When at last the pair reached the reed-marked, quietly churning river that flowed south and east to Maratrace, and the threat of being bound and blood-smeared and left for the ants had faded into anecdote, Gaunt and Bone held a conference.
“Damn this sword,” Bone spat.
“Language,” Gaunt objected. Then she caught herself, and swore.
“You see?” Bone said. “The thing’s influence is growing. We will be lucky to arrive as anything but pedants of good behavior.”
“Look, Bone. Look at the verse I wrote yesterday.”
He looked.
Oh, happy children at their song
Frolicking the winter long,
For in their joyous hearts they know
They lie, who warn of endless snow.
“You think this is a disaster?” Bone asked. “I’ve discarded my gear. My daggers and lockpicks, my camouflage dyes and knockout herbs, my ironsilk lines and sticky resins. Years to assemble, all gone—abandoned on the plains or tossed into the river! Each time, I thought, ‘Farewell, wicked tool.’ Only when it’s too late do I weep.”
Gaunt patted herself and cursed (“Bless it all!”) to discover she too had disarmed herself. She embraced Bone, leaning in closer when she found the initial result too chaste. “Well, fear not. Adventuring is done for now. We must merely deliver this artifact to Maratrace. There is no designated recipient, no specified act or ritual to perform. We may walk through the gates, drop the thing on the street, and leave.”
“You are right. We could even approach by night and hurl it over the wall.”
“And flee at once for Amberhorn on the Midnight Sea, where sin is state-supported, where thieves’ markets come thick as the harbor’s billowing sails.”
“Yes. Yes! You are a healing draught, Persimmon Gaunt.”
Bone kissed her. She responded eagerly, and his breathing grew labored. How long, she wondered, since they had behaved so? Too long indeed—since the fifteenth day out of Archaeopolis.
They clutched at one another, pulled each other to the ground, unfastened, tugged, tore, and lay naked in the tall grass. The scent of mud and sweat was rich. Their hands sought their unchaperoned flesh. . . .
And they paused, regarding one another in vexation.
“I am finding myself mortified,” Gaunt said slowly, “to be so exposed, before the hawks, the field mice, and whatever astronomers might exist on other heavenly discs.”
“I find myself thinking,” Bone murmured, “that this cavorting is rather brutish, and far beneath the dignity of a great poet and a thief whose name is at least known to high society.”
The pair turned their heads and looked upon the Sword of Loving Kindness. It had tumbled from its pack, and now shimmered pleasantly beside them.
They still lay that way when a trading boat arrived, making its way from cold Starkinggrad downriver. The hoots and whistles of the crew sent them diving for their clothes, and they barely mustered the audacity to beg a ride to Maratrace.
~ ~ ~
It was no city for sightseers.
First, grotesque dark towers, resembling broken-boned monstrosities covered with pustules, rose on the horizon. These were followed by smaller, angular pyramidal buildings like wide knives, then a conglomeration of adobe houses low by the river. Trails of smoke testified to activity, farmland stretched up and down the river, and watercraft bobbed beside piers; but there was a hush about the place that Gaunt did not like.
As the riverboat creaked cityward, sliding above the sunken rubble of older settlements, its captain said, “All mad they are, indeed,” as if reading her thoughts. “But honest dealers nonetheless. Too honest, in a way.” He was a Palmarian named Flea, with two fingers missing from his right hand, testament to avarice or clumsiness. (Gaunt was oddly proud Bone’s hands were intact even after a long career in Palmary.)
“What do you mean?” Bone said with a flaring of the fingers that implied reward for information (and emphasized, Gaunt knew, that he had all ten).
Flea cupped his own maimed hand, accepting with a grunt a minor coin. “They’re fanatics, friend. They believe pain’s the great truth of the world, and they labor to provide their own evidence.” Flea pocketed the coin, lifted his hand. “Palmary’s proudest had to shackle me to do this. But Maratrace’s mighty do the same to themselves, or worse. And outsiders who linger become pain-lovers too. I know a few old river-hands who are short a hand or two, these days. Me, I’ll be leaving in one—down to Mirabad. Best you come along. If you can’t afford it, you can work for passage.”
A glance at the morose faces of Flea’s oarsmen, chained by wrist and nose, convinced Gaunt she’d rather walk.
A tsking Flea deposited them at Maratrace’s modest port district. Unusually for a city of tall towers, Maratrace’s harbor did not throb, but rather snored. Activity was faint. Where other docklands would echo with the cries of drunks, lechers, and brawlers, this one clicked with the lackadaisical sounds of dice upon the piers. It seemed the traders clung to the water’s edge.
There was no city wall as such. Wooden harbor-sheds blended with adobe homes and stone pyramids, the city growing by turns more austere toward its center; and despite their intent to abandon the sword immediately, it was unclear to Gaunt and Bone if they were truly inside Maratrace or not. They ventured inward.
They soon found themselves upon hot, hushed, shadow-slashed avenues of white sand, slicing between close-set buildings. To Gaunt, the city seemed the work of two diametrically opposed architects. Most structures, those meant for business or habitation, sat stark, smooth, and angular, reminding her of tombs. This much was strange but hardly daunting. It was the other constructions, the public and military buildings, which cast monstrous shadows. They clawed skyward like the citadels of genius termites. Within the limits of engineering they were asymmetrical and rough-hewn, crafted to suggest diseased and disfigured creatures. The tallest structure, ebon and windowless but in outline oddly reminiscent of Heaven’s Vault, flowed with intricate carvings depicting humans and other sapients undergoing torture. Beneath it, children played.
Gaunt led Bone nearer the children, who represented the largest knot of activity in sight. So far, other citizens had clung to the shadows, slipping indoors as the poet and thief passed by. Gaunt had only been able to discern that the Maratracians were surprisingly pale for desert-dwellers, and that many were maimed as if veterans of some ugly battle.
“We might as well inform someone what we’re doing,” Gaunt said, worried that her scruples were generated by the sword, but unable to act otherwise.
The older children played catch with a wooden octahedron bristling with little spikes. Usually the children avoided the hazards, but occasionally a sharp cry went up.
Heat and distraction had made Gaunt stupid; but when she finally understood the meaning of the latest yelp, she ran toward a fallen boy.
He cradled a bleeding palm. His cohorts gathered around him, silently watching.
Bone slid onto the sand and grabbed the boy’s hand. Perhaps fourteen, the victim was long and lean of face, brown-haired and brown-eyed, and stared as though Bone were a particularly unbelievable desert mirage.
“Let him help,” Gaunt implored in the language of Amberhorn, a far place, but not so distant as the homes of other tongues she knew.
The boy regarded her in silence, but his gaze was intent, perhaps even expectant.
Bone applied a tourniquet from his pack, and strong alcohol from his flask. The boy hissed as the liquor stung, then narrowed his eyes with a peculiar, satisfied look.
Again in Amberhornish, Gaunt said, “Where are your parents? Or your guardians?” She pointed angrily at the spiked ball. “Why do they allow such playthings?”
No one answered. Slowly, Gaunt grew aware of the collection of scars and bandages on the impassively staring children. One boy lacked half an ear, the wreckage neatly trimmed. One girl wore a patch over one eye, the fabric bearing a ghastly symbol. It recalled the famil
iar skull-and-crossbones of pirates, yet depicted a severed head and arms, all covered in flesh.
“Does no one speak Amberhornish?” Gaunt called out. “Roil? Eldshoren?”
“We understand you,” said the boy with the wounded hand, in careful Amberhornish. “We learn this language in school. We’re supposed to know the tongues of future conquests.”
Bone avoided the obvious question, asked instead, “Then why did you not answer?” The thief finished his ministrations, and the boy flexed his hand with a grim smile.
“Your questions make no sense,” he replied. “We are children. Why should we not play?”
At this point another cry arose. A plump, tanned girl of around twelve barreled toward them, sandals slapping the sand, dirty brown hair flailing about her intense dark eyes. Had Gaunt imagined a sentient sandstorm, there would have been a resemblance. Girl collided with boy with in what seemed both tackle and embrace, weeping. He, in turn, detached himself but swatted her shoulder in amused condescension. “Skath, Skath, Skath. What are we to do with you? It’s just a little blood.”
“Siblings?” Bone murmured to Gaunt.
“Yes,” she said. “The mix of anger and affection is telling.”
The girl Skath looked up at the strangers. Worry twisted her face. She took Gaunt and Bone by the hand and nodded urgently down the white street. “Come!” she declared in Amberhornish. “You must hurry.”
“A welcoming committee at last,” Bone quipped in Roil, as they consented to be led. “But we must dispose of the sword.”
“Perhaps this girl can introduce us to officialdom,” Gaunt said in kind. “The weapon’s emanations make me want to deliver it to proper channels. Also, I am having difficulty refusing an invitation. It’s impolite, after all.” She shrugged helplessly.
“We are wanted thieves in Palmary, Archaeopolis, and Loomsberg,” Bone sighed, “and now we’re compelled to knock at all doors, and wipe our feet. Next we’ll be sending thank-you notes to every noble we’ve robbed.”
They followed Skath. After some hesitation her brother tagged along, taunted by his contemporaries’ laughter.
“A strange city,” Bone observed in Roil. “The size and condition of the buildings imply wealth, and despite their scars the children are well-clothed and fed. Yet all doors stand open, all save those of the great tower, where I saw no opening. Nor do I see city guards, or private muscle. . . .”
“But there are those. . . .” Gaunt jabbed an elbow at a side street, toward one of the smaller grotesque towers. Below, figures in drab grey robes gathered in discussion. They glanced at the foreigners. “They look ominous.”
“They cannot hurt you,” Skath piped up in Amberhornish, proving she understood more than the outlanders realized.
“Because we are outsiders?” Gaunt asked in the same tongue.
“They are not allowed,” Skath said. “No one in Maratrace can hurt anyone else.”
“A lovely sentiment,” said Bone.
“But they want to. They all want to hurt you.” With this she strode into a two-story pyramid.
She led them through the first story, one single large room adorned with bright wall-hangings and colorful sitting pillows, where in one corner lurked a sculpture like an iron sea-urchin with spines of irregular length. The tips had a rusty look. A stairway led to a deeper, cooler level. Another sliced along three walls and led to the roof, and it was up these stairs the girl marched.
They attained a square rooftop rimmed with flower beds, with a rustling white canopy on rickety stilts offering shade. A watering pot creaked in the dry wind; weeds choked the flower beds. A dry, sharp smell accompanied the weeds.
Skath scanned the garden, nodded to herself, and plucked a dandelion. She handed it to Gaunt with slow ceremony.
“I am Skath,” she said. “I keep lots of gardens, here and there. I like the plants people call weeds. Most people think I’m crazy. Have a dandelion.”
“I am. . . Lepton,” Gaunt said, accepting the white puff. She chose an Amberhornish word meaning thin or light, preferring Skath know the sense of her name rather than the sound. Also, it was just as well her true identity went unspoken. “This is, um, Osteon,” she added, nodding to Bone, and passing the dandelion to him. He bowed. White seeds drifted behind him, from the canopy’s shadow into the blazing sunlight.
“This is Skower,” Skath said with a toss of her shoulder.
Her brother made a scoffing noise.
“Skath,” Gaunt said. “Who rules your city?”
The girl’s smile froze. She looked away to her weeds.
“We are returning something to Maratrace,” Bone added. “May we show you?”
“Um, Osteon. . . .”
“I feel that we must—Lepton.”
Skath nodded uncertainly at Bone’s question, and he set the dandelion atop the roof’s wall, removed the shrouded sword, unwound the cloth. Prismatic flashes and ruby light painted the air.
Skower hissed. Skath merely stared.
“The Sword of Loving Kindness,” Bone said. “Reputed the world’s most dangerous weapon.”
Indeed, Gaunt thought. For she saw Skath reaching toward the sword with an expression torn between terror and awe. Her brother crept beside her like a cat tracking a lame bird.
“Ah, now,” Bone said, edging back. “Touching magic is like petting sharks with a bloody hand. . . .”
Skath paused.
But suddenly Skower grabbed her wrist. As she said, “You are not allowed—,” he shoved her hand toward the blade.
“What are you doing?” Bone pulled back, but his reflexes were sluggish, and his movement served only to cut Skath’s hand upon one of the hilt’s crystal petals.
Skath gasped and closed her eyes.
“At last,” crowed her obviously insane brother, releasing her. “At last you have hurt yourself. And I only assisted you a little: a minor sin.” He babbled on, switching to the language of Maratrace.
“This city is mad!” Gaunt snapped. “Your own sister—!”
“She is a disappointment to us!” he retorted in Amberhornish. “Mother and Father fight over what to do with her. She has never embraced abyssmitude.”
“Embrace this,” Gaunt said, and backhanded him.
He recoiled, clearly not anticipating her strength, or her willingness to cause another pain. “That is—that is against—”
“I’m not from around here.”
Skower stared into Gaunt’s face, a tear crawling down his cheek, and his peculiar intensity collapsed like a tower of sand. He fled down the stairs.
“Good riddance,” she said, but with little satisfaction, for Skath’s eyes were still closed, as though the girl slept on her feet.
“Perhaps if I splash her?” Bone said, looking at the watering can.
Skath’s eyeballs danced behind shut lids, in a way Gaunt’s bardic teachers had discovered signified dreaming. “Wait,” she said.
Skath’s eyes opened, and she shrieked. Bone backed away, and his elbow bumped the dandelion, knocking it over the side in a spray of shining fluff.
“No,” Skath said, spreading her arms as if sheltering the entire weed garden. She uttered frantic sentences in the tongue of Maratrace, and a few words in Amberhornish: “No, you will not! It’s wrong! Wrong!”
She darted downstairs, whence her brother had gone.
The nonplussed wayfarers saw her sprint down the street, dust rising behind her sandals.
“Ah,” Bone asked, “what just happened?” He held the sword away from his body as though it were a boa constrictor.
“You speak as if I was there,” Gaunt said, rubbing her temples and reconstructing the scene in her mind. “All I can say is, two children just had very strange reactions to a magic sword. Stranger than ours, Bone.”
“Did the Pluribus have a hidden agenda in sending it here?”
“Are deserts dry?”
They watched as Skath collided with the collection of drab-robed people they�
��d noted earlier—those who supposedly could not harm others, but wanted to. The boy Skower was already among them, leading the drab-robes toward the house.
“Let’s consider this from the local point of view,” Bone ventured. “Two foreigners assault a pair of children in their own home.”
The drab-robes pointed pale fingers at the weed garden.
“I think our work here is done,” Gaunt said. “Shall we descend this fine, angled slope?”
“Well said.”
They began climbing over the wall—and stopped.
“Do you feel what I feel?” Gaunt asked.
“Would that be, dear Gaunt, a sense that it would be wholly impolite for us to flee the lawful authorities?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “But even worse, that it’s shameful to tread our dirty feet over these immaculate walls, when honest folk would use the stairs.”
Bone took a deep breath. “Enough. This time the sword presumes to interfere with our long-term plans. To survive, that is. We will overcome it. On a count of three. . . .”
“Keeping in mind the sinister look of those towers. . . .”
“. . . Indeed. . . we vault the wall.”
Bone counted three, and both leaned forward.
And both leaned back.
They stood there, feeling foolish, but unable to move.
“Second plan,” Bone said. “We throw the sword, the authorities claim it. Deed done.”
“Excellent,” Gaunt said.
Bone made to fling the weapon, but instead set the rosy rapier tenderly upon the roof.
“Close enough,” Gaunt said. “Let’s flee.”
They still could not descend the wall. They used the stairs. Progress was slow, leisurely, dignified. . . .
“Bone, I Can’t. Move. Faster.”
“Just keep walking.”
The greater their distance from the Sword of Loving Kindness, the faster their pace. As they reached the front door, the compulsion was released, and finally they could run.
It was almost soon enough.
The doors burst in and six drab-robed figures entered. These assumed the stances of trained unarmed combatants, dropping their centers of gravity and spreading their feet, raising calloused hands and sizing up Gaunt and Bone. Gaunt glimpsed scarifications surrounding hard-looking eyes.
The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year One Page 3
