Chapter 37
The metal warmed to Nefer's Virnrayan fingers and would've done what he wanted if his left arm hadn't got in the way.
It was high summer. The hearth glowed in the smithy, and the silver swirled in the crucible. It looked a bit like Trid's eyes, which were watering in embarrassment.
"Nefer," I shouted over his hammer, "Don't turn a blind ear––"
"Turn a deaf ear, witless," said Padlimaird. He banged a pliers on the counter. There was a silver ingot stuck to it.
"Deaf's the on'y kind of ear he's got." I punched Nefer in the side.
"What, now?" Nefer looked down. "And me stake boomin like a ripe old tower bell––" He saw Palimaird. "Ghast, Paddy! Hold 'er over the fire like the sensible boy you ain't, but don't use yer foot to pull––"
The silver burned through the bottom of Padlimaird's shoe. He broke the pliers free and knocked over his brazier. Charcoal dust choked the air and blackened Trid's feet, and Wille chose that moment to haul two sandbags through the doorway. The dust cleared. The sandbags dropped to the stone. Wille looked down at Trid's sandals.
"A human boy with dirty feet, sir? Stepped right out of protocal with them feet, m'boy. They'll be after you with soap, scourges, and clean linen, but don't worry––we've plenty of hiding places. How bout in them acid vats?"
"Wille," I said, "leave off chopping down the tree before he's had a chance to provide shade."
"Why, then," he switched to Gralde, "what kind of seed would grow into a tree like that?"
I spoke in the common tongue. "That concerns Nefer and not you."
"Oh?" said Nefer. "Let's hear it then." He lit his pipe and sat down on his old stool in the space of three seconds.
After the success of my leg I'd decided Trid was a worthy medic, and I persuaded him to re-set Nefer's left arm. I forgot about persuading Nefer.
"A doctor?" Nefer said. "In't healing a woman's job?"
"If people were less stupid"––Trid suddenly found his voice––"they'd find caring for people is something everyone ought to be interested in and anyone can do."
Nefer scratched his neck and looked my way.
"Trid's successful at whatever he tries." Trid's ears glowed like the tongs around the crucible.
"Alright," Nefer said. "I''ll give it a go." He looked over at Wille and Paddy. "Can ye look after the shop while I'm incapacitated?"
"Can I take a step up, Nefer?" cried Wille in Gralde. "I need a staunch income to support me family. They're multiplying like rabbits."
Nefer choked on pipe smoke. "Got yerself into a problem?"
"Not just me."
In an expression of 'utmost admiration', Wille had landed Sal with an unborn child, and they'd decided to wed. I didn't know what to think. Anyway, by the time late summer arrived I had other things to think about, like the growing contingent of soldiers from Omben.
"The Queen's become nervous. They say she's ill with it," said my brother Tem.
We were sitting on the shore in the shade of an overturned schooner. The afternoon sun was so fierce I'd ripped the tunic off and gone for a swim; and when Tem found me he'd dropped a pair of knickers on my head. They were red canvas and much too big, and I tied them around my waist with a piece of string. Now they were covered with damp sand I'd scraped from a hole.
"Of course the Queen's become nervous," I said. "I'd be nervous too, tryin to feed ten thousand bloodthirsty foreigners."
"She invited them here, Reyna. She's nervous about Lorila, especially Dirlan. The millitary keeps growing over there, because the Lorilan Ravyir keeps giving that idiot, Caveira, troops, because Herist keeps recruiting more over here, and I fear it will end in war." Tem plucked at a sand creeper. It shriveled beneath his talons. "I don't know what to do. Situations like this don't spring up on their own. Someone's plotting something. And more frustrating, Caveira started it, but Lorila can't afford a war––"
"I don't know if Caveira started it."
"What?"
"I dunno." My hair fell over my eyes. "What do you want me to write for you?"
"You're hiding something."
"I'm not."
I could've explained how Herist had given Noreme soldiers to Caveira in the beginning. But Andy still commanded my loyalty for a reason I couldn't place.
"How did Faiorsa get hold of all them big Omben men?" My mouth tightened with self-loathing.
"She's promised them something. Something they really want. If she doesn't give it to them I don't know what they'll do."
"What do you mean?" I drew my legs up to my chest, which had suddenly become cold. "Tem, what's she promised? What if she doesn't give it? What'll happen?"
He stepped back and shook sand off himself, and the ship groaned behind him in the wind.
"Either she'll give it to them and we'll have to support them and folk'll starve this winter, or she won't give them anything and the troops may leave. But more likely they'll stay, still after what she promised, and we can forget about rule by Evenalehn, because Evenalehn shan't risk the ill will of the Southern Confederation, particularly Miachamel and Omben, and Norembry will be sucked under Southern rule via the Ombenelva."
"God, Tem. What are they after? What's she promised? Our souls?" I piled sand onto my knees.
"Oh, no. She has something far more valuable."
"Tem!"
"Have you heard the rumors? About the weapon, the Æbelavadar? "
I had, on dimly lit streets and in the backs of taverns. Æbelavadar was a Simarghl word; it meant an incomplete soul lacking a predetermined end. A human. But Æbelavadars weren't strictly humans, and through history there had been many Æbelavadars.
The Æbelavadar that Tem was talking about was rumored to be a beautiful and powerful weapon. And apparently it belonged to the Queen.
"It's true?" I said. "She has it here? How'd she get hold of it?"
"I've no idea. But the Omben government wants it."
"So she'll use it to pay for the Omben soldiers?"
"Maybe."
"But then they'll stay and we'll go to war with Lorila? What's Lorila ever done?"
Tem snorted, insofar as an egret can. "Besides flattened their Elde for centuries? Nothing that calls for invasion."
"We're in a pretty pickle."
"Yes."
"Why––" I picked sand out of my hair. "D'you suppose she wants to go to war with Lorila?"
"Seems like it." He said this in so light a manner I suspected he was especilly anxious about it. "Lorila is weak, ideal for invasion––but it was a duke of Lorila that started the troops race, and am I watching the wrong men, do you think? Should I be over in Lorila, rather than here?"
I suddenly felt very alone. "Stay here. You're needed here."
"For now. The letter––It's about a hanging next week. But you won't want to hear it, and neither will the White-Ships: it's to do with the Omben men, and it's only the beginning of worse. The garrison has it in for Nat Breldin and two others at dawn a week from today, did you know? It's their sixth attempt for Breldin, but this time they have to let them go through with it.
"Wait," he cried as I leapt up, slinging sand from my lap. "Hold it."
"What's got into ye?" I cast the parchment away. "I can't tell them to do that."
"There's a reason. Listen to me, please, before you start crying. Now sit down––there's a good girl––and let me tell you why. The Omben military hold an annual––sacrificial ceremony, if you will, to satisfy one of their deities. Orshinq, it's called. The god they hold responsible for their military victories. The sacrifice must be a criminal guilty of treason, desertion, and the like: all threats to a martial system believed to be divinely ordained. Are you still with me?"
"No. Must they bring their nasty ceremony over here? Nat Breldin and them are Noremes. They ain't fit to be Omben sacrifices."
"Reyna, I wish the whole world thought so sensibly. But what matters to the Ombenelva is that they get traitors, no need to worry which government scratched the mark of treason into their arms. The mercenaries were intended as security, but the Queen hasn't surrendered the weapon, and it's touch-and-go with unpaid soldiers. Do you understand what might happen if the city rises against the ceremony of your ten thousand bloodthirsty foreigners next week? I fear a massacre over the death of three. Please write what I have to tell you."
Mordan delivered the letter the next day, and afterwards I steered clear of the quay and its streets. I didn't fancy an encounter with Wille, whose belligerence had probably multiplied threefold at Tem's letter, or Hal, who knew something about where the letter had come from.