Shallows of Night - 02 (11 page)

“Give him as much tea as he wants. And rice cakes,” instructed the physician before departing. And Ronin was left with the men. Soon he drifted off to sleep.

A dense and smoky tangle, it climbed into the hills. It spread upward and outward from the wide harbor, the shores of the yellow and muddy sea, in a jungle of one- and two-story buildings of wood, dark paint, brown brick. In many places they seemed set so close together that he could not tell where one ended and another began.

“Sha’angh’sei,” said Rikkagin T’ien.

Ronin could discern movement along the vast front of docks and wharves thrusting out into the slowly lapping waves. Dark masses milled like ants over an earthen mound; they were still too distant for him to pick out individuals. A peculiar haze hovered over the immense city, a component of its clutter and sprawl, obscuring its loftier reaches so that he had no clear idea how high the houses extended.

“Welcome to the continent of man.” There was a harsh edge to the laugh.

Ronin tore his eyes away from the domination of the city and looked at the man who stood on the deck beside Rikkagin T’ien. He was tall and muscular with cerulean eyes and short-cropped thick blond hair. An ivory bar was run through the lobe of one ear. He wore a light-colored, loose-fitting shirt of silk tucked into tight black leggings. A long curving sword hung in a battered leather scabbard on one hip. A wicked dirk of extraordinary length, its hilt studded with rough-cut emeralds, a rather nonchalant statement of their value, was stuck into his sky-blue waist sash. T’ien had introduced him as his second in command: Tuolin.

“It was I who fished you out of the sea,” said the blond man. “It was reflex, really. Most of the men believed you already drowned; you were under a long time.”

Ronin shook his head. “I recall sinking, holding my breath, then darkness and a beating silence and then—”

Rikkagin T’ien called out an order and half a dozen men sprang from the deck, racing up the rigging lines. He turned back, observing them both.

“What happened to your back?” asked Tuolin.

“Have you been north?”

Tuolin shook his head, no.

“On the ice sea,” said Ronin softly, “far enough south so that the water was already coming up on the ice, thinning it, a—some kind of creature broke through the crust and attacked us.” Tuolin’s eyes narrowed; he glanced quickly at T’ien, back to Ronin again.

“What kind of creature?”

Ronin shrugged. “I cannot truthfully say. The world, it seems, is filled with strange and monstrous things. In any event, the light was almost gone. It took us totally by surprise. There was no time for anything save death.” The men in the rigging had reached the highest yards and they began to furl the topsails, using darting rapid motions. “It tore my friend in two; ate his legs.”

They stood like three statues on the high poop deck, near the stern of the ship. A soft breeze brushed their faces, the tentative touch of a reunited lover.

“You must understand,” Rikkagin T’ien said, “that death means little to us here in Sha’angh’sei; it is our way of life.” He peered up briefly. The men were returning down the rigging. “War, Ronin. That is all we have known; all we shall ever know. Death waits for us behind every doorway, beneath every bed, down every dark alley of Sha’angh’sei.” The ship began to slow as the command was given for the rowers to slacken their pace. “We would have it no other way.”

“We have lost the ability to mourn for our dead,” said Tuolin regretfully. “Still, I would very much like to know more of this creature of the ice sea.”

“I am sure there is little more I can tell you,” said Ronin. “However, I am most curious about this craft’s mode of travel. If I could see—”

“The rowers?” said Tuolin. “I hardly think that you—”

“Tuolin,” interrupted Rikkagin T’ien, “I do not think that under the circumstances we have much choice. It is a simple exchange of information.” His eyes sparkled. “By all means, lead us down to the rowers.”

Tuolin’s face had set into hard lines and ridges and Ronin wondered what he was missing in this dialogue. He understood only that he dare not interrupt.

It seemed as if there was no air and one had to take short breaths because of the concentrated stench but over all it was cleaner than he would have expected. The men sat along low wooden benches, three to each oar. They were naked to the waist and the ridges of their working muscles along shoulders and backs glistened in the low light. They moved in perfect unison to the cadence of a drum and the rhythmic singing. Three tiers of men along three quarters of the length of the ship. He stopped counting at one hundred. They were dark-haired and swarthy, thick-boned and short, fair-skinned and fair-haired, yellow-hued and almond-eyed; a jumble of humanity, inhabitants of the continent of man.

“You can plainly see,” said T’ien expansively, “that we refuse to rely solely on the inconsistencies of the weather. Canvas is fine when the wind is up, otherwise—” He shrugged.

They walked slowly down a narrow central aisle between the oarsmen.

“They are continually manned,” T’ien continued. “The men work in shifts.”

“They do not mind this work?” asked Ronin.

“Mind?” said Tuolin incredulously. “They are soldiers, bound to Rikkagin T’ien. It is their duty. Just as it is their duty to fight and die if need be for the rikkagin’s safety.” He snorted. “Where is this man from that he does not understand this? He cannot be civilized, surely.”

Rikkagin T’ien smiled somewhat absently as if he were enjoying some private jest. “He comes from a long way off, Tuolin. Do not judge him so harshly.” Tuolin’s eyes blazed and for just an instant Ronin believed that he was going to turn on his rikkagin. “Teach him if he does not understand our ways,” said T’ien placidly.

“Yes,” said Tuolin, the cold light receding from his eyes, “patience is its own reward, is it not so?”

T’ien walked on and they followed, a pace or so behind.

“You see,” said Tuolin, “we carry with us many moral obligations which we are taught to honor virtually from birth.” A dark blur at the corner of Ronin’s vision. “To be bound to a rikkagin has many benefits.” Oblique approach, ballooning. “One eats well, one is clothed, one has money, one is trained—” And Tuolin had seen it too because even now he was moving, the long dirk no longer in his waist sash. There was a scream, disturbing the heavy air like a sudden breeze parting a velvet curtain, and the figure was upon them. Tuolin leapt forward, his dirk flashing in a savage thrust. The body, long and thin, sweat-coated, wielded a curving single-edged sword. The face was pinched, the mouth screaming, lips pulled back from rotted stumps of teeth in a rictus, the eyes glassy and bulging fanatically. Then the figure was spitted on the blond man’s blurred weapon. The legs kicked violently and then the eyes rolled as the blade ripped through the naked chest, spewing forth blood and bone fragments. The man’s sword clattered uselessly to the wooden boards. Rikkagin T’ien watched impassively as Tuolin withdrew the dirk and with a deft economy of motion slit the man’s throat. Ronin noted that T’ien had not even drawn his sword.

Now the rikkagin sighed and without looking at either of them said, “It is best if we return abovedecks.” And stepped nimbly over the crumpled corpse.

Sha’angh’sei loomed over them as they maneuvered the sea lanes clogged with vessels large and small and eased into the port. The ship plowed slowly through the thick sea, yellow-brown and clinging, past square-rigged fishing craft and high-sterned cargo vessels. Off to starboard, Ronin thought he could just discern the broad mouth of a river spilling into the sea.

He stood on a high poop drinking in the city while all about him was movement as men raced through the catwalk rigging, reefing the last of the unfurled sail, securing yards and lines, the forest of oars high in the air, dripping and shining, as the rowers prepared to ship them. It lay before him in the inky twilight like a vast fat jewel, dusky and dim with age, smoldering with fitful movement, heaving itself from the spume and effluvia of the land.

The low buildings closest to him appeared to be built on a delta and he looked again for the river’s mouth for confirmation but it was lost behind the thick clumps of buildings. Beyond the flat of the delta the city rose like the arched spine of a frightened animal and many of the dwellings in this area seemed to need the aid of wooden columns sunk into the hillside, which supported their jutting balconies, fluted and columnated, dark hardwoods gleaming in the smeary glow as lamps and torches were abruptly lit throughout the city as if by some prearranged signal. The deepening haze, sapphire and mauve, softened the flicker of the flames so that the individual sources blended and blurred and the city seemed to glow with an ethereal incandescence.

Ronin’s pulse quickened. By chance he had come to Sha’angh’sei, and it was obviously a major port on the continent of man. Here, he felt confident, he would find someone who could unlock the riddle of the scroll of dor-Sefrith. The wash of light reached out for him as the ship maneuvered toward the waiting wharf. Perhaps, he mused, Rikkagin T’ien will know of someone.

Men swarmed along the long arm of the wharf in anticipation of their arrival and Ronin, observing the frenzy of activity, felt the muscles of his stomach contract momentarily as his spirits soared. The continent of man: Borros had been correct all along. So many people here, such a teeming world; even now, though it was before his eyes, it was a shock; so long talked of, it was a dream world that had been an integral ingredient of the fantasy that had kept them alive with a goal as they flew across the featureless platinum ice for endless days and nights with nothing but the cutting wind and cold as their reality. This dream had kept Borros alive until the end, Ronin was sure; his body had been beaten and, save for this land beckoning him on, Borros’ mind would have let go in the midst of Freidal’s torture within the confines of the Freehold. And now: now I step upon the cluttered foreshore of the continent of man. A dream no more.

There came a brief command and the ship touched the creaking timbers of the long wharf.

There was an electric hum, the live-wire abrasive intensity of rushing bodies, the cacophonous atonality of voices raised in argument, laughter, command, the chunky slap of cargo continually being loaded onto ships ready to sail to other ports, unloaded from just-docked vessels, the brief slam of working doorways, the beckoning cries of vendors, the lilt of hoarse monotonous work songs, the crisp cadence of soldiers’ booted feet, the clangor of arms, the tolling of far-off bells, a whiff of mysterious chanting, and beneath it all, the heavy wash of the yellow sea lapping at the belly of the city, caressing it, washing its soil, eating its bedrock.

He stood on the wharf, an alien island in an ocean of moving bodies. The debarking soldiers passed him in formation, elbowing aside the scurrying workers, bare-chested and barefooted, tattered pants rolled up their legs, sweat streaming down their laden backs, some bent double under their immense loads, others in pairs trotting with crates of food-stuffs suspended from bamboo poles supported on their shoulders. Overseers screaming their instructions, orders being barked, sellers frantically hawking their wares, bodies coming against him like breakers, sounds like waves beating upon the shores of his ears, engulfing him. He breathed deeply and his nostrils flared to the steamy air laden with the fragrances of man, the pungency of fresh spices and syrupy oils, the mingling of exotic perfumes and thick sweat, the briny scent of the sea, rich with the myriad animal flavors of life and death.

Tuolin found him eventually.

“The rikkagin will see you tomorrow in the morning.” Caftans of silk and cotton, tight blouses over firm breasts, long earrings clashing softly. “He is most anxious to speak with you at length.” Gold rings glinting, a wooden leg with a worn shoe stuck on the end, colored skirts swirling, armbands dully shining, flash of yellow feathers. “Now he has many preparations to make and we could both use food and drink.” Carts bumping, green eyes flashing, strange two-wheeled carriages pulled by toiling runners, dark hair floating in the soft scented breeze, music skirling. “Especially drink, eh?” Faces hidden by veils, faces covered with long beards, greased and curling, the savory mouth-watering perfume of roasting meat, a black and terribly empty eyeless socket, laughter, mouths gaping wide, black teeth, eyes crinkling, flash of dirk. “And afterward, a very special place, Ronin. Oh yes.”

Along the sweep of the wharf the crowd thinned momentarily and Ronin was transfixed by a constellation of bobbing lights along the waterfront. Low, wide boats, some with makeshift shelters, most without, rocked gently on the evening tide. Lanterns were hung, illuminating the occupants. Families crowded the vessels, men, women, scrambling children and screaming infants, old ones still as statues, all assembled now for the meal at day’s end; sitting with cracked shallow bowls of rice close to their faces, eating with long sticks, throats working as if they were famished.

“Home for many people,” said Tuolin. “Generations have worked on land and have lived on the tasstans.” Bodies closed over the view in an unwashed tide, blotting out all but the sea lanterns’ mobile glow reflecting off the restless water. They began walking again. “There is no room for them in Sha’angh’sei.” Shouts and the sounds of running feet. “There never was.”

“Yet they work here, do they not?”

“Oh yes.” A scuffle beside them; coarse curses, receding, drowned in the sea of bodies. “There is always work from dawn until dusk: for a copper coin which the merchants take at the end of the day, for the mildewed rice that they must eat. There is always work in Sha’angh’sei for a strong back, day or night. But nowhere to live.” Tuolin laughed abruptly and clapped Ronin on the back. “But no more talk now. I have been too long from this city.” He guided them skillfully through the jostling throng, moving at an increasing pace.

“Come,” he called as he moved ahead. “We go to Iron Street.”

Night lights flared along every street they took; black iron lanterns, wrought in openwork grills, the flames within licking smokily at the darkness. The packed streets were cobbled, lined with buildings variously assigned as apartments or shops without any discernible pattern. Men, thin and fat, lolled in open doorways, picking at their teeth or smoking pipes with long curving stems and tiny bowls, squatting against grimy wooden and chipped brick walls, talking or dozing. Off these thoroughfares were ubiquitous narrow twisting alleys, blacker than the night, down which people would sometimes wander, disappearing within instants, leaving behind only a dissipating breath of sweet smoke.