by Holly Lisle
He couldn’t tell them. They wouldn’t believe him; what he had seen was simply too strange.
But he knew. If their people were in the hands of enemies, Hawkspar and the Obsidians were the ones who could get in, get them, and get them out again.
“The trip up the coast against the currents is three days if you don’t run against bad winds. Back, it’s a day. Plus a day in harbor.”
“One night,” Aaran said. “With the ship away from the harbor, and us going to land in longboats, and everyone else waiting behind to send in reinforcements if we need them …”
“We’re to sit here another six days? Figure seven or eight if we assume at least one day of ill winds.” Loostan av Hys of the Red Wake stood up, his face going redder and redder, and slammed a fist on the table. “We’re to just sit here, in a place known to every sailor on the sea, braiding ropes and carving wood and stitching our clothes like a whole shadda full of women. A whole fleet of us. Sit here and wait for someone to come along and sink us.”
Aaran said, “Yes. Sit here and be sunk. As if you were a whole shadda full of women—and evidently Mindan women at that, since Ethebettan women would no more sit helplessly by then Ethebettan men. If there’s a man here who would sit idly by while these ships were under attack, I haven’t met him. If one of you is that man, and can’t imagine fighting, I think it would be best if you’d turn around and go back to your women’s shadda.”
He stood on the bench. It was against etiquette in a room full of equals to be the man higher, but etiquette didn’t seem to be slowing down that old blowhard av Hys.
“You might wish to remember that we’re all going off to die, men. Some of us might survive, but I have it on good authority that, saving we get a miracle, most of us won’t. Hawkspar says she expects she’ll die in battle. She can see paths where she doesn’t, but she cannot guarantee that we’ll end on one of those paths. We can pursue them, but the enemy can change, which will force a change in us.” He took a deep, steadying breath, and forced his voice lower. Calmer.
“We go to win a war, and probably to die winning it.”
“You hurt my ass, av Savissha. You stab me like a festering boil every time you open your mouth,” Soder av Fonjin of the Wolf Bite said. It was the first thing he’d said the entire meeting. “You are, I am certain, the madman who will be the death of all of us. And yet I’ll follow your lead. Your pursuit of this business unveiled more treachery than we’d ever suspected, and you’ve managed to keep your skin on your bones until now.” He stood, too. “I’ll stand with you.”
“I’ll stand with you,” av Soortaak of the Rovintaaker’s Homsryn said.
“As will I,” the captain of the Nels stood, as well.
Around the long table, captains began to stand, usually without comment, but sometimes with.
Av Hys sat down, of course. Aaran wouldn’t have expected anything else. Nor could he be said to have universal support otherwise. But when the movement stopped, he had more than two thirds of the room standing with him. And the other third looking unhappy, but not looking like they were going to bolt from the room, take their ships, and sail home.
“Eight days, then,” said av Hys from his sitting position. He of all of them looked most resentful.
And av Fonjin, who thought Aaran was a boil, said, “Quiet, man. You’re not captain of captains, and you do not speak for any but yourself. I’m in favor of giving the lad the time he needs, and seeing how this plays out. Fifteen years the Feegash have been working against us undiscovered, and maybe longer—”
“Much longer,” Hawkspar interrupted, making av Fonjin jump.
He glanced at her nervously, then continued. “And you’re going to give the one who discovered their secret an ultimatum and a deadline? Really? And had he not found out their treacheries, you would have died thinking our problems with Sinali slavers were no different than any others’ who suffer their predations. You would have thought the blockades against our trading were a separate issue, and our people slaughtered when traveling into other lands yet a third issue. Neither you nor anyone else would have put all of them together, when there is no visible connection between them, and seen the hand of the Feegash over all.”
Aaran wasn’t sure he cared to be considered a boil, festering or otherwise. But he was grateful to have someone with av Fonjin’s experience speaking in his favor, so that he did not have to do it all alone.
They went on at some length after that, setting out their codes and contact methods, arguing about approaches and manners of determining where the captives, if there were captives and not a ship full of dead men hanging on the docks, might be held. Debate, most of it insubstantial and speculative, only some of it useful.
But all debates must end, usually when the hour is late and dinner has been long overdue, and Aaran finally got the captains off the Taag, knowing that he still had to speak privately with Hawkspar, whose support mattered to him most of all.
Hawkspar
I would never have refused him, and the Eyes told me his path, which he was blazing himself, was the best possible one for us to choose. So I found myself sitting in a longboat with all the Obsidians and all the Onyxes, being rowed to shore with the captain by a crew of well-armed marines. We’d been given our choice of weapons—the best the Taag had to offer.
We had a less than perfect night for such an adventure, according to Aaran. He said we had bright stars and clear skies, and about a third of a moon treading its path across the sky.
To me, bright daylight would have been no more hindrance than blackest night. When I found my stopping point within the time river, the whole world stopped, nor did it matter if I stood and danced in front of everyone I saw. When I set the waters flowing again, it would be as if I’d never been. Or considering the pain this business caused me, I would topple like one dead on the floor in front of some enemy, and time’s river would roll its mighty current over me, and I would end up a casualty.
Either way, though, my success was subject only to my own abilities, and would stand or fall by them. I was immune to unfortunate circumstance.
The Obsidians and the Onyxes, whose job it would be to physically contact any captives and survivors I located, and, when I had done my part, to get them away, had a harder time before them. For them, light cast by the moon and lanterns and torches in the great city of Gerstaggen would be of some import.
Nevertheless, with their Eyes, they could speed their movements within the flow of time, and make out what lay inside buildings, behind walls, and around corners. They were silent as owls on the wing, and if they could not truly see, still, their Eyes made up for the handicap.
Outside the walls of the city, we stopped and hunkered down. The marines set up their perimeter, and I stepped into the time river, connected with the harbor, and followed it back to the day the Ker Nagile sailed into harbor. Then I let the current carry me forward, and I watched.
The Ker Nagile crew hadn’t followed instructions.
A handful of sailors had managed to sneak off the ship, and they went out whoring and drinking. The whoring would have been fine had they not gotten drunk; the drinking might even have ended well had they not then ended up in the arms of whores. One of whom was an informant for the port authority, and that one heard the sailors’ words that “those Feegash pissers are going to vanish off the surface of the world” with more than casual interest.
She’d taken his indiscretion to the harbormaster the instant the sailor was asleep in her bed (and took the initiative of tying him to that same bed with remarkable skill and practiced speed against the possibility that he might be wanted for questioning).
And, because she was a clever girl, and he’d been a less than clever man, she took note of the fact that he was Tonk, and remembered which ship he had come off.
Between what he said and the fact that the port authority noted a run on sales of Greton fire, and a heavy purchase by this ship, a Feegash diplomat had been sent for. He hadn’t
arrived yet, but was on his way. The Gretons didn’t have a trade ban with Tonks, but Tonks weren’t favored customers, either. They paid higher prices, and in times of scarcity, had their orders filled last, not first.
But I was heartened that the Feegash diplomat had not arrived.
By carefully tracking back and forth through the current just past, I could see that he had been given only notice of an emergency, without detail. This is a normal thing, since diplomatic incidents can be created if something is broadcast by communicators about someone—or about a whole people—that then turns out to be untrue. The Gretons did not want any diplomatic incidents. They sold what they made to anyone, and it was their discretion in their dealings that made everyone willing to buy from them. The finest weapons in the world are of less value sometimes if the enemy knows you have them.
So.
Everyone on the ship was now housed in a comfortable clean ward in the prison. The prisoners were well treated. They had not been questioned. Their keepers were following the protocol of a carefully neutral nation, which will permit all sorts of dirty work within its borders, but will not publicly sully its own hands, or allow itself to be caught furthering one cause over another.
Their good treatment would, of course, end with the arrival of the Feegash diplomat.
And he was making haste. His party was coming overland from south Greton via horse. He would arrive on the morrow.
We had to have our people away before first light. Not just away from the prison, but away from Gerstaggen. We’d have to liberate the Ker Nagile as well, for we could not hope to get all the captives out to the Taag av Sookyn on our longboats.
I’d been tracking the futures as we approached the Taag’s hiding place. Following the progress of the Feegash diplomat, following the waters along the ever-thinning streams that led to our successful rescue of our people.
I could not track the streams to the cause of the thinning. We were doing what we needed to do, and yet at every turn, our odds of success worsened.
And if we failed here, our war was over. We could not destroy our enemies or save ourselves if we did not get our people to safety.
“You’re worried,” Aaran said.
“Terrified. Something is wrong. Something I can’t see. We have almost no chance of winning this, Aaran, and when we left the South Current Convergence Point, we stood at nearly one chance out of two.”
“What could you possibly not see?”
I turned my face to him, wishing again for normal sight. I could not hear sarcasm in his voice, but could not believe that he might be asking that question seriously.
“The waters of time are not a clear stream. They can be murky. Messy. Littered with so much busyness and confusion that it’s entirely possible for the one critical piece of knowledge to slip by unseen.” I closed my eyes tightly and rubbed my forehead. “That almost has to be what’s happening now.”
“Your head hurts?”
“Yes. But not from the Eyes. Just from simple frustration. What am I missing? How do I not see it? I’m going to look again.”
We were closing on the shore. I could be interrupted by our landing, but I had to look again. The happy side of this, if I cared to see it that way, was that the stream that led to our success had become so shallow and thin that useful knowledge would have a difficult time finding a place to hide. I was desperate enough to look at it that way.
I dropped into silence, and lost the rocking of the boat, the sounds of the oars, the crash of the breakers, the hiss of surf growing nearer. Suspended in silence, with time flowing around me, I looked once more from our people, to the caravan carrying the approaching diplomat, to the impounded Ker Nagile. Nothing. Nothing changed, nothing different. Nothing wrong. But the stream thinning, weakening, growing shallow. We were almost out of time; the danger lay where I was not looking. I did not see. Could not see.
And then I tripped over the thread I had missed. The thread that had garnered no attention.
One of our people was apart from the others, but on purpose. He was not being tortured, was not in pain, had not had anything horrible happen to him that would have caught my attention. To all outward appearances, he was another member of the crew, waiting rescue or doom, whichever came first.
He wore Ethebet’s nine-part braid, and knew her principles to mouth them, and he had conducted himself bravely in previous fights.
But beneath his outward appearances, he was one of the enemy. Reform Mindan. He had been put in place with the Ethebettans long ago, had claimed a conversion from Mindaism. And he had waited for the moment when he might do the enemy’s cause the most good. That moment had come. He had somehow managed to get himself put into a cell apart from the others, and he had at last gotten word to some Greton official that he was working with the Feegash and wanted to be taken out so he could give his statement. And the Greton official was on the way, in person, to hear what he had to say, and to consider the merits of putting him aside for a separate meeting with the Feegash diplomat.
A traitor in the midst would make everything so much less messy all around, from the Greton perspective.
I shook myself free of time’s grip and clutched Aaran’s arm. We were already on shore, and I was standing. I hated the disconcerting feel of coming back to different surroundings than I’d left. “We have to fly,” I said. “One of the crew is a Reform Mindan traitor, and if the Greton who is there to meet with him hears what he has to say, we’re done. Dead. The war is lost.”
“He’s … in the city now.”
“It’s worse than that. He’s almost to the prison doors.”
Aaran was not a man to throw up his hand at bad news. I had to give him that. “Archers, take out the men on the wall as soon as the marines are in place beneath it. Marines, as soon as the bodies fall, up the wall and over, kill anyone in your way, and get those gates open. You,” he said, and grabbed my arm, “ready yourself to go through, and get back to us as quickly as you can.”
He did not understand how quickly that would be. But he would.
Then we were racing toward the wall, the fighters of my Order and I far more comfortable running through the darkness than the Taag’s warriors with their normal vision.
I would that our comfort translated to speed. We were wearing sailors’ clothing—the robes of our Order would have been an impediment. But we, even the Obsidians, were not as quick of foot as the men. They were at the wall and up and over it, with bodies already on the sand before us, when we reached the gate. Just in time for it to open.
Aaran, who had paced himself to my speed, said, “Be careful. And hurry.”
And again, I had to school myself not to laugh.
I shook off the world around me and stepped into the river of time. Into the silence. Found and caught the now, the instant in which I and the flow of time intersected, and hung on to it, while around me the world froze and chilled, the air thickened, silence became absolute.
From my repeated trackings through time, I knew the lay of the streets, and I ran down them, for though I had within that instant sufficient time to do everything I needed to do, the weight of holding to that instant against the pressure of the rest of time crushed down on me. I could not hold my place against the currents forever.
Rough cobbles lay beneath my boots, but my soles made no sound in striking them. The weights of people frozen in the street, night birds and bats suspended over my head, fires cold as ice stiff in mid-flicker, fell behind me as I pushed through the thick air to the prison.
The doors were not locked. One stood open, with men inside it and outside it on the steps. None showed any clear direction, so I slit the throat of each in turn and dragged the bodies—or what would be the bodies once time resumed and they died—into the prison. Their weight was a nightmare, a vast unthinkable burden. Each of them felt like pushing a house up a mountain, but at last I got them moved. In the street, no one was nearby who might have noticed the instantaneous vanishment of six men. For
that I was grateful. The rest of our unsuspecting enemy could be left to fall where they died.
I closed the doors behind me and went from guard to guard, slitting throats.
I would say that I experienced great remorse at what I did; that in those moments I regretted the families they no doubt had waiting for them at home, regretted extinguishing their hopes and dreams, regretted taking their lives. I would say this, because it would make me look the better person. But it would not be true. I thought only of how I could make certain all were dead before I raced back to Aaran to let him know the prison was cleared for the rest of our people to move in.
It was them or my people, and I chose my people. Not the Tonks I had never met. They were an ideal to me. Something fine that I could admire at a distance.
No. I fought for those I knew. The men on the ship who had fought through hells to get to me and save me. With whom I had fought aboard the decks of the Taag against enemies before. With whom I would fight again.
I could claim to have killed those men for some fine ideal, for the millions of strangers who would live free because of my actions. But that would be no more true than it would be to say that I regretted killing the Gretons when I did.
I think once my view of humanity was much wider. Back in the Citadel, with the vast, high walls around me and all my dangers known, I had the luxury of seeing all people as more or less the same. If I did not care deeply about any of them, I still maintained the thought that I cared the same for all of them, and thought myself wise and good for doing so.
Now, I cared deeply about a few. I had committed, body and soul, to those I could truly love. And with commitment and caring, my broad view died.
He who loves all in theory loves none in truth. The words ran through my mind, and even as I knew they were not mine, I realized I believed them. I was living them.