Dust of Dreams (142 page)

‘Meaning, in turn, they hold people like me in similar contempt?’

‘Personally? I doubt it. Rather, they likely question your right to dictate the lives of your kingdom’s people. Clearly, your family asserts such a right, and you possess the military might to enforce such a claim. I will not speak for Tehol or Janath with any certitude, Highness, but I suspect they deal with you and every other dignitary from every other kingdom and whatnot, with an identical forbearance. The system is what it is—’

‘
Someone
needs to rule!’

‘And, alas, most of the rules rulers impose are the ones that make certain it’s
them
doing the ruling from now on, and they’ll co-opt and exploit an entire nation of people to keep it that way. Generation upon generation and for evermore. Anyway, Highness, should you ever return to Letheras by all means debate it with Tehol or Janath. They delight in such things. As for me, I can only answer as a ship’s captain—’

‘Exactly! No ship can function without a hierarchy!’

‘So very true. I was but conveying to you an interpretation of Tehol and Janath’s position contrary to the one you have been taught to believe. Such complicated philosophies are well beyond me. Besides, do I really care any more? I work within this system because that is an agreeable option, a means, in fact, of avoiding boredom. I am also able to help make my crew wealthier than they might otherwise be, and this pleases me. For myself, of course, I cannot even tell you if I believe in anything—anything at all. Why should I? What would such beliefs grant me? Peace of mind? My mind is at peace. A secure future? Since when is the future
ever
secure? Worthy goals? Who decides what’s worthy? What’s “worth” all about anyway? Highness, believe me, I am not the one for this discussion.’

‘Errant look away, Captain, you have shocked me to the core. I feel positively faint, assailed from so many directions my mind spins.’

‘Shall I summon your handmaiden, Highness?’

‘Dear me, no. Her seasickness refuses to abate, the poor thing.’

‘There are medicines—’

‘Not one of which do a thing for her. Why do you think I am up here with you, Captain? I cannot abide her moaning. Even more deplorable, before long when we are both in the cabin it is I who must attend to her, rather than the other way round. The impropriety of that is intolerable.’

Shurq Elalle nodded. ‘Impropriety, yes, I see. You should have brought the matter to me long ago, Highness. I am happy to assign a member of my crew to look after your handmaiden. Perhaps indeed we can have her transferred to another berth—’

‘No no, none of that, Captain. Though I do thank you for the generous offer. My frustration is ever shortlived. Besides, what better means of reminding myself that privileges of rank are but false constructs? When humanity and simple decency demand the relinquishing of such things?’

‘Well said, Highness.’

Felash fluttered her fingers. ‘And on that thought, best I return below, to see how the wretched child fares.’ She smiled up at Shurq with her doll’s smile. ‘Thank you for a most invigorating discussion, Captain.’

‘I too enjoyed it, Princess.’

Felash strode away, admirably sure-footed on the pitching deck. Shurq settled her forearms down on the rail and scanned the distant coastline to port. Jungle had given way to brown hills a few days past. The only trees she’d seen since had been uprooted boles crowding the thin line of beach. Enormous trees. Who tore
up thousand-year-old trees so indiscriminately as to leave them to waste?
Kolanse, what have you been up to?

We’ll find out soon enough.

Felash entered the cabin. ‘Well?’

Her handmaid looked up from where she sat crosslegged before the small brazier of coals. ‘It is as we feared, Highness. A vast emptiness awaits us. Desolation beyond measure. Upon landing, we shall have to travel north—far north, all the way to Estobanse Province.’

‘Prepare my bowl,’ Felash said, shrugging off her cloak and letting it fall. She sank down on to a heap of pillows. ‘They can go nowhere else, can they?’

The bigger woman rose and stepped over to the low table where sat an ornate, silver-inlaid, glass hookah. She measured out a cup of spiced wine and slowly filled the bulb, then drew out the silver tray, tapping out the old ashes into a small pewter plate. ‘If you mean the Perish, Highness, that is a fair assumption.’

Felash reached under her silk blouse and loosened the bindings of her undershirt. ‘My eldest sister did this too much,’ she said, ‘and now her tits rest down on her belly like a trader’s bladders riding a mule’s rump. Curse these things. Why couldn’t I be more like Hethry?’

‘There are herbs—’

‘Then they’d not fix their eyes there, would they? No, these damned things are my first gifts of diplomacy. Just seeing those dilated pupils is a victory.’

The handmaid brought over the hookah. She’d already drawn it alight and aromatic smoke spread out through the cabin. She had been doing this for her mistress for four years now. Each time, it preceded an extended period of intense discussion between her and the princess. Plans were created, tested, every detail hammered into place with the steady tap-tap-tap of rounding a copper bowl.

‘Hethry views you with great envy, Highness.’

‘She’s an idiot so that’s no surprise. Have we heard from Mother’s cedas?’

‘Still nothing. The Wastelands seethe with terrible powers, Highness, and it is clear that the Queen intends to remain there—like us, she seeks answers.’

‘Then we are both fools. All of this is so far beyond Bolkando’s borders that we would be hard pressed to extend any legitimate reasons to pursue the course we’re on. What did Kolanse contribute to our kingdom?’

‘Black honey, hardwoods, fine linens, parchment and paper—’

‘In the past five years?’ Felash’s eyes glittered in a veil of smoke.

‘Nothing.’

‘Precisely. My question was in fact rhetorical. Contact has ceased. We acquired nothing essential from them in any case. As for the Wastelands and the motley armies crawling about on them, well, they too have left our environs. We dog them at our peril, I believe.’

‘The Queen marches beside some of those armies, Highness. We must assume she has discovered something, providing a compelling reason for remaining in their company.’

‘They march to Kolanse.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And we don’t know why.’

The handmaid said nothing.

Felash sent a stream of smoke ceilingward. ‘Tell me again of the undead in the Wastelands.’

‘Which ones, Highness?’

‘The ones who move as dust on the winds.’

The handmaid frowned. ‘At first I thought that they alone were responsible for the impenetrable cloud defying my efforts. They number in the thousands, after all, and the one who leads them emanates such blinding power that I dare not look too long upon it. But now . . . Highness, there are others. Not dead to be sure. Even so. One of darkness and cold. One of golden fire high in the sky. Another at his side, a winged knot of grief harder and crueller than the sharpest cut diamond. Still others, hiding in the howl of wolves—’

‘Wolves?’ Felash cut in. ‘Do you mean the Perish?’

‘No and yes, Highness. I can be no clearer than that.’

‘Wonderful. Go on.’

‘Yet another, fiercer and wilder than all the others. It hides inside stone. It swims in a sea thick with the pungent flavours of serpents. It waits for the moment, and grows in its power, and facing it . . . Highness, whatever it faces is more dreadful than I can bear.’

‘This clash—will it occur on the Wastelands?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘Do you think my mother knows?’

The handmaid hesitated, and then said, ‘Highness, I cannot imagine her cedas to be anything but utterly blind and thus ignorant of that threat. It is only because I am able to see from this distance, from the outside, as it were, that I have gleaned as much as I have.’

‘Then she is in trouble.’

‘Yes. I think so, Highness.’

‘You must find a way,’ said Felash, ‘to reach through to her.’

‘Highness. There is one way, but it risks much.’

‘Who will bear that risk?’

‘Everyone aboard this ship.’

Felash pulled on her mouthpiece, blew rings that floated, wavered and slowly flattened out, drifting to form a chain in the air. Her eyes widened upon seeing it.

The handmaid simply nodded. ‘He is close, yes. My mind has spoken his name.’

‘And this omen here before us?’

‘Highness, one bargains with an Elder God at great peril. We must pay in blood.’

‘Whose blood?’

The handmaid shook her head.

Felash tapped the amber tube against her teeth, thinking. ‘Why is the sea so thirsty?’

Again, there was no possible answer to that question. ‘Highness?’

‘Has the damned thing a name? Do you know it?’

‘Many names, of course. When the colonists from the First Empire set forth, they made sacrifice to the salty seas in the name of Jhistal. The Tiste Edur in their great war canoes opened veins to feed the foam, and this red froth they called Bloodmane—in the Edur language that word was
Mael
. The Jheck who live upon the ice call the dark waters beneath that ice the Lady of Patience,
Barutalan.
The Shake speak of
Neral
, the Swallower.’

‘And on.’

‘And on, Highness.’

Felash sighed. ‘Summon him, and we shall see what cost this bargain.’

‘As you command, Highness.’

On the foredeck, Shurq Elalle straightened as the lookout cried out. She faced out to sea.
That’s a squall. Looks to be a bad one. Where in the Errant’s bung-hole did that come from?
‘Pretty!’

Skorgen Kaban clumped into view from amidships. ‘Seen it, Cap’n!’

‘Swing her out, Pretty. If it’s gonna bite, best we lock jaws with it.’ The thought of the storm throwing
Undying Gratitude
on to that treefall shore wasn’t a pleasant one, not in the least.

The black wire-wool cloud seemed to be coming straight for them.

‘Piss in the boot, this dance won’t be fun.’

C
hildren will wander. they will walk as if the future did not exist. Among adults, the years behind one force focus upon what waits ahead, but with children this is not so. The past was a blur of befuddled sensations, the future was white as the face of the sun. Knowing this yielded no comfort. Badalle was still a child, should one imagine her of a certain age, but she walked like a crone, tottering, hobbling. Even her voice belonged to an old woman. And the dull, fused thing behind her eyes could not be shaken awake.

She had a vague recollection, a memory or an invention, of looking upon an ancient woman, a grandmother perhaps, or a great aunt. Lying shrunken on a bed, swaddled in wool blankets. Still breathing, still blinking, still listening. And yet those eyes, in their steady watching, their grainy observation, showed nothing. The stare of a dying person. Eyes spanning a gulf, slowly losing grip on the living side of the chasm, soon to release and slide to the side of death. Did those eyes feed thoughts? Or had things reduced to mere impressions, blobs of colour, blurred motions—as if in the closing of death one simply returned to the way things had been for a newborn? She could think of a babe’s eyes, in the moments and days after arriving in the world. Seeing but not seeing, a face of false smiles, the innocence of not-knowing.

She had knelt beside a nameless boy, there on the very edge of the Crystal City, and had stared into his eyes, knowing he saw her, but knowing nothing else. He was beyond expression (oh, the horror of that, to see a human face beyond expression, to wonder who was trapped inside, and why they’d given up getting out). He’d studied her in turn—she could see that much—and held her gaze, as if he’d wanted company in his last moments of life. She would not have turned away, not for anything. The gift was small for her, but all she had, and for him, perhaps it was everything.