“We are not inclined in that direction. Aside from a few minor magics of obedience and coercion.”
“So they are unlikely to have stumbled across the boy’s mythic significance on their own?”
The Bekyar frowns, as if wondering whether offense should be taken. “If it’s the Rostoun, they’ll be led by a cousin of mine, Tarood. A man of tenacious cruelty, and I say that admiringly. His usual preference is for low-quality merchandise. That way if you lose a few along the way, because of rough handling, it’s no matter for concern.”
“So if it was he who sought Mwonduk in particular, he was likely hired by someone else.”
Verkusht considers her words for a moment. “It’s possible, but there are many ifs and guesses at play. Surely you desire a first-hand investigation. And before that can occur, there are terms to be struck.”
We reach the Aspis counting house. Shedding his air of sudden gravity, the Bekyar bounds across its threshold.
∗ ∗ ∗
The glee is still in his step after he has made his pact with Thorold, the Aspis man. The two of us wend through the puddles of a muddy back lane. Numbers glitter in his eyes.
“I knew it,” he says. “I knew my luck would turn. Wait long enough and it always does. And I have waited, my friend, oh how I have waited.” He waggles his fingers, cracking each joint. “Yes, when I look back on it all, today will mark the turning point. The time when it all changed, and Verkusht began to get his due.”
I have already told him of my friends, the Ngali, every one of them slaughtered by the firefly plague. I remind him again. And of the many others killed so far.
His triangular features arrange themselves into a frown. He is annoyed at me for ruining his joy. “Xhasi, my friend, the jungle devours. Devouring is its reason for being, and its sole intent. It falls to us to pick its scraps. Along with the hyenas, the vultures, the lions, and the other scavengers.”
We head to the north side of town, where its oldest buildings lie. Or sink, to tell it more completely. The rebel traders who made Free Station were explorers, robbers, and gamblers, not builders. Their first storerooms and winehouses were built to hug the Vanji’s bank. They meant to shorten the number of steps between the landing of a riverboat and the unloading of its cargo. To see that no more than a few steps separated a thirsty riverman from his fresh jug of grog.
The riverbank did not sympathize with its colonizers. Its soft banks hungered. They took these interloping structures and dined on their foundations. The taverns sank. The warehouses filled with disgorged mud. Abandoned, they stood tilting and wheezing, the river slowly advancing on them. Patiently devouring.
Verkusht squints at the collapsing buildings. “If Tarood’s hiding—and if he weren’t we’d see him and his clanmates all over town—he’ll be holed up here. There’s an old counting house he used last time I, er, ran into him. If not there, the back rooms of the Funeral Ship.”
The Funeral Ship is the only remaining tavern in the town’s sinking quarter. Its patrons imbibe at an angle. To take a seat there, the drinking men say, is to feel half-drunk already.
“He won’t be in the jungle?” I ask.
“He won’t be in the jungle,” Verkusht confirms.
We advance. I follow Verkusht, who sneaks well along laneways and between buildings. The counting house is empty, save for a fat constrictor and a scurry of heedless rats.
To the back of the tavern is the chancier approach. A wide avenue offers little cover. Its muck sounds a wet alarm every time we set a foot down. Finally we reach the back of the tavern, and Verkusht presses an ear against its gray, weathered boards. He nods and points to his ear. He hears them, inside.
A boiling, squealing thing erupts at my ankles. My spear is ready. It rushes past me—a piglet, one of the foreign kind, foolishly screaming. It circles around, momentarily intent on nipping my ankles. It reconsiders and veers off.
Shutters slam open. A Bekyar slaver leans out. I am seen. I look to my side for Verkusht.
He is gone.
Slavers leap from the windows. They pour from the porch. I turn to run. My feet slide beneath me. I right myself before succumbing to a painful, humiliating fall, but put scant distance between myself and my pursuers. One, propelled by some kind of leaping charm, is upon me before I can move further. The haft of my spear catches the bottom of his jaw, sending him sprawling into the muck. Then I am surrounded.
I wait for Verkusht’s counterassault to begin. For daggers to appear between shoulder blades. For arrows to zip from nowhere to thin out my foes. The wait is in vain.
I topple a second slaver, wind a third, clout another so hard he falls to his knees, retching. It is not enough. They outnumber me. Slavers shoulder in past my spear. They wrench it from my grip. Thudding blows dance over my ribs to graze my kidneys. The gray day blackens and twists. As I slip into a daze, I realize that they at least intend to keep me alive. This grants me faint solace as a dim awareness of floating seizes me. They have lifted me up. Are carrying me into the back of the Funeral Boat.
Verkusht has gone to get reinforcements, I tell myself. It cannot be that he has betrayed me yet again.
∗ ∗ ∗
Water awakens me. Thrown into my face, it rushes up my nose and into my gaping mouth. I return to life, choking. It smells like river mud.
I am lashed to a chair. I test my bonds and find them tight. This is expected, when captured by slavers. Old memories, never buried deep, surge to the surface. The fury rises in me. If I get loose, I will have to fight not only my captors, but also the siren urge to kill.
There are a dozen of them, more or less. Muck spatters their white robes. Bruises color the undersides of their eyes. They rub unhappily at throats, arm muscles, legs—places I have hit them. They sulk in corners, pick at their teeth, pace small circles on the floor. Because of who they are, the cruel trade they conduct, I take satisfaction in their pain. I wish only that they felt it a thousandfold.
The man who has thrown the bucket of river water into my face looks to his superior for permission to back away. As if I were capable of snapping the wet leather straps that bind me to the chair, of flying at him and twisting his neck until it snaps. He can sense my desire, but overestimates my capability.
The man who nods to him is a Bekyar like himself. He is taller and thinner than the others. The family resemblance is easily seen. Were you to flatten and elongate Verkusht’s head, to extend his nose outward into a majestic slope, and then douse him in a spring of youth, you would have this man. It can only be Tarood. His robes are impeccably clean; he took no direct part in my capture. His mouth opens like a snake’s. The quivering tip of his tongue peeks out to sample the air. Tarood is excited. A coiled whip hangs from his hip. He holds his left hand curled into a fist. Across his knuckles are looping lengths of barbed wire. Not a fighting weapon. A torturing weapon.
How long have I been unconscious? It shouldn’t be long before Verkusht arrives, with Obai and a troop of Aspis guardsmen. My words must keep me alive until then.
It is not Tarood who speaks. A foreigner steps from the gloom. His garb and accented speech describe him as an outlander, but of what sort I cannot tell. Later I will be told that he is a Taldan.
He tilts his head slightly. Tarood takes a disappointed step back.
This man is in command, not the slaver.
His skin is nearly as dark as the Bekyar, though light compared to mine. The crown of hair wreathing his head shines like sunset. It is darker near his scalp—dyed. I judge him a once thin and handsome man, newly encased in rich folds of flesh. Threaded with silver, his garments sparkle and dance. Heavy rings of yellow metal cover each of his fingers. A medallion, big as an outlander tea saucer, hangs from his neck. Its golden face glowers, a grimacing, angry sun.
None of these decorations are as striking as the m
an’s eyes. One is brown. The other iris is doubled: a light blue ring is imprisoned within a partner of deep violet. The strange eyes look me over, as if I am for sale. As a prisoner of slavers, some might say that I am.
“The boy,” he says. “Tell me about the boy.”
I look again at Tarood’s fist of sharp-edged wire.
“The boy is needed to reverse a deadly plague.”
The man contemplates, his face still. “You get to it, don’t you? I expected to waste some time before coming to the nub. First you would deny you knew what I was talking about. Then Tarood here would hurt you...”
“Why invite injury?” I ask.
“You are an intelligent man, then. A man I can deal with.”
I am not that last thing, but in the interest of delay I let his charge go unanswered.
“What is your name, Zenj?”
“What is yours?” I ask.
Again he thinks before speaking, his features empty of intent. “Brachantes,” he finally says. “It is not a name that will be known in these parts.”
“I am Xhasi,” I allow.
“Xhasi, formerly of the Ara tribe, occasionally of the Scarred Ones, improbably a Pathfinder,” Brachantes says. “Tell me what business you have with the boy.”
“The boy, Mwonduk, is accursed by Kitumu, the firefly goddess. If you have heard so much about me, you are doubtless also informed about the firefly deaths.”
Brachantes nods.
“To end the plague, the boy must be delivered to the goddess.”
“And you have a strong desire to end the plague.”
“My friends were slain by it. Many more will be if no one acts.”
He comes too close, peers into my face, as if reading a text written on my skin. “It does not trouble you that the child will be sacrificed?”
“The price of many lives is one life,” I say.
“A cold-blooded thought,” says Brachantes.
“The jungle devours,” I reply.
He seizes a wooden chair, finds a safe position for it on uneven floorboards, places it a few feet from me, and sits down. “Instead of letting a god devour him, I propose to purchase him. Name your price. No blood need be shed.”
“Except for that eaten by fireflies.”
Brachantes adjusts one of his golden rings. “Perhaps if I take the boy far from here, the goddess will forget her prize, and return to her slumbers.”
“I do not know about your homeland. Here in the Mwangi, gods and goddesses are never forgetful.”
He points a meaty finger into the air. “You cannot be sure it is so. Your seer says it. My seers, who sensed this boy’s presence from afar, whose visions brought me all the way to this rotting riverbank, predicted merely that I would find a boy touched by the gods. You say cursed, I say blessed.”
“Your prophets will be proven right,” I venture, “if we take him to the goddess and she chooses not to take him.”
Anger wells in his face. “Unlike you, I will not see him harmed. He’ll while the rest of his days in comfort.” Brachantes softens his tone, forces a benevolent smile. “He’ll not labor, nor will he want. Far better than life here. Even if he weren’t held by Consortium hirelings who mean to sacrifice him.”
It is cleverest to seem tempted. “What do you want with him?”
His round face widens, excited. “I am a collector of marvels, Xhasi. My menagerie is famed throughout the northeast. Housed in its golden cages are chimeras, basilisks, minotaurs. I include in my collection the great sphinx of Samun, even the black dragon Éirma.”
“How does the dragon like it?”
“She has resigned herself to her lot. Like most beings on this earth.”
“And now you wish to collect children, too?”
“As the Bekyar here can attest, there is no race of person that cannot legally be regarded as property. As a young connoisseur, I started with objects—paintings, jewels, arcane artifacts. Then I realized that only living wonders are worth owning.”
I realize too late that I am seething. Unlike Verkusht, I have never been a good liar.
Brachantes laughs. “You would let this boy be devoured, yet fume when I propose to establish him in permanent splendor? He would grow up in elevated company. My permanent guests include Oedes, poet of the shadow quatrains, and the former adventurer Strodai, who learned to breathe fire on the elemental planes.”
“They too are resigned to their fates?”
“Perhaps not. The occasional escape attempt keeps an inmate vigorous, that’s what I say. It is essential that the mind remains alive.” He steps up out of the chair, kicking it aside. “Yet I sense that moral argument, as one-sided in my favor as it might be, is taking us nowhere. Tarood?”
The Bekyar advances. Brachantes gestures to his fist and shakes his head. Tarood petulantly removes the barbed wire from his fist. It is with bare knuckles that he strikes me. I reel backward. In quick succession he hits me again, and again. I feel blood trickling from my nose, resolving into droplets, and falling onto my chest.
My eyes swell shut. The outlander’s reedy voice comes from somewhere behind me.
“You will agree to the following, Xhasi. You will choose a rendezvous point in the jungle. This way we will not have to fight our way through an entire counting house of Aspis Consortium guards. We will be waiting for you there. We will take the boy off your hands. And the Bekyar traitor Verkusht, too. He is nothing to me, but Tarood says that he owes a debt to his people, which must finally be discharged.”
Tarood’s smile is that of a serpent.
Brachantes continues, still where I cannot see him. “I regard myself as a fair dealer. Within reason, I am prepared to compensate you for your efforts on my behalf. I pay better than the Pathfinders, that is for certain.”
“How do you ensure my cooperation, once you let me go?” My words wheeze through bloodied lips.
“Let’s say that you don’t want to find out, and leave it at that.” He steps into view, wincing at whatever Tarood has done to my face. “Do you agree?”
With effort, I raise my head. “You know that I can’t.”
“Strong drink is Sunasuka's blessing-and her curse.”
Brachantes shrugs. Tarood places his barbed implement back in his fist. A whining giggle traps itself in his bobbing throat.
The back door slams open.
It is not the rescue party I have been expecting. No Obai, no Verkusht. No squadron of Aspis enforcers.
Standing silhouetted in the doorway is a single halfling. Her hair is a matted and tangled mess. Her nose lies flat across her face, the result of multiple breakings and healings. She wears a tattered tunic and leggings of antelope hide, in the manner of the halfling tribes of the jungle interior. A powerful stench of stale breath and palm wine accompanies her entrance. The spatters of mud on her face and arms are lighter than her gleaming skin.
“This is a drinking establishment,” proclaims my old friend Sunasuka the halfling, “and by the forgotten gods and all the shrieking apes, I will not be barred from it!” The booming roar of her voice contradicts her tiny frame.
She sees me in the chair, bound and bleeding. A howl of drunken indignation escapes her throat. Sunasuka rolls into the room, caroming unpredictably on her oversized, jungle-hardened feet.
The slavers are startled and surprised.
I am startled, but not surprised. My friend makes a habit of unlikely appearances and fortuitous blunders.
She utters commands in the universal tongue of beasts. At her bidding, vermin drop from the ceilings, roil up through the floorboards. Rats drop onto the slavers like water over the Korir Falls. Wasps, each as thick as a thumb, swarm around them, stinging. Roaches fly at their faces, buzzing and vomiting gluey spittle.
The few slavers
missed by nature’s onslaught advance on Sunasuka’s position, but her wobbly path confounds them. Their scimitars slash the air where she should be, but isn’t. Her double-headed club catches and sweeps them aside, the screams of its carved monkey faces adding to the chaos. Ducking crazily under a swung scimitar, she kicks my chair, toppling it on its side. Its damp-rotted wood crumbles on impact and I am free.
Sunasuka calls up a flaming wall to separate us from my captors. She helps me to my feet. Together we lurch from the scene. Behind us the Funeral Boat is consumed by spreading flame. The halfling looks back regretfully at the loss of yet another favorite drinking establishment.
“So something’s going on, then?” she asks.
Chapter Three: The Condemned
We stagger quickly through Free Station’s muddy lanes, the halfling nature priestess and I, ready for pursuers to appear at our heels. She owes her uneven tread to palm wine; I, to the beating delivered by Brachantes’ hired slavers.
Sunasuka scratches her mane of matted hair, withdrawing a fat nit. She frowns at it, quizzical. “What did I tell you?” she asks. She is speaking to the insect. A hundred black dots emerge from her scalp, gather on her neck, and crawl obediently down her arm. She leans against a stray sapling jutting boldly from the roadside. The nits exit onto it. She zigzags back to me. Taking note of my injuries, she mutters and waggles her fingers.
My mangled lip knits back together. In an instant, my bruises lighten, turn green and yellow, then vanish. The pain in my ribs goes away, followed by the dull throb in my gut.
I nod my thanks and return to what I’d been saying before. “You aren’t joking then.”
She blinks, as if seeing through a fog. “About what?”
“You weren’t sent to rescue me.”
“Sent? By the others? The others are here?”
I explain again about the mission, and Verkusht, and how he left me to be captured. How my coming accounting with him might be gentler if it turned out that he had found Sunasuka and sent her to get me.
“The others!” she exclaims.
Plague of Light Page 3
