“No!” Tamza blurted.
Edgar glanced at her and then his weighty stare found Dabecki. “We keep the bears for fighting enemies, not each other. I gave the order to Orpey, not you.”
Dabecki shrivelled from Edgar, eyes down.
Edgar looked at Burrington, who couldn’t hold the King’s gaze. “Have the messengers gone back to my brother?”
“Aye, early this morning. And a messenger arrived from Horace. He says all is well, he is holding the country, there’s been no more uprisings. People are adjusting to the idea of one chief. One King. And if they’re not, Horace says he’s dealing with them. Also, he notes the stone building you ordered is progressing well, we’ll soon be living in grand structures fit for the King of the country and his court. No more huts for us.”
Edgar grunted. “I’m impressed with the buildings here. These people were more advanced than I was expecting.”
The grey-haired man said, “Aye, but they don’t have metal, they don’t know how to make bronze. They have no weapons.”
A few voices spoke at once. Burrington coughed to get their attention. He was ignored until Edgar thumped the table.
Picking at his doleful beard, Burrington said, “We need to decide what we’re calling this place, now it belongs to the country of Fertilian.”
“Lian-by-Sea,” Edgar said, without hesitation.
A ripple of agreement. The King stood, his chair scraping back. The men around the table stood hastily. “I’m going to look at my new town, my Lian-by-Sea. Tamza.” He stalked from the room, not looking back at the men around the table. Tamza rose to follow. As did Dabecki.
The traitor beat her to the monster’s side, in the hallway.
“My King,” Dabecki slimed.
Edgar turned to him.
Dabecki flinched, but pressed on, “When will I be taking over from Burrington? As warden of the town, as promised?”
Edgar’s thick hand shot out and pinned Dabecki awkwardly to the wall, the skin of his bare hump slapped against the mudbrick.
“There’s something you should know about me, you snivelling rat, I don’t always keep my promises. You’ve served your purpose, you got us into this maze of a town. Now you’re my translator, nothing more.” Edgar released his hand and Dabecki slid down the wall into a blubbering heap. Edgar patted his creased forehead. “Enjoy the women, be thankful I’ve kept you alive.”
The King took Tamza’s hand and stomped from the building.
8
Outside the day was bright, the sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, but a cool breeze snapped at Tamza’s cloak and headscarf. In the distant north, dark clouds hid the snow-capped mountains, and Tamza expected heavy rain later. She tightened her scarf. Edgar had ordered his servants to bring her more clothes, whatever they could find, but she insisted she wear the cloak and scarf over the top. He acquiesced, telling her he was happy just to see her eyes. To her left was the still smouldering main palace building. A black scar in the palace grounds.
Edgar took a few steps and stopped. He turned to Tamza. “You lead the way. I want to see the sea.”
They left the palace grounds and headed downhill. Tamza took the main thoroughfare to the marketplace, where only yesterday the entire town had been celebrating the Festival of Many Gods. The path ran parallel to the river and was a route she had taken nearly every day of her life to the washing area, to collect food from the market, to pay visits to family and friends, to take her bears to perform at various festivals and celebrations. Always bustling, full of life and happy faces. Now, it was deserted and wretchedly silent. A few Fert soldiers were dotted about the town, on the roads where they could take their horses, but she knew from the council meeting that most were on the outskirts, building the new wall and watching for retaliation from Parchad.
Tamza staggered to a halt when she came across the first body. A child. Her head snapped back at an ugly angle, her hand still grasping a woollen doll. Edgar pushed Tamza on, blind to the death, the horror, and impatient to get to the sea.
They reached the marketplace, which was dotted with dead Vaasarians. Some of the statues of past Viziers were splattered with blood. The stage she had almost stood on the day before had been smashed to pieces. The square stank of festering beer, spoilt food, and a stomach-churning smell like old meat. Rotting bodies. Tamza cupped her hand over her nose, pushing her scarf tight to her nostrils.
Edgar stopped, not affected by the smell, and looked around at the statues. “Who are these?”
I must treat this as part of the performance. Be brave. Tamza found her voice. “These are the past eight Viziers of Vaasar. The town was founded eight generations ago, by that one, Vizier Gharak, who was the chief of the Khumarah clan who settled here. And this statue half built was going to be Vizier Hannijad.”
Edgar looked blankly at her.
“The one you beheaded,” she said, trying hard to keep the emotion from her voice.
He shrugged, and kept on walking in the direction of the sea. From the marketplace the town continued downhill and a blue expanse stretched out in front of them. Tamza followed him, he slowed so she could catch up and show him the way. In front of him stretched the most densely populated part of Vaasar. Sandy coloured mudbrick houses for as far as you could see, crammed together, all sharing walls. In between the houses were winding alleyways, often under archway bridges built from the flat roof of one house to the next. Off the alleyways were steep steps leading up to more houses or another alleyway. A labyrinth, for any who didn’t know it. But as familiar to Tamza as her own face.
She led the way, the alley was barely big enough for two people side by side, but the corpses pushed up against the walls made it even smaller. Scavengers feasting on the remains scattered as they approached. Silent tears streamed from Tamza’s face, and she dabbed at them with her scarf. She passed the path up to Yaseena’s house, and the butchers where she got the great slabs of meat for her bears.
The emptiness of death had settled over everything. Shadows like ghosts of the townsfolk who should be there but were now forever absent.
Soon they passed through the houses into an open space. The harbour. It stretched in a half circle, and they stood in the middle on pale rocks that had been smoothed from generations of feet, where the original settlers had chipped away to make pathways. In front of the rocks was pebbly beach and then the sea. A few small wooden boats bobbed in the harbour, further out the angry sea foamed and waves chopped into one another. Wooden piers had been constructed from the flattened rocks out into the sea at regular points around the half circle. There were six of them, but to Tamza’s left, the last pier was now charred remains, and the boatyard had been razed to the ground. Another black scar on the town.
Edgar took in a deep breath and stretched out his arms, head up, eyes closed. “I told you, father,” he shouted at the sky, “I told you I would take this place!” He rushed towards the nearest steps cut into the rocks and down onto the pebbles, towards the sea that gently lapped at the beach. He kneeled in the waves and thrust both hands in the sea, dipped his head in the water and flicked it back. A great arc spraying over his head. He sat on his heels and splashed.
“The sea!” he bellowed and laughed, slapping at the surface like a child. “I found the sea, father, something you never managed did you. Ever since those Xayans put the idea in your head, but you never got here, did you? But I did. Your youngest son. I was ambitious, you always said. I killed you, and your favourite Daneil, and bettered Horace. I took Fertilian and now I take the sea. Ha ha ha!”
Tamza watched this frenzied, half mad outburst and looked around for something she could kill Edgar with. A large rock? A fisherman’s hook? Anything?
“Come here, Tamza.”
Edgar stood and walked a few paces away from the shore and sat on the pebbles. She walked down the steps and went to him. He patted the stones and she sat.
He took her hand and leaned back. “Wha
t do you call the sea?”
Tamza looked out at the bobbing boats. “We call it the Sarenky Sea. Sarenky means unknowable in our language. The unknowable sea.”
“Ha! Well I plan to know it. I plan to find whatever is out there. Even if I sail in a circle and land right back here, I will do it.”
“Why?”
“Trade. Find other people out there to sell our bronze too. My father sent his people south, there was nothing there apart from a never-ending salt flat. Great for salt, but not much else.
“We went east, there was nothing there but wastelands. We went north and met the Xayans, the crazy bastards. They didn’t want to trade, they wanted blood. But father made a deal. He gave them what they desired – better weapons. Bronze swords, knives, arrow heads, spear heads. Everything they needed to bring more destruction on their own warring tribes. And in return they brought destruction and ruin to all those who opposed my father.
“We went west, but only ever found fucking desert. It was the Xayans who told us to stick closer to the edge of the mountains, in the strip where desert ends and before mountains begin. And here we are. Here I am. At the sea.”
He stopped talking, Tamza wondered if he wanted her to say something. To congratulate him, or some such. She wasn’t about to praise a murderer and didn’t utter a word.
“Come here, you, I want to fuck.” He grabbed her cloak and pulled her down to the pebbles.
She squirmed, “No, not here!”
“Why not? There’s no one here.”
“No, because you killed them all,” she shrieked and pulled away from him. The silence of the usually heaving harbourside unsettling her more than she realised.
Her outburst and defiance angered Edgar. “I said now, woman. Open your legs!”
He hauled himself on top of her and pinned her to the pebbles. She wrangled with him. This man is strong-willed, he is difficult to enchant. Her mother had warned her that some wild men can’t be controlled. Tamza quickly pressed her fingertips to his cheekbones and blinked. Soon his eyes glazed and he kissed her cheek and rolled off her.
He sighed, looking up to the sky. She lay very still. Not wanting to move in case the spell wore off. I will need to keep administering the enchantment, to dance for him every night, to entangle him deeply.
9
Each day for two weeks, Tamza walked King Edgar around Vaasar, answering his questions, pointing out landmarks, showing him the artisan quarters, the Scribery where the scribes had invented a way to mark animal skin to record daily life, as well as the Record of Relics building where they kept interesting objects from their past. Each night, she danced for him. Sometimes just for him, sometimes in front of his high-ranking men. She repeatedly asked to see her bears, but was forbidden. Edgar assured her they were being taken care of, that his soldiers threw food over the enclosure fence.
Edgar was alert, suspicious, cautious. His reactions to any threat to his life were like lightning, instinctive. She tried again to smother him with a cushion, attempted to wrap her scarf around his neck to strangle him. Once she tried to pull his dagger, as she learnt his short sword was called, from its scabbard on his sword belt whilst she danced for him, but he caught her before she’d even drawn it a finger’s width out and had shook his head slowly.
Before she knew it, weeks had passed. And with every day that went by, Tamza’s will faltered, her courage waned.
Every walk around the town ended in the same place, by the sea. Edgar liked to check in on progress at the new boatyard, the original burnt to the ground. It was slowly being cleared and rebuilt, larger, to make bigger boats that would venture into the Sarenky Sea.
They were sat on the open rooftop of what used to be a thriving public eatery, looking over the harbour. Edgar gazed towards the frothy ocean. “Soon we’ll be conquering out there.”
Tamza, familiar now with conversing with this man, asked, “Why are you so obsessed with the sea? There is nothing out there but death and sadness.”
He snorted. “How would you know?”
“I had three older brothers, they went to sea. The eldest leaving his wife and two children behind. They went off to conquer the Sarenky, to find new lands, new peoples, on an adventure.” Tamza paused, remembering. It almost broke my mother’s heart, to say goodbye to them. But she wasn’t going to tell Edgar that. “They set off early one morning, the entire town crowded around the harbour to see them off. The biggest boat we had made, the furthest any Vaasarian dared to go. Our fishermen stayed close to the harbour. We watched as the boat, manned by twenty of our bravest men, disappeared out to sea.”
Tamza took a deep breath, noted how Edgar was listening eagerly, hanging off her every word, and continued. “One week later a man washed up in a small row boat, he had left with my brothers. He was half starved and in shock. He couldn’t speak, only shook his head when asked of the others, and wept. This man died a day later. The sea claimed them all. My three brothers, dead.” And that did break my mother’s heart. She died a month later. Her death nearly broke my father. But he was strong, for me.
Edgar gazed at her and said, “Our boats will be better.”
Tamza pointed towards the boatyard, at the buzzing activity there. The Ferts scurried around one man, a Vaasarian, following his commands. A Fert soldier stood behind the boatbuilder, a sword in his back. Dabecki lounged to one side, no doubt drunk, translating. “Your men follow the instructions of the Vaasarian boatbuilder Farouk, he is who built our boat.”
Edgar shrugged. “That is so, but we will improve on his designs. You know, you Vaasarians are smarter than I thought. I should’ve kept more of you alive.”
“You regret the massacre?”
“No. I have Lian-by-Sea. I find your people curious with your many Gods and love for your rulers. I’m the God amongst my people, and I’d rather they fear me. This town is chaotically built, yes, but it is remarkable in its own way. If I’d realised you wouldn’t put up much of a fight, we could’ve taken it differently. Kept more people alive. But I assumed you’d battle or rebel, like the peoples I conquered in Fertilian. The only way to make them kneel is violence. You lot would’ve knelt if I’d asked, I’m sure.” He laughed at that, but Tamza was disgusted.
Edgar stood and walked over to the edge of the roof. It was a sheer drop down to the rocks below. He contemplated the sea, his back to Tamza.
She stood, crept forward and held out her hands.
A shove is all it will take!
She moved closer, fingertips hovering a hair’s breadth from the monster’s back.
Tamza hesitated. Fear rattled her insides, paralysing her. I can’t do it, I can’t take another’s life. She recoiled.
Coward. I’ve failed you father.
10
Edgar lay in bed and thumped his fist on the wall behind him. It was early morning and he had woken with big plans, as was his custom. For a few moments after his eyes opened, he spoke his ambitions, as if his mind had conjured them during the night and by saying them aloud Edgar was confirming that he’d heard, and he was progressing. “I’m going to rip this shabby palace down and build another with stone. Not a palace though, more of a fortress. Something that cannot be burnt and taken so easily as we took this place.
“My brother Horace is building back in Fertilian with stone bricks. The sentimental fool has called the construction a ‘castle’ after our dear bitch of a mother, Castella. But that’s what I’ll have here, a stone castle. How is mudbrick made anyway?”
Tamza was so miserable she could barely bring herself to speak. And she was exhausted, berating herself the entire night in place of sleep. She had failed to kill Edgar, but she had to keep up the act. I must enchant him so deeply that I have an unyielding influence over him. Atone for my cowardice by forcing him to be fair, less cruel, respectful of life. My chances of success are slight, he’s strong-willed, but I have to do something.
She forced a smile onto her lips, and in the
voice she used to speak to her nephews with when they were small, explained sweetly, “The mud mixture is put in moulds and left to bake in the sun. Once solid it is strong enough to hold up walls. Specially shaped mudbricks were used for the palace domes, but they burnt in the fire the day you arrived. Out by the crop fields, to the east, are the brick works. Have you not seen them?”
“Aye, that is near where the Xayans are camped. And that is where we go tonight. With the bears. An invite arrived last night, I accepted.”
Here goes, let’s try my influence. “No. I’m not taking my bears into that camp with those… animals.”
Edgar laughed. “The bears are animals, not the Xayans. You want to see your bears, now you can. They’ll dance. I’m the guest of honour at some feast tonight. I’m bringing the entertainment.”
Push harder. “I will dance, not my bears.”
“No, you’re not dancing tonight. They’ll all just want to fuck you. The Xayans are not to be stopped when it comes to women. They have some strange honour codes… The bears dance.”
Failed.
Tamza led Rae-bear and Ursah-bear through the town behind Orpey, Burrington and King Edgar. Fert soldiers lined the alleyways, swords ready to turn on the bears if required. The soldiers stopped at the edge of town, by the old brick works. Edgar led the small procession through the endless, redundant rows of brick moulds towards the Xayan camp.
Edgar had told her before they set off, “Do as I say, otherwise we die, bears and all. The Xayans are easily offended. They have invited me here with three companions to test my bravery and strength. They do not frighten me, don’t let them frighten you or the bears.”
Tamza had decided to bring her two strongest bears, in case of any trouble, and the two best dancers, to perform the dance that they had learnt for the Festival of Many Gods. She hadn’t trained them in many weeks, and she prayed to Bear-God that the choreography was still etched in their minds.
The Fall of Vaasar Page 6
