In flight from the scene of the eight dead squibbani, they pushed their untas into a canter, and it was no smooth ride. The huskers, even when relieved of half of each wagon’s weight, struggled to keep up. Farisa looked back, from time to time, dreading the sight of a revenge party, but saw only flat desert. Soon enough, they were in Terapic, a scattershot arrangement of beige tents and small wooden buildings dwarfed by the gray mountains around the valley.
Farisa asked, “Is this enough of a town to keep us safe?”
Garet said, “Squibbani aren’t stupid. They’re going to avoid five hundred of us, just as we would avoid five hundred of them.”
“That fight... didn’t have to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“I agree.”
The houses in Terapic were made from dried-out junk wood, with scraps of husker leather as roofing. The market sold only carp; the only furnishings in public view were the sebus-fur doormats of the larger houses.
They had paid for their spot in a campground—they wouldn’t be staying here for more than one night—and were settling in when Mazie said to Farisa, “There’s got to be something interesting here. Up for a walk around town?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Farisa said.
The sun wouldn’t set for an hour, and it would be good to reassure herself that this town, gated at both ends of the valley but with uncertain and mostly barriers, could defend itself should the squibbani return.
It hadn’t taken long for them to see all the town’s sights, mostly single-story houses, with a spare general store at the center. They did find, to their mutual surprise, a farm that appeared to be prosperous: its two-story house looked over a field of yellow-flowered cactuses, planted too densely and neatly to have sprouted there naturally.
Terapic’s other notable sight was a windowless sandstone building with a rounded roof and a black door. Farisa walked around the structure, trying to discern the place’s function—it was too large to be a family dwelling, given the spare local economy, but too small to be a temple or house of the public. The door did not look heavy or thick, but when Farisa tugged at it, she found it resistant to force.
“If you believe the locals, you’re wasting your time trying to open that door.”
Farisa looked back to see Garet had joined them.
“What is this building?” Mazie asked.
“This is the third time I’ve been here and I’ve never got a straight answer. No one seems to know what it’s for, but the door is said to be sealed by ancient magic. They tell me it has not been opened for two thousand years. ‘Since the worlds were split’ is the local expression.”
“I’m skeptical,” Farisa said. She knew what magic could do, and what it could not, and she could not see how someone could make a door resist force for thousands of years, when it was impossible to stay in the blue for more than a few minutes, let alone centuries. Still, she tugged again, and the door—which seemed by sound to have no mechanical lock—refused to move.
Around sunset, the group gathered at the town’s single restaurant, where a bland carp-and-cabbage slaw cost more than a steak would have back home. Mazie and Runar ordered beers. Mazie quit at one drink and a half; Farisa finished Mazie’s second glass. Kanos went straight to moonwater. It was not even eight o’clock when Kanos, waist deep in the tide of liquor, began boasting about the “killer shot” he had made to take down the last squibbani. Farisa found it to be a battle with herself not to tell everyone that she, in fact, had made the shot.
She’d had few dreams on this overheated continent, and those that had occurred had been vague and scratchy, but the one she had that night was so vivid that, if she had broken glass in it, she would have heard every branch of the crack. A full moon hung overhead and she moved—instantaneously; she conceived of the place, then was there—to the entrance of that odd sandstone building in the center of town. The black door, in the dream, was ajar and a red glow was coming from inside, drawing her toward it, but before she could see anything, she woke up. Morning had come.
Claes and Garet had encountered little trouble getting provisions, and kept their animals under close watch in town, so they were able to set out for Portal on schedule. By noon, they were back in the mountains.
“The road ascends from here,” said Garet. “The heat will lay off a bit. The days’ll still top out at five-and-a-half, but if you’re not used to that by now, I can’t help you. The springs ahead are flush, so we won’t have to worry about thirst. That’s the good news.”
After an awkward pause, Runar said, “What’s the bad?”
“We are several days behind the schedule I set for us. There are still eight hundred miles between us and Switch Cave. Our business in Portal will take at least three days—that can’t be avoided. We have to be through the Ashes, at the latest, by early October.”
“And we don’t know how far the Ashes go,” Claes added.
Runar said, “Why October?”
“Sandstorms,” Garet said. “Pitch a tent in the Ashes, ten months out of the year, and you’ll be buried alive in it after a few hours. To give ourselves the best chance we can, I’d like to reach Switch Cave by the first of September, which means we’ll be pushing for twenty-three miles per day.”
Claes added, “At the same time, we can't afford to wear out our animals, so except for you, Eric, we’re going to be riding the untas no more than three hours per day.”
Farisa looked around. She didn’t expect the others to receive news of the increased pace happily. Twenty-three miles was no meek pace; they’d had a few days in the middle twenties, but only under ideal conditions, and those had left them exhausted.
“We’ll buy boots in Portal.” Garet pointed to his own, stained black with scuffs upon scuffs, but solid in construction. “We’ll spend for the best—two pairs for each of us. Shoes here get torn up by granite, ’cause you’re walking the bones of the planet.”
“That was bad,” Mazie whispered to Farisa.
“Tell him.”
“That was bad, Garet!”
The old man smiled.
#
Clouds rolled in and the terrain sloped upward. The weather was hot, but the barren plain gave no sense of seasonality; were it not for her journal, Farisa would have lost track of the date—it was July 26. When the clouds broke, the sun shone high and hot.
Mazie broke a long riding silence. “Ya never told me how ya got that sexy scar.”
“The one on my shoulder?” Farisa tossed a shawl over her arm to hide it.
“Aye, unless you have others to show me.”
“To be truthful, I hardly remember how I got it.”
“You were young?”
“Seventeen. I was such a different person. I could probably erase it—”
“Don’t,” Mazie said.
“Don’t?”
“It’s your continuity.”
“Continuity,” Farisa said as her eye caught sight of a solitary mountain, off their path and so rocky she doubted anyone had ever climbed it. “Right.”
“And it looks good on you.”
An hour later, they were closer to that mountain and could see, through binocular field glasses, a snowpack at the summit, so she judged it to be at least twenty thousand feet high. She was sure now that it had never been climbed, not only because she was unsure if anybody could breathe at such altitude, but because it brought to mind the terror of an avalanche—crushing cold whiteness, rumbling falling world, burial alive and the desperate run to escape it—so starkly, she could hear it, even though the peak was miles away.
“Do you hear that?” Claes said.
They all stopped and looked back. No avalanche. Farisa’s first thought was squibbani, but six mounted men had crested a hill behind them.
Runar said, “They won’t make it far. They’re on horses.”
Garet said, “If they’re who I think they are, they’re not intending to make it far.”
Claes added, “We have no hope of outrunning them.”
Garet handed Farisa a spyglass. “I’ll get our weapons ready. Watch and tell me what you see.”
“Black neckties,” Farisa said.
“As I was afraid. They’re called forwardmen, because—”
She finished his sentence. “They never retreat.”
Claes cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. “Halt! We intend no harm.”
The Globbos’ powerful black horses continued their gallop.
As if telepathically entangled, Claes Garet Farisa ordered: “Fire!”
Forwardmen wore body armor, so Farisa aimed for a Globbo’s head. She missed, but Claes’s bullet, by scoped rifle, knocked the man off his mount. His neck snapped against a rock; he never got up. Runar’s successful headshot produced a spray of glittering rubies. Bullets whizzed. Farisa’s upper arm burned and she looked down to see that she had been grazed; a bright-red streak of exposed flesh glistened in the sun. She screamed as she emptied her holster, blasting an assailant’s leg and pelvis to pieces as he rode into pistol range. A rider dodged Kanos’s fire but took one of Saito’s crossbow bolts to the chest and, evidently, his body armor was insufficient for that, because he slumped over dead, his head bouncing as his horse bucked. A charging Globbo tried to dismount Farisa with the butt of his rifle, but Mazie’s shot split open his knee; he looked at the wreckage and might have been screaming—Farisa’s ears were ringing; she couldn’t tell—but his mouth never had time to close, because Garet’s rifle round reopened his head, and that was that.
Farisa’s unta buckled; she looked down and saw that her mount had been shot in the foreleg. She tucked her head before hitting the ground. Landing on her back, she found herself winded, desperate to stand and keep fighting, but unable in the moment to get up; her mind swam in a milky prison, a place not unlike the blue, but with none of its power. I have to get up, I have to stand, I am standing, but where is my gun? Where am I...?
Eric screamed.
Lucid, she jumped, terrified that the boy had been hit. In fact, Eric had delivered the decisive shot. The Globbo stared at the red spill star on his chest and, although there might have had a lucid moment left in which he could have returned fire, he deemed it an unworthy use of his last breath and closed his eyes.
Five of the soldats had been killed. The sixth one—the one who’d grazed Farisa, the one who'd lost his leg to her—remained alive, teeth chattering as the others surrounded him.
Claes said, “Give up your weapon.”
The crippled soldat, instead, raised his gun hand. No one would know his intended target, because Runar’s pistol fired and the soldat’s forearm exploded, letting fly ribbons of wrist meat. Mazie, to ensure the screaming captive couldn’t retrieve his gore-laden gun with the working hand, kicked the firearm out of reach.
“You fucking idiot,” Kanos said.
Runar said, “What’ll we do with him?”
Claes, sure to have his shadow cover the soldat, bellowed. “Who sent you?”
The Globbo shook in pain. “Hampus Bell himself.”
Mazie drew an eight-inch knife and trumped up her pessimal accent. “Use yer tongue for truth, or you won’t ’ave it much longer.”
“What color are his eyes?” Claes asked.
The Globbo said, “What?”
“If Bell sent you, you’ll know the color of his eyes.”
“I didn’t say I’ve met him. He’s the man I work for. We all work for him. The world does.”
“Your rank,” Garet said.
“Not that kind.”
Farisa scoffed. “So you’re not even a real Globbo. Just a hedge gunner hoping to make, is that right?”
Garet kicked a cloud of dust into the air. “Where’d you get the tie, then?”
He raised his handless right arm, realized it would not do the job, so instead used the left hand to lift the bloodied strip of cloth. “This? I got it from a man I killed, who got it from a Globbo he killed.”
“An honorary Globbo,” Garet said. “Two wrongs do make a right in their world. I assume you’re after someone in—”
“The brown girl.”
“You’re looking for a brown girl,” Runar said. “Well, they do tan quick this far south.”
“This girl,” Garet said. “What’s the reward on her head now?”
The Globbo’s breaths were hasty and shallow. “A hundred thousand.”
“You fucking louse,” Kanos said.
“A hundred thousand?” Claes scoffed.
The Globbo said, “Straight from the Patriarch’s right-hand man, Pann What’s-His-Cunt. That’s if you capture her alive, and her friend, the one she’s in l—”
“Stop fucking talking.” Kanos shot the man in the head. The ground was now supporting the weight of six, rather than five, dead soldats.
Claes raised his voice. “What the fuck? Why’d you—”
Kanos said, “He was lying.”
“He probably was,” Garet said. “They usually do, at first.”
“It takes time to get useful information,” Claes said. “You can use empathy—feed them, treat them as well as your own, gain rapport over time. Or, there is the Globbo way to interrogate, although half the information is then useless.” He shook his head. “We’ll learn nothing from him now, though.”
“He was fucking with us,” Kanos said. “Nonsense about a brown girl. Farisa? She’s got book smarts, I’ll give her that, but she still can’t hit a live target.”
“I just did.”
“You didn’t finish the job. I did.” Kanos looked aside. “What would anyone want with her? This man was just trying to get inside our heads. He knew he was fucked, so he made a game of it.”
“What you did, that isn’t how we treat prisoners,” Garet said. “Don’t do it again.”
Claes said, “I suppose there’s nothing left to do but manage the evidence.”
“Their horses have all run off,” Saito said.
“Except one,” Runar said.
A badly broken black animal, with no chance of healing, panted on the ground. Grief lined Saito’s face as he pulled the pistol trigger.
“We’ll burn the clothes,” Claes said.
Runar unsheathed his knife and began to cut a soldat’s uniform away. “No time for the bodies?”
“I’m afraid not. Destroy the faces, so no one recognizes them. If found, they’ll be half a dozen naked men riddled with bullet holes. A mystery, sure, but proof of nothing. In time, buzzards will take care of the rest.”
“Do scatter them, though,” said Garet. “If someone happens upon six, it’s a scene. One, and there may be no reason to stop. Conserve your strength; drag, don’t carry, them.”
Farisa did her part. The corpse’s ankles were dry and hot. The expressionless head lolled and bounced off the ground. She had always thought—still thought—of the Company as this menace of boundless power, but here lay one of its finest, now a corpse that would soon be eaten by ants. She found a cluster of shrubs in which the body could be seen only by air, and left it there. She did not want to think too much about Claes’s order, necessary as it was, that they destroy the faces, so she closed her eyes as she slammed a stone into the cadaver’s head until her arms were tired, and hoped that it had sufficed.
When she returned to the group, Runar had arranged the Globbos’ clothing into a pile.
“Anything worth taking?” Kanos asked.
“No,” Runar said. “I looked through everything.”
Mazie kicked a pair of slacks the wind had caused to stray from the pile. “Sometimes I wish I was a man so I could piss on all this.”
“Were,” Farisa said.
“What?”
“Sometimes you wish you were a man, so you could piss on it. And as far as I’m concerned, you can. I won't object.”
Mazie said, “It’d slow down the fire.”
They gathered around the pile of Globbo uniforms.
“I’d like to do the honors,” Farisa said. She crouched, so only Claes and Garet could see that, despite the motions of starting a fire through natural means, she had mixed nought but her mind into the process. The orange flame leaped, as if it had always been there, and the uniforms blackened, their material curling so as to look more like paper than cloth. The desert wind produced a fire whirl, and for no more than a sixth of a second she remembered herself being in Cait Forest, not sure what she was doing there... and then she felt pressure on her upper arm. Saito was dressing the bullet wound.
Mazie said, “Anything else to clean up?”
Kanos pointed. “They have lamed Farisa’s unta.”
The animal panted, tongue out.
(Fay was seven. It was early spring; trees were still bare. She had climbed high into an oak to watch the woods. Boof, who had snuck into Raam’s quarters and taken the monk’s pellet gun, aimed and fired as a rabbit ran across a meadow dotted with tiny bluebells. Impact made the creature’s hind leg spin away from its body, right out of the socket. “Stupid animal,” Boof said.)
“She’ll recover.” Farisa unfastened the unta’s pack and tucked it inside one of the husker carriages. “She won’t carry a rider or a load for a while, but she can walk. Right, girl?”
Once unladen, the animal stood up.
“Waste of time,” Kanos said. “It’s broken. It’s going to be a liability.”
“No,” Farisa said. “She—she’s not an it—will be pulling weight again in a few days.”
“Two or three weeks,” Garet said.
“If ever,” added Kanos.
Farisa glared at him.
“Would you look at that,” Kanos said. It hadn’t taken long for bald-headed vultures to find the Globbo corpses; at least twenty had already come. “Disgusting birds.”
“Disgusting?” Saito said. “No. They provide a service. Everything dies, and dead matter will always be eaten by something—birds, worms, or rot. It’s best if the birds come first. In my culture, the funeral of the sky is a high honor. Please, if I die out here—”
“You won’t die here,” Farisa said. “I won’t allow it.”
Saito smiled. “I hope not.”
She patted her unta. “You neither, Lucy. You’re going to heal and you’ll be as strong as you ever were.”
And then they were off.
#
Farisa, with her own unta unable to take a rider, walked every step of the climb the rest of the day. Her feet hurt. In the darkness after dinner, Saito gave the animal a full examination, by light of Farisa’s lantern.
“So, how is she?”
“As I thought, the bullet only grazed her.” Saito finished wrapping a bandage around the unta. “What did more damage was the fall afterward, and she has a few fractured ribs. She won’t be able to take a rider any time soon, but she’ll be able to keep pace with us, and she’ll be able to carry a small load in a month, maybe two.”
“I have a sense she’ll heal faster,” said the mage. “Right, Lucy?”
Kanos, facing the fire, ejected spit between his teeth. “You named her?”
“I did.”
“Only children name the beasts. Children and women, I suppose, not that there’s much difference.”
Talyn said, “Kanos, an expert on women.”
Everyone laughed but Kanos. “Animals are easy to replace,” he said. "We’ll get another one in Portal.”
Farisa said, “So, what do you want me to do? Leave her to die?”
“This isn’t a place for the weak.”
“I agree.” Farisa stepped in front of him. “It isn’t.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“I trust Farisa’s judgment,” Claes said.
Kanos looked up. “If you're wrong, Farisa—”
Farisa stood back from the campfire. “I know.”
#
They arrived in Portal on the last day of July. There had been a few near-skirmishes with orcs, including one that had forced them to wade through a river waist deep, but an hour before noon on a hot day, they caught first sight of what could be nothing else. Once a sacred spot for indigenous Bezelians, the oasis had become a gaudy town of twenty thousand, its streets and buildings similar to those of Exmore, but with the architecture and colors oriented toward exaggeration, because a place like this wouldn’t exist at all if it weren’t the sole human settlement below the thirtieth parallel.
Portal had four inns: Three-Toed Joe’s was the cheapest, followed by King’s Ear Pub, which Garet described as having the worst food in the Known World, leading to speculation about what meat was used in the chili, though there were no kings here, so fish cartilage was a better bet than regal earlobe. Loner’s Lodge, despite its name, qualified as upscale by the local standard, and sported a palatial two-story casino. The town’s most expensive hotel was the world-famous Last Resort, nestled in a grove of date palms half a mile south of the rest of town.
“Money’s just weight beyond here, so we can splurge,” Garet said. “Enjoy your last taste of civilization."
Only four of the Resort’s twenty-two rooms were available, so they had to pair up. Mazie wanted an upstairs room, so she and Farisa took number 18, whose balcony overlooked a swimming pool. Farisa had nearly forgotten how soft a proper bed could be; she closed her eyes briefly there, in the afternoon light, and when she opened them it was dark.
“Good, you’re up.” Mazie laid a paperback book, spine facing the ceiling, on the room’s single table.
“Don’t do that,” Farisa said. “Use a bookmark.”
“I’m going for a swim.” Mazie stepped behind a dresser. “Care to join me?”
“Swim,” Farisa said. She gave an awkward smile. “I’ll think about it.”
On the Mountain Road, one grew used to infrequent bathing, and cleaning oneself was often done by soaking a strap of porous leather in a river, then squeezing it over one’s body. This could be done under clothing, as it was not unlike rain. Although she had bathed nude in Cait Forest, for First Bath, that had been something else entirely, and that era of her life had not ended well. She was not sure she could undress in front of people who would be her only company for who-knew-how-long.
“Think about it, then.” Mazie emerged in a black bikini and leather sandals. “I’m going in.”
“You’re so...”
“I’m what?”
“Nothing.” Farisa laughed. “I’m shy. You know that.”
“If you don’t have a bathing suit—”
“I do. I bought one in Muster.” She had managed there to find a two-piece bathing gown, one that would be sufficiently modest by her standards if paired with a red saria; worn thusly, she’d only expose a quarter of her midriff.
“Good,” Mazie said. “I’ll see you down there.”
Farisa made sure she had her pair of black water socks, the kind every Lorani girl owned, and she got dressed for the pool. The water came from a mountain stream, artificially covered so it would not absorb heat from the sun during the day. Not all of the people there were hotel guests; one could tell by their number that locals and boarders at cheaper hotels were allowed to enter, so long as they bought alcohol, which one paid for by leaving coins in the tin cups that had been mounted into floating slabs of cork. The atmosphere was celebratory—for many travelers, this was the southern extent of the Mountain Road, and they would go home with a triumphant story of having reached and stared beyond the edge of the human world.
Mazie was already in the water.
Farisa dipped a socked toe in.
“Get in! It’s not cold at all.”
“I know it’s not cold. It isn’t that.”
“This can’t be your first time swimming.”
“It’s not. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago...”
“What?”
“Never mind.” Farisa got fully into the water. She walked toward Mazie, who had found a ledge where they could sit, waterline at their shoulders, and be far from the crowd. “I didn’t expect there to be so many people.”
“Oh, you.” Mazie looked up. “The stars are beautiful.”
“They are.” Farisa put her arms behind herself and tilted her head back. “They are.”
A man came to the edge of the pool and offered to buy the women drinks.
“I’m a snakebite,” Mazie said.
Once the man was gone, Farisa asked, “What’s a snakebite?”
“I have no idea. Something Garet said I could say to ward off male attention.”
“So, are you one?”
Mazie chuckled. “How would I know?” She pointed to a bar across the pool. “There’s Talyn.”
“She seems to have become the town darling.” Three men, all in oversized fedoras, were chatting her up. Farisa laughed. “I’m glad she’s having fun.”
“Think she’ll go to bed with one of them?”
“I shan’t comment,” Farisa said. “Nor do I desire ever to know the answer.”
“That’s right. She’s old enough to be your mother.”
“I’m not that young!”
A boy came over with a tin cup.
Mazie withdrew a silver coin from a pouch tied around her neck. “Do you want one, too?”
“One what?”
“We have vodka and beer,” the boy said.
“I wouldn’t mind a beer,” Farisa said. “Give me one of the local best.”
Mazie put a second coin in the boy’s cup. A few minutes later, a cork tray ferrying two glasses of saison floated toward them.
“It isn’t bad at all,” Farisa said after taking a sip. The beer had been sweetened with a local cactus fruit, but it had not been overdone. “Last Resort. Edge of the Known World. And for most of them, it is. They go to the gift shop—”
“Blow four grot on a shot glass or a candle with Last Resort engraved on it—”
“—then turn around and go home. Exactly.”
“What percentage do you think go on?”
“Continue south, like us?” Farisa let her gaze drift. “I don’t know, maybe five percent. No one I see right now has the look.”
“And are you sure we do?”
Farisa laughed. “We will. At the end of this, we will.”
Mazie stretched her legs and grabbed her toes. “It feels like we’ve known each other for years, Farisa.”
Farisa laughed. “Two months. Two long months and fifteen days.”
“Long months?” Mazie cleared wet hair from her brow. “You haven’t been enjoying yourself?”
“No, I have. I have, but, you know, sometimes it gets…”
Mazie put a hand on Farisa’s bare shoulder. “I know what you mean.”
“The days run long and short at the same time. You get lost in a cadence. You’re sore from riding, your feet and ankles hurt from all the climbing—I’m sure you feel it, too—and, still, you keep going. You make the day’s miles, and the day after that, you do the same. It blurs together. The bad does; so does the good. Even the mountains, fierce and beautiful as they are—”
“I think you need another drink,” Mazie said.
“I had planned to stop at one.”
“Two’s fine.” She waved down the serving boy and handed him a silver piece. “It’s on me. First time in my life I can say that.”
Farisa, feeling the alcohol’s pleasant buzz, looked up. The moon was high. “You know, the ancients used to believe there was a second moon, a dark one no one could see. On clear nights in Tevalon, I used to look for it through a telescope.”
“What did you find?”
“Well, there isn’t one. If there were, we’d know from its tidal effects. I did see a lot of stars, though. The naked eye can see a few thousand, and a handful of galaxies, but there are millions more if you have the right lens for it.”
“I tried to count them all once, as a little girl.” Mazie finished her second beer. “I’ll miss this.”
“Beer?”
“This particular beer,” Mazie said. “It’s not the least bit bitter. They mix cherries into the mash.”
“Cherries? I tasted cactus fruit.”
“Garet said it’s cherries. Maybe both.”
“How would they grow them here?”
“I don’t know.” Mazie leaned forward to douse her face with water. Then she looked at Farisa. “What?”
Farisa laughed; she had stumbled into that state where life’s tiniest details had a tinge of humor. “I didn’t say anything. Nothing at all.”
“Don't mind me.” Mazie shook her head, then rubbed her neck. “It seemed for a moment that you were looking at my—”
“Oh. No, of course not. I was looking at something else.”
“Something else?”
“See if you have a shy or proud navel.”
Mazie’s eyebrows went up. “If I have a what?”
“It’s nothing. It’s... oh, it’s this Lorani thing. If, when you bend over, you have a skin fold across your belly button—”
“I have that.” Mazie pressed her thumbs into her belly. “I think that’s pretty normal, no?”
“So do I. It means you can’t be a dancer.”
Mazie laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Zhivohn dlayoaen. Dance of Kings. ‘Loranian Dance,’ but obviously that’s not what we call it.”
“And why would a ‘shy navel’ preclude you from dancing?”
“The female lead needs a piercing, so she can put a ring there. A big one.” Farisa made a circle with her forefinger and thumb. “It’d hurt every time you sit down. In the final dance, the male lead runs a rope through the ring and she twirls around so it looks like he’s leading her by it, but if he’s not very good—”
“It sounds painful.”
“I’m sure it is.” Farisa shrugged. “But it’s the Dance of Kings.”
“Who wants to dance for a fuckin’ king?”
“Great question, Mazie.” Farisa, leaning back again, put her elbows on the pool’s rim behind her. “I saw the dance once as a little girl. The way the dancer’s body flows, it’s like soft water. She has such command in her eyes, she pulls your soul out of your skull; you see it, it’s like, ‘Yes, she is the most beautiful woman in the world; she is what God meant women to be.’ Every woman wants to be her, and every man—”
“You have no interest in men,” Mazie said.
“What? Of course I—wait, how did—What makes you think—?”
“I just know. In the bigger cities, there are a number of people like you. I worked with one. You and she would have liked each other. She wouldn’t have marked you down for...” Mazie dug a knuckle into Farisa’s flank. “What is it you called it, shy navel?”
She leaned forward and grabbed the tiny roll between her navel and waistline. “Just another thing for a young Farisa to be insecure enough.”
“Half an inch, at most,” Mazie said as she pinched Farisa, hard. “Ye’re perfect. I wish I had your body.”
Farisa smacked Mazie’s arm. “You’re ridiculous. I’m a husker compared to you.”
“Your belly’s flat... well, when you stand up, it is, and you have bigger—”
“They’re not that big.”
“You’re right. Mine are just small,” Mazie said. “Thanks, Farisa.”
She cut her hand into the water and doused Farisa’s face.
Farisa splashed back. “Hey, stop that!”
Mazie turned her head as a man, who had been standing in the pool’s center for some time, waded toward them. Once he was close enough to be heard only by the two women, he asked, “Are you—?”
“I’m not,” Farisa said. “I’m no one you’ve ever heard of.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“My name is Katarin Pelecza.”
Mazie added, “She’s adopted, obviously. I’m her sister.”
“Name mean anything? No? Good.”
The man said, “I just wanted to know if—”
Mazie threw an arm around Farisa. “This bird doesn’t land on your side of the river, buddy. Never has. It’s not personal.”
He looked around. “That’s not my interest. For entirely other reasons, I would not mind buying you both a pinch of the town’s swill.”
Mazie furrowed her brow. “In exchange for?”
“Conversation.” He sighed. “Please, I have a wife back home.”
“Every man says that.” Mazie scratched her shoulder. “Every single one.”
“Conversation about the Mountain Road. There’s a new crop of idiots every season. The poor ones think they’re going to get rich in Switch Cave. The rich ones, for them it’s vanity; they all think they’re going to beat the southern record by another half mile. I’ve been watching the group of you—there are nine of you, right?—and you don’t fit either pattern.”
“We’ll keep it that way,” Mazie said.
Farisa said, “Perhaps we’re just curious. We’d like to know where the Road really goes.”
“Naw.” The man crossed his arms and laughed. “I can tell you now it doesn’t go anywhere. The Company would know. They have all kinds of instruments, and if there was anything beyond the Ivory Ashes, they’d have found a way across it. If there ever were people down South, they’ve killed each other, just like we’re doing up here.”
Farisa looked at Mazie, who had stepped back toward the pool’s wall.
“Let me tell you girls a joke. Two kerusi—”
Farisa said, “Kerusi?”
“Northerners. Forest dwellers.”
“Like us.”
“Two kerusi walk through the woods. They run into a stormcat. You girls know what a stormcat is?”
“We do. I’ve seen one.”
“I doubt it.” The man’s breath smelled of yeast. “The things eat people.”
“Then I must not taste good.”
The man rolled his eyes. “One of the kerusi starts running. The other says, ‘Idiot, you can’t outrun a stormcat,’ and the first one, the one who’s running, says—”
“I know this one,” Mazie interrupted. “I don’t need to outrun him. I only need to outrun you.”
Farisa forced a laugh. “Good one.”
Mazie said, “So, what’s your point?”
“There’s nothing to the Mountain Road,” the man said. “It’s a death trap. The Company has maps going down to the tenth parallel. The desert goes on forever. I’m told the ocean is so hot, you taste metal in the air rather than salt.”
“Thank you for your insight,” Mazie said. “It’s getting late, so I think we’re going to—”
Farisa put a hand on Mazie’s shoulder. “Let’s stay. Let’s hear more of what he has to say.”
Mazie grimaced in surprise, then resigned boredom. The man talked about himself for several straight minutes before meandering off.
The women headed back to their room.
Mazie used a fresh towel to dry off her legs. “Why didn’t you want to leave?”
“There was something odd about him.”
Mazie laughed. “This can’t be the first time you’ve been hit on.”
“It’s not.” Farisa went behind a dresser to change into her bedclothes. “Also, he wasn’t.”
“You can’t be that—”
“He’s a spy.”
“A spy?”
Farisa, unsure she could trust the hotel’s walls, whispered. “I went in.”
“What did you find?”
“He doesn’t know my name, let alone that I’m that Farisa. So we got lucky on that one, Maze.”
“So, what’s he after?”
Farisa paused. “We need to be very careful, and there’s something we’re going to have to do, but first I need to speak to Claes.”
#
She knocked on Claes’s door at one in the morning. “You should be the one who hears this first.”
The man rubbed his eyes. “What’s going on?”
Farisa led him into a shadowed garden. “One of the yokels is a Company ear.”
“I’m sure a lot of them are.”
“No one important, just a low-level hedge spy. What I pulled out of him is that Talyn, well... she’s been sending messages back to Moyenne.”
Claes slammed his palm with his fist. “I fucking knew there was one. I felt it.”
“I... well, I never much liked her.”
“Do you think she brought those Globbos on us?”
“I don’t think she did,” Farisa said. “I don’t even think she knows that I’m—”
“She might be here for me, then.” Claes looked up. “I am ex-Reverie.”
“I’m very sorry. I went in a month ago, and should have—”
“Don’t be. If she’s working for them at any high level, she’s been trained to block it. That you got anything at all from her is impressive.” Claes paused. “I’m curious about something. Have you ever, so said, ‘entered’ me?”
“No, Claes. You’re family.”
“Mazie?”
“Nor her.” Farisa looked at the ground. “Never.”
A scorpion crawled behind a rock.
“Did I tell you why I had to leave Cait Forest?”
“You’re not going to tell me you started that fire?”
“No, I didn—” She paused. She could truthfully say, “I don’t remember doing it, so I don’t think I did. I loved the place, even after.... Well, what you may not know is that I would’ve had to leave regardless of the fire. I was—almost made a bad choice of words—terminated. Banished. Kicked out.”
“For what?”
She took a deep breath. “So, I had this friend, Erysi. I never told anyone that I was, you know, me, but people figured it out. This rumor started that I entered her mind, having a certain motivation—”
“Did that motivation exist?”
“It did, but I did not. I would never. To use the power for such a purpose I would consider....”
“Rape.”
“Precisely,” Farisa said. “The mages who do that tend to cook themselves quick. Even with noble intentions, entering a mind is no small matter. It’s more of a…” She pointed at the hotel’s lighted sign, bearing its name, Last Resort.
“I understand.” Claes looked at the black sky. “On the topic of last resorts…”
“I’m listening,” Farisa said.
#
They stayed in Portal for five days to give Farisa ample time for her work. In fact, Claes and Garet had managed to find provisions, excluding animals of which there were none, easy to come by here—desperate travelers, returning from and beaten by the miles beyond, were eager to sell everything they would no longer need.
It was seven in the morning on August 5. Farisa had tried to enter Kanos, but found it impossible. He had surely been trained to resist it during his spell with the Company Youth as, back then, the Globbos had still considered mages a serious threat, and taught such skills to cadets. She and Mazie were walking to Talyn’s hotel room.
“What new have you learned?” Mazie asked.
“Enough to justify this conversation,” Farisa said. They turned a corner, and found the woman’s door closed.
“What if you’re wrong?”
“We’ll know.”
Mazie swung the door open. Talyn blinked as the light crossed her face. “Wake up, Talyn.”
Farisa said, “When did you start working for the Globbos?”
Talyn, realizing the danger she was in, stood. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We already know Eric’s not your son,” Farisa said. “He’s not your son, and he’s not a mage.”
The boy started bawling. “I don’t want to lie anymore.”
“You’re not in trouble,” Mazie said. “Never were.”
The boy said, “I’m not leaving her.”
“Go for a swim,” Talyn said to Eric.
“No.”
“Eric, go. I’ll see you in an hour.”
The boy pouted, then walked to the door. He looked at Farisa. “Promise you won’t hurt her.”
“I’ll do nothing to her that she wouldn’t do to you.”
Mazie watched him leave. “He’s gone.”
Farisa stepped close enough to Talyn to count the pores of her face. “You made good money as an art forger. You should have stuck with that business.”
Mazie flashed a knife. “I’ve always wanted to get my ’ands on a G-Comp.”
“Mazie, no,” Farisa said. “The innkeeper said no murder on his good carpet.”
Talyn’s eyes darkened.
“Talyn Vanza,” Farisa said. “Thirty-seven years old, Z-5 at Doa. Never did get yourself to Headquarters in Moyenne, though you used the place for your cover story. You cooked up a sob story with Eric, and then you joined Claes’s excursion, because you thought you could grab some information that would get you there. And, of course, you found me. Do I have your motivations correct?”
Talyn backed up and reached for something that was not there.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mazie said.
Farisa said, “If we had planned to kill you, it would already have been done, and it would have been a lot easier than this conversation. We’re here to save your life, Talyn.”
“You’re never going to make Z-4.” Mazie chuckled, in contempt. “You’ll never see Moyenne. Farisa says you come from nothing, just like me. You think ratting on a couple old men is going to change what those snobs think of you?”
Farisa took a long breath that expanded her chest. “What made your case—”
“To Claes?”
Farisa clapped her hands in front of Talyn’s eyes, causing her to flinch. “To myself. What made your case is that you don’t know who I am.”
“A brash woman who sends herself before being sent.”
Farisa shoved Talyn and she fell on the bed.
“Don’t get up,” Mazie said to Talyn. “It’s better if you stay there.”
She turned a chair backward and sat facing Talyn, knees against the back posts.
Mazie looked at Farisa. “Tell me: why does the Company care about Claes? Or Garet? They’re ex-Reverie, I know, but Reverie hasn’t been active for years.”
Talyn swallowed. “There is a suspicion that he has, or intends to make, ties with some of the younger resistance movements. Ettaso’s dormant, but Wyo’s seeing resurgent nationalism—”
Farisa said, “There are twenty-three historical nations in southern Wyo alone. The probability that they could ever work together is—”
“Very low, if the Company keeps them hating each other, but if someone tries to unify people, and if that person can tell a good story, then we face a different situation. Tell me, Farisa, why do you think Claes travels so much?”
“To protect people.”
“Don’t be silly. He wants to bring the Company’s enemies together. Why? I don’t know. I don’t see what good it would do.”
“If you don’t see what good it would do, then why—”
Mazie, who had grabbed her own chair and sat down, interjected. “Are you telling me they sent you to the edge of the world to spy on someone who might know a few people? There’s more to this.” She and Farisa traded glances. “I’m sure there is something you’re not—”
Farisa cracked her knuckles. “I think we’re ready to—”
Talyn blurted out, “Mages. Two or three hundred. Claes and Garet, between the two of them, know the whereabouts of hundreds of mages, some of whom haven’t been discovered. That is why the Company cares about them.”
Mazie said, “This is why you’ve been acting like Eric is a mage—so Claes will feel compelled to protect him.”
Talyn nodded.
“So, if he’s not one, who is he?”
“Company-issued orphan. No more and no less.”
“You put him in a lot of danger, taking him here,” Farisa said.
“Oh, did I? Do you think he’d have a better life in a coal mine?”
The sun peered through the room’s drawn shades and Talyn shrinked away from the light.
The woman pointed at Mazie. “You can’t hurt me, because you’re fond of him. He reminds you of... didn’t you lose a little brother? I bet he’d never forgive you if....” Her finger changed gunsights to Farisa. “Your weakness is even more obvious. You’re in l—”
Mazie bared her teeth. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Have I worked for the Global Company? I have. Who has not, in some way? The truth is, I intended to send them a heap of false information. I knew all along that Eric and I would settle here.”
Farisa rolled her back against the wall. “Regardless of what he wants.”
“I have sent useless reports. I have no love for the Global Company. As you said, Mazie, I come from nothing—and I am a woman. I will never advance.”
Mazie drummed her fingers on her chair. “You never stopped taking a salary.”
“At Z-5, the penalty for desertion is death.”
“Only if they catch you.”
Farisa stretched her arms out in front of herself. “We’re better than the Globbos. We don’t just kill people because we find it easy. Unlike your employer, we don’t.”
Talyn buried her face in her hands.
“The night we came into town, you spoke to one of their hedge spies. Mazie and I had a long conversation with him—”
“Too long,” Mazie said.
“—in the pool. I know precisely what you gave him—”
“Nothing useful,” Talyn said.
“Right, and it’s that very fact that saved your life. Had you put Claes or Garet or Mazie or me into any real danger, we’d not be having this conversation.”
“Or any,” Mazie said.
“She understands that.”
“Just making sure.”
Talyn looked down.
Farisa got up, then sat beside her on the bed and touched her arm again. “We know you intend to mislead the Company. Unfortunately, the Globbos know you’ve met Claes. You’ve been seen together with him. They will figure out, in time, that you missed something major—an oversight they surely won’t forgive—about the group you traveled with.”
“Oversight?”
Farisa put her finger and thumb an inch apart and a tiny bolt connected them. “I’m that Farisa.”
Talyn’s eyes widened.
“The Globbos know that, too. They must, by now. They will assume you do, and haven’t told them. Trust me in saying that, while there would be no parting if we lost trust in you, we would nevertheless make it painless, which means that, even if we had to choose such a fate for you, it would be better than whatever the Company has in store.”
Talyn fell silent, then mumbled. “Eric.”
“An innocent and ordinary boy who has no business being out here.” Farisa stopped. If Eric wasn’t a mage, who or what had caused the squibbani to explode, earlier this month? Had it just... happened?
Mazie said, “We’ve already discussed him with Claes and Garet.”
“We’d like to send him back north. There’ve been funds set aside for him to attend a boarding school north of Lake Va’ala.”
Mazie flicked away a beetle that had landed on her arm. “Tell us what you know about Runar and Kanos.”
“Runar’s a fugitive.”
Farisa said, “A fugitive?”
“Gambling debts,” Talyn said. “He’s been profiled. He’s loyal to Garet. No Company ties. None. As for Kanos, I know he got into some kind of trouble as a teenager. I asked for more details, but no one got back to me.”
Mazie crossed her arms. “You asked whom?”
“The Company has a wire office, three miles north of here.”
“They do? What use would a wire office be?”
Talyn laughed, almost she pitied the women. “Oh, right. You wouldn’t know. The Company has undersea cables. All five continents are connected by telegraph.”
Farisa shook her head. She had, of course, heard rumors about such things—it had been one of those crank theories held earnestly by misfits, joked about by more educated souls, that the Globbos had built such capabilities, but the costs had always been considered prohibitive.
“I could,” Talyn said.
Farisa pointed north. “In that world, we would have had to kill you, but we’re going to a new one. Beyond Portal, the Global Company doesn’t exist, does it? On the other hand, each person we lose is one pair of eyes less on the Road, so our chances worsen. Neither Mazie nor I can stand Kanos, but if the cost of not being ambushed by orcs is to listen to his shitty stories, we’ll pay it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Talyn nodded. “Thank you, Farisa.”
“We’re leaving town tomorrow. Today, we’re going to that wire office. You’ll tell the Globbos that we were ambushed by orcs ten miles south of here. You’re the only survivor. Mention in passing that you’re worried about a fever you’ve developed. Nausea, blue-tinged fingers, and a ringing in the ears, telltale symptoms of—”
“Sagua Fever.”
“One hundred percent fatal,” Farisa said. “They will write you off as dead. We’ll all be dead to them.”
“It’s a good plan,” Talyn said. “I admit it, it’s good. There’s only one problem with it.”
“What’s that?”
“How are you going to get into a Company wire office?”
“I can’t, but you can.”
“How will you know what I told them?”
Farisa put a hand on Talyn’s shoulder. She could feel the woman’s repressed shudder. “I trust you to do the right thing. If for some reason you don’t, I will find out.”