The Great Rift (7 page)

"That?"

"I sort of forgot why we were there." He attempted to wash his hands in the river and fell down again, soaking his pants. "I think I need to go to sleep."

Dante sighed and headed to the tent, where Blays proved himself right by collapsing into his blanket, where he stayed until well past noon. The clan was similarly indolent, fishing, napping, sketching circles in the mud, where they lit candles and knelt to pray to Josun Joh for direction. Dante, turning to more earthly forms of action, decided to follow the mayor.

Technically speaking,
he
wasn't following Mayor Banning. A dead fly was. But Dante had killed it—three, actually, but the first two were too mangled to use—revived it of a sort, and sent it after Banning the moment the mayor lumbered from his cliffside home. Seeing through the fly's eyes was so nauseating Dante puked his guts up all over the shoreline reeds, where a hungover Blays had had the same idea. Unlike the sights and sounds he received from dead animals, which were essentially the same as (if sometimes sharper than) his own, the senses relayed from the fly were kaleidoscopic and chaotic, a fractured, fisheye view of the world that careered into stomach-stirring anarchy the moment the insect took wing. The only way Dante could keep up was to lie down in the darkness of the yurt with his eyes closed and a cloth over his face, a posture which Blays imitated after just a few minutes of trying to battle the shimmering sunlight mirrored on the blue waters.

Through the fly's manifold eyes, he watched Banning take meetings with merchants. Have lunch with his wife. Have
more
meetings with merchants, followed by a meeting with a mayor from downriver, and finally, with another pair of merchants, whom he spoke with over dinner and wine before retiring home to read scriptural scrolls in the candlelight.

The next day, during negotiations with a landlord from upriver over the prospect of floating his timber through Cling, Banning rose and smashed the fly into a gooey blot. Dante's second sight disappeared with a pinprick of pain in the center of his brain. Citing exhaustion, he sent Blays to catch him a new fly, which he had back in action by midafternoon. Just in time to watch things conclude with the would-be timber baron, whose proposal was denied on the grounds it might interfere with local fishermen.

For three days, Banning did nothing but rise, meet, eat, and read. On the fourth day, rather than descending the switchback to his offices on the short hill on the north end of town, the towering norren climbed to the very top of the rise in which his house was set and continued west into the woods. He wandered along as if aimless, gazing at sunbeams, kneeling to brush leaves from stones. After a few hours, during which Dante nodded off more than once, Banning trudged to a fold in the hills where a small, simple cabin hid among the thick trees. The mayor knocked on the door. A young norren appeared, smiling, and handed Banning a wide, flat object bundled in cloth. Paint smeared his hairy arms.

Dante opened his eyes and went to get Blays.

"He doesn't paint his own paintings," he explained. "He doesn't have time. He's so busy running the town's affairs he has some kid do it for him, then picks them up when they're done."

"So what?" Blays picked pulled chicken from his teeth; still traumatized from their days-long march of crusty bread, he'd made it his mission to try the fare of every stall, inn, and bakery in town. "Every master in Bressel does that."

"We're a thousand miles from Bressel. To the norren, the things you make are a reflection of your soul. That's why it's such a big deal. Passing off someone else's work as your own is like plagiarizing the
Cycle of Arawn
."

"A great way to get lynched by humorless scolds?"

"And to get him to talk."

"Now?"

"He's miles from town. We can catch him on the way back."

"What about him?" Blays nodded at Mourn, who idled at a bakery across the plaza, crumbling bread into his mouth. Out of shame or confusion, the young norren hadn't mentioned suddenly falling asleep the other night, but he hadn't ceased following them, either.

"Let him follow. If Banning tries to kill us, we'll have a witness."

Blays went back to the tent for his swords. While he was gone, Dante sat down and closed his eyes. Banning was still in the woods to the north, traipsing Cling-ward with the help of a tall staff, a package tucked gently under his other arm. Dante didn't bother fetching his own sword. He doubted Banning would attack them outright, whether in feigned outrage to their accusation or to stop them from telling others, but if Dante was wrong—and given how seriously the norren took these things, there was always a chance—his middling swordplay wouldn't be much use against the towering mayor.

They puffed their way up the switchback road, then followed the dirt trail traced across the hill's flat crest. Mourn lagged a hundred feet behind, but once the trail gave out and the two of them cut across the high brown grasses of the open field, the young norren jogged to catch up, his face dark with annoyance at being forced to run after his troublesome human charges.

"Where are you going?" Mourn said when he reached their side.

"Our daily stroll across the middle of nowhere," Blays said.

"You're not supposed to leave town."

"And my mother didn't want me to grow up a swordsman like my dad, either, but that didn't stop me from disgracing her dearly departed memory."

"Turn around and get back to your tent."

Dante scowled over his shoulder. "If you'd like to try to stop us, please let me know where to send your remains. Now go back to town and beseech Josun Joh to tell you what to do next. It's worked great so far."

"Josun Joh's words are real." Mourn's voice sounded so hurt Dante almost stopped.

"You've heard him?"

"Not me personally. Vee and Orlen do most of the talking."

"Then how do you know they're not making it all up?"

"Some summers ago, the clan headed to the highlands to wait out the heat. The peaks are high and jagged there, ready to tear open the belly of any stupid and lazy clouds who get too low. But it was dry there too, because sometimes the gods hate us. And who can blame them, when every smart lad in the land is ready to denounce their very existence." Mourn waited a moment before going on. "We were gathering jen-nuts when Orlen went stock still. Josun Joh had spoken to him, he said. There was a fire past the western ridge. We needed to move.

"We traveled east. Within an hour, the fire jumped over the ridge and swept over the valley where we'd been earlier that morning. Maybe we'd have had enough time to get away. But we were on foot, like always, and fire can outrun any man when it's hungry enough."

"Orlen probably smelled smoke," Dante said.

"When Josun Joh spoke to him, the wind was blowing westward."

"So he saw the smoke. Fire has a unique property of being visible."

Mourn tromped through the weeds in silence. "At least tell me where you're going."

Blays touched the pommel of the sword at his hip. "Oh, just to kick the mayor until the stars whirring around his head show him the sign to tell us where the hell your cousins are."

"I think Vee hates me," Mourn declared. "Why else would she assign me to you two?"

"Maybe she hates
us
."

"It's a stupid thing, really. You're running off to gods know where, and what am I supposed to do to stop you? Attack you? I don't think any good will come of that. Except for the local worms. So I'm supposed to run off and tell mommy and daddy like a spited toddler?" Mourn shook his head at the state of things. "You know what, to hell with them. If they want to guard you, they can guard you themselves. We're beating up the mayor? Let's go beat up the mayor."

The hill sloped down into a low forest of birches and young pines. Star-shaped yellow flowers dotted the roots of the trees. Dante shut his eyes to glance through the fly's and tripped into a pile of pine needles. Smelling sap, he kept his eyes shut.

"Are you okay?" Mourn said. "I think he's dead."

"I'm not dead." In the fly's fractured vision, dozens of Bannings hiked up the side of a hillside more or less identical to their own. He ordered the fly up, stomach lurching. He managed to prevent himself from puking until the bug had located them among the trees, confirming the mayor was no more than a half mile away. When Dante was finished, he kicked pine needles over the hot, sour mess, gargled with cool water, and gestured down the hill. "Stop staring at me and start looking for our man."

They need hardly have bothered. Within a minute, Banning began singing to himself, an eerie, droning tune that carried down the hillside like the honking of morbid geese. When Dante stepped in his path, the spire-tall norren stopped less than a foot away. Dante tensed, preparing to fling himself out of the way.

"I know you." Banning's face darkened. "Just because the cliff isn't here doesn't mean I won't throw you down it."

"You should at least hear what I'm about to say," Dante said. "Then some people might even not blame you for what you've done."

"Talk sense or talk less."

"That package under your arm. Is your name on it?"

Banning didn't glance down. "It's the last stroke I make."

"Typical of most artists, I imagine. Except, apparently, the man who actually paints yours."

The mayor's gaze was as still and deep as a lake. "Pick up a weapon."

Dante cocked his head. "What?"

"So I don't have to say I killed an unarmed man."

Sudden anger rippled through Dante's veins. With it came the nether, great pools he gathered in his hands. With a thought, he shaped them into shadowy ropes which looped around the tree branches and clawed at Banning's rugged face. The air dimmed like an instant sunset. Dante gave form to the nether for those who couldn't see it, viscous, liquid shadows that dripped from his hands like reluctant blood.

"I could have threatened you with violence," he said softly. "But I could tell at a glance it wouldn't work, and I'd have to either back down or hurt you, which I don't much like to do. But if you don't answer my questions about the missing norren, I
will
tell the city where your masterpieces really come from. You'll be exiled from Cling to die as an old man in a place you do not know."

Anger flowed over Banning's face, followed by a quiver of fear that was clearly visible beneath his thatchy beard. "If someone were to have up and enslaved a clan, you think their fellow norren would be happy to point those people out."

"Unless?"

"Unless saying such would threaten the ones that they hold dear."

"I see."

"Maybe even an entire town."

Dante let the taut branches relax. The shadows faded from his hands. "Then I'll put myself on the line, too. I'm from Narashtovik. I'm the agent of Callimandicus, highest priest of Arawn. I'm here to help."

"Narashtovik is a part of Gask like anywhere else."

"And if the capital finds out we're here, we'll be invaded the minute they're finished with you."

Banning slung the wrapped painting onto the forest floor. "Tell them anything you like. I don't give a damn about my reputation. And I don't know who took your people or who they sold them to." He stepped on the package. The wooden frame cracked beneath his weight. "But I do know who took them downriver."

"Who?"

"You give me your word."

Dante nodded. "No one will know who told me."

The old man grinned, a savage thing that bristled his beard like a wall of thorns. "Oh, I want the ones who did it to know. What I want you to promise is you'll scream my name before you kill every last one of them."

3

Haggling for the barge strained Dante's patience as hard as the days-long process of watching Banning's meetings. Before he could even begin to bargain with the captain, Dante first had to convince Orlen and Vee that hiring a boat was necessary to begin with, a requirement that seemed self-evident to him—when your quarry is river pirates, you won't have much luck hunting them down on foot—but which took the better part of the night to hash out. By the next morning's walk to the docks, he was ready to give up on talking and try hitting instead.

River pirates. It was simple enough that Dante considered it a major blow to Josun Joh's credibility that the mercurial god hadn't passed that info along directly rather than shooing them in the vague direction of a recalcitrant old man. But once Banning had been ready to speak, he'd spoken like he might never have the chance to speak again.

The slaveship had docked in Cling just over a month ago. The dockhands had seen the eyes glittering from the darkness belowdecks. There had been talk in town, when the pirates debarked, of slaughtering them then and there, but none of the captives were known to be family of anyone in Cling, and it had been pointed out that these weren't just a slapdash rowboat of common pirates, but the Bloody Knuckles, a multi-vessel armada headed by the three-decked galley the
Ransom
. The last village to threaten the Bloody Knuckles had been so thoroughly robbed, raped, murdered, and torched that six years later the only remnant of the settlement were the cinders of its dead and the nightmares of their relatives.

And so a conspiracy of silence had been enacted by the town of Cling—or those few who knew about the slaves, anyway, a shortlist including the dockside witnesses, Banning, and a handful of the port's elders and most highly-feared warriors—which Banning didn't break until witnessing Dante summon the nether from the forest floor. In that moment, he decided the Clan of the Nine Pines and its two human allies had a real chance to wipe out the Bloody Knuckles in a single blow.

If only Dante could afford a boat.

In theory, he had access to the full treasury of the Sealed Citadel of Narashtovik. The city had grown substantially in the last few years, propelled by Cally's new policies and the refugees from the war with Mallon, who, finding abandoned homes available for the taking in the city's outer rings, had flocked by the thousands to the foreign city, bringing new businesses, trade routes, and labor in equal measure. Despite Cally's covert funding of the operations in the Norren Territories, the city was rich by any objective measure.