The good new stuff, p.34
The Good New Stuff, page 34
Yellow robe takes the knife handle and holds on to it, his face only a foot or so from Barok’s. I smell shit. Barok looks at him, his face slack with disbelief, and starts to blubber. Some men’s minds snap when they die.
“Who gets them for you?” yellow robe asks.
Arterial blood, dark and mixed with stomach blood, pumps out around the knife. Barok is silent. Maybe Barok is refusing to betray his niece, but I think the truth is that he has lost his wits. He has certainly voided his bowels. When yellow robe twists the knife, he screams, and then blubbers some more, his saliva not yet bloodied. He wants to go to his knees, but yellow robe has the knife handle, and Barok’s hung on that blade like meat on a hook.
Chalcey is crouched, wrapped in her veil. She edges backward away from the men, her hands behind her, scooting backward like a crab until she bumps into my legs and stifles a little scream.
Ferret turns to us. “What do you know?”
I shrug casually, or as casually as I can. “I was hired today; he wouldn’t tell me what he hired me for.”
He looks down at Chalcey. I say, “He hired her right after he hired me.”
Barok begins to say, over and over again, “Stop it, stop it, please stop it,” monotonously, his hands making little clutching motions at his belly, but afraid of the knife.
“Tell me your source,” yellow robe says.
Barok doesn’t seem to understand. “Stop it, please stop it,” he whimpers. Die, I think. Die before you say anything, you fat old man!
“Tok it,” ferret says. “You’ve ruined it.”
I whisper to Chalcey, “Scream and try to run up the stairs.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but doesn’t move.
Yellow robe shouts in Barok’s face, “Barok! Listen to me!” He slaps the dying man. “Who is your source? You want it to stop? Tell me your source!”
“Help me,” Barok whispers. There is blood in his mouth, now. The shadows from the lamps are hard, the big red-robed belly is in the light, and he is starting to spill flesh and bowels. The smell is overwhelming; one of the men turns and vomits, and adds that to the stench.
“Tell me where you get the charts, we’ll get you a healer,” yellow robe says. A lie, it’s too late for a healer. But a dying man has nothing to lose by believing a lie. His eyes flicker toward Chalcey. Does he even know what is happening, understand what they are demanding? He licks his lips as if about to speak. I can’t let him speak. So I whistle, five clear discordant notes, to waken one of the spells in my skull, the one that eats power, light and heat, and all the lights go out.
Black. Star-magic is easy to do, hard to engineer.
“TOK!” someone shouts in the dark, and Barok screams, a high, white noise. Things fall, I push Chalcey toward the stairs and grab my sword. I’m almost too frightened to move myself; maybe if it wasn’t for Chalcey, I wouldn’t, but sometimes responsibility lifts me above my true nature.
I collide with someone in the dark, slap at their face with my sword, and feel something hook in my jacket, tear at my shirt and the bindings I wear under it, then burn in my side. Then the person is gone. Ferret is screaming, “The stairs! Block the stairs!” when I fall over the bottom step.
The darkness only lasts a handful of heartbeats. It’s a whistler spell, better against real power like the Cousin’s lights than against natural things like a lamp, and it always makes me tired later. I turn at the stairs just as the lights come back. Blinded for a moment, I slap with my sword for the flame and knock it flying. Burning oil sprays across the room, I see blue robe cover his face, and, gods help him, poor Barok squirming on the floor.
The boat is tinder dry, and instantly the pools of oil from the lamp are full of licking blue flames. I run up the stairs. Chalcey is standing-not by the gangplank but next to the rail. My pack is there, and in the pack the cloak with the badge, and my chain vest and bracers—all I own in the world. I go for the girl and the pack, my shield arm clenched against my burning side. Ferret and the others will come boiling out of the hold like digger bees at any moment. I look down over the railing and see one of the sailboats, a soft Cousins’ light clipped to the mast, and, in the glow, a green-robed adolescent with a cleric’s shaven head, looking up at me. I grab Chalcey’s arm and shout, “Jump!” and we land on top of the poor bastard, Chalcey’s shrieking and my oomph! drowning the boy’s bleat of surprise. Chalcey tumbles, but I have aimed truer, breaking his arm and probably his collar bone, so that he lies stunned and wide-eyed. I pitch him out of the boat. He is struggling in the water as I shove us off. I hope to Heth he can swim; I can’t.
Our boat has a simple, single sail; it’s a pleasure boat rather than a real fisherman’s boat, but it will have to do. I run the sail up awkwardly. The wind will drive us downriver, toward the harbor. I don’t see the boats of the others.
There is no pursuit. I think that ferret and the others have cut across the gangplank rather than make for the sailboats. I crouch next to the tiller and gingerly explore my injury with my fingers, a long flat scrape that crossed the ribs before the shirt and bindings and jacket hung it up. It bleeds freely, but it’s not deep.
Chalcey curls in the prow of the boat, looking back toward her uncle’s boat. The fire must have eaten the wood in huge bites. When we reach the bridge, I look back and see that the boat has been cut away and floats free in the river, burning bright and pouring out black, oily smoke. Two sailboats skitter away like dragonflies, silhouettes against the flames. Then we are enveloped in black smoke and ash which hides the boat from us, and hides us from everyone else.
Coughing and hacking, and, Heth forgive me, spitting, I keep us in the smoke as long as I can.
When we are almost out of the harbor, Chalcey asks, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I wish we had one of your charts.”
It’s a clear night, we have a brisk breeze and no moon yet. A good night to escape. I follow the coast, away from the city. On the shore, dogs bark at us, and to each other, distant and lonely. The sound chains along the coast as we sail.
“Was that magic?” Chalcey says.
“Was what magic,” I say absently. I’m tired and not feeling well; it is painful to cough and spit ash and soot when your side is cut open.
“When it got dark. When you whistled.”
I nod in the darkness, then realize she can’t see it. “Yes, that was a little magic.”
“Are you a mage?”
Do I look like a mage? Would I be living this way if I could smelt metal, and make starstuff in bright colors, and machines and lights? “No, littleheart,” I say, talking sweet because my thoughts are not nearly so patient, “I’m just a whistler. A fighter with no money and only a little skill.”
“Do you think they’ll get a healer for my uncle?”
No answer to give but the truth. “Chalcey, your uncle is dead.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then she starts to cry. It’s chilly, and she’s tired and frightened. It doesn’t hurt her to cry. Maybe I cry a little, too; it wouldn’t be the first time.
We bob along, the waves going chop, chop, chop against the prow of the little boat. Dogs bark, to us and to each other. Along our left, the lights from the city are fewer and fewer, the houses darker and smaller. It smells like broom trees out here, not city. In the wake of our little sailboat, craken phosphoresce. I wonder, since their light is blue, why is craken dye yellow?
Chalcey speaks out of the dark, “Could we go to my grandmother?”
“I don’t know, sweet, where is your grandmother?”
“Across the Liliana Strait. On Lesian.”
“If I knew where it was, I could try, even without a chart, but I’m a foreigner, littleheart.”
“I can draw a chart. I drew those charts.”
She sounds like a little girl. I smile tiredly into the darkness. “But I don’t have anything for you to copy.”
“I don’t need to copy,” she says. “They’re in my head. If I have drawn a chart, even once, I never forget it. That’s why my Uncle Barok brought me to the Order to go to school. But we’ve only practiced with Hekkhare and now Liliana Strait.”
“So you drew those charts from your head?” I ask.
“Of course.” She tosses her hair, her veil around her shoulders, and I can see her against the sky, just for the moment the imperious and sly girl who tried to impress the northern barbarian. “Everybody thinks that the charts are safe, all the paper and everything is spellbound. But I don’t carry any papers or anything; it’s all in my head.”
“Chalcey,” I breathe. “Can you draw one?”
“We don’t have any paper, and it’s dark.”
“We’ll land in a few hours and get some sleep. Then you can use my knife and draw it on the bottom of the boat.”
“On the bottom of the boat?” She is diffident.
But I’m elated. Two people hiding from the rest of the island, in a small sailboat not meant for the open sea, going on a young girl’s memory of a chart. But it’s better than Barok’s choices.
We have a fair breeze, the little sailboat is quiet except for the slap of the sail. The water is close, right at my hand. Chalcey says she’s cold. I tell her to dig my cloak out of my pack and see if she can get some sleep.
I think she sleeps awhile. I keep pushing us on, thinking to go a little farther before we rest, passing places to pull the boat up, until I see the line of gray that means dawn and take us into a stream that cuts down to the ocean.
“Chalcey,” I say, “when the boat stops, jump out and pull.”
We come aground, and I try to stand up, and nearly fall over. My legs are numb from crouching, and my side has stiffened in the night.
“What’s wrong?” Chalcey says, holding the prow to get out.
“Nothing,” I say, “be careful when you get out of the boat.”
The cold water is up to my waist and makes me gasp, but at the prow, Chalcey is in water only to her shins. I grit my teeth and push, sliding against the uneven bottom, and she pulls, and together we get the boat well aground. I lash it to a tree, the tide is still coming in and I don’t want to lose it, and then I grab my pack and stumble up the bank.
I should check the area, but I ache and I’m exhausted, so tired. I’m a little dizzy, so I promise myself I’ll only rest for a minute. I prop my head against the pack and close my eyes. The world swirls … .
Some tokking hero, I think, and then laugh. That’s one quality to which I have never aspired.
We’re in heavy trees, tall pale yellow fronds of broom trees, heavily tasseled at this time of year. I’m covered with chukka bites, and the cut in my side is hot; I can feel my pulse beating in it.
There’s no sign of Chalcey.
I lever myself painfully up on my elbow and listen. Nothing. Could she have wandered off and gotten lost?
“Chalcey,” I hiss.
No answer.
“Chalcey!” I say, louder.
“Here!” comes a voice from over the bank, and then her head pops up, floating above the soft lemon brush as if it had been plopped on a bush. Maybe I’m feverish.
“Are you in the water?” I ask.
“No,” she says, “I’m in the boat. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Jahn,” I say.
“I took your knife, but you didn’t wake up. Are you—” she hesitates, wide-eyed, and my heart lurches, “I mean, is your hurt bad?”
“No,” I say, attempting to sit up naturally and failing.
“I drew a chart in the bottom of the boat, and then I used mud to make the lines darker.” She shakes her head, “Drawing with a knife isn’t the same as drawing with a pen.”
She comes up on the bank, and we breakfast on boxfruit and red peanuts out of my pack. Breakfast and water improve my spirits immensely. I check Chalcey’s drawing. She clenches her hands nervously while I look at it. As soon as a wave puts a little water in the bottom of the boat, the mud will wash out of the lines, and I have no way of judging how accurate it might be anyway, but I tell her it looks wonderful.
To hide her pleasure, she turns her head and spits matter-of-factly into the stream. I wince, but don’t say anything.
We have nothing to store water in.
“How far is it to Lesian?” I ask.
She thinks it’s about two days. “Jahn,” she says, self-conscious about my name, “where did you learn your magic?”
“One of the Cousins put copper and glass in the bones of my head,” I say. Not exactly true, but close enough.
That silences questions for awhile.
We get some good drinks of water and relieve ourselves, and maybe she prays to her deities, I don’t know. Then we raise our pineapple-green sail, and we are off.
She chatters awhile about school. I like listening to her chatter. When it gets hot at midday, I have her spread my cloak across the prow and crawl into the shade underneath it. I stay with the tiller and wish for a hat. I’ve been browned by the sun, but the light off the green water is blinding and bright, and my nose suffers.
She sleeps during the heat of the day, and I nod. We are headed for a promontory which marks where we cut across the strait. In the afternoon, we have some bruised boxfruit out of my pack, which helps our thirst a bit. The way west is suddenly blocked by a spit of land; if Chalcey’s drawing can be trusted, that’s our promontory. Chalcey’s chart indicates that it’s not good to go ashore here, otherwise I’d stop for fresh water. We head for open sea, and I pray that the breeze holds up. I’m stiff, and tacking accurately all the way across is probably beyond my navigational skills.
I’m thirsty; Chalcey must be, too. She doesn’t complain, but she gets quiet. The farther we go into the strait, the smaller the land behind us gets; the smaller the land, the quieter she gets. Once I ask her what the crossing was like when she came to live with her uncle. “It was a big boat,” is all she’ll say.
I’m light-headed from sun and thirst and fever by the time evening comes, and the cool is a relief. The sun goes down with the sudden swiftness of the south. I dig the pigeon’s egg dumplings out of my pack, but they’re too salty and just make me thirstier. Chalcey is hungry, though, and eats hers and half of mine.
“Jahn?” she says.
“Yes?”
“The Cousins—why do they call them that?”
“Because we are all kin,” I say. “It is like in my home, when a place gets too big, and there isn’t enough land to let all the stabos graze, part of the kin go somewhere else, and start a new home. Our many times elders were the Cousins. The stars are like islands for them. Some came here to live, but there was a war and the ships no longer came, and our elders’ ships grew too old, and we forgot about the Cousins except for stories. Now they have found us again.”
“And they help us?” she asks.
“Not really,” I say. “They help the high-ons, mostly.”
“What are ‘high-ons’?” she asks. Southern doesn’t have a word for high-ons, so I always just use the two southern words.
“High-ons, the old men who run things and have silver. Or the guilds, they are like high-ons.”
“Were you a high-on?” she asks.
I laugh, which hurts my side. “No, littleheart,” I say. “I am the unlucky child of unlucky parents. They believed that some of the Cousins would help us, would teach us. But the high-ons, they don’t like it if anyone else has strength. So they sent an army and killed my kin. Things were better before the Cousins came.”
“The Order says that the Cousins are good; they bring gifts.”
“We pay for those gifts,” I say. “With craken dye and ore and land. And with our own ways. Anywhere the Cousins come, things get bad.”
It gets darker. Chalcey wraps herself in my cloak, and I hunch over the tiller. It isn’t that the boat needs much sailing; there’s a light wind and the sea is blessedly calm (someone seems to favor us, despite our attack on the green-robed boy to get this boat), but the boat is too small for me to go anywhere else, so I sit at the tiller.
The spray keeps the back of my left shoulder damp, and the breeze seems to leach the warmth out of me. My teeth start chattering.
“Chalcey?”
“What?” she murmurs sleepily from the prow.
“I am feeling a bit under, littleheart. Do you think you could sit with me and we could share the cloak?”
I can feel her hesitation in the dark. She’s afraid of me, and that pains me. It’s funny, too, considering. “I don’t want anything other than warmth,” I say gently.
She feels her way slowly from the prow. “It’s your cloak,” she says, “you can have it if you want.”
“I think we can share it,” I say. “Sit next to me, the tiller will be between us, and you can lean against me and sleep.”
Gingerly, she sits down next to me, the boat rocking gently with her movements, and throws the cloak around our shoulders. She touches my arm on the tiller and jerks back. “You’re hot,” she says. Then she surprises me by touching my forehead. “You have a fever!”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, oddly embarrassed. “Just sit here.” She curls against me, and, after a few minutes, she leans her head on my shoulder. Her hair smells sweet. It’s soothing to have her there. I try to keep the constellation southerners call the Crown to my right.
“How old are you?” she asks.
“Thirty-one,” I say.
“That’s not so old.”
I laugh.
“Well,” she is defensive, “you have white hair, but your face isn’t old.”
Sometimes I feel very old, and never more than now.
I jerk awake from scattered dreams of being back on Barok’s boat. It’s dawn. Chalcey. stirs against my shoulder and settles again. I think about the sea, about our journey. Celestial navigation is not my strong point; I hope we haven’t drifted too much. I hope that Chalcey’s chart is good, and I wonder how much Barok will get paid for a boat with a chart carved on it, even if the chart isn’t very good, but blue flames lick the chart, and I’m on Barok’s boat again … .
