The Great Rift (36 page)

"There's word you've had a hand in the norren troubles." The man glanced around the room, as if to reassure himself the walls sported no ears. "If the king's army comes to the Territories, do you think Narashtovik will be safe?"

"Unless the king has a thing for sacking innocent lands. Anyway, Narashtovik is the seat of Arawn. Why are you worried?"

"My sister lives in the city. I wonder if—" The door opened, welcoming in a cold wind and two sour-looking men. The bartender straightened and left to greet them. He glanced Dante's way more than once before Dante retired for the night, but didn't speak to him again until morning, and only then to say goodbye.

From the town on the stream, the deeply-rutted dirt road became a highway of travel-worn stones glued together with sandy cement. Here and there, a weed poked from the cracks, but otherwise the road looked younger than Dante himself. Traffic grew more frequent: two-mule farming wagons, peasants on foot, caravans with bright banners and the brighter spears of mercenaries.

They reached the road into the mountains eight days out from Tantonnen. Three great peaks stood from the mounded hills, their slopes green, their caps white. Shorter mountains ran along a line that extended some thirty miles northeast and southwest. The pass was an easy climb, cold but snowless, the stone road carrying them past grasslands squishy with meltwater. High-peaked homes and warehouses formed a township just below the crest of the pass. With the shadows of the mountains swallowing the road, Dante stopped for the night.

Dawn warmed the green lowlands, but hadn't yet reached the top of the pass by the time they crossed to the other side. Below, a great lake twinkled between the misty rims of the valley, miles in length and impenetrably blue, dwarfing the waters Mourn had dueled beside in the wilds of Tantonnen. In spots, the mountains descended in sheer cliffs, the road switchbacking along the face of the grass-tufted rock. Below the cliffs, the land was carved into terraces, giant green steps leading down to the lake. Thick green bushes grew in serpentine rows. Their leaves smelled spicy and sweet and rich. Tea bushes—the product of which was boiled, strained, and served across Gask, Mallon, and every other island, province, and territory the tradesmen of Gallador could reach.

Without breaking stride, Blays snapped off a tea branch, stripped its leaves, and tucked them into his satchel, scattering the twigs beside the road. Lira watched him steadily.

Blays rolled his eyes at her. "They won't stink like thievery once we boil them."

She shook her head. "Bad seeds makes for bitter brew."

"Oh, what do time-honored proverbs know? I've never met a pure seed in my life."

"Maybe you need to travel in different circles."

"Zigzags are more fun." Blays urged his horse forward. "They're more likely to take you places like this."

A vast city swamped the shore. Masts bristled the piers. Ferries splashed between the banks of the city of Wending and the islands smattering the water. Smoke lingered in the heavy valley air, mingling with the morning mists steaming off the massive lake.

"I hope you fellows like boats," Fann said. "Because our host lives on one of those islands."

"Boats." Blays glared at Dante. "You can bring a man back from the dead, but you can't make us fly? Not once?"

"I can't bring a man back to life," Dante said. "Cally says no one can. Not in this day."

"Huh. I thought you saw some guy resurrect a dog once."

"I thought I had, but I'm not sure it was dead to begin with. Or if it was, that what came back was alive."

"Oh, forget it."

Rather than the clapboard slums typical of city fringes, the upper slopes of Wending were dominated by green lawns and isolated villas. Crooked trees grew at deliberate intervals, their crabbed branches trimmed. Even in the early hour, men with pikes stood on the front stoops, backs straight, eyes watchful. The houses they guarded had been modeled after the farms on the hills: sprawling ground floors and terraced upper floors with stepped towers standing five and six stories high. The curved eaves gave the roofs a tentlike look. Next to every manor, a golden pole jutted fifty feet into the sky, isolated in a circle of gravel raked into alternating spokes of white and black.

"What the hell is that?" Blays said. "I mean, besides a big old pole?"

Fann shot him a distressed look. "A temple."

"It looks like a very sickly tree."

"These people come from ancient lines of traders. In olden days, they planted brass-capped poles at crossroads where the gleaming metal would attract the eye. Even the most ephemeral bazaars took on the air of sanctuary. Few use the poles in that way now, however. Across Gallador, they've become houses of worship."

"Not much of a temple if everyone's got one," Dante said.

Fann shook his head briskly. "Quite the contrary! These were nomads, remember. In modern times, services are held at a different swappole every week. Some of the larger orders may not meet at the same pole more than once a year. By the way, don't approach one without flipping a coin at its base."

"Why not?" Blays said.

"It's considered akin to shitting in the well."

"So should I not do that either?"

Fann sighed. The poles all but disappeared as they entered the city proper and its smells of manure, lake-mud, and the savory tea sold from carts and teahouses in every single plaza. The corners of roofs swooped and curved. Squat, short-legged horses trundled through the streets, carts strapped to their thick bodies. Men and women wore bright, skirtlike things slit to the knees.

It was like they'd crossed the mountains into another world. Yet at the same time, Wending was nothing more than another major city, with the same wood and stone and pressing flesh of all the others. Fann led them to the ferries, stabled the horses at the massive barn beside the docks, and hired a man with a rowboat and a sibilant accent. Two heavy-shouldered men paddled them across the cold, deep waters to Bolling Island, a sharp ridge of rock a few hundred feet long and less than a hundred across. Stairs climbed from its jetty. There, Fann hired a waiting porter to help with the luggage and escort them to the house of Lord Lolligan, where they were to stay.

A servant let them in to the foyer of the five-layered house, where they waited in a receiving-hall insulated against the lake's chill by lush carpets. Padded benches and paintings of sloops on misty lakes furnished the room. Lolligan emerged shortly, a thin, avian old man with a pointed white beard and light brown skin.

"You may as well sit," he said, eyes creasing with a smile. "Unless you plan to stand for the next three days."

"I don't take your meaning," Dante said.

"Because it was deliberately unclear. In less obscure language, the man you want to see is named Jocubs, and he won't see you for three days."

"We'll see about that," Blays said. "We've got places to be."

Lolligan tipped back his chin. "That's precisely the problem. So does everyone else."

Nevertheless, he let them down to his private pier, where two of his servants rowed Dante and Blays to another island a fraction of a mile further out on the lake. There, they called on a terraced house much like Lolligan's, if a little older and statelier, and were brought to a closed-off deck overhanging the lake. Jocubs was not in. They were met instead by Brilla, a woman who was unobtrusive in appearance but whose cool command made clear she was used to speaking for the household.

"I'm afraid Lord Jocubs is not available to see you," she said. "I am sure he'll be pleased to hear you came to announce your arrival in person."

Dante leaned forward on his padded green bench. "We're pressed for time. Our meeting with Lord Jocubs will only take a few minutes."

"A few minutes Lord Jocubs does not currently possess."

"What if we wait here?" Blays said.

"Then you will be waiting for three days, which I assure you would be more comfortably passed at Lord Lolligan's."

Dante rubbed his mouth. "Perhaps he can squeeze us in at the end of the day."

Brilla tented her hands. "Regrettably, the end of the day is already accounted for."

"Is every second of his time blocked out?"

"Of course not. That would be ridiculous."

"Is every
minute
?"

"All the important ones," she said.

Dante's brow lowered. "Then perhaps we can intrude on some of his unimportant minutes."

"Impossible." Her dark hair swung as she shook her head. "That would make them important minutes."

"And thus accounted for?"

"You can see the bind I'm in."

"So he can stay up late!" Blays thundered. "Taim's sagging ass! Our rider beat us here by a week at least to set this up in advance. We're here to stop a
war
and your lord is too busy counting tea leaves to spare us fifteen minutes?"

Brilla gave him a look that could have withered all Tantonnen. "I'm not stopping you from seeing him. I'm just explaining to you why you can't."

"Oh yeah? Then what would you do if I ran upstairs and kicked in his bedroom door?"

"Obviously I would stop you."

"You're lying like a rug that's very tired," Blays said. "Either that, or you honestly don't understand—"

Dante cut in. "There are issues at stake much closer to Lord Jocubs' interests than any conflict. Dunden Pass, for instance."

Brilla's gaze snapped away from Blays. "What about it?"

"Narashtovik continues to be concerned about reprisals from Mallon about the last war," Dante lied. "We believe the pass may need to be restricted. Possibly even shut down."

"You can't do that."

"Nevertheless, we may. We had hoped to kill two birds by bringing the matter to Lord Jocubs, but if we have to move on before he's free—"

Brilla held up her fine-fingered hands. "I'll let him know. That's the best I can do."

"I'm sure that's true," Blays said. "I'd hate to be anywhere near when you show off your worst."

Her lips compressed into a tight line, but she fared them well at the door. Lolligan's boatmen rowed them back to Bolling Island. Lolligan sat in his receiving-hall holding a lively conversation with Fann and Mourn. He looked up with a cheerful smile.

"How did it go?"

"I have no gods damn idea," Dante said.

"Well, you'll find out soon enough," the old man said. "Or not."

"What, are you related to Brilla?" Blays said. "You both equivocate like you were born into it. Like you had to convince your moms to have you in the first place."

Lolligan laughed, dry yet cheerful. "Do you know what Galladites are most often compared to?"

"Mossy stones," Fann said.

"And why is that?"

"Because your people live in close proximity to a great many rocks?" Mourn said.

Fann shook his head. "Because they're so slippery."

"Indeed," Lolligan smiled. "What good is a contract you can't wriggle out of? What good is it to want something if everyone knows about that want? That is how business survives when everything else perishes."

Dante narrowed his eyes. "You seem awfully upfront in your desire to help us."

"Oh, that's because I'm more gambler than businessman. And I see Narashtovik—more specifically, the man who runs it—as the sneakiest bet to hitch my wagon to."

A servant coughed from the doorway. It was time for dinner. The lake shimmered pinkly through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The meal was a bevy of trout found nowhere but the lake, seasoned with black and red peppers and a savory tea-based sauce. Lolligan made no rituals before it was served.

A letter arrived from Jocubs before dessert. The lord would see them tomorrow afternoon.

* * *

Jocubs received them on the same enclosed balcony where Brilla had given them the verbal run-around. Jocubs was elderly, stately, with winglike gray eyebrows that turned up at the ends. His bald head was as shiny as the lake and he moved with the slow confidence of a man who's always known a servant would catch him before he fell. For all that, Dante liked him: he smiled readily, and insisted they forget his title.

"I'm puzzled why Callimandicus would be worried about the pass at this juncture," Jocubs said. "It's been what, six years since your little squabble with Mallon? If it takes them that long to respond, surely they're not much of a threat, eh?"

"The thing is, Callimandicus is very old." Blays reached for his lake-chilled champagne. "It makes him prone to forget that everyone younger has better things to do than stew about the past."

"I'm sure I don't have to mention we find that pass very useful. It would be a shame to have to run a new road through the southern mountains. Which would run closer to Wending, of course, but why tip a rolling cart?"

Dante smiled. "I think we can talk him down. But we wanted to be certain you still had a use for the pass if Callimandicus does wind up its steward."

Jocubs' winged brows leapt. "Does he think that's likely, too? I must say I haven't heard one thing about this whole mess that doesn't smell like a buzzard's gut. I'm beginning to think we'll level out status quo."

"He disagrees, I'm afraid. I assume Wending has no interest in a war in the Territories?"

"Celeset, no. How do we ship tea to Mallon when there's a horde of damned soldiers clogging up the road?"

"Rolling carts and tipping hands, et cetera," Blays added.

The elderly man grinned. "You sound downright lakeborn."

"Narashtovik doesn't want war, either," Dante said. "We feel a certain paternal sympathy for the norren, for one. For another, I'm afraid Setteven may be misinterpreting the acts of a single clan for statewide unrest."

"It sounds like you need an audience with the Tradesman's Association."

"How do we make that happen?"

"Well, I could ask for one. I am the head of it." Jocubs chuckled, then leaned back on his bench and folded his hands across his modest belly. "I can schedule our meeting within, say, eight days."

"Eight days?" Dante said.

"Does time pass more slowly in Narashtovik?"

"It's just that we have other places to visit before we head home."