Lord of the Isles (32 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Lord of the Isles
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“
T
his North Harbor used to be for the fleet alone,” said Mellie. “It's all artificial, you know. I've seen three hundred triremes here, covered with bunting and spreading their striped sails.”
She surveyed the buildings on the harbor side of the cobblestone street and added, “
My
how it's changed. You humans are such fun to watch!”
“The factory we've rented is this next one here,” Frasa said with a nod. “It's owned by a consortium of our own
people, though on previous trips we've sometimes used the Ardukh factory when there was already a cargo in ours.”
The Serians normally kept their hands within their full sleeves. Their gestures were mostly facial, and slight by the standards of the people Cashel grew up with. That wasn't a problem to him, since for most of his life he'd been interpreting the even subtler body language of sheep.
Cashel hadn't been sure what the Serians meant by “factory.” The indicated building was one of at least twenty similar structures: two-story in front with a lower extension in the rear and a walled compound to the side and back, all the way to the water. They were built of stone with sturdy double doors onto the street and only slit windows (if any) on the front. The Serian factory was one of those which had a perfectly blank façade except for the iron-strapped doors.
A team of tall brown men wearing breechclouts was washing recent filth from the factory's façade. Cashel could see speckles high up the masonry: marks left by flung cobblestones, harmless except in intent.
Jen and Frasa walked briskly to the door of the building with their faces lowered to avoid eye contact with the spectators. Cashel strode along with them, but he kept his head turning in all directions as he would when shepherding a flock through certain danger.
The streets near the North Harbor were slums whose tenement rooms were as small as a rural hut, equally windowless, and not as clean. Idlers in the street watched the Serian workmen, but though the locals were hostile they seemed of a more subdued disposition than Cashel had feared.
“Highlanders,” Mellie said, pointing with her right leg while she balanced on the toes of her left foot.
Sitting cross-legged in front of the building were four men of wholly different ancestry from that of the docilely toiling workmen. The seated folk were no more than five feet tall and lightly built besides. Their skin was the pale yellow-white of a well-prepared parchment, and their long straight hair was black with no other hues highlighting it even in direct sun.
They chattered cheerfully to one another and passed around a piece of dried meat from which each in turn tore a mouthful.
The Highlanders' front teeth had been filed into triangular fangs. They held short bows on their laps; the bone points of their arrows had been dipped in black gum that was certainly poisonous. The necklace that each Highlander wore was made, Cashel was pretty certain, of dried human ears.
The door of the factory opened unbidden. One of the Highlanders squinted, then pointed at Cashel's right shoulder and called enthusiastically to his fellows. Cashel glared at the man and rapped his quarterstaff down, striking sparks from the cobblestones.
The Highlanders all laughed and patted each other on the back. The man with the slab of meat lifted it for Cashel to take if he wanted.
Cashel grinned and shook his head as he strode past. Giggling, Mellie hugged his neck.
A pair of Serians pushed the door closed behind Cashel; a third man slid the crossbar through its staples. These servants wore robes similar in cut and color to those of Jen and Frasa, but they were woven from some coarse fabric Cashel didn't recognize. He'd like to send a swatch to his sister, but he knew he had to stop thinking that way or he'd never make a break with his memories of Sharina.
Besides, Ilna was here in Carcosa. She was probably learning about all sorts of new things.
In an alcove beside the door stood a life-sized statue of a goddess in saffron robes as beautiful and delicate as the figure herself. She was flanked by a pair of hideous dog-faced demons: one red and the other blue. Though the demons were bipedal, their forelimbs ended in clawed paws rather than human hands. They were obtrusively male.
Jen and Frasa knelt before the goddess. They lowered their heads and placed their palms flat on the stone before them as they murmured together in an unfamiliar language. As they got to their feet again Cashel said, “Masters? Ah, should I do that too?”
The Serians looked at him in surprise. “Surely you don't worship our Goddess of Mercy, do you?” Frasa asked.
“Well, I just thought maybe you'd want me to,” Cashel said in even greater embarrassment. He didn't know how to act in Carcosa … unless somebody attacked him, of course. The rules then were pretty much the same everywhere.
“I can't imagine why,” Frasa said. “Whatever good would come of forcing anyone to
worship?”
He led the way to the staircase on the opposite side of the hall. Jen nodded Cashel to follow and added from behind him, “Though of course if you wanted to thank the goddess, that would be fine. The decision simply has nothing to do with us.”
A cheaply dressed Serian started down the stairs carrying tablets of laced bamboo; the leaves clattered against one another as he moved. He saw Frasa and bounded upstairs again to get out of the way.
“The statues beside the goddess …” Cashel said, glancing back over his shoulder from the landing. He let his voice trail off, hoping that his hosts would answer the question he was afraid to articulate for fear he'd use the wrong words. The Serians were decent folks; he didn't want to shock them—as he obviously had earlier when he called them devil worshippers.
“The guardian demons, yes,” Frasa said. He'd reached the top of the stairs. A servant wearing a robe with a black border bowed and opened the door of an office facing the harbor.
“You see, Master Cashel,” Jen said, “the goddess is perfectly benevolent; she does only good. But beings of such pure innocence need the protection of others to exist in this fallen world. Therefore the goddess is always guarded by demons … while we ourselves crew our vessels in part with Highlanders.”
“And desire your company as well,” Frasa said as he gestured Cashel to one of the low chairs around an even lower table within the office. A servant hovered at the inner door,
holding a tray of cups with tiny rice-paper caps over each one.
Jen and Frasa seated themselves as Cashel lowered himself carefully onto the chair. It was sturdier than it looked, but he was more used to stools than chairs and more used to squatting on the floor than either form of furniture.
Mellie hopped down from his shoulder and scampered off to explore on her own. It frightened him to see the sprite's bright hair suddenly pop from behind a lacquered screen and jump to catch a window louver. He had to tell himself that she knew what she was doing much better than he did.
His hosts took cups from the tray and lifted the caps off. “A mixture of fruit juices,” Jen explained. “We can provide alcohol for you if you choose?”
“No, this is fine,” Cashel said, wondering what to do with his legs. He finally stretched them out in front of him to straddle the table. The Serians crossed their legs under them on the seat, but his joints weren't used to bending that way.
The opposite wall was of shuttered casements overlooking the one-story extension at the rear of the factory. The shutters were open. Cashel could see more Serians and Highlanders relaxing in the closed yard, as well as the wharf to which was tied a square-bowed sailing vessel like nothing ever imagined in Barca's Hamlet.
Cashel sipped his juice. It was tart and cool, but there was an overtone that suggested to his unfamiliar palate that one of the fruits had been rotten before it was squeezed. He continued to drink.
“Our family has been trading to Carcosa for five generations,” Frasa said. “There's always been hostility to folk of our religion—”
“Or our race,” Jen said. “Perhaps that's the problem.”
Cashel didn't speak aloud, but he'd never noticed that folks needed a real reason to throw stones at other people if they were minded to. Red hair or left-handedness or the fact they came from the next borough—any stick was good enough to beat a dog.
Frasa's eyebrows made the equivalent of a shrug. “In any case,” he continued, “we have very little contact while we're in Carcosa. We rent a factory and store our goods in it, then contract with a Carcosan broker to arrange buyers for the merchandise and a return cargo for us. The difficulty this time is that the civil unrest is so unexpectedly severe.”
Mellie sped across the flat roof of the building extension and vanished through a drain of glazed brick. There were Highlanders is the yard below … .
“Do you know Carcosan politics, Master Cashel?” Jen asked politely.
Cashel had to smile. He shook his head. He wasn't sure he knew what
politics
were, much less the particular version practiced in Carcosa.
“Count Lascarg came to power in riots a generation ago,” Jen continued. “He has general support among the common people while most of the wealthy class oppose him, but he's worked to conciliate himself to both parties instead of ruling by brute force.”
“In part because he lacks the force,” Frasa said. “Lascarg deliberately whittled down the size of the Guard so that his successor wouldn't replace him the same way he replaced the former Count and Countess of Haft. Because he doesn't have a real power base of his own, he's desperate to prevent open class warfare from breaking out.”
“Whoever won in the end,” Jen said, “Lascarg can be sure that he would lose. Therefore he's has tried to unite the populace by stirring up feeling against strangers. Particularly Serians.”
Cashel nodded, “Yeah,” he said, glad to see Mellie climb onto the drinks tray again. “Well, you're stranger than most.”
She fell on her back, holding her sides with laughter. Frasa and Jen stiffened, then smiled.
Cashel blinked at what he'd heard himself say. Either there was
something
in the fruit juice, maybe not alcohol, or the situation of the whole past week was so unreal that his mind
saw no reason not to speak what normally would have remained as unspoken thoughts.
“I suppose we are,” Frasa said. “Well, our ill luck at finding ourselves in a situation fomented by cowardly deceit has been mitigated by meeting so unusually honest and stalwart a person as you, Master Cashel.”
“If we had known the extent of the unrest we would never have sailed here in the
Golden Dragon
,” Jen said. He didn't point to the ship at the wharf behind him; rather, his eyes moved minusculely to the side. The motion if continued would have indicated the window and by extension everything beyond it. “Stones were thrown at the factory last night after we docked, but that had happened before. Today my brother and I went out to contact a broker. Without your help, sir, we would not have returned.”
Both Serians rose gracefully to their feet, then genuflected as they'd done before the goddess. Cashel blushed; he wanted to sink through the floor in embarrassment.
“Look,” he said as he got his legs under him, “I'm glad I could help you; it wasn't right, what was happening. But you're back safe now, and I'll be on my way.”
He tugged out his purse. Mellie bounced toward him turning handsprings, her unnaturally red hair flaring each time her head went down.
“Please,
Master Cashel,” Jen said as both Serians jumped up in obvious concern. “We meant you no insult.”
“Wasn't right for me to take money for helping you, either,” Cashel said as he fumbled for the silver anchors Frasa had given him beside the fountain. “I wish you fellows well and good business.”
Mellie's touch on Cashel's leg and up his tunic had been as feather-light as a bumblebee settling for a drink of salty perspiration. From his shoulder she said, “You've never dealt with Serians before, Cashel. Remember that they haven't met many countrymen. Or honest men either in Carcosa, unless things have changed since my last visit.”
Cashel paused, frowning in confusion.
“We sail to Haft by the southern route,” Frasa said. “There are many pirates in those waters, so we take Highlanders in our crew. They can't navigate so there's no danger that they'll steal the ship themselves; and they have no compunction about killing pirates.”
He smiled very slightly. “Or eating them.”
Cashel nodded. He didn't see where the Serian's speech was going, but he could wait. He felt silly holding the purse in his left hand. He drew the neck closed and tucked it back within his tunic.
“In Carcosa,” Jen said, taking up from his brother, “we have no protection outside the factory. We hope to be able to do our business quickly through the broker we've engaged and not have to go out again, but we can't be sure of that. Master Cashel, even if we don't need your strength ever again, the presence of an honorable man will lighten our tasks. Please stay with us; and permit us to pay you as we agreed, for the sake of
our
honor.”

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