The Dagger's Path

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  This one is for you, Duke McGuigan, with much love and the hope that you will always have time for a good book

  Twenty-three years before

  The sorcerer stood in the doorway of the nursery, unobserved, savouring the moment. Emelia, the nurse and the baby: a scene of domestic tranquillity, lit only by the glow of candlelight, for it was already two hours past sunset. The nurse, her back to him, busied herself folding the child’s clean linen with her chapped red hands. Emelia was holding the baby, a besotted expression on her exquisite face, singing to the child she held in her arms.

  Did she really think such a thin and reedy sound would lull anyone to sleep? Her voice always had been her most unattractive feature. Still, it did seem the babe slept, for he was silent and still, his plump face barely visible within the wrappings of a crocheted shawl.

  His son.

  Little do they know, any of them.

  “A scene of such domestic bliss,” he said pleasantly and stepped into the room.

  Emelia gave a squeal of delight. “My lord! Is it really you?”

  Typical. As if I could be someone else.

  He held up his hand to halt her headlong rush at him. “Contain yourself, my dear. You’ll wake the boy.”

  She stopped then, obedient, and sank into a curtsy, wobbling awkwardly because her burden unbalanced her.

  She has the right blood lines, remember that.

  He waved a dismissive hand at the nurse, who bobbed and waddled from the room in almost indecent haste. He enjoyed seeing how the respect of servants and lackeys was always tinged with something more disquieting. Not quite fear; after all, he paid them well, never raised a hand to them and rarely dismissed anyone, but they sensed his power nonetheless. He suppressed the glimmer of an amused smile.

  “Well, my dear, let me see my son.” He held out his arms.

  Carefully, she handed over the sleeping boy, her joy dampened. He saw and recognised it in the slight tremor of her fingers, the tense muscles along her jawline. Good.

  “I expected you long since,” she said.

  “I don’t know why. I told you I’d be gone a year, and it is almost a year to the day. Do not chide me.” Do not dare.

  A flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “Of course not, my lord.”

  “I had no qualms about your ability to deliver our son into the world with a minimum of fuss, and then to care for him well.” He glanced down at the child still sleeping wrapped in his blankets. “He seems healthy.”

  “Indeed he is.” She was relaxing, and there it was: the faint note of accusation at his long absence that he’d expected to hear. “Five months old and thriving.”

  She couldn’t resist it, could she?

  Cradling the baby carefully in the crook of his arm, he began to unwrap the shawl until he’d exposed one plump little hand. Gently, he uncurled the tiny fingers. His smile widened as he gazed down on the palm so exposed.

  Perfect. Oh, so perfect.

  At last.

  He could scarcely believe it; after so many attempts, he had the first of the sons he needed. “You have done well, Emelia.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” She hesitated, her gaze doleful, the flush tingeing her cheeks betraying her.

  He smiled encouragement. “You have something you wish to ask me?”

  “You said–you said, if it was a son and healthy—”

  “Why so hesitant, my dear? There are no secrets between us now.”

  Her lips parted with delight; her eyes shone. “We can wed soon, then?”

  “Indeed. I promised, didn’t I? You’ve proven yourself. I regret I ever had to demand such proof from you in the first place. It was… ungallant.”

  “Oh, never so! I understand the necessity of a man such as you to have an heir, my lord.”

  “So true. Put the child down in his cot and come with me. I have a gift for you, down in the courtyard.”

  “Oh!” She scurried to the cradle and tucked the child into the bedding, discarding the shawl.

  “Bring that,” he said. “It’s cold outside.”

  Obediently she snatched it up from where she’d dropped it.

  “It’s a chill night. Maybe this is not a good time…” he began.

  “Oh, how can you tease me so! Is it a new carriage? You can show me from the parapet walk!”

  “So I can.” He held out his hand and she took it shyly, ducking her head like a child. He curbed his exasperation and led her out of the room, picking up a candelabrum from a side table as he went. There was no one about in the passage or on the spiral staircase; he’d already ensured that would be the case.

  When he opened the door to the battlements, a blast of salt-laden air raked his face and threatened to tear his coat from his shoulders. The candles blew out. Emelia squealed. Of course.

  Plunged into the darkness of a cloud-ridden night, he halted briefly to give his eyes time to adjust. The parapet walkway dated back to the days when this had been a remote castle guarding the whimsically named Yarrow Narrows against coastal marauders. On one side, the crenulations of the parapet overlooked the sea; on the other, below–a long way below–was the inner bailey, nowadays simply called “the courtyard”, as if renaming it could make a defensive keep in this wild location seem more homely.

  “Pickle it,” he said and tossed the useless candlestick over the railing. The moan of the wind and the roar of a turbulent ocean was enough to smother any sound of the brass hitting the stone paving. “Someone has already doused the torches in the courtyard. I don’t think you will see much.”

  She groped for the railing. “Let me look! Where is it?”

  “Right below us.”

  Bending over, she peered into the darkness.

  “Ah, Emelia, you know what I have always loved about you?” he asked, whispering into her ear. “You are always so delightfully gullible.”

  She turned her face towards him, but the dark hid her expression. Puzzled, probably. She always was so unaware. He gave a low laugh, and bent to grab her legs. In a single, fluid action, he lifted her off her feet and thrust her body forward, propelling her across the balustrade.

  So easy.

  She didn’t fight him. There was no struggle. In her shock, she didn’t even scream on the way down, or at least if she did, he didn’t hear it.

  Leaning against the handrail, he studied the darkness below. He could just see the white patch of the shawl, still clutched in her hand. A nice touch, that. The devastated mother, betrayed because he’d decided not to wed her.

  He chuckled.

  There’d be whispers. There always were. He didn’t mind those; they added to his mystery. Those who worked for him, though, ultimately they kept their silence. They knew who paid for the ale in their goblets or the linen of their coats. He looked after his retainers, and they knew it.

  He returned to the nursery where his son still slept. He halted for a moment, gazing down on the boy, but didn’t touch him. “Sorry, lad,” he murmured, “you may be my firstborn son, but you’re not ever go
ing to be my heir.”

  He moved on to knock at the adjoining door. “Nurse!” he called.

  She was there immediately. “My lord?”

  “Look after your charge. I fear I have upset the Lady Emelia. I informed her I was leaving again in the morning and will not soon be returning. She has retired for the night to her room and asks not to be disturbed.”

  The nurse blinked uneasily before bobbing another curtsy. “Of course, my lord. The wee lad will be in my good hands for the night.”

  He smiled his thanks and left.

  On the morrow, after the body was discovered, he would double her annual stipend.

  1

  Between the Cherished and the Forsaken

  Lookout duty aloft lent itself to the pleasant diversion of daydreams. Memories too, but memories were a trap, because you didn’t always know where they might lead you…

  The mast creaked under the strain of wind-filled sails, the tang of salt and wet canvas saturated the air, but in the crow’s nest, memory had snared Ardhi in his past. He smelled the smoke of mangrove charcoal burning in the kilns and heard the hammering in the forges of the metalworkers’ village. His thoughts lingered in that other world, recalling the greying attap roofs of the houses on stilts and the rows of fish drying on the racks in the sun.

  His grip on the railing in front of him tightened as he remembered the day he’d gone there to see the blademaster, the empu Damardi. He’d been sick with guilt and shame. His pounding heart had matched the sound of the hammers; the whiff of molten metal had tasted bitter to his tongue.

  With clammy fingers, he’d straightened his loose jacket, brushed a streak of dirt from the hem of his pantaloons and checked for any untidy strands of hair escaping from under his cloth headband. He’d made sure that his kris, his father’s coming-of-age gift, was neatly tucked into the waist of the sampin wrapped around his hips. Finding nothing that would hint at disrespect for the man he was about to visit, he’d walked on past the lesser smiths until he came to the house of Damardi, the greatest krismaker of all.

  Once there, he did not mount the steps to the serambi, the raised porch, as a normal visitor might. Instead, he’d knelt on the bare swept earth in front of the house. He’d taken the plume he carried from its sheath of protective bambu and laid it on the ground. In the mango tree overhead, the bird they called the macaque’s slave scolded its noisy warning at his intrusion.

  The villagers went about their business, muttering to each other while they ignored him with calculated insult as he knelt there in the heat. Remorse suffused his face and neck with red. They all knew his careless words had brought the unimaginable to the Pulauan Chenderawasi. He’d told the pale sailors of paradise birds, and they’d come a-hunting.

  They’d shot Raja Wiramulia with their guns, killed him for the golden plumes of his regalia even though they knew nothing of their true sakti, the Chenderawasi magic with which they were imbued.

  Kneeling there in the metalmaker’s village, mortified, Ardhi wanted to die.

  The village boys were less mannerly than their elders. They spat on him and whispered as they passed by, “Betrayer. Traitor. Moray, moray, moray!”

  He shuddered and hung his head at the insult. The despised moray eel was the hated assassin of the reef, darting out of its dark crevasse to seize unwary prey.

  An hour passed before Damardi stepped on to the serambi and placed his hands on the railing. “Who comes to speak to the bladesmith?” he asked, looking down on him. “You, young Ardhi? How dare you bring the Raja’s plume here, still stained with his blood!”

  “The Rani bade me ask for a kris to be made, empu. Who else is skilled enough to craft such a blade?” He picked up the plume and held it in both hands, offering it to the old man. Damardi would need some of its barbules to fold into the metal.

  Yet the blademaster swelled with rage. “Such a kris is borne only by a warrior-hero in the service of the Chenderawasi. Are you such a hero? Are you even a warrior?” His scorn was scarifying and his grief seared.

  Yet Ardhi couldn’t look away. “Empu, it is the Rani’s wish.”

  Tears slid down the creases of Damardi’s wrinkled cheeks to pool at the corners of his mouth. He made a gesture with his hand without turning around and, in answer, his granddaughter emerged from the door behind him. Lastri.

  Lastri, with her long black hair and lithe body, her shoulders bare above the tight wrap of her breast cloth. Lastri, whom he had loved so well. Lastri, who’d swum naked with him in the lagoon by night, and lain in his arms on the sand after they’d made love by moonlight. Lastri, who had pledged herself to him, just as he had sworn his love for her.

  Now she carried half a coconut shell cupped in both hands and the curve of her hips shivered him with its reminder of all he’d lost.

  “The Rani sent me the blood of the Raja,” Damardi said, his voice cracking as he gestured at the contents of the shell. “This will be used to damask the blade.” His unflinching gaze fixed on Ardhi’s like the eye of a sea-eagle on its prey. “I must obey Rani Marsyanda. I will make this kris, although every song in my soul screams at me that you are unworthy of it. Leave the plume. Return after two moons, and the kris will be ready.”

  “Two months is too long, empu. The kris is needed now.”

  “Revenge can always wait.”

  He licked dry lips. “It is not needed for revenge. That, I could achieve with my bare hands.”

  “Then why?”

  “The pale men still have the other plumes. They took them on board their ship and sailed away. I need the kris to follow the regalia, that I might find and return the plumes to their rightful place.”

  Lastri gasped, her eyes widening. Damardi’s knuckles whitened as his grip on the porch railing tightened. “These pale men, these ugly banana skins, do they know the power lurking within the plumes?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “At least you had a rice grain of wisdom left in your empty, traitorous skull.”

  He hung his head in silence.

  “But a kris containing the sakti, the magic of the Chenderawasi? Such a kris cannot be made in an hour, or a day, or a single moon. The metal must be folded and refolded, the blade must be waxed and soaked and damasked to its edge. Every step must be perfect, otherwise how can it be endowed with its sakti? Two months, Ardhi.”

  “And there’s the hilt,” Lastri murmured. “Who is to craft and carve the hilt?”

  “The Rani. She will use…” But Ardhi couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I know what she will use,” the old man replied, scowling. His eyes glistened. “And she will have already cut what is needed from the body of her husband.”

  With those words, Damardi appeared to shrink before Ardhi’s eyes. The wrinkles on his cheeks burrowed deeper and his eyes shadowed darker under the heavy overhang of his brows. “Very well,” he whispered. “I will craft a Chenderawasi kris, but to do it in seven days, a price will have to be paid.”

  “I will pay it.”

  “You do not know what it is.”

  “Empu, if a price has to be paid, then it is mine to pay, and it shall be done.”

  “Indeed.” Damardi nodded. “You will stay with me for those seven days. Your strength will aid me. But when it comes to the power of a Chenderawasi kris, your promise to sacrifice your life will be the spark that awakens the Raja’s blood and the plume-gold of his regalia. There is no other way. For without a sacrifice, the sakti of this kris will rouse too slowly to give it life.”

  Grief-stricken, Ardhi bowed his head. “I need to live, empu. I need to live to seek, find and return the plumes.”

  Damardi frowned, considering. “Then the day you return with the plumes will be the day of your sacrifice. That promise and those undertakings I will fold into the blade. Your blood to be spilt, and your life freely given to the blade of this very kris. If you do not return the feathers, then the kris itself will turn on you in punishment and take your life no matter where you
are. You have no future beyond your quest, Ardhi.”

  He nodded, his grief cold with fear and rock-hard in his breast. The time of his death had been decreed. So be it. Yet he wept at the thought.

  He was only eighteen.

  Glancing at Lastri, he winced. Her face was a mask, her eyes dulled with grief, but her stance said something else. She was enraged, furious at him for what he had destroyed: their future together.

  “Now go,” Damardi said. “Build a fire in my forge, so we may heat the metal. I have the best Pashali iron, and we will mix it with the dark-silver sky iron from the heavens, collected long past in the mountains. We shall add the root of the graveyard tree and the leaves of the tree of life. This kris will have a bird’s-eye damask at the point and the stem, to ensure that its future is auspicious. Its power will carry the sakti of the islands across the seas to aid your task.” A tear trickled down his cheek. “You are not worthy of such a blade.”

  Pulauan Chenderawasi. The nutmeg islands.

  Agony to have the memories play again and again before his eyes–yet how to stop them?

  Perhaps it is punishment, Ardhi thought. Perhaps it was all just to remind him that even if lives were ruined, he had to believe in the rightness of what the kris was doing. The path of the sakti of the Chenderawasi was always true.

  He looked up at the sails of the Spice Winds and dragged his thoughts back to the present. He had to understand why the dagger had brought the four of them–Saker, Sorrel, Piper and himself–together on board this ship on its way to the Spicerie.

  Splinter it, though, now is not the time to think about it. He was on lookout duty. He turned his attention to the ocean.

  On the horizon ahead, the Regal’s aging galleon, Sentinel, wallowed along with its impressive array of cannons. Keeping pace to either side of Spice Winds were the two other new fluyts designed for spice cargoes; and far behind, with a topmast splintered, limped the elderly carrack Spice Dragon. It was a miracle that on this, the first day of watery sunshine they’d had since leaving Ustgrind, the Lowmian fleet was still together. It had taken a whole moon month to emerge from the storm-scoured waters of the Ardmeer Estuary, followed by fourteen more miserable days of appalling weather as the fleet rounded the Yarrow Islands and lost sight of land.