Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady

by Rebecca Bradley

  Tig, my dearest, this is our only chance to talk. What do you want me to do?

  Meantime, she was beginning a long, respectful and complicated speech of welcome to the Frath Major—in fluent Vassashin, via Coll. It took Coll a good five minutes to translate this and add the fine oratorical flourishes which no native of Vass seemed able to resist, and all the while Calla's fingers and mine were flying. Yes: there was another way out of the Sacellum. Yes: she could still spirit Verolef out of his bedchamber that night. No: she had not told the child anything. No: Valsoria had voiced no suspicions. No: Calla knew nothing about the plague, this was the first she'd heard of it. And yes: she would meet us in the shadow of the rain-tun housing, in the corner of the courtyard, one hour before midnight, with Verolef, and good luck to us all then—we'd need it. By this point Coll was in the middle of some metaphors of his own devising, certainly well outside the original content of Calla's speech, so there was time for a few messages of a personal nature (Shree tactfully averted his eyes) before Coll finally dried up.

  The Frath muttered a few obviously insincere words of gratitude, which gained hugely in Coll's translation; and after these courtesies had been duly dealt with, Calla came to the point, that is to say, the trivial and humdrum domestic details of bedchambers, mealtimes, ritual arrangements and the location of sanitary facilities for the visiting Fraths. Then she tacked on a few parting compliments and walked away while Coll was still rendering them into Miisheli. This translation, including embellishments, took so long that the Frath Major had turned an exciting shade of purple well before the end.

  "These damned speechmongers," he muttered when Coll finally ran out of words and went away. "I tell you, any Miisheli governor running these islands will start by cutting out a few tongues."

  I could not help sympathizing with the Frath's critical assessment, but I thought the Miisheli solution was typically extreme. The Bequiin Ardin refused to catch my eye.

  Rinn and her women appeared in the doorway at that point. My bride's deportment was just what you'd expect from a veteran of many Miisheli court intrigues. She greeted the Frath Major with the same blend of deference and arrogance that she always gave him, no fear and no effusions, nothing to indicate that she had anything to hide or that she was worried by his arrival at the Sacellum. The news of the plague, of course, interested her not at all. Plagues were for common people. She was Rinn of Miishel.

  * * *

  33

  I COULD NOT face breakfast because my gut had taken a notion to behave like a butter churn. I could not go back to my bed because I had destroyed it. Shree's temper was on a short Sheranik tether, the heat was stifling, the forced inactivity was torture. After the brief pleasure of seeing Calla in the courtyard, my anxieties returned in even larger sizes and darker colours than before—what kind of risk was I asking her to take? What kind of danger was I exposing my son to? Furthermore, even if we did manage to escape safely, was my son going to like me? I found that last question preying more and more on my mind as the long dismal morning wore on.

  The long dismal morning was followed by a long dismal midday meal. All the Fraths Minor were there, but the Frath Major and the Bequiin were not. Rinn was very much there, bored and querulous because she'd just heard that the rites of the Oracle had been suspended until such time as the fire-gods (bless and feed them) were ready to pronounce on the plague, which left my bride without her regular entertainment for the afternoon. This shifted the plague from being an inconvenience to being an actual affront, and Rinn was not one to suffer an affront in silence. I picked at my food and agreed with everything she said, and at the earliest possible moment Shree and I burped politely and took ourselves upstairs. We still had a full ten hours to kill before we could make our move.

  The corridor was deserted except for an old charring-woman on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor-boards outside Shree's cell. The door just before his was open, and I glanced in as we passed, then stopped short and went back for a better look. It opened on to a dark, narrow corridor with a dim archway at the end, framing the bottom turn of a steep blackstone staircase. Shree and I looked at each other. What better way to pass the time than to explore? Provided, I reminded myself, that it was permitted—this was not a good day to go looking for unnecessary trouble or calling official attention to ourselves. I approached the charring-woman and asked her where the stairs led, trying to soften my Sheranik into a passable approximation of Vassashin.

  She looked up at me as she wrung out her scrubbing cloth. "The south tower, pilgrim. But you do not want to go up there. It is not an easy climb." She slapped the cloth down hard on the floorstones and twitched her long greying plait back over her shoulder.

  "What's up there?" I asked.

  She stared at me, taken aback. "Nothing." Unspoken meaning: how ignorant can you offlanders be? She sounded very much like Coll.

  "In that case," I remarked to Shree, "it will make the perfect diversion, not unlike reading a very bad book—no point to it, but it pushes the time along. Let's go."

  "It is not very safe," the charring-woman said without looking up.

  "All the better," said Shree. "I'm bored."

  The charring-woman looked up at that, and rocked back on her heels to watch us go.

  The stairs (one hundred and forty-seven of them by actual count, and built too badly to be the work of the Ancients) came up into a fair-sized chamber like the inside of a box with one open side, the side facing away from the mountain. A blackstone balustrade had been built across the open end, but it was sadly weathered and rather frail-looking, with a long vertical crack at one end.

  We trod gingerly towards it, noting that the floorboards creaked and groaned under our feet. The charring-woman had been right in saying it was unsafe and a hard climb, wrong in saying there was nothing at the top. There was a view, a very large one. Most of it was taken up by the broad polished-silver mirror of the Sherkin Sea, but by leaning out far enough so that Shree hissed and grabbed the scruff of my tunic, I could see down to the patch of open ground in front of the Sacellum. I whistled softly.

  "Look at this, Shree."

  Muttering, he released me and leaned cautiously over the railing. "What is it, a festival?"

  "I don't think so."

  The stretch of barren ground now looked like something between a mass picnic and a used battlefield. The red and yellow banners of Miishel fluttered over a small enclave of order near the gate, a precise square of dark tents around an exquisitely tidy supply dump. Everywhere else was chaos: scatters of hasty lean-tos and ragged tents, large clumps of people gathered around excited speakers or makeshift food stalls, a great many straw mats laid out randomly as if marking small patches of private territory. I could see two separate brawls in progress, each with its own knot of interested spectators, and here and there the distinctive scarlet robe of a Daughter of Fire moved through the mob. On the road up from Villim, whatever short stretches of it were visible through the tree-cover, I could see a steady stream of people climbing towards the Sacellum.

  "Refugees from the plague," remarked Shree.

  "Supplicants," I amended, "asking the protection of the fire-gods. Of course, it might be the worst thing they could do. Everything I've ever read about plagues suggests that crowding together only helps to spread the contagion. These people should be dispersing, not congregating. Valsoria should be—what is it, Shree?"

  He had stiffened. Now he growled, grabbed my arm for stability, and leaned out even further than I had dared to. He was not looking at the Vassashin mob below us, but down at the nearshore waters, at a point that I reckoned was roughly opposite the main fishing beach at Villim. I could see nothing there of any interest.

  "What is it, Shree?"

  "Keep watching—it's gone out of sight. No, there it is again! Through those trees, Tig—out on the water."

  I saw it then: a dark moving boat-shape partly masked by the trees, vanishing for a few moments, appearing again, clear of the
trees at last, a little two-masted windcatcher with all sails set. It seemed to be tacking out to sea.

  "It's a boat."

  "It's the lorsk. But where in the name of Raksh does that tupping fool think he's going?"

  "The lorsk! Are you sure?"

  He snarled, which I took as a yes. I craned to get a better view. "If that's Chasco, he's moving past the cove where I told him to meet us."

  "I can see that."

  "It looks like he's heading out to sea."

  "It does."

  "Leaving us behind."

  "So it seems," said Shree through gritted teeth.

  We watched for a few minutes, as long as the lorsk remained in sight, me in silence, Shree muttering vivid and poisonous phrases. At first I was just puzzled. I found myself almost hoping to see other boats in pursuit of ours, if only to explain why Chasco appeared to be leaving without us, but the lorsk was alone on the sea. Even so, I could not believe Chasco was betraying us—a former member of the Web, a fellow Gilman, a descendant of the great Clanseri poets. A friend. At any moment I expected him to tack around and run for the shoreline. I was still expecting it when the lorsk passed out of sight behind an outlying flank of the mountain, still apparently pointed in the direction of Zaine. Shree spat out a most impressive curse and smashed his fist down on the balustrade.

  Shall I destroy him, seed of the Excommunicant? The two are one.

  The words echoed and re-echoed inside my head. I played with the idea, finding to my surprise that I was furious now too, almost furious enough to agree. Without the Lady's two-are-one business, I might have done it. But her voice in my head was too eager—I formed a strong impression that the Lady was seeking her own advantage in this. Every outburst of power so far had been involuntary on my part, and, though I could not have said why exactly, it seemed important to keep things that way.

  "No."

  "What did you say, Tig?"

  "I wasn't talking to you. But you're going to break the railing if you keep on beating it like that." And in my head, I repeated: no.

  The Clanseri has betrayed you. He has stolen your ship of escape. Command me to destroy him and bring the vessel back to you.

  I will not command you.

  A charged silence. Then: he has fled the plague. He has abandoned you, not caring if you die, and the other Scion with you. Command me to punish him.

  I will not.

  Shree was shaking my shoulder. "Pay attention, Tig. He's gone. The bastard's gone and saved himself and left us behind, and there's nothing we can do about it." These were the first complete and repeatable sentences he had spoken for some minutes. I stared at him, distantly noting the fury in his eyes. Then I realized that my own anger was fading; I did not completely trust the appearance of things, I had enough faith left in Chasco to make me reserve my judgement. Most of all, I did not trust the Lady's burning eagerness to condemn and destroy him.

  "There is something I could do, Shree, but I won't. We'll just have to steal a boat after all, and somehow we'll catch up with him, and when we do—"

  "When we do, I'll make a noose for him out of his own traitorous guts."

  "You'll do nothing of the sort. When we find him, we'll ask him why he left us behind. He might have a perfectly good reason."

  Shree glared at me in disbelief. "What reason? What reason could be good enough?"

  "We'll ask him anyway."

  "But he's betrayed us!"

  "We don't know that for sure."

  After a few moments Shree let his hands drop to his sides in defeat. "All right, we'll question him. And after that we'll string him up by his own guts."

  I didn't say anything more, having made my point. Anyway, that good old Sheranik temper was well up and Shree was in a dangerous state. I didn't want him to start pounding the balustrade again, or starting on the walls—I was afraid he would bring the whole tower crashing on to the heads of the pilgrims below.

  Halfway down the stairs, we met Coll coming up to find us. He was breathless from the climb and the excitement of having a good story to retail. This was the story of the dragon-ship, the fisherman, and the chest of golden palots.

  If the dead choose to take their gold with them when they sail to the afterworld east of Zaine, who would dare to rob them? And those who would dare have only themselves to blame if the dead decide, quite properly, to punish the crime. That was the popular view of the origins of this plague. It had already resulted in the slow sacrifice of several dozen of the salvagers' close relations in the hope of appeasing the outraged dead—the salvagers themselves were beyond reach, having been the first to dance themselves to death. And now, since direct appeasement had failed, the people of Vassashinay were turning to their blessed fire-gods for protection.

  Since early morning, by ones and twos and threes and whole families, the faithful of Vassashinay had been toiling up the mountain to gather on the field in front of the Sacellum. Appalling tales were being passed around of conditions on Korviss, the island immediately west of Vass; the fourth and most remote island, Masslivan, where the dragon-ship had been taken and the palots melted down, had fallen under a pall of ominous silence. On the main island, Vass was the town hardest hit, although the first horrors had started to break the evening before in the villages of Alssorvan and Tinnas on the island's south side. Villim had not been touched so far, but I had a feeling it was only a matter of time.

  Coll seemed excited rather than anxious. He had perfect faith in the fire-gods' power to overcome the malign influence of these deceased and vengeful outlanders. True, Valsoria had just ordered the Sacellum gates to be sealed from the inside, but that was for the protection of the populace camped outside, not those inside. Sometimes when the fire-gods were roused to action, he kindly explained, they were a little unpredictable at first—as when they rose up to drown the towers of Iklankish and happened to drown several hundred Vassashin at the same time. No, Coll proclaimed with confidence and great pride, the Divinatrix and the fire-gods would overcome those hellhound angry spirits from the west and send them and their damned disease screaming past Zaine with no more than a few flicks of her fingers. I asked when. He said, when she was ready. She knew how to cover herself, all right.

  When Coll had finished his story and hurtled off to find somebody else to tell we repaired to Shree's cell, deep in thought. Not only did we appear to have lost our best means of departure, but the vast and swelling crowd encamped around us was not going to make it any easier to leave the Sacellum. And there was another thing—at that time I had no knowledge of the broad scale of this disaster, no idea that the rest of the known world was already stinking with death and thudding to the dull blows of a million dancing feet, but I could read the signs. The dragon-ship was clearly a Calloonic trader, and it was also the local wellspring of the plague, which made me wonder about what was going on in Calloon at that moment. Moreover, no Calloonic ship would sail as far east as Vassashinay without passing the Archipelago and Gil on its way, which in turn made me wonder what was going on in Sathelforn and Gil City. Somehow I could not believe that Vassashinay was being treated to a plague of its very own, compliments of a shipload of disgruntled corpses.

  I sat tensely on one end of Shree's pallet while Shree sprawled restlessly across the other. "I'm wondering," he said after a while, "whether this plague has struck anywhere else."

  "Like Calloon, Sathelforn, Gil? I was just wondering the same thing."

  He looked at me gravely. "It may be just as well we're planning to bypass Zaine—if we can steal a boat, that is." His eyes hardened, and I thought he was probably brooding over Chasco and the lorsk again. I was wrong. "And it's just as well," he continued, "that we're leaving tonight. I don't imagine the Sacellum walls will keep the plague out for long, even if Valsoria has barred the gate."

  "A little late for that anyway," I said with a somewhat forced cheerfulness. "Between the Frath Major and his party, and the Burgher of Vass and his party, several dozen pilgrims have moved
into the Sacellum since sun-up. Any one of them could have brought the plague with him."

  At that moment there was a gentle rapping on the door, soft enough to be called furtive. Shree sat up on his end qf the pallet and drew his knife, hiding it under a loose fold of the coverlet. He frowned at me fiercely, so after a moment I followed his example. Then he called out, in a not very welcoming voice, "Who is it?"

  The door shot open a few inches; a slight grey figure burst through and closed the door again rapidly and silently and pressed one ear to the door-crack, breathing in short hard gasps.

  I looked at Shree. He looked at me. This day was becoming really very interesting indeed.

  "Welcome, honoured Bequiin," I said. "Do sit down."

  Ardin replied by throwing himself across the cell towards me. I didn't know about his dagger until I felt it slide between my ribs.

  * * *

  34

  I STARED DOWN at the haft sticking out of my chest. Apart from the pain, which was considerable, there were strange and unpleasant sensations, in places that weren't intended to have them; you're normally too dead to feel cold iron in your heart. Furthermore, my second-best tunic was ruined. I glowered at the Bequiin Ardin as I took hold of the haft with both hands and yanked the blade free.

  He was a face-down heap of grey rags on the floor by that time, with Shree's knee in his back and Shree's knife on the upswing of a blow designed to be fatal. Shree was clearly upset; he looked like a Canzitrine berserker, the one warrior in the world more insanely bloodthirsty than a Sherkin. I threw myself at him, wincing at the waves of agony from my chest, and knocked his arm away on the downswing, barely in time. "Don't kill him," I said quickly, "we need to question him."

  "You're not dead!" The astonishment that replaced the crazed grimace on Shree's face was enough to set me laughing, but the extra pain this caused sobered me up. If the Lady went so far as to make me unkillable, I thought bitterly, it would be nice of her to block the pain as well, though already the wound was starting to hurt less and itch more as the healing process raced ahead. There was very little blood.