Dreamlands (13 page)

The
lingering unquiet of the bazaar was as palpable as a hand at my back urging me
along.  Though I walked head down through the aisles, I could not deny the
number of merchants from Dylath-Leen had grown, and that of their wilt-addled
hangers-on doubled.  Whatever had happened in the coal burners’ camp, their drugs
must still be in ready supply.

I decided
to stop at Gorice’s stall.  The blacksmith would have the latest news, and more
than that I needed a dose of his bluff amity.  Arriving at his kiosk however, I
was confronted by a pair of heavy-lidded, jaundiced eyes.  Gorice’s metalwork,
bench and tools had been replaced by shelves of dry goods, and he by one of his
hated enemies.  The merchant was not armed, but his two henchmen, eyes bugged
and lips peeled back, made a shuffling circuit around the space, clutching cudgels
studded with chips of scrap iron.  Choking back an epithet, I forced my hand
away from my knife and moved on without comment.  The attack I had lead on the
coal burners’ camp had been motivated by a similar rage.  I did not yet know
the consequences of that error, but I was not eager to repeat it.

I was
already on Iron Street when I spotted them:  Gorice’s apprentice Cal and the
blacksmith’s wife, Marina, small and round where her husband was large and
square.  They were loading crates and bundles into a cart, so many that I
surmised they were moving house.  Marina’s usually ruddy cheeks were pale, and her
mouth set in a downturned frown.  It did not break when she saw me.  Instead,
her load grew heavier in her arms as I approached until she set it down on the
ground.

“Marina,
I must speak to Gorice.  Did he move the stall?”  I looked at the tables of the
bazaar, at the crumbling walls, and at the swaying ships’ masts above the low
buildings along the harbour, anywhere but at her grief-stricken face.

“Isaac,”
she said dazedly, “you’ve returned.” She swayed a little before adding
bitterly, “Now you return.”

“Where
is Gorice?”

“He’s
gone, he’s left,” she said.  “He’s left Zij.”

"Left
when?"  I shook my head.  “To do what?”

Her
answer set up a ringing in my ears, and for a moment I saw the world through a
long, dark tunnel.

“He
signed on with the black galleys,” she said, her face a perfect composite of
bafflement and pain.  “He’s gone with the yellow-eyed merchants.”

Without
a word I began to run.

* * *

From
the hall I could see that the Iron Street apartment had been ransacked,
everything upset and trampled, though to what purpose I could not guess.

“Isobel?”
I cried in a cracked voice.  Nothing.

I
crept inside, dagger drawn.  A dim figure waited, motionless, within.  As
little as I had anticipated finding him there, still less did I expect Ajer
Akiti's reaction, a dispirited sigh.

“Dead?”
I somehow found the courage to ask.  He shook his head.

Disappeared
. 
He explained in a perfunctory manner.  After my friends had returned from the
coal burners’ camp, Isobel had been inconsolable, insisting she would learn the
truth about the turbaned traders from the north.  Ajer and Erik had endeavoured
to watch over her, but the night before last they had come to the apartment to
find it turned over and the girl gone.  Erik was out searching even now.

“The
yellow-eyed merchants have all but taken over the market,” I said.  “What
happened at the camp?”

Burned,
was all he said.

Ajer
Akiti did not rise as I picked over the remains of Solomon’s and Isobel’s
lives.  The old man’s atlas had been tossed in a corner.  I leafed through it, recalling
how he would rest his hand on the cover as if it were a strongbox full of
jewels.  A lock of Isobel’s hair had been secreted inside, along with a
familiar piece of translucent cloth.  The hair I tucked away in my pouch, the cloth
I gently unfolded.  It was the second leaf of the palimpsest the blind
shopkeeper had given me with the pearl-handled dagger.

When
I showed it to Ajer, he untied his pack and produced the other sheet.  Despite
the time it had spent in his bindle, it was in good condition, but without the
final section two pieces made no more sense than one.  My cutlass, which Ajer
had also kept, would be of more practical use.

We
went to gather Erik and I quizzed them on who they had spoken to, where they
had searched and how thoroughly.  But however I worried at it, the gist was the
same:  Isobel had vanished utterly.  To the question of Gorice’s departure, the
two of them were equally grim and silent.  For the rest of the morning we wore
down our sandals on the streets and piers of Zij.  The city’s wildflower
inhabitants laboured under an unmistakable pall, their laughter restrained and their
movements guarded.  That is, everyone but the wilt addicts, who either worked feverishly
for their masters or strutted jerkily up and down, jeering at townsfolk,
sailors, and their comrades alike.

Having
spent my first wave of anxious energy, I stopped at a well for a dipper of
water.  Erik adjusted the sash with which he cinched his sword and stood
straighter, plenty of notice that I would not like what came next.

“There
is an old mystic woman, a soothsayer,” he said.  “She has a reputation for
finding things, and people, who’ve been misplaced.”

“So
we are reduced to asking a witch for assistance?” 
How Gorice would laugh at
that,
I thought, but did not say.  “We are desperate men indeed.”

“I’m
not so simple that I’d patronize any charlatan who sets up a tent,” Erik said,
crossing his arms.  “She has a good reputation, and we’ve exhausted all the
sensible options.”

I
looked to Ajer, who shrugged in resignation.

“You
look like a dog’s corpse got up on its hind legs to walk,” Erik continued when
I didn’t answer.  “I will go talk to her myself in the morning.  You take a
rest and I’ll–”

“I
am done with resting,” I snapped.

“Then
come with me.  If she cannot help us, we’ll–”  He trailed off hopelessly.  “We’ll
think of something else.”  But Ajer and I had no more confidence in his words
than he did.

The
next morning, on the Street of Candlemakers, we searched out the witch among
the makeshift structures which grew like mushrooms against the west wall.  Her
hybrid of tent and hut had been dashed together from a collection of canvas,
branches and cobblestones.  A young boy, grubby, unshod, and indiscernible from
a gross of others in the port, rose from where he sat on a section of log to
announce us.  At a grunt from within, we climbed into a cramped space reeking
of smoke.  The woman was as wrinkled as a winter apple, and covered in a
gypsy’s motley, washed by time to a uniform drab.  Nevertheless, her girth pledged
the success of her business.

Given
how little we knew, it was short work for Erik to explain Isobel’s
disappearance.  When he was finished, the old woman fixed her rheumy eyes on each
man in turn, saying nothing.  I bristled at having to wait out this charade,
but kept my tongue.

“You
don’t expect me to snap my fingers and produce this friend of yours, I hope.” 
Her voice was surprisingly strong.  Only around the edges did it show the wear
of a long life.

“No,”
Erik said, “but we did hope you could advise us.  You are in the business of
finding people, yes?”

“If
the yellow-eyed merchants, as you call them, have your girl, finding her will
be no easy matter.  They are warded against the simpler techniques.”

“Is
it a matter of coin?” I interjected, as if a desire to be paid would confirm
her for a fraud.

“You
will find my requirements very reasonable,” she said impassively.  "Do you
have something of your friend’s, some possession?”

“No,”
I said, swallowing, “nothing.”

“If
you could provide a brush or comb, a bit of her hair would do.”

I
did have the lock her hair, and produced it for her.

The
soothsayer rummaged for a few minutes among the undifferentiated junk crowding us
on all sides, producing a bamboo tube, most of a meter long, within which nested
a few scrolls.  As there wasn’t room in her shack to study them, we moved
outside and arranged ourselves around a great slab of stone which had long ago
fallen from the city wall, and now served as a table for the commons.  The
soothsayer unfurled one of the documents, carefully weighting the corners with
bits of rock, to reveal a nautical chart.  Erik raised his eyebrows at me as if
to say,
See, here is something we all understand.
  The old woman indicated
a blank space a few hours up the coast, not far from shore.

“Nothing
is charted there,” I said, studying it.  “You think she’s been marooned?”

“I
haven't the slightest idea where she is.  This is a place for divining, a
hallowed and secret shrine.  That is how you will find her.”

“Do
you know this area?” I asked Erik.  He had for ten years sailed the waters around
Zij.

“A
fog rises along the coast there every day at dusk,” he said, “but I have sailed
it numerous times, by day and by night, and there is nothing at this location,
not even a hazard.”  He examined the document more closely.  “According to the
cartographer’s legend, this is over a century old.  It is either a mistake or
has long since vanished.”

The
old woman gave a slow and elaborate shrug.

“Supposing
there is an island,” I said, “what are we supposed to do there?”

“You
will find a cave near the beach on the west side.  Follow the widest passage until
you come upon a  hand-carved stone pool, beneath an opening to the sky.  When the
moon is overhead you may see what you wish in the pool.”

“I
will see what I wish,” I said incredulously.  “That’s all?”

“The
boy will assist you.”  As if summoned by magic, he appeared at my elbow.  He was
so quiet he seemed to fade away when you had no use of him.

“Why
not come yourself?” Erik asked her.

“I
am too old to go scrabbling about a rock in the middle of the ocean.  The boy
is my apprentice, he will know what to do.”  As an afterthought she added, “Ignore
the other passages leading underground.”

She
handed Erik the chart and the boy a burlap sack that looked to contain a lunch,
and we were dismissed.

“I
know where I can hire a sloop for a couple of days,” Erik said, already leading
the way to the docks.  “The tide will be in our favour.  We’ll gather a small
crew this forenoon and be off.”

The
boy followed several paces behind until Erik whistled for him to catch up.  He trotted
closer, but was leery of Ajer Akiti’s intimidating form.

“Does
your mistress often send you on errands with sailors?” Erik asked.

The
boy shrugged morosely.

“If
we’re going to be mates, at least tell us what to call you,” I said.

“Mostly
I'm called
Boy
, but my mum used to call me
Lark
.”

“Can
you sing?” I asked, feigning good humour I did not feel.

“No,
sir,” he said, staring at his bare and dirty feet.

“To
be called after a bird is fine for a sailor, providing the bird isn’t an albatross.” 
I chuckled at my own joke, alone, since I was a world away from anyone else who
would understand it.

* * *

The
vessel Erik had secured for us was single-masted and shallow keeled.  It was too
small for freight and not rigged for fishing, or any other useful work that I
could see.  Ajer signed that it was built for speed.  Smuggling, of cargo and
people, would be its primary business.  My two friends and I could have crewed
the small craft, but Erik had thought it prudent to ask five sailors along as
well.  "In case we get lonely," he had said.

Four
hours later, looking up from the chart at the unbroken waves, I was thinking we
had wasted their time as well as our own.

“We’re
here,” Erik declared, setting down the spyglass.  We had checked and rechecked
the coordinates but there was no island in sight.  The foretold fog cloaked the
horizon to the east.

“We
must have miscalculated,” I said.

“Have
a look at this.”  Erik rested one finger on the glass of the compass, as if hoping
to steady its wildly oscillating needle.  Minutes before it had been working
perfectly; now, it may as well have been seated in a lodestone.  We would not
need it in the near future anyway, for the fog was bearing down on us in a
suffocating blanket.  The sun would set a dim white disk over the sea. 

“This
has been a fool’s errand,” Erik said, “and it’s my fault.”

“I
don’t mind so much,” I replied, “since you paid for the sloop.”

“What
next, Captain?” Marthin asked.  I wondered a moment who he was addressing, before
concluding it must be me.

“Jome
will keep a watch,” I said to him.  Jome wore the long beard and blue-tattooed
scalp favoured by sailors of the Cerenerian, and could about break me in half
if he wished.  If anyone else felt as anxious taking my orders as I did giving
them, they hid it well.  “Everyone else, rest.”