by Jon Kiln
Maaritz opened his side-door and jumped out onto the pavement next to their driver, the Herald Allura, who watched the large contingent of a hundred or so running down the hull, towards the outer gates of the city. Suriyen had already opened the other side-door, and helped Talon climb with her up onto the roof of the carriage, to stand and look down over the city below.
“Look!” the far-sighted Suriyen said, pointing into the distance.
Below them, the city was sprawled out with all of the confusion and disarray of an overturned child’s game. Streets turned and circled and knotted in mesmerizing lines, punctured by the many market squares and small parks, breaking the chaos and adding a little order to the crowded trading port. To the north, the city butted straight out onto the Inner Sea, its docks made of numerous piers and harbors, warehouses and stone slipways.
Talon could see the coast stretching beyond the estuary river across the top of the world, most of it blushed green with foliage, before fading into a haze of yellow and brown. The city walls stood gigantic, but still toy-like at this distance. Talon could see the large gates that punctuated the thick walls, with their adjoining bridge made of moored boats and platforms that spanned the wide estuary river. On the far side, the shanty town and markets were a mess of seeming uproar; lots of dust as wagons, horses, and cattle were being moved, with the press of people heading over the bridges looking like a solid human wave.
“Why are they all leaving their homes and trying to get into the city?” Talon was confused at all of the commotion.
More whistles blew from across Fuldoon, as from their height, Suriyen and Talon could see more contingents of Fuldoonian soldiers running through the streets, ordering people out of their path as they made their way down to the gates.
“Because of that.” Suriyen pointed at the small, dark specks on the horizon, past the city gates, past the river, past the cattle markets, and out over the gold and brown deserts beyond. What Talon had taken for just distant rocky outcrops, wavering in the heat that was already rising as the sun crept up the sky, were not, in fact, stationary.
Talon had spent the last couple of years or so crossing the Sand Seas with the gypsy caravans. He was used to all sorts of mirages and visions and strange sights. There had been a time when he had once seen, sitting low on the horizon but clear as the buildings around him, the green blush of trees and shrubs of a much-needed oasis, only to find it glimmering and rising off of the ground the closer that he got to it. A mirage, the travelers had laughed, a trick of the gods, but indicated that it promised that there was an oasis nearby.
Talon was used to the desert tricks a little, by now, and so when he saw the five or six points getting larger and taller in the horizon, he thought that they must just be more practical jokes by the gods on the foolish, weak-willed mortals below.
But the five or six dark shapes retained a stubborn solidity the closer they got, and they were joined by a haze of dark shapes around their base.
“What are they?” Talon whispered. It looked to him as though trees had started to walk out of the desert, or as if the stony mountains themselves had taken to war.
“Siege towers,” Suriyen breathed beside him. “I know what they are, because I have seen their like before. They are the siege towers of Dal Grehb, and the last time I saw them they took the cliff city of the Iron Pass.”
Talon looked up at her, expecting to see the woman’s face as fearful, or bitter. Instead, he saw a strange, bright-eyed sort of excitement in her eyes, the way a hungry man might look at a plate of fruit.
“Suriyen?” Talon said nervously. “Don’t we have to go? Find Vekal? Leave this place before they get here…”
“This might be my chance,” Suriyen was muttering under her breath. “This could be my chance to avenge myself and my family against that brute of the Menaali!” she spat the words finally, and Talon knew a different type of fear than he had ever felt before.
21
“Three Cubits! Four Cubits!” the man beside the Sin Eater was shouting, attempting to be heard and attract the attention of the ship’s captain in the red bandana.
Vekal was surrounded by others, similarly shouting out offers of payment. Some were even holding out small pouches of coins and shaking them at the monolithic fellow, who grinned through yellow, mismatched teeth like a gloating king.
The Sin Eater had spent the night here in the docks at the suggestion of the devil inside of him, to be one of the first to find a sea captain brave or foolish enough to sail through the Inner Sea to the Shattering Coast, and there to find the Isle of Gaunt. Even after having spent the night curled up on a pile of old fishnets and woken every few watches to the sounds of gulls, cats, or the night trawlermen returning, still Vekal was only one of a large throng of people to arrive at the docks to find passage across the Inner Sea.
The Inner Sea, Vekal knew, was the largest body of water save the great cold ocean of the north-west, and the hot ocean of the furthest east. It held within it great stretch islands and archipelagos, and had its own strange currents and eddies. Vekal had read the Histories of Myr, which claimed that there had once been a mountain range inside of the land, upon which had once lived an ancient people so wicked that the gods had made their mountains sink, spewing fire and ash as they did so.
Of all of the dangers that the Inner Sea presented, it was still one of the easiest routed from southern hotlands to the fertile north, and many thousands of people made their way across it every year, either to trade, to wage war, or to seek a new life out there. Vekal knew that the Inner Sea itself was home to many such traveling groups, just as the land had its gypsies and its nomads. The sea had its sea-wanderers, folk who lived on floating platforms and never set foot on land, to the pirates and smugglers which, Vekal thought, their prospective captain looked suspiciously similar to.
Here, the Sin Eater’s internal companion had been surprisingly silent about how he was to go about his task, only what he had to do.
I would have hoped that your friend Sadgast might have helped us, the Sin Eater grumbled at the recalcitrant Ikrit inside of him.
“And why would any devil cultivate followers amongst fish-gutters and dockhands?” the devil sneered. “A devil wants kings and mighty warriors. Princes and Queens.”
Well, it might have helped us now. Vekal groaned, putting his hand in the air holding all of his own wealth to offer, which was approximately none.
The ship’s captain, along with everyone else, was standing on the small dock next to an impressively sleek longboat with rich green and blue striped sails. On either side of them, the water was muddy and murky, with other piers receiving and releasing boats from the waters. It was a noisy spectacle, and if Vekal hadn’t had the devil inside of him, he knew that he would have given up and run to quieter hideaways a long time ago.
The ship’s captain was a large man in loose-fitting robes, with a red bandana and a disheveled brown, curly beard. At the sash of his waist he wore a cutlass and many leather purses, already full from the taking of those passengers he chose for his ship. Even now, his eyes were scanning across the heads of the crowd, alighting on the richest looking, or the one with the fattest purse.
“Say something! Get the brute’s attention, then!” the devil buzzed inside of the Sin Eater, who remained silent. Vekal knew just what must happen. It had to. He was a Sin Eater, chosen by the gods, and if this was the will of the gods, then this would be the path that he would take. He stood stock still, with a hand raised up to the morning sun, waiting for the captain in the red bandana to notice him.
In the end, it wasn’t the captain who noticed first, but one of the other passengers next to him. Vekal heard a gasp, and then a whisper.
“It’s one of them! Out of the desert!”
The Sin Eater smiled, not moving, nor taking his eyes off of the captain. It took a little more murmuring from the crowd, and then a convulsion of fear and disgust as they drew away from the silent man with the ragged bandages wra
pped around calves, forearms, neck, wrists, and ankles. Finally, the captain noticed Vekal; he stopped taking pouches of money and stared at the silent Sin Eater with his hand in the air, regarding him quizzically.
“By the Moon and the Stars. What do one of you want, crossing the water?” the captain asked, his face half-amused, half-worried. No Sin Eater ever traveled the Inner Sea; no Sin Eater ever crossed the water to the northern lands.
Vekal waited for the voices around him to murmur before he answered the captain, and then he waited a little longer, until he saw the captain’s eyes flash with uncertainty. With all of his training, he could almost read what the man was thinking: Was it true what they said about the Sin Eaters? That they cavorted with devils? That they could heal the sick? Appease the gods? Curse their enemies?
“If only he knew, huh…?” Ikrit was laughing as Vekal cleared his throat.
“Captain, I seek passage on your ship, and all I can offer you in return is the peace of mind in knowing that I will be beseeching the gods in your favor for the length of your journey. You need not fear ill-luck, accident of fate, or will of the capricious gods, with me aboard.”
Vekal found that he was almost nervous as he said it. What if the gods had already abandoned him for what he was now carrying? Did he even count as a Sin Eater if the holy city of the gods had been overrun, and all of its sacred places destroyed by heretics?
But sailors are ever a superstitious people, and the captain scratched his chin musingly. “But why?” he said eventually. “Why travel the seas with me?”
“Tell him there is a treasure in the isle we are heading to. Tell him he will be rich beyond his wildest dreams should he take us.” Ikrit was fawning and gasping in delight inside the Sin Eater’s mind. Vekal wondered if the art of temptation came so easily to the devil, or whether it was just helpless to offer any soul whatever it might desire the most.
No. Vekal said, not knowing if what Ikrit was saying was true or not, but he would be no part of the deception.
“There is a very holy shrine that I must get to for my order, one which I can only tell you the location of in private,” Vekal said in a clear voice over the crowd. For their part, the rest of the throng appeared rapt to this strange tale.
“A shrine, you say? Is it on any known trade route across the sea, at least?” the captain queried, to which the crowd mumbled and hissed. What would the gods think of someone so truly selfish when it came time for his soul to be judged?
“I cannot tell you its location, sir, but I can tell you that, for taking me, the spirits will be very, very grateful,” Vekal hedged. He wasn’t technically lying, after all, as there was at least one spirit that Vekal knew of who would be incredibly grateful.
“Hm.” The captain scowled, then shrugged. “What’s one more mouth to feed in a crew of thirty? You look a skinny one too, so you won’t take up too much from the crew. Done!”
Vekal smiled, feeling a wave of relief flood through him as the others started to bicker for the last remaining places.
“Where, captain?” he tried to shout over the heads of the other passengers. “Where do I stow my belongings?” Vekal shouted, meaning little more than the knives and the cloak that he had.
“Last Wharf!” the captain roared. “Boat by the name of The Emerald, can’t miss her. We leave in the hour!”
Vekal was already turning and pushing his way through the press of bodies. He might just have time to beg some food along the way, he thought to himself happily, as he heard the noise of the hagglers rise around him once more.
“Well done, cleric,” the devil behind his eyes murmured. “I did not think that you had that level of sophistication in you. Convincing him to take us through the Shattering Coasts just because of some promise of a pat on the back when he’s dead? Huh, these sailors are gullible.” Ikrit buzzed and hummed with pleasure.
Vekal felt hurt, as he didn’t feel as though he had been lying or manipulating the man at all. All men want to be thought of favorably by the gods, and all men die, he answered, reciting scripture that was as true today as it was at the time, thousands of years ago, when it had been written by an ancient Sin Eater.
“Pfagh! All men want money and a warm bed, in my experience!” The devil laughed. “Even you, secretly, down here in the dark of your mind, I can sense it. The thoughts and the memories that you won’t let yourself think or feel. Should I unearth them for you, little priest? Should I tell you what terrible deeds I have uncovered down here?” Again, Vekal heard that almost purring note to the devil’s voice as if it was a temptation that the creature was offering him.
“No!” Vekal said aloud, disturbing the progress of a fish-seller with her hand cart, who stopped and looked at him strangely. He was making his way down the wide thoroughfare that edged directly onto the piers and docks, as all around him people embarked and disembarked, or traded barrels and catches and crates over his head. Last Wharf couldn’t be far, he reasoned.
No, devil. Whatever is in my past that I cannot remember, can stay there. I haven’t needed it for this long, why should I need it now? Just be happy that I am getting you to the Isle of Gaunt, and do not anger me further, devil!
“Okay, my Lord, whatever you say…” Ikrit said submissively, although Vekal could feel the dual amusement behind its words as it thought them.
Suddenly, a sound like the screech of a gull split the air, but higher and clearer, followed by more. Vekal looked around but could see no one making the noise, although the reaction in the crowd was incredible. People tripled their paces or abandoned their transactions completely, leaving crates of foodstuffs on the side of piers and vanishing into the crowd. Vekal, seeing no great danger to his immortal soul for seeking what others had discarded, filled his pockets with a fish pie or two, before he noticed that the people around him were in very real alarm.
“What is it?” he called to the nearest sailors, who were unlashing their ropes and throwing their boarding platforms up or, in some cases, away.
“That’s the whistle of the bloody militia, friend!” shouted one skinny sailor. “Probably come to crack a few heads and cause havoc. Get yourself off the street if you don’t want to have a headache!” The sailor laughed, as people around Vekal jostled him and sent him sprawling to the floor.
“There! Last Wharf!” Ikrit gasped excitedly, seeing the sign for one of the smallest of the small stone harbors. It contained a couple of small row boats, and one round-bellied, double-decked tug boat with two masts. It had once been painted an emerald green, Vekal saw, but now it was more like the dirty algae-green of the sea itself, in the places where the paint still held and hadn’t completely flaked off.
The Emerald was, by anyone’s description, in a bit of a state. Well, thank goodness that I didn’t pay anything for the passage, Vekal thought, as the whistles suddenly reached a crescendo and a phalanx of soldiers in cream colors and leather jerkins marched into the dock areas. They carried helmets and pikes, and looked about as angry and stern as any soldier that Vekal had seen in his limited experience so far.
“Halt! By order of the Council, all work to cease immediately!” the lead soldier barked. His words echoed further down the column as they spread out into a long line of brooding faces, covering as much of the docks as they possibly could. “By order of the Council, no boats to embark and none to disembark. As of now, there is a full travel embargo in Fuldoon docks and harbor. Cease all trade, and await direction from the Council.”
Vekal found those sailors, fishermen, dockhands and passengers around him suddenly confused. Never had this happened before. The soldiers might decide to try and root out some new smuggling gang and order a stoppage, but never had they put in place a full embargo across the entire docks. Vekal could feel the crowd hovering between disbelief and fury at what the Council was trying to do.
The whistles continued to blare around him.
“Remain calm!” the soldier in charge roared at the mixed crowd. “This is not a drill. This
is not an exercise. Fuldoon is at war!”
Oh no, Vekal thought in that stunned moment of silence that met the lead soldier’s proclamation. The soldier might have been able to avoid what came next if he had pretended that it was an exercise, or an anti-piracy operation. Instead, as the words sunk in to the crowds, each of them there wondering where their loved ones were, where their possessions were, and where would they find safety, almost as one the crowd convulsed into a stampede towards a hundred different directions, and chaos reigned supreme.
22
All around Vekal people were screaming and jostling, either trying to get away from the coast and back to their families, or to their boats and away from what might become at any moment, a battlefield. A certain urgency lent itself to the Sin Eater himself, who had seen a city overrun once already in this lifetime, and had no great desire to do so again.
“Hurry, priest!” Ikrit infused the robed figure with strength and speed, to ensure he got to Last Wharf and the Emerald before the Fuldoonian soldiers closed it all down. Behind him, at the top of the docks, Vekal could already hear fights breaking out between dock owners, harbor masters and the guards, as they tried to cease operations and prevent boats from leaving. Vekal had never lived near a sea, so all of this sloshing activity and frothing waves looked violent to him already. No order, no calm, he thought, as he dodged another sailor jumping up onto the railings of their boat.
“They want to keep as many ships here in case they need to evacuate the city, the fools,” the devil purred inside of him, and Vekal had the sick apprehension that the creature actually liked all of this discord, pain and strife about it.
