Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  She smiled, and the smile held all sorts of promises.

  Aranthur felt some of the excitement he felt when he fought.

  “I accept.”

  “Good! I’m sorry that we are not even well dressed. I am no biddit. But I have a ship to see to, so this is as it must be. Put your hand in mine.”

  Aranthur did as she bid, and felt the warmth in her hard hands.

  He also felt the power in her immediately: her saar, and also some sihr.

  And something else. Something extraordinary, like a candle burning inside an already bright lamp.

  She led him back into the curtained room. The old priest said the service in the name of the Old Kings—not a rite Aranthur had heard, and a very ancient one. He said it in Masri and in Byzas with great exactness. It was not long, but it was solemn.

  “You may kiss,” the priest said. “In fact, you must.”

  Aranthur was swept into an unexpected maelstrom. Her lips were soft, and pliable, and not at all like…

  Like…

  Then Inoques broke away, her eyes dancing.

  “Ah, there is good fire in the hero,” she said. “Listen—now if I kindle, our child is legitimate. And the true gods smile on me and you.”

  The way in which she said “kindle” disturbed him, but Aranthur gave the priest a present—all the money he had on him, which was deemed enough. And the two of them walked back to the beach.

  “But surely you won’t kindle,” he said. “You have a crystal…”

  Inoques shrugged. “That will be my choice, eh? Perhaps you will make me a daughter as full of baraka as you are—a woman to manage the river and the ships.” She smiled.

  She was lying. He knew it.

  Aranthur had a moment of fear, as if the water was closing over his head.

  “Why the tattoos?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Power. And a bargain I made.” She leant over and kissed him, and the touch of her lips was like a bolt of lightning, although they just brushed his. “Perhaps I will even tell you, eventually.”

  The horses were swayed over the side and swam ashore. Aranthur checked that Jalu’d was taking the wounded ashore in the ship’s boat. He tried to find the Masran priest, Haras, to talk about the stone, but the man was nowhere to be found. Then he rode his Steppe pony across the island. They had to jump a kuramax that appeared out of the deep vegetation, but its snapping jaws were no match for the agility of a horse bred to the endless threats of the open plains. He fed the pony some sugar cane, and something that looked like a turnip but was not, and thought about names.

  Then he took Ariadne out. This time, instead of being alone, he was with Dahlia, who was mounted on her white Nissean. They cantered along the beach, and then walked the horses to cool them in the heavy, hot, humid air.

  “You married her?” Dahlia put a hand to her mouth. “Damn!”

  Aranthur shrugged. He felt oddly better for having told Dahlia.

  “Well, I could tell she wanted you,” she smiled. “I won’t even say she has bad taste.”

  They walked for a while.

  “If Sasan—” Dahlia began.

  “You’ll go with him, if he goes to Safi.”

  “I want to. But I know you’re right about your hunch. Something is badly wrong in Megara—there should be warships here. Imperial warships, guarding the mouth of the river. Something is very wrong. And I know what strings to pull at home.” She tossed her short hair and looked at Aranthur. “The thing is, I don’t want to go home. Fuck it all—this is what I want. Sasan, and adventure. I don’t give a shit about my marriage list—I’m never going back to that.”

  Aranthur nodded. “I feel some of that. I really haven’t had time to think. But—”

  “But the Academy?” Dahlia said. “Can you imagine?”

  Aranthur smiled. “I can, though. I’ve learnt so much that now I might learn more.”

  Dahlia looked at him. “You are twice the caster you were even a month ago. I learn new principles every day. So do you. I feel as if the Academy was a machine to hide the real functions of magik, not to teach them. You and I are becoming something… But yes, I have questions for my masters.”

  Something went through Aranthur like a bolt of cold lightning. It was almost painful.

  “Oh, gods,” he said aloud.

  It was as if a giant cascade of discovery played through him with Dahlia’s words: the ancient well covered in glyphs; the sling bullets; the words of Tirase; the Black Pyramid.

  Dahlia reined in. “What?”

  Aranthur was looking out over the Delta.

  “I’m probably wrong,” he said, but his breathing was shallow.

  “Speak,” Dahlia ordered.

  “What if Tirase wanted magik muzzled? Because it was too dangerous. He didn’t give magik to the people to empower them, but to strip power from the dangerous ones.”

  Silence, punctuated only by the humming of insects and the distant yowling of a cat in heat.

  “Endless wars fought with power. The gradual destruction of… everything. Waves of refugees from heavy magikal combats, consuming everything in their path…” He was talking mostly to himself.

  “Lady! So the Pure are right?” Dahlia spat.

  Aranthur thought that he suddenly understood the knife edge that the Lightbringers walked.

  “No. Or yes.” He stared into space. “Do we trust Tirase? And anyway, think about those things at Al-Khaire. The Apep-Duat.”

  Dahlia waved her fingers dismissively.

  “I can already see how to control them. So can Qna Liras. Time, and power. That’s all we need.”

  Aranthur bowed with genuine respect.

  “When you are the greatest power of our day, remember us little people.”

  “This from you?” she said. “You know why else I don’t want to go with Sasan? Because together, you and I haven’t been beaten. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes.” Aranthur was embarrassed by her hidden praise—and deeply happy. “And I miss Ansu already.”

  “Me too. Keep this idea to yourself. I agree it fits the evidence—it won’t help our cause.”

  “Whatever our cause is.”

  “Cold Iron,” she said. “Keep that in mind. We save our own first—then the Empire, then the rest of the world. Masr is Masr. This is not our fight.”

  “Says a woman who claims she’s not going back.”

  Dahlia nodded. “Touché.”

  Aranthur looked at her. “I’m not sure you are right, Dahlia. Maybe because I’m Arnaut, I see this more clearly than you. It’s not our own first, and then the Empire. It’s everyone. We’re playing for all the marbles, and there’s no time to be selfish.”

  Dahlia looked over at him. She was half-hidden in the shade of a beautiful flowering bush, and her hair in the sun was dazzling, but her expression was hidden.

  “You have grown,” she said. “I… Interesting.”

  Aranthur might have said more, but Ariadne was stung by a wasp, and that was all the time there was for talk.

  The light on the Delta was ruddy when Aranthur finally made his way back to the garden gate. The bent old man opened it to him and bowed, fists to head. Aranthur returned his bow as best he could.

  He had not yet taken a cup of wine when Vilna caught his arm and pulled him aside, through a beaded curtain to a small room tiled in simple mosaic.

  “Listen,” Vilna said. “I learnt many things, some important, some not so much. Here’s the greatest—Myr Comnas, the lady who commands Rei d’Asturas, the long red galley, says there are bandits on the south bank trying to steal a ship. She thinks they are Safian—maybe even servants of the Pure. And she said, too, that the Pure have agents in this town. She has a guard at all times on her ship, and fears for her cargo. The navark of the Leone was killed in a tavern fight—she says it was a murder.”

  He leant against the wall and crossed his arms.

  In the courtyard, Chimeg’s voice could be heard, a nasal turomehn son
g, and then the tambouras started.

  “They all think that Myr Tribane lost the great battle,” Vilna went on. “And there are no ships from the City.”

  Aranthur groaned.

  “They say the Emperor, may his name be praised, is sick,” Vilna added. “And there is chaos in Megara. Martial law, maybe.”

  “Grab a drink and come back here,” Aranthur said. “I need a moment to think.”

  He walked out through the door, past the garden where his friends and his people were singing, and through the gate.

  He sat on the stump of a dead palm tree, smoking stock and listening to cats fight in the darkness. He thought it all through, and he came to conclusions. Then he knocked his pipe out against the old palm stump and got to his feet.

  “Is a problem?” asked the old man at the gate, solicitously.

  Aranthur thought a moment. And smiled.

  “I think I can work it out,” he said.

  The old man smiled. Aranthur went through the garden quickly, so that no one would pull him aside. He leant through the beaded door and saw Dahlia dancing sinuously to Chimeg’s music. He waved to her.

  She came with Sasan.

  “Tell them what you told me,” Aranthur said.

  When Vilna was done, Aranthur raised an eyebrow.

  “Dahlia, I absolutely understand why you want to go with Sasan. But by the oath we swore—if it was up to me, you’d board the Rei d’Asturas and sail for Megara. You have the name to command the navark to take you home. I do not. Something is badly wrong at home and it is our business.”

  “You mean, Cold Iron,” Sasan said.

  “I do,” Aranthur said.

  Sasan glanced at Dahlia. “I agree.”

  Dahlia gave Aranthur something like a look of pure hatred.

  Aranthur stood his ground.

  “Sasan, you need me!” she said calmly. “You need my powers. Without me, you cannot operate against the Pure, even in the most cautious manner.”

  Sasan nodded. “This is true. So, I will come and be your sword in Megara. My bandits won’t desert me. Maybe my dream is foolishness, anyway.”

  “It is not foolishness,” Dahlia said. “I’d rather be a bandit in Safi…”

  “It’s worse than that,” Aranthur said, steeling his voice. “Dahlia, you need to go without Sasan. Too many people know him. Too many know you, but the two of you together—”

  “You think I’m going to sneak into my own city?” she asked.

  “As a Noble Officer on the Rei d’Asturas. Yes, that’s exactly what I think.” Aranthur changed from commanding to a more pleasant voice. “Dahlia, I can’t even pretend to order you. But think about it as if you were Iralia or Tiy Drako.”

  “Noble Officer?” Sasan asked.

  “Most nobles who do not take a turn in the military or the civil service go to sea. I never did. I had the Academy.”

  “Nobles have the greatest political stake in the city,” Aranthur said. “So they have to serve. One of Tirase’s reforms.”

  Sasan nodded. Suddenly he smiled. His effusiveness seemed false to Aranthur, and yet he welcomed it instead of the storm of anger he’d feared.

  “You must,” he said to Dahlia. “Timos is right.”

  She caught the falsity too.

  “We need to tighten our guards on the ship,” Vilna said.

  Aranthur looked around wearily.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  If Dahlia was really leaving on the morning tide with the Rei d’Asturas, he couldn’t ask her to spend her last night with Sasan on board.

  Dahlia and Sasan were staring at each other, and no one said “no.”

  Aranthur sighed.

  “Did we get all our wounded ashore?” he asked.

  “Jalu’d took them to the Imoter,” Sasan said.

  “And then I brought them here,” Jalu’d said, brushing through the curtain of beads with all the drama of a dancer. He turned a pirouette and bowed, one hand on his heart. “Omga is here, with a wine cup in his hand, thanks to a very thorough and very… hmmm… lovely Imoter in the port. Bored and able. I paid.” He smiled. “In charm,” he added.

  Even Dahlia smiled.

  “I’m going back to the ship,” Aranthur said. “To guard it.”

  Jalu’d nodded. “I will come with you. I have had my wine and I have… hmm… danced with a lovely partner.”

  Chimeg rose as they went out. She held up two fingers, a Mughail sign.

  Aranthur went to her.

  “You go to the ship?” she said. “I go. A little drunk, but good.”

  “No, enjoy yourself,” he said.

  She smiled. “I have danced and had fuck. Come. Swim, maybe dance on ship.”

  She scooped a deep-bellied amphora off one of the tables, and Nata, a small Qirin tribesman with a hatchet face, grabbed another and followed her. Nata was a good man—reliable, with near-perfect Byzas, so that he could relay any order and describe anything from scouting—and a wicked sense of humour. Now he raised the amphora and mimed drinking it, and then put a large cork in and melted wax across the top.

  “Seawater,” he said in explanation.

  Aranthur smiled at their ease with him. Without ordering anyone, people came to share the night watch. He looked back to see Vilna smoking a water pipe with Sasan, and Dahlia watching him. He shrugged, unwilling or perhaps unable to make any more decisions.

  He grabbed the mate, Mera.

  “Where’s the captain?” he asked slowly.

  The man bowed. “I left her in the market, Shaib. She was bargaining for greens, and told me to go drink for her.”

  “That’s a good captain,” Aranthur shouted over the growing noise. “Tell her that I’m sorry, but someone had to watch the boat and I chose me.”

  Mera smiled. “This is a weight off me, Shaib.” He put his hands to his forehead. “Now I can drink in peace.”

  Aranthur led the way, and they walked down to the beach, two streets away. Aranthur and Chimeg stopped to talk to cats. They emerged to the starlit sky and the murmur of the crowded harbour—lanterns on the ships, and oil lamps along the waterfront. They stripped and swam to the ship. Chimeg showed her immense agility by climbing the anchor chain into the bow and then diving back into the sea with a hiss of disgust.

  “Anchor chains are filthy,” Aranthur explained.

  He took the opportunity to swim slowly around the ship, aware that there could be kuramax or other enemies in the water. He spread his awareness wide, but he found nothing. Nata gave him a hand over the side, and he was handed someone’s old cotton turban cloth as a towel.

  The two Nomadi were dexterous enough to have swum out with full pitchers of wine, which went around. Aranthur had a cup, and then passed. He was walking up and down the deck, trying to decide what the best way of watching was.

  In the end, he elected to put a very small amount of power into the glyph carved into the deck. And he put a monitor on it inside the Aulos. He asked Nata to swim around the ship and the wiry Qirin splashed about until Aranthur had the limits of his detections.

  An hour later, as he passed a pipe with Chimeg, now decorously wearing a uniform shirt, a tone sounded inaudibly in his head.

  “Visitors,” he said.

  They had loaded carabins in the rack just by them; each of them took one and knelt.

  “Anyone aboard?” called a voice.

  There was the sound of a boat coming alongside—a squeal of an oar in a rowlock, and then the thump.

  “Someone should be on fucking watch,” the voice grumbled.

  The man tossed a coin to his boatman and then turned away.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  They heard him take out a noisy tinderbox and go through the laborious task of lighting his pipe. When the coal was glowing like a cherry, he turned back to find Chimeg’s pistol aimed… not quite at him.

  “Welcome aboard,” she said.

  It was Kallotronis. He grinned.

  “I knew the be
st party would be here. Look. I found arak.”

  “Aren’t we on watch?” Aranthur asked.

  “I’ve killed more men drunk than you’ll kill sober,” Kallotronis said.

  “I think it’s rude to kill people when they are drunk,” Jalu’d said, and they all laughed.

  They sat, and things passed—stories and the pipe, wine and memory. Overhead the stars turned.

  “There was a smuggler once,” Jalu’d said.

  He was the best storyteller—better even than Kallotronis, who was also both sharp and funny. They all fell silent.

  “Every day, he crossed the mountains from Armea to Safi. Every day, the Shahinshah’s guards stopped him, and asked him his business.

  “‘Smuggling,’ he said, each day.

  “Most days they let him go, but some days he went to the captain of the guard, and the captain would try to get this old man to confess.

  “‘What are you smuggling?’ he would ask, and the old man would smile and put a finger alongside his nose.

  “And the guards would search the old man and his donkey, basket by basket, but all they found was straw. And each night the man returned home by the higher pass. Finally one day, the man came to the border post on foot.

  “‘I am retired now, and only wish to go see my children,’ he said, like many other nomads.

  “The guards sent him to the captain. The captain fed him, gave him quaveh and a pipe, and bade him good cheer, and then, when the man had eaten, drunk, and smoked, he said, ‘Oh wise one, you are now retired. Please, satisfy my poor intelligence and tell me what you took every day across my border to sell in my master’s land.’

  “The old man smiled. ‘Swear on Aploun that you will never harm a hair on my head, nor my family.’

  “The guard captain, who was quite a decent man for the job, swore.

  “The old man laughed. He rose, picked up his stick, and gave the captain a deep bow. ‘Donkeys,’ he said.”

  When Jalu’d was done, they all roared with laughter. Aranthur leant back, and his alarm sounded, and he was on his feet. One look at him and they all moved. Kallotronis and Jalu’d continued talking as if nothing had happened.