Ian Esslemont: Blood and Bone

After running a sceptical eye up and down Shimmer she announced in passable Talian: ‘You are no customs official.’

‘And you’re no ship’s captain.’ Another figure stepped up on to the gangway, yanking Shimmer’s attention away from the woman: a towering man in layered shirts, a curved dirk at his side. He too was dark, like the woman, as the Kanese can be, skin the hue of ironwood rather than the black of Dal Hon. He too wore his hair long, but gathered atop his head by some sort of carved stone clasp. The thick timbers of the gangway groaned and bounced as he descended.

After looking Shimmer up and down, he rumbled, ‘She is of them.’ His gaze was not challenging, yet something of his eyes made her uneasy: the irises glittered as if dusted in gold.

The woman’s gaze sharpened, a sudden wariness touching it. ‘Ah. I see it now. I was fooled — no Isturé would have deigned to appear so … informal.’

Shimmer frowned, and not only at being discussed as if she were not standing right before these two foreigners. And that word … why did it grate like a dull blade across her back?

Yet with Blues gone north she was the acting governor and so she inclined her head, all politeness. ‘I’m sorry, but you have me at a disadvantage. What was that you said?’

‘Isturé. It is our word for you in our lands.’

‘Us …?’

The woman did not even try to disguise her distaste. ‘You Avowed. It translates as something like “undying fiend”.’

Shimmer reflexively retreated a step and her hand went to her long-knife at her back. ‘What do you two want here?’

The woman opened her hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Forgive my ill-temper. I have been set a task that finds in me a reluctant servant. We come with an offer for you Crimson Guard.’

Shimmer relaxed her stance a touch. Behind the two foreigners the sailors climbed the rigging to prepare the ship for the repairs of a port call. They worked barefoot, the soles of their feet black with tar. ‘An offer?’ she answered, doubtful. ‘What would that be?’

‘Employment.’

She understood now, and she shook her head. ‘We are no longer accepting contracts.’

‘Well, perhaps that is for your general to decide. K’azz.’

‘He’s not … seeing potential employers right now.’

‘He will see us.’

‘I doubt that very-’

‘There is an inn, or hostel, here in this hamlet?’

Shimmer gritted her teeth against her annoyance at being interrupted. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you stayed on your vessel …’

‘I think not. I am quite as sick of it as they are of me.’

That I can well understand . ‘If you insist.’ She invited them onward. ‘We have an inn with some few plain rooms … but I cannot guarantee they will take you.’

The woman’s smile was a wolfish flash of needle ivory teeth. ‘Our gold is good, and innkeepers are the same breed everywhere.’

As they climbed the gentle slope up to the hamlet Shimmer introduced herself.

‘Rutana,’ the woman answered. She gestured back to the man who followed with slow deliberate steps. ‘This is Nagal.’

‘And where are you from?’

She snorted a harsh laugh. ‘A land close to this but of which you would never have heard.’

Shimmer’s patience hadn’t been tested like this for some time. ‘Try me,’ she managed to offer lightly.

‘Very well. We come from the land known to some as Jacuruku.’

Despite her irritation Shimmer was impressed. ‘Indeed. I know it. I haven’t been there, but K’azz has.’

‘So I have been told. You will take a message to K’azz for us.’

Shimmer’s irritation gave way to wonder at the woman’s breathtaking imperiousness. ‘Oh?’ she answered. ‘Will I?’

‘Yes. You will.’

‘And what is that message?’

Rutana stopped. She scowled, as if only now noting something in Shimmer’s tone. She tugged on the tight lacing of the leather straps cinching her left arm and winced as if at an old nagging wound. Shimmer noted that the amulets knotted there were small triangular boxes each of which appeared to contain some sort of tiny carved figurine. ‘Skinner walks our land,’ the woman finally ground out. ‘Tell him that, Isturé. The curse that is Skinner walks our land.’

Later, Shimmer summoned Lor-sinn and Gwynn to discuss their visitors. At table Gwynn maintained his grim and dour demeanour, dressed all in black, saying little and smiling even less. His newly grown shock of white hair stood in all directions. Shimmer could very easily imagine the man spending even his free time sitting stiffly while he glowered into the darkness rather like a corpse presiding gloomily at its own wake. The second of her company mages present, Lor-sinn, was still obviously uncomfortable sitting so close to Shimmer among the seats normally occupied by Blues, Fingers, Shell, or the recently departed Smoky. Having the opportunity to study her more closely now, Shimmer thought that the woman was slowly but steadily losing the plumpness that had endeared her to so many of the company’s males.

As servants brought soup Shimmer turned to Lor. ‘You are continuing to attempt to contact the Fourth in Assail?’

‘Yes, Commander.’

‘Shimmer will do.’

‘Yes, ah, Shimmer.’ She leaned forward over the table, ever eager to discuss her work. ‘My last effort was last week. I could try opening a portal if you wish …’

‘I would not risk that, Lor. Not into Assail. Nothing so drastic as yet. We will see what K’azz thinks.’ She turned to Gwynn. ‘And our friends the First?’

The humourless mage — who only seemed to be getting even gloomier — studied his soup as if it were something unrecognizable. ‘As our visitors claim. Jacuruku still, Commander.’

‘Just Shimmer, please.’

Gwynn bowed his head, then, as if reordering his thoughts, he set down his utensils, sighing. He cradled his chin on his fists. ‘This Rutana is a servant of ancient Ardata. Whom some name the Queen of Witches.’

Shimmer nodded. She tasted the soup and found it pleasant. She set down her spoon. The servants slipped the main entrée of roasted game birds before them. She inhaled the steaming birds’ scent then sat back to meet Gwynn’s glistening steady gaze. ‘Yet you assure me they are enemies of Skinner.’

‘They are.’

‘Then your point?’

‘They are here to draw us into their war. And, Commander, I have been there. I have seen it. And I strongly counsel against this.’

‘I see. Thank you for that blunt appraisal.’ She turned to Lor. ‘And you?’

The mage shrugged her still-rounded shoulders. ‘It remains academic. No one even knows where in the interior K’azz has disappeared to.’

Shimmer lowered her gaze to the small baked game hen. She plucked at the crisp skin. ‘I will send the message through our dead Brethren. They will find him.’

‘He may not bother to reply,’ Gwynn added.

A touch too blunt , Shimmer thought, her lips tightening in irritation. ‘We shall see.’

Much later, Shimmer stood in the centre of her chambers. It was the set of rooms which had once belonged to the old lord and ladies of the dynasty that had ruled this province as one of the petty kingdoms of Stratem before the arrival of the Crimson Guard. Officially it was Blues’, as it was his rotation as governor, and it would be K’azz’s should he be visiting. Not that whichever of the Avowed occupied the room would have altered anything. The furnishings remained sparse: a cot for a bed and a desk for paperwork. That was all. And a travel chest containing Shimmer’s armour. As for her whipsword, it hung in the main hall downstairs.

Studying the empty room, its walls of dressed stone, the dusty old tapestries that dated back to the original dynasty, that hung rotting where the Guard had found them, her thoughts returned to her irritation at dinner. It was not Gwynn and his clumsy manners; no, it was K’azz’s absence. The man was avoiding something and what that might be worried her. At times what personal vanity she had left fancied he was avoiding her. At other times she cursed the man for running away from his responsibilities. It was damned hard work struggling to build a unified nation from the ground up. Roads had to be surveyed, bridges built, settlements planned. Things couldn’t be allowed to fall out haphazardly. And the man had walked away from the dull dreariness of it all — leaving others to clean up the mess. That irresponsibility had lowered her estimation of him a fair bit. She shook herself, frowning at the dark. In any case, he had to be contacted. She summoned the Brethren to her.