The Floating Islands (26 page)

“Stay here!” Master Patan said sharply to the decouan, and went out himself.

“Great generous Gods!” said the decouan, still staring at Trei. “Boy, what did you throw
in
there?”

Trei said nothing.

The provincar of Teraica, who, Trei gathered, had been intended to govern the Floating Islands after they were properly conquered, had a lot to say. He stormed back and forth in his great hall—there were cracks in its plaster and marble, too—and he said a great deal, mostly to the artificers who had built the engines and to the soldiers who had guarded them. Not even Master Patan, who was evidently the master of all the artificers in Teraica, tried to answer the provincar.

Master Patan had come back to collect Trei, eventually. Trei had hoped he might have a chance to slip out into the confusion of the city; there seemed nothing out there
but
confusion now. Only, not at all to Trei’s surprise, the decouan had made sure no such chance came. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he
was
thoroughly professional.

So Master Patan had brought Trei to the provincar’s palace. Evidently the provincar wanted to see with his own eyes the boy who had wrecked one of his beautiful engines. Trei tried to stand straight and hold his head up proudly before his captors, but he felt very small and young in the provincar’s grand palace, with the provincar himself cursing and shouting. Even Master Patan stood with his head bowed in the face of that fury.

“The greatest weapon of the age, you assured me! Assured
us
!” the provincar shouted at the artificer. “Brought down by a brick lobbed in by a
boy
!” He had said this before; he had said a great many things. No one was trying to answer him. “One of my irreplaceable engines! Destroyed!” He gestured broadly in the direction of the harbor and glared murderously at Master Patan, hand half raised, clearly longing to hit him. He had, once. Master Patan had not said anything to that, either, but he had returned so outraged a stare that the provincar apparently hesitated to do it again. Trei wondered who Master Patan’s patron was, or who the artificer was related to, and wished he had such a powerful protector himself. Though the provincar hadn’t yet struck
him.
But Trei could guess he would. Or worse.

“It isn’t irreplaceable at all. Everything that has been lost can be rebuilt,” Master Patan said calmly. “Two of the engines remain, and I am informed that most of the ships continue sound. We have experienced a setback, but the method itself has, I believe, proven itself.” His calm seemed almost a deliberate insult, set against the provincar’s fury. Another artificer standing close behind him put an urgent hand on his arm, and Master Patan, looking faintly surprised, stopped speaking.

“A
setback
!” shouted the provincar. He was a big, florid man, now very red in the face. Veins stood out in his throat.
“Rebuilt?”
He stared at Master Patan, seeming for the moment beyond speech. Then he took a deep, deep breath and said, much more quietly, “You and yours, go out there and look well at what’s left of my harbor! And then you come back to me and tell me how long it will take to
rebuild
what we have lost.”

Trei had been afraid of the provincar when he shouted. But he found he was more afraid of him when he stopped shouting. Even Master Patan seemed to feel the same; he inclined his head and turned obediently to go, taking all the other artificers with him.

The provincar glared after them for a moment. Then he took in another deep breath and turned to Trei. He gestured sharply toward the soldiers. “And drop this boy down the deepest oubliette in Teraica!”

Master Patan, nearly at the door, whirled back. “No!” he cried, sounding more outraged now than even when the provincar had hit him. “That is an Island flier; where are we to get another? We—”

The provincar seemed to swell up with the force of his fury, until Trei half thought he might explode like one of his furnaces. “Out!” he roared. “
Out! Do as you are told,
or I swear before the
Gods,
I will drop
you
into an oubliette after this brat!”

Trei had no doubt at all that he meant exactly what he said. Even Master Patan seemed to believe it. The master artificer stared at the provincar for a long, suspended moment. But then he bowed his head, backed away, and disappeared out the door.

“Take him out!” the provincar repeated, glaring at the commander of his soldiers. He added viciously, “If the harbor and my engines are beyond you, perhaps you can at least properly guard one Island boy!”

The commander bowed his head stiffly and gestured to his men. The decouan put a hand on Trei’s shoulder and guided him out.

Trei walked numbly beside the decouan, surrounded by soldiers, through the hot haze of sunlit dust and smoke that covered the city. He didn’t know whether to be glad that he had, after all, destroyed one of the engines—or dismayed that he had destroyed only one of them: had Tolounn’s invasion of the Islands been ruined? Or merely inconvenienced?

The smoke-filled air made him hope he’d at least achieved something more than an
inconvenience:
that had been a really powerful explosion. But if two of the engines were left? Master Patan had said the destruction of one engine was just a “setback.” He’d said the “method had proven itself.”

Trei doubted he’d have been willing to risk imprisonment in an oubliette just to destroy
one
engine—and he knew with great surety that he wouldn’t have done so just to
inconvenience
the Tolounnese. Though … maybe the technique of throwing dragon eggs into furnaces had
also
been proven. If Genrai told the wingmaster what they’d done … maybe they could find more dragons willing to give their eggs to kajuraihi to throw into furnaces?

But he was still terrified of the oubliettes. He told himself he should try to escape, that this walk was surely the last chance he would have—but he knew that it wasn’t any chance at all.

And there really wasn’t. The walk was not long at all. The oubliettes were not very far removed from the provincar’s palace, which was, Trei found, built into the hills on the far side of Teraica from the harbor. They walked uphill all the way, until they came to the place where the oubliettes had been dug down deep into the chalk of the hills. Trei stood beside the commander as the men levered the grating away from the first oubliette in the line. He did not watch their effort, but lifted his head and gazed up, into the wide and empty sky. Nothing moved except smoke. He could not even see any birds.

“How old are you, boy?” the commander asked him abruptly.

Trei flinched, startled. He looked at the commander: a young man with the red-handled knife of a teruann, commander of a whole company. Presumably this man’s company had been in charge of guarding the steam engines, but though the teruann looked stern and angry, he did not seem to be angry with Trei. Trei said, “Fourteen, sir.”

The teruann looked grimmer than ever. “Fourteen. Gods.”

Trei said hastily, “I wasn’t—no one
sent
me. They wouldn’t send a boy still in the novitiate to do, well, anything! But Master Taimenai, the wingmaster, I told him, but he didn’t understand about the engines, and I thought it might work.…”

“Huh.” The teruann gave Trei a sharp look. “Why would
you
know about engines? What
was
it you threw in there? Something magic, I suppose? Do you people have more where that one came from? We’ve rearranged our guard, so I hope it doesn’t matter, but I confess I’m curious.”

Trei swallowed. He didn’t answer. He knew he shouldn’t have answered even the first question: it only led to another question, and another after that. To his shame, he knew he would answer whatever questions the teruann asked, if the man persisted. The man wouldn’t even have to hit him. Trei would answer him just to delay the oubliette.

However, the teruann didn’t press for answers. After a moment, when Trei didn’t speak, he sighed. Then he looked around and snapped his fingers. The decouan stepped forward and gave the commander a water flask and a cloth-wrapped packet. The teruann passed these to Trei without a word. The teruann’s expression was tight. But he only stepped back, gesturing toward the ladder another of his men had lowered.

Trei stepped jerkily toward the ladder, stopped, turned toward the teruann. But the man shook his head quickly, stopping Trei before he could say anything. He was a soldier: that was what the shake of his head meant. He was a professional Tolounnese soldier, and the Tolounnese were the best soldiers in the world. He would carry out his orders whether he approved of them or not. So there was no reason, after all, for Trei to shame himself by pleading. He just turned and walked to the ladder. And climbed down it, carefully, the flask and packet an awkward burden on the ladder.

It was a long way to the bottom of the oubliette. The narrow shaft cut off the light very quickly, so that it almost seemed to be night instead of day. And it was cold in the ou-bliette. Twenty feet down it was merely pleasantly cool, but after forty feet, it was cold. Trei reached the end of the ladder and hesitated for a moment. But he couldn’t cling to the ladder forever. It couldn’t be far to the bottom; they wouldn’t do that. Trei shut his eyes and jumped awkwardly backward into the dark. He landed hard, after a fall of no more than a foot or two, and fell to his knees. Then he stood up again, peering upward toward the light. After a moment, he shouted, “I’m down.”

The ladder rattled upward, and the iron grate fell back into place between Trei and the sky. Then there was nothing. If there were guards up above, they made no sound he could hear.

The oubliette shaft was round, about six feet across, made of white chalk and cold brick. The floor slanted. There was a drain, about as wide as a man’s hand was long, on the low side of the oubliette. For … necessary functions, Trei supposed, and also to keep prisoners from drowning when the monsoons came. Prisoners weren’t supposed to die quickly in the oubliettes. They were supposed to last a long, long time, down in the dark while the world above forgot them.

Trei walked slowly around the perimeter of his prison. There were marks on the walls, lots of marks, only barely visible in the dim light. He ran his fingers across them, reached up, found the marks went higher than he could reach. Words, pictures, but it was difficult, in this darkness, to understand what story they told. Lines laboriously carved with knives, or pebbles, or shards of brick … the marks of someone else’s long imprisonment. Trei didn’t want to think about that.

Instead he found the packet the teruann had given him, undid the oiled cloth … sausage and hard bread and salty cheese, and strips of dried fruit. Soldiers’ fare, he thought, and tried to be grateful. He had no idea when prisoners were fed. Or what. Or how often. He couldn’t imagine eating anything. But he supposed he would be glad of the food eventually. He set it aside and sat down. Leaned against the brick, flinched away from the cold. Maybe it was cold that prisoners died of down here. Unless it was despair.

The light above vanished, flickered, reappeared.… There was an odd sound, a little like wings—Trei put his hands out, warding off whatever was falling, and something soft fell across his outstretched arms. He stared at it for a moment, ran his hands across it … looked upward in surprise. One of the guards had thrown a blanket down. Trei’s throat tightened at the unexpected kindness. He shouted, “Thank you!” up toward the light. There was no response. But it was that small kindness which gave him the courage to endure as even the dim light faded toward night.

12

A
t noon on the second day of the siege, Cesei’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed. He had once again been trying to do Tichorei’s work. Second bell had been when Tichorei had either overextended or died: Araenè was not sure which.

Cesei had said he thought the older apprentice was still alive. Tichorei looked dead to Araenè. He was horrifyingly cool and limp, and she couldn’t see any flutter in the thread she held in front of his mouth. But Cesei had assured her she just wasn’t looking at Tichorei right.

She was still glad to see that when Cesei collapsed, he didn’t look dead: he just looked like an exhausted little boy who’d worn himself out trying to do a job too big for him. Araenè picked him up. He was not heavy, but she was too tired herself to carry him more than a step or two. Fortunately, she only had to turn and look to find the ornate oak and ebony “friendly door” in front of her, set right into a wall that ordinarily would have held a lot of spheres and three narrow mirrors. It was standing open, showing her a slice of Cesei’s apartment.

“Thank you,” Araenè told the door wearily. She carried Cesei into his apartment and put him into his bed. He looked shockingly young. His eyes looked bruised; his whole face looked pinched and thin. She wished suddenly, desperately, that her mother was here … to tuck Cesei into his bed, to tuck
Araenè
into hers.… She was too tired to cry. She looked around to the door, which still stood where she had left it.

“Well …,” she said, and sighed. She would come back later and look in on Cesei. She could bring him soup, at least. In the meantime …

In the meantime, Tichorei still looked dead. He was much too heavy for Araenè to carry, or even to drag. In case Cesei was right and he wasn’t dead, she fetched a pillow and an extra blanket from Cesei’s room and tried to make him more comfortable where he was, tucked against the wall. Then she went down the spiral stairway—down seven turns and then along a hall, up a short flight and a long jump across a narrow gap that should have been bridged by three floating stones. The stones had fallen, of course, when the Tolounnese mages had driven away the dragons; for all Araenè knew, they had fallen all the way down through Milendri and right into the sea.

On the other side of the gap, she found a small, plain door and went through this into the kitchens. No one was here: the kitchens had been deserted since … well, since everything had gone wrong. The ovens were cold and dark, all the fires out.

Araenè found some griddle-baked breads, not too stale. She rolled honey and nuts up in the breads, absently adding a shake of pepper and a pinch of cassia, and made up a tray. Then she left the kitchens and went down a narrow flight of stairs right to the bottom, where she found a door of glass bound with strips of metal. When she stepped through this one, she came out exactly where she’d meant to, on the balcony of Horera Tower. Master Akhai was there again, sorting through spheres and showing Kanii and Taobai how to release the spells in them: he didn’t have the strength to use them himself and the adjuvants were all exhausted. Jenekei and the twins had been here the last time Araenè had come: now they were gone. She bit her lip.

Kanii stood up and took the tray out of her hands with a tired nod. “They’re all right. Or they will be. Master Akhai sent them to rest.”

“Oh.” Araenè hesitated. “I don’t know if Tichorei is all right or … or not.”

Another nod, as weary as the first. “I’ll tell Master Akhai.”

“How are … how is … everything?”

Kanii rubbed a hand over his face. “Hard to tell. Maybe better than it was? Something happened.…” He gestured vaguely. “A little while ago. The Tolounnese lost a lot of the strength they’ve been pouring at us. Half, maybe? We don’t know why. We don’t think it was anything we did.…”

Araenè stared at him. “What, then?”

Kanii only shrugged. “We think maybe Cassameirin did something? We all hoped … but nothing else like that has happened. And Tolounn still has … a lot of strength.”
Too much,
he did not quite say. But Araenè heard it anyway. He added, “I think there’s fighting all the way out to the Second City now.”

“Can I … do anything?”

Kanii only shook his head, too tired to be kind.

Araenè bit her lip again and slipped away quietly, not to disturb the ones who might do something. She meant to go back to the kitchens, make some broth for Cesei. But this time, knack or not, she couldn’t find the door. So instead she looked, a little impatiently, for the “friendly door.”

It stood in front of her at once, half open. To show the hall of spheres and mirrors.

“There isn’t anything I can do there,” Araenè explained to the door. “Not now that I’m by myself. It was Tichorei and Cesei who could actually do things there.” And she did not want to look at Tichorei. She closed the door firmly, said, “The kitchens, please,” and opened it again. To find the hall of spheres and mirrors.

She rubbed her hands across her eyes. But it did not seem worth arguing over. She went through the door.

One whole wall of spheres was on fire.

It looked that way at first. Then Araenè, squinting through her fingers, could see that the fire was really contained in the spheres, that nothing in the hall was actually
burning.
The scent of cloves was very strong; the taste of ginger and cloves numbed her mouth. She edged forward, staring.

Every sphere on that wall showed the same thing: fire. Every sphere, whether made of black onyx or white-veined quartz or heavy, polished hematite, seemed filled with fire, and the memory of fire, and the promise of fire. Blackness burned at the heart of the fire, and something moved across that blackness: something small and whip-thin and sinuous that was not exactly fire. Araenè did not at once understand what she saw. She lifted the biggest of the spheres off its shelf and carried it away so she could look at it with less distraction … then, on impulse, settled cross-legged on the floor near Tichorei and set the sphere down in front of her. She leaned forward, gazing at it intently, concentrating on bringing out the hot, glittering ginger of vision and foretelling.

In the sphere, flames rose high and hot: at the center of the fire, something that was not fire slid toward her, coiled back on itself, tore at the glowing black iron floor beneath it, and twisted back again in a movement that seemed to express terror and despair. A narrow head lifted atop a long, graceful neck garbed in feathers of fire.… Araenè leaped to her feet and backed away from the sphere, horrified: she knew, vividly, not only that Trei had succeeded in throwing her dragon’s egg into a Tolounnese furnace, which should have been wonderful, but also that something had gone terribly wrong. Then, as the “friendly door” was gone, she turned and fled down the spiral stair to the first door that offered itself. This was a door three times her own height, made of heavy black oak bound with strips of twisted black iron. Araenè didn’t know where the black door might ordinarily lead, nor did she care: she knew where she had to go and she was furiously determined that whatever door this was, it would take her there.

The door opened to show her the balcony where the black gulls nested.

“No!” Araenè said fiercely, and slammed it shut again. She slapped her hand down hard on the door and said, “Master Tnegun, or I’ll let all that fire out right
here,
Gods curse you, and see how strong your oak is when it’s turned to coal, and all your iron glows red!”

This time, when she opened the door, it swung back meekly to show her Master Tnegun’s workroom. When she stepped through it, the door misted around the edges and tried to take her to the gulls’ balcony after all, but, consumed by terror and guilt and fury, Araenè scarcely noticed. She only smacked her hand against the frame, jerked the door back to the workroom, and stepped through.

Master Tnegun was sitting alone at the far end of the great room, in a deep chair at the head of his enormous table. Table and chair and mage alike were drowned in shadows; clad in a severe black robe, the master was hardly visible at all. He did not seem to notice Araenè’s entrance. She paused for a horrified moment, thinking that he might have gone too far in whatever magery he was working—like Master Kopapei, who had overextended while trying to mislead and distract the Tolounnese mages, or Master Camatii, who had done the same thing trying to heal too many injured men. She tried not to think,
Or he might be dead.
Then she saw her master’s hands move and breathed again. She walked forward.

A single sphere of black glass rested on the table, which was otherwise entirely empty. Master Tnegun was not looking at the sphere, however, but at a long black feather, which he was drawing over and over through his fingers. He still did not look up at her—whatever he was doing, he was intent. The bitter scents of cumin and fenugreek filled the room, and something else, something hot and wild, like the scent of fire itself.

Araenè arrived at her master’s end of the room, reached out, and touched the black sphere with a fingertip.

The sphere burst into flames.

Master Tnegun blinked. Blinked again. Awareness seeped back into his face. He lifted his head to look first at the blazing sphere and then at Araenè.

Araenè said furiously, “You asked me if I wanted you to break my—my hard-held protection, you said! By force, you said! Now I do!”

There was a pause. Araenè wanted simultaneously to scream with impatience and run away. She did not move, but her hands clenched hard.

Master Tnegun said softly, “It was a rhetorical question.”

“I know it was! Then!” Araenè snapped. “Now it has an answer. The answer is yes. I think I must have done everything wrong, and now I think you’d better hurry—” Her sharp tone wavered toward tears and she stopped quickly.

“Arei … I am aware that you would not hold your mind’s privacy so hard if you had no cause.” Master Tnegun paused, looking carefully at Araenè. “Allow me to speak plainly. If I break that shield by force, young Arei, I must tell you, it will shatter entirely. I will see first what you most desperately wish to conceal: you will yourself fling your secrets at me. Neither you nor I will be able to prevent this.”

Araenè swallowed. She felt very cold. Her rage seemed to have deserted her: she only felt frightened and ashamed. But she said anyway, “It doesn’t matter. And there’s no time! Just … hurry.”

Master Tnegun did not ask her again if she was sure. He seemed to trust that she had reason for her urgency—in a strange way, Araenè even felt flattered by the smooth speed with which he rose to his feet, took the one step necessary, dropped one hand to her shoulder and the other to rest against her face—she tried not to flinch—

Master Tnegun’s mind slid across the borders of hers with that same quickness, probed suddenly inward toward Araenè’s mind and heart. Instantly her cool shield stood in his way: anise and lemon and pepper, a barrier smooth and featureless as glass between her mind and his. But this time, Master Tnegun’s mind did not sheer away, but closed around hers like a vise. The glass did not merely shatter: it exploded. Master Tnegun’s mind sliced into Araenè’s with cold precision.

It hurt. She did not know whether she cried out or not; she tried to fight the mage’s intrusion, could not keep herself from fighting it. But she met only an iron determination that closed around all her struggles and pressed her mind to stillness. She was aware of the first stutter of surprise when Master Tnegun found her true name, and then the second when he glimpsed the fire dragon that had given her its egg. And then the third when he understood what fire the spheres were showing, and why.

Then he lifted his hand from her face, and Araenè was free. She found herself sitting in a chair that, moments ago, hadn’t been there. Bending forward, she pressed her hands hard over her eyes.

“Look at me,” Master Tnegun commanded her. His voice was as dark and smoky as the cumin that swirled in the room, as remorseless as the sea.

Araenè blinked hard, clenched her teeth, straightened abruptly, and met the master’s eyes. There was nothing she could read in his; his thoughts were hidden behind a wall of cold reserve.

“I’ve been in these Islands too long when I can’t see a girl in front of my eyes merely because she’s wearing boys’ clothing,” the master said softly.

Araenè shook her head, demanded sharply, “Does that matter now?” She did not let herself think about later, when it would probably matter very much.

“Indeed, no. We must indeed act swiftly. I was warned—” Master Tnegun hesitated briefly, then continued, “I was warned to reserve my strength, but now I find I did not hold back as hard as I should. You have a great deal of power, Araenè. I wish you might set your strength willingly behind mine, but you do not have the training to do it freely and there is no time for you to learn. I must take what you do not have the skill to give.”

“Yes,” Araenè said. She felt odd: not angry. More just … uncertain, and yet also desperately relieved that the deception was over. “Can you—you
are
going to save the little dragon?”

“Among other things. I think there may be a way—I hope there may be; the Islands are greatly in need of dragon fire just now. With fortune and the favor of the Gods, perhaps we may save it.” Master Tnegun set his hand back on her shoulder, drew her to her feet, and directed her attention wordlessly toward a delicate door of pale wood and pearl and bone. “Let us see what wind rider the Gods will put in my hand.”

Under the master’s hand, the pale door swung silently back open upon a clean, sweeping height. Before them, jagged stone reached to the sky; behind them, it fell away to the distant sea. Between sky and sea stood a small white tree, with a perfectly round pool of clear water under the tree.

A tall young man sat beside the pool, staring down into its still water. But he turned when Master Tnegun closed the door behind them. He rose at once and walked quickly to meet them. Araenè did not exactly recognize him, but he looked familiar—he had kajurai eyes, she realized; they caught and refracted the light as he stepped through a shaft of sun.