The Stone in the Skull

by Elizabeth Bear

  He rinsed off the last of the sand and walked to the edge of the tub. It too was tile—red tiles, painted with intricate black glaze—making the Dead Man smile in memory of the Gage’s dry humor. More woven rush screen hung between sections of the pool, separating the classes. The Dead Man could hear voices beyond them in each direction. He sized up the bathers he could see, relying on the overhang of his veil to conceal the direction of his gaze from anyone who was not staring directly at him.

  So. These men were the warriors of Himadra the Boneless.

  They looked a worthy lot. Some were lean and some were stout, but all were muscled. They all had scars—even the boys—of a sort the Dead Man recognized: ether the scars of combat, or of a lifetime of training for combat. He saw them recognizing the same on his own body, and a ripple passed through the room. It was too soon to tell, he thought, if that marked acceptance or if it represented an increase in tension.

  He stepped onto the sloping ramp that led down into the pool as if he had not a care in the world. Let’s see how desperate they are to start trouble.

  Not, apparently, very. Scrubbed and rinsed and rinsed again, the Dead Man walked down the curved ramp from the lip into the pool. The water was hot enough that he gritted his teeth and took it by stages, but once he was in, he acclimated and a great ease stole over him. He let out a great, cascading sigh, and one of the men near him chuckled. But it was a friendly chuckle, or at least a knowing one, and anyway they’d all stopped staring at him when he was halfway down the ramp. A disciplined force, then, or one kept busy enough that they hadn’t the time or energy for brawling with someone who gave no offense.

  The chatter resumed by stages, as the Boneless’s men either got bored with him or decided to dissemble in their interest. It was too rapid-fire and slurred for him to understand anyway, given his flawed Saratahi. The Dead Man let the water float him to his toetips, feeling the delicious stretch of muscles abused with walking, hauling, fighting, cold, damp, and bumping around in the bellies of the ice-boats for far, far too long. Everything eased, and it was a good sensation. He let his eyes drift closed.

  He wondered if there was an easy way for a mercenary to make enough money to retire to the sort of manor house that might offer baths with a hypocaust. Maybe he could go back to Messaline, the Mother of Markets. Maybe there were such houses in fabled Tsarepheth. That mountain fastness—the Rasan summer capital—lay in the shadow of a famous volcano, and was reputed to be rich in hot springs. Though volcanoes had the unsavory habit of exploding every once in a while. And the city was supposed to be overrun by Wizards.

  Hmm, maybe not that, then.

  A voice spoke up beside him, in stilted but perfectly comprehensible Uthman. “Not getting any younger, are we?”

  The Dead Man didn’t startle. He didn’t even open his eyes. He’d heard the whisper of water on skin, and felt the currents as the other man came up beside him. “Not so many make it to our age in this game,” he replied in his own stilted Saratahi. “I’ll take it over the options.”

  That got a laugh. “A good answer.” The man lapsed back into Saratahi, but did the Dead Man the courtesy of speaking slowly and with care. “You come from the caravan.”

  It wasn’t a question, but the Dead Man nodded. Water tugged at the drifting ends of his veil.

  “Where to?”

  “Want a job?”

  The man laughed again. “I’m a sword for the Boneless,” he boasted, but lightly. “I should be offering you a position. If you think you’re good enough.”

  At that, the Dead Man cracked an eye. He lifted his head a little so water didn’t sting it, though his neck protested the resumption of his skull’s weight. “Himadra hires mercenaries?”

  “Lord Himadra,” the man said. He stood somewhat up the ramp, half out of the water, with his arms folded over a small solid belly. He had the stance and stolidity of a sergeant, and the no-nonsense attitude, too.

  The Dead Man felt a pang of homesickness. Loneliness, too, for the simple company of brother soldiers. Maybe he should look into becoming a warlord. There were probably heated baths up at that castle on the cliff.…

  But a deeper pang broke his longing. It was stupid to dream. He was rootless, unmastered. Making a connection, looking for a home, just meant something else to be abandoned when the time came to move on. He belonged nowhere. He fooled himself to think he ever would again.

  “He doesn’t take just any mercenary, no. But word has gotten around that there’s an Uthman with old Druja’s boats who wears an old red coat, and I thought you might be him.” He shrugged and held out a hand. “Even here, the red coat comes with a certain reputation. He might like to meet you. I’m Navin.”

  The Dead Man took the hand. “Serhan,” he said. Because there weren’t Dead Men anymore, and it was as good a name as any, and one he’d used before. He wondered if Himadra offered a finder’s fee for the recruitment of competent cannon fodder. “Alas, I’m contracted,” he said. “The caravan goes through to Sarathai-lae.”

  He and the Gage did not go with the caravan that whole distance: their contract ran out in Sarathai-tia, with the delivery of a package there. But nothing he’d said was a lie, and he thought perhaps it would be best not to give too much information away. He had heard rumors that there were tensions between Chandranath and Sarathai-tia. As it would be strange if there were not, honestly: a mountainous land with unforgiving soil would no doubt have an interest in raiding away produce of the rich bottomlands of an agricultural neighbor such as Sarathai-tia was reputed to be. The Dead Man, desert-bred as he was, was quite curious to see this fabled land where spice trees supposedly bloomed in all seasons, and you could pluck juicy exotic fruits merely by putting out a hand whenever hunger threatened, or thirst.

  “Well,” Navin said. “Your loyalty to your contract does you credit.”

  The Dead Man laughed. “Druja hasn’t paid me off yet.”

  Navin shrugged and lowered himself into the water so he, too, could float. “Take a shorter contract on the way back, maybe. It’s not a bad life for a fighting man.”

  * * *

  The Dead Man hauled himself out of the water at last only when his heart pounded from the heat, and his head spun slightly. He crossed to the cold water and poured it over his arms and neck to cool himself somewhat, but he could not, quite, bring himself to sluice it over his whole body as he’d seen the others doing. Instead he toweled himself roughly dry and stepped out into the antechamber to dress, letting the cooler air there restore his alertness without sacrificing the delicious sensation of being warm for the first time in … he couldn’t remember when. His clothes, as promised by the attendant and paid for when he entered, had been laundered, and were crisp and dry. He wondered how they managed that, but it couldn’t be just magic: the wool coat hadn’t been returned yet. It was given back to him, still very slightly damp, when he asked at the desk—along with his sword and purse.

  He’d left most of his coin with the Gage as a sensible precaution, but the purse didn’t even seem to have been rifled. Seeing as he somehow still had some money—these country towns were cheap, at least—he paused at a market on the way back and bought an oilcloak with a hood, and two bottles of what passed for a decent wine out here in the hinterlands. He’d share one with the Gage as a thanks for keeping his coin.

  The Gage might not eat or sleep or drink of necessity, but he did have some inscrutable system for … imbibing … when the mood took him, and he seemed to enjoy it.

  The rain had not ceased, but the Dead Man re-entered it better accoutered and thus far more comfortable. He picked his way between puddles, trying to keep his boots from soaking through again. It was a losing battle, but it kept him occupied.

  So occupied, in fact, that he was within a few houses of the main street leading to the caravanserai before he noticed the crowd gathered ahead of him. The town had been as deserted on the way out as in, and now he paused, feeling as if he had unexpectedly stumbled upon a s
ecret. A fanfare of horns suggested it wasn’t as secret as all that, however, and the people gathered along the sides of the street seemed to be waiting or watching rather than traveling. So he tugged the oiled cloak a little higher to hide his foreignness and stepped up to the back of the crowd.

  The Dead Man had been a soldier long enough to know that all sorts of tidbits of information had the potential to be useful. Or interesting.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  From the direction of the stockade came a short procession. Triangular banners draggled in the wet, but though he could not make out the devices he could see they were of two different colors. There were several ranks of horses, with armored men upon their backs in differentiated rows, like courses of colored bricks. First, those that wore dark red, gold, and brown livery. Then those that wore saffron-orange and a blue like sapphires, before the brief pattern repeated itself. The effect was a little like the stripes of a particularly gaudy tiger.

  After the ranks of armed men came eight more soldiers on horseback, these holding a shelter resembling a light, portable roof aloft on long wooden poles. Among them rode two men on horses almost as fine as any the Dead Man had seen, whether of the lines of Asitaneh, or of the Qersnyk tribes. Or—

  Well, one was a man, in any case. He had a heavy, gray beard—unusual in the Lotus Kingdoms, from what the Dead Man understood—and was both tall and built like a wine-tun: not so much barrel-bodied as well-nigh spherical. His carriage was erect nonetheless, and he held his chin with a haughty poise.

  The creature that rode beside him …

  Don’t be cruel, the Dead Man told himself, remembering that the Scholar-God counseled always to compassion. He cannot help it that he is cursed.

  And cursed he obviously was.

  Any man could be crippled in an instant. But not any man could be crippled like this.

  The Gage had been right. Himadra the Boneless was a dwarfed and misshapen lump in the saddle of his fine mare. Despite his disadvantages, he obviously knew his horse and his horsemanship. She was one of the gaited western breeds—the Dead Man was not enough of an equestrian to name which one—with a silvery-gray coat and a fine-boned head. She moved with a strange gliding stride that managed to be both elegant and dramatic, as if she skated on air where merely mortal horses might be accused of walking.

  Her rider was a dark-complected man with a proud nose and fine high brow, despite his stature. He wore his hair dressed in ringlets down over a fine red wool robe, which was belted open-chested over a black leather breastplate chased with silver. A mace swung from the saddle by his knee. That particular red made the Dead Man violently, momentarily homesick. He plucked at his own sleeve; the moth-eaten wool had long since faded from that shade.

  His terrible illness aside, this Himadra looked like a man who could command warriors. His eye was keen; his gaze intent.

  That gray-bearded, whole man he rode beside could not have been more of a contrast.

  He was a king, that much was plain. He was garbed in the same saffron-orange and sapphire as some of the troops were, but being trimmed with fur and bullion in his case it was obvious that this represented a mark of office and not mere livery. But even at this distance, and even through the rain, the Dead Man could see the drinker’s network of split veins thickening his nose. He could see that this princeling in his soft boots had nevertheless kicked his feet free of the stirrups, and seemed to hold them away from the irritated horse’s sides gingerly.

  Gout, probably. Or the foot pain that came with the pissing evil that also resulted from too much rich food and too much drink.

  The Dead Man caught himself sneering at this petty potentate, this little king who traveled with the army of his little kingdom like a boy playing soldiers with his toys. He found himself comparing these men and their troops to the glittering caliph and his glittering legions … and he stifled a laugh at his own arrogance. You forgot how far in the world you had fallen, and you started judging others by the standards of a world that had been lost, now, for more of your life than it had existed. And the rheumatism got into your bones, and the cataracts got into your eyes, and pretty soon you were thumping your cane and sneering about how the world had been in your day.

  No. The world was a dune. It wore on, and things and places and people you had loved or hated or had your heart broken by vanished beneath it and the only mark they left was on your soul. And that was that. Whatever words there might be in long-dead languages for the traces left behind, those languages were dead too. And erased. Only the pen of the Scholar-God wrote real and lasting truth. All other marks wore out, despite what the Gage sometimes said about his ancient abstract concept of the mark, visible or invisible, that remained behind when any piece of the world touched on or interacted with any other.

  He was here now, in this muddy little bandit kingdom in this impoverished corner of a crumbled empire. And he was seriously thinking about taking a mercenary post with this hardscrabble little lord when his current messenger duty was done.

  He had no palace to sneer from. That empire was dust. The Caliph was dust. And these little potentates remained.

  These little potentates—and the woman who followed them.

  She rode a horse that hated her, and her saddle blanket was a tiger skin. As soon as the Dead Man saw her, he forgot the little kings she apparently served, and forgot that it was blasphemy to stare at women, and he gaped unreservedly.

  She was tall and broad with muscle, and her black hair piled high and stuck with glittering combs made her seem taller. She dressed in red leather boots and green-blue silks and brocade that somehow remained unspotted by the rain, trousers and a blouse and a jeweled jerkin resplendent in pointed epaulets constructed to make her seem even bigger. Her gelding suffered her weight ungracefully, sidling and snapping his jet-colored tail as he snatched at the bit and spattered bloody froth with every irritated toss of his head. He was a leggy blood-bay with tiger-striped legs and an iridescent coat that proclaimed steppe-horse ancestry, though he was far too tall and heavy-necked to be of the pure line. The tiger skin under her tooled saddle covered his entire back and flanks, the snarling head resting just above his tail, the eyes winking orange as if with glittering, malevolent life.

  The Dead Man started, feeling as if the dead thing stared at him, but they were only padparadscha stones. “Only” pink-orange sapphires, faceted and as big as a hen’s egg.

  As if the movement attracted her attention, the lady herself turned and looked at him. He met her gaze in startled blasphemy.

  For a moment, he thought her eyes flashed as orange as the tiger’s cold stone ones, but it was just the reflection of the rainy light filtered through the canopy above. She tilted her head and awarded him with a faint smile, and he saw the real color of her irises—a clear shade of brown.

  She was not pretty, this woman, with her short nose and heavy upper lip. But she had a presence—a charisma—that made the Dead Man want to step forward and fall in line behind her. He reined himself back at the edge of the watching crowd. Somehow, he’d slipped between watchers to come right up to the verge, though he couldn’t remember having done so. Even with his soldier’s discipline, he thought he might have followed her, if it weren’t for the pressing itch of the message he and the Gage were charged with.

  She turned away, and the desire faded. He gasped into his veil.

  “Ravani,” the man next to the Dead Man whispered, as if he had asked aloud. “The foreign princess.”

  “From where?”

  The man shrugged, grinned with weather-split lips. “Foreign.”

  Geography was obviously this one’s strong point.

  “Has she troops?” the Dead Man collected himself enough to ask.

  The man shook his head. “She needs no troops. She is a sorceress.”

  * * *

  The Dead Man waited until the warlords and their attendant sorceress had gone on their way, so he could turn his back without any risk of giving offen
se to two kinglets and a few hundred armed, damp, irritable men. As soon as it was politic, he hustled back to the caravanserai.

  Unease seethed in his belly, though the cause was not immediately identifiable. It wasn’t just the reminder of how far in the world he had fallen, how little he could afford snobbery or pride. It wasn’t just the shame of having forgot himself so far as to stare at a woman’s face, like an uncultured dog. It was something he couldn’t name, but it prickled nonetheless.

  So he did what he always did, these days, when the world didn’t make the sort of sense he wished it would. He went to fight about it with the brass man.

  The Gage stood easily on the stern deck of the blue-painted ice-ship, his back to the stockade wall. He was at rest, as motionless as a statue, and from the ground he could have seemed a thick, sodden homespun robe draped over a ragged stump. When the Dead Man got closer, though, he smelled the greasing of suet in the Gage’s joints.

  He gave a little sigh of homecoming as he stepped into the shelter of the helmsman’s roof, close beside the Gage’s post. It was ridiculous what you could get used to.

  “How were the baths?” the Gage asked.

  “Salutary,” the Dead Man answered. “One of Himadra’s sergeants tried to hire me on as a soldier.”

  “It probably wasn’t anything personal,” the Gage commented. “They give recruiting bonuses.”

  And just like that, the thing that had been niggling at the Dead Man slid into focus before his inner eye. This was, indeed, a poor, hardscrabble little mountain town. The fields surrounding it were poor, the agriculture barely enough to support its people. It existed here only because the trade routes through the mountains unavoidably crossed. And it was in a principality whose major industry was the taxation of trade, either legally or through banditry.