The Lascar's Dagger (6 page)

And pushed him.

He toppled, falling backwards, arms flailing in vain. He fell hard, his skull cracking on a step. Momentum carried his unconscious body downwards, banging his head on every tread. She glimpsed the appalled look on Hilmard’s upturned face. Whirling, she fled to her room without waiting to see what happened.

Temporarily safe inside, she barred the door and pushed a chest across it. Anything to buy a little time. Panting in reaction, she dragged in deep shuddering breaths. She was shaking so badly she could barely move.

I’ve killed him.

Maybe he didn’t die.

She didn’t know which was worse.

Either way, she had to escape or she’d be gibbet bait. She looked across the dark room to the window, where a twig from the oak outside scratched at the glass in the wind, beckoning her.
A summons,
she decided, her thoughts wild in her fear. When she opened the casement, the muted whisper of leaves swelled to a rustling song.

I am Shenat. In the name of oak and acorn, I beg forgiveness and mercy
…

She climbed on to the window ledge and reached for the nearest branch.

“L
et me see if I have the story straight.” The Pontifect’s drawl was heavy with sarcasm. “In spite of your promises, you chose to indulge in a brawl under the noses of Lowmeer’s most powerful and richest men, endangering your mission and risking scandal to this office.”

“It wasn’t exactly my
choice
, your reverence.”

“It never is.”

“I do try—” he began mildly.

She cut him short with a sound best described as a derisive snort. She was famous for them.

Her birth name was Fritillary, after a pretty, fragile-winged butterfly, but Pontifect Reedling was neither fragile nor pretty. She stood taller than most men, with a build to match. Invariably dressed in the dull green robes of her office, she wore her iron-grey hair caught up in a net snood at her neck designed for convenience rather than beauty, and her lined face was always devoid of paints or powders. Most people, taking their cue from her hair and wrinkles, guessed her to be about sixty years old; Saker was not so sure. She moved with the supple ease of a much younger woman, and the backs of her hands were smooth, unmarked by age.

“I do my best,” he said, attempting to stare her down. Tough, when she was taller than he was. Not for the first time he wondered if her intimidating height had anything to do with how she’d ended up elected as the Pontifect of Va-Faith, with authority over all its primes, arbiters, witans, seminarians and prelates, right down to the humble shrine-keepers throughout the Va-cherished Hemisphere – especially as she’d not had a promising beginning. She’d been born to a poor farming family scratching out a living in the Shenat Hills, just as he had been.

“Let me make one thing quite clear, witan,” she said. “Maintaining balance in the Pontificate’s relationship with Lowmeer and Ardrone, and between their Way of the Flow and our Way of the Oak, is a matter for the most delicate diplomacy. In spite of being Shenat and Ardronese, I must be seen to be utterly neutral in purely political matters. Yet by your own admission, you wore our clerical oak medallion on a spying mission in Lowmeer – and allowed Kesleer’s son to see it!”

She was pacing the room like a caged wildcat, spinning on her heel every so often to fix him with an icy stare. He might have known she’d worm that slip of his out of him. She always homed in on the very thing he was trying to hide.

I swear she reads my mind.

“Your reverence, I
do
know it would cause trouble if Regal Vilmar thought you sent Ardronese witan spies to check up on his merchants. He would consider it a deliberate insult to both his person and to the sovereignty of the Basalt Throne. The medallion was a careless mistake on my part.”

“Keeping the unity between the duality of the Ways is like walking a thin crust of ice over a frozen lake,” she said, “and you nearly put your foot through the surface. It is particularly difficult for me because I’m Shenat.”

He knew she was right. The Way of the Oak had begun in the Shenat Hills, where the first shrines had been erected to the unseen guardians of forests and oaks and fields. Shenat witans had taken these beliefs to Lowmeer, where Lowmians had adapted them into the Way of the Flow, proclaiming this to be the purer form. There had even been several wars fought over the matter.

Centuries later, a much-blessed witan from Vavala – after receiving divine revelations – unified the two Ways under the umbrella of the one true god, Va the Creator, but the unification had always been an uneasy one. To keep the peace, pontifects were usually elected from clerics of the Innerlands, where shrines followed an eclectic mix of the two Ways. Fritillary Reedling was an exception.

With an exasperated sigh, she waved her hand towards her work table. “Sit down, sit down. Here’s hoping the Kesleer boy kept his mouth shut after you left.” She took the chair opposite him, her gaze fixed on his. “Explain about the lascar.”

“Lascars come to Ardronese ports from time to time, as crewmen on ships from Karradar, but they’re not common in Lowmeer. I asked around and found out there’d been one on board the
Spice Dragon
. A young man called Ardhi. I suspect my lascar was that man. The description fitted him.”

“And now the poor fellow is dead.”

“I … well, yes.”
Perhaps.
Something in the account of his death bothered him, and he hadn’t put his finger on it yet.

“Let’s move on to this meeting of traders. Why would Kesleer want to cooperate with his business rivals?”

“The fluyt he mentioned is a new design of ship, suitable for large cargoes and long journeys. I think this meeting was about raising more capital for shipbuilding.”

“Between rival trading companies?” She pondered that. “Just possible, I suppose. Shipbuilding is an expensive business. But then, would Regal Vilmar allow such an alliance? He raises money selling separate trading licences to all the different companies.”

“What if they cut him a percentage and sweetened the deal with a costly present?”

Once again she paused to consider, then said slowly, “The Regal
is
indeed a jackdaw hoarding pretty things, as Kesleer said. Vilmar Vollendorn loves baubles, especially ones no one else has. He’s a vain and acquisitive ruler. But there’s no value in feathers.”

“I think they were just the soft packing for something breakable.”
And of course the gold feather-like strands in the dagger were something else entirely.

“So, something precious,” she was saying, “intended to buy the Regal’s support, was packed in feathers inside the – what did you call it? Bambu? And you saw the lascar steal it. So this valuable gift is now at the bottom of a port waterway, or floating out of the Ardmeer estuary on the tide?”

“I suspect Kesleer still has whatever was inside, and the lascar took the bambu not realising it was empty.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What could be so valuable that Kesleer thought it would buy the Regal’s support for a trade monopoly?” She tapped his written report, now on the table next to the sample of spices he’d stolen.

“A new spice is possible, I suppose,” he said. “Something with curative powers? Kesleer made some remark about Ardronese court women clamouring for something only Lowmeer would be able to supply. But a new spice doesn’t fit with the idea of baubles and pretty things.”

“Pity you didn’t hear more of the conversation.”

“At the time, I was rather more worried about my skin. Per your previous instructions, of course.”

Her eyes narrowed still further to indicate she was not amused. “What was the lascar doing in the warehouse?”

“Stealing,” he said promptly. “Obvious, surely.”

“I’m not so sure. Assuming he was this Ardhi from the
Spice Dragon
, he’d just been paid. Why would he steal?”

“Greed?”

She made an exasperated sound in her throat. “Put yourself in this sailor’s britches.” She stood to walk over to the window. With her back to him as she gazed out, she asked softly, “What sort of a man sails halfway around the world, under the command of people he doesn’t know, with men who speak a different tongue and follow a different faith, to arrive at a destination unknown to him?”

“A madman? A slave?”

She was silent, her back an eloquent rebuttal of his flippancy. “An adventurer,” he suggested, serious this time.

“I would have thought the word ‘hero’ might be closer to the truth. Or at least a very
brave
man.”

Pickle it, she was right. The man had indeed been brave. “Someone passionately in search of something. Enlightenment. Knowledge. Something precious to him.” At last he saw what she was ferreting out. “Ah. A man who thinks he’s been robbed of something precious.”

“Exactly. Perhaps he came to take back what had been stolen from him by Lowmian traders. Whatever was inside the bambu.” Her next words were said so quietly, he had to strain to hear them. “This spice trade will not be good for any of us.”

“You fear Lowmeer ascendancy.”

“Yes, but not because I’m Ardronese.”

“I never thought that was your motive,” he said hastily. “An overly rich and arrogant Lowmeer will mean a fearful Ardrone, and that’s a volatile combination that could lead to yet another war.”

“Possibly, but not even war motivates my concern. There are deeper evils in Lowmeer than that, and they may be exacerbated by an excess of trade wealth.”

The tremor in her voice took him by surprise.
Fear?
The Pontifect was
frightened
? No, he must be mistaken. Nothing scared Fritillary Reedling.

“Tell me,” she said, “did anything odd catch your interest while you were in Lowmeer? Anything that seemed unusual?”

His hand dropped to his knife sheath, where he now kept the lascar’s dagger, intending to show it to her. He had tried to rid himself of it. He’d tried to leave it behind in the cloister. Later, he’d offered it to an itinerant knife-grinder he’d passed on the street, then he’d attempted to sell it to a blacksmith. Each time, at the last moment, he’d been unable to follow through the intention.

Now his fingers spasmed when he touched the handle, refusing to clasp it. He opened his mouth to tell her about it, but couldn’t form the words. And he couldn’t move his hand. A moment later, he was struggling to remember what he’d been about to say.

When he hesitated, his thoughts scrambling after something just out of reach, she added, “No matter how uncanny or inexplicable it may have seemed at the time?”

For a moment he saw again the way the lascar had smiled just before he’d thrown the dagger. Not a smile of malicious intent, or of enmity, but of … hope. The act of throwing the knife hadn’t been an attempt to divert attention, and the lascar was more than just a tar; he saw that now.

Once again he opened his mouth to tell her, but couldn’t remember the words.

He choked, stammering, then thought,
Oh well, it couldn’t have been important,
and relaxed. He said instead, “There’s the Horned Death. I’d heard of it before, vaguely, but this time I
saw
it. A man died in front of me, speaking of A’Va.”

“Oh? And what were your thoughts?” She came back to her chair and sat.

“You know the victims grow horns? Reverence, they
change
. They look more like animals – and not particularly
nice
animals, either. It was … horrible. Inhuman. Insane.”

“I’ve had it described to me.”

“One other odd thing. Twice people mentioned twins to me when talking about the Horned Death, hinting they were somehow to blame for the plague. Which seemed … weird, as well as ridiculous. I’ve been thinking about it and I recall Lowmian myths about twins being evil. They called them ‘devil-kin’ in the past, didn’t they?”

“Superstitions are tenacious things. I suppose any plague is so horrible that people feel it must have an origin outside of Va-Faith. Then of course, if A’Va the anti-Va exists, he must have his minions. Devil-kin, or whatever name one wants to bestow on them. Although I’ve no idea why they settled on twins to fill that role and I’m glad the rest of us had more sense. Anyway, no need to concern yourself about Lowmian twins. It’s just silly superstition.”

The back of his neck prickled. She was hiding something, and he decided to challenge her secrecy. “Scuffing leaves across a trail doesn’t eradicate the scent of prey. What’s worrying you? What’s wrong in Lowmeer?”

For a moment he thought she might avoid answering, but after a short pause, she said, “I don’t truly know. Something the Regal himself knows about and yet conceals. The Horned Death, twins, the Regal’s men – there is a link.”

“Do you want me to go back to Lowmeer and investigate?” Even as he asked the question, he remembered the death cart and had to stifle a shudder.

“No.” There was no hesitation in her answer, no hint that his return was negotiable. “I have others there working on this and I have other plans for you. I’m sending you to Ardrone. Specifically, to King Edwayn’s court in Throssel. Of course, if you hear of any outbreaks of Horned Death in Ardrone, I want to know about it, but I don’t expect that. So far, Ardrone has been spared.”

Saker blinked, taken aback. In his mind’s eye he remembered the misty, ethereal beauty of the vales of the Shenat Hills where he’d grown up. But the
court
? He suppressed a desire to sigh. Too much stone and too little forest or field. Besides, he’d have to behave himself.

Protocol. I
hate
protocol
.

She continued, “King Edwayn has asked for a spiritual tutor for Prince Ryce and the Princess, Lady Mathilda.”

“Oh?”

“So I’m sending you.”

He gaped at her, now completely thrown. “Me? A
spiritual
tutor? To the King’s children?”

“And now you’re going to tell me you’re more oak-shrine inclined, so you’ll make a dreadful adviser to palace-dwelling, chapel-attending young who’ve never set foot in a shrine.”