The burglar of sliceharb.., p.16
The Burglar of Sliceharbor, page 16
part #4 of Edgewhen Series
Tisha took the helmet off and put it on her armor stand.
“And that’s why we keep him locked in the cellar,” she explained.
“But he’s not going to steal from us,” Sander said. “You weren’t planning to steal from us, were you, Ben?”
“I –” The skinny young man shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t even know.”
“But … you played with our kids,” Sander said. “We’re friends.”
Bendoko cried, “I don’t have friends!”
“Baby,” Vernda warned.
“I don’t have friends,” said Bendoko, quieter, but still angry. “People like you get to have friends. People like me just get … locked in the cellar.”
He stood up. “I’m sorry, Tisha. I didn’t mean to trick them, but I guess I did. I’ll go back.”
Sander wore an expression of incredulous horror. Horror at the idea that Bendoko might steal from them? Or horror at how Tisha had demolished the man?
Vernda’s face held remorse and pity.
Well, Tisha felt sorry for him, too. She wasn’t heartless. But really how could they –
How could they treat him like a person?
That was all they had done. They had let a nervous young man spend the evening with them and treated him like a person. And maybe he would have stolen their money. Maybe he would have stolen their things. But Tisha could have found him and gotten most of it back.
Vernda was right. He wasn’t dangerous. He was just a sad, worthless little man.
“Wait, Ben. I’m the one who needs to apologize here. Sit back down.”
“No, I think it would be better if –”
“Sit,” Tisha said.
Bendoko sat.
She sat down beside him.
“All right,” she admitted, “I was a little hard on you guys. I guess I’m still upset about what happened on the bridge today.”
Vernda reached across the table and put her hand on Tisha’s. “I think we all are.”
Tisha looked to Bendoko. “I’m sorry I humiliated you. That wasn’t necessary. I just wanted – Oh, never mind what I wanted. I’m sorry.”
Bendoko hunched his shoulders. “It made sense to me.”
“I knew Jodi wanted to keep playing with him when I locked him in tonight,” Tisha said. “And I should have guessed she’d find a way to talk you into letting him out. It’s just too much temptation for a three-year-old.”
“So we don’t have to keep him in the cellar anymore?” Sander asked. “I mean, if he promises not to steal anything?”
“Crane, would you lie to us?” Tisha asked.
“I don’t know,” Bendoko said miserably. “I don’t want to lie to you. But I don’t know.”
She smiled. “At least you’re honest.”
She patted his arm. Her hand was sticky from the evening’s heat, but he didn’t seem to mind.
She sighed. “Although frankly, I don’t know what to do with you. Captain Kosho just gave me and Gusty a mission that’s going to take us out of the city for a few days.”
“Is it dangerous?” Vernda asked.
“Will you miss your night off?” Sander asked.
Tisha looked at him. “Yeah, Sander. If I’m not in the city, then I won’t be home for my night off this week.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” Tisha said. “I like spending the evening with you guys. I guess this is my night off.”
“It’s been fun so far,” said Vernda.
“Yeah, well, anyway …” Tisha said.
“… what do we do with the criminal?” Bendoko finished.
“Yeah,” Tisha agreed. “I could be gone for a week. We can’t keep you locked in the cellar the whole time.”
“Right,” said Sander. “That’s where we keep the beer.”
Tisha chuckled. “Yeah, right. So if I’m going to trust you not to steal from my family, I’m going to need a better promise than ‘I don’t know’.”
“I’m good at making promises,” Bendoko said. “Just not good at keeping them.”
“Yeah,” said Tisha.
“I don’t suppose you’ve caught … those guys yet?”
“No,” Tisha said.
“Didn’t think so.”
She didn’t really want to throw him out, but she kind of had to. He had to see that, but he was going to make her say it.
“Look, I can’t let you stay here,” she said. “Otherwise, Vernda and Sander will start thinking we need another husband.”
No one laughed at her joke. Vernda and Sander didn’t meet her eyes. Oh no. They’d actually been thinking it. Bring a guy home for one day and – No. That was ridiculous. They didn’t really want him for a husband. Like Jodi, they were thinking of him as a house pet.
“I see,” Bendoko said. “Do I have to go now? Or can I stay one more night in the cellar?”
“You can stay one more night,” Tisha said. “But in the morning …”
“It’s back to the streets,” Bendoko said.
“Yeah. Unless you want to come to the jungle with me.”
“Really?” he asked. “You’d take me with you?”
“What? No, I was joking. It’s an Urban Cohort mission. Gusty and I are guarding this ambassador on her trip through the jungle.”
“Why does an ambassador want to go into the jungle?” Sander asked.
“I don’t know,” Tisha said. “Maybe she thinks she’ll find people who will go help in the Queenies’ war.”
“Does she need a jungle guide?” Bendoko asked.
“I don’t know,” Tisha said. “Why?”
“Because you could take me along as a jungle guide.”
“Do you know anything about the jungle?” Tisha asked.
“Sure,” the Crane said. “I’ve heard lots about it.”
“Yeah. ‘Heard lots.’ Well –”
“He could be your scout,” Sander said.
“My ‘scout’?” Tisha asked.
“He’s a burglar, right? Sneaky? Stealthy? Climby? He could go ahead and tell you where the danger is.”
Tisha laughed. “He doesn’t want to go ahead and look for danger. If he weren’t afraid of danger, he wouldn’t be staying here.”
“But you’ll take him if he wants to come?” Sander persisted.
Tisha shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”
He wouldn’t want to come.
Sander asked, “What do you say, Ben? Do you want to be Tisha’s scout?”
“Panthers, vipers, and alligators,” Tisha said.
“I don’t know,” Bendoko said. “It still sounds safer than going back to the streets.”
6 Yellowmonth
Matyu Gloria Sunrise, ambassador for the Reconciled Queendom of the Goddess of the Sun, stood in the middle of the dirt road and considered the skyline of Sliceharbor. On the left edge of the sunward horizon, an arc of bright sun was beginning to rise above the thatched roofs of the city.
Her assistant, Matyu Iris Daylight, paced the road like a chicken scratching for bugs. “Where is the native guide?” Iris asked. “She was supposed to be here by now.”
The other guide grunted. Matyu Gloria could not tell whether he was supporting, disputing, or just acknowledging Iris’s statement. Gusty Longbread was not very communicative.
Of course, men didn’t need to be communicative – not in general. Her bodyguards, Pious Rock and Clever Rock, rarely spoke at all. They were standing in silence now – arms folded, feet shoulder-width apart, faces hard-edged. She had ordered them to leave their weapons behind and pretend to be merely porters, but they did not look like bored laborers waiting for the day’s labor to begin. They looked like they were guarding the supplies.
Most of the supplies were food: loaves of bread, net-bags of citrus, small crates of dried apples and apricots, and two caged laying-ducks. The food was heaped on a litter which also held Gloria and Iris’s sea chests.
Iris had invited the guide to put any of his equipment on the litter, too, but it seemed he planned to wear it all. He wore a copper-finned helmet, an iron breastplate, a cane skirt, and cane shin-guards with iron knee-covers. He carried a stout wooden paddle that he gripped like a club. Apparently, he thought he was her bodyguard. Perhaps she could use that to her advantage.
Gusty Longbread was Aura Wisebrow’s man. Gloria had no doubt of that. Aura had not recommended her best guide; she had recommended her most loyal spy. The true guide was this native that they were still waiting for.
Gusty Longbread, with his club and his armor, was not even pretending to be a guide. This meant that Aura knew that Gloria knew Gusty was a spy.
Aura must have confidence in him. Gloria wanted to know this man who inspired such confidence. And then she would take his loyalty to Aura and make it her own.
* * *
Gusty Longbread saw Tisha before the sun cleared the horizon. She wasn’t really that late. The Queenies were just impatient because they had all arrived early.
Like Gusty, Tisha was in uniform. Sunlight glinted off her copper-finned helmet. Sunlight also glinted off the bald head of the skinny blue man beside her.
The Crane? Why had she brought the Crane?
The Rock brothers focused on Tisha, sizing her up. Yeah, those guys weren’t really porters. They acted too much like soldiers.
Gusty decided he was glad they were wary of Tisha. He wanted them to take her seriously. She looked too small to be a fighter, but she wore her weapons well.
Tisha approached smiling, with her hands nowhere near her weapons. She said, “Good morning, Ambassador Gloria. It’s good to see you again. I am Tisha of the Urban Cohort. We met at the Senatorial Palace.”
Ambassador Gloria Sunrise was a tall woman with elegant yellow skin and a proud, flat nose – traits common among the matyu caste in the Motherland. Her carrot-orange hair was oil-dressed and piled atop her head in a mound of elaborate curls decorated with nine jeweled combs surrounding her gold circlet. She looked down on Tisha with the full pride of the Sunrise dynasty and said, “I assure you, I have not forgotten.”
“You are late,” her assistant said.
Tisha kept her smile and looked to Gusty. He realized she expected him to complete the introductions.
“Ah, Tisha, this is Iris Daylight,” Gusty said. “And these are the Rock brothers, Pious and Clever.”
The ambassador’s assistant looked offended by these last words. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to introduce people from the laboring caste. Or maybe they didn’t count because they were men.
“And who is this?” the ambassador asked, looking down on the Crane.
He was dressed in the yellow sari that Tisha sometimes wore when she met Gusty for an off-duty visit to a pool house. It looked nice on the Crane, because it was a nice sari. And he still managed to look bedraggled in it, because he was a bedraggled little man.
Gusty said, “Ah, this is Bendoko the …”
“The guide,” the Crane finished. “Bendoko the guide.”
The ambassador looked at Gusty curiously. “I thought this Tisha was our native guide.”
“Gusty and I are the escort,” Tisha said. “And we can act as liaisons. But Bendoko will be our guide – or scout, if you prefer.”
“What use have we for a scout?” the ambassador asked.
“To watch for unstable ground,” Tisha said. “And to spot signs of predators. The jungle can be a dangerous place.”
So to make it less dangerous, you decided to bring a burglar? Gusty thought. “Glad you could make it,” Gusty said.
“Yeah,” said the Crane. “Me too.”
Gusty looked from one blue to the other. Oh well. He wasn’t going to get the story out of them while the Queenies were listening.
“I think we’re all here now,” Gusty said.
The ambassador’s assistant sniffed.
The ambassador just said, “Very well. Let us go.”
The Rock brothers knelt down on either end of the litter and hoisted the load. In addition to food, the ambassador and her assistant had brought two sea chests – one mahogany chest decorated with carved manatees, and one cedar chest decorated with gilt-painted seascapes that flashed in the morning sunlight. The litter’s wooden poles sagged with the weight, but the Rock brothers seemed to bear it effortlessly.
Iris Daylight looked to Gusty. He was expected to do something. Maybe take the lead?
“Ah,” Gusty said. “You can lead … Bendoko. Go on ahead and scout.”
“Right,” the Crane said. “Where are we going?”
* * *
“Where could they be going?” Senator Fanjei asked.
Hesho, his secretary, said, “I do not know. They apparently had food for several days.”
Fanjei had asked Hesho to keep track of the Reconciled Queendom’s ambassador. Ambassador Gloria had become quiet once the scroll was removed from her reach. Instead of storming into the Senatorial Palace demanding that it be found, she had stayed in the guest suite of the City Palace and consulted with Aura. The other senators attributed the ambassador’s silence to Aura’s diplomacy, but Fanjei suspected that Ambassador Gloria was working on a secondary plan.
“We need to find out what she’s doing,” Fanjei said.
Technically, the Republic’s inland territory was under the jurisdiction of the individual ports. Sliceharbor’s jungle belonged to Sliceharbor, and Fanjei’s navy couldn’t touch it. But technically, anything involving the Reconciled Queendom was “relations with a foreign power”, which was definitely a matter for the Republican Navy. In fact, since the Urban Cohort was confined to Sliceharbor and the jungle villages had no soldiers of their own, Fanjei could claim that involving the Navy was necessary.
“Hesho, please send a message to Captain Tu. Tell him I want the services of his best jungle tracker. Tell him I need someone quiet.”
* * *
The Moko River Road is broad and rutted in the vicinity of Sliceharbor. It curves between the orchards, fields, and timber stands that support the Lunaslip Republic’s largest city. The landscape is crisscrossed by canals designed to aid drainage into the river. Many of the fruit trees have been magically shaped into varieties that are more flood tolerant. In other words, the rural landscape outside Sliceharbor is as artificial as the city itself. But to a city dweller, any place without paving stones is wild jungle.
Gusty Longbread watched the Crane’s wary advance. The burglar expected a panther in every tree, and because they were passing through an orange grove, the panthers of his paranoia had many places to hide. But the Crane didn’t let his paranoia slow him down. In fact, his nervousness propelled him up the road, far ahead of the rest of the party.
Gusty had to admit that the Crane made a pretty good scout. He wasn’t a convincing scout. He wasn’t reassuring. But Gusty was certain that if there were trouble ahead, the Crane would find it long before they got there.
Gusty and Tisha strolled at their typical patrolling pace. The ambassador and her people followed along behind. The Queenies weren’t particularly friendly, but Gusty didn’t mind. As long as they stayed aloof, he and Tisha could talk privately.
“So why did you bring him?” he asked.
“Because I couldn’t leave him at my house,” she said.
“You could have told him to go back to the Shacks,” Gusty pointed out.
“I did,” Tisha said. “But he didn’t want to. You think the Too-Tall brothers have stopped looking for him?”
Gusty shrugged. He suspected the Too-Tall brothers had other things to do now. After the skirmish on Breadbaker Bridge, the sailors of the Republican Navy were probably in more danger than Bendoko was.
“Yeah, I don’t know either,” Tisha said. “So I told him that if he didn’t want to go home, he could come with us.”
Gusty grunted.
“So why are we visiting the Order of the Holy Shield?” Tisha asked.
Gusty said, “The ambassador wants to talk to the Holy Shield’s First.”
Tisha didn’t need to know that there might be a second Sun Scroll. At least, not yet.
“Oh,” Tisha said. “I thought there was some kind of trouble between the Holy Shield and the Queenies.”
“Yeah,” said Gusty. “That’s right.”
When Mogadwen invaded the Sun Island, the First of the Holy Shield had said that the Republic shouldn’t get involved – with the implication that the Queenies had it coming.
Tisha asked, “So the ambassador is trying to mend nets?”
Gusty grunted. He hoped Tisha would take that as a yes.
Maybe Aura Wisebrow had made a mistake by asking that Tisha come along. It wasn’t easy to keep things from her.
* * *
Later that morning, they reached the river for which the Moko River Road was named. Like the river, the road grew narrower as they progressed upstream. By midday, it was little more than a cart track. Farmers who lived this far from the city did not drive their carts to town very often. Barges were more efficient.
Villages were sparser here. Fields were hidden in forest clearings. A few fruit trees lined the road, but the travelers saw no more great orchards.
People were small here, and the jungle was thick. Now even Gusty was wondering where the panthers might be hiding. Branches hung high overhead, suspending clumps of jungle moss.
The forest kept the sun off their heads, but mosquitoes were thick in the shade. When the ambassador called a halt for the midday meal, Gusty suggested that Tisha and the Crane eat with the Rock brothers. The two men had a strong mosquito-repelling scent.
The ambassador’s assistant, Iris Daylight, went off to eat by herself. She obviously considered herself to be too important to eat with the others. Gusty thought guides and soldiers must be like porters – part of the laboring caste. Iris seemed offended that she was not allowed to sit with the ambassador. Or maybe she was offended because Gusty was allowed to sit with the ambassador.
Allowed? No. Gusty’s company was required. Technically, the ambassador had invited him, but Gusty did not think the invitation was refusable.
* * *
Gloria Sunrise sat on a picnic mat beside a wicker food basket finely woven by tiny native hands. Gusty Longbread, Aura’s spy, sat on the other side of the basket emitting a sharp scent to keep away the mosquitoes. The scent seemed to be working for him, but he lacked the skill to fully encloud them both. Gloria discreetly resonated with the scent so that it enclouded her as well.
