ALSO BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY
The Fionavar Tapestry
The Summer Tree
The Wandering Fire
The Darkest Road
Tigana
A Song for Arbonne
The Lions of Al-Rassan
The Sarantine Mosaic
Sailing to Sarantium
Lord of Emperors
The Last Light of the Sun
Beyond This Dark House
(poetry)
Ysabel
Under Heaven
River of Stars
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Published by New American Library,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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This book is a publication of New American Library. Simultaneously published in Canada by Viking.
Copyright © Guy Gavriel Kay, 2016
Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Random House LLC, 2016
Map copyright © Martin Springett, 2016
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Names: Kay, Guy Gavriel, author.
Title: Children of earth and sky/Guy Gavriel Kay.
Description: New York City: New American Library, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2015047832 (print) | LCCN 2016001089 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451472960 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698183278 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Voyages and travels—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Fantasy/General. | FICTION/ Fantasy/Historical. | FICTION/Historical. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.3.K39 C48 2016 (print) | LCC PR9199.3.K39 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047832
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
for
GEORGE JONAS
and
EDWARD L. GREENSPAN
who belong together here
dear friends, lost
Contents
Also by Guy Gavriel Kay
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Principal Characters
PART ONE CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
PART TWO CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
PART THREE CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
PART FOUR CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
Acknowledgements
Readers Guide
About the Author
we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous . . .
—LOUISE GLÜCK
And all sway forward on the dangerous flood
Of history, that never sleeps or dies,
And, held one moment, burns the hand.
—W.H. AUDEN
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
(A Partial List)
In Republic of Seressa and elsewhere in Batiara
Duke Ricci, head of Seressa’s Council of Twelve
Members of the Council of Twelve
Lorenzo Arnesti
Amadeo Frani
Pero Villani, an artist, son of the late Viero Villani, also an artist
Tomo Agosta, his servant
Mara Citrani, subject of a portrait by Pero
Jacopo Miucci, physician
Leonora Valeri, a young woman passing as his wife
Count Erigio Valeri of Mylasia, Leonora’s father
Paulo Canavli, her lover in Mylasia
Merchants from Seressa
Nelo Grilli
Guibaldo Ferri
Marco Bosini
The High Patriarch of Jad, in Rhodias
In Obravic
Rodolfo, Jad’s Holy Emperor
Savko, imperial chancellor
Hanns, principal secretary to the chancellor
Vitruvius of Karch, in the chancellor’s service
Orso Faleri, Ambassador of Seressa to Obravic
Gaurio, his servant
Veith, a courtesan
In Senjan
Danica Gradek, a young woman
Neven Rusan, her maternal grandfather
Hrant Bunic, a Senjani raid leader
Senjani raiders
Tijan Lubic
Kukar Miho
Goran Miho
In the Republic of Dubrava
Marin Djivo, younger son of a merchant family
Andrij, his father
Zarko, his brother
Drago Ostaja, one of their ship captains
Vlatko Orsat, another merchant
Elena and Iulia, his daughters
Vudrag, his son
Radic Matko, another merchant
Kata Matko, his daughter
Jevic, a guard at the Rector’s Palace
Giorgio Frani of Seressa (son of Amadeo), serving Seressa in Dubrava
Filipa di Lucaro, Eldest Daughter of Jad in the holy retreat on Sinan Isle
Juraj, a servant on the isle
Empress Eudoxia of Sarantium
In Asharias
Grand Khalif Gurçu (“the Destroyer”)
Prince Cemal, his older son
Prince Beyet, his younger son
Yosef ben Hananon, the grand vizier
In Mulkar
Damaz, a trainee in the ranks of the djannis, the khalif’s infantry
Koçi, another trainee
Hafiz, commander of the djannis in Mulkar
Kasim, an instructor in Mulkar
In Sauradia
pon (“Skandir”), a rebel against the Asharites
Jelena, a village healer
Zorzi, a farmer in northern Sauradia
Rastic, Mavro, and Milena, his children
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
It was with a sinking heart that the newly arrived ambassador from Seressa grasped that the Emperor Rodolfo, famously eccentric, was serious about an experiment in court protocol.
The emperor liked experiments, everyone knew that.
It seemed the ambassador was to perform a triple obeisance—two separate times!—when finally invited to approach the imperial throne. This was, the very tall official escorting him explained, to be done in the manner of those presented to Grand Khalif Gurçu in Asharias.
It was also, the courtier added thoughtfully, how the great eastern emperors had been approached in long-ago days. Rodolfo was apparently now interested in the effect of such formal deference, observed and noted. And since Rodolfo was heir to those august figures of the past, it did make sense, didn’t it?
It did not, at all, was the ambassador’s unvoiced opinion.
He had no idea what this alleged effect was supposed to be.
He smiled politely. He nodded. He adjusted his velvet robe. In the antechamber where they waited he watched as a second court official—young, yellow-haired—enthusiastically demonstrated the salutations. His knees hurt with anticipatory pain. His back hurt. He was aware that, carrying evidence of prosperity about his midriff, he was likely to look foolish each time he prostrated himself, or rose to his feet.
Rodolfo, Jad’s Holy Emperor, had sat the throne here for thirty years. You wouldn’t ever want to call him foolish—he had many of the world’s foremost artists, philosophers, alchemists at his court (performing experiments)—but you needed to consider the man unpredictable and possibly irresponsible.
This made him dangerous, of course. Orso Faleri, Ambassador of the Republic of Seressa, had had this made clear to him by the Council of Twelve before he’d left to come here.
He regarded the posting as a terrible hardship.
It was formally an honour, of course. One of the three most distinguished foreign posts a Seressini could be granted by the Twelve. It meant he might reasonably expect to become a member on his return, if someone withdrew, or died. But Orso Faleri loved his city of canals and bridges and palaces (especially his own!) with a passion. In addition, there were extremely limited opportunities for acquiring more wealth at Obravic in this role.
He was an emissary—and an observer. It was understood that all other considerations in a man’s life were suspended for the year or possibly two that he was here.
Two years was a distressing thought.
He hadn’t been allowed to bring his mistress.
His wife had declined to join him, of course. Faleri could have insisted she do so, but he wasn’t nearly so self-abusive. No, he would have to discover, as best one might, what diversions there were in this windy northern city, far from Seressa’s canals, where songs of love drifted in the torchlit night and men and women, cloaked against evening’s damp, and sometimes masked, went about hidden from inquisitive eyes.
Orso Faleri was willing to simulate an interest in discussing the nature of the soul with the emperor’s philosophers, or listen as some alchemist, stroking his singed beard, explained his search for arcane secrets of transmuting metal—but only to a point, surely.
If he performed his tasks, both public and secret, badly it would be noted back home, with consequences. If he did well he might be left here for two years! It was an appalling circumstance for a civilized man with skills in commerce and a magnificent woman left behind.
And now, the Osmanli triple obeisance. To be done twice. Good men, thought Faleri, suffered for the follies of royalty.
At the same time, this post was vitally important, and he knew it. In the world they inhabited, good relations with the emperor in Obravic were critical. Disagreements were acceptable, but open conflict could be ruinous for trade, and trade was what Seressa was about.
For the Seressinis, the idea of peace, with open, unthreatened commerce, was the most important thing in the god’s created world. It mattered more (though this would never actually be said) than diligent attention to the doctrines of Jad as voiced by the sun god’s clerics. Seressa traded, extensively, with the unbelieving Osmanlis in the east—and did so whatever High Patriarchs might say or demand.
Patriarchs came and went in Rhodias, thundering wrath in their echoing palace or cajoling like courtesans for a holy war and the need to regain lost Sarantium from the Osmanlis and their Asharite faith. That was a Patriarch’s task. No one begrudged it. But for Seressa those god-denying Osmanlis offered some of the richest markets on earth.
Faleri knew it well. He was a merchant, son and grandson of merchants. His family’s palace on the Great Canal had been built and expanded and sumptuously furnished with the profits of trading east. Grain at the beginning, then jewels, spices, silk, alum, lapis lazuli. Whatever was needed in the west, or desired. The caressing silks his wife and daughters wore (and his mistress, more appealingly) arrived at the lagoon on galleys and roundships voyaging to and from the ports of the Asharites.
The grand khalif liked trade, too. He had his palaces and gardens to attend to, and an expensive army. He might make war on the emperor’s lands and fortresses where the shifting borders lay, and Rodolfo might be forced to spend sums he didn’t have in bolstering defences there, but Seressa and its merchant fleet didn’t want any part of that conflict: they needed peace more than anything.
Which meant that Signore Orso Faleri was here with missions to accomplish and assessments to make and send home in coded messages, even while filled with longings and memories that had little to do with politics or gaunt philosophers in a northern city.
His first priority, precisely set forth by the Council of Twelve, had to do with the savage, loathed, humiliating pirates in their walled town of Senjan. It happened to be a matter dear to Faleri’s own merchant heart.
It was also desperately delicate. The Senjani were subjects, extremely loyal subjects, of Emperor Rodolfo. They were—the emperor’s phrase had been widely quoted—his brave heroes of the borderland. They raided Asharite villages and farms inland and opposed counter-raids, defending Jaddites where they could. They were, in essence, fierce (unpaid) soldiers of the emperor.
And Seressa wanted them destroyed like poisonous snakes, scorpions, spiders, whatever you chose to call them.
They wanted them wiped out, their walls destroyed, boats burned, the raiders hanged, chopped to pieces, killed one by one or in a battle, burned on a great pyre seen for miles, or left out for the animals. Seressa didn’t care. Dead was enough, chained as galley slaves would do. Would maybe even be better—you never had enough slaves for the fleet.
It was a vexed issue.
No matter how aggressively Seressa patrolled, how many war galleys they sent out, how carefully they escorted merchant ships, the Senjani raiders found ways to board some of them in the long, narrow Seressini Sea. It was impossible to completely defend against them. They raided in all seasons, all weather. Some said they could control the weather, that their women did so with enchantments.
One small town, perhaps two or three hundred fighting men inside its walls at any given time—and oh, the havoc they wreaked in their boats!
Complaints came to Obravic and to Seressa, endlessly, from the khalif and his grand vizier. How, the Asharites asked in graceful phrases, could they continue to trade with Seressa if their people and goods were subject to savage piracy? What was the worth of Seressini assurances of safety in the sea they proudly named for themselves?
Indeed, some of the letters queried, perhaps Seressa was secretly pleased when Osmanli merchants, pious followers of the teachings of Ashar, were seized by the Senjani for ransom, or worse?
I
t was, the Council of Twelve had impressed upon Faleri, his foremost task this autumn and winter. He was to induce a distractible, erratic emperor to surrender a town of raiders to Seressa’s fury.
Rodolfo needed to understand that Senjan didn’t only raid over the mountains against godless infidels or seize their goods on ships. No! They rowed or sailed south along their jagged coastline to Seressini-governed towns. They went even farther south, to that upstart marine republic of Dubrava (the Seressinis had issues with them, too).
Those towns and cities were Jaddite, the emperor knew it! In them dwelled devout worshippers of the god. These people and their goods were not to be targets! The Senjani were pirates, not heroes. They boarded honest merchant ships making their way to sell and buy in Seressa, queen of all Jad’s cities, bringing it wealth. So much wealth.
The vile, dissembling raiders claimed that they only took goods belonging to Asharites, but that was—everyone knew it!—a pose, a pretense, a bad, black joke. Their piety was a mask.
The Seressinis knew all about masks.
Faleri himself had lost three cargoes (silk, pepper, alum) in two years to the Senjani. He wasn’t any worshipper of the Asharite stars or the two Kindath moons! He was as good a Jaddite as the emperor. (Maybe a better one, if one considered Rodolfo’s alchemy.)
His personal losses might even be, he suddenly thought, as the young, smooth courtier straightened from his sixth obeisance (six!), the reason he’d been appointed here. Duke Ricci, head of the Council of Twelve, was easily that subtle. Faleri would be able to speak with passion about the evil the Senjani represented.
“The emperor has received the gifts you brought,” the tall official murmured, smiling. “He is much taken with the clock.”
Of course he was taken with the clock, Faleri thought. That’s why they had chosen it.
The clock had been half a year in the making. It was of ivory and mahogany, inlaid with precious stones. It showed the blue and white moons in their proper phases. It predicted eclipses of the sun. A Jaddite warrior came forth on the hour to smite a bearded Osmanli on the head with a mace.