Beneath Ceaseless Skies #191 Read online

  Issue #191 • Jan. 21, 2016

  “In Skander, for a Boy,” by Chaz Brenchley

  “Blessed are Those Who Have Seen and Do Not Believe,” by D.K. Thompson

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  IN SKANDER, FOR A BOY

  by Chaz Brenchley

  Skander: city of exiles, assassins, plotters and panders and whores. City of poets, of lovers, of embassies, liars of every hue.

  Skander sits on every man’s horizon. I gazed at it in contempt, where it lay off the starboard rail like a smear of lit charcoal spilled at the sea’s edge; I called for greater effort on the oars. These tideless waters had nothing to offer. Our own work would bring us in, see our task complete and take us home again. Untainted, if we were hard and fast.

  * * *

  Rulf had sent us, standing raucous above the coffin in his high rede-hall. That was a memory for me to cling to, appalling and wonderful: torchlight on silver, shadow on bone. Rulf—Lord of the Seamarch, Kingslayer, the Iron Hand—weeping into his beard, roaring for mead, rejoicing and cursing and lamenting this death above any, that had left him with no enemies worth the name.

  The coffin had come by way of many hands and many holds, fetched in at last with a shipload of Rothland horses, breeding mares that had waited out the winter storms in Landrëas. Rulf had a fancy to be Lord of Horses too, to ride and rule inland as he did the coastal waters. It was madness, and so I told him—which might perhaps be a reason why he screamed my name above the coffin.

  “Croft is dead,” he said, thrusting a torch into the dark casket to make it evident. “Take ship to Skander, and bring me back the boy.”

  This was almost more stupid than his notion of turning sea-harriers into horsemen. I said, “How can you know this is Croft? All I see is bones.” Bones with the meat boiled off them, ingeniously wired together in the figure of a man.

  “Bones and hair,” he said, showing me the long plait he had snatched up. It was coarse, blond gone to white: it might have been Croft’s. Or mine, or his own. Any northman’s.

  “His name is on the lid,” he said. It was: in silver inlay in a strange corrupt southern reading of our own strong runes, as though it spelled the name out with a lisp.

  “Anyone can write on a box and put bones in it.”

  “And then ship it two thousand miles? Why would they?”

  “To make you believe, of course, that Croft was dead.”

  “But he is,” Rulf said simply, wafting his torch again. “He is here.”

  “You cannot know that.”

  “And yet I do. See his legs?”

  I saw what he showed me, as he lowered the torch: how twisted the leg-bones were, how they had been shattered and brutally mis-healed.

  “I did that,” he said, as if I hadn’t known it, hadn’t been there. “These are the ways, the places where I had the bones broken and then tied up so they would set so bent he could never stand or walk again. Three months he screamed in the cesspit, before I was sure they were beyond any man’s doctoring.”

  I remembered. All summer Croft lay in shit, and made sure that we all lay in the sounds of his pain and loss. I had thought that almost Croft’s victory, rather than Rulf’s.

  And then he had been washed and dressed—in a woman’s skirt, because those dreadful legs would never wear trousers again—and set in a skiff with the boy for deckhand and servant, and he had sailed into the sun’s setting on his way to exile and death.

  Eventual death. It had been twenty years before his twisted bones came back to us.

  I said, “Why do you want the boy back now?”

  “Harlan, I have no heir. They tell me it is the gods’ curse on my blood, for what I did to the old king his father. What I took from him. Some of that, at least, I can restore.”

  “He will claim the kingship.”

  “He is welcome to it, when I’m gone. I can adopt him, train him, make him a better man than Barent ever was.”

  “Rulf, you gave him to Croft. He will have been trained already, to despise you and all of yours. Will you make a gift of yourself, to a young man who is right to hate you?”

  He shrugged ruefully, confused perhaps by his own sudden penitence. “Harlan. Fetch him back.”

  * * *

  At least the voyage home would let me see what kind of man Croft had made of him. If I judged it needful, I would keep him in chains and be sure at least that Rulf had to make his own mistakes.

  We were two months abroad before we sighted Skander, a smudge of smoke in the east as we lost the sun, a sullen glow in the dark to guide us. Any other port on any other water, we would have held off for a daylight tide. Skander has no tides to wait for; and besides, I ached to be swift, in and out.

  In, then, slow and steady on the oars, all sail furled. I was a windmaster and we had barely rowed all journey, but these were strange waters and this my own ship beneath me, manned on Rulf’s gold and charged with his mission. I would be twice a fool to take a risk with her.

  In fact we could have sailed right to the lamplit wharf and never scraped a rock nor jarred a timber; Skander’s harbor is as deep and clean as legend paints it. We’d know, when it came time to be leaving. A man old enough to have grown wise always keeps it in his head, that he may be leaving swiftly.

  That same old wise man knows it’s good to come in slow and quiet. To seem tamer than you are.

  I was old enough, even in my own eyes. I dragged my own long reputation like a twilight shadow at my back, but still: it had been a dreary voyage and the crew had seen every year of my age tell on me as we came. I was tired already, hungry only to go home. They were a pack of wolves at my oars, and I feared loosing them in the city. Any city, but Skander more than any: its reputation was longer, louder, lewder than my own.

  I said, “The streets are full of lights. That’s not a welcome, it’s a warning. Stay close to each other, if you won’t stay close to me. Keep away from shadows, keep watch on your bench-mates; keep out of trouble, because there will be no rescue here.”

  They had never looked for rescue in their lives. There was pity in their eyes, pity and contempt. Had I really fallen so far from my strength that I saw danger in an effete entrepôt where men and women alike dealt in silks and whispers, in smokes and perfumes and each other?

  Even as we sidled up to moor, I thought I would be leaving half those men behind. Dead or enslaved, drunk or bewitched or carried off.

  Well, they were free men—for now—and few of them truly my own. So long as I had hands enough, I would be leaving as soon as I had the boy. If necessary I could buy oarsmen at market, although I’d hate to do it. Slaves taint a ship’s heart, and make a mock-man of her captain. I stared down the Skopje’s length and prayed to see enough of those faces back here in a day, two days.

  And then my good ship bumped against the wharf, and there were small slim figures waiting for ropes and high shrill voices crying welcome, asking how they could serve us, what we might require. Whatever we might desire. Information, temptation: before one of us so much as set boot ashore, the bargaining had begun.

  * * *

  My own boots were first, as was my right and duty. I leaped over the rail and landed two-footed and emphatic on the wharf.

  I don’t rightly know what I was stamping against: a snake’s welcome, a hissing from the shadows? That was surely how I saw the city: as a nest of serpents all knotted together, spies and assassins and traitors in exile from a dozen different lands, poison and sorcery no doubt their weapons of first resort. Cowards and schemers all.

  My head is a slow, dull thing. In my own cou
ntry they call me Harlan the Wily, expressly because I am not. Rulf should never have sent me to Skander. He should have known, not to do that.

  A voice hailed me; a woman stepped forward.

  Smaller than me, but if she was smaller than the normal run of men, it was not by much. She carried herself with straightforward authority, and I liked that even as I was surprised by it, where I was looking for insinuation and duplicity.

  “Are you the master of this vessel?”

  “I am.”

  “Your name and origin?”

  “Harlan, of Sawartsland; emissary of Rulf my king.” I should perhaps not have said that, but I didn’t even carry trade goods to disguise my mission. I have said it: I was not the man for this.

  “I am Dzuria, harbormaster here. My people will see to yours, and to your ship’s comfort. You come with me, and tell me of your embassy.”

  “I will tell that to the prince of the city. There is a prince, I think?”

  Her mouth quirked. “There are many princes in Iskandria, none interested in any tale but their own. Of course you must take your tale to the palace, but the chancellor’s is the ear you want.”

  I sighed. “At home, if a man wants the ear of Rulf King, he walks into the rede-hall and bellows for him. I do understand that matters are arranged differently elsewhere.”

  She said, “In this city, truly, your best first step towards the chancellor’s ear is through mine.”

  It was elegantly done. She cut me out from my crew and penned me alone, as she had intended from the first. My own intent, to use my king’s name here the way I had used my axe and shield elsewhere, a brute swift way to the top—that was neglected early, abandoned swiftly, forgotten soon.

  How much help I could truly expect from a harbormaster, I had no way to measure. In my world, harbormasters berthed ships and tallied cargoes, charged for wharfage and warehousing, their heads full of cables and weights and manifests.

  They might have comfort in their offices, but not like this. She brought me to a chamber swathed in damask and lamplight, soft cushions and soft-voiced children who fetched sweet juice and fiery spirit, nutmeats and pastries, offers of anything more.

  I batted them away with thanks and refusals. They smiled and shrugged, settled in the perfumed shadows in the corners of the room, watched me and their mistress both with a scrupulous, indefatigable care.

  “Shouldn’t they be in bed?” I grunted.

  “Undoubtedly. Would you care to send them? I wish you joy of the attempt.”

  At least she didn’t say take them. Even so, I was not inclined to be generous. I said, “You call yourself the harbormaster; these speak to me more of a slavemaster.”

  “Indeed. Do you not take and keep and trade slaves, in Sawartsland?”

  “We do, yes; but—”

  “Not children, would you say?”

  “Oh, children too, but not like this,” scented and silk-clad and complaisant. The youngsters I bought or bred in my own house worked their share, just as my own children had, as my grandchildren did now. And fed from the same plates, ripped the same clothes ragged, rioted as much and were beaten for it side by side; and slept safe in a puppy tumble, free and slave together.

  “I am sure not. There are none like these. Don’t let their seductive ways deceive you. Some of our princes-in-exile, yes, they keep children for their bodies, for their beds; but these?” She stretched out a long arm to tug at the artfully tangled hair of one ingratiating imp that I took—not quite certainly—for a girl. “If you took one of these to bed, you would wake up sorry. If you woke at all. They are heartless, entirely without compunction, because that is how I raise them. Their perfumes and fancies are stolen, from any ship careless enough to let them aboard. Once goods are landed they are safe, because then they fall under my regard, but anything on shipboard is fair game. So is the crew.”

  “Do I need to warn my men?”

  “If a man needs warning against such as these, he should perhaps have stayed at home.”

  Indeed; but we had Rulf’s order at our backs, heavy as a blade and just as imperative. Staying home had never been an option.

  I said, “Where do you find these dangerous children?”

  “In the alleys, on the wharfs, some of them. Most I buy. And sell again, when I can find them places. It’s the only way to keep them from the thiefmasters and the beggar kings. And the palace. Besides,” reaching out again, touching the smooth cheek of an adolescent boy as he refilled her goblet, “how else would I manage my harbor? I can hire men to do the heavy work, but these are my rat-catchers and bead-counters, my watchers and messengers. As you have observed, they never go to bed when they’re supposed to. If you are my friend, you need not worry for your purse or your safety or your ship, while you are here.”

  “I hope I am your friend,” I said, with enough urgency to raise smiles in the shadows.

  “Good. I hope it too; it means I can be a friend to you. Tell me of your embassy.”

  I said, “When my king took the throne twenty years ago, the man he took it from had a son, a boy of fifteen. Rulf sent the boy into exile, sooner than see him as dead as his father.”

  “He sent him here, you mean, to Iskandria.”

  “Of course. Where else? In company with his father’s warhammer, Croft, the finest fighter and the worst picker of us all, who chose to support the old king when all his friends had turned the other way. Rulf... punished him, but would not kill him. Which was perhaps a mistake. Rulf has spent twenty years being wary of the world and never quite comfortable in his chair. But Croft is dead, and Rulf hopes the boy will come back now to make a son for his side and an heir for his back.”

  “Not so much a boy now, if he was fifteen then.”

  “They are all boys, when they stay so much younger than we are. You know.” There was grey and white in the dark woven pattern of her hair; she was younger than me, but not so much as it would matter. “If you were here then, you would remember: a boy, tall and slim and flaxen-haired, not yet come into his strength. And a cripple, a big man who would not be walking, who could not leave the boat without help. A small boat, and just the two of them to crew it.”

  She said, “Oh, I was here. I have always been here. But a cripple and a boy, in a small boat, this far? That sounds... ambitious.”

  “We are good sailors.” Even crippled, even ungrown.

  “Even so. There are storms, there are pirates. There is simple bad fortune, and they would seem not to be rich in anything else.”

  “Indeed—but we know they did come. At least, we know that Croft did. His bones came back to us.” And someone had to send them, with knowledge and purpose both.

  “Yes. If it was the cripple you were seeking, it should be Fenner that you spoke to. A boy, though, a prince in exile—well, we have a city full of those. You will have to go to the palace.”

  “Fenner? Who is that?”

  “He is—no, he was one of those I saved my children from. A beggar king, for a while. He matters more these days, but he is still cripple-king in this city. He knows all the lame and all the lacking.”

  “It’s good, no doubt, that they have a friend with influence,” but Croft was dead, and it was the boy I sought.

  “I didn’t say he was their friend. He buys and sells, he deals in flesh as much as he ever did, only from a more exalted position now. We used to call him Fenner the Helpless, because he never needed any help. He would have known your Croft, and where to find him. If you want your boy, though, ask at the palace.”

  I grunted, nodded, sighed. Not the man for this.

  “Meantime,” she said, “rest while you can. Palace days start early, and run long.”

  * * *

  One of her watchful children—this one a girl, close enough to a young woman that I’d have been watchful myself if she were mine—took a lamp and led me to another room of cushioned comfort. I ought to have asked where my crew had gone, where I might hope to find them. But I was tired
, and ashore, and frankly weary of them; and interested in bed, a lot, and in the girl a little, because her mistress interested me greatly.

  “Will Dzuria really sell you to another house?”

  The girl gave me a quick smile. “Of course. Soon now, I think. How else would she afford new little children? Being harbormaster does not make her wealthy.”

  Which was as good as to say that she was an honest harbormaster, but I had gathered that already. She was probably an honest slavetrader too. I said, “Don’t you mind?”—but the true question was why don’t you mind?

  If anything, she seemed amused by my naivety. “This is Xandrian. Here, everyone belongs to someone else. And Dzuria will sell me somewhere I can be happy, to someone who will be happy to have me. Why should I mind?”

  I shrugged, and sat on the bed. My boots looked a terrible long way away. I thrust my legs out hopefully, and said, “You mean you trust her.”

  “Of course. She has fed me and dressed me, washed me and doctored me, taught me to run with others and to run alone—how could I not trust her?”

  She hauled with a will at one boot and then the other. I thanked her heartily and reached for my purse.

  “Not in this house,” she said, frowning mightily. “We don’t take money from our friends.”

  Then she scudded swiftly out of the room, and it took me a moment too long to realize she had taken my boots with her.

  * * *

  Waking slowly, stiffly in an unaccustomed bed after a long sea-voyage: there was nothing unusual in that.

  What was unusual was to find myself alone, and depressingly glad of it. It gave me the chance to move slowly, to groan aloud as I stretched, as every joint ached, as vicious age stabbed me mockingly in one hip and numbed a foot entirely.

  I cursed, and stamped until some hint of feeling came back. The stamping only hurt me more, which only made me curse more, which left me all the more embarrassed when I looked around for clothes and found a boy, a small boy squatting in the corner.

  I stood quiet, breathing hard, under the grave weight of his stare. I knew what he was seeing—a particolored giant, wind-burned at face and arms and throat, pale elsewhere and seamed with scars—and I understood the fascination.