Hawkspar

by Holly Lisle

  “So you did. And so it hadn’t. And yet, before you left him to find those three men, you said to your good captain, ‘Hurry anyway, as if we still had hope. Fight as if we still might win. And pray with all your heart I find a miracle.’”

  “I did not want him to despair, and despairing, do something foolish.”

  Her smile grew merry again. “There is always hope, if you have the courage to look for it. After you killed the Feegash and left the knife with the last Greton, you didn’t look again.” She sighed, and added, “You’ll need a great deal of courage in the coming days. And a willingness to see what others won’t, and fight for what you see. Sometimes you will have to fight for things not even you can see. But so long as you walk with Ethebet, you are never alone.” She took my left hand in both of hers, and traced the clan mark on my palm. Fire burned into the mark, and for a moment it seemed to me to glow with its own inner light.

  “That was my warning?” I asked.

  “No. Your warning is this: If you are to find your way through to the end of the task Ethebet has set you, and the task you took on your shoulders when it was offered you, you have one more sacrifice to make, and it is greater than the last. If you do not make it, everything you and all the Tonk have suffered, everything you have done to that moment, will be for nothing. And yet it is a sacrifice that any warrior might refuse, and not be despised.” She rose, and I realized that I had finished eating.

  I stood, too, and the blanket was gone, and she began to fade in front of me, and the field of wildflowers seemed to fall away, faster, and faster.

  “Yet you did not lie to Aaran av Savissha. There is always hope.”

  I woke, back into the utter darkness of my blindness, with no idea of how long I’d slept, nor of why I’d had such an odd dream. And I was hungry, of course; so much for the hope that my dream food might have some substance, since the dream had been so real.

  But the woman in white … I found myself wondering if her words, at least, had some reality to them. I found myself yearning for hope.

  So I let myself drift into the waters of time. I did not push nor struggle. I simply immersed myself and let all the possible futures swirl around me, thinking as I did of the Tonk, and the Feegash. The river had changed. It once again split, with a wide channel in which the Feegash won and the Tonk were no more. But the narrower channel in which the Tonk won and conquered the Feegash was back, and it was strong.

  I slipped upstream, watching, and saw that the Feegash, hoping for advancement and a transfer to a place more hospitable and refined than Greton, had told no one of the great coup he was about to pull off. And the Greton prison warden, fearing reprisal for having broken with Greton’s policy of neutrality in order to convince the Feegash to drop what he was doing out in the hinterlands to race to Gerstaggen, had told no one about the secret he held in his prison, save the interrogator and his assistant. He would tell no one, either, because when he’d discovered the Feegash diplomat dead and the knife in his hands, he’d realized that he would be handed over to the Feegash for questioning. Knowing what he knew of the Feegash, he promptly killed himself.

  It was done. Over. The traitor’s poison had been stopped before it could destroy us all.

  The voice of the woman in white was inside my head. Some futures are so unlikely you have to dig the streambed as you go, by living it. But once you have dug, child, the whole of the river can follow you through.

  I pushed myself to the point in the river where the waters split.

  And there I found the three events that dug the channel and let the water run through. First, I had gone back to the prison knowing it was hopeless, and had killed the Tonk traitor and the men who knew what he’d told them. Second, knowing that even doing this had changed nothing, I’d killed the Feegash diplomat who had come to find out what he knew, and my actions had resulted in the Greton prison warden killing himself. And, third, Aaran had sent the Ker Nagile back to the fleet without me.

  That stopped my self-pity at being left behind right in its tracks. If Aaran had not pushed the captain of the Ker Nagile out of harbor when he did, all would still be lost.

  I had saved hope for the Tonk. And so had Aaran.

  No more tears on that account, then. If the only way the Tonk could survive was if I ended up abandoned in Gerstaggen, well … I could hardly complain about the unfairness of that.

  I had to get out of Gerstaggen, though. My trick with the knife would certainly make things miserable for a bit with the Greton official who had ended up holding it, and the importance of the dead Feegash diplomat might even cause a complete breakdown in Ba’afeegash’s diplomatic relations with Greton.

  But maybe not. Maybe they’d come looking for anyone who didn’t belong, and with the Eyes, anyone could see I was one of those people.

  Traveling time flows, I could see the ways by which I survived that mess. However, there were also so many paths where I didn’t that they all started to blur. It would have been so much easier if I could have just drifted into the future a bit to see one perfect line of actions I could take that no one else could interfere with, that would get me out of Greton with my head still attached to my body.

  I let myself drift into the future, farther along the stream in which I survived. It hazed quickly into a completely indecipherable mess. Too many choices, too many directions, too many places where I could put one foot wrong and get myself killed.

  So I sought out Aaran’s stream. I had followed him so often, watching his life run, worrying about all the dreads and horrors that seemed to be awaiting him. I knew the feel of him, the shape he took in time’s river.

  And I found him. Unlike my tangled mess of a future, his currents ran straight and clear.

  He was going to sail to the South Current Convergence Point, meet up with the rest of the fleet, retake the helm of the Taag, and then convince the rest of the fleet to follow him up the Gold Channel, just as they’d planned. I could see him and the Taag on the other side of Greton, tucked away into a tiny bay, sails lowered, as he and some of the rest of the fleet waited for nightfall.

  In a bay.

  Close to shore.

  Where, if I could just get across Greton, I might catch up with him. He had to sail around the whole of it, and going up the Gold Channel, he would be running against the current.

  If I could get across Greton.

  Traders would travel from Gerstaggen overland, wouldn’t they? Traders and travelers, marketers, entertainers, priests … I ought to be able to find my way to someone who would help me. Or direct me. Or introduce me to someone who could.

  I had no money, of course. No form of trade that I dared make public. I would be an outsider of the worst sort to anyone who saw me.

  I knew of cultures where men hid their faces, and those where women did, but in every case, their eyes were visible behind their veils or scarves. I could certainly cover my whole face including my eyes. But if I did, who would trust me enough to provide me passage?

  I did not even know the names of places where I might ask to be taken. The name of the tiny bay where Aaran would hide? I not only did not know it, but could not ask about it for fear of raising curiosity about the place.

  At least, however, I had a direction and a goal. I would find some way to run east. I would do everything in my power to be in that bay when Aaran reached it.

  I would not let myself consider what would happen to me if I failed.

  38

  Aaran

  Down in the passenger quarters, the Obsidians wept and prayed and fasted. They’d braided their hair in Ethebet’s braids, and made sacrifices in the chapel, and marked their faces with ash in Tonk fashion, abandoning the gods of their Order and pinning all their hopes on Jostfar. The head of Hawkspar’s personal guard, Redbird, spoke to him in tones of loathing when he addressed her; she blamed him for not holding the ship in Gerstaggen, for not going back to find Hawkspar, for leaving their indispensable oracle.

  For not
letting the Obsidians know, so that at least they could also be left behind to search for their missing leader.

  Aaran blamed himself, too. He leaned on the rail, staring out to sea. He’d given up trying to make sense of anything, given up hoping, given up feeling. He thought drinking himself into a stupor might be a solution, except he wasn’t on his own ship, and didn’t care to make a fool of himself on another man’s.

  So he lost himself in the wind and the waves and the endless, directionless blue-gray where sea met sky without even leaving a line to mark the transition.

  “How are you going to tell the rest of the fleet that she’s gone?” Haakvar asked.

  Aaran didn’t turn around. He wasn’t going to answer—any answer required effort, he was weary from the weight of breathing. But simple politeness demanded some response. “I don’t believe she is.”

  “Gone? You don’t think she would have met us at the dock had she still be alive? You were sure when we left—that she wouldn’t be coming, that she had fallen. We would never have left her if I’d known you had doubts. If she’s fallen to enemy hands …”

  “You think enemy hands could hold her? How?”

  The captain had seen every guard in the prison fall dead without a sound. There had been no sight of the woman who had done it, but Aaran had been quick to tell him and his men that the oracle who had brought them this far had also effected the most difficult part of their rescue. “You make a point. Still, if you thought she yet might live, we should have gone back for her.”

  Aaran shook his head. “She said that if she did not meet us as the dock, we should go on. We waited—we waited as long as we dared and perhaps longer than we should have. I tracked for her. I sought her out.” He hung his head and closed his eyes. “Had she lived, I would have found her. I found her the first time from half a world away.”

  Rya Haakvar leaned against the rail next to Aaran and looked him directly in the eye. “So she is dead. And yet you said you don’t believe she’s gone.”

  “I don’t. That’s the pure madness of it, isn’t it? I searched for her, and she was gone. Gone. Utterly erased, no part of her spirit within my reach. I know she’s dead. And yet I don’t believe she’s dead. My heart keeps trying to insist that if I looked for her again, I’d find her.”

  “So have you?”

  “Looked for her again? That way lies madness,” Aaran said softly. Nor did he exaggerate in positing that end. He did not forget the trackers who had pushed past the safe places at the Edge, trying to follow a loved one through death to whatever came after. Some died in the process, following too well. Some stepped back from the twilight borders in time, and lived to tell their tales.

  Some trackers, however, fell into spaces or mazes or mirrored halls where they could no longer see the way back. They struggled inside private hells, seeking ceaselessly something that had moved forever beyond their reach; their bodies roamed, their hands picked at their skin, their hair, their clothes, they did not know enough to eat, though if fed, they could swallow. They saw well enough to avoid falling into holes, but they never recognized what they saw. It all melted into the shapes of the world that had trapped them.

  He would not follow any of those routes—would not out of desperation chase in death someone he had failed to adequately embrace in life. He was without her; that was the price of war. But he had been without her for most of whatever time they could have had. And that was the price of his own cowardice, that he had only been able to fear what life would be like without her, and had not been able to rejoice in what it had been with her.

  Aaran stood there a while longer, then turned to tell Haakvar he’d been wrong about the way he’d treated her. He discovered that he was alone again.

  Ahead somewhere, the Taag would be making way for the South Current Convergence Point. Now the Ker Nagile was making good time.

  When they arrived, Aaran was going to have to tell everyone that they had lost their oracle—that they no longer had any sight into the future. No edge, no direction, no real chance. Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? She’d told him to keep fighting, but without her, they were fighting blind.

  He didn’t miss the irony of that.

  Hawkspar

  I want to be safe. It’s such a simple thing in concept. You find a place with four walls, a solid roof, high windows, a strong door. And you hide yourself inside it, and nothing will bother you, and you will not die.

  Such a simple thing in concept.

  But I was running through Gerstaggen after dark, keeping myself well away from the busy streets and the marching guards, heading east, east, ever east, and even though I knew where trouble was before it marched around corners, still I felt like I was the sole mouse in a city full of cats. I was small and fast and careful, but they were hungry and everywhere.

  Twice guards turned suddenly out of streets where I’d thought they would be marching in straight lines, and suddenly I found myself with trouble behind me and trouble before me.

  Both times I managed to flatten myself against inset doorways; I was not found only because of luck and darkness. I could not hope for more luck. What I needed was less city.

  I stumbled across a caravaner who shouted at men loading wagons. I listened, hiding first against a wall and then under the axles of a loaded wagon.

  “We’re an hour more than late, you worthless daughters of poppy-drunk sluts. You balless sack-headed snivelers. If you loaded any slower, my cargo would be moving off my carts, you pigs. Clear it is that you’re not the lads with a profit dribbling away as the ships to Tandina sit empty in harbor, while villages along the way pay another man for fineries they won’t need when I arrive.”

  The laborers, big men all, took the little caravaner’s endless cursing at them in good humor. They ribbed each other, and said, “Left your balls at home, did you?” and “I thought you had naught but sacking between your ears.” And they trudged, their loads huge, their backs bent.

  I could not understand their good humor. Had the man shouted at me as he shouted at them, I would have left him to do his own hauling.

  I was grateful they were not faster, though, for from the long stream of his invective, I pulled out a few useful facts. He was heading east. He’d already bribed a guard to count his load at half its value, to save him from heavy taxes. He needed to be out the gate before sunrise.

  That was enough for me. I found one of the wagons that had already been loaded full of bags of grain. I climbed aboard and crawled into the center of the cargo, and built myself a hiding place well covered on all four sides. And then I curled up and slept.

  I awoke to rocking, and thudding, and the warmth of the sun on my face where it should not have been. The buildings that had leaned in toward the road or crazily away from it on all sides, their stone walls shifted over time into dense, tilting masses, were gone. So too were the cobbled roads, the narrow walkways, the wells and lines that hung overhead layered with laundry. Gerstaggen, then, lay behind us. We rolled through wide-open country—rolling low ground, bare of trees. I guessed that it would be covered with grass, but grasses did not show up well to my eyes. They were too much water, not enough dense matter.

  I heard someone coughing, almost on top of me, and froze, holding my breath.

  “I can see you, you know,” the voice said. Male, amused, thick, and deep. And threatening. “Pretty sleeping girl in man’s clothes. I figure, you sneak onto this caravan, it’s because you want to provide services for the lonely men making their weary way across the—”

  I sat up and turned to face him, and opened my eyes.

  And he shrieked like a girl. I was most gratified.

  “I think,” I said, “that you do not wish to upset me. I was seeking a way out of town that would get me safely past the guards. But it was only because I didn’t want to hurt anyone when I left. Not, you understand, because I was afraid of them.”

  That wasn’t as true as I would have liked it to be, but it was true enough
.

  “What’s wrong with your … eyes?” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “Not a thing. Don’t you like them? You thought I was pretty.”

  He was moving away from me, slowly, as if I might strike suddenly if he turned and ran.

  “You’re a devil, aren’t you?”

  I grinned at him. “Don’t you want to come find out?”

  “No,” he said, and jumped off the back of the wagon, and went running to one of the outriders, shouting.

  So I was no longer a secret. I should have amused myself less at the expense of the man in the wagon, but it seemed to me a thin line lay between frightening him too much and not frightening him enough. I did not want to end up dead in the ditch at the side of the road. That had seemed possible.

  It still seemed possible.

  The man had pointed, but he wasn’t coming back this way. The outrider was, though.

  “You,” he said. “You don’t belong here.”

  “I know.”

  “You have gold to pay your fare like the others who ride with our protection?”

  “No,” I said. “I have nothing.”

  “Of course not. And what are you willing to offer for your fare? Nothing? For I assure you, our protection costs money, or something of equal value. We can take your fare out in trade, or you can stay behind and take your chances with the hillmen who roam these parts. I like your chances better with us.”

  “So do I,” I said. “But we might need to define trade.”

  “Women have only one coin good as gold. You’re no beauty,” the outrider said, trotting along the cart where I road, “but I venture in a dark enough room there would be few who would protest that.”

  “I think I should speak to the man in charge,” I said.

  “You think you’ll get a better deal from him? Little, noisy Beckgert? You think he’ll bed you himself?” The man laughed. “Beckgert likes no woman so well as gold. And he has no more heart than the sacks of grain you sit among. If he finds you’ve slipped yourself into his caravan without paying, he’ll leave you by the side of the road, and you’ll deal with the hillmen. You’d rather have us, trust me.”