Page 21

Chapter 21

I arrived at the riverfront docks early the next morning. Our boat was a long, narrow thing, with high armored walls on either side, and nine seakips harnessed to its bow. The doughy little creatures rolled over languidly in the brown water as the boat was loaded, their translucent whiskers twitching as they snuffed. I crouched at the edge of the pier and extended a hand to one. It surfaced and sniffed at my fingers, blinking its big, black, soulful eyes at me, before it realized I had no food and dove back down.

“Don’t get too attached,” said Malo’s voice.

I turned to see her walking down the pier to me, an enormous pack tossed over her shoulders.

“If the smugglers ambush us,” she said, “they shall kill our steeds first and leave us floating.”

“What do we do if that happens?” I asked.

“Then we row, with much complaining.” She tossed the bag at my feet and studied my pack hanging from my shoulder. “You seem kitted out well.”

“Not my first time in the wilderness,” I said. “At least here there will be fewer worms.”

“Maybe, but other pests in abundance. Many of them human—the worst kind.” A flash of a grin. “Come. I have things for you to move.”

I helped load the boat, and as I did she introduced me to the rest of her crew: nine wardens, all green-eyed Pithians, all augmented for scent and sight and hearing; and, for the men, all wildly bearded. Few of them spoke much imperial standard, and instead muttered bits of Pithian at Malo for her to translate for me. One warden stared at me when introduced, and said only, “ Ugasa kavi ki’um livahpam? ”

The other Pithians laughed. Malo shot him a glare but did not reprimand him.

“What was that?” I asked her.

She hesitated and said, “He asked, ‘Why we are bringing a big sad poet on a raid?’ Do not listen to him. He is an idiot who wipes his ass with the same hand he uses to eat his bread.”

I assumed that was a Pithian adage, but still made a note to accept no food from him. “At least I shall have an opportunity to learn more about the Yarrow locals,” I said.

She looked me over as if scrutinizing me for a sign of jest. “These are not Yarrows. These are wardens. These are people who spend days in the swamp waiting to shoot smugglers with many arrows. I would no more assume they are an example of Yarrow folk than I would assume a rabid dog is a common pet.”

Along with us came a short little Kurmini fellow named Tangis: a medikker princeps with smooth, straight gray hair he combed back around his ears. “I don’t speak a word of their language, either,” he confided to me. “But we get by with grunts. Besides, you don’t have to talk much when patching up a wound. Blood speaks well enough.”

Yet it was the last warden to arrive who caught my attention: a tall Yarrow girl who came running down the pier, angrily waving a hand at the jeers of her colleagues, who appeared to scold her for being late. She was about my own age, and sported a wild mane of auburn hair, and green eyes no less wild.

We locked eyes as she grew near, and she slowed in her pace. I recognized her immediately: the girl I’d slept with during my first night in the city.

She nodded stiffly to me. I nodded politely back, and she loaded her kit into the boat.

It was a small moment, I thought, yet it was one Malo spied instantly. She sidled up to me, bumped her shoulder into my arm, and gave a triumphant “Ah!”

“Ah?” I said warily.

“I thought I’d smelled something familiar upon you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t bother denying it! But by hell, I can’t believe you bedded Sabudara, of all my wardens! I am surprised she did not take a bite out of you.”

I felt myself coloring. “Her name is Sabudara?”

Malo stared. “You…you did not even get that, Kol? By the titan’s taint, what kind of man are you? Some kind of fricatrat, making your rounds?” She stuck a finger in my chest. “Whatever you have with her, you leave it here now. No fucking on a raid, all right?”

I blushed brighter and climbed aboard.

—

We embarked just after dawn, the seakips hauling us off into the brown tides of the canals. We passed the clearings about New Town and the many junks and barges making their way along the Great Canals; then after a few more hours we came to a narrow little tributary, and turned and headed southwest into the shimmering veil of the jungle.

Soon all civilization was lost, and we saw nothing but forest. The crew fell to silence, watching the trees. Sabudara glanced back at me, then reached into her pack, pulled out a filthy brown cloak, and tossed it to me, saying, “ Tutim baputa vate ake baputa vileh hoi. ”

Once more, the other Pithians smiled or chuckled. I looked to Malo.

“She said you are too big and too blue,” Malo told me. “And you should cover yourself.” She shrugged. “She is right. You are very visible. If you take an arrow to the neck, it will cause me no end of trouble.”

I sat low in the boat, tossed the cloak about my shoulders, and studied the trees. “Are we looking for anything in particular?”

“You look for nothing,” Malo said. “For you’ve not got eyes as we do. But the jungle is not trustworthy here, and will get less trustworthy as we go. The smugglers are as ghosts, in many places—yet ghosts that fire a volley of arrows before vanishing.”

“Do you expect much combat?”

“Combat is not their nature,” she said. “Smugglers wish to stay alive, steal, and make money, not fight wardens. They will run. The tricky thing is approaching unnoticed. So stay quiet.” She reached into a satchel on the deck, slid out a small roll of paper, and tossed it to me. “And keep an eye out for this fellow, of course.”

I unrolled the paper. Sketched on the inside was an ashpen drawing of a man’s face. He looked thin and reedy, with his curly hair pressed flat against his head, and a beaky nose and small eyes set close together: somewhat common features among Rathras folk. Even though the drawing was crude, there was something hurt and sullen to his eyes, as if I had done him a disservice by unrolling the little paper and looking at him.

“That’s him?” I asked.

“So the boy at the bank claims,” said Malo. “He does not look the sort, no? Yet he may have reshaped his flesh by now. Bones he won’t be able to change on his own, but the thickness or thinness of a face, or the shape of his nose…that is more mutable. Mark it well, though, and let me know if you spy it among the trees!”

—

The hours passed in a humid torpor. Soon my clothes were soaked with sweat and I was forced to strip down to my white tunic. The other wardens did the same, though Sabudara and I scrupulously avoided looking at each other. Tiny insects flittered about us, taking bites of our flesh, and the wardens showed me how to seal my skin with a dark orange paste that smelled faintly of lemon. I rubbed the paste on my cheeks, musing that this morning I had been a respectable Iyalet officer, yet now I was already as jungle-wild as Malo.

As night fell we moored the boat at a bend in the river, hewing close to a tall cliffside that shielded us from being seen from the south and west. The wardens brought in the seakips for rest and food, and then we set to making our own dinner. We risked no open flame nor light but ate cold rations in the dark, relying on the enhanced vision of the wardens to parse the shadows and spy any threats.

“My least favorite part of going out with you lot,” muttered Tangis. “Not just the poor rations, but I got to wait for one of you to tell me where to piss.”

“You want your prick gobbled up by a lurking turtle, then feel free to piss where you like,” said Malo.

“It’s been so long since my prick was gobbled by anything, ma’am,” retorted Tangis, “that p’rhaps I’d not turn down a reaper-back’s kiss.”

Malo was so amused by this that she translated it for her fellow wardens, who whooped and chuckled huskily. It made for a strange sound: they had trained so strenuously as hunters, apparently, that they even knew how to avoid laughing aloud.

The wardens soon fell to playing games, dealing out tiles and dice and whispering near-noiselessly in the dark. There was little light except for the sliver of moon above, and I lay against the edge of the deck, gazing up at it; yet after several games I noticed that the wardens were watching me and muttering to one another, sometimes accompanied by smirks, other times scowls.

“Something wrong?” I asked Malo.

“No,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“They…find you curious,” she explained reluctantly. “Sublimes never come with us in our work. If we ever see one, it is only to be given orders.”

“That’s common,” I said—for although I’d worked alongside Sublimes for nearly all my career, I knew we were still a rare sight for many in the Iyalets.

“Yes, but especially for we wardens. We stay out in the canals and the jungle, away from where decisions are made. They definitely do not see anyone so well-traveled.”

“I’m only well-traveled if you count places no one might wish to see.”

Malo translated this to her wardens and was met with another question. “Then where have you been, in the Empire?” she asked me.

“I have served in Daretana, Talagray, Sapirdad, Logirstad, and Qabirga.”

Malo looked surprised, translated this, and was met with more surprise.

“You’ve been to Talagray?” said Tangis softly. “Fucking hell…”

Another warden asked a question. Once more, Malo translated: “Have you seen the sea walls there? Do you think they shall hold?”

“I…have,” I said haltingly. “They are grand works. And they will hold, if there are good folk to work upon them.” I added, “And…there are, I think. There were some decent men I left behind, when I departed.”

Malo translated this. There was much nodding in answer, as if they all saw the wisdom in my awkward words. I wondered if she was actually translating what I said.

Another question, this one from Sabudara. I noticed the wardens all leaning in to look at me, grinning. Again, Malo translated, now smiling as well: “Have you ever met the emperor?”

I smirked. “Afraid I haven’t.”

Sabudara asked another question, and again Malo translated: “But do you know if he is really a thousand years old? And is he truly a god?”

I paused, discomfited to find myself speaking on behalf of the emperor. “Why does she ask this?”

“Mostly they are fucking with you.” Malo shrugged. “But this is not the Empire. They have grown up with a king living in a white city above them, but they know him to be very old and weak. Your emperor is another thing entirely. Stories cling about him like haze on a mountain. And you are the most-traveled person we have ever spent much time with. So…” She smirked cruelly. “… is he a god?”

“Well…no. He is over four hundred years old, maintained through arts I do not know. And he is not a god, but Khanum. The only living Khanum now—the last of the first imperial race, the first altered people. He hardly ever comes out of his Sanctum anymore. Some don’t even think he’s really alive.”

Malo, now irritated to still be acting as translator, rendered this into Pithian as well. Then she sighed as another question was voiced and glared at the man who’d asked. “Now they want to know if the old Khanum were actually real,” she said.

“If they what?” I said, surprised.

“Many think they are invented,” she said, again shrugging. “Stories of some wise, brilliant race that vanished? It is like a spirit’s tale.”

I looked to Tangis for support, but he gave me a wry smile and a shake of the head— I’ll take no part in this.

“Well…the original Khanum were real,” I said reluctantly. “But they did not vanish. Rather, the first imperials changed themselves, until they became something not human, and declined to nothing.”

Malo translated this. Her words were met with blank stares.

“They don’t understand that shit,” she said to me flatly. “No one could. Say more.”

“Well, they…they became smarter and stronger and wiser than any human being,” I said. “So clever they almost became incomprehensible. But they also became like mules—a different species, unable to breed with anyone. They could not reproduce, so they died out. The emperor is the last of them. We Sublimes are like a…an imitation of their likeness. We can only do a fragment of what they could do, a piece of what their minds were capable of.”

Malo translated this lengthy answer. Now the wardens fell to squabbling, with Sabudara speaking indignantly. She held her hands up about six smallspan apart, as if measuring something invisible. I began to feel a humiliating dread.

“Ahh,” I said. “What are they discussing now?”

“This might be an issue in translation…” said Malo. “The word for ‘mule’ in Pithian is the same as ‘gelding.’ Now they debate if you are an incomplete man.” She nodded to Sabudara. “Some testify on your behalf.”

Tangis, who had been sipping from a small pot of water, burst into a riotous coughing fit.

“I am complete,” I said, stung. “And all functions well. But I do not engender children.”

Malo translated again. All the wardens stopped talking. The female ones seemed most intrigued and studied me appraisingly—including Sabudara, who I realized must have been willing to leave all to fate when she bedded me. The men, however, shot me looks both alarmed and resentful.

“I, ah, am no longer sure if I enjoy being an object of curiosity,” I said to Malo.

“I know I do not enjoy acting as middleman for it!” she snapped. “Titan’s taint! Bring one Iudex along, and they all become as fucking children!”

She rattled off some Pithian to her wardens, and the women nodded derisively— Yes, yes, we know. Then she turned to me. “I have told them what I told you: no fucking on a raid,” she said sternly. “If one of them tries to mount you, shove the idiot off into the water. All right?”

I drew away from the wardens, stuck a pipe into my mouth, and lay back on the boat, watching the stars through the quivering canopy.