Crimson Valley

by Hausladen, Blake;

  “Yes. You will want others,” he said, took back the set, and hurried away. When he returned, it was with a stack almost twice as high.

  “Why do you hate the Savdi so much?” I asked as he handed over the set.

  “They take orders from no one. For centuries—as if they were deities above Bayen. Their sacrilege is without peer.”

  I leaned close as said, “Bayen whispers to Emilia. He speaks of an evil in the east born of Sikhek’s treachery. You have put us on the right path.”

  He blanched. “She is sent by Bayen? Many think she has to do with Barok and his new religion in the north.”

  “Yes. Tell no one. The ranks of the faithful have been infiltrated,” I whispered and encouraged him to get to safety. He marched away as if to war.

  I loved the lie I’d crafted, but as I sat down with the stack of books, no amount of good fortune could have kept me happy. The old volumes were records of transactions, loans, and deliveries of crimson—the commerce between the church and the Savdi-Nuar. I would have cut out my eyes rather than read more of the dust old tombs if the pursuit was not so important.

  Liv opened the lattice door to my small room, and Emilia slide in around her. “You found something already?”

  “You’d told be about the family in the east, but it didn’t seem so important at the time. The archivist heard one mention of our effort and put me onto a family in Aneth the way a farmer would point a hunter at a forest full foxes. Reading all of this, I am beginning to wonder.”

  Liv sat down with us and the pair listened intently as I told what I’d read so far about the Savdi-Nuar and the freedom they enjoyed in their valley. Tariffs did not apply to them. Taxes were waved. They owned a monopoly on crimson that had been enforced three times by Sikhek’s Hessier. We divided the stack of books into the three studies and scrounged a meal of bread and cheese from what the priests had abandoned.

  The Grano arrived in numbers that evening while the three of us read. There was a bit of drama when some of the church soldiers thought to stop them, but Ellyon and Wayland had been captains of men too long to be upset by church rabble. A bit of blood was shed in the foyer but the color disappeared into the vibrant rugs. They got busy securing the building and the plaza while the city convulsed around us. Neither the archivist nor the Corneth dared to approach Emilia, and our men secured the plaza’s gatehouses one after another.

  It made Emilia sad that they feared her so much, but she would not say it.

  We focused on the Savdi while we waited on the city to calm down and beg an audience with us. A second day of reading became a third and then a fourth. We did not mind the quiet and enlisted Okel and a dozen other lettered men to dig through the stack with us. Every book told the same story. The Savdi-Nuar where ever so much as scratched by a Conservancy that had an iron grip upon every other family and interest in Zoviya.

  “Who controls who?” Emilia asked me and Liv the next morning.

  “Sikhek or the Savdi, you mean?” Liv asked.

  “Yes. It doesn’t make sense. Sikhek murdered millions—build the Warrens and all the other dark places. There is nothing special about the Savdi that I can see. They are a family of miners by every account here, so how have they survived so long with such access to Sikhek? What if it’s the Savdi that control him and not the other way around?”

  “Something to do with this third spirit you encountered?”

  “I don’t know, and I bet there is not one mention of the spirit in the entire archive.”

  “We need to be moving faster,” Liv said and she was right. Winning Alsonelm seemed trivial.

  53

  Sikhek Vesteal

  I lay on the beach for two days. My left eye healed first, then my ears. My crushed lungs would not inflate, and I could not make my limbs work out of the water. Nothing tried to eat me though, so I lay slumbered in the embrace of this relative comfort and waited for Geart’s implacable magic to do its relentless work.

  Footsteps startled me, and I coughed up a bit of water. A single figure crept close, and my milky eyes focused enough to recognize the blue and gray of an Anethean sailor. He searched the tattered scraps of my clothes before checking if I was alive. He mumbled about the reward he might get for saving me before deciding to push the brine from my lungs.

  The first gasp of air was a new pain, and I longed for the days when I felt nothing and could heal as fast as fire could burn.

  Then again, feeling pain was not the only sensation my restored condition allowed. I dreamt of a feast, the touch of a woman, and the warmth of a bottle of wine. They would be a proper reward for surviving the depths. It was time for me to move on. Somewhere in the north, perhaps—a Khrimish vineyard staffed with long-legged redheads. These thoughts where the taste of madness, but I enjoyed them all the same.

  The man took a long time chatting with himself while he decided what to do with me, but eventually dragged me into a sandy clearing surrounded by tall weeds. He had a tiny fire there and a turtle cooking in its own shell. He fed me broth and asked me questions about my family that I could nod or shake my head at. Yes, I was from Aneth. No, I’d not fought in the battle. Yes, my family was wealthy.

  He had a rusty knife in his belt, and its handle was damp from palm sweat and stained black with blood. If he’d been hiding along that strip of beach since the battle, he’d eaten stranger fare than turtle.

  The small meal was all I was going to get, but that and fresh air was already inspiring my body. Sitting up was something I was certain I could do.

  His yammering was endless, and while banal, I dared not fall asleep while he clutched at his knife. But as he blathered at me through the twilight my heavy eyelids closed.

  I dreamt of biting eels and woke shivering. I’d been dragged into the tall weeds. The fire had been buried, and the deserter was nowhere to be seen.

  “Stay down,” the man whispered from somewhere close. I managed to roll myself over and saw a two-masted Yudyith corsair gliding close in along the beach. They moved on, and the man appeared over me, knife in hand.

  “Your family—they love you, yes? Have coin enough to pay for you?”

  He did not like my haggard squawking and did not have the patience for another game of yes and no.

  He stabbed my shoulder. It was a halting poke—cowardly.

  I twitched but made no other move. The small wound bled red and he fidgeted.

  “Where is your family from? Walsemi?”

  I shook my head.

  “Uvrondi?”

  Again, no. Both were close and likely where the man was from.

  “You are bit peculiar looking. From Thanin? You’re not one of those gray cloaks from Estechi, are you?”

  It was not the story I would have conjured for him, but it would serve. I nodded and fidgeted. He considered stabbing me again but walked down the beach instead. He came back with a turtle suspended on a stick by its jaw. It took him several tries to cut its head off. He restarted his small fire as the sun was setting. He glanced at a rock in the tall weeds the entire time.

  I napped with this knowledge and woke to the meal. He fed me more than I expected, and night’s sleep and food had me eager to stand.

  “Up?” I whispered. “Move.”

  “Oh, that’s a good man. Can you walk? We need not go far to get to the forests above the tithe road—a ways through the marsh and along the river. Fewer patrols this way.”

  “Patrols?”

  “That bitch from Enhedu and that maggot Sikhek. She pressed me into her navy and nearly get us all killed. Anyone with sense has abandoned them. If I ever lay eyes on that cunt or that fucker Sikhek, I’ll kill him myself.”

  I stood up and smiled at him. “I’ll make you a bet.”

  “Ha, don’t go exerting yourself there. Need you to make it to your family. Get me some of that gold. Wait—a bet? You have coins to wager? Where are they?”

  “Not coins. Our lives. You stab me. I stab you. We take turns. The winner gets
the rest of the turtle and whatever you have hidden under that rock.”

  He started fidgeting again and almost made a run for it. Then he let out a sad growl and stabbed me high on the left side. The knife went deep between ribs into my abused lung. The man let go of the knife, backed away, and half smiled, expecting me to fall. It had missed my heart, I think, but it would not have mattered if he’s stabbed it clean through me.

  “My turn,” I said.

  He could have run while I worked the knife free. He stood and watched instead as I jammed the small blade deep into the side of his neck.

  The look on his face when I took another turn and stabbed him in the gut was enough to make me laugh. He fell and whimpered about not getting another turn while his blood soaked into the sand.

  I ate the rest of the turtle and uncovered a small purse beneath his rock. I left the man his clothes. I was better off naked than in an Anethean uniform.

  I would have preferred to find my way up the coast to Khrim, but Soma’s patrols could not be discounted. Any yellowcoat was likely to recognize me. I did not like my chances trying to make my way west overland, either. I waited instead for the corsair to make another pass and waved them in.

  They laughed as they came ashore. One had chains ready. None bothered to draw their swords.

  “Hardly worth rowing in to get him,” one of them said while prodding the body beside the fire. Their tall sun-baked captain eyed me like I was a snake.

  “I am Tasean Roto,” I said and tossed him the small purse. “I was captain of the guard and cousin to our late Arilas Ulrik Roto, who was murdered before my eyes by the pretender Ludoq in Bessradi while the council of Lords looked on. Has Ulrik’s son succeeded him?”

  His men froze, waiting on his lead. He opened the purse and examined the deserter’s wounds. “He did. Did your father survive the ambush?”

  “My father died three years ago when Sikhek’s conservancy swept through Cyaudi. Have our attacks along the coast succeeded? Sesmundi Bay is not under blockaded.”

  Their posture changed, and the captain was quick to answer. “Sesmundi broke out a number of days ago, but their women will be filling our pens soon enough. The rest of the coast is ours.”

  “Very well. I bear a message from those in Bessradi who are loyal to the Roto. You will bear me to Cyaudi with all speed and you will not speak to me again.”

  He handed me his cloak and when he ordered his brutish men out of my way they leapt back and bowed.

  As soon as we were aboard he raised sails and called all hands to the oars. I slept in his hammock and slurped down rich broth while we slid along the Havishon Coast and through the jagged Wellaze Isles. We put in at Yud port at Soulenti five days later, and the captain hurried ashore to hire me a carriage.

  He opened the door for me and I found a generous bundle of bread, wine, and sausage inside. “What is your name?” I asked.

  “I need no reward. The driver will see you to your royal kin.”

  “Very well, captain,” I replied and decided not to question why he wished to detangle himself from me. Perhaps his commission had expired, or he had been patrolling beyond its allowance. His offense, whatever it was, did not matter to me.

  He closed the door, and the carriage started through the wide town. It occupied a shelf of stone that guarded a wide river delta and a vast valley of black rice fields renowned for their clockwork flooding each year. I saw no one working the patties, however, as we started up the winding course of the river.

  It grew dark as the carriage trundled into the shadowed folds of the ancient valleys. A glow caught my eye as we moved past a spruce-ringed graveyard hidden in the shadows of ridge. A red light moved through the stones and took the shape of a woman. It lay down upon one of the graves and the grasses there smoldered while the ghost faded.

  If I were still the Minister, I’d have personally interrogated every surviving member of the families that reposed there. I’d not seen such a vivid ghost since the days when Edonian Cern stone occupied the hillsides and the ghosts of druids came out to set fires and summon the ghosts of their kin. The woman was likely guilty of a well-known infanticide or had herself been famously murdered. Those who had been near the events would have been touched by the Shadow and would make great stock for thralls—perhaps even Hessier.

  The carriage continued on and I gave it no more thought.

  I spotted Cyaudi the next morning, but the driver did not make the turn into the city as I expected. He continued around until we were upon the tithe road that ran west through Havish on its way to Alsonbrey. I was certain the captain has set me up, but I did not care too much. Whatever the destination, I would kill those I found there and make my way somewhere else. I considered leaping from the carriage, but my curiosity got the better of me.

  We reached the crest of a high ridge the next afternoon, and I was growing more and more confused by where he could be taking me when we encountered pikemen on the road. They let us pass after talking to the driver and as we rolled by, one of them smacked the side of the carriage with the flat of his pike blade.

  “Cost you extra,” the driver said back at him, cheerfully—a joke I did not understand.

  My confusion compounded. Was this ride to end at a private party or some event of the stuffed up Yudyith royalist that ruled Yudyith? I waited, but the trip did not find an end.

  “We sleep here,” the driver said, but I could not manage it. I almost asked him about our destination. I spend the night trying to figure it out for myself, but dawn broke with nothing to show for my time but a full bladder.

  The driver laughed loud and long as we crested another ridge, but no explanation of his humor followed. I heard the yelling of a crowd for a moment, but it faded before I could get a fix on the direction it came from.

  “Where the hell?”

  When the carriage stopped, it was surrounded by more pikemen. The driver said a few words to an officer, and the door opened with a chattering of an armored hand. The officer helped me down onto a field of trample yellow grass. The razor top of the ridge behind them reached diagonally across the road and a series of towers rose beyond it.

  “You are in time, sir,” he said, and offered me a cloak to go over my weary seaman garb. “You will find him that way.”

  He turned away from me then, which only made sense if they believed I was a Roto. I said nothing in return and made my way up.

  It was then that I heard the drums and the crowd on the far side of the ridge. I walked the rest of the way up the road.

  The smell of cooked meat and fresh fruit hit me the same moment as the screams of thousands. I thought I’d wondered upon a carnival until I created the ridge and saw the long lines of pikemen and circling horses below.

  The scene made no sense. I pushed through the small crowd there and found myself at a small counter.

  “Stick?” the man behind it asked.

  “What?”

  “You want a stick or not?”

  Behind the man was an open fire pit layered with racks of grilling meat. Three boys worked to flip, cut, and skewer it. A fat line of people behind me waited with coins in hand. I’d cut the line. The vendor and the men behind me glanced at the carriage that had delivered me, and the cloak I wore.

  “What’s below today?” I asked.

  He made gestures as though he was going to act a major domo and sell me on the grandiose scene, but changed his mind as he searched my face. He leaned in instead like he had something illicit to sell.

  “Today will be the last show. Their Arilas has come forward finally and a second from further up the coast, so they will not mount another attack after this. The good bet is on the Karesetti to break this last push, if you are going to put coin on the outcome.”

  They were spectators. The Yud pennants upon each tower were those of families that made up each division of pikemen on the field below.

  Two thousand horsemen were moving up the valley toward us and around me the crowds cheere
d and supped on spiced meat and sweet wine. Every vendor was taking bets.

  Drums sounded anew—a great rumbling that vibrated my leg while horns shrieked discordant anthems from all the towers left and right. Pikemen moved down from each with teams of drummers wearing colors that matched each tower’s pennant. The people in line hurried down without their snacks and I followed them, ignoring the vendor’s call to take my bet.

  The crowd began to chant, their voices snapping in unison with the drums. The thin columns of Yudyith pikemen bashed their weapons upon the backs of their shields to the same beat.

  The horsemen came straight at them, and the Yud stabbed men from their horses to the beat of the drums. Groups of pikemen broke forward into the swirl of the Havishon horses and began to dance, their pikes flailing in every direction. The bait drew an angry charge and the pikemen lowered their long weapons to meet it. Bodies began to line the slope and the crowd cheered louder and louder as the small squares challenged the might of Havish.

  The square to my left was overcome, and the Havishon poured over them. The crowd only cheered more as another group of three-hundred pikemen started down, dancing as though they were gods.

  Everyone around me screamed, and I flinched. Then the people beneath the next tower to the east screamed as well, followed in sequence by the people below each until came back around.

  It was “Yud” that they were screaming.

  Yud, Yud, Yud. The chant made the ridge vibrate as it boomed from each section in sequence. Hands clapped. Feet stomped. Everyone was standing. A tingle of happy energy and voices rose as the invaders changed. The first ten dancing pikemen stopped as the horses came on. Their shields formed a wall and the rest of the pikes behind them came down as the horses ran upon them. It was a massacre.

  Drums and voices. Yud, Yud, Yud, as they made fools of every horseman who come to try them.

  The crowd screamed and cheered again, but I could not see why. Then they sat with a deflated sigh, and I found the reason for it. A single man had gone forward to challenge the commander of the Havishon, but he was wearing a spear through his neck. He fell, and the crowd began another chat as a fresh squares started down.