Blightcross: A Novel Read online

  She looked to Dannac, but he just shrugged.

  “Listen, Baron...”

  “Yes? Have I done something to offend you? Something that makes you want to punish me with this... obvious display of discontent?”

  “Well, actually—”

  “I suppose I should have known that an exotic beauty such as yourself would be socially incapable of being my wife.” Parnas sighed and dabbed his cheek with a handkerchief. “The barbarian women are impossible to train properly. I should have listened to their endless warnings! Oh, but it was just too tempting.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him that she wasn’t lusting after another man, that she had aimed only to steal his business prospects, but stopped. There were soldiers from her homeland searching the ship for her, and each second she stood there like a stunned pig meant that the odds of escaping were significantly less, but she couldn’t ravage the old bastard’s fragile heart so callously. Not after hearing so much about the man’s mother. Something about that kind of familiarity made her unwilling to deliberately hurt him.

  “Parnas, I should have told you. I didn’t think it would matter, but clearly it does.” She glanced to Dannac. “Every Valoii girl is sold into marriage at the age of ten. I was promised to this man before the war. You see, the war had ruined marriage plans all over, and only just now did he find me. I am afraid that no matter how much I love you, I cannot break my parents’ honour. I belong to this man.”

  Parnas leaned forward slightly. “Is that so? I had no idea.” There was a hint of understanding in his voice. She half wondered if he thought it was interesting and romantic.

  “Yes, and if I do not obey, he has the legal right to murder my family and take their land.”

  “Oh, I do see. Well, what if I just killed him?”

  Dannac moved his head from side to side slow enough and frowned deeply enough that no living person could miss the signal of intimidation.

  “But I will miss you, my dear.”

  “And I you.”

  She curtsied to him once more, and pulled Dannac out of the alcove. It felt as though she had cut the act short at the wrong time, but under the circumstances about all she had time for was a quick lie. Let Parnas wonder. It would keep him busy enough to stop his sobbing.

  They jogged around the outer deck, towards the one of the propellers at the ship’s tail. There was a vibration in her feet, and a clattering that sounded like a mechanical heartbeat.

  Now the tall structure at the far end of the city stretched above them, and it appeared to reach farther into the sky than they had ever flown. The weak sun spilled across its polished surface, and some of the tower’s details now showed through the haze. She bent backward to see the top, and found a gigantic clock face near the top. Below them flowed the dark river in which the flying boat would land.

  “How far are we to the dock, do you think?” she asked Dannac. “The boat is practically in the water.”

  He grunted something and looked over the edge. “Too far for what you’re thinking.”

  Behind them, the crowd began to part and jostle. Unless there was a sudden epidemic of what she had experienced a few minutes before and the impromptu party outside had become a battle royal for the privy, it had to be Alim.

  “Are you sure?”

  He looked over the edge once more, then towards the disrupted crowd. “Maybe not so much.”

  She scanned the layout below. There was a raised structure where the ship would moor, presumably after its already low speed dwindled to that of a proper boat and allowed it to turn around. On this stood three brass poles, on which flapped the flags of Naartland, Tamarck, and a rose emblem she had never seen before.

  “We could still steal the deed, Capra.”

  “Are you insane? You of all people should know what Alim and his men are capable of.”

  “I think it’s no more insane than your plan to jump off this ship. We can blend in with the passengers and disappear into the city once it lands.”

  “Alim won’t allow that. He has the full cooperation of the government here. I know it. He wouldn’t have revealed himself to me otherwise. I know how the Valoii military operates, Dannac. Did you forget about the tattoo around my neck?”

  He gazed at the ground, which was slowly moving closer. “Either way, we’re stuck in Blightcross.” He growled.

  “Come on, Dannac. At least this way we get a head start. There will be other jobs.”

  “But the point of this one was that it would be the last job either of us would need.”

  “There’s money here. The Baron talked about it last night. Blightcross runs some kind of factory that produces... well, I’m not sure exactly what it was, but old Parnas was quite impressed with the place.”

  He snorted. “A factory?”

  “Come on, there will be something for us here. There has to be. Forget about the mining scam.”

  She kicked off her uncomfortable shoes, and they tumbled across the deck only to disappear among scattering passengers. Without any of her previous hesitation, she hopped onto the railing, stayed there in a crouch, balanced on the thin bar of metal. “Well?”

  “I still cannot fathom why your people allow women like you to fight as men would.” Dannac tossed his hat over the edge and shrugged out of his frock coat. “Nor can I fathom why I continue to listen to you.”

  She grinned and stood, the brass comforting and cool against her bare feet.

  “I say, clear the way, all of you.” Alim brandished his Mizkov Defence Force issue stiletto at the crowd. Spoiled trash, the lot of them. All he found were confused stares, indignant ladies likely shocked that their luxury voyage had been tainted by such a display. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to recognize his weapon, or his tattoo. They had no idea that he was a soldier.

  Where were the ship’s guards? They could clear this deck in a heartbeat simply by showing up in their leather armour. Never mind that he had let Jorassian—

  Or Capra, as he had known her in another life, before things had become complicated.

  —bowl him over and escape. He had been hanging around outsiders too long, and their prejudices were creeping into him. A woman was just as deadly as a man, and he knew this because every Valoii knew this. Every Valoii knew this because after the war they had vowed never again to be caught off guard and victimized and slaughtered, and this included turning every healthy person into a soldier, regardless of their genitals.

  Capra Jorassian - Specialist Armswoman, 2nd Class

  #336 - 237 - 539.

  Assignment: 5 Battalion, Veta’s Swords

  Status: Deserter.

  That’s all she was to him now. It’s all she could be, and even that was generous considering that her unit had been all but destroyed during the border skirmish she had fled. That was the kind of dereliction one was taught to take personally.

  He had to grit his teeth and push through the crowd, and concentrate equally as much to block out memories of Jorassian as an innocent school girl in her uniform, trading state-supplied rations at lunch and joking about the stupid fat literature instructor.

  Status: Deserter.

  He moved faster, and was relieved when he met with a squad of ship’s guard, led by the sergeant-at-arms. Alim had spoken with the red-haired man on several occasions since he had arrived three days ago, and was glad to see him.

  “They’ve gone aft,” the sergeant said.

  Alim clapped him on the shoulder and loped onward.

  “There’s nowhere for them to go, Valoii. Relax.”

  But he could not relax. His fingers wrapped around the stiletto vibrated with anticipation. He wanted a superior to reassure him, to say, “Yes, Alim, go ahead and kill one of Mizkov’s precious daughters. She has proven irredeemable. Kill her. Kill her.”

  This kind of idle speculation would be the end of him. Anxiety wouldn’t stop him from finishing this. He was fortunate to be given this special assignment, far from the disputed zones.

&n
bsp; “Watch out for the Ehzeri,” he said to his two men. “There is something different about him. Some new Ehzeri trick, I suppose.” He flipped the stiletto in his hand.

  “Magic,” one of his men said. “Nothing new about that.”

  “But be aware anyway. Somehow I think that jewel in his head gives him more than what the average Ehzeri is capable of. Perhaps it gives him divine strength, or invulnerability.”

  They moved closer to the ship’s engines, where a banging rumble shook deep inside his head, muddied his thoughts. There were no passengers outside down here, and no wonder. He could now see the stern, with its own engines placed on either side of a giant fin. Nobody there, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding behind a pipe or one of the crates stacked by the railing.

  “Leave Jorassian to me.”

  The men mumbled their affirmatives.

  When they reached the end of the wrap-around deck, Alim stood dumbfounded. He checked behind the crates— nobody there. Behind a pipe—nothing. After a moment of paralysis, he went to the railing and peered at the jetty below. The ground moved at a crawl underneath them, and there he glimpsed a black hat of the Tamarck fashion. Beside it was what looked like a ripped bottom half of a woman’s dress.

  The sergeant sauntered over, took position beside Alim. He looked at the jetty casually. “Well, I don’t suppose you’ll have to worry about them now. They couldn’t have survived a jump, even if they had done it at this height. Probably they smacked the wharf and bounced into the river.”

  Alim’s throat became dry and his face became hot. “I would not be so sure.”

  “Well, you tried your best.”

  Alim sneered at the sergeant. “How long will it take for this thing to dock?”

  “Ten minutes and they’ll lower the stairs, I imagine.”

  “Can you get a message to the authorities on the ground?”

  “You see a signalman out there?”

  Alim narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t enough to swindle the transport company into cooperating with his orders. Now he would have to convince the law in this city to take Jorassian as a serious threat. Without help from the government here, she might disappear into the crowd again.

  No. One thing he knew for sure—Jorassian would never again cross the Blightcross Administrative District’s borders alive. She had always been stubborn and refused to concede, to the point of insisting they go into best-of-seven matches during their childhood. She made it difficult, but once someone beat her, she fell hard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The now floating flying boat loomed over the city block, and Capra still felt uncomfortable with the huge bird-like shape. It seemed an affront to nature that such a thing could lumber into the air after a few minutes at sea.

  She flexed her hands and rubbed them. They glowed red and there were bits of shredded skin, but otherwise the flagpole slide had gone better than she had anticipated.

  Capra tore the shawl from her shoulders and dropped it to her side, where it settled among enough trash that the action must have been local custom. She rummaged in the satchel that now contained everything she owned and retrieved a red cravat. The thing ought to be enough to cover both the tattoo around her throat, as well as the burn scar across her shoulder.

  It would do until she could find less daintier clothes. Hopefully she’d find something suitable here, but looking at the shapeless garb many of the richer citizens wore, she doubted it. There was no indication of the kind of fashion she had seen in the Little Nations, and this was perhaps the largest regret she had about meeting Dannac and entering the trade of thievery.

  Dannac hurried behind. “So what do you plan on doing now? Besides drawing attention to yourself by wearing a man’s garment.”

  “Leave this island, for one. Then it’s back to the same old grind, I suppose.” She dodged a trail of broken glass. In fact, the entire road glittered with shards of coloured glass, jagged metal, and empty cans. If only she had some decent shoes... “And I don’t see how a cravat can only be worn by men.” She grinned and decided that she would wear this cravat at every opportunity.

  She also expected that her torn dress, now barely covering her rear, might attract attention from the people they passed in the street. But these people, an odd mix of Ehzeri in their white cloaks, soot-smeared faces in tough blue clothing of a style Capra had never seen before, and men in proper evening dress, barely glanced at her. There was a whir of machines, like the flying boat’s drone, all around. There were a few pack animals pulling carts, but not nearly as many as she would expect in a city of this size.

  Her mouth went slack, as though she’d stepped into a dream. The smell of the place was not the banal stink of human waste, but something more peculiar that burned in her throat. And all the Ehzeri... what were they doing here? Perhaps Dannac would know, but for the moment all she could do was take in the tall structures, the clouds of smoke (and it was not coal smoke, but billowing white clouds of a size she thought impossible to be created by humans), and strange sounds.

  The trance shattered when something hard knocked her aside. She fell onto a boardwalk, sprung upright, ready to kill, and found Dannac glaring at her. In the street, a carriage sped past, and there was that odd clattering-belching sound she kept hearing.

  “Pay attention. The streets here are not for walking.”

  “Magic reigns here, then? There was nothing pulling that carriage... and all of the Ehzeri here...”

  “No. Vihs was not at work there. I had heard that a lot of young people were giving up on joining the raids and coming to Naartland to work, but most of them were from depleted families. I think the Ehzeri here have nothing to offer but their labour. My people would not come to this place just to sell their birthright for a wage.” He gazed to the horizon for a moment. “Sometimes I wish I could just go back and find out what is really going on with my people.”

  Dannac didn’t wax wistful very often, and when he did, Capra’s reaction was to pull him out of it as soon as possible. “Then what do you call all of this? It sure smacks of magic to me.” She gestured at the wide road, strange contraptions bracing skeletons of towers in the distance, and noisy carriages.

  “We should keep going. I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing once it docks.”

  They were only a few blocks from the dock, and Dannac was right. A head start was something she didn’t want to waste. It was just that the place was so unfamiliar, and not in the way that the Little Nations were. Her feelings here were a negative image of her travels on the continent. A bizarre reversal.

  They hurried through an alley, wended through makeshift tents and ignored pleas for pocket change neither were in a position to give.

  “So you know that soldier?” Dannac asked, once they came to a street with less traffic and beggars.

  “Alim? Yes, unfortunately. Mizkov is small, and since we’re all shoved into the service... well, everyone knows everyone. We have to rebuild Valoii unity, after all. I guess it works, in some ways.”

  “We ought to just kill him and get on with it.”

  She stopped. “No.” And Dannac kept walking.

  Over his shoulder, he said, “You’ve left your country, Capra. They mean nothing to you.”

  Was it true? Did she no longer care about everyone she knew, and the few Valoii that were left? Did she care about the new state they had been given by Tamarck, did she care for the bright new future promised to her and her descendants?

  She broke into a jog to catch up with her Ehzeri friend. Her only friend, because friends like Alim only lasted as long as the correct national allegiances were reaffirmed with pledges and service to vague ideals and the oppression of the people their new state had displaced. Oh, how she wanted to do her part, to protect their borders the way she had been ordered. But some things were not worth giving up one’s humanity.

  “Look, Alim’s just having fun on a paid-for trip around the known world just to track down deserters. We’ve dealt with wor
se before—like King Rotanour’s Lancers. Or that time with the pirates. Pirates, Dannac. Alim’s nothing.”

  He grumbled something.

  She tried to affect a flippant tone, but wasn’t sure if it worked. “We need to find work. Forget Alim.”

  “I work best when I can sleep without constantly watching the door.”

  “We haven’t been able to do that since we met.”

  Dannac nodded slowly, then laughed. “Pirates.”

  By the Great Golden Ram, this man will not stop until he turns piss into ambrosia. Vasi held the object into the light and examined the intricate carvings. It was a diamond-shaped bauble, plated with etched copper. There had to be something else underneath the metal facade, since it was far too heavy. Lead, perhaps?

  The stained glass arch across from her scattered sparkles of blue, red and orange along the artifact’s surface. She shut her eyes and tried to feel out any potential vihs inherent in the object, but all she saw was the blackness and random sparkles of her own closed eyes, and sensed little more than cold weight inside the trinket.

  Vasi set it on the table and made a note in her log. Piece #0342: Koratian Ornament, circa 4560 U.E. Preliminary test: negative.

  No surprise, at least to her. It was too bad that Till Sevari ignored her warning that the artifact was nothing of importance. Another instance of Sevari cultivating too much hope before obtaining the appropriate information. Yet Vasi would not complain about living high in the clock tower to perform busywork for the chief administrator of Blightcross district. This was more than any Ehzeri could have dreamed of.

  It might be a waste of her vihs-draaf, her work-skills, to aid Sevari in his occult curiosities. But the Ehzeri had to change with the times.

  She gazed at the artifact with a satisfied grin. Things would improve for them all. The money she made here would stop the raids, break down barriers, save her family...

  She stifled a cough and brought the ornament back to its shelf at the end of the chamber. Her footsteps sent clouds of dust into the spikes of coloured light from the stained glass. She would have to call in the maintenance crew to give the place a quick cleaning. It was just that the maintenance crews were mostly Ehzeri from depleted families, and what could she say to them? Sorry for your misfortune, look at my huge paycheck and personal laboratory?