The Wave Speaker: Prelude to the Powers of Amur

by J. S. Bangs

  “Why do you say they have nothing to do with us? She helped us escape the storm.”

  “She also called up the storm in order to get away from the Red Men. So she’s already cost me most of my cargo and the mast of the dhow.”

  “Don’t you care about her mission? Those books are worth as much as our tin.”

  “You want me to take her books and sell them?”

  Ashturma shook his head vigorously. “Think of the knowledge contained in those books. For hundreds of years the thikratta have studied the ways of the Powers. Would you throw that away?”

  Patara rolled to his side and pushed himself up on an elbow. “I’m not throwing anything away on purpose. You’ll notice that I haven’t hurt the woman, or harmed her books, or done anything else that would disrupt her quest. But I’m not going to break my back helping her along. Her business is not mine.”

  Ashturma’s face was silhouetted in purple from the last of the daylight seeping through the window. He looked like his mother in this light. Patara felt a throb of homesickness. How many months since he had been home?

  “Now you tell me,” Patara said. “Why are you so obsessed with the thikratta woman?”

  “She is… different.”

  Patara laughed. “She’s different all right. But we’ve sailed past the thikratta colony in Davrakhanda dozens of times. You never said a thing about it.”

  “I didn’t know,” Ashturma said.

  “Didn’t know what? Everyone knows the story of Khaldi. Did you ever go and leave her offerings?”

  “I’m not talking about leaving a shell at the cliff shrine,” Ashturma said with annoyance. “I mean someone real. Someone living Khaldi’s teachings and knowing her power.”

  “Someone who can walk on the water and calm storms with a word.”

  “Yes, that. Why… if the thikratta can do that, why don’t people know about it? Why don’t you see them on the waves of the harbor? Why don’t they go out to save ships on the sea?”

  “You’d have to ask her. I think she’d say it’s because the thikratta aren’t trying to earn fame or do good deeds. They’re trying to become like the Powers.”

  Ashturma was quiet for a bit. “I would like that,” he said after a moment.

  It was what Patara had been afraid of since the moment that the woman had first uttered the word thikratta. He tried to control the bubbling of anger and fear in his veins. Calmly he said, “I need you to inherit my ship and my trade. Not to renounce the world and join the hermits.”

  “I know,” Ashturma said. “I’ve been told so many times.”

  “Your mother needs you, too. And your sisters.”

  “Jasthi and Janani are already married.”

  “Even married sisters benefit from a successful brother. And little Ugali?”

  Ashturma murmured, “Let me choose a route of my own.”

  “A route of your own? You have sailed across the Bounded Sea. You have visited Kalignas, seen the snow on the mountains and smelled the sulfur of the springs, carried tin away from a land most people in Amur have never seen. You escaped from pirates. What more do you want?”

  “Those were your adventures.”

  “When you’re captain of the dhow you can sail to Kalignas by yourself and they’ll be yours.”

  Ashturma rolled abruptly onto his side, turning his back to Patara. “Fine.”

  “And if that isn’t enough adventure for you,” Patara barked, “then you can carry tin on your back to Bhurnas. That’s something I’ve never done before.”

  Ashturma didn’t answer. Patara rolled onto his back and punched the air. He had lost his temper there at the end, and now the boy was bruised. But, he told himself, Ashturma was too fragile. He needed to be bruised now and then.

  After four days, Patara and the men were ready to give up and sell their tin to the first person who would take it off their backs. But the back country between Dasnaya and Bhurnas was nothing but mud-brick homes and palm leaves, fields of corn, and dry rice paddies. Flocks of sheep nibbled the sides of rocky hills, and monkeys hooted at them when their path wound through the woods. None of them would buy tin. There was nothing to do except to carry on.

  They reached Bhurnas at noon on the eighth day: buildings strung along a narrow hill, walls of blue-tinted granite streaked with chalky lime. On the far side of the hill waited a shallow harbor filled with fishing canoes and trade dhows. After passing beneath Jakhur’s moon on the gate Patara and the men found a wide alley where they dropped the baskets. The men waited while Patara looked for a tin buyer.

  Patara found a man called Gasama in a workshop reeking of burning charcoal and melted beeswax. At Patara’s request, a tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed beard emerged from a back room, rinsed his hands in a bowl of water, and gave Patara a suspicious glare.

  “You took me away from my work,” the man said. “I hope you have a good reason.”

  “Baktur smile on you,” Patara said with an obsequious grin. “I understand that your workshop forges with raw metal, and you have need of copper and tin.”

  “We have our regular suppliers of copper and tin,” Gasama said. “We don’t need any more.”

  “But surely, dear sir, you could be convinced to purchase a small amount of tin at a tremendous discount, in order to keep your fires stoked and your pockets full.”

  Gasama crossed his arms. “What happened? You stole something from one of the tin sellers?”

  “On the contrary, sir. I am a tin seller looking for new business. My ship has a hold full of tin from Kalignas, and I am looking to see if the enterprising men of Bhurnas are interested in buying a sample.”

  “Your ship is in the port?”

  “No, no, sir. For fear of the other tin sellers, who might be jealous, I have come to shore in a village some ways away. I brought a few baskets overland as a sample.”

  Gasama narrowed his eyes, and his gaze wandered over Patara’s unwashed appearance and travel-worn clothes. “More likely you’re a bandit. You don’t look like a tin trader to me, and your story rings false.”

  Because the story was false, but Patara wasn’t about to let the man know how desperate his bargaining position was. He straightened his back, looked Gasama in the eye, and spoke sharply. “You’ll forgive my appearance. My name is Amabhu Patara of Davrakhanda, and I normally do business with the merchants of that great city, not with the men of Bhurnas. In Davrakhanda, the bronze workers are keen to judge a man by the weight of his metal, not the cut of his clothes or his skill as a storyteller. Now, if you’re not ready to consider a new partner in trade, perhaps I should take my cargo back to Davrakhanda where it’s welcome.”

  Gasama sniffed and folded his arms. “How much do you have?”

  “About four hundred pounds,” Patara said. They hadn’t been able to weigh it properly in Dasnaya, but it was a guess.

  “We’ll check that with my scale.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine otherwise. We have it here in the city, if you’d like me to bring it to you.”

  “I’ll give you a half-talent per hundred pounds.”

  Patara affected an expression of shock. “A half-talent! Sir, in Davrakhanda I would take a talent and a quarter on a hundred pounds.”

  “You said you would offer me a deal.”

  “But I don’t offer to turn myself into a pauper. Three-quarters of a talent per hundred pounds.”

  Gasama tossed his head back and forth. “If you’ve got four hundred pounds, I’ll give you three talents for the lot.”

  Three talents would be enough to cover Patara’s needs, if he actually had four hundred pounds. It would have to come out on the scale. “Well enough, sir. Baktur’s blessing. I’ll have my men bring the tin. We’ll return in about an hour.”

  “Baktur’s blessing,” Gasama said with a quick bow.

  Patara’s men heaved the heavy baskets of tin to their shoulders with a hint of pleasure now that the grueling trek was almost over. At Gasama’s workshop they we
ighed it and, as feared, they were short of the promised weight. Gasama examined the ingots closely, checked that their stamps were the official stamps of the tin smelters in Kalignas, and insisted on chiseling one ingot open to ensure that there was no lead inside. Once he was satisfied haggling re-commenced as to the final price.

  They only got two and a half talents for the load. Less that Patara had hoped—much less. But it would buy sailcloth and get them food to sail to Davrakhanda.

  They found a large, clean guesthouse in the city, bigger than the flea-ridden hostels that sailors would normally visit. Patara told the house-master to serve the men whatever they wanted, and he left them draining the house’s stores of rice beer.

  The pauper’s hostel was near the harbor, a crumbling clay-plastered building with Thikram’s spiral painted on its side. He and his men had depended on Thikram’s blessing enough for the past days; he wouldn’t rest well until he cleared his debt to the Powers. He left a sizeable gift with the dhorsha who ran the place, and thanked Thikram that they had gotten this far.

  Back at the guesthouse, he found the men just as he hoped to find them: sprawled around the common table, platters of half-eaten food spread out before them, drinking bowls of rice beer, and chatting raucously with the other guests. Ashturma was telling a story to two strangers huddled around him at the common table, Thikritu was engaged in a rapid game of sacchu with a knot of other gamblers, and Vaija was flirting with a courtesan far too expensive for him. Patara shouted “hey” as he slipped into the room, accepted the jovial responses of his men, and sat down next to Ashturma at the table. He filled a leaf of roti with spiced yellow rice.

  “… said that the storm would abate now that we’d rescued her,” Ashturma was saying. Patara clenched his jaw. “And not two minutes after we pulled her in, the wind breaks and the rain stops.”

  Curses and jeers met his story. Patara relaxed a little. Sailors’ tales. Let the boy tell his sailors’ tales. Couldn’t hurt them worse than the woman already had.

  “I believe him,” called out a slurred, thickly accented voice. “I heard about this woman.”

  A Kaleksha man staggered away from the wall, swaying slightly, his pale skin flushed red. His words were slurred over his accent, which turned his speech into mashed rice. “Heard about her,” he repeated. “Red Men looking for her.”

  “That’s enough, Medleb,” called out another Kaleksha voice. Patara glanced around the room and spotted them: three different Kaleksha, dispersed among the Amurans. The one who had spoken to Ashturma staggered forward and dropped to his knees next to Ashturma. Even kneeling, he was a head taller than the boy.

  “You heard about the Red Men?” he slurred. “They looking for thikratta witches like her.”

  “We’re protecting her,” Ashturma said. “We have to—”

  “You idiot,” the Kaleksha man said. “What’s the village you’re in?”

  “Don’t—” Patara said.

  But it was too late. Ashturma had already said, “Dasnaya.”

  “Dasnaya. I should just go to Dasnaya and grab her to get the thirty talents of bounty for myself.”

  Thirty talents. Patara’s head spun. Money to repay his creditors and repair his boat and…

  “No!” Ashturma said, standing to his feet and staring at the drunken Kaleksha furiously. “You wouldn’t.”

  “C’mon,” one of the other Kaleksha said, grabbing Medleb’s shoulder. Medleb pushed his comrade aside.

  “No,” Medleb said, turning towards Ashturma with a hostile glare. “That witchy woman drove us off with her storm—”

  “What?” Ashturma tried to say, but the man stumbled drunkenly along.

  “Gonna catch up with your ratty little tin boat and grab that woman. Gonna have a crack at her, then sell her to the Red Men for that fat bounty.”

  “Medleb!” the other Kaleksha shouted. He grabbed the drunken man by the hair and pulled him away. The man switched into the Kaleksha language and started howling and kicking. He shoved his partner away, then swung a red, meaty fist at Ashturma.

  Ashturma ducked. He kicked the man’s knee, and the Kaleksha staggered back, and then the brawl burst into chaos. Thikritu and Vaija rushed the Kaleksha, shoving and kicking at men twice their size, while the Kaleksha swung fists and kicked over the table. Patara scrambled out of the way.

  “Stop!” he shouted, to no avail. “Stop!”

  The Kaleksha grabbed Ashturma’s hair and clubbed his face with his other fist. Vaija leapt onto the big man’s back and clawed at his eyes. Most of the occupants of the room hid against the walls, except for a few who piled in.

  “Stop!” someone else shouted. The house-master. A thud of metal meeting wood, then a scream. The ruckus halted for a moment.

  The house’s guard stood with a bronze short sword drawn, a line of blood on its tip. One of the Kaleksha was bent over, holding a short gash on his shoulder with blood seeping between his fingers. The other two Kaleksha drew close around him and backed away from the guard with the sword.

  “All of you Kaleksha get out of here,” the house-master said. The men were already backing away in a tight knot, casting glances of concern at their scratched comrade, their fists ready to threaten anyone who approached. Shouts and swearing in Amuran and Kaleksha followed them out of the door.

  “C’mon, boys,” Patara said. “We’ll go, too.”

  “Don’t bother,” the house-master said. He gestured at the guard, who wiped the sword clean with a rag and sheathed it. “I saw what happened. The big one started it. My fault for letting them in here. You need any help, boy?”

  He gestured to Ashturma, who was bent over with his hand on his cheek. Ashturma straightened and showed the house-master a split lip and an eye that would be as purple as the Emperor’s cloak in the morning. The house-master grimaced.

  “I’ll get you some water for that. The rest of you sit down and clean up.”

  Everyone in the guesthouse was quiet. Thikritu and Vaija set the overturned table upright and began to sweep together the scattered rice. Ashturma turned to his father with a desperate expression.

  “We have to—”

  “No,” Patara said. “We don’t. Why did you talk to that man? You told him where we came ashore.”

  “We have to return quickly—”

  “We’ll return quickly, all right. After we’ve had a good night’s rest, bought the sail, and gotten supplies.”

  “But Idhaji is in danger!”

  “I think Idhaji can take care of herself. We’re in danger if we keep drawing the attention of everyone we meet with your fast tongue.”

  “You are in danger,” said a quiet, calm voice behind them. “Do you know who that was?”

  Patara turned to see a young man with gold rings on his fingers, wearing a clean white kurta embroidered with black moons. His mustache was neatly trimmed, and he smelled faintly of sandalwood and rose. He looked at Patara with the practiced indifference of someone used to speaking to inferiors.

  Patara was taken aback for a moment. “Ah, no, my lord, I don’t know who that was.”

  The man nodded towards a curtained alcove in the corner of the common room. “Come with me,” the man said.

  Patara followed him into the alcove. An oil lamp hung from a chain overhead and cushions covered the floor. The man drew the heavy curtain shut, plunging them into gloom. Patara crossed his legs and arranged himself atop a cushion.

  “Your boy,” the man said with a nod of his head, “said that you had been pursued by corsairs. Unfortunately, I think you just met some of them.”

  “Those men? The Kaleksha?”

  “The same ones,” the man said, giving Patara a polite nod. “They’re well known along this coast, sailing out of a haven hidden in the islands. I gather you don’t sail here often, or you would know this. Usually Kaleksha filth wouldn’t come into this guesthouse, but they were canvassing for work. The owner of this house lets them harass the clientele in this way.”


  He shot a glance of aspersion through the curtain. The house-master’s voice could be heard tending to Ashturma’s bruises.

  “Continue, my lord,” Patara said. “Surely you wouldn’t traffic with corsairs.”

  The man smiled gently. “I’ve had a few of my ships attacked by the Kaleksha. Since they’re known to frequent this place, I came here hoping to pay them to attack my rivals rather than me. But you seem to have provided them with a distraction.”

  “A distraction,” Patara said. Dread settled into his stomach.

  “I wouldn’t worry about beating them back to the village,” the young noble said. “They won’t go back that way. They’ll return to their haven, then sail out and catch you on the seas. Unless you have someone to help you.”

  “You, my lord?”

  He shook his head with a patronizing smile. “I’m merely warning you, out of gratitude for the fact that you’ve distracted them from my ships for a while. You should get to the Red Men. There’s a small detachment in the garrison here in Bhurnas.”

  “The Red Men,” Patara said reluctantly. “I would rather not…”

  “It’s up to you,” the man said. “But I wouldn’t risk my life and my boat for a thikratta woman. The Emperor will snuff them all out soon enough anyway.”

  Patara bowed his head. “Thank you, my lord. I appreciate the warning.”

  “And I appreciate you being a thorn in the side of the Kaleksha. Now do yourself a favor and talk to the Red Men.”

  Patara slipped outside the curtain and rejoined the other three. Ashturma sat leaning against the wall of the guesthouse with a vinegar-soaked rag pressed to his eye. Thikritu and Vaija crouched next to him and grumbled with concern. Patara sat down across from them.

  “What did the young lord want?” Thikritu asked.

  “He was warning us about the Kaleksha,” Patara said. He gave Ashturma a pensive glance, but Ashturma’s eyes were closed, and he noticed nothing. “Just a warning. That’s all.”

  Patara woke before Ashturma stirred, and long before he expected Thikritu and Vaija to recover from the drunkenness of the night before. With the pale blue dawn washing away the night mist, he rinsed his face in cold water and set out into the empty city streets.