Karesh Ni is the sequel to Bloodharvest. It’s comparatively ‘Modern Day’ in Pallas.
Twilight in Heaven is in the dawn ages. It’s part of my Silmarillion.
Karesh Ni: Chapter 4
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.
Karesh Ni: Chapter 3
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.
Karesh Ni: Ch2
Following the events of Bloodharvest.
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.
#
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.
Karesh Ni: Ch1
Chapter 1
Alyssa and Satre argued about whether to give me a job, and I didn’t know who I wanted to win. The job sounded terrible. Even if Alyssa won, I should decline. The problem was she knew this. When I’d mentioned I didn’t need their money, she counter-offered with, “What if we gave you a lot?”
And looking for a diplomatic way to say no, I asked, “How much is a lot?”
One of those things that weirds me out but I can’t explain to anyone is that Pallas has offices. When I go talk to a sorcerer or a wizard, we often meet in their office, and it’s an office. Alyssa’s office had a desk breaking the space in half, and a little sitting area by the door with five comfy but mismatched chairs. On that side she had bookshelves of mostly modern law and a wine sideboard. On her side of the desk, she had maps and files. In each corner of the wooden room and before the full-wall window behind her desk, she grew catnip and owenge, an orange pitcher plant that smelled faintly of lavender. There were two small fireplaces, one for each side. Baroness Alyssa, ruler of Citi Kageran, had an office. It wasn’t even an office of doom; it was an office-office, where you get advice about your taxes or to update your will. The last was good because I was going to need one if I broke into a sorcerer’s prison.
After Trui had left, Alyssa asked me to explain why I had sold a bunch of wheat options when I was obviously not a wheat merchant. I said that’s why I’d sold them. I didn’t want them. She asked me to explain, so I laid bare the entire ordeal of Bloodharvest. The Baroness listened to with polite interest while Satre, her husband, made us a round of drinks. I asked for quarter wine. Well-water in Kageran occasionally gives you dysentery, so drinking straight water wasn’t an option. Three drams water to one wine is about as non-alcoholic as I care to go.
Alyssa moved around to our side of her desk and took a slightly-lumpy oak chair, knees together, shins at a slight angle while she faced me, holding a stemless wine-glass in both hand like a teacup. When I finished, she asked, “Could you rescue someone from a prison that isn’t run by goblins?”
And I, like an idiot, said, “That would be even better!”
Which was true, but I should have said something like, ‘No, I’m done breaking people out of prison.’
Satre had taken an armless chair beside her and sat at an angle. He leaned against the chair-back with his left shoulder. His right hand bore the huge signet ring of Kageran he’d used to officiate the transaction, and he hadn’t used wax. Satre had held his hand over a fire, then smashed his fist into the document to burn the Crest of Ozymandias into the paper. Now the same hand swirled the water and wine because their wine wasn’t very good, and sediment kept collecting in the glass-bottom.
He looked from me to Alyssa and cocked an eyebrow.
Alyssa said, “Like the sorcerers of Whitefire.”
My brain caught up with my mouth, and I put up a hand. “Um, I don’t know.”
Satre squinted. “Who’s there? Other than a bunch of sorcerers?”
“Kyria,” said Alyssa.
“Good!” he exclaimed, loudly and unexpectedly enough to startle me into squeaking.
“But Elegy could get her out,” Alyssa told him.
“Or she could not and let Kyria rot.”
Why were they bringing me into this? “I don’t know Kyria,” I said.
Alyssa ignored me. “But we could help her. Elegy rescued Prince Aehr from Bloodharvest. We need to check, of course, but we can ask the elves. No offense.” She smiled at me.
“They said they’d provide references,” I replied quickly, but as soon as the words escaped, I tried to slow down. “But how does that lead to Whitefire?”
“Because you just said you can rescue someone from a different prison.”
I….dammit.
“Who’s Kyria?” I asked.
“My sister,” said Alyssa.
Looking for support, I glanced at Satre.
“Alyssa, this is a terrible idea,” he said correctly.
I nodded.
He continued. “If Whitefire turned on her, leave her to them. She tried to kill you.”
That’s a pretty strong argument. Points for Satre. He spoke wisdom.
“No!” said Alyssa. She waved a hand at me. “I am not going to let my sister die in captivity, while Elegy here makes a profession of getting people out!”
I mean, I had done it twice. I don’t know about making a profession of it.
“Who cares?” yelled Satre. “Elegy just got paid! Elegy, did you just get paid by Hyrma Trui?” He looked at me, following Alyssa’s wave.
“I did,” I said.
He turned back to Alyssa but waved at me. “See? She’s happy. She doesn’t need more money.”
Well…
“Elegy, are you interested in taking another contract?” asked Alyssa. Both of them looked back at me: Satre shaking his head and Alyssa nodding.
I stammered. “I’d like to take a little time off right now, you know, just to spend a little money–”
“What if we gave you a lot?” interrupted Alyssa.
I froze, and when I unfroze, I made my mistake. “How much is a lot?”
A lot was two hundred and fifty Celephian marks. I’d gone through Bloodharvest for sixty three in options, nine over seven as elves do numbers. I’d resold them for twice that. A Celephian mark is a gold coin about the size of my palm, stamped with Kuranes the current on one side and the White Ship on the other. Each coin weighs about half a pound. Alyssa was offering me a me in Celephian gold.
Satre said, “We are not going to give her that,” and they started fighting.
I’m Elegy. I’m a normal-sized woman surrounded by tall people. Some of y’all think you’re cool when you reach high shelves and see over horses. You walk like you’re being chased, trying to get away from me because I have little legs. You should! I’m fierce down here.
Normally I keep my hair short, but it had grown out over the last half a year. Now it wasn’t long enough to pull back but long enough to get into my face. I was considering putting it up in pigtails, but then I look like I’m twelve. I wear a reversible cloak of gray and green, loose clothing, and everything I have is stitched in curves. I don’t have a clear outline to break up. I hide small knives in boots and belts, and one, the Blade of Luthas, up a sleeve. That knife frightens me, and I’m a hair shy of throwing it into the sea and forgetting it exists.
I could do that in Celephias. It’s an island. They make money. I could throw the Blade of Luthas into the ocean and drink something in a coconut mug. I listened to the married couple fight, thinking about drinks in coconut mugs on beaches with warm sand. Winter was cold in Kageran, and even with the fireplaces warming my face, drafts scurried around my feet with the chill of outside. I could also go back to the Solange, elvenhome, with elegant lords and ladies. I had royal friends there.
Hell, I could hide in a ditch and pile rocks on my head. It would be better than sorcerer prison.
I spaced back in. The married couple were still fighting.
Satre said, “And isn’t she dead?” Which I guess is a question, but he didn’t say it like he wanted an answer.
But he got one.
“No, she’s not!” said Alyssa. “For years now people have been accusing me of killing her (which I didn’t!), but the only defense I’ve had is ‘she probably died when she set her own tower on fire.’ Van’s raising an army because he says I’m still settling old scores, and I didn’t settle scores in the first place. Besides, I just found out she’s alive. If Elegy rescues Kyria, the twins have nothing to say.” Alyssa threw an invisible something at Satre, a silent chew-on-that gesture.
“Until they all team up to try to kill you. Again.” Satre didn’t seem to be chewing-on-that.
Alyssa made a face. “Team up? Gods no. They hate each other.”
Satre scowled. “Didn’t you just say they were defending her?”
“Yeah. Her memory! No one likes Kyria in person. Didn’t you ever meet her?”
Satre sort-of grumbled. “Yeah.”
“Do you hate her?”
Satre scowled to the left, right, and center. “Only because she tried to kill you.”
“That’s very sweet,” Alyssa said. “But you just don’t want to agree with me, do you?”
Satre took a hard, tense breath and held his hands up, open but shaking. “Alyssa, she tried to kill you!”
“We were at war. A lot of people tried to kill me.”
“That doesn’t make it better!”
Satre thew a fake smile at me; his face looked like cracked wood. “Could you excuse us, please?”
Alyssa looked from him to me too. “Thank you.”
“Okay,” I said, and we all stayed perfectly still.
Oh right, they were royalty. ‘Excuse them’ meant I had to leave.
I stood up and moved to the hallway, shutting the door behind me. A page standing outside smiled at me. He would see me if I tried to listen at the door. I smiled back, stepped a polite distance away, and tried to decide if the royals were running a blind or if this was a real argument.
Let me bring you to now.