This Forsaken Earth (10 page)

They strolled away from the sea, to where Ganesh Ka’s ruins were strewn in cyclopean walls and arches about the feet of the soaring towers. On the forested slopes above them, work-parties were trudging uphill to the logging camps in the depths of the trees. Charcoal was created there in vast earthen kilns, to provide smokeless heat for the inhabitants of the city below. Faint over the wind, there came the hollow clanking of goat-bells, a dog barking.

“Even before our recent reverses, she was thinking of you,” Canker said at last. “I have watched over her these last several years, and have seen the strain that bends her.”

“Ambition will do that.”

“Indeed. It does strange things to people. And hers is the highest ambition of all. She can afford to trust no one, and this has made her task almost insupportable. Phidon did not fall through battle and siege, but through treachery. Bar Asfal is suborning our generals with bribes and titles and amnesties.”

“Artimion has always thought you will win, in the end.”

“Artimion has a mind as sharp as a pine-needle, but he is not on the spot—he has not seen what I have. We are losing; and if we lose, Rowen’s life will be forfeit.”

Rol smiled, but there was bitterness in his voice. “Queen or corpse, is that it?”

“You know her, Rol. She could do nothing else.”

“Oh, I knew her, Canker. Once. What is she to me now?”

“Your sister. The woman you loved—the woman I see that you love still.”

Rol’s breath sucked in sharply. When he exhaled again the words rushed out with it. “It was—it is—a thing of sickness, this love. I’d be better off without it. My soul would be that much the cleaner.”

“We cannot choose who or what we care for. Your feelings for your sister do not rank that high in the list of this world’s perversions. Believe me, I know.”

Rol collected himself. His voice hardened. “Those feelings were not enough for her eight years ago. She holds me cheap if she thinks she can play upon them now.”

Canker laid a hand on Rol’s arm, halting him in his tracks. “She is tired, Rol, and she’s surrounded by traitors and fools and greedy men. I would not have her end her days on an impaler’s stake.”

“So she has set her charms about you, too, eh, Canker?”

The Thief-King frowned, and looked away.

“If you want my help, you’ll have to be a damn sight more honest than this. Maybe I do still love her, but what of it? I am not some starstruck boy anymore, ready to uproot my life for the snap of her fingers.”

“If I thought you were, I would not be here,” Canker said with some asperity. “Do you have no interest in the world beyond this half-baked little kingdom of yours? You have a ship, yes, but you could command whole fleets. What are you here but some floating brigand, living from one day’s plunder to the next? The blood that is in you deserves better.”

“The blood that is in me. I wonder, Canker, has Rowen told you the whole story of our shared parentage? We came out of the same womb, that’s true; but Psellos told us before he died that we had different sires. Your mistress is indeed the Lost Heir of Bionar, but my father was not hers. He was someone else entirely. Did she tell you that?”

Canker blinked, taken aback.

“So don’t prate to me of blood. My mother was a witch out of the Goliad, my father someone known only to the gods. I have no stake in the future of Bionar, and no wish to marshal fleets and fight for the destiny of nations. All I have ever really wanted, I have.”

“All except Rowen,” Canker said, collecting himself.

“A man must learn to live with his disappointments, or else he is not much of a man.”

“And what manner of man are you anyway, Cortishane? Did you see the looks on the faces of your friends last night, when the other thing came blazing out of your eyes? They wonder now what kind of creature they are sharing their precious little pirate camp with. Your welcome here is wearing thin, I fear.”

“No thinner than yours.” But Canker’s gibe had hit home. “You were not surprised by it, were you? Not completely.”

“They have a library in Myconn, the greatest in the world, it’s said. Rowen has had scholars working for us there, in the Turmian, ferreting out secrets and lore, anything that might aid our cause. They have dug up quite a few bones, my boy.”

“Explain.”

“No. Rowen will tell you herself.”

Rol laughed. “Gods in heaven, is that the sweetest you can make your pill? Psellos did the same, as I recall, dangling knowledge before me like it was a carrot for an ass.”

“Laugh if you will,” Canker said, smiling himself now. “But would you not like to know what is happening to you? These rages, the transformations, the visions of another world beyond our own…”

Rol turned to seize him, but the Thief-King was out of his reach, darting away like a dragonfly. “Well, now, have I touched a nerve?”

“I’ll kill you,” Rol choked.

“Aha, the starstruck boy is back. Use your head, Cortishane. Do you think you can sit here forever and play at being a pirate, while the world burns down around you? People are looking for you; it just so happens I found you first. If you do not come with me by choice, sooner or later you will be forced to go somewhere against your will.”

“Lies.”

“No, simple truth. It is not just the Bionese who are looking for this Hidden City of yours—there are a hundred ships scouring the Reach alone. Stay here and you are doomed.”

“And your old friend Artimion—have you told him this?”

“No. I care not a damn for Artimion, or any of these other vagabonds. The truth is, I was sent here for you, pure and plain. Whatever you say about your father, or lack of one, I know that you and Rowen are connected, and together you will decide the fate of this continent. Now put aside your distrust, your anger. Come with me to the Imperial City. Face Rowen again. She needs you. She loves you yet, Cortishane, I know it. I swear it.”

If Canker was not being honest now, then his dissembling had been raised to the level of art. Rol found that he had no other words to say. He walked past the Thief-King blindly, his feet picking their way between the stones, guided by the comforting rush of the sea.

On first coming to Ganesh Ka, Rol had laid claim to a series of rooms high up in one of the city’s weird towers, close to the tunnel that led down to the docks. It was a stark eyrie, hewn out of solid rock, but he had softened its austere lines somewhat with the pickings of piracy, gathered over the course of a dozen cruises. When ashore, he was singularly indifferent to his surroundings, but when he had had occasion to bring a girl or two up here, they had one and all complained about the bare stone, the wind that hissed through the window-slits. So he had furnished the place, after a fashion. It had chairs and a table, hewn out of wood so fresh the resin still oozed out of them. There were bright rugs on the floor, woven in Aringia or Tukelar and brought out of the holds of captured merchantmen. An ancient, exquisite bronze lamp in the shape of a dancing girl with an enigmatic smile, and a rope-bottomed bed to support his mattress.

Creed had lit the fire again. He lived next door, Gallico close by. The three of them ate together most evenings, much as they did at sea, and when they were gathered about the sticky table, the fire blazing and the girl of the lamp smiling her thousand-year-old smile, it seemed to Rol that he had found a home at last, and two men he would gladly have claimed as his brothers. For that reason alone, Ganesh Ka was worth fighting for.

“There’s a nip in the air,” Elias Creed said, entering without ceremony and dumping an armful of wood on the floor.

“You soak up heat like a lizard, Elias,” Rol told him. He was sat in an elbow chair, scanning a list of provisions which the city quartermasters had grudgingly deigned to part with. Canker’s words were still running through his head, as insistent and annoying as a half-remembered song.

“Aye, well, we’re not all cold-blooded as frogs. Gallico got himself a haunch of venison off one of the hillmen, and is roasting it down in the square. Will you eat there, or have it brought up?”

Rol raised his head and looked round at the room, tawny with firelight. “I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll have him bring it up, then. Some of the good wine too…How’s your face?”

Rol touched his mouth. “Still bearing the mark of Gallico’s knuckles, I fear.”

“You saw Canker this morning?”

“Yes. He does love to talk.”

Creed hesitated. He seemed about to comment, then shrugged. “Well, if you want to come down to the square tonight, there’s many would be glad to see your face, knuckle-marks or no.”

“You think so, Elias?”

“Aye. And most of them are prettier than me.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

It was in many ways the heart of the Ka, the square—or so they called it. It was a place to gather around the cooking fires and talk over the day’s labor with friends and acquaintances. It was never empty, often crowded, and the woodsmoke that hung under its cavernous roof was a permanent fixture. The smoke smarted the eyes and soaked into clothing, and everything they ate was tainted with it. Rol found a place at one of the fires, people making way for him, nodding, staring. The
Revenant
’s captain was seldom seen here, except when drunk and looking for some nocturnal companionship. But he was stone-sober now, and withdrawn, and was handed venison and a wooden mug of birch-beer without comment. He sat cross-legged on the stone floor to enjoy them.

Easy to lose oneself here, in the close-packed crowds about the fires. The gabble of a hundred conversations and arguments, the leaping shadows, the jostling bodies; they were a fine curtain of anonymity to sit behind. Rol wiped grease from his lips, wincing at the scab there, and listened to the people milling around him as they talked through the minutiae of their lives. A more tattered, patched, and filthy crowd it would be hard to imagine, but under the grime there were people of all stations in life, from scholars to cutthroats, and they rubbed along surprisingly well with one another. There was a little recreational thievery, but no violence. In many ways, women, in particular, were safer here than walking the streets of Urbonetto, or Myconn itself. Another of the Ka’s peculiarities. Was it unique, or could it be duplicated elsewhere?

“I’ll have a sup of that beer, Captain, if you’re to do nothing but stare into it,” a voice said beside him.

He looked up. “You’re welcome to it, Esmer.”

The woman took a seat beside him, close enough for her elbow to nudge his ribs. She was a pretty thing, past the first flush of youth, with black hair and eyes to match. As she took the beer from Rol her shawl slipped to reveal a Kassic slave-brand on her left shoulder. He had kissed that brand in the past, and supposed he might well do so again. Esmer and he understood each other, in many ways.

“A short cruise, but profitable, I hear,” she said.

“We picked up a slaver.”

“Yes.” Her jawline tightened. “What of its crew?”

“Threw them overboard.”

She leaned into him, a smile lighting her face. “So? Then you have made the world a little better.”

“With what, murder?”

“Justice.”

Rol nuzzled her hair. It was musky as a cat’s fur, and full of woodsmoke. “It’s a fine line between them, Esmer.”

She cupped his face. “Lonely tonight, my captain?” And she looked up at him with the firelight burning in her black eyes. Rol leaned and kissed her on the lips.

“Always lonely, Esmer. You know me.”

In the morning he pulled back the deerskins from the windows and let the sunlight slot through them in long bars of honeyed warmth. Esmer stretched in the bed, her white limbs stark against the furs. “Can’t you keep the morning out for a while longer?”

Rol kissed her absently. “I have things to do, ships to attend to.”

“You and your ships,” Esmer drawled. “The only woman men like you ever take to wife is that bitch widowmaker Ussa.”

Rol walked downhill, a corkscrew progress into bowels of stone, the searching rays of the sun cut off. The
Revenant
was in the dry-dock where he had first encountered her almost a year before, propped up by a maze of timber frames and baulks, her topmasts lying on the quay amid a welter of stores and cordage and all manner of naval supplies. A mere abandoned carcass she had been back then; now she was aswarm with life. Working on her were most of the artisans that the Ka possessed: shipwrights, blacksmiths, caulkers, riggers, sailmakers; they swarmed over the Black Ship’s hull like maggots taking apart a corpse.

Elias Creed stood on the quay consulting lists of work-rotas and supplies, and having a shouted argument with Gallico, who was invisible somewhere under the bulk of the
Revenant
’s hull.

“How goes it, Elias?”

“More heat than light, but we’re getting there. Kier has replaced half a dozen of her bottom timbers, and a couple of her transom planks which had been battered loose.” Creed had something of a smirk on his face. “You slept late?”

“I had a busy night. How long before she’s ready for sea?”

“Have you a piece of string?”

“Answer me, damn it.”

Elias raised an eyebrow, looking closely at his captain. “Kier thinks another three days of fine work.”

“What kind of fine work?”

“Well, he has yet to glaze the stern-windows, and there’s the headrails to look at.”

“That’s just prettying nonsense. Tell him to make her ready for sea and forget the other bullshit. Now, what of the
Astraros
?”

“She’s still none too sweet-smelling, but we’ve ripped out the slave-deck and repainted her below. You said you wanted her foremast converted to square-rigged—”

“Forget about that too. Get those nine-pounders into her and rustle me up a crew. I want her ready to sail within a week.”

“What’s the sudden hurry, Rol? We only just got in.”

“We must put back out to sea, Elias, as soon as we can. Now, see to it. And tell Gallico he’s going to be master of the
Astraros
whether he likes it or not. She needs an experienced skipper, not some half-baked merchant pilot. That’s an order—these are all orders.”