Chapter Twenty-Seven
Our Time Aboard the Ikennakas Family Leisure Ship
On the day that we went to sell the Lanreas River Guild, someone looking out into the endless ocean from the west coast of North Shore Skydašiai, might have beheld an odd sight. Specifically if they were right around where the inland Skydaš Sea emptied out into that ocean—where the domain of the Bari in their barges ended, giving way to the Skydašian navy, which patrolled the coast in great warships—they would behold what appeared to be a gigantic stork mounting a ludicrously humongous swan.
This swan-shaped vessel was not even the biggest nor most extravagant leisure ship to (I’m sorry) swan about the coast, but it was large enough that Simurgh could land her marabou balloon on its deck and easily avoiding being skewered by its masts.
“This . . . oh gods . . .” Kalyna was sitting on the floor of the marabou’s basket, looking sick and making gulping noises as she spoke. “This is a very delicate operation, Simurgh . . . so . . . ugh.”
“Yes, yes, I remember.”
Kalyna nodded and began to take deep breaths.
The purpose of Skydašian leisure ships, I was told, was for the wealthy nobles of the kingdom to move between North and South shores easily—to always be part of both in a noticeable and meaningful way. It wasn’t actually convenient, as they only had easy access to the coasts, but it let them feel cosmopolitan and withdrawn at once, and allowed them to move from shore to shore without relying on the Bari (who were, of course, “beneath” them).
“Once upon a time,” Kalyna had told me, “the nobles had barges on the Skydaš Sea, but they ran into the same problem as the Yams: their rowers kept defecting to the Bari.”
This ship, like all of its type, did not have a traditional title. Instead, the surname “Ikennakas” was emblazoned across its side, as though someone had taken a branding iron to the poor swan. This false bird had been endowed with a visage that towered above the rest of the ship and could easily have fit two or three adult humans in its beak, but the collections of gemstones that made up its eyes actually served to make it look vacantly surprised.
The founder of the Lanreas River Guild’s full, legal name had been Adomas Albinakas Rutorie Marijonkwo Ikennakas, and this swan that could have housed every member of his guild belonged to his sister, Rozalija. (I do not remember her full name.)
Kalyna and I stepped out onto the ship’s vast deck, and she took a series of deep breaths meant to calm her stomach before anyone reached us. I was quite used to the suspension of the marabou but had never been on the ocean before, so it was the rocking of the ship’s deck that made me feel a touch sick.
Kalyna was dressed in lightly woven, and closely cut, wool. She carried an unused red cloak over one arm and wore trousers that matched it, over which was a black doublet trimmed with silver, which glimmered perhaps too brilliantly in the sun. Also glimmering were a number of rings and a gold necklace worn over the doublet. Kalyna had admitted that even she could never pass as a noble, and so was dressed as a merchant—the sort that made Skydašian nobles hate the trade guilds for “elevating” commoners just a bit.
I wore a silk robe not unlike what Vidmantas had on when I first met him. It was turquoise with yellow flowers, and I looked forward to wearing it again when the seasons turned cooler. Most wonderfully, there was no need to cover my tattoos for this trip.
An attendant, who was attended by sub-attendants, greeted us, said some nice things about the marabou, took Kalyna’s cloak, and offered us chilled lemon liqueur in little glasses. We drank it beneath a parasol carried by a sub-attendant.
“Oh, none for her,” said Kalyna, nodding back toward Simurgh. “She must keep the thing flying or else the flame dies out. She’ll be back for us in an hour or two.”
As we were led across the deck, with the marabou rising behind us, the attendant pointed out other ships that could be seen nearby. The pleasure ship in the shape of an enormous blue frog belonged, we were told, to a Skydašian prince. Even further out was a battleship that seemed just as huge as its decadent neighbors.
“Now that is the Goddess of the Summer Sun. Pride of the navy, patrolling our waters.” The attendant’s eyes flashed with excitement, and he whispered, “And below? Our biggest prison: the Goddess’ Guts!”
Kalyna smiled wide, enchanted to see such a famous craft. I leaned on the fact that I was acting as her foreign manservant (really her charity case, or her pet), and kept my expression neutral. Were the others from the Žalikwen Salon still there? Still alive deep in the Goddess’ Guts? Are they there even now?
We were led belowdecks into a hallway that appeared to be made from the smoothest brass, showing our warped reflections in deep orange as we walked along it. Confused as to why a ship with brass innards wasn’t sinking, I touched the wall to find that it was actually wood. Whatever they’d done to paint it so convincingly amazed me as much as a ship of brass would have, or possibly more.
We turned a corner and found ourselves facing a well-dressed man in his thirties who looked, well, rather like a young Adomas must have. He was of a lighter complexion, his ears stuck out a bit, and his eyes didn’t have the same endlessly searching quality, but he was certainly sporting the same warm smile that Adomas had been able to bring out when he needed to.
“You must be Kalyna Aljosanovna!” he said, bowing in the most fluid fashion. “We have been in correspondence. Enyivdas, I was Adomas’—”
“Favorite nephew, yes, I remember!” Kalyna bowed back. Hers was much stiffer, and I didn’t know if this was lack of practice or pretending to have a lack of practice. “Absolutely charmed!”
I wondered how many little truths and lies they were communicating to each other with their tones, their clothes, their movements. Loasht is absolutely a place that can stand on complex ceremony, but less so in the south, and far less for Zobiski. (This is, perhaps, another reason people didn’t like us.)
What’s more, I had never seen anything so decadent as this ship we were on. The Loashti Academy came with its own prestige—Aloe was a noble with a longer pedigree than anyone in the Tetrarchia—but its bones had been built before anyone could do the kind of trickery that just this hallway demonstrated.
Enyivdas began walking alongside us and chatting with Kalyna.
“My aunt Rozalija hasn’t any children,” he said. “I wonder if this ship will come to me when I’m gone?” He laughed airily. “Or perhaps she’ll want it sunk with her—a burial at sea!”
“Perhaps,” Kalyna replied. “And if you’re to inherit from her, why do you need to buy the Lanreas Estate?”
“Well, because I don’t know, do I? And I certainly wouldn’t like my darling aunt to leave us so soon.”
Kalyna bobbed her head from side to side, as though she was weighing her options. Even though we were on our way to an appointment, she walked slowly, both to give the young man his time, and also to make him anxious at her seeming disinterest.
“You must understand,” Enyivdas continued, “Rozalija never leaves this boat. She wouldn’t be a good ruler of that land—not if you still want to guarantee that your workers can stay there.”
“I do,” said Kalyna. “That’s an important point, my lord. My workers and I will run the farm as they see fit, and send their crops and other products to . . .” She acted as though she was about to say a name and then stopped, smiling coyly. “Well, to whomever ends up owning the land. Wouldn’t an absent landlord be more useful for my purposes?”
“But she won’t understand, you see. She’ll be off in her boat, or perhaps attending balls in the south, and so she’ll simply lay down quotas with no thought to what is actually feasible. What if you have a drought and can’t produce this or that amount of sorghum, but that’s what she insists upon?”
Kalyna pursed her lips thoughtfully and bowed her head toward him. “And you . . .”
“Well, I love to travel, you see. A regular vagabond. I would greatly enjoy coming to the farm and seeing how things are done, what you all need, and what you can spare. And then . . .” He snapped his fingers and waved his hand. “I’d be off to some other corner. You see?”
“I do. I do.” She rubbed her chin, and we stopped walking right outside a door that was bigger than all the ones we’d passed.
Our attendant flourished toward it and opened his mouth, but Enyivdas stepped on whatever he was about to say.
“Rozalija’s in here, my good Kalyna. If you wish to say anything to me before we’re in her presence, now is the time.”
He bowed low and took her hand, not quite kissing it. From the look on the attendant’s face, Enyivdas was not supposed to treat a commoner this way, not even a rich one.
“You make a good case,” said Kalyna. “But I can’t know who will be the better owner of the land.” She took her hand from his in order to snap at me. “Loashti? How much is the Countess—?”
I shuffled some papers, smiled simperingly, and replied, “Her most recent offer was six thousand, ma’am.”
Kalyna did another little bow of her own. “Numbers are something I can know right now, my lord. So consider that.”
“How very bourgeois,” sighed Enyivdas.
The attendant opened the door, and we were ushered in to meet Countess Rozalija Something Something Something Something (Something?) Ikennakas. The chamber was stunning, although I’m not sure if it was stunningly beautiful or stunningly ugly. It was beyond my senses and experience, I think.
If the ship itself was a swan, then the room was like being nestled to a swan’s bosom, beneath its wing, or perhaps like being inside of its body, if that body were the abstract concept of a swan, rather than guts and sinews. The walls were covered in what appeared to be white feathers, each as long as my forearm and patterned so tightly that nothing beneath was visible. The far wall sported a series of portholes—all shaped like eggs—which were open so that the ocean breeze could gently sway the feathers. (When I came closer, I realized the feathers were not real, but painstakingly handmade.)
I was disappointed to see that all the furniture in the room—desks and chairs and couches and lamps—was sumptuous but did not particularly match the theme. The floor, on the other hand, made me gasp audibly: it looked so much like the quiet, serene surface of an impossibly blue pond that I almost worried I would fall in. There was a pattern of ripples throughout that made it look as though something light, like a leaf, had landed gently in the very center of the room—a trick of the light made it sometimes seem that the ripples were moving.
“Rozalija! You’ve impressed the Loashti!” laughed Enyivdas.
“Well of course,” said the Countess, who was standing perfectly in the center of the room—that is, in the center of the floor’s ripples. “Please. Please. Come in and sit down. I’m so glad my nephew has been keeping you company.”
Rozalija looked much less like Adomas than her nephew. She was small and delicate, with thin wavy hair and a pinched face. The Countess struck me as someone who would have been very awkward had we not been on her ship, where she wielded all the power.
We made our introductions and were brought to a set of large armchairs near the portholes. An attendant brought us wine and pastries so precious they looked like they’d fall apart if one breathed on them.
“I saw your approach through the windows, you know,” said Rozalija, with none of the chumminess of her nephew. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Such was the freedom your good brother granted us while he was alive,” I said. “The freedom to dream. And create!” Part of my job in this little play was to be the sycophant of poor, departed Adomas, so that everyone else could tear him down.
“And in so doing, left us with no money and a . . . complicated ownership situation,” added Kalyna.
“That does sound like Adomas,” said Rozalija. “But when my brother—to everyone’s surprise—found himself un-outlawed, the family gave him your plot of land, because it would have been embarrassing for the oldest of my generation to not own any estates. We considered it to be worthless, so why is it now worth six thousand kudais?”
I began to fidget nervously with my papers. After all this, was the Ikennakas family suddenly uninterested? But Kalyna feigned surprise—which is to say, she purposefully looked as though she was feigning surprise to play along with their game (I think).
“Well, I know that you know it has been verdant and bountiful for ten years now,” said Kalyna, pointing playfully, but I assume rudely, at the Countess. “I also know you’ve had your people scurrying around the nearby towns, asking for information, for at least the last five.”
“And mine too!” laughed Enyivdas. “I don’t want to feel left out!”
Kalyna smiled graciously at him.
“It’s true that things started growing better there, somehow,” said the Countess. “But there were also a lot of strange rumors.”
“None of us,” said Kalyna, “are here to argue that your brother wasn’t a strange man. My point is only that what he did worked for the land.”
“But not for your coffers,” Enyivdas chimed in. “Else you wouldn’t be selling.”
Kalyna nodded, smiling. “Yes, but I’m not just selling you the land; I’m selling you potential.”
“For?” was the Countess’ brusque reply.
“I don’t know how up-to-date your news of our farm is, but we’ve recently improved it much more and are on the cusp of being able to do something truly wondrous with that land. And our secret weapon”—Kalyna waggled her eyebrows—“is the second reason you should want that land.”
“I assume you mean the proximity to Loasht,” replied Enyivdas.
“You’re welcome to that, nephew,” said Rozalija. “I am old enough to know better than to trust this Blossoming.”
“But there’s never been anything like it before! Not in hundreds of years!” I chirped.
“You don’t have to trust something to make money off of it,” said Kalyna. “The fact is, what was once a contentious border is now a trade route. But even more importantly for the Lanreas River Estate, Loasht is currently, ah, cleaning house, if you catch my meaning.”
Both nobles nodded understandingly. I looked at my feet on the marvelous floor.
“And that,” said Kalyna, “means an evergreen source of fresh, cheap labor coming to our little farm. That has been the secret to our recent success.” She held her hands out, indicating me—my entirety—as though I were an object. “Why, my Loashti here was a respected advocate in his own land. But he has the misfortune of being the wrong kind of Loashti, so he now keeps my papers for a pittance!”
I nodded.
I should point out here that while this aspect of my role was Kalyna’s idea, she did not push it on me at all, and promised we could go another route if I preferred. But I insisted, because I thought it might be fun to try playing a part the way Kalyna so often did, and because I thought of it as a good way to learn just how abhorrent Adomas’ family were.
The answer was: quite.
“But to bring in more workers,” continued Kalyna, “we need the money to build homes, buy equipment, and feed everyone before the farm is up to its full potential. There’s that word again.” She grinned her great, big Kalyna grin.
Rozalija tried to look uninterested, but if I didn’t believe her, Kalyna certainly did not.
Enyivdas shrugged and said, “Well, now, that seems decent. I suppose I’d pay as much as . . . oh, four thousand.”
Rozalija harrumphed out a laugh before she could help herself.
“Does that mean your offer’s still on the table, Countess?” asked Kalyna.
I dug out the letter in which she had offered six thousand.
Rozalija looked at her nephew for some time and then said, “Yes.” It was hard to know how much was greed and how much was a desire to show up her nephew.
“Well, I . . . I . . . I could probably go higher than that,” said Enyivdas. “But how do I know this scheme of yours will work?” He smirked. “Besides what my people have told me, of course.”
“Of course,” Kalyna repeated. “Speculation is always a gamble, but the core of it is letting us run the place our own way, which is baked into the contract my Loashti here has drawn up.”
I nodded with great seriousness.
“Less work for me sounds lovely,” said Enyivdas. “Seven thousand.”
“Eight,” said Rozalija.
Enyivdas opened his mouth, stopped himself, closed it, and then shrugged. “I must leave my final offer at seven. I couldn’t do more in good conscience.”
“Seven and eight,” said Kalyna, pointing from one to the other. “Well, naturally eight wins.”
“If I like this contract,” replied Rozalija.
“And if she doesn’t, and I do . . . then seven!” laughed Enyivdas.
“Of course, of course.” Kalyna snapped her fingers at me and held out her hand.
I reached into my satchel and pulled out a crinkled, old paper, sliding it into her hand delicately. Kalyna made a big show of holding it up, moving it farther, then closer, wetting her lips, and then squinting.
“‘I’m surprised at how fast I’ve gotten used to the idea,’” she read and then looked at me, irritated. “This isn’t the contract! What is it?”
“I . . . I don’t know, ma’am.” I began rooting through my satchel, looking mortified. “But it must be related to the Lanreas Estate. I haven’t brought anything that isn’t, I swear!”
“Why,” said Kalyna, “it’s dated to ten years ago. How odd. And does this look like Adomas’ handwriting to you?”
I looked over her shoulder and agreed that it did.
She furrowed her brow in mock curiosity and continued to read: “‘What was unthinkable is now my only way forward. I’ve spent my whole life running, and I’m tired of it. If I poison King Piliranas and then save him with my own concoction, no one else will ever have to know’?!” Kalyna looked up, aghast.
“What is this nonsense forgery?” growled Enyivdas.
“But we found this in Adomas’ own study after he died!” I insisted.
“Why would he write that down?” demanded Rozalija.
Kalyna shrugged. “Narcissism, perhaps? So that someday people would know how clever he was? Does that . . . does that sound at all like him to you?”
Silence.
“Still, it must be a forgery,” said Enyivdas. “This isn’t enough proof.”
Kalyna then began to let on by smiling slightly. “Wait, wait. There’s more. From the next day.” A throat clearing. “‘I pondered for some time about how best to get poison to the King, considering I’m outlawed, but now I’ve hit upon it. That wastrel Enyivdas—’ Oh no. I’m so sorry, Enyivdas. You must understand I’m just reading what it says here. ‘That wastrel Enyivdas is so desperate to fill the void my brother left in his life that he’s been trying to cozy up to the King as a new father, when he isn’t bothering me for the same.’”
Enyivdas’ mouth was hanging open.
Kalyna shrugged apologetically, then grinned with relish and continued: “‘He was just telling me that his next overture—’”
“You were speaking to Adomas when he was outlawed?” growled Rozalija. “That’s treason already!”
“We both know you were too!” her nephew yelled back. “And besides, this is all falsehood. There’s no proof!”
Kalyna smiled and waited patiently for them to be quiet. Once they were, all pretense was gone. She was possessed of a vicious glee far beyond her enjoyment when toying with Yalwas or a commander of the Yams.
“‘He was just telling me that his next overture,’” she repeated, slowly, “‘will include a gift of the Leopold volume A History of North and South Shore Monarchs in the Years Before Skydašiai. I learned a trick in—’ Well, let’s not give away all his secrets.” Kalyna winked. “The trick is ‘to contaminate the binding of a book with arsenic such that repeated usage will poison the reader. Enyivdas isn’t much for books, so I’m sure the boy will be fine.’”
Enyivdas had his head in his hands. If I hadn’t seen his eagerness to exploit my people, I would have felt sorry for him.
“‘In this form, it will be slow acting,’” continued Kalyna, “‘so once the King gets sick, I’ll just need to swoop in and . . .’ Well. You get the idea.” She shrugged.
“Give me that!” Enyivdas came out of his chair, reaching for the paper.
Kalyna easily avoided his grasp without getting up. “This isn’t the only page, my lord. Your uncle was quite detailed. For posterity, I suppose. Or maybe as leverage—this is a level of treason that would bring down your whole family even if you weren’t directly involved.”
Enyivdas stood above her, fuming.
“You still can’t prove it,” said Rozalija. “Even if my fool nephew has confirmed it here, you have a piece of paper. And if we kill you here, then who will ever know?”
Kalyna opened her mouth.
“Have you mailed more pages to an accomplice?” Rozalija interrupted. “I can’t see how it would matter. It looks like his handwriting, but how could they prove the story is true?”
“Adomas didn’t poison a bottle of wine, Countess, he poisoned a book, which is probably still sitting in the royal library.”
“And?” laughed Rozalija. “Do you think we haven’t friends at court? Do you honestly believe you left your other pages with someone who can get to the royal family before—” She stopped and knitted her brow. “What? What are you pointing at?”
Out the portholes, over Rozalija’s shoulder, was the frog-shaped pleasure ship of a Skydašian prince. A great and terrible stork was hovering above it.
“Our balloon,” said Kalyna, “will land on the Prince’s ship any minute, agiving him everything he needs to learn of the plot against his grandfather.”
Enyivdas collapsed back into his chair.
“Unless, of course,” she added, “your semaphore men send a signal that I will tell them.”
Enyivdas moaned.
“Didn’t King Piliranas die just a few years later?” mused Kalyna. “I wonder if he kept reading that book . . .”
“But . . . but . . .” spluttered Rozalija.
“Oh, give it up!” Enyivdas chided. “I inscribed the damn thing!”
Rozalija blew a loud breath out of her nose. “How much do you want?”
“No more than you each offered.” Kalyna smiled at me. “The contract, if you please.”
I handed it to her.
This contract, written up by an advocate Kalyna paid quite a lot for, was much more exacting than Adomas’ original will, which had simply promised the land to “the members of the Lanreas River Guild.” Now the Guild would be granted all the legal protections of being owned by nobles, but those nobles (undersigned here) could act only as “sponsors,” with names on the deed but no rights to change, take, or do anything to the land. There were, the advocate told us, precedents for organizing “village law,” wherein a group of elders were in charge. For our contract, he simply added a clause that defined elders as “anyone over sixteen.”
“You’re welcome, of course,” the advocate had said to us. “But who in the world would sign such a thing?”
Kalyna had just grinned and paid him.
And thus, the Lanreas River Guild laid claim to fifteen thousand kudais, to be delivered by the end of the week.
Kalyna was still much too skysick to enjoy her victory on the way back, but once we were wandering the Guild, she looked elated.
“I don’t mind telling you, I was worried for a moment there.” She stretched her arms above her head as we walked. “If Simurgh had actually needed to land on the Prince’s ship, I think we would’ve been out of luck. Imagine her parlaying with royalty!”
“You sound like you enjoyed how close it was.”
“Well, yes! And I’d almost forgotten how much fun it is to stomp all over powerful and awful people. Didn’t you enjoy it?” She turned to look at me. “After all, you were— Oh, no. No, you didn’t at all.”
“The very beginning was fun, as was the end, when we knew we’d gotten away with it. But the middle was all . . .”
“Demeaning, shameful, abject.”
“Yes.”
“I warned you.”
“You did! I’m not upset with you at all. I’m . . . I’m in awe. How do you do it? And enjoy it?”
“I don’t always. But . . .” She stopped walking and tapped her foot in the dirt for a moment, watching Ifeanyas slowly coming toward us, pushing Aljosa in his chair. “I don’t know. You can waste a lot of time trying to convince people like them that you aren’t the scum they expect. It usually gets you nowhere.” She looked at her hands, still covered in rings, and pressed her fingertips together. “Conversely, it can be . . . freeing to just act like what they think you are.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, for me anyway, and the ways in which I am broken.”
“Kalynishka!” Aljosa cried as Ifeanyas brought him closer. “Never say that about yourself! You’ll make me cry! And then I’ll see crying people. All sorts of crying strangers, from all over and all when!”
Ifeanyas looked at me and shrugged.
“I’m sorry, Papa.” Kalyna took his hand.
“You sound like Mother when you say things like that about yourself,” he said, looking into the middle distance.
“Don’t you miss her? Isn’t it nice to be reminded of her?”
He brought up his other hand to pat hers absentmindedly. “Yes I do, but no it isn’t, you know that. Mother is gone, and if we just stand here talking until the sky bleeds, these boys won’t get to go kiss, and I know you don’t want to be responsible for that.”
“No, no. Of course I don’t,” said Kalyna. “Never in a million years.”