The Water Road (3 page)

Rasinah waved his hand, as if to
swat away an errant fly. “Balderdash!” he yelled, in the same tone with which
he dispatched his young protégé. “You are no monster, Antrey, no creature of
myth sent to torment this boy. He needs to learn that. All of his generation
need to learn that.”

Antrey smiled and chuckled softly
to herself. If anyone were to give lessons on not judging books by their
covers, it would be Rasinah. By all appearances, he was an old fool set in his
ways who looked askance at anything different from how things used to be.
Instead, he was as open-minded as the young assistants who flooded the
Triumvirate compound every summer.

Antrey and Rasinah exchanged small
talk while the boy collected the supplies. Her last errand complete, Antrey was
ready to head for home.

~~~~~

The sun had begun to set over the
city by the time Antrey left Rasinah’s shop. The taller buildings towards the
center of the city cast long shadows over the twisting streets near the coast.
The bag that Antrey had slung over her shoulder was heavy now, laden with the
supplies she had procured for Alban. The extra weight made her shoulder sore
and slowed her steps. As a result, she became particularly wary about her
surroundings.

As she weaved her way through the
streets back to the main avenue that would take her to the compound, Antrey
became aware that someone was following her. More than one someone, she
thought. It was only a hunch, but over the years she had developed a keen sense
for when the eyes of others were following her. It was part of her daily life
as someone who looked out of place with the world around her. She picked up her
pace as best as she could.

Antrey turned a corner—she had just
three more to go before the relative safety of the boulevard—and cast a quick
glance over her shoulder. She was right. There were two men behind her who
appeared to be following her, tracking her, and trying to avoid looking like
they were. They made the turn around the corner behind her and averted their
eyes when she saw them. They were closing in on her.

Her mind raced as she thought of
what to do. If she kept going towards the boulevard as planned, they would
surely catch her. What would they do in such a public place? If they grabbed
her off the street and into some dimly lit dead end back alley, would anyone
notice? Would anyone care? She did not know the area well enough to know where
else she might go. She could dash into one of the shops along the street, but
most of them were closing for the evening. In an unsettled moment, she turned
right at the next intersection, rather than left, without thinking about it.
The moment she made the turn she knew it was wrong, just as she knew that
turning back was not an option. She kept walking, only to find that she had
actually turned into a dead end. If the two men had continued to follow her,
she was trapped.

They followed her all the way down
the alley. They were large for Altrerians, with evident bulk on their frames.
Even with her father’s wiry frame, Antrey was still stronger than the average
Altrerian, but probably not these two. Certainly not the two of them working
together. Brute strength was not going to get her out of this.

Both of the men that confronted her
had fair light-green skin. The one approaching on the right had a scar across
his temple. Antrey also noticed that he had a small knife dangling from his
belt. Not a dagger, but big enough to hurt. His hand lingered near the hilt.
The other one, approaching on the left, did not appear to be armed, but it was
impossible to tell what he might be concealing.

The one on the left was the first
to speak. “Well, well, well, Gintie, what we got here, you think?”

Gintie, the one with the knife,
answered as if this was a prepared routine, “Looks like we got one of them
halfbreed whores, Myral.”

“I do believe you are correct,
Gintie,” Myral said, with practiced rhythmic precision. “A nice clean one, too.
The kind you find in those fancy houses down in the center of town.”

“You are right,” Antrey said,
having decided she needed to talk her way out of this. “I do work in the
compound.” She wondered if the weight of the bag on her shoulder, swung
properly, would knock one or both of the men down. “But I’m not a whore,” she
finished.

The two men chuckled. “Did you hear
that, Myral? She says she’s no whore!”

“I dunno, Gintie,” Myral said,
roaring with laugher. “Sure looks like one. What happened, love?” he asked,
turning his attention to Antrey. “Your mother seduce one of them Neldathi bears
in a traveling circus?”

They cackled some more. Antrey found
nothing amusing about the situation. “My father was a Telebrian soldier,” she
said. “My mother is Neldathi.” She was trying to string them along for enough
time to figure out what to do.

“Well, that is just lovely,” Myral said.
“True love, was it, then? How about that, Gintie, we got a romantic here.”

Gintie struck a pose like he was
deep in thought. “I can see it, Myral. I can see it. She is quite a specimen.”

“That is too kind,” Antrey said,
mind still churning.

“Oh, now, love. One thing you will
find about me and Gintie is that we is anything but kind,” Myral said, stepping
slowly towards her.

“Yeah,” Gintie agreed. “True love
and all that don’t have anything to do with what we going to do with you,
dear.”

“And what would that be?” Antrey
asked. She knew the violent answer, but needed to keep them talking.

“Why, the only thing you damned
halfbreed bitches are good for,” Myral said. “I know the gods are gone, but I
think somebody must have blessed this land with all you sterile halfbreed
whores. No need to worry about no trouble after, right, Gintie?”

“No worries about unpleasant
surprises, Myral,” Gintie said. They roared with laughter again.

“No worries for us, mate, that is
certain,” Myral said. “Now, miss, if you would be so kind as to turn around,
Gintie and I will get to business.” He flashed a sickening smile at her, while
Gintie brandished the knife that he had silently slipped from its spot on his
belt.

The image of Gintie’s knife buried
in her belly flashed through Antrey’s mind. She closed her eyes, but otherwise
stood perfectly still.

“I said turn around!” Myral yelled
at her.

Antrey began to turn, but then she
heard the sharp whack of a hard object on skin. One of the attackers, she
thought it was Myral, cried out and sounded like he crumpled to the ground.
There were two more quick thumps and she heard another body fall to the ground.
She opened her eyes and saw Myral and Gintie on the ground, doubled over in
pain. Myral had a bloody gash on the back of his head. He might have been
unconscious. Gintie was moaning and clutching his stomach, as if he had been
punched. Standing over them were two Sentinels, each with a pikti in hand,
ready to strike at either of the men should they move. She did not recognize
either of them. They looked at her with a mixture of scorn and pity.

“Were these thugs bothering you?”
one of the Sentinels asked.

“Yes,” was all that Antrey could
say at first, her heart still racing. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“What are you doing out here at
this time of the day?” the other one asked.

She fished out the employment
papers from her bag. “I was running errands for my employer,” she said, handing
the papers to one of the Sentinels. “I work for Alban, the clerk of the Grand
Council.”

He examined the papers and handed
them back to her. “All right, then. Well, there’s no reason for you to be here
any longer, is there?” His tone was condescending, without any real sympathy
for what she had been through.

The two attackers lay between them.
Myral was returning to consciousness, moaning as the pain reached his mind. The
other Sentinel poked him with the end of his pikti.

“No, sir,” Antrey said. “No reason
at all for me to be here anymore. I’ll be on my way.” She stepped over her two
fallen assailants, slipped between the two Sentinels, and walked briskly out of
the alley. Behind her, Antrey could hear the sounds of more violence. The thwap
of piktis on skin. The sound of breaking bones. Part of her knew that she
should be concerned that they would simply be brutalized, rather than arrested.
This was not how it was supposed to work. As she crossed the street back onto
her original path home, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

By the time Antrey made her way
back to the compound, it was dark. Inside the compound gate, the inner
courtyard was bathed in a beautiful combination of moonlight and lamplight. If
not for tonight’s full moon, the courtyard could be a dangerous place, filled
with flickering gaslight and dark passages. She walked across the courtyard to
the front door of the apartment where she lived with Alban and his family.
There was no light near it, so even with the moon it was dark enough to make
Antrey nervous. She tried the front door, hoping to avoid a search for her key
somewhere in the heavy bag that weighed her down.

Alban had standing orders that the
door should always be locked. Although the compound was ordinarily a safe
place, it was not immune from occasional violence or petty theft. Alban was not
inclined to take any chances. In spite of that, it was not unusual for one of
Alban’s young daughters to leave the lock open after they ran inside while
playing. Antrey had no such luck tonight. She searched through her bag and then
tried, unsuccessfully, to fully engage the key with the lock in the dim light.
The noise must have been registered inside, as she heard the lock slide open
from the other side of the door.

When the door swung open, Antrey
was confronted by Alban’s wife, Onwen, who was standing in the threshold. She
was an imposing woman, even though Antrey was taller than she by nearly a foot.
Onwen had the dark-green skin of an Arborian and the hardscrabble personality
that went along with it.

That she and Alban would find each
other, fall in love, and marry was another oddity of Tolenor. Alban was from
the Guild city of Ventris, on the continent’s west coast. That society was
organized around a dizzying variety of trade guilds, rather than families or
clans. Marriages were so rare as to be unheard of. Alban had come from the
Guild of Law, but had not been a part of that world for three decades. He came
to Tolenor, first as a Sentinel, and then to serve as the clerk of the Grand
Council. He met Onwen while he was a Sentinel when she had accompanied her
father here on a trade mission. According to Alban it was love at first sight.
He never tired of telling the story.

Onwen had never been fond of
Antrey, much less her presence in their home. Tonight she looked particularly displeased.
“Where have you been?” she asked in a stern voice.

“Sorry, missus,” Antrey said,
sliding past her into the apartment. “I was delayed after leaving the supply
shop.” She took the heavy bag off her shoulder and put it on the small table in
the entryway. With her left hand, she massaged her other shoulder.

“Delayed?” Onwen said. “Wasting
time, you mean. And wasting my husband’s time, as well.” She started to say
something else, but was stopped by a fit of coughing.

“I’m truly sorry, missus,” Antrey
said. There was no need to tell the story of her confrontation in the alley. It
would not do her any good with Onwen. “Is your husband still about?”

Onwen shook her head while the
coughing fit passed. “He went to the Hare with a few others. You should take
those supplies to his office as soon as possible. Although I suppose it
wouldn’t hurt if you had your supper first.” She motioned towards the kitchen
and the small table where Antrey took her meals. “Be quick about it.”

“Yes, missus,” Antrey said, with a
nod. She walked quickly into the kitchen, took a bowl of whatever had been
cooking, and sat down at the table. She thought of Alban at The Inn of the
Great Antlered Hare, a tavern inside the compound walls. At the Hare, people of
importance met to discuss business and the issues of the day. It was all
strictly off the record, which Antrey thought was ironic, given Alban’s line of
work.

~~~~~

The apartment was said to be the
largest in the compound, larger even than those of the nine Grand Council members
themselves. Antrey had no way of knowing whether that was true, but she
supposed that because the members of the Grand Council came and went so
frequently they required less space than those who lived here permanently. It
was a practical arrangement, more practical than one would think people called
Grand Councilors would allow, in that it gave the greatest benefit to someone
who was not a member of the Council itself.

Alban’s apartment had three floors.
A kitchen, dining room, and salon were on the ground floor. The second floor
was given over largely to Alban’s office. Onwen also had a small personal study
there, but Antrey was rarely given permission to enter it. On the third floor,
three bedrooms clustered around the top of the stairs. One for Alban and Onwen,
one for their daughters, and one for Antrey.

When she arrived in Tolenor, Antrey
had little hope that she would call a place like this home. Her mother sent
Antrey north just after her fifteenth birthday. Before that her mother’s clan,
the Kohar, at least tolerated her presence. Antrey had heard the talk about her
among the others since she was old enough to walk. She knew that they did not
really consider her Kohari. She could never be a part of the clan. At best, she
could hope to be some kind of hanger-on, following the clan as it roamed around
the Trewavas Valley. She might survive, although that was certainly not
guaranteed. Unable to have children due to her mixed heritage, she was useless
in the eyes of the clan elders, aside from the few who might want to use her
like Myral and Gintie planned.

Once she became an adult in
Neldathi culture, fifteen years of age, she knew it was time to leave. In spite
of all she knew, it was harder than she expected. There was a part of her that
assumed her mother, or perhaps one of her half-siblings, would do something to
try and stop her. Something to prevent her permanent exile. In all the years
she had spent in the clan, surely someone had come to love her or at least care
about her well-being? But no one spoke up. No one said there must be another
way. No one even tried to help her prepare for the journey north by providing
supplies or information. And no one seemed to care when she finally left.

The Water Road makes for a natural
boundary, running from one end of Altreria to the other. The Neldathi stayed to
the south, in the snow-capped mountains and the rugged valleys. The Altrerians,
in their numerous factions, stayed to the north. To ensure that separation, the
Triumvirate had built forts all along the southern bank of the Water Road to
keep the Neldathi in place. Any Neldathi who was foolish enough to try and
cross the river could be shot on sight, without anyone batting an eye. A very
few would be captured, to be kept as a curiosity or pet in one of the larger
cities.

It turned out to be the one
instance in Antrey’s life where her mixed heritage worked in her favor.
Although, as the daughter of a Neldathi woman, she could not legally cross the
Water Road, if she could make it through undetected it would be impossible to
prove she had not been born on the northern side. It was not as if her
appearance could betray her. The appearance of mixed offspring was notoriously
random.

The most pressing problem when she
left her clan, however, was that Antrey had no idea how to actually get across
the Water Road. Her mother, along with the rest of her clan, could not read or
write, nor did they have a firm grasp of geography beyond the clan’s territory.
The only thing her mother could tell her was that the river was to the north
and point her in the right direction. Armed only with that, Antrey set out the
next day. It was a stroke of luck that the clan was at the most northern point
in their great circuit and thus at its closest point to the river.

She arrived at the river after
several days of walking, nearly starved, with her legs dragging behind her.
Later she would learn, from one of the maps in Alban’s library, that she had
come to the river at a point that was almost the equal distance between two of
the Triumvirate forts that lined the shores. It was as far away from the high
walls and sentry towers as one could possibly be. It was pure luck. She sat by
the river, watching it glide slowly and silently east towards the shore while
she rested, finished her provisions, and regained her strength. At nightfall,
she slipped into the water as quietly as possible and swam for the other shore.
Although she had only swum before in the shallow ponds and lakes of the Kohari lands,
she struggled across to the northern bank.

Once on the northern side of the
Water Road, Antrey make her way through the Endless Hills, following the river
to the sea. She was in Telebria at the time, but had no way of knowing it. It
was a good place to travel, gently rolling country with just enough cover to
allow her to stay out of sight. That allowed her to shadow groups of other
travelers, far enough away to avoid detection but close enough to hear them
talking and begin to learn the Altrerian language. She had heard of the island
at the mouth of the great river, where it spilled into the ocean, and the city
that had been built there. She had only heard it talked about with anger and
contempt, but it still seemed like the only place she might be able to survive.
When she reached the Bay of Sins and saw Tolenor bustling in the distance, it
made all the effort worth it. She crossed the Grand Causeway and entered her
new home.

Once she got to Tolenor, however,
Antrey realized that she had no idea what to do. She had no way to earn a
living. Where would she live? She scraped by on the streets, carefully avoiding
the gangs that ran the less reputable parts of the city. As with her clan, the
gangs wanted no part of this odd-looking stranger. There were days when she did
not know whether she would survive the night. Other days, she gave serious
consideration to walking to the edge of the island and flinging herself into
the breakers.

 Then she met Alban. It was
near the market where he had just bought fruit. He was practically the most
important man in the city and Antrey had no business being anywhere near him.
She had been sitting on a street corner hoping for some chance to eat. Hoping
that someone would let their guard down just enough that she could snatch a
piece of fruit or a heel of bread from their bag as they walked past. Waiting
for someone’s rambunctious child to knock a pear off the fruit stand onto the
filthy ground, where she could grab it and run off. Alban saw her there and,
for some reason, took pity on her. He stopped and spoke to her, not like she
was some oddity but as one person to another. He invited her home for a meal
for the simple reason that she looked like she needed one.

Sitting there at the kitchen table
finishing her dinner, Antrey could still remember the taste of that first meal.
She could still remember how warm and filling it was. How the spices nearly
burned the roof of her mouth. And she remembered the fight Alban had that night
with Onwen. A fight about her. They argued in Onwen’s study upstairs and
assumed Antrey could not hear them in the kitchen below. But the argument was
heated enough that Antrey could hear most of what was said, even if she could
not understand most of it. The broad strokes of their positions were clear,
however. Onwen was adamant about having one of “those” in her home, must less
around their daughter. There was only one, at the time. And what of Alban’s
employers? What would the members of the Grand Council say about their most
trusted servant harboring a halfbreed?

In the end, Alban won the argument.
From Antrey’s perspective, it seemed like the only time he ever won a battle
with Onwen. Perhaps it was important enough to him to let her have anything
else she wanted. He made Antrey an offer that night, across the small table in
the kitchen. She could come work with him, be his assistant, with the Grand
Council. And she could live in his home. Alban would teach her how to read, how
to write, give her a safe place to sleep, and warm meals to fill her belly. It
was like a dream, except even in her dreams Antrey had never expected so much.
She accepted without hesitation. Antrey owed Alban her life.

~~~~~

After supper, Antrey grabbed the
supplies she bought that afternoon, left the apartment, and made her way across
the compound in the moonlight. Like the city itself, the Triumvirate compound
was built around a central point. The Hall of Unification sat in the middle of
the compound, with all paths and courtyards funneling traffic to it. In
addition to the elaborate room in which the Grand Council held its sessions,
the hall also contained countless offices and meeting rooms.

Alban’s office was a complex
labyrinth of adjoining rooms, connected to both the main public lobby of the hall
and the Grand Council’s meeting room. Most of the small rooms along the route
were filled with papers and other official records of the Grand Council. One of
those small rooms, with only a few nooks and crannies clear of books, had
become Antrey’s office when she came to work with Alban. From her notch in the
wall, Antrey was able to hear anyone coming into the public entrance to the
clerk’s office on one end, while keeping an eye on Alban’s office on the other.

Only three of the rooms that made
up Alban’s office were of any real size. One was the entry foyer, where members
of the public could be received and contained. It was spare, but tasteful, as
befitted an office of such authority. In truth, it was hardly ever used. The
Triumvirate had no real constituents, aside from the three nations that created
it. There was no need for ordinary citizens to come and request documents or
seek to review the official records. Only the occasional scholar or journalist
would make their way there. Antrey understood well that, were it otherwise, she
probably would not be able to work there.