Hawkspar Read online

  “I’m taking Eyes,” I told Redbird. “You need not. You have a choice.”

  She looked from her plate over to me, her expression serious. “You are taking Eyes. Therefore, I am taking Eyes. The blessed oracle said you would need me. How much more truth is there in the world than that?”

  4

  Aaran

  The wolf-pack sailed into Port Midrid at dawn, with a clear sky behind it and busy docks before.

  Aaran stood on the deck with the captain. “You’ll leave us in a bad way if you go,” Haakvar said. “We’re not like to find another tracker of your caliber any time soon; you’ve been with us a long time, too.”

  Aaran nodded. “I can’t save them all, Captain,” he said, “but I believe I can save these.”

  “You’re set on buying your own ship then, are you? And getting your papers, and taking on crew? I know you know the basics of it, lad, but have you thought out the particulars? You’ll be crossing into the territories the Sinalis claim as their Empire. Whether they hold it in truth or only in the fiction of their legal papers and their twisted minds, if you’re Tonk and they find you in the Fallen Suns, they’ll kill you. No trades, no negotiations—and it won’t matter if your commission from the Joint Council of Hyre is in order or not. Your papers are no good north of the equator and east of the Path of Stars. Those Sinalis’ll call you a pirate and rip your innards out with a meat hook.”

  “I’ve thought of that.”

  “Have you considered the cannibals, then? Everyone knows the Fallen Suns are full of cannibals. And what of weird wizards? And sea monsters. Summoned storms, flying blood drinkers, headless women who will lure you to your death against reefs, walking dead? Those islands are the playground of the damned. Nothing good can come of going in there.”

  Aaran said, “All the more reason I have to go. Our people are trapped there. Slaves.” He didn’t tell Haakvar he thought Aashka might be there. He had worn that hope to threads with the captain years before; he could hope for nothing but a look of pity if he mentioned it again. Some things were better left unsaid—he didn’t want word getting around that he was a madman when he was going to have to hire a crew to go with him. In the world of men and ships, mad captains were a health risk no sailor would choose to take.

  “Then you’re bound to do this?”

  “I am.”

  Haakvar’s eyes narrowed and he said, “You can stay on the Windsteed until cash-out, then. Make sure you have your next berth ready and your belongings cleared before cash-out, though, because once you have your money, I don’t want you in my sight again. Unless you come to your senses before then.”

  Aaran was stunned. He and Haakvar has always worked well together, had eaten at table often, had shared ale and tales and a comfortable camaraderie. He’d expected the man to clap him on the back and wish him luck. He’d hoped Haakvar, who was rumored to be richer than taaklords and to own nearly half the ships that comprised the Tonk privateer fleet, would consider financing part of this venture. “I’ve done well by you for years,” Aaran said. “And I’m heading off to save Tonk slaves no one else has gone after.”

  “You have done well by me. But now you’re leaving me with neither a decent warning, nor a trained replacement, nor even a half-trained assistant. And no matter what you might believe, you’re taking whichever fools you might find to follow you up north to die. You’ll be wasting good men and at least one good ship, and I have no patience for that.”

  Aaran felt anger boiling in his belly, but he kept it locked down tight. Haakvar thought it well enough to run after the slaves that were easy to reach, but was willing to leave to die those unfortunates who had gone into darker lands. Aaran had always thought better of the captain than that. He said, “Then I’ll be here until the share is divided.”

  “Keep yourself out of my sight until it is.”

  When he parted company from the captain, Aaran sought out Tuua, who was down in Ethebet’s temple with the books.

  “Trying to decide which part of the collection to negotiate as part of my severance,” he said, grinning, as Aaran stepped through the doors.

  “Consider none of it, and count yourself lucky with that,” Aaran told him. By the time he’d finished describing his encounter with Haakvar, Tuua looked almost sick.

  “I’ve written a dozen of these volumes,” Tuua said. “I just days ago completed an analysis and gloss on Raakbaan av Finetaak’s Journeys of Ethebet: The Ten Essential Meditations. I cannot leave any of my own writings behind; I haven’t had a chance to take them to a temple to be copied and entered into the archives.” He stared around the chapel walls, wild-eyed. “If they stay here, it will be as if they were never written.”

  “You don’t have to come with me, Tuua. Perhaps this is a sign from Ethebet that at last the time has come for us to part company.”

  Tuua said, “I will seek Ethebet’s guidance. Until I have done that, I don’t know what else to say.”

  Aaran felt his heart sink. He had somehow imagined that Tuua would instantly declare that the books were mere books, and that his cousin mattered more. But books were Tuua’s life and love.

  Perhaps, after all, it was a sign that Ethebet had decided to set the two of them on different paths.

  Aaran went to his own quarters and gathered up his kit. He had other belongings onboard, but if Haakvar suddenly decided not to let him board again, Aaran intended to have already removed those things he considered essential.

  With his kit bag slung over his shoulder, he headed up to the deck. Thanks to Haakvar’s temper, or his own stubbornness or stupidity, he was going to be stranded in Midrid. To his benefit, Midrid was a large, busy port. He had contacts around the town. But he decided he wanted to know where he would be staying before Haakvar had a chance to kick him off the Windsteed.

  The docks were the usual jumble a man could find in any busy harbor, and while Aaran let his legs adjust to ground that didn’t move beneath his feet, he walked the piers, simply taking it all in. After months of water and small islands, the busyness was alien to his eyes. Gamblers and whores and hucksters he found in plenty, and sailors fresh from the sea, and sailors weary from the land. Old men sat along the warehouses watching the ships that sat at anchor with wistful eyes. Old women and young scanned the horizon for a familiar mast, or a long-absent flag, a known blazon on sail.

  This was Aaran’s known terrain. This thin strip that lay between his home in the sea and the foreign world hidden away behind every port was always like coming home, and it was home in any harbor into which the sea washed him. He searched out familiar faces in the crowd—men with whom he’d shipped out, women who might welcome him for a meal or a toss between sheets. He saw some, and nodded, but did not stop to talk. He needed to find a place to stay—but not a place like the ones he had always stayed in before. He was to be a captain, taking on crew, and to hire decent officers he would have to stay in a place where captains—good captains—would stay.

  He could find a room in one of the dockside taverns quick enough, and pay sailors’ prices, and live with sailors’ risks. Dockside, honesty was not a policy. Money flowed fast, ale faster, and the roughs that eyed his sea-staggered gait with narrowed eyes smiled a little as he passed. He could feel their interest in him and their assessment of his possible value versus his possible threat. He knew the game. He knew the rules.

  Captains stayed inland, in fine rooms. Officers saw their wealth and knew they could trust their futures to these wealthy captains’ ships.

  Aaran wandered into the unknown world of Midrid proper. It was, beyond the rattrap structures built onto the piers and wharfs, a pretty place. It lay closer to the equator than any point in Hyre, and had trees and birds far different than those he knew from home. Midrid had no walls, either, which made it unlike the Tonk taaks. Its narrow, uneven, curving streets wandered in all directions, the products of ruminant surveyors, no doubt. The houses were all white wood planking, ship-built, tall roofed. Profusions of fl
owers hung from window boxes, and ribbons of laundry flapped on lines from house to house across the streets waved like banners to welcome home returning heroes.

  From the high stories and side windows, he saw women leaning on sills and chatting house to house. In the streets below, children ran in mobs and scattered like chickens as he moved close.

  In Trade tongue, he asked a woman where the nearest good inn might be found. Lips pursed, she looked him up and down—that narrow assessment outlanders got from homefolk—and at last decided he was a decent enough sort to warrant an answer. She pointed onward and up the hill, and told him to ask for Wayron Hogsmann, and the Buttered Bread.

  Aaran thanked her. He did not toss her a coin as he would have had he gotten the same information from a child; customs differed from place to place, but he had yet to find a land where decent women took money from strange men as anything but an insult. Or an excuse for calling out the dogs.

  The Buttered Bread spoke of wealth and comfort. It announced itself like a silk-dressed woman at a party—the inn was dressed in bright pink paint, with glittering lights showing from huge windows. It had a wide courtyard, a dozen liveried boys who were taking horses back to a stable or bringing them when called for, and greeters in the brightest orange shirts and breeches Aaran had ever seen stepping up to potential customers and asking them how they would wish to be served.

  The customers themselves, women and men, expensively dressed in clothes of exotic cut and exquisite fabric, stepped in and out of the inn through a wall of glass-paned double doors that sat side-by-side, eight across.

  Aaran had never seen the like. Marqal never sat beneath months of falling snow and ice, and its architecture suggested as much. But—Midrid had lived its whole history at peace, too. Not a single building had been built with war in mind. This place, if ever called to defend itself, would throw up pretty hands in despair and be overrun in an hour.

  One of the greeters came up to him, judged his status quickly, and in Trade tongue asked if he would like a room for the night.

  “Longer than that,” Aaran said, “though I’m not sure how much longer. I’m going to have to buy and refit a ship and take on crew, and I’ve only just got into harbor.”

  The greeter permitted one eyebrow only the slightest arch of surprise. Aaran, dressed in the uniform of a Tonk ship’s officer, knew he didn’t look like a ship buyer, or a crew hirer. He looked like the sailor he’d always been.

  But the greeter said, “We have captains’ quarters open on the top floor if you’d like to inspect them, sir.”

  Aaran shook his head. “I’m not looking for anything so grand. This will be my first ship, and I need to save as much of my share as I can toward what I’ll have to do. Let me have—” He hesitated. If Tuua were coming with him, the two of them could share a two-bunk room and save a great deal of money in the process.

  But he couldn’t be sure that Tuua would be joining him. “For tonight, let me have a one-bunk. I have someone who is considering investing with me in this venture—I’ll not know for a day or two if he’s coming in on it.”

  The greeter nodded. “We can easily move you to a two-bunk if you need. We have a comfortable number of open rooms at the moment.”

  Aaran studied the constant traffic around the front door and tried to imagine the place when it was full and busy. “Thank you.”

  “Private bath?”

  Aaran thought of the luxury of a private bath, and the temptation pulled at him like a storm tide. “How much extra for the night.”

  “How will you be paying?”

  “Horse cash.”

  “Horse cash. Very good, sir. Customers who pay in favored currencies get our discount. Your room will be three cash per night, half a cash extra with private bath.”

  “The parlor needs to be large enough to interview potential investors, crew, and suppliers. I’m also going to need names and directions for area shipwrights.”

  “The services we offer to captains who room with us include half price on all meals taken at table with one or more guests, so that you can entertain those with whom you wish to do business without impoverishing yourself; posting of the positions you have open on our board in the grand hall and on our boards down on the docks, for a mere pittance; and a greeter who will, for a modest sum, arrange interviews with you at times of your convenience.”

  “How much for the extras?”

  “A one-time fee of ten horse cash for the job postings; a daily rate of one horse cash for the greeter; and as for meals, if you are careful to order the house ale or house wine, prices per guest at meals will be fixed at half a cash. Our house drinks are quite palatable even to the most selective.”

  That sounded reasonable. “Let me see the room, then.”

  “You get a two-bunk for us, did you?” a familiar voice shouted behind him.

  Aaran spun, disbelieving. “Tuua?”

  Tuua, a big pack slung over his back, came swaggering up the street. “I’m in,” he said with a broad grin.

  “Your first officer, Captain?”

  “My temple keeper.”

  “Very good. A two-bunk, then, Captain, with private bath?”

  Aaran glanced over at the man, knowing he must be radiating relief like a fire radiated heat. “Absolutely. All your captain services. A parlor room. I’ll have my list to you in the morning.”

  “Very good, sir,” the greeter said, and led the two of them through the grand glass doors.

  “You’re sure about this?” Aaran asked Tuua as they followed the greeter. “You’ll make no friend of Haakvar for leaving his employ.”

  “I promised I’d help you find Aashka and bring her home. And if we have to move all the world ourselves, I’m with you until we do.”

  5

  Penitent / Acolyte

  The day I did not want came far too quickly. Obsidians came to the Ranwi building before first light. The penitent on hall duty in our dormitory watched me strip down to nothing but my tabi. I owned nothing, and would take nothing with me to the acolytes’ house—not even the soltis on my feet.

  “You’re to be Hawkspar?”The girl who asked me had a fuzz of bright red hair, skin so pale it was almost transparent, and vivid green eyes.

  She was Ter Hurry, a junior penitent, though of course that would change when I moved up. She was also one of mine—in on my escape plans, as desperate as I to flee the confines of the Citadel, and as fine a fighter as any of the Obsidians.

  “I am,” I told her. “Nothing has changed, though.”

  But I could not tell her more. Other girls, freed from work for the few minutes before they would go to bathe and then retire for the night, wandered in to stare at me. Word had evidently spread.

  “Are you excited?” one asked. She was dark-eyed, dark-haired Fawi Catch, a senior penitent, but assuredly not one of mine. She loved the Order, and worse, had always been ambitious. She yearned for a place as an oracle, talked about the wonders of having Eyes, and talked far too often about how she would make changes if she attained an oracle’s power. She thought our lives were too soft.

  Few of the other penitents cared much for her, though she belonged to a little group of fanatical penitents who shared her vision of the future of the Citadel.

  “No, I’m not excited,” I said.

  “You’re to be a goddess,” she said.

  “So I’m told. My sense of it is that I’m to have my eyes ripped out and cold rocks—spelled with visions and pains and suffering I do not want—jammed into their places.”

  Fawi Catch said, “But you were chosen. This is what we live our lives for—to be chosen. To be made something more than we are. To be given names, and new sight, and to serve and to … to earn praise and honor for the Order.”

  “We had lives before the Ossalenes. We had names,” I growled. “We had families and homes.” I had more to say, but stopped myself. I had, after all, chosen this path. If I had not chosen it, I would have eventually been forced onto a path
not of my choosing. Nonetheless, I had been called, and like the rest of the women who would one day take Eyes, I had in the end agreed to take them voluntarily. And I would do so for something bigger than the enrichment of the Order.

  Instead, I left quietly, to a few whispered good wishes.

  I walked the short distance from Ranwi Hall to Brevon Hall—the only acolyte hall. Redbird was already there, standing and waiting. First Acolyte Marit Brevon met me at the door, a bundle of acolyte garb in her arms.

  I took my place beside Redbird.

  “Welcome, acolytes,” she said, looking at both of us, but handing me the bundle. “You’re to be Acolyte Alsa Brevon until the new first acolyte,” she nodded toward Redbird, “takes Eyes. I will step back to Betsin until you become Marit.”

  Which was not how matters should have been. Redbird and I were the newest acolytes, while Alsa was the second-ranked cell, and Marit was first.

  I bowed to the first acolyte and said, “Permission to ask a question.”

  “You’re an acolyte now. You don’t have to ask,” she said.

  Of course. “How, then, am I made second acolyte? How is …” Names are always a problem. “How is the new Marit made Marit?” I asked her. “We should be Rono and Khern.” These were the two lowest acolytes.

  “You aren’t an acolyte because you have what the Order sees as an aptitude or a vocation. You’ve already been chosen—and by the Hawkspar Eyes, no less. You’re to be an oracle, she’s to be Obsidian, and she will become Obsidian on the morrow. Hawkspar sends word that you will be Oracle within the month, though she will not tell us the day.”

  I had heard rumors that some of the oracles could make seru Eyes. I could not swear to it, but the rumor was fairly common among the slaves and penitents. However, for me to receive the Hawkspar Eyes, the current Hawkspar had to die. Oracle Eyes were unique.

  So she knew she would die within the month?

  I did not wish to step ahead of all the other acolytes, though, nor did I imagine that Redbird did. All penitents heard of the jealousy that sometimes led to … well, “accidents” in the acolyte hall, as women who had been chosen as acolytes for their vocation were passed over by Eyes who chose wearers who were younger or who appeared less qualified. I knew already that I had not been the true choice of the Hawkspar eyes, and I knew as well that some girl or woman within Brevon Hall had been. I was a pretender. The true heir to the Hawkspar Eyes—assuming she wanted them—would have cause for jealousy if she suspected the truth.