Isles of the Forsaken (19 page)

“I knew him,” Dorn said. With surprising quickness for such a large man, he stood up and held out his arm as if to touch hands. Harg reached out, then saw that where Dorn’s left hand should have been was only a stump. Dorn held up the truncated arm, smiling grimly. “I owe this to your father.”

There was a long, tense silence. It was Holby Dorn who broke it at last, with a low, grating chuckle. “By the root, I never want to meet his like again. When his boat went down I figured the Mundua must love me. I never knew he had a son.”

Harg’s voice was low and controlled. “Then maybe you can tell me something about the . . . accident that killed him.” There was a persistent rumour on Yora that it had been no accident.

Dorn eyed him keenly, combing his wiry beard with his good hand. At last he shook his head. “No, I don’t remember. It was too long ago.”

Some of Dorn’s men shifted, and one cleared his throat.

“What’s your business here?” Dorn broke the silence roughly.

Torr jumped in. “I brought him, Dorn. We were talking on Yora, and he has information you need to know.”

“Information, eh?” Dorn looked at Harg. “I hope it’s not ‘The Innings are coming.’” He said it in a mincing falsetto. “I’m sick of hearing that.”

Harg crossed his arms. “That doesn’t make it less true. And when the Native Navy arrives from Fluminos, your little boats and pop-guns are going to be so much flotsam, unless you start planning now.”

“Stop, you’re scaring me,” Dorn said mockingly.

“You don’t know what you’re up against,” Harg said. “It takes different tactics to fight them. You need to listen to some of these guys who know how Innings think.”

“So what do you bring us?” Dorn demanded. “You have a boat and crew?”

Taken aback, Harg said, “No.”

“You have money? Guns?”

“No.”

“Then what do you expect us to do? Split our profits because of your name?”

“I’m not here for profits,” Harg said. “I’m here . . .” He stopped, uncertain why he
was
here. Then, words he had been swallowing for days started coming into his mouth of their own accord. “Because I realized that if no one stands up and tells the Innings they’ve got to respect us, they’re going to trample us down and shove us aside while they help themselves to our islands. They don’t respect us, they don’t respect the Grey Folk, they don’t respect anything but power and profit. I lived for seven years in their world, and I don’t want to any more. So
that’s
why I’m here.”

Dorn’s men were all staring at him, and he realized he had spoken with some passion. The pirate was frowning, first at him, and then at the people behind him. Softly, he said, “Big brave words out of a little man. But the fact is, you’ve got nothing but words to offer. Bring me a boat, and I’ll talk to you. Till then, I don’t want to hear your name again.”

Before Harg could react, Dorn shifted his gaze. “On the other hand,
you
are welcome, Grey Lady. If you’d like us to get rid of him for you, we will.”

It was only then Harg realized that Spaeth was standing at his side. She was facing the menacing men before them without the slightest fear.

“You ought to listen to him,” she said, her voice cutting cleanly through all the rivalry and bravado. “It’s the Innings who are the enemy. They are coming here to ban dhota and spread their law-power where mora used to be. You don’t know how dangerous they are. The balances are cracking, and you are quarrelling amongst yourselves.”

No one spoke. Harg felt a cold premonition, as if it weren’t just Spaeth beside him, but someone else, someone ancient as Alta. The thought made him queasy. He wanted nothing to do with such matters.

But then she looked at him, and it was Spaeth again, all of Goth’s dreams made human. He took her hand. “Come on, let’s go,” he said quietly. He had nothing more to say to the pirates of Thimish.

He led the way out. Barko, Torr, and the others followed, grim-faced. When they emerged into the tap room, Harg headed for the door, but before he could get there a voice called out behind them, saying, “Stop! Wait!”

It was Calpe. She had followed them from the back room, and now pushed through the crowd to catch up. She faced Harg with a searching, intense look. “He can’t order you out of here like that,” she said. “This isn’t his place; it’s mine, and I want you to stay. There’s a room upstairs where you can talk, all of you. I’ll send up some food. Don’t worry, it’s on the house.”

“That’s mighty nice of you, Calpe,” Torr said.

Calpe looked at Spaeth. “This isn’t a good place for you, Grey Lady. I know a dhotamar in town who could take you in. Would you like to go there?”

“A Lashnura?” Spaeth asked, interested.

“Yes. His name is Anit. I’ll take you.”

Wanting Spaeth safe but reluctant to let her go, Harg looked around for Tway. She was already at his side. “I’ll go with her,” she said.

“Thanks, Tway.” He was still holding Spaeth’s hand. He forced himself to let go. “Be careful,” he warned. Spaeth had been perfectly magnificent in there, facing down Holby Dorn, but far too incautious. Her sense of invulnerability could get her in trouble.

Calpe gave a piercing whistle, and a man came out from behind the bar, drying his hands on a towel. Calpe gave him a series of curt orders, and he nodded, glancing curiously at Harg. Then she said, “Follow Noll,” and turned to shepherd Spaeth and Tway toward the door.

*

For Spaeth, leaving the Green Lantern was like escaping a furnace. She had not realized how the presence of so many uncured souls had overtaxed her senses till she breathed in the cool night air outside. She stood, gratefully relaxing her mind, as Calpe gave some instructions to the burly man by the doorway.

She felt much farther than a day’s journey from Yora. From her first glance of Thimish’s pine-covered hills, she had known it would not be a friendly island. It eyed her from under its cloak of forest, old and crafty, wearing Harbourdown like a tawdry bangle. She remembered how Mother Tish had always said that people were not meant to go from island to island, because they might get tricked into trusting one that wasn’t theirs.

Coming to the Green Lantern had been repellent and mesmerizing. She had never encountered so many people in various sorts of pain, psychic and physical. They were damaged in ways she had never seen, and could barely understand. She had felt the tantalizing tug of it from all sides. It was like smelling a hundred spices competing for her attention, waking her desires. There was a complexity, a depth of adversity in these people; each one was a landscape of wounds that would take months or years to explore. She could dive into the souls here and never surface.

“Are you all right, Grey Lady?” Calpe asked.

Shaking herself out of the memory, Spaeth said, “Yes.”

The noise of pirate revelry died away behind them as they went down the alley. A gusty wind awakened a hollow rattle of rigging from the moored boats in the harbour. The streets were very dark, and the lantern Calpe carried cast a sickly light. As they began to climb uphill, buildings closed in on either side—silent, crowding shapes of brick and timber.

After a time they reached an open square. Against the northern stars ahead, Spaeth could see the symmetrical outline of the ancient fort that dominated the town. It lay atop a steep ridge of stone, its five bastions spread out like a reaching hand. She could see pinpricks of light where a late caravan climbed the switchback road to the citadel.

Calpe fell back by Spaeth’s side. “That is the Redoubt,” she said. “Perhaps you have heard of it.”

When Spaeth shook her head, Calpe said in a low tone, “It was built in the time when the great lords of Alta ruled. No one knows what use they made of it. Now and then our young men would try to stay the night, but they said it didn’t want them there.”

“It looks inhabited now.”

Calpe nodded darkly. “The Innings stationed soldiers there.”

Spaeth peered up at the ancient pile. “It doesn’t look ruined.”

“It isn’t. The Altans built it in such a way that no piece of it decays. They say the whole thing would shatter into slivers at a single blow well aimed, but until that blow comes, no part of it will break.”

They crossed the square and began to thread their way up a cobbled alley aromatic with trampled spices and rotting fruit. Now the buildings of brick and wood gave way to ponderous stone. The grim, dilapidated masonry still had an air of magnificence; the houses soared three stories, taller than Spaeth had ever seen.

It was strange being near so many people, and yet alone. Beyond each wall, Spaeth could tell, people swarmed like ants: talking, smoking, loving, swearing, dying. Yet outside the boxes of their houses, the street was like a desert.

They stopped at last before a tall, shuttered house with gaping, empty upper windows. A rustling came from a garbage bin across the way. When Calpe rapped vigorously on the door, a cloud of bats issued chittering from the second-story window.

Presently they heard the rattle of bolts being drawn inside, and a tiny crack of light appeared. Calpe raised the lantern to her face, and the woman inside gave an exclamation of alarm.

“He is ill, Calpe!” she said. “He can’t help you tonight.” She tried to close the door, but Calpe’s foot was wedged in the crack.

“It’s your help I want this time, Lorin,” she said.

“Mine? Why? I’m not one of them—”

Calpe drew Spaeth into the lamplight. “We have a new dhotamar,” she said.

The eyes inside the door caught at Spaeth with a look of fearful hope. “Ehir,” the woman breathed. The door fell open, and Calpe pushed Spaeth through.

The room inside was snug and wood panelled. As Lorin lit the lamps, Spaeth caught her breath in wonder. The room was a fantasia of ivory carvings. Ivory fish sported among the rafters, owls perched on the cabinets, lizards lurked behind the spice-jars, mice peeked out from beneath the hearth-broom. A wreath of snow-white holly hung above the fireplace, and by the shuttered window a pot of ivory asters bloomed. The room was crowded with life, frozen into motionless immortality.

“This is the home of Anit the Bonecrafter,” Calpe explained. “He is my bandhota. Lorin is his daughter.”

Now that Lorin stood in the light, Spaeth was surprised to see that she was Adaina. Her brown face was framed with dark, curly hair; her body would have seemed small if she had not been many months pregnant. She greeted Spaeth and Tway with respect, clasping her hands together with the index fingertips touching. “You honour our house, Grey Lady.”

An old man’s voice called out from the next room, and Lorin turned like a shy, wild thing to the doorway. “Calpe has brought us a guest, Father,” she called. “A dhotamar from another isle.”

There was a thump and some shuffling steps, then Anit appeared at the doorway, dressed in his nightshirt and walking with a cane. His grey face was entirely circled with a bush of white hair that hid his ears and chin but left his round cheeks to glow like apples of ivory. “Why Calpe, my dear!” he said, taking her hand and giving her a lingering kiss on the cheek. “Sit down, sit down,” Anit gestured them to some chairs by the fireplace. On the calico cushion of one of them an ivory cat was curled. “Here, don’t sit on Tassie,” Anit warned, and picked the cat up. “We’ll just put her by the window; she loves to look out on the street.” He placed the cat on the windowsill and shuffled back to hang a shining copper teakettle over the fire.

“Some people claim that Anit’s creatures come to life at night, like the statues in the song of Ison Omer,” Calpe said.

“Why,” Anit’s grey eyes twinkled, “don’t they look alive to you now?” Without waiting for an answer, he began to introduce Spaeth and Tway to his menagerie of friends. All of them had names, from the ivory goldfinch perched on a teacup to the ivory beetle under the woodpile.

“Where is Gamin, Anit?” Calpe asked when he seemed to have finished his introductions.

“Why, that Torna trader bought him,” Anit said.

“I hope you made him pay dearly,” Calpe muttered darkly.

The bonecrafter only gave a laugh like apple cider being poured into a glass. “He came here two days since, all eager to dicker his copper pots and fishhooks for my carvings. Imagine!” He ran his finger thoughtfully along the curved back of a leaping fish. “He thought he could buy the wind with a fishhook, and sea-spray with a pail. I let him have what he wanted. He said he would take them off to a fine Inning lady at Fluminos, who would put them in a glass case. It made me sad to think of her and her glass cases. They say the Innings have lost their past, you know. I think that would be a terrible thing.”

For the first time since leaving Yora, Spaeth felt perfectly safe. She laid her head back against the chair cushion, breathing out the collected tension.

“You’ve been out in the town?” Anit said, eyeing her keenly. Spaeth nodded. “It’s hard to go out there,” he said softly. “So many hungry people. If you did all that was needed, you’d have no blood left. I stay close to home these days. We all do; to go out would be tempting madness.”

“Are there many Grey Folk here?” Spaeth asked.

“No, not many; there aren’t many anywhere any more. We’ve lost our taste for keeping the race alive, I think. I know I did. Would you want to bring a child into this world only to inherit the kind of life we lead? It’s a cruelty I could not commit.”

Tway was looking at Lorin, puzzled. “I thought—”

“Ah, but you see her mother was Adaina,” Anit said, taking Lorin’s hand fondly. “The half-Lashnura don’t always inherit the disease, or the gift, or whatever it is.”

Spaeth said, “Goth always said the isles were full of half-Grey children, but they were only born Lashnura if their parents truly wanted it.”

Anit chuckled. “Goth, whoever he was, was only telling half the story. Can you ever say, with perfect certainty, what it is you truly want? Eh?”

The kettle was boiling. Lorin went to the hearth to pour some tea, and Calpe moved silently to Anit’s side. He looked at her with a radiant, doting smile.

“I can’t stay,” she said softly.

Anit shook his head in disappointment. Calpe put her palm on his cheek and turned his head to her, then kissed him slowly, open-mouthed. Their bodies pressed together, a picture of inflamed desire.