Hammer Of God (29 page)

Ursa rolled her eyes. “For all the good it does me. Jones, I've got to go. Walk me to the front gate.”

As they meandered down the path she said, “Well, Jones, if you're determined to take him romping in public you'd best shave his head again. That blue hair's a beacon for trouble.”

Dexterity swung the gate open for her. “There's no need. Last night I made him a headwrap, like they wear in Dev'karesh. Nobody'll look twice.”

“Jones, you're a cock-eyed happy hoper,” said Ursa, exasperated. “Just you keep a close eye on him, d'you hear?”

He kissed her cheek. “I do. Come for dinner tonight.”

“Can't. I'm spoken for.”

“Tomorrow night, then. I'll make mutton stew,” he promised. It was her favourite.

“All right,” she said, pretending reluctance, and stomped away.

Dexterity watched her go. He still hadn't told her of Hettie's return. He'd have told her this morning, if they'd not been sidetracked by Zandakar.

But that news can wait. She's enough to feel scratchy about as it is.

He went back inside. It was time to get ready to take his last toys to the market.

A half hour later, seated beside Zandakar on the donkey cart as they trundled their way down to the harbour, he looked the warrior over again. Zandakar's head was wrapped in a tightly-tied square of black and yellow cotton. Not a single strand of blue hair could be seen. And he'd exchanged his linen shirt and leather leggings for the roughspun working clothes he'd worn on the road and in his prison cell. Clean but tatty, he appeared to be nothing more than a common hired hand.

“Zandakar,” he said, suddenly curious, “what clothing do you wear in Mijak?”

“Horse hide,” said Zandakar. “Leggings.” He patted his arm. “Wei sleeves. Mijak hot. Much desert.”

“You lived in a desert?” It was hard to imagine. No grass. How horrible…

Zandakar shook his head. “Wei. Et-Raklion wei desert. Et-Raklion like Ethrea.” His voice had fallen to a whisper. “Et-Raklion beautiful.”

Otto had fallen back to a dawdle. Dexterity slapped the reins against the donkey's rump, stirring him up, then glanced sidelong. “Do you miss Mijak?”

After a long pause, Zandakar nodded. “Zho. Is home, Dexterity. You leave Ethrea you miss home, zho?”

“And your mother? Your brother? You miss them, too?”

An even longer pause this time. Zandakar stared at his folded bands. “Before Lilit, Yuma – Yuma—” His clenched fist struck his breast. He seemed lost for more words.

He sighed. “She's your mother, Zandakar. No matter what she's done…that bond is hard to break.”

“Zho,” said Zandakar softly.

“And what of your brother?”

“Dmitrak,” said Zandakar. His expression remained baffled. He punched his chest again. “Dimmi – Dimmi—” He unclenched his fist and instead knotted his fingers, turning them into something gnarled and twisted. “Like this, zho? Heart like this.”

“Why? Why is he like that?”

“Yuma wei want,” said Zandakar, shrugging. “Yuma birth Dimmi, hurt body. She hate. Always hard to Dimmi, zho? Wei smile. Dimmi try, always fail. From a baby, zho? From small sent to chalava-chaka, beat him for chalava.” He sighed again. “Dimmi angry boy.”

As a way to raise children it was abhorrent. “And you?” he said, staring. “When you were a child, were you beaten for your god?”

Zandakar nodded. “Zho. And as man.”

“As a man?” If he didn't know better he'd have thought Zandakar was lying, or trying to see if he was indeed gullible. “Why would you permit it? You're more than capable of defending yourself. Are you saying you wanted them to beat you?”

A glimmer of resigned amusement in Zandakar's face. “Want? Tcha. Wei. It is for chalava.”

“I don't understand, Zandakar. Explain it to me. I mean, was it just you and your brother, or is everyone in Mijak so severely treated?” Mistreated. Abused.

“Me. Dimmi. Raklion chotzu. Chalava-hagra. Wicked people,” said Zandakar. “Pain for chalava. Show chalava yatzhay. Show chalava love.”

Love? “Well, I'm sorry, but it sounds utterly barbaric,” he retorted. “Barbaric, uncivilised and downright cruel.” Which summed up Mijak quite neatly, really, now that he thought of it. “Zandakar, surely there must be better ways to worship. Ways that don't involve blood and pain?”

Zandakar didn't answer. As Otto's hooves tit-tupped along the stone-paved road leading down to Kingseat, Dexterity nodded to a few folk he knew, early risers passing on foot or in their own carts and carriages. In the distance Kingseat harbour sparkled beneath the morning sun and flashed it on the rooftops of the township. Now there was a hint of salt in the air.

In a blinding instant he saw scarlet-haired Dmitrak and his warriors running wild in the streets, hacking and slashing the people of Kingseat with their long sharp blades…and Zandakar's brother with his gauntlet of power, unstoppable fire lancing from his fist, smashing Ethrea's jewel of a capital to rubble and blood.

No. No. I can't let that happen…

“Zandakar?” he persisted, feeling the sweat of fear trickle down his spine and slick his hands on Otto's reins. “Isn't there another way?”

Zandakar stirred and looked at him. “Ethrea way, Dexterity?” He shrugged. “Ethrea way strange. Ethrea god strange. Ethrea people wei worship, they wei suffer. Ethrea god wei care. Chalava care. Chalava want all men worship and obey.”

He had to clamp his lips together and grit his teeth to stop himself from blurting out the truth. Chalava isn't a god, Zandakar! Mijak has no god, all it's got is mad priests drunk on human blood and dark power! He cleared his throat, swallowed the words he wasn't allowed to say.

“Yes, well, I'm sure there's something strange to be found in every man's religion: if you look hard enough. I suppose all I'm saying is it's possible your brother Dmitrak might be a different soul today if it hadn't been for all that beating. The angry boy grew into an angry man. And now that angry man leads an army against us.”

“Yatzhay, Dexterity,” said Zandakar, his expression turned from baffled to sorrowful. “Yatzhay.”

“Gracious, Zandakar, it's not your fault,” he said briskly.

Zandakar shook his head. “I think…zho. Raklion father. Dimmi born, he die. Dimmi born, Yuma nearly die. I am brother. I am gajka. Friend. Wei gajka but me, zho? I am brother, I am like father. Then I love Lilit, Dimmi think wei love him. Aieee, tcha. Dimmi hurt. I hurt him.”

So families were families no matter what language they spoke. A pity it's not more comforting to learn Mijak and Ethrea have that much in common. “I'm sure it sounds like he had a miserable childhood but I still say that's not your fault. And whatever choices he makes as a grown man, well, they're his choices, Zandakar. Not yours.”

“Choice?” Zandakar considered that. “Wei choice Mijak, Dexterity. Wei choice. Only chalava.”

The resigned acceptance in his voice was as horrible as any revelation he'd made. Dexterity shifted on his donkey cart's hard wooden seat, deftly guiding Otto through the gradually increasing traffic as he tried to make sense of the strange man beside him.

“Zandakar, your brother murdered your wife. That was his choice, surely, a choice made out of spite and childish jealousy. Do you forgive him for it?”

“I think…zho,” said Zandakar slowly. “He is Dimmi.”

Dexterity felt his guts tighten. Oh dear. If he can forgive his brother for killing his wife, if he can still love his mother after all that she's done…can we trust him to stay on our side? Is Ursa right, and Rhian wrong? “And what does that mean for Ethrea, Zandakar?”

Zandakar looked at him, his pale eyes clear and unconflicted. “I fight for Ethrea, Dexterity. I fight for Rhian. Chalava say wei Mijak kill. Chalava is chalava.”

Dexterity swallowed. What is it like, I wonder, to feel faith like bedrock, to believe in a god as though it were the sun in the sky? I can hardly imagine.

“Good,” he said, and smiled, though inside he was shaking. “That's good to hear.”

They reached the heart of Kingseat township soon after that, and conversation was abandoned in the tricky business of winding through the crowded streets, dodging carts and carriages and butchers' boys with trays of meat and girls with their little flower barrows and the foreign sailors taking in the sights and too much ale, even at this early hour, and the sober respectable men and women of Kingseat conducting their lives and the guards chivvying those who weren't quite so respectable.

Zandakar stared at the townsfolk and the sailors and the shopfronts and the paved streets, his dark face alight with curiosity. The smell of the harbour was stronger here. Between this building and that one, tantalising glimpses of the water and the moored trading vessels and Kingseat's fishing fleet. Masts poked above the lower roofs, romantic hints of far-flung lands.

Dexterity guided Otto down the sloping cobbled street to the harbour market gates and took his place in the long line of stall-holders waiting to be admitted. Memory stirred again, of that other lifetime. The morning he'd found Zandakar chained and dying on the Slyntian slave ship, and bought him.

If anyone had told me what that one act would unleash…would I have done it? Would I have dared?

Perhaps not. Perhaps that was why Hettie had kept so many secrets from him.

And now here's me keeping secrets. Are secrets contagious then, like plagues from distant shores?

It seemed they must be.

At last they were cleared to drive through to the marketplace. It was located on the far right hand side of the harbour, well away from the mooring places of the ambassadorial vessels and foreign trading ships in its middle section, and the fishing boats on the far left. As a rule, the general public weren't permitted to wander around the harbour docks for fear of accidents or unfortunate misunderstandings. There'd been plenty of both, in the old days, before the rules were changed. Any brash young men thinking to flout authority soon found themselves in a different kind of deep water…or, even these days if they were monstrous unlucky, the actual harbour, face-down and floating.

And if I fail there'll be a lot of Ethreans following suit…

Breath caught in his throat, heart beating too fast for comfort, he squeezed his eyes tight shut and willed that kind of nightmare to leave him be.

As they meandered their way in line to the market place he couldn't help looking back over his shoulder at Emperor Han's splendid vessel, still dominating the harbour. Admiring its sleek lines, its bold colours, he heard again Hettie's warning.

“Emperor Han is a mystery, Dex. His heart is a locked box and only he has the key to it…The witch-men of Tzhung-tzhungchai serve the emperor first and last and always. Remember that in your dealings with them.”

How he wished Rhian weren't mixed up with Han. How he wished Ethrea had no need of Tzhung-tzhungchai.

“Dexterity?” said Zandakar. “Something is wrong?”

Indeed something was: he couldn't seem to stop this plague of calamitous forebodings. He banged a fist on his knee, then made himself smile. “No. No. Just wool-gathering, Zandakar.”

A few minutes later he was too busy for frightening himself with imagined horrors, because it was time to set up his market stall. Pointed to their allotted space by a harbour official, they unloaded the wicker toy baskets – so much easier with two pairs of hands! – and saw Otto settled in his temporary stall. Then it was a matter of unpacking the toys, arranging them in a beguiling fashion…and waiting for the customers to arrive.

Kingseat's harbour markets were popular, and so were toys made by Dexterity Jones. He couldn't ask the same prices he'd asked of affluent nobles like Lady Dester, which was a pity, but he could ask enough so his labour wasn't valued at a pittance. A little over five hours after the markets opened all the toys were sold, and they were free to leave. But Zandakar seemed reluctant. From the moment they'd arrived at the harbour his attention was snared by it. Every chance he got, he stood and stared across it to the open ocean beyond its wide mouth.

“Dexterity,” he said as they gathered the emptied baskets. “We look more?”

“At the harbour?” he said, surprised. “Well…yes. I suppose. We can't see all of it, though. We don't have the authority. Why are you interested?”

“Mijak,” Zandakar said softly, so no-one standing close by could hear.

“Oh. Yes, all right,” he said. “For a little while.” He patted his moneybelt, tied tight around his middle. It was stuffed full of coins, satisfyingly heavy. Just to make sure, he buttoned his coat tight over it. “I want to look in on Otto first, though, make sure he's in clover. And remember, Zandakar: mouth shut. I'll do the talking if there's talking to be done.”

Otto was dozing, quite happy to be left alone. So they started by wandering through the busy market, slowly but surely inching their way closer and closer to the water's blue edge, as near to the working dock as regulations allowed. For a long time Zandakar brooded at the lapping wavelets, at the ambassadors' vessels and the moored trading ships and Kingseat's fishing fleet, waiting for the next turn of tide to sail out again. Then he stared behind him at the crowding township, hugging as close as it could to the harbour's scooped hem.

“What are you thinking, Zandakar?” Dexterity asked at last, made nervous all over again by the warrior's stern expression.

Zandakar stirred from his reverie. “I think if I am Mijak chotzu, how I take harbour. How Dimmi will take harbour.”

He shivered. Not would. Will. As though it were a foregone conclusion. As though Ethrea were defeated already. “And?”

Zandakar looked at him, his blue eyes bleak. “Ethrea harbour. How many?”

“Just the one. This one.” At Zandakar's surprise he added, “Of course there were many more before Rollin and the charter of trading nations. It was part of the agreement, you see. Each duchy was to stop trading on its own behalf and instead send all its produce and so forth here to be stored, then transported to its various destinations by hired outside vessels. The kingdom's permitted its fishing boats and a handful of other vessels for sanctioned business. The crown has one ship, the Queen Ilda. And a wall was built around the entire kingdom, cutting off the other ports and helping to keep us protected from pirates and marauders and suchlike ruffians. The trading nations do their part, too. They regularly patrol the waters around Ethrea as part of the trading charter.”