Sword and Sorceress XXVII (25 page)

They marched and they marched. The
handlers and drovers pressed hard, cracking the lash to lengthen the gait of
the slaves and camels. No shelter awaited until they reached Salt Town. Go too
slow, and they would be caught in the open when next the sun climbed high.

Even though the temperature dropped
steadily throughout the night, the air remained oppressive, because as they
descended into the basin, they passed below the winds. The air puddled like
lead in a crucible, the rim of higher terrain blocking any current that might
stir the layers trapped within the bowl. The perfumed veil was not enough.
Azure breathed in particles that desert air was not supposed to contain,
material that burned her throat, dried her nostrils, fouled the taste of her
tongue. But the worst was what it did to her eyes.

Coil bore it without comment. As always.
So did she, but only because complaining would have required her to open her
mouth and let in more of the foulness.

Despite a pace that made three of the
slaves drop dead, they were short of their goal when dawn arrived. A
crepuscular glow spread across the basin floor.

“What is
that
?” asked her milk
brother.

A chaotic maze of buildings emerged from
the gloom. Azure had seen oasis towns of mud-brick walls, and this had that
look, but the chief building material was not clay or sandstone, but salt, as
if the seafloor had grown strange blocky pustules during its final evaporative
decay.

A massive tower rose high from the core
of the outpost. Azure guessed it was as much as a dozen times the height of the
inn where she and Coil had spent their first eight years of life. A
pavilionlike canopy of stiffened leather supplied life-preserving shade to the
lookout platform at the top. In silhouette the structure possessed a disturbing
non-architectural aspect. It reminded Azure of the corpse toadstool she had
seen a year ago when she and Coil had been forced to flee across the Fever Bogs
to escape the giants—except that lethal fungus had only stood as high as her
ankle.

Aside from the canopy, the tower was
constructed of fine veined marble. Bringing the material here from the coast
and assembling the building must have taken years and cost the lives of a
thousand slaves.

“That,” she murmured, “is what we came
here to find.”

The daylight strengthened further,
revealing that though the outpost might be another half hour’s walk away, the
caravan had already entered the mining zone. Broad, shallow pits sprawled on
either side of the road. She spotted several crews of slaves prying cakes of
salt from the ground and stacking them into pyramids. Elsewhere another crew
was disassembling a pyramid and loading cakes into the panniers of waiting
camels. Drovers were urging fully loaded camels toward shelter.

Work ended with the sunrise. The slaves
began plodding toward their blockhouses, which like the outpost were
constructed of salt bricks. They seemed alive only by comparison to the piles
of bones where past workers had fallen. Vultures clustered around a pair that
had succumbed that very night.

Azure shaded her sore eyes, trying to
spot the far end of the excavations. She thought she saw it, but given the
distance and the haze, she couldn’t be sure.

“How long have people been digging salt
here?” Coil asked the drover.

“Longer than men remember,” replied the
Rhirzadi, blowing road grit out from between his remaining teeth. “One warlord
after another fought to control this place. Seventy years ago the pirates took
it from the chieftains of the Gnarled Hills. Nobody called them the Salt
Pirates until then. Now they’d rather die, every last one of ‘em, than let this
jewel be pilfered from their hoard.”

The drover jerked a thumb at the tower. “There’s
always a prince of the cartel up there keepin’ an eye on things. They rotate
out every couple of years. None of ‘em want to be posted here, of course, but
they don’t trust underlings to run the place.”

Azure had heard the tales of how rich
the salt trade had made the pirates. She readily understood why they would hold
tightly to their prize. What astounded her was that any person had ever been
insane enough to explore this basin in the first place.

#

The first thing Coil did when he woke
that evening was drink an entire flagon of water. Even that was not enough to
rinse away the taste of dust. He opened one of the kegs, refilled the flagon to
the brim, and set the flagon beside Azure’s pallet. Returning to his own
pallet, he began working on what remained in the keg.

Moonlight shone brightly through the
grillwork of the window of the coop the innkeeper had rented them. As he
sipped, Coil contemplated the stack of kegs in the corner—their entire supply,
transferred from their camels as the last thing they accomplished before
collapsing for the day. How inadequate it seemed.

Azure murmured and sat up. She, too,
went straight for the flagon, taking huge, unladylike gulps.

Coil considered lighting the oil lamp,
but Azure was as wilted as she had ever been aside from that time they’d been
poisoned in Murk Hollow. He decided she would prefer to have whatever illusion
of grace the dimness preserved.

“Will it
ever
get cooler?” she
whined.

“It has to,” he said. “But once that
happens, patrons will start wandering in downstairs. If we’re going to look
around before our shift, we need to head out soon.”

They put on street clothes, broke their
fast on raisins and roasted locusts, and tried to stretch out the stiffness
from their roadsore muscles. Then they headed out the back door of the inn and
began threading through the lanes of Salt Town.

Whenever they met someone going the
other way, they were forced to squeeze by. The gaps between the buildings were
narrow, the better to preserve shade during the day. Given the canopies on most
windows, a rat would be able to travel from one end of Salt Town to the other
and never touch the ground.

They stumbled across the pens without
meaning to. Coil suspected they would have found more of the same no matter
which quarter of the outpost they explored. Camel drovers, mercenary guards,
and slave overseers lined up at the entrance. They handed over their whore
chits to the doorkeep, who let them in one by one whenever a man already inside
exited a stall.

In any other town, except perhaps the
desperate ports along the Kraken Sea or the hovels of Lotus City, a building
such as this would be a stable for livestock. But then, in any other city one
might see weavers at their looms, children running after stray chickens,
maidens helping their old grandfathers to the meditation house.

They continued on to their goal. They
found it at the very center of Salt Town, surrounded by a circular plaza of
stone pavement, standing tall as no human-made building had a right to stand,
straining for the moon like the phallus of a buried god.

Whatever lookout might be stationed at
the uppermost platform had lit no lamp—the better for his night vision, Coil
surmised. He and Azure made sure not to step out into the plaza where he might
spot them.

Lamplight did flicker through some of
the windows. The lowest of those was five times as high as Coil could reach if
he stood on his toes, and none were big enough to squeeze through. The only
ways in were the grand entrance and two service portals around back. Burly
guards stood at each opening, and in the absence of anyone going in and out,
the grates had been lowered.

“No going in the hard way,” Coil said. “The
soft way it is.”

“It seems so,” Azure sighed.

That was unfortunate. The soft way would
take time. And luck.

They made one complete circuit of the
outpost so that they would have their bearings. They soon found themselves back
at the inn. The window of their little room looked down on them. The first
patrons were ambling into the ground-floor tavern, parting the strings of beads
that hung halfway down the arched entrance.

Coil paused outside. He studied the
building.

“You’re thinking of home,” Azure said.

“I am,” he replied. “I was thinking how
this could never be like Mama’s.” His foster mother’s establishment had catered
to a neverending series of overnight guests, but its kitchen and back rooms had
nevertheless been a sanctuary—as good a family space as any boy could ask for.
Or it had been until that one awful night.

This inn was no home. No place in Salt
Town was home to any person. People came here to Salt Town to work. They came
to die. No one came here to live.

#

Coil showed off his rope tricks and his
knife juggling. Azure sang ribald songs of the barge wenches of Reedy River.
But for most of the evening, Coil played his sevenflute while Azure danced.
Around them guards and drovers and off-duty cooks drank and gambled among
themselves for scrip or whore chits. Finally the right prospect turned up: A
guard sat down alone at a table. By his third ale he was gazing up and down
Azure’s curves in a way that said he had sought his release in the pens so many
times in a row he wanted to prove to himself a woman would be with him of her
own accord.

Coil drew the accompaniment to a close.
Azure slowed her movements to finish her last pose just as the last languid
note of the flute faded below human hearing.

Coil put away his instrument and found a
seat along the wall. The innkeeper brought him an ale. He and Azure did not
make eye contact.

“You and your fellow having a lover’s
spat?” the guard asked.

Azure glided casually across the dais
toward the guard’s table. “He’s not my lover. He’s my milk brother.”

“Ah. So, are you saying he won’t be
jealous if you spend time with me?”

“Something like that,” she responded. “But
I don’t show favor to just any man.”

He moved to a bench near the edge of the
dance dais. “I expect I’m up to your standards.”

Azure tilted an eyebrow at him. “And
what makes you special?”

“I’m a tower guard. You won’t find me
sweatin’ out there in the salt fields, whippin’ slaves all night.”

“Mildly impressive.” She propped his
knees together and sat sideways across his lower thighs.

He raised his hand toward her chest. His
grin faded when she stuck her talon thimble into his questing palm.

“Ow!”

“Anyone can be a tower guard,” she
chided. “Tell me something
interesting
.”

“I can nick a bluefly off a camel’s ass
with my scimitar, and the camel wouldn’t even feel it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time my
camel needs that.”

“I can out-drink any man here.”

She yawned.

“I’ve seen the prince’s new plaything.
The daughter of the stormwitch.”

Azure shrugged. “I don’t believe she’s
actually in there. If she were, how would
you
see her? I’m sure the only
guards with access to her are eunuchs. Oh!” She eyed his crotch. “Are you a
eunuch?”

“I didn’t say I
guard
her, now
did I? I saw her in the cage when she was brought in. Lovely little thing, she
was. Fresh into her womanhood. He’s one lucky man, that admiral prince. He’s
having her trained in the arts of the harem. Sends her to the baths every
afternoon so she’s fresh for him when evening comes. Sends her to the baths
again when he’s done what he likes.”

“There are
baths
in Salt Town?
You make me laugh.”

“There are in the tower. The master of
Salt Town can have anything he wants. He has water brought in fresh every day.
Sends the dregs off to the camel troughs and slave cisterns. If you’re a pirate
lord, even Salt Town has its luxuries.”

She scooted a bit further up his thighs.
Leaned in a little. “You really saw her?”

“With my own eyes.” He put his hand on
one of her knees. She let it stay there.

“The Salt Pirates are taking a risk,
taunting the witch that way.”

The guard snorted. “She’s toothless.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“You know what the prince is going to
do? When he’s tired of the sweetling, he’ll send her to the pens. Even I might
have a chance at her when that happens. He’ll send her to the pens like he sent
the witch herself there when she was the same age. She couldn’t stop him then.
She won’t be able to stop him this time.”

Over at his table, Coil had been reading
the man’s lips. His eyes widened.

Azure disguised her own shock by tilting
forward until her mouth was only the span of a finger away from the guard’s
ear. “Now that’s story to stir me,” she cooed. “Find me when my shift is done.”

She rose. Coil began to play his
sevenflute. She resumed her dancing. The guard leaned back against the table,
grinning like a fool.

#

By the time their workshift ended, the
fool was snoring on the floor, a little beyond drunk thanks to the dose of
slumberlock Azure had slipped into his tankard.

Coil and Azure cleared out of their
room. By the time dawn came and the populace went to ground to wait out the
onslaught of heat, the milk siblings were tucked into a hiding place in the
warehouse caves near the plaza, where the pirate prince’s barrels of water were
stored.