Raven's Ladder (22 page)

“Hmm.” She licked her lips as if sampling wine. “A few lessons and you won’t be bad at all.” She wagged her finger at him. “Our little secret, redbraids. I gotta take what I can get when Brown’s not looking.”

“You’re not going to sell us?”

“Eventually, sure as sap is sticky, we’ll take coins for you.” She pinched his nose, her hands frantic as tailtwitchers. She took a small clay pot out of her pocket and waved it in front of his throbbing nose. “Slumberseed oil. Breathe it in. You’ll forget all about what hurts and sleep a few more days.”

“Maybe I don’t mind the pain.”

“Ooooh, strong man! That’s just sparky, ’cuz”—she fingered the claw marks on his face—“there’s plenty more scars on the way.”

“Can I try some?” asked Wynn.

“I’ve other potions,” she went on, ignoring the boy. “They’ll make you forget your heart’s true favorite. Then you and I can stop wasting time and have some real fun. Time’s short. We’ll knock on Bel Amica’s door in two days.”

Cal-raven could not stifle his surprise.

“Yeah, Bel Amica. Seers’ll buy you right out of our hands. I suspect you’ll end up on an island somewhere.” She picked at a jagged fingernail and watched her story sink in.

“And what if we don’t play along?” Wynn sneered.

“They’ve got these sharp little tools that can carve a tongue right out.”

Wynn pressed his lips tight shut.

“Thesera knows about this?” Cal-raven’s mind hastened to make sense of these revelations. “She consents to such slavery?”

“All she knows is that we catch trespassers and crooks so the Seers can punish them, teach them discipline, and train them up as resourceful laborers. She’s happy to let the Seers take care of nasty business.”

“The Seers must pay you handsomely,” he said. “But I can do better.”

“Redbraids is a bargainer,” she groaned.

“Too bad,” came the other’s voice beyond the canvas. “Mousey, keep your hands off him. It’s my turn for special company.”

“The heiress herself invited me to Bel Amica.” Cal-raven struggled to hold her narrowing gaze. “She wants to surprise the Seers.”

“And what kind of surprise would you be?”

He thought fast. “The Seers keep watch over everything. It’s hard to surprise them with any kind of honor. I’m a stonemaster.” He nodded toward Wynn, who lifted up the tiny cleverjay sculpture with his toes. “Cyndere wants a statue for the Seers. But I have to arrive in secret, without any kind of fuss.”

“What statue?”

“When you’ve helped me get inside, I promise I’ll mention your names to Queen Thesera. But if Cyndere tells the queen that I’ve gone missing, there may be some investigation.”

Mousey stuck her fingernail under his chin and tilted his head back. “How do I know you’re a stonemaster?”

Wynn kicked the stone to Cal-raven’s feet. Mousey put it in his hand. The cleverjay’s harsh edges softened and melted.

Mousey backed away from him.

He lay calmly and said, “You’re saving me days of travel by giving me this ride.”

For a brief moment Mousey’s eyes flashed in desperate hope. But then the driver’s mocking laughter sounded outside. “Liar.” Mousey opened the pot, and a sharp, bitter vapor washed across Cal-raven’s face, clouding his thoughts.

“No!” Wynn cried. “Don’t! He’s not what you—”

“Wynn!” Cal-raven shouted. “Not another word, or I’ll ask them to throw you out the back.”

“How did you plan to get into Bel Amica?” Mousey asked.

Cal-raven took a deep breath.
Cyndere warned me not to trust anyone else
. “A token. I’m to send it to her through a Bel Amican guard.”

“What token?”

“I have yet to sculpt it.”

Mousey looked at Cal-raven’s hands. “Melted that rock like it was cheese on a hot pan.” She scratched the scab on her chin. “You hearing this, Brown? This bloody fellow’s a friend of the heiress.” He could see the ovens burning hot within her mind. She was beautiful and feisty, just the way his father had described his mother when he spoke of finding her—an orphaned merchant girl in the wilderness.

Mousey leaned in and stroked his hand. “You know,” she whispered so Brown wouldn’t hear, “if what you’re saying is true, I could be a friend to you in Bel Amica. Help you get settled. I’ve always wanted a room of my own with a view of the sea.”

“Tempting,” he whispered back. And for a moment it was. “Consider this a promise.” He took a shred of the softened stone and sculpted a ring around her finger.

“Sparky!” she gasped. He watched a shudder ripple from her shoulders to her fingertips. “I knew you were good news when we pulled you out of that pit.”

“Mousey!” Brown was upset. “Put out that fire. He’s mine.”

“I’m just puttin’ him back to sleep!” Giddy with conspiracy, Mousey pressed her small round nose to Cal-raven’s. She smelled like a summer pear. “Believe me, if you’re lying, I’m gonna ask if I can be there when they hurt you.” She had freckles—countless flecks of freckles fanning out across her cheeks. He was so distracted by them that he didn’t see her raise the clay pot.

You fool. Remember what happened last time you let yourself be seduced by a stranger
. It was his last thought before the wave of slumberseed perfume plunged him back to sleep.

Two days and several empty slave pits later, they gave up the wagon for a row-boat. As if caught and reeled in by some far-off fisherman, the boat was drawn from the stream into the Rushtide Inlet, that great spearhead of water where five tributaries joined in a rush out to the Mystery Sea.

In the middle of that bay, a family of islands was bound by sweeping arcs of stone to one tremendous, central hive—the rock of House Bel Amica. From his seat on the floor of the boat, Cal-raven could see it all come into view.

“It’s a whole ’nother world,” said Wynn. “It’s like we’re being pulled into a dragon’s jaws.”

Mousey grinned so broadly that she revealed several missing teeth. “You’re not the first to see it that way.”

“The story of the stranded dragon.” Cal-raven opened his tied hands as if presenting the story. “I heard it as a child.”

While Wynn looked concerned, eying the city on the rock with suspicion, Mousey rubbed her hands together, clearly eager to tell the story. And she did.

In an age long since past, she said, an enormous oceandragon traversed the Mystery Sea. Eventually the dragon became bored with its limitations. Skydragons could fly wherever they wished, and earthdragons could swim if necessary, but oceandragons could neither fly nor walk.

One season the oceandragon decided it was tired of borders. So it ventured eastward until it encountered the edge of the great continent of the
Expanse. In frustration, the dragon refused to turn and take the necessary route around this mass of land. Instead, it tried to push the continent out of its path.

Other dragons tried to talk sense into the oceandragon’s tiny mind. But the stubborn creature insisted, too proud to give up, until it eventually expired, leaving only this dent in the coastline—which came to be known as the Rushtide Inlet. Eventually the sea claimed the oceandragon’s body. But its great skull remained there, rising from the waters in the cleft of the inlet as a lesson: heed your elders.

“No, no, no,” said Brown, whose tight black garments, black hair, and white-painted face contradicted her name. “That’s not the story’s lesson. The dragon’s skull is to remind us that we should never set out on a mission we cannot complete.”

“When my teacher told me the tale,” said Cal-raven, “he came to a different conclusion. Impatience can blind you. If you don’t stop to consider all paths, you’ll get stuck in the wrong one.”

“Whatever the lesson,” said Mousey, “the story’s meant to explain the shape and place of the rock that’s home to Bel Amica. In truth, it’s bigger than the skulls of a thousand oceandragons put together.”

Whether for Wynn’s benefit or just to hear herself talk, Mousey went on to explain that Bel Amica had filled the rock’s vast cavities with homes, markets, temples, and galleries. She pointed out the palace towers and immense, flag-decorated domes. She identified residences, outbuildings, and platforms anchored like barnacles all over the rugged surface. Walls spanned sections of the rock, she explained, so watchmen could monitor the harbor, the mainland, and the sea. As she spoke, a silver cargo train descended around the rock on a spiraling track.

Cal-raven grew distracted, losing himself in memories as he studied the crisscrossing avenues that ran in tangles all around that stone foundation like the wire of a Bel Amican beastman trap. The streets were lined with sculptures of eagles and oceandragons. Massive seashells served as canopies for great halls and chambers, gleaming white in the sun, and when the wind whirled around the rock, they sang in sonorous tones. Gardens and orchards
in green and gold burst from jutting promontories. Flags flapped in the hard wind, streaming ribbons of colors.

This is what drove my mother to covet. And she could not have it, so she punished us all
.

Clouds of birds swarmed about the scene, now swelling like a puff of smoke, now shredding and streaming like webs on the wind. They rose from shipyards along the inlet banks to engulf the bridges, besiege the tall towers and the slender spans that connected them, and then spread themselves across the broad flats of the rock to Bel Amica’s marketplaces and craftyards.

“It’s like twenty Abascars, isn’t it?” Wynn whispered.

“And we’re seeing only the shell of it.”

Brown scowled while Mousey leaned out over the prow of the boat.

“My pa told me how they got rich,” Wynn continued. “He said they learned to build ships, which they sailed until they found islands. And the islands are all covered with good stuff.”

“That’s part of the story.” Cal-raven shook his head as Brown’s oars brought them into the shadow of the foundation. “Incredible. Everything I might’ve recognized has been replaced.”

“There’s an old Bel Amican joke,” said Brown. “If ya don’t like the view here, wait a few minutes.” Her eyes interrogated Cal-raven, testing him for a lie. “Your accent says Abascar, but you’ve got memories of this place.”

“Long story.

“If we’re going to find a way to get you inside, we’ll have to do some fast talking. What do we call you?”

“Marcuson.”

From the “mouth” of that skull-like rock, a long floating bridge ran to the mainland. This was Bel Amica’s primary entrance, the path to the front gate. But other bridges sprouted out like whiskers from the base of the rock, leading to complex wooden walkways and mazes filled with boats that covered the inlet like lily pads.

Brown drew the boat through the maze toward the harbor caves in the base of the rock. The stone here was rugged, and creatures of many colors and many legs clung to it, some ogling the boats with beady eyes on the end of wavering stalks. The hulls of larger boats loomed over them.

“Ey! Ey! Bring it in!” A grey-haired guard in a green uniform gestured to them from the end of a dock’s wooden span.

Brown, who looked more like Mousey’s burly brother than a sister, turned the boat, her muscled arms bulging as she drew them alongside. Mousey leapt from the boat and saluted the guard. During her hasty whispers, the man squinted at Wynn and Cal-raven as if sizing up muskgrazers for slaughter.

“Ey then, ey there,” he said in a voice burnt out from smoking. “She says you’ve a token for the heiress.”

“It’s for Cyndere’s eyes only.” Cal-raven wished he could stand without help. “She invited me and told me to alert her directly.”

“How did she expect you to manage that, ey then?”

He shrugged. “Her invitation was too short for details.”

“Show me this token.”

Brown sighed, kneeling to unbind Cal-raven’s feet and hands. “Jump in the water,” she said, “and you’ll feel my dagger between your shoulders.”

She helped him to his feet, and he grimaced at the sharp reports from his bruised knees and his battered arms. Leaning on her shoulder like a drunkard against a friend, he said, “You’ll be glad you trusted me.”

As she held him up before the guard, the man assessed him with an icy squint. “Ey then, mystery visitor. I’m Henryk. You’re lucky it’s me you’re facing. I’ve brought in surprise visitors for Cyndere before.” He glanced out to the open water as if he half expected to see someone swimming toward him.

Mousey shifted her feet, cleared her throat.

“Anyway,” said Henryk, “I’ve known the heiress since she was the age of this boy. So I will relay your message on my own two feet.” With a guffaw he added, “If I can remember it when I get there, that is. So give me a name. Give it to me twice.”

“Name’s Marcuson,” said Cal-raven. Then after an awkward pause, “Marcuson.” He reached out his shackled hands and offered a small sculpture.

That small, detailed figurine was the best representation he could manage with his wrists bound. If Cyndere had indeed sent this beastman, she would recognize the wild mane, the sharp pointed ears, the leonine lines of
the messenger’s face. And if there was any doubt after that, he’d etched the Abascar rune for royalty in its base.

Henryk lifted it to the lamplight. “Ey, boyo. This reminds me of something. Why is it familiar?” He wrinkled his nose and squinted at Cal-raven. “What did you call yourself again?”

“Marcuson.”

“Boiled crolca,” Mousey whispered. “Your life’s on the edge, and you send the queen’s daughter something to remind her of the monsters that killed her husband. If Cyndere burns up, the trouble’s all on you, Marcuson.”

Henryk looked again at Cal-raven for a long, silent moment. Two officers approached from the harbor cave, baring bad teeth as if threatening to bite him.

“Take the boy to a holding cell,” Henryk told them absently. “This one I’ll lock up myself.”

“He promised us we’d be rewarded,” Brown barked, standing up and lifting an oar as if she might paddle them all. Meanwhile, Mousey got into the boat and lifted Wynn up to the two snarling officers, who seized him by the arms.

“I’ll see to your payment when I return.” Henryk turned from Brown to Cal-raven and held up his hand in caution. “Step carefully, ey, boyo? Don’t want to spoil your surprise. I’ll escort you to your quarters.” He pushed Cal-raven forward up the stair, following the guards who were buffeting Wynn with questions.