Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) Page 3

  “It will be nice to feel warm again,” the dark, slender man commented, tucking a thick envelope into an inner pocket between brisk strides. “Too long since I’ve been home.”

  His taller companion did not respond.

  “And you? Do you miss your homeland?” the first continued.

  “More than you know.” The words came reluctantly.

  “Oh, I doubt that. Of the two of us, which is further from the familiar? Which has the more desperate task that draws him into danger?”

  The taller man stopped, hazel eyes cold. “You dare ask that of me? After everything else you’ve demanded, you expect me to also allow you the courtesy of a comparison with myself? No! We are nothing alike!”

  “Tut, my lord, let us not attract undue attention. Neither of us desire the consequences of that.” The short man continued walking, and after a moment, the other followed as well. They ambled beneath the winter-wilted leaves of a vapor tree. “Besides, we really are not that different, deep down. We both do what we must to get what we want. Is that not what drives all men?”

  “No, it is not.” The tall man raised his pointed chin, clipping his words in anger. “If you had not come to me with your smiling threats, I would not have to do anything for you.”

  A chuckle. “So short-sighted, for all that vaunted Shawnash’kote wisdom. Fifteen years ago, had you not done as you willed to achieve the end you desired, you would not feel the need to heed my smiling threats in the first place.”

  The taller man stopped again. In his eyes burned a hatred that had not been loosed since the Raqtaaq Wars ended a score of years past.

  The dark man frowned. “Ah, I see I have overstayed my welcome yet again. An unfortunate habit. I thank you for your latest gift.” He patted his pocket. “And I caution you to continue as you have, letting none draw near the secret that lies between us. That, unfortunately, is the only guarantee you have that those you love will remain, shall we say… no, that is all I need say. It is the only guarantee you have that those you love will remain.”

  With a courtly bow worthy of any lord, he turned and left. After a long moment, the other man did the same.

  ~~~

  The purple carriage rolled along the soft road and headed north into the unknown. A gentle rain had dampened the dirt, and the dust was gone from the air. Bayan sat next to one of the windows and looked up the road. Looking back toward Pangusay would do him no good—his entire life lay days behind. He’d dreamed of Imee last night as he lay wrapped in his blankets—warm, inviting, all arguments forgotten. Only his choice to honor his father’s decision kept him from flinging himself out the door and running home. That, and the seven guards Philo employed.

  The flamboyant Philo sat to Bayan’s left, wearing a mango-hued wig with matching lace on his creamy tunic. He hummed to himself while reading a sheaf of pages he tried to hold steady with beringed hands in the jostling carriage. On the padded bench across from Bayan sat Philo’s assistant Kipri, a young eunuch with a slender frame, wide eyes, and a dark shock of hair.

  “You will meet new people,” Kipri assured Bayan in a formal but kind tone. “You can’t go ten strides in Helderaard without seeing another person; it’s very crowded, especially in the cities. And there are people from all over the empire, all mixed together. You’ll blend right in.”

  Bayan shifted. He hadn’t said a word to either of his companions—captors, really—in three days, so he made an effort to be social. “Were you born in the capital?”

  In Kipri’s glance out the window, Bayan thought he recognized the effort to suppress emotion, though seeing it from the outside was new. A dark glow seemed to inhabit the eunuch’s eyes.

  “I was born in the Raqtaaq lands, in Aklaa,” Kipri said, hunching as if expecting derision.

  Bayan frowned. “Is that far from Helderaard? I was never much of a geography student.”

  Kipri smiled briefly. “Not far enough. When I was seven years old, I moved to Helderaard. I was already a eunuch then, a Second. They let it hurt for the Seconds.” Bayan cringed at the thought.

  “Kipri.” Philo admonished, without looking up from his reading.

  Kipri clucked his tongue; a grimace flitted across his face. “Philo had it easy. He’s a Third.” Bayan didn’t understand.

  “Don’t terrorize the lad, cricket.” Philo set down his papers and met Bayan’s eyes. “Eunuchs have three classes, though using them to differentiate us is considered rude, at least amongst other eunuchs.” He gave Kipri a pointed look. “The members of the first are the royals: cousins and siblings of the emperor. Those of the second are sons of rebels. The third group, myself included, are greedy bastards who love food and fine clothing more than the idea of fatherhood.”

  “He means they’re poor, Bayan,” Kipri said. “It’s an alternative to becoming an indentured.”

  “A vastly preferable one! Give me a life of wine, silk, and adventure over a dozen years of hauling fish or baking bread any day!”

  Kipri smoothed his unruly hair forward, flattening its dark curls. “Scribbling your office messages day after day is not adventure.”

  “And that is why I’ve brought you with me this past year, my boy,” Philo said with a broad smile as he gestured out the carriage window at the passing landscape. “To see the glories of the empire first-hand.”

  “But scribbling’s all I’ll be doing once we get home.”

  Bayan wondered at Kipri’s insolence, but Philo seemed immune. “Nonsense and stuffery,” replied Philo. “I’ve no intention of foisting boredom upon you and the other lads. After seven years in this fabulous land, I will require an interesting life at the Kheerzaal to keep from going comatose, and I shall make sure you’re constantly entertained as well.”

  Kipri leaned toward Bayan. “He means overworked,” he whispered loudly.

  The large eunuch merely harrumphed and rustled his pages as a signal for silence as he returned to his reading.

  Would I trade my own fate as some sort of magical warrior for Kipri’s? The son of a rebel, coerced to serve the empire that his father hated? Bayan tried to imagine his father leading a militia against imperial forces, but his mind conjured instead Imee’s heart-shaped face, and Bayan knew he’d rather take his chances at duelism.

  Maybe she’ll wait for me anyway.

  Vagaries of Travel

  Bayan stepped up into the cramped space of the enclosed cooking wagon and handed a clump of freshly-picked bitter melon leaves to Lotte, Philo’s chef, who accepted them with a smile. “You’re going to make his day, you know.” She gave the leaves a swish in a bowl of clean water.

  “It’s not hard to please someone who eats anything you put in front of him.” Bayan grinned. His rage, fear, and desperation always receded when he helped Lotte cook. The activity reminded him of home.

  Lotte poked at the bitter melon slices she’d made, nibbled one, then shook her head. “You can’t possibly think that after traveling with the man for this long. We’re speaking of a man who hired a professional chef and gave her an entire kitchen in a wagon.”

  “He can afford that?” Bayan asked, surprised.

  “Oh, yes. Philo made his fortune right after the Raqtaaq Wars. You’ll notice he has a way with people. Well, it wasn’t any different over in Nunaa. Even though he worked for Emperor Hedrick, they still accepted him and let him do his job. He was the only eunuch in all of Nunaa who didn’t get hassled, hazed, and booted home.” She nibbled another bitter melon slice, nodded, then spread the slices on the ground beef, chicken eggs and diced tomato in the sizzling pan atop the stove built into the wagon’s wall.

  “Is that why the emperor ordered him to Balanganam?”

  “Oh, no. He volunteered. For all his obsession with creature comforts, Philo Sallas is, at his heart, a generous and loyal man. Or woman, depending on his attire.”

  Bayan wrinkled his forehead. “What does that mean? Is it normal for the empire eunuchs to dress like him? Kipri doesn’t.”

&
nbsp; “Most eunuchs stick to their cream tunics and culture-free hairstyles, but Philo is a rainbow ibis among sparrows. He has to be as true to himself as his situation will allow.”

  When the meal was ready, Bayan helped Lotte carry platters of lightly herbed frybread, the palaya she’d just made, and bitter melon greens from the small cooking wagon out to the others at the campfire, which burned at the base of the a damp, stony cliff edged with delicate ferns. The hungry travelers eagerly reached for their shares.

  Philo, wearing a black wig laced with creamy pearls, thanked Bayan for helping Lotte cook again. Bayan nodded, then excused himself from the group and entered the dimness of the purple carriage. He sat down, lifted the baby pitcher plant’s pot from its holder, and placed it on the wagon’s windowsill.

  By the light of the fire, he pricked his ring finger with the knife given him by his father and squeezed until blood welled up. Holding his finger over the plant, Bayan let one drop fall, then another.

  “What in sints are you doing?” Kipri appeared, as if by magic, at the window. The young eunuch stared at Bayan’s injured finger.

  “Feeding the plant. You haven’t seen me do this before?”

  “No. But you always wander over here at supper, so I came to see why. That thing eats blood?”

  “Only when it’s small.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “When it’s bigger, it eats whole animals.”

  Kipri stepped back. “It grows teeth? It doesn’t lie in wait and ambush them, does it?”

  Bayan laughed, rubbing his finger. “No, no teeth. It’s a plant. It has to stay where it’s rooted. It lures its food in with the sweet smell of its nectar. I’m taking this one as a travel gift to my new home.”

  “Why would they want an animal-consuming plant? For pest control?”

  “The glorified Waarden need pest control like the rest of us?” Bayan snorted. “My father suggested the Academy might like to try making its own seerwine.”

  “Seerwine? Don’t be silly. Seerwine comes from a mysterious vine found only in the forests of Balanganam.”

  Bayan waggled the little stoneware pot at him. “And where did you find me?”

  Kipri’s expression changed to sickened wonder. “This little leech-thing is the glorious seerwine plant? I…I thought it was a kind of grape. Oh, sints, I’ve drunk man-blood.”

  “Now who’s being silly? There’s no blood in seerwine. No animal bits either, in case you were going to ask. Seerwine is pure nectar, fermented, spiced, and sold at outrageous prices to the pompous imperial nobility. It’s the crop with the highest returns on my father’s farm.”

  Kipri raised a skeptical eyebrow. “If you say so. How long do you have to let it feed on you like that, though? Are you going to be too weak and pale from blood loss to perform your classwork?”

  “Another score of days. There’s a rule of ten that seerwine harvesters use: one drop of blood for nine days, two drops for eight days, three for seven, and so on. The day after you give it nine drops, you can feed it a maggot. Later, mice. Or whatever small rodent the Academy has crawling around.”

  Kipri managed a faint smile. “Yes, you can take your creepy blood-drinking plant and go to the Academy, while I’ll be very happy to see my civilized home in the Kheerzaal again.”

  “And, do all those civilized, essential government workers at the emperor’s palace enjoy an occasional glass of bloody, furry seerwine?”

  Kipri pursed his full lips. “You just love ruining my happiness.”

  Bayan’s lips formed a bitter smile. “Then we’re even.”

  ~~~

  Days later, near sunset and the border between Pinamuyoc and Marghebellen, Philo’s carriage rumbled along the stone road, whose pale pavers gleamed like a rippling river in the angled light. Lotte’s cook wagon remained atop the previous hill as some of Philo’s guards attempted to silence the ear-splitting squeak of its wheel with cooking grease. As the horses guided the purple carriage down the switchbacks of a particularly steep hill, Bayan studied the high gray border wall ahead whenever it appeared in his window and marveled at the ancient structure. A few hundred years had passed since the Waarden Empire had relied on the wall’s imposing bulk for protection. He’d heard that the terrible Tuathi tribes had long ago invaded the empire from somewhere just north of Pinamuyoc; maybe the wall had once protected Marghebellen from invasion. Perhaps its broad top had been manned by duelists.

  The carriage slowed. Through the window, Bayan saw an old man with a bandaged leg clapping his hands for aid. Nic, on the driver’s bench, called to the man, offering a ride to the next town, but before the carriage came to a full stop, a chorus of yells burst from the bushes. Nic swore as the horses whinnied, and the carriage jerked to the side, tossing its occupants against one wall before Nic could right it and bring it to a halt.

  “What’s going on?” Bayan panted, disentangling himself from Kipri.

  “Hail, fair travelers!” a voice called from the road ahead.

  Bayan poked his head out of the window. Philo grasped the back of his shirt and hauled him inside, but not before Bayan had seen Frits and Fabian astride their horses, engaging a small collection of men on foot.

  “You want to get your head chopped off, son?” the older eunuch hissed, all trace of his usual good humor gone. “These are vagaries!”

  “Vagaries?”

  “Bandits. Vagaries of travel. An old empire term.”

  “Halloo, I know you’re in there,” the same vagary taunted in a sugary voice.

  Bayan looked out his window again. The old man stood atop a weathered boulder against the hillside. He waved at the carriage.

  Bayan turned to Philo. “What do we do?”

  “Nothing. If Frits, Nic, and Fabian can’t handle him, Joord, Lemmert, and Konrad will be along shortly. You stay in here and out of sight, and no more creating crevasses in the ground. Understand?”

  “Yes, Surveyor.”

  An arrow slammed into the carriage, its narrow head piercing the wall above Kipri’s head. The young eunuch skittered across the bench seat.

  “It’s the right now that worries me,” Kipri said, wide-eyed. “There’s a lot more of them than there are of us.”

  The zhoom of Nic’s bowstring told Bayan that the driver was firing back, until an odd whizzing noise resulted in his crying out and toppling from his bench.

  “Halloo again.” A man’s face abruptly appeared at the window. His dark complexion blended with his attire, making him appear as a shadow. “It isn’t nice when the prey fights back, you know.”

  The man dropped a smoking ball onto the carriage floor and darted away. Acrid orange gas emanated from a hole in the ball, burning Bayan’s eyes.

  “Get out! Out!” Philo shouted. Coughing, he shoved Kipri out the far door. Bayan threw open the door nearest to him and leaped out, gasping for air. He landed on his hands and knees, then crawled away from the wagon, praying the agony in his lungs ended quickly. The caustic burn of the orange smoke faded quickly, replaced by the dry mineral smell of the dust and pebbles beneath his palms.

  “Not so fast, young man.”

  Cold metal pressed against the back of Bayan’s neck, and fear shot down his spine like chill lightning.

  “No one leaves without my permission. Empty your pockets.”

  Bayan eased up into a kneeling position and held his trembling hands away from his sides. “I have nothing with me.”

  “Liar.” The man circled Bayan and leaned close, baring crooked teeth. His hair wasn’t gray after all, but powdered with flour, and the bandage on his leg didn’t slow his stride. “Show me your baubles, muckling.” The man lifted a dirty boot, put it against Bayan’s chest, and shoved.

  Bayan tumbled back into the dirt, skidding across rough stones that dug into his back. His mind flashed back to Imee’s slap, when the dark something inside him had risen and retaliated. At the time he’d been terrified of the unknown power within him, but at present, he w
as more terrified of the man before him.

  You can come out now, he told the darkness.

  The vagary stepped closer and reached for Bayan’s collar, his short sword in his other hand. Bayan parried away the man’s reach and threw him off balance. He jammed a foot into the vagary’s gut and shoved hard. A bright light buzzed around Bayan’s shoe, and the man flew through the air, trailing a conspicuous arc of white light which vanished while he was still in midair. The man landed with a surprised grunt among some dusty shrubs. He shook his head and blinked as if waking from a dream. He lunged for his dropped sword, but released its hilt with a hiss of pain. With an angry grunt, he stood and drew a long dagger.

  Bayan jumped to his feet, anticipating a quick attack; the look in his opponent’s eyes promised Bayan a plethora of pain. Weaponless, Bayan adopted a narrow defensive stance. The vagary advanced and thrust his blade at Bayan’s belly. Bayan sidestepped and grabbed the man’s wrist, then spun down to one knee, hurling the man over him. Trapping the man’s wrist in an uncomfortable position, he stripped the knife from the man’s grip and pressed it against the vagary’s throat.

  “Don’t call me muckling,” Bayan hissed, pressing his knee onto the man’s chest. The vagary wheezed.

  The sound of thundering hooves reached Bayan’s ears. He glanced up and saw Joord, Lemmert, and Konrad approaching at full speed, ignoring the road switchbacks. Konrad dismounted from behind Joord’s saddle as the horse thundered by. He skidded to a halt on the other side of the carriage. Bayan had no idea what had happened to Philo and Kipri.

  Bayan heard gurgling and glanced down. Startled, he nearly dropped the dagger, its blade red with blood that gushed from the man’s neck.

  Bayan shot to his feet, clenching the reddened dagger. Kipri, Konrad, and Philo ran around the end of the carriage, but their footsteps slowed as they approached the vagary’s body.

  “You’re all right, son?” Philo came to Bayan’s side. Bayan nodded.