Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“The best kind,” said Bolutu, smiling, “or so we are taught as children. There is no divine law given us, no rules, no scripture. What we are given is here, and here.” Bolutu tapped his forehead, then his heart. “Wisdom, and an instinct for the good. It is to those things we must strive to be true. As for worship, what good has it ever done? In the Last Reckoning the Watchers will judge our deeds, not our praise of them, our flattery.”

“Deeds, eh?” said Fegin, turning back to his work. “D’ye suppose they’ll like what they see?”

Mr. Bolutu looked down sadly, as if the same question had occurred to him. He walked away from the youths, trying for a closer view of the heron. The bird had not moved a feather. Thasha wondered if it would see them off at sunrise.

She drew a deep breath. “We’re really going, aren’t we?” she said.

Pazel drew her close, rested his chin on her shoulder. “Love you,” he whispered, so softly she could barely hear. Thasha wished suddenly to pull them all close, to tell them they mattered to her more than anything, more than their quest. She turned and kissed Pazel, felt his urgency, his hammering heart, and wondered just how long they had before dawn, and then Marila said, “I’m with child,” and they all looked at her, speechless. The heron lifted off, as though it had come for just this information, and Neeps covered his face with his hands.

11. Admiral Isiq’s letters refer to the dour gentleman with the cat as “Great-Uncle Torindan, the war hero.” — EDITOR.

5 Modobrin 941

In the dead of a moonless night in Northwest Alifros, in the midst of the coldest spell of weather the Crownless Lands had seen in fifty years, two boats ran afoul of the same reef in the Straits of Simja. They were light, swift vessels; they had been shadowing each other with lamps extinguished; they were under orders to avoid a firefight. One was an Arquali kestrel-class frigate, the other a Mzithrini tirmel. Neither boat could break free of the reef, and with the first light of dawn they became visible to each other. There was shockingly little distance between them.

On the Arquali boat, a certain aging weapons officer found himself in possession of a full gun-team, a fair shooting angle and a lit cigar, but rather less tranquillity of mind than the moment called for. His cigar served as a match; his cannon boomed; a thirty-two-pound ball skipped over the water and shattered on a knob of exposed reef, just in front of the enemy ship. Coral exploded in fist-sized chunks; a Mzithrini sailor dropped, senseless, half over the forecastle rail. Before anyone could reach him the boat lurched on the incoming wave. The dazed man fell upon the reef; the weight of forty sailors rushing to portside shifted the boat’s center of gravity; on the next wave the boat pitched lethally in the man’s direction, and with it the Third Sea War of Alifros began.

King Oshiram of Simja received the news in the wood behind the Winter Keep, a day’s ride from the capital. The message, dashed off in a panic by his chancellor and delivered by a rider whose exhausted horse stood steaming beside him, flooded the King’s mind like a swiftly darkening dream. Sudden and immense hostilities. The two Empires’ fleets exchanging fire in the Narrow Sea. The Arqualis demanding access to Simja Harbor; Mzithrini battalions spotted on the beach at Cape Coristel. A plea for aid from Urnsfich, Simja’s neighbor-island to the south, overrun by land forces already.

Whose forces? The King turned the parchment over, as though something might be scrawled on the back. Who were they being asked to help Urnsfich repel?

Aya Rin, what did it matter? He stepped back into the tent and drew the frost-stiffened flaps closed behind him. For a moment he succeeded in believing none of it, reducing the world to this canvas cocoon, where the loveliest woman who ever drew breath lay sleeping, naked, among furs and satins disordered by their lovemaking. Syrarys. The King fixed his eyes on one pale, perfect hand. The palm he had kissed and tasted rose water, the fingers that had enslaved him with a touch. Never again, never again, unless he went to her this minute-but that was out of the question. War had come. He crept forward, ashamed of his trembling, and began to pull on his clothes.

Isiq had foreseen it: general war before the year was out. Day by day the old admiral’s mind had grown sharper, his torn memories knitting together like muscle to bone, as though the tactical news Oshiram had been providing was a food for which he’d been starved. “We no longer have months, Sire. We may not even have weeks. Sandor Ott wants panic in the Mzithrin: he wants them to look like superstitious fools. Scared of the Shaggat’s return, accusing Arqual of treachery they cannot prove, striking at shadows. But Arunis only wants war, the sooner and fouler the better.”

“And my Kantri-”

“Her name is not Kantri, Sire. It is Syrarys, and she is no more yours than she ever was mine, or Sandor Ott’s for that matter, though perhaps he trusts her still. It was Ott’s wish that she poison me, but it was never Ott’s wish that my Thasha die before she could marry.”

“You blame her for Thasha’s death?” the King had cried, incredulous still.

Isiq had replied with devastating logic. Syrarys alone had handled the necklace that had strangled his girl. She had polished it with a salve from Arunis himself, before he cast away his disguise. And she had insisted that Thasha Isiq wear the necklace every day of her life. “She is a servant of the sorcerer, Your Majesty,” said the admiral, “and like him she has made fools of us all.”

The King stepped into his trousers, struggling not to make a sound. Her beauty like something flung at him. Like that high, crystal note at the end of the opera, the one you waited out before breathing. He had told Isiq he could not go through with it. Oh, the plan was good enough. Syrarys had to be removed from the capital, and quietly, without revealing to Ott’s other spies that her true identity was known. And only with the King and his retinue gone from Simjalla Palace could Isiq himself hope to slip away into the city. If the Arqualis find him now, if they learn that I have harbored their rogue admiral, a war hero prepared to denounce their treachery…

Too late for regrets. He must do all he could to help Isiq escape, and certainly that meant drawing attention away from the palace. But to bring the woman here, to their special hideaway, to dine and hunt and carry on as if nothing had changed, to make love to her Isiq had cut him off with a gesture. “Do it,” he’d said, turning away, and of course he’d been right. She had only to step out of her riding clothes and her King was there, ready for her, calling her darling, dearest one, traveling her body with the same tongue that would condemn her, surrendering to her hands. Pretending was easy; facing the truth might be lethal yet. He had (the King saw now with perfect clarity) never before been in love.

One by one he donned his rings. They’d made a game of this for weeks, her lips moistening his fingers, slowly, languorously, until the rings slid free. But where was his coronation ring, with its ruby the size of a grape? Somewhere among the bedclothes, or under the nightstand. Well, let it stay there. He flexed his fingers, and it occurred to him that a few hard blows with these jeweled hands would disfigure her forever. Hideous thought! He had never struck a woman, nor even a man since his early youth. Better to do it through others, isn’t it, Oshiram? Drag that torturer out of retirement; it seems we haven’t outgrown him. Do the sort of job my father used to ask of you, Mr. Ghastly-Whatever-You’re-Called, and don’t limit yourself to her face. See that she’s no longer a temptation for anyone, for me.