Outside the day was bright, the sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, but a cool breeze snapped at Tamza’s cloak and headscarf. In the distant north, dark clouds hid the snow-capped mountains, and Tamza expected heavy rain later. She tightened her scarf. Edgar had ordered his servants to bring her more clothes, whatever they could find, but she insisted she wear the cloak and scarf over the top. He acquiesced, telling her he was happy just to see her eyes. To her left was the still smouldering main palace building. A black scar in the palace grounds.
Edgar took a few steps and stopped. He turned to Tamza. “You lead the way. I want to see the sea.”
They left the palace grounds and headed downhill. Tamza took the main thoroughfare to the marketplace, where only yesterday the entire town had been celebrating the Festival of Many Gods. The path ran parallel to the river and was a route she had taken nearly every day of her life to the washing area, to collect food from the market, to pay visits to family and friends, to take her bears to perform at various festivals and celebrations. Always bustling, full of life and happy faces. Now, it was deserted and wretchedly silent. A few Fert soldiers were dotted about the town, on the roads where they could take their horses, but she knew from the council meeting that most were on the outskirts, building the new wall and watching for retaliation from Parchad.
Tamza staggered to a halt when she came across the first body. A child. Her head snapped back at an ugly angle, her hand still grasping a woollen doll. Edgar pushed Tamza on, blind to the death, the horror, and impatient to get to the sea.
They reached the marketplace, which was dotted with dead Vaasarians. Some of the statues of past Viziers were splattered with blood. The stage she had almost stood on the day before had been smashed to pieces. The square stank of festering beer, spoilt food, and a stomach-churning smell like old meat. Rotting bodies. Tamza cupped her hand over her nose, pushing her scarf tight to her nostrils.
Edgar stopped, not affected by the smell, and looked around at the statues. “Who are these?”
I must treat this as part of the performance. Be brave. Tamza found her voice. “These are the past eight Viziers of Vaasar. The town was founded eight generations ago, by that one, Vizier Gharak, who was the chief of the Khumarah clan who settled here. And this statue half built was going to be Vizier Hannijad.”
Edgar looked blankly at her.
“The one you beheaded,” she said, trying hard to keep the emotion from her voice.
He shrugged, and kept on walking in the direction of the sea. From the marketplace the town continued downhill and a blue expanse stretched out in front of them. Tamza followed him, he slowed so she could catch up and show him the way. In front of him stretched the most densely populated part of Vaasar. Sandy coloured mudbrick houses for as far as you could see, crammed together, all sharing walls. In between the houses were winding alleyways, often under archway bridges built from the flat roof of one house to the next. Off the alleyways were steep steps leading up to more houses or another alleyway. A labyrinth, for any who didn’t know it. But as familiar to Tamza as her own face.
She led the way, the alley was barely big enough for two people side by side, but the corpses pushed up against the walls made it even smaller. Scavengers feasting on the remains scattered as they approached. Silent tears streamed from Tamza’s face, and she dabbed at them with her scarf. She passed the path up to Yaseena’s house, and the butchers where she got the great slabs of meat for her bears.
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The emptiness of death had settled over everything. Shadows like ghosts of the townsfolk who should be there but were now forever absent.
Soon they passed through the houses into an open space. The harbour. It stretched in a half circle, and they stood in the middle on pale rocks that had been smoothed from generations of feet, where the original settlers had chipped away to make pathways. In front of the rocks was pebbly beach and then the sea. A few small wooden boats bobbed in the harbour, further out the angry sea foamed and waves chopped into one another. Wooden piers had been constructed from the flattened rocks out into the sea at regular points around the half circle. There were six of them, but to Tamza’s left, the last pier was now charred remains, and the boatyard had been razed to the ground. Another black scar on the town.
Edgar took in a deep breath and stretched out his arms, head up, eyes closed. “I told you, father,” he shouted at the sky, “I told you I would take this place!” He rushed towards the nearest steps cut into the rocks and down onto the pebbles, towards the sea that gently lapped at the beach. He kneeled in the waves and thrust both hands in the sea, dipped his head in the water and flicked it back. A great arc spraying over his head. He sat on his heels and splashed.
“The sea!” he bellowed and laughed, slapping at the surface like a child. “I found the sea, father, something you never managed did you. Ever since those Xayans put the idea in your head, but you never got here, did you? But I did. Your youngest son. I was ambitious, you always said. I killed you, and your favourite Daneil, and bettered Horace. I took Fertilian and now I take the sea. Ha ha ha!”
Tamza watched this frenzied, half mad outburst and looked around for something she could kill Edgar with. A large rock? A fisherman’s hook? Anything?
“Come here, Tamza.”
Edgar stood and walked a few paces away from the shore and sat on the pebbles. She walked down the steps and went to him. He patted the stones and she sat.
He took her hand and leaned back. “What do you call the sea?”
Tamza looked out at the bobbing boats. “We call it the Sarenky Sea. Sarenky means unknowable in our language. The unknowable sea.”
“Ha! Well I plan to know it. I plan to find whatever is out there. Even if I sail in a circle and land right back here, I will do it.”
“Why?”
“Trade. Find other people out there to sell our bronze too. My father sent his people south, there was nothing there apart from a never-ending salt flat. Great for salt, but not much else.
“We went east, there was nothing there but wastelands. We went north and met the Xayans, the crazy bastards. They didn’t want to trade, they wanted blood. But father made a deal. He gave them what they desired – better weapons. Bronze swords, knives, arrow heads, spear heads. Everything they needed to bring more destruction on their own warring tribes. And in return they brought destruction and ruin to all those who opposed my father.
“We went west, but only ever found fucking desert. It was the Xayans who told us to stick closer to the edge of the mountains, in the strip where desert ends and before mountains begin. And here we are. Here I am. At the sea.”
He stopped talking, Tamza wondered if he wanted her to say something. To congratulate him, or some such. She wasn’t about to praise a murderer and didn’t utter a word.
“Come here, you, I want to fuck.” He grabbed her cloak and pulled her down to the pebbles.
She squirmed, “No, not here!”
“Why not? There’s no one here.”
“No, because you killed them all,” she shrieked and pulled away from him. The silence of the usually heaving harbourside unsettling her more than she realised.
Her outburst and defiance angered Edgar. “I said now, woman. Open your legs!”
He hauled himself on top of her and pinned her to the pebbles. She wrangled with him. This man is strong-willed, he is difficult to enchant. Her mother had warned her that some wild men can’t be controlled. Tamza quickly pressed her fingertips to his cheekbones and blinked. Soon his eyes glazed and he kissed her cheek and rolled off her.
He sighed, looking up to the sky. She lay very still. Not wanting to move in case the spell wore off. I will need to keep administering the enchantment, to dance for him every night, to entangle him deeply.