The Sacred Band (33 page)

Naamen jogged over to them. “What?”

“I found a boat,” Kelis said again.

“An Acacian ship?” Naamen asked. “Do they know who you are?”

“No, nobody knows. And it’s not an Acacian ship.” He glanced at Shen. She lay sleeping on a narrow blanket cast on the hard ground. “You all will probably not like it much, but it’s the best I could do. Come. Wake Shen. We must go now.”

Naamen approached him as he gathered up their scant supplies. “And them?” the young man asked.

Kelis did not need to look up to know what he meant. He slipped their bowls and foodstuffs into his sack, then stood, slinging it onto his back as he did so. “Just the five of us,” he said. “That’s all I can account for. We will do what we do. They will do what they will do.”

What the Santoth did was shadow them as they came down from the toes of the Teheen Hills in which they had spent the last few nights. Before them ran the thin line of white sand that marked the northern shore of Talay. The Inner Sea stretched north toward the isle of Acacia, unseen but there, surely, just a little over the horizon. Though not a city or town, the entire area crawled with life. Flat transports crowded the long stretch of beach. Pilgrims like themselves converged from all landward directions. A network of wooden pens described ragged geometries from the beach up through the sea grass. Inside them, herds of creatures grazed. They were fat things, hairless and pink—and not just from the early sun.

“Pigs? You’re joking,” Benabe said, in a tone that indicated she knew he was not. “Those … are pig barges. Where is our ship?” She did not look directly at Kelis, choosing instead to scan the scene as if she had somehow overlooked a nice stout galley with their names emblazoned on its side.

Kelis slowed because she had, but he tried to keep them moving forward. “It’s the best way I’ve found. They’re taking pigs to sell on the raft of boats floating around Acacia. They asked no questions and they’re not Sinper Ou’s people. We’ll be safe on them. They will get us as far as the flotilla surrounding the island. Then we’ll have to make our way as best we can. We …” He cleared his throat, hesitated a moment, and then decided he might as well get it all out at once. “We will have disguises.”

“What disguises?”

“As pig keepers.”

The look of derision Benabe set on him made him feel like a naughty child facing a grandmother’s disapproval. She must have practiced the look, for she was too young to be so skilled at it. “I am no pig keeper.”

“Today you are,” Kelis said, “if you want to reach Acacia.”

“I thought you knew people. I thought you were connected to the royal family! I thought—”

“Pigs!” Shen said. She and Naamen had just caught up with them. “Look, Mother, pigs. Are there piglets?” She grabbed her mother’s hand and tugged her back into motion, fighting her reluctance with pure childish enthusiasm. As Kelis watched them, relieved, Shen glanced back and winked.

The hundreds of human feet and the thousands of hoofed ones had torn and slashed and gouged the white sand. The smell pushed straight for the backs of their throats. It fought against the fresh breeze blowing in from the water and seemed to be winning the battle. As was the sound warring with the peaceful lapping of the waves: oinks and grunts, squeals and shouts, voices raised in entreaty, booming with directions, announcing bargains on foodstuffs and fresh water for the journey.

Kelis, in the lead once more, kept them moving until he had retraced his route to the livestock merchant who controlled a small fleet of barges—only one of several such along the beach. He had agreed to carry them across, but it was no act of charity. He required both the coins Kelis had left in the sack and their labor. Divided up and set to different tasks, they worked the frantic loading of the barges: opening and closing pens, prodding animals to get them moving, luring them forward or kicking them onward, making human barriers to block one herd from mingling with another, loading slops into troughs that were then tugged onto the barges. A few minutes into the squealing chaos of it, and all of them were splattered with filth.

Leeka went to work with awkward solemnity. Naamen, Kelis noticed, kept his weak arm hidden beneath the shoulder wrap of his robe. He eschewed the shoveling duty a boy half his age directed him toward. He was adept at appearing both deaf and stricken with blind spots in his vision, much to the younger boy’s annoyance. Benabe wore an evil expression, one corner of her lip curling whenever she caught Kelis’s eye.

For Shen, however, the work looked more akin to play. She ran around with her arms outstretched, darting and shooing as if she were herding chickens instead of barrel-shaped swine several times her own weight. The pigs rushed from her with a wide-eyed intensity that stayed just this side of panic. It would have been comical, except for the animals’ agitation. Behind the girl the Santoth fanned out in wings. They changed nothing of their demeanor or silence. They simply shadowed her; and the pigs—whether seeing or sensing them—looked for escape that they found by rushing up the gangplanks onto the barges.

“I’ve never seen the like of that,” the merchant said, coming up and nudging Kelis with an elbow. He wore a perplexed grimace as his eyes followed Shen, taking no notice of the Santoth at all. “You ever want rid of her I have work that girl could do. Replace the whole lot of my boys. Be happy to see the back of them.”

Kelis did not answer.

A few chaotic hours later the pigs were loaded. Kelis stood ankle-deep in the water, watching as the others, having finished their tasks, joined him. The incoming tide had begun to lift the barges free of the bottom. They moved now with the undulation of the waves, much to the consternation of the passengers. Pigs crowded each barge so tightly that they stood shoulder to shoulder, haunch to haunch, sliding against one another with grunts of protest. Boys climbed into the rigging. Dangling above the animal’s backs, they worked on the sails that would catch the evening breeze and pull them from the shore.

“Is this safe?” Naamen asked. “I know we need to go, but …”

Kelis was not at all sure, but he said, “You saw the merchant. Does he look like a man who lets his pigs sink to the bottom of the sea? Acacia is close. Come.”

“Just a walk across a sea of swine,” Naamen said. He hoisted his sack up over his head and motioned for Shen to walk beside him. She began to, but then spun around.

The Santoth stood as if rooted to the shore, away from the waterline in the dry sand.

“Aren’t you coming?” Shen asked.

One of the Santoth said, “May we?”

Before Kelis could consider the question and the possible answers he would offer, Shen gave hers. “Of course, Nualo. You’ve come all this way. This is the easy part.”

“We may come with you?”

“I just said so.”

The Santoth lifted his foot and set it down a few inches farther, on the smooth wet sand. Another of them spoke, his voice tremulous, more solidly of this world than Kelis had imagined possible of them. “We may go to Acacia? You allow us?”

“That’s where we’ve been heading all this time. Yes, come on.”

A tremble passed through them that was different from the usual ripples and disturbances around them. They are afraid, Kelis thought.

“Shen,” still another Santoth said, “do you lift the banishment upon us?”

“Will you come if I do?”

“Yes,” they all answered.

Kelis splashed forward toward the girl. He reached for her arm. He suddenly wanted to stop her easy answer. “Shen, wait—”

“I lift it, then.” Shen waved her hand in the air to indicate something vanishing just like that. “There’s no banishment. Now, come. Ouch! Kelis, you’re hurting me.”

Kelis let go of her arm. He had not even realized he had grabbed it.

Shen massaged the arm with her other hand. “You are odd sometimes.”

She turned and walked up the gangplank onto the barge. The Santoth followed her. They dispersed across the raft, causing no more disturbance to the pigs than would a breeze touching them.

As he splashed through the ankle-deep water and stepped onto the gangplank, Kelis thought, Aliver, I pray this be right.

The man had hairy nostrils. Sire Lethel could not help but imagine tweezing the hairs out one by one. Quite distracting. More so than the scaly plates on his forehead and cheeks. More so than the fact that the tip of his tongue was split, presumably in imitation of the hooded snake that was his clan’s totem. Lethel did not look away as the man spoke his rough, choppy Acacian. Lethel ridged his forehead and pursed his lips, appearing to respect this Dukish, the self-proclaimed headman of the Anet slaves of Avina.

The two men sat across from each other in the center of a marble courtyard, open to the clear sky. A wedge of advisers flanked the leagueman, with Ishtat soldiers among them. Archers lined the last row and fanned out to either side. The slaves were not the threat the Auldek had been, but it paid to come prepared for trouble. Behind Dukish stood a crowd of quota slaves. They were well dressed and looked healthy enough, but Lethel could not help but think of them as a motley horde. They were slaves, after all. Had been raised as servants, victims to whatever whims the Auldek—beasts themselves—could conceive. Their very bodies were testament to that. He did not know or want to know what their lives had been like. Dukish did not know this, of course, hence his long diatribe on just this subject.

As he sat pretending empathy, Sire Lethel’s mind journeyed elsewhere. There were a million more important things to consider than the woes of slaves. He had arrived in Ushen Brae only five days ago. He sailed in along with Sire Faleen, both of them with full blessing of the League Council, with authority between them to handle affairs in Ushen Brae on the league’s behalf. He had spent most of that time on the barrier isles, where he had fed ravenously on all the information he could gather about this place, about the details of the quota trade, about the Auldek tribes and, most crucially, about the Lothan Aklun.

The few nights he had stayed in the Lothan Aklun’s estates, those strange dwellings hung from cliffs and almost otherworldly, had left him dizzy, most pleasantly so. Most of the things he saw were indecipherable. But the small things that he could see function—tabletops that floated in midair, glass that darkened or lightened beneath the touch of his fingers, grooves in the hallways that, when stepped into, propelled one forward as if sliding slowly downhill, the soul vessels that surged over the water without any obvious power source, propelled by the will of whoever held its wheel—tantalizingly hinted at further possibilities. They certainly had other vessels. Sire Faleen had mentioned finding enormous transports capable of carrying thousands of troops, as well as numerous smaller vessels, some tiny enough that they held only a single person. What other wonders might be uncovered? Weapons? Other soul catchers? Had it been possible, he would have stayed out there or sailed to Lithram Len to see the ruins of the soul catcher for himself—as Faleen was doing at this very moment.

It was not within his purview to pursue such things yet. That went to Sire Faleen, he being of higher rank within the league. Lethel had volunteered to handle matters on the mainland. This mostly entailed sorting things out with the emancipated slaves. Later, he would explore inland, seeing what use could be made of the abandoned Auldek cities. There might be benefits from that as well, but Lethel hoped to find some way to take over Faleen’s duties. Perhaps he would fall off a boat, stumble after having inhaled a bit too much of the sweet red mist he so enjoyed. Uncharitable thought, yes, but Faleen had always been a windbag, politely incompetent in the manner that assured his political rise among the League Council. Lethel was sure he would find the real world more challenging.

Dukish droned on.

Lethel would have raised his eyebrows, except that the tweezed slashes that were his eyebrows had been shaped to mimic a fine-lined version of that expression already. It amazed him that foolish men so often took silence and a concerned expression as an invitation to blather. Small price to pay, for this Dukish had just made his life considerably easier. Just three days in Ushen Brae, Lethel had received word that Dukish wanted to meet and come to peaceful terms. He should not have been surprised, though. These people had been slaves. They were freed by the actions of others. Of course freedom would scare them. Of course they would seek a new master. The league would oblige. Not as holders of whips and chains, of course. They did not need such things to enslave.

Dukish offered Sire Neen’s ashes as a special gift. The unfortunate man’s parts had been gathered up and put through some cremation ritual, and this Dukish had come into possession of them. A strange offering, but Lethel accepted the urn with a rather specific idea of what he would do with its contents.

“I hear all and am saddened,” Lethel said, once he could bear sitting through no more. “These things you say are grave. They twist my heart. They fill me with shame. You must know that the league was an innocent accomplice in all this. For all these years, we served the will of the Akarans. We sailed the Gray Slopes at their bidding. And here in Ushen Brae we were mistreated ourselves by the Lothan Aklun, the haughty, arrogant, vicious Lothan Aklun. In our own way we have also been duped by both of them.”

Someone in the slave crowd grumbled and a few others responded. Lethel wished he could have the grumbler killed, but that would not do. He looked past Dukish and brought his entreaties to the entire party.

“I hear that this is a surprising revelation to you,” he said. “But ask yourselves, how could we know what became of you? As far as we knew, we delivered orphaned children into the hands of a nation that welcomed them. We were but the middlemen. Search your mind. Look back. Was it a man like me—a true leagueman—that took you from your homes? No, the—What did you call them? The Red Shirts! They did that on Akaran orders. Did any leagueman set foot on Ushen Brae in your memory? Did we stand in that chamber as some of you were robbed of your very souls? No. Consider everything from this perspective and you will hear the truth of it ringing in your ears. I am certain.”