Steelflower at Sea Read online

For the love of the gods... I swallowed an obscenity often heard shipside when a sailor has crowded too close again and again. “Five it is, no more, and if you don’t mind your tongue I’ll set the Northerner upon you. His axe was exercised on a dozen-and-one pirates during our crossing, and the number makes him uneasy.”

  Redfist glowered magnificently through his salt-whitened beard, and Thanourt actually paled a bit, which ignited a weary sort of cheer behind my breastbone. I did not sway on my feet only through sheer force of will, and we slapped hands to seal the bargain. I paid him half with the leftover break-bits from the passage-fee, and left the unloading of the cart to the rest of my little band of outcasts. I had brought them to this harbor, as safely as I could manage.

  “And you will be wanting news, Kaia.” Thanourt gestured me inside.

  “Yes, but not now.” I could ignore Darik, I found, as long as I was exhausted enough not to feel his presence—or the lack of it. The lower commonroom passed in a blur of smoke, mead-smell, and voices; I followed Thanourt up familiar stairs that did not slide so much underfoot as leap randomly from one point to the next. I took the room furthest from the bathing-suite, and told him what I wanted. He nodded, stroking his beard. It was a nervous motion, and my weary cheer turned to consciousness of the various nips and gnawing all over me. Sellswords are hardy, but ever since Hain I felt the invisible hand of age upon me, bone to joint.

  You have not given yourself much rest, a small voice whispered in the back of my head. It sounded suspiciously like Darik’s, struggling through a wall of formless noise that blurred every nuance. Was he trying to speak-within to me?

  It didn’t matter. Not now. “Thanourt?”

  He turned back, his eyebrows raising, and there were gray and silver threads in his black beard. His beaded and oiled moustache held no trace of time’s pale feathering, but there were white wires in his fine mop of dark hair, too. He had softened about the belly and the shoulders, though there was still good muscle under the padding. I had thought him a giant, before I met Redfist; Thanourt was nothing beside the ruddy barbarian’s bulk.

  “It’s...good to see you,” I managed, awkwardly. “Take care with my companions.”

  “Ai, of course, Kaia!” He bowed, without any of a merchant’s flourishes, and I noticed what I should have first—the leather braces at his wrists were gone, the scars underneath now on display. The marks had somewhat faded, and no longer reddened with his exertions up the stairs. “They shall be treated well in this inn, and they shall be singing praises of my hospitality from here to...” He waited, to see if I would give any indication of my bearings after this port.

  I treated him to the most genuine smile I could manage with a weariness-frozen face. Even my ears hurt, to their very tips. My toes each sang an individual song of stiff, cramped pain.

  “Do not send so much as a maid to this door until I open it again,” I repeated, and slammed the heavy oak. There was no bar, merely a lock, and I turned it without caring much that it was flimsy protection at best. No fire, but there was a bed wide enough for two if they did not mind closeness, and a small window with heavy shutters that would have shown me the inner courtyard and the cook’s garden, if I cared to look.

  I tacked unevenly across the floor, almost tripping on one of the Trejan rugs, and fell face-first upon the prettily made bed. I did not take off my weapons, or my boots, or anything else.

  Instead, I fell into a dark well of sleep, still feeling the ship’s creaking underneath...

  ...and wishing, as I had for days now, for the steady warmth of a G’mai s’tarei beside me.

  A Little Sour

  The Emperor had, after all, taken this rebellion seriously. They came around the southron hill, the real bulk of the army, not the Hamashaiiken advance-guard. The head of their column should not have outpaced the main body so far, but the Emperor’s Elect were arrogant, believing in their nickname—the Immortals. The shield-fist of Empire, as the Blue Hand was the shadowed, knife-bearing other arm.

  From above, it unfolds as if in a teaching-tale, one of the classic battles warmasters draw in sand with sticks, or move colored counters upon a painted board to represent. The rebels, taking trophies and administering mercy-blows, were caught in the open, struggling to reform their line. Choking dust rose in veils, and one wing of cavalry charged, wheeling about the flank of the scattered rebel forces. They would later fall upon the baggage-train, the camp and its followers, and take their fill of plunder twice-won.

  They said he had the favor of the gods, this one. There had even been...distressing signs. Droughts, the great blood-soaked morass of the Danhai war adding to public restlessness, and the priestesses of the harvest goddess had withdrawn from certain public festivals—and now this upstart, claiming to speak for the War God himself.

  The War God did not stretch forth his hand to cover his chosen upon that day.

  A one-handed general on an ill-tempered stallion managed to rally a group around the pretender in the saddle between the two hills, and they stood firm through three infantry charges. Their banner, a proud white horse, hangs limp and tattered, but still upright. The rabble in the rebel army melts away, screaming and dropping armor and weapons, ridden down from behind. It is a coney-catch, and few escape.

  Only the fanatic and the desperate are left, those who truly believe and those who will not be pardoned if they do somehow survive. Dust, bowel-stink, and blood mix into mud around their boots.

  From above, the end is never in question, only how long. After the third cavalry charge, the thunder of nailed boots crests, and the fresh, eager infantry break upon the rebels like a wave. Kevest One-Hand, bleeding from four mortal wounds and roaring the name of his ill-tempered white horse, falls. Shammardine Taryana fights until she is spitted on a peasant conscript’s pike, probably raging at the daring of such a lowborn.

  Surrounded, the pretender does not waste time. He knows they will take him alive if they can, to be paraded on an open cart through the capital city, then caged in the Emperor’s rain-garden as he starves to death. The pretender has set the hilt of a shortsword against a handy rock at the side of the road, his Danhai longblade dropped into the dust, and before he casts himself upon the blade he looks up, as if he can see me.

  Ammerdahl Rikyat’s face is a mask, and he pitches forward, one last convulsive movement—

  * * *

  …straight into sitting up, despite the scream of protest from every stiffened muscle, a full chant-chorus like the groups of gelded boys the Hain are rumored to have singing for their Empress night and day to keep her young. My left hand was full of knifehilt, my right in a bruising-hard grip around a thin wrist, and I almost plunged the blade into flesh before I realized who, and where, and what I was.

  The nightmare-cry died in my throat, an inelegant croak. Little Diyan stared at me, his big dark eyes shining. He didn’t look in the least frightened. He was even freshly washed, the festival-day shirt and breeches bought for him before we boarded the Taryam rumpled but much better than the ragged mess his clothes had become aboard. Thin spears of gray daylight fingered the shutters, and a clay lamp full of clarified khafish-oil burned low on the table, its flame blue at its heart and thankfully not reeking of oceandweller’s guts.

  “Mother’s tits,” I rasped, “how did you get in?”

  Then I realized I’d spoken in G’mai, and it was an effort to shift to tradetongue. “Diyan. How did you get in?” I let go of his shirt-front slowly, my knife sliding back into its home.

  He beamed. “Better locks in Vulfentown, cha. You slept two days.”

  “I believe it.” I rubbed at my face—saltglaze crackled free, and every inch of skin I possessed itched. My feet ached too, trapped and swollen in stiffened bootleather. The dream revolved inside my skull, refusing to settle in sleep’s lurid-colored but ultimately illusory country. I could still hear the screaming. “What of the others, little one?”

  “Barbarian’s in commonroom with dice, minstrel went t
o temple.” The irreligious little wharf-rat made a scornful face, though Gavrin was probably right to offer thanks for our arrival to any god he chose. “Prettywitch and longface are with D’ri. Are you still a-thatch at all’n?”

  “They are more thatch’n with me, small one. Let me see your hands.”

  He held them up, little capable paws crosshatched with pink and white rope-marks. A flicker around his fingertips told me Janaire was still applying healings to him, even without my asking.

  Among the G’mai, children are cherished, even flawed ones. It had been...difficult, when I left the borders of my homeland, to understand the sheer number of cast-away little ones, prey to slavers and others of darker purpose. In Kar-Amyus I had even seen the corpse of a boy of no more than six summers beaten to death by his own kin.

  Such things do not become easier to witness, no matter how common. Kar-Amyus had taught me much, though I could not have returned the favor. One young half-starved sellsword is not enough to leave a mark upon an entire city.

  “You’re th’thatch’n, K’li.” He handled the stop in the diminutive well. “D’ri keeps back an forth, ox grinding corn. No talk, no eating. Longface says you goan kill him.”

  I tested his fingers—no loss of flexibility. He would be none the worse for his shipboard stubbornness. And Darik was pacing. “Kill Atyarik? Why?”

  “No. D’ri.”

  I would sooner cut my own hand off. I shook my head, muscles in my neck protesting afresh. The times when I could simply sleep away crossing the Lan’ai were gone. Even G’mai feel time’s kiss, and a sellsword’s life does not make for comfort in one’s old age—assuming one is lucky enough to reach that far. How many times had I simply laid the question of my own survival aside?

  Now my own life was not mine to waste as I saw fit.

  I contented myself with shaking my aching, filthy head. “Have you eaten, little one?”

  “Oh, cha. Big table. Fat man says you took him up-coffle. Tha’so?”

  So Thanourt was telling the story again. The wagon, the filthy straw, the clinking sound. The slave-chains, and the mud, and the guttural screams as my blade plunged deep into a fat belly.

  Traveling brings you to strange companions, and some of them were not nearly as well-mannered as G’mai, a wharf-rat, a barbarian, and a Pesh lutebanger. I wondered how Gavrin’s instrument had fared during its sea-crossing.

  I contented myself with ruffling Diyan’s hair. “You are an inquisitive little creature.”

  He ducked away, with a shy smile. He was young, yes, but already learning the diffidence of adolescents. “Listening don’ cost nuffink, cha?”

  “Cha,” I agreed, deciding not to tell a tale where an eavesdropper lost his life. There are many, and none of them fit for a child’s ears. Even if the child had probably seen more of life’s underside than many an adult of more tender environs. “Now, little one, I am bound for the bath. Run and tell the innkeep I’ve awakened, and will expect a meal. Gods above, what time is it?”

  “Just past nooning.” He slid off the bed, raking his hair back with quick fingers. Barefoot, he stepped carefully, and he would, in time, make a very fine thief. Perhaps I should apprentice him to someone in the city? “Kaia?”

  “Hm?” I bent to my boots. Getting them off suddenly seemed the most important matter in the world.

  “Are you gon’ kill D’ri?”

  Why does he ask again? What has he been told? “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

  “He look fair maund.” With a flick of his capable paws and a heave at the door, he was gone into the hall. My skin crawled, my bones ached, and the consciousness of every problem looming before me turned to cold, heavy metal against my shoulders and my throbbing neck.

  “A bath,” I muttered. “Whatever happens, let me be clean.”

  I worked my boots off and trudged for the fallwater, shedding filthy cloth as I went, and hoping against hope I would be granted a little peace before I faced one of the G’mai.

  My luck, however, was still a little sour.

  Made of Your Metal

  The bathing-suite held two tubs—one tepid, one steaming, and I wanted a bath hot as wingwyrm breath. Unfortunately, the steam parted to reveal long dark hair ravelling on the water’s surface and the tips of dainty ears poking shyly through the dark silk, and Janaire’s sweet lowland face peered at me.

  In the mountains, the temperament as well as the appearance of my folk is sharper, bred of the bones of the earth and the wind that scours bare rock. Lowlanders are held to be less dour, and in them the beauty and the pride of Mother Moon’s chosen people becomes a kymiri blossom dipped in filigree, its blurred fragility on display in an imperishable casing. She smiled, like dawn breaking over the rolling hills of the river-country, and a swift pang went through me. Battered and scarred, my feet gnarled from boots and muscle in flat straps and sheathes all over me dispelling any female softness, I was a damaged dish next to her, and well I knew it.

  She did not seem to care, but those with beauty can afford to be generous. Gavridar Janaire was everything I would never be, and I could not even hate her. She carried out her duties as a potential Yada’Adais with fierce dedication, though I was an unruly student at best, and my sharpness seemed more likely to wound her than to strike an answering spark.

  It was always and ever the same. Years of navigating the world alone had turned me into a collection of edges, each sharper than the last, and those who brushed against me were lucky to escape scarring.

  “Kaia!” She even sounded happy to see me, curse her. “You’re awake.”

  Her lowlander accent turned the words to a lullaby. Outsiders have much difficulty with our language—the inflections sound similar to ears not born and bred to them.

  I glanced at the tepid pool, braced myself, and found the shallow steps into the hot one. Warm water enveloped me, the waves of my entrance lapping against her. Her cheeks were rosy; she had been soaking for some time.

  Good. She would perhaps be done soon.

  “How do you feel?” She moved, lazily, and made her own ripples, canceling mine as soon as they met. She could no doubt shape the steam any way she wished, or draw the heat from the water with a word, capable of working what other folk called witchery but to us is as natural as breathing.

  Since leaving G’maihallan, I avoided witches of any kind. We make each other...uncomfortable. Now I wondered if they could sense the Power in me, dammed up and swelling like sealed woundrot, when I had not been able to sense it myself.

  I found my voice with an effort. “Well enough, adai’sa. Thank you.” I found the proper formal inflection, I the lowly student and she a full-fledged Teacher. The cadence of G’mai was a thorny pleasure after so long with tradetongue and the slang, loan-words, and mess of every other language.

  “Good, good.” She paused, and the blush in her cheeks was not merely heat.

  Oh, Mother Moon. What now?

  “I must broach a delicate matter,” she said, formally, and she was still using the wrong inflection—as if I were an older agemate of hers, and due respect. “Will you give me leave to do so, Anjalismir Kaia?”

  “I can hardly stop you.” It sounded ill-tempered, and uttered in common besides.

  She kept to G’mai, and kept the inflection. “Your s’tarei...”

  I said nothing. Settled on the bathing-bench, wood instead of stone but quite serviceable. The heat would work inward, dispelling muscle aches. Were I alone, I would be contemplating a walk to the Bathai Temple, to see if Manil Kasoua was still among the flesh-kneaders there. She was an old woman, and half-blind, but her fingers were iron.

  And even if she was not still kneading the aches of those who visited the Antai god called the Mender of Ills, she was...friendly enough. Any kneader at the temple would have the latest news.

  So would Thanourt. He would no doubt dole out a serving of it with my meal, if I had any stomach left after this conversation.

  “Kaia...Has he displea
sed you?”

  The term she used was uncomfortably precise—k’din’jasa, the inflection lifting the second-to-last syllable, implying a well-deserved banishment from a refuge. The word for a s’tarei treading the edge of being outcaste.

  Bath-heat worked inward. My legs relaxed, the knotted muscles in my thighs finally loosening. “He is the one displeased.” I shut my eyes, my head finding a scallop in the rim of the tub. It held the back of my skull comfortably enough, and I let out an involuntary sigh. “I left him during a battle.”

  “Ah. Well.” She cleared her throat, a small uncomfortable sound. “We have been...there is disagreement. The prince says he should have killed the foreign witch instead of forcing his adai to such a measure. I have said the fault is mine, for not recognising the danger, and my s’tarei has been determined to take it upon himself, for not striking down a threat to the prince and the prince’s adai.” She sighed again, a long, drawn-out sound. Perhaps she had been waiting in this tub for too long. “I do not know, Anjalismir Kaia.” Unbearably formal, her inflection. “I simply wish...will you not speak to your s’tarei? And to the rest of us?” Now she switched to tradetongue, and her grasp of it was markedly improved. “Your silence, it is...cold.”

  “There was not time to speak.” It felt like a halt, lame imposter of an excuse, and it was. “There was only survival.”

  “Oh, aye.” Did she sound sarcastic, or merely weary? “We are not all made of your metal, Steelflower.” The inflection made them the name out of words for brittle metal and a starflower, those cold-loving early-blooming, brief splashes of color announcing winter’s hold was slipping but not broken.

  We are addicted to wordplay, we Children of the Moon, and I had not thought her quite so handy with it. It was not the first, or the last, time Gavridar Janaire surprised me.

  “Tis probably a good thing, Yada’Adais.” I half closed my eyes. A teacher of Power is much respected in G’maihallan, and even their insults are borne with grace. Though rare indeed was a Yada’Adais who stooped to insult.