Black Spice (Book 3) (3 page)

After
leaving King Tonah’s house, Ellec and Lerica argued all the way back to the
ship.  In the end, Ellec said, “You cannot ignore my captain’s authority just
because you’re my niece.  I order you to stay here.”

“Then
I resign as your second mate,” Lerica said.

“And
forfeit all your shares of the profit?”  Ellec smirked a little.  He had her on
that one.

“If
I must,” she returned easily.  “But I
am
going with them.”

“You
can’t protect him,” Ellec said, glancing at Kyric.  “And he can’t protect you.”

“That’s
not true, but it isn’t why I’m going.”

“Why
then?”

She
made her hands into claws.  “I don’t have to explain myself!”

Ellec
turned to Aiyan.  “If you are my friend you will tell her that she cannot go.”

Lerica
stepped between them.  “That won’t stop me.  He has no more say over what I do
than you, uncle.  If he will not take me, I’ll follow anyway.”

Aiyan
shrugged at Ellec.  “I could cut her leg off.”

Kyric
fought to hold back a laugh.  Ellec and Lerica weren’t smiling at all.

“Well,”
Ellec said, still angry.  “I guess you’re a grown-up now.  It’s about time.” 
Then he stormed off to his cabin.

Aiyan
followed him.  Lerica had work to do.  So Kyric slipped out of his armor and
decided to go for a walk out on the headland.  He wanted to see if Ubtarune was
still sitting there staring out to sea.  As the rocky ground rose before him,
he was struck by the fullness of the ocean wind.  It had to be even worse out
there at the top of those poles.

Below
him, on the shore of the inlet, an enormous flat-topped boulder jutted into the
sea, and there stood Prince Mahai, swinging his war club through the air with his
full strength.  Kyric watched him for a while, then picked his way down to him,
making sure to do so noisily.

Mahai
looked up.

“I
wouldn’t have thought you could be so graceful with a weapon like that,” Kyric
said.

“You
have to be strong.  And even then it isn’t easy.  I would prefer to use a spear
— it’s a more elegant weapon — but when you belong to a noble Onakai family you
must learn to use the war club.  It is the symbol of our authority.”

“I’ve
heard the spearmen of the various clans referred to as either hunters or
warriors.  What is the difference?”

Mahai
laid his club on one shoulder.  “Outside the Onakai nation, there is no
difference.  They all own spears and shields and know how to use them.  But
among the Onakai, resolving conflict is part of our religion.  Training for war
is our national pastime.  That is why Soth Garo attacked us first, before his
power or intentions were known, and it is why the attack was so vicious.  Had
we assembled our full force, they never could have defeated us.

“Many,
many generations ago, we were part of the Hariji nation.  My family trained the
elite warriors of the clan.  As they approached excellence, our fighting
masters discovered a new martial spirit.  They developed a code of honor.  They
sought to defeat themselves rather than others.  The shark spirit befriended us
because we are always moving, always seeking.  And in any fight, we will go
straight at our enemy.”

“You’re
beginning to sound like Aiyan.”

Mahai
thought for a moment.  “I sense the master warrior in him.  King Tonah affords
him great respect considering how short a time you’ve been here.”

“I
think the king knows more than he ever gives away.”

Mahai
nodded.  “You are correct.  King Tonah often feigns ignorance.  It’s too bad
that it is real sometimes.”

“Is
it?”

“I
don’t mean as a king.  I was just thinking of Caleem, that‘s all.”

“What
happened?”

“Caleem
wasn’t a good kid.  I don’t mean that he was mischievous and often in trouble,
the way I was.  I mean that he was weak and shameful.  He was afraid of rough
play.  He was afraid of doing new things.  He would try to buy my friendship
and then cheat when we played games together.  When his family came to visit,
he would always find a way to avoid going on the shark hunt.  When he was older
and learning to fight, he would only spar with those who were less skilled. 
Things like that.  So his father’s solution was to make him act like a man when
he was still a child.”

“I’ll
guess that it didn’t do him any good.”

“We all had problems as kids.  We all
worked them out sooner or later.  Caleem just wasn’t allowed enough time.  He’s
better now, at last.  He’s become a good fighter and he has a strong sense of
duty.  The king acknowledges this grudgingly, but he thinks the boy who was
afraid is still hiding inside his son.”

They
didn’t meet Prince Caleem until they were ready to set out the next morning. 
He stood taller than his father, his frame wiry, and his hair was short and
bristly.  His face ran black and purple with bruises, like he had taken a blow
from a war club.  If Ilara’s song had healed him, it had done so only on the
inside.

His
armor looked like something that the Baskillians would use for gladiatorial
combat: a heavy leather skirt with iron studs, a breastplate of bamboo and
cloth, and a set of bronze vambraces that went nearly to his elbow.  He left
his shield behind and carried a short, heavy spear like the Bantuans used.  King
Tonah made the introductions, and then off they went without much of a chance
to get acquainted.  But one thing had been clear.  Caleem had shamed himself in
his father’s eyes, and this expedition was his chance to regain some of his
lost honor.  Kyric wondered if Tonah would have been happier had his son died
with the others.

Kyric
and Lerica walked side by side as they passed the outskirts of Tiah, heading
south.  Prince Caleem was right behind them.  The road felt smooth and firm
beneath their feet.  It was no more than a pair of tracks for oxcarts, but it
looked well used.  Horses were a legend on the island, and oxen were the only
beasts of burden, so the Mokkalans usually walked when they went inland. 
Mantua, the central town of the Manutu, served as a natural hub for the roads
that connected all the major villages of Mokkala, and they were going there
first.

“Soth
Garo will have planted spies there by now,” Aiyan said.

“How
so?” said Mahai.

Aiyan
glanced at Nakoa, Mahai’s companion, and he fell a few steps behind to join the
others.

“They
will be your own people — captured after the battle and tortured until they
agreed to drink his black blood.”

Mahai
walked in silence for a time, then said, “I know a path around the village.”

Aiyan
shook his head.  “We have to go there.  I have to find out what the Manutu know
about his movements.”

The
coastal plain spread north and east from Tiah, and when they crossed the stream
to the south they soon came to a rolling country of scattered shrubs and tall
broadleaf trees, many of the trees branching to form almost perfect domes above
their massive trunks.  The grass grew short, even here at the end of their
springtime.  After Terrula, thought Kyric, it seemed rather tame.

He
turned to Lerica.  “Gods, it’s like a landlord’s park back home.”

“Thank
you,” she said, “for not trying to make me stay back there.”

He
smiled and squeezed her hand.  He would have given anything for her not to come
along.  This was going to be dangerous and he didn’t need the distraction of
looking out for her.  But he wasn’t going to tell her that.

They
stopped under a
Ko
tree for the midday showers.  The rains never lasted
long.  The ground would be dry by nightfall.  Lerica passed around some dried
mango, and Kyric took the biggest slice.  He never thought he had a sweet tooth
until he came to Mokkala.

Aiyan
looked Prince Caleem right in the eyes and asked, “Did you ever see him, this Soth
Garo?”

Caleem
chewed for a moment.  “I apologize.  I thought that my father told you of the
fight with the Hariji.”

“It
was a very brief account.  He was still grieving for his lost friends.”

Aiyan’s
gaze didn’t waver.  I hope you can see something, thought Kyric, because this
isn’t drawing him out, it’s driving him deeper in.

“
I
saw him,” Mahai said, “but he was behind the battle line and I couldn’t get to
him.”

“That’s
probably fortunate,” Kyric said.

“Tell
me about him,” Aiyan said.

Mahai
took a swig from his water skin.  “He was tall as me and looked stronger.  He
didn’t have armor, only straps for his weapons, and I could see his face and
his skin.  It was the same as the skin that walks, and he trailed the same mist
as it did.  Our best bowmen tried to kill him, but their arrows glanced off his
demon skin.  One arrow struck him square in the chest and simply snapped.”

Aiyan
nodded as he listened, as if this were no great concern, but later he took
Kyric aside and said, “Tell me that there is a tale of this walking skin in the
Eddur.”

Kyric
shook his head.  “Not that I remember.”

Aiyan
pulled on his lower lip.  “I don’t like the way Caleem avoided my question. 
Keep an eye on him, talk to him, but don’t try to trick him into lying.  Just ask
him about the other nations and spices and things like that.  Maybe something
will slip through.”

“Alright,”
Kyric said, “but he may have only ran and hid.  He’s clearly the nervous type. 
Mahai told me that when they were kids Caleem was a coward, so he might not be
guilty of anything more than that.”

They
walked until the sun hung low in the west, Aiyan pushing the pace, trees and
tall shrubs growing more dense as they went.  According to Mahai, the nights
were always clear and warm this time of year, and camping consisted of merely
finding a soft piece of ground.

Kyric
learned quite a bit from talking to Prince Caleem.  The Manutu and the Bantuan
lived in the interior of the island.  The Bantuan shunned the ocean completely and
didn’t build boats at all.  The Silasese on the other hand lived on the coast,
only going inland to collect cassia, a spice something like cinnamon.  They
were supposedly great sailors, building huge ocean-going outriggers.  Their
clan totem was the whale.

Kyric
suddenly tingled with a weird feeling.  The new figure he was carving had begun
to take shape yesterday.  He felt sure that it was going to be a whale.

Unlike
the Onakai who sometimes hunt sharks, explained Caleem, the Silasese would
never take a whale.  When whales came into their bays, the Silasese befriended
them, sending their older children, ones who were still innocent, out in canoes
to sing the whale songs.

“If
the Baskillians haven’t been here for so long,” Kyric said, “how is it that
most of you speak their language?”

“We
have had a couple of ships come in recent years, including one from your
homeland last summer, but we learn Baskillian so that we can speak to each
other.  Each of our nations has its own tongue.  To my ear, the Bantuans sound
like they’re barking, and the Manutu only chatter.  The Hariji grunt through their
noses when they talk.  And Silasese speech sounds like they’re talking through
a conch shell.”

Kyric
laughed.  “That can’t be how they really sound.  Those are just the sounds of
their clan totems.”

Nakoa
chuckled a little and Caleem looked at the ground with a big grin on his face.

“Okay,
I get it,” Kyric said, “you’re having fun with the foreign guy.”

“Maybe
so,” Caleem said.  “But the truth of it is that the Onakai tongue is much like
my own, yet their words are nonsense to me.”

When
they found a good place to spend the night, Mahai drew a wide circle around a
sandy patch of soil.  “We have to keep the sleeping area small,” he said. 
“Don’t want to waste cloves.”

He
and Caleem opened the spice pouches they always carried on their belts, and
began sprinkling crushed cloves along the line he had drawn.  The sharp scent
spread through the camp.

“Keeps
snakes away,” he said.  “Otherwise they come and curl up with you.”

Of
course,” Kyric said.  “There had to be something.  I suppose these snakes are poisonous.”

“Yes,”
Caleem said, “very.”

So
they all slept within the circle, close together, Kyric and Lerica back to back,
their hips snugly fitted into a low spot.  Sometime after midnight Mahai began
to snore.  It was a full lung, epic snore.  We don’t need the cloves, Kyric
thought — no snake would come near that sound.

Aiyan
had them up and going at the first hint of light.  The morning was cool, and
loud with bird calls.  They wolfed down some Tialuccan rice cakes and started
out before the sun was up.  Kyric walked with Caleem again at the end of line
where he always placed himself.

“The
weapons you Aessians carry are astounding,” said Caleem.  “Bows twice as long
as we can make.  And your — what did you call it? — wheel-lock pistol?  Will
you be able to kill the white warrior with it?”