“Why?” Myrrima asked.
Borenson sighed. “How much do you know of the Inkarrans?”
“I knew one back home, Drakenian Tho,” Myrrima said. “Drakenian was a fine singer. But he was quiet, and, I guess, no one knew him well.”
“But you know that our borders are closed?” Borenson asked. “Gaborn’s grandfather barred Inkarrans from his realm sixty years ago, and the Storm King retaliated. Few who have entered his realm have ever returned.”
“I’ve heard as much,” Myrrima said. “But I thought that since we were couriers, we would be granted safe passage. Even countries at war sometimes exchange messages.”
“If you think we’re safe, you don’t know enough about Inkarrans,” Borenson said. “They hate us.”
She understood from his tone that he meant that they didn’t just actively dislike her people, the Inkarrans hoped to destroy them. Yet Myrrima had to wonder at such an assessment. She knew that Inkarrans were outlawed in Mystarria, but it wasn’t so in every realm among the kingdoms of Rofehavan. King Sylvarresta had tolerated their presence in Heredon, and even did some minor trading with those Inkarrans who followed the spice routes up through Indhopal. So she wondered if Borenson’s judgment wasn’t clouded in this matter by the local disputes. “And why would you think that they hate us?”
“I don’t know the full story,” Borenson said. “Perhaps no one does. But you know how Inkarrans feel about us ‘Dayborn’ breeding with their people?”
“They don’t approve?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Borenson said. “They won’t talk about it to your face, but many Inkarrans are sickened by the mere thought of it—and for good reason. Any child from such a union takes on the skin, the hair, and the eye color of the Dayborn parent.”
“Which means?” Myrrima began.
“A full-blooded Inkarran, one with ice white eyes, can see in total darkness, even when traveling through the Underworld. But many half-breeds can see no better at night than we do, and the dark eyes follow down from generation to generation. The Inkarrans call such part-breeds kutasarri, spoiled fruit of the penis. They’re shunned in their own land by some, pitied by others, forever separate from the Night Children.”
Myrrima remembered the half-breed assassin that had tried to kill Gaborn.
“But,” she argued, “even some in the royal families are kutasarri. Even the Storm King’s own nephew—”
“Shall never sit on a throne,” Borenson finished.
“Here’s a mystery,” Myrrima said. “Why would a kutasarri from Inkarra agree to act as an assassin? Why would he try to kill Gaborn? Certainly it wouldn’t be for love of country.”
“Perhaps he merely wants to prove his worth to his own people,” Borenson said. “But there may be more to it. The Inkarrans do not just hate us for the color of our eyes. They call us barbarians. They hate our customs, our way of life, our civilization. They think themselves superior.”
“That can’t be the whole argument,” Myrrima said. “I’ve seen Inkarrans in Heredon. They didn’t seem to hold us in contempt at all. There has to be something more.”
“All right,” Borenson said, “A history lesson, then. Some sixty years ago, Gaborn’s grandfather, Timor Rajim Orden, discovered that many Inkarrans who were entering our lands were criminals fleeing justice, so he closed the borders. He turned back many of their traders, and told the minor nobles to put on trial any man that they believed posed a threat. Three minor Inkarran nobles in Duke Bellinghurst’s realm thus went to trial, and proudly admitted that they were more than criminals—they were assassins bent on killing the king’s Dedicates. They were from a southern tribe of Inkarra, one that despises us more than most, and had sworn to destroy us barbarians in Mystarria. Bellinghurst executed the men summarily, without first seeking King Orden’s approval. King Orden was a moderate man, and some say that he would have merely outlawed the offenders. But I think that unlikely, and in any case, it was too late. So he sent their bodies home as a warning to all Inkarrans.
“When the dead men reached their own land, their families cried out for vengeance to their high king. So King Zandaros fired off a choleric missive protesting the executions and cursing all northerners. Gaborn’s grandfather sent a skyrider over the mountains, telling Zandaros that if he refused to patrol his own borders, then he had no business protesting our attempts to protect ourselves. A day later, a skyrider from Inkarra dropped a bag on the uppermost ramparts at the Courts of Tide, at the very feet of King Orden. In it was the head of the child that had borne the message to the Storm King, and with the head came an edict warning that the citizens of Mystarria—and all of the other kingdoms in Rofehavan—would no longer be tolerated in Inkarra. Soon after, the Inkarrans began building their runewall across the northern borders, a shield that none dare now pass.”
“But that was a long time ago,” Myrrima argued. “Perhaps the new high king will be more tolerant?”
“Zandaros is still the High King of Indhopal. It’s true that he’s old, but he’s more than a king, it is said. He is a powerful sorcerer who can summon storms, and he uses his powers to extend his life.”
“But,” Myrrima protested, “in sixty years, surely his anger has cooled. His argument was with Gaborn’s grandfather, not with us.”
“Aye,” Borenson said. “That’s my hope. It is the only thing that might save us. We come as the envoys not of the old king but of a new, and we bear entreaties of peace. Even that black-hearted old badger should respect that.”
There was a pregnant silence. Borenson loved his wife, and was offering her one last opportunity to abandon their quest. But Myrrima said with finality, “I won’t be left behind.”
“Very well,” Borenson said.
Borenson gave over three forcibles of stamina to the marquis’s facilitator, an elderly man who studied the forcibles with glee, as if he had not seen so many together in a long, long time. The facilitator went to a logbook and came back shaking his head. “Only two folks have offered to give stamina in the past year. Would you like to wait until our criers find a third?”
“That could take weeks.” Borenson sighed. “Give me what you can now, and send out the criers. Perhaps you can vector the third endowment to me?”
“Done,” the facilitator said, disappearing from the room to make the arrangements. For a moment they stood in the silence, and Myrrima gazed about at the work chamber filled with implements of the facilitators’ craft. There were scales for weighing blood metal, tongs and hammers and files, a small forge, thick iron molds for making forcibles. A chart on the wall showed the various runes that allowed the transfer of each type of endowment, like sight and wit, along with possible minor variations in the shape of the runes. Cryptic notes written in the secret language of facilitators were scrawled upon the charts.
Myrrima gazed curiously at Borenson. She noticed that he was pacing, and his face seemed a bit pale. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” he replied. “Why?”
“The facilitator back in Carris said that he’d vector endowments to you: metabolism, brawn, wit. But you’re not moving any faster now than you did two days ago. Do you think he forgot?”
“No,” Borenson said. “The facilitators keep copious notes. I’m sure he’s just too busy. The city was—” He searched for the right word for the destruction of Carris. The walls of the city had buckled under the onslaught of the reavers, and many of its finest towers had fallen. The lands for thirty miles around lay black and blasted, every plant dead. The corpses of reavers, black monoliths with mouths gaping wide, littered the fields along with dead men. The reavers’ curses hung over the city—a reek that demanded that the men inside dry up, be blind, and rot and putrefy. Recalling the nightmare of Carris, Myrrima could think of no word to describe it. Destroyed was too weak. Demolished? Devastated? Borenson offered “Expunged.”