Black Spice (Book 3) (8 page)

“Lerica,
what are you — “

She
took a skipping step to the edge and leaped, arcing toward the palm tree,
hitting its top dead center and somehow keeping her balance as she grasped at
fronds for support.  As soon as she was steady, she slid down the trunk in a
controlled fall that left claw marks all the way to the bottom.

She
ran toward the waiting boat, calling for help, stopping at a rack on the beach
to gather something into a bundle.  A minute later she stood below the cliff
with five burly men.  She spread a fishing net between them.  They took hold
and pulled it taut.

“We’re
ready,” she called up to Kyric.  “One at a time, please.”

“Youngest
first,” Aiyan said, “and quickly.  They’re very close now.”

The
boy, Meithu, stepped to the edge, and leaped with a grin on his face.  They
caught him easily.  Then it was Rillah’s turn, but she froze at the edge and
started crying.

Dinala
took her hand and said, “We have to be brave now.  Here, I’ll jump with you. 
Alright?”

She
counted three as Kyric bobbed with impatience, then over they went, and somehow
they didn’t bump heads, but Rillah landed badly and twisted her ankle.

“Hey,”
Lerica said.  “I told you guys one at a time.”

Kyric
looked at Mahai.  “I’ll be twenty-one in three days.”

Mahai
smiled triumphantly.  “I turned twenty-one a few months ago.  You’re next.”

Kyric
kicked out as he jumped, landing in a seated position, and quickly rolled off
the net.  From the top of the cliff came shouts and the clash of steel.  Then
Mahai came sprinting off the cliff edge, plummeting down with his legs still
churning.

“Toss
me,” he called as he fell.  “Toss me!”

Then
they saw why.  Aiyan was right behind him, sword in hand.

The
Silasese knew what to do.  They angled the net and threw him off as soon as he
hit.  He was flung to the side, going end over end, and landed flat on his
back.  He didn’t get up.

“Oh
gods no,” said Lerica.

Kyric
ran to his side.  Mahai opened his eyes.

“Sand
is harder than you might think,” he said, getting to his feet.  “Knocked the
wind out of me.”

Kyric
laughed quietly behind a wide smile.  He couldn’t help it — Mahai had said it
so casually.  A fall like that would have broken another man’s back.

Aiyan
was out of the net already.  The Silasese dropped it and ran for the boat, one
of them scooping up Rillah as he went.  With Dinala and Meithu between them,
Aiyan and Lerica made a dash for the beach, Kyric and Mahai right behind them.  Kyric
was still laughing.

A
horde of Hariji poured out of the town, but they wouldn’t get to the beach in
time.  From the cliff top, a handful of arrows arced toward them but fell wide.

The
boat was in the water, overloaded to be sure, but the bow floated free.  The paddlers
and sail handlers stood ready.  As they reached it, Kyric began to laugh in
earnest.  He and Mahai were the last ones, and they pushed the stern of the
giant canoe off a sandy lip, climbing aboard as the paddlers dug madly into the
ocean and a sudden breeze filled the sail.

The
boat raced out of the harbor, quickly closing with the fleet of canoes, all
their little sails taut and full as the wind continued to rise.  Jascenda sat
behind the mast singing, her high soprano voice sounding like whistling wind. 
And there was no mistaking it — she directed her singing at the big triangular
sail, as if her voice could fill it, and with every verse, the boat went a little
faster.

A
small island with a rocky shore lay off their starboard bow, and now they saw a
three-mast carrack hove-to on its far side — the Baskillian ship.  It mounted a
canon on its bow, and three more on each side.

Its
sails began to fill and it eased forward, heading directly at the Silasese
flotilla.  It fired its bow chaser, barely missing a large twin-hull with two
masts.  Kyric felt the vibration from the shot, even though it was half a mile
away.

Jascenda
said something to the skipper of the boat, a fellow younger than Kyric who
manned the steering oar.  She moved to stand at the bow, a metal object on a
braided leather cord in her hands.  It was then that Kyric noticed the
figurehead at the prow of the boat, and on all the big ocean-going canoes.  It
was a seahorse, but more than that it was
his
seahorse, exactly as he
had carved it on their voyage to Mokkala.

Jascenda
began to whirl the leather cord, and the metal thing, a crisscross of copper needles
trailing long strips of tin, whipped a circle above her head like a falconer’s
lure.  Out on the bay, a huge thunderhead dragged a black column of rain toward
them.  Jascenda screamed, and it suddenly shifted direction, picking up speed. 
She screamed again, a wailing cry from deep within her, and it bore down on the
Baskillian ship, which was desperately trying to shorten sail now.  The storm
cloud struck the ship head-on with the force of a gale, bringing it to a dead
stop, tearing its yardarms away, the remaining sails flapping wildly on only
one or two sheets.

And
then they were past it, making swiftly for the mouth of the bay, the town well
beyond bowshot now.

They
had done it.  Kyric couldn’t believe it.  They had actually done it.  And not
one scratch on any of them.

He
saw a speck of white on the shoreline.  It could have been anything, a canvas
awning or the like, but he wondered.  He let out his best whoop of triumph, and
flipped the double finger at Soth Garo and his men.  Laughing, he turned and
waved his butt at them.

“Pucker
up and kiss it, boys,” he shouted over his shoulder.

Aiyan
glared at him.  “Kyric.  Sit down!”  He seemed truly angry.  Lerica just shook
her head.

Kyric
looked along the length of the boat.  The Silasese sat unmoving, some looking
back at their home, others simply staring out to sea, their eyes wide and glazed
over.  The whale singers huddled together, Dinala wrapping Rillah’s ankle with
a wet cloth.  In the bow, Jascenda had collapsed.  She struggled for a breath
that would not come, but apparently they had all seen this before.  One of them
propped her head up and waited for her to get better.

“I
know that everyone has suffered,” Mahai said gently.  “There’s no reason to celebrate. 
But I don’t think a gesture would be wrong here.  We won a victory.  A small
victory, yes, but a good one nonetheless, better than we could have hoped — we
saved many lives and gave the enemy a fat lip on top of it.  We won the day and
got away clean.  Clean, and with no regrets.  Tell me, how often does
that
happen?”

They
made it to Niwendesh well before sundown, and landed there, having no fear that
the Baskillian carrack could have pursued them.  Niwendesh was a Silasese town
on the wind-torn northeast coast, and it was strung thinly along the shore. 
These villagers were clearly fisher folk.  Racks and racks of spearfish and
tuna stood drying in the open spaces, and huge deep-sea sailfish hung from
bamboo poles.

The
Silasese elders met briefly and made the decision to abandon their land for now
and join with the Tialucca, as they could field no more than five or six
hundred warriors, men and women together.  They would not let what happened in
the south happen here.  But many of the canoes were too small to risk the treacherous
north cape of the island, so the plan became that most of the Silasese would go
to Tiah on foot, crossing Bantuan land with as much food as they could carry,
while the elders would bring the spice reserves and the whale singers there by
sea.  Kyric and his group would sail with them.

They
departed at sunrise in the same boat they had used to escape.  By noon they
were getting tossed and sprayed off the north cape, and they sighted the great
bird-heads of the Tialucca at the very end of the day.  As they passed the
headland in the purple twilight, Kyric was sure he spotted Ubtarune, still
sitting atop his watch pole, still waiting for his message.

Calico
had a new
foremast, fully rigged and ready to go.  Lerica went aboard at once, looking
for her uncle.  Aiyan started toward King Tonah’s house, waving for Kyric to
come with him.

“I
have to tell him about Caleem.”

“I’d
better join you,” Mahai said.

Tonah
listened to them in silence.  He didn’t ask any questions.  He didn’t speak a
word when Aiyan finished everything he had to say.  He sat motionless as Mahai
swore that it was all true.

At
last he said, “Bring me my son.”

“You
must understand that he is no longer your son,” Aiyan told him.  “He is now the
son of Soth Garo, and he will tell any lie, or commit any act, to serve him. 
He would even kill you.”

Tonah
could have been made of stone.  “Bring me my son.”

“I
know the place where he is being held,” Mahai said.  “It’s a day and a half
away.  I can leave in the morning and be back with Caleem on the third day.”

When
Tonah dismissed them, Kyric left Aiyan and Mahai behind, pushing through the groups
of confused Silasese and Tialuccans, suddenly not wanting to talk to anyone or
even be near them.  He went to the ship and straight to Lerica’s cabin.  She
was still with Ellec, and he didn’t mind.  He let his weapons and clothing lay
on the deck where he dropped them and fell face first into the bed.

Aiyan
woke him at noon the next day, saying that there was going to be a council of
war and that Kyric needed to come and translate.  He was surprised to have
slept so late; he couldn’t remember when he had last done it.

Lerica
had been up for hours and was in the middle of a painting detail, so he
breakfasted alone.  He ate furiously, tearing through rice cakes one after the
other, and only vaguely aware of what he was doing.  As he made his way to King
Tonah’s house, he realized that he was mad as hell, ready to push aside anyone
who got in his way.

The
meeting included all the Silasese and Tialucca elders, and lasted for hours,
with everyone telling their version of what had happed since Soth Garo landed
on Mokkala.  It turned out that the Silasese headman at Whale Home had also
been killed by the walking skin the night before the Hariji attacked.  But
nothing was decided that hadn’t been decided before with the Bantuan.  The
Silasese didn’t have a king.  Every year they selected an older woman to be
Mother of the Clan, a sort of temporary queen.  Her name was Perrua, and when
she announced that she would mix cassia with cardamom, there was bowing and
whistling and the sign of the feathered crest.

Kyric
almost ran to the ship when the council broke up.  The Tialucca made a sweet
wine called
rass
from fermented fruit, and Ellec had traded for jugs and
jugs of it the first week they had been in Tiah.  He took a jug without asking
and went straight to a cluster of palms behind the beach and drank a fourth of
the jug with one pull.  There wasn’t much left by the time Aiyan found him.

He
sat cross-legged in the sand and Kyric offered him the jug.  He took a good
swig.

“A
little sweet for my taste, but not bad.”

They
sat and watched a wave roll in.  Aiyan took another drink and handed the jug
back.

“This
is a nice spot,” he said, looking out over the beach.  “I wouldn’t mind
spending a day or two just sitting here.”

Kyric
had nothing to say.  Aiyan fell into thought, grimacing with an unpleasant
memory.

“One
night in Kandin,” he said, “when I wasn’t much older than you, Bortolamae and I
were ambushed in an alley.  It was a bad fight.  One of the assassins tried to
garrote me from behind, but I had turned my head in time and he was mostly
cutting into muscle.  I knew he was too close to use my sword, so I drew a
knife.  When I reached back and stabbed him, he only pulled harder.  I stabbed
him over and over in the ribs and in the leg — I stabbed him at least a dozen
times before he let go.  I’d never seen a killer so determined.

“In
the end we fought them off.  My master had been shot and could barely walk —
that scared me more than the fight.  I still have a couple of scars from that
night.”

“I
know that
i
t
could have gone badly,” Kyric said through the haze of wine.  “I should be
happy about how it came out.  I
am
happy about it, only . . . ”

“No,
not after what we witnessed in that clearing,” Aiyan said, watching a tiny crab
skitter across the sand.  “After the fight that night, I helped Bortolamae out
to the main avenue.  While we stood on the corner waiting for a cab, this
woman, more of a girl really, started to cross the street.  What she was doing
alone at night I don’t know, but she must have been deaf, or drunk, or very
distracted because she didn’t hear the carriage coming down the road at a
trot.  I shouted a warning to her, and she was looking right at me as she
stepped into its path.  It knocked her down and ran over her chest, killing her
right there.  That was the worst part of that whole night.

“So be grateful it went as well as it
did, but don’t think that you should be happy.  You should not be happy.  As
soon as you realize that, you’ll be alright.”

The
next day was Kyric’s birthday.  Lerica woke him with kisses, breadfruit, and a
cup of wine.  He sat up groggily and drank the wine down in one gulp.

“That’s
better,” he said.

“I
thought you might need that.  You drank an awful lot last night.”

“I
don’t even remember going to bed.”  He started to shake his head but that was a
mistake.  “I can’t do that again as long as we’re here.  There could have been
trouble in the night.”

“I
suppose I should say happy birthday — again.”

“Thanks,”
he said, reaching for a slice of breadfruit.  “I’m now a full citizen of Aeva
with all rights thereof.  ‘Old enough to own land’ is what they say.”

“In
Aleria the expression is ‘old enough to marry for money.’”

“Do
you get a cake?”

She
cocked her head at him.  “What?”

“Where
I come from you get a cake on your birthday.”

“A
cake?  A whole cake?  I’ll ask the cook, but I don’t think they have eggs
here.  In fact, I haven’t seen one chicken in this place.”

They
sat quietly for a time while he finished his breakfast.  “I’ve thought about
this day ever since . . . ever since I went to live in the rune convent.  I
couldn’t wait for it.  I knew I would be strong and fearless.  And I would be
my own man.  I would eat steak every night, and never do anything I didn’t want
to do.”

Lerica
laughed.  “Well, there’s one consolation.  If we make it back with a load of
spice, you’ll be able to have steak as often as you like.”

Aiyan
spent most of the day with King Tonah.  Kyric lounged by the stream beneath
Tiahnu Rock and finished carving his latest figurine.  As he had thought, it
turned out to be a whale, but the tail was wrong.  The wood there ran dark and
grainy, and the tail was vertical, as with a fish.

He
returned to the ship late in the day, nearly laughing aloud as Lerica tried to
hide a knowing grin.  He could smell something like cake baking in the ship’s
oven, and he loved her just a little bit more right then.  In the convent they never
did anything special on his birthday.  Mother Nistra had always told him that
Winter’s Eve counted as his birthday celebration, since it was only three days
away.  Winter solstice was always festive in the convent and in the town.  They
had nut pies and peppermint candy, and everyone burned candles in the windows
at night.  But none of it was for him, and when his real birthday came no one
noticed.

He
went for a swim before supper, asking Lerica to come with him, but as always
she declined.  He loved swimming in the ocean, and the waters of Mokkala were
the bluest he had ever seen outside the dream world.  Schools of rainbow fish
passed beneath him.  He swam face down and opened his eyes against the stinging
saltwater, seeing coral that looked like pink lace fans standing on the floor
of the shallows.  He rolled to float on his back and watched beams of sunlight
change color against the sky.

As
he climbed back aboard, Lerica stood on the quarterdeck, spyglass to her eye. 
“Come here, Kyric.  Hurry, you have to see this.”

He
rushed to join her at the rail, and she handed him the telescope.  Out on the
headland where the poles stood, birds had begun to gather, circling and forming
a ring around Ubtarune.

“His
messengers?”

The
ring grew thick as more birds joined the circle.  There were gulls and
pelicans, great sea eagles, and scores of sparrows, finches and parrots, all
flying together.  And then they all began to cry.

They
didn’t chirp or call out.  They shrieked, unnaturally loud, all of them at
once.  It was sublime, an otherworldly chorus.  Their cries were carried on a strident
note, growing sharp and frantic, reaching a crescendo.

Then silence, only the flutter of wings
as the flock scattered.

At
noon on the next day, Mahai returned with Caleem in tow, still guarded by Nakoa
and Witaan.  The vanguard of the Silasese exodus had begun trickling in that
morning, the main body arriving as the afternoon rains struck.  About a
thousand homeless people made camp on the muddy plain outside Tiah.

Tonah
called a private meeting that night.  Attended only by Aiyan, Kyric, Ellec,
Ilara, Jascenda, Perrua, and Caleem — unbound, but still guarded by Mahai, Nakoa,
and Witaan.  And Ubtarune was there.  Weathered and worn, he stood near the
king, his clothes tattered and his face red and raw, but his eyes shone with a
frightful passion.

Tonah
signaled for him to speak.  Ubtarune raised the feathered crest and looked at
each of them.

“The
clan spirits have spoken and I have heard them clearly,” he croaked through
encrusted lips.  “We must seek an alliance with the Gavdi, or disaster will
befall the Tialucca.”

Ilara
gasped.  Jascenda stared.  King Tonah turned to look his high priest in the
eye.

“This
is how it must be, my king.  Without the Gavdi, your house will fall.”  He
broke into a funny little grin.  “I will be the one to go, of course.”

There
was a long silence.  At last, Tonah said to him, “Is that all you have to say?”

“I’ll
need a boat.”

Tonah
looked to Perrua, but Ellec was quick to speak.  “Do I understand,” he said to
Ubtarune, “that you are going to Gavdi Island?  I would be happy to offer you
the service of my ship.  My charts show the position of the island, but I may
need some help determining the latitude.”

“I
know the way,” Ubtarune said simply.

Ilara
rocked nervously on her mat.  “What if the foreigners anger the Gavdi?”

Ubtarune
considered it for a moment.  “No, it will be good.  The Gavdi will respect the
cat people.  The others must not set foot on the island, of course, but yes, it
will be good.”

“One
of our seahorses could get you there in only a few days,” Jascenda said, “if my
wind was in her sail.”

“Captain
Lyzuga’s ship will be swift enough.”

“But
he is only doing this to get spice.  If purple gavdi is rare among the people of
Mokkala, think what it would be to the northerners.  He could offend the Gavdi
with his greed, ruin our sacred trust with them.”

She
shot Ellec a dark look.  “You wouldn’t want to do that, Captain.  You and your
crew would all be killed.”

Ellec
made a shallow bow.  “It is true,” he said to Ubtarune.  “I am a trader, and I
would wish to trade for purple gavdi.  It is legendary among us northerners. 
If I did only what you instructed me to do, if I spoke only the words you gave
me to speak, would that be possible?”