The Red Sea (31 page)

None of the locals paid them any mind. The sun drooped to the west, silhouetting a tall tower standing above a thriving town.

"I say we do this tonight," Dante said. "Check out the Basket, locate the seeds, and get out of here before Vordon knows we're here."

Blays laughed. "That sounds idealistic. Besides, if we're going to rouse the rabble against him, it's going to take much longer than an overnight trip."

"One scheme at a time. Star Tree first."

"I suppose restoring a sacred tree will bank us a little divine goodwill before we return to commence with our murdering."

They paddled on. When they tired, Dante refreshed them with the nether. Winden warned them that the city's bay was lit at night. To minimize the attention they'd draw, they beached the canoe three miles east of Deladi, hauling it up into the weeds and continuing on foot.

By then, it was fully dark. It was even warmer on the south side of the island, though, especially compared to an all-day voyage on a windy sea. On their way to the dirt trail worn into the turf above the beach, Dante spooked a rodent. He dispatched and raised it, sending it up the path to make sure they weren't about to stumble into any hordes of armed men.

After half an hour of walking, they topped a ridge and looked down on the city less than a mile away. Lanterns burned in intersections and above the doors of larger buildings. Both the city and the fields around it were terraced. Moonlight glinted on watery fields of san. A faint chorus of wooden chimes carried on the breeze.

A great deal of the buildings were the black island stone, ranging between two and four stories. There were enough to house several thousand people. A river wound through the center of Deladi, dispersed into a great many canals that fed into a bay teeming with small vessels and voluminous orange lights.

"Candlefruit," Winden explained. "Harvested to massive size. Helps them keep watch on the bay."

Blays made a skeptical noise. "And impress the neighbors, I'd wager."

Half a mile up the shoreline from the bay, the High Tower overlooked it all. Its lower levels showed lights in the windows, but its upper floors were completely dark.

"Let me guess," Blays said. "The upper portion, that's the First Basket?"

Winden nodded. "Baskets are sacred. Especially this one."

Dante continued forward. "And it's a good way to keep it out of the hands of the hungry peons."

"I think it will be less suspicious to cross the edge of the city than to bypass it."

"We can stroll right in?"

She frowned at him. "Your cities, they're built to keep people out?"

"The larger ones tend to have walls. Does wonders to deal with rampaging barbarians and enemy nations. Along with anyone too poor to buy anything."

"Here, walls would be stupid. Your enemies would just come by sea."

They entered the city. The scent of grilled fish and chicken carried on the wind, reminding Dante he'd eaten little but san mush for several days. People walked about freely. Almost everyone carried a club at their waist, women included, and some bore spears or swords.

Wooden chimes clonked musically, stirred by the wind. Mosquitos whined in his ears. As he neared a set of chimes outside a public house, he saw they were actually the still-growing seed pods of a willowy tree. Harvested, probably, but in this land of bizarre flora, who knew.

They crossed a wooden bridge arched over a brackish-smelling channel. People paddled canoes, slicing along at jogging speed through the canals, which were as numerous as the streets. Some neighborhoods fronted small lakes. Artificial islands sat in the lakes' centers, claimed by stone temples with steep, triangular roofs. Outside the temples, groups of men and women moved in choreographed unison, barking out noises halfway between a grunt and a chant.

"What's that?" Blays said. "Some kind of dance?"

Winden laughed dryly. "Of war, maybe."

Dante's Taurish was more or less fluent, but his accent lagged, and he spoke as little as possible on their way through the city. Pairs of soldiers patrolled the streets, carrying swords and dressed in mismatched armor.

"Can we find a public house?" Dante murmured. "I'll explore the tower while the night settles down."

"You can't just walk inside the High Tower," Winden said.

"I won't. But I'd like to see them keep out a highly determined moth."

She homed in a set of chimes, the presence of which seemed to indicate a public structure. The building she brought them to was stone, implying it was pre-Mallish, but its bar, tables, crowd, and performing minstrel could have been shipped straight from Bressel. Which, in a sense, they had. Dante and Blays hung at the back of the common room while Winden secured lodging. They headed upstairs.

Like almost every room on the island, the windows were large and held no glass. Out in the street, a candlefruit lantern summoned flying insects of all kinds. Dante used the smallest pin of nether he could muster to impale a moth. He raised it and sent it flapping toward the High Tower.

The grounds around it were open and clear, well-lit by a bevy of lanterns. The main tower was at least two hundred feet high, accompanied by shorter spires and squat, round-capped towers. Warriors stood outside the front entrance. Dante sent the moth above it all, winging its way toward the darkened floors that began halfway up the tower's body.

The moth careened toward a black window. And struck something solid.

Dante pulled his sight from the moth's spinning vision, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. Once he'd recovered, he ordered the moth onto the windowsill and walked it forward. Again, it bumped into solid matter. Angling for a better look, he made it fly back a few feet and do its best to hover.

"The window," he said. "It's covered in wood."

"You mean it's shuttered?" Blays said. "Those fiends!"

"It's not a shutter. It's solid. Seamless. Like it's been harvested."

"Harvested? But aren't there supposed to be plants in there? How can they grow without any sunshine?"

"I don't know." Dante sent the moth to the next window, but ran into the exact same barrier. He flapped up to the next story and found more of the same. It took ten minutes to make a complete search of the darkened half of the tower. "They're all closed off."

"The windows," Winden said. "They must harvest them shut at night."

"Why would they do that?"

"To keep things out. Much like your cities and their walls. They can reopen them easily enough when it's light out."

"Oh, all right then. So we'll just break in under cover of broad daylight."

Blays wandered toward the window of the inn. "This seems rather excessive. The Basket's already on the top of a fortress. How safe does it need to be?"

"I told you," Winden said. "It holds food. Medicine. Spices. With these at hand, a strong Harvester can supply everyone in the tower. The Basket is vital."

"Well, if we can't get in through the windows, I have a radical suggestion: we take the stairs."

Dante laughed in embarrassment. "Right. On my way."

Plenty of the windows on the lower floors were open. The moth flapped into a dining hall, then out into the hallways. After much confused meandering, it located a stone staircase. The next landing was illuminated by a lantern. But the one above that was blocked off by a seamless sheet of wood.

"Stairs are out, too," Dante said. "Covered in wood. So no shadowalking, either."

Blays put his hands on his hips. "It's almost like they knew we were coming."

"Except for the part where we're not in jail. Or being separated into various pieces and waved about on the points of spears."

"Look, the windows are harvested over, right? So why don't you and Winden just un-harvest them?"

Dante stood. "It'll be pitch black in there. We won't be able to see anything. As long as we're close enough to crack it open, we may as well harvest down a vine, climb up, and take a look for ourselves."

"Nothing conspicuous about rappelling up the side of a guarded tower."

"The back side is practically right against the cliffs. There's nobody out there."

"Sounds like we have a plan," Blays said. "Let us sally forth!"

They headed back downstairs, under close scrutiny from the innkeep. Dante walked north over a number of canals. The tower loomed hundreds of feet to his left. He continued on, heading into an orchard west of the tower. The air smelled of pollen and citrus. Dante circled back toward the shore and hunched in the brush at the edge of the grove, watching Vordon's sentries patrol the cobbled grounds around the tower. It would have been simple enough to strike them all dead and pitch their bodies off the cliff, but within fifteen minutes, Blays spotted a gap in the patrol pattern. They waited, confirming it. When the gap appeared a third time, they stood and walked briskly toward the tower.

Dante moved into the cover of the wall. They crept along it toward the south face. A hundred feet away, waves boomed on the cliffs. Dante sent the nether into the wood sealing the lowest of the blocked-off windows. It lived. Gently, he pulled it apart, drawing open an aperture wide enough to crawl through.

He sent the waiting moth inside. Moonlight revealed a wide room overflowing with trees, shrubs, and flowers. Plenty of vines, too. He moved the shadows into the one nearest the window, thickening it and two others, especially where they held fast to a tree. The vines slithered toward the window, braiding together. And snaking down the side of the tower. A minute later, they dangled a foot above the cobbles.

He gestured to Blays. "You first."

"Not sure it'll hold, huh?" Blays gave it a tug, eyed the lower windows—many of which were lit—and scrambled up, bracing his feet against the side of the tower.

Dante kept watch on the grounds. With monkey-like dexterity, Blays reached the window, hauled himself inside, and waved. Winden was next. When she was fifty feet up, a silhouette appeared in the window just above and to her left. Dante's heart pounded. He held the nether in his hand. The silhouette receded.

Winden got to the Basket and swung inside. Dante started up. The vines were springy, offering a good grip. The rain-roughened walls made good footing for his sandals. At the window, Blays reached for his wrists and helped him inside.

"Here we are," Blays said. "Now how about we find ourselves some seeds?"

Keeping both eyes on the grounds, Dante grabbed hold of the vines and hauled them up the side of the tower, assisted by Winden and Blays. The room was cavernous but the air was thick with the scents of flowers and leaves. Once the vine rope was coiled in a heap, Dante grew the wood back over the window, sealing them in darkness.

He fetched his torchstone and warmed it with his breath. Pale light beamed across the space. They stood on an elevated platform rimming a wide, round room, which would allow the Basket's minders to move about and tend to the countless trees and shrubs growing from the dirt-packed floor. The ceiling was twenty feet high. He'd seen many of the trees here grow much taller than that, but the Harvesters clearly kept them in check.

Every surface that wasn't covered in dirt was sheeted over with smooth, grained wood. An odd touch, but Dante supposed that allowed Vordon's harvesters to do things like seal up the windows, or grow chairs, furniture, or tools wherever they pleased.

"So," Blays said. "Do we have any idea what we're looking for?"

Dante held up the torchstone, slashing light through the branches, which cast shifting shadows. "Storage of some kind. How are seeds traditionally kept, Winden?"

She peered into the foliage. "In Kandak, care of seeds is the duty of the Archivist. To keep them safe from insects and water, they're stored in sealed bins. In case something were to happen to the Basket, these are often kept elsewhere."

"Meaning a where that's else than here? So the seeds might not even be in this tower?"

"In Deladi, there is nowhere safer than the tower. If it has fallen, then so has the entire city. I think the seeds will be here."

"Maybe the seeds are here and maybe they're not," Blays said. "But we're never going to find them by arguing about it."

Blays climbed down the steps from the platform and disappeared into the trees. Dante recognized most of the trees from his traipses through the jungle, but there were many he'd never seen, including one that was nearly all trunk (for easy firewood or fortifications?) and another that grew finger-thin, perfectly straight branches ready-made for the shafts of arrows.

Curious, but beyond the focus of his search. They made a quick circuit of the room and found no storage of any kind. An enclosed staircase took them up to the next level. This was all fruit trees, shrubs, and vines.

Winden frowned at a waxy yellow berry. "Poison. So are the ones over there. These things, they shouldn't be kept so close to the food."

"Think we should leave them a note?" Dante said.

A shack had been grown from the eastern wall. Dante opened the door and shined his stone inside, but the small room was filled with trowels, rakes, and snips. There were candlefruit lanterns, too. He lit three and put away his stone.

They ascended to the third floor of the Basket. This room was the most odiferous yet, with flowers and herbs filling the air with so much sweetness, pepper, savor, and mint that Dante found himself sneezing repeatedly.

Anxiety tightened his chest. Judging by the windows on the outside, the Basket was only five layers deep. They'd already exhausted three. On reaching the fourth, they found it divided into three sections. One held saplings, cuttings, and sprouts. The second was devoted to mushrooms and fungus, which Winden claimed were notoriously hard to harvest.

And the third was filled with growths that would be described kindly as "oddities," and less politely as "weeping sores on nature's face." A tree with matte black bark. A vine with an open maw feasting on a chunk of what Dante hoped was raw pork. A flower whose petals dangled like dead worms.

"Experiments," Winden said. "The Harvesters search for new plants."

Blays made a face. "Looks more like they search for ways to make grown men cry."

This floor also sported a shack. It was filled with tools, too, though they were so strange Dante couldn't begin to guess their purpose.

The staircase terminated at the fifth level. While the previous levels had been filled with a dazzling diversity of species, this was dominated by a monotony of squat trees with thick trunks and spiky branches. Heart sinking, Dante made a circuit of the walls. He saw no bins of any kind.

He rubbed his hands down his face. "They're not here."

"They must be somewhere in the tower," Winden said. "Maybe the basement. It will be cool there. Protected."

"So all we have to do is descend through all the inhabited levels, find a way into their safehouse, and pray
that
is where they keep the seeds."

"Suppose they'll have the basements harvested over?" Blays said. "If not, I could shadowalk in."

"If the seeds are that valuable, I have no doubt they're enclosed at night, too."

Blays moved toward the grove of identical trees, testing the point of a thorn against the tip of his finger. "Maybe we should go hole up in the inn. Throw some cash around to find out where the seeds are hidden. And
then
go after them."

"That would make a lot more sense than blundering around this place." Dante was aware that coming up here in person had been his idea, but that only made his annoyance worse. "Is there anything we're missing? Is this the highest floor? Could there be a secret level above us?"

"You're the one with the magic moth."

Dante moved to one of the windows and harvested a crack in the wood covering it. His moth fluttered outside and up the tower. Its top was only five feet above the ceiling of the fifth floor of the Basket. It was possible there was a chamber in that space, but if so, it would be very cramped. There were no obvious entrances on the roof, either. Unless they had a nethermancer capable of opening a hole in the stone—something he'd seen no evidence of—he doubted there was anything to be found there.

As he explored these things, Blays walked up to one of the stubby trees. "This is a bit odd, isn't it? Why these?"

"Who cares?"

"On every other level, there was only one or two of each subject. One walnut tree, one verberry bush, and so on. But this is an entire grove of the same thing."

Dante slapped at a fly on his neck. "Maybe they just love fat little trees. Winden, are these ceremonial?"

She wrinkled her brow. "These are damans. They grow in the driest lands. They have hollow trunks for the storage of water."

Blays' eyebrows shot up. "Hollow trunks?" He knocked on the one next to him, producing an empty rap. "Well, probably nothing to it. Best be on our way."

Awash in nervous heat, Dante brought himself beside one of the damans. He took hold of the nether within its trunk and peeled the wood apart. Inside, shelves held dozens of polished wooden boxes.

"Genius!" Winden laughed. "You would never look here if you weren't a Harvester yourself. And the trunks, they insulate the seeds from light, bugs, and rot."

Dante drew out one of the boxes. When he shook it, it rattled. It appeared to be a single piece, and he was on the verge of harvesting it open when his fingernail scraped over a seam. He pulled it open, revealing nine separate chambers filled with seeds.

"That's one down." He regarded the tiny forest. "Only hundreds and hundreds to go."

Blays and Winden joined the search. Each tree contained up to forty boxes, and each box held anywhere from four to sixteen different chambers, depending on the size of the seeds, nuts, or slice of fungus inside. There were easily a hundred trees within the level. Some were empty, but even if only half the trees were filled, they still held something like twenty thousand different varieties of seeds. Perhaps some of those were harvested variants of other species, meaning the number of truly discrete plants was closer to a few thousand.

Even so, the number was boggling. This was a storehouse of knowledge just as great as the Library of Bressel or the archives in Narashtovik. Perhaps even greater. Books held ideas—but the plants here could feed the hungry or treat the sick.

Pawing through them, then, made him feel like a looter. Like he was betraying one of his dearest ideals. Going forward, he was careful neither to spill anything or to mix the seeds between compartments. And when he put back a box, he made sure to replace it from where it had been removed.

Blays lifted his head from a box. "Did you hear something?"

Dante went still. No wind could penetrate the Basket. The only noise was their own rustling, currently paused. "Nothing."

"Still got your moth around?"

"It's outside. Everything looks fine."

Blays set the box back on the shelf within its trunk. "I'll be right back."

Dante nodded absently. Each tree was taking about five minutes to search. The empty ones would speed the process up, but at their current speed, it would take up to six hours to check every last box. Six hours would run them uncomfortably close to dawn. It was possible the tower's Harvesters would arrive to open it before then. He could kill them, if he had to, but—

A piercing whistle drifted up the stairwell. Dante shoved his open box back on the shelf and ran for the stairs, drawing his sword. Further below, steel swashed against steel.

Dante's curse echoed off the walls. The candlefruit lantern flickered on the next landing down. There, Blays ducked under a flash of metal and flicked his sword into the attacker's forearm. The man shrieked and dropped his weapon. He wore a chain mail jersey and iron helm. Blays threaded his sword into the man's neck.

He fell, joining the bodies of three others. Without an instant of hesitation, Blays lunged into the next warrior, pinning the man's sword against the wood-lined inner column of the stairwell and slashing his second sword straight though the man's collarbone. As the man dropped, Dante shot a streak of nether into the warrior behind him.

But two more rushed up to take the dead man's place. And others swarmed up behind those.

"How did they know we were here?" Dante said.

Blays feinted at his opponent. "Must have seen us climbing up."

Horror gushed through Dante's veins. "We still haven't found the seeds. We need more time to search!"

"I'll just hold them off for the next eight hours, then." Blays parried an incoming strike with such deftness it looked like he might actually be able to do so all night. A soldier jabbed with a spear from the second row and Blays pivoted, the spear whisking past his head.

Dante fell back a step, delving into the nether in the wooden stairs, casting about for any stone he could plug up the entrance with. But the stairwell appeared to be entirely wooden.

Winden brushed past him. She rolled her hand forward, gesturing at the steps. "Blays, get back!"

Blays hammered at his foe, driving him down the stairs, then danced up beyond Winden. Shadows streaked from Winden to the wooden floor. With an audible rasp, branches shot upwards, twisting and tangling around each other, filling the stairwell from top to bottom. She continued harvesting until the growth was three feet thick.

"Well done," Dante said. "Blays, stay here and—"

Nether flickered within the wall of wood. A branch shot forth, its tip as pointed as a spear. It struck Winden in the ribs and punched out the small of her back.

"No!" Dante cast his mind along the trail of shadows, following them past the wooden wall and to the Harvester who must be lurking on the other side. With an ice-cold surge of nether, he reached into the man's heart and squeezed.

A gasp. The thump of a body against the steps.

Blays cradled Winden's limp body, taking the pressure off the makeshift spear she was impaled on.

"Don't move her," Dante said. "Hold her just like that."

Blays braced himself beneath her. Dante's mind was squealing like quenched metal, but he breathed deeply and sent his mind inside the spear. It withdrew from her body, moving back into the tangle. Blood spurted from Winden's back and chest. Shadows glommed onto her wounds. Dante took them up and shaped them into her flesh, knitting it back together.

The bleeding stopped. Blays held her aloft, face coated in sweat. Winden took a juddering breath. Her eyes remained closed, but she breathed.

Dull thuds sounded from the other side of the barricade. By the sound of things, it would take the Tauren many minutes to hack their way through. Dante gave Blays a hand carrying Winden back upstairs.

"Will she live?" Blays said.

"I think so. I'll keep an eye on her. You watch the barricade and let me know if they're close to punching through."

"Don't tell me you're going to keep searching."

"We can't leave now," Dante said. "They'll know we were after their seed archive. Either they'll move it, or lock this place down so tight we'll never get in again."

They reached the top level and its forest of damans. Dante ran back to the boxes he'd been searching previously.

"What's the plan, then?" Blays said. "Stay up here until we're completely surrounded?"

"I don't know! I don't even know if the seeds are here."

"If we stay here much longer, even if we find the seeds, we won't get out with our lives."

Dante moved to the next tree, parting its trunk down the middle. "Then quit griping at me and come up with an idea."

"First step is to assess what we've gotten ourselves into. Block the stairs to this level and open a window."

Dante turned from the boxes and did as he was told, sealing the stairs off with a crush of branches grown from the living floor, then pulling the wood away from a window.

Blays moved to it, gazing below. "Yup. Guards down there, too."

"Wonderful. Since they're already aware of our presence, we may as well keep up the search."

After another minute of window-gazing, Blays came to join him. Dante no longer had any regard for keeping the boxes orderly—when he lifted a lid and confirmed there were no Star Tree seeds inside, he cast the box away. Even though this archive was the work of the enemy, it hurt to wreck it. Dante consoled himself with the thought that the Harvesters could rebuild it from what they had in the Basket.