The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine Year Eight

  I said, “The streets are full of lights. That’s not a welcome, it’s a warning. Stay close to each other, if you won’t stay close to me. Keep away from shadows, keep watch on your bench-mates; keep out of trouble, because there will be no rescue here.”

  They had never looked for rescue in their lives. There was pity in their eyes, pity and contempt. Had I really fallen so far from my strength that I saw danger in an effete entrepôt where men and women alike dealt in silks and whispers, in smokes and perfumes and each other?

  Even as we sidled up to moor, I thought I would be leaving half those men behind. Dead or enslaved, drunk or bewitched or carried off.

  Well, they were free men—for now—and few of them truly my own. So long as I had hands enough, I would be leaving as soon as I had the boy. If necessary I could buy oarsmen at market, although I’d hate to do it. Slaves taint a ship’s heart, and make a mock-man of her captain. I stared down the Skopje’s length and prayed to see enough of those faces back here in a day, two days.

  And then my good ship bumped against the wharf, and there were small slim figures waiting for ropes and high shrill voices crying welcome, asking how they could serve us, what we might require. Whatever we might desire. Information, temptation: before one of us so much as set boot ashore, the bargaining had begun.

  ~ ~ ~

  My own boots were first, as was my right and duty. I leaped over the rail and landed two-footed and emphatic on the wharf.

  I don’t rightly know what I was stamping against: a snake’s welcome, a hissing from the shadows? That was surely how I saw the city: as a nest of serpents all knotted together, spies and assassins and traitors in exile from a dozen different lands, poison and sorcery no doubt their weapons of first resort. Cowards and schemers all.

  My head is a slow, dull thing. In my own country they call me Harlan the Wily, expressly because I am not. Rulf should never have sent me to Skander. He should have known, not to do that.

  A voice hailed me; a woman stepped forward.

  Smaller than me, but if she was smaller than the normal run of men, it was not by much. She carried herself with straightforward authority, and I liked that even as I was surprised by it, where I was looking for insinuation and duplicity.

  “Are you the master of this vessel?”

  “I am.”

  “Your name and origin?”

  “Harlan, of Sawartsland; emissary of Rulf my king.” I should perhaps not have said that, but I didn’t even carry trade goods to disguise my mission. I have said it: I was not the man for this.

  “I am Dzuria, harbormaster here. My people will see to yours, and to your ship’s comfort. You come with me, and tell me of your embassy.”

  “I will tell that to the prince of the city. There is a prince, I think?”

  Her mouth quirked. “There are many princes in Iskandria, none interested in any tale but their own. Of course you must take your tale to the palace, but the chancellor’s is the ear you want.”

  I sighed. “At home, if a man wants the ear of Rulf King, he walks into the rede-hall and bellows for him. I do understand that matters are arranged differently elsewhere.”

  She said, “In this city, truly, your best first step towards the chancellor’s ear is through mine.”

  It was elegantly done. She cut me out from my crew and penned me alone, as she had intended from the first. My own intent, to use my king’s name here the way I had used my axe and shield elsewhere, a brute swift way to the top—that was neglected early, abandoned swiftly, forgotten soon.

  How much help I could truly expect from a harbormaster, I had no way to measure. In my world, harbormasters berthed ships and tallied cargoes, charged for wharfage and warehousing, their heads full of cables and weights and manifests.

  They might have comfort in their offices, but not like this. She brought me to a chamber swathed in damask and lamplight, soft cushions and soft-voiced children who fetched sweet juice and fiery spirit, nutmeats and pastries, offers of anything more.

  I batted them away with thanks and refusals. They smiled and shrugged, settled in the perfumed shadows in the corners of the room, watched me and their mistress both with a scrupulous, indefatigable care.

  “Shouldn’t they be in bed?” I grunted.

  “Undoubtedly. Would you care to send them? I wish you joy of the attempt.”

  At least she didn’t say take them. Even so, I was not inclined to be generous. I said, “You call yourself the harbormaster; these speak to me more of a slavemaster.”

  “Indeed. Do you not take and keep and trade slaves, in Sawartsland?”

  “We do, yes; but—”

  “Not children, would you say?”

  “Oh, children too, but not like this,” scented and silk-clad and complaisant. The youngsters I bought or bred in my own house worked their share, just as my own children had, as my grandchildren did now. And fed from the same plates, ripped the same clothes ragged, rioted as much and were beaten for it side by side; and slept safe in a puppy tumble, free and slave together.

  “I am sure not. There are none like these. Don’t let their seductive ways deceive you. Some of our princes-in-exile, yes, they keep children for their bodies, for their beds; but these?” She stretched out a long arm to tug at the artfully tangled hair of one ingratiating imp that I took—not quite certainly—for a girl. “If you took one of these to bed, you would wake up sorry. If you woke at all. They are heartless, entirely without compunction, because that is how I raise them. Their perfumes and fancies are stolen, from any ship careless enough to let them aboard. Once goods are landed they are safe, because then they fall under my regard, but anything on shipboard is fair game. So is the crew.”

  “Do I need to warn my men?”

  “If a man needs warning against such as these, he should perhaps have stayed at home.”

  Indeed; but we had Rulf’s order at our backs, heavy as a blade and just as imperative. Staying home had never been an option.

  I said, “Where do you find these dangerous children?”

  “In the alleys, on the wharfs, some of them. Most I buy. And sell again, when I can find them places. It’s the only way to keep them from the thiefmasters and the beggar kings. And the palace. Besides,” reaching out again, touching the smooth cheek of an adolescent boy as he refilled her goblet, “how else would I manage my harbor? I can hire men to do the heavy work, but these are my rat-catchers and bead-counters, my watchers and messengers. As you have observed, they never go to bed when they’re supposed to. If you are my friend, you need not worry for your purse or your safety or your ship, while you are here.”

  “I hope I am your friend,” I said, with enough urgency to raise smiles in the shadows.

  “Good. I hope it too; it means I can be a friend to you. Tell me of your embassy.”

  I said, “When my king took the throne twenty years ago, the man he took it from had a son, a boy of fifteen. Rulf sent the boy into exile, sooner than see him as dead as his father.”

  “He sent him here, you mean, to Iskandria.”

  “Of course. Where else? In company with his father’s warhammer, Croft, the finest fighter and the worst picker of us all, who chose to support the old king when all his friends had turned the other way. Rulf. . . punished him, but would not kill him. Which was perhaps a mistake. Rulf has spent twenty years being wary of the world and never quite comfortable in his chair. But Croft is dead, and Rulf hopes the boy will come back now to make a son for his side and an heir for his back.”

  “Not so much a boy now, if he was fifteen then.”

  “They are all boys, when they stay so much younger than we are. You know.” There was grey and white in the dark woven pattern of her hair; she was younger than me, but not so much as it would matter. “If you were here then, you would remember: a boy, tall and slim and flaxen-haired, not yet come into his strength. And a cripple, a big man who would not be walking, who could not leave the boat without help. A small boat, and just the two
of them to crew it.”

  She said, “Oh, I was here. I have always been here. But a cripple and a boy, in a small boat, this far? That sounds. . . ambitious.”

  “We are good sailors.” Even crippled, even ungrown.

  “Even so. There are storms, there are pirates. There is simple bad fortune, and they would seem not to be rich in anything else.”

  “Indeed—but we know they did come. At least, we know that Croft did. His bones came back to us.” And someone had to send them, with knowledge and purpose both.

  “Yes. If it was the cripple you were seeking, it should be Fenner that you spoke to. A boy, though, a prince in exile—well, we have a city full of those. You will have to go to the palace.”

  “Fenner? Who is that?”

  “He is—no, he was one of those I saved my children from. A beggar king, for a while. He matters more these days, but he is still cripple-king in this city. He knows all the lame and all the lacking.”

  “It’s good, no doubt, that they have a friend with influence,” but Croft was dead, and it was the boy I sought.

  “I didn’t say he was their friend. He buys and sells, he deals in flesh as much as he ever did, only from a more exalted position now. We used to call him Fenner the Helpless, because he never needed any help. He would have known your Croft, and where to find him. If you want your boy, though, ask at the palace.”

  I grunted, nodded, sighed. Not the man for this.

  “Meantime,” she said, “rest while you can. Palace days start early, and run long.”

  ~ ~ ~

  One of her watchful children—this one a girl, close enough to a young woman that I’d have been watchful myself if she were mine—took a lamp and led me to another room of cushioned comfort. I ought to have asked where my crew had gone, where I might hope to find them. But I was tired, and ashore, and frankly weary of them; and interested in bed, a lot, and in the girl a little, because her mistress interested me greatly.

  “Will Dzuria really sell you to another house?”

  The girl gave me a quick smile. “Of course. Soon now, I think. How else would she afford new little children? Being harbormaster does not make her wealthy.”

  Which was as good as to say that she was an honest harbormaster, but I had gathered that already. She was probably an honest slavetrader too. I said, “Don’t you mind?”—but the true question was why don’t you mind?

  If anything, she seemed amused by my naivety. “This is Xandrian. Here, everyone belongs to someone else. And Dzuria will sell me somewhere I can be happy, to someone who will be happy to have me. Why should I mind?”

  I shrugged, and sat on the bed. My boots looked a terrible long way away. I thrust my legs out hopefully, and said, “You mean you trust her.”

  “Of course. She has fed me and dressed me, washed me and doctored me, taught me to run with others and to run alone—how could I not trust her?”

  She hauled with a will at one boot and then the other. I thanked her heartily and reached for my purse.

  “Not in this house,” she said, frowning mightily. “We don’t take money from our friends.”

  Then she scudded swiftly out of the room, and it took me a moment too long to realize she had taken my boots with her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Waking slowly, stiffly in an unaccustomed bed after a long sea-voyage: there was nothing unusual in that.

  What was unusual was to find myself alone, and depressingly glad of it. It gave me the chance to move slowly, to groan aloud as I stretched, as every joint ached, as vicious age stabbed me mockingly in one hip and numbed a foot entirely.

  I cursed, and stamped until some hint of feeling came back. The stamping only hurt me more, which only made me curse more, which left me all the more embarrassed when I looked around for clothes and found a boy, a small boy squatting in the corner.

  I stood quiet, breathing hard, under the grave weight of his stare. I knew what he was seeing—a particolored giant, wind-burned at face and arms and throat, pale elsewhere and seamed with scars—and I understood the fascination.

  He said, “My name is Salumehramahin, and I am yours until you no longer need me.” Then he looked me deliberately up and down one more time and added, “You will need me for a long time, I think.”

  “Dzuria sent you, I take it?”

  “Of course.”

  His dress was shabby and painfully white; I liked that better than the slippery silks of last night. At least he looked like a servant, not a whore.

  “Say your name again?”

  “Salumehramahin,” he said, flashing a smile as white as his cottons.

  “What do your friends call you?”

  “Ramin.”

  “Where do I find breakfast, Ramin?”

  “I could bring it to you.”

  “No, bring me to it: somewhere between this room and the palace, which is where I have to go now.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “You should have been there earlier than this.”

  Then he dressed me like himself, in a long loose shirt and baggy trousers, and offered me sandals that he said were the largest he could find in all the warehouses of Skander wharf. He said they would be too small. Which, yes, they were.

  ~ ~ ~

  I have worn less, in my time. And been led by the hand in stranger, darker places, to worse meals and worse days too, though rarely so frustrating.

  I broke my fast—and the boy’s, at my expense, naturally—on flatbreads filled with a hot spice paste, standing on a street corner. Afterwards I washed grease from my face and fingers at the public fountain, thought briefly and enchantingly of the notorious baths of Skander—and set my jaw resolutely against asking the way. I was for the palace, sea-scoured as I was. In and out, as swift as might be.

  ~ ~ ~

  Ramin led me through winding alleys and shadowed arcades, with never a glimpse of our purpose until suddenly we came out into the light and there it was, four-square in front of us.

  They call it a palace—the palace, as though this were the principality of the world—but in truth it is nothing so singular. There isn’t even a wall, to mark it off from the common city. The first building of authority is set openly on a public square; everything else has been added where it might be, behind and to the sides and running away out of sight.

  That gateway building stands high and square, cut of local stone, as stern in its age as it must have been when it was new. Beyond lay a hundred unlikely structures, each one vying with its neighbors to be taller or broader or deeper, brighter or more imposing or more absurd. Some weary exiles built their pavilions to look like home, to teach their children where they came from; others seized the chance to shrug away tradition and build jubilant fantasies, faerie-castles that resembled nothing real in any city anywhere.

  Some had built true castles, sullen fortresses that spoke of their fears: assassination, instability, uprising. I thought they should look around and find other things to fear. With five ships and a case of gold, I thought I could take this city entire. Except that I did not want it, and neither would my king. It’s always useful to have somewhere else in the world, a place that sits apart. Somewhere to send those enemies you’d sooner not quite kill.

  And the children you dare not live with. Those too.

  I looked down at the child who hung so persistently on my arm and tried to shake him off. And failed, of course; he was most earnest, tugging at me, “Come. There is a back way to the kitchens, I know a man there. . .”

  I was sure he did. That was his Skander, and his experience: covert, insinuating, conditional. Not mine. “This is my way, my king’s way,” in through the front door to ask straightforwardly for what I wanted. Looking at me, they would see Rulf at my back, and all his ships behind him; they would not refuse me. In and out.

  Little Ramin let go of me then, and put his hands firmly behind his back. “I cannot go in there.”

  “Nor should you.”

  “Nor should you,” emphatically.
“Dzuria said—”

  “Dzuria is your mistress, not mine.”

  I straightened my shoulders and walked alone, under his diminutive skeptical gaze: up dry and gritty steps, between stout pillars, through an open door.

  ~ ~ ~

  I was met with obsequious manners, with drinks and courteous conduct into one antechamber after another. Courteous to me, at least: they almost fought each other for the privilege of serving me, those big smooth rounded men. I was surprised that Skanderenes ran so large, until I remembered the native habit of the high-born in the matter of their officials. Cut young, a eunuch boy might grow and grow. This must be the consequence: this heavy, huge unmanning, this fatuous squabbling over the right to be subservient to strangers.

  I sat and sweated in close confines, ate and drank what they brought me, demanded attention that did not come. I asked for the prince of the city, and was politely abandoned; I asked for the chancellor and was moved to another room and abandoned again. I wielded Dzuria’s name, and they might never have heard of her.

  There were always other supplicants coming and going, seeking an audience, being disappointed. If all day I saw one person being led into the presence, I was not aware of it.

  I did wait all day, in ever-fading hopes. And talked to my fellow-hopefuls, though none of them could offer hope. Some had waited weeks, one months. In and out looked like a fool’s dream suddenly. Tomorrow perhaps I’d come back with my blade and whoever I could find among my men, cause a rumpus, see what ruder manners might achieve.

  Tonight, there was nothing to do but yield at last to brute implacability: court was closed, audiences were over, neither the prince nor the chancellor would see us now, we should all come back tomorrow. . .

  ~ ~ ~

  I headed down towards the harbor and was unsurprised to find Ramin dancing attendance on me before I was halfway there, smugly certain. “You should have come with me, not wasted your time with silly pompous eunuchs.”

  I wondered briefly how wise he was, to make such mock. For sure some of those same eunuchs had come to the palace by way of the slave markets; for a boy in need of a future, his mistress might deem that a reasonable road.