Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  Not an easy war, but well worth it. Rich land, needing only modem techniques to bring it to full bearing. A people advanced enough to make valuable and docile slaves and underlings, as well; the markets would be glutted. Glory and wealth for the leaders, estates for the younger-child gentlefolk who officered the Fehinnan armies, farms for settlers.

  Not to mention converts for the temple to tithe, she added mentally; although sometimes she felt they were almost as eager for recalcitrants to send to the Holy Light.

  One solution for several problems. Maahk and Sanha, to start with. Both corps-commanders, both able, and both from rival family coalitions. A serious war would leave many extremely honorable and extremely perilous positions to be filled ... which they could not decline with honor.

  Now to convince the priests.

  Under the Sun-On-Earth, the God-King, She-who-lives-forever, the High Priest Cubilano was the power in the temple. Eager for expansion; not so eager to see the military grow in power and influence.

  But. But. There was always a but. She got up and paced the office.

  The merchants. Illizbuah had suffered less than the countryside during the Five Nations War, and the opening of the trans-Lannic trade was bringing in incredible wealth. All of which, and its attendant power, went to the urban patricians, not to the landowners who should have it, by ancient hereditary right.

  Not to mention the Guild of the Wise. Scholars, officially—there were rumors of magic—were just barely tolerated by the priesthood, who resented their breaking the clerical monopoly on higher learning. Very valuable as navigators and mechanicians, doctors and numerators, and heavily patronized by the merchant community ... and the state.

  War was a long-term investment; taxes would go up, they’d have to, and quite a few shaaid, the lowest caste, would starve to death. She shrugged off the thought. There were always more.

  The merchants would see their profits squeezed and the expansion of the trans-Lannic colonies slowed. Military contracts could not begin to compensate, and then again, with territorial expansion the aristocracy would be fully back in the saddle again.

  She looked out; the window was above the roof level of much of the Iron House, and looked out over the City, at the flame on the golden dome of the temple, at hectares of jumbled red-tiled roofs, towers and gardens and tenement blocks.

  I’ll get the High Priest on my side, however I do it, and once this war starts I’ll be secure. All I have to do is get Cubilano to hear me and hope that the Sun-On-Earth takes no notice what games her faithful are playing. She picked up the folder on her desk. I’ll let him see these if he seems ... reasonable. She signed herself again. The Sun-On-Earth might well listen to rival voices ... or not listen at all.

  The God-King could be ... alarming.

  Chapter II

  The Radiance slowed, coasting in toward the shore on her larboard tack. The water warmed a little, a sign that the bottom was shelving, and tackle rattled as the ship prepared to come about and head into the bay. Megan raised her head, trying to see in the spray, looking up from where she clung by one hand to the leading edge of the rudder of the ship; the other cramped, wrapping around the hilt of the knife driven into the hull.

  When she’d gone over the side, the ship had been making two knots, just getting under way after having cast loose the hatch cover that had been her raft. She’d been scraped by the barnacles of the hull and knocked under once but stayed close enough to grab. The hull right here was fairly smooth, slippery because of a skirt of weed; the coaster needed to be hauled out and cleaned.

  Koru, if I ever complain of having a boring life ever again I give you permission to rain divine farts on me.

  She was hungry, trying to shake visions of barley and mushroom soup out of her head, warm crusty amaranth bread sopping up the juices from a roast; honey nut pastries and maple sugar. Even remembering the mash on the slaver made her mouth water.

  She’d driven the knife into the hull just in front of the rudder, hoping that whoever was on the wheel wasn’t experienced enough to feel the drag.

  I’m glad that I could speak to the cat, and that it felt like fighting, she thought, clamping her teeth together to keep them from chattering. Even warm water leeched the heat out a body, eventually—worse if it was moving. Back home a person could die in a few minutes if he fell into the river just before freezeup. Megan had always liked cats; dogs tended to be too sloppily disgusting for her taste. Even if Shyll happens to like them. For a moment, homesickness caught at her throat; Shyll and her cousin Rilla, the hard-won warmth of her own home, the House of the Sleeping Dragon she had built into a great trading firm from a single leaky riverboat.... Enough of that.

  The moon was up, its reflection wrinkling in the water, as the long, slow ghosts of storm waves rumbled in among the mangroves and swamp cypress. She could swim that far, she thought, when it was just a bit darker, perhaps one more tack.

  The sky was a deep blue silk, edged with orangey gold on one hem and jet on the other. The diamond embroidery of stars was just showing when she yanked the knife free and hesitated. She had never liked to hurt a ship if she could avoid it. On the other hand—

  I know this type of merchant, even if they aren’t of my race. They’d skin a tick for its hide and tallow and complain of their meager living while cleaning their teeth with ivory toothpicks. Trying to put shackles on a castaway was downright inhospitable and unsailorlike, too. She reached up and snaked her hand through the hole where the stempost of the rudder met the under-deck tiller, feeling for the wrist-thick ropes that ran through pulleys to transmit the torque of the wheel. They were just where they would be on a ship like this back on the Mitvald Zee. With exquisite care, she sawed at the rope until it was almost cut through. The mate’s knife was excellent steel and half as long as her forearm, much better than the usual crewfolk tool; it was good and sharp, as well.

  One more tack and you’ll lose steerage; inconvenience you for a day. She grinned to herself as she let go and let the Radiance pull away from her. A good-bye present to someone who tried to take me for a slave.

  Awkwardly, clutching the knife in her teeth, she swam with a slow, even stroke to the mangroves and hauled herself out of the water and the ooze, climbing up the main trunk. There, in a springy tangle of branches that were well above the wave action, she fell asleep.

  Next morning she grinned at the distant speck that must be the coaster, driven further out by the estuary current while they tried to affect repairs.

  “Good morning!” she said, as if the captain could hear her. Then she licked dry lips. First course was to find water. Then food. She slapped at the mosquitoes. And some kind of clothing against the bugs.

  As the sun rose higher, she found a pool of cleanish water further in the swamp and drank through a handful of grass to strain it as best she could. Her claws were blunting but they wore through the oak around her ankles so she could pull her feet free and felt much better even though the thick, rot-stinking mud clung to her all over. Without the wood, her ankles were braceletted by black leeches where the skin was broken.

  “Koru, I think the Dark Lord thought this place up as an antechamber to Halya,” she muttered, looking at the fringe of leeches around one ankle slowly ballooning from tassels to lumps.

  Later that afternoon, she avoided a pack of miniature alligators, watching them swarm a strayed cow, picking the beast down to bones in the time it took to count one hundred. The gators were barely the length of her hand, nothing like the man-sized creatures that hunted the warm rivers south of the Mitvald Sea, or the ten-meter oceangoing kind.... But a stray cow meant that humans lived somewhere near.

  Climbing through the limber trunks of the tangled mangroves to avoid the gators’ pond, she bunked to chase way the greenish-grey blotches swimming across her sight.

  “Got to eat soon,” she muttered, then clamped her lips shut against making any more noise than she had to. I need something more orderly than all these stupid trees, s
omething like pavement. Maybe a good building or two to block out this miserable wilderness. The almost dry ground under her feet was enough of a shock to make her stumble, and the sounds she heard ringing through the trees cheered her no end; the rasp of saws, the squeal of a hand mill, dogs barking, geese, voices. The sound of a village carried for a couple of chiliois sometimes.

  But they’re probably the sort like that captain, she thought. Besides, I’ve no money to buy with. She found a relatively dry hollow to wait for the sun to go down, too hungry to feel hunger, only emptiness, trying to ignore Her awful hair, matted with sweat, salt at the roots, grease, and crushed insects. She leaned her head back against the tree, looking up through the grey-green leaves festooned with strange grey moss that looked like hair. First, after all the essentials, I have to find a city big enough to have a fair-sized port, and get back home before everything’s in ruins. The man who had drugged her and sold her off was not the sort to keep a shipping firm in good order.

  The village was on the edge of a dredged canal, houses set up on long pole legs. The animal pens were clustered below, and from one house came the voices of the villagers, talking, singing. As the night deepened, they went their ways in ones and twos, the hum of their talk comfortable as hive-bees on a hot, drowsy day. She waited till the moon was up, looking to see Shamballah, the god’s moon, then shook her head. She’d read enough sailor’s rutter-books, and all reported if you went far enough west, or east, Shamballah wouldn’t show in the sky at all. This country must be at least seven or eight thousand chiliois west of F’talezon, the full length of the Mitvald and the full width of the Lannic Ocean as well.

  She avoided the pens full of geese, because they were better watchers than dogs. A tunic seized from a clothesline made her feel more human. Someone’s left a pie of some kind on the windowsill up there. When the scratch of her claws on the wood roused no one inside, she paused just under the window. Suspicious of something so easy to take, she stilled herself, listening. She could only hear two sounds, and knew that the dog was below at the pigpen. Megan wrinkled her nose at the stray odor. Just as coffee smelled better than it tasted, live pigs smelled much worse than pork.

  When she lifted the pie from the sill, careful not to scrape it across the wood, she bit her lip slightly because it was still hot enough to redden her hands. From inside came a fluttering snore and she froze. Another snore.

  She clambered down carefully, changing her grip on the pie, saliva in her mouth as she smelled the warm fruit odor of blackberries. The first bite was Koru’s Lap itself, and she closed her eyes blissfully, stopping herself from trying to cram the whole thing into her mouth at once, holding back the urge to gorge.

  Now. We’ll see how well the canoes are tied and what town that coaster was making for. A big freshwater estuary like this meant a river, and settlements usually clustered where river and sea met.

  A long day later she looked across the water at the largest dry she’d ever seen in her life. Even at a distance the low, wide golden dome bulked in the eastern quarter like a mountain, the long tongue of flame at its apex licking at blue-black undersides of clouds rolling in from the north. The setting sun picked out the tops of the towering clouds in orange and gold. The hectares of city below gleamed in the hazy sun, white seawalls tinted pink. Distantly, she could see the bulk of a fort at either end of the wall. Two more in the middle broke up the pattern of warehouses, docking basins and gardens, then more warehouses, more docks. She whistled to herself. This city sprawled, where every city she’d ever, known coiled in on itself. There was nothing like this back in the Mitvald, except perhaps Arko the City Itself, the Imperial capital.

  She paddled across the river, avoiding the wash of a four-masted warship, running under bare poles against the tide. It was propelled by no means she could see, though there was a beat being struck inside the hull, keeping time for someone. Her stolen canoe blended in with hundreds of others on the city side of the river, clustering away from the customs gates and forts, passing the sailing ships.

  The seawall was impressive, presenting a blank, white stone face to the estuary. She assumed it would be difficult to get in without papers or clearance of some sort, especially considering what Jaipahl had told her. Her eyebrows furrowed in a frown. Rather frown than cry. After the storm had died, she’d searched in the wreckage, paddling from floating bundle to floating bundle, uselessly.

  The memory of his dry old scholar’s tone triggered another thought. This city must be Illizbuah, Fehinna’s capital. She couldn’t imagine a city larger than this. She floated a moment, noticing the measured patrol along the top of the city walls. They were far between, which made sense if this was the capital city in the heart of their home territory.

  Her dugout scraped the low walkway disappearing under the rising tide. She tilted her head back. It was a smooth wall, but the cracks were enough to give her claws a grip. There was only a bit of shadow here, because of the angle of the wall. She sighed. She’d have to use more power. As tired as she was, as hungry as she was, she doubted she’d be able to hold any illusion longer than an instant or two.

  She tied the canoe to one of the poured-stone rings in the walkway and stood up to her ankles in water. Breathing evenly, she blanked her mind, drawing on the pool of power she saw in her head, and was startled at how thinned down it felt. Almost startled enough to break her concentration, she steadied and imagined herself becoming part of the wall, fading from sight as she thought of flat, white stone and climbed. She lay on top of the wall for a long moment panting, nauseated, a headache beginning to pound behind her eyes.

  Up, get up. The patrol is coming, and I don’t want anyone to see me getting in. She tried not to shudder as she called on power a second time, to hide her climb down.

  It took her a long time to recover from that, the ache fierce enough in her head that she didn’t notice a sweeping thought arcing from the temple, seeking through the mind-world like a swaying cobra.

  Her hands shook as she walked along the docks, a fact that she hid by jamming them in the back of her belt, swaggering as if she’d entered through the gate and had every right to be where she was. Never look weak in a poor quarter, and conversely, never swagger enough to draw a challenge; especially if one is a foreigner. That had been her mother’s advice, years ago.

  The streets nearest the dock were dark, a poured-stone pole standing at one corner with the lamp at the top broken, glass shards lying around the base. She emerged from the small streets into a roar of light and

  “I think I’m going to like this place, the short time I’m here,” she said to herself, and leaned against the wall to look down the street.

  Shkai’ra sank down and studied the view between her toes as they floated and dipped through the light wisps of steam on the surface of the bath water; there was more than enough room, since the tubs were the sawn halves of wine casks built to hold a tonne each. Dying evening light slanted down from the window opposite, picking out detail: the cool blue flagstones, the warm brown tile that covered the walls of the long rectangular room, the band of blue-flowered glazed tile around the edge of the ceiling.

  Also the warning over the arched entrance, of course: Patrons must soap and rinse before entering tubs. No food or fornication while bathing. Penalty for peeing in the bath water is clubbing to unconsciousness. There was an attendant to enforce it, too; a black giant from the Sea Islands leaning on the weighted staff that was his people’s national weapon. Fehinnans took cleanliness seriously, and the Weary Wayfarer’s Hope of Comfort and Delight was a respectable inn, unlike many of its customers.

  Shkai’ra ducked her head, scrubbing at the roots of her hair to get rid of the last of the salt; having been delayed while the ship affected repairs had been irritating enough to make her promise to sacrifice a sheep to Glitch, godlet of fuckups, if he would just ignore her for a while. Some people petitioned Glitch for good luck, but that was pointless. She surfaced, wallowing with luxurious content. In her
homeland, folk bathed once a month, less in winter, and a hot soak was a special comfort for the elderly, to ease the pain of often-broken bones.

  If you live on the Great River, learn to enjoy catfish, she quoted to herself, throwing back the damp mass of her hair.

  A portly man bustled in with an armload of towels and a tray of stoneware jugs.

  “Firehair!” he said, stopping. “Still alive! I thought the sharks would eat you sure, down south.”

  “Junno, you’re always surprised when someone makes a journey outside the city and lives,” she replied. He was one of the kinfast that owned the Weary Wayfarer, and an old friend of sorts. “Nothing down there but cheap rum and big bugs. They got you hauling wine again?”

  He sighed and sat down, removing the stopper from a jug and refilled her cup. “Shorthanded,” he said, and scowled. “Two of our people killed in a riot—times are hard, very hard. Plenty of scum we could hire, but we’re waiting for trustworthy help. Glad to have you here again, by the Immortal Sun.”

  Shkai’ra nodded; she got a reduced rate, on the understanding she would help crack heads if necessary. This was not the quietest section of town.

  “I noticed the harbor wasn’t crowded,” she said.

  “War talk, and traders waiting till things settle down before they spend,” Junno said. He refilled her cup again and took a drink himself. “Just when everyone was finally making a little coin, enough to pay their taxes and eat meat once a week—” Shkai’ra looked ironically at his well-padded stomach “—the Iron House has nothing better to do than think up a new war. Soldiers! Murdering scum—no offense.”

  “None taken,” Shkai’ra said. In her native tongue murderer was a complimentary term, anyway. Junno chuckled and heaved himself erect; she snaked out an arm to ensure he left the jug.