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Karesh Ni: Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

For all that she had me over a barrel, I got something else out of it. I got land. Baronness Alyssa offered me a small manor house within Kageran proper. Manse Plachar filled about a quarter of one of Kageran’s round city blocks, with a shared private well in the center. It needed some work. The roof leaked, and there were mice in the walls. But a complete refurbishment was only a mark or so, even for an eighteen room mansion with a summer kitchen. Manse Plachar came with a title as well, and I would be Lady Elegy of Kageran.

It’s not a high title, but it’s the first step above.

So I sat on a boat in the middle of the lake, waiting for moonrise. The Sun would rise swiftly behind the waning Moon, but for now the sky held nothing but stars. It was bitterly cold. The Baroness’s office had been chilly; this was a compound hell. Wind blowing down the Aph valley carried all the Doon’s chill. There was no snow, but a fine sleet of dust and sand from the uplands stung my face. Waves beat away from the wind, pulling my boat elsewhere.

I was wrapped up in every blanket I could carry. Every few minutes I would unwrap myself enough to pull the oars and row back to the point Alyssa had prescribed west of the dead center of the lake. Then I swam back under my blankets and sulked. No one could see me sulking. The sky was clear. Alyssa should be stilling that wind, not watching me.

But just in case she was watching, I said some mean things about her. This was her fault.

Why don’t powerful sorcerers ever build their temples of evil on beaches? Warm beaches? Beaches where I can drink something in a coconut mug? You’re powerful sorcerers! Do warm things!

The wind gusted, I rowed back to position, and the air was so cold my face hurt. My hands ached where they weren’t numb. People do freeze to death on the water in winter. This could kill me, I realized, and not in the whiny, I-don’t-want-to-be-here way. There’s risking death for a job, but this wasn’t really the job yet. This was sitting in a boat on a nigh-frozen lake in winter, waiting for a sorceress to kill the damn wind.

You know, this just wasn’t worth it. I could cut the contract and be done. Her job was to stop the wind, and I wasn’t going to die because my employer couldn’t stop a wind from breaking up reflections–

The wind died, like a switch was flipped, and the lake-surface flattened into glass.

My boat stopped rocking. I lost all sense of time.

In the east, the trees of the Arsae rose black against a star-speckled sky. Here and there a star would peek through, twinkling as leaves blocked it, but the forest-ocean looked like a low shadow crouching on the horizon. That great thicket by the Three Sisters where ghosthearts rose high above the rest stood unusually dark, unusually tall.

The moon peaked through the thicket. The water lay flat as a mirror and the air dead still. I waited. A thin sliver of moon broke above the treetops, a bit of crescent only, and that meant soon it would be dawn.

In the lake’s surface, the reflection of the moon looked startlingly bright. Prepared as I was for sorcery, it looked mystical. But the night was dark, the trees below the moon blocked the stars, and the water was thick with silt from the mountains. I couldn’t be sure.

The moon kept rising. Its reflection brightened, I tried to discount what I saw as optics and perspective, but the reflection brightened further until the moon in the lake and the moon in the sky hurt my eyes. I blinked and glanced away.

I looked back, and the reflection was rising out of the water. A rash of bubbles set the surface foaming, and a low, white rock with a mooring pin stuck up.

I rowed once, and the boat slid through water. I winced at every wooden creak and the hint of splashing in my wake. Nothing else made a noise.

The prow bumped the rock with a solid, mundane ‘thump.’

I reached out, caught the mooring pin, and stepped from boat to rock. Up close it was white marble, veined with something translucent like quartz. The moonlight hitting the side cast rainbows thought it. I tied off the rowboat.

The moon rose further, and with it rose the platform. My rock rose on a crescent of other stones, all white and crystalline. They reached around a pool of water, the boat at the center. Every new block in the crescent appeared below the one before, and soon the boat was in the center of a small lagoon of white blocks, apparently standing unsupported in the center of the lake. The stones were as still as the water.

But the moon kept rising, and more rocks appeared underwater within the circle. They faded into view down there among the reflections of the stars, a long, spiral stairway that sank into the reflected sky. I looked east. The sickle moon was now fully above the trees, and in the water, the stairway descended up into the sky.

I walked down to the lowest part of the crescent to rise above the Hyades. Underwater the landing at the head of the stairs bridged the gap in the arc. Here the stairway that seemed to descend through the reflection of the sky rose to its highest/lowest point. The first step was right before my feet, underwater.

Do you have any idea how cold that water was going to be?

I’m really not very brave. I thought about dying, freezing to death feet first, if I stepped off the dock and onto the stairway. That’s how Alyssa said I could climb to the Karash Ni, the Silver City. But I didn’t have much time, for the Sun was closely chasing the Moon and would soon wipe the reflections and the stairway from the lake as it wiped the stars from the sky. To get to the Silver City, I had to step onto the stairway, go down into the water, while the Moon reflected. I had to start before dawn.

Back in the office, Satre had come back from his snit and reluctantly agreed with her.

“It’s not that hard,” he’d said. “It’s all downstairs, anyway.”

He’d sounded like my father. On the landing I paused, took out a small honeyed pastry called a ‘flat’, and had a snack.

#

I was born outside Indianapolis, Indiana and have exactly zero memories of it. Apparently I lived in Columbus, Ohio until I was one. But I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia in a big family, six kids, and remember it well.

I don’t know what small families are like, but big families are wondrously intense and you sort of want to murder someone. Everyone is in your business. For us this was partially because our house was so small that brothers or sisters had to be in your business. They had nowhere else to go! The parents had no money and worked odd hours, so the only thing they spent on us was time. Sometimes I wondered if they should have had such a big family when they struggled financially and realized they just really liked kids.

The parents liked messing with us. My father told outrageous lies, and my mother enjoyed having someone with her. I asked her about it growing up.

She said, “I wanted to matter. I don’t remember who won the Academy Award when I turned eight, and I don’t recall who took the Nobel Prize. I remember the president because I had to memorize him and the VP for class, but they’re just names and pictures on a wall. But I know my mother liked to cook chicken and beans, and she seasoned them with garlic. I remember my father coming home and making me take off his boots in the evening. His fingers had been run over long ago, and the way he wore his laces they ratcheted tight over the day until he couldn’t remove them at night. When I was in school I thought about trying to become a celebrity or a politician, but they only touch people superficially. I wanted to matter to someone so they would never forget me. So we had you.” And she touched my head. I was nine, she was thirty four, and she was always the most beautiful woman on Earth with black hair and a quiet smile.

“Do I have to?” I asked her. “Be a Mom and not a famous person?”

“No, sweetie. You don’t. You can if you want to, but you can be a politician, or scientist, or businesswoman, or anything you want. You can be both. Just be the best person you can be.”

Then I asked my dad why he had kids.

“Tax breaks,” he replied.

Even at nine, the peak of believing everything my father said, I had a feeling that wasn’t true.

“I don’t think you had kids for taxes, Dad!” I told him.

“We haven’t made a profit yet, but next year you’ll be old enough for the salt mines!” He wiggled his bushy eyebrows. “And we may sell your spare kidney on the black market. You have two!”

My father had the worst of all social diseases: he thought he was really funny.

My mother liked to cook with one of us kids at a time. The kitchen was tiny, and she didn’t want fighting around hot stoves and ovens. She liked our questions, she liked answering, and she liked to pat my head or touch my back while I was doing something tricky.

Dad could cook, and Mom once told me that he’d cooked for her when they’d dated, but he enjoyed stirring the pot of a great fighting mass of kids, all of us arguing and yelling, so to him fell the setting of the table with one kid, the clearing of the table with another, washing the dishes with a few more, and innumerable cleaning tasks, limited only by the number of children he could foist them off on.

Dad– I never really got a handle on Dad. Dad was far more entertained by us than Mom was. He had a bit of distance which let him observe us as pawns on a chessboard or maybe more like dogs at a park. He was immensely invested in all of us, and he enjoyed everything that went on regarding us. He liked driving us on errands because he would put someone in the front seat and talk, sometimes about economics, often the back-stabbing politics of tenure, the history of technology, or equally intensely our little struggles. He loved us, loved putting time into us, and equally loved bothering us: deep down, bone deep irritating his children. He once snuck into my room at night and unlaced all of my shoes.

Why would anyone ever do that? I just assumed it was one of the brothers, but maybe my sister because we were fighting at the time, and only years later he’d admitted it was him.

“Why?” I’d asked, astounded beyond words. I truly felt flabbergasted.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just wanted to see what you’d do.”

Coming from Earth to Pallas is a story for another time. I can’t go back. I don’t think about the trip much, but I think about Mom and Dad, the world I lived in, and the differences between them. They don’t have flats on Earth but Pallas doesn’t have sugar like Earth. Nothing here is as sweet. Food-wise, I mean. There’s no food here as sweet.

#

But eating finishes a pastry quickly, and then I had sticky fingers and was still scared. If I stepped into the water, and that reflection of stairs was just a reflection, I’d splash right through. That would kill me. Even if I climbed out immediately, out here, on the lake, in the cold, I would die. I had blankets in the boat nearby, but I didn’t think they would matter.

But some horrible part of my brain said, You could make it. Those blankets are right over there. Even if you fall into the water, you can jump right out, wrap yourself in blankets, and you’ll be fine.

You could even quit, said my brain. Right then. If those stairs aren’t real and you fall into water, Alyssa hired you under false pretenses, and you could quit the job immediately. Take your money and go. First you just need to take that one step.

And every other part of me said, don’t do it! but that one terrible part of my brain said, just try.

I whined a little and stepped into the lake.

My foot landed on a dry marble stair. I knew where the water level should be, but inside the stone crescent the water was so clear I couldn’t see the lake at all. My foot stayed dry. I stepped off the landing and took the next step. Then I took another. Soon I was grumbling and muttering to myself, walking down a helix of stairs that descended towards stars and clouds. Behind and above, the crescent of white stone hung just like a moon in the star-speckled sky. A few revolutions down, the stone crescent was the sickle moon, hanging in a star-speckled sky, and the night-wrapped expanse of Pallas lay below.

To the east lay the dark Arsae, the great tree ocean between the elven homelands and goblin nations. To the west rose jagged mountains. The Doon, the great mountains on the north of Tenemerrair, looked like rumpled laundry thrown over big dogs. The glaciers looked white and cold, the valleys between them dark and deep, and tiny, ribbons of silver water appeared and disappeared between peaks. North and south, the mountains met the trees in a folding line. I knew that the mountains pushed east to the north and far up there the great goblinmounts rose, but I was making stuff up if I told myself I could see them. To the south, the sharp border cut hard west, and I could see peaks abutting the blackness. Further south, and I might be making up details because I knew they were there, I thought I saw the floodplains of Nar, maybe the dun grasslands of the Horned Lords to the west and the gentler trees of the Solange to the east.

Directly below me hung the Silver City. My helix of stairs danced with its match, another white marble stairway that rose from Karash Ni. That stairway rose to the black part of the moon, the shadow within the crescent. Between them ran a long gold cable, thick as a building, made of braided gold cords, themselves made of twisted gold strands. Throught the middle of it ran something white and red. If I leaned over the inside railing, I saw the stairs spiral together until vanishing at a distant point, the gold cable running through the center. If I looked outside, Pallas spread out like a misty map with dawn rising in the distance.

I stopped to appreciate the view, cold be damned, and stayed still long enough to see the world slide by. The Silver City remained a fixed point, but the ground beneath it slid east. Soon we passed the blotch of the Hyades to hang over ice-capped ripples. The mountains looked so tiny and mild. A long, thin cloud slithered by. The city stayed perfectly still as the world walked past underneath.

I wasn’t on Earth any more and hadn’t been for a long time.

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Twiligh in Heaven: Chapter 9

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Chapter 9

The day was dark, the sky heavy, and the seas had no waves. Even the winds seemed hushed. What had been a perfect beach of endless sea and beautiful golden sand had become a cacophony of rock, deep pits, and broken shore. Mallens’s wrath had lifted the bedrock. Sand had fallen aside, sandstone jutted up into the air, and basalt plates rose from the lagoons.

I’d heard the five cousins perfectly though they stood about fifty feet away. A little hint of a breeze blew in my direction, so perhaps that helped, and the flat water had no waves to wash out their voices. I was trying to find an alternative to mugging them but nothing came up.

My thinking time ran out when the five of them turned and entered the shallow water between sandbar and shore. They were talking deliberately lightly about how great everything was going to be when they gave Mallens the sword, the one thing I absolutely couldn’t let them to do. That had to be stopped. Violence it must be. I crouched, Nurim walked in front of the rest and said something about Jesephene, before he vanished as if the ground underneath the water sucked him down.

The others screamed, and dark scaled hands grabbed them from below. Like a surge of little plops, the cousins plunged underwater. They struggled. Several propped themselves up on knees and elbows, but their heads were below the shallow surface. It’s said an angry nereid can drown you in a palm’s worth of water, and these had almost a foot to work with.

The cousins struggled. I saw their backs heaving, and the sea nymphs climbing on top of them: a pack of predators focused on their prey.

The heavens parted. Lights appeared. Inspiration sang.

This was a problem I could solve by hitting people!

I screamed Obesis, ran across the water, and they heard me coming. I wanted them to. There were more than a dozen of them, and they paid little attention to one, shouting idiot charging.

They should have noticed I ran on the water, not through it, but they learned.

“Obesis!” I shouted again and threw myself down and forward, skidding across the surface like an ice skater. A nereid rose out of the water to grab me, and I caught her in the face with a deep fist, the low swing you use on a grappler when he’s shooting. That’s a punch that has to hit like a boulder stopping a rhino to be any good at all. Mine sufficed.

Knuckles hit scales. I pushed through. My fist dragged her out of the water and threw her a dozen feet through the air. She landed on sand but hard enough it still splashed.

The impact stopped me. I sank. Water swirled around my feet. I shouted Obesis again, jumped to the surface of the water, landed on the splash, and when nereid hands reached for my ankles, I reached for them. I yanked him fully up into the air by his own wrists, and he gave me that look of shock that came with a hesitation. The utter comprehension of how bad this was about to be made it inevitable.

I spoke Raln, and all things were blades, even my fist.

I punched about half his head off, and all of him dropped.

Surprise gone, they stopped drowning the cousins and turned on me. I beat them down. Blood underwater is black, and nereids soon floated on the surface of the lagoons. The cousins lurched to their feet gasping, and when the sea people hesitated, counting their losses, I started shoving the big, solid cousins toward the sea.

“Out of the water! Run!”

He argued. “We can–”

I interrupted. “You don’t fight nereids in the water! Run!”

He ran. They all ran. The nereids attacked. I put down two but probably not fatally, and turned before the rest. Maybe they didn’t really want to catch me, or maybe I could run across the waves faster than they could swim beneath them, but I made it to the shore safely. The cousins stood there gasping, and the six of us ran uphill.

For a moment the spirits of the sea watched. Then they slipped beneath the waves. The one I’d knocked out of the sea had vanished, leaving beside just marks in the sand, and the forms I’d thought were corpses sank beneath the waves. You’d be amazed what a spirit can live through in their place of power, but I doubted all of them lived.

Whatever. It was over. I stood with the cousins, panting, and trying to get my breath back.

After a minute or two they asked the most reasonable question: “Who in death and darkness are you?”

And of course I lied. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am Remus, and I am a finder of rare, exotic, and stolen weapons. I’m here for the saber.” And I pointed honestly at the sword Nurim carried.

“It’s not a saber. It’s straight!” said Zenjin.

“Yeah,” said Nurim. “Hold on. It says something here.” He peered at the butt of the handle and held it right up to his face. He could barely see through the gloom of the heavy overcast.

I couldn’t remember the handle saying anything, but since I was trying to erase all traces of it, I didn’t want anyone to know if it did.

“It is called a saber because sabers are weapons of the elite. They’re more expensive.”

Five confused, wary people looked at me. The one holding my forgery grabbed it. I think he wanted to look threatening, but all I noticed was he wasn’t inspecting any writing any more.

I continued. “The single curved cutting edge gives some justification for saber. Likewise, the shape makes it slightly point heavy to augment slashing. However the straight back, as noted, would normally bring it into the longsword category. All of this is missing the point. Curved swords are weapons of the elite. Straight swords are cheap. If the maker called it a saber, he could charge double for it. If he called it a longsword, he couldn’t. As such, it’s a saber.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Osret. “You can’t charge more for something just because you call it something it isn’t.”

I laughed at him.

“People who have enough money to buy it would know it isn’t a saber!” he yelled.

“Correct. But that is an extremely expensive weapon, so it’s not going to see a lot of use. It will be worn, not wielded. It can be called anything the owner wants.”

“When you say expensive, how expensive do you mean?” asked Apseto.

“Extremely,” I said. “It’s also extremely stolen, and those two extremelies are about equal. I’m authorized to pay you for it, and I’m authorized to kill you and take it. My customer doesn’t care.”

“Parasite, there’s five of us!” said Zenjin. He looked like he was holding a grudge.

I looked at them and the dark lagoon. “How’s that working out for you?”

I waited until the silence became uncomfortable and then began a slow, mocking clap. No one joined in. I stared him dead in the eyes until he looked away.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

“So we’re going to turn this in, right?” asked one of the men on the shore.

“Yes, we’ve decided to be stupid about it,” agreed one swimmer from the center of the water. It was the one who’d claimed to have gotten it before.

“Oh, the blight upon you!” swore the other swimmer in the dark lagoon, and he turned, pulling hard toward the shore. The blighted one followed.

I ran between dunes and broken trees. Knotted pines had fallen over. Rifts had been driven into sand and dune, and narrow rivulets crawled through them. I could see where the hills had sunk, and where they would level out as wind and rain would shave the sand bar’s rough edges. But I also saw huge shelves of black stone up on their sides like broken dinner plates dropped from a picnic. Mallens’s stomps had lifted the bedrock here, driven it down there, and hills like the Flatirons of Thango rose out of flat beaches. They gave me great cover.

Around a jetty I found the sandbar the five had stopped to rest on, but it wasn’t connected to the land. Between us was a submerged section of dark water, filled with silt and black weeds. It looked about knee deep. I could run across, but they’d hear and see me coming. Their spit of sand had no dunes.

I could wait and hit them when they crossed. If I timed it right, I could catch the few in front and put them down while the others were still in the water. That might cause problems depending on who had the sword, but it seemed better than bull-rushing the five of them.

I hid and waited. There was some argument I couldn’t catch, and I broke cover to get closer. They didn’t notice.

“I’m agreeing with you!” said the disagreeable agreer. “We all agreed to be stupid, and so stupid we shall be. We’re going to turn it in, because Mallens will give us a reward and certainly not just take it as his due. We aren’t going to take this obvious item of power to the mists and and make a party palace out of it! We’ll stay in our little house instead of making a mansion because all the partying would distract us from our complaining time!”

Someone sighed. “Osret,” he said, slowly and as if in great pain.

“What?” yelled Osret. “Who wants all that party sex? Clearly, not anyone here.”

“If this is one of the weapons used to try to kill Mallens, do you really think we should keep it?” asked another one. “Does that seem remotely wise?”

“Of course not. We definitely shouldn’t transform it into something nothing alike, because Mallens will clearly start watching the property market for mist palaces when he needs to find assassins. Blessings of feast and fortune, you’re so smart! There’s certainly no way we could hide a sword.”

Someone else sighed.

They all looked so tired except for Osret. He took advantage of their silence.

“And we certainly couldn’t do something worthwhile with it, like give it to the ghost. This is only exactly what she asked for, and then we’d get revenge on the man who killed your mother,” Osret almost screamed.

“You want to use a forbidden weapon to hire a ghost? Osret, what part of that plan could go right?”

“She’s a ghost! She disposes of things so they are never found. She’s a ghost!” Now Osret was yelling.

Another repeated, “You want to use a forbidden weapon-”

Osret said, “It’s not forbidden. Mallens doesn’t even know it exists!”

“Who cares?” interjected a third. “Are you going to argue with him if he finds out? Claim ex post facto rules don’t count? He’s the Lord of Creation! He’ll stomp you to death and unmake your essence. What will you do then? Be dead at him?”

“Osret, we’re decided,” said another. “No one cares what you think, so stop talking.”

“Death upon you,” said Osret, and I thought he would strike the other.

But he didn’t. The two of them glared at each other while the other three formed a silent, worried crowd. Then Osret looked away, and the rest spoke among themselves quietly.

One of them came forward. “Everyone. Osret, Zenjin–” he looked at the one Osret had cursed “–we have to live together. Can we all agree with that?”

No one agreed with that. Several muttered. Osret and Zenjin looked away.

“Now bless feasts,” said the one trying to still the conflicts.

Osret and Zenjin didn’t bless anyone’s feasts. Osret managed to look nauseated, annoyed, and tired at once, and Zenjin was looking at him like he’d just spotted someone he’d always hated and never been drunk enough to fight.

“Glad we’ve put that behind us. Now we–” He was looking at Osret when he sighed a deep, gurgling thing of bubbles in his throat. His entire attitude changed, and he turned back from the sandbar that separated us to fully addressing the others.

“Osret, it’s just us. You can stop performing. There’s no one here to see you. We’re cousins. Me, you–” he tapped his chest. “Nurim, Apseto. Zenjin–” he double-tapped the other on the chest too. “You’re wishing death on people! Osret, that’s not necessary! I understand, I’m with you, but we’re not trying to get you. We’re your family. Osret, it’s okay. Hesh, you with me?”

Osret wouldn’t look at him.

“Come on, hesh. Hesh, we go back from before we could walk. Before my Mom died, she used to tell stories of when you used to chew on me when we were crawlers. Come on. Please. I’m not fighting with you. I’m your cousin. I’m Aesthus. I’m a person, I’m family, not some enemy. Come on.”

And Osret still wouldn’t look at him, but he sighed.

“And Zenjin, you too. You had no reason to say that. It was disrespectful.” Aesthus held out an open hand, both warning and calming.

“Yeah, ye,” said Zenjin. He made an act of will. “Osret, I apologize I shouldn’t have said that.”

To Zenjin, Aesthus said, “Thank you.” And to Osret added, “See? We’re with you.”

Osret and Zenjin stood awkwardly for a moment, then shook hands like limp fish. But if they weren’t embracing like brothers, their shoulders held less tension, and their arms didn’t clench.

Aesthus continued. “We talked about this, and four of us agreed. But Osret, we’re not dismissing you. Yes, if things go right, making a mansion from the blade would be something, or giving it to the ghost. Yes, we could make a party house, and yes, if we didn’t have to pay rent, we could throw double bumps. I also heard you about giving the sword to the ghost. Feast and fortune, Osret, of course I want revenge. He killed my Mom!

“But she’s my Mom! And I think about her, the way she kept telling me to be smart and take care of myself. Mallens is mad. Not just angry, but mad with with fury. He threw Tollos into the sky! If he finds anything, anything about the sword, he’s not going to be calm. We’re not going to have a chance to argue our case. He’ll just start killing people.

“I’ll take the sword to him. I massage his feet. I know all of you hate it, so I’ll do it. I’ll tell him how wonderful he is and how loyal we are, and how everyone else is wrong and he’s right. I’ll give him the sword. And you’re right; he’s not going to reward us.

“But we’ll be made. And if we can talk him down, all of the other gods holding their breaths will remember. And if we plead–and I’ll plead, remember. You don’t have to say anything—he’ll take Tollos down from the heavens, and she’ll remember.

“You’re right, okay. If everything goes well, your ideas are better. But if anything goes wrong, we’re all going to die, and Mallens isn’t going to be calm or reasonable about it. But I’m pretty good talking to him, and I’ll massage his feet, get between the toes, and he’ll be okay. We win this way.

“But we have to stick together. We have to work together. You need to stick with us. Zenjin won’t say anything like that again, he apologized, and the rest of us will be a little more respectful. But if we, family, are fighting like this, Mallens is flipping plates. Come on, hesh. Stay with us.”

Osret made a noise like he’d eaten bad shrimp. He frowned at the sea and waves.

“Osret, agree with us,” said Aesthus. His voice was low but not soft. He insisted. “Let this be done.”

Osret looked away. The others watched.

After a moment, Osret tried to walk away, but Aesthus caught him and held him back. Another struggle of wills happened, and Osret obviously just wanted the others to drop it. But Aesthus wouldn’t, and while he didn’t contest with Osret, he didn’t look aside either. He stood peacefully demanding, and the other three cousins stood in a close circle around Osret. He wouldn’t be able to get away with shoving or fighting.

Aesthus repeated, “Agree with us. Let it be over.”

And Zenjin added, “I did apologize, hesh. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Finally Osret took Aesthus’s hand and shook it. “Fine.” He shook hands with the others, Zenjin again, and they were fast but tight handshakes. But it galled Osret, and I could see a deep banked fury in his eyes. It bordered on malice. His cousins must have seen it too or chose not to.

I felt like a pervert watching this conversation, so I looked down and away. The notion of running up on them and hard initiating to take the sword felt even worse. There didn’t seem to be any alternatives, but I stared around as if magic was hidding under a rock.

Instead I saw dark, quick figures like shadows slide through the shallow water. They moved without even rippling the surface, through water barely knee high. Nereids, fish spirits, the dryads of sea and surf, I thought.

All around me the wreckage of the beach rose in piles and towers. The nereids swam into the deep black water around the cousins’ sandbar and vanished. Nereids are usually peaceful, lazy, and they like to tease. But the shore had been ruined and disrupted by Mallens’s efforts, and the dryads had swum silently and fast.

They swam like predators, I thought. Suddenly I had something worse to worry about than Osret.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 7

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Chapter 7

It took me two days to run from Angel’s Crest to Hyperion moving with all due haste. Clean air filled my lungs and made me want to move. Manna kept me going. The mountains of the west dwindled. North of me, other mountains would be rising though I couldn’t see them. Mallens had drawn the privacy veil around Mount Attarckus, thick white clouds that rolled with wind and thunder.

Of course that had nothing to do with me…well, it had everything to do with me (Yay! I mattered!), but I hoped no one figured that out.

My master plan to become famous seemed to have some rather significant problems.

I put them out of my mind.

When I arrived, I had one of those moments of indecision where I knew whatever I chose, I’d choose wrong. The heavy cloud cover blotted out the sky, and Hyperion, Beloved of Light, lay dark. I couldn’t see squat. I could head in at night, but I wouldn’t be able to see what I was entering. If I waited until dawn, that was time wasted.

After unpleasant hesitation, I waited. The city beloved by light lay dark. That didn’t look right. It didn’t sound right in my head. It didn’t feel right on my skin. I slept and started with a full stomach.

In the morning I couldn’t see the Sun, but dawn came anyway. The world went from dark gloom to light gloom.

Mount Attarckus rises north of Hyperion, the eastmost and tallest of the Broken Fangs. Other, lesser kings who had ruled Heaven before had built their mansions on those peaks, and Mallens had thrown them down when he heaved Attarckus up. In clear weather, it’s a cone that reaches the sky. A pennant of stars trails behind Attarkus’ summit at night, and at the summer solstice the Sun has to change his path to avoid hitting the peak. Now it looked like a funnel or a wagon stand. The green of trees had turned to dingy gray, and the cone of the base had barely begun to taper when it hit darker gray clouds. They spread outwards and rolled like the top of a pot of water just coming to boil.

The Headlands of Ju rose above the Dawn Sea on white sandstone. To the east they met the ocean with marble cliffs. Hyperion took up most of the headland, a rumpled plateau where white hills jutted up from manicured forests and table-top mesas held marble palaces. Every forest had been perfect, every stream bed sculpted. Spirits of water and rain came from the ocean or the fast flowing rivers nearby to tend the springs of the city. Sandstone is a dry rock, and only constant attention by the spirits made Hyperion livable by the gods.

I say by the gods because Hyperion was a city for the gods. No one else was welcome. The spirits were tolerated and Celestials allowed, but they both received cold welcome even as they kept it running. Being mortal in the capital city of Heaven was a capital offense.

So’s treason.

Earthquakes had shorn the edges of the plateau off, and golden palaces and magnificent lawns lay in rubble fields. Idyllic rivers tumbled over marble cliffs and ran through broken houses. The main roadway had fallen apart, and the sign that said ‘No Mortals’ had been torn apart. I scrambled up a scree-field and entered the city without ever passing a sign.

There were no guards. Sometimes I saw movement in broken palaces, and a few timid people moved on the streets. Mostly I saw no one. I’d catch a glimpse of someone a few blocks ahead, but by the time I got there, the streets were empty. A few times I came upon someone, but they pretended not to see me. I did what I could to take advantage of this.

From my mother’s side, I knew that spirits did live in Hyperion, more of them than even the gods knew. Many dryads came here to tend the perfect forests. Nereids warded the beaches and watched the waves like shepherds. Naiads sculpted the crystal rivers that flowed between houses, kept the deep pools clear of pond scum, and ensured the wild life didn’t get wild enough to inconvenience the gods of the city, much less the titans who ruled it and all.

Also from her I knew of the deep frictions between the spirits and Celestials. The Celestials, mostly born of titans and the great powers, but occasionally the forgotten offspring of gods, were powers of themselves, atavistic beings of might. Hoarfast was one. They had skins of steel, they breathed snowstorms, they wore capes of rain, or their bodies were goats or boars. Some were extremely powerful. Death was a Celestial. Some were mere animals. The Boars of Herindon pulled the chariot of Regulus and ate the corpses of his victims. There were many of them. Mallens had fathered five hundred sons. They were not gods and not titans, but somehow less.

Which put them in the ranks of spirits, but they had to be better than somebody.

In Hyperion, Celestials formed the interactive working class. They ran forges, carried bags, pulled rickshaws, and served food. Spirits tended their domains: forests, rivers, and parks. Celestials tended the works of the gods.

No one cared about mortals. We weren’t even a thing.

If they could, spirits and Celestials belligerently ignored each other. They could walk face-first into each other on a corner and move on without either recognizing the collision happened.

After crossing the outer walls, I headed east. If I approached someone among the trees, I walked near the roads. If someone with iron skin or bee’s wings approached, I stuck to the forests. Everyone put me in the ‘other’ group, and if questioned later would have a hard time identifying me.

Soon I found the waterfront facing the Dawn Sea. The Sun Palaces lay in tatters with roofs stomped in and grounds torn with canyons. Mallens’s stomps had driven the ground down to bedrock, and the tops of great trees stuck out of sand traps. Whole buildings were driven underground or smashed flat. Over this place a curse of dark skies hung.

But there were no signs forbidding me to enter. I suppose the clouds and curse of dark skies meant that, but they didn’t say so.

This was it. If someone found the scepters before I did, I was dead. I’d tattle on Koru immediately, and we’d be tortured together. My death would be agony, but his would last forever. I’d win.

Self! Stop!

I didn’t want to die in agony. Death in agony wouldn’t be better if Koru’s was worse. I needed to find the weapons, dispose of them, and I didn’t know what to do next, but there wouldn’t be a next if I didn’t get find the scepters first.

I thought of two utterly blistered summers at Fate, filing unread documents in the bowels of an office building. It’s beautiful and majestic office building. It’s built on Firmament of the Sky, behind the stars of the Mask! But you know what a basement in a scenic building looks like?

It looks like every other basement.

High stress, someone always checking my work but no one ever needing it, no promotion potential, I had almost nothing to show for those two summers. I’d already spent my wages on rent.

But I had four little bits of luck.

I prayed to the Pattern Spiders and asked for one of my favors. I needed to find those weapons.

I glanced around. No one watched. I jogged down to the sea and started searching.

#

It took me several hours to figure out what was where. The New Light Cape had detached completely from the mainland, and Mallens had stomped lagoons into the beach, making a false shore. Wooden towers for lowly gods to greet the dawn had toppled over. The deeps east of the Cape bred tall waves that rolled on or collapsed, depending on what took place beneath the surface. A morass of beach houses, scrub trees, and rocks hid under calm water.

I looked for Heridite’s Crest. It was, or had been, a low prominence where yellow rock stuck up through the beach, a famous picnic spot surrounded by small pagodas and pavilions. Mallens had stood there the last four years when he’d greeted the dawn at First Light. That’s where we’d planned the hit to occur, so it would be a good place to start searching. However the geography of the place had been rearranged.

While I was poking around on a spur of boulders, splashing noises suddenly broke the otherwise dead silence. They didn’t sound like fish or whales surfacing, and after a moment, I made out shouting from the other side of a line of dunes.

“We’ve got it,” said someone.

“You mean I got it.”

“Oh, shut up. We got it.”

Wondering what it they got, I ran over.

Two heads were splashing and yelling in the middle of a black lagoon, and several more were swimming for the beach. The swimmers resolved themselves into three climbing out of the water and fell, gasping, onto the sand. The two in the lagoon were still yelling.

“Would you both shut up?” yelled a guy on the beach. He held up something. “We got it!”

‘It’ had a blade as long as an arm with a two-hand handle. It had no hilt. The cutting edge formed a stretched S; the other was straight and blunt. The blade wept a kind of darkness when the man waved it, a faint staining shadow like ink in water. But it would cut like razors. It would cut gods. It was a godly weapon.

It was a magnificent copy of Death’s All Things Ending, and Hasso, who’d made it, knew exactly who I was.

My jaw clenched.

I looked over the five of them, three if I could get there quickly enough. They were tired; I was fresh. I could probably hit them from ambush.

Was I really about to kill three people to take that sword?

The idea bothered me, and yet, what did I face at Mallens’s hand?

I ground my teeth like I was chewing rocks.

Maybe I could get the sword quickly. I’d take it without killing anyone.

Yeah. No one had to die. It would be fine.

I stayed low and started around the rocks.

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Karesh Ni: Chapter 4

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Chapter 4

The door opened, and Satre appeared. He blocked the entrance completely. The Last Man Standing looked more like a vault door than a human. The page, who had been rocking against the wall while staring at the ceiling, snapped upright. The Baron-Consort regarded us with flared nostrils and a grimace.

He scowled at me. “Astrologamage Elegy.”

Was there a response to that? I waited.

“Never get married,” he said and strode away.

Was there a response to that either? Should I say something? I didn’t want the Baroness to think I was going after her man, but her man was angrily walking away, each booted step coming down heavily on the wooden floor. He rattled. I glanced inside the Baroness’s office.

Alyssa wore a smile so warm and friendly she was downright frightening.

“Come in, please,” she said. “And shut the door.”

Ah, biscuits.

#

Baroness Alyssa said, “I would like you to go to the Silver City and rescue my sister, Kyria. In return, I will pay you two hundred and fifty marks, Celephian, almost four times the strike value that elves paid you to go to Bloodharvest.”

I wished I had listened at the door. I’m a spy. It would be expected. But should I have door-listened because I’m a spy or not for the same reason? I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t listened, but I wished I had.

I wanted to know if Alyssa-and-Satre’s ostensible argument was real or not. If they were running a blind, Satre leaving meant he had argued the side they didn’t want me to take. Which would be fitting, since I didn’t feel like Satre could hold a deception too well, but maybe that was part of their plan. Alyssa could. I could barely read her at all.

Was I being more clever than wise again? How far should I push the idea an argument that boiled over in front of me had to be fake?

“Why?” I asked the baroness.

“She’s my sister.”

“Didn’t she try to kill you?” Satre had been emphatic on this point.

Alyssa sighed. “Things were muddled. The Disagreement about inheriting the throne nearly split Kageran apart, but we’re done now. I rule. I won’t call myself a savant of history, but I do know rulers who start their reign by settling old scores rarely rule long. Once people believe crossing me is an irreconcilable offense, when they do, they’ll take it to death. I won’t be here long if I make every enemy an enemy for life.

“For the last few years, things have been tense. While we haven’t returned to knife-fighting in the halls, Van has a small army, and if I disband it, we will return to fighting in the halls. But I don’t think they’re on the cusp of attacking. I think they’re being paranoid.

“If settling scores isn’t wise, letting people have standing armies isn’t wise either. I need to do something to show that they’re not in danger, and Kyria is one such a person.

“Neither of the older twins like Kyria, but she is our sister. What’s more, she raised arms against me, as Satre mentioned, which is worse than what they did. The twins undertook a sort of soft coup, while Kyria started throwing meteors.

“Kyria has a gift of rubbing people the wrong way.” Alyssa rolled her eyes at Satre’s empty chair. “And the older twins are a little too sensitive to work with her. But, if she returns, they’ll have no excuse to think I’m going to move against them, and perhaps we can do some measure of healing for the city.”

“That sounds like a long wager on personal biases,” I said.

“All politics are somewhat personal. Family politics are entirely personal.”

She would know, I thought. But I wasn’t going to argue with her either way.

I asked, “How do you know she’s still alive?”

“I saw her from a lightning bolt.”

We smiled at each other. We waited. And I realized something: If they were willing to go through this elaborate scheme, good and bad sides having a fake argument, to get me to agree to this deal, they had to be invested. They had to want me to go. Which meant I had some leverage.

And if they had just had an argument in front of me, she might be willing to share something to get me on her side.

“Please go on, your Highness,” I said.

Baroness Alyssa’s smile lost none of her warmth, but I was struck by the notion she was judging me. Maybe she held that practiced smile too long. Maybe she watched me too carefully through warm eyes. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I didn’t think so.

She said, “For a long time, I thought she was dead. The climax of the Disagreement involved a certain amount of conflict and people being set on fire. She disappeared for years.”

Alyssa rose, went to the sideboard, and sorted quickly through small crystal decanters. One she sniffed, considered, and declined. She found another one with a pale red liquid in it and poured several fingers worth of rosé into her glass. She mixed it one-to-one.

“Another?” she asked, pausing in the act of stoppering the bottle. “Satre prefers strong over smooth. This is a little finer.”

I actually did want another, but I was hesitant. “Perhaps in a bit, thank you.”

She nodded, replaced the bottle, and sat down. She must have wanted a pause for thought.

“Years ago I finally made contact with Amon Tim, Whitefire’s new Hierophant, and gave him assurances I didn’t want him burned at the stake. When we met, I thanked him for a calming resolution to previous hostilities. The way he replied seemed…off. He said Whitefire’s participation in the Disagreement had been Kyria’s doing, but ‘we won’t need to worry about her again.’

“So I started worrying about Kyria again.

“I heard Amon Tim talking in private, and Kyria had promised the Eparchs that when she took this throne, she’d end the Maurite Prohibition. They were-” Alyssa stared at nothing and stroked invisible space, like she was learning the shape of something. “-they are hunted. In Ashirak Whitefire initiates are considered witches, and my father accepted that when he knelt to the emperor. I do not enforce the Prohibition, but it is enforced.”

Alyssa sighed. “Kyria promised to end the hatred. If she took the throne, she’d renounce loyalty to Ashirak. She and the four Eparchs had risen together, and they stood with her.

“However when I took the throne, and her sisters in Whitefire had lost patience. Amon Tim lead a new faction, tired of doing the dying, and they replaced Kyria and the Eparchs. Politics in the Silver City have been turbulent. Are you familiar with it?”

“The Silver City?”

“Karash Ni. It hangs from the Moon’s reflection. Mal Set hung it there after the Ashirai Emperors exiled Whitefire.”

I blinked a few times.

“No, but that’s incredible. How do you…” I trailed off, thinking about it.

“Get there? You wait until the wind is calm and row out to the middle of the Hyades. When the moon rises on a clear, still night, a stairway appears in the lake surface, descending into the reflection. You could do it tonight, if the wind were calm.”

She smiled. “And I have some skill over weather.” She opened her hand as if presenting something.

“You’re a sorceress?” I asked. She’d said something about seeing Kyria through a lightning bolt.

She nodded. “I work weather.”

“And you saw Kyria through a lightning bolt?”

She inhaled, held it, and said, “Yes. She’s on the dark side of the Moon where weather does not go. I can send no storm, wind, or rain up there. However Kyria is a sorceress herself. Two weeks ago she spoke the word of Thunder’s Lovesong, and I happened to be paying attention. I know she’s up there.”

“What is Thunder’s Lovesong?”

“A crude and simple form of power. I am a poet. Kyria writes bad words on bathroom wall.” Alyssa seemed somewhat less fond of her sister when she wasn’t arguing about her.

However, I’d noticed something else. “Two weeks before I arrive. That is the darndest timing.”

Alyssa nodded but said nothing.

I thought of Elvenhome. Two weeks ago Esmerelda cut my deal with Hyrmai Trui. She’d asked him because I’d suggested him, and Trui had been suggested to me by the stranger in yellow. Kyria is a sorceress, but she used a crude power at just the right time to be spotted.

Forget, for a moment, sorcerer’s prison on the dark side of the Moon. I mean, don’t forget that because it sounds horrible. But think about something worse. Alyssa had seen her sister through a lightning bolt within a day of the yellow stranger setting this whole thing in motion.

This was clearly, absolutely, and utterly a bad idea.

“My dear Highness, I must respectfully decline. I am going to someplace warm where I will sit on a beach and drink something with a little umbrella.” I stood up to bow.

Alyssa put her own hands together over her nose like she was praying. She looked over steepled fingers.

“What if I told you where Prince Aehr’s wolves are?”

I stumbled through two breaths like I’d forgotten how to breathe, finishing with, “What?”

“Prince Aehr’s wolves.” She enunciated every word. “I can tell you where they are, and when you return, successful and rich, I can tell you where they will be to within a thunderstorm.”

Um…

I skipped my turn to speak, because she’d shoved a stick through the bicycle wheels of my head.

Baroness Alyssa had hard, gray eyes that looked like stormclouds themselves. She spoke with excessive clarity. “Won’t Aehr be grateful? He risked goblins looking for them. He would love someone to find his wolves. Just love them,” she said, staring at me.

I was quiet for a very long time before sitting back down.

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Karesh Ni: Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

Black domes of the Agmar Shinoen rose north of the lake, and in the low spots between them lay deep clay soil. The rocky hills stood bare, long since washed clean. The stone was a dark mishmash of crystals, sparkly in the right light, but all of the grains smashing up against each other. The Hyades filled a deep crevice in the rocky ground, looking something like a capital T with the foot pointed south. Across from where the foot hits the crossbar, a double-spur of gray-brown mountains formed the Trough, a wide, fat-bellied hanging valley between two folded ridges. Kageran stands in the mouth of that valley, where the fast, cold river Aph has cut a small canyon, between the two Weeping Women who hold back the mountains.

The Weeping Women are tall figures of the same rock as the Agmar ground, whose upper bodies emerge from the lake with their backs to the mountains, and all the gray earth of those folded ridges piling up behind them. They’re crude, rough sculptures, if sculptures they are. The one on the east, Shanna, has a split butte of stone in front of her, giving the impression of two elbows sticking out like she’s got her face in her hands. A coarse, hanging curtain of stone tumbles around her face. Anna, on the west, is a little more refined. Her left arm is thrown back and out, pointing towards the city, and her right is clearly bent in front of her head with her face in the pocket of her elbow. Shanna requires a little visualization to make her look like a person, but Anna has a clear bust, waist, and hips that meet the black water.

The city fills the valley mouth. The Trough opens up a rocky scarp, maybe two hundred feet tall and leaning back at a quarter angle. There’s a toll road full of switchbacks. Where the Aph falls over the scarp, a great watermill sits at the heart of Gormen Manor. There Baroness Alyssa lives. The road hits the top of the scarp and ceases its switchbacks to run mostly straight up the Trough, and from it spread a hundred lesser roads and streets. On the other side, almost at Anna’s hand, there’s a bit of cliff missing like some giant took a bite out of the edge. Within the Trough, north of the city, the ground is rich and loamy.

Before the Aph falls through the waterwheels, plunging down through a raucous canyon to fill the Hyades and later to plunge into the Arsae, it flows a wiggly line down the Trough. Along it runs a road cut into the canyon wall, and on the road come the Doonish people. They’re a thick-bodied, dark-skinned people with sure feet. Men grow thin facial hair, but both men and women wear their head hair long, often braided intricately. They delight in complex colors on their clothing, wearing hats of braided ribbons. As a group they smile often.

New to the Doon are settlers from Ashirak, come up the great canyon city and spreading through the southern valleys. Those valleys are higher than mountains in other parts of the world. The newcomers are like many of the Ashirai, fair-skinned and tall, but not as tall as their lowland cousins. Nor are they as cheerful as their Doonish neighbors. They don’t wear the colors nor the grins.

Another path to Kageran is the low route, the Emperor’s Gateway that runs from Dylath-Leen on the Begah Bay to here in the shadow of the Doon Escarpment. Along that way lie the domain of a hundred warlords who call their bands ‘consequences’, such as the Consequence of Thalgo or the Consequence of Mayhar. Few of the Ashirai come that way. It is said that the consequent warlords are horned giants, and they’ve found a way to achieve the power of monsters by eating humans. Satre would know better than I, if the rumors are true. There aren’t many of the Ashirai lowlanders, but I saw a few. They look like taller versions of their uplander cousins.

From sunken Meom came the Meomassa, carrying a history of doom and suffering. Two hundred years ago they spoke a blasphemy no one will repeat, and volcanoes erupted across their isles. In fury, they spoke worse blasphemies to condemn the gods who sent the volcanoes. Their islands sank, their home was destroyed, and the survivors washed up on the Ungale Ngalnak beaches, where they were eaten by the horned lords. Some found their way here. Their skins are dark as dried lava. While the old-mountain Doonish wear linens spiced up with ribbons and threads, the Meomassa will make a whole dress out of a bolt of vivid red fabric and accent it with a shawl of yellow or green.

I hear ships can drop anchor at Meom and find bits of old wood in their anchor chains later. Divers can see the dim shapes of huge mountains under a dark and cloudy sea. Sometimes the ocean bubbles. I’ve never been there.

Kageran had Celephians, of course. Wherever there was money were Celephians. They’re a mixed people of their own, having few common features. As I entered the gates of Kageran, I saw them mucking out stables and gutting fish, arguing over prices in the market, and waiting in lines for gate access. I did see a few rich ones. A man on a black stallion wore silk and held scented lace to his nose. He looked at the world like he owned it while his horse shat on a non-rich Celephian groom.

And the people of Kageran seemed like the mixed-grain rock of their city, except where the rocks did their job in silence, the people yelled, argued, fought, and I think I saw someone get stabbed.

I paid the toll on the roadway and gave someone else a copper for directions. The toll road opened in Duncton’s Quarter, and Trui lived in the Baroness’s Quarter. I found my way over and inquired.

Hyrma Trui had had an attack and might die. Apparently his drinking had caught up with him. His brother Lemrai would take my options off my hands for the same price, but he was at Gormen Manor now, doing something or other with the royals.

Remember how I said Kageran has a Baroness? As best I understand it the last king of Kageran, Ozymandias, cut a deal with the Ashirai Emperor for military protection. In exchange Kageran joined the empire and the king took a demotion to baron. The locals think they were robbed. Among them, their rulers are still royal, to the point the third standing house, House Royal, makes no bones about where they stand on the issue.

They also say Ozymandias lived for thousands of years before being assassinated a few years ago, which touched off the Disagreement. I don’t know too much about all that. I know the objective facts that Alyssa is the youngest and she rules the city, her older brother Duncton doesn’t, and the eldest siblings, the twins Van and Mandrake, don’t either. The twins were not born in wedlock, nor were two other siblings, Ducarte and Kyria. Ducarte and Kyria were between the twins and Duncton, and they were missing or dead.

A polite woman met me at the door to Gormen Manor and brought me to Alyssa’s office. Satre introduced himself at the door. He was a big man in mail with an equally polite but bored expression. He had curly black hair, a big aquiline nose, and a wide chin.

“Satre, Baron-Consort of Kageran,” he said, clicking his heels together and nodding in the faintest insinuation of a bow. He spoke Celephian.

“Astrologamage Elegy,” I replied in the same. I’d made the title up because I’d needed something for the elves, but I figured I’d stick to it now. I bowed a little deeper than he had.

“Good,” he said. “And you are?”

Didn’t I just…oh, right.

“I’m here to see Lemrai Trui. I made a deal with his brother for wheat options, so I’m looking for him now.”

“A moment.” He turned in the doorway. “Lemrai, do you know an astrologamage?”

“No,” said a thin, confused voice.

“She says she’s got some wheat options for you.”

“Oh, her! Yes!” Someone jumped up, a chair scraped back, and rapid footsteps approached the boulderish-Satre. He stepped back, opening the door the rest of the way.

Lemrai Trui was a thin, ascetic man of advancing years but quick movements. He had a beak of a nose, and his hair had retreated even from a thin donut of wispy white. Now he had a fuzzy high-water mark around a too-big head. He stared at me around Satre.

“You got ’em? Don’t you lie to me. I want to see them first.”

I blinked.

“Come in, Astrologamage,” said a woman behind the desk, the Baroness Alyssa.

She was much smaller than her overlarge husband, almost normal-sized, with thick brown hair and hazel eyes. Her skin was a little fair to be Doonish, but she wore their style of clothing, a long-sleeved dress that seemed like one thread in four was scarlet, azure, or emerald. On the desk before her lay an abacus, a slate, some chalk, and five little cups of pebbles with another, larger bag of pebbles nearby. Her fingers and wrists were smudged with chalk.

“Your Highness,” I said and walked in.

“Don’t hassle the woman,” said Satre to Lemrai, who had followed me, hunched forward like he was a vulture waiting for me to croak. He had terrible posture.

Satre continued speaking to me, “Show us the documents. You can put them on the desk there.”

I hadn’t even put my stuff somewhere, but with all three watching, I dropped the duffel, rooted around within to find a leather portfolio, and displayed the fruits of my labors. I’d gone through Bloodharvest for these, and I was absolutely sure I wasn’t going to let them out of my sight. The options were ten sheets of vellum, written in silver ink, and embossed with royal seals of Manari, one of nine Immaculate Dynasties of Elvenhome. Those sheets of paper were almost everything I had and meant many things. They meant a fairly horrible job completed. They meant a fortune. They meant I could have not gone through a horrible job if I hadn’t wasted all my money the first time, and they were going to mean I wouldn’t waste a fortune again.

Lemrai snatched one option and read it greedily. Satre shut the door behind us and stood against it, and the Baroness reached for another option. She glanced at me before touching it.

“Go ahead. They’re real.” I beckoned her forward.

She picked it up and took another sheet of paper out of a hidden place behind her desk. She compared the two. That document was thick, bleached-white parchment covered in precise, small script. I’d bet a fortune it had come from a Celephian wind-house.

Actually no, I wouldn’t, because I wasn’t going to waste any more money. Be smart. Smart.

The two of them perused the documents until the baroness put hers down. Then Lemrai compared that one to the rest, but finally he was done too.

Baroness Alyssa said, “They look valid to me. Mons. Trui?”

He grumbled first, before saying, “Yes, I’ll accept. I do want to confirm directly with Gesphain though.”

“Our windcallers,” Satre said behind us.

Alyssa said to Trui, “I think that’s fair, but I doubt she’ll let them out of her sight until you pay her. Would you like us to wait?”

Lemrai didn’t want those options out of his sight, but neither did I. He wasn’t happy about that. Finally he conceded to finish the sale now. His hands twitched every time he put one of the options down.

That was that. Alyssa let me examine her scale before weighed each of Trui’s one hundred and twenty six marks. She was precise, neither quick nor slow. After Trui’s money balanced, he took the documents, Trui and I signed a bill of sale, and Satre sealed the contract with his signet ring and the fire. Alyssa had stacked my coinage beside a wooden box, and perhaps to distract me from Satre’s action, she had me count the coin-stacks, again, and place them in a long wooden box she packed with straw. By then Trui had scuttled out, and she sealed the box with more traditional wax.

“Would you like to carry it out of here?” she asked. “We can have it delivered to the Gesphains for you, if you’d prefer.”

“Is there a fee for that?” I asked.

“No. I quite like to know where this much gold is going inside my city, so I’m happy to help in exchange for a little information.”

“What information?” I asked.

The baroness smiled. “How did you get options for ten shipfuls of winter wheat from the elves? You’re not a wheat merchant.”

“The stars!” I replied. I shoulda given her jazz-hands, but I didn’t think of it in time.

“Please continue,” she answered, and they had me over a barrel.

One hundred and twenty six marks weigh sixty three pounds. We had just weighed them. I wasn’t carrying that little box out of here.

“Can I get something to drink first?” I asked, and that’s how we got to now.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

I woke up on the bier. It was a low, squat block of stone, uncut and unpolished, white marble shot through with veins of silver and speckled with quartz. This was where Koru told me to come for a reading of my dreams, where Zeni performed her day-job. Night-job, I guess. I sat up and my leg was cured. Zeni sat on a chair nearby, playing cat’s cradle with herself, and looking unutterably bored.

My schemes and flattery aside, she was quite pretty. Her skin had the same reddish tint as the river silt, carried down from the Tsme. She had big eyes and small, long-fingered hands. Her hair and clothing floated in the water as if they were weightless, and underneath her clothing, her form curved in most interesting ways. That was the thing about gossamer. It revealed shapes and no details, form but no specifics, and hints. She looked amazing.

She looked up while I was looking at her and put her game away.

She really was quite pretty, but now, instead of looking passionate, enraptured, or amorous, she looked curious and a little cynical.

“I fixed your leg,” she said, waving her finger at me.

“Thank you.”

“With less pretty language, why are you here? Be honest.”

“Mostly for the leg,” I said.

“Fair.”

“Also, I want your help to escape the valley.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get involved in the affairs of the Hakan.”

“I hate your sister.”

Zeni perked right up. “What now?”

“She’s a plague, and I want to work her downfall.”

Zeni’s eyes narrowed. “Which one?”

“Astras.” I paused. “Aelof’s fine. She’s quite nice, honestly, but she complains a lot.”

“She does do a lot of work,” Zeni said quickly.

“Maybe so, but I don’t want to hear about it! Anyway, I wish her the best. I’m talking about Astras. I want to work her downfall.”

“I don’t know if I should get involved–” said Zeni, and I hurried on.

“I think she’s cheating on Koru.”

That stopped her like I’d staked her through the heart. “With who?”

“Dr Simmons.”

She looked away, and the gears of her mind clicked audibly.

I went on. “He’s the really annoying one with the too-big head on the too-thin neck and laughs like a harpy.”

Zeni looked down, and her eyes fixed on me. She leaned forward in her seat, pulling barely-there fabric tight. “Why him?”

“A few reasons. One, he’s an idiot, she seems to like him, and I can’t imagine anyone putting up with him unless he was giving her a little something extra. Two, I don’t think Koru would suspect. Simmons gives a slightly-gay vibe. Three, I’ve never seen Koru give a lot of attention to Astras. She has to show up, look hot, and he treats her as being decorative. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was watering other fields as a way to get revenge.”

Zeni squinted. “Why do you want revenge?”

“She tried to have me killed.”

“Did you try to sleep with her, and she turn you down?”

“Who?” I yelled. My voice cracked. I didn’t mean to, but that meant there was no way I could have faked it. “The evil plague?”

“Yeah. You just said she’s hot.”

I stared at her for several seconds, then said, “No.”

“I’m just saying,” she just said.

“No.”

This turn of conversation had moved away from me. I was still kinda trying to seduce her.

“Baby, let’s not talk about other women.”

“Yeah, yeah. Enough with that, buddy. What do you want?”

“I’d like you to smuggle me out of valley without anyone knowing.”

Zeni waggled her head side-to-side a few times. She looked up at the Moon again and frowned.

“And I’d like to talk with you a little bit,” I added.

Her head stopped wiggling, and Zeni looked at me. It was a flat gaze. Her eyes didn’t open all the way, but she arched her eyebrows. Her lips made a thin line. But I got the feeling through her mask she wasn’t quite as cold as she implied.

“Come here. Talk with me a little bit,” I added. There was plenty of room on the bier.

She stood up with marvelous posture, and that made her hips and curves draw the floating gossamer tight. I enjoyed looking at her. She shifted her weight to her right leg, as if to take a step, but the movement made her curves curvier. Her left foot went up on the toe.

“Night Witch, Daughter of Alph, Oracle, come to me!” yelled the voice of the idiot above, the true blister under my sandal strap, Mithrak. “Give me your wisdom.”

“I won’t give you a bleeding thing,” muttered Zeni, slipping out of her position to stand flat-footed with fists on hips.

I slipped up from the bier, took her about the waist, and kissed her. She looked surprised, and she didn’t kiss me back. But she didn’t move away either.

After a long, pleasant moment, I leaned away without letting go. “Help me. I must escape.”

“Okay.”

“Mithrak’s going to ask you where I am. Don’t tell him.”

“I’ll lie to him.

I expected more fight there, honestly. “You can do that? As an oracle?”

“Do what? Lie to a customer? Oh, sweetie.”

“Dang.”

I’d always sort of suspected, but I’d just assumed it was impossible.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked.

Hyperion, I thought, but I didn’t say. “Just out of the valley, and far enough away I can’t be tracked easily.”

“Follow this stairway down, but when you come to the Moon, turn around. Before you, you will see many pools. One will bear the reflection of Angel’s Crest. Walk through it, and you will be there.”

“Can I come see you again?”

“If you want.”

And I did.

But I didn’t want to die. Fighting Mithrak would get me killed. If he fired even one round from that .43, Hoarfast would hear. And then…

I looked at Zeni.

“It would be great if they thought I was dead.”

She shrugged a mysterious shrug, but underneath she was smirking.

I ran down the stairway toward the Moon at the bottom of the lake.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 4

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Chapter 4

I didn’t want to die.

I did some fast but simple thinking in the seconds while falling.

I didn’t want to die.

I had nothing else. I didn’t know what I wanted to live for now that everything had ended. I didn’t know what I would do. I didn’t know where I mattered or to whom.

I didn’t want to die.

But that was enough.

I fell from the high tower toward the river below and thought of rivers.

The River Alph had three daughters: Astras, Aelof, and Azenath. Astras you’ve met. Aelof never really left home. A high aqueduct met the Hundred Ribbons falls as the Alph came over the ringwall, and siphoned a small stream away. This stream, Aelof, ran across the arch that connected the Hakan to the wall, and once within the Hakan, drove wheels and turned vanes to power the city. When I’d first come to Shang Du on an errand, she and I had been introduced while I was waiting for Koru. Within thirty seconds, she was lamenting how much harder she worked than anyone else and how no one else helped. She did and nor did anyone else help, but we’d just met and I didn’t really want to hear about it. After doing all the work in this place, her words, the river vented through a hundred-headed rat sculpture on the south side of the pillar.

Azenath or Zeni, left her father shortly after Hundred Ribbons. An oxbow of the river branched off and filled a narrow, deep fault between black basalt and pale granite. The fault’s shape resembled a funnel. A stairway carved into the fault spiraled down until being lost in deep shadows. One could walk down the spiral until exiting to the other place and there read the meaning of dreams. Koru had bragged about it when giving me the tour.

I’d met Zeni last night. The river carried a great deal of brown silt, but by moonlight, the pool had cleared. I could see the stairway descending across white and black stone until it met the reflection of the moon and there vanished. She’d worn gossamer and spider silk, waited at a platform round as the moon itself, sitting on a round bench around a round pit, everything pocked with black shadows against white marble. There was no marble in the earth around Shang Du. We’d talked for a long time, but my dreams had been full of glory and thunder. She’d had little to say.

I was going to hit the Aelof’s outflow.

In my second year of Northshore, after I’d dropped out of my Sorcery major but before I’d started Unarmed Combat, a rumor had circulated that if you spoke Obesis at exactly the right moment, you could fall from any height and live. Right as you hit the ground, provided you were falling feet first, you could ghost-step onto the ground and walk away. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who had done it. A freshman tried.

He died.

The faculty brought everyone together and explained you can’t actually do that. Hitting the ground happens really, really fast, hence the problem, so speaking Obesis at exactly the right time is basically impossible. Furthermore, that isn’t really what Obesis does. Obesis lets you stand on things, not survive getting hit by them at terminal velocity. I felt badly for the kid. We hadn’t been friends, but I’d known him. He rode a skateboard. His name was something Unnish, Franz or Frens.

I hit the Aelof’s outflow, and it was more like a thick mist than a waterfall. It rumbled but didn’t roar. I spoke Obesis as my foot found a trickle of falling water.

The impact wrenched my foot. My knees felt like breaking. My foot plowed through the stream, throwing dovetails, and I stepped onto them, shouting Obesis again with more power. My other foot went sideways beneath me, and the knee did break. The mist fell thick, and the spray made rainbows. I inhaled to try again, hoping to land on the mist itself when I hit the water.

The water of Alph, even in a deep pool with the surface agitated by the Aelof’s outflow, hit like nothing else. I’ve never eaten canvas on the mats like that. It was getting hit with everything, all at once, and there was nothing to slap or break-fall.

And then I was underwater in the dark, and I couldn’t breathe, but at least I had been inhaling to yell so I had good air in my lungs. My head was foggy. I couldn’t figure out why I was floating but felt like I was going down. The world was dark, and the black rocky bottom of the pool looked the same as shadows.

The brain-machinery started clicking again, and the first thought in line for processing was ‘Pain and death, that hurt!’

The second was ‘Swim sideways, then up.’

That was more useful.

I broke the surface, breathed, and groaned. “Oh, wow. Oh, wow.” Oh, that hurt. But the pool seemed still outside the falls, deep in the Alph’s canyon. The black rock of the valley floor reached together overhead. I couldn’t see the silvered domes of Koru’s palace. Spirals of bubbles turned lazily on the water surface like the river spiraled about the valley floor, and they spun me in gentle circles. I tended distinctly toward one side.

The canyon was more of a series of connected pits than a single long trench, and at the end of it, the Alph vanished under the Hakan, a drop from which no one or no thing returned. This one place in the valley held none of Koru’s children. Rats can’t make it out once they are taken by Astras, the final plunge at Alph’s end, and I think I’ve mentioned that rats are strong swimmers. I wasn’t. I paddled to the side, found a bit of ledge, and slithered out.

I felt terrible. Oh, biscuits.

But I lived.

#

Several long, circuitous miles of crawling on hands and one knee brought me to Zeni’s oxbow. Her father had not appeared in flesh or foam. That had worried me, for the rats that did not see me avoided this place because they feared his drowning grip. Alph served Koru in exchange for being fed. Yet the river did not take form nor reach out to drag me down. I thought of so many reasons he should or shouldn’t be gone that I realized I was thinking in circles. I crawled in circles too as Alph spiraled in, and when I crawled up-stream, I spiraled out until I came to Zeni’s branch. The trip consisted of unpleasantness that cannot be described. Yet we had feasted on honeydew and ambrosia to watch the killing, and now, I endured.

The Sun set, the Moon rose, and I crawled to her pool and down. The winding stairway lead around and around, and I could breathe the water as if it was air. Soon I met her as she climbed to greet her visitor, and she greeted me like an old friend.

“Stop bleeding on my stairs!”

“We’re underwater!”

“So?” she demanded.

“Let the water wash it off.” I waved a hand.

“Who do you think the water is?” asked Azenath in a tone that didn’t imply she wanted a response.

When I need help with the ladies, a little sex appeal always gets me through. If that doesn’t work, I try flattery. If that didn’t work, I’d need a desparate plan C.

“Oh lady Azenath, fairest and most beautiful of your sisters-” I paused to think of something to say next.

“Yes,” she replied.

I hesitated.

She waited.

Boils and blisters on plan C. “Since I met you, I have thought of no one else.”

“Good.”

“You have stolen my heart. I yearn for you. My eyes see nothing but your face, and the blood in my veins beats to your name.”

“I do that to people.”

She smiled, facing upward at a slight angle, nodded, and waited.

“My love, I need your help.”

Azenath snorted. She made bubbles. “Oh, there it is. Why would you bring that in? You were doing so well.”

“It’s my leg.”

“I don’t care about your leg. Talk more about me.”

“You’re probably right. It’s for the best you don’t cure my leg, for if I could run, I would chase you, catch you, carry you down to the bier in the pool’s dark nethers, and have my way with you.”

Azenath stopped scowling at the distant sky. She looked down. “What now?”

“I dare not say it again.”

“Oh, you should.”

“It’s my leg.”

She licked her lips and stretched her eyebrows. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Technically speaking, it’s broken.”

“I can see that. You’ve got bones sticking out.”

“You did ask.”

“Don’t get fresh.”

“I’m trying to get fresh. That’s why I’m here!” I insisted. “If you cure my leg, I’m going to get even more fresh, and that’s something too impure to be conceived.”

Azenath cocked her head sideways but did not immediately reply. Nor did she cure my leg. She was a river-goddess in her place of power, so I wasn’t asking for the Moon here.

“Besides, it would be wicked. Your father wouldn’t approve.”

She shook her head. “He’s not here. Koru sent him off for something.”

Interesting. It explained why I’d survived, but I’d been involved in every step of planning the attempt, and Alph didn’t have any part that I knew of. Koru couldn’t have sent Alph out already. There was no time. That meant Koru had sent Alph out before. I couldn’t guess why.

I could guess I was about to lose consciousness.

“Zeni, may I tell you how beautiful you are?”

“Please do.”

“Your face is like–” and I dropped like a bag of soup.

Blissful, perfectly-timed unconsciousness. That’s the secret to women. Say enough to get them interested, then pass out.

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Twilight in Heaven: Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

Koru’s palace, Shang Du, stood on a tower of white granite, the Hakan. Behind it the folded Mountains of Tsme rose in jagged peaks, divided by deep, round valleys where the worms of Meru had crawled. The Hakan rose at the center of a bowl valley. At one time the spire had been joined to the greater peak Mt Nonac by a high wall of the same white granite, but the river Alph had cut a path through the junction. Now the crest of the rock formed a white bridge between Shang Du and the mountain, ornamented with lanterns and a wide path. The Alph entered the valley via a waterfall, the Hundred Ribbons, and circled the valley lazily until it passed underground. Koru’s palace up top was opulent and magnificent, horribly furnished, and carried a viewing deck that overlooked the valley and stood above the Tsme Peaks.

I stared at the other seven. Most of them stared at me. I wanted to think, but my mind struggled to comprehend Astras’s suggestion. No one quite moved. No one wanted this.

Maybe Astras did.

She kept talking.

“With the assassins gone, they will tell no secrets,” she said. “Nor will their remains be recognized. But they carried replicas of All Things Ending, and Kog had those replicas made. If Kog was gone, there would be nothing that connected any of us to him, and if we could all keep our secrets like the dead, we’d live.”

And if none of them said anything, they began to move.

“Take your hand out of your shirt,” I told Mithrak.

He’d reached under his jacket where I’m sure he carried a gun.

“I’m just scratching,” he said.

“Stop.”

Hoarfast shifted his feet. Somehow, he seemed closer.

I faced seven of them. Seraphine wouldn’t fight nor Astras, Koru would have others fight for him, and Dr Simmons looked irrelevant. That left Mithrak, Cole, Agammae, and the terrible Hoarfast.

I wanted to fight Mithrak, but not him and Cole at the same time. Not if they had help. I never wanted to fight Hoarfast.

Who was this Astras who suddenly had so much to say? What was she even doing? She was a trophy wife. She needed to shut up, look sexy, and be kept. Now she seemed content to wait, but some noise kept building. Maybe the waterfall of Alph was getting louder.

Mithrak scratched himself again. His hand moved toward his armpit.

“Stop that,” I told him.

“I’m just scratching.”

“I told you to-”

Mithrak’s hand shot under his shirt, and I hard initiated on the lot of them.

He grabbed his gun, my fist met his face, and I followed through his head. His whole face wrapped around my fist with jaws and jowls moved in opposite directions, until I finished the strike and launched him a dozen feet away.

Agammae went on me. She threw her chair, I blocked, but the chair was a big thing. It filled a lot of space. She came in behind and kicked out my legs. I dropped.

Cole jumped at me and missed. Hoarfast went wide around behind the rest of the group. I had two seconds before he got here. Agammae spun around and jammed her leg between mine. I tried to leap from my back, but she got herself tangled up with me.

Hoarfast passed the spare chairs and drinks table, four steps away.

“Overe!” I shot my legs skyward again as I slip-broke from Agammae’s grip. My body moved like a wave, and I ended on my feet. Cole tried to tackle me. I retreated, Agammae sprawled out to snatch my feet, I retreated again, and Hoarfast arrived.

His parentage showed. Lines of gray followed his veins. His knuckles had turned to steel.

He feinted, threw two shots, and somehow, he’d gotten between me and the door. His assault was beyond the rest of them combined. I countered low, he blocked, and we exchanged strikes that didn’t connect. Mithrak got up, leaning like the deck was pitching and he’d lost his sea legs. Cole kept trying to grab me. Agammae’s hands appeared with knives. I slipped around Hoarfast’s jab as his off-hand tagged me, and my side went cold.

I dove off the balcony as flashing knives flew overhead.

Shang Du’s balcony overlooked the deep forest. At the bottom of the granite pillar, Alph passed into a dark cavern. Fog and froth filled the pit, and sometimes Koru’s children fell in. None of them ever emerged, and rats are strong swimmers.

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Karesh Ni: Ch2

Following the events of Bloodharvest.

Prior chapters

Chapter 2

After leaving Bloodharvest, fighting Laptra, and allowing her strange storm to disintegrate over the tree-ocean, the Arsae, Phillius captained the Dream in Emerald south in a mad, full-speed run. We survived intact, though I’m not sure if that was his plan. But if goblins chased us, they weren’t going to catch Phillius.

We arrived at the Grand Fountain Harbor, an immense tree-port of the Solange on the border of the vast forest, sailing in on treetops in a ship of clockwork with the shape of a dragon. I’m not quite used to being this showy, but it worked. Everyone saw us arrive. Prince Aehr’s unexpected homecoming, the return of all of his people, and the manner of our arrival drove the people mad. Elves gasped and yelled. Elves! They stood on benches and shouted, cheered, and runners left for the royal palaces to announce to the kingdoms that Aehr had come home.

Prince Aehr was about my height, which I liked, gentle, fiercely loyal to his people, and wise. He wasn’t very practical. He’d gone chasing after wolves and got himself captured by goblins, but I trusted he wouldn’t be doing that again. That being said, we hadn’t found the wolves. He talked about them, his wolves, a startling amount, and he would talk about them with me. He was also a prince, and whomever he married would be a princess.

Her Majesty cried. She hugged her son like, well, like her son had been captured and taken to Bloodharvest, the goblin death-prison from whence no one returned. I was very polite and respectful, told the Queen I had fulfilled my contract, and noted I’d rescued all forty two of Aehr’s attendants as well. They weren’t in the contract, but I don’t think that was disregard on the queen’s part; I don’t think anyone had expected them to be alive. I hadn’t. But they were, they were here, and we speeched at each other before elvish throngs.

The only one who didn’t look happy was Her Majesty’s Surrogate, who’s creepy-sounding title actually just meant he paid her bills. Royalty wasn’t supposed to handle money. He looked positively ill to see me victorious. I thanked him graciously, commended him on a job well done (because he was going to pay me), and hired a mariachi band to sing The Praises of Elegy outside his window. Culturally, elves refuse to acknowledge rudeness, so when I left he was still pretending the band didn’t exist.

And I got paid! Sort of.

The deal I had worked might have been more clever than wise, because instead of taking money, I received options for ten cargoes of winter wheat. The elves didn’t really understand, but they did write the options. They had tried hard to figure out my scheme, so the price was non-negotiable, the delivery date was fixed, and even the method of payment was established. But I had been to Celephias where the real villains of finance lived. The contract was a resellable bearer document.

The elvish wheat market is one of deepest closed markets in the world. Every deal is based on the last, which means there are no new sellers. Unless you’ve done a deal before, you can’t do a first. Outsiders can’t get in.

Unless you have a guaranteed option to sell ten cargoes. Someone with that wouldn’t just have an in, they’d be a wheat major. Ten cargoes is a lot of wheat. I didn’t have ten ships, wheat to put on them, or about forty marks to buy the wheat if someone else had the ships.

Around the time the elves noticed Othrak, a goblin I’d rescued because Aehr owed him (see? Loyalty! Aehr was loyal. He needed someone loyal. I’m loyal), I went to the windcallers. Celephians have mastered the arts of banking and shouting to each other across great distances. They use the high winds, the ones that ring the world, to communicate across continents, and they use them mostly for financial shenanigans. The question isn’t, ‘are the Celephians up to mischief?’ It’s ‘what mischief are the Celephians up to now, and how much is it going to cost me?’ Fascinating people. I like to visit but don’t ever want to live there.

A broker met me at woven cane doors and brought me to a bright, interior room. It looked like a silo, with an open ceiling showing the high tower rising toward the sky, and two more doors forming something like an airlock. The doors had panels of fabric woven through the rattan, making them basically soundproof. We would conduct our business in privacy at a glass desk in mahogany chairs.

“What about above? Isn’t listening to voices on the wind what you do?” I asked.

“The winds are bound in a gyre above, and they trap sound. If you screamed for hours, no one would hear you.”

I snapped my head down and looked at the broker, really looked at him. Something like glass shattered in my head. My impression, a bland-looking southerner with a calculated tan and fine suit, vanished. Instead I saw a tall figure in a yellow robe and a hood that hung open at the neck and low over his forehead, spreading like the hood of a cobra. A mask of thick knitting covered his face. Some stray threads as thick as a finger hung loose and jiggled when he talked, the stray tentacles of a hunting jellyfish.

“Hello, Elegy.” The stranger in yellow smiled. His mask pulled up on the edges, but his hood concealed his eyes.

Oh, no.

I’d actually been to Bloodharvest three times total, once accidentally, but once before I went for the elves. I’d been paid more money than I knew how to spend for the second trip, but I had figured it out. Oh, how I had figured it out. That’s what lead to going back. Now I was going to be smart. I wasn’t going to earn and waste everything in a useless cycle. I was going to invest!

That time, this yellow stranger had hired me. I’d rescued a something named Luthas, a faceless creature of the deep who managed to smile too much. I’d cut Luthas free from a wall where he’d been manacled with irons, old and rusty even in the dry, deep air, and he’d vanished into the dark. Aehr shouldn’t have been in Bloodharvest, and the elf prince had deserved a rescue. Luthas I probably should have left where he was.

“Hello,” I said and smiled like my teeth hurt. I didn’t know his name.

“But don’t worry, Elegy. We’re friends, and you have nothing to fear.” He kept stretching his face like he was smiling. “I’m here to help. Your options are non-divisible, and ten cargoes is a lot of wheat. You need to sell them all to one buyer. There’s a merchant, Hyrma Trui, in Citi Kageran who would love to buy them all, and he would offer you a delightful price.”

I said, “Oh. Great.”

I barely even heard myself say it, thinking about whether I should draw a knife on him.

“I agree.” The stranger winked and left.

My fingers and toes hurt like they’d been exposed to terrible cold. I gasped and massaged my hands. A woman in subdued blue clothes looked in.

She asked, “Excuse me, ma’am, have you been helped?”

Had I?

I didn’t answer the question. “I need assistance, please.”

“Oh, excellent. Esmerelda Blaine, pleased to meet you.”

“Astrologamage Elegy.” We shook hands.

She looked curiously at me. “Can I get you something to warm you up?”

“Yes, please.”

“Let’s sit.”

We did. She gave me spiced rum, and it took the edge off.

I said, “I have wheat options to sell. It’s a single contract for ten cargoes. Strike price, date, all that is fixed.” I showed her the paper. “Can you find a buyer?”

“Maybe. May I see it?”

I gave her the paper.

After reading, Esmerelda said, “I can move your trade, but it will be tricky. It’s winter wheat, and winter is coming soon. In the north it’s already here. Most merchants who can move this much grain will already have buyers for some, if not all, of their harvest, and the ones who can pay top dollar certainly will.”

“But possible,” I said.

“Certainly. I’d like to manage your expectations, though. I can reasonably get you a mark per contract, maybe a mark and a half. Fifteen total marks would be on the high-side, and it will take several weeks of searching. They’re valuable to the right buyer, but there aren’t a lot of buyers.” She shrugged. Esmerelda had wispy white hair and dangly earrings. “My commission is the greater of one mark or five percent, and that includes surety. Would you like me to go ahead?”

She looked at me with a polite smile with a whole lot of little stuff in it. She was eager for the job, with high-eyebrows and a slight forward lean. She was closed to negotiations, with hands folded, palms toward herself. She did well, with careful makeup and diamonds. She wore them subtly. Her dangly earrings had silver teardrops that caught my attention, but studs on the ear-posts had big rocks. Her wedding ring, white gold and more white diamonds, was almost hidden under her lace cuffs. She wore one simple necklace, the only obvious piece that wasn’t somewhat hidden, but it was just a chain of small silver links.

Nothing, nothing on her was yellow, not even gold.

My mouth spoke of its own volition. “Please do. Would you check Citi Kageran? There’s a merchant there, Trui, who might be interested.”

“My pleasure. I’ll walk you to the clerk, and he can start surety while I run your order to the callers. We should be able to call your order before you leave.”

We got up and walked out the double doors. The main hall was moderately busy with rich people in riches and rich people in deceptively poor clothing, and possibly a few poor people in both too. I didn’t know where I fit in.

The rum had been a little strong. I looked at Esmerelda. “How is the water?”

“Solange Sweetwater,” she said as she walked me to the clerks. “Tastes like Elvenhome.”

#

Esmerelda talked Hyrma Trui of Kageran into offering me double the strike price.

I don’t know if Aehr’s family had one hundred twenty six marks. If they did, they would bleed for it. But they could move wheat while Trui was in the market. No one got bankrupted, my prince’s ransom was perfectly reasonable, and if Aehr’s family needed some help, I could do that again too.

My scheme hadn’t hurt anyone. I’d kept it secret to protect myself, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. There was no reason to feel bad about this at all, and the sweetwater tasted like Elvenhome.

But the contract was a bearer document, so I had to take it to Kageran for delivery. I left Aehr explaining to his people that yes, Othrak, a goblin, was going to live with them. He explained that Othrak was now a hero to the Star-Drinking People. He told them of rescues in the dark, the Well of Memory, and Laptra’s bizarre, psychotically-personal evil. He even sang my praises for the fight on the thunderhead. He’d promised to do so, but I’d expected him to dodge. Instead he stood before the kings and queens of elvenhome, come together to rejoice in his return, and sang of me and him in a voice like nightingales. For an infinite moment, I was the most important person on Pallas. I started getting feelings outside my heart; tingles in my fingers and face, and I had to leave before I did something stupid.

Arguably, a human interested in an elf at all was stupid, being interested an elvish prince was definitely stupid, and me, a non-mythically beautiful woman more adept at sneaking around goblins and occasionally stabbing one than court niceties, chasing an elvish prince was no doubt more foolish than any of the above.

I’m the sort of girl who breaks into goblin prisons and swears too much. I am that fool.

Want to know an expectedly weird thing about elves? They don’t swear. They don’t curse. They don’t invoke their gods in vain. I swear like a fucking sailor, and they ignore it. They’re not offended, but swearing isn’t elvish so to them, it doesn’t happen. Just talking to elves made me realize how human I am, how not they are, and how absurd I was being, thinking too long of Prince Aehr of Elvenhome.

But that didn’t matter, because I wasn’t really thinking of Aehr, because if I did, I’d have to stop swearing.

I left in a hurry because those options had a hard settlement date and soon. Phillius scared me, but he sailed quickly. I sailed for Kageran on the Dream in Emerald.

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On the western edge of the Arsae, the black of the Hyades falls over cliffs. No human has seen the bottom of the Three Sisters waterfall and lived. There the ghosthearts of the Arsae grow thick and tall, taller than the cliffs that bound the deep Karas, and tall as mountains beyond the lake itself. They form a green rise like a wooden wave, eternally breaking against the cliff. The foam is their leaves, branches, the little sticks that fall from higher bows, and the tiny monoleaf thyf that grows in the highest canopies. The whole copse sways with the wind as a wave slowed down in the moment of breaking.

A gallows overlooks the edge. It’s on a long, flat platform that juts past the rock with carved channels so the waterfall roars underneath. The gallows tree faces the breaking wave of the Arsae: a straight trunk with one crossbar branch. The end of the crossbar hangs over falling water. No one occupied it when Phillius sailed the Dream in Emerald to the edge and tied off to the hanging post. It worked fine as a pier.

Kageran resides further up the lakeshore, maybe a mile and a half walk. The water didn’t seem to move until it passed over the cliffs, and then it roared. It was winter now, but in the summer the lake surface is green with waterfern and lilies.

Phillius walked to the edge of the hanging platform, looked down the black chasm, and nodded at whatever he thought. I stepped off the boat and walked gingerly across the gallows platform. It was bitterly cold, far colder than the air over the Arsae. Tiny icebergs, little frozen bits of lake scum, and snow-covered logs floated by under the platform and fell. The old wood creaked underfoot, and I was carrying a heavy duffel. Once on stone, I looked back at Phillius.

He looked at the empty gallows arm, the falls, and the bare rock nearby. The arm had seen use, and there were no gravesites. Then he nodded to me.

We parted silently. I would have felt odd saying goodbye knowing he wouldn’t reply.

An hour later I climbed into Citi Kageran.