Hawkspar

by Holly Lisle

And devastation lay at the fore of our main channel. The waters of choice and betrayal bore us toward a rendezvous with three ships—Sinali war frigates by their sails and build, upon which waited hundreds of fierce marines, hardened veterans. The ships were sailing in a favorable wind, and set to intercept us just after the last light of day faded. They knew where we were, they knew how many of us they would find and what weapons we could bring to bear against them, and they knew, as clearly as I could see, that we had no chance. They had us. They knew where we were, and even if we changed course, the magic with which the traitors had branded us would let them track us as if we were their Lady with the Lamp, their fixed and shining star.

  When they caught us, they had but one instruction. Every living thing aboard our ship had to die. They would kill the men with a quick, brutal efficiency.

  The women and girls would die a slower, uglier death.

  If it came to that, I would kill every one of my people myself, rather than let those monsters at them.

  But perhaps we could keep it from coming to that.

  I fought my way out of the strong channel into the side branches, looking for a branch where we escaped.

  It took a great deal of looking. We had little hope. Our deaths mattered to them—to the Sinalis and the Feegash—because we had uncovered a secret that had been hidden for fifteen years. They would do anything to keep it hidden as long as possible. They had been doing anything for quite a few years, I suspected.

  But there was one thin, shallow channel. It grew so thin in places I doubted we could follow it. But we had no choice but to try.

  “We are likely to die at first true dark,” I told him. “But if you would live, I’ve found one route we might follow with at least some hope of success.”

  Aaran stopped what he was doing.

  “Your communicators have to let your people in Hyre know what you’ve discovered about the Reform Mindans. Right now—this is more important even than finding the markers they have hidden on this ship. You must send news of the testimonies you have taken and the executions you are carrying out, of the betrayals, and the names of the betrayers, both Tonk and Feegash. The names of the Feegash allies, the names of the Sinali ships that are almost upon us. I have them, I’ll give them to your communicators.”

  “Now?”

  “Now. The Feegash have traitors everywhere, and they’ll hear what you’re telling. You must get this message out to every communicator you have, and instruct them to pass it on to everyone. Everyone. Including Mindans and even those you suspect maybe Reform Mindans. There can be no secrecy in this discovery, no chance that it might be hidden away. You cannot let any secret go unspoken, though, because they will use any wedge, no matter how small, to hide themselves again. They will lie, they will deny. But that is for another time. For now, bring forth the truth and spread it to all the winds.”

  “Then what?”

  “Find the rest of the marks the traitors hid on this ship, and break them as quickly as you can. And I will seek the route across the sea that will let us evade the three Sinali frigates that come to kill us all.”

  26

  Aaran

  The drums rolled long and slow, the “March of Death.” All sailors knew it, none ever wanted to hear it. They crowded on the deck with the Ossalenes, with the little girls solemn and frightened, and the adults still and watchful.

  The sails were reefed, the ship sat briefly on the currents, adrift in the sea without direction.

  And up from the holds, the traitors stepped forth. Each wore his complement of chains and manacles, each moved between his escort of cold-faced marines. Aaran stood at the mast, sword in hand, waiting while the drums rolled in a steady rumble, and the men fought, even to the last, to escape.

  Aaran wondered briefly where they thought they might escape to. If they jumped into the sea with their metal chains around them, they’d drown in an instant. Or perhaps they knew enough of the Feegash magic of transport that they could transport the chains off them, if only they could break free of their guards.

  But they didn’t break free. They stood in the center of a wall of men and women and children, and not a face staring back at them bore pity. They were betrayers who had brought unnecessary death to their own people.

  “We are gathered to witness the executions of the following sailors: Sedaar Degooryn and Den av Diiri, both Reform Mindans born to the Tonk people, both claiming Saint Minda, have by their confessions admitted treason against the Tonk people, and the attempted murders of all aboard this ship.” Aaran took a slow breath. “Kerwyn av Maaitaak, Reform Mindan born to the Tonk people, claiming Saint Minda, has confessed to treason against the Tonk people and to the attempted murders of all aboard this ship. He has also implicated the Feegash, enemies of all Tonks, as the allies of the Reform Mindans, and has named his associates within the Feegash.”

  Aaran heard gasps from the other Tonk aboard the ship. He understood their shock and disbelief. The Tonks had not welcomed the intervention of the Feegash when first they came to Hyre, offering to negotiate a peace between the warring Tonks and the Eastils on the other side of the border. But after their attempted enslavement of all the people on both sides of the border, after stripping the wealth of two nations to line their own pockets, after they were uncovered as the debased, vile scum that they were, no true Tonk could look at a man born Tonk who sided with Feegash dirt and say he was Tonk anymore.

  Aaran continued, “These three are made clanless, nameless, peopleless. We do not know them, we do not acknowledge them, and we do not give them prayers or words now in the hour of their deaths. They are cast aside. If Minda wants them, she’ll have to find them herself.”

  The sailors up on the higharm dropped the nooses and grapples, and all three men, still in chains, were hoisted by grapple up to the deeparm. There sailors wrapped nooses around their necks, and the drums began to roll for them. No one cried out for mercy. Not a soul breathed any word at all. They stood watching, a solemn crowd finding no pleasure in this necessary killing—in this removal of beasts from their number. They watched because it was their duty to their fellows aboard the ship. They desired justice, and justice, like freedom, required acknowledgment of its consequences.

  Aaran stood next to the ship communicators, crewmen who used the Hagedwar to send out the progress of the executions of the traitors, just as they had previously sent out every bit of information Aaran and Hawkspar had been able to glean from the traitors about the betrayal of the Tonk.

  Aaran studied his crew, satisfied by their demeanor. He would have had the man who made sport at that moment, or the one who jeered, beaten. This was no moment for celebration or for mocking. This was a dark task, made necessary by treason. But what had to be done did not have to be done with pleasure.

  He raised his sword and the drums leapt to life again, this time a loud and terrible thunder. Up on the deeparm, all six sailors who held the convicts in place signaled their readiness. He dropped his arm, they pushed, and all three men toppled from the deeparm to hang just a bit above the deck, their necks snapped, their bodies twitching only for a few moments.

  Aaran ran each through the heart with his sword—the final assurance that all three were truly dead.

  He made the air cut that stopped the drummers, then called up to the sailors on the higharm, “Cut them down.”

  And to the sailors who stepped forward, unbidden, to deal with the bodies, he said, “Cut their heads off. Throw them overboard. Take the chains off first, weight them with ballast. Say no words for them.”

  He watched the men work quickly, wrapping the bodies in with the ballast, tying the shrouds shut, tossing them over without ceremony.

  So it was. So it went.

  He started to walk back to the steersman’s castle to give the crewman his new heading, when out of the still-gathered crowd, a sailor lunged at him, knife drawn. No sound, no warning; he caught the movement from the corner of one eye, and then, as he started to turn, a fast,
low shape lunged in front of Aaran’s attacker and did something too quick to be seen. Aaran’s attacker flipped through the air, and Aaran realized that the one who had flipped him was Eban.

  “You can die now!” the boy screamed, and drew his own knife, and cut the attacker’s throat.

  Aaran had a fleeting sense of how near death had stepped to him. The man—who had gone by the name of Tagrish Boxmaker—lay on the deck, bleeding out, his eyes glazing and fixing even as he still feebly waved the knife.

  “Don’t touch his weapon,” the boy said as Aaran knelt by the dying man. “The blade will be poisoned. They always are.”

  Aaran studied Tuua’s young apprentice with a wary expression. “Which blades are those? And how would you know this?”

  “He’s a Feegash assassin. I didn’t recognize him until he pulled out the knife and ran at you. He changed his appearance—grew a beard and longer hair. But I’ve seen him before.”

  “And where would a boy with no past he’ll admit to have met a Feegash assassin?”

  Eban said, “In my father’s house.”

  Which set Aaran back on his heels. “Your father’s house.”

  Eban nodded and hung his head. “I’m Feegash. I am the youngest son of a concubine my father killed. I had no value to him—I wasn’t a son of any importance, so he lent me out to visiting friends, along with my sisters and a lot of half sisters, and some of my other half brothers.” His voice dropped. “I lived. A lot of them didn’t.”

  Aaran’s heart went out to the boy. “We know about the Feegash and their … entertainment,” he said, feeling both angry and disgusted. He looked at the kid. No wonder the boy hadn’t been willing to say anything about himself before. Aaran had thought him simply a wharf rat with a drunkard father he feared. That Eban was a Feegash kid taking refuge among Tonks—who’d have believed it?

  “The men don’t pay any attention to children; they don’t care what we see or hear. We’re just toys to them, and they have so many toys we become part of the house. I saw things and heard things, both with him and with his friends.”

  Aaran rose and pulled the boy to his feet. “Walk with me,” he said. “I want to talk with you.” And to two of the marines, he said, “Just throw the body in the sea. Don’t bother with wrapping or weights. Let the sharks have an easy meal.”

  The boy trotted along beside him as he went to his cabin. He sat the boy at his charting table, and took a seat at right angles from him. “So when did you learn how to kill a man?”

  “The Ossalenes have been teaching me,” Eban said. “They’re good fighters. I need to know how to fight, too.”

  Aaran nodded. Tuua said the boy was a quick student, and eager to learn anything anyone would teach him. “I’m getting a feel for what the Feegash are doing. But perhaps you can help me. What I can’t understand—yet—is why. Why do they want all of us dead?”

  The kid again stared at him, as if that ought to be the most obvious thing of all. “Because you’re never going to see things their way,” he said. “My father and my uncle talk about that all the time. About how the Tonk haven’t changed in centuries upon centuries, and how they aren’t going to change now. How as long as there are Tonks, you’re going to be this …” He looked frustrated. “Amijanbja bnar. I don’t know how to say it in Tonk. It’s a big thing in the middle of a river that stops boats from going on the river. The water runs, but no one can use it. You’re that thing. And my father and his brother and their friends think that the whole world ought to be their river.”

  “And if they can’t get us to be like them, and they can’t make us slaves, they want us all dead.”

  The kid nodded. “If you dare say what they’re doing is bad, they want you dead.” He put his elbows on the table and said, “They think they’re the best people in the world. They’re horrible.”

  “I’ve seen some of what they’ve done.”

  The kid pulled off his shirt and turned his back to Aaran. “Have you seen this?”

  The kid’s skin was a roadmap of scars: the puckered furrows of whip lashes; the narrower lines where someone had carved obscene pictures of the things men might do to little boys; round burn holes and brands. It was, Aaran thought, a wonder the kid was even alive. He had never seen anything like it.

  No wonder the boy never took his shirt off in front of anyone.

  He turned, and to his horror Aaran saw that both the boy’s nipples were gone, too, and that the front of him was as brutally scarred as the back.

  “Jostfar’s heart …” Aaran wiped a hand over his face and said, “Sit.” He tried his best to sound reassuring. “Tell me who these men are, your father and his friends, and when we return to Midrid, I will guarantee not one of them ever touches another child.”

  “If I tell you their names, they’ll know you have me. They’ll find out. They’re diplomats,” he said, as if this was the most terrifying thing in the world.

  Aaran’s people had experience with the Feegash. Perhaps diplomats were the most terrifying thing in the world. “This is what Feegash men do to their own children,” Aaran said softly. “I don’t want to think about what they do to the slaves they buy.”

  His mouth went dry. Jostfar, he prayed, don’t let her have fallen into Feegash hands. Please.

  The horror of his sister’s possible fate had never been more clear to him.

  Eban said, “You look sick.”

  “My sister was stolen by Sinali slavers when I was a boy. I’ve been sailing in search of her ever since.”

  The kid gave him a pitying look. “I’m sorry. Knowing is bad. Not knowing is worse, I think. I had a sister I liked. She was three years older than me, and she was always kind to me. And one morning I woke up, and she was gone. I never saw her again. I probably know what happened to her …” He hung his head and stared at his hands. “ … But I don’t know that I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aaran said.

  “I want to be Tonk,” the kid said after a moment under his breath. “I want to make them stop it. The horrible things they do. They say none of it matters—that there isn’t any good or bad, that it’s just what people do. But it matters to us. It matters to the people they do it to.”

  Aaran said, “It does. We’re all born to be free. Being some sick bastard’s plaything is no part of being free.” He stood and patted the boy on the head. “Come on. You’re supposed to be helping Tuua. He and I will talk—he’ll tell me when you know what you need to know. So learn, all right? Being Tonk is something that starts in your heart and flows into every part of your life. It isn’t a name you take. It’s a whole life.”

  “I know,” the boy said. “I want that life.”

  As Aaran went back out to check on the windman and the progress of the Taag, Aaran thought that the kid would possibly make a better Tonk than a lot of those who’d been born to it.

  It should never be easy to be Tonk, he thought.

  And he considered the Reform Mindans, who wanted ease. Slaves and a steady flow of wealth, no standards, no criticism. No shame.

  It was that, he thought, that had marked the Feegash as worthless, and that now would mark the Reformists, too. They wanted to live in a world without shame. Where anyone could do anything wicked, and everyone would simply smile, or look the other way, and say it was fine.

  Shame had value. It kept men decent in their dealings in public and in private. It protected the weak from the strong. It civilized.

  The Feegash were in dire need of civilizing, Aaran thought.

  Hawkspar

  I stood by the captain as he frantically passed information to his communicators. Those communicators had the same light inside them that had surrounded Aaran, the same beautiful magic that was, to me, a door that led straight into the whole of existence. It was, in each of the two of them, small. But perfect. Same colors, same shapes, same power. I could not reach out and touch it, though I wanted to.

  They’d already passed on the names of the Sinali ships that pur
sued us, their location in the sea, the names of their captains and the Feegash diplomats aboard them. Everything we knew about the Iage, too, though that was little enough.

  Now we were passing on the names of the Feegash diplomats—two brothers—that Eban had given us. We were not announcing the boy’s presence on the ship—only that a reliable source had implicated these two Feegash as being important in the plot against the Tonk. And we were letting everyone know that our ship had been marked by the traitors, that we had managed to remove the marks, but that we might not survive—that we were still being pursued and that the deaths of all on board was the goal of our pursuers.

  The word went out, with the communicators expressing the shock and disbelief and dismay of most of those receiving the messages. Standing in the communicators’ bay that sat just below the steersman’s castle, I allowed myself to slide back into the river of time. I followed events back to the narrow, shallow channel I’d located. Time was shifting around me, banks eroding and channels reforming. My chosen channel—the one in which we lived and escaped—was growing faster and deeper as chances that time would flow that way improved.

  It wasn’t the main course yet, nor even close to it. But hope grew in me.

  When we were done, we returned to Aaran’s quarters, with Redbird settling outside the door with the marines to stand her guard.

  I was scattered. I had pushed the Eyes too hard that day, and I was not strong. Not yet.

  “You’re hurting,” Aaran said.

  “Merely tired.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “Believe. I have been tracking our future, looking at possible paths, trying to pick those most likely to lead us to safety. I finally discovered such a path. It will be a miserable journey.”

  Aaran said, “Miserable would be an improvement on final.”

  I didn’t argue.

  I just said, “We have to sail due east, straight into the wind.”

  He stood there, quiet for a moment, then I heard him start to chuckle. Then to laugh out loud. “That’ll slow them enough that we’ll have a chance to get out of reach.”