There were sheep grazing nearby watched by another pair of shepherds and their dog. They eyed Neven warily. Asharites, he saw, as the brother and sister had been the day before. This was currently Asharite land, it seemed. He knew the borderlands went back and forth, over and over.
He had left his necklace with Ashar’s star at the farm, looped on Milena’s door. He knew nothing about the faith of the sun god, but he was going to be a Jaddite now.
That decision he’d made when he left the army. They had taken him away, taken everything from him. You could try to find your way back, step by step along springtime roads, muddy fields. He was doing that. Had done that. He looked around. A hawk overhead. The sun—Jad’s sun—setting over the mountains.
He tried to imagine—to remember—fires in the night here. Or anything from before. There was something, but not enough. Nothing clear, or sharp. He felt terribly alone. There was nothing to stay here for. He had only the one place left he could think to go to now. He might die there, but it was the last link he had.
He wondered if an Asharite army was headed for Woberg this spring even as he stood here. Red-saddle cavalry and new cannons (new serdars for the artillery) and the djannis in their regiments marching towards glory in the khalif’s name.
It had indeed been a drier spring. They could have reached the fortresses, in fact, but no army was headed north that year. The forces of Ashar had gone east instead. There was rebellion there. It needed dealing with.
It would take more than a season to do that. Hard fighting in desert places would stretch Asharias to the limit for years. There was no thought of Woberg Fortress, of conquering in Jaddite lands during that time. The disgrace and death of Cemal, the khalif’s expected heir, a perception of weakness, these had shaped instability among the eastern tribes.
(The artist Pero Villani, whose words had begun all this, in the Palace of Silence in Asharias, was painting Duke Ricci of Seressa that same spring.)
Neven Gradek built a small fire in the village where he’d been born, and he stayed awake through the night beside it, as you needed to in such an open place alone, keeping it burning to ward off wolves, watching the moons cross the sky and the wheeling of the stars. In the morning he went west, towards the mountains and a pass through them, headed for Senjan, where his sister had said they’d fled, through the borderlands.
—
DADO WAS ON WATCH alone by the tower outside Senjan’s walls. (His real name was Damir, but no one called him that, however much he tried to make them.) He ought to have been in the tower, up top, but he was someone who’d always hated feeling enclosed.
The emperor, may Jad defend him, had offered to send more imperial guards for their defence, and weapons and goods (and payment!) for Senjan’s great heroes. They were badly depleted since the events of last spring, and they’d accepted fifteen soldiers. With their own numbers so low, and uncertainty as to the future, it was necessary.
But this year it was said that the Osmanlis were marching east, not west—for reasons he didn’t understand. But it did mean that if there were raids on the border they’d as easily be from Senjan through the passes. And the Seressinis, may they be cursed to have their limbs fall off (all their limbs, including the fifth one, his father always added), were not in any position to make trouble right now.
Not after a hundred Senjani had died in the service of Jad while destroying the khalif’s great cannons and a very large number of the best soldiers and officers he had.
Senjan was—for a moment, a springtime, a year—truly a place of heroes, known as such through the Jaddite world. The High Patriarch himself had sent them commendations, with a relic for their sanctuary—and a ship’s hold of food! It seemed that prayers were being chanted in Rhodias itself each evening for the courageous Senjani who had died in the far northeast in the god’s name and to his eternal glory and their own.
Dado’s father had said he didn’t know much about eternal glory, but it had been a decent spring, no denying. He’d lost two sons (Dado’s older brothers) with Hrant Bunic. There wasn’t a family in Senjan that wasn’t mourning someone, but they were heroes, those boys and men, and Senjan had always known what Jad needed it to be. That was why they’d marched out a year ago, a hundred of them, wasn’t it?
So, on a warm, lazy day, Dado Miho, alone on guard outside the wall, was sitting on the grass, leaning back against the tower, eating cold meat and drinking ale when he saw a man come down from the wooded eastern slope.
He was alone, but he was armed. It wasn’t worth ringing the bells for, but a good lookout did report, so Dado hastened back (after assembling his food and drink and spear) to the gate. He reported, dutifully, what he’d seen.
They said he’d done right. For a thirteen-year-old that was reassuring. He watched as four men went and stood in the road, blocking the way into town. They didn’t bother to close the gate. Not against one man. That would suggest they were fearful, and Senjan never was.
The man—a boy, it looked like—came up with the long, steady stride of someone used to walking. He lifted a hand in greeting while still a distance away but didn’t slow down as he came past the tower and up to the gate. He had a good sword and a bow. He was dusty and muddy from crossing the pass.
He stopped in front of the four men barring his way.
He said, “My name is Neven Gradek. I was taken as a child by hadjuks. I’m looking for my family. I believe they might be here.”
From behind, where Dado was, the four men in the road could be seen to shift uneasily. Their heads turned as they looked at each other.
Finally, one said, “There are none of your people left here.”
“My mother? My grandfather?”
“Goranka was your mother?”
“She was. And Neven Rusan was my grandfather. I’m named for him. And my sister . . . my sister is Danica.” He hesitated a moment, and Dado suddenly felt sorry for him. “Don’t tell me she is dead, please.”
They let him come in through the gate. They waited in a small group just inside and sent for the person best suited to address all this. While they stood there awkwardly, Dado stepped forward and offered the other boy his flask. He knew his family were supposed to hate all Gradeks, but his cousin Kukar had been a terrible person in Dado’s opinion, and this one was alone and had come a long way, and he looked . . . it was hard to say all of how he looked, but thirsty was part of it.
—
NEVEN WATCHED AS an older man made his way towards where he stood among others by the gate. They’d told him his mother and grandfather had died two years ago—a summer illness had taken many people. They’d been burned with others. That was what they did here at such times, the young one who’d given him a drink said. There was no slight meant in it, he’d added anxiously.
“I know,” Neven had said to him.
Other than that he didn’t speak. They said Danica had gone away. He knew she had. He had seen her.
He had come a long way and there was no one here.
The old man stopped in front of him. He spat in the dust through a gap in his teeth. He said, “If you were taken as a child and are not gelded and have those weapons, you are a djanni.”
Neven nodded respectfully. He said, “I was. Not any more. I left after the fighting by the river last spring. I am here because of the courage of Senjan I saw, and because my family are . . . my family were here.”
“You were in that fighting?”
“Yes.”
“So was I. Should I believe you?”
“I have not come this far to lie.”
“How were the cannons destroyed?”
“Men crossed the river with explosives and set them off by the artillery. I was with those already by the river. We saw the flames—people for a long way in all directions will have seen the flames.”
“And you crossed the water?”
“Eventually. We’d suffered more losses when explosives in the mud were set off with fire-arrows by your people on the other side.”
“This is so,” said the old man. “That is how we did it. And then?”
“And then we crossed and the Senjani were barricaded to the west between wood and water, and we killed almost all of them. At night some tried to escape through the trees and they were caught. But . . .”
“Yes?” said the old man.
“I think . . . I do not know this, but I think those going through the trees were distracting us from others who went down the river.”
“That is also true,” the old man said. He spat again.
“There was a waterfall,” Neven said. “I don’t think they could have survived, but I hope they did.”
“They didn’t,” said the other man. “I am the only one who came home.”
Neven looked at him. “I am sorry to hear it. They were more brave than any men I have known. They did great damage to an army.”
“Why are you here?” the old man asked.
Neven looked around. There was a crowd now, men and women. Not friendly faces. He hadn’t seen friendly faces since leaving the four farms. He said, “I tried to go home to Antunic. There is nothing there. So I thought I might come here. To find my family, and do what I can to make up for those lost.”
“One man?”
“I can’t be more than that,” Neven said.
“Do you know anything about the sea?”
“Nothing,” Neven said.
The old man—he would learn that his name was Tijan Lubic and he had escaped from the slaughter through the woods—spat another time into the dust, then he smiled.
“We’ll start by teaching you that,” he said. “There is a rumour your sister is fighting with Skandir, bringing us honour if it is true. I knew your grandfather well. You can have your family’s house, Neven Gradek, and you will be welcome among us. Come to the sanctuary. We’ll pray there, all of us, for you and your dead.”
“I don’t know how to do that properly yet,” Neven said. He was close to tears he realized, which would shame him.
“We’ll teach you that, too. But few of us do anything properly here, I have to say.”
There were smiles now. It was a hard place, it seemed, but not without generosity to go with courage.
They walked him across the square. The boy he’d seen by the tower stayed by his side on the way and in the sanctuary. His name, he whispered, was Damir, and he said he thought Neven’s sword was the finest he’d ever seen in his whole life.
—
HE STAYED MORE than a year, until the autumn that followed. They did teach him about boats and the sea. In spring he joined a raid (and then two others) south past Hrak Island towards lands held by Seressa on this coast (for salt, for timber). They boarded a merchant vessel flying the lion flag of that republic.
They were careful: looked for goods belonging to Asharites, and there was Kindath cloth. These were free to take. They left Seressini goods mostly untouched, though their raid leader did allow a cask of wine from Candaria—what men could be expected to not take any of that?
Neven discovered he liked the sea. The salt and spaces of it, the seabirds, and the dolphins they’d often see. Sea swells didn’t unsettle him, nor did storms when they came.
He taught the younger Senjani archery, starting with how to make bows and string them, and the best ways of fashioning arrows. Two girls joined them for this. There was a shortage of men in Senjan at that time. He had a house of his own, skills, was an obvious marriage prospect, even young as he was. He learned that women in Senjan made their own decisions as to where they’d spend a night, and that having a place of his own, with a way for someone to get in and out through the back, was a useful thing for a man learning the ways of women. He didn’t marry, though, didn’t allow it to be discussed.
His sister, they told him, had been like that. His sister was remembered.
His sister was why he left when he did. No one had word of her, though they asked down the coast. It wasn’t as if Skandir made his location easy to find. Assuming she was even with him, was still alive. The last sure knowledge of Danica was from Dubrava. She’d been employed by a merchant family there.
There were none of them alive but her and him, and he hadn’t looked back when he’d walked away in Sauradia. He’d wanted to, but he hadn’t.
So he made his decision and moved on again, looking for her. To Dubrava, by boat, in autumn. Some friends (he had friends by then) took him south. He knew how to pray to Jad by then, and they all offered the invocations in the sanctuary, as men did before going to sea.
It wasn’t intended to be a permanent leave-taking. He’d said that to two girls, and to young Damir, and also the raid leaders, who’d asked. He was going to see if anyone knew anything about his sister.
He was never in Senjan again. How can we ever presume to know what will come of our choices, our paths, the lives we live?
—
HISTORY DOES NOT proceed with anything like fairness or a recognition of valour or virtue. Senjan was gone, the walls broken and smashed, on both the harbour and the landward sides, less than a hundred years after this time. Matters of larger politics made the Senjani both unnecessary and a problem. They were scattered among villages and farms.
In later years, long after the shattered pieces of the walls had been carried away by farmers in carts to be used for buildings or stone fences to mark fields, all that remained of Senjan was a round tower near where the town had been. That was described, centuries after, as evidence of the strong, steady presence of the empire’s brave soldiers there, defending a vulnerable town.
Dubrava, however . . . Dubrava to the south never fell. Its walls were not breached. The republic by the sea, sowing treaties in all directions, placating and observing, trading, negotiating trade tariffs, dwindled, rose again, dwindled, but never died. There was an earthquake once. They rebuilt.
Three hundred years later the republic did surrender briefly, to an army from Ferrieres (Ferrieres had become very strong in that time). It was said by the cynical, and there are always those, that the citizens opened the gates and let the great besieging general and his troops come in so the claim could remain that the walls of Dubrava were never breached, for all eternity.
Eternity is too long for us. It is not a scale for men and women. We live by different, smaller measures, but there are stories we tell . . .
Their attempt to assassinate the head of the newest bank in Obravic could scarcely have turned out worse for Seressa.
This disaster took place in autumn, two years after Neven Gradek made his way south from Senjan by boat. In that same season of falling leaves, Pero Villani was painting Seressa’s newest duke, a former ambassador himself (for two years) to Obravic. It was his successor at the emperor’s court who was implicated in what happened.
Obravic would never, of course, take an accredited ambassador into custody or punish him personally, despite confessions obtained, but they did deny the man access to the emperor and his officials—making it necessary for a new ambassador to be appointed. Signore Arnesti returned home in disgrace.
In Seressa he was ruinously punished—financially. His reckless folly would end up costing the republic a vast sum. The events of that day in Obravic would be—were already being—reported around the world, with consequences to their bankers and merchants everywhere, bringing rapture and delight to the enemies of the republic.
The recently elected Duke Orso Faleri would spend considerable time and attention addressing this unfortunate matter. It took years and a flood of money before the effects could be said to have truly receded, making it just another in a list of transgressions—and everyone had those.
—
ON THE DAY his guards have told him he is meant to be killed, Mari
n Djivo, head of the newly opened Djivo Bank in Obravic, lending funds to the imperial court itself, is not greatly concerned.
Afterwards, his principal regret will be that he was not able to deal with any of the would-be assassins himself. He is, as is somewhat widely known, adept with a sword. On the other hand, it would have reflected badly on the bank’s security should their head have been compelled to draw a blade to defend himself, and so he never did so that day.
The Djivo guards are—and have been for some time now—exceptionally good. They need to be. The family has been making ambitious incursions into the cloth trade north, and now into the world of banking, with a view to vying with Seressa as lenders to the courts of the Jaddite world.
They have started in Obravic. He has been here for some months, and their immediate plans include Ferrieres and the court there. Esperaña is possible, and Anglcyn he has thought about. Emperors and kings always need funds—for wars, and for expanding their reach and esteem in other ways. In the coming world, as Marin sees it, bankers will hold great power, and he has persuaded his father—and others in Dubrava, backing them—that there is no reason why Seressa’s dominance in this need remain unchallenged.
The Seressinis always respond badly when challenged. Hence the well-trained guards, and the events earlier this day, Marin is thinking. He is back in his Obravic mansion, receiving a stream of concerned visitors in the front reception room.
He knows—everyone knows already—that this was an ambitious man’s personal folly. But an ambassador represents his court or council, and Signore Arnesti’s mistake is therefore Seressa’s.
Marin has more people here with him in Obravic than is widely grasped. His men learned of the plot quite easily, told the broad details, deducing the secondary ones.
The men who were to kill him were not in any obvious way tied to Seressa. They were to feign a robbery attempt as the Dubravae banker walked through the street. He would be hacked to death. Then the assassins would be killed—by Seressinis—after fleeing to what they had been told was a refuge, where their payment and a secret way out of Obravic would be waiting for them.