Tanayon Born
Part Five of Native Silver
Blake Hausladen
Edited by
Deanna Sjolander
Published 2018 by Rook Creek Books, an imprint of Rook Creek LLC
Copyright © 2018 by Blake Hausladen
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All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Edited by Deanna Sjolander
Cartography by Author
Contents
Also by Blake Hausladen
About the Author
70. Geart Goib
71. Madam Dia Yentif
72. Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
73. Crown Prince Evand Yentif
74. Madam Dia Yentif
75. Geart Goib
76. Arilas Barok Yentif
77. Geart Goib
78. Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
79. Arilas Barok Yentif
80. Madam Dia Yentif
81. Prince Evand Yentif
82. Geart Goib
83. Sikhek
84. Evand Yentif
85. Madam Dia Yentif
86. Arilas Barok Yentif
87. Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
88. Evand Yentif
89. Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
90. Geart Goib
91. Sikhek
92. Arilas Barok Yentif
93. Sikhek Vesteal
94. Arilas Barok Yentif
The Capital of Edonia
95. Sikhek Vesteal
96. Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
Glossary
Also by Blake Hausladen
Ghosts in the Yew - Vesteal Series Volume One
This omnibus volume includes:
Part 1 - Beyond the Edge
Part 2 - Opposing Oaths
Part 3 - Reckless Borders
Part 4 - Bayen’s Women
Part 5 - Falling Tides
Native Silver - Vesteal Series Volume Two
This omnibus volume includes:
Part 1 - Sutler’s Road
Part 2 - Forgotten Stairs
Part 3 - Thrall’s Wine
Part 4 - Corsair Princess
Part 5 - Tanayon Born
The Vastness - Vesteal Series Volume Three
This omnibus volume includes:
Part 1 - Silent Rebellion
Part 2 - The River War
Part 3 - The Blinded
Part 4 - Crimson Valley
Part 5 - Singer’s Reward
About the Author
Armed with an English degree from Ripon College and an MBA from Chicago’s Stuart School of Business, Blake has delved for twenty years through the shadowed realms of the financial industry. He currently solves financial crimes during the day and gives life to wild fantasies during the blackest hours of night.
70
Geart Goib
“I’m not quite sure where the summer went,” I whispered to Pemini.
Lilly was asleep on my shoulder.
Pemini hugged my arm and pointed at our cabin upon the top of the ridge above the quarry. “Yes, you do,” she whispered back.
The cabin’s architect and builder had spent the night, as he often did, and was on the front porch working on a sketch.
Three horses were tied onto the rail out front.
“We have more guests?” I asked before I remembered how late in the summer it was.
The greencoats that followed us took up their usual places around the cabin. Theirs was a fine post. The view of the river and Urnedi was perfect.
Anton showed us his sketch as we stepped by. It was a remarkable likeness of the waterfall on the far side of the river valley. It was the fifth or sixth time he’d drawn it, each just as good as the last. It really was a good thing that he wasn’t a soldier anymore. His father had not raised a spearman.
“They are inside,” he said.
I handed Lilly off to Pemini and she carried her into the back bedroom. Fana was there with Avin and Ryat.
“Is she okay?” Fana asked.
“She learned her second noun outside the mine today,” I said. “Maple. She’s getting stronger.”
Fana nodded and asked me to sit down. I did and she got ready to speak to me. She was nervous. She said, “We talked a lot about today—amongst ourselves. Your contributions here are many, and you are loved, but there is something missing now. For too long.”
“Trust,” I said so she wouldn’t have to. “You can say it Fana without fear of my anger. You do not trust me any longer. Lilly is not safe with me.”
“I wish that she was,” she said. “We talked about what else you could do earlier this summer. We would have done this sooner, but Lilly loves you and she is happy with you.”
“But I don’t work for Lilly,” I said. “I work for you—for the Spirit, I mean. Same thing, really.”
Fana nodded. Ryat and Avin said nothing.
She said, “Do you think we could talk about it when you get back from Bessradi? Find something else for you to do?”
“Something,” I said. “Something away from Lilly and the other girls you will start teaching.”
Fana didn’t want to talk about that. She didn’t trust me to know the other girls that she’d picked. I thought to ask Avin if he thought Fana was ready to be the school’s new teacher, but held the question in my mouth. There was no point in it. It was time for me to leave the work to others.
“Thank you, Geart,” she said, stood, and kissed my cheek before departing.
Avin and Ryat followed her. Avin said to me, “The ships are leaving in the morning for Bessradi. See you aboard.”
They went and Pemini came back out. “Lilly is out cold,” she said and started brewing some mate. “She’ll sleep straight through the night.”
Her playful tone was not lost to me, but I sank into my chair. “That’s sad,” I said.
“Why?”
“I wanted to say goodbye to her.”
“You’ll see her when you get back from Bessradi.”
“Do you think I am coming back?”
She abandoned the mate, made me sit up, and sat down on my lap.
Then she hugged me, and I hugged her right back.
71
Madam Dia Yentif
Barok planted a goodbye kiss on me that left me tingling long after he’d sailed south toward Bessradi.
The farewell lacked all the madness of our previous partings—the comedy of a botched swaddle change aside. He’d managed it at last. Urnedi could carry on without him.
Poor Errati was left to ride south alone to explain to Vall’s escort that only he would be going to Bessradi—a lie, but necessary all the same. All the world was on its way to the capital, and Enhedu’s lord would join them—in the way that he saw fit.
Urnedi was so free of worry that I caused no stir whatsoever when I decided to finally accept Thell’s invitation to visit his stud farm. Gern assigned me a troop of guards, and darling Umera was happy to watch Clea for the day. She was proving an able wet nurse, and our girls made quite a pair.
Thell and my fine mare were waiting for me outside. Jescia was as ready for a ride as I was. Her long pregnancy was over, too, and roads were made for racing. She kept to a playful canter down the empty streets on that dewy morning, and broke into a gallop the moment we were free of town. She hit a patch of the rising sun’s w
aking light and we danced.
We said a few hellos when we crossed the bridge and continued north to a patch of land that had once been thick with trees. Their disappearance was sad in a way, but the farm Thell and Master O’Nrosevel had built was marvelous. A half-dozen large paddocks and training yards occupied the space between two hills, and around each was a vast pasture of wild grasses filled with Fell Pony mares and foals. Thell’s apple orchard blanketed the hills to the west, and its sweetness filled the air. To the east, river barges moved to and fro.
We found Master Eppel O’Nrosevel in one of the forward pens with a cohort of the older foals. The pens on either side contained an equal number of mares. Fleur Sahin was farther back, lead training a pair of striking foals.
“Weaning looks to be coming along,” Thell said softly. He kept his distance.
Eppel nodded, finished sharing out the last of the bag of alfalfa, and made his way out to join us. The group of youngsters had clearly formed their own band and sprang out into their enclosure. Each had powerful hindquarters and could easily coil and spring to stop, spin, turn, or sprint forward. They had short backs, well-muscled loins, strong bones, well-arched necks—all with a hot blood temperament.
“Fine set,” I said to Master Eppel and hugged the old man’s arm. “Thell’s idea for the cross is better than I’d imagined. The best of both breeds to be sure.”
“Indeed, Madam,” Eppel said. “Strong, hearty, with elegance and speed. I dare to say it will be a better horse for the greencoats than the Akal-Tak—high bred vigor and presence for the battlefield, yet strong enough to be the muscles for such skilled engineers. This set passed the three day and one season tests I have established for this new breed. We’ll see if they make the three year test. I’d hoped for more than 15 quality foals from the 300 that Clever sired, but they are remarkable, indeed. The offspring of the other two stallions will start foaling any day now. It is going to be quite the autumn.”
“Will you be crossing the dames of the fifteen with the other stallions?”
“All but Jescia here,” he said. “She had a hard time with the twins.”
I looked to the pair that Fleur Sahin was training and nearly rushed over to say hello to them. Twins—how wonderful. I stopped myself, though. I was close enough to trespassing on their work where I was. I nearly let the day end there but could not help the question. “I do not suppose you are in need of another trainer?”
“I am, indeed,” Master Eppel said with a magnificent smile. Thell could not have been happier. The three of us looked to my guards, who seemed unconcerned.
Huh. Not such an asset without a baby inside me.
I turned away from them and extended my hand to Master Eppel. “Then if you are offering, sir, I accept.”
“Ehn’prom, ehh,” Eppel said and shook my hand. “Can you start tomorrow? Fleur needs all the help she can get.”
My guards looked cross—but only for the shortest span of time. Their days of being cooped up in the keep were over, too.
And what a set of wondrous days we found as the summer wound down. Eppel and Fleur were every bit the professionals they appeared to be, and they exhausted me those first days making me prove that I knew how to handle feed, bridle, halter, and saddle before I got anywhere near the paddocks.
Clea treated me to ear-splitting screams each morning and night, but Umera’s milk quieted her most times.
Fleur introduced me to Jescia’s twins that next morning, and I got to spend the day imprinting with them and the other foals. The first thing I learned was that the twins’ energy after their morning feed was boundless. Fleur had left a stuffed fox out for them, which they pounded until the stuffing was torn free and ground into the dirt.
They were Clever’s colts, alright.
When they walked away from their defeated toy, Fleur said, “Let’s see what you can do.”
I was glad for her technique of tiring them first. The spring was out of them when I entered the meadow, and they came straight over. I let them get the smell of me, and the memories all came back to me. I knelt down between them and held out my hands toward them. The one smacked its mouth. I lowered my head and just rested there until he calmed. They both approached at last, and I rubbed their necks, picked up their feet, and rubbed the lengths of their legs.
It felt like I had cheated on an exam. Fleur had been working the colts for days. Their level of trust was very high. I was even able to go nose to nose with both of them, breathe into their nostrils, and have them breathe into mine.
I gave them each a scratch upon the neck in farewell, and made my way back out.
Fleur congratulated me with a great hug. Thell and Eppel both shook my hand. The master horseman said, “Glad to have you. We’ll submit your name to the consortium for status. See you tomorrow.”
I smiled and laughed the whole way back to Urnedi.
How remarkable.
This must be how it had been for everyone in Enhedu—good work waiting to be done under a warm sun for a man who wanted us all to succeed. I’d moved through the day without fear of black-hearted bailiffs, wandering sermod, or an overseer’s dirty hands. I’d become a credentialed horse trainer and not one of the thousand challenges and recriminations that would have doomed a similar effort in the Kaaryon had troubled me.
Barok had done it, alright.
Edonia and its free people were on the rise.
I spent the rest of that day telling Clea all about him.
72
Admiral Soma O’Nropeel
The Last Thirteen Days of Summer
I was happy to learn that we were bound for Bessradi. I’d already mended every coastal town between Almidi and Sesmundi at least twice, and I’d yet to touch the souls who lived upon the west or south coast.
We departed on the 81st—I in command of the Whittle and Admiral Mercanfur in command of the Kingfisher. We sailed straight across the Gulf of Ulgos and rounded the jagged tip of the Sencil Mountains on the 84th. I’d wished that Pix had been aboard to see it. The mountains there were red and angry, and my earliest memories were of the sun hitting the rusty slopes. I counted those days gliding along the teeth of the fiery mountain as some of the best of my life.
The coast of Eril proved easy to sail—beautiful for its crumbled coast of river valleys, and lined with small towns of Bayen’s faithful. The tall spires of churches reached up from all points as though the trifling lords of Zoviya’s west-most edge competed with each other on the size and number of their climbing spires.
Mending their souls was a delight.
Avoiding Barok was not. I’d managed it so far, but he had along enough healers to keep his seasickness in check, and it seemed that he’d learned the watch schedule. He came up to the aftcastle just after the watch had changed and calm wind and seas refused me the excuse of a diversion.
“You are hard to find,” he said.
“It is not that big of a ship,” I said. “Not that many places for someone to hide.”
There were, actually.
“Been trying since we departed.”
I pulled the heavy canvas over my box of black earth. The town of Setch was just behind the falling horizon. It and the surrounding countryside was free of the Shadow.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked.
He tapped his fingers on the canvas. He felt the heat and laid his hand down upon it. “That’s warmer than I expected. How many have you … what do you call what it is that you do?”
“I call it mending. The men call it a severing. Is the number the issue?”
“No. I suppose it is not.”
“You think it should be reserved for the Chaukai, as Kyoden did?”
Barok did not miss the note of anger in my voice. “I would not tell you what to do aboard your ship, and I do not question the instructions She gave you.”
“Then what is there to discuss?”
“It’s … complicated,” he said. “The places you have mended—m
any are allies. The rest are those I mean to make my allies. Your magic—it can kill, right? Thralls, I mean.”
“It is the mercury that poisons and kills them, once I have removed the Shadow.”
“But dead all the same.” He could tell that I was running out of patience. “It is just—well, it is just not very neighborly to arrive unannounced and kill people.”
“You worry about your place on the Council.”
“I worry I will lose the few friends we have if you and your ship are branded the bearer of some dark curse.”
“Then you have little to fear. I can reach out far enough now that no one will know that we’ve even been by. And there are few places I have not visited. Your neighbors’ lands are free of the agents of our enemies. You object to this?”
“No. But what am I to say to them?”
“Say? Nothing. Do you intend to explain Leger’s attack upon Bessradi to your father?”
“That’s different, we cannot—”
“It is not, and you insult me by suggesting otherwise. I act at the direct instruction of the Spirit of the Earth. Who gave you the right to burn men and women alive for gold?”
“But it’s magic. Men understand a fight. It makes sense. This—it is an unnatural and improper way. Do you not see that?”
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