Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran

“Hold hard there a second,” Miriam said, raising one white bony hand. “You we know, Gallico, but who are these followers of yours? Been collecting vagabonds on your travels? What about old Woodrin, and the rest of the Adders?”

Gallico’s face closed. “All dead. These two are my friends. I will vouch for them with my life. One is Mathuw Creed’s son, the other a mariner from Dennifrey. They saved me when the Adder was wrecked, but the Bionari torched their ship, and we walked across the Gorthor Flats to get here.”

A murmur of talk behind Miriam. Her eyes widened. “So? The Bionari are a busy crowd of late. Gallico’s word is enough for me. Come, and be welcome to Ganesh Ka.”

Miriam left the rest of her band at the wall and led them downhill into the ruined city proper. All about him now, Rol could hear the voices of a multitude, but apart from Miriam and her fellows he could see no sign of the inhabitants. Looking up, he saw that the towers above were riddled with lights, but only on the landward side. To the east they presented a face of blank stone. The streets themselves were an empty maze; the more so since the buildings that enclosed them were open to the sky. This was later construction, not the consummate masonry of the towers, and was choked with tumbled stone and broken blocks.

He caught the woman Miriam staring at him as he lowered his eyes from the towers. She held his gaze coolly for a second, then looked away.

“We’ll go to the square. There’s a good gathering there tonight, because Artimion’s Prosper has just come in, looking as if Ran has been using her for a toothpick, I might add. You are not the only ones to have had a run-in with the Imperials lately. We’ve the Albatross and the Swallow on the wharves, too, come a-running with their sheets flying, tails between their legs and twelve-pound cannonballs rolling in their scuppers. They won’t be fit for sea again this side of midsummer.”

“This coast must be getting crowded,” Gallico said.

“Aye. We’ll have the faint-hearts and grandmothers up on their hind legs tonight, you mark my words. Something is up in the palaces of the world, and they’d like to take it out on us for want of an easier enemy.”

“How long have you been in this place?” Rol asked Miriam.

“Since my master’s ship was taken by Artimion and the Seasnake. Ten years ago if it’s a day. God bless that old brig, she’s on the bottom now.”

“I mean everyone-how long has Ganesh Ka been a haven for pirates?”

Miriam stopped in her tracks and looked Rol up and down. “This cold-eyed friend of yourn is free with his insults, Gallico.” The musket-barrel came up. Her own eyes were hazel, hot and bright.

“He’s still learning, Miriam,” the halftroll said, pushing down the weapon’s muzzle gently. To Rol he said: “We do not like the term pirates here in the Ka. We’re privateers, if you must call us anything.”

“My mistake.” He held Miriam’s gaze and some momentary tussle of wills was set aside. She smiled.

“Whatever you think of us, friend, you are one of us now, like it or not.”

They resumed their way downhill. “Twenty-five years or so,” Miriam said, “that’s how long we pirates have rattled around in this old mausoleum. The irony is, I’ve heard tell it was a Bionari, an Imperial, who set it up, come here fleeing his betters.”

A tunnel-mouth opened in the ground before them, stone steps leading down and firelight somewhere at the bottom of the darkness. Miriam extended a hand and leaned on her musket. “Do come in.”

Rol counted sixty steps. At their foot the tunnel-mouth opened out into a wide cavern or carved vault at least fifty fathoms wide and thirty feet from roof to ceiling. Fires burned on raised hearths in the middle of the space within, and all about them hundreds of people came and went. The air was thick and warm, stinking of close-packed humanity and woodsmoke and roasting meat. Rol’s eyes smarted and the fug seemed almost unbreathable after the cold, clear air of the Ganesh highlands.

“The square,” Miriam announced grandly. “Or so we call it. The gods know what the Ancients used it for; they seemed to like rock over their heads, at any rate. Eat and drink as you please-the Prosper took a Mercanter wine barque before she was mauled by the Imperials and there’s fifty tuns of the stuff floating around-the best Auxierran you could wish for. I’ll tell Artimion you’re here.”

She stalked off, a willowy, russet-haired shape with the swagger of a longshoreman about her.

“A city?” Rol said. “It’s a squatters’ camp. Who’s in charge?”

“The ship captains,” Gallico told him without meeting his eyes. “Without them we’d be down to flint axes and bows. Do not judge us too harshly, Rol-these are humble folk for the most part, many of them freed slaves or convicts like Elias here. We’re not setting ourselves up as one of the powers of the world.” His eyes gleamed dangerously.

Rol set a hand on Gallico’s massively thewed forearm. “I know. I am sorry.” Perhaps more of Psellos’s training remained in him than he had thought. Or perhaps he had expected something different. This was no legendary city-it was a bolt-hole of refugees.

They joined the crowd about one of the fires and were given venison and roast hare to eat and a plump skin of wine. Gallico was slapped and hailed and hooted at and the numbers around the three castaways grew as news of their presence spread. Soon there were three- or fourscore packed tight around them, squatting on their haunches and gnawing meat from greasy bones, tossing back beakers of dark wine and laughing and talking all at once. Gallico made no mention of their ordeals yet somehow managed to make a tale of his adventures since last leaving the city-a tapestry, a bright story without shadows. It was a romance of half-truths and imagination, but it was what these people needed, Rol realized. Their lives were cut too near the bone to allow otherwise. Watching them, he was reminded of nothing so much as the kitchens of Psellos’s Tower, and the scrum of kitchen scullions competing for scraps after one of the Master’s grand dinners. These people were of all ages except for the very old and the very young. They were dressed in cobbled-together rags and half-cured animal skins for the most part, though some sported incongruously fine attire edged with lace, or stitched with pearls, no doubt part of some ship’s stolen cargo.

A girl wormed her way through the malodorous press and sat herself by Rol’s elbow. No more than ten or eleven, she had disturbingly mature eyes. He levered her hand gently out of his crotch and looked appealingly at Gallico.

“Now, Jenra, none of that. Give him a kiss and have done.”

She tugged down Rol’s face and planted a kiss on his lips, then smiled a beautiful vacant smile and curled up beside him, asleep in minutes.

Gallico’s bestial face was ill suited for compassion, but his eyes burned. He patted the sleeping girl’s golden head as though it were that of a dog. “Jenra spent some time as a plaything of Bionese infantry. She was sold onto a Mercanter slaver, and liberated by Artimion. He crucified the captain of the ship that carried her, and fed the crew to the sharks. I think he was merciful.”

The girl whimpered in her sleep and an older woman with a ravaged face lifted her and took her away, crooning softly.

“All of these folk have tales like it to tell,” the halftroll went on relentlessly. “This is the continent of Bion we are on now, not the Seven Isles, or the Mamertines. Man took his first steps here, on Bion, and it’s said by some he will limp his last here also.”

“In the wide world, when one thinks of Bion, it conjures up a picture of the old empire, of fabled armies and glorious battles,” Rol said. “I had no idea the Bionari were still like this.”