Sandstorm (23 page)

The Almraiven of the WeavePasha’s imagination, though, the shining exemplar of human achievement that was the end of the wizard’s grand ambitions, and which, on more than one occasion Corvus had assured him was an absolute impossibility, was an Almraiven free of djinni influence.

The aspect of Almraivenar life that most closely resembled life in the genasi Emirates of the deeper desert, and which was most
unlike
the other greatest human cities, was the simple fact of slavery.

Corvus understood that slaves toiled and died in every city of the Realms, but few of those cities, indeed, were places where the practice was deemed legal, much less acceptable, as was the case in Almraiven. Even rarer were those places that
celebrated
the practice, as was the case in Calimport and its client cities, and in far Memnon and the other places where the efreet and the southern firesouled held sway.

Slavery was an undeniable fact of life in the City of Spells, and should the WeavePasha’s plans ever bear fruit, at some distant and unlikely point, it was the fact of life that would have the greatest impact on the city in its changing.

Slaves fed the city and clothed it. Slaves fished its waters and cleaned its streets and, in an aspect that mystified visitors from elsewhere, slaves even guarded the city as the backbone of its militia. Slaves even filled out the lowest ranks of the city watch.

The WeavePasha made much of the fact that Almraiven, alone of the Skyfire Emirates, was a
human
city. But Corvus believed that for those who lived as slaves, the difference between being in a city ruled by humans and a city ruled by genasi was not that great.

Corvus could not imagine Almraiven without slaves. He thought it likely that the WeavePasha, a man known to have bested a Duke of Hell in single combat, would see his reign ended not because he provoked the ire of enemies without, but because he held a radical opinion that his subjects within would never tolerate.

“Almraiven without slaves,” Corvus mused again, this time whispering. There were none in the fetid alleyway to hear the revolutionary idea. Through the gloom, Corvus could just make out the trench dug at the base of a sagging brick wall that was no doubt older than some gods. A familiar, foul smell floated up from the trench, confirming for the kenku that he had not forgotten the way. Steps were cut into the jumble of old stones that lay beneath the streetscape, remnants of past Almraivens.

A thin line of light appeared below, as a poorly hung door was forced open long enough for a figure to dump a bucket of something mostly liquid at the bottom of the steps.

Corvus put thoughts of the WeavePasha’s mad dreams out of mind. No slaves in Almraiven—who would drink at T’Emma’s?

T’Emma was a gnoll who had managed the minor miracle of growing to adulthood as a runt among those fierce, jackal-headed folk. Corvus had never met a more foul-tempered or sharp-tongued woman. Neither had he ever seen her anywhere but lounging behind the length of a broken ship’s mast that served as her bar. How the mast was brought to the dugout basement tavern was a minor mystery compared to how such a tavern, owned by a gnoll and serving a clientele of slaves, came into existence in the first place. But exist it did, and it had for thirty years that Corvus could bear witness to.

The gnoll woman did not acknowledge him even after he laid his heavy purse on the stained wood. As usual, she was interested in speaking only to herself.

“There’s that kenku again. He’ll want to know things that are none of his business. He’ll have a lot of coin.”

Corvus said, “I seek word of any agents of the djinn of Calimport in the city.”

“He didn’t even order a drink,” said the taverner. “Every time, he just starts right in like he don’t know he has to order a drink.”

“Yes,” said Corvus. “He always puts it off as long as possible, because he knows that once he orders it, he’ll also be expected to drink it.” He waved a hand at the barrel behind T’Emma.

“Look at that beak,” she said, setting down the cup. “Look at them funny eyes.”

Corvus said, “Look who’s talking,” and threw back the drink.

If anything, the brew was a little better than he remembered. His vision seemed unaffected by the first draft.

“Agents of Calimport,” he said again, “in the city.”

“There he goes. It’s like he gets something caught back in that beak and just has to worry at it and worry at it until it goes down. Or comes back up.”

“And as you said,” Corvus continued, “I have a lot of coin.”

T’Emma bared her fangs, their dingy brown revealing the inadequacies of her diet. She did not intend the gesture to show ferocity. T’Emma revealed her ferocity through her words. “I remember one time I took his gold, then sent him down the wrong alley in Caravan Ward.”

Corvus ran a talon along a wide scar on his shoulder, hidden beneath feathers and leather. “I remember that time, too. It’s how I can tell when rain is coming.”

“That time, he gave out that he meant to rob a man bringing girls down from the Banites in the Ithal Pass. But he was just looking to kill one of the girls.”

Corvus signaled for another drink. “She wasn’t a girl; she was a forty-year-old adept of the Redeemer’s Guild, secreted in the coffles by the Banites and disguised by their rituals to appeal to the tastes of a client of mine. It was his coin you took, by the way.”

“Priests start fighting, the wise go to ground. But there was that big beak, poking in. Lots of priests died around that time. Ugly deaths for ugly men.”

Cephas drank, and the old familiar haze misted up in his peripheral vision. “I didn’t get paid, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Banites stopped running girls down the pass, at least. ’Cause of them Janessar picking up their raids out of the Alimir Mountains.”

This was what had taken Corvus years to puzzle out. The slave population of Almraiven lived under a somewhat lighter yoke than many others. They had enough freedom of movement that they formed communities.
They managed to keep familial relations active even when kin were sold apart, and they maintained a culture coherent enough to support a shadow economy—an economy where the coins were struck from information, not the Weave Pasha’s gold.

The chief exports were rumors, the principal trading partners were the Janessar abolitionists who attacked the slave trade all over the South, and the high minister of trade was a runt of a gnoll woman who never left a dugout dockside tavern.

T’Emma was the principal agent of the Janessar within Almraiven. He realized this when he noticed that her self-directed growls only aided his activities when the deaths of slavers were involved, or, usually coincidentally, the possibility of escape for slaves. She was an invaluable source of information, when it served her cause.

Or could be made to believe it would.

“These agents seek a man under my protection. A man I’ve brought to the WeavePasha.”

The taverner’s laugh sent Corvus back to terrifying night runs across the plains of his youth, the desperate efforts to avoid hunting packs unleashed by his teachers. When her barking changed to a cough and the cough yielded a yellow bolus spit on the bar, T’Emma said, “Oh, listen at him talk. Fine friends in high places he’s got.”

Corvus turned his cup upside down over the woman’s spittle. He slid his purse next to it. “The WeavePasha believes this man to be the son of Marod el Arhapan.”

“That’s an evil mouth. Naming such names in the company of a lady.”

“He wishes to shape this man into a blade, and set it against the throat of the master of games.”

“Thinks a person is something to be honed and used up and thrown away.” There was a shift in the gnoll’s timbre,
and Corvus realized with a start that, for once, T’Emma really
was
talking only to herself. “That’s what they all think.”

Corvus tapped his claw on the bar next to the leather pouch. “If there are agents of Calimport in the city, they will learn of this man and warn their master. They will kill him, and the Games will go on.”

“Listen to him. Like he thinks the Games would cease with a splash of el Arhapan blood. Like he knows who any masters are.”

Corvus wondered if he should try another tack. Usually, she would have sent him on his way by this point, whether she offered hindrance or aid. She reached out with her grizzled paw and swept the pouch beneath the bar.

“He probably thinks those firesouled Akanûlans serve only one master. As if
he
ever did.”

Corvus knew better than to thank her. He left without another word.

Corvus hurried across the city, cursing himself for having discounted Ariella’s mention of members of the Firestorm Cabal in Almraiven as unimportant.

These firesouled—efreeti-kin, some called them—must have some unlikely connection with the djinn-dominated Emirate of Calimport. The genasi of the South were almost universally declared for either Air
or
Fire, carrying on a war begun on another world so long ago that the immortals who waged it had forgotten its origins. Calim and Memnon, founders of the cities that still bore their names, blasted the lands they found on Faerûn down to rubble, then blasted the rubble down to sand.

Only the so-called high magic of the elves put a temporary halt to the devastating war. The elves imprisoned
the djinni and efreeti nobles in a pretty crystal and told themselves it would last forever—this, in a world where even the gods didn’t believe in eternity.

Above, according to the priests, the gods donned new masks or traded old ones, reshuffling their pecking order like understudies in a mummers troupe on a night when the star takes ill. Below, according to the historians, the common folk of the Realms did the only thing they could, the only thing they ever did. They dealt with the consequences as best as they were able.

One consequence came in the deep desert of Calimshan, in a place called the Teshyllal Wastes: the breaking of a crystal. Whether the Spellplague was the means of that shattering or it simply presented the opportunity for some unknown force, Calim and Memnon made the only use of their newfound freedom their alien minds could imagine. As they had seven thousand years before—and as some believed they
always
had—they made war.

Corvus read once that in the final years of the last human caliphate of Calimport, the city’s population approached two million people. The historian could only estimate, of course, because the Calimien kept slaves, but they did not count them.

Corvus had never visited Calimport, but neither was he the only spy in the South. The governments of the Sword Coast generally agreed that the current population of the windsouled-held city was around sixty thousand.

In the scant decades of the renewed conflict, of the Second Era of Skyfire, or Calim’s Second Rule, or Memnon’s Blessed Return, or whatever name was used, well over twenty-five times that number perished in one city alone. Calimport had been the largest city the natural world had ever seen. Now, it must be the most haunted.

Corvus considered all this as he made his way back to the WeavePasha’s palace. Allies of the Memnonar, the faction that counted that unimaginable loss of life as a victory, were now spying on behalf of Calimport’s rulers?

The kenku clicked his tongue. Well, that was it, wasn’t it? These northern genasi from Akanûl considered their cousins in the Emirates to be barbarians. The Akanûlans kept no slaves and divided the rulership of the nation, even though their people, like the genasi of Calimport, were mostly windsouled. Indeed, many Akanûlans were mutable, shifting from manifestation to manifestation, something considered abhorrent by the bloodline-obsessed followers of Calim and Memnon.

Thinking of T’Emma’s last words, he could only guess that the motivations of these cabalists must be as tangled as his own.