The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1)

by Larke, Glenda

  ‘Hairy, hairy, halfbreed brat!’ the boys would taunt, knowing I hated having to wear my hair long. ‘Watch your back, hairy tits, cos one day they’ll come for you and drag you off to the Spits.’

  ‘You’re only here because we allow it,’ Duthrick would say. ‘Put a foot wrong, and we’ll pack you off to the that sandy blight of flea-ridden hell. Halfbreeds are Spitters at heart…’

  Sometimes I would sneak away and go back to the cemetery for a while, but it was pointless. That life had nothing to offer me any more; even its freedoms were sham. Most of the children there never lived long enough to grow up.

  When I was older, I tried again to escape the Keeper’s clutches. What happened to me then was worse than anything that had gone before. In the end I came back because there were worse people than Duthrick in the world, and worse things than being teased in a schoolyard. But I don’t want to talk about that now. Let’s just say I was tied to the Keepers, bound to their service because the alternatives were unthinkable. I was a halfbreed, after all.

  ###

  Two hours after I returned to The Drunken Plaice, Syr-sylv Duthrick walked in.

  My mouth was as dry as desiccated squid even as I faced him across the room. He was the one who had given me this assignment. Although I don’t suppose he knew that it would eventually lead me to Gorthan Spit, his ruthless efficiency intimidated at the best of times and now the thought that this task of mine was important enough for the Keepers to have sent someone like him after me almost scared the curls out of my hair. Or was it really just one of those absurd coincidences that people say happen all the time? I was no great believer in them.

  He glanced around the room, set up four shining sylv ward pillars with a gesture of his hand, then linked them together in a lacy square around us so that we wouldn’t be overheard. Only then did he condescend to incline his greying head, to smile in my direction. Over the years we had developed a way of dealing with each other: generally civilised and polite. Threats were always blurred with good manners; dislike was smothered in smiles. There was no point in behaving otherwise. Of course, even while he smiled, those deep violet eyes of his remained remote. I was used to that too.

  ‘Blaze, Punt said you’d probably be in Gorthan Docks.’ (Punt, the fellow he had sent with me to Cirkase, had been as much use as a hole in a fishnet and I’d rid myself of him as soon as possible.) ‘Where’s the Castlemaid?’

  I felt sick. I could see my chance of fortune disappearing as fast as seawater into dry sand, and with it, the chance of earning citizenship of the Keeper Isles by my twenty years of service. I’d served Duthrick and his ilk most of my life, but they’d only started counting the years when I had finally woken up to how I was being used. I’d been about fifteen at the time, and finally brave enough to demand payment. Money, and the possibility of citizenship…

  Duthrick had made a promise. I even had it in writing. But I also knew if I failed once too often, then my usefulness to him would be at an end; failure would become the excuse to turn down my application.

  ‘Where’s the Castlemaid?’ he asked again.

  I swallowed and said, evenly enough, ‘I don’t know. Yet.’

  He raised an eyebrow into an even sharper arch than usual. I was thirty years old then, yet he could make me feel fifteen again… ‘It has become a matter of urgency.’

  ‘Why? Does the Bastionlord of Breth grow impatient for his bride?’

  He was shocked that I knew. Then—Great Trench below—embarrassed. Duthrick was actually embarrassed that I knew the royalties of Breth and Cirkase were planning a cross-island marriage. I hadn’t thought he had that much sensitivity. Or perhaps it wasn’t sensitivity as all, but just discomposure because I knew the Keepers were facilitating something that they were supposed to despise. And, in truth, I couldn’t help the bitter thought that it was all right for royalty to interbreed; their offspring were never citizenless, never cast off and despised as halfbreeds…

  It was nothing new. There had always been one law for the Islandlords and another for us ordinary mortals. What was new was Keeper involvement. The Keeper Isles had no royalty and promoted themselves as the guardians of equality. They alone of all the Isles of Glory elected their rulers and they were prouder of that fact than all their other accomplishments put together. I had just shown Duthrick that I knew he and his kind had double standards after all, and he was a proud man. No wonder he was embarrassed.

  ‘How did you know the Bastionlord was after the Castlemaid?’ he asked sharply.

  I shrugged. ‘I keep my ears open. I’m not stupid, Syr-sylv.’ Neither were the more prosperous villains of the back streets in the town of Cirkasecastle, which was where I’d heard the rumours.

  He recovered his equilibrium. ‘There are political necessities which have to be observed at times, Blaze, whether we like them or not. This is one of them. The Bastionlord wants his bride. And you apparently haven’t found her. Explain.’

  ‘I traced her to the Cirkasian port of Lem,’ I said, knowing he must be aware of all this if he had spoken to Punt. He was just determined to make me suffer; he didn’t like inefficiency, and my failure to uncover the whereabouts of the Castlemaid of Cirkase was definitely inefficient. ‘She was brought on board a Gorthan Spit slaver ship just an hour or two before I reached Lem. Four quite unconnected people told me they had seen a Cirkasian girl wearing a slave collar taken on board. Two of them actually saw the coming-of-age tattoos on the backs of her hands. They thought she must have been some minor royalty who had displeased the Castlelord and was being sold into slavery. In the past, he’s not been above doing something like that, apparently, at least to male relatives.’

  ‘These people didn’t recognise their own Castlemaid, the Castleheir?’

  I hid the smile that threatened to twist my lips up in a superior smirk. It wasn’t often that I knew something Duthrick didn’t. ‘Royal women never go unveiled in public in Cirkase. Not from the time they are five years old. In fact, they rarely go out in public at all. Castlemaid Lyssal was allowed out of the palace once a year—veiled—to attend the fleet festival. There’s not a citizen of Cirkase, outside of the female palace staff and her own family, who knows what she looks like.’ I gave a sarcastic smile. ‘For all you know, the Bastionlord might be chasing a bride who looks like a sea-slug in spawning purple.’ (In actual fact she had been described to me by female palace staff as ‘truly lovely’ and a ‘perfect vision’, although one patently jealous maid had added ‘colourless’ and ‘as skinny as a garfish’. Her father, the Castlelord, had remarked nastily that, ‘She was good enough for the most expensive whorehouse which is where I am tempted to place the disobedient bitch when you find her!’ All of which had left me curious to meet the lady.)

  Duthrick ignored my remark about sea-slugs. ‘You’re sure it really was her on board the slaver?’

  I shrugged again. ‘As certain as anyone can be under the circumstances. I traced her from the palace. She left of her own volition, by the way—ran away, in effect. But she was an innocent; how could she have been otherwise with an upbringing like that? She was captured by criminals on the outskirts of the capital. I don’t think they knew what they had; maybe she told them, but who was going to believe she was the Castlemaid? The palace never publicly acknowledged she was missing. She was taken to Lem, kept there for weeks, waiting for a slaver. Then she was apparently sold. It was just bad luck that I didn’t find her in time. As I said, I missed her by a matter of hours. I managed to find a fishing vessel that was about to sail to Gorthan Spit, and I came after her. I thought the Spit was the logical place to look, because it is the only place that openly trades in slaves —Even if they do call them indentured servants or some other sweet-smelling thing. I told Punt to go back to The Hub and let you know what was happening, but I assume to get here so soon you must have caught up with him in Lem before he left.’

  He nodded. ‘I had business there. How far were you behind the slaver?’

 
‘I arrived here a day after they did.’

  ‘So, where is she?’

  ‘The captain and the crew of the slaver deny she ever existed. And I haven’t found a trace of her. There is a Cirkasian woman of about the same age, who is said to have come in on the same ship—which the sailors deny—but she can’t possibly be the Castlemaid.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She has no royal coming-of-age tattoos. She’s not a slave and never could have been. She has sylvmagic.’

  He frowned, disbelieving. ‘That’s unlikely. Who’s ever heard of a sylvtalent from Cirkase?’

  ‘Why not? Anomalies do sometimes turn up in any breeding line. And we both know Cirkasians sometimes interbreed with off-islanders, don’t we?’ I added with sardonic sweetness. I wanted him to squirm.

  He came as close to gnashing his teeth as anyone I’d ever seen. ‘This is just the sort of thing that the breeding laws were designed to prevent. The random spread of sylvmagic is just as dangerous as the occurrence of dunmagic.’

  ‘Pity people don’t always obey the breeding laws as they should, isn’t it?’ I replied, still sugary. ‘She’s skilled, this lass. Someone taught her how to handle her talent.’

  ‘Not a Keeper,’ he said with distaste, showing the usual Keeper disapproval of anyone but a Keeper having sylvmagic. They couldn’t do anything about it, of course, but they didn’t like it. And as far as Keepers like Duthrick were concerned, it happened far too often.

  He still sounded sour as he said, ‘If she’s the Castlemaid and she has sylvmagic, she could be hiding her tattoos under an illusion.’

  I was exasperated but I swallowed the insult; Keepers hated to acknowledge that there were some things that Awarefolk could do that sylvtalents could not. ‘She couldn’t hide them from me,’ I said equably. ‘She has no tattoos. She has never had them. I saw the backs of both her hands quite clearly. And it’s just as certain that Castlemaid Lyssal was tattooed on both hands in accordance with royal Cirkasian tradition; I checked. Besides, in the unlikely event that a Castlemaid did have sylvmagic, there’s no way she could ever have become adept in its use. No one would have dreamed of teaching her, not in Cirkase. But this woman is skilled enough to cure a dunmagic sore.’

  ‘Then what happened to the Castlemaid?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea—yet. It’s possible that for some reason she never got here. They couldn’t have landed her anywhere else, there was no time, so perhaps she was killed or died on board the ship for some reason, and was thrown overboard. Or maybe they transferred her to another vessel.’

  He looked even more appalled. ‘She’s got to be found. And soon. I expect results.’

  ‘It might help if you tell me what is going on in Gorthan Spit. As you lack Awareness, it might have escaped your notice that the place reeks of dunmagic, but I doubt that you’re entirely unaware of the problem.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to concern yourself with that,’ he said stiffly. ‘We are keeping an eye on the situation. It is why we are here.’

  Of course. My problem with the Castlemaid was unlikely to have brought them all the way to the Spit. When Duthrick gave me a task, he expected it to be performed without his help. I wondered why he had gone to Lem in the first place, but didn’t dwell on it: maybe he had felt the need to placate the Castlelord for some reason or another. It wasn’t my business.

  His eyes glittered at me unforgivingly. ‘Why haven’t you questioned the Cirkasian?’

  ‘Because I can’t be sure she’s not part of some Cirkasian plot to dispose of the Castlemaid.’

  He was scornful. ‘Cirkasian plot? What plot?’

  ‘You haven’t been listening, Syr-sylv. No sooner had the Castlemaid escaped the palace than she was captured and sold into slavery. In a land that purports, in theory, to have outlawed slave sales—sorry, outlawed indenturing anyone who is not a criminal, she was sold to a ship that had dealings with the Castlelord’s own agents. The whole thing stinks. My guess is that she was encouraged to escape and then betrayed. I’d like to know why.’

  He saw what I was hinting at immediately. ‘Believe me, the Castlelord is not involved in the disappearance of his own daughter.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ I admitted. ‘But someone is. There’s a lot more to this than you’re saying.’

  ‘I am not at liberty to discuss politics with a non-Keeper. You were given enough information to deal with the situation. You have handled it badly. A full report on this will be made to the Council if you don’t find the Castlemaid soon.’ He nodded abruptly, closed down the wards and left the room. I suspected he’d use his sylvmagic to hide his departure in the same way I guessed him to have blurred his arrival.

  He left me with my anger, my frustration.

  Five more years service, then if my application for citizenship was granted, I’d be able to look him in the eye as a person of worth. Then he and his fellows would have to address me as Syr-aware, then I would be able to own property in the Keeper Isles, then I would have a country. Five more years and I might just have that precious earlobe tattoo, the horned-marlin with the inlaid diamond splinter for a horn; the tattoo that would prove that I too had what most people automatically had at birth: citizenship of a nation, a place of belonging. Until then I was a halfbreed, welcome nowhere but a middenheap like Gorthan Spit, unable to own property anywhere else, or legally work anywhere else. Five more years…but only if I pleased the Keeper Council. Fail them, and my application had about as much chance as a tree had of ever growing in Gorthan Spit’s sand dunes.

  FIVE

  I went to speak to the Cirkasian, of course. Syr-sylv Duthrick was right enough to question why I hadn’t done it already. She was a lead, and anyone who practised sylvmagic couldn’t be all bad.

  She wasn’t in her own room, so I knocked on Noviss’s door, and sure enough she was there. She was standing by the window, feeding some small dark birds on the sill. Noviss was lounging on the bed and the look on his face when he saw me was enough to sour whale-milk.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I said to him and turned to her. ‘I’d like to speak to you privately, if I may.’

  ‘She doesn’t speak to slavers,’ Noviss said primly. He hadn’t added the adjective ‘halfbreed’ but I heard it nonetheless.

  I almost sighed. The lad might look like an innocent but his self-righteous tongue was about as subtle as a sea-wasp sting.

  ‘She can also speak for herself,’ the Cirkasian reproved him mildly. She left the window and came across the room towards me. ‘My room?’

  I nodded and she led the way, without even glancing at Noviss. She might have been young, but she already knew how to put a possessive man in his place.

  There was nowhere to sit in her room except on the bed, but she had managed to procure decent brandy and a couple of whale-tooth mugs, so I was glad she’d suggested her room rather than mine. I was a little puzzled at her hospitality. On Gorthan Spit, gossip travelled as swiftly as a bore tide, so she doubtless had heard by now what I was after and I would have thought she’d be as touchy as her uptight friend—but she actually smiled as she handed me the drink. (I immediately wondered if it was poisoned and switched mugs when she put hers down and turned her back for a moment. I always made a point of being a suspicious bitch; it kept me alive.)

  ‘Well?’ she asked as she seated herself beside me and retrieved her mug from the wall ledge. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to the Cirkasian slave who sailed from Lem in the same ship that brought you here.’ I had a feeling that it paid to be blunt with this lady.

  ‘And can you think of a single reason why I should tell you?’

  ‘You do know?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I want to buy her.’

  ‘We heard you were a pimp buying for a brothel.’

  ‘I did tell someone that, yes. It sounded a likely tale.’

  ‘And what’s the real reason?’

  ‘I was of
fered two thousand setus by her father to return her to her home.’ Substitute ‘Keepers’ in place of ‘her father’ and that was the truth.

  ‘Ah. Then you know who she is.’ She sipped her drink.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘The lady in question doesn’t want to go home. She is free and safe, and she will stay that way. You may as well say goodbye to your two thousand setus.’

  ‘She’s an innocent. How long will she last without protection?’

  ‘She’s not without protection. And what would happen to her if she went back would be worse.’ She took another swallow of her drink—without any ill-effect, of course. She was no poisoner. She continued, ‘The Castlemaid was to be married off to the Bastionlord of Breth, a fat, boy-loving tyrant twice her age.’

  ‘So?’ I drawled indifferently. ‘I’m told such alliances are sometimes necessary. A cross-island royal marriage brings certain advantages: international accords, trade treaties… An internal one often leads to feuds between noble families. So, the Castlemaid has to marry the Bastionlord: that’s the penalty of her birth. There are plenty of compensations.’

  The Cirkasian didn’t move a muscle in her face, yet her eyes changed. They flattened; the irises became solid discs of steel. Not for the first time I had to revise my opinion of her. There was a core of hardness there that I hadn’t been aware of before. She said harshly, ‘Doesn’t that kind of double standard bother you? You especially? Why should Islandlords put themselves above the breeding laws?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s always been that way.’ Still, I thought of my mother, trapped by passion or rape or ignorance into bearing a halfbreed, forced to abandon me so as to escape the punishment that would have been hers had anyone known of her crime. I fingered my bare earlobe bitterly. No one kept an Islandlord’s child from his citizenship because of his mixed blood. No one hounded him from island to island.