The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  Word arrived the viceroy of Dollendun and the border-towns had banned all norren from bearing arms in public without notarized consent of the local guard. Several norren had already been arrested. Two days later, one of Cally's scouts rode through the gates with news the Clan of the Broken Branch had ranged across the river to burn a slave camp to the ground. The clan left no living human behind.

  "It's just a matter of time," Blays said after a long time planning routes in his room. "We ought to just dig a huge ditch around the norren lands and fill it with all the trash we can find. See if that keeps 'em out."

  Dante stood from the desk, knees popping. "Speaking of trash, I'm hungry. Want lunch?"

  "Five times a day."

  Dante clomped down the back stairs to take the shortcut to the dining hall. The high, wide walls were a product of an earlier time, and so too were the rules of etiquette that continued to govern it. Anyone within the Citadel was allowed to eat in the hall, from the lowest charmaid to common soldiers to Cally himself. When there were lines, no favors were to be expected or granted. Most shockingly of all, perhaps, in practice it played out just like that: the few who had issue with such egalitarianism, such as blue-blooded Kav, simply took all their meals in their room or out on the town. This order amongst the classes was self-policing and easily explained. Pull rank on a servant in the hall to help yourself to the last slice of plum duck, and the next time a meal was delivered to your room, it was likely to contain an additional spicing of saliva, hair, and pestled rat feces.

  So the hall bore its usual assortment of soldiers, footmen, and monks. Flatware clattered from plates and long wooden tables. Across the room, Lira faced Wint, her back as stiff as charcoal-forged steel. Wint smiled and gestured towards her waist. Her hand flinched.

  "Ah." Blays strode across the wooden floor, sidestepping a servant waddling along beneath a tray of cups and bowls. Dante jogged to catch up.

  "My point," Wint said, voice threading through the rattle of knives and laughter, "is why limit yourself to bodyguarding while you're awake?"

  Lira didn't move. "You're proposing to hire me in my sleep."

  The young councilman shook his head. "I wasn't aware your services were paid."

  Her limbs went loose. Not from a deflation of tension—the alert looseness of a warrior readying her muscles to react in an instant. "Stop speaking to me."

  "Is that a command?" Wint's smile withered. "Just where do you think you are?"

  "Positioned in front of a rather poor view," Blays said, slipping between them like a knife between ribs. "But I bet I can pound it into shape easy enough."

  Wint laughed inches from Blays' face, brows bent. "Everyone's forgot themselves today. Officially, you're a retainer of the Citadel, yes? Bound, in other words, to carry out orders from every member of the Council."

  Blays' hand found the handle of his sword. "Yes, but I have notoriously bad hearing. To me, all orders sound like 'stab stab stab.'"

  Nether flickered to Wint's thin fingers. "Perhaps your ears are simply clogged, and the blockage can be knocked free with sufficient force."

  "Stop this," Dante said. "Nobody wants a bunch of blood in their food."

  "Nothing to worry about, then. There's no blood if a man's heart just...stops." Wint winked at Blays, then turned and strode for a nearby table, snagging an entire plate of skewered beef from a passing servant.

  Lira met Blays' eyes. "I can take care of myself."

  "I know that," he said. "I've just always wanted to hit that guy."

  "He was reaching for the nether," Dante said.

  Blays snorted. "I've been around you long enough to have worked out a plan or two. Let's see how well you boss those shadows around while I'm twisting your nipple off."

  Dante shook his head. Blays rapidly dropped the subject in favor of a tirade about the inherent superiority of peppered chicken and herbed kasha, but Lira was silent even by her own laconic standards. Then again, she and Mourn had been cooped up in the Citadel and its grounds for days now, sitting on their hands while Dante, Blays, and Cally schemed and mapped and planned.

  "It's the last day of Thaws," Dante said. "Why don't we go out tonight?"

  Blays jabbed a greasy chicken bone his way. "Not if your plan is to go look at churches. Or attend some play."

  "My thinking was more along the lines of eating, drinking, and repeating, until our corpses have to be swept into the street."

  "That's what you consider fun?" Lira said.

  She came along anyway. Dante took his loon, leaving the other with Cally. Blays took an emergency flask and and emergency-emergency flask. Lira took three extra knives. Mourn took himself. Their first stop was just beyond the gates. A similar scene was about to play out in squares across the city, but the plaza between the Cathedral of Ivars and the Sealed Citadel was the most popular by far.

  Three thousand people ringed a wide, roped-off circle. Twelve monks were spaced along its interior. They carried long-handled nets and foolish grins. Spectators jostled, placed bets, exchanged good-natured jeers with the monks. The sun sank beneath the cathedral roof. A gap opened in the crowd directly in front of the church's doors, revealing an elderly woman—Hallida, the institution's master. She shuffled to the center of the vast ring, head bobbing, a squirming sack tucked beneath one arm. Four men in black hoods circled counterclockwise among the monks, passing out ceremonial wine.

  "Confused, blind, and chased," Hallida smiled. "At least you're not alone."

  She whipped the sack away. A blindfolded rabbit wriggled in her arm. Around the circle, the monks chugged their mugs. The crowd whooped as the monks set down their cups and took up their nets. Hallida raised her free hand for silence, then spun three times and set the rabbit on the ground.

  It listed like a hulled ship, careering straight for a portly monk. He swiped at it with his net, missing widely, drawing a hail of boos. A woman sprinted forward, robes and black hair flapping. The rabbit bolted between her ankles. Three others jogged to intercept, holding a chevron formation. The creature veered toward the crowd. They stamped their feet until it reversed course—and straight into an old monk's net. He hefted it over his head, its long legs kicking as he raised his fist in triumph. The audience laughed, shouted, clapped.

  "I don't understand what I just saw," Lira said.

  "Narashtovik," Dante smiled. "Five hundred years of sieges and decay has left them a bit fatalistic."

  "And weird," Blays said. "Onward!"

  Last light dwindled from the rooftops. Knowing the best taverns were rarely the richest, Dante led them beyond the Ingate to one of the city's less-loved neighborhoods. In squares, people stomped the slush and shoveled it to melt beside snapping bonfires. The smell of woodsmoke on cold air always made Dante feel at peace. In front of the six-sided spike of Vaccarrin Tower, a man in a patchwork cloak made delicate hammer-strokes from atop the ladder he needed to play the ten-foot strings of his godsharp.

  The pub-hunt didn't start strong. The Left Hand was too crowded to fit through the door. The Pine and Hatchet had burned to the ground. Finally, Dante settled on Kattin's, a four-story pub and inn with an auxiliary basement they opened for holiday crowds. To his surprise, several tables were open in the main room. Their group occupied one and quickly populated it with mugs of stout. Dante wasn't as enthusiastic about pubs as Blays, but for his coin, the second drink was always the best: settled in to his chair, that first rum or beer soothing his nerves, the anticipation of the evening to come. The mood of the crowd at Kattin's matched his; placid to begin with, but gradually growing more excited for no apparent reason. By the time the barbacks shoved two tables aside for a boisterous quartet hailing from the eastern mountains, Dante's toes began to tap on their own.

  "I think I need to dance," Blays declared.

  Dante glanced away from the short-haired blonde whose voice was as crisp as her flute. "I didn't know you danced."

  "Not well. But that's why it's fun." He stood, chair scraping, an
d extended his hand to Lira. "My lady?"

  "I don't dance," she said. "Meaning I don't dance."

  "How stupid. How about you, Mourn?"

  The norren blinked. "Do male humans dance with other males?"

  "No, but they sometimes joke about it. Wish me luck." Blays swung from the table and approached the hodgepodge of men and women dancing in front of the sweating quartet. He quickly linked arms with a young woman whose white smile flashed between the black brackets of her hair. Each time Blays stumbled, he leaned in and shouted something above the music. Each time, the girl drew back laughing.

  "He's very enthusiastic," Lira said.

  "Especially for putting our lives at risk." Dante sipped his thick and bitter beer. "Why don't you dance?"

  "I have to choose to be thought of as a warrior or as a woman. Shooting for both targets means striking neither."

  "I can only imagine."

  Lira laughed in the high-pitched way of someone who's very pleased with herself. "You bought it, didn't you? Not that it's entirely a lie." She peered at him over her beer. "Primarily, I'm afraid I'd break both legs. I'd probably break a third one I didn't know I had."

  Dante chuckled. The musicians finished on a stutter of hard notes. The dancers fell apart, laughing and clapping and bowing.

  Lira gestured their way. "Do you dance?"

  "Just often enough to remember why I never do."

  The next dance involved a rhythm of boot-stomps and partnered claps that Dante couldn't begin to follow. Blays blustered through in a flurry of stinging palms and barking laughter. At the end, the dark-haired girl hugged him and left with a wave. He plopped back in his chair sweaty and grinning.

  "I'm not going to ask if you watched," he said. "Saying no would only prove you're a liar."

  "We conversed," Dante said. "Mostly about the best way to scrape the remains of your partner from the bottom of your shoes."

  Lira clapped her mug to the table. "I should dance with you after all. I'm much harder to stomp than some waif."

  Blays grinned. "Another drink first. And much more air. Then we'll see who tramples who."

  Air was breathed. Drinks were drunk. The band took a breather of their own. When they returned, Blays stood up and offered Lira his hand. She accepted with a curt nod.

  "What am I seeing?" Mourn said.

  Dante shook his head. "A man eager to make a mistake."

  Lira moved with a rhythm that more or less matched that of the fiddle. Dante thought she'd be clumsy, stiff, openly dangerous with her elbows and toes, but she danced with a martial precision that resembled a less-practiced version of the crisp mastery she showed with her forms in the barracks. Despite this, it wasn't unpleasant—through it all, she kept her limbs and muscles loose, guided by the confident hands of training and alcohol. The players leaned into their instruments, elbows jumping back and forth. The creases of concentration smoothed from Lira's brow. She flowed after Blays' lead, matching his steps and gestures as if she'd rehearsed for weeks. Dante smiled.

  Two people in tune to each other and the music that brought them together. Years later, he would remember nothing else from that evening, but his memory of the dance would persist with the sharpness of splintered obsidian. Regret came with that remembrance, of course. But also the knowledge that for everything that happened afterward, that song, that dance, that moment could never be destroyed.

  The final notes swept the crowd. Blays grinned, slicking his hand through his sweat-clumped hair. Lira stepped away with a small smile and returned to her chair. "I hope that wasn't too disgraceful."

  Dante shook his head, laughing. "You did just fine."

  * * *

  Their travel plans took shape. Cally ruled out spending any serious time in the lands directly between central Gask and the Norren Territories. If it came to war, the lords there would be deluged by the king's men, incapable of the first hint of resistance. Even acting too slowly to support the king's army could result in the forcible appropriation of food, men, and their very titles. Cally would dispatch another diplomatic attachment to visit those lords and make carefully apolitical promises of Narashtovik's friendship. Dante, however, would be sent further afield.

  His natural targets would be those distanced geographically and politically from the capital's gravity. A long ride south-southwest would take him to the plains of Tantonnen, eighty miles of grain and grassland not far from the norren hills' western edge. They had long ties to their norren neighbors; Tantonnen had been absorbed by Gask in the same wave of expansion that gobbled up the Norren Territories. Many of its farmers and baronets had never taken to the royal yoke no matter how many decades passed. It would be unable to muster much in the way of men, but if Dante could convey to its rulers that a norren victory would enable all of the eastern states to self-rule, Tantonnen might be convinced to find a way to misplace its excess grain before the king's collectors came to call.

  Dante's second stayover would take place among the lakes of Gallador Rift. Some three hundred miles further west, nestled between the mountains, the lakes' merchants were rather boisterous proponents of preserving peace at any cost: "Calm waters bring many sails," or so their motto went. Dante's pursuit there wouldn't be material gains, but political ones. If he could convince the trade-nexus that a war against the norren would be slow, messy, and chaotic, the merchantmen would assuredly pressure Setteven to settle the conflict through gentler means.

  The third shot was a long one. Not just in the sense of the sheer distance to the meandering inlet of Pocket Cove. At least Dante could find the place. The same might not be true of its residents. Even if he could track down the People of the Pocket, there were no guarantees they wouldn't flay him on the spot and kite his skin on the beach.

  With no unforeseen diversions or delays, the trip to all these places would last two months, with much of that time reserved for introductions, dinners, and multi-day stays in stately manors. The trip back could take as little as three weeks. Less, if they were willing to kill a few horses.

  They'd be back by the end of June, in other words. If he planned to take the Norren Territories before winter, Moddegan would have to commit his forces to the field around that same time.

  "Three days," Cally said after reaching that conclusion.

  Dante glanced up from the maps on the table in the old man's room. "What about them?"

  "That's when I kick you out the front gates."

  "That's hardly any time at all. Blays has had hangovers last longer than that."

  Cally scoffed, flicking his beard with his fingertips. "You have an entire castle at your disposal. If you were feeling cramped, you could clap your hands and have a new house built for you by the morning."

  Dante blew on the notes he'd been taking. "It just seems fast. I suppose three days is enough."

  "It had better be. Because you'll actually only have two."

  "What? Why the hell did you just tell me I'd leave in three?"

  "You will." Cally peered down his crooked nose. "But one of those days will be spent with me. It's time you had another lesson."

  Dante looked up sharply, smudging his ink. "In what?"

  "Clearly it ought to be in patience."

  "Tell me!"

  "Poultry farming," the old man said. "What do you think?"

  That was the best Dante could get out of him. He left to tell the others the plan and get started on a final list of all they'd need along the way. Despite all the details demanding his attention, his focus refused to stay put, returning incessantly to the idea like a dog to a wounded paw. He wasn't sure Cally had given him any proper lessons after they first met in Mallon. While Blays waited for the gallows and Dante fumed, impotent, Cally taught him the secret of blood. A tomb had served as the old man's schoolhouse. His methods, chiefly, had been insanity. But by the time he finished showing Dante how to feed the nether with his own blood, Dante had been able to carve his way through the dozen guards that stood between him and Blays. That had
been some six years ago. Six years of constant practice with the nether. What would Cally be able to teach him now?

  A knock jarred him from sleep. The room was blacker than nether; his headache implied it was hours before dawn. He put on a robe, opened the door, and stared murder at the waiting servant. "This had better be about the end of the world."

  "Callimandicus requires you on the roof. Now." The servants' eyes widened. "His words, not mine. I meant no—"

  "Shut up," Dante said. "Tell him I'll be up in a minute. And that I hate him."

  He slugged down a half-empty mug of cold tea, dressed in a thick doublet and thicker cloak, and shuffled up the steep staircase to the roof. Cally stood in its center, head tipped back, beard and hair flapping in the vicious wind. Far below, smoke furled from brick chimneys. Far above, stars burned from the perfect sky. Without clouds to trap it in, all the day's warmth had been lost. A film of frost slicked the stone.

  "What time is it?" Dante said.

  Cally didn't turn. "Does it matter?"

  "I guess I'd want to throw myself off the roof no matter what time it was."

  "So you don't think it matters."

  Dante huddled in his cloak. "Is this part of the lesson?"

  Cally's brow darkened. His eyes were as bright as the stars. "You're wrong. When we go to extremes, your wrongness is clear. It's the end of winter. If you were a farmer, you should be preparing your first fields now. If you waited to plant your tomatoes and peppers until the fall, October frost would kill your crops, and then you."

  "That's a difference of seasons. I'm talking about an hour or three. The difference between a normal morning and a pounding headache."

  "So there's no difference between hours? What about days? Will today as a day be different than tomorrow?"

  Dante rubbed his eyes. "It will be longer. By a minute or two."

  "If you woke at dawn both days, could you tell one dawn from the other?"

  "I highly doubt it."