1633880583 (F) (43 page)

Anansi
brought the Lardermen survivors to Fiskegard, a place looking more like a set of half-drowned, sky-lancing mountains than a proper island group. There lay one small harbor, with a fishing village called also Fiskegard. It was filled with itinerant workers from all around these parts, and the houses were fenced in by racks of drying stockfish.

And there on the beach before the tavern called the Pickled Rat, Captain Glint burned the recovered bodies of dead Lardermen and Muninn Crowbeard. Gaunt, Bone, and Eshe watched the foamreaver funeral and raised mugs to the dead. The others drank coffee, but Bone sipped aquavit, for he figured he was entitled. It was a little like tasting the funeral fire.

“I’ll be glad to trade you a barrel of aquavit,” said one of the proprietors beside them, a wizened, bright-eyed woman named Nan, “in return for a bunch of this Kpalamaa coffee. Seems to take a year off me, in the good way. If we can come to a fair arrangement, of course.”

“I’ll ask Captain Nonyemeko to speak to you,” Eshe said. “Her business is the cultural exchange and trade agreements. Mine is the skullduggery.”

“All right, then,” said Nan, nodding as her companion Freidar passed by, tending to the other patrons. “What skulls need to be dug?”

“You say Innocence disappeared from this place?” Gaunt said.

“Yes,” said Nan. She told the tale of his kidnapping by uldra, how Nan and Freidar failed to retrieve him, and how they followed rumors of his appearance in Oxiland. “We actually went there recently and learned he’d vanished from the basement of Saint Kringa’s. Innocence seems to have a talent for disappearing.”

“That’s my boy,” Bone murmured.

“I see the resemblance,” Nan said, and her voice was sad. “I am so sorry we weren’t able to keep your son safe.”

“I am not certain anyone could,” Bone said, moved. “We’re grateful for all that you did.”

“He is a good lad. Troubled, but his heart is good.”

“It’s good to hear that.”

But Gaunt said nothing as she pulled out the
Chart of Tomorrows
. The heavy book thumped onto the table and silenced them, as though an ominous sixth person had come to the table. Gaunt opened the book to sea-charts of central Kantenjord. She lingered over an image of the Chained Straits and frowned at red ruins marking some sunken site on the island in its midst. Intriguing, but not useful to her.

She turned the page to an image of Fiskegard’s main island. It was intricate, displaying hills and shoals, though not any of the modern buildings. She pointed at another spot marked in red runes. “There. Does that match the site of the Pickled Rat, Nan?”

“I think so. What’s it supposed to be, here?”

“An old place of worship. A stave church.” She flipped to maps of Oxiland. “This is Loftsson’s holding, yes? And this spot, on the hill?”

“A stone church,” Nan said. “Saint Kringa’s.”

“But the notes again indicate a stave church. And it was a stave church in which I had my dream of seeing Innocence.” She flipped to a map of the Morkskag. “There.”

“Our ancestors,” Nan said, rubbing her temples, “built old wooden shrines to the Vindir, making the foundations resemble wooden ships. Some of the shrines even held ship-graves, places where chieftains and their families and slaves were buried. It’s whispered that these first Swanlings saw something powerful in these old places and sought to top each of them with a stave church, a wooden building fashioned by Swanling shipwrights.”

“You are saying,” Eshe said, “they sensed these were places of power, and they built structures that would keep the power intact.”

“Yes. Perhaps they’re places where the might of the old dragons seeps through their petrified skin. Places where one can travel to strange realms.” She looked directly at Gaunt. “That is why Freidar and I built our tavern on this spot. We are practitioners of Runewalking, a magical art. We thought the energies would help us in our researches. I think they have, and that we’ve done good for this village thereby. But I am so very sorry this power helped snatch away your son.”

“Do you know how it is done, Nan?” Gaunt took the older woman’s hand. “How to access this gateway? Please. If there is a way . . .”

Nan’s face was solemn, but she squeezed Gaunt’s hand in return. “My husband and I have been trying to open the way since the day your son disappeared. Without success. I think the key was not knowledge but your son’s own power, and the desire of the uldra to reach out to him.”

“I want to sleep here. Right out here where you say he disappeared. I reached him before, in the Morkskag. I must try again.”

“Of course.”

Eshe cleared her throat. “If it does not work, Persimmon, or even if it does, you will have my help tracking him down. Bluntly, as long as he bears this might, he is a lightning rod for any unscrupulous power. My country wants him found.”

“And controlled?” Bone said archly.

“And with his parents,” Eshe said, meeting his gaze. “I suspect any father would agree that’s not quite the same.”

Nan patted Gaunt’s hand, smiled ruefully, and left to get more for the table, or so she said. She passed slowly by a line of shields.

“But I am in earnest, you two,” Eshe said. “I care what happens to your family, but I’m more concerned about the world. The Karvaks and the trolls are up to mischief in these isles, and I think Innocence is mixed up in it.”

Glint cleared his throat. “I understand little of this talk of strange powers. But invaders and trolls, that I understand. If there’s a fight ahead the Lardermen are ready. We may partake of Kantenjord’s squabbles, but this sounds like a threat to us all.”

Nan returned with mugs, and Freidar beside her. “Erik Glint speaks for us all, I think,” Nan said. “Sounds like mad, beautiful old Kantenjord needs us.”

Bone thought of his enslavement and squeezed Gaunt’s hand. She squeezed back, and he thought she understood, at least a little.

Kantenjord can burn
, he thought.
The Karvaks can hang, and Qiangguo can twist in the wind. I just want my son
.

CHAPTER 23

CHOOSER

Gaunt sat in the darkened tavern and dreamed. She found herself drifting above a quicksilver sea, its sky awash with brilliant stars.

A young woman riding a narwhal swam that sea, bearing a spear. Seeing her stirred a memory, or a premonition. In this place it was difficult to tell the difference.

She called out, “I am Persimmon Gaunt! I seek answers! Can you help me?”

The girl laughed. “Most visitors to the Straits of Tid are terrified. Those who are not raise their weapons. You are the only one I’ve seen who responds by demanding answers.”

Gaunt smiled. “That was not a much of an answer, you know.”

The girl smiled herself, but it was the smile of one who was keeping a secret. She almost seemed not to have heard Gaunt. “But then, your dread weapon is gone, and you have not yet claimed your fiddle. You are betwixt and between, as is Imago Bone, who is now neither thief nor spy. I can help you—but only briefly. My substance is highly subjective at this juncture.” And indeed, her aspect rippled as though Gaunt’s breath had disturbed the reflection in a clear pond.

Gaunt remembered something. “Alder. He said he’d met a girl riding a narwhal.”

“I think I remember him. Or foresee him. I have chosen, or will choose him.”

Gaunt felt as though something cold brushed her neck. “You’re an agent of the old gods of these lands. A Chooser of the Slain. Though I thought your kind rode flying horses.”

“I could, if you wished it enough. The specific manifestation of time, and me, that you perceive is filtered through your preconceptions. The
Chart of Tomorrows
depicts time as a body of water, and so for you it is. Were you a Kantening warrior of elder days, you might instead perceive time as a battlefield, and free movement through time as flying over the fighting.”

“You don’t speak much like someone of elder days.”

“In part that is also an effect of your perceptions. You are a learned person—well do I know it!—and I can explain matters in a way I couldn’t to a frightened warrior fresh from the farm. For him I would speak simply and bravely, as a comrade, while there was any chance our conversation would be overheard by his fellows. When he had passed on, I would embrace him like a mother, that he might accept his fate. Then I would lead him to the hall of heroes, my hand in his like a lover’s.”

“I am glad you are not doing any of those things. Nonetheless, your thinking seems modern, almost familiar.”

“I am of your time, Persimmon Gaunt—almost! The old gods reached across the centuries to name me a Chooser. It is easier to claim champions of this age if one has an agent of this age. But you are wasting time! I am enjoying meeting you, and I risk my future and your own by lingering. Ask your most important three questions—quickly! And I will answer, if my memory or foresight can serve.”

“Where, right now, is Innocence Gaunt?”

“Too many assumptions! But if he is not with you, then he must be with Jewelwolf or Skrymir.” She held out her hand, and with some trepidation Gaunt took it. The girl said, “I will take a risk and attempt to find
right now
.”

Gaunt descended like a leaf onto the narwhal, and the scene flickered like a Swanisle windstorm in the autumns of her girlhood, all golden leaves and spears of sunlight and shadows at her feet.

Now they seemed to swim over the craggy island in the middle of the Chained Straits, in the place where the Chain itself wrapped around the rock, rising at an angle at either side toward the absurdly attenuated headlands of Svardmark and Spydbanen. There were domed gers all over, and many Karvak soldiers. The sky was gray-black with clouds, and sunlight seemed more of a pleasant idea than a reality.

She gasped, for what she’d at first taken for a huge boulder was a gigantic troll. Kneeling before the troll was Innocence. Despite everything, it filled her with astonished relief to see him alive and whole.

In the next moment, she realized he was not whole. Not quite. One of his beautiful eyes glowed green. Gaunt shuddered.

“Do you see well, lad,” the rock-thing said in a startlingly quiet and intimate voice, “with the troll-splinter I’ve given you?”

“It’s made me understand many things, glorious king. Now daytime seems dark, and nighttime bright. Now bloodshed seems heroic, and generosity weak.”

“Do you see now,” said the troll-king, “any difference between humankind and trolls?”

“I think you
do
all the deeds my parents’ people only
think
of. But if thinking is what matters, then we’re all the same.”

“Fair enough! But there is a key difference, boy, that you’ll understand in time. Humans say they must be their true selves. Trolls say that to be themselves is sufficient.”

“That sounds like you’re saying the same thing with different words.”

“Ah, but Innocence Gaunt, chosen of the Heavenwalls of Qiangguo, it is not the same thing. You will know. Perhaps soon. Your enemy stirs.”

“My enemy?”

“The Runethane.”

“She is my old friend.”

“A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, daughter of Snow Pine and Flybait, is your old friend. The Runethane is your enemy. Which is Joy’s true self? I leave you with that question as I go to plumb the labyrinth of the Splintrevej. There is a haven of light and freedom there that has long vexed me. It is time I went looking for it. And I think soon enough you will go on your own errand as well. Meantime, seek again to unlock the power of this Chain, as we discussed. Bring on the Fimbulwinter, my boy.”

“It resists me, Skrymir. I think it knows there is another with a claim on its power.”

“But you are the stronger, Innocence. And now, with your troll-perceptions, weakness and mercy will not hamper you. In time you will suck its power dry, like a lamprey taking blood. Now I take my leave.”

Gaunt watched the troll-king rise and depart. Sometimes he scratched the emptiness where a heart should have been. Once, as he did so, he looked in her direction, as if half-noticing something there. Gaunt tried to still her breathing, in case any sound of hers might somehow reach him from the Straits of Tid.

The troll shrugged and surged into the waves.

Innocence turned from the ripples of water to the whorls of power flickering like lightning upon the metal of the vast Chain. A woman walked up to him, someone who had but one ear. Gaunt recognized her as Dolma, a member of a group called the Fraternity of the Hare. They’d once protected the lost land of Xembala but had chosen to serve Princess Steelfox of the Karvaks. Why was Dolma tending to Innocence?

“What did he say?” Dolma asked.

Innocence chuckled. “Did he not bellow loud enough for the whole island to hear?”

“No, he whispered. What did he say?”

“Troll things.”

“You have changed.” Dolma, too, stared at the Chain. “You were kinder, before. More . . . innocent.”

“Perhaps my name should be Lamprey.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He smiled. “Do you still wish to serve me? You may be off if you wish. Or you may keep minding me if that is your and Steelfox’s desire. I do not care either way.”

“You need help. You need people who will stay by you.”

“In the long run, no one can be relied upon . . .” He looked around. “Someone is spying on me. I know not how.”

He seemed to look directly at Gaunt.

“Innocence!” she could not help but cry out.

“What is it?” Dolma asked.

“I . . .” He shook his head. “I could have sworn I heard my mother calling me. It is surely my imagination. I must be afraid of growing up.” He turned to the Great Chain. “It is time to make a change in the weather.”

“Innocence!” Gaunt called again.

“No,” said the Chooser of the Slain. “You can do no more here. And I won’t risk Skrymir Hollowheart sensing you and returning.”

The world blurred, and again they floated in a moonlit sea.

“I could help him!” Gaunt said. “It’s not too late. He’s so lost, but I could still help him.” It was like a stony troll-hand was constricting her chest.