by Col Buchanan
‘You selfish old bastard,’ Baracha grumbled. ‘We need you here while we rebuild the order, not traipsing off to your death on some suicide mission into the Hush. The Hush, by all that is Holy. And after that the Isles of Sky, where my people will fay you alive with hot sand if they catch you. I’d laugh if you hadn’t involved my daughter in all of this. Well no, I say, no!’
‘It is her decision. I will not stop her.’
‘She barely knew the boy!’
‘Yet they were friends, in their own way.’
Baracha stared for a long moment and then sighed in a release of tensions.
‘You know my daughter. She’s hot-headed is all. Aye, just like her father, before you say it. And she has a habit of forgetting what world she’s really living in. A young woman who ignores her father’s guidance will end up as nothing but a harlot or a slave in this life.’
‘You told her that?’
‘Why do you think she’s banging on the door?’
‘Father!’ Serèse screamed from outside with the wood clattering in its frame. Baracha rolled his tired eyes; a man who killed for a living, yet out of his depth as a father.
‘Come, put the stave down,’ Ash tried again. ‘Let us sit by the fire and talk a while, as comrades.’ And without waiting for a response, he pulled another chair across to the one already before the fire, and sat himself upon it.
The big man sat with a creak of straining wood and rested the training sword across his lap, as though he might still need it. He was wearing a heavy cassock the same deep black as his curled hair, which was tied back from his dark features in a knot. He looked neater this morning than he usually did, his beard trimmed and his hair freshly oiled, the stubble gone from his hawkish, sharp-boned expression. Perhaps he was attempting to set an example in his new role.
Ash thought of how he had once resisted the idea of this man leading the Rōshun order. Yet he had agreed with the others when the vote had been taken, if only because Baracha was the most realistic and cautious of the candidates available. He would keep them alive and safe after he was gone.
With sincerity, over the snaps of the flames in the fire, he said aloud, ‘Oshō spoke well of you. He thought you would make a fine choice. He liked the realist in you.’
A grunt. The man was uncomfortable with words of compliment. ‘Oshō was a realist too. If he was here now, he would say the same as I and disallow this whole venture of yours.’
‘Yet still I would defy him. And still he would understand.’
The anger in the man’s eyes faded, buried once more deep within himself for another day, another hour.
‘Ash. She’s my only child in this world. I tell you, one father to another . . . It would break me to lose her.’
The farlander said nothing, for he was stung to silence by the man’s words. His tongue had become a sudden lumpen thing in his mouth.
‘She’ll listen to you,’ Baracha pressed on. ‘If you tell her it’s too dangerous she will listen to you, you know that. With a few words you can stop her from getting herself killed.’
Ash’s sigh was a heavy one. He disliked this burden of responsibility. It was enough that he would be carrying the lives of an entire ship’s crew on his back, men who would live or die because of his decisions.
‘Fine,’ he relented with a clearing of his throat. ‘She stays then.’
‘And you tell her.’
All at once the tension drained from the room. Together they sat listening to the rude music coming through the door, Serèse’s temper fully flown. She was swearing blindly now, in between her threats and insults; a young woman who would not be told by any man what to do.
Ah, Serèse, he thought to himself. I hope you find your place in this world.
‘If she stays,’ Ash spoke up loudly, ‘you must agree to cast aside any notions of arranged marriages for the girl. I mean it now. I know how you think and I know Serèse. You will only lose her if you try to dictate her life for her.’
‘If you think I’ll just—’
‘Swear it, swear it now, otherwise she comes with us and takes her chances in the Hush.’
‘Fine, I swear it!’
‘Good. And Aléas still comes with me. I can use him.’
‘So he can get himself killed for nothing?’
‘I may need his skills, Baracha.’
Again Baracha’s chair creaked as his heavy frame shifted to study the room. He observed the few possessions Ash had propped against the wall ready to take with him; his sheathed sword and his backpack stuffed with clothing, a few books and mementos, nothing else remaining save for the items on the desk.
‘You’re taking everything?’
A gust from the chimney drove a belch of smoke into the room. The flames flattened out, and then regathered greater than before.
‘I will not be returning, Baracha,’ Ash replied quietly, and he glanced to the window for a sign of the ship, but could not see it from here. ‘I owe this world a body, and my path comes to an end.’
‘You’re certain then?’
‘Soon the pain will be bad enough that I cannot see from it. After that, the end will be swift.’
His words prompted Baracha to swing his arm and cast the wooden sword into the fire. Sparks flared around it.
‘You old fool,’ he told the dancing flames.
Ash was silent. It wasn’t enough though, to say nothing in this moment which was likely their last alone together. He thought back to the testament on the table, its need for some flair in it, some spirit. ‘I have left my last testament on the table there. Will you take care of it for me?’
‘No,’ answered Baracha, and Ash looked to him sharply. ‘Better ask someone else for such a favour. If you leave, I’m leaving too.’
‘Bar-Khos?’
‘With some of the others. We’ll establish a forward base in the city. And then we’ll turn our skills to striking back at the Empire. I would welcome a chance at that. We all would.’ Baracha’s voice was grim as he spoke, thickened by passion and memories. He stroked his beard and swept it into the nape of his neck, needing to shape some kind of order in this moment of his thoughts.
‘We enter into war against the Empire with barely half of our numbers still remaining, many of them apprentices. We need you here, Ash. I need my daughter and Aléas here.’
‘I know.’
‘You know, yet still you do it.’
‘Yet still I do it.’
He watched Baracha rub the stump of his missing hand where it was banded in strips of leather. The man stared at it long and hard as though recalling the moment the injury had happened, their desperate fight through the Temple of Whispers to kill the son of the Holy Matriarch of Mann.
‘Well, you will be missed, you old bastard,’ he confided at last, surprising Ash with his sentiment.
They fell to silence. Nothing left to be said.
It seemed as good a time as any to leave. Smoothly Ash rose to gather his bag and his sword, then crossed to the door.
‘You had better tell her the bad news then,’ he said, and grasped the wooden handle and heard Serèse panting from the other side.
He took a deep breath and flung open the door.
*
Smartly Ash’s boots rapped across the flagging of the open gallery, the sounds preceding him through the length of the Hermitage. His eyes narrowed by a sea breeze, he searched for his old friend Kosh amongst all the Rōshun there, his sword in hand and pack hanging from one shoulder. The pack was heavy with the urn of his apprentice’s ashes it now carried, removed from the alcove below in the cave of the Terravana. Meer had insisted they would need them if they ever made it to the Isles of Sky.
Ash walked fast to outpace the footsteps behind him, those of Aléas and Baracha who were still arguing bitterly, and the Alhazii’s sullen daughter Serèse, who had at least accepted the news from Ash better than she had from her own father.
‘Kosh!’ he called out, causing the nearest Rōs
hun to look in his direction. Ash scanned the faces of old companions and younger apprentices alike, slapping a few backs in farewell, shaking hands, exchanging words of good fortune; all of it in a passing hurry, for he disliked farewells as much as anyone else.
None of them had seen his old friend either.
On the southern side the gallery was open to the elements save for a waist-high parapet of stone, where all manner of cats lounged in the weak sunlight, curled in furry balls or watching the comings and goings of the men, many of whom were returning already from their breakfast to tasks of carpentry or the moving of stores and equipment. A whistle of a song threaded its way through the chatter; a sudden peal of laughter. It seemed their spirits had returned now that they were gone from the ruins of their old monastery, where comrades had been left buried in the ground; now that they had a new place to call home.
No sign of Kosh anywhere, which was uncommon of him during meal times, when usually his presence could be guaranteed. Perhaps he had eaten earlier, had taken himself up above to sketch some more of the small island; anything to avoid the dusty, sweaty work of making the place habitable.
Ash stopped before a wooden door at the end of a short passageway, the sound of gulls and his Rōshun companions echoing at his back.
‘Look it up yourself!’ he heard the voice of young Aléas saying from the gallery behind. ‘The early Rōshun of Honshu spelled it out plain as day. The use of master by an apprentice is a sign of respect for his mastery of the Rōshun craft – not as a sign that he’s his bloody master!’
‘Show me,’ boomed the big Alhazii voice of Baracha to his apprentice. ‘Show me where it says such a thing.’
‘I will!’
Ash stilled himself with an exhalation, waiting for their footsteps to pass by. When he raised a hand to rap the door lightly it suddenly swung inwards, and the hedgemonk Meer stepped out with a brief greeting. Meer was dressed in his usual robe of black like Ash and many of the other Rōshun, but really he was a member of the Few.
‘The ship is here?’ the monk asked him, seeing Ash’s pack on his back. The old farlander nodded.
‘I’ll join you shortly then,’ he replied on his way past, and for a moment Ash watched him walking away with his light-footed gait.
‘Find Kosh too,’ he called after him. ‘He would be sore if we left him behind.’
Ash looked down, drawn by the sudden chill that was infiltrating his boots, and saw a white vapour drifting out across the sill of the open doorway and across his feet. He stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind him.
Inside the long windowless room, the old Seer of the Rōshun order shuffled around amongst newly crafted workbenches strewn with boxes of equipment, scratching at himself absently through his heavy robe and poking around in things, shooing the occasional cat out of the way, seemingly content enough in his new setting.
At a workbench near the door, a handsome young man sat hunched beneath an array of reflective lanterns, his face obscured by a pair of yellow-tinted goggles, his hand gripping the fleshy connection of a farcry pulsating on the surface of the bench. His eyes were closed. His body swayed where he sat wrapped in thick travel clothes of wool and canvas.
Rooks, they called themselves in the Free Ports, these rebel youths who dabbled with farcrys in new and mysterious ways. A rising phenomenon according to the Seer, who in the past had expressed an interest in their exploits, though had always failed to explain their importance in a way that Ash could understand.
‘Blame, give it another shot,’ came a woman’s voice from somewhere beneath the workbench.
‘Huh,’ said the man absently. ‘Sounds like that storm Seech brewed up is still tracking across the Ports. It just dumped a shower of flying fish onto Al-Coraxa.’
‘Blame. Another shot please.’
The young rook snapped open his eyes behind his goggles, and leaned across to squeeze a soft tube protruding from the bottom half of the device. The farcry looked like a monstrous scaled egg covered with pinkish orifices. It reminded Ash of one of the Rōshun seals, in the way that it seemed to breathe in and out like a lung.
‘Got it.’
‘Keep it coming.’
He hung back a moment, interested in what they were doing and in the presence of so many exotics around the room, brought here by the pair in the previous day: tanks of grey goo with living things in them; objects like severed scorpion’s tails flexing from a line; lamps that glowed without any visible flame. He saw that the icy vapour across the floor was oozing from the closed lid of a tiq casket, and wondered what could be inside. It all had the air of one of those Tales of the Fish set far into the future, where animals were able to talk and men had travelled to the two moons and back, declaring life to be there.
Across the chamber the ancient Seer was shaking his head emphatically with his back to the door, causing the stretched, dangling lobes of his ears to swing above his shoulders.
‘These farcrys make a nonsense of secure communications,’ he complained. ‘And the cost of one alone! I had a look at them when those cheaper replicas began emerging from the Academies of the Free Ports, but you rooks had already rendered the whole business anything but secure. What use are codes when people like you can use rookery to eavesdrop on their leaking thoughts?’
‘Times change, grandfather,’ drawled the young man at the bench. ‘And we know how to make them more secure now.’
‘More secure,’ the Seer cackled as he rooted around in another crate.
A faint smile curled the corner of Ash’s mouth. He would miss this old rascal of a Seer, over thirty years together in exile.
‘Listen,’ came the woman’s sharp tone from beneath the worktop, a breathy exertion to her words. ‘That was good work you did back then, coming up with those Rōshun seals of yours. And I know what you can do without any exotics at all. You’re an old-style shaman and I respect that. You have gone deep. But you’ve fallen behind the times, and that’s the truth of the matter. You Rōshun could be using all kinds of exotics for your vendetta work. But here you are, still using carrier birds and infused dreams to communicate, still running around with swords and crossbows and doing everything the old-fashioned way. Again, Blame, another shot please.’
The old Seer was chuckling to himself as he listened to her words, tugging open more crates to look inside. ‘In our game, we favour reliability over innovation,’ came his withered voice across the room, and his squinting eyes were bright as he peered down into the box, privately delighted by what he had found there. ‘That hardly means we are ignorant of all things new.’
‘Good. Then this delivery should get you started at least.’
A hand appeared and slapped down on the workbench, and then a young Contrarè woman rose into Ash’s view, wearing a tightly fitted suit of red silk and brown velvet. Fascinated, he stared at the subtle sheen of the Dreamer’s skin. Like watching soapy water in sunlight, its surface disturbed by the odd ripple of colours.
A glimmersuit, the Seer had called the second skin she wore. Something that magnified her powers exponentially, allowing her, supposedly, to dream lucidly in the waking world. To perform what seemed like miracles.
Hard to believe it, even when he knew that the Alhazii Caliphate had been using glimmersuits for centuries, for their own few rare miracle men who worked for them in shrouds of secrecy.
While Ash wondered what that shining skin would feel like to wear, whether it hampered her feelings of touch or enhanced them, the woman wiped her hands on a cloth and threw a lingering glance his way, then returned her gaze to the device before her. ‘It’s running clear now. Let’s hope that’s the last of it. Better follow the same procedure once we install the new farcry in Bar-Khos, in case they’re both infected with the same thing.’
Ash blinked when she turned to acknowledge him at last. He saw the silver half-mask worn on her Contrarè features, his own warped face reflected across it. Sensed the energy coming off the woman, like the crackle and
buzz before a storm, causing the hairs on his arms to rise erect.
‘Ah,’ she said, recognizing him from the previous evening’s introductions. ‘The man who’s flying all the way to the Isles of Sky. I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten your name.’
‘Call me—’
‘Ash!’ cried the Seer on his way over, spotting him at last. The black skin of his face fell slack as he saw Ash standing with his pack and sword. ‘You are leaving, so soon?’
‘I am,’ Ash answered in Honshu.
‘And Kosh. You agreed to let him go with you?’
‘He left me little choice in the matter.’
The old Seer dropped his shaven head for a moment. Sighed. When he looked up once more his eyes were large within his black features. He embraced Ash paternally, patting his back, smelling as he always smelled, of woodsmoke and herbs and the dark earth. ‘I’m to be the last one standing, eh?’ the Seer whispered in their native tongue.
‘Who would have believed it,’ Ash answered with a lump in his throat, and for a moment he was startled by the thought of the Seer being the last of them, last of the old Honshu exiles amongst the Rōshun order.
A slap of his shoulders. The Seer held him out before him for one last look. Intuitive as always, he seemed to know that Ash was not returning from this voyage, and a sheen of light filled his gaze. ‘I was never any good at farewells, I’m afraid.’
‘Nor I, Quinsun.’
‘Well go out brightly, Ash. Return to the world as I’m certain you first arose from her. With a mighty roar!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tatters and Frays
Ash was hardly a man prone to worry. Yet from the first day of leaving the Hermitage of Istafari aboard the skyship known as the Falcon, heading high and fast over the pale Sargassi towards the southern continent, he observed the erratic, exhausted condition of the skyship’s crew, and became increasingly concerned about what he was leading them into.
