Sutler's Road, page 3
I waved on the last, a uniquely stable Hessier named Paij. He had been the Sten of Zoviya a century earlier and was responsible for my vast network of conservancy priests.
He said to me, “Prince Horl and Crown Prince Evand are meeting at Dagoda to form an alliance of their mothers’ families.”
“The Bellion and the Grano? A very unlikely union. Who is your source?”
“A senior prelate that has been vacationing at Dagoda. Are you in favor of this combination or should I intervene?”
“Crown Prince Evand has survived longer than I expected he would. He might challenge Parsatayn if he can establish himself. No man of the Ministry shall interfere with him. Make it known.”
He bowed, and I asked, “Any new report of singers?”
“One. The librarian uncovered a small group. They are weak and hungry. He has set a meeting with them tomorrow evening.”
“Kill them. We do not have time for distractions.”
Minhost stood without my leave and spoke as though we were equals. “It would be better to draw them out. There could be others.”
I pulled in the power of the Shadow, and I struck.
draw mercury
The quick and brutal song stabbed through Minhost’s defenses, and he clattered noisily to the floor. His helmet bounced free, and the vital mercury that preserved him began to weep from his flesh.
I said to the rest, “I am the voice of the Shadow. My words are your only salvation, and those that question His will shall perish.”
They went to their knees and put their foreheads upon the floor while Minhost’s dead flesh sagged. The centuries of abated decay caught up to him while the lingering effects of my magic gathered the mercury to a low point in the floor. Minhost had seen his last winter. He had seen his last sunset.
I withdrew a small iron eyedropper from a case upon my belt and carefully gathered up and drank the precious fluid before hunger got the better of the rest. A happy chill washed down my back and along my arms. I summoned the Shadow around me like a frozen fog.
My Hessier shrank and trembled. They worshiped me.
Fear not, my children, I will feast upon all of you in time.
I let the darkness sink back into the tortured stones of the Treasury Keep and turned back to Paij. “Have you substantiated any of the rumors about Prince Barok now that the roads have cleared?”
He rose to one knee and said, “I have heard two firsthand accounts of his victory against the Pormes of Trace and the Hessier they hired. Both accounts put the attacking force at over 17,000 men and Barok’s at no more than 800. One report describes a healer of unusual size and strength who was able to heal the wounds of every man upon the field and kill the Hessier with sword and hammer. The other report credits a red hat priest of slight build with the magic and the prince himself with the slaying of the Hessier. Neither account explains how they resisted the touch of the Hessier.”
The group hung upon Paij’s every word. A Hessier had not been killed by a man in over two centuries. Prince Barok had killed ten of us in a single season.
I asked Paij, “Have you learned why they disobeyed my order to stay away from Enhedu and Prince Barok?”
“It is as you suspected. Their greed for mercury tempted them. The first pair was hired by Prince Yarik for 15,000 weights of gold. The leader of the second group was bought for a much smaller sum. The rest of your Hessier have been recalled to Bessradi as you instructed.”
“How were they going to acquire the mercury?”
“We do not know yet.”
It was as I suspected. But it remained a mystery to me how Barok had survived. His ancestor Kyoden had fought me with the strength of a great nation for two years but had failed to kill even one of my Hessier. Something had happened in Enhedu since I had returned Barok to his family—something beyond my control. I would have traveled there myself to unravel this mystery, but there was nothing upon the earth more important than the blood of the Vesteal. I was not sure how many Vesteal there were in Enhedu, but I would not risk even one of them.
I asked Paij, “Have you successfully installed any thralls in Enhedu or Trace?”
“No,” he said and bowed his head lower. “There is one man I will take tomorrow. He is a Tracian general who married into the royal family. Prince Barok appointed him Regent-Arilas of Trace after the surrender, so he is in Bessradi for the Council meeting.”
“We do not take senior men. It compromises their judgment and diminishes their value. Thralls make very poor leaders. Take a pair of his juniors, instead, and his mistress if he has one. Is there anything else?”
“Yes. Both Lord Vall and the Sten are sending missions to Enhedu. They are eager to hear the details of Barok’s victory.”
“We will send a man as well,” I said. “Do you have someone loyal? Someone who is not a thrall?”
“Yes. I would recommend the man I was speaking to when you arrived. He is strong and loyal.”
“Send him to me. The rest of you, see to my city.”
They departed and Paij’s man did not keep me waiting. He was silver-haired but spry, and the Shadow was wrapped around him like a lover. Paij had been collecting men such as him. The librarian was another. Both would make excellent Hessier if they survived the war that was coming.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Dekay Nechpee, Minister Sikhek.”
“Sing your words to me,” I said, and he did so at once, verbs and then separately the nouns.
rest heal bind
man flesh
He knew more verbs than most. He was strong, for a man. “What do you desire?” I asked him.
“To become Hessier,” he said, picked up his head, and looked me in the eye. He reminded me instantly of Leger Mertone, and I was glad for it. It would take an uncommon man to befriend the Vesteal.
I said to him, “Good. You may well earn it. Take a lantern. There are things you must know before you travel to Enhedu.”
He found one, and I led him down into the dungeons below the keep. It was a wet and narrow place filled with the sorrows of the people I condemned there to prey upon each other for food. The Shadow was drawn to such misery, and I swelled from His touch like a suffocating man catching a lungful of clean morning air.
I opened a hole in the floor to reveal Minhost’s unconscious and mutilated prisoner—Parsatayn’s deputy. I lifted the man free and carried him deeper into my dungeon. The rat-infested excavation we descended into was a special place, known only to me. A twist of rock at the far end concealed a flat wall of stone, and the verse I chanted used a noun and a verb that only I knew.
bend granite
My song sucked heavily upon the magic of the Shadow pooled there, but it was enough. I pushed through the heavy curtain, unlocked the silver door behind it, and pulled Dekay through before I let go of my song. The angry stone snapped back into place, and I closed the metal door behind us.
Every surface of that square chamber was made of silver and caught the lantern’s light. In the center of the room was a wide, plain altar made entirely of silver. Beneath it were the four iron casks that contained my vital supply of mercury.
The Vesteal blood that filled my veins warmed, and the mercury that bound my soul cooled. I gasped and then laughed.
I laid Crispo upon the concave surface of the altar. Minhost had been savage. Crispo’s ears and eyes and several of his fingers had been removed. It was fortunate that I had come. I sang a song of healing that rebuilt his flesh and his eyes. I did not know the noun for bone, so the flesh that had once encased his missing digits withered back to gnarled stumps.
Crispo came awake with an exalted gasp and looked up at me.
“This is a remarkable place, Crispo,” I said as a friend might and laid my hands gently upon him so that he would be still. “There was once a temple here and a vast forest as old as the Earth. I burned it all to the ground and poured the blood of the people who lived here into the rocks. You feel the touch of it, yes? The Shadow dwells here.”
He nodded and wept.
“During my first three centuries here, His touch was all I knew. The fourth, though, taught me something new.”
And then I sang another song to Crispo—a long and luscious verse. It contained no verbs, only the words that named the many metals upon the earth. Each word summoned the Spirit of the Earth to my chamber. She was very ill and very weak but already too great to behold.
I remembered my wife and my daughter. I remembered the Vesteal priests that murdered us. I remembered what it was to be sad. I felt the Spirit’s gratitude for my verse and felt as though I could still cry. I stopped singing, and Her touch faded.
“This is what I have learned here,” I whispered to Crispo. He was overcome with emotion and temporarily freed of the magic that bound him.
“You are a thrall. Who do you serve?” I asked as he smiled and laughed.
“The Shadow,” he said. “All will serve the Shadow.”
“Parsatayn seeks to become the chairman of the Council of Lords. Why? Who would he elect to the Throne of the Exaltier when Lord Vall’s time comes to an end?”
“No one. We will leave the throne empty and destroy the royal families. Parsatayn will become the true Sten and sweep away the Exaltier. Zoviya will be ours.”
“Fool. The mob would not serve you,” I said, and moved on to another topic. “Who made you and where?”
“I was made a thrall by Ashod priests in the Bunda-Hith many years ago.”
This was the answer I expected. My agreement with the Ashod to divide the continents between us was as old as Bessradi, but they had been encroaching since I’d selected the first Exaltier.
“Why have the Ashod broken their truce with me?”
“You have betrayed the Shadow.”
I could not believe him. “What betrayal?”
“The Kingdoms of the East know you have rebelled against the Shadow. The Ashod have sent their Hessier to kill you.”
“The far continent knows? Which Hessier have they sent?” I asked, but already knew the answer.
“Those superior to you,” he said. “The Ashmari.”
“What do they know of my intentions?” I demanded. “Do they know that I am learning the Song of the Earth?”
He shook his head. “I knew nothing of the song until you sang it.” The joy in Crispo’s voice began to fade. I nearly killed him then, but I needed to be sure that he told me all that he knew.
I drew a knife and opened the veins upon his arms and legs. He flailed for a moment while his blood welled around him upon the altar. As his life left him, I drew a single drop of mercury from one of the iron vessels and let it fall into his mouth.
I sang, then, the song that had made me.
bind heal mercury blood soul man
The Song of the Hessier seized the man’s drifting soul and bound it into his dead flesh. He cried out—a long and languid scream filled with the desire to live. He looked up at me, and like so many before him, he despaired as all that was human in him began to fade.
“What have the Ashmari learned of my plans?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” he whispered. “My task was to discover why you have rebelled, but I learned nothing. They fear you. They fear what you do here, in your city.”
“How many of the Ashmari Hessier did the Ashod send?”
“Parsatayn thinks there are seven of them. I have met only one.”
All of the elders. War wasn’t coming. It had come.
“When and where are you next supposed to meet him?”
He told me the place and the time, and I thanked him. His look of sorrow flattened slowly to a dull stare. No memories remained. All that was left was the desire to please me. He was a Hessier but no closer to the Shadow than driftwood was to the bottom of the sea. His mercury-starved body would not heal well, and I’d added none of the Vesteal blood that gave a Hessier its strength.
I turned to Dekay expecting him to be unconscious. He was upon his knees, instead, and looked on as though all of this was something I had meant for him to see. It was better this way, perhaps. His task was not for a simple or ignorant man.
I said to him, “You will travel to Enhedu and speak to Prince Barok. You will tell him that I seek a truce with his family. You will tell him that as long as I live, no servant of mine will harm him. I desire that his family remains. The Earth desires that they be preserved. Do you understand?”
He nodded and said, “I understand that everything I have been taught is wrong. Bayen is a fiction, and you are not a servant of the Shadow as you would have your Hessier believe. Nor am I. We serve another.”
Extraordinary. Paij was collecting more than just skilled and loyal men. He was finding those capable of greatness.
“Yes,” I said. “You and I alone, Dekay, know the truth of the world, and I am the last who knows how to heal the dying Earth. The prince’s family must remain and must multiply for us to succeed. I leave much to you. Return with a pledge from the Vesteal, and I will teach you this song so that we may save Her.”
He bowed and wept.
I took us back through the secret door and ordered Crispo to hunt the people and the rats that infested my dungeons. He went, and I paused there to drink from the dark cloud of sorrow. The feeling of renewal was dim and shallow.
It was Her touch that preserved me, not His. I worshipped Her. I loved Her.
I heard a whisper then. It was She, and I knelt and covered my ears so that I might hear Her.
‘Bone,’ She said, giving to me the noun, and I smiled with such joy it seemed for a moment that I was still alive. The Shadow stared at me from the thousand dark and tortured places about me. I laughed at Him and went to put my best killer onto the trail of the Ashmari.
4
Madam Soma O’Nropeel
I love Enhedu. It is rough, and it is dirty. Its men work timber, orchards, and quarries. They pull fish from the sea, herd monstrous bearded pigs, and hunt beaver and deer in the shadows of a great mountain. They and their work are ugly, their education limited, and their religion unaccounted for. They do not belong anywhere—except perhaps Enhedu, serving a prince who has bent centuries of laws to exchange their hard work for land.
This near treasonous arrangement has drawn the best craftsmen from the very heart of the Zoviyan Empire. My husband was the first of the thousand masters who had crossed the hostile Daavum Mountains into the backwoods of the world for this chance at freedom.
I am ever astounded that it holds together. The endless disagreements between these very different sets of men are the kind that inspire theft, extortion, and murder.
But the land—the unattainable goal of becoming landed—it was deliverance from all the empire’s many terrible laws. Few men are foolish or petty enough to risk losing their chance at it.
“Nobleman coming through,” my husband said as he shoved his way toward us.
“Sevat,” I hissed, but his boorishness could not be tempered.
“Soma, dear. There you are. Do get the children moving won’t you? We must get back to town so you can get the boys and I packed for the trip.”
I waved down the girls’ sudden protests. “Aren’t we all going?”
“Next time, perhaps,” he said. “Come along.”
Half the crowd heard. I could not disagree with him there.
Rot your eyes, Sevat. Don’t do this.
We rode up from the harbor behind Prince Barok and his soldiers. Our overjoyed sons galloped ahead to ride alongside the column while the girls trailed behind us in a sad little line.
“Don’t be so melancholy,” Sevat said to me. “I’ll bring you and the girls along next time.”
“Spending time with the sailors has made me miss our families terribly,” I said, trying hard not to pick a fight. “It would be quite a thing to see Wilgmuth and visit our cousins.”
“My family is right here,” he replied proudly and gestured at us. It was a sweet thing to say but did not help. He had never really known my parents and had spent his life trying to escape his. Seeing the thick beards and hearing again the friendly accent had brought back so many memories.
He frowned a touch at my expression, only to clap his hands and reach into his saddlebag. I knew what he had for me before he pulled it free. The small wooden box was tied with a blue ribbon, and he handed it over as though all was instantly forgiven. I untied the bow and peeked inside. It contained a miniature carriage, the latest of a hundred such toys he’d built for me. He’d been carving barges, wagons, and carriages for me since we’d first met, but the gesture was starting to lose its shine. Still, the tiny thing was a marvel—as was anything he put his artisan’s hands upon.
“Do you remember the old dock in Errera where you gave me that first little barge?” I asked hopefully. “Mother taught me how to tie hitches on that dock while we waited for father to return from Urmand. She taught me how to swim there, too. Did I ever tell you that?”
“Hmm,” he replied. He’d stopped listening to me and was trying, instead, to overhear a conversation between the prince and his reeve. It was the worst of Sevat’s habits, and I wished he would stop doing it. There was talk that the prince would name a few more envoys, and eavesdropping would not recommend him to the coveted appointment. Becoming a bondsman did not happen by insinuation.
I tugged on his arm to prevent him from embarrassing himself twice in one day. “The girls should get a chance to see where they are from.”
“The decision has been made.”
“The same way you decided to take us off the river?” I asked.
“You and that rotting river,” he said, turned away from the prince, and punished me with hateful eyes. “Will I ever hear the end of it? And you can stop looking at me that way, you are out of practice.”
“And why is that, in your estimation?”
“Do not blame me because you no longer have bargemen to order about. Bendent’s men destroyed your father’s business long before I brought us here. Will you never tire of this argument?”
