The burglar of sliceharb.., p.18
The Burglar of Sliceharbor, page 18
part #4 of Edgewhen Series
The spider descended, swinging on its silken thread, dropping a thumbwidth with every bouncing step. It was halfway down when Iris turned to speak over her shoulder, whipping the spider through the air.
“I believe he is lost,” Iris said.
“Our native guide?” Gloria asked.
“He is no guide,” Iris said. “He acts like an urban child on his first trip into the jungle.”
“True,” Gloria agreed. “But he convinced Gusty Longbread and the native girl that he knows where to go.”
“We have not seen a village since he led us off the road,” Iris said. “He could be leading us to a gang of kidnappers.”
“First you say he is lost, and now you say he is deliberately leading us astray.”
“I do not trust him.”
“Very well,” Gloria said.
“He is misaligned. Did you notice?”
“I noticed he is aligned with Nature, yes.”
“How can we trust a man who has rejected the deities?”
“We do not have to trust him,” Gloria said. “But we do have to follow him. He is the one who claims to know the way. Perhaps the nature spirits are guiding him.”
“I do not trust the nature spirits, either.”
Gloria let Iris have the last word in hopes that it would placate her.
She had lost track of the spider.
No. There it was.
The yellow spider had abandoned its thread and was now crawling down Iris’s back, heading for the waistband of her loincloth.
Would it climb over or try to duck inside?
Gloria found herself hoping for the latter.
* * *
Tisha tromped up the jungle trail, taking long strides so she wouldn’t slow the oranges down. Even with long strides, she wasn’t gaining ground on Bendoko. He was moving fast, and he was no longer looking back.
Close behind her, Gusty asked, “Do you think he’s lost?”
“You think he’s moving fast because he’s hoping the next bend will prove he’s been going the right way?”
“Yeah,” Gusty said.
“All right,” Tisha said. “So what do we do, Gus?”
Gusty made a grunt that meant he didn’t know.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell the ambassador that we’re lost,” Tisha said. “I don’t think she trusts us ‘natives’ much.”
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t have much reason to,” Gusty said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing,” Gusty said.
“No, Gus. Tell me what’s wrong. Why can’t she trust me?”
“It’s not you, Tisha. It’s the Senate. She came here looking for a way to help her people, and the Senate has given her nothing.”
“The Senate is supposed to look out for the Republic, Gus. It’s not there to bail out the Queenies if they get themselves on rough seas.”
“So you think it’s all the Queenies’ fault?” Gusty asked.
The Queenies had invaded the mainland. And now the Mogadrel were punishing them for it. And maybe the punishment was harsh, but it wasn’t any worse than what the Queenies had tried to do in Mogadwen.
Had Gusty forgotten that?
She asked, “What do you think, Gus?”
“I think people are dying over there,” he said. “I don’t blame the ambassador for wanting to end the war.”
“Are the Queenies trying to end the war or win the war?”
“Both, Tisha. They don’t want to give up land to the Mogadrel.”
“And you think that justifies opening the Sun Scroll?”
“I don’t know,” Gusty said. “No one knows what’s written there.”
“Because the Goddess of the Sun told us not to read it.”
“She told us not to read it. But she gave the words to the Sunrise line. They are matyus.”
“That doesn’t make them exceptions to divine law.”
“That’s not for us to decide!” Gusty said. “Matyus have direct contact with the deities. Deciding questions of divine law is their job! But now a blue senator has taken divine law into his own hands and stolen the scroll away! And that’s why we can’t trust … the Crane.”
Oh.
Tisha wanted to believe that her partner had not been about to say that he couldn’t trust her. Maybe they disagreed about this one thing, but that didn’t mean –
Actually, yeah, it did. This wasn’t a little thing. For Gusty, this was a big thing. And because she was blue, he couldn’t trust her.
But he hadn’t said it. So they could pretend he hadn’t meant it.
“I’ll go check on him, then,” Tisha said.
She jogged ahead, trying to put some distance between herself and the oranges.
* * *
Bendoko hurried along the trail, hoping to find a sign around the next bend.
All right, maybe the next one, then.
He scanned the tree trunks on either side, even checking the undergrowth in case the mark had been placed too low for him to see it easily. But he found no marks.
This had to be the right trail, though. He’d seen the “ruined temple” mark on the doorpost of that house on the village square. That meant he was supposed to leave the main road and follow the road that went past that house, right? That was the code, right?
The code was invented by Big Zeemo. Knowing its secrets was one of the benefits of giving your soul to him. In the city, criminals left signs on houses to pass on important messages: Don’t mess with this house – a judge lives here. This house is under protection of Big Zeemo. You can lie low here, if you can afford the rent. This house has nothing of value.
Bendoko had left this last message more than once.
In the jungle, the code was supposed to tell you where to go. Bendoko had been following signs marking the route to the ruined temple, but he hadn’t seen one since turning down this path.
Maybe he’d read the mark wrong. Maybe it had meant, “You’re on the right track,” instead of, “Now turn here.” Or maybe it hadn’t been left by Big Zeemo’s people at all. Maybe some kids had seen the mark on a tree somewhere and copied it on the doorpost of their house one day when they were bored.
Maybe Bendoko was lost.
Maybe he could fake his way out of it.
Panting and the clacking of a cane skirt caused him to turn around. Tisha was jogging toward him.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Smooth,” Bendoko said. “It’s going smooth.”
“So you know where we are?”
“Yeah,” Bendoko said. We’re in the middle of the jungle, he thought.
She gestured to indicate they should keep moving. Bendoko did so. She walked behind him, armor clacking, weapon scabbards creaking as they swung on her belt.
“How long till we get there, do you think?”
“Oh … I’d say about …” Bendoko pretended to check the sky. Any heavenly body that could have told him the time was completely obscured by junglemoss-covered pine boughs. “About another lithic,” he decided.
That was safe. If he said two lithics, then the Queenies might want to make camp here. Bendoko did not want to spend the night in the jungle. The cellar hadn’t been that great, but at least he hadn’t worried about panthers.
“All right,” Tisha said. She sounded sad.
“But it might be sooner,” Bendoko said.
She didn’t reply. Nor did she fall back to walk with Gusty.
Bendoko glanced over his shoulder.
She met his gaze with somber eyes. Yeah, she was sad about something.
“Look, I’m pretty sure we’ll get there,” he said.
“All right, Ben. I trust you.”
“Really?”
A pause. “Well, no. Not really. But until you admit you made a wrong turn back at that village, I’ll keep following you.”
“I don’t know,” Bendoko said. “It seemed like the right way at the time.”
“I bet you say that a lot.”
Bendoko thought about it. “Yeah. Maybe I do.”
* * *
Gusty Longbread walked along the jungle trail, wading through ferns and ducking low-hanging branches. He was supposed to be staying alert for any dangers that might be concealed in the vegetation, but he was distracted by what Tisha had asked him: Would it be right to end the war by opening the Sun Scroll?
Aura Wisebrow wanted him to claim the second Sun Scroll for Sliceharbor. She didn’t think it was right for the Queenies to open it. But Aura Wisebrow thought like a blue. You had to, to be successful in politics.
The navel oranges said that urbies thought like blues, too. Maybe they were right. Gusty didn’t know anymore which thoughts were his and which thoughts were blue thoughts that had been put in his mind by the Urban Cohort. It was simplest to follow orders and not think at all.
Someone shrieked on the path ahead.
Gusty froze.
It wasn’t Tisha shrieking, though. It was the Crane.
“Kill it!” the Crane shouted. “Kill it!”
Gusty broke into a run. He held his club in one hand. With his free hand, he pushed aside branches that got in his way. He caught up to the blues at the marshy shore of a shady lake.
“It went in there,” the Crane said, pointing to a hollow log lying among the rushes.
Tisha was standing with her hands on her knees, peering at the log dubiously.
“I think it was just a garden snake,” she said.
“It could be a viper!” the Crane said.
“Well, maybe,” Tisha said. “But it’s gone now.”
She looked up. “Hi, Gus.”
Gusty grunted a greeting.
Tisha said, “I think you were a little too loud, Ben. You made Gusty run.”
“It jumped at me!” the Crane said.
“It jumped at you?” Tisha asked.
“Yeah. Or, at least, it jumped.”
“I jumped, too,” Tisha said, “when you started screaming.”
“Yeah. Well.”
“I’d better go tell the ambassador’s bodyguards they can stand down,” Tisha said.
Gusty thought that was a good idea. The Rock brothers wouldn’t be keen on all the screaming. Pretending that the Crane was a competent jungle guide was going to be real hard now.
Except …
“Hey,” said Gusty. “You found it.”
“Found what?” the Crane asked.
He looked where Gusty was looking.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I guess I did find it.”
Beyond the trees on the opposite shore of the lake was the greathouse of the Order of the Holy Shield.
* * *
The Order of the Holy Shield had boats. They were large, flat-bottomed dories designed specifically for carrying Children of the Sun across the swampy lake.
The Republican Navy’s jungle tracker arrived at the edge of the lake just in time to see the ambassador and her companions disembarking on the opposite shore. Monks of the Holy Shield were greeting them.
So now he knew where she would be staying the night. Was this visit the reason for her journey, or would she be traveling again the next morning?
He waited until everyone had left the docks. Then he slipped quietly into the water.
* * *
Gloria Sunrise thought the Holy Shield’s greathouse was rustic. The vegetable gardens grew close to the walls, as though huddling around the building for protection against the jungle. The fruit trees were pruned, but that did not make them ornamental.
However, the building itself was heavily decorated with wood carvings representing various aspects of the deities. Here was a string of coins representing Wealth. There was a sword representing Lith. The carvings were well done, although they seemed somewhat primitive because they were unpainted.
Sun motifs appeared often on the greathouse’s facade, and always in places of high distinction, but the most common carvings were two-panel scenes depicting acts of justice: a thief stealing money and a judge requiring restitution; a healer stooping to help an injured man and then receiving new sandals as a reward; a dragon threatening a village and then being speared by a monk of the Holy Shield.
Matyu Gloria’s order, the Noonday Sun, also served all the deities, but they understood that the highest honor must always go to Mother Sun. The Holy Shield, in their centuries of service on the mainland, had been forced to make concessions to the customs of the natives.
The interior of the greathouse was as dark as the jungle. Fish-oil lamps burned in lamp nooks, illuminating the carvings that decorated the support posts. The interior theme was dangers of the jungle: panthers, alligators, vipers, and the dragons that the Order of the Holy Shield had finally eradicated after centuries of hunting. The order claimed to serve Heaven, but their concerns were so worldly.
Of course, Gloria’s own concerns were worldly, too, now. She realized this as she spoke with Stormrain, the Holy Shield’s First. They did not discuss spiritual matters. They talked only about the war.
“I’m sorry we can’t be more help to you,” Stormrain said, after Gloria had told her everything she knew about the battles that had been lost and the territory that had been seized. “The Holy Shield must be aloof from politics.”
Gloria nearly choked on the irony. The Holy Shield had remained on the mainland only because of their deep involvement in the Sliceharbor Insurrection. If they had not chosen the rebels’ side so forcefully, they would have been expelled from the mainland just like the Blessed Order of the Noonday Sun. In fact, if they had not betrayed the Queen’s forces, the Insurrection would most likely have failed and no one would have been expelled at all.
As a matyu of the Noonday Sun, Gloria knew well these events, though they had happened ten dozen years before. But this was not a time to renew historical quarrels. Only the oldest people remembered the Insurrection first hand, and they had been children at the time.
“I did not come here to beg for political help,” Gloria said. “I just wanted to ask directions.”
The corner of Stormrain’s mouth twisted in a grin. “Directions?” she asked.
“I wish to visit the Temple of the Noonday Sun,” Gloria said. “My grandmother told me that it was near your greathouse.” At least, geographically.
Stormrain’s eyes widened, and she nodded. “Ah. So that is why you came in on the back trail.”
“Was that the back trail?”
“It’s mostly used by blues. They don’t mind swimming across the swamp.” Again her mouth twisted. “But in Imperial times, it was a cart road to your order’s temple.”
That was interesting. The skinny native guide had seemed surprised to find a lake between them and the greathouse. Gloria suspected he’d been leading them on second-hand directions. Did he know that following the trail onward would take them to the Temple of the Noonday Sun?
Perhaps she could have asked to be taken there directly. Then she would not have had to reveal anything to this order of traitors.
But no. This way was better. This way she could leave the two natives behind in the village that supported the greathouse.
And Longbread’s son? Should she leave him here, too?
No, she decided. If she left Gusty behind, his obligation to Aura Wisebrow would require him to interfere. But if she took him along, then she could make him part of her expedition.
By showing him trust, she would make him her ally. She was a diplomat; recruiting allies was her job.
As Gloria laid these plans, Stormrain continued speaking of local geography and geology – facts that Gloria felt free to ignore now that she knew the way to the Temple of the Noonday Sun. Until:
“Excuse me, Stormrain. Could you repeat that?”
“I said that if your order’s architect had hired spelunkers, she would have realized that your temple was built on unstable ground.”
“How unstable?” Gloria asked.
“Thirty years ago, most of the building collapsed into a sinkhole.”
7 Yellowmonth
The next morning, Gusty Longbread got his first glimpse of the ruined Temple of the Noonday Sun.
Tisha and the Crane had been left behind, so Gusty was in the lead as the ambassador’s expedition reached the edge of the clearing. Except it wasn’t truly a clearing. The thick jungle was open to the blue sky not because someone had harvested the timber but because the ground had given way beneath it.
The earth had collapsed, creating a lake in a market-sized hole surrounded by jagged, white limestone cliffs. Trees clung to the edge with roots reaching down to the water fifteen feet below. The lake’s surface was placid, reflecting the cliffs and the blue sky above, but Gusty could not see into the depths. One part of the jagged cliff-face was interrupted by a hole at the waterline that gave the impression that a great maw had opened to drink the lake.
On the opposite side stood a wall of the temple. The view through the windows was not a glimpse into the interior; it was a glimpse out, to the jungle beyond. Gusty was looking at the inside of the back wall.
The rest of the temple had crumbled away. Chunks of tiled floor tilted on the edge of the sinkhole. Below was a trail of rubble leading down into the dark water.
Iris Daylight came to stand beside Gusty. She stared at the ruins in horror.
“This is worse than what the First described,” she said. “Much worse.”
“She said she hasn’t visited this site for many years,” the ambassador replied. “I had hoped more of the temple would be intact.”
The two porters also arrived at the edge of the gaping hole, but said nothing. They carried the digging tools that the ambassador had purchased from the village by the greathouse, but they were not prepared to excavate an underwater heap of rubble.
“It is gone,” Iris Daylight said. “It is just … gone.”
Gloria Sunrise looked at Gusty. “Not necessarily,” she said.
“Was Ruby Sunrise’s cell in the part that is left standing?” asked Iris Daylight.
“No,” said Gloria Sunrise. “Her cell had a sunward window.”
“So it is gone,” Iris Daylight said.
“I believe it is still down there,” Gloria Sunrise said. “And Gusty can swim.”
