“You were surprising back there,” I tell Kjat. She’s been quiet this whole time, and I feel the need to break the silence.
I see her tense up. “Surprising good? Or surprising bad?”
“Surprising good. You have a lot of strength in you. To be honest I didn’t expect it.”
“Thanks,” Kjat grinned. “I guess.” She relaxes, like she’s been holding her breath for most of the ride so far.
“Where did you train?”
She looks away. “Here and there,” she says. “A friend of the family showed me some things when I was younger.” She absently rubs the inside of her wrist, where a small black glyph lies on her skin.
I nod. I don’t want to pry. We all have our secrets.
We pass the mouth of an old mine, now abandoned, and we move toward a patch of deep forest where great flowering blossoms arch high above us. As we approach, the flowers swivel toward us and take on a predatory stance, heads low and forward, petals outstretched, and they shake themselves vigorously. The petals and fibrous stems are edged with spines.
Kjat draws her knife. “Wait,” I say. “They’re not things that you want to make enemies of. Watch.”
She nods and sheathes her knife reluctantly. The flowers study us, and we study them back. They are pale blue and white, stripes spiraling in from the petals toward the stamen like a whirlpool. Their fragrance is thick and fruity. They retreat slowly as the ship passes them by, most of them stretching skyward again to catch the next moonslight, but a few blooms still watch us until we pass out of the forest and on down the path, out of site.
“How did you know about them?” Kjat asks.
“There’s a great garden in the Chancellor’s Residence in Tamaranth. I had a chance to walk through it once, and there are a lot of plants like them. Some of them are almost sentient.”
“You worked for the Chancellor?”
“Sort of. We worked for someone who worked for someone. Just guard work, really.”
“But you fought at the ford, at Amontar. With Josik.”
I nod. And Pirrosh. “It was our first real fight. We nearly died, to be honest. There were so many Talovians, and they took us mostly by surprise.” It was one of the first major Akarii incursions, several years ago. Amontar was one of the outlying border towns near Tamaranth, and it had been completely overrun.
“I was with the Talovians for awhile.” She shakes her head. “Not fighting with them, I don’t mean that.”
“Josik had mentioned something. He didn’t say much.”
She turns her violet eyes toward me in the dark, and then looks away. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
“I get the sense you’ve been through a lot.”
She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. She doesn’t answer. And then she shrugs. “It’s war. Lots of people have been through a lot. I don’t think I’m much different.”
“I’m sorry about Josik,” I say.
“It wasn’t your fault, Blackwell. We know the risks. He knew what he was doing.”
“You two were close, weren’t you.”
“He reminded me of my brother, the way he wanted to look out for me?” She smiles to herself.
“He was a great friend, he and Pirrosh both.” I tell her about some of the things we’d been hired to go find. A sage deep in the Warrens of Tamaranth had sent Josik and I into the southern swamps for an old Akarii database, supposedly lost when a podship had been shot down. I’d come back with the data, and a case of creeping mold that had stayed in my fur for weeks. Another had sent us into a series of tunnels near Crom’s Watch, in search of an old aetherbook that had belonged to Crom himself. Instead we’d found a pack of wild dogs that had chased us for miles, and when at last we’d hid up in a tree, we found a body there, the husk of a long-dead Talovian, clutching that very same book.
“He had a lot of respect for you, you know,” she says. “They both did. They would have followed you into anything.”
I frown. “They did. And look what happened.”
She shakes her head. “You’re missing my point. Do you think they would rather have died in the Warrens somewhere? From brownplague or starving or something? The way Josik talked, you gave them something to work for, to dream about.”
I don’t have an answer for that. I nod. “Thanks,” I say. It doesn’t seem like much consolation, though.
The wind picks up, and she leans in against me. I find myself talking about my childhood in Sartosh’s lands, on the steppes of the Ghibral Mountains. I talk about the kiva I’d grown up in, about working in the fields, about my aunt and how she treated me, and about how there were long nights filled with nothing but wind and Sartosh’s books and the knife Sartosh had given me once, a knife that had belonged to Sartosh’s own father, that I kept now in a vault in a bank in Tamaranth for fear I’d pawn it.
As I talk, I can sense her relaxing more, settling into the ride. She asks quiet questions, and I’m surprised to find myself opening up to her.
“My childhood was a bit different,” she says, drowsily. I wait to hear more, but she leans in against me and is silent. I can hear her breathing settle into a deep, quiet rhythm that I sense doesn’t come easy to her. The Assassin’s moon is above the horizon again, and I study her in the moonslight. The patterns to her tattoos seems to shift and flicker.
She’s the last of my team, I think. I owe it to her. “I will get you out of this,” I promise, quietly. "I'll get you home." I can’t tell if she hears me.
• • •
The hills flatten out into a long stretch of warm, temperate lands that gradually slope down to the shore. The Buhr are moving so fast, the motion and my exhaustion take over, and when the Buhr from the bow wakes me, I realize two things—first, I’m a little embarrassed to see I’ve been spooned around Kjat. I extract myself without waking her.
Second, we’re reaching the port just before dawn.
There’s no live network here, since the town is off-lei. Mircada goes in ahead of us and comes back with a map and a bunch of keys. I guess the town is used to people coming in at all hours, being so close to the fallen city.
A fog has moved in off of the bay and the air is warm here, cloying even. The Buhr move us quickly through the streets, humming and clicking, the pads of their feet slapping at the dirt. It’s quiet. Ships shift in their moorings, lines knock against metal masts, waves slap against the docks. A dirty, rusted mech studies us for a moment, but then turns and rolls quickly down an alley. Rats look fat and lazy in the shadows, but the ones that aren’t quick enough to scurry out of our way are caught by a fast-moving Buhr, stuffed unceremoniously into a small spiked hole at the top of its feeding tube and quickly digested.
The warehouse is rough and temporary, no more than wooden walls and a metal roof knocked together, two large doors sliding doors in the front. It sits on a street back from the water that’s filled up with much of the same, all of them probably thrown up in the last few years to house things coming out of Tilhtinora. But it was large enough to house the ship. I unlock the doors, and slide them open. The Buhr carry us inside and lower the ship to the dirt floor. With the doors shut, it’s dark in here, but the rising sun shines through the cracks in the walls giving us enough light to work with. It’s tight, with all the Buhr, and it smells a little like a spicy barn.
HULGLIEV
, the Buhr perched on the bow shouts into my head. At least I think it’s that one, but it really could have been any of them.
WE COMPLETE OUR TASK
.
“I agree,” I say. “We’re done here.” I’ll be honest—I’m pretty relieved. They could have carried us straight back to the Akarii Retriever ship, and there wouldn’t have been much we could have done about it.
“They can’t get us a ship, can they?” Ercan says. “To Tamaranth?” He and Mircada climb out of the hatch. There are dark circles under his eyes.
I shake my head. “They probably could,” I say. “But I wouldn’t trust it.”
The Buhr appear not to hear me, and they bow as one and wave their feeding tubes at us. In a flurry of clicks and buzzes, they assemble and swarm out of the warehouse.
The lead Buhr remains behind.
The warehouse is eerily silent with them gone. Somewhere I hear a dog bark. “We are done, aren’t we?” I ask the last Buhr.
WE HAVE COMPLETED OUR TASK,
it agrees.
“You’re still here?”
WE REMAIN
,
it says.
AT MR. CAPONE’S REQUEST.
I get it. He’s keeping an eye on his investment now.
“Where will they all go?” asks Kjat. She’s rubbing her eyes, too. “The rest of them?”
WE WILL SPREAD ACROSS THE SEAS,
says the Buhr, to all of us. It stands up and spreads its arms wide, and it’s feeding tube swings in the air.
WE WILL BE ON SHIPS AND SWIMMING IN THE AIR. WE BREATHE BENEATH YOUR WAVES AND SIT BESIDE YOUR KINGS. WE WILL ROCK YOUR CHILDREN TO SLEEP AND SING THE PRAISES OF ONENESS BENEATH YOUR STARS UNTIL THE LAST PART OF YOUR SUN DIES. AND THEN WE WILL HONOR YOUR MEMORY ACROSS THE MULTITUDE OF WORLDS.
“You’re a little wrecked, aren’t you,” I say.
Its feeding tube droops.
PERHAPS,
agrees the Buhr, sounding a little sheepish for the outburst.
I
WILL SLEEP NOW.
It climbs up in the harness on my back and folds itself into a ball.
It’s pretty creepy, if you think about it. One giant mind spread throughout our worlds, selling everyone’s information to everyone else. I shake my head. But I guess there’s not much I can do about it.
For now.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering? A Buhr snores long and loud. When it’s on your back, up near your ears? It sounds like a giant, narcoleptic wildebeest.
13.
A
fter we get some rest, we find out that Akarii soldiers are everywhere in the Framarc family shiptown, called Port Ehlis. I think the Akarii are supposed to be a secret, but everyone in the town seems to know it.
The town is a temporary one that the Framarc family had built out a decade ago, a port to ship ore out to their island holdings in the Choroleos Archipelago. The Framarc make knives, some of the best, and every mage needs a knife. But then Tilhtinora opened up, and other families began to use the town as outpost for mining the city, too. Paying the Framarc for the privilege, I bet.
On the docks, though, I can’t help wondering if the Buhr have betrayed us after all. Several Akarii transports sit at anchor in the harbor, sending tracer lines of aether in to some of the soldiers. Junior Akarii mages walk the docks and hang around the noodle bars, and Akarii foot soldiers stand arrogantly at intersections of the docks, looking too bulked up with the gear hidden under their coats and just too alert. Framarc soldiers eye them nervously, and their hands twitch at their knives. While they’ve been known to work together, there’s no love lost between those two families. Though Framarc ships still come and go, probably with holds full of ore, and the town itself is busy with miners and sailors and merchants, all buying and selling from each other in different languages and gestures and currencies, it seems like everywhere we look there is an Akarii watching, waiting for something.
Kjat stays close to me, and we have our knives ready.
But it's not clear what they're looking for. Something else is going on.
Ercan, Mircada, Kjat and I head out to get supplies. Or for the Kerul to get supplies, since they’re the ones that have any money to spend, and we’ve got old oatmeal. I douse myself in cold salt water to cover my scent and despite the heat I wrap myself up in a hooded coat. There are Talovians in the colony, and I’ll never forget the first time in Tamaranth that an old frog flicked a thick gobbet of spit at me from the end of its long tongue—it had soaked into my underfur and smelled foul for a week. Talovians hate us, and rumor has it alot of them were Hunters, who nearly wiped us out.
There are also stray dogs roaming the piers, and I don’t want to draw too much attention.
For me, the difference between richness of the Framarc colony and Tamaranth, a city at war, is pretty overwhelming. On shore there are long rows of hotels, high-end brothels, and casinos that cater to Retrievers and miners, and then long stretches of warehouses like the one we’d rented line the beach to either side. Then most of the town reaches across the bay in a maze of floating docks, stretching out to a deep-water harbor. Everything’s in very good repair. Floating rafts support tent-like office structures flying the Framarc logo, and the family workers dressed in coats and bowler hats move between them with heads down, talking rapidly at each other in some sort of corporate dialect filled with acronyms. They pay little attention to anyone else.
But it’s the shops that get me. Ship-based shops sell basic staples and luxury goods, and those cheap souvenirs of Earth that are so popular now in Tamaranth--Eiffel Tower keychains, Las Vegas shirts, snow globes from Berlin. Some of them hold bars or restaurants, too. Food is everywhere. I’ve been starving for the last year, and the smells of the noodle shops, cooking meat in the open-air market, and beer from the bars is staggering. Fruit is stacked in bright pyramids.
My mouth waters and my stomach does backflips, and I see that Kjat can’t look away either.
Everyone is uneasy. The bald woman who sells Mircada rations is packing to leave in a small transport ship. A Krukkruk fishmonger gives her steep discounts on both fresh and smoked fish, bobbing and weaving its pockmarked and cratered first head with anxiety. When Mircada points out a small stringed sitar as something her mother had played, the tall, distracted man who runs the store presents it to her as a gift. “One less thing I have to carry, dearie. Take it, I insist.”
Ercan has been off talking to people, and we reconvene on a back section of dock. “They don’t seem to be looking for us, exactly,” Ercan says. “At least not yet. I don’t know why there are so many of them. And I probably need to find out.” He washes his face and hands with salt water, tries to brush the dirt off of his coat. He’s bought a tall, white wig, the kind you see some government officials still wearing in Tamaranth, and lets it settle onto his head. He tucks his spiky hair up underneath it while it sends out little feeding suckers to hold itself in place. It makes him look a foot taller, almost my height. “There has to be someone from Kerul here. I’ll try to book us some passage out of here, if I can.”