The Executioness (4 page)

I licked my dried lips and sat up.

The world kept creaking back and forth.

I heard wheels turning underneath me.

I was inside a covered wagon of some sort. Daylight peeked through cracks in wooden walls and top. And I could taste fish and salt hanging in the air.

A bird screeched outside, and I realized I must be near the coast.

My axe lay near me, as did my leather hood. Which meant I was somewhere safe.

In a daze I crawled toward a large flap, and as I reached it a hand flung it aside, blinding me with daylight.

“Well, hello there,” someone said gently. “I was just coming to check on you.”

My eyes watered, as if they hadn’t seen sunlight in weeks.

Strong hands gripped my arm. “Careful, or you’ll fall off.”

I sat on the back of a large wagon. A small deck ran around the rim of the vehicle. A woman my age, traces of gray in her hair, held my arm. Her trader tattoos, including a striking purple figure of the elephant god Sisinak holding the triple scales of commerce, ran up and down her forearms. “I’m Anezka,” she said. She squatted on the platform jutting off the back. “I was bringing you some soup. Everyone’s going to be excited to hear you woke up.”

I moved out onto the platform with Anezka, still amazed that my ankle wasn’t hurting. Behind the wagon I was laid out in, another wagon followed.

That wagon behind us was pulled by four massive aurochs. They looked like cattle, but far more muscular, and their long horns swooped well out before them like the prows of ships. Four aurochs also followed the back of the wagon I was on, resting from the strain of pulling, their flanks rippling and hooves thumping the ground as they plodded along.

Behind the wagon following us, was another, and then another, and then another yet again. I counted ten before the long train of wagons curved around a bend in a fine mist of kicked up dust. Each wagon featured its own unique, mottled purples and greens painted in patterns on their wooden sides. Many had carvings: depictions of markets and roads and maps of the world, all expertly chipped into their sides.

“This is a caravan,” I said out loud, realizing it at the same moment I spoke it.

“This is
the
caravan,” Anezka said. “You’re traveling the spice road on the perpetual caravan. We move along the coast starting in Paika and go all the way to Mimastiva and even a little beyond, until the bramble of the east stops us with its wall. Then we turn back around again. There used to be many, all throughout the old Empire. Now: only us.”

Mimastiva was on the coast, hundreds of miles south of Khaim. Paika lay on the coast as well, far to the west. I knew of a few who’d visited Mimastiva. Paika was said to have fallen to the raiders when I was still a child. These were cities that to me, were almost past the edge of the world.

“You said that people would be excited I was awake,” I said.

Anezka’s eyes widened. “Because you’re the lady executioner, who met four Paikans in mortal combat. Everyone’s been talking about you up and down the line.”

“Paikans?” I asked.

“You northerners call them raiders.”

“I didn’t fight four raiders,” I said with a frown. “I only took on one, and he beat me badly. But yes, there were four of them.”

I looked down at my ankle. “How long have I been asleep?”

“You should see the Roadmaster,” Anezka said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because this is his wagon, and you are his guest,” Anezka said, somewhat formally, but quite firmly.

With her arm to steady me, I grabbed the ropes along the outside of the covered wagon’s rim, and walked toward the front.

As we approached the raised platform from where the aurochs were controlled, I could see up the line of the caravan. We were near the front. Muscled men with brass arquebuses stood on a fifteen paces long war wagon in front of us, with hammered metal shieldwalls protecting them.

Further ahead, a wagon with a large fire crew burned bramble away from the road edges, the roar of the flame carrying back over the air to us. The stench of the burned limbs wafted past.

I was a long way from Lesser Khaim.

The Roadmaster was a successful, rich, mountain of a man, robes draped across the heft of his belly.

But if I thought him jolly, that was a mistake. His smile was tight, controlled, and his eyes shrewd. This man saw more miles pass under the wheels of his home in a year than most ever traveled in a life.

And judging by the lines in his face, he’d had a long life doing this. Like Anezka, trader tattoos ran up and down his forearms, and his ears dangled with earrings.

He had no mustaches, his lips were shaved clean, like a refugee from Alacan.

I’d heard tales of the caravan, and the coastal spice route. Townsmen who travelled south to markets were told tales of the great market of Mimastiva by other townsmen who ventured that far south, and here I was, sitting on a wagon with the Roadmaster of the caravan himself.

“Welcome to the spice road,” the Roadmaster said with a twitch in the corner of his lips. He did not hold the reins himself: that was a job for a young man in a loincloth with massive arms who sat next to him, the thick leather straps leading to the aurochs draped across his lap. He watched the road like an owl, his eyes never blinking.

“Thank you,” I said, and brushed my skirts up to sit by him. Sitting higher than the bramble along the road meant that a soft sea breeze cooled my skin.

From this perch, I could see the road stretching out along the rocky coastline before us. The ocean, hundreds of feet below us, slammed and boomed against the wall of brown rock. And out beyond the spray, the green waves surged around pinnacles of rock shaped like the spires of castles. And beyond the spray and foam, the ocean stretched out forever: flat, unbreaking, the color of winter-green leaves.

“It is a beautiful sight,” the Roadmaster said, noticing my gaze.

“I never thought I’d see it in my life,” I whispered. I wondered if Duram or Set had seen this, as they were being marched west.

I leaned forward and hid my face in my grief, and the Roadmaster leaned close and touched my shoulder. “What is your name, lady executioner?”

“Tana.” I swallowed. “Tana the lost. Tana the homeless. Tana the abandoned. But not Tana the lady executioner. I’m not that thing.”

“I am Jal,” he said softly. “Where are you from Tana?”

“Khaim,” I told him, and then I corrected myself. “Lesser Khaim.”

“Ah, Khaim.” He nodded. “I think I remember Khaim when I was just a boy. I was still sitting on my father’s lap when he led the last caravan through. Sometimes I think I remember the start of that journey, or the greater cities of the Jhandparan Empire. I know I remember seeing a great palace that had fallen to earth, tilted, its foundational plane shattered like a plate! And the bramble, it gripped the city like a giant’s fist, it did.”

My grief broke a little, hearing his memories. “You are that old?”

Jal laughed at me. “I am that old. Yes. Hopefully old enough that I’ll die before I lose the title of Roadmaster to the title of Bushmaster, which is what they will call me when even the spice road on this coast becomes choked by damned bramble.”

I looked out on the road, and thought about what came next. “Where do you head?”

“Paika,” the Roadmaster said. “And you will too.”

He said this so firmly, I jerked to stare at him. “What do you mean?”

“The men who delivered you here said you attacked four Paikans on your own. They said you demanded your family back, and fought to the near death. So I have to imagine that a person who did that, would not then turn around and head back where she came from.”

As he spoke, he turned and looked at me with a larger smile.

“I will not be going back to Lesser Khaim,” I agreed.

“The men who brought you to me thought so. Paika is the greatest city in the west, and where your family most probably will be taken. And Paika is a carefully guarded city. You cannot enter without an examination, and papers, and a writ, unless you are like me and have dispensation. The Paikans fear people like you coming in to try and find their families. Yes, a person who attacks four of them would go to Paika with someone like me, who could get you inside, I think.”

I shook my head in frustration. “I didn’t attack all four of the raid… I mean Paikans. The stories are wrong.”

“Of course they are. They’re always wrong. Stories are for the listener, Tana. And it is what the listener makes of them that truly matters. The men who saw you attack the Paikans, they told us they found their courage. If one woman could attack four horsemen, then they could do the same. For two days and two nights they plotted, and then finally… attacked!”

I couldn’t believe what I heard. But it had to be true, didn’t it? Or I wouldn’t be here. “And they succeeded?”

“They killed three of the Paikans and took their gold, their weapons, and their horses. Then one of them rode back to find you, where you were deep in the clutches of bramble sleep.”

“How long,” I asked. Jal waved a hand at me and ignored the question.

“When I saw them outside Mimastiva, they had you on a travois pulled behind a horse. They wanted to ride to Paika as fast as they could, so they gave me gold and a captive Paikan horseman. We will ransom him back to Paika for good coin.”

Up ahead the aurochs plodded forward. The wagon groaned and creaked along.

“How long have I slept?” I asked again, fearing the worst.

“Three weeks, I think. Maybe a month. It could have been far, far worse. You are lucky to be alive.”

I rubbed my arms. Would it be possible to find my family then, after a month? Or would they be scattered to even stranger lands? I bit my lip and looked at Jal. “The stories I have heard say the caravan is an expensive place to ride. Wherever I am, you can’t carry any goods for trade, right? What are you asking for the price of my passage?”

I asked that, while fearing the worse.

“I’m not after your body,” Jal muttered. “The coin and the prisoner your inspired friends gave me is enough. Or we would have left you asleep by the side of the road weeks ago. But you are right: no one in the caravan lies around. Well, unless they’re in a bramble sleep. I will move you to another wagon, and you will work. Everyone in the caravan helps the caravan. That is our way.”

I was relieved. “In Lesser Khaim I…”

Jal held up a hand to stop me. “Our needs are different than a town’s. I don’t care what you used to do. The caravan is a new life for you, until we reach Paika. Anezka says we need cooks in the lagging wagons to the rear. Or firewood scroungers. We need hagglers and movers with the trading teams, inventory managers to make sure nothing is being stolen…”

Now it was my time to interrupt. I thought about my fight with the raiders, and about the future I was reaching for. I was in a strange new land, and as Jal said, starting a new life.

I pointed at the wagon ahead of the fire crew. “Those men, with the arquebuses. Let me join them. I want to learn how to use those weapons. In Khaim there are just a handful of those old weapons, left over from the lords that once vacationed there, before the fall of Jhandpara. And here you have a team armed with them, it is very impressive.”

Jal made a face. “Impressive? The magisters of Jhandpara would call down rocks from the skies and fly over their enemies to rain fire on them.
That
was impressive. These things are just loud tubes.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, no, I suppose you are right. The arquebus would be an interesting weapon for a lady…” and I could see the word ‘executioner’ lurk behind his lips, but then falter as I stared coolly at him. “Tana, to wield,” he finished saying.

I looked at the road curving off into my future, filled with ruts and ropes of bramble. “Jal. The caravan goes all the way to Paika, then back to Mimastiva. You trade with them?”

“Of course. I am a man of trade,” the Roadmaster said. “I work with anyone willing to pay a fair price for my goods, and leave me to the spice road. But my allegiance is to no one city. Most of us abandon such loyalties after years on the road, as cities rise and fall, come and go. Many of the families on the caravan have always been in the caravan, and will never rest until they reach the halls of Sisinak, if Borzai wills it and your life’s trades have been judged honest. It is only there they will rest in the oasis markets, where the goods are never scarce, and the gold in your purse refills every night.” Jal chuckled.

“So you are no friend of the… Paikans.” I still had to hunt to use the right word. They had always just been known as ‘raiders’ to us in the north.

“I am no one’s
friend
, I am a trader,” Jal said. “If you doubt me, go see the Paikan chained away in our wagon. He will remain there until we get to Paika, and I negotiate a good price for his freedom.”

“I may well do that,” I said.

Jal raised his hands and clapped them together. “So. You want to use an arquebus. I will humor you. Bojdan!
Come here.”

One of the warriors looked back at us, set his arquebus down, then swung over the shields to drop to the road. He waited for the Roadmaster’s wagon to approach, then climbed easily up onto the deck and walked up to us. “Yes?”