Children of Earth and Sky (4 page)

It seemed the Council of Twelve had decided the raiders had finally become too much of a nuisance to be endured. There had been mockery: songs and poetry. Seressa was not accustomed to being a source of amusement. They claimed this sea, they named it after themselves. And, more importantly, they guaranteed the safety of all ships coming up to dock by their canals for
their merchants and markets. The heroes of Senjan, raiding to feed themselves, and for the greater glory of Jad, were a problem.

Danica offered a thought to her grandfather.

Yes, a thorn in the lion's paw
, he agreed.

The Seressinis called themselves lions. A lion was on their flag and their red document seals. There were apparently lions on columns in the square before their palace, on either side of the slave market.

Danica preferred to call them wild dogs, devious and dangerous. She thought she could kill some of them tonight, if they sent a skiff into the bay, intending to set fire to the Senjani boats drawn up on the strand below the walls.

—

HE WASN'T GOING
to say he
loved
her or anything like that. That wasn't the way the world went on Hrak Island. But Danica Gradek did drift into his dreams, and had done so for a while now. On the island and in Senjan there were women who interpreted dreams for a fee. Mirko didn't need them for these.

She was unsettling, Danica. Different from any of the girls on Hrak, or in the town when he made his way across to trade fish or wine.

You had to trade very cautiously these days. Seressa had forbidden anyone to deal with the pirates this spring. There were war galleys. You'd be flogged or branded if caught, could even be hanged, depending on who did the catching and how much your family could afford in bribes. Seressa almost certainly had spies in Senjan, too, so you needed to be careful that way, as well. Seressa had spies everywhere, was the general view.

Danica was younger than him but always acted as if she were older. She could laugh, but not always when you'd said something you thought was amusing. She was too cold, the other men said, you'd freeze your balls making love to her. They talked about her, though.

She handled a bow better than any of them. Better than anyone Mirko knew, anyhow. It was unnatural in a woman,
wrong
, ought to have been displeasing, but for Mirko it wasn't. He didn't know why. Her father, it was said, had been a famous fighter in his day. A man of reputation. He'd died in a hadjuk village raid, somewhere on the other side of the mountains.

Danica was tall. Her mother had been, too. She had yellow hair and extremely light blue eyes. There was northern blood in the family. Her grandfather had had eyes like that. He'd been a scary figure when he came to Senjan, scarred and fierce, thick moustaches, a border hero of the old style, men said.

She'd kissed him once, Danica. Just a few days ago, in fact. He'd been ashore south of the town walls with two casks of wine before dawn, thin blue moon setting. She and three others he knew had been waiting on the strand to buy from him. They'd used torches to signal from the beach.

It happened he had learned something not long before and—on an impulse—he'd asked her to walk a little away from the others. There had been jokes, of course. Mirko didn't mind, and she hadn't looked as if she did. It was hard to read her and he wouldn't claim to be good at understanding women, anyhow.

He told her that three days earlier he'd been part of a group supplying the war galley in the northern channel. He'd overheard talk about sending a boat to fire the Senjani ones drawn up on the strand. Bored men on ships, especially mercenaries, could grow careless. He said if it were him doing it, he'd do it on a no-moons night.
Of course
, she said.

He thought if she was the one he told she could reap the benefit of reporting the tidings to the raid captains and she'd be happy with him for that.

Danica Gradek kissed really well, it turned out. Fiercely, even hungrily. She wasn't quite as tall as he was. He wasn't sure, remembering
the moment, if it had been passion, or triumph, or the anger everyone said was in her, but he'd wanted more. Of the kiss, of her.

“Good lad,” she said, stepping back.

Lad?
That he didn't like. “You'll warn the captains?”

“Of course,” she said.

It never occurred to him she might be lying.

—

SHE WAS PROTE
CTING
the boy, she'd explained to her zadek. Mirko wasn't a boy, but she thought of him that way. She thought of most of the men her age that way. A few were different—she could admire skill and bravery—but those often turned out to be the ones who most fiercely rejected the idea of a woman as a raider. They hated that she was better with her bow than them, but she wasn't, ever, going to hide what she could do. She'd made that decision a long time ago.

The heroes of Senjan, devoted equally to Jad and independence, also had a reputation for violence. That last, in the eyes of the world, included their women. There were horrified, wide-eyed stories told of Senjani women streaming down from hills or woods to a triumphant battlefield at day's end—wild, like wolves—to lick and drink the blood from the wounds of slain foes, or even those not yet dead! Tearing or hacking limbs off and letting blood drip down gaping throats. Senjani women believed, the tale went, that if they drank blood their unborn sons would be stronger warriors.

Foolish beyond words. But useful. It was a good thing to have people afraid of you if you lived in a dangerous part of the world.

But Senjan didn't think it good for a woman, not long out of girlhood, to believe—let alone seek to prove—she could equal a man, a
real
fighter. That, they didn't like much, the heroes.

At least she wasn't strong with a sword. There was someone who had spied on her throwing daggers at targets outside the walls and,
well, according to him she did that extremely well. She ran fast, could handle a boat, knew how to move silently, and . . .

Some reckless, very brave man, the general view became, needed to marry the ice-cold, pale-eyed Gradek girl and get a baby into her. End this folly of a woman raiding. She might be the daughter of Vuk Gradek, who'd had renown in his day, inland, but she was a
daughter
of a hero, not a son.

One of his sons had died with him; the other, a child, had been taken by the hadjuks in the raid on Antunic, their village. He was likely a eunuch by now in Asharias or some provincial city, or being trained for the djannis—their elite, Jaddite-born infantry. He might even one day come back attacking them.

It happened. One of the old, hard sorrows of the border.

The girl did want to join the raids, it was no secret. She spoke of vengeance for her family and village. Had been talking that way for years.

She'd openly asked the captains. Wanted to go through the pass into Osmanli lands on a raid for sheep and goats, or men and women to ransom or sell. Or she'd ask to go in the boats chasing merchant ships in the Seressini Sea—which they might actually be able to start doing again if this accursed blockade would only lift.

Danica knew the talk about her. Of course she did. She'd even let Kukar Miho watch her practising, thinking himself cleverly unseen behind (rustling) bushes, as she threw knives at olives on a tree near the watchtower.

This past winter the clerics had begun speaking to her about marrying, offering to negotiate with families on her behalf since she had no parent or brother to do so. Some of her mother's friends had made the same offer.

She was still mourning, she'd said, eyes lowered, as if shy. It hadn't been a year yet, she'd said.

Her mourning year would end in summer. They'd chant a service for her mother and grandfather in the sanctuary, along with
so many others, then she'd need to think of another excuse. Or pick a man.

She was perfectly happy to sleep with one when a certain mood overtook her. She'd discovered some time ago that cups of wine and lovemaking could ease her on occasion. She closed off her grandfather in her mind on those nights, relieved she was able to do so. They never discussed it.

But being with a man by the strand or in a barn outside the walls (only one time in her own house—it had felt wrong in the morning and she'd never done it again) was as much as she wanted right now. If she married, her life would change.
End
, she was half inclined to say, though she knew that was excessive. A life ended when you died.

In any case, she'd told her grandfather the truth: she
was
protecting Mirko of Hrak by not reporting his information to the captains or the military. If the Senjani set a full ambush on the beach for a night attack, the Seressinis would realize someone had given their plan away. They were clever enough to do that, Jad knew, and vicious enough to torture a story out of the islanders. They might or might not arrive at Mirko, but why risk it? One guard out in a boat—that could be routine.

If she'd revealed Mirko's story she'd have been asked who told her, and it would have been impossible (and wrong) to not tell the captains. She wanted to join the raiders, not anger them. And the Seressini spy inside the walls (of course there was a spy, there was always a spy) would almost certainly learn whatever she said, see the preparations. They'd likely cancel the attack, if it was happening. If Mirko was right.

No, doing this alone was the prudent approach, she'd told her grandfather, choosing the word a little mischievously. Unsurprisingly, he had sworn at her. He had been legendary for his tongue in his day. She was developing a little of that reputation, but it was different for a woman.

Everything in the world was. Danica wondered sometimes why the god had made it so.

She really did have good eyesight. She saw a flame appear and vanish to her right, north, on the headland that framed that side of the bay. She caught her breath.

Jad sear his soul! What pustulent, slack-bowelled fucking traitor is that?
her grandfather snarled.

She saw it again, quickly there and gone, moving right to left. A light on the headland could only be there to guide a boat. And to do that in these deadly waters you needed to know the bay and its rocks and shallows.

Tico had seen it too. He growled in his throat. She silenced him. It was a long bowshot to that headland at night. Too long from a boat. Danica began rowing again, heading that way, north, against the light breeze, but looking west as she went.

Quietly, girl!

I am.

Nothing to be seen yet. The Seressinis would have a long way to go past the island from where the galley blocked the channel. But that light on the headland was signalling a path through rocks and reefs. Swinging right now, then left, held briefly in the middle, then hidden, most likely by a cloak. It meant someone was coming, and that he could see them.

She gauged the distance, shipped her oars, took her bow, nocked an arrow.

Too far, Danica.

It isn't, zadek. And if he's up there they are on their way.

He was silent in her thoughts. Then said,
He's holding the lantern in his right hand, guiding them left and right. You can tell where his body is by how—

I know, zadek. Shh. Please.

She waited on the wind, the small boat moving as the breeze moved the sea.

She was still watching two ways: that headland light, and where the channel opened, by the dark bulk of the island.

She heard them before she saw anything.

They were rowing, not silently. They were not expecting anyone out here and they were coming towards her.

Splash of oars in water, Tico stiffening again. Danica hushed him, stared into the night, and then it was there, clearing the dark bulk of the island, one small light. Seressinis on the water, come to burn boats on the strand. She was awake, this was not a dream of fire coming.

There was anger in her, no fear. She was the hunter tonight. They didn't know that. They thought they were.

I don't need to kill him
, she said in her mind.

He needs to die.

Later. If we take him alive we can ask questions.

In truth, it might have been hard for her, killing that one on the headland: whoever he was, he was going to be someone she knew. She had decided it was time to learn how to kill, but she hadn't thought it might be a face she knew right at the start.

I ought to have realized they'd need someone to guide them in.

Might have been with them in the boat
, her grandfather said.
Might still be someone with them. They tend to be cautious.

She couldn't resist.
Like me?

He swore. She smiled. And suddenly felt calm. She was in the midst of events now, not anticipating they might happen. Time had run, after almost ten years it had carried her to this moment, this boat on black water with her bow.

She could see the shape of the approaching craft, dark on darkness. They had one light, would mean to douse it when they came nearer to shore. She heard a voice, trying to be quiet, but carrying, if anyone was in the bay to hear.

“Over other way, he's saying. Rocks just there.”

Speaking Seressini. She was glad of that.

Jad guide your arm and eye
, her grandfather said. His voice in her mind was very cold.

Danica stood up, balanced herself. She had trained for this, so many times. The wind was easy, and the sea. She fitted an arrow to the string, drew the bowstring back. She could see them in the boat now. It looked like six men. Maybe seven.

She loosed her first arrow. Was nocking the second as that one flew.

“Y
ou don't like being inside me?”

Sometimes a girl likes to stay close in bed, after, be held, and Marin doesn't mind doing this. They have given him the gift of their intimacy, taking a risk. He may be a cynical man, but is not an ungenerous one, he hopes.

But this girl is getting dressed, briskly, as she asks her question, the curves of her body disappearing beneath clothing. There has been no lingering. She is young but hardly innocent. Quite a few of the well-bred girls in Dubrava, in his experience, lose their innocence early. It is not, on the whole, an innocent city.

He dresses as well. He crosses to the window, looks down. The sunset promenade has begun below her room above the Straden. If he waits he'll see her parents walk by. And his, of course.

He says, looking out, “I like it very much. I don't like the idea of something else growing inside you, after.”

She laughs behind him. “Really, Marin. You think women can't count?”

He turns to look at her. She is coiling and pinning her hair. He has come to hate these moments when two people, having
lain together, reassemble clothing and appearance, armour for the world. Even with courtesans, he doesn't like this. Intimacy, even a casual intimacy, ought to last longer, he thinks.

“I believe many women end up counting towards childbirth and ruin their lives. We are not as predictable as we like to think.”

“Well, you certainly aren't, Marin Djivo.”

He makes a face. “I do try not to be.”

Her hair is pinned now, beneath a cap again. She looks at him. “Am I as . . . pleasurable as the girls on Plavko Street?”

“Easily,” he lies.

She smiles, slyly. “I am so easy?”

She is clever. Men and women in Dubrava tend to be. The republic would not survive otherwise. He smiles back. “You were hard to conquer, then soft when you decided to be.”

She laughs. Then an inquiring look again. “As skilled as the courtesans in Seressa, Marin?”

“Very much so.” He is a good liar, as it happens.

“I don't believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Because everyone knows what a good liar you are.”

She won't know why he laughs aloud, but he sees it pleases her. He likes women; it is a matter of some regret that he finds himself growing tired of this particular dance. Maybe it is time to be wed, after all?

This is their third encounter up here. He is thinking it should be their last, for her sake, though he isn't vain enough to imagine he's the only man she's brought to this room. Dubrava is a wealthy city, an important port, but it is still small, risky for this sort of visit. She is eighteen, and their families have shared cargoes and ships and insurance for years.

She says, as if tracing the same path to a different port, “My mother spoke of you after sanctuary yesterday morning. Said you might make a strong marriage.”

“I'm flattered,” he says.

“I told her you had a terrible reputation. She said handsome men often do.” She smiles.

He takes his leave a moment later, out a rear window on this upper floor, jumping across to the lower roof of the house beside then descending to the empty backstreet that way. He has done this before, other windows, other descents. You can call it exciting. Or not, after a certain number of occasions.

He walks west a little towards the harbour, then crosses to join the evening promenade. Friends call his name, fall into stride with him. Everyone knows Marin Djivo. Everyone among the merchants knows everyone. It is the way of things here.

He watches the others, his friends, their fathers, as they reach the eastern end by the gate and turn. It is said in Dubrava that as they do the evening stroll along the Straden—the wide street from the Rector's Palace to the landward gate—you can always tell who has a ship at sea.

Those men will invariably lift their heads from whatever conversation they are having when they reach the end of the street and turn back west.

They will be looking towards the harbour. They can't help themselves. Word can come at any moment: a ship returning, tidings of a ship lost, or taken by pirates. Messages of fortune or disaster arriving from the port behind the palace.

Who could
not
look to see if anything was happening, even if only a few moments had gone by since the last quick glance? A merchant who traded on the god's sea always had a part of his heart out on the wide waters. Imagination conjuring creatures from the deep, lightning storms, wild winds, Asharite corsairs in the open sea south, or Senjani raiders in these, their home waters.

There are so many things to fear when your life is bound, as with ropes, to the sea. So how should a man with a ship away from
port not listen and look for a cry or commotion from the western end of a crowded street?

Marin Djivo, whose family owns three ships outright and often has goods carried on those of other merchants, has spent much of his life observing people in his small republic. He has seen this involuntary lifting of the head in friends (and not-quite-friends). He fights it in himself, as best he can, being the sort of man who dislikes being a slave to habit or fashion.

It is also too soon for tidings, he tells himself, bowing to the stylishly dressed wife and daughter of Radic Matko as they approach. It is early in spring and the
Blessed Ingacia
has gone a long way east, to Ammuz. The crew will have wintered in the port of Khatib there, awaiting the grain harvest among the small Jaddite colony permitted by the Asharites (with customs fees and bribes paid, of course).

Marin's father had established this routine years ago. One of their ships always winters in Khatib. It is a hardship for the sailors and captains and the Djivos pay them handsomely for it, but if that ship catches the earliest good winds of spring it can be back this way well before anyone else, with grain and spices, sometimes silk or wine, and being
before anyone else
is how fortunes are made.

Or lost, if the earliest winds of spring prove treacherous instead, if a late storm comes, winter's last gale. You gambled with cargoes and lives all the time, and prayed a great deal, as a consequence. It was said that an experienced Dubravae merchant was sensitive to
everything
, like a woman at a ball or dinner party assessing the subtle currents of the room.

The Matko girl, smiling as they pass each other, is soft and pretty.
She knows it, too
, Marin thinks. He is familiar with all the well-bred girls in Dubrava. And they know each man—older sons, younger sons, widowers. The families are not numerous, but no man or woman can easily marry outside their ranks. It makes for
challenging domestic planning, but the women of the republic are good at this, of necessity.

Marin Djivo is thirty years old in a city where men of that age might wed and start a family. He is the younger son, however, with a brother in the earliest stages of marriage negotiations. It gives him a little time.

His father and brother are on both the Rector's Great Council
and
the Small, which means that the usual close-watching of each family ensures that the third Djivo, the clever-tongued one, is relegated to minor functions such as monitoring how the fire and quarantine regulations are observed, and duly reporting back to the councils.

He puts a good face on this but he loathes it with a passion that startles him sometimes. He is not a man naturally submissive to rules or regulations—or the monitoring of them. He spends as much time as he can on their ships, most often the short run northwest to Seressa. He has become skilled at trading there, his father trusts him among the Seressinis. You can hate and fear Seressa, but it is the best market in the world, and their own smaller republic always needs to acknowledge that.

Another mother with two daughters passes. He lifts his hat and bows again. He'd had encounters with the younger one last year, once coming close to being caught by the sister. One needs to be careful, but there are ways. Usually the women find them.

It had been with a true sense of discovery that he'd learned, when still young, that the well-bred women of Dubrava (married or otherwise) chafed under the formalities of social interaction and piety quite as much as the young men did.

A life-changing revelation, for a time. It has begun to pall. The pettiness of such encounters, the urgent furtiveness—exciting, then less so.

Kata Matko's eyes, holding his a moment as they passed, hint at much, as had Elena Orsat's, whom he has left upstairs just now.
Either is likely to make a handsome wife for someone soon. Indeed, it might be judged by their mothers that the younger Djivo son was due to be tamed into marriage a little more quickly than most, for everyone's good. Perhaps as soon as the older one was wed. He came from a very significant family, after all.

He will probably accept that, Marin is thinking on a pleasant evening in spring. There have been times when his dreams have been more encompassing, but there are only so many ways you can fight the world as it is given to you, and his will be far—very far—from a dismal fate or future.

He and his friends reach the inland gate. They touch the white stone on the right-side wall for ships' luck, and turn back. Everyone always waits until they reach the fountain nearest the wall, then they glance up towards the harbour. Marin does not. Small things. Small things you do to not be the same as everyone around you.

Then he hears the cannon, and of course he does look. The cannon is a signal.

Someone is running as fast as he can up the street, and Marin knows the boy: he is one of theirs. The runner skids to a stop before Marin's father, walking with others just ahead. The boy is speaking rapidly, gesturing, excited. Marin sees his father smile and then make the sign of the sun disk with both hands before his heart, in thanks and praise.

He strides quickly forward—and hears the tidings himself. You can be jaded, often bored, dream of a different life (with no clear idea of what that might be), but your heart will quicken at moments like this. Other merchants gather around offering congratulations, some hiding envy.

It seems the
Blessed Ingacia
has come home. First ship of the spring.

“It was
not
a girl!” Captain Zani shouted for the third time. He had a carrying, heavy voice, useful at sea, very likely. “My lords of the council, I deny that!”

The Duke of Seressa winced. He had discovered over the past while that loud noises increasingly irritated him, and he was already disturbed tonight.

Was it impossible, he wondered, for civilized men to discuss matters of state without raising their voices? When had everyone become so loud? He often had thoughts, lately, of withdrawing from his office—to prayer, and to quiet. It was proper for a man to guide his soul towards Jad as his days neared their end.

Duke Ricci had been elected nineteen years ago. Absent violence (not unknown), one was Duke of Seressa, heading the Council of Twelve, for life, or until choosing to step aside. He wasn't young, he hadn't been young nineteen years ago. But the divisions in the council were extreme just now. His departure, the voting for his successor, could plunge the republic into chaos.

He detested chaos.

“Your denial,” he said to the loud, choleric man standing in front of him, “is hardly of weight, Captain, though it is certainly understandable, given that they were
your
men sent out and killed. We have evidence before us as to how they died.”

He watched from his shadowed (cushioned) seat at the head of the table as this man, Zani, perspiring heavily, tried to draw himself up haughtily, and failed.

The man was too afraid. Captain Erilli beside him, the duke saw, was being careful not to smile. The deaths mattered, but so did the fact that both commanders had failed in their assigned task. Erilli would be swinging back and forth between pleasure at seeing the other man squirm like a hooked fish and his own apprehension.

The Council of Twelve of Seressa was very greatly feared, by enemies, and sometimes allies, and by their own citizens.

In this upper-level palace chamber they were all aware that Seressa was mistrusted and envied, and they used this: the council took strength and purpose from these truths when they swore their oaths of office, and renewed these each spring in the Ceremony of the Sea. Having enemies could concentrate the mind, rally the heart.

Proud Seressa, on its lagoon amid canal-threaded, bridge-linked islands, with no mainland toehold in Batiara to speak of any more, was endlessly aware that its power rested on trade and wealth. And so, ultimately, on ships and the sea.

There was nowhere like this city on Jad's earth, under his sky. Dubrava, across the Seressini Sea (named so because men needed to be reminded), might also be a republic, have a mercantile fleet, survive by trading, but it was a fraction the size of Seressa. Dubrava was no lion; it cringed and bowed in every direction. It had no Arsenale, no war galleys to assert or defend power, no colonies. No great island like Candaria that it ruled.