Before dawn, Relgan roused the camp. The early morning cold made for fewer insects, but not a complete absence, Tiepool noted as he hurried into his uniform.
Outside Relgan waited for everyone to gather. The night watch, tired on their feet, stood in the center of the camp. Even the cleaners and other crew had been hustled into place to await Relgan’s words.
A bell, muffled by the fog, called everyone to a reluctant silence.
Relgan spat out his good-luck plant and spoke so the farthest troops could hear. “One last chance to catch the rebels, and this time every one of us is going. We will leave our camp vacant, leave not a soul behind, and see if doing so leads us to the enemies who have plagued our sides for far too long. Anyone trying to stay behind, whether an esteemed official in the army or a lowly worker, will be instantly shot. Gather in your muster points, if you have one. All others, to me.”
Tiepool joined the muster-less group, made up mostly of the local workers and non-fighting staff from the highlands. “You will take up the rear, with one unit still behind you for protection.” And to make sure no one tried to slip away. He didn’t say it, but the implication was clear. He wasn’t going to let a single person get away to carry a letter—or plant a seed spell. But what could he do to stop the insects from spreading the news?
There weren’t enough boats for everyone, but they crowded in anyway, filling the little decks and bumping elbows with the rowers. They plodded through the swamp, no semblance of stealth but with the inevitability of a typhoon. Strands of the army spread out to either side, sweeping any fleeing rebels into the main force so they couldn’t get away. At least in theory.
Tiepool heard no sounds of fights with surprised people. By the time they came to their destination, the army had dissolved into a much thinner affair, spread across a huge section of swamp. So Tiepool was near the front when they arrived at a large village. The sun ate away the mists to reveal dozens of stilt houses, perhaps as many as a hundred.
The only sound came from the mosquitoes buzzing to their ears.
Tiepool stepped onto one platform to study the building. Solid, no sign of decay, and yet great vines and leaves covered every face of the buildings.
Plant magic. It had to be, for surely those buildings weren't old enough or abandoned long enough to sport such overgrowth. The soldiers still poured in. Not for them to worry about plants and possibilities. But Tiepool already knew they'd find no enemy soldiers, no weapons secreted away. The most they might hope for would be some evidence of the rebels’ plans, a map or tally of their forces. And even that was unlikely.
But what did it matter to Tiepool, either, if it was plant magic? He took one of the massive leaves in his hand, ran a finger of the veins of the leaf. For a moment he fancied the lines resembled a map. Where would the leaf take him, if he followed such paths? Imaginary highlands and fanciful swamps.
Relgan cursed his way up and down the stilted walkways, kicked at the walls, and ordered everyone back to the boats.
Flies buzzed in swarms, touching the water and zipping off again. Telling some distant gathering of rebels where they went and how? He imagined some solitary magician carefully watching the motion of the insects, wearing filthy clothes that attracted them, surrounded by piles of refuse so there were always enough flies nearby. And overcoming his aversion to people whenever the rebels needed a warning. There was nothing the army could hope to do against that kind of power.
Back in the boat, Tiepool realized he was still holding the leaf. He laid it carefully in his lap and stared across the swamp, watching the insects for any clue to how their messages were sent.
*
“Report.”
Tiepool bowed to Relgan and laid a paper on his desk. “A letter to the general.” His right as a special agent to report directly up the line, but now that he stood before Relgan with the letter on his desk, it felt presumptuous to have written it without the commander’s input.
Relgan glanced at it but too briefly to read much. “And?”
“Suggesting we alter our approach. The locals are not powerful, no real danger to us, no impediment to using the river for trade, which was our true reason for being here anyway. But trying to control them more directly will only leave us weakened.’
“Is that all it says? I saw you wrote of magic.”
So he had read more of the letter than it appeared. Tiepool picked it up and read directly from a section near the end. “In my interrogations, I have found evidence of the clandestine use of plant magic among the people. It is likely that they have uncovered a way to observe and react to our movements through the use of local insects. This magic poses no threat to anyone beyond the river valley—the effects appear localized or it would have spread beyond the swamp long ago—but it makes our continued presence here purposeless.”
Relgan picked up a feather pen and sighted along its length, as if it were an arrow he was checking for a straight flight. “Purposeless.” His tone was flat, and there was a false sense of control to how he held the pen. Tiepool had the sense that any flaw he saw might send him into a feather-crushing rage. “I dislike that word given to my efforts.”
“It is no fault of yours, sir. That is the point of the letter. Your tireless work has shown the purposelessness of remaining.” Tiepool lay the letter back on Relgan’s desk.
Relgan tossed the pen onto the letter, leaving a blot of ink across several lines. “I will consider your letter and our continued presence here. And yours.”
Tiepool bobbed his acknowledgment and stepped out into the camp. Was it a threat? He hadn’t meant the letter as an attack, but Relgan’s tone left him a sense of dread that he might soon find himself down under the swamp and officially missing. He wandered the camp’s island, ending up beside the little garden bursting with plants. The insects here were no different from any other part of the camp or any other part of the swamp. Mindless and ever-present, how did the locals turn them into such a powerful force?
He didn’t doubt his assessment of the mission here. No matter what Relgan thought or wished, the raids and attempts at spying were clearly purposeless—at best. At worst, they might well backfire, stir up even greater resentment. But how could he make Relgan see it?
An insect attack would do it, if it were clearly coordinated somehow. But no, that might only inspire the generals back home to increase the force down here, hunt down the people controlling the mosquitoes, try to adapt the magic to their own insects.
Not to mention Tiepool had no way to provoke such a thing.
He watched the pattern of insects, tried to read messages in the way they flew in spiraling, seeming chaos.
Hardly any time seemed to have passed when Relgan summoned him to the command tent. A private audience, with two silent but burly guards standing beside Relgan, no doubt ready to arrest Tiepool if it came to that. The interrogator become the interrogated. Which meant it would take his skills in reading people to turn this back to his advantage.
Relgan began by studying him in silence for long enough to make most people uncomfortable. A very simple interrogation trick that had little effect on Tiepool. He waited Relgan out, at perfect ease.
“Who is your patron?” Finally the first question, though not what Tiepool had expected.
“Patron? I have none. I rose through the ranks on my own.”
“Mentors, then? Wealthy relatives who sponsored you?”
Ah, now the questions made sense. Relgan was looking for some enemy or rival who might have sent Tiepool with the purpose of undermining Relgan. Tiepool crafted his answers to defuse any such fears.
“No wealthy relatives. At each level I was mentored and sponsored by others within my divisions or units.” He listed names, speaking truthfully but picking names he hoped would be innocent in Relgan’s mind.
“And the one who sent you here?”
“The general himself. And his only instructions were to assist you in uncovering the locals’ secrets. Nothing more.”
>
Relgan sat back, a hand to his chin. The answer was already in his eyes. He would have more questions, but Tiepool knew he’d deflected Relgan’s primary concerns. Now was the part of the interrogation for saving Relgan’s ego and directing his concerns elsewhere. Tiepool committed himself to the remaining questions with little thought.
Within an hour the word went out, and the army packed up the camp. Relgan had gathered his command corps around him while the grunts tore down the tents, the good-luck leaves they chewed speeding up their work.
“Convey to your troops that this is no retreat. We have gleaned the information we needed and ensured the safety of our home and our control of the river route for trade and military purposes. That is all they need to know. No need to turn it into a speech, either, but the fabric of your conversation here and there today and the next few days.”
As the boats left with impressive speed, Tiepool lingered. The locals left, the non-soldier staff as well. But not the insects. Their buzz permeated the island, filled in the void left by the departing soldiers.
Packing up his own minimal gear to make room on the boat for others, Tiepool found the leaf he’d taken from the raid. He tossed it into the water. The boat wasn’t yet ready to leave, so he wandered the island one last time.
The garden still grew as if someone would come and eat its riches every day, though surely the gardener had left. Tiepool entered the garden. The plants blocked the sound of insects, the noises of the camp coming apart. Tiepool made his way through, eating a sweet flower here and a juicy pepper there, its spice filling his mouth and trickling down to warm his throat. Near the rear of the garden he found a bush bursting with the clusters of leaflets the soldiers called good-luck plants.
Tiepool plucked one, but then he paused. He pushed aside more of the little clusters to reveal the much larger leaves underneath, leaves that looked familiar. Hands trembling, he parted the leaves to peer at the thick bark that gave the bush a furry appearance.
An empty sickness grew in his stomach.
He ran back to his boat, remembering the leaves that had covered at least two villages, the thick, map-like bark of another. The warm hearths even in houses overgrown with what looked like years of growth.
Back at the boat, the stagnant water had kept the leaf from floating away, so he pulled it out, ran with it back to the garden as other images came. The good-luck plants that everyone chewed. Even now, the slightly bitter flavor filled his mouth. The flowers woven into Reglan’s beard. The gardener, a solitary man who had befriended this stranger years ago. And hooked him on the bitter plants.
The leaf was a match, not that he’d had any doubt by then. The leaf in his hand had a stillness, a dead sense though the green had yet to fade and grow brittle. The lines on the living leaves, though, were moving. They formed a perfect map of the movement of Relgan’s army as it decamped. Dots like insect spoilage came together into clear lines that headed straight off the leaf edge. The map edge.
And the bark? Tiepool had to pluck some of the leaves of other growth to see, but there too the deep-scoured lines of the bark moved as the bush appeared to ooze out an entire new skin, a map that was surely replicated on trees throughout the swamp.
Tiepool sank down.
He’d been wrong. The insects were nothing, an idea suggested by the gardener himself as misdirection. The clues had been there.
And as Relgan and his men chewed their plants, they sent their routes straight to this garden. And somehow from here to the target villages, where the trees themselves burst forth in warning.
Wrong to think he understood. Right in his suggestion to leave. Right through faulty reasoning, but wisdom sometimes came through misunderstandings. Small reassurance. He’d built his reputation on being able to read—not just people but situations, the hidden clues that others missed. How could he have missed this?
And yet, did it matter?
Tiepool threw the cluster of freshly plucked good-luck leaflets to the rich soil and walked away, bowing briefly to the missing gardener. No need to change his letter or tell Relgan a thing. The army could leave, and the plants of the Cranue River Valley could grow as they would, to the spells of at least one remaining magus, who surely mapped their departure from the valley even now, from some new and hidden garden.
Tiepool’s boat was ready when he returned. He stood at the edge, his bundle of drying good-luck plants in his hands. He began to throw the plants into the cursed water, but then pulled back, mid-throw. Tucking the bundle into his coat pocket, he stepped inside and bid the swamp farewell without saying a word.
* * *
Daniel Ausema
A writer, runner, reader, parent, and teacher, Daniel Ausema has had stories and poems in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, and many other places. His steampunk-fantasy trilogy Spire City is also available. He lives in Colorado, at the foot of the Rockies.
FLOW OF THE ROAD
Jason LaPier
Taylor rolled out of the bunk, climbed down the narrow ladder, and squeezed into the right-side seat of the truck’s cabin.
“My shift?” he asked with a yawn. He watched the controls on his side, expecting them to light up at any moment.
“Ain’t your shift yet,” Hammond said. “I got you up early so’s I can educate your green ass.”
“I already know how to drive,” he said, knowing that wasn’t what the other man meant.
Hammond’s eyes turned at him. They were the color of bone, with large brown centers and thin red branches of blood vessels at their corners. Those eyes didn’t seem to belong to the deep black face, and Taylor always got the sensation that they were operating of their own free will, especially when they turned in their sockets while the rest of Hammond’s face remained a wax statue.
“Captain,” Taylor said, as if he were finishing his sentence. Always address the captain as Captain. One of the Rules.
Hammond looked back at the road and smiled. “Maybe my new assistant isn’t as dog-shit dumb as he looks.”
When the two drivers met fifteen days ago, Hammond had determined that given Taylor’s skin color, he likely had excrement for brains. Taylor immediately saw the insult for what it was: an assertion of authority using the crudest methods possible. His skin, like most in his village, was an earthy brown. He’d seen plenty of different pigmentation come through town via the highway, both light and dark, but he’d never seen skin as dark as Hammond’s.
The cabin of a freight truck was a small space for the purpose of two people getting to know each other. Taylor turned the roller handle in the door to crack his window open. Hammond already had his side open and a cross breeze blew through the cabin, causing them both to reflexively inhale the salty air of the ocean.
“Thinks he’s so smart, too,” Hammond said, as if to himself. “That’s the worst part about it. That’s what’ll get us killed. The boy who thinks he’s smart and he ain’t. Boy!” he said, addressing Taylor. “What ocean is that breeze comin’ off of?”
A trick question? Another game of authority: Hammond would often ask questions he knew Taylor would answer incorrectly. Taylor frowned and stepped into the trap. “There’s only one ocean.”
“Captain!” Hammond slapped the wheel with the flat of his long palm. “There’s only one ocean, Captain. And no there ain’t, dog-shit-for-brains. There’s two. One there, and one there.” He pointed to the left side and then to the right.
“I think it’s still one ocean,” Taylor said. “Captain.”
“Lord save me, I picked up a moron. Boy can’t even see that there are two oceans separated by one road when his wheels are driving down it.” Taylor kept his mouth shut for a few minutes and so did Hammond. He thought about asking his captain if he wanted anything to eat—another one of the Rules was that whichever driver wasn’t driving prepared meals for the other one—but he figured if Hammond wanted food, he could ask for it.
The road was six lanes in this stretch and the traffic
was light, which meant they could see a few trucks in each lane, but there was no bunching. Other vehicles besides haulers were not unheard of on the highway, but Taylor hadn’t seen any in the past two weeks. The ocean glittered where the mid-morning sun hung just above it, about forty-five degrees to the right of the center of the road.
He reached into the small pack he kept stashed on his side of the cabin and retrieved his quadrant astrolabe and notebook. He felt Hammond’s disdainful eyes on him as he took measurements of the position of the sun. He ignored the other man and recorded the altitude of the sun at forty-three degrees and twelve minutes. Using the triangular tip of the vehicle’s hood as his only consistent mark along the horizon, he recorded the sun’s azimuth relative to the truck. Finally, he noted the time.
He tried not to look at Hammond as he carefully re-packed his astrolabe and notebook. To avoid the impending questioning, Taylor focused his eyes straight ahead. He’d watched this road his whole life, imagining what it would be like to be on it. His daydreaming had not included the sensation of driving through a tight, unending tunnel, one that despite the open air and sunshine closed in around the edges of his vision. Nor did his daydreams include the glare of the ocean’s thousand watery eyes, this lurking colossus that waited to burn and consume anything that got within licking distance of its waves.
Taylor figured if he was going to get his so-called education, he’d better restart the conversation. “So what is the name of the ocean that the breeze is blowing across, Captain?”
“Long,” Hammond said quietly. “My side is the Long Ocean. Your side is the Rot Ocean. Captain always sits Long. Assistant always sits Rot.”
“Where did those names come from, Captain?” Where Taylor came from there were many names for the waters that surrounded the land in all directions, but he’d never heard Rot or Long.
“They didn’t come from nowhere, that’s what they are,” Hammond said. He gestured, first to his left and then to his right. “Long. Rot.”
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