The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (24 page)

In short, it was not going to be a good place to dive overboard and swim for freedom.

Zeb still meant to bolt, and he knew how to run. Most men who came of age in the Riven Kingdoms were press-ganged into armies with some regularity, and before a battle that looked to be particularly thorny whole battalions could melt away into the woods. The King of Antersau had once joked that the hawk on his banners should be replaced with a more representative local bird, the Flying Deserter. From the Drannian Highlands to the Lower Ghendea, peasants fortunate enough to actually harvest a field always whistled sharply before sticking pitchforks into haystacks. A Riven Man did not live long if he did not learn when to beat feet at a young age.

Amatesu would not say where they were going, but Zeb had a good idea. An Ashinese warrior who looked like grim death itself, a shukenja with magic powerful enough to repair a ruined arm, and a mysterious Ayzant woman, or possibly bunny, with the royal-sounding name of Nesha-tari Hrilamae. Sailing to Souterm just down river and road from Galdeez, little more than a month before the Fifth Opening of Vod’Adia. The three strangers Zeb now found himself with, one of whom he had yet to even see, were not going to Doon for the coffee.

For the months of siege Zeb had spent in Larbonne, the Ayzant army had been reduced by more than just disease and the resistance of the Dauls. Larbonne was just a couple of weeks downriver from Chengdea, which along with Codian Galdeez were the two border towns through which the hobgoblins and bullywugs of the Vod Wilds allowed entrance into their lands once in a century to those wishing to brave the Sable City. More than a few of the besiegers had slipped out of the lines to try their luck further north, enough so that Ayzant officers regularly spread the bloody stories of what the Daulic forces in Chengdea were doing to any small groups of armed men coming their way from the south. More than a few times mangled bodies in ring mail armor “found on the roads,” were brought back to the lines for display.

With the port of Larbonne closed by the siege for much of the year, adventurers bound for Vod’Adia from abroad had been forced most often to take the route through Codian Souterm and Galdeez, and Zeb had no doubt he was with three of them now. For the moment. But he’d be damned if he was going anywhere near a magic city full of the unholy hosts of the netherworld. He would probably be damned anyway in due time, but not while he could still run like hell was at his heels.

Zeb prattled on to Amatesu but his mind was on Souterm long before the city came into sight. It was there that he intended to make his disappearance, the very first time the opportunity arose.

Around midday of the 27
^th
of Eighth Month the crewman watching for sandbars from the foremast first gave the shout that Souterm was nigh, and a huzzah echoed from the men sweating at the oars. Zeb and Amatesu moved from the slim shade beside the galley to the fore deck, and as the barge cleared the last torturous bend of the river they watched the city of Souterm appear before them.

The place was as grand as Zeb had every reason to expect. Though he had never been this far Down Channel before, Souterm was the sort of place preceded by its reputation. The oldest human city on Noroth had a history as complicated and convoluted as that of whole peoples and nations, and Zeb was faintly surprised by the number of landmarks he knew by his very first sight of them. There were the ancient Ettacean works of black stone, including the featureless stone cylinder standing like an iron rod on the stony spur of an island jutting into the wide harbor. That was now the Wizard Tower within the Circle Compound on Again Island, though no one had set foot within the tower itself for centuries. There were the spindly piers and twisting alleys of the lower west bank that dated from pirate times, backed by the even row houses of Broadsword Ridge between the hulking Castle of the Exlanders and the intricate White Cathedral of List, defining the part of the city seized by crusading knights from the Order of the Albatross. On the east bank of the wide river was a leafy green district of what seemed to be an entirely separate village below the massive and many-turreted palace of Denando the Great, the Agintan King who had extended his kingdom to this side of the Channel for a time.

Zeb pointed these sights and others out to Amatesu, and told her briefly a bit of what he knew about them. The woman nodded and looked interested, though she may have been humoring Zeb. He knew that the oldest and most storied town on Noroth was still far younger than those ancient cities of the Farthest West, but the shukenja was nice enough not to say so.

The men at the oars had struck up a cadence as they pulled into the wide harbor and the man in the foremast crow’s nest called down corrections so the barge’s course did not cross with any of the other numerous vessels plying the red-brown waters, everything from tall ships flying Miilarkian House pennons to little fishing craft from the east bank Pescadero. The barge moved for the west side of the harbor intent on a square fortress rising on a spur of natural rock, moss-covered and with the upper battlements retrofitted to sprout a number of stubby cannon barrels. The place flew a wide flag bearing the Codian emblem of an open brown chevron on a blue field representing the Book-from-the-Water, or the Code of Lake Beo. Zeb supposed that the old gray fort did as a customs house. He wondered how the band to which he was for the moment attached intended to clear Imperial customs, then noticed that the oarsmen had stopped singing.

He looked around. Uriako Shikashe stood nearby kitted out in his full-on regalia, and along with Amatesu both were looking back across the deck to the entrance to the aft cabins. So were the men at the oarlocks bolted to the gunwales. High above them the man in the crow’s nest had ceased barking. For the moment the barge was drifting under light sail.

Nesha-tari Hrilamae stood in the hatchway. Zeb supposed it was her, as she was the one person on this boat he had yet to see, though in truth he could still not see her very well even now.

The woman with the noble Zantish appellation “Hri-,” meaning “daughter of,” on her surname was ensconced in a voluminous cloak of sandy beige that looked golden under the warm noonday sun, topped by a peaked hood deep enough to shadow her face. There really could have been about anything within the bulky garment, but as she strode across the deck there was a roll to Madame Nesha-tari’s hips and the smart clacking of boot heels that could not have been mistaken for anything other than female. She moved with what a man from Wakminau would call the
marsik ik tsoo-tsoo
, which loosely translated into Codian as a fetching hitch in her giddy-up.

Amatesu bowed as the woman reached the prow, while Shikashe only gave a nod. Zeb did not manage either, he only stood and blinked.

“
Canharati
,” Nesha-tari said to Zeb, her voice at once clipped, yet with a husky sort of inflection that lingered. It took Zeb a moment to put aside Codian, and Minauan Danoric, and to finally find the part of his brain where he left his Zantish lying around.
Canharati
meant good afternoon.

“
Canharati, Mahadaci
,” Zeb managed, and performed what was probably the deepest bow of his life, not so much from respect as from the fact he was trying to get a peek up into the shadows of Nesha-tari’s deep hood. He got no more than a glance of chin and though it had never really struck him before, a chin could actually be rather lovely.

“
You are the translator, Zebulon Baj Nif?” she asked in Zantish, and Zeb rose and bobbed his head in a nod that probably went on too long.

“
I am, Madame. At your service. Totally. Um. That is…”

Zeb had taken Nesha-tari to be about Amatesu’s height as she crossed the deck, several inches shorter than himself. He was surprised as he rose to find she was actually just about his own height. She brought her long-fingered hands together in soft gloves, also beige, and from one wide cloak sleeve she withdrew a stiff leather envelope wrapped in ribbon and embossed with the Ayzant Royal seal of a crown with red dragon wings. Zeb saw a supple wrist, smoothly tanned but lighter in complexion than was typical for a Zant.

“
These are our papers,” Nesha-tari said, holding out the envelope. Zeb wiped his hand on his shirt before accepting the packet, as his palms had started sweating at some point.

“
They state our reason for traveling to the Empire as the diplomatic business of the Ayzant Throne. You should not be asked to explain anything beyond that to the customs functionaries.”

Zeb was having a bit of trouble concentrating, for a curled lock of dark red hair had slipped from the edge of Nesha-tari’s hood to rest pendant-like just above the swell of her breasts, notable at the moment as the stiff harbor breeze from the fore was pushing her voluminous cloak back against her frame. Zeb was a big fan of that breeze. Nesha-tari’s cloak was belted at her slim waist and had an eye-and-hook clasp at the throat, but the lower length was moving back to reveal that her brown leather boots were knee high, and had pointed toes in the Zantish style. She wore them with short trousers, baggy and with the calf-length cuffs bunched up at her boot tops. She said something else that Zeb totally missed.

“
Paerdohna
?” he asked, which was more Ghendalese than Zantish, though Nesha-tari seemed to get the gist of it. She looked at Zeb evenly as the breeze, of which he was growing increasingly fond, caught just enough of the edge of her hood to move it slightly back. Warm sunlight touched a high cheekbone and played at the turned corner of a full mouth. It glinted beneath an arched eyebrow in the bluest eye Zeb had ever seen.

“
Repeat this to the Westerners,” Nesha-tari said, speaking clearly as though she were addressing a young child or a very slow grown-up. “We will be examined at customs by a Circle Wizard, for the Codians monitor all magic brought within their Empire.”

Zeb switched to the Codian language and repeated the Zantish woman’s words for Amatesu, who relayed them quickly into Ashinese for Shikashe. The swordsman frowned deeply and answered the shukenja with a flurry of words, one hand on the hilt of the longer of his two swords. Amatesu nodded and spoke to Zeb, who translated for Nesha-tari.

“
Uriako Shikashe-sama says that the katana known as the Breath of Winter and the…what was the second thing? Wakizashi. Wow, that’s a mouthful. The wakizashi known as the Knife of Ice are carried as a sacred trust and shall not be relinquished unto any official…”

Nesha-tari snapped her fingers several times, which Zeb took as a signal to stop speaking.

“
Tell them that as long as they remain close to me no magic shall be detected about their persons.”

Zeb did so, not even wondering how exactly that was going to work for he was becoming increasingly lost in the blue depths of Nesha-tari’s left eye, ringed as it was by heavy lashes that gave the sapphire a languid coolness, very striking against the tumbling, dark red curls beside her unblemished face.

She said something else, as did Amatesu, and Zeb responded to neither as he only stood and stared, swaying gently with the motion of the vessel.

Nesha-tari turned on a boot heel and headed back for the passage below decks. Zeb had one glimpse only of her full face, of flashing eyes and a fine nose in profile with a slight upturn that was positively adorable. Then she was gone, striding away across the deck. Zeb hated to see her leave, though as the oldest joke in any language went, it was a pleasure to watch her go.

Zeb sighed, hardly realizing that he did it very loudly. Nor did he notice as the man in the crow’s nest resumed barking from above, and the surrounding men went back to pulling at their oars.

Behind Zeb’s back, Amatesu and Shikashe exchanged a sideways glance, and a single nod.

The barge moved to the docks below the old square fort, and a gangway was thrown across. Nesha-tari reappeared on deck and Uriako Shikashe, resplendent in full armor and helm, led the way onto land with the Zantish woman right behind him. Zeb and Amatesu hoisted the group’s rather scant baggage and followed the pair up a wooden stairway to street level where two Codian legionnaires in gleaming breast plates and helms, tower shields and spears, stood to either side of an open hallway giving into the fort. The legionnaires rapped the butts of their spears as the foursome passed by and one spoke a polite greeting, which Zeb returned purely by rote as he followed Nesha-tari’s mesmerizing stride into the cool hall.

The hall opened into a pleasant courtyard with two levels of arched walkways on the four sides keeping the open interior in cool shade. Great ferns grew in enormous clay pots on the balcony level, and their overhanging fronds dappled sunlight on the flagstone floor below. The place smelled like clean stone swept with straw brooms, and a working fountain in the center filled it with the burbling patter of water.

A line of stout tables stood beneath the balconies across the way, manned by clerks with rope lines before them, not busy at present as most ship captains timed their arrival off the river for early morning. Zeb wondered faintly why their barge had put in at midday, almost as though the captain was in a hurry to off-load his passengers. Shikashe strode to the end of the shortest line and his armored sleeves creaked as he crossed his arms to wait, drawing a nervous glance from the small fellow in line ahead of him.

Nesha-tari’s words about a magical examination by Circle Wizards, spoken half an hour ago, finally registered with Zeb and he looked around until noticing a figure in gray robes on the balcony above, a young woman holding a gnarled staff topped by a clear crystal globe. Her lips were moving, and the pale fingers of one extended hand wiggled in the air. Standing directly in front of Zeb, Nesha-tari’s hood only tilted slightly to one side, and she never took her eyes off of Shikashe’s back. The Circle Wizard above looked bored and rested the staff against her shoulder. She met Zeb’s eyes for a moment with no particular enthusiasm, and drifted away from the edge of the balcony.