The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (5 page)

There at least I was more or less content. I learned to read, and write too (at least a little), and sport was a strong part of the day’s activities. I was taught rudimentary sword skills, learned how to swim, how to draw a bow—all the so-called ‘manly’ pursuits—along with less interesting stuff like how to cobble shoes, chop wood and wash stew pots. These latter activities were the sort of thing that was supposed to ensure gainful employment for students when they left the establishment, unless, of course, they wanted to enter the patriarchy.

Whatever I learned of morality, of decency, of gentleness, of kindness, of learning, I learned there, from those unworldly but decent men. They weren’t particularly scholarly, but they did know children. Moreover, they understood poverty and how to alleviate the poverty of the spirit that all too frequently goes hand in hand with unlined pockets. They changed me from a child who believed in nothing, to someone who believed in herself. I will always be grateful for that, although in the end their doctrines were not enough for me.

Occasionally Duthrick would come and take me away for a while to perform some task or other: tell them if a child was sylv or not, testify in a court case as to whether a man had dunmagic or not.

I should have been happy: for the first time in my life I had enough to eat, I had enough blankets on a cold night, and no one was cuffing me over the head or stealing my bread. My life was not, however, all carefree. I was a halfbreed, and subject to the kind of taunts that most people could never even guess at. The Menod were kindly; the children were not. And always there was the threat that I would be sent off to Gorthan Spit when I was twelve because I did not have a citizen’s earlobe tattoo…

‘Hairy, hairy, halfbreed brat!’ the boys would taunt, knowing I hated having to wear my hair long. ‘Watch your back, hairy tits, cos one day they’ll come for you and drag you off to the Spits.’

‘You’re only here because we allow it,’ Duthrick would say. ‘Put a foot wrong, and we’ll pack you off to the that sandy blight of flea-ridden hell. Halfbreeds are Spitters at heart…’

Sometimes I would sneak away and go back to the cemetery for a while, but it was pointless. That life had nothing to offer me any more; even its freedoms were sham. Most of the children there never lived long enough to grow up.

When I was older, I tried again to escape the Keeper’s clutches. What happened to me then was worse than anything that had gone before. In the end I came back because there were worse people than Duthrick in the world, and worse things than being teased in a schoolyard. But I don’t want to talk about that now. Let’s just say I was tied to the Keepers, bound to their service because the alternatives were unthinkable. I was a halfbreed, after all.

###

Two hours after I returned to
The Drunken Plaice
, Syr-sylv Duthrick walked in.

My mouth was as dry as desiccated squid even as I faced him across the room. He was the one who had given me this assignment. Although I don’t suppose he knew that it would eventually lead me to Gorthan Spit, his ruthless efficiency intimidated at the best of times and now the thought that this task of mine was important enough for the Keepers to have sent someone like him after me almost scared the curls out of my hair. Or was it really just one of those absurd coincidences that people say happen all the time? I was no great believer in them.

He glanced around the room, set up four shining sylv ward pillars with a gesture of his hand, then linked them together in a lacy square around us so that we wouldn’t be overheard. Only then did he condescend to incline his greying head, to smile in my direction. Over the years we had developed a way of dealing with each other: generally civilised and polite. Threats were always blurred with good manners; dislike was smothered in smiles. There was no point in behaving otherwise. Of course, even while he smiled, those deep violet eyes of his remained remote. I was used to that too.

‘Blaze, Punt said you’d probably be in Gorthan Docks.’ (Punt, the fellow he had sent with me to Cirkase, had been as much use as a hole in a fishnet and I’d rid myself of him as soon as possible.) ‘Where’s the Castlemaid?’

I felt sick. I could see my chance of fortune disappearing as fast as seawater into dry sand, and with it, the chance of earning citizenship of the Keeper Isles by my twenty years of service. I’d served Duthrick and his ilk most of my life, but they’d only started counting the years when I had finally woken up to how I was being used. I’d been about fifteen at the time, and finally brave enough to demand payment. Money, and the possibility of citizenship…

Duthrick had made a promise. I even had it in writing. But I also knew if I failed once too often, then my usefulness to him would be at an end; failure would become the excuse to turn down my application.

‘Where’s the Castlemaid?’ he asked again.

I swallowed and said, evenly enough, ‘I don’t know. Yet.’

He raised an eyebrow into an even sharper arch than usual. I was thirty years old then, yet he could make me feel fifteen again… ‘It has become a matter of urgency.’

‘Why? Does the Bastionlord of Breth grow impatient for his bride?’

He was shocked that I knew. Then—Great Trench below—
embarrassed.
Duthrick was actually embarrassed that I knew the royalties of Breth and Cirkase were planning a cross-island marriage. I hadn’t thought he had that much sensitivity. Or perhaps it wasn’t sensitivity as all, but just discomposure because I knew the Keepers were facilitating something that they were supposed to despise. And, in truth, I couldn’t help the bitter thought that it was all right for royalty to interbreed;
their
offspring were never citizenless, never cast off and despised as halfbreeds…

It was nothing new. There had always been one law for the Islandlords and another for us ordinary mortals. What was new was Keeper involvement. The Keeper Isles had no royalty and promoted themselves as the guardians of equality. They alone of all the Isles of Glory
elected
their rulers and they were prouder of that fact than all their other accomplishments put together. I had just shown Duthrick that I knew he and his kind had double standards after all, and he was a proud man. No wonder he was embarrassed.

‘How did you know the Bastionlord was after the Castlemaid?’ he asked sharply.

I shrugged. ‘I keep my ears open. I’m not stupid, Syr-sylv.’ Neither were the more prosperous villains of the back streets in the town of Cirkasecastle, which was where I’d heard the rumours.

He recovered his equilibrium. ‘There are political necessities which have to be observed at times, Blaze, whether we like them or not. This is one of them. The Bastionlord wants his bride. And you apparently haven’t found her. Explain.’

‘I traced her to the Cirkasian port of Lem,’ I said, knowing he must be aware of all this if he had spoken to Punt. He was just determined to make me suffer; he didn’t like inefficiency, and my failure to uncover the whereabouts of the Castlemaid of Cirkase was definitely inefficient. ‘She was brought on board a Gorthan Spit slaver ship just an hour or two before I reached Lem. Four quite unconnected people told me they had seen a Cirkasian girl wearing a slave collar taken on board. Two of them actually saw the coming-of-age tattoos on the backs of her hands. They thought she must have been some minor royalty who had displeased the Castlelord and was being sold into slavery. In the past, he’s not been above doing something like that, apparently, at least to male relatives.’

‘These people didn’t recognise their own Castlemaid, the Castleheir?’

I hid the smile that threatened to twist my lips up in a superior smirk. It wasn’t often that I knew something Duthrick didn’t. ‘Royal women
never
go unveiled in public in Cirkase. Not from the time they are five years old. In fact, they rarely go out in public at all. Castlemaid Lyssal was allowed out of the palace once a year—veiled—to attend the fleet festival. There’s not a citizen of Cirkase, outside of the female palace staff and her own family, who knows what she looks like.’ I gave a sarcastic smile. ‘For all you know, the Bastionlord might be chasing a bride who looks like a sea-slug in spawning purple.’ (In actual fact she had been described to me by female palace staff as ‘truly lovely’ and a ‘perfect vision’, although one patently jealous maid had added ‘colourless’ and ‘as skinny as a garfish’. Her father, the Castlelord, had remarked nastily that, ‘She was good enough for the most expensive whorehouse which is where I am tempted to place the disobedient bitch when you find her!’ All of which had left me curious to meet the lady.)

Duthrick ignored my remark about sea-slugs. ‘You’re sure it really was her on board the slaver?’

I shrugged again. ‘As certain as anyone can be under the circumstances. I traced her from the palace. She left of her own volition, by the way—ran away, in effect. But she was an innocent; how could she have been otherwise with an upbringing like that? She was captured by criminals on the outskirts of the capital. I don’t think they knew what they had; maybe she told them, but who was going to believe she was the Castlemaid? The palace never publicly acknowledged she was missing. She was taken to Lem, kept there for weeks, waiting for a slaver. Then she was apparently sold. It was just bad luck that I didn’t find her in time. As I said, I missed her by a matter of hours. I managed to find a fishing vessel that was about to sail to Gorthan Spit, and I came after her. I thought the Spit was the logical place to look, because it is the only place that openly trades in slaves —Even if they do call them indentured servants or some other sweet-smelling thing. I told Punt to go back to The Hub and let you know what was happening, but I assume to get here so soon you must have caught up with him in Lem before he left.’

He nodded. ‘I had business there. How far were you behind the slaver?’

‘I arrived here a day after they did.’

‘So, where is she?’

‘The captain and the crew of the slaver deny she ever existed. And I haven’t found a trace of her. There is a Cirkasian woman of about the same age, who is said to have come in on the same ship—which the sailors deny—but she can’t possibly be the Castlemaid.’

‘Why not?’

‘She has no royal coming-of-age tattoos. She’s not a slave and never could have been. She has sylvmagic.’

He frowned, disbelieving. ‘That’s unlikely. Who’s ever heard of a sylvtalent from Cirkase?’

‘Why not? Anomalies do sometimes turn up in any breeding line. And we both know Cirkasians sometimes interbreed with off-islanders, don’t we?’ I added with sardonic sweetness. I wanted him to squirm.

He came as close to gnashing his teeth as anyone I’d ever seen. ‘This is just the sort of thing that the breeding laws were designed to prevent. The random spread of sylvmagic is just as dangerous as the occurrence of dunmagic.’

‘Pity people don’t always obey the breeding laws as they should, isn’t it?’ I replied, still sugary. ‘She’s skilled, this lass. Someone taught her how to handle her talent.’

‘
Not
a Keeper,’ he said with distaste, showing the usual Keeper disapproval of anyone but a Keeper having sylvmagic. They couldn’t
do
anything about it, of course, but they didn’t like it. And as far as Keepers like Duthrick were concerned, it happened far too often.

He still sounded sour as he said, ‘If she’s the Castlemaid and she has sylvmagic, she could be hiding her tattoos under an illusion.’

I was exasperated but I swallowed the insult; Keepers hated to acknowledge that there were some things that Awarefolk could do that sylvtalents could not. ‘She couldn’t hide them from me,’ I said equably. ‘She has no tattoos. She has
never
had them. I saw the backs of both her hands quite clearly. And it’s just as certain that Castlemaid Lyssal was tattooed on both hands in accordance with royal Cirkasian tradition; I checked. Besides, in the unlikely event that a Castlemaid did have sylvmagic, there’s no way she could ever have become adept in its use. No one would have dreamed of teaching her, not in Cirkase. But this woman is skilled enough to cure a dunmagic sore.’

‘Then what happened to the Castlemaid?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea—yet. It’s possible that for some reason she never got here. They couldn’t have landed her anywhere else, there was no time, so perhaps she was killed or died on board the ship for some reason, and was thrown overboard. Or maybe they transferred her to another vessel.’

He looked even more appalled. ‘She’s got to be found. And soon. I expect results.’

‘It might help if you tell me what is going on in Gorthan Spit. As you lack Awareness, it
might
have escaped your notice that the place reeks of dunmagic, but I doubt that you’re entirely unaware of the problem.’

‘There’s no need for you to concern yourself with that,’ he said stiffly. ‘We are keeping an eye on the situation. It is why we are here.’

Of course. My problem with the Castlemaid was unlikely to have brought them all the way to the Spit. When Duthrick gave me a task, he expected it to be performed without his help. I wondered why he had gone to Lem in the first place, but didn’t dwell on it: maybe he had felt the need to placate the Castlelord for some reason or another. It wasn’t my business.

His eyes glittered at me unforgivingly. ‘Why haven’t you questioned the Cirkasian?’