Jalia Prevails (Book 5)

by John Booth

  “What other evidence do you have to suggest it is Jant who murdered your Captain?” Mal asked Seb. “A threat is hardly the same as the deed.”

  “You three are the only available suspects,” Seb confessed. “Everyone else is accounted for.”

  “I doubt very much that you have interviewed Lady Sala Rotiln,” Mal said slyly. “I would be very much surprised if she was to be found at the evening meal during the time of your Captain’s death.”

  “She was indisposed in her cabin,” Seb said unsurely. He knew he should have talked to her before coming to arrest Jant, but Halad had been insistent that she was incapacitated and needed bed rest.

  Mal laughed in an insulting manner, which made Seb feel even more uncomfortable. From the look on the three faces in front of him, they knew something that he didn’t and they were mocking him.

  “Jant is not going anywhere,” Dor said dismissively. “I suggest that before you barge into rooms accusing innocent men that you gather your facts a little more thoroughly. This can all be sorted out when we dock later this afternoon.”

  “I want his weapons right now,” Seb demanded, determined not to lose face completely in the confrontation.

  “Why not?” Jant said before Dor could refuse. “Take them. Check them for blood if you must. You will not find any of your Captain’s on them.”

  Seb accepted Jant’s weapons and handed them to the closest of his men. They backed out of the room, watching the three men all the way. Once they were gone, Dor rounded on Jant.

  “Damn it Jant. You threatened the Captain in the hearing of a member of his crew? The King will be furious if the Boat Company pursues Dalk through the courts for compensation.”

  “I didn’t know the First Mate was within hearing when I said it, my lord. It was an empty threat in any case, and the Captain knew it. Dalk would not risk the enmity of the Boat Company by killing one of their senior officers.”

  “Do you think that Halad killed Toren?” Dor asked. “After all, we know he killed Lady Rotiln, even if we don’t know why.”

  “Halad must be working for Jenver. Though all the Triums swore never to carry out assassinations after the murder of your brother,” Jant mused.

  “There is another possibility,” Mal said quietly. The other men turned to him in surprise. “Maximus,” Mal told them, letting the word hang pregnant in the air.

  The boat’s horn sounded for the third time and Jalia groaned as she struggled to wake up.

  “Are we sinking?” Daniel’s asked in a half-awake manner from his bunk.

  “We must be about to enter Slarn,” Hala told them. Of the three people in the room, she was by far and away the most awake.

  “Wake me up if we sink,” Jalia murmured as she rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

  “It’s early afternoon,” Hala pointed out. They had gone to bed at dawn, exhausted from completing the theft of the swords. That had been over six hours ago and Hala was ready to start the day.

  Daniel sighed and shook his head to try and get his brains to work. He had gone to sleep fully clothed and bent down to pull on his boots.

  “Come on lazy,” he said, slapping Jalia none too gently across her buttocks. “We wouldn’t want to miss seeing the impregnable walls of Slarn.”

  “I could live with missing it.”

  Jalia rubbed her bottom absently. Nevertheless, she got to her feet, and they set off for the upper deck.

  When they reached the guard rails, the city wall was clearly visible about half a mile ahead. At first, it was difficult to estimate the size of the wall, but as the boat steamed closer and it started to dwarf them they realized just how immense the wall was.

  The wall dominated the horizon. It was all at the same height, as though someone had flattened the landscape before beginning its construction. The wall appeared to be constructed from a single piece of polished black granite and rose than a hundred feet from the ground. The side they could see was vertical and it looked as if it had been built the day before or perhaps earlier that morning.

  Where the river and wall met, a smooth rounded arch had been cut through the wall. The opening was high enough for the Steam Dragon to pass underneath it without problem. It was not clear what, if anything, was on the top of the wall. Certainly, nothing could be seen from where they looked; the top of the wall appeared to be devoid of any features.

  When they passed under the arch they could see the thickness of the wall, it was more than thirty feet thick. Daniel, ever the strategist, noticed that the bottom of the arch was embedded into the river. If you wanted to escape Slarn without climbing the wall, you would either need a boat or be prepared to get wet.

  The inside of the wall turned out to be identical to the outside. It stretched out in what looked to be a straight line in both directions as far as the eye could see. Jalia’s eagle eyes noticed something as she looked to the horizon.

  “The wall is curving inwards and I think I can see a black line on the horizon in both directions.”

  “Captain Toren told us back in Boathaven that the wall was six miles in diameter,” Daniel replied.

  You can see practically the whole wall from the observation platform,” Cara informed them as she and Don joined them. “We were just up there, before we saw you here and came to join you.”

  “I want to go and look,” Hala said.

  “It is a bit crowded up there. Nearly all of the passengers are there at the moment,” Don pointed out.

  Hala pouted.

  “Let’s go up anyway,” Jalia said, much to Hala’s delight. “We can always push someone off if they get in our way.”

  “She was joking, wasn’t she?” Don asked Daniel as the men brought up the rear of the party.

  “I’m never sure with Jalia,” Daniel said seriously. “But I shall be holding on to the rail while we are up there, just in case Jalia considers me in her way.”

  The view from the observation platform was breathtaking. Slarn was laid out before them like a gigantic toy. It turned out to be true that you could see the top of the far side of the wall if you looked carefully.

  Slarn was laid out inside three concentric rings and the land it sat on appeared to be almost perfectly flat. The wall they had just come through was the outer ring. About three miles away another, much lower wall separated the city from the farms that dotted the city’s outer zone. The second wall and the buildings inside it blocked much of the view of the center of the city. Nevertheless, it looked as though a third wall separated the central zone from the mansions and estates within the middle zone.

  “It’s wonderful,” Hala said as she leaned over the safety rail up on her tiptoes. “It’s the prettiest city I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s the only city you’ve ever seen,” Jalia pointed out. “However, I have seen a few and it is certainly impressive.”

  “Not the best?” Hala asked, more than a little disappointed at Jalia’s tone.

  “You would need to see Ranwin, the city of glass, to have a comparison,” Jalia said softly.

  “Ah Ranwin, city of the mad king and his hoards of murderous soldiers, I remember it well,” Daniel said.

  “But the buildings were pretty, Daniel,” Jalia said smugly. “You have to admit that.”

  “Have you noticed the banks of the river?” Don asked

  “Artificial,” Daniel agreed. “They seem to be made of the same stone as the walls. It’s a much bigger version of the canal in Wegnar. Like a circular pipe sliced in half along its length. The amazing thing is how much higher the banks are than the surrounding land, they must be at least twenty feet higher, I would guess. They must have been designed to cope with enormous flows in the spring.”

  “Men,” Jalia said. “A whole city to admire and you two are discussing how the banks of the river were made. Typical.”

  “I, for one, was wondering what is causing that black smoke,” Cara said and pointed towards the south west. They could see that something significant was on
fire within the central zone. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing towards them and they couldn’t see anything through the smoke.

  “We were expecting to see a fire today,” Daniel reminded them quietly.

  Nin was in the process of throwing a log into the boiler when Hal Pinder entered the room.

  “I’m glad to see you men working so hard.”

  “Is it true about the Captain?” Jerin asked. Rumors had spread through the ship like wildfire, but nothing had been confirmed.

  “Aye it is, Captain Toren is dead, murdered in his cabin last night. Seb is acting Captain now.”

  “Was it that woman, Sorn?” Nin asked. “She tried to kill us in the Greenhouse, or rather the men she set on us did.”

  “You never mentioned that before,” Jerin accused.

  “They asked me not to say anything,” Nin confessed. “I didn’t do anything wrong by not telling, did I Bosun?”

  “The Captain already knew about it, Nin, so not to worry,” Hal said, seeing the alarm on the boy’s face. “It wasn’t Sorn. She found the body and was pretty cut up about it from all accounts.”

  “I wouldn’t trust her an inch,” Nin said.

  “Neither would I, boy,” Hal said approvingly. “Jerin, I want you to stand ready tonight. I’ll explain why privately, once I have had a similar word with Nin.”

  Jerin took the hint and walked from the room.

  “Are you any good at acting, Nin?” Hal asked.

  “I’ve never tried, why?”

  “Because there are some things I need you to say and later on you will have to make it sound as if it was your idea.”

  Sila Klint knocked on the door to Dor’s cabin. Instead of the door opening as usual, Mal shouted to her.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sila Klint,” she replied impatiently, wondering what was going on.

  “Are you alone?”

  “What do you think?” Sila replied in annoyance. She heard the door being unbolted before it opened and Mal let her in.

  “Are you expecting trouble?” She couldn’t help noticing that Mal was bolting the door closed behind her.

  “We have already had it,” Dor confessed. “Have you made any progress?”

  “Of a sort,” Sila replied sitting down. “I couldn’t get them to admit it, but I am sure that Tonas does not intend to sell the swords to Gally Sorn if he has a choice. My guess is that he plans to sell them to Queen Kalenda, through her representative Jak Venjer.”

  “Venjer works for the Queen?” Jant asked.

  “I believe so, though I have no evidence. In any event, Wilf and Tred are determined that this transaction will be cash on delivery and that means that any negotiations will not take place until we reach the dock. If Gally outbids Kalenda, then we are in with a chance.”

  “The royal coffers will be empty if we have to go higher than twenty thousand,” Dor complained.

  “Then a joint bid by Dalk and Jenver would look to be our best option,” Sila said dryly. “But if Gally Sorn puts up the asking price and the other families are nowhere to be seen, they will sell the swords to her. It’s very likely that under those circumstances Tonas will have no choice.”

  “That won’t happen,” Jant said, smashing his fist on the table. “King Gilan will be waiting when we dock.”

  “If you say so,” Sila replied. She didn’t sound convinced.

  20. Slarn

  “Have you seen enough,” Jalia asked Hala. The other viewers were making their way down the steps back to their cabins. Only Jalia, Daniel and Hala remained as the Dragon travelled down the final stretch of the Jalon to reach the harbor.

  “Can we stay up here a little bit longer?” Hala pleaded. She would have been happy to stay up on the viewing platform until they docked; she was so fascinated by the city.

  Slarn was a beautiful city, built on the grid system favored by the Magician Kings. They were almost at the second wall and could see elegant white painted villa’s surrounded by lush grounds within it. Many of the trees within the second circle were taller than their platform on the Steam Dragon, which meant that their view of the central part of the city was largely obscured.

  They saw the upper halves of tall towers across the horizon. They too were white, though whether they had been painted or constructed of white stone was impossible to tell.

  The second wall circling the city was constructed of conventional stone blocks, cut and laid on top of it each in perfect precision. The wall itself was twenty feet high and had a walkway on top of it. Small round towers were dotted along the wall providing stairways to the ground. These towers were spaced about a half mile apart from each other. There were guards walking the wall, though not enough to carry out any serious defensive work. They had the look of a token force, put there to prove to the world that their Trium owned it. The second wall did not cross the river but was interrupted at its banks, continuing on the other side

  Just inside the wall on either side of the river, was a wide tree lined avenue that stopped abruptly at the black granite riverbank. The bank was almost as high as the wall, being only six feet or so lower than the top of the wall.

  The guards on the two banks yelled cheerful greetings at the Steam Dragon as it progressed to the center of the city. The river Jalon was six hundred feet wide from bank to bank, though Daniel thought that it might be narrowing.

  “Did you notice that the guards on either side wore different uniforms?” Daniel asked, causing Jalia to snort in derision at the idea she wouldn’t have noticed. “Do we know which side of the river belongs to which Trium?”

  “The left bank is Jenver and the right is Dalk,” Hala told them absently. Nin had described the journey into the city in some detail. “We were supposed to dock in the harbor at Dalk. Nin didn’t tell me anything about the rest of the city, but I think we will join the River Slarn by turning right when we get to the palace. Tallis will be over to our left.”

  Daniel walked around the platform until he was looking up the river. The Jalon gently curved to the right as it entered the city so the Palace was largely hidden by trees and buildings. What he could see was a single black cylindrical shaped spire that rose high into the sky. At the top of the spire was a larger cylinder, also made of polished black stone.

  They were approaching the inner wall of the city. It was about the same height as the previous wall and appeared to be identically constructed. The one significant difference was that there was an avenue on both sides of the wall. The avenue on the outside was elegant and tree lined while the one inside the wall was narrower, did not have any trees and looked more functional.

  “I wonder if the purpose of this wall is to keep the people inside the city center away from the wealthy people and their estates outside,” Daniel pondered. This wall was more heavily manned than the outer wall had been and the guards looked as though they had a serious job. There was no cheering as the Steam Dragon went passed the wall, though every head of every guard on both sides of the river turned to watch them.

  Apart from the fact that all the houses in the city center had steep tiled roofs, there was little to distinguish them from buildings that could be found in Delbon or Bagdor. Of course, the minarets of Bagdor were missing, but then those minarets had been decorative rather than functional in nature.

  By now, they could see some of the palace. Daniel had some trouble figuring out where the river ended and the palace began.

  “Is the palace on an island or is it somehow suspended over the river?” Daniel asked Jalia whose eyesight was keener than his.

  “I think it is a bit of both,” Jalia replied, squinting at the highly unlikely sight in front of them. Daniel remembered that Captain Toren had refused to describe the palace, saying that it had to be seen to be believed.

  “Look, that’s Dalk’s harbor,” Hala told them, pointing to the right riverbank. A channel of water three hundred feet across cut into the city at right angles to the river they were on. They saw buildings on the ha
rbor covered in black smoke marks and people working to remove debris from inside them. Despite the intensity of the earlier fire, the buildings seemed largely undamaged. There were several large barges on the side of the dock away from the damaged buildings, loading and unloading goods

  The people inside the dock stopped working and waved at the boat. Despite the fact that the palace was looming over the Steam Dragon, it was still a good mile away.

  As they got closer to the palace, Daniel’s jaw dropped in surprise, as he finally understood what he was looking at.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he whispered in awe. Hala and Jalia moved to either side of him and he found himself wrapping his arms around them. They hugged him back as the Steam Dragon slipped under the palace

  The bottom of the palace sat on a cylindrical black stone island, which was at least a thousand feet across. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the lower portion of the palace was a black stone cylinder rising up in the center of a vast moat. The palace was not bound by the confines of the island. The underside of it stretched over and across the river at a height of fifty feet above them. Three massive black stone arches curved out from the palace walls to embed themselves like roots into the ground of the three Triums. The King’s Palace in Slarn literally joined the Triums together with tentacles of solid rock.

  The River Jalon flowed from the north under the base of the palace and around the central island before breaking into two rivers, one going south and the other being the river they had traveled. As the Steam Dragon entered the circular channel of water, Jalia noted that the island in the center was not devoid of features. There were vertical slots in its otherwise smooth surface.

  “What do you think they are?” she asked Daniel.

  I think the outer surface of the island is actually three open gates,” Daniel replied. Each of them can swing outwards and block the flow of water from one of the rivers that go downstream.”

  “What would happen if the downstream gates were closed at the same time?”