Mother Moon in her magnanimity makes the earth to provide for all circumstances. Clouds of flies descend on the battlefield and their young worms consume the dead, but only the dead. Take heed, then, learned mothers, when a portion of flesh dies while the body lives, be the death inflicted one to another or brought about by sickness. The young worms harvest only what belongs to them.
-The Twenty-Nine Mysteries, Book 28
Millark, Dridon
Akona finished reapplying the dressing to Styri’s facial wound. She knelt at the side of their shared bed, nothing more than a crude straw mat on the floor. It was a far cry from the familiar cots of Myrenthos or even the more generously stuffed straw beds of the Baranathan Oasis. But it would have to do for now.
“How does it feel?” Akona asked.
Styri shot her a sullen glare. “How do you think?”
“You know what I mean. Besides the obvious.”
Her twin lifted an instinctive hand to scratch beneath the bandage, then had to pull it away forcibly with her other hand. “Tickles.”
That was a major improvement on the pain she’d felt before. “That’s all? That’s wonderful!”
Styri shook her head. “You’ve never felt tickling like this. Not the kind that makes you laugh. The kind that drives you mad. Keeps you up at night.”
“Only for a while longer.” Akona took her sister’s hand in hers, stroking it sympathetically. “Mother Moon is watching over you.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Styri took back her hand, rolled over, and sulked at the bare wall. “Maggots aren’t eating your face.”
Akona had no reply.
It made her skin crawl, the thought of those pale yellow worms writhing in the black-and-beige crater on her sister’s cheek. It was as the glademothers had taught them. It was the only way. Thankfully, the wound from the scorpion venom was shallow enough that it wouldn’t cause any structural damage to her face, but it would likely leave a gruesome scar. It was a shame. Styri had always been the prettier one, she thought.
“I’ll be back before dark,” Akona said, pulling on her yellow Dridic dress. “Don’t scratch it. And stay away from the window.”
“Whatever,” Styri sighed. She’d been in such a dour mood ever since they’d made their way out of the Zan desert; rest only gave her time to ruminate on their situation.
“Styri.” Akona bent down and held out her bent elbow. “Promise me.”
Her sister sighed again, but complied. She hooked her arm around hers and they pulled to seal their promise. Then Styri rolled over again and resumed staring at the wall in silence.
They’d been given residence in an abandoned house in the Dridic village of Millark. It was the proclamation of a local triarch, a male priest who presided over the village’s Trinitist church. In exchange for free lodging and a single coin’s wage each day, Akona would help certain villagers with various tasks, all of which varied by the day. Some days she would help milk cows at a farm on the village outskirts. Other days, she helped out in a brewery near the center of the village, mashing the grain, boiling the water, mixing the two, pouring precise measurements into the fermenter. However they put her to work, it was always tiring.
But no more tiring than running for survival.
They’d been hiding in Millark for eight days by this point. After the days spent in hiding and the harrowing nights crossing the dark Zan desert, it was a welcome respite. But even in her short years, Akona knew the dangers that comfort entailed. It lowered one’s guard. Made one soft.
She never stopped searching the faces of the villagers for eyes looking back at her. She never slept at the same time as her sister anymore—they slept in shifts, and when Akona had no time to sleep before she was due to work, she skipped it entirely. She knew it might dull her senses. Make her prone to mistakes. Still, it felt safer than the alternative, which risked her waking up beside her sister with another veracidin’s scorpion hovering over them.
Most of all, it wouldn’t last forever. Soon they would go where even the veracidins could never find them.
“How much for one of these?” she asked in Stonish. She’d found her way to the shipyard at the far western edge of the village, a place where wooden ships were built and repaired near the water’s edge. Beyond that sea lay the Grand Archipelago, and the Great Unknown beyond that.
Beyond that was Xheng Yu Xi. Then home.
One of the shirtless shipwrights wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm. “Run along, child. This is no place for a little girl like you. Where’s your mother? Poor thing.”
“I don’t need your sympathy. I asked how much it would cost to buy a ship.” Akona was resolute. She could sense that the men here in Dridon were not quite as cruel or barbaric as those to the north of the desert, but the paradigm here was still worlds different from back home in Myrenthos. There was a female queen by birthright only. Otherwise, women were given no special authority in Dridic society—often, it was the men who ruled over them, a concept that was backward and alien to her wherever she found it.
Now the shipwright stood up straight and dropped his tool in the dirt. “More than you can pay, little girl.”
“You still haven’t named your price.”
A grin broke out on his face. “I like your attitude. I can tell you’re not from here.” He glanced over his shoulder at the ship being built, which at this stage was a massive wooden frame just starting to fill out with planks. “A ship this size? The crown will pay us four hundred triskeles.”
Akona gasped. “That much?”
“That is a generous bargain, even for a boat this small. I’d charge a nobleman twice that for his private use!”
The Myrenthian girl took a few steps closer, cocked her head to get a better look at the wooden skeleton of the vessel. “And this will sail all the way to Tern? The capital?”
“She’ll stay here at port for now, awaiting the queen’s orders. She will sail anywhere Her Majesty sends it.”
That got Akona thinking. “Could it sail to the Grand Archipelago?”
The shipwright furrowed his brow dismissively. “If the islands didn’t belong to Grackenwell, yes, it could. What are you getting at, little girl?”
“What’s the cheapest ship that could sail you there? How much would that cost?”
The shipwright chuckled. “You don’t look Archipelagian. You also ask a lot of questions. I’m Brennac. What’s your name?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not here to make friends.”
“And I don’t do business with strangers.” The shipwright’s stubbornness was playful rather than demanding, and she could tell as much. It was the only reason she humored him.
“My name is Phileia,” she lied. “Pleasure to meet you.” He reached out his right arm and they grasped each other’s forearms, a common Stonish greeting.
“Likewise.” His eyes narrowed a bit, and she got the sense that he was more discerning than he first appeared. Could he tell she’d given him a false name? Did he care? “Well, Phileia, that depends on a few factors. How big’s your crew? How experienced?”
“Four,” she lied again. “Enough.”
“A girl of few words. Wise beyond your years. Well...” Brennac wiped his dirt-smudged face with a rag from his belt. He couldn’t help but glance again at his fellow shipwrights hammering the planks into place along the ship’s frame, as if feeling out of place that he wasn’t working alongside them. “...I’d estimate for a small ship seaworthy for that distance, we could build you one for, eh...” He shrugged. “...a hundred fifty triskeles.”
The price was staggering, but not wholly unexpected based on what he’d said so far. “All right. I’ll need time to earn that many coins. Could you have it ready for me in...” She thought for a moment. There was no way she could come by those coins honorably. “...eight days from now?”
Brennac threw back his head and laughed. “If I had double the crew who asked for half the wages and never ate or slept, sure I could! Lass, this warship is halfway built and still won’t be ready until next season. Even with a small ship, you’d need to give us at least a few moons.”
“What if I need a ship sooner than that? Could you do it in, say... one moon’s time from now?”
He laughed again and shook his head, but the angle of his gaze suggested he was considering it. “Ah, well... Perhaps. But to complete the job in a third the time? I’d have to charge you double. And that’s only because I like you.”
“You’d charge a little girl like me three hundred triskeles just so she could go home?”
“Now you’re playing for my sympathy, eh?” He folded his arms, looking down at her sternly like she was any other customer. “Two hundred fifty. And I’ll need twenty-five of it upfront as a deposit in good faith.”
“What about fifty for a deposit, and you let it go for two hundred triskeles even? For a friend?”
“Fine. Deal.” The shipwright snorted, and they sealed their contract with another forearm handshake. “Though I was told you weren’t here to make any friends.”
Akona shrugged. “You’re doing business with me. I suppose that doesn’t make me a stranger, does it?”
Brennac laughed a big belly laugh and applauded her. “By Triad! Where’d you get that quick wit of yours, girl? A mind that sharp, you could trick every man and woman in Dridon out of their hard-earned coins!”
She gave him her most innocent smile and waved goodbye for the day. “In another life...”
“Oh, and Phileia!” Brennac called after her. “One moon from today for the final payment. I’ll need the deposit in twelve days. If I don’t have the deposit, or the final payment, I’ll sell off the ship to a fisherman or some noble for twice the cost. Friend or not, we have livings to make. Understand?”
“I understand,” she answered him amicably. But she didn’t like it.
***
Akona had wanted to earn coins honorably. Truthfully, she had. She’d been taught from a young age the Myrenthian concept of tychna, the impact of one’s moral actions, good or bad, on one’s fortune. Certain destinies were written by the gods beyond mortal control. But sowing good deeds could allow one to reap good benefits. Doing evil meant one would reap hardships.
The problem was that honest work didn’t pay very well.
Killing Hierophant Drakhman in that cold castle in the woods—was that good or evil? Where did justice end and vengeance begin? She couldn’t shake the feeling that all this running and looking over their shoulders was some sort of divine penance assigned to them for killing a man who could not see his death coming, no matter how much of a tyrant he may have been.
Only one question remained. How much penance was left to do?
It begot only more questions. When would it end? Years? Would it take the death of one of them to wipe the slate clean—a death for a death? There was no way of knowing.
“Three coins,” said Akona. She closed the creaking plank of a door behind her, locking it with a wooden bar. It was well past dark. The extra work she’d put in at the brewery was grueling and made her break her word to her sister about being home before dark—all for a measly profit. “That’s all I made today.”
“That’s two more than most days.” Styri sat up in bed, looking a little livelier than she had recently. Or so Akona thought. She was nothing but a dark blue shape in the light of Mother Moon. “Why?”
“I talked to a shipbuilder today. He said he can build us a ship to sail the rest of the way home.” Akona stored her coins in a sack which she stashed back under a loose floorboard. “He needs two hundred triskeles. Fifty upfront.”
“Two hundred?” Styri was incredulous. “I’ll be back in working shape soon. Even still... We could both break our backs every day and it would still be over a moon before we had enough to pay him. He’s reliable?”
“Seems so. But they need more time to build it anyway. He said it would be ready this time next moon. We have time.” Akona set about changing Styri’s wound dressing for the second time that day.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Not enough. A day’s wage in this village is a coin. That’s a full day’s work. Earning multiple coins a day will have us working like madwomen... How long can we keep that up?”
“Hold still.” Akona peeled back the gauze and then stopped to light a candle.
“We might have to use the ways of the fox again.”
Akona hated when her sister used that old saying of the glademothers—it made their practiced skill of discreet thievery seem like some lesser, baser instinct that they were surrendering to, and it made her feel all the guiltier for it. “Stop talking,” she grumbled. “And hold still.”
“I was.”
“And now you’re talking!”
“Because you weren’t doing anything!”
“Well, now I am! Be quiet.” Akona took her tiny iron tongs and used them to pluck each maggot out of her sister’s wound with care and precision. They each fell with the gentlest tink in the glass jar where she dumped them. “And be grateful for a change.”
Styri’s remorseful look was all the apology she needed.
Akona worked diligently for a while, and when she was finished, all that was left was a clean wound and a jar of writhing maggots, which she sealed using a mesh lid. She would dispose of them in the morning in the woods. “It’s done.”
“Really?” Styri sat up and smiled with the good side of her face, eyes wide.
“I thought you would need to have them one more night. They did quick work.”
“Thank the gods!”
“You’ll still need to keep dressing the wound, though.”
“I can do that myself. Finally.” She grasped Akona’s hand. “Thank you. And I’m sorry for being irritable with you.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll just add it to my list of complaints to give our mother when we get home.” She shared a hopeful smile.
When Styri finished applying a fresh dressing to her maggot-free wound, the two of them curled up on their straw mat bed for the night, facing away from one another as they always did. Styri was snoring within moments. For Akona, though, sleep was forbidden for the time being, and she instead stayed up wondering about their turn of fortune.
Why hadn’t the veracidins found them yet? Did the shifting sands of the desert hide their trail? Or were the spies simply rallying their forces, gathering enough trained men that the wily Myrenthian assassins couldn’t possibly wriggle out of their clutches this time? Perhaps they were finally free. Perhaps their penance was over.
Would the ways of the fox sully their good fortune again? Or had the gods deemed them worthy of an easier life, willing to excuse the theft of a few coins when it meant eluding their captors and returning home for the first time in almost a year? It was impossible to tell.
Akona didn’t know. She hated not knowing.
Eventually, exhaustion won out over her restless uncertainty. She was unable to stay awake for her shift keeping watch. The worry followed her into her dreams.
***
“So, the little girl made good on her deal,” said Brennac, grinning. He threw his hammer in the mud. “Fifty triskeles, eh?”
Akona threw him the cinched sack of coins, which he caught one-handed. “You can count them if you’d like.”
“I don’t befriend liars. I trust you.” He fastened the little bag to his belt. “Would you like to see it?”
“Please.”
The shipwright led her across the shipyard, past the hulking frame of the Dridic warship tilted on its side, as well as a trio of rowboats in various stages of progress. At the far end of the yard was the ship that was to be hers. Its skeleton stood near a copse of trees at the edge of the sand, the frame complete and the first planks in place. Brennac patted the frame proudly.
“Fifty triskeles in just twelve days,” he said, whistling. “That’s no small feat in such a short time. How’d you manage that, little girl?”
Akona shrugged. “What can I say? I work hard for what I want.”
“You and your sister, or so I’ve heard.” Her heart skipped a beat as it changed rhythm. She waited for him to summon veracidins lying in wait in the copse behind him, or perhaps hidden under the incomplete boats. None came. “Have I heard right? Word travels fast here in Millark. I heard she was ill for a time and just started working alongside you.”
“Yes, she’s part of my crew.”
Brennac nodded. “Well, good. Glad to hear you have help earning those coins. That amount of honest money is hard to come by on your own.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He shrugged. “What I said. Word travels fast here in Millark. Just be careful out there.” He eyed her warily for a moment, and Akona drew on her extensive training of reading the expressions of another. She could tell that he suspected her of something but without proof.
“I always am,” she finally replied.
As Akona trudged away from the shipyard and back into the village proper, she soured. The ways of the fox were their only means of amassing that many coins in such a short time. This was on top of their already backbreaking daily labor, running around all the village for more grueling work to do in exchange for a single meager coin. It wasn’t sustainable.
To make matters worse, they’d already parted with the last of their savings to make the deposit payment. They had a bit more time to scrounge up the final payment, but it was three times as large, and failure would mean getting stranded in Millark. On the Stone Continent. No one from Dridon would risk sailing to the Grackenwelsh-occupied Archipelago. It would mean more time for the veracidins to catch up and find them—if they were still in pursuit. The not knowing killed her.
“We need to finish here right away,” Akona panted, having just run from the other side of the village. She squatted next to Styri, who was pressing out a cow’s udder into a pail. “The brewery has another batch ready to go. We’re wanted there.”
Styri shook her head without looking away from her work. “No, the seamstress said she needed us. I told her we’d be there once we were done here.”
“Then I’ll take the brewery and you can go to the seamstress. You’re better at sewing anyway.”
“No, I wanted the next day at the brewery!”
“Well, too bad! I’ve worked under the seamstress the last three days in a row. My fingers hurt. You can take a turn with her for a day or two!”
“She’ll have no more work left this moon by the time I’m done—”
“Styri, enough!”
At their outburst, the cow kicked Styri in the chest, knocking her on her back and spilling the near-full pail of milk. Akona’s older twin glowered up at her then, tears in her eyes, looking every bit like a little sister half her age. “Go on, then!” she snapped, trying to hold her voice steady. “Go take the day off, for all I care! I’ll do it all myself!”
Akona sighed. “Styri, stop whining.”
“I’m not whining!” Styri whined. She shook the milk from her arm in disgust, drawing up her knees against her chest in her gray dress. “We’re never going to have enough money to pay him. Will we? We’re going to be stuck here forever!”
“We will. We just have to keep work—”
“Keep working?” Styri cut her off. “That’s all you keep saying. We don’t have time! Three coins a day for each of us—if we could even keep up with that level of work—we still need twenty-five days to get the rest of the coins! Our ship will be sold by then! That’s what you told me.”
“Well, what would you like to do? We were lucky enough to scrape together the coins we did in the time we had. You think...” Akona looked around, lowering her voice. “You think a village this size wouldn’t notice over a hundred coins going missing this moon? We have to be perfect. Every time. Every time, for every last coin... And all it takes is one perceptive villager to catch us in the act. Then we’ll be jailed for gods know how long?”
Styri wiped her eyes with her dry arm. “So what do we do? Try going south, on foot again?”
Akona had had her fill of walking and running for several years. Her calves and thighs were leaner, more muscular, than ever, flying in the face of the Myrenthian female aesthetic. Her legs were looking manlier by the day—legs fit only for crude manual labor, the kind a man or a beast was fit to do. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe a noble will ride through the village. Nobles carry coins, don’t they? If we hit only one target... Well, we’ll have fewer chances of getting caught.” Styri sniffled. “I don’t know where else we’ll be able to get that many coins at once. Not around here, at least.”
That was the detail to jog Akona’s imagination. “I’ve got it,” she breathed. “I know what we need to do. But we’ll have to wait until the day before we buy the ship.”
“Why?”
Akona swallowed the sudden dry dread rising up in her throat. “Because we’ll need to make our getaway as soon as possible. Before they find out.”
***
“Blessings of the God Above,” said one of the triarchs.
“Wisdom of the God Among,” said the second.
“Mercy of the God Below,” the third one finished.
The three old men bowed and, each holding up three fingers, drew triangles in the air between them and the twins.
“Thank you for your help tonight, girls,” said the first triarch, the oldest. He had plump, ruddy cheeks and white hair. “Twelve boxweights of triskeles for Feast Day. Twelve! Surely Triad has smiled upon Millark this year!”
“The fruits of our faith,” the second one added with a solemn nod.
“Praise Triad indeed,” Akona agreed with a smile. “Forgive us, triarchs. We’ve worked long in the fields today and my sister needs her rest. She’s still healing.”
“Of course, of course,” said the eldest triarch like a harmless grandfather. “Off you go. Rest well. The feast is in three days’ time—I trust we’ll see you both back here then?”
“Of course!” the twins lied in unison.
“Very good. Rest easy this eve, girls. You’ve done a good thing this day!”
Akona waved goodbye and led her sister back to their house toward the outskirts of the village. The sun was low. She waited until they were far from the Trinitist church and far out of earshot of anyone who might be listening. Still, she couldn’t help but remember the words of the matriarch from her hometown: In delicate matters, words are best kept mysterious.
“Tonight,” she said. “We’ll come back for it. Then our deal is done at first light. Then we move on.”
“It’s hidden well?” Styri replied.
“A shallow grave. Ferns. Beneath two trees growing apart.”
“The thirteenth? Fourteenth? How many?”
Akona nodded. “Thirteenth.”
“Not enough.”
“The thirteenth contains pieces of the first twelve. Trust me, it’s enough—and then some. The builder will have his pay. We will have what he built.”
Styri stopped her in her tracks. Held out her arm. “Promise?”
Akona locked arms with her sister. Sealed her word with conviction. “Promise.”
And she made good on her promise—to her sister, at least, if no one else. That night, they stole away from the abandoned house gifted to them by the village church, wearing the clothes gifted to them by the villagers, and made their way back to the site of their crime. The wooden box lay buried beneath a mound of freshly turned soil. In it rattled almost two hundred triskeles that Akona had stashed over the course of the day.
All they’d had to do was help count and sort donations from the local Trinitist believers. It was a Millark tradition to pool their coins so that the church could host a feast each year. And they had plenty yet to fund their Feast Day.
They simply had twelve boxes of coins instead of the thirteen they would have had otherwise. It was no great tragedy, at least not in Akona’s heart. And a fraction of their money was going to a much better cause now.
These were the things she kept telling herself.
“I can’t believe it,” Styri whispered. She finished counting the coins by torchlight. “They’re all there. Every last one we need, plus a few extra!” It was all worth it to see the relieved smile on her face. “We’re going home?”
Akona nodded. “Yes. And we just made a big leap of progress.”
The twins couldn’t sleep at all that night. When the first dim hint of pre-dawn twilight fell over the world, they gathered their belongings and took off, bound for the shipyard. They carried with them a separate bag of coins to make it look as though they hadn’t stolen them—the empty box was buried back in the woods. Brennac didn’t seem the type to care where his money came from, but Akona couldn’t risk it.
“Up and at it so early,” said the shipwright, who had only just made it to the shipyard himself. He was the first of his men to arrive. “Why the rush?”
“You said you’d sell it after today,” Akona replied tiredly. “One hundred fifty. As agreed.” She hefted the sack in both hands.
Brennac gestured to the dock, where a new ship, complete with sails, was tied up. “Your ship. As agreed.” When the money changed hands, he weighed the sack, nodding. He looked impressed. “Do I want to know where you got these?”
“From the people of Millark,” Akona answered, and for once, she was telling the truth. “We’ve been working ourselves to the bone since we arrived here.”
The man smirked half-knowingly. “So you have. Come along.” The twins followed him to the dock and onto the ship that now belonged to them. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”
“They won’t be joining us.” That’s the truth, too, Akona thought. “Unfortunately, they couldn’t be here.” They couldn’t because they don’t exist. “But my sister and I are more than capable. Wise women back home trained us well—we can handle it.” That applies to sailing, or you, if need be.
“Fair enough. Care to take her out for the morning? Should be smooth waters. Could get a feel for her before you make your trip.” The twins didn’t answer. “Don’t tell me you’re in a hurry to leave already! Won’t you at least stay for the feast? It’s a Millark tradition.”
“We’ve heard. Sadly, we can’t stay.”
He narrowed his eyes, though his light smile was still friendly enough. Akona detected a subtle change in him. “Is that so? What a shame.” He took a step forward on the deck of the small ship. “I’m not sure how much you know about Feast Day, but it’s quite the celebration. You see, Millark gathers once a year to celebrate all our hard work and reward ourselves with the fruits of our labor. Builds morale. Everyone in the village gathers for it. And everyone contributes. Did you know that? The dairy farmer, the seamstress, the brewers, the farmers, the smiths, the cobblers, the butchers... Even the triarchs throw in some coins.” Another step forward. Brennac was in arm’s reach now. “You must know a little about Feast Day. After all, you volunteered to help the triarchs with preparations, didn’t you? Just yesterday, if I’m not mistaken.”
“We did,” Akona said, meeting his gaze brazenly. “We hope you all enjoy it. From what I counted, there was plenty to guarantee a good feast for the whole village.”
Brennac stared back into her eyes. His smile faded. “I see.” He looked east, past the shipyard and toward the gilded silhouette of Millark against the dawn. “Well, then, Phileia... Our business is finished. Consider me a stranger again.” He stepped off the ship, back onto the dock, and kept walking for the yard, never once turning back to face them.
Akona let out the breath she’d been holding. “Let’s go.”
They drew up the ship’s anchor, unfurled the sails, and after spending the early hour of dawn recalling everything they’d learned about sailing in their childhood, the sisters managed to get the ship to leave the dock. Soon Millark was just a cluster of bricks and wood flanked on either side by forest. It was nothing but a dot in their memory now, another glimpse of strangeness along the way.
Paranoid, Akona made sure to check below deck for any Qardish stowaways like the one who ambushed them in Umreh. It was small, and the hiding places would be scant, but she could never be too careful, not anymore. There were none. The ship was in good working order and it was all theirs. Before long, land was just a greenish-gray smudge on the horizon behind them. Even the wind favored them that day.
Was it really that easy? Akona asked herself. They hadn’t crossed paths with even a single veracidin during their whole stay in Millark, and it had been more than two moons since their clash in Baranatha. Perhaps all that business was in the past now. Is our tychna finally paid in full? Even this victory in a string of defeats and setbacks brought her no peace.
Their journey, and the peril it yet promised, was far from over.
“Phileia?” Styri said, and she snickered quietly.
“Don’t,” Akona sighed. “It’s not funny.”