Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (6 page)

“For the last time—we don’t
belong
to anybody,” Jiren
said. “We came here as free men, and we plan on staying that way.”

Oale made a low gurgling sound. It took Raith a moment to
become aware that he was laughing. “No
lathcu
is a free man unless the
master-king wills it. Please forgive.
Lathcui
do not often wander the
city alone and unchained.”

“So we’ve heard,” said Derrow. “As it happens, the
master-king has allowed us our freedom… even
he
knows it’s useless to
put us in chains.”

Oale gave a slow nod and glanced at the remains of his whip.
“I know this also. So I tell you what I do. I let this be…” He grunted,
searching for the word. “Eh… mistake. Misunderstand. I let you go now and I let
woman go, and we forget all this thing.” He waved a hand.

Raith was grateful, if suspicious, that Oale had decided not
to alert the master-king of their interference. Best make their exit now that
the situation had been diffused. “Jiren. Derrow. Let’s leave this man to his
business so we can attend to ours,” he suggested. “We apologize for the
trouble.”

The two younger men followed Raith reluctantly as he exited
the tent, leaving Oale and the woman alone inside again.

“What was that all about?” Derrow asked, when they’d started
back toward the city’s chiseled mountainside wall. “Why did you apologize? You
backed down from that dope like what he was doing was our fault.”

“He’s hiding something,” Raith said without breaking his
stride.

“What?”

“You saw how his mood changed when he realized we weren’t
slaves. There’s more to that situation than he wants anyone to know, and I
think it’s best if we stay out of it. He claimed that woman was his slave, yet
I didn’t see or hear any chains in that tent. Did you?”

Derrow shook his head.

“As much as I admire your eagerness to do the brave thing and
save a person in distress, we can’t afford to make trouble of any kind. This is
a different world from our own, and you’d both do well to remember that Ros’s
life is at stake. Our actions have a direct consequence on Tycho Montari’s
treatment of him, and the second we cross that line, we might as well be
putting the knife to his throat ourselves.”

Neither Jiren nor Derrow raised an objection. The rest of the
walk back they remained as silent as they’d been on the way down.

Breakfast was on by the time they returned to Sig’s
household. There was a thick, salty smell in the air, and the others were
already seated around the long dining table before a decadent spread. There
were strips of fried meat ribboned with fat, simple round thinbreads, bowls of
seasoned rice, pungent cheeses, and plates of something soft and pillowy that
looked like cooked eggs.

“Where’ve you been?” asked Ernost Bilschkin, the question
laced with his typical note of worry.

“Just out for a walk,” Derrow said, slipping into an empty
chair.

“We were about to go out and look for you,” said Mercer
Terblanche, a sturdy bull of a hunter whose normally close-cropped hair had
grown out to a shag since they’d left home.

“No need for that,” Raith said.

“We wanted to get some air before the streets started filling
up with people. Figured we’d stay out of trouble that way,” said Jiren.

“And did you?” asked Ernost.

Jiren cut his eyes at Raith. “Any trouble would’ve been
better than the way it smelled in here last night.”

The men laughed, and Raith breathed a sigh.

Sig joined them at the table a few minutes later, dressed for
the day and looking all the more displeased for it. He sat at the head of the
table and scanned the others before his eyes settled on Raith. “You all look
like a pack of starving dogs. Come, eat. Do not leave this here for me. Can you
not see what I will do with it?” He patted his belly, then began to pluck
various items from the serving bowls and drop them onto his plate, working his
jaw as if putting a great deal of thought into the effort. His wife Shonnie set
a wooden mug beside his plate and kissed him on the forehead.

The Sons of Decylum helped themselves, taking deep breaths to
make room before refilling their plates with a modicum of reluctance. Raith
could not identify every dish on the table, but he was too hungry to care much
for what it was, and it all tasted good. The others asked him which route he
and the younger men had taken on their walk, where they had gone, and what
they’d seen. Raith let Jiren and Derrow do most of the talking.

At times, Raith found himself running his fingers over the
rough-hewn tabletop, staring off into space and letting the sounds of clinking
tableware and muttered conversation swell to an indiscernible hum around him.
He was not a daydreamer, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his dream; about
Myriad and the two gargantuan statues. The dream had troubled him, perhaps more
than it should have.
Dreams mean nothing
, he told himself.
This one
was no exception. Mere anomaly, drawn from the deceits of my own imagination
.

He hadn’t dreamed about Myriad in years. His only memories of
her resided in brief glimpses he seemed to recall at odd moments, or in the
whispers of the council chamber, or in the passage of Decylum’s collective
mythology from one generation to the next. Myriad was a fable; that was all. A
lost tale whose aroma was stronger than its substance.

Presently the room fell silent. Raith did not realize why
until he tore himself from his thoughts and looked around. Everyone at the
table was staring past him, down the hallway toward the home’s entrance.
Someone had come into the open doorway of Sig’s house and was addressing one of
his servants in the antechamber. The servant came into the room to fetch Sig,
who stood up from the table and followed him out.

Sig returned a moment later with a look of suppressed
happiness on his face. “A rider has come from the steel city. They have found
your brothers.”

Jiren shot up from his chair amid murmurs of delight. “Which
ones? Who? How many of them?”

“He did not say. Only that there are
yarun merouil
with Diarmid Kailendi at the factory camp in…
Belmond
.” Sig formed the
word with an effort.

“Are they on their way here?”

Sig shook his head. “They remain in the steel city until the
master-king sends his orders.”

Raith dropped his fold of thinbread onto his plate, where it
flopped open and sent bits of cheese and meat scattering. The news of any one
of Decylum’s sons being found alive would’ve been enough to excite him, but his
heart leapt to think Hastle might be among the survivors. “I would speak to the
messenger who brought you this news. Is he still here?”

Sig shook his head again. “He returns to the master-king’s
luchair
.”

Raith stood. “We can’t let the master-king send word back to
Belmond before we talk to him.” He looked at Derrow, then at Jiren. “We need to
request an audience with Tycho Montari. Now.”

CHAPTER 6

The Goatskin Record

When Lethari woke, his wife was sleeping next to him.
He had gone to bed late and hadn’t heard Frayla slip into bed beside him, so
lost in his dreams he might’ve slept through a windstorm. He decided not to
rouse her. He would wait in his den until she woke, then tell her what Amhaziel
had shown him and what he had decided to do.
We will not leave this
household, neither one of us, until I have made clear my intentions
, he
promised himself.

He stole away and breakfasted alone in his great hall,
sitting in his high-backed ironwood chair at the heavy sandstone table which
embellished the cavernous room like an altar. When he excused himself, he left
a great deal of uneaten food on his painted clay plate; his travels had
acclimated him to slimmer rations, and the servants at home always prepared far
too much. He supposed that was because they liked eating the leftovers, but he
did not mind. And they had nothing to worry about on that score, as long as
Frayla never found out.

Before retiring to his chambers for his morning rituals,
Lethari told Oisen to send Frayla to him after she had eaten. Once inside,
Lethari removed the cloth bandages Amhaziel had lain over his new sigil and
cleansed it with fresh water. He winced at the pain, but was pleased to see the
progress the scarring had already made. A pair of sharp horns rose above the
gentle curve of a snout that swept over his skin like a wave.
A creature,
both beast and man
. The cuts were perfect; in a few weeks, the healed flaw
would make a fine addition to the others.

Lethari spent the rest of the morning doing all the things a
great warleader did while no one else was watching. He cut his hair and shaved
his face. He hummed a little tune he knew and had heard in the market upon his
return to the city. He exercised. He practiced his forms with one of the spare
scimitars he kept in his den. The scimitar he usually carried,
Tosgaith
,
with its golden lizard’s-head pommel and two emeralds for eyes, had been
severed by one of
yarun merouil
at the factory camp in the steel city.
Lethari had commissioned the sword many years ago from Cairmag Charani, one of
the great smiths who lived just outside Sai Calgoar. Today,
Tosgaith
was
back in Cairmag’s forge, being remade.

When there came a knock at his chamber door, Lethari thrilled
to think Frayla had woken. But it was only Oisen, coming to alert him that the
undertaker had returned with the
lathcu
’s corpse. Lethari commanded them
to bring Daxin’s body into his den. They left the simple wooden casket—a
slave’s casket, reserved for the lowliest of
lathcui
—on the floor for
lack of a better platform, along with the burlap bag containing Daxin’s clothing
and personal effects.

Lethari was far from superstitious about housing the body,
and he was not bothered about those who would renounce him for taking such care
over a dead pale-skin; he simply wanted to return Daxin Glaive to his hometown.
He owed Daxin’s family that much. To do that, Lethari would need Tycho
Montari’s leave to go to Bradsleigh instead of accompanying him to the hidden
sands. And with Diarmid Kailendi, Lethari’s second-in-command, still in the
steel city, the master-king would have to rely on one of Lethari’s lesser
warleaders to take him there.

Changing Tycho Montari’s mind about anything would be a feat.
Changing his mind about this, Lethari knew, would be impossible without the
intervention of the fates. Lethari trusted the visions Amhaziel had shown him,
however, and he did not think the fates would abandon him on the eve of his
greatest triumph.

Lethari removed the lid and stared down into the casket,
studying the grim countenance of the man who had for so many long years been his
friend and ally among the
lathcui
. Daxin Glaive’s face was dry and
sallow, his skin smooth and pale. At Lethari’s request, the embalmers had
dressed him in the traditional clothing of the
calgoarethi
: a
loose-fitting outfit of thin white linen that covered him from neck to ankle.
Despite the corpse’s clean appearance, there was a cold chemical smell masking
the stench of decay, like flowers over fertilizer. The smell made Lethari’s
eyes water, but he ignored this as he paid his last respects.
Rest you now,
my dear friend. If the fates will it, I will see you safely home before you
travel into the beyond
.

Lifting the burlap sack filled with Daxin’s things, Lethari
dumped it onto the floor. Leathers, cookpots, tools, blankets, weapons, and
various knickknacks flopped and rolled out—all the comforts a pale-skin needed
to survive on the wastes.
You had all this with you, and yet the most
valuable of your treasures was laid up in your mind
, Lethari mused,
thinking of the goatskin record.

He opened the drawer on his sideboard to make sure the
goatskin was still where he had left it. A sudden wave of dread fell over him.
He was not sure why, since he, his wife, and his father were the only souls who
knew of its existence. There it lay, rolled up and safe, a goat’s pelt covered
in coarse brown hair.

There was no denying it: in all his years of service to the
king, Lethari had never possessed an object of such great importance. Daxin
Glaive had given him records like this before, but this one was the most
detailed. And it would be the last. This was where the future of the pale-skin
trading company rested. But there was only so much time before that future
moved into the present and the record became obsolete. When the schedule
expired, so too would Lethari’s opportunity to know the enemy’s movements down
to the last detail.

There was another knock at the door. Lethari slid the drawer
closed and stood with his back to the sideboard, rallying himself for the
delicate discussion he was prepared to have with his wife.
This time it must
be her
, he predicted, calling for the person outside to enter. But it
wasn’t. It was only Oisen again.

The steward poked his head into the room. “A messenger is
here, my master. He brings word from the master-king’s
luchair
.”

“Give me a moment,” Lethari said, his heart sinking. He
looked around at the mess on the floor. “On second thought, I will come out to
meet him.”

Oisen glanced at the scattered assortment of Daxin Glaive’s
possessions, then at the open casket behind them. The steward’s nose wrinkled
for the briefest of moments before he nodded and shut the door.

Lethari met the messenger in the foyer a moment later. When
he came in, the young man was flushed red in the face, still breathing hard
after his long run up from the city’s lowest level.

“Come, sit. Give yourself time to breathe,” Lethari said,
inviting him into the lavishly cushioned front room.

The young man shook his head, still trying to catch his
breath. “I have a long run back, and my message is short. Tycho Montari demands
your presence in his hall.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now. There is not time to delay.
Freagh?
” This
word was the short-form for ‘
reply
,’ a term the messengers often used to
mean, ‘
Do you have word you wish to send back?
’

Lethari was despondent. He had meant to speak to Frayla
before the day’s responsibilities got away with him. Now he was regretting that
he had not woken her sooner. “What is this about?”

“He does not say, my liege.”

“When you left the palace, was the king alone?”

The messenger hesitated, thinking. “There were men at his
throne. Slaves. No—
lathcui
, but not slaves.”

Yarun merouil, no doubt
, Lethari surmised. “Tell him I
will be there.”

The messenger bowed and vanished into the daylight. Lethari
withdrew to his wardrobe, where he donned his out-of-doors clothing and gear.
Returning to his den, he stood at the sideboard for a long moment, his hand
hovering over the drawer.
If I do not bring it with me, I cannot change my
decision
. He opened the drawer and picked up the goatskin, sliding it into
his satchel.

“Oisen, I must go,” he said on his way out. “Tell Frayla not
to leave the household under any circumstance until my return. There is a
matter about which I must speak with her.”

“Yes, my master.”

Lethari did not hurry to the master-king’s
luchair
. He
never hurried without good cause.
To run is to show fear. A predator who
chases his prey is afraid of losing it
.

The citizens of Sai Calgoar crowded the terraces as Lethari
made his way down the hewn sidewall of the great tiered city. He passed both
friend and stranger, though even the strangers knew him when they saw the
extent of his flaws. The scars roaming his skin were the mark of a noble
warrior, and many bowed their heads or touched their palms together in respect
to him as he passed.

Though Lethari basked in the attention, he did not
reciprocate their gestures. It was quite a thing to be admired, but he would
not lower himself by acknowledging the meek. He strode on, never slowing to
avoid a collision or turning his shoulder to slip through a gap. He was of a
substance to be yielded to, and that was what the people did. Whenever they
didn’t, he crashed through with shoulders wide and sent them spinning off
kilter to learn their lesson for the next time.

The light-star was past its peak, the tips of afternoon
shadows creeping across doorways and rooftops, by the time Lethari arrived at
the king’s
luchair
. It was as the guards were ushering him inside that
Lethari realized he had forgotten to close Daxin Glaive’s casket before he left
his den. He brushed the thought aside as he strode down the Hall of Kings and
entered Tycho Montari’s throne room. He was not at all surprised to find
Raithur Entradi and the two younger
yarun merouil
standing before the
high seat.
I knew this summons had something to do with them
, he
thought. Lethari came to a halt on the near side of the room and cut his eyes
at Raithur, who nodded in greeting.

Jiren, the youngest of the three and the man who had severed
Lethari’s sword in Belmond, waved to him and smiled. Lethari frowned and looked
away to where the king was draped across the sandstone throne in his usual
posture of apathy.

“You are slowing with your age,” said Tycho Montari, his
voice echoing loudly through the chamber.

“The affairs of my household do not easily suffer interruption,”
Lethari said.

The master-king gave him an amused look. When he spoke, there
was a mocking tone in his voice. “Many regrets,
Maigh
Prokin. No one has
informed me this day that the affairs of a servant take precedence over those
of his master. Has not the woman of your household seen to her duties in your
absence?”

“She has, my—”

“No matter,” the king interrupted. “You have made clear your
position. You have held your own command for some time now; far be it from me
to break you of your self-reliance. I summoned you, and you came… perhaps I
should not have expected better than that.”

Lethari Prokin had endured more than his fair share of the
master-king’s beratement. As his father had told him many times, serving a king
was not about fairness. “I have come to do my master’s bidding,” Lethari said,
bowing. “What would you have of me, my king?”

“These pale-skins claim they do not know the way to their
home,” said the king. “This place of the hidden sands is hidden even to them,
it would seem.” He gave a derisive laugh. “This morning, there came a rider
from the steel city. Diarmid Kailendi has found brothers of Raithur Entradi and
his people. Not many; only a few.
Yarun merouil
have petitioned me to
release them into your oversight for the return journey. You will bring them to
the steel city and return them to me when they have discovered a means of
finding their home. Then we will all go there together.”

Lethari thought again of the casket, and the body inside. The
destruction of the pale-skin traders had not been Daxin Glaive’s only dying
wish. He had asked Lethari to do him one other favor as well. Lethari had seen
Amhaziel’s visions, and he had no doubt that fulfilling Daxin’s wishes was his
destined path. “I cannot take them to the steel city,” Lethari said. “A trusted
friend of mine has died, and I would see him buried.”

“Bury him, then. What is that to the task I have given you?”

Lethari scanned the room, noticing the master-king’s guards
and advisers more readily than before. He tried not to dwell on what they would
think. “He is a pale-skin of the southlands. I would see him to his home… to be
buried.”

Tycho laughed. “You have no time for that. Burial in the sky
is a more distinguished honor than any pale-skin deserves.”

“His body has already been prepared for travel, and for
burial in the ground. The sky will not do. His flesh would remain for many days
and nights, poisoning the scavengers.”

“Let the vultures get aches in their stomachs,” said Tycho
Montari. “You do not delay your master’s plans for the sake of a slave-mongrel
not worth the sand that would cover him.”

Lethari raised his voice. “This is Daxin Glaive—the man who
twice gave us the record of the pale-skin traders. Whose counsel has given
your
warleaders power over the merchants of the Black City and their wealth. Daxin
Glaive was a
lathcu
, yes, but a
lathcu
you have come to know by
name, if not by sight. He is dead, and his memory deserves our reverence.”

The master-king straightened. “This is the man you speak of?
He has come to my city?”

“He came… and he died.”

“Did he bring new secrets of the pale-skin traders?” asked
Tycho Montari, gazing intently. He leaned forward, searching Lethari’s eyes for
an answer.