A long lean cat slipped through the camp, nosed at the sleeping man, went pacing off, a whisper of a growl deep in his? yes, his throat. “Hmm, I wouldn’t want to be in your sandals, Danny Blue, the changers are not happy with you. Aaah! that’s an idea, good cat g0000d, next time through you might let your claws slip a little, yes yes?” He got heavily to his feet, thumbed off the mirror and snapped to his rooms.
Todichi Yahzi was whuffling softly in a stuffed chair, having gone to sleep as he waited for Maksim to return. Maksim bent over him, smiled as he caught the glint of gold in the short gray fur on his neck; Todich was wearing the chain. Maksim shook him awake. “Now what are you doing, Todich? Go to bed. I’ll do the same soon as I’ve had my bath.”
Todichi yawned, worked his fingers. “Yim showed up with a message from T’Thelo,” he humspoke. “Sent it to me not you because mmmm I think he was frightened of what Yim might carry back to him. He said Servant Bulan wanted mightily to know what you said to him, said he said you wanted him, T’Thelo, to assemble a report on the village schools, that you said it was important right now to know how the children were doing, what the teachers and landsmen were thinking. He’s slyer than I thought he was, that old root, I thought you were making a mistake
“Go to bed, Todich, you’ve done more than enough for tonight. I’ve got to think.” Todichi Yahzi looked disapproving, pressed his lips tight as if he were holding back the scarifying scold he wanted to give. Maksim chuckled, a deep burring that seemed to rise from his heels and roll out of his throat. He stretched mightily, yawned. “But not tonight, old friend, tonight I sleep. Go go. Tomorrow I’ll be working you so hard you won’t have time to breathe. Go.”
Unable to sleep though he knew he should, Maksim pulled a cloak about his shoulders, looked down at the naked legs protruding dark and stately from his nightshirt, laughed and shook his head. “Be damned to dignity.” He snapped to the high ramparts and stood looking down over his city.
Clouds were blowing up out of the west and the moon was longgone, it was very dark. Silagamatys was a nubbly black rug spread out across the hills, decorated here and there with splotches and pimples of lamplight and torchfire except near the waterfront where the tavern torches lit the thready fog into a muted sunset glow. The Godalau floated in the bay’s black water, moving in and out of the fog, her translucent body lit from within, Tungjii riding black and solid on her massive flank. She drifted past Deadfire Island, a barren heap of stone out near the harbor’s mouth; her internal illumination brushed a ghostly gray glimmer over its basalt slopes. She passed on, taking her glimmer with her and Deadfire was once more a shadow lost in shadows. Maksim leaned on the parapet, looking thoughtfully at the black absence. I let them leave my city and I lost them. Mmm. Might have lost them anyway and half the city with them. Deadfire, Deadfire… yes, I think so. He laughed softly, savoring the words. Live and die on Deadfire, I live you die, Drinker of Souls and you, Danny Blue. Let the Godalau swim and Tungjii gibber, they can’t reach me there, and your Chained God, hah! Brann oh Brann, sweet vampire lass, don’t count on him to help. The stone reeks of me, it’s mine, step on it and it will swallow you. He reached through the neckslit of the nightshirt and smoothed his hand across BinYAHtii. You too, eh? Old stone, that’s your stone too, you’ve fed it blood and bones. There’s nothing they’ve got that can match us… mmm… except those changers, I’ll have to put my mind to them. Send them home? Send them somewhere, yesss, that’s it, if they’re not here, they’re no problem. He stroked BinYAHtii. It might take Amortis to throw them out, Forty Mortal Hells, the Fates forfend, I’d have to figure a way to implant a spine in her. He gazed down at the city with an unsentimental fiercely protective almost maternal love. Blood of his blood, bone of his bone, his unknown M’darjin father had no part in him beyond the superficial gifts of height and color, his mother and Silagamatys had the making of him. Amortis! may her souls if she’s got them rot in Gehannum’s deepest hell for what she’s done to you my city. To you and to me. If I did not still need her… He shivered and pulled his cloak closer about his body. The rising waterheavy wind bit to the bone. Out in the bay the Godalau once more drifted past Deadfire. Maksim pushed away the long coarse hair that was whipping into his mouth and eyes. That’s it, then. We meet on Deadfire, Drinker of Souls, Danny Blue. Four more days. That’s it. He shivered. So I’d better get some sleep, I’ve underestimated the three now two of you before, I won’t do it again.
They reached the Plain by midmorning, emerging from a last wave of brushy, arid foothills into a land lushly green, intensely cultivated, webbed between its several rivers by a network of canals that provided irrigation water for the fields and most of the transport for produce and people. Braun and Danny Blue rode side by side, neither acknowledging the presence of the other, an unbroken tension between them as threatening as the unbroken storm hanging overhead. The changers flew in circles under the lowering clouds, probing with their telescopic raptor’s eyes for signs that Settsimaksimin was attacking, signs that held off like the storm was holding off.
The day ground on. The hilltrack had turned into a narrow dirt road that hugged the riverbank, a dusty rutted weed-grown road little used by anything but straying livestock. Out in the river’s main channel flatboats moved past them, square sails bellied taut, filled with the heavy wind that pushed them faster than the current would. Little dark men on those boats (hostility thick on dark skin, glistening like a coat of grease on a kisso wrestler’s arms and torso) glared at them out of hate-filled dark eyes. In the fields beside the road and the fields across the river landfolk worked at the harvest, men, women, children. Like the boatmen they stopped what they were doing, even those far across the river, and turned to glower at the riders.