The Seascape Tattoo (20 page)

Aros's hand touched Flaygod, which hung low at his side. “No?”

“Would you care to sell it?”

“I won it in battle with one of my kinsmen,” Aros said honestly. “He was a brave man, and I honor his death by carrying it. I would not dishonor him.”

“A fine blade is won, not bought. Is that what you say?”

Aros shrugged.

“I can respect that. Of course, you can only win a sword if it fails its owner. Doesn't that bother you?”

“Flaygod did not fail its owner. Its owner failed Flaygod.”

General Silith laughed and then led Aros through more of the house. As they walked, the general watched him carefully. “What do you think?”

“That this is a
man's
house.”

The general's thin lips curled up at that answer. But Aros found he was shying away from dozens of expensive, fragile-seeming toys: ceramics, fabrics, little machines. Would an amnesiac prince feel so intimidated? He might.

They entered an expansive dining room, where Jade Silith awaited them at a surprisingly small and intimate table.

She rose as they entered. “Welcome. We decided to greet you in the personal dining room. There is another for guests and large gatherings. Do you mind?”

“This is wonderful.” Aros gave a deep, formal bow. “You are being more than kind.”

“Please be seated,” the general said.

“Thank you.”

Servants bustled about, serving. Aros enjoyed the food and wine. Jade glanced from Aros to the general, almost shyly. The general mouthed something to his wife that Aros couldn't decipher.

Aros stopped eating, looking from one of them to another and back again. After a moment the general began to eat, and then Jade, and then finally Aros followed suit.

“Please,” Silith said. “Tell us more about yourself.” Both Silith and his wife paused a moment, waiting for Aros to begin speaking.

“I've lived a variety of lives. But my earliest memories are of the Southern Desert people. Best I can guess, my parents died in the midst of some kind of journey, a pilgrimage perhaps. I was found by a kindly merchant and ultimately sold to the Chumash folk.”

The general sliced his meat and lifted a chunk to his lips on a silver fork. “Sold by a merchant who left you a gold coin? Odd.”

“Oh, yes. I've wondered. But I've no memory of any of it, so the trail is cold.”

“No memory?”

“No. I'm told I had a head wound, and was in a fever when sold. I'm sure I was purchased at a bargain.”

Jade laughed politely, then leaned forward. “The coin is Aztec. Did you travel there, try to find your parents or people?”

“Yes, once,” he replied. “I was thought a spy and barely escaped with my life. I don't think I'm going to find many answers there.”

He put his meat down. “You are Aztec,” he said to the general's wife. “When did you leave?”

“Almost thirty years ago,” she said. “I've not been back for two decades.”

He nodded, chewing. “I think that the heart rippers have taken hold. It may not be the place you remember.”

“There was a time when the sacrifice made the fields and wombs fertile. And perhaps another time when the priests took that power for themselves. That would be a great pity. But I promise you: you come from a great people.”

Aros grunted. “I did see the pyramids. I'm not sure I'd ever seen anything so wondrous. But … so much
death
.”

Jade's smile was the sort she might have offered a child. “Death and birth are two sides of the same thing. Both have power.”

“Please pardon me for saying, Madam Silith, but I'm sure that's easier to see from a palace than from the fields.”

That quieted the table for a moment, and Aros began to worry if he had pushed too far.

But Jade spoke again. “What if you had come from the palace, Kasha? What if it had been your responsibility to be certain that everything flows smoothly, that order is maintained, that the people prosper. Could you have had the strength to stamp out a few individual grains, that the crop might flourish?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I'm a simple man. I can only imagine that I came from simple folk. I live; I fight; one day I will die.”

She set her fork down, looking stricken. “And that is all?”

“I don't know what more there is,” he replied. “I am content.”

“There is more than contentment in life. There is closeness. Hope. Ambition.” She paused. “Family.”

“I am happy for you that you have known such things. I come to offer my sword. Perhaps helping to protect your dream might make mine more of a reality.”

“And what is your dream, Kasha?”

He considered. “I would find my own kingdom one day. A place to fight for, worth dying for. A woman to be my queen. Comrades to battle at my side.” He sighed. “I have spent my entire life with no one to trust. It grows … weary.”

“How old were you when you were sold?” the general asked.

He chewed. “I'm not sure. Not yet a man. Perhaps … fifteen summers. All I remember before that was following a wagon. Selling goods. Fighting bandits. A city, somewhere. Deserts. Little more.”

Jade seemed to have forgotten her food. “No mother. No father. No love. Nothing but travail, all your life.” She paused. “What must you think of a mother and father who would take you into such a situation? Or leave you in such?”

Aros chose his next words most carefully. “I think they were probably peddlers, doing the best they could. Died protecting me and would have done more if they could.”

“You think they're dead?”

“Yes. Otherwise, I believe they never would have stopped looking for me. Never. I feel it in my heart. My mother loved me.”

Jade stifled a sound. Aros pretended not to notice, silently calling himself a bastard. The general's face was as hard as a sack of walnuts.

“Do you…,” Jade Silith said, voice muffled, “remember anything of her at all?”

Aros scowled. “You'll laugh.”

“No, we won't,” she promised.

“Sometimes I have dreams. I dream of a woman who is very beautiful. Something like the image on the coin. The Aztec women are unmatched, and I would think that my mother was as beautiful as one of their princesses. I imagine that she tucked me into bed. Sang to me.” He paused, then added, “Loved me.”

He scowled some more, as if challenging them to mock him. The general was speechless.

“Anyway,” he said, and stretched. “Enough of this talk. A warrior doesn't lose himself in thoughts of yesterday. Now is what matters, eh? Now, and tomorrow. And if now, right now, I can pledge my sword and help you make your tomorrow better, perhaps there is a place for me, hey?”

Jade looked at her husband imploringly.

“Yes,” the general said slowly. “I think there is a place for a man like you. A man just like you.”

“A future here?”

Silith nodded. “A future. You have sought a home. Shrike could be that home.”

Aros sipped and then put his cup down. “I have told you of me. And my dreams. Would it be too much to ask you of yours?”

The general nodded. “I was a younger child of a minor wife of the last king of Shrike. I knew I had a destiny and that it was not waiting for a throne that would never be mine. So I roused an army and took it to the south, where I aided an Aztec king, Toutezequatyl, put down an uprising and incursion from his southern neighbors. Created the trade alliances we enjoy to this day and won my beautiful Jade as a wife. This was my beginning.”

Aros toasted him. “That would be another man's lifetime career. And now you have wealth, and power, and position?”

“And hope of more.”

Aros's left eyebrow arched. “More? You are a great man. The greatest swordsman I have ever seen. I was fortunate to taste your skill without dying. And of royal blood. And with a woman such as this at your side. And even a man like you … wants more.”

“And?”

“And I would not be so foolish as to think I could understand the mind and heart of such a man upon so brief an acquaintance.”

The general seemed pleased by that answer. “You have never had schooling?”

“Only what I could learn along the way.”

“You will pardon me for saying,” the general said, “but I have to wonder what you might have been, had you been given such preparation. Clearly, you … come of fine stock. Fine stock. Well. This is a portentous evening. You come at a time of great … potential, Kasha. This is what I say to you: train hard. Show us who you are. I would enjoy playing swords with you again.”

“I would enjoy that, too,” Aros said.

The general stood. “And now … I must bid you good evening. My wife and I have business to attend to.”

Aros paused for a moment and then stood as well. “It has been my pleasure. General? Lady Jade? I bid you good evening.”

He rose and left, the slightest of smiles on his face.

*   *   *

The general filled a flagon of wine and went to stand by the roaring fire. He looked into it, scowling.

“Oh, husband…,” she said, pulling at his arm.

“No.”

“How can you say that? How can you doubt? That was the coin I gave him. The one with the picture of my mother on it. How did he come by it?”

“I don't know.”

“He is the right age. He has my nose. He has your eyes. He has the tattoos! How can you doubt?”

The general snarled at her. “Any man can get a tattoo!”

“The coin?”

“I don't know, damn you! Damn it…” His massive fist struck the wall next to the window. The glass cracked.

“Husband,” she whispered.

He held out a flat palm, pushing her away. “Leave me alone.”

She ignored him, came closer. “What is it?”

“What he said,” the general's voice was roughened by emotion. “That his parents loved him. Would never have stopped looking for him.”

“Sinjin…”

He turned and looked at his wife. “We should never have stopped looking for him. Never.”

*   *   *

Aros and Neoloth headed away from the castle. Aros was swaggering just a bit.

“So…?” Neoloth asked.

“I could get used to castle food. And maybe I will.”

Neoloth said, “They fed me well enough, too. The general eats mostly meat; his wife likes bread and vegetables and honey flavors, according to the head cook. Both like chilies. They were slow to talk, so I told them stories and listened to their remarks. They wanted to know about you.”

“You held to our tale?”

“I embellished a bit. You get seasick. When drinking you turn harsh to your servants—but I left out details, so they may think that's just me. They started to tell me of a servant the general killed but stopped each other. Truly, I learned little. You?”

“I think I'm hired. As for finding my parents, maybe.”

Neoloth smiled.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Lord Kang

It seemed to Aros that the sun had been beating down on them from directly overhead since dawn, and the orb deliberately and maliciously refused to set. Through the running, fighting, wrestling, archery—all of it—he was glad that it was still not as fierce an orb as that which blazed in southern lands.

In the distance, behind a wall sectioning off another part of the grounds, came explosions, varying between deep and low or sharp and fast. With them came cheers and laughter from the men who were preparing themselves, practicing with tools Aros had never dreamed of and seen only in flashes.

Despite his growing relationship with the general, there were places he was not as yet welcome. Sights that were not for his eyes. What were these strange devices? From whence had they appeared? He didn't know but reckoned that the answers were behind the wall that sealed the mountain pass behind the castle. Before this affair was over, he intended to see what was behind the wall.

He wasn't certain he would survive the experience.

Despite the fact that it had been a hard day, the men had been buzzing for the last hour with the notion that the king himself was due to inspect the troops. His Majesty was rarely seen outside the castle anymore, and it was a cause of speculation.

There was a disturbance at the gate to the training ground, and a line of horses entered. In the midst were two huge men, bodyguards no doubt, flanking an aged man in silvered armor, his gray-streaked beard flagging. For all his years, the man seemed to Aros an odd combination of alert and somehow intoxicated. He sat horse beautifully, like someone trained from infancy, but swayed a bit out of rhythm with the jouncing.

Odd.

The general rode out to meet the king, bowing from horseback. “Your Majesty honors us.”

Silith received the faintest of royal smiles in return. “Well, General—you will be leading our forces out for another border skirmish.” He leaned closer to the general. “I believe you will be using your fascinating toys against these mountain people. Is that right?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Oh my, would that I could accompany you!” He stroked his beard, combing it with his fingers. “You know, when I was a lad, my father sent me out on patrol with his troops. He thought it would be good for my character.”

“I'd say he was a wise and prudent man, Your Majesty.”

“Ah! Weeks in the saddle, under the sun! The adventure, and the … the…” He suddenly grew vague, as if struggling to remember where he was or what he was doing there.

“Your Majesty,” the general whispered. “You wish to inspect the troops.”

The king's withered forefinger lanced into the air. “The troops! Yes!”

“Troops! Gather in formation!”

The men, tired as they might have been, ran to take formation and stood at attention.