by Holly Lisle
I sighed. What he had told me would help me not at all.
“You’d be better to ask who are the friends of the Tonk,” he said.
“Who are the friends of the Tonk?” I asked him.
“Reliably? Only the Tonk.”
I considered that. “In all the history that you know, have the Tonk been without allies?” I asked him.
“No. The last … hundred years or so … those have been hard years everywhere the Tonk live. I cannot point to a reason; there is no one reason. Different problems arise in different places, and …” I saw his shoulders rise and fall. “In earlier years, the Tonk had many allies, but for one reason or many, they fell away. Things change. In the future, no doubt, we’ll have allies in plenty again.”
I thanked him, and rose, and went on my way, wondering at the coincidence that all the Tonks he knew of were warring with neighbors or suffering some outsider incursions at that point.
He thought all peoples suffered the same problems, but as I tested that statement, I found it false. The Sinali, for example, had been allies with the Bhekians for time out of history. They had good relationships with various nations in Franica, too, and with some of the kingdoms in the Fallen Suns. Some of the kingdoms within the Fallen Suns, for that matter, had lived in undisturbed peace for remarkably long times.
That all the Tonks in all their scattered homes found themselves beset by different enemies at the same time smelled, to me, of deception and conspiracy. Somewhere.
21
Aaran
Aaran went about his work in a fog of doubt and misery.
He’d gone up to Hawkspar twice to talk to her. To ask her why she’d left his bed, to offer apology for his behavior if, like so many women, she was having morning-after thoughts.
She’d held him, and he’d kissed her. And then she’d backed away. She excused herself from her presence the first time claiming a need to check on the little girls in her care. The second time, she’d said the flow of time was much in her mind. She’d been distracted. Worried.
He should not have been bothered. He already knew that she would be a temporary part of his life—that he would take her to Hyre and leave here there with the rest of the rescued captives, and likely never see her again.
He should have been fine with that.
He’d sworn his life to the rescue of Aashka over the dead bodies of his mother and father, over the burned campground where they had been summering with the flocks and his only sibling. He’d sworn in his own blood, to Tuua, that he would not rest until he found Aashka or he died in the attempt.
So he had never permitted himself to consider permanence. A woman he might keep.
Love.
It was not for him. He’d made his peace with that. He took his comfort expediently. He accepted the limitations of his life, because those limitations came tight-bound to the goal that gave him purpose.
And yet every time he heard Hawkspar’s voice something inside of him shivered.
When he’d touched her, he could see himself wanting to touch only her.
“Captain? We’re seeing gulls ahead.”
He had not yet questioned Hawkspar about what lay in the southmost islands of the Fallen Suns.
She had been aware of the layout of the islands, of which kingdoms or tribes were most likely to be found in the areas they passed through. He’d discovered this, and had meant to put her knowledge of the area to good use—and then other things had distracted him.
He turned to Potyr, who had been whittling at his side, and said, “Please ask Oracle Hawkspar to come to the foredeck lookout, will you?”
Potyr nodded, and turned and raced down the companionways and vanished into the depths of the ship.
Aaran didn’t turn around moments later, when he heard her footsteps behind him. He pretended he didn’t know she was there.
“You sent for me?”
He turned, schooling his expression to calm, so that he would not betray his irrational delight in seeing her, and then keeping it there even when he remembered that she could not, by her own admission, make out facial expressions. “I had meant to ask your assistance earlier. We’re soon to pass into the south islands of the Fallen Suns. We have a sailing chart of questionable usefulness, no old logs or records to consult, and only rumors of the vaguest sort on what we may find there. I’d hoped you would know about the people in this area.”
She stood there for a moment, resting a hand on the back rail of the deck, bracing as the ship rocked and plunged through a moderate but worsening chop. “I know the history of this area, up until fairly recently. We were instructed in the customs and religions and politics. I cannot promise you that what I know is current, however.”
“Anything you can offer me will be more than I already have,” he said, and saw the corners of her mouth quirk into a tiny smile, swiftly gone.
“Of course. Bring your chart, and something I can write with, and I will do what I can to assist us all through this place.” She paused, and lifted her face toward the sea, and breathed in deeply. “I don’t smell land. Nor do I see it.”
“We’re not that close. The lookout noted sea birds. We have another day’s sailing, I think, until we pass into the islands.”
And still she was standing there, face lifted to the sea, and something about the intensity of her expression and the way she stood unnerved him. “Not another day, though, before you reach the Iage.”
“The Iage?”
A thoughtful frown. “Master boatmen. We dealt with them from time to time. They sought out the Eyes of War—they are much taken with expanding their domain. And, too, they brought gifts for the Eyes of Discovery, Tigereye, always wanting her to find them new ways to kill their enemies. They are clever, dedicated warriors, and unlikely to be gentle with any who try to sail their waters without paying tribute.” She turned her face to him at last, and said, “You’re going to need a negotiator.”
“I’m a fine negotiator,” he told her. “And that is a duty the captain bears.”
Her body tensed. “No, Aaran. Captain. No.”
“You dismiss me so? Why would I not be negotiating?”
“You don’t speak Iage, do you? Have you skills the Iage might choose to employ in exchange for free passage?”
“I don’t speak Iage, but I have skills. I’m a Hagedwar masterclass tracker, one of only a handful in the world. I found you, after all. It’s no simple thing. How long before I found you had you been calling for someone to come save you?”
She said nothing for so long he thought she hadn’t heard him. And then she whispered, “At least twelve years. Maybe thirteen.”
He’d been all ready to flaunt his prowess for finding something no one had found for a month, or six months, or perhaps a year. But he tried to make sense of no one crossing the powerful spell she’d cast for twelve or thirteen years, in an area he knew lay close to the Southern Trade Current. “Are you sure?”
“Every day from the first day my first instructor taught us how to bind and cast a spell, every single day, without fail, from that first day until the day you came, save only those days when I was too hurt or too sick to shower, I sent out my prayer for help. I bound it with my sweat and my blood and my tears. It became my one link to my people.” She hung her head. “Would that I had bound my name with the prayer, that I might have remembered it.”
“Your name.”
She nodded. “Had I said it every day, even just in my mind, I would have it yet.”
He felt a burning at the back of his throat, and a suspicious tightness in his breathing. His eyes itched and he rubbed at them surreptitiously with the backs of his hands, grateful that she could not actually see him. What manner of man heard a woman tell of a simple daily prayer and found himself at the edge of tears?
Not a warrior, for certain—a veteran tracker of slavers and hunter of the enemies of the Tonk. Not a man who had heard every pathetic story ever told, and had one of his own just as bitter.
“Well,” he said, and his voice cracked. He took a deep breath, and started again. “Well, it’s well for you, then, that I came.”
But … twelve or thirteen years? How many trackers had traced that plea in that time? Had found where it went and had not followed, out of fear or out of lack of interest? How many times over could she and these with her have been rescued? How many times over could the women who knew of the plot to destroy the Tonk have been discovered, brought out into public, and their knowledge made known? How many Tonk lives—everywhere—might have been saved?
He had asked among the women of the right age if any of them were named Aashka. He had looked for the tattoo on the left palm that was like his own, for the Aayn and the Eyn tattooed between shoulder blades.
Aashka was not among the women he had rescued from the Citadel. And no one knew if she had even been among them, because they had never dared whisper their true names one to the other. If Aashka had passed through the Citadel of the Ossalenes, none had marked her passage. None would remember her, none could point him to the place where her body lay, or to the slaver who had bought her. For that matter, she could be there still. And he would never know.
But Hawkspar said he would find Aashka. He wished he could have faith.
“You’re sad,” Hawkspar said, and he jumped.
“I don’t get sad,” he said. “I have too many things yet undone to allow myself that luxury.”
She held her silence for a long time. When thinking they were done speaking, he turned to leave, she said, “I will negotiate with the Iage for you. I will offer both my own services as oracle and yours as master-tracker to them in exchange for the lives of those aboard this ship, and unmolested passage.” She stood there with her head down, with her hands tucked into her complex robes, prim and distant and cool as some Mindan goodwife, and he thought of her nearly undressed on his bed, wanton and eager.
“I would be most grateful for your assistance, Oracle Hawkspar,” he said, and heard his voice tremble with longing.
She turned without another word and walked toward her quarters.
He watched her leave, wishing he had touched her while she stood there.
No. He didn’t love her.
Hawkspar
The Iage came to us in moonless dark, silent as ghosts in the wind, sliding in their longboats up to the ship, grappling their way over the sides, landing on our darkened deck in bare feet.
They had thought to come unnoticed, to slay us as we slept, to take the ship and all on it as their spoils.
We met them with the formal ceremony of the Iage negotiators—with a table and benches on the deck, with the ship’s officers and me gathered around it, with tea and ale and food spread on the table, because to negotiate with the Iage, first the would-be negotiators had to provide a banquet. The cook and his assistants had labored in the galley for the better part of two bells, getting everything right. I told them which foods could be included in the treat, and which could not. Thus, pork and fowl were present, and smoked and dried and pickled fish, but beef and cheese forbidden. Ale made without grapes they could serve, but any fruit of the grape was hidden well away. We offered breads both leavened and unleavened, and beans spiced to ferocious hotness—a specialty of the cook’s and a favorite of Aaran’s, he assured me.
The beans were a hidden bit of tactical superiority. I had thought I’d die eating them—I’d mistaken them for food when in fact they were clearly the invention of some vile demon. Yet the captain and his men ingested them without a whimper.
This they could use against the Iage. Beans were a much favored Iage food, and the Iage were of the belief that men proved their manhood by tests of courage and strength and the endurance of pain. I thought the beans would bring them to their knees faster than bouts of knife-wrestling on the afterdeck.
The captain rose as the ruffians climbed over the rails, and one of the captain’s runners lit the lamps at table, revealing the fine feast that we had set for them.
The captain bowed, and I bowed. I said, “I, the Oracle Hawkspar, Eyes of War, late of the Citadel of the Ossalenes, greet you. My companion, Ship Captain and Hagedwar Master-Tracker Aaran Donin av Savissha dryn Tragyn, offers you welcome aboard his ship.”
They stood there, stripped to the waists and with their knives clamped in their teeth, surrounded by armed men with swords held at attention and by Seru Obsidian dressed all in black, and presented with a very attractive banquet spread, and they assessed the situation quickly. They put their knives point-first into the captain’s beautifully scrubbed deck—I could feel him stiffen at my side as the blades thunked point down into the wood—and they bowed.
Their leader stepped forward. “We had not known such as yourself traveled these waters, Oracle,” he said. He bowed deeply. “We have thought often of the Eyes of War; we would never have presented ourselves thus had we known you graced this ship.”
I translated for the captain, then said, “I did not choose to make my passing through these waters a public matter. A war awaits me that I long to reach, and I have little time to tarry, no matter how fine the gifts offered.”
I made a point of mentioning fine gifts. The Iage were used to paying quite well for their military information. Passage through their waters would be a small, almost disrespectful gift, compared to the hundred slaves they once gave the Citadel, or the trunks of gold and jewels. We’d take it, of course. But I did want to place them on a less-than-firm footing before negotiations started.
We sat at table. Rather, I sat first, then the leader of the Iage sat, then Aaran sat, then the Iage second sat. Everyone else stood around with weapons in hand, pretending that this was a social event instead of interrupted slaughter. It was the sort of meal that would give most people indigestion. And I knew the captain’s pepper-devil beans were waiting.
The captain’s kor wogan, Ermyk av Beyrkyn, was dressed as a cook, though beneath those clothes he’d hidden enough weapons to take on the Iage single-handed. He served us. We first received small bowls of pig’s-foot jelly sweetened with fruit. Following that, eel soup and leeks, which I quite enjoyed. The cook had added bitters to the broth, and chervil, and I found it quite heartening. Following that, a baked sailfish stuffed with crab meat and seasoned with more of the cook’s spices. Something about them stirred memories deep inside me. I could not say for certain that I remembered the food, but it seemed familiar.
Then a bread with oil and garlic and salt, baked to crispness. And then the beans.
I had been given different beans, a kindness by the cook. He’d taken sympathy on the blisters on the roof of my mouth and assured me that he knew how to make beans that were not a weapon. And I had a bowl of those. I bit into them, and I swear, they were near as deadly as the beans I’d had three days before that had made me weep.
But no man of the Iage would feel himself winning face if a woman—even an Oracle of the Eyes—were too weak to eat such mighty food.
I sipped my tea and wished for more of the bread, which would have eased the pain somewhat, and vowed at my earliest opportunity to have a word with the cook about what was and what was not a lethal amount of hot pepper.
Meanwhile, however, the captain had started digging into his enormous bowl of beans like he had never seen food before. And the Iage chief and his second attacked theirs with equal enthusiasm. For about three bites.
Then the pain caught up with them, and first the chief and then his second put down their dippers. They sat with their faces turned toward the captain, watching him eating. One mopped at his eyes with his napkin. The other drank all his tea in a gulp, and handed his mug to Aaran’s second for a refill.
“You are not eating your beans,” the Iage chief said to me, his voice accusing.
“I am but a woman,” I said, “and this dish is man food. I am not strong enough to eat it.” It seems to me that if the enemy who has come to kill you suddenly hands you his knife, you should stick it into his ribs at the earliest oppo
rtunity, and then twist it a bit. So I did.
“Man food?”
I said, “Oh, for certain, good Chief. This is a courage food of the Tonk—a warrior’s meal.”
Aaran asked me what they were saying, and I translated. He nodded, and said, “Tell them I’m ready for a second helping. And that we have made enough that he and all his men, and I and all my men, will have some of this fine warrior fare together.” He clapped his hands, and the cook and his assistants stepped onto the deck with a huge cooking vat of the beans, ladles, and the square wooden bowls used aboard ship because they didn’t slide on the square, raised-edge trays, and in truly bad seas, they almost never broke.
I translated quickly. The Iage chief and second turned their faces toward each other, and murmured an exchange that managed to sound panicked, but that was too quick and too low for me to catch.
Around me the rivers of time swirled and flowed, and I found myself at a splitting point in the river. “Careful now,” I told the captain. “Neither you nor your men can mock them if they fail at this, or they will pull other weapons out of their clothes and we will all be dead before we can draw our next breath. They will eat, because they must. But—and I swear this—no man may dare laugh, nor any woman. Pride is a dangerous thing among the Iage.”
The Iage chief stood and told his men, “Eat—each of you. Match them bite for bite, and don’t shame me.”
Iage warriors and the Taag’s marines walked side by side, two by two, to the bean vat, and each received a bowl filled near to overflowing with the beans. They returned to their places around the deck, this time paired man to man.
