The Larion Senators

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  Alas, this is all temporary, but necessary for me to show you your gift.

  ‘I can’t have it back in the swamp?’

  You can’t see it in the swamp. You have it already.

  ‘All right, I’ll bite. At least it isn’t hot in here.’ Mark stood and stretched. His legs felt strange, as if he had spent two months on crutches. ‘What do I have to do?’

  Come over here to the mirror.

  ‘Over here?’ The idea that whoever was holding him hostage might be near the mirror intrigued him. He had to move a wooden longbow out of the way; he didn’t remember owning one, but perhaps it was Steven’s. He closed the closet door to see the mirror and noticed a quiver of homemade arrows stacked behind his fishing waders, next to an old pair of skis. He expected to see his captor in the mirror, protected behind some sort of Lewis Carroll force-field, and wondered what would happen if he just shattered the thing into a pile of jagged shards. ‘Take that, Alice,’ he said aloud.

  What’s that?

  ‘Nothing. Now, what is it that you’re so—’

  It was him, but at the same time, not him. He was there, seeing his own eyes as they rolled up and down, checking the length and breadth of the mirror, searching for any sign of Mark Jenkins. When he looked up, his eyes – the eyes, those eyes – looked up. When he looked down, they followed suit. He raised a hand to his face and ran a finger across his cheek; the young, muscular black figure in the mirror did the same. ‘Holy shit,’ he said. ‘Where am I? What did you do with me?’

  With you? Your body, Mark, had a nasty, purulent sore. Major Tavon ordered it burned.

  Mark fell forward and gripped the sides of the mirror. Bracing himself, he stared into the unfamiliar face. It was the man from the pool, the sorry bastard who had drifted past the row of marble columns and into the dark place. The tadpoles were snacking on him right now. ‘So who is this? Who am I?’

  His name was Redrick Shen. He was a sailor from Rona, a South-Coaster. I thought you might like to know that I had found a likely replacement: young, of dark skin, strong and healthy, and with no open sores on his hands.

  It was true; Redrick Shen had been killed before being taken. Except for some painful-looking bruising on his neck and a swollen jaw, Mark could find nothing amiss. ‘But why?’ he asked, bemused.

  Why what?

  ‘What difference does it make? Did you think I wanted to be a black man? That being a black man would somehow make this easier for me than being a white woman? Are you fucking nuts? It isn’t enough that you made me a black man, you dope – you want to make me happy, go find me and put me back inside my body.’

  I can’t do that, Mark. Major Tavon—

  ‘I know. She had it burned.’

  I hoped you’d be pleased.

  Mark shook his head, the stranger’s head. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why? What difference does it make what skin colour I wear now?’

  Mark, you disappoint me. I thought you had it all worked out: Vienna, the Gloriette, that patch of sunshine you’re trying so hard to reach.

  He turned away from the mirror, checked the snake on the shelf and watched as his room began to change. The floor bowed and creaked, warping into the irregular rise and fall of a swampy riverbank. The walls cracked, the sheetrock popping and bursting as thick lengths of coiled, snakelike vine writhed into the room, covering the walls. Ferns crept up around his feet and he heard the sound of mud slurping and sloshing through the floorboards.

  They were going back.

  ‘Why did you bring me here? Why did I need to see this?’ His feet were wet; he searched the room for whatever might transmogrify into the stone bridge or one of the last three columns.

  I have plans for you, Mark Jenkins, big plans. I just thought you’d be more comfortable in something familiar.

  The air was all at once heavy and dank with decay. As if welcoming him home, a deer-fly bit him on the neck and Mark slapped it dead, wiping the broken wings and gore on Redrick Shen’s leggings. The lights were fading and he had not yet seen the coral snake. Maybe it was stuck in Colorado – it would freeze to death there at this time of year. Before being plunged into darkness, he made a cursory check of the ground cover, mud and ferns.

  ‘Nothing there?’ he said, and dived for the next column.

  ‘Two to go, shithead,’ Mark said as darkness fell.

  A FOLLOWING SEA

  Jacrys lifted his head, blew hard enough to clear a lock of hair from his face and considered the stairway. It might have gone on for ever. He had been up and down these same stairs countless times over the Twinmoons but had never before realised how steep and precarious the crooked slats nailed into sloping cross beams were. They could not be more than a breath or two away from collapse.

  ‘I can’t make it,’ he wheezed. No one heard; the others were wrestling with bags and a heavy trunk. ‘Thadrake,’ Jacrys’ voice rattled, ‘Thadrake, I can’t make it up there. All that time on Carpello’s yacht and I never imagined I wouldn’t be able to make it up the steps at my own safe house.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’ The young officer dropped the bags and walked into the foyer. Thadrake was back in uniform since negotiating their safe passage through the naval blockade early that morning. With his leather polished to a shine and his jacket brushed to within an inch of its life, he looked as if he expected to encounter Prince Malagon strolling along the quay at any moment.

  Jacrys gripped the one handrail that looked sturdy enough to support his weight. ‘I said, there’s no way I can make it up these stairs. I never—’

  ‘Mirron and I can—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me when I am speaking!’ Droplets of blood sprayed from Jacrys’ lips and his head bobbed in time with his laboured breathing. He inhaled as deeply as he could, hollow tree, coughed a wet, throaty spasm, loose gravel, and said, ‘Don’t interrupt me, Captain. Remember your place.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Mirron, General Oaklen’s healer, joined them, and immediately spotted the blood. ‘Good rutting lords, sir, you’re bleeding again. I told you to stay in bed! I said going about on deck was a mistake – you have opened that wound again, sir, you have to—’

  ‘Shut!’ Jacrys whispered, then doubled over in a prolonged coughing fit. When he finally raised his head again, the front of his tunic was splattered with blood, and a trail of blood-stained saliva dripped from his lower lip. With an effort, he spat, then whispered, ‘Just get me upstairs.’

  Together Mirron and Thadrake helped Jacrys up the ramshackle staircase and into the small apartment. It was sparsely decorated, with a simple cot against the back wall, a small chest of drawers and a chair near a window overlooking the quay and twin wardrobes flanking the wooden doorframe. Inside one, Mirron found bedding, a rack of expensive clothes and a ceramic basin, which he placed on top of the chest of drawers. In the other, he discovered several shelves of outlawed books, science, history and even storybooks, all generations old, printed before Prince Marek closed the universities.

  In a bedside table, Thadrake found several candles and a tinder pouch. He kindled a small fire in the tiny hearth and when it was burning nicely, he added a couple of logs from the woodpile next to the fireplace, just enough to warm the room.

  All the while, Jacrys lay on the cot, staring out of the window towards the harbour. Finally, he tilted his head far enough to find Mirron, standing with his back pressed against one of the wardrobes. Unwilling to minister to the wounded spy without permission, Mirron waited for instructions.

  Jacrys nodded at him and the healer crossed and knelt at his bedside.

  Jacrys fought to lift his head from the pillow; he didn’t want to give orders lying down, not any longer. ‘Mirron … leave the querlis,’ he managed, then, haltingly, ‘You are relieved of duty. Find a transport back to Orindale. Tell Colonel Pace that I dismissed you.’

  Mirron flushed, indignant, and started, ‘But sir, you—’

  ‘Don’t argue,’ Jacrys cu
t him off. ‘I don’t care what you have to say. You’re dismissed.’

  The elderly man stood stiffly, trying to preserve a measure of dignity, and said, ‘Very well, sir. Good luck with your convalescence.’

  Jacrys tried not to laugh. Mirron had been quite right: he had done this to himself. If he hoped to live through the next Twinmoon, he needed to proceed cautiously; laughing was banned. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, ‘although I think we both know there isn’t going to be any convalescence.’

  Mirron said nothing, just started for the door.

  ‘Ah, Mirron,’ Thadrake said, ‘the querlis?’

  The irritated healer stomped down the rickety stairs and into the crowds moving along the Pellia waterfront. Thadrake retrieved the bags, did some unpacking to avoid the uncomfortable silence in the small room, then added more wood to the fire.

  ‘Leave it be,’ Jacrys whispered.

  ‘But sir, it’s too cold—’

  ‘It’ll warm up when they stoke the ovens downstairs. They’ll bake bread for this evening. It gets plenty warm in here when they do. If you make me a querlis poultice, I’ll most likely sleep through the night. That should give you some time to look around a bit, perhaps find someone who can tell you about the goings-on here in the capital, or even at the palace. And I know you’re not a healer, Captain, but I’m glad to be rid of that horsecock Mirron.’

  ‘Me too, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. Now, please look beneath the third plank from the left, there near the window.’

  ‘This one?’ Thadrake heard a hollow thud when he thumped the board with the toe of his boot. ‘Something under here?’

  ‘Silver, copper, some tobacco – although it’s probably no good any more – and a bit of root.’

  ‘Fennaroot?’ Thadrake looked surprised. ‘You don’t seem like the kind of man who would use that stuff.’

  ‘Not for me,’ Jacrys rasped, shaking his head slightly, ‘but it can be an excellent aid in interrogation.’

  ‘Really?’ Thadrake used his knife to pry up the length of old wood. ‘I would have guessed that your methods of interrogation were a bit more … well, rough.’

  ‘There are many ways to conduct interrogations, Captain.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said as he withdrew the contents of the hidden storage chamber. ‘Did you want some of this root now, sir?’

  ‘No, you blazing fool,’ Jacrys murmured. ‘I want you to take some of the silver and get us something to eat, some wine, the best you can find, more querlis and maybe a pair of willing young women.’

  ‘That’d kill you,’ Thadrake smirked.

  ‘Ah, but what better way to start towards the Northern Forest?’

  ‘How about much older, and in your sleep?’

  ‘Good point.’ Jacrys found to his surprise he was enjoying the banter. ‘Forget the whores, but maybe bring back—’

  ‘A pastry or two?’ Thadrake risked the interruption. Pastries were one of Jacrys’ weaknesses.

  ‘Yes, please.’ The spy rolled into his blankets and closed his eyes. ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Thadrake pocketed a handful of copper Mareks – there was no need for silver.

  ‘Thadrake?’ Jacrys didn’t bother opening his eyes. ‘Nothing for the morrow. I take only bread and tecan in the mornings, understand?’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Later, with the remnants of their shared dinner on the table, Thadrake, still in uniform, sat near the window, watching a team of sailors and stevedores prepare a three-masted schooner tied up at the wharf. He swallowed a mouthful of wine, the finest he had tasted in his life, and propped his feet up on the chest.

  Thinking Jacrys asleep, Thadrake poured another goblet and nibbled at what meat remained on the gansel leg. From the darkness behind him, the spy asked, ‘What’s happening out there?’

  Thadrake jumped, spilling wine on his leggings. ‘Rutters, you scared me.’ He put his goblet on the table, mopped up the wine and moved to beside Jacrys’ bed. ‘Not much, sir,’ he reported. ‘The dockers are making that three-master ready to sail. Customs officers have already been on to check her hold. I expect they’ll be pushing off shortly.’

  Jacrys’ breathing sounded worse. He wouldn’t live much longer if he didn’t get to a sorcerer with knowledge of the healing arts. There was too much blood pooling in his lung and attempting to cough it out would only exacerbate the injury and kill him more quickly. ‘I’d like to see that,’ he murmured.

  ‘Would you?’ Thadrake considered the cot. It was a simple wooden skeleton with leather straps to support the thin mattress. ‘Hold on, sir.’ He hefted the head of the small cot and dragged it to the window, then went to the wardrobe and collected the rest of the bedding to prop up Jacrys’ head and shoulders, giving Jacrys an unimpeded view of the quay, the waterfront and the harbour beyond.

  When he’d finished, he asked, ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  At first Jacrys didn’t respond, and Thadrake was starting to fear he’d actually killed the spy. Finally, Jacrys made a sound that, a Twinmoon earlier, would have been a sigh of contentment but now sounded like something broken. ‘Thank you, Captain,’ he whispered.

  Thadrake drained what was left in his goblet. ‘I worry, sir, that perhaps you shouldn’t be at the window for too long. It is quite draughty here.’

  ‘I’ll be fine right here,’ Jacrys said. ‘Good night, Captain.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  ‘And Captain,’ Jacrys turned his head and found Thadrake in the candlelight and repeated, ‘thank you.’

  Within the aven, Jacrys was back on the slip of sand across the Welstar River. Brexan was with him.

  Thadrake sat up until the candles burned out, finishing the wine as he watched the schooner push back from the pier and disappear into the night. Listening to the Malakasian spy struggling to breathe, even in his sleep, Thadrake eventually drifted off himself.

  Garec stepped on deck and immediately regretted it. Roiling black clouds filled the sky with the promise of freezing rain. What would be a pleasant dusting of snow on the Falkan plains was a bone-chilling drenching for the passengers and crew of the Morning Star, and just to exacerbate the discomfort, the ship was running north under a steady Twinmoon wind, heeling over in a way that – to Garec – felt dangerously close to capsizing. He braced his boots on the canted deck, gripped the gunwale and made his way carefully towards the helm. I will never get used to this, he thought grimly. Give me the mountains any Twinmoon; this is madness.

  Captain Ford was at the helm, looking absurdly happy with their tailwind and the following tide. ‘Good morning,’ he shouted over the din.

  Garec grabbed the wheel to keep from falling. ‘Do we have to be tipped quite so far over? Is this normal?’

  ‘Perfectly normal,’ the captain assured him. ‘Just a bit of heel – we want to make good time; so I had Marrin and Tubbs haul the sheets in tight. We’re rutting near flying before this wind. You don’t feel it while you’re asleep, because your hammock acts as a plumb: the ship rolls around you. It’s not a good way to get your sea legs, though. You ought to sleep in a bulkhead bunk. By the time you wake up, you’re already used to the swells.’

  ‘Is that what you call these terrifying waves? Swells?’ Garec sounded incredulous; it felt like a full-fledged flood tide to him.

  ‘They’re not the big ones.’ He grinned and wiped the spray from his eyes. ‘We’re saving those for up north.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Garec forced a smile, ‘because I was worried that perhaps this would be too easy. I mean, we’ve had such a quiet and enjoyable journey so far.’

  ‘I noticed your head. How is it? Getting better?’

  ‘Sure, and if I don’t drown when this boat rolls over, I’ll probably have Kellin take the stitches out in the next day or two. Right now it itches more than anything.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’ Captain Ford made a slight adjustment to their course, forcing Garec to release the helm for a mom
ent and trust his footing. ‘I’m sure Tubbs or Sera have some tecan brewing if you want some. They’ll be in the galley.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Garec swallowed hard. ‘I don’t think I could eat anything right now. I like to swim on an empty stomach.’

  ‘The ship is fine,’ the captain assured Garec with an avuncular smile. ‘As a matter of fact, this is the way she likes to run, just like a horse; loose her reins and let her go.’

  Garec thought of Renna, his much-loved mare. It was true; the fiery beast was never happier than when he let her have her head. ‘Can I bring you some tecan?’

  ‘No thanks, that’s a port drink, a luxury. Out here we drink our own brew, something Sera dreamed up about fifteen Twinmoons ago. It’s mostly rosehips; they grow all over southern Praga, right up to the waterline, too. They’re easy to find and we dry them over a beam in the for’ard hold.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Marrin tried smoking them once, just for laughs. He looked like his face was on fire.’

  Garec looked anxiously across the rolling sea to where waves were shattering against the granite cliffs of western Falkan. ‘How much further?’

  ‘At this rate?’

  ‘Or a bit slower,’ Garec said. ‘Too many people hurry too much these days. It’s not healthy.’

  ‘We ought to be in sight of the fjord in about two avens, just after midday.’

  ‘What? That’s too early,’ Garec cried. ‘We’re here too early; it needs to be late tonight, or tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Sorry, my friend, a couple of avens and we’re there.’ He fixed his gaze on Garec, ignoring the ship for a moment. ‘Unless you want to make a run in there.’

  ‘Into the shallows?’ Garec shouted over the wind. ‘It looks rough.’

  ‘It won’t be the high point of your trip.’

  ‘Is there a way to wait out here for them?’

  ‘To stop? No. But we can reef the main, foremain and topsails. In this wind, the topgallants will keep us on course, but—’