Burning Tower (23 page)

I
t dawned on Regapisk that posing as a Lordkin chief was a bad idea. Wherever he went, he'd be thought a gatherer. He told Fethiwong the tale of Sandry and the mirror, loud enough that the Oarmaster could listen. Maybe he'd be believed, maybe not.

And he told of Tras the teller, proud of the truths he could ferret out the hidden places he'd penetrated, who overreached himself at the Lordshills gate. People need their secrets. A tale that comes as a lie is at least the property of the teller; the truth is not.

Lord Regapisk was a dead man; but Lord Reg the oarsman was learning. Tras had taught him to listen. He'd taught himself to tell the stories he heard. Regapisk the storyteller lay still in the future. Some day he'd be loose from these chains.

DAY 61: RUMOR—CRESCENT TOWN IS
NEAR; WIND BLOWS NORTH; SHORE TO
THE EAST.

The Oarmaster unchained him at sunset. Regapisk went without asking questions.

As on previous evenings, Arshur let him in. Tras, seated at his desk, didn't even look up. The Oarmaster went away.

“I thought you weren't going to summon me again,” Regapisk said to Tras Preetror.

“He's dead,” Arshur said.

Somehow it wasn't a surprise. Maybe it was the way Tras sat, hunched over, all bones. Regapisk whispered, “He die that way?”

“Yeah, at his desk, making those chicken footprints and little cartoons that're supposed to tell him how to tell a story.”

Regapisk stepped around to look. Tras Preetror's writing was readable, but it didn't say enough about anything. It was just notes, not stories, and the pictograms weren't in any style Regapisk knew.

“You haven't told anyone? The Captain?”

“Way I see it,” Arshur said, “I don't want to turn over what he's got. The captain or the mate, they'd just take it and say it's for his heirs. Even if he's got heirs, I don't know who they are or how to get to them. There's not enough to be worth a search.”

Regapisk found a dark amusement in the situation. “You can't dump him overboard. If they don't see him when the
Angie Queen
docks, they'll want to know you didn't hit him on the head.”

Arshur mulled that. He said, “Let's jump ship. Can you swim?”

“Sure. You too?” It was an unusual skill.

“Yeah.”

“Be better if we could steal a boat.”

“Too noisy. Here, get into these.” Clothing. Tras Preetror's would have been too small by half. Old Arshur's were loose around the belly but fit him otherwise. These weren't a Lord's clothing, but they weren't cheap, and they had a style. Regapisk suddenly felt much better. He tied soft boots around his neck, knowing they'd be too big.

“What else? We can't carry too much,” he said.

“He hasn't got much. Here, take this stuff.” Gold coins. A jeweled box. Regapisk didn't see what Arshur had packed in a rolled blanket. Something lighter and more valuable, like…“Jewels,” Regapisk remembered aloud. “Sewn in his shirt.”

“I took them. Go!”

 

Arshur dove in silently. Regapisk lost his balance and raised a mighty splash.

The water was startlingly warm. They might drown, but they wouldn't freeze first. They trod water beneath the swell of the hull until they were sure nobody had heard. Then—the land west was a waterless wilderness. They struck east.

He'd worried that gold coins would weigh him down, but the water was buoyant. It tasted brackish, salty. The shore was a long way off, a shadow along the horizon. They aimed for the nearest point of land. It didn't come closer for a long time. Regapisk was worn out, and Arshur barely had breath to mock him, before they heard the splash of waves.

But Arshur wasn't making for shore. And the water that had seemed startlingly warm was getting colder.

Regapisk didn't have breath to shout. He followed. The chill had his teeth chattering…but a pale hairball was afloat in the nightbound ocean. A minute of staring allowed Regapisk to make out a man's white hair and beard and a big crooked nose peeping through.

Arshur called cheerily, “Out for a swim?”

“Quiet,” the man croaked.

Arshur's voice went soft. “Why?”

“You can stand here,” the man said in passable Condigeano.

Regapisk's toes found bottom. Now his head and shoulders were out of the water. All his tired muscles cried in relief. Arshur asked again, “Who's listening?”

“That's my farm,” the man said, waving toward shore. “And those are bandits. We'll have to wait for them to go away.”

“How many?” Arshur asked.

“There were four. One gave up already. They think I've got money, so the rest are still searching. I don't know why that rumor doesn't die. If I had money, I'd buy talismans and get myself young again!”

“We'll take care of it,” Arshur said.

“Hold up a minute.”

Arshur started walking toward shore and was afloat again.

“Curse. That other one went for help,” the old man called. “Can't you see them? That makes six. You better wait with me.”

“I'm tired of waiting. I'm cold,” Arshur said.

“They went for friends who can swim,” the old man said. “Boys, I'm glad you showed up.”

Arshur was halfway to shore. He shouted, “Come on, Lord Reg. I hope you can fight!”

“Sure,” said Regapisk. He noted that the old man hadn't come with them. He noted that the two men wading toward him had swords, and he and Arshur didn't. But the rest were hanging back. These must be the ones who could swim.

The waves were a handsbreadth tall. The water was armpit deep. The bandits hesitated; but Arshur didn't, and the bandits weren't inclined to back away. Regapisk tried to stay just behind and left of Arshur, as he'd been trained. He'd wrapped a shirt around his left fist. His right gripped Tras's tiny eating knife. Maybe he could grab a blade and get in a punch.

Arshur laughed.

One of the bandits stumbled behind a wave. There was a gentle sound like a ship knocking against a dock. Then Arshur had a sword and was splashing toward the remaining swimmer. The bandit lunged away from him, whining, found shallower ground, and turned to fight, waving his sword like a child. Arshur killed him, dipped below the water, came up with the man's sword, and tossed it to Regapisk.

Regapisk remembered his training…and what he remembered was being knocked down, disarmed, bruised, beaten. Years of that. The Lords trained all their boys to fight, but Regapisk hadn't been very good at it. He was good at jeering. He called, “Gentlemen! The owner wants to know your business here!”

The bandits shouted obscenities Regapisk had never heard. Arshur seemed familiar with them: he laughed and bellowed back. The four were standing in an arc on the beach, holding Arshur at the focus. Then one cursed and ran at them, sword held high, like a total idiot.

That was the most awesome part of that whole night. Regapisk
knew
how good a swordsman he wasn't, but these fought like six-year-olds. The unfamiliar sword felt light as a feather in his hand. He cut at extremities, notching a wrist, above a kneecap, tip of a thumb, then running a man through when he bellowed and charged. The living man he'd left in the ocean crawled out and ran at his back. Regapisk whipped around in an elegant circle and beheaded him and was back in guard before the remaining two could move.

Arshur had killed one, but now he seemed to be just playing around.

The two men dropped to their knees and threw away their swords.

“My name is Zephans Mishagnos,” the old man told them, “and I'm a wizard of sorts. This is not a good place to be a wizard, but not a good place to leave either.”

They were in a pointy-topped one-room hut, crowded close around a fire in the center. Regapisk had stopped shivering. He said, “Even at night, this is odd for a farm. Where do you get fresh water?”

“You swam through it.”

“That's salt.”

“Yes. I'll show you tomorrow. You want to help me run this farm? It's coming on toward harvest, such as it is. We'll eat like kings, at least.” He looked at them. “You're big men, but we'll have more than enough.”

F
or the first few days, they'd had to make the old man repeat everything. He didn't speak much Condigeano. Now Regapisk was learning his language; Arshur already knew a little. It was Aztlani, Zeph said.

“I was already an old man when word of the Warlock's Wheel spread here from Asia. That makes me a hundred and sixty or seventy years old,” Zeph told them. “There's no manna hereabouts. Not even in Crescent City, barring a market in shielded talismans. If I tried to walk out of here, I'd turn to dust.”

Regapisk and Arshur continued picking squashes and fruit in the twilight. The watermelons were big. Lord Reg was surprised at how light they were. He asked, “Where's Crescent City?”

The parrot on the old man's shoulder screeched, “Where's Crescent City?”

Zeph jumped. Zeph's deafness seemed to come and go. The parrot helped. Zeph said, “Oh, northwest along the shore by ten leagues or so. That's by canoe. Further by road, you have to go north a ways to get past the delta. I got here forty years ago, running from Aztlani soldiers, in a wagon I stole from a farmer. Full of seeds, it was. I had this talisman too. They gave up on me when I got into the badlands. I never was good at taking a hint. I used up the manna in the talisman, and that left me as a farmer. Look…”

The irrigation trough ran downhill from a pond that fed the crops. Regapisk hadn't seen how Zeph kept the pond filled. The old man scooped water from the trough in cupped hands. He offered it to Regapisk.

Regapisk sipped. It was fresh. Regapisk dipped up more in his own hands, sipped and spat. “Salt,” he said. “What's going on?”

“You tell me.”

“You're turning brackish water to fresh. It's the only way you could farm this land.
How?
”

“There's currents of manna in the sea,” said Zeph. “You can see 'em if you've got good eyes. The currents are piss-poor here, but there's enough to make fresh water and get it up here to the reservoir.”

The old man gestured down at the shore. Waves humped a little higher. Waves ran uphill along the main irrigation channel and stopped halfway to the field.

“Curse,” Zeph said without much emphasis. “Can you see the manna, how it streamed in and then out a little too quick for me?”

“No,” said Arshur.

“Just sun-glitter,” said Regapisk.

“Well, there's manna in sun-glitter,” Zeph said, “but cast your eye north along the strand. See, where it's just a bit brighter?”

The water of the Inland Sea was mostly brown. A thread of brightness ran through it. “Yeah…”

“Now, south, there's a pool of it going into the waves, where it's no use to me. Farther out, the main rivulet—”

“Yeah.”

“Right, then. Shall I summon it?”

“It's nowhere near the channel,” Regapisk said.

Arshur bellowed, “Hah! You are the match of Tras himself!”

“No, really—”

“But you can fight. ‘Lord Reg,' they said, but not like they meant it. I wasn't sure. But Tras could make a man believe anything!”

But Regapisk was sure he could see something. If he wasn't trying to look, they were there: bright lines in the water, dim patches here and there, and bright current lines. The water was mud colored everywhere, and it flashed with momentary sunlit reflections, but in places there was a pervasive tinge…. “Down the middle, there's nothing,” he said.

“Down the middle, there's nothing!” the bird shouted.

“Yes, that is where the Rainbow River runs in. The Rainbow carries some manna, but not much, and it gets used up at Crescent City. People pray in temples and courtrooms and do business in tearooms—you know how it is. Everybody's a little bit magician. They use up the manna. See where the current is moving past the channel now? See if you can bring it up.”

“What do I do, wave at it?”

“Like this. Can you feel what I'm doing?”

“Nothing. Wait, it's getting brighter.”

“Getting brighter!”

“Not your arms. Your whole body…mph. Just 'cause you can see it doesn't mean you've got the talent.”

But the water was pulsing up the channel in little waves, flowing into the pond that fed cabbages, yams, squashes, and a maize patch. Zeph was tangled in the lines of brightness, though he was here and they were way out there….

 

They didn't eat like kings. Meat was short. When stoop labor got to be too much, Arshur and Regapisk went hunting for prairie dogs and turkeys and such.

Kings would have better manners than Arshur, Regapisk thought. The old swordsman watched Regapisk using silverware improvised from two sticks, and laughed. “Lord Reg!”

“You should be learning this. Weren't you bragging that you were going to be a king?”

“I am. That old sorceress said so, and the young Feathersnake shaman, she said so too!”

“Kings don't eat with their fingers.”

Arshur shrugged, but he began to study the way Reg used his implements. The next day, he made his own.