by Holly Lisle
“And then you received your stone eyes, and they let you stop time.”
“And I’m not like the other girls anymore. Right.” I turned my face to him. The pain had subsided enough that I could try to see him; I wanted to catch as much of who he was as I could. I wanted to see what others saw—I wanted to see the outside of him, the colors of him, but all I could make out were the solids and the liquids and the air spaces, layers and densities. I had no idea what he looked like. “My mentor died. And I received her Eyes. It was not a pleasant thing, and she gave me right of refusal when she chose me. But she saw something—something that involved the destruction of the Tonk. And she offered me the task of preventing time from taking the path she saw. Or at least preventing it in this stream.”
“Why you?”
“Because I was born Tonk. And will be Tonk again, as she was Tonk. We were both captured by slavers in our youths—I when I was very young. She chose me because I was a troublemaker not tempted by power. Because I’d figured out a way out of the Citadel, and had people ready to risk their lives to fight for our freedom with me.”
He reached out and took my hand. My left hand. I had thought he meant to offer me comfort, but instead I felt his fingers trace the mark on that palm, the one I had shared with my Hawkspar predecessor.
“Eskuu,” he whispered.
“My clan, though I don’t remember it. My mentor bore the same mark.”
“Eskuu was lost to the Known Clans some thousand years ago. The whole clan sought new lands and a new future, took horses and seeds and sailed into the west. And were never heard from again. We thought—always believed—that the Eskuu were devoured by the storms and none survived. But here you are.” He sounded excited. “Where were you? I cannot tell you the excitement there would be if the Eskuu returned in force, and brought back the fedderhorses and the books of their passage.”
“I don’t know where my people lived. As I said, I was taken young. We have girls who were taken as slaves when they were older. I don’t know if any bear the same mark I do—I was never that curious—but if they do, they might remember.”
“A clansman of the Drifted, returned. It’s amazing. I would have thought it impossible.”
He sat there for a while holding my hand, his finger tracing over and over the mark on my left palm.
He sat that way for a long time. Then he said, “But you mentioned a threat.”
“That someone seeks to destroy the Tonk, and is succeeding.”
“There are a lot of Tonk,” he said. “In a lot of places. The nomads still roam the plains of Tandinapalis. And our sailing ships and horses have taken us across the world. The Old, the Transitional, and the New Clans covered much of the world. My clan, which is Viiku, has several taaks in the Confederacy of Hyre, which has now allied itself with the Eastil Republic … but the Confederacy is Tonk to the core, and has maintained the old ways.” His hand squeezed mine one last time, gently, and let it go. “So … what threat do you see?”
And I had to confess my own failure. “I don’t. Yet. My mentor saw it with these Eyes, but she was much more skilled in their use. She saw that the Tonk are fighting a war they don’t know they’re fighting. All I see is a coming darkness—and three wizards bound to my fate. Two are dead but not gone. One of them we killed today, one is Ossal, who made these Eyes. The third waits in the future, and I don’t know who he is or how I shall meet him—only that he does not bode well for my future. More than that, I don’t know. I still have only the strength and skill to navigate the waters that flow around me a little way in any direction.”
I heard Aaran stand, and heard the chair he’d sat in scrape back and click as he slipped the ladder back of it over a hook on the wall.
“I’m going up to see how everyone is doing. I’ll check in on you later. I have not yet counted our losses—this I must do.”
I wanted him to stay, but around me I could catch the shapes of healing and tragedy. He was right; he needed to be other places. “Thank you for sitting with me, and for sharing your drink with me. It was dreadful. But it helped.”
“You only have to start worrying when you like the way it tastes,” he said, and laughed. I loved the sound of his laugh—deep and warm and strong. And then his boots clattered up the companionway at a near run, and I was left with myself for company, and the little girls still hiding in the berths, too afraid to come out.
I sat up again, and the room still felt like it was spinning in every direction at once. Like the captain, however, I had duties. I had brought those little girls to this place, and I had the responsibility to make sure they did not shiver in needless fear. If I had to crawl from cabin to cabin, I would do that.
19
Aaran
Eskuu. Hawkspar was Eskuu.
Aaran couldn’t shake the disbelief. It was like knowing in his bones, knowing from everything he had ever seen and ever heard, that there were no more fedderhorses in the world. And then stumbling across one, alive and kicking, gold and black stripes gleaming in the sun.
He wondered if the fact that there were still Eskuu meant that there were still fedderhorses.
He could have the men do some work on one of the holds—put in a few stalls. Great Jostfar, if they showed up in Beyltaak, say, at the horse market, with even one breedable, papered fedderhorse, his fortune would be secure. His reputation would be … godlike.
Aaran played for a moment with the idea of going in search of the land of Eskuu and fedderhorses, but he couldn’t think he would find any Tonk slaves there.
He hadn’t eliminated the possibility that one of the women aboard the ship was his sister, but it didn’t seem likely. He considered that she might have been one of the Ossalenes who stayed behind, but that wasn’t likely, either. He needed to check the clan marks on the hands of the girls and women aboard; perhaps all the Drifted had come home. Perhaps, hidden in the islands where men did not dare to sail, some Tonk had found a way to survive. If that was the case, then there would be other expeditions.
Meanwhile, he and his men had saved more than two hundred women and girls, mostly Tonk, who had been captive, had managed to sneak them out under the very noses of a raiding king and his pillaging scum, and away, too, from the monastery that would never have let them go. The Tonk would have to send people to deal with the Ossalene Order—the Tonk did not tolerate the enslavement of their people. But dealing with the Ossalenes would not be Aaran’s mission, either.
He had to get the captives he had to safety.
And he had to find Aashka. If she wasn’t on the Taag, she was somewhere else.
Tuua saw him step out of the passenger companionway, and crossed the deck.
“What’s the news?” he asked.
“Bad,” Tuua said. “Ves is dead. Neeran is dead. Otaam is still alive, and the Moonstones are working on him, but I cannot believe he has any hope of surviving.”
Otaam was the ship’s tracker. He was of only middling talent, but having him alive meant someone to watch the passageways while Aaran slept—someone to keep them off rocks, if not someone to find them the best route through an entire region. Aaran, still stunned that he’d lost his kor daan and one of his runners, prayed that he would not lose his tracker, too.
“Who else?” he asked.
“Baaksa.”
Their one true steersman. They had other men who might do the job, but none who’d had training in it. He nodded. “Who else?”
“Four marines. Seven sailors. Some of the warrior women. One little girl who hid on deck instead of going below.”
And if any of the dead women were Aashka, he had lost her before he found her.
Aaran rang the death bell—a slow, steady tolling of the ship’s bell that summoned all who could attend to the final rites. He rang it until everyone who could walk and was not tending the injured stood on the deck. Then he steeled himself against what he would face, and walked aft, where the men and some of the women had washed the dead and laid them out
in state on the deck.
And there was Neeran, always so quick and willing and eager; a boy on his first voyage, a young wharf rat who had signed papers because he saw his future in the sea. The boy had no one back home to notify—he’d said he was an orphan, and if he wasn’t, he’d had his reasons for the lie.
“Who first?” Tuua asked.
“The boy. He’ll be the hardest to get through. And then the little girl. Do the women want the Tonk words said, or have they another prayer to offer?”
“We are all Tonk here,” the Obsidian Redbird said, and Aaran jumped. He did not know that she’d been standing behind him. “Born that way or not, we are your people now.”
Aaran nodded, and Tuua said, “As you wish it, then.”
Tuua knelt on the deck beside Neeran, and put one hand on the boy’s narrow chest. Aaran stood at the child’s head, wishing Neeran didn’t look so young, so small, so helpless. Wishing they had someplace for his body other than the cold depths of the sea.
Wishing that someone somewhere would weep that he was gone, and understand what a good boy he had been.
The boy wasn’t Tonk, but he was theirs. So Tuua said the prayer for a Tonk warrior for him.
“Jostfar silent but near,
Ethebet, hand of the sword,
Guardians of the souls of your people,
Take Neeran Old-Walk home,
To horses and meadows and family
And the long halls of the honored.
Give him place, and name,
And rest for a time.
Remember him,
And that he served in life,
Honored living.
That he is in death,
Honored dead.”
“Gitaada,” Aaran said, in unison with Tuua and the other Tonk officers gathered around the bodies, and with the sailors and marines who had fought and lived. And with the women and girls, who whispered “Gitaada,” with the rest.
Aaran said, “The spirit is gone to the Summerland. The body remains, but is not the boy. We honor the life of Neeran Old-Walk, and grieve his passing. We are made less by his absence.”
Aaran folded the shroud around the boy’s body. So small, so young. He hadn’t listened to Potyr, who had passed on Aaran’s order that he seek safety. He had died fighting, a dagger in his hand. He’d been a brave child. He’d deserved a long life, and great adventure.
Aaran forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand; on folding the corners, on wrapping the cords, on tying the knots. Each step had to be done with respect, in the old way. Each step took concentration—and it was as he squared the corners and carefully tied the falcon-head knot at each point down the midline that he understood why. It was a way of stepping back. Of building a wall between the living and the dead, of making the death about form and custom, so that it could be borne a piece at a time.
Aaran finished the wrapping, which was always the captain’s duty, and nodded to his officers. Six men would not be needed to carry the boy’s body to the rail of the gombaar deck—but six men would carry it, because that was the way a warrior went. Two officers, one marine, and one sailor stepped forward, and along with Tuua and Aaran, carried what remained of the boy to the rail.
Aaran bore responsibility for the next part of the ritual. When the afterdeck filled with everyone aboard ship save the healers and the injured, Aaran said the old words:
“His spirit is with Jostfar.
His flesh is as nothing.
He was born of salt and tears,
In a gush of brine and blood.
His flesh is one with the sea,
And the sea will keep him.”
Aaran tried not to look as the wrapped body hit the water, as the lead sewn into the shroud bore it down, beyond vision, beyond retrieval.
He would remember Neeran. Even if the boy had no other family, he’d had a family on the Taag. And Aaran stood in as his father. No father would forget his own son.
And so it went. The little girl. Ves, in whom Aaran had just been beginning to discover a friend, and a man he admired. Reynor Deepwater, who had become the new head steersman, and who had been steady at the tillers, level-headed.
And on, and on.
One by one, Tuua blessed the spirit with the prayer of souls, Aaran released the flesh with the Final Grace of the Sea, the men lifted the bodies and sent them to the deep. The little splashes always chilled him.
Death showed little mercy, offered little grace. It only took, and in place of what it took, left ghosts of sound and fragments of scent, little shapes that caught the eye and brought back memory and pain. One of the sailors who had fiddled on the deck, amidst the dancing and laughing, went still and silent into the deep, his music dead with him. “Marrying Maadryn” was going to echo in Aaran’s head for a long time. The tune, the way everyone had gathered around, clapping, the way Hawkspar had leapt and stomped and flashed through the dance, following his lead, never missing a beat.
And then that little splash, and everything that had been the fiddler was gone, and only the empty spaces filled with ghosts of what had once been remained.
Death made no distinctions.
They turned back, and Aaran looked at the line of dead still waiting. And took a deep breath. He was their captain. He was the last family for every one of them. He would honor them. Keep them in his heart. Remember the sacrifice each had made, and grieve the loss of each.
Men went to the sea because they had no place else to go. Because they had no one. Because of a thousand different reasons—but all of the reasons meant that they were mostly alone. But on a Tonk ship, everyone had family—everyone was family.
He worked his way through his officers, his sailors, his marines.
And then he reached the first of the women. She looked like she might be the right age to be Aaran’s sister. Her hair was the right color. He knelt beside her and turned over her left hand, and felt his throat tighten and his breath grow short. She had been Clan Viikuu, the same as he was. He rolled her over on her stomach and carefully lifted the neck of her shirt to check the marks between her shoulder blades. Her name marks mua and haa. She had no saint mark—she had been taken captive before she was old enough to claim a saint.
“Not her,” he whispered, and the fear drained out of him, leaving him dizzy and sick with relief.
None of the other women could have been her. They were the wrong age, or the wrong clan, or the wrong appearance.
Hawkspar made it up on deck for the burials of the women who bore Eyes. She did so supported by two of her Obsidians, and he could tell from the pallor of her skin that she was far from well. But she knelt next to each of the women after Tuua had said his words, and added, “Your Eyes will go with you. You will be the last of your line. May your soul find comfort in that.”
At last it was over. The decks cleared of all save those who were working.
Aaran gathered his officers in the attable and called in a handful of men who were to be promoted. Right there, he gave such new assignments as he had to. Ino Tortaaknavyn stepped into duty as the new daan to take the place of Ves av Imaaryn. Aaryn left his kor wogan, Ermyk ave Beyrkyn, in charge of the marines, but also made him kor daan.
He would make do with one runner. Neeran would not be replaced this voyage. Aaran found a sailor with good carpentry skills, a solid older Eastil fellow named Bobik Two-Bricks-Down, and made him shipwright. A few Tonk sailors—Reformed Mindans all—were deeply offended that a non-Tonk was elevated to an officer’s rank when Tonk men were available. Aaran told them curtly that wood and metal didn’t know race, religion, or creed, and when he was making a man shipwright, neither could he.
Death had come, it had gone. Life moved on.
Hawkspar
I stood in a pool of darkness, as if at the bottom of a deep well. Above me, I could see light, but nothing I could do would let me reach the light, escape the deep pit, or move in any direction. I was bound after a fashion that I could not discover, and helple
ss, and I knew that I was not alone.
“You belong to me,” a voice said very close to me. “You wear my Eyes, you are my slave. You have opened the door to me, and welcomed me in, and now I claim you, flesh and bone and sinew, mind and magic. I own you, and you cannot deny me what is rightfully mine.”
He laughed, and I shivered. I heard madness in his laugh, and evil.
And then he was upon me, a spirit, but thick as liquid mud, pushing into my nose, my mouth, my ears, between my legs, forcing the air from my lungs, strangling me, choking me.
I flailed. I fought him, not with the art of an Ossalene warrior, but with the panicked, useless strugglings of a child overpowered by a monster.
He was in me, around me, filling me, and I was dying. Dying.
Light poured around us, and in the light, he began to thin. To melt off.
I dared to look around, to see what weakened him.
I was in the meadow, with the flowers, the horses, the woman dressed in white who stood far away, watching.
Ossal, for I knew he was Ossal, began to sizzle like water poured on a hot griddle. He began to scream. “Mine,” he shrieked. “She is mine.”
“She is Ethebet’s,” the woman in white said.
They were both gone. I lay in the bunk in the passenger quarters of the Taag av Sookyn, crowded next to Redbird, in a room filled with others who all slept with varying degrees of noise. My throat hurt on the outside. My nostrils and ears ached. The place between my legs was a throbbing agony.
I tried to tell myself that it had been a dream, that in opening the gate that had separated me from Ossal, I had not released something that had the power to physically destroy me.
But I ran my fingers lightly over the skin of my throat, and I could feel places so tender they seemed likely to bruise. It had been no dream.
