The Dagger's Path Read online

  “It was responsible for the storms? Just so I could not be landed anywhere on the Ardronese coast as we’d planned?” She snorted. “I’ve never heard of anything so absurd! Look at me. I’m a nobody. I started life as a yeoman’s daughter, then a landsman’s wife, and finally a servant hovering somewhere between the status of a lady-in-waiting and a despised chambermaid.”

  “You’re not a nobody, not to me,” he said.

  Once her heart would have lurched to hear that; once she would have blushed with pleasure, but not now. He was the one whose actions had brought her to virtual imprisonment on this ship and it rankled still. “Well, that’s sweet of you to say so, but it doesn’t change anything.”

  “If it wasn’t you the kris wanted on board, then it was Piper.”

  “That’s silly. She’s just a baby.” But the thought that it could be true tore her fragile equanimity to shreds. Appalled, she started shaking. “Because she’s a twin? Or because she’s Mathilda’s child?”

  “How can any of us know why? Maybe Va-forsaken sorcery is doing this to prevent us getting her to the Pontifect.” He glanced at her. “You’re shivering! Are you cold?”

  She shook her head, but her stomach griped with terror and she leant forward, hoping to relieve the pain. A royal child. And a twin. Maybe a devil-kin. “Can feathers and daggers really command the winds?”

  “That’s the kind of witchery they have in the Va-forsaken Hemisphere, it seems. Ardhi’s kris and those golden plumes–they’re all steeped in what he calls sakti.”

  She hunkered down lower into the shelter of the longboat hoisted above the deck. “It’s evil, then. Sorcery, not witchery.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “But it’s from the Va-forsaken Hemisphere!” She stared at him, astonished. “And it’s forcing us to do things we don’t want to do.” When he didn’t reply she asked, “Where is Va in all of that?” She thought he paled in the moments before he answered.

  “We both have witcheries that tell us Va-faith has power,” he said, his eyes troubled. “A power that came in answer to our prayers when we were in dire jeopardy. I saw an unseen guardian with my own eyes. I spoke with her. Va exists, Sorrel.” His words were clear enough, but conviction was lacking in his tone.

  He doubts, she thought. And perhaps so do I. She looked down at the child she held. “Are you sure about Va? Perhaps it’s just Shenat belief that is true and real. Shrines and their guardians. Because I wonder at a deity who allows a child to be born a devil-kin.”

  “We don’t exactly know the truth of what devil-kin are.” He sighed. “I can’t know the mind of Va. All I know at this moment is that you and Piper and Ardhi and I are all heading towards the same place for reasons we don’t understand, commanded by forces we can’t resist. All we can do, every time we are faced with a choice, is to hold on to what we believe is right. I trust the instincts that tell me Ardhi is not an evil man, although I do believe he will put Chenderawasi interests before ours. I’m sorry, Sorrel. I can’t offer you anything more than that.”

  “Coercion of any kind has to be wrong. If we can’t choose freely, then how can any choice we make have any value?”

  “I hold tight to the belief that the idea of a child born innately evil, without any say in the kind of person they will grow up to be, must surely be anathema to Va.”

  “I’ll tell you what else must be anathema to Va,” she replied bitterly. “That horrible coercion you exerted on Lustgrader using the plume. That was despicable.” Her revulsion returned with the memory. “You’re a witan! How could you do that?”

  He winced. “I did it to save your life. And probably Piper’s too. If I hadn’t, at best you’d be languishing in an Ustgrind jail for stealing the plumes. At worst, you’d already be dead.”

  She blinked back tears of frustration and rage. She hadn’t stolen the plumes: he had! “Saker, this is ridiculous. I can’t sail all the way to the other side of the world with the Regala’s child! I’ll leave the ship at Karradar. I’ll buy a passage back. I still have most of the money you gave me.”

  “If Lord Juster Dornbeck’s ship is in Karradar when we arrive, we’ll ask his advice.”

  She was puzzled. Why would Dornbeck help her? She was hardly a noblewoman in distress. It was doubtful he’d even remember who she was. Sick with worry, she asked, “What about Lady Mathilda and the other twin? I failed them. I was supposed to get help for them!”

  “I did send the Pontifect a message before we sailed. I didn’t know then though that you’d be on board too, so I’ve tried sending messages since. Several, in case some didn’t arrive.”

  “How?” She stared at him blankly.

  “My witchery.”

  “Oh! You were sending a message with that huge bird.”

  “Trying to. Who knows if I was successful?”

  Before she could say anything more, Piper started crying, her awakening sudden, her demands imperious. Sorrel dropped their glamour instantly. The crying of an invisible baby would raise questions better not asked.

  “Oh, pox,” Saker muttered. “Here comes Cultheer.”

  She was already on her feet, ready to go, but was too late to avoid Yonnar Cultheer’s attention. He strode down the deck, clutching his black cloak with one hand in a vain attempt to keep it from billowing out behind him, while his other hand anchored his tall-crowned hat on his head. What a fusty bolster he is, she thought. So attached to his idea of what’s appropriate, he won’t even dress to suit the conditions.

  His face was thunderous as he came up, words spewing out of his mouth before he’d even reached them. “Didn’t you hear the orders that were given concerning this woman, Heron? She is off limits! And you, you hussy, do not dare to speak to my men.”

  She raised her chin and glared at him. “Would you have me stay silent throughout this voyage, Mynster Cultheer? All the way to the Spicerie?”

  “You aren’t going all the way to the Spicerie, mistress! The captain is going to throw you off the ship in Karradar.”

  “Perhaps, but I go nowhere in silence, not to please you, or anyone.”

  She nodded to Saker and headed towards the companionway to return to her cabin, hushing Piper as she went. Nausea rippled through her guts in waves. Brave words were all very well, but what if she was marooned in the Karradar Islands without any way of getting back to the Va-cherished Hemisphere?

  All she’d heard about the islands told her they were not a safe place for a single woman, let alone one with a baby. She’d heard it said that in Karradar you could hear all the languages of the world, commit all the sins ever invented by mankind, and worship all the gods ever known, if you so desired. Its main function was to act as a revictualling port for trade ships, and a place for sailors on shore leave to gratify their whims and lusts.

  Sweet Va, why am I here? When I accepted my witchery, I said I would serve Va-faith, but I still don’t know what it’s asking of me!

  After dinner that night, Cultheer spoke to the factors about the paradise birds. Saker sat and listened, hoping the expression fixed on his face was as bland as he thought it was. Inside, he felt wretched. That foolish old man, Regal Vilmar! He ought to have learned from his own experience how dangerous the plumes were; instead, with rattle-brained idiocy, he thought he could use them to his own advantage.

  Well, at least Cultheer’s given me an excuse to be seen with Ardhi.

  When he went looking for the lascar in the morning, he found him scrubbing the residue of sea salt coating the carriage gun on the weather deck.

  “Bad news,” he said, speaking Pashali for secrecy. No one else on the ship spoke the language with anything close to fluency. “The Lowmians want more plumes. What did you call them? Your Chenderawasi gold.”

  “Chenderawasi’mas,” Ardhi said quietly. He was as taut as a windladen sail.

  “They want to hunt the birds,” he said, and passed on all Cultheer had said. For a moment he thought the lascar was going to hurl himself in rage
at the only officer in sight, Mate Tolbun, who was standing with his back to them as he berated one of the swabbies on deck.

  He grabbed hold of Ardhi’s arm. “That won’t help, you muckle-top,” he said. “You’d end up in the brig looking forward to a lashing.” Gradually he felt the tautness under his hand relax, and released his grip. “I’m sorry.”

  “My crime, my guilt,” Ardhi said finally, his eyes dark with pain. “Tell Cultheer I’ve never seen a paradise bird. That when I told those sailors on Spice Dragon about them, I was in my cups, as drunk as a rat in a wine barrel. Tell him I just passed on information I’d heard. Tell him that I thought it was all legend anyway.”

  “Unlikely they’ll believe that, given what happened later.”

  “I know, but say it nonetheless. As for other information about the Chenderawasi Islands, I’m already spreading tales designed to strike fear into the heart of every superstitious sailor. Do you know how impressionable they are?”

  “Indeed I do. I wish they’d place as much faith in Va as they do in evil spirits and good-luck charms. But, Ardhi, be warned. Cultheer said this order to find plumes came direct from the Regal, written in his own hand. That means Vilmar worked out how to use the power of the plumes. This whole business isn’t going to go away. Even if this fleet sank in its entirety before we reached the islands, there’d be another fleet, and another.”

  “I’m not a lackwit.” The expression on his face was grim. “I brought this on my people, and it’s up to me to solve it.”

  “How?”

  He made a sound that was part groan, part laugh. “Come now, Rampion. You’ve thought it through. You and Sorrel, or maybe Piper and Sorrel and you, are going to fix this. Why else would you be here?”

  “I’ve had a belly full of your Chenderawasi sakti, Ardhi. You reckon it’s all up to us to solve your problems, so you can go home and live happily ever after?”

  “Me? I don’t get to live at all!” He gave a bitter laugh.

  “What makes you so certain?”

  Ardhi changed the subject. “I owe you an apology.”

  “You can’t undo my anger with a piss-weak apology! After what you’ve done to me with your wretched Va-forsaken witcheries, you should be on your knees begging for my forgiveness. Mine, and Sorrel’s!” He took a breath. “So which of the numerous crimes against us do you want to apologise for?”

  Ardhi bent to scrub the cannon with extra vigour. “That time I came to steal the kris from your room.”

  For a moment Saker didn’t know what he meant. Then he gasped. “Hang me for a beef-witted dunce. That was you?”

  “You didn’t guess?”

  “No, of course not!” He’d been hit on the head and his memory of that night was confused. He’d woken in the morning, suffering from an excruciating headache, to find his window and door still latched on the inside, although one board from the window shutter had been misplaced. He vaguely remembered a fight, but he’d never been quite sure what had happened. He couldn’t see how anyone had entered his room several storeys up, so he’d eventually concluded he’d fallen somehow during the night and hit his head.

  Flabbergasted, he asked, “You followed me all the way from Lowmeer to Throssel? How did you know where to find me? Fobbing damn, how did you even know who I was?”

  “I didn’t.” Ardhi kept his head down as he brushed the underside of the gun barrel. “I didn’t know your name, just that you were a witan. I’d seen your medallion, remember? I found you by following the path left by the dagger. I thought that was what Sri Kris wanted. But when I tried to steal it back, it wouldn’t come. It wanted to stay with you. That was when I knew I’d wasted my time on that journey. So I turned round and went back to Lowmeer to look for the stolen plumes.”

  Saker blinked. “Dear oak, is there anything that’s happened to me over the last year or more that hasn’t had something to do with that blasted dagger?”

  Ardhi gave an exasperated shake of his head. “I should have known when that kris abandoned me in the warehouse, it was for a reason. I should have waited. Instead I ended up fighting you, and that’s what I want to apologise for.” He straightened and looked him in the eye.

  “Damn you to beggary, Ardhi! Doesn’t all this make you sick in the stomach? No man should be at the beck and call of magic. Where is our free will? And what about Sorrel and Piper? Why are they here?”

  He turned away to look over the bulwarks at the sea. “I might be able to answer your question properly if I knew who Piper’s parents are.”

  “Why would that matter? I’m not certain who her father was, and I’m never going to tell you who gave birth to her. It’s not my secret to tell! And really, it has no bearing on you or your problems.”

  “Then I can’t even begin to guess why either of them is here. I can tell you this much: I believe in the rightness of Chenderawasi sakti. It has kept our island and our people safe. I do not believe it is evil, any more than you believe witcheries are vile.”

  “But can you assure me that it has the interests of anyone else at heart? What does it care about us on the other side of the world?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No. Exactly. You don’t.” He banged the palm of his hand down on the bulwark in his frustration. “And yet you still obey!”

  Ardhi gave the faintest of smiles. “Just as you obey your Va and his shrine guardians, even though you don’t know what any of them wants.”

  He couldn’t think of a reply to that.

  3

  The Petition Writer’s Son

  “So I can never have a witchery?”

  “Reckon not.”

  Peregrine Clary looked over the back of their laden donkey, Tucker, and pulled a face in response to his father’s answer.

  “You heard what the shrine keeper said,” his father continued. “Not your choice, lad; the shrine guardians do the choosing, not you. They pick fine, upright folk, not the grubby son of a petition writer.”

  “Be hardly my fault I’m grubby! Nobody can keep clean on the road, not if they don’t stop at a proper hostelry. Reckon it’d be fun to have magic.”

  “Witcheries aren’t magic; they’re Va-bestowed gifts. Magic, that’s sorcery–and believe me, if the old legends are true, we don’t ever want to see sorcerers again. They were dark days when such as them walked the earth. Anyway, you don’t need a witchery. You can read and write. Be never wanting for food or ale when you can write a letter or a petition. Or read one.”

  Peregrine snorted. Their meals were often more beggarly than sumptuous, not to mention too far apart. The idea of using some kind of witchery to make a living was much more appealing. Being able to call up a breeze for the fisher folk’s sailboats, for example. Or calm a horse, or cure a case of the meazle, or lure fish. That would be fun. And people paid for services like that too.

  “Will we get to the bottom of the valley afore nightfall?” he asked, hoping it was so.

  They were moving down a track carved into a hillside. On the right, the slope rose so steeply you’d have to claw your way up it on all fours; on their left, the land fell away almost as precipitously, clad in a rough tangle of trees and bushes and rocks as it plunged into the darkness of thick forest below, everything so sunless and soggy that just looking at it made chills creep up his back.

  “ ’Fraid not. We be losing light already. We’ll camp as soon as we find a flat spot, and be grateful the weather’s fine. Leastwise it be warmer here than up in the pass.”

  “I wish we’d gone another way. The valley roads have villages and inns. This way there be naught.” Worse still, the hotpot meal they’d had with the shrine keeper up at the top of Needlewhin Pass seemed a ponderous long time ago. “ ’Sides, this forest is eerie. Reckon not too many folk come this way.”

  “They don’t, but this be shorter. Don’t whine, Perie.”

  He sighed, but made sure his father didn’t hear. He’d be glad when they arrived in Twite down in the valley. He liked tow
ns. Towns were interesting. But oh, travelling between East Denva and Ardrone was as dull as a dish-rag. And why did it look so dank and dire when hill country was supposed to be where Va-faith had started? The track was so narrow and mean. The forest canopy met overhead, cutting off the last warmth of an evening sun. It might not be raining, but it was going to be horribly cold.

  Now that would be a good witchery: the ability to conjure up warmth.

  His train of thought broke as his father grabbed his shoulder and halted. He was staring downhill, but Perie saw nothing untoward. He tilted his head, listening. Then he had it; not what there was, but what there wasn’t. Sounds.

  No birdsong. The forest had fallen abruptly silent, as if the whole world had stopped breathing. Dread tendrilled along his skin like a cold breeze, then blossomed into horror. Yet he saw nothing. He couldn’t think. He whirled to look back the way they’d come. Still nothing.

  He wanted to flee, but couldn’t move. Tucker brayed, eyes rolling, nostrils flaring. A smudge of darkness sucked the light out of the air. Rot overwhelmed his nostrils; a tight grip squeezed his chest. Panic, telling him that his world was about to end. He wanted Da to say nothing was amiss, but his father was staring straight past him, his face contorted in fear.

  Perie needed to turn. He had to see what was behind him, had to know what his father saw. Yet he was frozen, unable even to turn his head. Da’s face was pale as milk, his gaze stark with shock. In that moment Perie’s world, all he’d ever known, skewed into insanity. He opened his mouth to scream, but his breath was torn from him.

  Da reached out, picked him up and hurled him through the air with a strength Peregrine would never have dreamed he possessed. The air filled with harsh sound. And he was falling, falling… plummeting down the slope. He crashed through leaves, breaking branches, careened off something else at a breathless pace, hit the ground and skidded and plunged feet-first into the air as if he’d fallen off a cliff. Then, just as he finally drew in enough breath to scream, he slammed into something so hard the air was driven from his lungs. Even then he didn’t stop. He cartwheeled, rolling down a slope so steep he couldn’t halt his fall, until he thudded into a tree trunk.