12

He left the traders in Woodedge within sight of Harn-Larger. Its walls were similar to those of Harn, but much taller. The buildings within made of wood rather than being mostly mud and woven sticks. The Larger was a maze of narrow streets, houses built and rebuilt to no plan after the fires that regularly destroyed lives and livelihoods. It was also the gateway to the plains of Harn, the sweeping grasslands, studded by copses and cut through with ravines. The plains were good for grazing and little else.

Still a full morning’s walk away, a black wart on the muddy green landscape. He watched a message skipper heading towards the town, a balloon of either floatvine or gasmaw above them to balance out the massive pack, twice the size of the person who held it. They moved in huge leaps towards Harn-Larger. Lines of people were making their way towards the town, and from the south a huge skyraft was coming in towards the mooring spike. He realised why Sengui had been making the trip, why there had been time pressure on them. The price for gasmaws shot up whenever the rafts came in as they needed to replace the sick or dying ones, and in large numbers.

“You’ll not come in with us?” said Gart. Cahan shook his head.

“I’ve done my job now.” He stared at the skyraft as it floated serenely towards the town, its huge and gaily painted balloons billowing as the rafters started to release hot air. “I will make my way back to Harn to claim the rest of my coin.” He intended no such thing of course, but if they thought he was going back towards the village and he never arrived most would presume some forest creature had got him, or maybe the Forestals had taken their revenge. Few would mourn his loss.

“The Leoric paid you to escort us there and back,” said Ont.

Cahan shrugged. “She paid me to protect you from the Forestals,” he said. “And they will not bother you on the way back, they gave their word.”

“What use is the word of outlaws?” said the butcher.

“Do you wish to spend more time in my company?”

“No,” said Ont. He was very poor at covering his thoughts. Cahan could see in his eyes that he was scheming something. Probably realising he could tell the Leoric that Cahan had abandoned them. That it was Ont who protected the party on the way back.

“Come, Ont,” said Sengui. “The Larger will be busy, it always is when the raft tethers. I want to be in the trading hall, not stuck out in the square.”

He watched them go, gradually reducing in size as they crossed the plain to join the long lines of people and carts heading towards the town. Then he returned to the forest. Tomorrow, when the raft was tethered the town would be busy and he could slip in and buy supplies for his journey. Few would look twice at him in a town, though neither would they welcome him much as he was clanless. He would get what he needed and get out of the place, head to somewhere he was unknown. He would become nomadic, travelling from town to town, picking up work where he could. Maybe he would sign on to the raft crew for the journey east towards Mantus where the raft would pick up the winds going south. He did not want to go as far as Seerstem; war still raged there and the new Cowl-Rai fielded their armies in the name of Tarl-an-Gig. He could earn well as a soldier, but found it impossible to hide what he knew, what he had been taught in his youth, and it either brought him into conflict with those who led the troops or brought him to their attention as someone who should be promoted.

Attention was the last thing he wanted.

No. That was not true.

Death was the last thing he wanted. He had seen too much of it. Been the cause of too much of it. Power and death, to him, were inextricably intertwined. With the attention of the Rai came death, always. It was inevitable and he was done with it. No more a soldier. He was a forester, a farmer. There was always work for a farmer.

Tilt should be safe for him. The people there were comfortable and the climate good. He would avoid Tiltspire, far too many Rai there, and as long as he had shelter when the geysers erupted then life would be better and more comfortable than it had been on his farm. And even if he could not find shelter when the geysers erupted? Well, he had been wet before and it would not kill him.

He felt something warm against his leg and looked down to see Segur. Now the villagers were gone the garaur had returned.

“We are going south, Segur, in a day or so,” he said softly. It wound itself up and around him to sit around his neck. “Do not get too comfortable there, Segur.” The garaur chattered in his ear and he scratched it between its ears, a thing he knew it loved.

He slept fitfully, woken in the night by one of the earthquakes that were becoming more and more common.

In the morning he left Segur in the wood and headed, cold-necked, to Harn-Larger, slipping and sliding over freezing mud trodden by many before him as they made their way to the town to sell whatever goods they brought in the shadow of the skyraft.

Out of the shelter of the woods where the circle winds were cold and cutting, he wrapped his felt coat tighter, leaned into his staff. He met few people on his way to Harn-Larger. Most were already in the town, and the few heading in now showed no interest in him. He stopped to watch another message skipper, clad in green and bounding down the path in huge leaps, the balloon of floatvine creaking as they jumped. They moved far more quickly than Cahan could ever hope to.

The skipper’s progress drew his eye to the town. He could see what looked to be a balloon partway there, and wondered what it was. As he walked the balloon grew larger and he could see a small raft below it. When he reached the raft it was coming toward him, pulled along a rope that stretched across a deep crevasse. It was not massively wide, but too wide to jump, unless you were a skipper.

“Three splinters to cross,” said the rafter as she brought her craft in to grate against the edge of the crack in the land. Earth fell into the hole, some spilling onto the raft. He heard stones clatter against the wood of the craft but nothing from those that fell into the hole.

“How long has this been here?” he said, nodding at the hole.

“Not long enough for ’em to bridge it,” she said. She was very old, with a creased face beneath a conical yellow hat. “I’ll move on when they do. Always some new hole opening in the shakes.”

“Three splinters is a lot to cross such a small gap,” he said. He leaned over, looking into the split in the land. Deep down in the darkness a trick of the eye made it look like lights were twinkling.

“You can go around,” she said, her voice creaking like the wood of the raft, “but it’s a day’s walk in either direction. No guarantee we won’t shake again, open it further as you walk.”

“Do you ever wonder what’s down there?” he asked as he dug coins out of his pocket. She shook her head.

“Some fellows came along with ropes in the early eight of yesterday, says they were going to look.”

“What did they find,” he said as he stepped onto her raft and felt it dip under his weight. She shrugged.

“Don’t know, fools never came back up. Osere got ’em, I reckon.” She pushed off with a heave on the rope and they drifted across the gap. He looked into the twinkling depths, wondering whether the creatures who had once enslaved the people and fought against gods really lived in the depths. Though he did not wonder for long. The journey across was swift.

Cahan half expected the guards to stop him as he passed through the gates of Harn-Larger. But the fact that he was clanless hardly mattered to them; he was just another face among many. Above the gates hung the curfew bell, a ragged figure shown begging on its porcelain sides. The bell was rung to empty the streets of vagrants as the second eight ended, but he did not intend to become a vagrant. He had money and would rent a room, even though it would cost him dear with the skyraft being in. Still, he would stay only one night, buy some travelling supplies and then move on.

From above came the shouts and calls of the rafters. The raft was bigger than the town, and shaded most of it. Three huge masts slung underneath, one pointing straight down, the others at angles and all were connected by a web of rope through which the crew moved as if it was their natural habitat. Against the hull were nets of gasmaws, hundreds and hundreds tethered in position by the web of rope. The top of the raft was given over entirely to cargo, cabins for travellers and the woodburners for the balloons. Above that the huge balloons which would be inflated for flight, though now they were stowed away. Ropes had been lowered and goods were being slid down them, the weight countered by tethered maws. On the far side he could see passengers walking across a gangplank to the tether tower. Unlike the town, which was strewn with lines of flags in blue for Tarl-an-Gig and green for Harn, the raft had no flags of allegiance, though it was painted in many bright colours.

These rafts were independent of Crua, seen as small principalities of their own under the rule of families who had plied the circle winds for generations. He had travelled on the skyrafts in the past, and found the command families to be a strange and insular lot, though they kept their word, always.

He stopped in the town square, one of Harn-Larger’s Rai was fire-juggling. Easy enough to do for those with a cowl, and impressive to the common passer-by. There was art in what they did, wheels of fire and bright flashes of colour spinning hypnotically. They ended the display with an explosion, which would usually have elicited an awed shout from the people but the skyraft was drawing the eyes of most. A round of desultory applause greeted the end of the fire show, most of that encouraged by a woman he took to be the Rai’s servant.

The skyraft’s arrival was timed for what would have been the festival of Rahini, the Stern Judge. Now it was simply another festival of Tarl-an-Gig. In the central square filthy monks, scarred with burns, robes dirty with charcoal, danced and sang around pyres with figures of the judged tied to posts atop them. Thankfully figures of rags, not flesh. Cahan had little stomach for executions, especially burnings. Even these false burnings set a bitter taste in his mouth.

He turned from the main square, pushed past a recruiter, singing out the glory of war and telling the town that the strongest would get rich mopping up the remnants of the red in the south. He tried to catch Cahan’s eye, his size always attracted recruiters, shouting of the Cowl-Rai who had fulfilled the prophecy and heralded the coming of warmth and plenty to the north. Twenty years since the Cowl-Rai had risen and ten since they had taken the great spires of Tilt, and still war raged. Cahan had seen little plenty and felt no warmth. By the recruiter was an information broker, paying for news of those who did not follow the new ways.

He wanted nothing to do with them.

Cahan had long ago found it true that in the worst of places the least questions were asked, so he sought out those places and found one near the wall of Harn-Larger. A rickety building with a drinking den downstairs and what were laughably called “rooms” – beds divided by thin wicker walls – on the second floor. The place was rowdy, filled with filthy men and women and the smell of them hit him harder than the raucous noise. They had little interest in him and he in them which suited his purposes. In the back of the room was a door and from behind the door came more noise. His feet took him in that direction as if there were a path there he must follow.

Curiosity had ever been his undoing.

In the back room, a place larger than the whole of the Leoric of Harn’s house. He heard the yattering of garaur but did not see them. There was much laughter, much drunken joy, and the smell of blood which he did not like, not in a place like this. It was the smell of the hunt and it had no place in a town where people hid behind walls.

Too late he realised he had stumbled into blood sport, a fighting den. He tried to retreat but the weight of the crowd denied him, pushing him towards a large wicker cage.

In the cage, shivering and frightened, sat a rootling. The sight of it stopped him dead. Froze him to the spot.

Cahan knew the great slow and layered forests of Crua as living things in more ways than greenery and great trunks. The forests had ideas and desires which manifested in ways that were strange and frightening to those of the towns. Strange and frightening to him too, quite often, but of their place, and he knew and respected them for it. Sometimes the trees would take a creature, one of their own, and change them, make them look more like the people and so rootlings were born. Whether this was to try to communicate with the people of Crua or to fight them off Cahan was never sure. Rootlings could be fierce when backed into a corner, but were generally shy. The most he usually saw of them was a sparsely furred arm or leg vanishing into the thicket.

It was not right it being here, it was not its place.

The one in the cage had been a garaur once. At first glance it looked like one of the people, not the size of a fully grown person, but bigger than a child. If you looked more closely then you realised it was not like the people at all, the eyes, intelligent, wide and oh-so-scared, were too large, the teeth in the mouth too sharp, the nose too small and ears too big and pointed. The body, covered with fine hair that was too long and too thick.

The rootling was plainly terrified. It had curled itself into a ball in the centre of the cage, as far away from the jeering crowd as it could get. Scattered around the floor of the cage were dead garaur. Cahan counted eight and mourned every one of them for they were good and noble animals. He had seen this before, setting rootlings against the creatures they had once been and betting on it. Once it would have been unthinkable, too many of the gods came from the forest, and their creatures were revered. Those who did not revere them at least feared the vengeance of the boughry, the Forest Nobles, the greatest of the forest spirits. But Tarl-an-Gig had no time for the forest, its gods, or any other gods. Such cruelty as this was becoming more common, and one of many reasons he stayed away from towns.

“Four at once, next!” came the voice of the cagemaster. He stood on a box to see over the crowd, “How long do you think it will survive, eh? How long? Will it survive at all?”

To survive is often to walk away from cruelty. But is that to live?

This gardener had told him that.

Saradis, the Skua-Rai of Zorir, always said cruelty was inevitable, and that was the way of life. But the old gardener said cruelty was a choice, and if you wished to live easily then you must be ready to let the cruelty of the world pass you over, but to do that was also to take the cruelty into yourself. To accept it was to become part of it. Cahan had learned all about cruelty from the fists of the tutors of Zorir who found him wanting, and he liked it little.

Real strength, the gardener had said, meant to stand against cruelty. Cahan did not want the attention such a stand was likely to bring.

To survive is often to walk away from cruelty. But is that to live?

“Osere take you, Nasim,” he said. Somewhere, deep within, Cahan knew it was not the gardener he should curse, but himself. He had nursed a slow ember of guilt in his gut for those who had died at his farm, a subtle, gnawing thing. That small ember had been burning brighter and brighter in him from the moment he had found the child’s toy in his house. He had let cruelty pass him over there, in exchange for his life. Here, now, whether he knew the truth of why or not, he could not let it happen again.

He pushed his way through the crowd to the cagemaster; small, young, his skin smeared with dirt around his clan marks. Like most younger people in the bigger towns he did not wear thick make-up. He had three teeth missing and the ones that were left were stained from chewing narcotic roots.

“How much?” Cahan shouted to him over the excited noise of those making bets.

“Bet what you want, Clanless,” he said. Filthy bodies jostled him and the smell of the room threatened to fell him. His head spun. “Your money is as good as any other’s. But bet quickly, we loose the garaur soon.”

“No, not to bet,” he said, “to buy the rootling.” The cagemaster stopped chewing, his surprise so total that it consumed him. It filled his mind and left him with no room to think of anything else. No space to take the money held out at him by excited men and women.

“Buy it?” The noise of the room receded, like the circle wind dying away and the forest trees calming in their ceaseless sway. He looked at Cahan as if he had appeared from the air before him from nowhere. “This is my livelihood, Clanless.”

The forester leaned in close, so he could whisper to him.

“And what do you make from these people, small coins I bet? Little more than splinters. There’s, what, one or two fights left in that thing? I will give you ten roundwoods for it.” His eyes widened in surprise, and Cahan felt shocked at his own words. Ten roundwoods was almost half the coin he had. The cagemaster cocked his head, lank hair hanging in strings.

“Why?”

“I am clanless, we learn to revere the forest. I owe it a debt.” He looked at Cahan, laughed.

“Keep that quiet, Clanless,” he spat. “We worship Tarl-an-Gig, the forest has no place here, and we care nothing for twisted creatures like rootlings.” He motioned towards the cage then leaned back, so he could look at him. It was not hard for Cahan to divine his thoughts: he was thinking of stealing the money. He would have people here who would help. But Cahan was bigger than most, a thick trunk fed and watered well that could stand against all weathers. Those around him were more like saplings on rocky ground, struggling to root themselves and ready to be thrown over by a strong breeze.

“I wish to buy the rootling,” he said again. “If I have the money, does why really matter?”

The cagemaster shrugged. “My business partner, I must speak to her.” Cahan nodded and the man vanished into the throng. Coming back quickly with a woman as ragged and filthy as himself.

“What will you do with it?” she said.

“Take it out of the town, set it free.”

She blinked, twice. “And for this you will pay ten roundwood?”

Cahan nodded. She turned to the man and they exchanged a look, then he raised his voice.

“The fight is off,” he shouted, “see Turif for your money. The fight is off!” All eyes turned to Cahan, a blanket of hostility settling across the room.

“We have paid for a fight,” said a woman near him, “and we expect blood.” A rumble of agreement, a shifting of the atmosphere towards violence.

“And you have had blood,” said the cagemaster. At the edge of the room Cahan noticed a man and woman in gnarled and rough barkwood armour appear, clubs in hand. “Unless you want the next blood on this floor to be yours,” he nodded at the guards, “be happy with what you have been given.” A woman in the crowd spat on the floor and threw a vicious glance at Cahan. The cagemaster waited until the room emptied and turned, holding out his hand. “My coin, friend,” he said, the guards watched. Cahan shook his head.

“I do not have it on me.” Only a fool would hand it over there. “Meet me outside the walls with the rootling. I will pay you once it is free.” The cagemaster did not like that any more than the crowd had liked being robbed of their sport, but had little choice. Cahan looked about him. The two guards were eyeing him suspiciously. He thought it best to leave. Leave the room, the building, the town. Once the rootling was free it would be best to find the crew of the skyraft and sign on. Get away from here.

Outside the city he waited, sat cross-legged before the wooden walls of Harn-Larger. The walls were not so tall close up, but were crowned with sharpened stakes and gibbets, though they were all empty. The walls were a poor defence. If war ever came here a real army would roll over the place and barely realise it. But Harn-Larger was far from any fighting, the red warriors of Chyi had been pushed out of the Northernmost territories many years ago by the forces of the blue and the new Cowl-Rai. It was the south that suffered now, where Chyi had the strongest support.

The man and the woman from the fighting pit came out of the gate, dragging the rootling on a lead. It had a pronounced limp. Behind them came soldiers, not many, only four, but they were armed with spears of hardened wood. Cahan stood, not liking what he saw but knowing that to run would be suspicious and would doom the rootling. The guards might even call on their friends on the walls. He did not want them to look at him too closely, and he did not want them to take the rootling back into town to die.

“I brought some friends,” said the man. “To speak to you. Only Turif, my second, she thought it powerful strange that a man would pay so much for a rootling. She worried you were some sort of betrayer, a spy for the red, maybe. Or one who follows forest gods.” As he walked nearer, Cahan stood, leaning on his staff. The man was a lot braver with the soldiers behind him.

“Don’t seem the way a good man of the blue would act,” said the woman, Turif. She wiped a hand across her nose and sniffed. “Paying money for a rootling. No god we know would want one of ’em. We don’t put up with forest worship here.”

“Brokers give a good reward for traitors,” said the man. The soldiers moved behind Cahan. “And we thought, we could get your money, the reward, and keep our forest fellow.” He nodded towards the rootling.

Cahan nodded. Looked from the man to the woman, over his shoulder at the soldiers. Shrugged. He could fight. The man and the woman were nothing. The soldiers and their spears a problem but not an insurmountable one. He let his shoulders slump, so that he appeared beaten. Turned to the man.

“This could have been easy,” he said to him.

“Seems easy to me.” He took a step closer. Brave now. Sure he was in a position of power. Cahan stepped forward and pushed him as hard as he could, sending him stumbling backwards. In his surprise he let go of the rootling’s lead. For a second, a moment, it squatted there, like one of the people but not like them. Confused by the world around it. It looked at the forester.

“Run,” he said to it. The rootling blinked overly large eyes once, then took off. Alternating between running on all fours in an animalistic lope and running like a person on two legs. Despite the limp it sped away from the town and out of the shadow of the skyraft at a speed no person could match.

Cahan had a moment to watch it. To smile at its freedom. At the sheer joy in its running, its athleticism as it leapt the crevasse. Then the guards approached, spears at the ready. The man was standing now, an ugly look on his face.

The cowl beneath the forester’s skin writhed.

You are the fire.

The guards reversed their spears so that they could use the butts to beat him.

And he let them.