As the sun arched slowly toward the black horizon, the afternoon’s steady breeze dissolved into breathy, saline gusts. Zigrel, slouched to a seat against the villa wall, avoided both. As she sweated in the stagnant warmth, she vaguely decided on fetching some prognosticative aid--a coin or a candle. But she did not rise. For at least half an hour, she had simply sat there, ruminating on two uncomfortable truths:
First, that she owed Mierel an apology--since he’d probably saved her from the poison. She ought to have sniffed it out (it was as pungent as it was poorly concealed). Plus, if he hadn’t managed to murder their employer so swiftly, then the guards probably would have stuck them all through. But Mierel didn’t seem like the kind of man to take apologies graciously.
Second--and infinitely more troubling--that she actually missed Arzado, or felt some kind of eagerness for his return.
Frankly, she’d been hoping that a bit of prediction might reveal a third uncomfortable truth with which she could distract herself. But it would need to be quite a chilling vision to have any chance against that disquieting second.
Zigrel felt her master’s absence almost like a suffocation--a need more irritating than wholesome. She even found the prospect of its relief undesirable. She was reminded of the pearl divers she’d seen down in the Sea of Gales, by the Mouth of Jakko. Dark faces bobbing on the ocean surface, the black bushes of coiled hair shimmering behind them. Jaws clenched open, grasping over strained necks for dry air; the heaves of their sore lungs gasping over the rippling surf.
No, Zigrel didn’t want Arzado returned. The ghost of expectorated lectures past caressed her cheeks. Her still body shivered. She could see his bright eyes, cruelly slivered; his lips curling up into a carnivorously bared smirk. She could hear the percussive hiss of his demeaning laughs.
I want him back like I want the pox.
She sighed. The suffocation continued.
Once upon a time, she’d felt quite differently about her master. The young master Arzado had been dauntless, daunting, and flawless--at least when measured against his numerous virtues. The sequestered masters referred to him with wide, suggestive glances, puffed out cheeks, and a lot of lip blowing. “He is an eccentric,” one might patiently have explained, “and a rather prickly one…” Prickly, of course, didn’t begin to describe him.
It had been the fourth year of her novitiate (medicine class), and two dozen bright-eyed pupils (and the few graying, perennial novices) crowded the perimeter of the temple laboratory. Finally, they triumphed, practical classes! Three years of theory had revealed the Glass Path, let them touch upon it. Now, they would begin to navigate its invisible turns in earnest.
It had been winter, when cold winds blew south down the long valley of the Tarriki River. Prighuyt Tuzk, at its lung-wracking altitude, stood above the wind--but suffered an even greater chill.
It would have been morning, by Zigrel’s half-rationalized reckoning, when the lecture had begun. Before the sun had had a chance to ameliorate the freezing air. Anyway, all the students had been bundled up in their warmest clothes: a scratchy, woolen tunic over their traditional linen shirt and thin, cotton pants. Not that the clothes did much against the high, frigid air. They’d had their breathing for warmth. That, at least, was taught alongside theory. “The First Step,” they called it--one which many a middle-aged novice, shivering on their stone cots, struggled fruitlessly to take.
“In the course of your work,” the voice had struck like a salvo of arrows, clattering around the chamber’s stone walls--despite the many open windows which looked out over the snowy peaks and vales. The novices had winced, begun sweating through the chill. “It will be necessary to hold posterity as a bargaining chip!” The suggestion had an accusatory bend, as if someone in the class was already guilty of remonstrating against him.
This is Arzado, isn’t it? They had all thought, panicked. The man who delivered over a dozen Gothesgalite princes?
They had all fought to not scratch their itching skin, every straggling fiber of their tunics biting into their necks like gnats. The sound of heaving breath had filled the airy chamber, audible over the low roar of distant breezes, growing faster as the silent moments stretched on.
Arzado’s voice cut down all before it. “For that reason,” he’d continued, appearing through the array of flushing students, “I will teach you to transform a human fetus into a fish.”
And they learned. He had been a cold, fickle teacher, but effective. The most genius--and the most unpleasant.
All the lessons to come, even introductory lectures, bore that same penal tone. When Zigrel’s cohort first encountered him, they quickly decided that the abbot must have put him up to it, as a punishment for the novices. They only wished they’d know what they’d done wrong, so they wouldn’t repeat the offense.
Alas, he had been quite a vision in those days. All that predisposed electricity woven into the hard lines of his face, which still had a rather youthful, olivine glow. A receding crop of thick, dark hair carved formidably around his brow, and even beneath the thin, billowing linens of a master, his hard, wiry, physique had been apparent.
Truly in his prime, the young Arzado had just returned from missions in Gothesgal. Precedent rumors had offered the novices a rare glimpse of romance, a sentiment which would need expunging if they ever hoped to be functioning seculars. Indeed, it was a sentiment which Arzado conspicuously lacked. He had little patience for story-telling. But even the simplest facts of his exploits bore the kind of mythic grandiosity which a young Tuzhk acolyte might associate with the Founders.
Particularly, he had just returned from a stint as the court warlock of Aroxavan--the Great Malik, himself--overseeing assassinations and performing miraculous healings. He had delivered seven of the malik’s sons and nine of his daughters, and had seen to the destruction of at least thirty nephews and nieces. He’d fought the shadowy Burgisnoriacs in their wooded homeland, and had even traveled to the Gray Coast, to inspect the unusual flora and fauna in the Galite colonies there. People said he’d fought against the Shu’s armies, soldiers who cleaved through rocks with foil-thin blades, and conversed with Arasgalite merchants who were richer than kings.
So the novices had still looked up to him, his glamor somehow incorruptible. And after his bellicosity could be no longer excused as anything other than disposition, they decided (optimistically) that he was probably only bitter for being cooped up in Prighuyt Tuzhk. This paragon secular monk, after all, belonged in the field.
His patrons famously enjoyed stability in their family and in their realms. On the battlefield, rumors demanded, his generalship was worth two-thousand men. He had reportedly never lost a battle. And when he returned from his worldly missions, he always came laden with detailed journals, exhaustive records of correspondence, and arsoric studies of the foreign locals. His almost illegibly diminutive script might nearly fill a whole scroll--nearly a quarter mile of paper-thin, frozen wax.
Upon Zigrel’s accession to apprentice, she had counted herself lucky that he’d agreed to bring her under his considerable wing. He’d taught her everything her pliant mind could wrap around, stuffing her like a fattening duck. He’d approved her work only by advancing to the next lesson. Zigrel had raced to keep up.
When, finally, he had taken her from Prighuyt, down the Tarriki River, and off into the adventurous Sea of Gales, the truth revealed itself: each mile which separated Arzado from his native abbey corresponded to an extra measure of misery in his person. He was an insufferable traveling companion. Even Zigrel, who had never gone anywhere with anyone, could tell.
Still, he is human. Humans were flawed. If he hadn’t been flawed, then he never would have taken the Vows, never come up to the highest Tuzhk, at Prighuyt, and humbly begged the abbot to shepherd him through the Glass Path.
Just like me, Zigrel thought, her sight half-focused on nothing in the distance. She might have preferred to ask a god to keep her from getting any more like her master--but she knew it was up to herself, alone.
And so she was alone. Alone with two mad barbarians; one, still catatonic from poison, greedily guzzled. The other, looking a bit tired from his earlier exertion. And guiltless. More than guiltless--utterly unconcerned.
When Zigrel closed her eyes, the bludgeoned skull of the Noriac mistress appeared once again to her. The once fiery looking woman’s bewildered eyes crossing violently as the flying pitcher met her squealing head…
Zigrel shuddered, sympathetically shivering as the murdered mistress had, just before she’d fallen to the ground--and, indeed, for a rather long time after. Her knees knocked together, almost toppling her. The strong urge to vomit jerked into her throat, but there was nothing left to expel. Her hollow guts panged, convulsing. She breathed deep, and pushed the pain from her mind. Just like she’d practiced, in, out, down…in, out, down…
“I’m sorry, Sprunishman,” said the witch. She didn’t sound so sorry. But Mierel had long found that people seldom sounded sorry--until they had a sword at their throats. She continued:
“It’s no wonder your prince…” she paused to think a bit, then delicately added:
“That he values your service. His court must be safe, with you around.”
“Listen, witch,” Mierel sneered. “Ayricalt of the Isles hasn’t been back to those isles since he was a lad. I mean, frankly it’s bloody obvious that he’s not from the isles, at all. He’s exactly the kind of big, Northern bastard whom Sprunish milkmaids warn their children about.” Zigrel’s head cocked inquisitively. Apparently, she didn’t understand what he was getting at.
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“His court’s no more than the dirt beneath his clogs. He’s a prince in name alone. A cypher. Do you understand?”
She hid her confusion with a thoughtful frown. “Why do you follow him around, then?” She looked over to where he lay, corpselike, in the shade of the villa wall.
“I mean…just look at him,” he said, hungrily biting his lip.
Zigrel cleared her throat and hummed decidedly. “Why does he call himself ‘prince?’”
“The Storm Lord named him ‘Prince of the Karafins,” he said with a shrug. “Hell, if the Storm Lord named me ‘Queen of Ram Valley,’ I’d be shouting it from the rooftops.”
She didn’t laugh, almost said something, stopped herself, then continued: “Why did the Storm Lord name him prince?”
“Politics, witch. Enemies to the north, enemies to the south, enemies to the east. Why not try to make a friend in the west? Besides, the Karafinners are basically all pirates.” He nodded certainly. “You’ve got to do what you can about pirates.”
“Your lord has many enemies?”
“Not my lord, witch. I’m not from the Rittel. But no daimyo worth his salt keeps too many friends.”
“What about the king?”
“What about him?” Mierel scoffed, squinting suspiciously.
“The king is King of All Sprune, by right of inheritance. It was my understanding that the daimyo serve him, so one wouldn’t have the authority to crown peasant adventurers.”
Mierel looked bewildered, then his gawking mouth closed up into a broad grin. He hissed laughter. “You know your history, witch. I admire that. But the Storm Lord has more than a few loyal beasts at his side. Ten-thousand of them, if the rumors can be believed. I suppose he does as he pleases.”
Zigrel looked a bit troubled by this, squinting her eyes and frowning tightly.
“Then why him?” she asked, and her patience was obviously thinning. “If he’s nobody…”
“Give it a few years. Mark my words, once the Storm Lord is ready, he’ll personally fund the mission to put Ayricalt in power--and put the seas in his pocket.”
“That’s mad,” Zigrel accused.
Mierel shrugged, matching her loss for patience. “Maybe he’s suffering from a dearth of Tushikan witches whispering in his ear. That’s what you lot do, isn’t it? Meddle in the minds of greater people?”
She snorted disdainfully, but asked no further questions.
Mierel closed his eyes to rest, and dully swatted at a pernicious fly.
Fortunately for Zigrel, the Ellusenese administrator emerged from the villa’s ominous doorway to distract her from the frustrating Sprunishman. Finally, she stood, shaking loose dirt from the seat of her jacket and trousers.
“Governor Lastor,” said Zigrel, nodding her head into the most mysterious bow she could manage on such short notice.
“Never underestimate the value of mystique,” Arzado had once demanded. “It might the only defense you’ve got against a dagger in your back.”
“Lady Zigrel, if I’m not very much mistaken.” A rather slovenly figure, the governor. Strong but pouchy, and ill-shaven. The green lines of his scalp tattoo eked out from a high hairline, his long, red locks helmet matted. A distant cousin of the queen’s, he bore little resemblance--all broad, bloated features. Still, he spoke with a kind of competent energy that not only belied his unsavory appearance, but even his Ellusenese heritage.
His face was sweating rather profusely, and flushed to match, more disturbed by the weather than the gruesome scene inside.
“Dear me,” he said, wiping himself with a red, silk handkerchief, “it is dreadfully hot out here. Quite stifling. Here I thought an island climate should be convalescent. Well…what exactly happened in there, anyway, young lady?”
“The Sprunishman,” she replied severely.
“Hum, yes…then he crawled off to take a nap?”
“No, sir. The mangy one.”
“Yes, well…” He turned to witness his troops trudging out down the garden path with corpses in hand. “Why?”
“He was under the impression that the soup was poisoned.”
He then turned to look down at the two: Mierel glaring with wide, white eyes from his perch by the wall, and Ayricalt groaning miserably as his waking eyelids began to flutter.
“I take it the soup was poisoned.”
“It appears so,” she muttered.
He smiled. “So you’ve already found some conspirators. Efficient,” he frowned at the noble corpses, “very efficient. Though I warrant you will learn little from them now.”
“So…what? We just keep doing this? My apologies, sir, but we didn’t come from Prighuyt Tuzhk to smother a revolt.”
“By the seas above, no! We’ve been very clear about your role here--you’re to extinguish the monster that’s killing our officials.”
Zigrel guffawed. “Again…apologies, general,” she said, “but I think it’s perfectly obvious that the monster is--”
“Still at large,” he remarked, forcefully. “Believe me--we’ll know when it’s been slain.” He flashed a brief, knowing smirk, turned to pass some unspoken orders onto his retinue of guards. Then he offered Zigrel a slow, weighty bow, and left.
“What’d he want?” snapped Mierel, glaring suspiciously at Zigrel and the approaching guards. He shot up onto his feet, hand rested on the sword at his belt.
“Nothing. I don’t know. Reminding us that we’re supposed to be hunting monsters, I suppose.” Now Aryicalt was shifting from side to side, uttering incomprehensible moans and curses. “Is he going to be alright?”
“Big, strong lad like him? He’s seen worse.” Then he looked up into Zigrel’s eyes, still hunched as he was against the wall, looking desperate almost to the point of threat. “Done crying over our attempted killers?”
She met his glare until, not too long after, he turned away. “May their souls find peace in the next life,” she said.
Mierel snickered bitterly. “That merciful front is going to get you killed.”
“Violence begets violence,” she snapped back--violently.
“That’s what they call ‘justice,’” Mierel replied.
“‘Justice is elusive,’” she said, a rote recitation, “‘and revenge is all before it.’”
He didn’t acknowledge that, shifting slightly on his perching feet; his vacant, green eyes wandered unresponsively over the bloody fruits of his effort as the guard’s procession passed them. Ayricalt, meanwhile, roused himself. He lay on his back, black ponytail splayed out under his head like a pillow of crow’s feathers. His eyes wide, face pale, stuttering for breath as he intermittently winced in some acute pain.
“Rise and shine, love,” Mierel said nastily.
“Terrible dream,” he whispered back. “Feel like I drank an ocean.”
“Just one saucer, Ayry. I’d say you never could hold your booze, but…well it wasn’t booze.”
“Poison,” he said, remembering. “I’m some kind of idiot, eh Mierel?” His voice stuttered, hot with the seed of tears--though probably more from the hangover than regret, Zigrel considered.
“Aye, Ayry. You are. Luckily, our friend here is wise.” That easy, capricious smile returned to him. His gaze ate into her. “And she has a strong sense of justice.”
The trio watched wordlessly as the three corpses were beheaded, staked, and anchored in front of the villa’s gates. Crows, already perched on those slack, suspended shoulders, or clinging to the stained, wooden poles, pecked at the carrion. They tossed up what viscera they could extract, and caught it playfully in the backs of their maws. Their black beaks somehow darkened with gore. Zigrel watched, her mouth shivering slightly, her jaw tensed--though she hadn’t really noticed the birds.
Governor Lastor, who could not hide his impatience at this little diversion back to Cad Aarvort’s villa, had swiftly retreated back to the main road, wiping his sweating face incessantly. Though the evening had begun to cool--quite dramatically, for Zigrel.
“What’d he say?” Mierel whispered, just from the corner of his mouth. He sounded suspicious, and exhausted. Ayricalt, lumbering uneasily on his other side, beheld the grisly, avian spectacle with an only mildly disheartened frown.
“He says,” her voice choked in her throat, somewhere far away. It hardly seemed real. “He says that the others, the Galites, and…and Master Arzado, have been taken.” She pulled at her breath. In, down, out. Bring yourself back. In, down, out.
“Caught in the brothels?” he returned, and it wasn’t a jab, or a jape. “Port towns always--”
“No, Sprunishman. No.” She could feel herself returning to the present (in, down, out), her feet bearing comfortably down on the Glass Path. Anger: something to focus on. Arzado had taught her that--and not with his words. The giant turned his vacant attention toward her, looking nonplussed as usual. “Kidnapped!” she explained, “taken out of port. Lastor’s men just came back from interrogating the harbormaster.”
“Do we know where they’re going?” asked Mierel.
“Where we’re going, Mierel.” Ayricalt corrected, startlingly full-voiced. It filled Zigrel with wanted encouragement. It sounded foolish.
“Well, aren’t you feeling chipper?” Mierel muttered back.
“I was feeling sorry for myself, Mierel, because I drank some poison. And because the whole damned thing was my idea, anyway. But, on second thought, I think…” but he trailed off.
“You’d better not, Ayry,” Mierel scoffed. “There’s badness all about your thoughts.”
“Worried about a little boat ride, Mierel?”
“No,” he lied. “Actually, Ayry, I’m worried that two men and a witch are hardly sufficient--”
“Well don’t be,” he carried on, easily overpowering the conversation. Mierel, for his part, looked earnestly worried. “I’ve seen seas like these before. I’ve seen a cloud like that before, Mierel. I know what that statue is, and I’m fairly certain what that statue means. I think I know where our companions are being taken.
“I know what the monster is, and I know where we’ll find it.”
“What is it?” Zigrel wondered. She’d never heard him speak so much at once.
Ayricalt sighed in preparation. “We call it a whaleherd,” he said. “But I’ve heard that it’s called ‘Crusis’ in the old tongue.”
Zigrel snorted, met with a particularly severe glare from the glacial-eyed Ayricalt. She cleared her throat and explained, mildly: “that’s just a term for certain seafolk.”
Ayricalt blinked hard for a few silent moments, his long face set in stone. But when he asked: “Like…merfolk?” it was with an almost ingenuous curiosity.
“Actually, no…” she regretted to say, “more like sea monsters. Serpents and sirens.”
“And you’ve never seen one?” Mierel reminded him.
“No. But they have, Mierel. Which means we probably will, too.”
“Not an attractive prospect, Ayry. What if it’s as big as the statue?”
“They herds whales, Mierel,” Ayricalt frowned, “I suspect they’re much bigger than that. Shouldn’t matter. If we can see it, then we can kill it--isn’t that right, Mierel?”
To Zigrel, it certainly sounded like something he might have said.
Mierel chortled, groaning sorely as he rose, and sauntered over to jab a finger down into the big man’s chest. “All the hardness you should’ve had here,” he whispered, “is up in that thick skull of yours.”
“Not just in my skull, Mierel,” he whispered back.
Zigrel cringed celibately--it reminded her of the kind of idiot things which pubescent novices giggled about. Somebody needs a beating, she thought automatically.
“Keep a lid on it, Ayry,” Mierel said with a weighty sigh. “I’m tired. From saving your enormous ass, by the way--again. You’re very welcome.”
He’d already started walking back to the main road. Ayricalt looked to Zigrel, and nodded, smiling mischievously. They moved to follow.
“Two plans in one day!” Mierel shouted to no one. “We’re setting a dangerous precedent--you’re just lucky I’m too exhausted to think…”