‡
Her fingernails bit into her palms. The tongues pushed back. “You and Pol are lovers,” she said.
His amber gaze did not waver. “Yes.”
Her hearts shuddered in her chest, restarted off-kilter. A pressure built in her throat, as if she were being strangled. She had known it. Of course she had. The boy had always been so self-assured. He carried himself like someone who enjoyed fucking. She could see it, clearly. She was no fool, and she had her jar of sex spells to prove it.
Get off it , she told herself. That is the least important fact you have learned. “Thank you,” she said, and stood. She snapped her fingers and her servant appeared in the doorway. “Retrieve one pound, four ounces of dust for this man.” She looked down at Shavrim. “You did not lie. That was certainly worth the money.”
The quarterstock furrowed his brows. “Please sit down, Magess bon Mari.” She met his stare, shrugged, and sat. She did not doubt the man’s intentions even slightly. Now that she knew the truth about Pol, the whole world felt bright and clear, her path through it obvious. Not a comforting truth, no, but knowing it was better than believing a lie.
She would crush Pol. She would force him to love her and then watch him die.
“I will take the extra dust,” Shavrim said. “But you deserve something for it.”
“You have more?” she asked. “He must have told you that I love him. Surely he has seen it. He has known me for too long.” Her voice dropped an octave, became a warning. “I do not want to hear any more about his disdain for me. Clearly I mean nothing to him. If you have ever loved, you know this kind of pain.”
He smiled without humor. “I have been betrayed before, and have no desire to increase that particular pain. Instead, I will offer you a small boon: Garrus Eamon. He works at White Ministry, in the morgue. Recently, he was caught filtering alchemical materials from corpses. He and Pol are lovers.”
She filed the name. The quarterstock had given her more than he needed to.
He stood, and offered his hand. She took it, the first time she had touched another person without her gloves on in over three decades. He did not flinch when her tongue tasted his palm.
As she walked him to the door, she marveled at the way her life had been overturned. It had happened so quickly, so cleanly, an entire limb cut from her body without pain. A few exchanged words with a stranger, and she was a new person.
She had also figured out the anomaly in her memory. When Pol removed his gloves, for a split second he revealed a small patch of lustrous black on his wrist. Ebn visualized it clearly.
A tattoo. She would not even need to use the recall spell to confirm it.
Had he really been stupid enough to use alchemical paint on his own skin?
On the other hand, if it worked...
At the door, she faced Shavrim. It shocked her to find that he stood a few inches shorter than her. “Why did you do this?” she asked.
“I need the money.”
“Enough to betray a lover?”
He shrugged his immense shoulders. “My work as a tamer does not pay well, and Tansot is a poor place to be a fighter. Still, I am a fighter, and Danoor is fast approaching.”
POL TANZ ET SOM
THE 26th OF THE MONTH OF PILOTS, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, KINGDOM OF STOL
Pol had spent much of his adolescence along the docks of Ravos, Pusta’s capitol city. There he watched the fishermen pull their catches from the teeming sea, corded arms and calloused fingers quick with the rusty latches and mechanisms of their enormous trap baskets. Naked, they scampered with odd grace over the monumental wire and steel structures suspended between the docks, dodging the man-sized pincers and jagged jaws snapping at them from below.
Their dexterity astonished and thrilled him, as did their scars and missing limbs, which rarely impeded them in their tasks. Such devotion to work had made Ravos the most successful exporter of seafood in all of Knoori. The fishermen were beautiful and dangerous and proud of their craft, and they shared their bodies as freely as they shared labor. They did not look down on an elderman boy, especially one so eager to learn.
Had Pol’s mother known the way he spent his evenings, spreading his legs for men of low caste, working, drinking and carousing with laborers, she would have locked him in a cell. Had he been dimmer or less intellectually inclined, she certainly would have found him out.
Despite the time he spent with fishermen and dockhands, he did not echo their concerns or beliefs. They were a fascinating people in their own right, but hardly examples for an elderman boy. He used them, first for pleasure and then for their unique perspectives.
Few noble-born men cared to know what laborers thought of the world. Unbeknownst to the aristocracy, labor guildsmen communicated across national borders, irrespective of the restrictions placed upon them by government. They exchanged information on trade and common magical practices, and maintained extended family ties.
In Pol’s opinion, these comprised the least significant percentage of exchanged information. The majority of laborers in Knos Min, Nos Ulom, Stol and Casta practiced a highly fluid form of oral storytelling called adrasses, which recounted moments in Adrash’s life upon the earth. An adrass—the events of which often began thirty millennia or more before the present age, far beyond the scope of recorded history—never referred to the god’s ascension into the sky. It never referred to the Needle, or the obvious threat its existence posed to the world.
Such tales transcended the rude boundaries of Adrashi and Anadrashi, for while no sane man could deny the god’s existence, he could interpret events as he saw fit—a fact that contributed to the continual development of adrasses. Even Orrust and Bashest sects, a small minority in most nations, took part in the telling, incorporating the legendary events of Adrash’s life into the traditional stories of their own deities.
The fishermen of Knoori’s coasts shared a particularly rich canon of adrasses, compiling the numerous tales of Adrash’s life as a sailor. Of course, the people of Jeroun generally agreed the god had exiled himself to the ocean for a period of time prior to his ascension into the sky, yet only the most conservative Adrashi claimed to know his reason for doing so. Largely uninterested in his motivation, fishermen of all varieties celebrated Adrash’s incredible feat of navigating the ocean with tales of superhuman strength and daring.
According to the fishermen of Ravos, the god had set sail from their very docks. They claimed he saw their bravery, their clean sweat, and was so inspired that he decided to embark upon his own adventure. He formed a ship out of steel and glass without the assistance of tools, fusing the materials together with the light from his eyes. Once finished, he pushed the vehicle out to sea alone, battling beasts along the way.
Convictions were split on the ship’s name. Some swore it was Aberrast, others The Oabess. Its prow was a knife blade, fine enough that creatures learned to steer clear of it lest they be cut in two. He piloted the sixtyfoot vessel alone with a crank drive and propeller of his own design. Many adrasses differed in this account, insisting that the ship was powered by sail or by thaumaturgical engine, but the fishermen of Ravos loved nothing more than a display of muscle.
They downplayed the role of the divine armor in Adrash’s life. In their accounts he only grew to rely upon its power later—during the unspoken period after he left Jeroun’s surface. They saw the god as a being of superhuman sinew and bone, relying upon his strength, wits, and nautical skill. Some went so far as to claim he found the armor itself while at sea, that it was a gift from the Ocean Mother, no greater than his whalebone sword Amedur, his shark-toothed club Xollet, or his narcroc-ivory spear.