Blade of Dream, page 17
“I know it’s serious,” Theddan said. “I know you’re scared. Don’t be mad at me for asking.”
“I’m never mad at you for long,” Elaine said, and then her cousin was gone and the allegedly endowed priest with her. Elaine sat back on the prayer mat, waiting until Theddan was safely away so that they wouldn’t be seen together in the street. Oddly, her mind felt clearer than when she’d come in. Yes, something was wrong in the palace. But Theddan had a point. She was the daughter of the prince, and one day prince herself. There were people she could speak to, questions she could ask. And maybe, if she were careful, a way to get into Ausai’s private study herself. When she got back home to the palace, she could start her own investigation.
On the wall, the pictures of the gods looked back at her with their stylized, abstracted, inhuman faces. She felt a pang of guilt at desecrating their temple with her intrigues. When the priest peeked in again, she waved him over.
“My… my lady,” he said. “It is… it is such an honor.”
“The honor is mine. Please, will you let me leave an offering? Out of respect.” She nodded toward the fresco.
The priest bent himself nearly double accepting the silver coins from her wallet, and promised to speak her name in his prayers. Hopefully the gods would be as easily placated.
At the door to the street, she turned back, thinking to bow to the gods one last time. The gesture of respect was empty, but the habit was good.
It was a trick of memory and her own distraction that the female figure—Lady Er with her dark halo—seemed to have changed. It was Elaine’s own shadow and the play of the light on the walls that gave the illusion of movement, and her misremembering that the god’s arm had been at her side when clearly it was lifted, palm toward the prayer mats as if in farewell.
Or else in greeting.
In the first place, Finrar wasn’t supposed to be there. His job was to take the sugar from Caram up the river to the family hold just north of Everenhom. After that, he was supposed to trade with Vivrin and take the last load of the season back south—furs and ironwork and weapons down from Kithamar. Only Vivrin had gotten pregnant again, and even though he’d argued that any number of perfectly fine people got themselves born on the river, Grandmother said no. She said that the river was hungry, and any baby born there would never come quite right. Which was a dig, because Finrar’s own father had drawn his first breath on a flatboat outside Imaja. But never minding that, Vivrin wasn’t taking the sugar the rest of the way north, and someone had to. So that was Finrar.
The north river wasn’t his stretch. He didn’t know it like he did the south. He didn’t like it. But he’d hitched his boat to the tow line, and the ox men had hitched it to their beasts, and he started the long second half of the journey. When he got back, he’d have to take the load south, and pay the penalties for arriving late, all thanks to Vivrin and Grandmother.
When they reached Kithamar, he’d hoped to put in at the southern piers outside the city walls, but the dockmaster there said no. The sugar was for Riverport, and so he had to go through the bridges and the press of boats, find his place in line, and stay there.
So now he was, with his little crew, holding just north of the third bridge with the Khahon trying to wash them all the way back to Caram, three dozen other boats around them hooking to tugs or tow lines pushing farther north, or sliding away to the south. The dockmaster’s skiffs darted between the boats, a man in Kithamari robes barking orders and gesturing at parts of the shoreline. The cranes at the docks creaked loudly enough that he could hear them across the water. He paced the little deck—three steps one way, three the other—like a dog in a kennel. The great cliff-face neighborhood they called Oldgate stared down at them. He didn’t even want to find a taproom and a girl. He just wanted to get the delivery made and leave Kithamar.
One of the skiffs turned toward him, and Finrar went to the edge of the boat. The man in it was heavyset, with a beard like a bird’s nest and a blue cloak.
“What’s your load?” the man shouted over the rush of water and gabble of voices.
“It’s for House Left,” Finrar yelled back.
The man pointed at the barrels stacked on the deck. “What is it? What’s your load?”
“Sugar.”
The bearded man shook his head and turned away.
“Hey!” Finrar shouted. “Where are we supposed to go?”
The man didn’t answer, busy as he was making his way to another of the boats waiting on the river. Finrar went back to pacing, faster now and angrier, but still the same three steps. The minutes passed into another hour. Ussman came to him from the back.
“We’re going to be here all damned night at this rate.”
“Get the oars.”
Ussman’s eyes went wide. “We’re going to row up there?”
“No,” Finrar said, and pointed to the stonework where the river met the bridge. “Just tie up at that quay. I’m going to walk my ass over to the dockmaster and sit on his desk until we get our fucking place.”
“You say it, we’ll do it.” Ussman shrugged. Five minutes after, they untied from the pile. At first, it seemed like it was going well. There was a path to the quay despite the cluttered water, the path to the dockmaster’s couldn’t be that hard to find, and the raw fact of being in motion eased his frustration, if only a degree.
He saw the other boat—a flatboat with cargo enough that the river water threatened to slop onto its deck—as they came around another lumbering barge. They were both heading for the same clear stretch of water. For each other.
“Hey! You! Veer off!” Finrar shouted as he waved his arms. “Veer off!”
His own boat lurched under him as Ussman saw the threat. A woman on the other deck shouted at him, her face red with anger, and shooed at him like he was a fly she could scare away.
“I am turning,” Finrar shouted. “You turn too!”
He looked over his shoulder to where a handful of people on the bridge had stopped to watch. Their heads were like birds on a branch, all turned the same way.
“Ussman!”
“I see it.”
Two men appeared on the other boat carrying poles. As they came closer, closer, closer, the pair set the poles, ready to push Finrar away if they could. He hoped they could.
“What is wrong with you?” the woman was shouting. “What are you doing?”
“Do something helpful!” he shouted back.
Their poles touched the side of his boat, and the men braced. They were shoved back across their deck, but they held steady. They didn’t stop the collision, but they slowed it. The two boats drifted inexorably together until he could see the moles on the shouting woman’s neck, they were so close. The impact was a low grinding, like a tree being twisted apart by a giant. Finrar stumbled, and the crowd on the bridge—larger now—cheered.
His boat rebounded, and the other angled away, moving down the river toward the bridge and the south with a different woman at the rails with her hands raised in an obscene gesture.
“Fuck this city,” he said to himself. Then, “Let’s get to that quay.”
“How bad’s the hit?” Ussman asked.
“I don’t know. Not too bad, I think.” And he kept thinking that until they had almost reached the bank.
He felt the pop under his feet as much as heard it. His heart sank. “We’ve got a problem,” he shouted, but it was already clear. Water lapped up the deck like the river was rising up to devour them. In a moment, it was at his ankles. The cold had teeth.
“The quay’s not big enough,” Ussman said. “If we can’t find land, we’re going to lose the cargo. We passed a place coming up. I can find a sandbar.”
“You can’t ground us.”
“It’s that or sink.”
Finrar looked around him, tracing the water with his gaze. Looking for a miracle.
“Turn us, then.”
The boat lurched, and a tremor ran through it. The water rose up to Finrar’s knee and the illusion that they could reach safety died. Two of the dockmaster’s skiffs were coming for them, oars flogging the water. Finrar stood at the prow of his sinking boat, trying to think how he’d tell Grandmother what happened and letting the despair wash over him with the water.
For part of an hour, the river ran sweet.
Garreth ached, but less. He was tired, but less. He sat in a taproom with Kannish and Maur, and more than them. Hellat Cassen and Frijjan Reed and Old Boar, all veterans of the guard. Abbit, who had been a bluecloak until he’d caught an axe through his left foot, and ran this place now. In and out of the taproom, a dozen more. Men and some women whose lives were spent seeing that Kithamar ran as it was meant to run.
The main room was wide and low, with rooms above it for the family who kept the beer and bread and cheap, pepper-hot sausage coming. The opened shutters looked out over a street corner falling into the gold and blue of twilight, and if the breeze was nearer cold than cool, it still couldn’t cut through the barn heat of bodies pressed close on the old wooden benches and the warmth of the lamps. The house dog—a wide-headed, thick-shouldered war dog—ambled through the press accepting scratches between its rough-cropped ears and smiling.
“So I say, ‘Open the door in the name of the prince, or I’ll open your asshole in the name of the guard,’” Beren—the same one who’d bruised Garreth’s ribs not all that long before—said. “And I’m waiting there, ready for some vast fucker ready for blood. After all the shouting and screaming, I figure this has to be some kind of half bear, you savvy? Door opens, and it’s this twig of a girl. Thin around as Garreth’s leg.”
The others glanced at him, grinning.
“Turns out she and her boy were freshening up the luck, only he’s got a wife. So the wait was all her getting him time to run out the back.”
Hellat Cassen lifted his massive hand. “Which is where I was. Poor fucker was pulling his boots on when I got him.”
“How much was the fine?” Garreth asked.
Hellat shrugged. “How to put a price on love? I told him not to scare the neighbors next time.”
The others laughed as the cook came through with another plate of bread and jam and onion. There was a rhythm to the conversations. Someone would start telling a story, and the other conversations would quiet to listen, then pick back up when it was done. Garreth had heard more than one of the tales before from Marsen, but recast with Kannish’s uncle always in the central role. He had the sense that if he stayed in the guard long enough, he’d be telling the stories himself one day. He might even think they’d happened to him.
The house dog plopped down by the cold fire grate and began licking himself with a vaguely obscene gusto. Maur lifted a hand for a fresh beer. Garreth felt a wide, warm pleasure at being with his old friends and his new. There were times he missed his home and his family, but there were also times he didn’t. He couldn’t say which version of himself was more nearly real.
And then there were other times when he thought about asking to shift his service to the Stonemarket barracks. He imagined walking with men and women he didn’t know, learning new streets and alleys and squares. And maybe, maybe in all that not belonging, finding a face with that familiar wry smile.
“There’s something coming,” Kannish said. “The captain’s been meeting with the heads of the other barracks.”
“Maybe they’re just talking about budget,” Maur said. “Or looking for a way to get us cheaper food.”
“I don’t think so,” Kannish said, leaning close so that his words would reach Garreth and Maur and then drown in the cacophony. “I think he’s getting ready to crack Aunt Thorn.”
Maur sobered at that. “That’s a heavy lift.”
“And a lot of ugly fighting in hallways they know better than we do, from what I’ve heard,” Kannish said. “If the captain asks for volunteers for something…”
Kannish lifted his eyebrows, but Garreth didn’t know if he meant they should take the chance together or stand aside. The door to the street opened, and Uncle Robbson strutted in, his chest out before him like he was spoiling for a fight. As new as Garreth was to the guard, he could still see the subtle reaction of the others. Shared glances, a smirk, a general retreat from the good cheer that meant someone from outside had come in. Garreth felt a strange blend of embarrassment at his uncle’s arrival and protectiveness on his behalf. He was halfway to his feet before Uncle Robbson found him and started over.
Beren brushed past Garreth as if on his way someplace else and murmured Say the word if you need his ass kicked, kid before he moved on.
“Boy,” Uncle Robbson said. It was the same bark he always had, but Garreth could hear it with the other guardsmen’s ears, and it sounded half an insult.
“Uncle,” Garreth said, his tone light.
“We need to talk.”
Garreth pulled out his wallet, found enough coin to cover his drinks and food, and tossed them to Maur. “Pay up for me, yeah?”
“Done,” Maur said.
Garreth nodded at the door, then started toward it, leaving his uncle to trot catching up.
In the street, the twilight had come to Newmarket. The streets were a single blue shadow. To the west, Palace Hill was just losing its limn of red-gold and fading into grey. Garreth slowed, letting Robbson catch up to him and setting an easy pace.
“You have to come back,” Robbson said. “I understand this rebellion of yours. And I’ll tell you this, I respect you for it. I haven’t seen your father have something thrown in his teeth like this in decades, and it speaks well of you. But you’ve made your point. The family needs you now.”
“It’s not rebellion. It’s a choice. I took an oath.”
“There’s a hundred ways out of the guard if you want it. We’ll make the captain whole for your loss.” They walked on for a dozen paces in silence. “You heard about the sugar?”
“I heard a boat sank,” Garreth said. “Was it ours?”
“It was.”
Between one step and the next, Garreth felt his mind shift. It was as if he were standing in his father’s office, the family’s books open before him. Garreth the bluecloak was the merchant’s son again, at least for the moment.
“Can we buy from someone to make up the loss? Vinant and Gastar both have contracts in Imaja.”
“We have offers to both of them to buy as much of their overage as they’re willing to let go. Even if there’s enough to avoid penalties on our contracts, we’ll be selling at a loss. Your mother’s plan was our best hope before this. It’s our only hope now. That’s why you have to come home.”
A boy of no more than eight ran out of an alley to their right. The deepening night took the colors from him, painting him all in greys. His whooping stopped short when he saw Garreth, and something part respect and part fear filled his eyes as he backed away. Garreth ignored him. Down the road, a woman stood at an open baker’s shop, selling the last of the day’s bread cheap. A half dozen men with dirty clothes and workman’s hands were joking with her. Farmers who had come to the city for the harvest and were making a celebration of their own. He half wished that they’d try to run off with her bread or her coin, just to give him a way out of the moment.
“I have to think about that.”
“There’s nothing to think about,” Robbson said. “Genna has put her whole faith in us to see the Kithamar end of this. She’s done too much, sacrificed too much, for us to do less than every damned thing we can to make this work.”
“I said I’d think about it,” Garreth said.
“Fine. Sleep on it. But then of your own free fucking will, get back and marry that girl. Because if you don’t, she’ll lose her trust in us. If she loses trust in us, the winter caravan falls apart. And if the winter caravan falls apart, there won’t be a home for you to come back to.”
The palace, like Green Hill, like Kithamar, was in the thick of preparations for the harvest festival. In years past, Elaine would have been part of it. Especially when she’d been young, her father would make an event out of the preparations that was almost more than the event itself. There were costumes to be made, decisions to make about what food and wine to give out to guests who were making their way through the houses and brotherhoods, dancers and artists and poets to commission. Harvest was a time to be grateful for the food that would see the city through another winter, another spring. It was also a time to boast how much your family could give away and how beautiful a spectacle it could fashion. When she had been eight years old, she’d decided—only the gods knew why—that they should have a real dragon. Her father had hired a sculptor from the Smoke to cast a set of interlocked iron ribs twenty-five feet from nose to tail and a troupe of dancers to inhabit it. There had been a metal seat on the great beast’s back just for her, and she’d ridden the dragon up and down the streets of Green Hill until she was too tired to see.
This year, the first of his reign, he was putting together a huge cart. It was meant to be like a great sailing ship with the high priests of the brotherhoods riding it through the city. For four days, the courtyard outside the stables had been filled with carpenters and wood and barrels of paint as the huge thing came together. Gigantic wheels were fitted to axles made of tree trunks reinforced with metal, and twice she saw men arguing about what route the massive carriage could take without binding against trees or buildings when it tried to take a corner.
If home had still meant the compound of House a Sal, someone might have noticed how little she took part. Home was the palace now, and so there was no precedent. Nothing was strange because nothing was normal. She could be any version of herself, and no one would think anything amiss, except possibly her father, and he was too preoccupied to notice.
And so she was free to do what she chose.
