The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (2 page)

Behind him, his men unsheathed their blades.

They walked down the row of my people, slaying them with expert, efficient motions. The Ganteans fell, every single one quiet and stoic, never making a sound. We were not a people given to emotional outbursts or dramatic ends. Does the deer resist once the wolf has its teeth sunk into its throat? No. It surrenders. It becomes still. Every Gantean had seen that dying moment countless times, had imagined the surrender in our own flesh. None of us on the boat screamed, either, though every flash of southern steel struck me like a physical blow that brought up my stomach.

Shock made my vision fade in and out, but even so, I watched. The fallen clanspeople would want our witness, and just as a raw Gantean would not scream when facing death, she also would not avert her eyes from it. All blood contained the power our Hinge craved. Here on Gante’s hungry soil, no spilled blood was a waste. Though my clanspeople died, Gante drank.

Only afterwards, only after the dark blood pooled on the sand around the fallen bodies, did little Seleniq begin to wail. She was too young to understand that their blood fed the Hinge, that, terrible as the slaughter was, Gante might have demanded it. She was too young to understand the surrender beyond the fear.

Blood and wind pounded in my ears. Waves rolled the boat beneath us, as though Gante thrashed, shark-like, as she fed. Seleniq shoved her face into my skins, holding my sealskin cloak in white-knuckled fists even as her scream persisted.

That child’s wail would forever imprint itself in my memory as the sound of the end—that high, thin shriek that could barely compete with the wind. This wretched bloodletting would feed the Hinge for moons and moons, but what would happen when Gante became hungry again?

The task is yours,
Nautien’s voice reminded me. I shivered, and again, my vision blurred, this time with suppressed tears. Nautien’s anbuaq burned against my chest.

Entilans waded back to the boats and took up oars to row us to their main ship. If I rolled over the ship’s edge into the freezing surf, what would they do? As if he could see the intention in my eyes, a guard inserted himself between me and the edge. He yanked the still-crying Seleniq from my lap.

“Shut up! Quiet!”

The girl only screamed louder.

“Quiet!” the soldier yelled again, his fat, nightcrawler fingers digging into Seleniq’s slender shoulders.

“She can’t understand you!” I snapped in Lethemian, thankful that the Elders had made us learn it, though at the time I had resisted along with all the other tiguat children. “She doesn’t know what you’re saying.” Speaking brought me back to life, gave me a focus for my mind.

The Entilan glared at me. “No? Then what use is she?” Seleniq, still mewling, cringed as he lifted her and dangled her over the edge of the boat.

My breath stopped again. Her arms were tied; she couldn’t swim if she fell in the water.

“Stop!” I cried.

The guard dropped her.

Seleniq crashed into the water, and I heard something that sounded like my own voice, screaming.

S
omething
important and vital dies inside you when you face the end of your world. My friends’ expressions dulled and closed as the Entilans loaded us onto their ship and down into a dark hold below decks. A frozen, windlashed fear lit their eyes and trembled through their flesh. My uncontrollable scream had been my breaking point, too, the final deadly clamp of the wolf’s jaws on the deer’s neck. The part of myself that took action, that made plans, that believed I could exert control over my life, laid down in my chest and surrendered. The Entilans had turned me liquid and uncertain in a few short, brutal moments. I’d never recapture my easy, confident innocence. Fear, once rooted, never dies.

Why does the deer give up?
I had once asked Nautien.
Why doesn’t it fight to escape?

It is a kind of natural wisdom,
she had answered.
Death comes to everything. The deer knows it is better to flow than fight. It surrenders to death; it turns liquid and dissolves in it. There is less pain that way. This is why we Shringars say ‘flow like water,’ Leila. In this way, we maintain our proper role in the Slow Dance of creation, Sukaibiruq. We adapt.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark of the larger vessel’s hold, I saw little Anarian, only four winters old, curled in a heap on the floor. I gathered her into my lap and wound my hands into her hair, unworking the snarls. She eased her crying as I wove her hair into braids. This was the soothing a Gantean understood: gentle, comforting hands, and silence.

Murlian lifted her head. “What do you think they’ll do with us?”

Merkuur wrapped an arm around her shoulder. His brown eyes flashed with murderous anger as he saw the scratches on Murlian’s neck where the raiders had ripped away her tormaquine. I tucked the two charms I wore at my neck deeper under my sealskin cloak. I must not let the Entilans see that I still had them.

“They’ll take us to the slave market, of course,” Merkuur said.

“Merkuur, did you see—did you see what happened to the others at the main camp?” The question had been eating at me since the horror on the beach. If the others had also been killed—

Merkuur only closed his eyes and shook his head.

I persisted. “That bad?”

“No one escaped,” he finally said.

Now I mimicked him, closing my eyes and blanching. The world had truly shattered beneath my feet. What would become of us now? What would become of Gante? Of our Hinge and the world’s magic?

The task is yours.

The burden of Nautien’s duty weighed on me, but eventually
exhaustion and fear trumped every concern.

Be like the deer
, I told myself.
Surrender.

Sometimes that is all you can do.

G
antean eyes knew only
the natural vistas of sea, sky, and land. Our island was an open tundra dotted by sparse collections of spruce, mosses, lyme grass, and birch. We had boulders rather than buildings, footpaths rather than roads, and stark steep cliffs rather than manmade docks. We lived in wild places that were cold and empty, made habitable only by our diligent efforts and the sacrifices of the animals we used to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves.

My friends and I had never seen a place such as Queenstown, with tall buildings that cut the sky, chimneys that spouted black smoke, lights that glittered on the street corners even in daytime, and
people
. So many people! They rushed along the quay and gathered on the docks, wearing colorful, complicated clothes: fabrics threaded so fine I saw no texture in their weave, boots with stitching too small for the eye to see, hats in sculptural shapes that defied gravity. In one glance at the Queenstown docks I saw more people than had numbered in our entire clan.

The guards led us down the gangplank and across the busy quay, where they corralled us in a pen that smelled of musk goats. The early spring sun glared as brightly as the colors here in the south. Despite the heat, we Ganteans huddled together. Close contact eased our fears.

People crowded around the fence. Their vivid clothing nearly overwhelmed their natural features. What dyes had conjured such colors? Everything was rich and shocking, bombarding my eyes. In other circumstances, I might have been enchanted by the new sights, though no raw Gantean would ever have admitted to curiosity about southern ways. Secretly I’d always wanted to see the Lethemian mainland. Ganteans who had traveled and returned brought back stories about the strange sights they’d seen. Those stories had always enchanted me.

Ganteans were not as the Lethemians thought us—insular savages with no understanding of the southern ways. Our Elders kept careful tabs on the political events of the mainland, though they strove to keep us separate and uninvolved. We knew the southerners’ customs and language. We knew they had their own magic, though its practice was limited to those in a special caste, and they did not make proper payment for their power.

The Elders had never said that the southern world contained so many colors and textures and sensory delights, however. Even in my state of shock and despair, the brightness penetrated. It called to me.

The guards untied Anarian from me and made to take her, along with the littlest children, into the center of the corral. I clung to her tightly and would not let her go, even when the man said, “Release the girl! Now, or I’ll make sure you get sent to serve in the Lady’s house, and you won’t like that.”

He smacked my forearms with his stick and hauled Anarian away. Losing the weight of her small body from my arms was more terrible than anything had yet been. I felt empty, bereft. Frozen in terror.

“Gantean traitors, all of them!” cried a man on the corral’s central platform in a carrying voice. “Lady Entila’s representative has right of first refusal; once refused, they go on open auction! Starting bid for youths, eight jhasstone! Young, tractable, make ‘em how you like ‘em. Hardy Gantean stock!”

Anarian was sold first, but the other children were scooped up almost as quickly, leaving me breathless. Everything happened too fast. I had no time for reaction or thought. The Gantean children vanished into the crowd, caught in the current of this river of people.

Next the guards came for Murlian. She grabbed onto Merkuur when they untied her, but the guards tore them apart. Murlian refused to walk, so they dragged her across the ground, sending dust into a cloud around her.

“Murli,” Merkuur rasped, struggling against his own binds. The guards pulled Murlian to her feet, and our eyes met. The auctioneer’s voice droned on as the guards shoved her into the crowd. So many strange sounds battered my ears, I could not translate the rapid fire transactions of the auction. Murlian kept glancing over her shoulder at me, her eyes wide in terror. I could hardly force air into my lungs as the crowd absorbed her. I wanted to scream after her, to make some plan, some way to try to meet, but what was there to say?

The wolf’s teeth clenched so tightly on us. We knew no place but Gante, and this foreign southern world threatened to swallow us whole.

My guard shook me. “Where’s he gone, then, the young man, which way?”

I blinked. Merkuur had disappeared. I shook my head. I would never betray my friend, even if I did know where he’d gone.

Cursing, the guard hauled me towards the auctioneer. Greedy glares surrounded me. The auctioneer pinched at the scant flesh of my cheeks and spanned my wrist with his dry white hand. “Gantean girl child!” he cried, describing me. “Perhaps thirteen years of age? Dark hair, pale skin. Not the usual barbarian trash, this one’s special! Not a single sunspot on her!”

“Stop,” a voice said from behind us. A woman in a purple dress that abraded my eyes looked down at me as if I were a piece of mud stuck on her jeweled slipper. “Lady Entila will take this one.”

E
ntilan
guards marched
me along the waterfront. My legs kept moving, though they felt as loose as water beneath me. Nautien’s words rang in my ears:
survive, adapt, to surrender is a wisdom.
I shoved down thoughts of Gante and what had happened there. There are moments in life that act as hinges, that turn you from one path onto another, irrevocably. A Shringar clanswoman seeks to follow these changes without resistance. All instincts told me that to fight or struggle or attempt escape would only backfire. Where would I go? I knew nothing of this place.

Surrounded by Entilan guards, I followed the Lady’s liaison, who rode in a sedan chair carried by four slaves. Our busy party received curious looks from the people on the street.

“Welcome to Queenstown!” a man jeered at me as we passed. He smirked when my gaze caught his and then hissed, “Damned barbarians.” Others in the bustle around him glared at me with passing looks of scorn or hatred, but even so I couldn’t stop staring.

Queenstown had too much to see. The harbor moored vessels of every type: narrow boats with sails as sharp as blades; fat trawlers with fishing nets coiled on their sterns; ponderous ships, mastless, with steam spouting into the sky from their stacks; fast cutters; iron-hulled ice-breakers. The promenade bustled, congested with horse and foot traffic. Wealthy people passed in sedan chairs borne by slaves. The tall buildings, most made from wood, a few from stone, oppressed me. Every new and startling thing left me breathless and reeling. How would I find my way in this vast new world?

The road led away from the water, and we climbed a rise with westward vistas. A stone building sprawled over the cliff’s plateau, girded by thick hedges and iron wrought fencing. Countless glass windows and one tower garnished the mansion. We passed through a gate to follow a side path. Here the woman in the purple dress departed and the guards herded me into the building.

A man sat before a hearth, dressed in a plain white robe, warming his hands over the embers of the fire. He looked up as we entered.

“Ah,” he said to the guards. “Only the one today?”

They hauled me closer to the fire. The warmth appealed, as sweat had chilled me. A guard sliced through the back of my sealskin tunic and pushed it down. My hands flew up to cover myself, trembling, but none of the men even glanced at me. The one in the white robes moved quickly, pulling a round, glittering rock from his sleeve. In one sweeping motion, he passed the stone above my bare left shoulder.

Pain lanced my arm.

I bit my cheek to keep from screaming. I did not wish to show my distress to the sayantaq men. Though he had not touched me, it felt as though the southern mage—I presumed he must have been doing magic by the telltale prickle in my hands—twisted a knife in my flesh. I tasted blood as I struggled to move away. The guard behind me pinned my arms.

My shoulder burned and burned, even after the man with the stone put his magic tool away.

A woman entered the antechamber. Her graying hair sat in a fat knot on her neck, and her lips pressed together as she regarded me. “Have you a name?”

“Leila.”

“That is not a Gantean name.”

She spoke the truth; my name was not Gantean, and I had never asked why.

“Here you will be known as Lili,” the woman decided. “A slave shouldn’t have too grand a name. I am Rennet, the keeper of the house. All our slaves and servants work under my charge.”

Rennet dismissed the two guards, stripped me naked, and mopped my burning shoulder with cold water.

“Put this on,” she commanded, handing me a scratchy woolen sack dress that billowed past my feet. Then she cut my waist-length black braids, throwing them in a pile with my sealskins like so much refuse. I burned with shame—the length of a Gantean’s hair expressed strength of spirit—but Rennet had missed the leather twine I wore with the two bone charms on it, a mercy that made up for the loss of my hair.

As I followed Rennet through the stone house, the pain in my shoulder abated into a niggling itch of magic. We exited the building onto a path that led across a rolling meadow covered in white flowers. At last we came to a long, low building at the top of a rise.

“Mr. Tiercel!” Rennet called as we stepped into a wide room lined with bird cages. “We have procured the child you requested.”

A vague irritation flitted across my shocked mind. Like the auctioneer and the Lady’s liaison, Rennet had mistaken me for a child. It wasn’t enough that I had been captured, taken against my will, and forced into servitude. I was still to be treated like a child.

A man stepped through the far doorway, a man unlike any I had seen. This was no rough Gantean hunt-father, no wan southerner. He wore black clothes that shimmered even in the dim light. His hair fell unbound above his shoulders, a single white streak at the temple punctuating the black.

His skin gleamed, pale and smooth. He looked womanish and yet handsome at the same time. Hair slicked with pomade, clothes clean and pressed—everything about him was fresh. Even his boots shone with new polish.

“A girl?” he asked. “But I expected a boy.”

“I was told this was the only child at the auction who didn’t look like a filthy Gantean,” Rennet replied.

The man shrugged. “I never said the child should not look Gantean. I wanted a Gantean.”

“Don’t overstep yourself, Mr. Tiercel.” Rennet glared at him. “I run this household. This girl suffices, and she is all you will get.”

The man’s eyes flashed. “Very well. What is her name, Madame Rennet?”

“Lili. I will leave her in your care. Good day.” With that, the stern keeper departed, leaving me the sole focus of Mr. Tiercel’s fierce attention. I stood frozen before him.

“Well then, Lili.” He approached with graceful steps. “What are your skills?”

“Um…knotwork,” I replied hesitantly, whiplashed by the changes of the past few hours. My senses reeled from too much stimulation; I wanted to close my eyes and plug my ears, to curl in a ball alone somewhere still and quiet. Despite my distress I continued, “Mostly nets, though I sew, too. I can spin thread, twist sinew...” I mimicked the motion with my hands. Of course I didn’t tell him that I had magic.

“And what is your age?”

His calm voice encouraged my honesty. “I have eighteen winters.”

An unaccountably bleak look traversed his face. Then he chuckled. “It seems they mistook you for someone younger.” He scanned me, head to toe. “A common occurrence, no doubt?”

When I gave a short nod, he smiled. “I had a similar problem as a youth. Come, Lili, let me show you what I wish you to do out here. Never fear, it’s nothing too strenuous. You may call me Tiercel. No need for the mister.”

He pushed open a door at the end of a narrow corridor. “This is my room.” His quarters consisted of a single bed, a small desk and chair, and several shelves of books lining the far wall.

Tiercel waved. “I was hoping for a youth I could train to be a manservant, but here you are. We’ll manage until a better situation for you can be found. Rennet has her opinions, but I have some sway with Lady Entila. In the meantime, you’ll keep it clean and tidy for me here. I’ve never been good at that myself. Always knock before you enter.” He indicated the other door in the hall. “You’ll sleep here. It’s nothing much. I asked for a Gantean partly for that reason. I expect you’ve never slept on a mattress, have you?”

“We sleep in hanging beds or on the floor atop furs.”

“Hammocks? She never—” Tiercel broke off. I peered in at the room that was to be my own—a startling idea, privacy. I’d never had it in Gante, though I’d often wished for it.

“Will it do?” Tiercel asked.

I nodded, surprised to be asked.

“Then come see the birds.” He urged me back towards the largest room with the cages. Sconces on the wall had flickered on in the growing dark—magelights. Ganteans said the southerners’ spent their magic on lighting the night, but I had never truly believed such tales. It seemed too wasteful to imagine. I peered up at the sconces, hoping for a closer look, but Tiercel pulled my attention away.

“The raptors are solitary creatures,” he said as he opened a pen. “They do not naturally look for the company of people. I like to introduce new ones to many people. It helps me to train them.” He donned a long glove and coaxed the bird onto his wrist, murmuring to it as if in conversation.

“Do they speak to you?” I blurted, thinking he might be a shaman who could communicate with animals.

He smiled. Tiercel struck me as kinder than the other southerners. Kinder than most Ganteans, too. “In a way.”

“Is it magic? Can you see them in the—the Spirit Layer?” I fumbled for a good way to translate what Ganteans called Yaqi—the layer of magic, the place where the bloodlights were visible. The Spirit Layer was the best I could do.

“The Spirit Layer? Do you mean the Aethers? Amassis, no. I have no magic. When I was tested by the Conservatoire analyst I failed every task.” That same bleak look marred his expression again. “My first son had magic.”

Tiercel’s sadness did not fade as quickly as it had the last time. “My work with the hawks is no more than a knack,” he said. “Here, have her stand on your hand.”

The bird stepped onto my gloved hand.

“There,” said Tiercel. “See how well she settles for you. Now, Lili, you mustn’t play with the birds. They are very delicately trained, and I cannot have you interfering with their learning. You may only handle the birds under my supervision, do you understand?”

I nodded, but sudden exhaustion nearly made my knees buckle.

“Look at you,” Tiercel said with almost avuncular concern. “You’re dead on your feet. Go to bed early. We’ll get you more acquainted with your duties tomorrow.”

I
woke
the following morning with an ache in my stomach. Surely they meant to feed me? Or did I have to fend for myself? I went outside and scanned the rolling meadows, but the only plants I could see were the white, bell-like blooms. Nothing familiar—no moss or saxifrage, no cold onions or mushrooms. I was puzzling over what kind of plants Lethemians might eat when Tiercel came up the path carrying a tray.

“Awake then, Lili?” he said. “Are you hungry?”

My stomach gave an answering growl, and I fell into step behind Tiercel, drawn by the scents wafting from his tray.

“I’ll have to show you where the kitchens are so you can fetch the food from now on,” he said. “It will be one of your tasks.”

The man’s continued kindness startled me after everything I’d been through: the massacre and capture, the humiliating and terrifying auction, the pain inflicted upon me when I’d arrived at the mansion. I had not imagined anyone would look at me the way Tiercel did, with compassion in his odd silver eyes.

He set down his tray on the desk, but I recognized nothing upon it. Several vessels exuded steam. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the food needed tending, and I was expected to do it.

“Pour,” Tiercel prompted, gesturing to one of the steaming vessels.

I had no idea what he meant. “What?”

“Watch. Next time you’ll prepare it.” Tiercel deftly poured liquid and mixed other foodstuffs into it. He picked up a flat white cake. “Try this.”

I took a small bite, warily. Sweetness assaulted my tongue. I would have liked to shove the remaining biscuit into my mouth, but instead I set it back on the tray. I feared I would be forever tainted by rich southern food. In Gante we had been warned about the temptations of these strong flavors, so different from our seal meat and venison and mushrooms. Ganteans said that people who ate southern food never returned to the isle.

“Tell me about those.” Tiercel pointed at my necklace. “I’ve seen such pendants on Ganteans before.”

I assumed he meant the tormaquine, for surely he had never seen an anbuaq like Nautien’s. “No one in Lethemia ever has a tormaq?” He may as well have told me his people did not have hearts, that their blood moved through their bodies of its own accord.

“No,” he said. “What is a tor-mack?”

I debated what to tell him. “My tormaq
is my guide in the Spirit Layer, in Yaqi.” That seemed safe enough—information that was self-evident to any Gantean. The Elders had always said we must never discuss magic with southerners, but a tormaq was hardly magic.

Tiercel gave me a puzzled look. “Yah-kee? That’s what you Ganteans call the Aethers, isn’t it?”

I nodded, though the Elders’ admonitions pounded in my head:
If you are captured, your first duty is to keep our secrets. Do not speak of our magic. The sayantaq will not understand. They will try to seduce our secrets from you in any way they can, but if you are Iksraqtaq, if you are a real, raw Gantean, you will hold your silence.

We called the southerners sayantaq, the cooked, as we called ourselves Iksraqtaq, the raw. Sayantaq used magic carelessly, wastefully, increasing the burden on us and the Hinge. They did not pay for their magic in blood, and it was left to Iksraqtaq to manage the necessary balance. So we had always been told. Ganteans had held themselves apart from the profligate southerners for centuries, ever since they had stolen pieces of our Hinge to manufacture a magic of their own.

Tiercel batted the air. “I’d like to know more about your magic. This is why I wanted to procure a Gantean servant, particularly.”

I recoiled.
Was his kindness only a show to woo Gantean secrets from me?

Tiercel did not appear to notice my distress or my silence. “Have you had enough to eat? Take another biscuit. You are far too thin, child.”

I ate another slowly.

“Come,” Tiercel said, rising. “You are expected in the Big House. Madame Rennet will give you a tour. I’ll go over your tasks here when you return.”

A
s Rennet
grudgingly walked me through the Big House—aptly named, it was so large I did not think I’d ever learn my way in it—I understood that a slave’s life on the Entila estate was easy. In Gante my daily duties had been much more strenuous. The conveniences of Lethemian life shocked me. Rennet showed me the ductwork system that piped water into the buildings; I did not have to walk to the river and carry it back bucket by bucket. The same was true for firewood—the estate had it delivered, and if I needed to lay a fire, I did not have to collect it myself. Even Rennet’s rules were easier to follow than Gantean ones. As long as I came to meals on time and avoided her notice, she’d happily ignore my existence.