The Shadow had known me very well for a very long time.
“Are you okay?” Soma asked.
“Yes. Fantastic, actually. Why?”
“Some of the threads broke,” she whispered. “The threads of your soul. I am so sorry.”
“No damage done from where I’m standing.”
“Good,” she said and took firm hold of my hand. “But please, Geart, do not allow the Shadow to get ahold of you like that again. There is very little of Her left in you. I don’t think I could save you again. I know I couldn’t.”
I thanked her, and she addressed the crowd. “What is our intention for the church to Adanas we have built?”
It was the next natural question, but it took a long moment for any of us to catch up.
“Build more,” Barok said.
“Yes, Barok,” Soma said. “As many as we can, in every city upon the Earth, but why? When a priest of Adanas stands here preaching to a convocation of strangers, what will you say is the reason for it? What words will you use to inspire men and women to live lives that will keep the Shadow away?”
I did not understand the question. Dia did and said, “We do it to warm the tired hearts of men and push back the slow, growing cold. The touch left by souls in torment chills the Earth.”
These words struck me like a lightning bolt, and the reaction of many around me was the same.
Dia kept going, and her explanation was the genius of a prophet. “That is how the Shadow is killing Her. We are killing Her. The tormented souls of men who live lives of hatred and fear linger and steal the warmth of the world. The Earth grows cold and is slowly falling asleep as our dead blanket Her with their tortured souls.”
She looked to me, and her eyes went wide. “Geart, you know how, don’t you? You know how to save Her. That is your purpose. A song?”
“Dia, I am not to speak of it.”
“Geart, the Chaukai and the Mother Yew suffered their secrets in silence for all those years to save themselves from the eyes of the priests of Bayen who stood upon these battlements collecting the men and women of Edonia into slavery. That time is over.”
“Dia, I failed as a singer and failed to find others who can.”
“Avin, Ryat, could they learn it?”
“No. Neither is capable. My endeavor is to find those who can. Teach them.”
“It would have to be someone who has walked lightly,” she said and seized hold of my breatplate. “Try it now with us. Perhaps someone amongst us has walked a light enough path.”
“Dia, it is not so simple a thing …”
“Try,” she said, and I could not resist her.
I sang my nouns and they pricked the ears of every Chaukai and their teacher, but they did not catch them and no one else reacted to the sound.
“No one in Urnedi has the skill,” I said. “I have tried many times.”
“Skill?” Dia said. “No. I do not think it is a skill.”
I was tired. Tired of standing in the armor. Tired of the day’s long struggle. The rest looked as weary.
“Who was the easiest to save?” she asked Soma.
“Children,” Soma said. “Arilas Vlek’s daughters. Lilly.”
The little girl was not there. Dia turned to a couple in the crowd. “Can you bring her?” The girl’s father seemed unsure, but the mother agreed for them both and they went down.
Dia’s fire reminded me of the day she’d charged across a broken battlefield to fight eight Hessier alone. She and Soma were made from the same steel.
While we waited, Dia introduced Ryat to the arilas and the regent. Avin joined the conversation, and they talked about the churches and priests in their provinces. I should have been listening but was too tired.
Sevat and Barok both gave me the same exasperated look, and we managed a small laugh. It was a happy one.
Barok asked me, “Do you feel any different? Better?”
“Better, yes. Not very much different, though.”
“Do you still intend to leave us?”
“I … well. No. I suppose not. How odd. Better and different.”
“Perhaps someone else was telling you to go. Good thing you stopped listening to Him.”
“You wouldn’t have let me leave, would you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Beautiful armor, isn’t it?”
“It is. Any notion yet who it was made for?”
“Someone in the Oreol. I’m having Mercanfur carry word of it south to Leger as soon as we’ve cleared those corsairs from our shores.”
“Still glad you were banished to Enhedu?” I asked.
“You still glad you followed?” he asked in return. Sevat had hung onto our conversation, smiling the way men do when they are on the outside and hope someone will bring them in. He was as annoying as they came. “How about you, carriagemaker?” I asked. “Are you glad you came?”
He seemed unequipped to answer, but he had nowhere to go. We looked down at the smaller man and waited.
“No,” he said then. “No, I’m not. I should never have taken my family away from the river. I should have stayed and fought Bendent and the rest. I ran, and it cost me my children.”
“Well,” Barok said. “You are here now. What are you going to do to keep the rest of your family from dying?”
He was small standing between the two of us, but swelled a bit at those words. Barok was trying to get a rise out of him. Sevat seemed wise to his goading and did himself a service by answering in kind.
“I’ll deliver an application to your bank in the morning—if this bank of yours is ready to act upon a substantial proposal?”
“In the morning, then,” Barok replied weakly, and I laughed at him.
“Best be ready, Prince,” I said. “I think you’ve put your toe into the hornet’s nest.”
He cleared his throat and was quite relieved to see Lilly and her parents make their way up. I chuckled at Barok but lost the humor as the gathering turned its attentions back upon me.
Ryat and Avin continued talking to the arilas and regent as Lilly was brought across. The quartet seemed completely uninterested in the event, and I relaxed. There was nothing special about the girl—same as the rest I had sung to. What I was looking for could not be found in a child. Why bother?
Soma folded her arms. She and Dia fixed their steely eyes on me. They quite terrified me at that moment.
“What is your name?” I asked the mother, who was flushed, smiling brightly, and something close to frantic with hopes for her daughter.
Lilly answered for her with a smile that was nearly as big and friendly, “Lora. And my name is Lilly. I work for Dia Yentif.”
“Thank you, Lilly,” I said. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“I’m going to sing,” she said and half the crowd laughed with her.
Dia wasn’t smiling, nor Soma. They stood a bit back from the rest with focused looks as though they were willing the Spirit to gift this girl the miraculous power we needed.
The Chaukai and everyone else were at ease.
“Well, let’s hope so, Lilly. Now listen closely,” I said, knelt down, and whispered the word into her ear.
yew
She screamed. It was a piercing, bloodcurdling scream impossibly loud for such a small girl. She fell forward and grabbed ahold of the collar of my armor. Blood rolled from her nose, eyes, and ears.
Avin and Ryat were there instantly. They seized the screaming girl and got ready to sing.
“No,” I shouted and knocked them both aside. “No verbs!”
They argued with me while her mother, father, and Soma all shouted for them to heal her. The Chaukai drew weapons, and everyone started shouting.
Still she screamed.
The desire to sing them all to sleep almost overpowered me. “Quiet,” I bellowed with a blast of anger hot enough to melt a company of recruits. “Shut your rotting mouths, all of you!”
The din ceased. Lilly, too—her scream reduced to a sippi
ng of air. Behind it was an inhuman pain I knew too well.
I knocked everyone back from her and knelt close. She clutched my arm, blinked blood down her cheeks in terrifying lines, and with a voice that shook my soul, she sang the word back at me.
yew
It lit my heart and wet my eyes. So perfect a sound I had never heard.
Her pain went away, and she laughed. It was as delightful as the solitary noun, and it cured the terror. I laughed with her, and her mother took hold of her with such pride I worried she would explode into a puff of bright flowers.
And here was my answer, as Dia had said. A person with no measure of skill but a full measure of innocence. Someone who had walked an uncluttered path, someone who could and would learn only nouns.
Here was a druid—one not flawed by the business of bloody men.
I was no longer alone.
The convocation ended, but not the evening. Pemini had food ready, and we suffered our fatigues in the great hall while it was roused up. We filled the tables and benches. Gern and Fana joined me in the dark alcove I’d hoped to occupy alone.
I’d not caught either sight or smell of the food on my way through the keep, and as it came I learned how far from the world of men I had drifted. Rye loaves, asparagus seared with honey and pepper, beet soup, steamed trout, spiced apple pie. Mugs of beer. I supped and gulped, and the tired day became a joyous night.
Pemini was still hustling food around when I started gobbling down seconds. Fana called her over. “Gern, we’re in Pemini’s spot,” she said and cleared them out of the way. Pemini gave Fana a long look before she sat down across from me. I shared my plate with her.
She ate with me for a while. After a time she said, “Thank you for not wearing Tosen’s robes.”
“They are something you give to a son or nephew, perhaps, when they come of age. Never a stranger.”
She nodded and looked across at me. The sun had gone down, and the glow of the fire caught her eyes—and the round tops of her great and perfect breasts. She said to me with a voice full of honey, “You are a beautiful man, Geart Goib.”
I set down my beer for fear of spilling it, and with bravery I’d not known myself to possess, I leaned close across the table and kissed her cheek.
She turned her head toward me, and there was nothing for me to do but kiss those full, flushed lips over and over and over.
She put her wonderful baker’s hands upon my face, and said, “Grab your beer. You’re coming with me.”
39
Captain Soma O’Nropeel
I woke to the swirling smells of a breakfast tray and wildflowers.
The moment I opened my eyes, Pix ambushed me with pillows and would not relent until I was upright with bowl in hand. I missed most of what she’d said until I’d swallowed my first bite, but she had plenty left to say. “Do you remember the last time we had ginger muffins, mother? I have two here for you when you finish your sausage pie. Better hurry, though. You slept straight through yesterday. What a day it was, too. Selt and the regent sailed for Almidi—and, ohh, what a sendoff. I’m surprised the noise didn’t wake you. Can you believe it is the 25th already? And the Vlek girls, mother, Avin accepted them both into his healer’s college. Madam Vlek is staying, as well, to look after them. Isn’t it wonderful? Sad for Lukan, but he’ll sleep well with them here and safe from the war—well, safer anyway. Don’t you think so?”
I tried to agree, but was far too slow to get a word past the ginger muffin-fueled girl. She went on, saying, “Ohh, and you should see Lilly. She looks so much older. If you ask me, though, her parent’s place in town is too noisy a space for Geart and Avin to teach anything. I hope they move the college out to Tayani where father is going to build the shipyard. He found a buyer for all that cocoa, too—a brewer, if you can believe it. Have you ever had a beer made with cocoa? Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Not that I’ve ever had a beer,” she added and moved on in the same breath to say, “And what a sight Barok’s guards are now. The first time I saw them I screamed, mother, like a little girl. Just wait until you see them. You’ll yell, too, I bet when you see so many men walking about looking like Hessier. Here, have some water.”
I managed one good gulp to wash down the sausage pie before she stole away the tray and ordered me out of bed. I bumped the bedside table on the way up, and Pix saved the pot of flowers she’d brought me with a deft grab. I kissed her by way of apology.
A collection of warm sea-worthy clothes was laid out upon the nearby table and chairs.
I bathed at the basin while Pix selected items from the collection. She hurried me into yellow linen stockings, a walnut brown shirt and trousers, my best front-lacing linen corset, and a stunning yellow wool short coat. The coat had disk buttons made of silver and a wide flipped collar that showed off its cream-colored linen liner. Its forearms and vents were sewn with two striking lines of diagonal black silk thread. The boots were made of dark brown leather with a glossy sheen and high flaps that could lace all the way to the knee.
The hat and kerchief were both from Umera’s shop. I tied the soft square of white linen around my neck with a wide, loose knot. The felted white hat had a large brim and a heavy brown band that Pix had fitted with my favorite hairpins. The hat pinned on so snuggly I doubted there was a gale upon the seas that could take it from me.
I pet the black lines on each sleeve. They were the marks of a captain. “Darling girl, how did you manage it?”
“Madam Urs started making it after we all left for Heneur,” she said. “You’ve a second set in your sea chest, as well as a heavy black overcoat and rain slick. She wanted to thank you for saving Fana. Dia put her on to it, I think. We added the captain’s hashes yesterday after the prince made your rank official.”
I kissed her forehead and was treated to a hug.
Noise from below the window drew my attention, and she grabbed my hand and pulled me across. The room overlooked the harbor. Out in the bay, all five of the new ships were crisscrossing the calm waters as they tested their sails and oars. And along the pier, the Grace, Thorne, and several other of Mercanfur’s ships were being perfected for sea.
“Ohh, there’s father,” she squealed and started tugging me toward the door. I wasn’t able to spot him and only just managed to grab ahold of one of the muffins before she hurried me down. We reached the crowded street, and she moved out onto the long beach that ran up the east side of the bay.
The air was filled with the aroma of cocoa, and I found the cargo stacked in a nearby open-faced warehouse. Sevat stood before it with a group that included Arilas Vlek, Admiral Mercanfur, and most of our carpenters. My husband was clearly in charge.
Upon his breast was the silver emblem of a royal envoy. Mercanfur’s grin was a very close second to my husband’s. The admiral shouted a happy good morning to us, pulled Sevat free of the crowd, and gestured toward the ships in the bay with both hands. “The sea trials, Soma. They could not be going better. The boys have had ‘em out three days straight now. Masts and rails as solid as ancient oaks, and the hulls have swelled up proper. What a sight they are. They’ll be ready for real service in a few days. Beautiful, aren’t they?”
And they were, too, each nearly twice as long as Mercanfur’s thin-walled traders. They had wide decks and sat deep in the water. One of the designs caught my eye at once. Its prow and stern swept up to wide castles mounted fast above each. A forward mast rose up through the reinforcing forecastle, and the aftcastle rose high above the water—a place for a captain, and archers, too, when the time came to bear down upon an enemy. It carried two great squares of canvas that hung from heavy top masts and were drawn back to the base of the aftcastle where a captain could watch and control all four corners of each with ease. It had eighteen oars and what must be a crew of fifty or more.
“Does that one have a name?” I asked.
“That would be the Lynx,” he said.
“Looks a sure bet to win Barok’s contract,” I said, to whi
ch the Admiral raised an eyebrow. “No? Which do you think it will be then?”
“Mine,” Sevat said, and this mystified me until I recalled that Pix had mentioned his intention to build a shipyard in Tayani.
“Since when do you build ships?” I asked.
He was nervous—charmingly so. He had one of his little speeches prepared for me but bumbled his first few words. Pix took hold of his hand, and Mercanfur chuckled at him.
The admiral said to me, “He’s been practicing all morning how to tell you about it.”
This did not help my husband’s cause, and his face glowed crimson. He coughed and got ready to make a second attempt when the rest of the crowd approached.
We reluctantly turned, and Sevat cleared his throat wildly. “Captain,” he said to me indicating the first man forward. “Have you met Master Yerami Herren? He is one of Haton’s men and the mayor of Tayani.”
“I have not,” I replied. “A pleasure.”
“Lady Soma,” Master Herren said silkily and extended his hand as though I was an unmarried maid and he meant to take mine and kiss it. I clasped my hands behind my back, instead. The man missed my displeasure. He was one of Haton’s men, however, so I gave his Bessradi attitude a momentary pass.
“You purchased the cocoa?” I asked him.
“It and every crop for the next five years. How could I not? It is an uncommon ingredient, but there will be no finer beer anywhere.”
“Brewer, are you? It is a fantastic trade.”
“I am master of many,” he said and turned back to Sevat. “Sir, you evaded my question. These ships you keep speaking of building in Tayani, will they be suitable for transport of my barrels?”
“Your barrels? I’d not considered them. They have some special requirement?”
“They do. I do not doubt the prince’s confidence in you, but we’ll need to review these plans of yours. I’ll have my carpenters take a look. I am sure your designs can be corrected.”
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