops. A foot, rising slowly out of the water. A year ago, she would have thought nothing of a ripple and a drip in the vast expanse of dead water, but now her ears were attuned to the flats and trained to understand the dangers. The deck swayed imperceptibly. Whoever was coming for her was good. Sariah reached for her rotfish fang dirk, the one Kael had been training her to use. She tucked herself to one side of the shuttered door. A trickle of sweat ran the length of her spine. She waited.

  The sudden attack came not through the door, as Sariah expected, but from the side. A long weaved body crashed through the small window and landed in a crouch, facing her. Sariah remembered her basics. Survey your enemy. Find the strengths. Find the weaknesses.

  The trouble was the warrior before her seemed to be all strength and no weaknesses. He was a full head taller than she was. Muscles bulged on his upper arms and shoulders. A long lithe leg struck first, aiming at Sariah's dirk. Sariah blocked the kick, but found herself trapped in the corner between the assailant and the wall. A gleaming hatchet descended on her like the belch's rage. Sariah blocked the blow with her forearms. She feinted high but came up from beneath, seeking her opponent's underbelly. Her blade clashed against the hatchet instead.