The woman’s partner, a middle-aged man with bone-grey hair, bowed his welcome. “Ash Splinter. The lady is Ash Bough. The sorrow we must witness is as intricate as the Imperial gardens.”
A third woodlander joined the conversation, a portly young man with a secretive face. “Or perhaps we celebrate a painful joy as complex as roots stirring at the long-awaited touch of rain.” He shrugged. “Maple Stem.”
“Are you of that mind?” Ash Bough asked frigidly.
“The Emperor has called the army back to fight the fire. The cruelest cut makes way for the fairest blossom, so it is said.”
Ash Splinter smiled without warmth. “And the aptest maxim makes way for silence.”
Jo grinned, but Rope felt dull as a dogfish. He knew that somehow they were talking about Hilt’s death, but he was baffled by the woodlanders’ brittle smiles and slanted words.
They climbed a long flight of steps carved into a high mound south of the city. The citizens of the Arbor ringed the howe with murmurs manifold as the voice of the sea. Behind them the gongs slowed like a dying heart that staggers and stops. In the center of the hill’s flat crown, lying atop its wooden tower, Hilt’s body came finally to rest.
“Switch!” hissed a voice from the darkness.
Ash Splinter and Ash Bough looked around in consternation. Maple Stem bowed. “A pleasure,” he murmured, backing into the crowd. “I have a sudden wish to observe the sacred rights from the other side of the hill.”
“As do we,” Ash Splinter remarked, taking Ash Bough’s arm and guiding her away.
“But we have not had a chance to give you our names!” Jo said suddenly.
“Quite all right. Perhaps later—”
The haunt was implacable. “I would not dream of such discourtesy.” Ash Splinter paused and smiled with obvious annoyance, glancing ever so briefly at a lean man who approached from a part of the hillside now oddly unpopulated.
“My name is Jo. Rope and Brook are my companions. I pray you, will you suffer our company a little longer? We would doubtless benefit from your perceptive commentary on the mystery at hand.”
“We are but dilettantes,” Ash Bough said quickly. “We would never presume.” She bowed with careful courtesy to the newcomer. “Particularly when you have a chance to profit from the observations of so profound a sage as Bronze Switch.” She took a step backwards as she spoke. Ash Splinter had already vanished into the gloom.
Switch was a slender man nearing the end of his prime. His eyes were hollow and his face gaunt, as if years of hardship and fierce passion had burned all excess away. His lidded eyes glowed bronze. Something about him made Rope uneasy, a quality of hidden danger, as if fire would spray forth from those golden eyes if the woodlander ever chose to widen them.
The newcomer bowed to the departing Ash Bough and laughed. “I am anything but profound,” he said. “You will not need my help. Island eyes are weak under leaf-shade, but when the Spark flies there will be light enough to see.”
“How did you know we were islanders?” Jo said.
“I had occasion to stay in Delta for some years. I heard the sea in your voices.”
The Palace mourners chanted around the funerary tower. A ring of musicians answered, playing a lament of curious savagery on tambras and chiming stels. One by one the Bronze women approached to lay gifts upon the funerary pyre: instruments, wreaths, lacquered bracelets and garments of silk, a kite, liquor and weapons and bottles of scent. A songbird in a wicker cage who poured out his heart as if knowing what was to come. Last of all came the Emperor, bearing a puppet within a paper cage, its shadow thrown by a gulping candle.
The crowd had drawn away, leaving the islanders alone with Bronze Switch. “Why do they burn the Emperor’s son?” Rope asked. “It seems mad to make a fire after this drought.”
“Perhaps it is, but fire is the only fit end for the noble. The Emperor’s son could have no less.” When Switch spoke again his words sheathed a sharp memory. “In the forest, I think, we know more of desire than do those who live by the cold damp sea. In a tree you see the record of a thousand lusts. Every leaf and twig is clawing at the sun; every root is seeking out the rain. We desire love, and wealth, and plenty, and the power to wither others, or make them grow. In our thirst for knowledge we trick the mute world into speaking her secrets. Desire drives us, and dares us to be great. And consumes us in the end.”
Brook said, “But desire sometimes leads to evil.”
Switch smiled unpleasantly. For the first time Rope noticed he had a sword at his side. “Of course. Every Spark calls up a host of shadows. For instance, I could kill you all. Here before these hundreds. You have no seconds and no clan.”
Rope gripped the hilt of his notched sword.
“The Spark burns fiercest within a Bronze,” Switch remarked. “Most of us do not survive. Some compulsion drives us into risk, or atrocity.”
“Yet discipline is necessary,” Jo said. The stranger turned to her and his eyes widened. She was no longer a woman, but a lean man, even taller than Switch.
“True,” Switch said. “But discipline may slip. It has happened before. A Bronze has given in to impulse. Has slain several men and a woman too. For some slight offense, just enough reason to reduce the penalty from death to exile for five dreary years beside the mumbling sea. It has happened.”
Jo nodded. Now she wore the Emperor’s face. She reached out with a man’s thin hand, fevered and dry as burning paper, to stroke Switch’s cheek. Her curving bronze fingernails came to rest just below his jaw, where the great vein beat hot within his throat.
Switch’s right hand was resting on the pommel of his sword, light as a mantis on a blade of grass. Awkwardly, Rope unsheathed his sword, knowing it would be no more use against this lean woodlander than it would against the sea.
Switch hooded his eyes. “Happily, discipline is the great virtue of the mature Bronze.”
Jo’s voice was a knife sliding from a metal sheath. “I think the Emperor’s son would agree. Were he still alive.”
Switch stood very still, not speaking. His life beat below the haunt’s long nails.
The Prince’s dirge stopped, leaving a great silence. A torch flared into life and passed its flame. One by one a ring of red fires sprang up around the funeral tower, gleaming like wolves’ eyes. The crowd held its breath.
The firelight drained slowly from Jo’s hand, leaving it white as salt. It dropped to her side. “I think we should flee the call of the flame.”
“Perhaps that would be as well.” Switch bowed crisply to Brook and Rope, but his eyes returned to the haunt as he backed away. “May you find whatever your heart desires.”
Brook reached for Rope’s hand. “I can tell a curse when I hear one.”
After Switch had gone, the other woodlanders muttered and did not come near the islanders.
Standing alone before the funeral tower, the Emperor drew back his head and gave a long, shuddering cry that curled into the night like smoke, bitter with loss. A second time it came, and a third. Then three times the circle of torches wailed, shaking off sparks of grief, and three times all the citizens of the Arbor cried out, three roars hurled at the stars. And when the Prince had been mourned nine times, the torches leapt spinning into the air and the flowers exploded in a burst of flame.
Oils had been sprinkled on them, both the sweet and the bitter; swiftly were they devoured. Heat rolled from the burning tower. Higher the blaze rose, and higher still, until the thorns on the palanquin burst into spikes of flame, and Hilt’s cage became a lace of fire. The night shook with hot thunder and a mad wind rushed amidst the burning flowers.
The Emperor stood alone before the blazing tower until a spar fell crashing to the ground. Then he took a pair of tongs and reached into the flames, pulling out embers from the fire and placing them in a brass box held by a waiting servant. Only when the box was full did he suffer an attendant, wincing in the blistering heat, to guide him from the hilltop. His people f
ollowed, looking back in fear and awe.
Brook watched the Emperor leave. One withered hand rested on the brass box. “I wonder what will happen to him?”
Jo’s voice was like the wind in a broken tower. “He will be cold, I think. Cold as Ash was, now that the Spark has left him. It was the Spark that made all this, the murder and the madness and the war itself.”
Behind them the pyre hissed and creaked, swaying drunkenly. Then, with a roar like the angry sea, the tower collapsed into itself, hurling a comet of flame at the heavens and spreading a cloud of stinging sparks over the fleeing onlookers. As people rushed around them Jo stopped and held Brook’s eyes. “The great has become small, you see. I have the Spark now. Now all that was between the sea and the forest is between you and me.”
It is the same story, Brook thought. But the leaves have fallen, and the tale will finish among the roots.
I wish I did not love her.
I wish I could end it with a single cut.
SEVEN’S LINE
CHAPTER 19
THE SHADOW WOOD
“VANISHED.” SHALE shook her head at the darkening coast. Somewhere in the gloom Hazel Twist’s troops were winding their way back home. “Gone as if the forest had swallowed them whole.” Behind her on the middle thwarts Reed and Foam nodded, and in the stern Seven turned his head, steering by the feel of the tiller in his hand, looking back at the line of grim cedars silhouetted against the darkening sky.
They were returning from the mainland. Three months had passed since the recapture of Thumbtip; two weeks since Reed had returned with a little flotilla of starry-eyed volunteers from the Middle Islands. Seven had almost three hundred under his command now, most of whom sailed beside them tonight, glimmers of wash and snatches of laughter abeam.
They had much to celebrate, for after months of training it now seemed certain they would not have to go to war. The woodlanders had abandoned Delta, fleeing the empty sea for the shelter of the leaves. The islanders had sailed in to the first island that morning, leaving Glint with their wounded along with Pond to set the city right again. The rest had headed for the mainland to make sure the forest army had really gone. They had.
Now as the sun set, the sixty small ships of Seven’s navy made a brave show, their sails humming with every twitch of breeze, their little lamps swaying like a crowd of fireflies rocking over the deep, heading for the greater lights of Delta’s harbor, and home. But Seven’s ship was strangely somber. The fresh landward wind whispered around her pennants and lines. Her spreading wash hissed out into the night. Seven shook his head. “This was not our victory.”
“That makes it only greater,” Foam said. “Glorious death is still death to me. We saw enough of war on Thumbtip for my taste.”
“Like fencing with a shadow, this Hazel Twist. Why did he send his men to build those camps on the mainland shore?”
“To get them off safely, a few at a time,” Foam said. “He never wanted a fight, not really. I think he was giving them something to do, something he could justify. He could tell the Emperor they were ‘digging in’ while they studied shipbuilding and sailor-craft. But taking the islands was a hopeless task and he knew it. He kept his men in order without ever risking them again to the open sea. After the squall that caught those who fled Thumbtip, I can’t say I blame him.”
Shale nodded. “I thought those signals from the mainland two nights ago were going to mean the start of a big attack, but they must have called the retreat instead. I wonder if Brook and Jo had anything to do with it?”
“Is my mood dark because there was no battle?” Seven said. “Am I that shallow? I do not believe so. I do not want more glory. And yet . . . We stopped Hazel Twist, but something else called him back. How can I be sure he will not return? My heart tells me we are not done with one another, he and I. I cannot shake his shadow from my thoughts.”
“Then woe to him!” Reed said with a soft laugh. “And woe to all who stand before the Warrior’s champion!”
“Hah! No more of that! With the woodlanders gone we need no more of that bilge. Chosen of the Gull Warrior! Was that your own idea, Reed, or did someone put you up to it?” Seven looked darkly at his lieutenants.
Foam fussed with the sheets. Shale gazed innocently up at the sky. “The stars are dimming. Fog’s coming up.”
Reed laughed again. “You must admit my singing did its business. Two thirds of your sailors heard my song, I think. And believe me, they did not leave Sealsbeard and Telltale to come to Delta’s aid! They came because of you; because they wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with the only hero the islands have produced in living memory.”
“I did what you made me do. You with your songs and tales.” The night air was turning damp. Seven pulled his cloak more tightly around his shoulders. He stared at his sword, lying sheathed before him with its butt on his bench and its tip on the aft thwart, like a narrow bridge over a dim gulf. “I do not like being smaller than my own story.”
“Sometimes one is a ship, and words are the wind,” Foam said. His voice was soft in the falling gloom. “No matter what touch you put to the tiller, the wrong words can blow you off course. If people say you are light, you come to believe them. A light thing is easily lifted, or moved aside.”
“No one ever said you were light!” Shale said.
“No one ever built me a boat either, though they built one for Rope.” Foam shrugged. “I do not blame them. I never watched narrowly for my own success. And then somehow I looked up and life was passing me by, and my playmates were no longer children, but no one believed I was a man. Including me.”
Including you, he added to himself. The long summer he had spent with Shale was bittersweet to him. The campaign against the woodlanders had made them friends, but it had not made them lovers. Here, with Seven’s army, he had grown greatly in her eyes, and in his own. Each dawn he felt more keenly how much he needed her in his life. Each sunset made them better friends, but nothing more. And if they could not be lovers now, in a new world where all the old rules were broken, how could he hope not to dwindle in her eyes when they returned at last to Clouds End, and home?
“Your people will know you for a man after this summer’s work,” Reed said. “You have been a captain of the islands. Everyone who knows of the war will know your name.”
“Taste that!” Shale said. “We are storied in our own right, Foam.”
“Great stories turn to small ones, and great fires fall to ash. This tale ends at the hearth, the Singer said. We won’t be famous to anyone on Clouds End. This war will be only a story there.”
“Night has come,” Seven said.
The sun had set. Darkness rose from the east. The line of bobbing lights that was Seven’s command grew ragged as they sailed out into the gulf; they seldom heard laughter anymore, or snatches of song. As Shale had predicted, a fog was rolling in from the sea. The air was chill and damp. Waves muttered at their prow and the quartering swell made the wooden spars creak and lift as every quiet roller went by. Coming from the darkness aft, Seven’s low voice was like the voice of the wind itself. “I will tell you about stories,” he said.
“It was just before my Naming that Switch came to Delta. We had seen no more than three or four woodlanders in living memory. He was a sensation, with his lordly manners and his steel. I already knew that I could never be a shipwright. Whatever I did, I had to do it as well as my father.
“I fell in love with Switch, with everything about him. He meant adventure, and courage, and excellence—and nothing about boats! I begged him to take me on, and begged my father to hire him. Looking back, I believe he thought the sea people soft. Not lazy, exactly. Untempered. As if nothing happened in our simple lives to test our mettle. Of course, brilliant as he was, Switch was from the forest; he could not understand the sea.
“A tragedy lay behind him; he had been exiled for killing a Bronze in self-defense. I spent more time with him than I think his own family could have done, from the a
ge of twelve to sixteen, and yet I never knew anyone who seemed so alone. That hurt me then. I was a good pupil, but I could never blunt the edge of his loneliness. Perhaps the world was too strange for him, out from under the forest eaves. Or perhaps the woodlanders slipped past his guard when they cast him out so unjustly, and the part of him that dealt with other men was wounded and could not heal.
“All this by the side. Talking of stories and names, and how our stories drive us like the wind behind our sails, I remember now a story Switch told me once. I did not understand it at the time.
“I must have been fourteen when he told me the tale of the Shadow Wood. I had not done well in practice that morning (I forget why) and I was crying with rage at my own stupidity. ‘Shh then, it is only a lesson,’ Switch said.
“ ‘Not good enough!’ I said. ‘I want it so much, and I have tried so hard, for so long, and still I do it so badly.’
“ ‘What do you want then?’
“ ‘To be the greatest swordsman in the world,’ I said.
“He laughed. ‘A tidy little ambition! But how can that be? Have you forgotten me?’
“ ‘One day you will be old,’ I said. And then, seeing him flinch, I said, ‘When you step down, I do not want some forest bastard to take your place and his master to get the glory. Not only would I have failed, I would have wasted the teaching of the greatest master in the world.’
“He smiled then, in a curious way that had little to do with laughter. ‘Let us rest for a time,’ he said. ‘I think you will make a reputation for yourself, Seven. But it is time I taught you wisdom as well as weaponry. There is fire in your heart and steel in your bones, but you are still an islander, and islanders are ignorant. While we rest I will tell you a story of my people, a story of reputations, and of a young man not unlike yourself, and of the gifts given by old men like me.’
“And so I sat down on the sandy beach, just a little up from where we swam ashore on Spearpoint—Remember, Shale?—Sweat was still streaming into my eyes, and my legs were trembling, but by the time his story was done my limbs were still, and my sweat had long turned as cold as the fog that gathers around us now.”