“Nothing was ever going to happen between us,” she snapped. Then she regretted it; her hangover kept making her say things she shouldn’t. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to say. I always thought we had a lot in common. I thought we might be allies. If something deeper had developed—well, fine. But you were always too …”
“Arrogant?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
But he didn’t need to. Had she really misjudged him so badly, over the years? After all—look at him now. He had made his life choice, and evidently a good one.
He said, “I think you genuinely don’t know what you want, do you?”
She sighed. “No. I just know I don’t want this.” And she opened her arms to indicate the carpet-like landscape of Northland, the people marching with their shovels, the laughing children. “I keep thinking there must be more to life. Even getting drunk with some greasy Dumno miner with wandering hands is different.”
“Then be a trader,” he said. “See the world. See Hattusa and Mycenae, see Egypt …”
Ximm looked back. “Serious talk’s for tomorrow,” he said briskly. “Today we’ve got a canal to fix—and here we are.”
Before them, the people were spreading out along the bank of a drained canal, dropping their packs of food and water, taking their shovels from their backs.
Irritated, Milaqa snapped, “Oh, give me that shovel, Voro, and show me where to dig.”
11
They were to be supervised by a senior of the House of the Vole, the water engineers, who unrolled a complicated map drawn in red and black on a sheet of bark. The canal system had been dammed and diverted at some point upstream from this stretch, which was a branch of the main canal called the Sky. The duct here had been left to drain and dry out for the best part of a month, ready for the family to take it on.
So, with Ximm and the others cheerfully calling out orders, the adults and older children grabbed their shovels and buckets and clambered over the banks of hardened mud and earth down into the empty channel. Though it had been drying out for some time the mud at the bottom was wet and deep and clinging and cold. Milaqa, up to her calves in it, wondered how long it had taken this thickness of muck to build up—how long since this particular stretch had been dredged, five years or fifty?
The people got their bearings quickly. They formed up into rough lines, the adults and older kids in the deeper mud of the bottom, the smallest children and nursing mothers and old folk walking along the banks, looking down and calling encouragement. They began to dig away at the mud with shovels of bronze and bone, passing it up by a bucket chain. The glistening stuff was dumped to add another bit of height to the banks that lined the canal—and indeed, it was this endless digging out that had created the banks in the first place.
There were a few surprises. They turned up broken pots, what might have been a child’s doll of wood and bone—even a broken bronze sword. Offerings to the gods, to the little mother of the sky, to Ana and Prokyid. You were supposed to make such offerings by one of the five great canals, but people driven by sufficient hope or despair would make their small prayers wherever they could. Ximm always made sure that such finds were pressed back into the deeper mud, to be covered over and lost again. Then some of the children got excited at the sight of a sunken boat, a few hundred paces further down the channel. They ran off to investigate, followed by cries of exasperation or envy from the toiling adults.
Milaqa had Hadhe and Teel to either side of her, Ximm just ahead, and Voro hanging around somewhere just behind her. She threw herself into the work. There was no real choice; this was what Family Day was all about. And she didn’t want any comments about how hard she worked, or didn’t. Besides, though the mud was heavy and sticky, she found the simple repetitious work warmed her muscles up. Somebody began singing, a rhythmic comic song about the only ice giant who didn’t like fighting. People joined in, up and down the stretch of the canal, as they dug and lugged their way through the mud, growing steadily filthier.
“This is the life,” Teel said, working beside Milaqa.
She eyed him skeptically.
“Good honest work. Building the world, spadeful by spadeful. The way it’s been since Ana’s time. It’s the Etxelur way. When our family came here from Kirike’s Land, this work was all we could do, all we could understand. But we were welcomed into the House of the Beetle, and we worked hard, and did it better and better. And look at us now!”
“What, still up to our knees in muck?”
He grinned, his face a muddy mask. “I felt the same way when I was your age. Younger, probably.”
“What way?”
“Like I didn’t fit. Our world here, the Northland way—it’s fine, and it works, but it is rigid. It’s a world where you are expected to find deep spiritual joy mucking out a canal.”
“So what did you do?”
“You know what I did. I gave up my chance of ever becoming a father, for the sake of a greater ambition. And it was all the fault of Prokyid the Second, the nearest to a king we ever had here in Etxelur, about a thousand years ago. Did you know that? He did just what all these other petty kings and princes do on the Continent—strutting and posing, picking fights with others of his kind, starving his people to wage war on others. And for a generation the important stuff, the engineering, was neglected. When he was toppled, the Annids decreed that no man could ever again join their number, for generally it’s men who cause trouble of that sort. And so now—”
“It’s women only, or eunuchs.”
He shrugged. “I made my choice years ago. It’s as if a different person made it for me. I jumped off a cliff. I had no way back, and I have none now.” He glanced at the children playing on the bank. “Like you, I wanted more.”
“And was it worth it?”
“Oh, yes. I got what I wanted, which was to see how Northland works from the inside. But that’s what worries me now. Northland is ponderous and slow moving—frankly, the Houses are usually too busy infighting to look outside. And yet there are new things in this world. Things that need to be looked at. An arrowhead that can pierce bronze. The nestspills who come trickling into our country from their failing, drought-ridden farms—”
“I’ve seen some of them.”
“In the east people are starving, dying, marching. Ancient kingdoms are collapsing. Even the Hatti are in trouble. The world is changing. And if it’s to survive, Northland must change too. Change and adapt.”
“How? You just said the Houses are too busy fighting each other.”
“But the Houses you know about aren’t all there is.”
“Now I really don’t follow you,” she grumbled, pecking at another patch of hardened canal mud. “What other House is there?”
He dug under his shirt and pulled out an amulet—a crow’s foot, dried and suspended from a loop of leather.
She stared.
“Keep digging,” he murmured.
She bent over her spade. “I never heard of a House of the Crow. Besides, you’re an Owl. You sacrificed your balls to become one! How can you be in two Houses at once?”
“It just evolved that way … Milaqa, like most things in Northland, the House of the Crow is very old. Somebody far back in our history realized that we have this basic problem of getting stuck in our ways. And that every so often the world changes, something new happens, and we have to be able to cope with it. So the Crows emerged. Like the other Houses, you can only join if you’re invited. And you’re only invited if you have the right kind of mind.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that doesn’t fit anywhere else. The whole point of the Crows is to be the ones who deal with the new, the unexpected, the challenging.”
She felt her heart beat faster. “The exciting.”
“The dangerous,” he warned. “Look, Milaqa, I’m just offering this to you as a way forward. I already showed you something unexpected. Something strange.”
“You mean the arrowhead.” She pulled it out from under her tunic, as he had his crow’s foot.
“What have you done about it?”
“Nothing,” she said slowly. “I …” She had felt reluctant to face the fact that her mother must have been murdered. Somehow asking questions about it would make her seem even more dead. It was easier to dive into the clamor of the Scambles and forget everything.
“I know it’s complicated,” Teel said. “But that arrowhead isn’t just lethal, it’s new. Maybe if you can find out where it came from, what’s different about it—”
“Nice pendant.” Ximm was only a pace behind them. Teel hastily tucked away his crow’s foot. Ximm reached out to cradle the arrow in his palm. “I know a bit about iron.” He frowned. “An arrowhead? Funny sort of ornament.”
Milaqa took a breath. “It’s not just an ornament. This works. It’s been fired.”
“You saw that, did you?”
She stayed silent, hoping she wouldn’t have to lie.
Ximm turned. “Here, Voro, take a look at this.”
Voro straightened up from the mud and strode over. “Iron?”
“Not just iron. Hard and true iron, good enough for the bow, according to the lady here.” He tapped the head on the shaft of his shovel. “How come? Iron falls from the sky, doesn’t it? No use for anything but showing off.” He cackled.
“I heard rumors,” Voro said. “About the Hatti. You know how it is—we send them potato and maize mash, and tin for their bronze. We get iron goods back from them in exchange, among other stuff, and so we know something of their techniques. I heard they have a way of working iron that makes it harder. Better than bronze, so they say. I may be meeting some Hatti myself. Some of their high-ups are coming to the Giving in midsummer. I’m supposed to go with Bren to meet them in Gaira and escort them here.”
Teel pulled Milaqa away, and murmured, “Maybe this is your way forward.”
“To do what?”
“Follow the thread, Milaqa. If you can find out where this arrowhead was made and how it got to Northland, maybe you can find out who pulled the bowstring. If there’s some connection with the Hatti—”
“I don’t know any Hatti. I don’t know anything about them.”
“What, you don’t bump into any in the Scambles? Then it’s time you found out, isn’t it?”
12
The midsummer Giving at Etxelur was, Qirum had learned, a custom more revered than all the ceremonies of Egypt, more ancient than the rites of vanished Sumer and Akkad. And as the solstice approached people traveled from across half the planet to attend the Giving, like a great drawing-in of breath. Now Qirum was going to Northland for the first time, he was going to a Giving. And he would have a queen of the Hatti at his side.
The long journey began as they pushed off from Troy’s long gritty beach. The rowers dragged on their oars under Praxo’s gruff leadership, and Qirum worked his steering oar as they navigated the treacherous currents of the strait.
Kilushepa was fascinated by Qirum’s ship. She paced the length of it, picking her way between the eight rowers’ sweating torsos and the bales of food, water, wet-weather clothes, folded sails, bailing buckets, bundles of weapons and other junk that crammed the narrow hull. Her balance was good, as the ship pitched and creaked in the offshore swell.
“Twelve paces long.”
“About that.” Qirum, sitting at his position in the high stern, was unfolding the periplus for this stretch of coast. He was amused by the way the rowers were distracted by Kilushepa’s slim figure brushing past them, and by Praxo’s clenched, furious expression under his salt-stained felt cap.
She sat down at the prow, running her fingers along the hull beams. “Your paintwork is flaking.”
He laughed. “Probably. We never were the smartest ship on any of the oceans. But it’s pitch, not paint.”
Praxo growled, “Smart or not, she’s the fastest and most feared of all—right, lads?”
The only answer he got was a couple of uninterested grunts. Most of these rowers had been signed on in the dingy taverns of Troy, and most looked as if all they wanted was to work off last night’s mead or wine or beer. At least they seemed to be an experienced bunch, however; they could handle their oars, and none of them was throwing up as the sea swelled under them.
“Oak,” Kilushepa said now. “These planks are of oak, are they not?” She picked at the withies that bound the planks, the caulking. “And these lengths that bind them?”
“Yew. And then it’s all caulked with moss, beeswax and animal fat. The hull is sealed to keep out the water.”
“You know, we Hatti generally don’t have much time for ships. Even though we rely on the fleets that bring us our grain from Egypt. Everything this ship is made of was once alive, wasn’t it? The wood, the wax, the moss, the leather—all these bits of trees and plants and animals, sliced up and stitched together. The living stuff of the land molded to defy the sea. It’s wonderful when you think about it.”
“Is it?”
“Yes! As if the ship is itself alive, a creature bounding across the waves.”
“Praxo says she has a mind of her own, that’s for sure.”
His only response from Praxo was a scowl.
They were putting out from the land now. Troy diminished to a shabby blur on the eastern horizon, and a breeze was picking up, fresh with salt. Sitting at the prow, Kilushepa turned and looked out to the open sea, breathing deep. She was remarkably composed, Qirum thought, not for the first time, considering her circumstances—considering she had been the booty of her own people’s army so recently, and now here she was alone on the ocean with ten violent, lusty men.
“So we sail for Northland,” Kilushepa called back. “Will we be out of sight of the land altogether? How remarkable that would be—the world reduced to an abstraction of sea and sky.”
“Only for brief stretches,” Qirum replied. “We’ll do some island-hopping before we get to the Greek mainland. Basically we’re following the coastline.” He held up his periplus, a linen scroll. “From Gaira, we’ll work our way up the river valleys and overland to get to Northland.”
“Would you get lost, out of sight of land?”
Praxo hawked and spat over the side, a green gobbet on the gray-black water. “He would. There are clever sorts who have tricks to find their way around on the open water. Such as to see how high the sun rises at noon, and from that you can work out how far north or south you are.”
She frowned. “What sort of divination is that? Sounds like the Greeks to me. Always full of tricks, the Greeks, clever-clever, like clever children. What is that scroll, Qirum? A map, is it?”
He unrolled the periplus carefully, passing the fragile fabric from one spindle to the other, holding it up so she could see the writing, the little sketches. “This is my periplus. A guide to the coast. It cost me half my fortune when I bought it from an old seaman down on his luck. And he bought it in turn from somebody else, long ago. I’ve been adding to it since. See, the three different writing hands?”
She came back down the boat to see. “I can’t read your script. But yes, I see the differences. And this faded writing must be the oldest.”
“It’s a kind of description of the coast. Of landmarks, dangers like shoals and shallows—and dangers of a human kind. You see, there are little sketches to help you understand. Good ports, safe places to beach, the prevailing winds. Look at this.” He raveled the scroll back. “Here is an old description of how it was to come upon Troy, before the Greeks burned the place. A sketch that shows how it might have looked from the sea.”
She studied the picture solemnly. “You have crossed it through.”
“I hadn’t the heart to erase it.”
“This little scroll is shared wisdom. You treasure it, don’t you? A sailor would have to be desperate indeed to sell such a thing. How would you feel if you had to part with it?”
“I hope I never have to.”
Her gaze was steady. “You hope to have a son, don’t you? A family. You don’t want to be doing this all your life, fighting all day, whoring and drinking all night … You want a legacy. A son to have your periplus, when you’re done with the sea.”
Praxo, at his oar, was staring at the two of them.
Qirum felt unaccountably embarrassed. “That’s all for the future.”
“You aren’t wrong to dream,” she said, her voice like a rustle of linen. “I saw that in you when I met you.”
Praxo guffawed. “And did you see his father the rapist?”
Qirum threw a water jug at him. He ducked, it hit the man behind him, and Praxo laughed.
By midmorning they had picked up a breeze blowing offshore. Under Praxo’s brisk instructions the men shipped their oars, fixed the mast to its socket, and unfolded the leather sail. Soon the sail billowed out, and they were driven east with a creak of wood and leather. This was another new experience for Kilushepa. As the rowers stretched and took food and water, she sat in the prow, letting the wind ruffle hair that was growing back after its brutal shaving by the Hatti soldiers.
Praxo came to sit beside Qirum in the stern. They shared a leather flask of wine mixed with water. “This is a stupid plan,” Praxo said. “To meet up with Hatti traders and officials in Northland?”
“She sent letters to arrange it.”
“But the Hatti threw the woman out, remember! Why will they accept her now?”
Qirum shrugged. “She says it will work.” Hattusa itself was a big place, Kilushepa had said, and the reach of the Hatti kings stretched much further. Traders out on the edge of the world might not even know Kilushepa’s name, let alone know of the intrigues in court that had deposed her. If she simply claimed to be back in power, even if they suspected her, how could they prove her wrong?
“Get rid of her,” Praxo said bluntly. “I mean it. She’s trouble. She’s getting into your head.”
“We wouldn’t even be making this voyage if not for her,” Qirum said. “At least she has a plan. Face it—before we met her we were sailing in circles, going nowhere, you and I. She’s given me a direction, Praxo.”
Bronze Summer : The Northland Trilogy (9781101615416) Page 7
