Immortal at the Edge of the World (24 page)

As basically the only person there whose well-being I cared about other than my own, I didn’t really hesitate in racing to his aid. It left everyone I had been defending without a flank, but I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking that Hsu had just disappeared into a crowd of unfriendly men, trying to stave off a killing blow with one good arm, from the ground. The goblins at his side had closed around him, but they had barely been able to hold off this army as a threesome. They stood little chance as two and a half.

But I couldn’t get to him. As soon as I pivoted and charged I was met by two guards, both less flawed than the one I’d been meaning to kill a few seconds earlier.

And that was when the most remarkable thing happened. A new fighter entered the battle. At first all I saw of him was the reactions of the Talus defenders. They ran toward him, and then they backed quickly away because his arms were a blur of bloody motion. He had curved swords in both hands and he swung them with amazing grace and efficiency, and cut down everything that came near him almost without effort.

This man—although he was no man—was taller than I was, thin and deathly pale, with bright blond hair framing a triangular face that ended at a sharp pointed chin. He wore nothing but a leather tunic and the gore of the men he was slicing his way through.

I had never seen such a creature before, but the word for him came to me immediately—faery.

It wasn’t long before the soldiers opposing him backed away and gave him the room he wanted to reach Hsu. My friend was on the ground, exhausted, and bleeding badly from the knife that was still stuck into his back. The faery knelt down beside him, and when Hsu saw who was there he sagged into the creature’s arms.

I was shouting for Hsu but I still couldn’t get close, as the men I had been fighting were more eager than ever to face me rather than the faery in the courtyard.

I would love to say I knew for sure what happened next. I know the faery picked up Hsu and cradled him in his arms, and I’m nearly positive Hsu died at that moment. I also know that despite being unable to defend himself, the soldiers thought it best to fight around the faery rather than risk going at him again and discovering that he had a third arm or something, which was a degree of caution I could understand. But I don’t know what happened to either of them. I was looking at them one second, defending myself the next, and when I checked back they weren’t there anymore.

*
 
*
 
*

I’m not sure why, but we didn’t have much trouble fighting our way out of the compound after that. Maybe it was because the numbers of the Talus force had been significantly dented by the path the faery had cut through them, or maybe they were worried we had another faery at our disposal and didn’t want to keep us around long enough to meet him. Probably they were all just tired, as it had been a costly engagement to say the very least, and most of the damage had been incurred on their end. But for whatever reason we made it through the walls and into the street, and then a block away, and then two blocks, and then we decided nobody was chasing us and so we stopped in an alley and rested, and checked for wounds.

Something you don’t really realize when in the middle of a heavy melee is that you’ve taken a cut. The adrenaline takes care of any pain you might feel, right up until the battle is over and you catch your breath and calm down a little, and then suddenly you’re sore everywhere, bleeding, light-headed, and sometimes you throw up a little bit. It sucks.

In the midst of all the wound checking and bandaging and vomiting and whatnot, Abraham decided to talk. He had been wearing the same stunned look since we’d left the conference room, but now that he was pretty sure he wasn’t about to die he had decided it was time to assert himself.

“Could someone please tell me what just happened?” he asked. It was an open question posed to any and all of us, since he couldn’t tell who was in charge and what they might be in charge of. He looked like a guy that had sleepwalked into a bordello.

 
“I have a question for you, Abraham bin Yasser,” I said. “Ten years ago a man named Aleph repaid a debt to you with an unusual golden medallion. Do you remember this?”

He looked at Moshe and then at Xuangang, both as confused as he was. “Why would you ask me this odd question?”

“The debt was for a shipment of black pepper, and it cleared Aleph’s account. He was a short man with one eye and a drinking problem, and a leaky boat. Do you remember?”

“Yes, but why is this important to you? And what does this have to do with what happened today?”

“I assure you, Abraham, of all the questions you may be asked in your lifetime this is one of the more important, as it is a question that has gone unspoken for a decade. It’s only unfortunate that I am the one asking instead of my compatriot, for it was his question and he died unable to pose it. What did you do with the medallion?”

“The gold was, as you said, for the repayment of a debt. It was sent home, as are all goods I receive when there are books to be cleared. I’m sure it has been melted down by now, if it was truly gold.”

“It cleared a
large
debt. I can’t imagine you were unsure as to the quality of the gold.”

He laughed. “Really, sir, you are covered in the blood of a dozen men and perhaps some of your own, and this is what you want to talk about? I cleared the books because Aleph was indeed a drunk with a leaky boat. I had no intention of using his service again and did not doubt that I would see no further payment regardless of whether the medallion was valued sufficiently to offset the pepper or not. I confess that I found it to be eye-catching and clever, and perhaps I let this assessment better my good judgment, but regardless it is doubtful the thing exists as it had ten years ago. Now can you explain to me
why
you are covered in the blood of a dozen men?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it would take longer than it is worth to explain. However, in the future I suggest you consider not taking the advice of whomever put us all in the room with the Talus.”

*
 
*
 
*

It was in the best interest of all of us to get out of Mangalore immediately. Once I impressed upon Abraham the fact that the death of Gorrgon Talus was likely to put his own life in danger even if he had not personally performed the murder, he agreed that it was time to find a new port for his business dealings going forward. And that was where the businesses intersected, since we had a number of other ports he could use and he had the sea route that made bringing black cardamom to market much easier for us.

Or rather, for Xuangang. The business meeting between us took place in the hold of one of the ships Abraham used—he didn’t own any ships but employed trusted vessels—and began with my introducing the true Xuangang. I then took part in helping everyone come to an equitable agreement, and once that was done I named a price for my stake in Xuangang’s venture, and then I walked away. In doing so I left behind a sizable chunk of money that nobody could truly argue belonged to me, but I didn’t really mind. I had been rich many times and knew I would be again, but I’d lost all interest in the spice merchant trade, so I took only one pouch of gold and snuck out of Mangalore on a stolen horse in the middle of a moonless night.

And I wondered, as I left, what had actually happened to Hsu. Over the years I convinced myself that he and the faery just escaped through another exit, or had perhaps fallen to an enemy sword. It wasn’t until very recently that I came to a different conclusion. The faery had appeared out of nothing, and when he and Hsu departed they disappeared back into nothing.

If I wanted to find out how the red-haired woman had accomplished this exact trick I needed to know how the faery had done it. I needed to find Hsu’s imaginary faery kingdom.

Chapter Fourteen

“Men will always make poor business decisions when their children are involved.”

“I’m not prepared to wait until bin Yasser’s son is a part of the business,” Hsu said. “That could be two decades, if ever.”

“You misunderstand. I mean, we can find the whelp and use him to get Abraham to come to us.”

He looked at me for a time. “That is perhaps more ruthless than I am capable of.”

“I mention it only as an option, if you are desperate.”

“Desperate, I am. But I’m no savage.”

*
 
*
 
*

I could understand why Abraham lied about the outcome of the astrolabe given he’d forwarded it to his son. That his son was—by the time we spoke—an adult and raising a family of his own didn’t mitigate the possible risk he might be putting Isaac in, and on top of that he didn’t know me at all. I was also asking him the question while covered in blood for reasons Abraham only had a dim grasp of. For all he knew I was willing to kill for that little trinket, given everything he had already seen of me.

I was not willing to do any such thing. Hsu was, but as far as I was concerned he was dead. I had already begun to doubt what I’d seen with regards to the faery, and I was certainly not entertaining the idea that what I had seen was a grown being vanishing into nothing. I was so very certain that such a thing was not possible that when I saw the red-haired woman perform the same trick it was almost ten years before I even remembered Hsu’s story.

Mirella held up Abraham’s drawing to get a better look at it in the cabin lighting. “This is the thing your friend was trying to find?”

“I think it is, yes.”

She shook her head, put the paper down on the bed next to me, and walked over to the bar. She was pouring herself a drink, something I only really saw her do when I was also drinking, which I was not. So this was new. “That’s insane,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“So . . . all right, I want to get this correct.” She gestured with her drink—it looked like she was trying my bourbon, which was a very good bourbon. “Your friend Hsu, he has this great love, this faery. And this faery gives him the . . .”

“Astrolabe.”

“The astrolabe. And tells him this is the thing he can use to return to the . . . I’m sorry, do I have to call it a faery kingdom?”

“Not if you don’t want to, no.”

“He loses the astrolabe in a bet, it ends up in the hands of the one merchant who is kind enough to record every single thing he does on a document that somehow manages to survive until
now
, so you can find a
drawing
of that thing waiting for you in a museum. Now I suppose you’ll tell me there’s some reason to think that astrolabe might still be around somewhere, instead of buried in an undiscovered pit or melted down for the gold, or just vanished somewhere and lost forever to history. And of course, let’s remember how old you are supposed to be. We can’t forget that.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well with all of this.”

“Thank you, I’m not. Look, if you want to go around telling people you’re a thousand years old, that’s fine as long as you’re still paying me.”

“It’s really much older than that.”

“Of course it is.”

“Sorry.”

“You want to be an eccentric rich man, that’s all right. I protected someone once who insisted he was an incarnation of the god Rama, and if that made him feel better about himself I was entirely okay with it. But I had no obligation to believe any such thing.”

She downed her drink and refilled it. I was torn between wanting a glass myself and wishing she stopped drinking the expensive stuff. I kept both wishes to myself, since she appeared to be having a moment of some sort.

“But then you come along, and not only do you think you’re the world’s oldest man, you fight with a warrior style I’ve never
seen
before, you defeat a goblin in single combat, you seem to know more about this Abraham fellow than anyone should, you
refused
to go to the hospital or even take a damned aspirin, and I am nearly convinced that the woman on that videotape actually did disappear like you said she did. I am running out of explanations for this other than the ones you are giving me, and it’s making me very angry.”

“I really do think you’re handling this very well,” I said again. “Also, I wonder if I could have some of that?”

She reached behind the bar and found a second rocks glass, and walked it over with the bottle. “I would tell you this is a bad thing to do while you’re healing, but I have no idea if this is true in your case. Maybe it’s the alcohol that’s been keeping you alive all these centuries.”
 

“It’s not,” I said, filling the glass. “I just wanted some before you polished off the bottle. So do you believe me?”

“I’m prepared to conclude either that you are performing an incredibly elaborate and dangerous hoax exclusively for my benefit, or all of it is true.”

“That would be one impressive hoax.”

“I’m leaning toward the other option. I don’t think I’m worth the expense of such a hoax.”

I smiled at this. And it may have been the bourbon she’d had but she smiled back. “I think you would be surprised what someone with a lot of money and time might do to capture your attention,” I said.

“Thank you, that’s very nice. It’s also creepy, so please tell me you aren’t doing that.”

“I’m not.”