Dreamlands (6 page)

He
employed a cutlass similar to my own, but so caked with rust his first blow
snowed orange flakes.  With a surge of adrenaline, I pushed off the rail and we
fell into a rhythm of stroke and counterstroke to the music of jarring weapons
and feet stomping on bare wood, with for a chorus someone down but not dead,
screaming over and over.  Anyone in Massachusetts hearing the words
Isaac
Sloan
and
a
dventurer
in the same sentence would have fallen
to his knees with laughter, yet here I was, trading blows with a teenaged boy
whose only aspiration was to cut my throat.

Neither
of us could find an advantage until the blunt spine of Jome’s sabre accidentally
clipped my opponent’s head on the backswing, spinning him half around.  The slash
I had aimed at his arm bit deep into the thigh instead, all but severing his
leg, and he fell to the deck.  The limb pulsed a vivid red stream and he
slumped in place, senseless from shock.  I watched the life fade from his face,
so stunned by what I had done a strong wind could have knocked me down.  He was
dead when the voice roused me to raise my cutlass from where it rested point
down on the deck.

Captain
Harrog, looking as if he had bathed in blood, was balancing on the back of a still
struggling foe.  Like a butcher attacking a gristly bit of beef, he finished
his man with a wet-sounding chop and, teeth bared, called, “Pirates, to me! 
Come meet your master!”

My
comrades’ cheer admitted no doubt or fatigue, and our remaining enemies sought
frantically for succour.  They had left a lone man to pilot their craft and without
a crew to pace the Asphodel she had drifted far out of reach.  The survivors
chose the sea over surrender, swimming towards Oriab, where they would likely
be cut into chum on the hidden reef.  Harrog had us circle around to claim the abandoned
ship, and an hour later it provided a pyre for our dead.

The
embers of the cutter were no brighter than the stars when the captain growled, “Isaac
Sloan.”

No
special words marked the occasion, but a pot of red paint and the worn nub of a
brush were produced, and my tunic was adorned with the stripes of a fighting
mariner.  I did feel different once it was over, for now I understood the
significance of its warning.

* * *

When
the lookout announced our approach to Zij three weeks later, sunlight limned
every mast and rooftop, conspiring to turn the wharves and shanties new and
strange.  I felt a protective affection for my new home, just as one loves life
more when on the knife’s edge of losing it.

Dusk
had melted into night when I joined Solomon on the rooftop, where he sat on a
broken-backed chair abusing a jug of wine.  When in port I would eat with
Isobel and her father three or four times a week, often talking deep into the
night.  Isobel was away this time, accompanying a cousin on a trip to a silk
merchant up the coast.

"You've
been blooded,” he said, inviting me to sit while he fetched another cup.  His
hand shook as he poured, and I helped steady the jug.  “I knew it wouldn't be
long."

I
ran my hand absently over my breast.  I had thought, rightly, that it would be
easier to show the painted tunic than to be first to speak on it.

“He
was about sixteen years of age,” I said, “just a boy.”  I remembered when his
face had gone slack forever:  the snarl had vanished and beneath the grime and
marks I saw the innocent he should have been.  An adventurer I might be, but I
had doubts about my future as a ruthless killer.

"Sixteen?”
Solomon was saying.  “I don’t know how they reckon it in your homeland, but
here that makes him two years a man.  Were there any others?"

“The
second was in Nagoordi, older but no more able.  I caught him trying to filch
from our goods on the dock.  He had the chance to run but–  I  was worried my
hand would betray me, but the opposite was true.  I did not hesitate.”

"Good. 
Mercy is a luxury a sailor can ill afford, especially under Harrog.”  Solomon
fumbled with his pipe as if to light it, then put it away again.  He was
glassy-eyed, far into his drink so early in the evening.

“Captain
Harrog fights without mercy,” I said.

“He’s
a hard man, you’re not wrong there.  On this coast, and without coin for
guards, he must be.”

I
closed my eyes and allowed the wine to dull my nagging New England morality.

“How
goes it with you?” I asked.  “You look like you’re sitting on nails.  Missing
Isobel, I suppose.”

“I
cannot deny there is something weighing on my mind.  I have a last job to do for
the Guild, a dirty task, but it will be the last.”  We sat without speaking awhile.

"I
remember now what I wished to speak to you about,” he groaned in mock
irritation.  “Isobel never stops praising you when you’re at sea.  It’s
embarrassing.”

I
smiled, but did not answer.  In New England, the threat of marriage hung over a
man like the sword of Damocles.  There, I would have had to ask for Isobel’s
hand or sever our ties altogether, but in Zij each day followed the last
without urgency, and I believed they would continue that way without end.  How
wrong I was.

Late
that night, dizzied with Solomon’s wine, I got turned around in the maze of back
lanes abutting the port.  I had stopped by a smoking taper to get my bearings,
when I recognized a sign scratched into the surface of a shop door.  The symbol
there had been worn by time and weather almost to obscurity, but it was undeniably
similar to that printed in the frontispiece of Solomon’s atlas:  two seven-pointed
polygons above a zigzag line like an asymmetrical letter M.  The more ornate version
here plainly represented mountain peaks beneath two stars.

I
rapped on the panel and a tall man in dingy robes answered.  He was bald as an
egg and had bound an embroidered rectangular patch across his eyes, a custom
indicating blindness.

He
sniffed disdainfully at me, then made a show of turning his head left and right,
as if scanning the road for spies.  Without warning, he seized my left wrist
and ran his fingers up the loose sleeve of my shirt to touch the scar on my
forearm.  With a grunt I inferred to indicate satisfaction, he turned back
inside and I followed.

The
dirt-floored room was divided by a high counter, behind which sat a hutch of many
small drawers, another Chinese medicine cabinet.  From back of the partition, the
blind man produced two clay cups and poured us a draught from an unmarked
bottle.  Thinking it rum, I drank it off in one go, but my throat and stomach
burned with undiluted grain alcohol.  As I struggled to temper my expression –stupidly,
given my host’s sightlessness– he opened one of the cabinet’s compartments to
retrieve an object wrapped in a torn shirt.

“Is
this what you sell?” I said.

“It’s
not for sale, dumb cluck.  It’s yours.”

I
unwrapped an ornate leather sheath, and found the patterns worked into its
surface, in some places like a foreign alphabet and in others like an abstract
design, eerily familiar.  From it I withdrew a long knife with a handle of
inlaid pearl.  The workmanship was heavy and solid, and it felt made for my
grip.

Examining
the sheath once more, I pulled back my sleeve and the ground under my feet shifted
like a ship’s deck in a chop.  The concentric ridges and grooves of the scar on
my forearm were distinctly similar in style to the sheath’s weird patterns, too
close of a likeness to lay to chance.  I returned the blade to the sheath and fastened
it to my belt, glad that my reaction was invisible to the shopkeeper.

“Listen,”
I said, “did a man named Eamon Sloan leave this here?”

“He
went by a different name in Zij, but yes, I knew your uncle.  That knife was part
of his legacy to you, and this the rest.”  He produced a square of material about
two hands across and so fine it was translucent, like onionskin but stronger. 
It was marked with a series of disconnected strokes and curves.  I held it to
the light, then turned it upside-down and on one side, but could make no sense
of it.

“It’s
just a mess of lines,” I said, “unless it’s some kind of code?”

“Do
you see a cross in one corner?”

“Yes,
there is a black cross in the corner, over three horizontal bars.”

“Then
it’s a palimpsest, of course.”  He chuckled.  “A blind man could see that.  The
three bars indicate that three layers complete the diagram.  Match the cross with
its sisters on the other fragments and you will have some kind of map, or
message or something.”

I
rolled the palimpsest up carefully, wondering again where the breadcrumbs of my
uncle's life might lead.

“What
can you tell me about my uncle, about his life here?”

“Not
that much to tell,” he said, replacing the bottle and cups behind the counter. 
“He was a sailor, but I guess you knew that.”

“Eamon
served under Captain Bromm.  Did you know him?”

“Bromm? 
Yes.  I've heard folks call him a legend,” he muttered to himself, “but he was
as real as you and me.  He had a scar here.”  He drew his finger up from the
left edge of his lips to his ear.  “They called him Smiley.”

“He's
dead then?”

“I
cannot say for certain, but no one’s seen him in many years now.  My guess is
that Captain Bromm sleeps at the bottom of the Southern Sea.”

After
asking for directions to my rented room, I thanked him for the parcel and said
my goodnight.

With
my foot on the threshold however, I asked one more question:  “Where would I
find the two mountain peaks engraved on your front door?”

“Mountains?”
he said.  “I know of no mountains.”

Though
his voice gave nothing away, and I did not press him further, he had no idea
how to present a poker face.

The
next morning, while searching for something to fill my stomach, I drifted into
the market quarter given over to the merchants of Dylath-Leen, and it struck me
that Solomon had not once mentioned them the night before.  The traders’
supposed schemes were his favourite topic of conversation, and he never missed
the chance to gnaw them over, especially without Isobel present to rein him in.

Unlike
the vendors in Zij, and every other town I had visited while serving on the
Asphodel, they did not harry me with their goods as I passed, only smiled with mouths
unusually wide.  They dressed in a style similar to that of a Bedouin nomad, in
loose robes, curl-toed shoes, and turbans.  The head wrap was lumpy and
disheveled however, as if it hid your grandmother's collection of porcelain
figurines.  When they spoke, it was in a quiet, sibilant lisp.  

A
particular species of beggar, addicted to some exotic drug, clustered about
their stalls like flies.  Their appeals were energetic enough, but earned them
few coins.  Alongside these mendicants, a general discomfort attended the yellow-eyed
merchants wherever they lingered.  Later, I would realize a low buzzing
enveloped the area.  When I tried to mentally separate the sound from the
regular racket of the market, it disappeared entirely, but my irritation did
not.

While
I ostensibly inspected a cart of citrus fruit, a young spice merchant got into
an altercation with one of the turbaned ones about the stink of the rail-thin
vagrants.  While the younger man hollered and gesticulated, the interloper
maintained the composure and equanimity of a stone wall, saying nothing.  I
wondered if his slightly insolent expression was a smile, or simply the way his
detestable face was put together.

“I
hope you have no truck with these scoundrels.”  My arm was seized by a man I vaguely
recognized, a blacksmith.  Although his forge was elsewhere, he kept a stall of
wares across the way from the yellow-eyed ones, and seemed to spend as much
time scowling at them as trading.

“I
do not trade with the merchants from the north,” I said, “if you’re referring
to them.”

“I
am.”  He relaxed the vice which trapped my arm.  “I take nothing from their
galleys, not wool or spices or rubies either, and they get nothing of mine.  I
can see you’re keeping tabs as well.  Gorice, blacksmith.”

“Isaac
Sloan, sailor,” I said, clasping his hand in the Southern Sea fashion.

“Come
talk to me a moment, if you will.”  Gorice escorted me into the shade behind
his kiosk, where he cleared a pile of tools from a shallow bench.  After barking
out a series of orders to his apprentice, he lowered himself onto the too small
seat.

“The
truth is I already knew about you, Sloan.  Erik of the Asphodel told me to look
out for you, and old Solomon has mentioned your name as well.  The three of us
have formed a sort of informal cadre to study those cretinous northerners
polluting the air of our market.  After I tell you what we’re about, you’re
welcome to join us.”

Gorice
launched into a description of the merchants’ habits and wares.  Though manic
in its attention to detail, his spiel added nothing to the rumours Solomon
regularly plied.  The blacksmith’s obsession was to me faintly ridiculous but
as he was the friend of my friends, I decided to hear him out.  Later on, we
ended up in a grog house popular with sailors and labourers called the Brass
Coin.  Erik joined us and tea drinking turned to rum drinking, but the subject stayed
the same. 

“You’ll
recall,” Erik was saying knowingly, “just this week Solomon narrowly avoided
being crushed to death by a pallet of masonry blocks on Dove Street.”  Gorice agreed
this was a sign he was getting closer to the answers they all sought.

“I’ve
listened to you two, and Solomon, jabber endlessly about these merchants,” I
said, “but I’ve yet to hear an account of any crime.”

“They
are making themselves rich in coin and bullion,” Gorice replied, “but at great
expense in goods.  They deal in gold only, mind you.  Silver, copper, anything
else they will exchange at a loss.”

“What
do they need so much gold for?” Erik pondered.  “An army perhaps, an invasion?”

“If
gold is their cargo,” I said skeptically, “those galleys should be swarming
with pirates.  It’s a wonder they’re not attacked right in port.”

“Haven’t
I heard they were slavers?” Gorice asked, eyeing our fellow drinkers. 

“Maybe
in other seas,” Erik answered, “but here they come by their crew honestly. 
I’ve known a few who have gone aboard to pull the sweeps for them.  I have seen
men go, but never seen them come ashore again.”

“If
you considered these mysteries when you were sober,” I said, “they would be
much easier to solve.  You yourself mentioned they started hiring this past
year.  If their route takes them to the Cerenerian Sea, they could be gone the
round of a year or even longer."

“They
sell almost every form of goods folks wish to buy,” Erik remarked, ignoring my
argument, “but what freight do they carry on their return, aside from a
strongbox full of gold?”

“An
interesting question,” Gorice said slowly.  “A sailor friend of mine was tasked
to guard one of their ships two weeks past, while they were all away at some
villains’ congress.  He decided to take himself a look-see.”

“And?”
I said, into the weighty pause that followed.

“It
was sand,” he replied.  “Crate, barrel and sack were all packed with sand, and not
just for ballast.  Their whole cargo, everything they took aboard, barring
provisions and water, was a fake.”

“Is
this friend of yours still around?” Erik asked.

“He
told me he would be leaving the very next dawn, and by road, not by sea.”

Erik
coughed up a mouthful of drink, the idea of a seafarer leaving Zij on foot more
baffling than anything else he had heard.

“But
why?” he said.  “Surely they couldn’t know he had poked about a few of their
packages.”

“I
said as much myself,” Gorice replied, “and he told me,
They’ll know.  They
always do.
”

When
the blacksmith spoke with such quiet drama, he looked like a huge, serious
child, and I let out a guffaw.  He and Erik turned their hangdog expressions at
me, and I laughed in earnest until their solemn faces began to crack and we
were all laughing together.

* * *

In
the week leading up to my next voyage, I worked aboard the Asphodel from dawn to
dusk, and hadn’t the opportunity to visit Isobel or Solomon.  I had been
assisting with the final loading when the old shipwright appeared on the dock,
I supposed to wish me luck.  He kept his eyes shaded from the sun, and approached
haltingly, as if ill.

“Solomon,
are you sick?  Sit down on one of these hogsheads.”

“I’m
fine,” he said, dismissing my suggestion with a grimace.  “Too much wine is
all.”

While
waiting for the block-and-tackle man to finish rigging our next load, I drew the
pearl-handled dirk given me by the blind shopkeeper.  I had told Solomon
nothing about the parcel he had given me.

“What
do you make of this?”

“It
would fetch a good price in Ulthar,” he said blandly.

“It’s
a fine blade,” I agreed, “but I’m of no mind to trade it.”

“Then
you’ve good judgement as well as a strong back.”  Then, looking away, “I heard
you spoke with Gorice about those villains in the bazaar.”

“All
I heard from Gorice is that men are crewing with them.  But this is a port,
after all.”  I gestured expansively.  “You’re likely to find men working on
ships, for coin.”

“Will
you be ready to move against them?” he asked, missing my tone.

I studied
him more carefully.  He did look sick, and old, as if he were being chipped
away.

“You’ve
finally ginned up a reason to attack them, have you?  I haven’t time for this. 
The Asphodel is about to sail, and even if she weren’t, I’ve no interest in
starting trouble.”

Solomon
snorted, and sneered at the barrels and rope as if they were not to his liking.

“This
is more important than going to sea to earn some pennies for rum,” he said.  “I
have been watching these creatures closely–”

“And
what have you uncovered so far,” I interrupted, throwing down the bit of rope I
had been nervously twisting, “that traders like gold?  I suppose in the
dreary land they come from it’s wanted for rings and bracelets.  Next
season they will want grain, and after that door hinges or lollies for
children.”  In an attempt to soften my words, I added, “If you’ve so much time
to spend on conspiracies, retirement must not agree with you.”

He
clenched his fists and paced for a few moments.

“I’ll
leave you with this:” he said, “if you sail now, you may not like what you find
when you return.”

I
turned my back as he strode stiffly away, thinking what a relief it would be to
put to sea.

* * *

When
I awoke late that night to Solomon’s creased and humourless face, it was much
too soon.

“We’re
going to see the harbourmaster,” he declared, as if this were a perfectly sensible
reason to rouse a sailor who shipped out with the dawn.  I rolled over and
pulled up the cover, but when I closed my eyes I saw Solomon incarcerated, Isobel
frantic, and me far away on the water.  I relented.

Harbourmaster
Voxhaus lived in a room above the city customs office next to the docks. 
Though it was midnight, I was thankful to see a candle burning in his window.  Voxhaus
was an intimidating man, difficult to deal with even during the daylight hours,
and so taciturn it was said a witch had cursed him to pay
a
copper piece for every word he spoke.

He
answered our knock wearing his night robe, and produced a bass growl deep in his
chest.

“I
need you to search a ship,” Solomon said, suddenly deferential.

The
grooves that made up Voxhaus’s face deepened slightly.

“Don’t
make me remind you of a certain favour–
” Solomon began.

“I
won’t.”  Voxhaus went back inside, reappearing a few minutes later in his usual
leather vest and grubby trousers, carrying a lantern.  At his belt hung a heavy-headed
truncheon.  Locking his door, he motioned impatiently at Solomon, and the old
shipwright led us to one of the many black merchant galleys which, as far as I
could see, was identical to the one next to her and to all the others.  They each
of them showed no light and kept no watch, bobbing in their berths as if derelict. 
I noticed an oddly strong spice smell about the crafts, and a nasty, reptilian
scent beneath.

Solomon’s
lips moved as he scanned the ship’s name, written in the runes of the
merchants’ own queer language, forwards and back.  A harbour official would
copy the characters into his log when they moored, but no one in Zij knew what
they signified.  At last the shipwright confirmed this was the vessel in
question.

Voxhaus
spat, and asked, “The charge?”

“Imprisonment,”
Solomon said, crossing his arms to reinforce his own conviction.  “I believe
the crew are being held against their will.”

“Slavery,”
Voxhaus made a sound like a corpse laughing, “in my port?”

The
harbourmaster stepped aboard the accursed ship without announcing himself, opened
the main hatch, and descended. 

The
minutes stretched unpleasantly, with Solomon nervously checking all quarters as
if expecting an ambush and I speculating idly how the northerners kept their
hulls completely free of barnacles, until Voxhaus finally reappeared,
white-faced, and walked off the ship.

“There
is nothing untoward about the management of this vessel,” he said.

With
obvious effort, Solomon stopped himself from restraining the harbourmaster as
he passed.

“We
know there are men on that ship below decks,” he said.  “What of them?”

“They
are under no duress,” Voxhaus said without breaking stride.

“Men
from Zij were due to return on that vessel.  Are you telling me they choose not
to disembark in their own port?  I don't believe it.”

“I
said they are under no duress!”  Voxhaus’s voice caught in his throat
mid-shout, making it a terrified yelp.

Whatever
he had seen had shaken the harbourmaster to his depths, and had I not moved
aside he would have bowled me into the sea.  Mouth agape, I watched his hasty
retreat to the watch house while Solomon squatted down on his hams, breathing
heavily, empty eyes fixed on the pier.