They were trying to kill him with contrasts, Goth thought as he stepped from the palace into the garden. A breeze fresh from the invisible sea stirred his clothing, still musty with sweat. Above him the birds were warbling promises they could never keep, and the trees rustled as if they were not, like everything else here, prisoners.
They had sent him straight from their Hospital of Justice to regain his peace of mind in a garden. He had been in the clean, sunlit hospital for ten minutes before he had realized that the gleaming instruments set out on white linen were not made for mending bodies, but for rending them. The cultivated Inning doctor who toured him around never used the word “torture.” He called it “correctional science.”
“It is a far more efficient and rational method of criminal justice than incarceration,” the doctor said. “It is more effective as a deterrent, it operates faster, and it is far less costly. Lock a man up for ten years and he comes out as incorrigible as before. But a month here will break even the most defiant and courageous criminal, and make him abject and compliant. Pain has a remarkable transformative power. We have refined our methods to work efficiently on the mind, for that’s the point, isn’t it? Anyone can break a body. We want to modify the man.”
Goth was not timid when it came to pain; he had known too much of it. Other people’s pain, mostly. It had had a sanctity in his life, coming to him as it had in the intimate embrace of dhota. But here in Tornabay, it had lost its purity. It was not an act of love, but of control.
“Why are you showing me this?” Goth had asked.
“You will have to consult Commodore Joffrey,” the doctor had said politely. “He asked me to give you the tour; that’s all I know.”
As the shady gravel path unfolded before him, Goth reflected that there were only two things they could want from him: to anoint a new Ison of the Isles, or not to. If the object were to prevent him, then threats served no purpose.
The problem was, they also served no purpose if the object were to gain his support.
What his captors evidently didn’t know was that he was already in pain—the unending heart-pain of separation from his bandhotai. The Innings had already sliced away great parts of him, as sure as if they had used a razor. There was an aching pit inside him, where severed bonds hung dangling. In that cavity the universe was empty, a grey waste fit only for kindling.
He forced himself to walk on. The garden was placed in an angle where the palace walls met the sheer side of Mount Embo, so that on one side the gnarled black rock of an old lava flow formed the only wall, rising nearly vertical for forty feet. Down the cliff’s knotted side a small mountain spring tumbled into a moss-edged pool. Goth sat on the bank and splashed some water on his hot face. A few yellow poplar leaves were drifting on the pool.
It was very beautiful, he thought, trying to keep his mind balanced away from thoughts he could not control. And yet the beauty was deliberate—as if the garden had been placed in the fortress just to create a mocking illusion of freedom. When he saw that the ivy climbed hopefully up the wall to the iron spikes set at the top, he shook his head at its useless optimism. It would never escape.
At first he did not notice the bottle bobbing in the water by his hand. When he saw it, he took it up with suspicion, for there was a message in it. He unfolded the scrap of paper, holding it well away from him. It was printed in a large, childlike hand. It said:
Heir of Gilgen, be of good heart. Your people know that Tiarch holds you. Believe in us, and we will make you free.
He frowned, angry and frustrated. Evidently, some mad patriots had once more rallied against the rule of Inning, and now in their foolish zeal they had managed to compromise him with an incriminating letter. His first instinct was to shred it and scatter it on the water; but as he was about to act, a sound made him stop, certain he was watched. Not a movement stirred the holly bushes around him; a squirrel browsed nearby, oblivious of human presence.
It occurred to Goth then that the letter might be just one more contrivance of his captors—a test. How, after all, could rebels penetrate Tiarch’s citadel to leave a message in a garden where Goth had never been before this moment, and where only the governor’s staff could have known he was likely to be?
Putting the note in one of the tiny ornamental pockets of his Inning waistcoat, he rose to pace. Soon he heard again the sound that had startled him; it came from another part of the garden. He passed through an arbour and came to a place where the air was perfumed with herbs that grew in little terraces against the frowning mountain. In one of the plots a middle-aged woman was working with a trowel, planting seedlings in the black soil. She looked up for a moment on hearing his step, then turned back to her task. Goth stood and watched her, ridiculously pleased to see an ordinary person performing an ordinary task.
At length the gardener finished the row she was working on and sat back on her heels to survey her visitor. Her grey hair was tied back in a red scarf. Her high cheekbones and broad mouth revealed her Torna origins.
“Have some tea,” she said in a voice that was both rough and pleasant.
Going to where she pointed, Goth took a hot teapot swathed in cloth from the lunch pail she had set under a bush. He poured the steaming liquid into a small pottery cup, tasted it, and nodded. The heat soothed the ache inside him.
“You like it?” the gardener asked, reaching out a knotted, mud-caked hand to take a taste. “It’s a blend of four mints I mixed myself. They all came from this garden. The star mint here, rose mint here, the ruffled mint in the plot behind you, and white mint over by the wall.” She sounded as if she were introducing him to friends.
“It looks like a mess, but all the plants are grouped so they will help one another grow,” she explained. “One plant will attract the butterflies, while another keeps off the aphids. This plant enriches the soil with foods that plant takes away. I have been working for twenty years to balance them perfectly. The secret is variety. Always I need a greater variety to create a plot that will sustain itself.”
“What are they used for?”
The gardener rose, brushing dirt off her skirt. “Some are used in the kitchens. Others are for medicines. Some are never used. Those, for instance.” She gestured to a nearby terrace. “They are mostly poisons, some of the deadliest native to the isles.”
“If they are never used, why do you raise them?” Goth asked.
She shrugged noncommittally. “Many poisons have medicinal properties. It’s all in the dosage, whether they cure or kill. This one is the only import.” She paused by a waxen-leaved plant that had been covered against the cold of night. “In Rothur, where it grows wild, they call it achra, or delight. There they eat the root whole for the feeling of pleasure it gives. But the Innings have found a way of distilling the elements of the root, and creating a substance so strong that people who have tasted it can never again rest with ordinary pleasures. They say achra gives each person his heart’s desire, for a time.”
Goth said nothing.
“Everything else here is native,” the gardener said. “Seeds and bulbs and grafts have been brought from every corner of every Chain. Here representatives from all the isles live and bloom in peace. How unlike the real world, eh?” She gave him a wry and knowing smile.
“Perhaps someday the people will learn from the plants,” Goth replied.
“Not in your lifetime or mine.”
It was the voice of an actress, Goth decided. It had a harsh, throaty quality that made it arresting even when she spoke the softest. For some reason—he could not tell why—Goth liked this chance companion. She did not have the cold officiousness of the Innings, or the wiliness of the servants of Tiarch. On an impulse he took the piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to her.
“What do you think of this?” he asked.
Her face grew very grave as she read it. At last she handed it back to him. “Where did you get it?”
“In a bottle in the pool over there,” he said. “Is it genuine, do you think?”
“Oh yes, it’s genuine enough.” She had an air of resignation. “How they smuggled it in here, I can’t say. There may be a spy on the staff.”
“Who sent it?”
Instead of answering, she strolled on down the path to where a big, gnarled boulder jutted out of the grass. She settled down on its sun-baked back and regarded him sharply, her black eyes glittering with a thousand thoughts.
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “A band of zealots hiding somewhere in the city, I suppose. You had better tell Commodore Joffrey.”
Goth was silent. Somehow, he had expected a more compassionate, less official answer from her. She read his emotions with the skill of a fortune-teller.
“Disappointed?” she said roughly.
Her tone provoked him to honesty despite his better judgment. “You answer like a minion of Tiarch’s.”
“That’s not surprising,” she said, “considering that I am Tiarch.”
For a moment he thought she was joking; but the set of her jaw convinced him otherwise. He struggled with confusion then, unwilling to believe he was at last facing the Innings’ viceroy in the isles, the politician who had ridden Inning power to dominion.
“Surprised?” she demanded. “What did you expect me to be like?”
Goth’s long years among the Adaina had left him unskilled at navigating with words. He did not have the agility to come about into this wind. So he drew his dignity about him and was silent.
“You,” said Tiarch, “are exactly as I expected: a man concealing his heritage under rustic ways, using age as a veil to hide his strength. It’s so, isn’t it?”
“I have nothing to hide from you,” he murmured.
“I am glad to hear that. If it’s true, you are the only person in Tornabay who can say as much. They all have something to hide from me. Even my ‘minions.’ Especially my minions. But that is the way with rulers, isn’t it?” She looked to him for confirmation.
“I don’t know,” Goth said. “I have never been a ruler.”
“Would you like to try?” she gave a wry, sandpaper chuckle. “I’ll give you my kingdom for a day.”
“You could not bribe me to take it.”
“Wise man. So you think I’ve been unjust in bringing you here?”
He groped for the right answer. Justice was an Inning word, an Inning idea. Impatient at his slowness, she said, “Come along. You told Joffrey as much.”
“Yes,” he forced the word out. “It was unjust. I have done nothing to merit being taken from my bandhotai.”
His voice faltered on the word. For an instant he thought he was going to break down right in front of her. With an effort of will, he kept control. Slowly he went on, “It was also unwise.”
“How so?”
“Where I was, not a soul knew me. Here, they not only know me; they rally around me against my will.” He touched the paper in his pocket. “There, I would have lived out my life in peace, surrounded by my bandhotai. Here, you are making me a desperate man.”
She was thoughtful at this, regarding him keenly. “Tell me,” she said, “what could I do to make you content?”
“Free me,” he answered. “Let me go back.”
“I think you do not appreciate what a dangerous man you are,” she mused.
He protested, “I have never opposed you or the Innings. Who rules in the isles is of no concern to me. All I have ever cared for is to rule myself.”
“Who rules in the isles is supposed to be your concern,” she said. “The Heir of Gilgen is supposed to keep himself free of dhota, so he can care about who rules.” She paused to let him answer; when he didn’t, she said, “Why did you do it? Why give dhota when you didn’t have to?”
How could he answer? He had done it because union with the human soul had filled his need to lose himself in something higher. He had thought that by giving himself away to all, he might come close to touching the divine. But it hadn’t been that easy. Love had a way of becoming personal, fixed on the individual rather than the universal.
“I was a terrible fool,” he said.
Frowning, she said, “But it doesn’t disqualify you, true? If someone were to come to you now, claiming to be the next Ison, you could still confirm or deny him?”
As she said it, Goth felt a deep rumbling in his bones, and the earth quivered under him. The Mundua were restless under the mountain—far more restless than they had been in his youth. Then, Embo had slumbered; now it only dozed.
“It is not that simple,” he said.
“Then enlighten me.”
If he had been facing her in one of the long, echoing marble conference chambers, as he had expected, he would have found it easy not to answer with the truth. But here the very aspen and willow disarmed him. He settled down on the boulder next to her. “We Lashnura were created to guard the balance between the forces of chaos. The Adaina call them the Mundua and Ashwin. It doesn’t matter what you call them. In this world, the horrors of disorder are waiting everywhere, every moment, to break through. When people are in pain, they are vulnerable to that. Dhotamars take on the pain of others so humans will not be weakened by it and ally themselves with chaos, allowing those powers to gain a foothold in our world.
“But when there is some need in the isles for a person with more than ordinary influence, someone who can unite and lead, it is essential to know that that person is not acting in alliance with powers that will bring suffering to our world. We must be vigilant, and suspicious of anyone who seeks power, unless we know his motives are disinterested and pure. That is why dhota-nur exists. It is a deep cure. It cleanses a person of all scars that might give imbalance a foothold in his soul. Before anyone can be Ison of the Isles, I must enter every corner of his being, explore every wound, examine him to make sure no taint exists. And whatever I find, I must take upon myself, a lifetime of pain. Dhota-nur has been known to kill. If it does not, it is the most profound bond two people can share.”
Tiarch had been listening carefully. Her face was stern. “So, in your view, you actually create a new person. A better one.”
The words the Inning doctor had used to describe his job sprang unexpectedly into Goth’s mind: to modify the man. Horrified, he tried to banish the notion from his mind. It was not the same, surely, even though both processes involved a passage through pain.
“A wiser person, I hope,” he said. “Better able to resist the corruption of power.”
“And do you find that saints make good leaders?” Tiarch asked.
“Not always,” Goth murmured, looking at the grass. “So many of those who rise to leadership are propelled by past pain. It is the fuel on which they draw to act. Usually, great men are hiding great scars.”
“You keep saying ‘men.’ Must it be a man?”
Goth looked at her directly, thinking that at last she might have revealed her purpose. “No, of course not. A woman is just as capable of being Ison.”
“And must it be an Adaina?” she said.
“No. A Torna could be Ison. Even an Inning.”
She glanced at him sharply. “I would advise you not to mention that,” she said.
He pondered that response. It had been so quick and instinctive.
“Has Joffrey threatened to torture you?” she asked abruptly. Goth answered with his eyes. Tiarch smiled at him disarmingly. “Don’t worry; he won’t. He was bred up licking the boots of the Innings, and he is still terrified at the thought of making you suffer unjustly. But the Innings aren’t like Joffrey. Especially Provost Minicleer. You need to be careful of him.”
“What do you all want from me?” Goth asked. “Just tell me, and I’ll give it if I can.”
She was gazing off into the arbour. Pointing down the leafy aisle, she asked, “Do you think that apple tree needs trimming?”
“No,” he answered sullenly.
“You’re wrong,” she said decisively; “it does.”
There was a silence as Goth tried to control his frustration. At last Tiarch turned to look at him, assessing. “You ask what we all want, as if we all wanted the same thing.”
“Then I will ask what you want, Tiarch.”
Her smile was sad and ironic. “What do I want?” She mused over the words, as if she had never asked herself the question before.
The temptation to touch her was strong, since it would sharpen his vision. Like everyone, she was a pattern of old scars—a complex pattern, since she had had a long and eventful life. But she was a controlled and closed-off person. He could not see deeply enough to know what drove her without some physical contact.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” she said at last. “Before I die, I would like to see the isles united.”
Goth laughed. “Surely you have already united the isles—under Inning.”
“If you call it unity to all pay taxes to the same despised invader,” Tiarch answered.
“You rule more isles now than any Ison for five centuries past.”
“Yes,” she said, “but from time to time I think of being loved.”
So what the tyrant of the isles wanted was not so different from what everyone else did. Goth had spent a lifetime trying to meet that need in people, that urgent, demanding need for love. Sometimes it had scalded him with its heat. But even that had been preferable to the vacant isolation he felt now. His hand moved of its own accord to hover over hers. She noticed it, and looked at him. He swallowed hard, and forced himself to pull back.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Somewhere off in one of the palace towers, a clock began to strike the hour. Tiarch rose. “I must go,” she said. “Will you dine with me tonight?” He nodded, though her question scarcely needed asking; he would dine where her guards took him.
On the verge of leaving, she paused. “Give that note to Joffrey. Don’t say you showed it to me; it will make him think he’s found something, and keep him busy. Young men need to be busy.” Goth had risen to take leave of her, but she waved him abruptly off and hurried down the path toward the palace.
As he watched her go, Goth felt a twinge of regret that he could not befriend this small, determined woman who was the fabled tyrant. He could not afford to think as an actor in these affairs, neither ally nor adversary. Repeating to himself the Lashnura proverb, surrender is victory, he infused his thoughts with submission. By the time the guards came to fetch him, he was as gentle and resigned as they had ever seen him.
*
It was twilight on a rain-slick evening before the Ripplewill’s passengers went ashore. Torr had brought the boat in at one of the filthiest wharves in Harbourdown, far from the bustling town centre and its new customs house. From the near-derelict dock, Harg eyed the line of dark buildings that teetered on the brink of the oily water, their slimy lime foundations crumbling into the sea. There was a strong smell of sewage and rotting fish.
They had waited till dark because Harg didn’t want many people to know he was here. “I’ve got to keep my head down,” he had said.
“Don’t worry,” Torr had responded. “People here know all about disappearing.”
Harg felt a misgiving as he watched Spaeth step onto the dock, looking at her surroundings with wide grey eyes. He hadn’t wanted her to come tonight, but she had insisted, and Torr had backed her up. There was something of Yora’s innocence about her that Harg didn’t want to see destroyed, especially not in the brutal way it had been destroyed in him.
They set out down the dock with Torr in the lead, Harg and Tway on either side of Spaeth. Soon the skipper plunged into a narrow alleyway whose entrance was almost blocked by a pile of refuse, and they had to go single file. They passed an emaciated woman sitting on a doorstep with a man too drunk to sit up. She ran a hand over her greasy black hair and eyed them hungrily. A man with a hare lip pushed roughly past them, headed in the other direction.
“It’s so strange,” Spaeth said in a whisper.
“What’s strange?” Harg said.
“They’re all in pain.”
Torr gave a short laugh. “That’s normal, Grey Lady. It’s Yora that’s strange.”
Deep in the warren of alleyways, they came to a ramshackle doorway with a green-shaded lantern hanging over it. A beefy man lounged by the door, his complexion sickly in the jaundiced light.
“Evening, Bole,” Torr said. “I’ve got three guests here.”
Bole nodded, looking close as if to memorize their faces. Torr jerked the swollen door open, and gestured them inside.
The tap room they entered was a large space lit by lanterns, and simply packed with loudly talking people. They paused just inside the door as Torr scanned the crowd. At last he spied someone at the bar. “Hey, Barko!” he bellowed across the room. “Look who I brought.”
A man paused in his conversation and looked their way. Harg recognized him instantly: Barko Durban, ugly as sin, with a sharp, feral-looking face and thinning black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He looked every inch the pirate. He was one of the men Harg would have promoted to captain, if he had ever gotten the chance.
Barko recognized Harg just as quickly, and yelled across the room, “Harg Ismol, by the root! Hey, Cobb, Birk, look who’s here!” He started pushing his way through the crowd toward them.
So much for staying inconspicuous, Harg thought.
He was soon surrounded by four or five men he only vaguely recognized, but who seemed to know him like a brother. Alert to his surroundings, he was aware that the din of conversation had lost some volume as people looked to see what the commotion was about. Then, as he was touching hands, the background noise suddenly dropped to near-silence. Spaeth had stepped to his side. Barko’s left eyebrow rose at sight of her, and he glanced sharply at Harg. Instinctively, Harg put a hand on Spaeth’s shoulder to reassure her; but when he glanced over, she was looking around with the wide, wondering expression of someone too young to know what danger was.
“Is there a table we could sit at?” Harg asked.
“Sure,” said Barko, shaking himself out of the paralysis the sight of Spaeth had induced in everyone. He started off through the crowd, which parted before them.
“Don’t they have Grey Folk here?” Spaeth whispered to Harg as they followed.
“Sure they do,” he said. “They just don’t show up in bars very much.” Inwardly, he was cursing. Nothing could have made him more conspicuous.
Barko evicted a group of people from a secluded table by the back wall, and the newcomers settled down, eyed curiously by their neighbours. Tway whispered to Harg, “If they stare any harder, we’ll be picking eyeballs off the floor.”
The young woman who sauntered forward to wait on them was vigorously attractive. She crossed her strong, tanned arms in front of her chest and stood staring at Harg and Spaeth in a tough, appraising way. At last, tossing a strand of light brown hair behind her shoulder, she said, “What can I bring you folks?”
“I’ll buy a round of beer, Calpe,” Torr said.
With a last, lingering look, Calpe turned and walked with a swaying gait back toward the bar. Harg only realized he was staring, mesmerized by her ass, when Barko waved a hand before his face and said, “Harg. She’s married.” Everyone laughed.
They spent some time catching up. Barko and the other Navy men had been back for several weeks, and their simmering discontent at the situation they had found was palpable.
Eventually, Barko eyed Harg over the rim of his beer mug. “So are you here just for a visit?”
Harg shifted uncomfortably. “I had to get away from Yora. I got into some trouble there.”
“Does this have anything to do with the fact that someone tried to rearrange your face?”
“Something. Four of Tiarch’s marines gave me this.”
“It took four of them, eh?” Barko said, grinning evilly.
“Yeah.” Harg willed Tway not to say anything about how little fighting back he had done. She didn’t. “Actually, Barko, I need to keep my head down for a while. They’ll probably come looking for me.”
“Assholes,” Barko said. “They ought to be buying you drinks. These Tiarch’s-men don’t really believe the war happened; it’s just a set of stories to them.”
So Harg told them how he’d been accused of theft for having an officer’s insignia in his possession. Though he tried to laugh about it, the outrage of the others made the bitterness come back. Every Adaina in the fleet had known about Harg’s captaincy. To have it denied was a personal insult to them all.
“Well, if you feel like getting a bit of Adaina justice to offset the Inning type, let me know,” Barko said.
“I’m not looking for trouble,” Harg said. “I came here to get out of trouble.”
Torr spoke up. “I thought we should introduce him to Holby Dorn.”
“Good idea,” Barko said.
“He has some ideas Dorn needs to hear.”
“I bet he does.”
Harg just stared at his beer. He actually had half a hundred questions about the supposed resistance—how organized it was, how widespread, what resources they had, what plans. But he wasn’t about to ask them here. “Maybe we can get together some time, and you can fill me in,” he said.
“Sure,” said Barko. “We’ve got a little problem now that’s right down your alley. Three of—”
He was interrupted by a hubbub at the doorway. A new person had entered—a huge, white-bearded man, dressed in gaudy silks, with a king’s ransom of gold chains hung around his neck. He swept in, surrounded by half a dozen bodyguards. Instead of making way, the crowd surged toward him, yelling out “Dorn! Dorn!” so that the bodyguards had to push and shove roughly to make their way through. Halfway into the room the pirate stopped and tossed a handful of silver coins into the crowd. People fell to their knees, scrambling to pick them up. In the distraction, the pirate and his beefy retinue made it to a door in the back and disappeared through. Two guards took up stances on either side of the door.
“That was colourful,” Harg remarked as the room returned more or less to normal. The Thimishmen were smiling, he wasn’t sure why. The whole performance had seemed tawdry to him.
“Yeah, Holby Dorn’s a character all right,” Barko said. He had caught Harg’s reaction, and was assessing it.
Torr said to Barko, “What do you think, should we wait till Dorn’s drunk?”
“I think it’s too late,” Barko said.
“What’s his power base?” Harg asked.
“You saw it,” said Torr, rubbing two fingers together.
“Money?” Harg said. “That’s it?”
“That’s all there needs to be,” said Torr. “He gets payments from the merchants in town, and in return he keeps a lid on all his rivals. He keeps things quiet, at least, and that’s all most businessmen want—especially now that he’s running raids farther from home.”
“How many men does he command? How many ships?”
The Thimishmen exchanged glances that Harg found inscrutable. Barko said, “It’s not like a navy, Harg. Dorn’s got a boat, Vagabond, and he’s got his guys. Other people with their own boats come along when they think there’s profit to be had. They follow him because he passes out spoils. All in all, if everyone came, maybe twenty, twenty-five boats. Between them—what do you think, Torr, how many guns?”
“Counting small arms?”
“No, just ordinance.”
Torr tipped back his chair, rubbing his hair. “Oh, maybe forty, fifty.” He looked at Harg. “Little guns, five-pounders and such. These aren’t big boats.”
“You guys are in deep shit,” Harg said.
There was a short silence as they all took drinks of beer. At last Barko said, “Yeah, we know that. That’s why there’s a big argument going on about the three warships coming here from Tornabay, and what we ought to do about it. Some people say it’ll only provoke them if we take them on, so we ought to lay low and wait. Other people are saying there’s never going to be a better chance, and we ought to strike before they can establish themselves.”
“What side are you on?” Harg looked at Barko. He respected the man’s judgment.
“I’m waiting to hear what you say,” Barko said.
“Me? I don’t know a damn thing about it.”
“Not yet.”
“I told you, I can’t get involved.”
“You can give us your opinion. You owe us that much.” Barko rose. “Come and meet Dorn.”
As Harg rose, everyone at the table followed suit. He turned to Spaeth and Tway. “You ought to stay,” he said.
“No, let them come along,” said Barko. “You, too,” he said to the other navy men.
When they all came to the door into Holby Dorn’s private room, Barko signalled them to wait. He talked quietly to one of the guards, who let him through. After a few minutes the door cracked open again, and Barko waved them in. Everyone gestured Harg to go through first. When they followed him in, it looked like he had his own troop of bodyguards.
Holby Dorn and several of his men were sitting at a large table spread with food, eating. Calpe, the woman who had served their beer, was replenishing cups and clearing away plates as Harg’s group entered. Dorn didn’t rise, or even look up, until Harg stood directly in front of him. Then he set down his beer mug and gave a deliberative belch.
Up close, the old pirate’s face was a patchwork of scars scabbed over with belligerence. One jagged old cut ran up the side of his face, barely missing his right eye. He regarded Harg suspiciously from under bristling, steel-grey brows.
Barko said, “Dorn, this is the man I was telling you about, Harg Ismol.”
“I hear you’re some kind of hero,” the pirate said, picking his teeth with a fingernail. “Won the Battle of Drumstick or something.”
“Drumlin,” Harg said, not getting angry, since Dorn so obviously wanted it.
“Ismol,” Holby Dorn mused. “Any relation to Immet Ismol?”
Surprised, Harg said, “His son.” People almost never asked about his father.
“I knew him,” Dorn said. With surprising quickness for such a large man, he stood up and held out his arm as if to touch hands. Harg reached out, then saw that where Dorn’s left hand should have been was only a stump. Dorn held up the truncated arm, smiling grimly. “I owe this to your father.”
There was a long, tense silence. It was Holby Dorn who broke it at last, with a low, grating chuckle. “By the root, I never want to meet his like again. When his boat went down I figured the Mundua must love me. I never knew he had a son.”
Harg’s voice was low and controlled. “Then maybe you can tell me something about the . . . accident that killed him.” There was a persistent rumour on Yora that it had been no accident.
Dorn eyed him keenly, combing his wiry beard with his good hand. At last he shook his head. “No, I don’t remember. It was too long ago.”
Some of Dorn’s men shifted, and one cleared his throat.
“What’s your business here?” Dorn broke the silence roughly.
Torr jumped in. “I brought him, Dorn. We were talking on Yora, and he has information you need to know.”
“Information, eh?” Dorn looked at Harg. “I hope it’s not ‘The Innings are coming.’” He said it in a mincing falsetto. “I’m sick of hearing that.”
Harg crossed his arms. “That doesn’t make it less true. And when the Native Navy arrives from Fluminos, your little boats and pop-guns are going to be so much flotsam, unless you start planning now.”
“Stop, you’re scaring me,” Dorn said mockingly.
“You don’t know what you’re up against,” Harg said. “It takes different tactics to fight them. You need to listen to some of these guys who know how Innings think.”
“So what do you bring us?” Dorn demanded. “You have a boat and crew?”
Taken aback, Harg said, “No.”
“You have money? Guns?”
“No.”
“Then what do you expect us to do? Split our profits because of your name?”
“I’m not here for profits,” Harg said. “I’m here . . .” He stopped, uncertain why he was here. Then, words he had been swallowing for days started coming into his mouth of their own accord. “Because I realized that if no one stands up and tells the Innings they’ve got to respect us, they’re going to trample us down and shove us aside while they help themselves to our islands. They don’t respect us, they don’t respect the Grey Folk, they don’t respect anything but power and profit. I lived for seven years in their world, and I don’t want to any more. So that’s why I’m here.”
Dorn’s men were all staring at him, and he realized he had spoken with some passion. The pirate was frowning, first at him, and then at the people behind him. Softly, he said, “Big brave words out of a little man. But the fact is, you’ve got nothing but words to offer. Bring me a boat, and I’ll talk to you. Till then, I don’t want to hear your name again.”
Before Harg could react, Dorn shifted his gaze. “On the other hand, you are welcome, Grey Lady. If you’d like us to get rid of him for you, we will.”
It was only then Harg realized that Spaeth was standing at his side. She was facing the menacing men before them without the slightest fear.
“You ought to listen to him,” she said, her voice cutting cleanly through all the rivalry and bravado. “It’s the Innings who are the enemy. They are coming here to ban dhota and spread their law-power where mora used to be. You don’t know how dangerous they are. The balances are cracking, and you are quarrelling amongst yourselves.”
No one spoke. Harg felt a cold premonition, as if it weren’t just Spaeth beside him, but someone else, someone ancient as Alta. The thought made him queasy. He wanted nothing to do with such matters.
But then she looked at him, and it was Spaeth again, all of Goth’s dreams made human. He took her hand. “Come on, let’s go,” he said quietly. He had nothing more to say to the pirates of Thimish.
He led the way out. Barko, Torr, and the others followed, grim-faced. When they emerged into the tap room, Harg headed for the door, but before he could get there a voice called out behind them, saying, “Stop! Wait!”
It was Calpe. She had followed them from the back room, and now pushed through the crowd to catch up. She faced Harg with a searching, intense look. “He can’t order you out of here like that,” she said. “This isn’t his place; it’s mine, and I want you to stay. There’s a room upstairs where you can talk, all of you. I’ll send up some food. Don’t worry, it’s on the house.”
“That’s mighty nice of you, Calpe,” Torr said.
Calpe looked at Spaeth. “This isn’t a good place for you, Grey Lady. I know a dhotamar in town who could take you in. Would you like to go there?”
“A Lashnura?” Spaeth asked, interested.
“Yes. His name is Anit. I’ll take you.”
Wanting Spaeth safe but reluctant to let her go, Harg looked around for Tway. She was already at his side. “I’ll go with her,” she said.
“Thanks, Tway.” He was still holding Spaeth’s hand. He forced himself to let go. “Be careful,” he warned. Spaeth had been perfectly magnificent in there, facing down Holby Dorn, but far too incautious. Her sense of invulnerability could get her in trouble.
Calpe gave a piercing whistle, and a man came out from behind the bar, drying his hands on a towel. Calpe gave him a series of curt orders, and he nodded, glancing curiously at Harg. Then she said, “Follow Noll,” and turned to shepherd Spaeth and Tway toward the door.
*
For Spaeth, leaving the Green Lantern was like escaping a furnace. She had not realized how the presence of so many uncured souls had overtaxed her senses till she breathed in the cool night air outside. She stood, gratefully relaxing her mind, as Calpe gave some instructions to the burly man by the doorway.
She felt much farther than a day’s journey from Yora. From her first glance of Thimish’s pine-covered hills, she had known it would not be a friendly island. It eyed her from under its cloak of forest, old and crafty, wearing Harbourdown like a tawdry bangle. She remembered how Mother Tish had always said that people were not meant to go from island to island, because they might get tricked into trusting one that wasn’t theirs.
Coming to the Green Lantern had been repellent and mesmerizing. She had never encountered so many people in various sorts of pain, psychic and physical. They were damaged in ways she had never seen, and could barely understand. She had felt the tantalizing tug of it from all sides. It was like smelling a hundred spices competing for her attention, waking her desires. There was a complexity, a depth of adversity in these people; each one was a landscape of wounds that would take months or years to explore. She could dive into the souls here and never surface.
“Are you all right, Grey Lady?” Calpe asked.
Shaking herself out of the memory, Spaeth said, “Yes.”
The noise of pirate revelry died away behind them as they went down the alley. A gusty wind awakened a hollow rattle of rigging from the moored boats in the harbour. The streets were very dark, and the lantern Calpe carried cast a sickly light. As they began to climb uphill, buildings closed in on either side—silent, crowding shapes of brick and timber.
After a time they reached an open square. Against the northern stars ahead, Spaeth could see the symmetrical outline of the ancient fort that dominated the town. It lay atop a steep ridge of stone, its five bastions spread out like a reaching hand. She could see pinpricks of light where a late caravan climbed the switchback road to the citadel.
Calpe fell back by Spaeth’s side. “That is the Redoubt,” she said. “Perhaps you have heard of it.”
When Spaeth shook her head, Calpe said in a low tone, “It was built in the time when the great lords of Alta ruled. No one knows what use they made of it. Now and then our young men would try to stay the night, but they said it didn’t want them there.”
“It looks inhabited now.”
Calpe nodded darkly. “The Innings stationed soldiers there.”
Spaeth peered up at the ancient pile. “It doesn’t look ruined.”
“It isn’t. The Altans built it in such a way that no piece of it decays. They say the whole thing would shatter into slivers at a single blow well aimed, but until that blow comes, no part of it will break.”
They crossed the square and began to thread their way up a cobbled alley aromatic with trampled spices and rotting fruit. Now the buildings of brick and wood gave way to ponderous stone. The grim, dilapidated masonry still had an air of magnificence; the houses soared three stories, taller than Spaeth had ever seen.
It was strange being near so many people, and yet alone. Beyond each wall, Spaeth could tell, people swarmed like ants: talking, smoking, loving, swearing, dying. Yet outside the boxes of their houses, the street was like a desert.
They stopped at last before a tall, shuttered house with gaping, empty upper windows. A rustling came from a garbage bin across the way. When Calpe rapped vigorously on the door, a cloud of bats issued chittering from the second-story window.
Presently they heard the rattle of bolts being drawn inside, and a tiny crack of light appeared. Calpe raised the lantern to her face, and the woman inside gave an exclamation of alarm.
“He is ill, Calpe!” she said. “He can’t help you tonight.” She tried to close the door, but Calpe’s foot was wedged in the crack.
“It’s your help I want this time, Lorin,” she said.
“Mine? Why? I’m not one of them—”
Calpe drew Spaeth into the lamplight. “We have a new dhotamar,” she said.
The eyes inside the door caught at Spaeth with a look of fearful hope. “Ehir,” the woman breathed. The door fell open, and Calpe pushed Spaeth through.
The room inside was snug and wood panelled. As Lorin lit the lamps, Spaeth caught her breath in wonder. The room was a fantasia of ivory carvings. Ivory fish sported among the rafters, owls perched on the cabinets, lizards lurked behind the spice-jars, mice peeked out from beneath the hearth-broom. A wreath of snow-white holly hung above the fireplace, and by the shuttered window a pot of ivory asters bloomed. The room was crowded with life, frozen into motionless immortality.
“This is the home of Anit the Bonecrafter,” Calpe explained. “He is my bandhota. Lorin is his daughter.”
Now that Lorin stood in the light, Spaeth was surprised to see that she was Adaina. Her brown face was framed with dark, curly hair; her body would have seemed small if she had not been many months pregnant. She greeted Spaeth and Tway with respect, clasping her hands together with the index fingertips touching. “You honour our house, Grey Lady.”
An old man’s voice called out from the next room, and Lorin turned like a shy, wild thing to the doorway. “Calpe has brought us a guest, Father,” she called. “A dhotamar from another isle.”
There was a thump and some shuffling steps, then Anit appeared at the doorway, dressed in his nightshirt and walking with a cane. His grey face was entirely circled with a bush of white hair that hid his ears and chin but left his round cheeks to glow like apples of ivory. “Why Calpe, my dear!” he said, taking her hand and giving her a lingering kiss on the cheek. “Sit down, sit down,” Anit gestured them to some chairs by the fireplace. On the calico cushion of one of them an ivory cat was curled. “Here, don’t sit on Tassie,” Anit warned, and picked the cat up. “We’ll just put her by the window; she loves to look out on the street.” He placed the cat on the windowsill and shuffled back to hang a shining copper teakettle over the fire.
“Some people claim that Anit’s creatures come to life at night, like the statues in the song of Ison Omer,” Calpe said.
“Why,” Anit’s grey eyes twinkled, “don’t they look alive to you now?” Without waiting for an answer, he began to introduce Spaeth and Tway to his menagerie of friends. All of them had names, from the ivory goldfinch perched on a teacup to the ivory beetle under the woodpile.
“Where is Gamin, Anit?” Calpe asked when he seemed to have finished his introductions.
“Why, that Torna trader bought him,” Anit said.
“I hope you made him pay dearly,” Calpe muttered darkly.
The bonecrafter only gave a laugh like apple cider being poured into a glass. “He came here two days since, all eager to dicker his copper pots and fishhooks for my carvings. Imagine!” He ran his finger thoughtfully along the curved back of a leaping fish. “He thought he could buy the wind with a fishhook, and sea-spray with a pail. I let him have what he wanted. He said he would take them off to a fine Inning lady at Fluminos, who would put them in a glass case. It made me sad to think of her and her glass cases. They say the Innings have lost their past, you know. I think that would be a terrible thing.”
For the first time since leaving Yora, Spaeth felt perfectly safe. She laid her head back against the chair cushion, breathing out the collected tension.
“You’ve been out in the town?” Anit said, eyeing her keenly. Spaeth nodded. “It’s hard to go out there,” he said softly. “So many hungry people. If you did all that was needed, you’d have no blood left. I stay close to home these days. We all do; to go out would be tempting madness.”
“Are there many Grey Folk here?” Spaeth asked.
“No, not many; there aren’t many anywhere any more. We’ve lost our taste for keeping the race alive, I think. I know I did. Would you want to bring a child into this world only to inherit the kind of life we lead? It’s a cruelty I could not commit.”
Tway was looking at Lorin, puzzled. “I thought—”
“Ah, but you see her mother was Adaina,” Anit said, taking Lorin’s hand fondly. “The half-Lashnura don’t always inherit the disease, or the gift, or whatever it is.”
Spaeth said, “Goth always said the isles were full of half-Grey children, but they were only born Lashnura if their parents truly wanted it.”
Anit chuckled. “Goth, whoever he was, was only telling half the story. Can you ever say, with perfect certainty, what it is you truly want? Eh?”
The kettle was boiling. Lorin went to the hearth to pour some tea, and Calpe moved silently to Anit’s side. He looked at her with a radiant, doting smile.
“I can’t stay,” she said softly.
Anit shook his head in disappointment. Calpe put her palm on his cheek and turned his head to her, then kissed him slowly, open-mouthed. Their bodies pressed together, a picture of inflamed desire.
Lorin had frozen, watching them, with the kettle in one hand. Then she banged it loudly down on its wrought-iron stand.
Anit and Calpe broke apart. Calpe squeezed his hand, then turned to leave. The old man’s gaze followed her longingly; when the door had closed behind her he turned to Spaeth. “My daughter’s a prude,” he said in a loud whisper.
“She preys on him,” Lorin said to Spaeth, as if her father weren’t in the room. “Every week, sometimes twice. He can’t deny her; he’s besotted. It will kill him one of these days.”
Lorin’s helpless rage was achingly attractive.
“We have one like that on Yora,” Tway said.
Lorin handed Spaeth a cup of tea with a look of yearning. “But now you are here,” she said. “If you stay, you can take some of the burden off him.”
“Oh, for shame, Lorin, to put such an obligation on a guest,” said Anit. “Pay no attention to her.”
To Spaeth’s relief, Lorin turned away then and began fetching blankets to make up beds for the guests. Spaeth sat wondering if there were any place where she could escape the desperate needs of humans.
*
After Calpe departed the Green Lantern with Spaeth and Tway, the men trooped up the stairs at the heels of the bartender, Noll. He showed them to a small room under the eaves, and left with the promise that their dinners would be up soon.
Torr said, “Holy crap, that’s some magic you’ve got, Harg. Calpe never gives away food.”
“I thought she was just the barmaid,” Harg said.
“No, she owns this place, and runs it like a Torna drill sergeant.”
Harg filed away that useful information in his head. It made him realize that, mentally, he was already recruiting. He frowned, trying to stop himself from thinking that way.
Barko said, “I’m sorry about Holby Dorn, Harg. I didn’t know you and he had a history.”
“Neither did I,” said Harg.
They settled down around the small table. Harg could see from their faces that they were wondering how angry he would be. He decided to dismiss what had happened and skip ahead. “Why don’t you tell me about your situation?” he said.
They crowded round to fill him in. It turned out there were already two of Tiarch’s ships in Harbourdown: a frigate guarding the harbour and an unarmed troop transport that had brought the soldiers and arms to re-man the fort on the hill. The three additional warships en route from the Inner Chain were due to arrive in about three days. The Thimishmen had good intelligence on them: the largest was a two-decker with forty guns, the others had twenty and sixteen. Once they arrived, the pirates would be outgunned more than two to one.
“Which route are they using?” Harg asked.
“The northern one,” Barko said significantly.
“So they’ll have to go through Rockmeet Straits.”
“Right. It’s the obvious place for an ambush, but some of the pirates think it’s too risky.”
“Fuck the pirates,” Harg said, momentarily revealing that he wasn’t as dispassionate as he seemed. “Who else do you have?”
The others started discussing names. At last Barko said, “We could probably put together two dozen navy guys from Thimish and Romm. But we don’t have ships or guns. That’s why we need the pirates.”
And even if the pirates were trustworthy, their boats would look like mosquitoes next to the warships. It seemed perfectly hopeless on the surface. But Harg was unwilling to let the problem go. “What about the fort? How many men in the garrison?”
“At the moment only forty, and at least ten of them are usually stationed around town. There will be twice as many once the ships arrive. But it doesn’t take many to defend the Redoubt. Wait until you see it, Harg. It’s impregnable. You couldn’t take it without siege weapons.”
“And what about the frigate?”
“We could take the frigate,” Barko said, “if it weren’t for the fort. They’ve got guns up there covering the harbour. They could blow us to smithereens.”
It was all an interlocked puzzle, and you just needed to find the key to make it fall apart. Harg couldn’t yet see the key, but he was sure it must be there. People were always fallible; they left some loose end hanging. There were only three days to find it. Once the ships were here, the military options would be even more limited.
He had fallen into an intense, focused silence that the men who had served with him recognized, and knew better than to interrupt. But before he could emerge from it, the food arrived, and all of them set to demolishing it.
They were still eating when Calpe came in to check on them. Harg said, “Everything okay?”
Calpe nodded. “She’s safe, don’t worry.”
When the food was just a remnant of its former self, Barko leaned back and said, “So what do you think, Harg? Are we screwed?”
“I don’t know yet,” Harg said. “I need to look it over myself, in the morning. But it depends some on what you want to accomplish.”
The man named Cobb said, “What do you mean?”
“Well, do you just want to get their attention? Do you want to turn the boats back? Or do you want to actually capture them?”
They all looked at each other. Finally Barko said, “I’d settle for any of those.”
“Okay,” Harg said. “Say the object is to get their attention—that’s most realistic. Then you’ve got to ask yourselves why we don’t have their attention already. Seems to me there’s two reasons, and only one is solvable by military means. First, they think we’ve got no power. Second, they think we don’t have anything to say. We’ve got to show them they’re wrong on both counts.”
Barko gave a slow grin. It made him look like a banshee. “You just stopped saying ‘you’ and started saying ‘we.’”
Irritated, Harg said, “It was a slip. I told you, I can’t get involved.” It was sounding less convincing every time he said it.
Barko poured him some more beer. “Okay, then just theoretically. If you were involved.”
“You need to pull together some demands—things the Innings could imagine themselves doing. Something short of ‘Get the hell out.’”
“Like what?” Cobb said.
“I don’t know. Giving us an Adaina governor with power equal to Tiarch’s. Appointing Adaina officers. Giving us full citizenship rights. Whatever you want.”
They were all frowning at the prospect of coexistence that Harg’s examples seemed to imply. “They wouldn’t do those things,” Torr said.
“How do you know unless you ask?”
There was a sceptical silence. This was the larger problem, Harg thought: they had gotten so used to being conquered that they couldn’t think any other way. The Adaina could only think as far as rebelling, not as far as ruling. They needed people who could plan, and talk, and organize. People who could communicate with Innings. What they needed was Torna help.
“Barko,” he asked, “are there any Tornas in Harbourdown who might support you?”
“Are you crazy, man?” Barko said. “They’re all for law and order. They support anyone who will control the pirates.”
“But we’re not pirates. We’re people sticking up for the rights of the South Chain.”
“I don’t want Tornas involved,” Cobb said. “They’d just take over. This is about us, the Adaina.” There was a murmur of assent from the others.
Harg stared off into the darkness beyond the candles on the table. Calpe was still sitting there, in the shadows by the wall, listening. He said slowly, “Didn’t you hear what Spaeth said down there? This isn’t just about us. It’s about mora, and the balances. That means we’ve got a duty not to lose.”
They were staring at him gravely, and he felt a qualm for having brought the Lashnura into it. He could feel the tangible power of reverence in the room, changing the whole tone.
Barko said, “There are some Torna navy men, discharged just like us, and not too happy with the way things are going.”
“I do shipping for some local Torna shopkeepers,” Torr said. “Some of them are saying the Innings are giving all the contracts to the big Tornabay merchants, Tiarch’s cronies, and leaving them out.”
“You ought to talk to them,” Harg said. “Sound them out.”
“You ought to talk to them,” Barko said seriously. “You’re the one who knows what the Grey Folk want.”
That remark gave Harg a feeling that he had gone too far. He said quickly, “I don’t know what they want. No more than you.”
The vehemence of his tone made them fall silent. Then Calpe spoke up out of the darkness. “You might not know what the Grey Folk want, Harg,” she said, “but it sure looks like they know what they want from you.”
“It might look like that,” he said. “It’s not true.”
He got up, so uncomfortable with this turn of the conversation that he couldn’t sit still. All evening he’d been thinking guiltily that he was leading Spaeth into danger, and now he realized it was the other way around. He wished he had never mentioned Spaeth, never gotten mixed up with her, never been seen in her presence.
They were all watching him, but no one said anything. To change the subject he said, “Calpe, do you have a room I could stay in? I can pay you—not tonight, but soon.”
“Sure,” said Calpe. “I’ll put it on a tab. You want to see the room now?”
“Yes.” He had to get away and think.
The tone changed back to normal as the party broke up and they all made plans for the next day. As Harg stepped out into the hall and heard the hum of conversation from downstairs, the feeling came back to him that he was straddling a crack—but this time it was a four-way crack. Torna, Lashnura, Adaina, Inning. He was going to have to dance fast to keep on his feet.