Times change.
Some people blame me for that. Go figure.
I gave a sidelong squint to the nearest of the horses until my attention drew its gaze. And got nothing. The horse’s stare was bleak: dead as a chip of stone. Curls of foam dripped around the pivots of the curb bit wedged deep into his mouth. A martingale with straps an inch thick locked his head down. And spending all day hauling around two hundred fifty pounds of chainmailed pain-in-the-lumbar wasn’t doing the poor fucker any favors either.
It hurt me just to look at, and I don’t even like horses all that much. Horses in general. About all I can say for horses in general is they’re a hell of a lot better than people in general.
The dockside was eerily quiet, despite the crowd of passengers from the riverboat, despite the teams of sullen hulking dockers cranking donkey-wheel cranes to swing cargo nets off or onto barges, loading or unloading chockedwheel wagons that stood with yokes and traces empty, despite all the sausage carts, the pastry kiosks and the dozens of little freestanding market stalls thrown up in the shade of high warehouse walls. When the riverboat’s steam whistle shrieked noon into the silence, people all over the dockside jerked and jumped and then laughed at themselves-but even the laughter was subdued. Self-conscious. Nervous. People instinctively knew that the quiet here was no accident.
The dockside was quiet because the Khryllians like it that way.
It wasn’t a good quiet. It wasn’t library quiet, temple quiet, evening-by-the-fire quiet. It was lying in bed without moving because Dad’s drunk in the hall and you don’t want to give him the idea of coming into your bedroom quiet. When your authority comes straight from God, shit always turns ugly.
And these were the good guys. I’ve known my share of Khryllians. And they are good guys. Honest, upright, true-motherfucking-blue do-or-die parfit gentil knights of renown. That just makes it worse.
As long as I was just shuffling along in line, it wasn’t too bad. A couple of feet every minute or two, dragging the trunk, leaning on it when I had the chance, shading my eyes against the sun to watch the grills work the docks-
I could take it. Being there.
I didn’t have to do anything. Didn’t have to make any moves. Nobody got hurt. Nobody died. Nothing unlocked the black vault inside my chest. Not even the Spire, a thousand-odd feet of whitestone looming behind my left shoulder. The glare off its facing made a pretty good excuse not to look up at Hell.
The passenger queue snaked to one side of the customs barn; most of the smothering semi-gloom inside was full of cargo crates and livestock and whiteshirted human clerks with clipboards, charcoal pencils in stained fingers and behind blackened ears, damp seeping rings below armpits. Autumn sun heated the corrugated steel roof to a medium broil that cooked human sweat, cow and pig farts, machine oil, wood mold and rotting straw into a chewy stench, familiar, suffocating.
Smelled like civilization.
I passed the time reading an enormous poster of fading edge-curled parchment that listed in six languages the bewildering variety of items which nonSoldiers of Khryl were forbidden to possess or import into Purthin’s Ford. Some were understandable enough: a variety of impedimentia related to combat magick, edged weapons with blades longer than two-thirds handbreadth, that kind of thing. But others made me shake my head. Grapevine cuttings? Beverages of greater than 17 percent alcohol? Live mealworms?
The lower margin contained two vividly recent additions painted in doublesize brushstrokes of arterial scarlet: CHEMICAL EXPLOSIVES
FIREARMS
A handful of customs inspectors worked their way among the crates and nets and cargo pallets. They wore circlets of what I guessed might be electrum strapped around their skulls; from those circlets depended an array of individually jointed mechanical arms, each of which supported a lens. The lenses varied in size and color, and the inspectors would squint through each in turn while examining a suspect container. They looked bored, as did the inspector who stood beside the passenger queue, similarly scrutinizing hand luggage.
I smiled bland-friendly as the inspector examined me and my trunk through a succession of six different lenses. All I had with me were clothes, toiletries and gold. The inspector frowned. “You show positive for weapons.”
“Can’t help that.”
“Extend your hands.”
I did, palms up. Open. Empty.
The inspector switched lenses, then nodded to himself, muttering as he jotted notes on his clipboard. “Crimson, grade six-arms, legs. . hmp. And head.” He looked up. “Monastic?”
“Used to be.”
He nodded. “Very well. Pass along. Be advised that Khryl does not recognize Monastic sovereignty. On the Battleground, you are fully subject to the Laws of Engagement.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Be sure to examine the Laws in your visitor’s guide. Monastic training beyond grade four designates you an Armed Combatant at all times. Unarmed Exemption never applies.”
“Grade four?”
“Combat grades are detailed in your copy of the Laws. Grades beyond four involve the use of magick. Or, in your case, Esoteric Control Disciplines.”
“You seem to know more than most about Monastics.”
“I am a Soldier of Khryl. We know more than most about fighting.”
“Huh. Fair enough.” I leaned a little closer and lowered my voice. “You get a lot of trouble with that stuff?” I nodded toward the poster. “Firearms and explosives?”
“More every day. Ever see what a gun can do to a man?”
“Once or twice.”
The inspector shrugged down at the paper on his clipboard. “Bombs are worse.”
“I’d rather get blown up than a couple other things I could name.”
“Yes.” The inspector squinted up. “Know anything about the Smoke Hunt?”
The back of my neck tingled. Smoke Hunt. Like an echo of something I almost heard. . Finally I shrugged. “Fuck all.”
“May Khryl grant you keep it that way. Pass along.”
I shuffled forward. This trip was turning interesting already. Not in a good way. But I hadn’t expected good.
The stamp clerk at the head of the line didn’t bother to look up. “Name and nation.”
“Dominic Shade.” I fished documents out of a worn leather purse that hung from my belt. “Freeman of Ankhana.”
The clerk took the documents from his hand and opened them, but instead of reading them he glanced to one side, where a mountain of blond human in glittering plate armor stood at parade rest, visored greathelm under his left arm. The mountain scowled faintly, staring.
I gave the mountain back the ghost of a smile. I learned twenty-five years ago that I can’t be read by the truthsense of even the most powerful Khryllian Lord. And nobody better than Knight Attendant-barely out of novitiate-gets stuck with shit duty like checkpoint verification.
Not that it mattered; I was telling the truth. I mostly do.
Dominic’s the name I’d gone by when I first came to Home, playing a promising novice at the Abbey of Garthan Hold. In the depths of the gambling hells of Kirisch-Nar, where men fight beasts barehanded in the star-shaped arenas called catpits, I am still remembered as Shade. I was granted the freedom of the Ankhanan Empire some three years ago-not long after I murdered the Empire’s god.
But let that part go.
The Knight’s lips tightened. The clerk nodded absently. “Welcome to Purthin’s Ford, Freeman Shade. I see here you are Armed grade six-impressive for an Incommunicant. Monastic?”
“Retired.”
“Ah. Very well.” He made a note. “Current occupation?”
“Business traveler.”
“Really?” The clerk sniffed and looked up through his brows. “We don’t often see Armed Combatants making careers in sales. What’s your line?”