Northern Storm ac-2

by Juliet E. McKenna

  He cleared his throat and nodded to the crippled diver. You are certainly blessed in your children, my friend’

  The importunate Isei was at Kheda’s shoulder as he turned to walk away. ‘Children are indeed a man’s greatest good fortune. And the domain’s.’

  That’s another of your concerns, is it? You and everyone else speculating around the evening cookfires. What would you have me say to my lady Itrac Chazen on that score?

  Kheda found his patience abruptly exhausted. ‘Thank you, Borha, this has all been most interesting. I shall take some refreshment now, until you have need of me to read the omens.’

  With his sudden about-face leaving them wrong-footed, he strode past the startled spokesmen. The islanders who had trailed around after their progress hurriedly got out of his way. With Dev at his shoulder, Kheda headed for the little blue pavilion and dropped on to the down-filled cushions, ignoring the girls.

  ‘Some privacy for my lord. No, leave that.’ Dev nodded at a girl carrying a ewer of juice. She put it on a small table wedged firmly into the sandy ground where Dev set the berale-wood box of pearls before shooing the patiently waiting maidens away, taking a tray of little cakes from one and a goblet of sard-beny juice from another.

  Kheda reached up to take the drink the barbarian offered him. ‘That should be “our lord”.’

  ‘Who expects an ignorant barbarian to get it right every time?’ Dev said, sardonic.

  ‘Too many lapses and they’ll expect me to beat it into you if necessary,’ warned Kheda, ‘and they may start wondering why I don’t. We can’t either of us afford that.’

  ‘You’ve got them wondering about more than your unusual body slave.’ Dev glanced idly around at the village spokesmen who were engaging in desultory conversations with various islanders. ‘I think they’re trying to guess if you’ll turn out to be some vicious tyrant like Ulla Safar or the enlightened ruler they were so used to hearing Daish traders boast of.’

  ‘They should be used to uncertainty. Chazen Saril’s moods were apt to change as quick as a weather vane in the rainy season.’ Kheda took one of the little sweetmeats Dev was offering and bit into it. Taken unawares by the glutinous sweetness of the filling, he grimaced before forcing himself to swallow it. ‘And as my dutiful body slave, can you please spread the word as tactfully as you can that I have nothing like Saril’s sweet tooth.’

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Dev, amused.

  ‘Yes.’ Kheda looked up, tone forthright. ‘You can find out just what history there might be between Borha and Isei. If there are any tensions between the two of them or their villages, I want to know every detail. Everyone’s all co-operation now, with the first excitement of a rich pearl harvest in view. That might last or it might not, once all the late nights and early mornings take their toll. And this cheerfulness will float away on the tide if sharks or sea serpents start taking divers on the reefs, or if too many of them find their eyesight fails this season.’

  Healer I may be, but there’s nothing I can do for eyes grown clouded, silvered as the pearls they’ve sought for so many years. Nor for those who find blurring in their vision means they can only see what they’re not actually looking at. I may be their augur but I’ve no explanation for that paradox. But the divers are always remarkably sanguine; they know some will pay that price for the oceans bounty. Everything has its price.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ Dev said confidently. ‘I can be your eyes and ears, just like a proper body slave.’

  ‘I don’t have a lot of choice, do I?’ retorted Kheda, waving away the sweetmeats and taking another drink to try to rid his mouth of the cloying taste.

  But you’re right. You are an accomplished spy and one who spent enough years sailing the length and breadth of the Archipelago’s domains to know all the ins and outs of masquerading as a body slave. Everything except the sword skills.

  But are you still spying for those mysterious barbarian powers that first sent you into Aldabreshin waters? And how will you seek to profit on your own account with whatever you learn, with your northern greed and utter lack of scruple? What will these people of Chazen think of me, if you ‘re caught out in some despicable connivance?

  What wouldn’t I give to have Telouet back as my body slave, strong sword arm and faithful friend besides? The only consolation for his loss is that he serves Sirket now. There’s no one I would rather have trusted my son to.

  Dev grinned as Kheda handed him the empty goblet. ‘I can tell you one thing none of you Archipelagans seem to know: you can do better than silk for stringing pearls. Horsehair, that’s what you want, white horsehair. That’s what all the gem traders on the mainland use. It’s the first thing they do when they get their hands on Aldabreshin pearls—resting them.’

  Taken aback despite himself, Kheda rallied. ‘Just how am I supposed to get such stuff when we’re as far from the unbroken lands as it’s possible to get? And every northern domain that’s been tempted to trade for horses from you barbarians has seen their investment sicken and die before the year’s out. No, I’ll settle for safer trades and more immediately useful ones, food most of all. Isei may be overbold but he’s not wrong to worry about a hungry end to the dry season.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not go hungry here or you’ll be insulting all these fine people.’ Dev searched through the sweetmeats with careful fingers. ‘I think that’s a plainer one. If you’re worried about them running short of food hereabouts, can’t they just eat the pearl oysters instead of fattening up maggots for the fish and the seabirds and raising a stink to curdle the clouds?’

  ‘Have you ever tried eating a pearl oyster, you ignorant barbarian?’ Kheda was surprised into laughing and nearly choked on the little cake. ‘I’d eat the coral gulls first and they taste disgusting.’ He paused to catch his breath before continuing, face serious. No, I don’t want anyone in the domain reduced to such straits; they’d give up on my rule for good if they were. Besides, it’s an ill omen to cook any kind of shellfish and find you’ve ruined a pearl with the heat of a fire. Haven’t you seen how thoroughly the divers cut up purple conch flesh, to make sure there’s nothing hidden in the folds?’

  ‘If you’re not hungry, can I eat something?’ Dev asked as he handed Kheda the refilled goblet. ‘I lost my breakfast, if you recall.’ He barely waited for Kheda’s nod of permission before cramming a couple of sticky morsels into his mouth, speaking through the food. ‘It doesn’t look as if you’ve much to worry about. If this year’s harvest is as good as everyone’s saying it will be, you’ll have enough pearls to buy each islander their own sack of sailer grain.’

  Kheda shook his head as he sipped sard-ben-y juice. ‘It’s a good start but it’s only pearls. You might only get a handful out of every thousand oysters. The shells in these reaches are too small and too thin to provide much nacre. That’s the foundation of Daish prosperity, the inner face of the oyster shells. That’s why they don’t have to trouble themselves salvaging every last dust pearl from the slurry in the vats.’

  ‘You should let me take a boat back to the northern lands and do some trading for you there.’ Dev looked out towards the ocean, face unreadable. ‘That little box they gave you just now would fetch a king’s ransom on its own.’

  ‘All the trading and bargaining done in Chazen’s name is my lady Itrac’s responsibility,’ Kheda said repressively. ‘I won’t encroach on her prerogatives nor yet insult her with such a proposal.’

  And I wouldn’t wager an empty oyster shell on my chances of ever seeing you again. You may be as much of a liability as you are an asset as a body slave but I want you where I can see you.

  ‘Your loss.’ Dev shrugged and sighed as he looked over towards the reefs. ‘Remind me, what are we doing now?’

  ‘We’re waiting until one of the fishermen Borha sent out comes back with something by which I can read the omens for the rest of the pearl harvest.’

  ‘How long’s that going to be?’ Dev looked askance at the warlord. />
  ‘Who knows?’ Kheda shrugged. Which is all part of the omen in itself

  And who else will be here to read the omens and cast their own interpretations around once the Yellow Serpent has carried me away?

  As he drank his juice, the warlord glanced idly around the crude huts, eyes alert for any man with the long, untrimmed hair and beard of a soothsayer. There was none to be seen, wherever he looked. Does that mean there are no seers here? Or are they just staying out of sight till I’m gone? Kheda tried to put such thoughts out of his mind and enjoy the shade beneath the pavilion. They had waited there long enough for Dev to discreetly eat most of the sweet cakes before a cry of anticipation went up along the waterline. A sturdy skiff was approaching the beach, the two men crewing it shouting and waving urgent hands. Chazen islanders abandoned their toils over baskets and tubs to splash into the shallows and help drag the craft on to drier, firmer ground. Pearl drillers and pickers alike stood up, their tasks forgotten as they strained to see what was being brought ashore. The spokesmen forgot their dignity as they hurried down to the shore with everyone else, Borha and Isei shoving their way to the fore.

  ‘There’s a favourable portent in itself, that they’ve found something so soon.’ Kheda got to his feet, feeling a welcome lightening of his mood.

  ‘Here you go again,’ Dev said under his breath, ‘getting up to your elbows in something’s innards. Have you any idea how the laundry maids complain when I take them a tunic with blood up to the armpits?’ Kheda laid a hand in the middle of the sarcastic barbarian’s mailed chest. ‘I’ve told you before: curb your tongue. For a man so keen to boast of his cleverness, you can be remarkably stupid.’ Not waiting for the barbarian to find a reply, he strode out from the shade of the little pavilion, the sunlight striking down hard on his unprotected head.

  Which is pretty stupid of you, oh wise and powerful warlord, and you can hardly min the moment for all these onlookers by going back for your helmet, you fool. You need to curb your temper or you’ll both end up dead, your blood spilled along with Dev’s. There are some things no domain’s people will forgive. ‘It’s a flail-tailed shark, my lord!’ The press of people around the pearl skiff parted to reveal Borha. ‘Have you seen many of them this harvest?’ Kheda looked around for some diver or boatmaster among the anxious, anticipatory faces clustering close.

  ‘This is the first sign of any shark, my lord.’ A thickset man spoke up, bare-chested in coarse cotton trousers faded to colourlessness. ‘And we’ve manned a ring of watch boats at first light every day, well before the divers take to the water.’

  ‘Then it’s a good omen when the very first shark to come sniffing around ends up on a spear.’ Kheda nodded his approval. ‘What else can we read into this? A flail-tail is a dangerous shark but nowhere near as deadly as a ragged-tooth. A ragged-tooth will eat a flail-tail, so the very fact that a flail-tail is in these waters should mean the bigger sharks are elsewhere.’

  ‘Very true, my lord,’ agreed the confident diver and the crowd’s smiles broadened perceptibly at this happy thought.

  Though it’s no meagre specimen, at least as long as I am tall and doubtless as heavy as any three men here.

  ‘Let’s see what else we can learn from this fish.’ Kheda stepped back to let the crowd press forward, eager hands grabbing at the harsh-skinned bluish-grey fins and tail. There didn’t seem to be any life left in the creature but he kept a prudent distance from the vicious maw all the same. The skiffs master and his helmsman lifted the shark’s head between them, using the broad-bladed spears that had slain it and which were still embedded deep in its gills and through its snout. The islanders wrestled the inert mass over the side of the boat and dumped it on the ground. Dark blood oozed from its mouth, staining the sand. ‘Show me its belly.’ Kheda held out a hand and Dev provided him with a heavy barbed spear acquired from someone. The skiffs crew rolled the unwieldy creature over to lie half on its back, half on its side, glaucous underside pallid in the sun, the long pennant of its tail trailing lifeless across the sand. Kheda lifted the spear high above his head with both hands and with a grunt of effort thrust it clean through the shark just below the vicious curve of its jaw, pinning the creature to the ground. There was a murmur of uncertainty from a few directions.

  Not what Chazen Saril used to do, then? Perhaps his father never told him of warlords who’d been surprised by a moribund shark and bitten even after they’d cut the beast’s head off. That’s not the kind of omen we want today.

  ‘A knife.’ Kheda reached behind him.

  ‘Here.’ Dev slapped a long, brutally serrated blade into his palm.

  ‘My lord?’ Isei was looking expectantly at him.

  Kheda took a deep breath and pinioned the fish’s tail firmly with one foot. He dug the point of the blade into the fish’s cloaca and ripped a jagged slit up its length, fighting against the tough, clinging skin, harsh as a carpenter’s rasp against his knuckles.

  Not too deep. Don’t pierce the intestines or mar the liver, blighting the interpretation before it’s even begun. Stars above, this is easier with a deer or a hog.

  Wiping sweat from his forehead, he persisted until he had laid the shark’s entrails bare for all to see. A powerful smell rose from the dead fish, not yet edged with the sickly stench of decay, though that wouldn’t take long in this strong sun.

  ‘The beast is certainly healthy, nothing ill-omened among its entrails, no marks, no deformities.’ Kheda waited to be quite sure that the shark was motionless, then stuck the knife into the sand by his foot. He reached both hands into the cavity to lift out the dark liver, searching for stains or blemishes. What’s the first thing I will see mirrored in its sheen? That’s always the crucial portent. As he sought to get a grip on the solid, slippery mass, something squirmed among the coiled lengths of the shark’s guts. Kheda abandoned all thoughts of securing the liver and snatched up the knife instead. ‘Has it eaten something alive?’ Dev peered into the beast with lively curiosity.

  ‘Or someone?’ quavered Borha. ‘It’s a flail-tail, not a ragged-tooth.’ Kheda took a firm grip on the salt-roughened handle of the knife.

  Which is fortunate because we’ve all heard the tales of ragged-toothed sharks cut open to reveal whole skeletons inside them or at very least fateful collections of skulls and bones. Flail-tails can only take an arm or a leg at worst and one of those could hardly be still fighting or kicking. Besides, the divers said there ‘d been no mishaps on the reefs.

  Dismissing his incoherent thoughts, Kheda used the point of the blade to push aside the pallid loops of the shark’s gut, less concerned with piercing them now than with revealing this mystery. He exposed a swollen sac, feebly contorted by whatever lay within in. ‘Whatever this is, it isn’t in the creature’s belly,’ he said, bemused. Setting his jaw, he seized one end of the sac where it was anchored within the fish and sliced it open with a deft stroke of the knife.

  A miniature shark twisted out of the wound, as long as a man’s arm and about as thick, perfect in every detail. Black eyes bright, its snapping white teeth missed Kheda’s hand by a hair’s breadth. A frisson ran through the mesmerised islanders.

  Teeth more than big enough to do damage. How would that have been for an omen?

  He skewered the wriggling infant through its flapping gills and hoisted it out of the dead shark’s belly on the knife blade. It was surprisingly heavy.

  ‘Has anyone ever seen such a thing?’ he enquired, letting a hint of amusement colour his query. Hearts shook all around, some faces awestruck, others apprehensive.

  ‘Then we certainly have a mighty portent to read.’ Kheda smiled and threw the baby shark down on the sand, sending the nearest islanders stumbling backwards into those pressing close behind them. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What has the liver to tell us?’ As he bent to tug at the uncooperative mass, using the knife to cut it free, he thought furiously. What might be read into such a thing? A shark with a live baby in its belly? What i
s that an omen for? Who is such a portent meant for?

  The dark, unwieldy mass of the adult shark’s liver came free with a suddenness that surprised him and Kheda felt Dev’s steadying hand in the small of his back. The ground was treacherous now, slick with the shark’s blood, and the stench was growing heady, red-eyed flies gathering to defy the islanders’ swatting hands.

  ‘My lord?’ It was the bare-chested diver, the confident one.

  Kheda saw the man’s face reflected in the last gloss on the rapidly drying surface of the shark’s liver and let the weighty organ fall back into the gutted hollow of the great fish with a soggy thud. He smiled at Borha, hovering anxiously on the other side of the shark. ‘We’ve seen all we need to, so I’ll wash now, if I may.’

  ‘Here, girl!’ The spokesman beckoned to the maidens who had been serving by the pavilion. One hurried forward cradling a broad silver bowl of scented water and, tense beside her, a younger girl clutched a sizeable sponge.

  ‘In the water with it,’ Dev prompted briskly, taking the bowl. ‘The sponge, girl, the sponge!’

  ‘I see most favourable omens in this shark’s death,’ Kheda announced as he squeezed water over his arms to wash the worst of the blood and slime off on to the sand. To his relief, besa oil’s astringency cut through the fishy stench hanging all around. ‘To add to all the other positive portents favouring this pearl harvest and this domain at present.’ He submerged one forearm in the bowl and scrubbed with the sponge.

  ‘This shark came to feed at dawn, as is their habit. But it came alone, so we need not fear a season of losses among the divers, not to the sea’s predators. That’s how I read the matter, anyway. Mind you, I believe it came to lay claim to the reefs and whatever prey it might find there. To give birth in a place is to tie your future to it.’ He looked around to see rapt agreement on every face. ‘It didn’t succeed, did it? Your watch boats spotted the creature and your fishermen speared it before it had a chance to flee or to hide. It had no chance to make its bid for a stake in these waters.’ He gestured to the dead infant shark before beginning to wash his other arm.