Thaddeus had given him the name of a man to seek out in a particular coastal town. He found the man and convinced him Thaddeus had sent him. The man passed him into the care of another, who fed him and told him what he could, who helped him fight back the mist hunger and sent him forward with a message to another person. Thus he came to understand that there was a hidden resistance at work in the world. The old chancellor was part of something larger than himself. Thanks to him, so was Leeka.
Throughout all of this he interviewed anyone he could as casually as he could. He knew of the person he searched for by a single name. He uttered it sparingly. He framed his queries differently depending on whom he spoke to. He passed one full month and much of a second in this manner, getting no closer to his goal, hearing little that helped him but much that fired his desire to push on. Still, when a break came he at first did not recognize it for what it was or welcome it.
A woman approached him in a tavern in a fishing port whose name he had not even asked. She carried a drink in one hand. She smiled at him and was young and attractive in a jaded enough way that he took her to be a prostitute. When she spoke, however, she struck with surprising directness. “Why are you asking after a raider?”
Leeka answered with one of his prepared responses. He was intentionally vague. He alluded to a business proposal, to inside information that he possessed, to the prospect that he and this raider might benefit each other in a variety of ways, all of them too delicate to reveal to anybody but the young raider himself.
“Hmm,” she said. She nodded her head as if this satisfied her. She took a sip of her drink and then, without any sort of warning, she pursed her lips and spat at him, spraying his face and eyes with a burning liquid. He was blinded. Hands fell upon him, more than just the woman’s. Suddenly it seemed every person in the tavern had lain in wait for him. He was battered by fists and blunt objects; his weapons stripped from him; his head beaten, beaten, beaten against a wall until he lost consciousness.
When he awoke he knew he was at sea. He felt the spray against his face. His body was wet. Drenched, actually. Intermittently dunked beneath the surface of the sea. He was, he realized, strapped rigid against a board that had been nailed to the prow of a ship. His arms and legs and torso were bound tight, and at times his body cut the ship’s course through a seething green sea. He was a living prow figure.
And it was as such that he arrived at Palishdock, in a less than desirable condition, with a great deal less secrecy than he wished, very little of his stature obvious to the motley throng of brigands that gathered to gape at him. The crew that lowered him to the pier was not over-careful about it. They left him facedown againt the sun-bleached beams for some time. When they finally carried him to shore they simply lifted the entire plank and walked with him, the ground rising and falling beneath him with their strides. They dropped him in the hot sand but only for a moment. He felt the entire board tilted upward and leaned back against a building of some sort. Thus he waited, bound, bruised, sand dusted.
The young woman he had taken for a prostitute was there, along with the host of thugs that had so easily beaten and bound him. They leaned about, as casual and lackadaisical as any street vagrants, until two others stepped out from one of the makeshift structures of the place: a young man and a large man. The young man did not look pleased. He conferred with the ones who had brought Leeka, and then studied him from a distance, seemingly considering whether to address him or turn away. The large man leaned heavily on a cane. His skin was pallid and his frame, though massive, sagged like a sack half full. He watched Leeka without speaking, just stared at him fixedly.
Eventually, the young man walked forward through the sand. He plucked the dagger from the sheath on his thigh and held it between himself and Leeka, not exactly a threat but not far from it. “Who are you, and why were you asking about me?”
Looking into the young man’s handsome face, nearly breathless at the prospect of the answer, Leeka asked, “You are the one they call Spratling?”
“I answer to that name. What of it?”
Leeka wished his lips were not so swollen and stiff, crusted with dried blood and salt. He wished his puffy eye was not obscuring his gaze and that he had a drink of water to loosen the words in his throat. But none of these things was about to change, so he said what he had planned to.
“Prince Dariel Akaran,” he began, “I rejoice to set eyes-”
“Why do you call me by that name?” the young man cut in, flaring with confused anger.
To Leeka’s relief, another answered for him. The large man hobbled his great bulk forward. “Calm yourself, lad. It’s my doing. It’s my doing.”
CHAPTER
Mena grabbed hold of the loops of rusty metal and pressed her bottom to the sand. Thus anchored she tilted her head and gazed up through columns of living mollusks. She sat, as she often did, on the sandy floor of the harbor, some thirty feet from the surface, her breath clamped tight inside her. Her hair floated around her in sinuous tendrils. Around her rose a towering forest of shadows, each of them a chain suspended from the surface and anchored to the ground. Oysters hung from the links by the thousands. Full grown, the creatures were as large around as a child’s head. Though much of this bulk was composed of shell, each of them could feed three or four diners, simmered in a coconut milk sauce and served with transparent noodles. They were a delicacy around which the temple controlled a monopoly. The export market in black oysters filled the temple coffers each time the floating merchants passed the archipelago.
Her lungs began to burn. They heaved against her chest. Every muscle out to her fingertips and toes twitched in protest, every part of her shouted in anger. Beyond the oysters, the brilliant turquoise of the surface glow highlighted the weight and size of the mollusks, as if the world above was a blessed place of light that she could regain only by the most perilous of ascents. She unclenched her hands and floated free. As she flew upward toward the light she blew a stream of bubbles preceding her. She was never sure if it was the bubbles themselves or if the oysters sensed her coming, but one by one the creatures folded their gaping shells closed, opening a passageway for her all the way to the surface. The last few moments were the worst, the most frantic, the entirety of her being screaming to get out of her skin, sure she had hung on too long.
She broke into the air with her mouth a gaping oval. Air engulfed her, as did light and sound and movement, as did life. She could not explain her need for this strange ordeal, but it always left her feeling temporarily secure about the purity of her soul. This was a thing that concerned her, especially on a day like this one, when she would look into the face of grieving parents and swear that a child’s death was a boon to them all, a necessary sacrifice, and a gift any parent should wish to give.