Acacia,War with the Mein

CHAPTER

Spratling awoke. His eyes were open. He was free of the dream. It was not real. He tried to quell the fear that had shoved him out of slumber so forcefully, but it was not easy. The illumination of the lamp hung by the ramshackle door to his cabin did nothing to dispel the menace he felt pulsing from the walls. There was threat latent in the three-legged stool with the vest draped over it and ominous import in the half-empty bottle of wine on the wall shelf. From outside came a rasp of ocean’s breath. He knew that there was nothing to fear in these mundane objects or sounds. In a way there had not even been anything to fear in the dream. Nothing like the dangers he willingly faced in his daily work. Knowing this, however, did not help him through the moments between the dreaming and the conscious world.

The nightmare he had fled was yet another variation on the visions that had plagued his sleep since Leeka Alain arrived in the Outer Isles, insisting on calling him by that half-forgotten name. Each dream began with an awareness of his smallness. He was a child, tiny, spindly legged, thin armed. He viewed the world from half height. He knew himself to be a target, hunted by a nameless, shapeless possibility. If this being found him, something terrible would happen. He did not know what, but he could not stay still to find out. He wandered through subterranean corridors, a dark and absurdly complex maze. The world existed only in front of him, and he existed only by moving forward through it. Behind him things vanished. He dashed through intersections, afraid of what they opened onto. Out of the stonework of the walls strange creatures stretched their talons, their beaks, and their horned heads, each of them trapped in expressions of rage. How easy it would be for any of them to rip him to pieces; how frightening that they all held so steadily to the pretense that they were only stone. They were not, of course. If he listened hard enough, he heard their hushed breathing.

Though the corridors varied and his path was never the same twice, he always arrived at the same destination. He stepped into a brightly lit room. It was full of people, loud with laughter and music, a sound of tinkling glass that was almost like cascading beads of water. A hundred faces turned toward him, smiling. They had gathered to honor him. It was his birthday. That was what he’d been searching for all along! His tenth birthday celebration. They crowded forward, calling him by the same name Leeka had. That name, actually, was the only word they said: spoken in myriad pitches, strung together in sentences, lilting like questions, forceful like accusations. They spoke a language made up entirely of a single word. His name.

One of them, the youngest girl, stretched a hand out toward him, her white palm upward, fingers crooked and beckoning. The gesture racked him with spasms of fear. She moved toward him, whispering, motioning that he need not be afraid. The more she indicated this, the more he believed it to be a lie. She had enormous brown eyes. They were too big for her face. He realized in a single, telescoped moment that she was not who he had thought her to be, even as he grasped that he had not even conceived an identity for her. This paradoxical realization was what hurtled him toward consciousness.

As always, the experience left him shaken. Who had he thought the girl was? Who had he realized she actually was? Sometimes he spent a greater part of the day plagued by her image, haunted by her eyes. He knew that her identity was within him. It was as if he had a hundred-sided die with the truth written upon one side. No matter how relentlessly he rolled the die, he never found the answer.

Wren stirred on the pallet beside him. She rolled from her back to one side, facing away from him. He felt as if he could hear her eyelids split open. They were not eyes at all like those of the girl in his dreams. Wren was from a coastal people north past Candovia. Her hair was brittle and straw silvered like a woman of the Mein, but her eyes were narrow, set flush with her face instead of recessed. They had about them a sleepy quality, although this belied her predatory sharpness of mind. “Dreams have no power beyond their realm,” she had told him before. “Only actions do.” Spratling felt sure that she was right but was not sure whether to read that statement as a comfort or as a challenge.

Later, when he joined the crowd of raiders taking their morning meal, he walked among them, smiling and joking, teasing in the easy manner he had with his men. They sat on benches ranked around a cook stove that had come from the mess hall at Palishdock. It was a massive, cast-iron thing. Spratling himself had led a small party back to the settlement to rescue it from the ashes and destruction the league warship had inflicted on the place. Its appearance here-on the southern isle that had become their third hideaway in as many months-had raised morale.

Standing in the sand before it, inhaling the bacon scent sizzling atop it, bent forward and preparing to pluck a strip up with his fingers, he did not take note of the general’s arrival until he spoke. Leeka stood some distance away, on the other side of the stove. He spoke for everyone to hear.

“Why haven’t you told everyone about the key?” he demanded. “Why haven’t you told them what the prisoner has said?”

Spratling’s appetite, his pleasant mood, his transitory sense of equilibrium all vanished in an instant. He had known this moment was coming, of course. It was eight days since his attack on the warship. He had sworn to silence the few who had heard just what the key was for, but secrets among raiders do not last, especially not with a league pilot held prisoner among them. Spratling cursed himself for bringing the prisoner with them. He should have killed him on the night, but he could not resist taking so valuable a prisoner, could not help but want to know what the man could tell him. He had made sure only those who had been with him in the pilot’s room took food and water to the man, and only Spratling and Dovian interrogated him. But his presence had been on everybody’s mind since their return.

“I make the decisions here, not you. If I do a thing, there’s a reason for it.”

“I thought Dovian led this group,” Leeka said. “You’re only one of his raiders, right? You said so yourself. Spratling, the raider. Just one of many…”

Turning to face him through the rippling heat thrown up by the stove, Spratling said, “Either way, you don’t make decisions for us.” He cast his voice tight and dangerous. He had not meant to respond with such obvious anger, but his passions tended to flare each time this man prodded. He had not kept the key secret out of any timidity, damn it! He just needed to think its significance through, to research what he could do with it. Leeka had no business calling him on it.

“Dovian agrees with me,” the soldier said.

As if on cue, the old raider rose from where he had been sitting at the edge of the group. He hobbled forward, his bulk like that of a wounded bear. Whatever pain the movement caused him he kept clamped between his teeth. He might have been getting better these last few weeks. He was certainly on his feet more often, but Spratling was not sure just how much of his illness he was hiding.

Leeka went on. “You have a weapon that could cripple the league. You should let it be known, and together we should plan how to use it.”

Spratling shifted his gaze from the Acacian to the Candovian, expressing his annoyance through his eyes. Dovian simply stared back at him, his face sad, apologetic, rimmed beneath the eyes with disappointment. “We will talk about this later-”

“No,” Leeka said, “we will talk about it now. Don’t you all wish to talk about it now? Your young captain wears a key about his neck that you should all know about. You want to hear of it, don’t you?”

Nobody answered. They did not have to. Their silence had a quality to it that anyone could read. Of course they wanted to know. And, Spratling knew, they deserved to know. He tossed his food down, no longer having a taste for it.

That afternoon they had the open meeting that Leeka wished for. They sat on the sand near the ocean, under the ribboned shade of coconut palms, the sky above them cloudless, a light blue dome undisturbed by anything save the progress of the sun’s blazing whiteness. Spratling did not attempt to run the meeting. Wren and Clytus, Geena and all of the others who had been involved in the attack on the league warship were glad to break their enforced silence and sing in chorus.

“Think back a few months ago,” Geena said, “to when they took the brig with Spratling’s nail. We came away with a fair bit of treasure, yes? There was one piece, however, more valuable than the rest.”

“See that pendant about Spratling’s neck?” Wren asked. “That’s what we speak of. You’ve all seen it, but we didn’t know its value until the pilot of the warship explained it. It’s one of a handful of keys that unlock the outer rim platforms.”

“There are only twenty of them in existence,” Nineas said. “Only twenty. And we have one.”

“And we brought the pilot with us,” Clytus said. “Spratling’s been learning all sorts of things from him, I wager. So you have to ask yourself if there’s a use we could put this key and our new source of intelligence to.”

For the next few hours the raiders enthusiastically considered that question. They threw about schemes and notions, filled with a lust for revenge and with the possibility of an unheard-of bounty. Leaguemen were enormously wealthy and their tastes extravagant. What might those platforms house? Slaves by the thousands? Warehouses stacked high with mist? They might find concubines of amazing beauty. Gold and silver by the bargeload. Floating palaces hung with vines and flowers, paved in marble. They could drape themselves in silken clothes and drink wine from chalices of carved turquoise and eat and eat and eat as they had never eaten before. They could spend the rest of their lives in the pursuit of pleasure. They could drown in excess, as all raiders dream. They could even take over the mist trade themselves! They would have Hanish Mein by the balls then, and their fortune would know no bounds.

With Dovian’s consent, they brought out the prisoner. His hands bound and clothing shredded, he stood timid and begrimed at the center of this whirlwind, a trickle of congealed blood on his upper lip. He sometimes needed to be prodded or cuffed, threatened or kicked, but he answered the questions put to him. What he said only fired the group’s enthusiasm.

Spratling let them talk, amazed at how easily they lost their grip on reality. There were some monumental obstacles before them, but in their frenzy nobody mentioned any of them. Leeka offered little. Even Dovian seemed to believe their scheming served a purpose. Only when the banter slowed did Dovian clear his throat and speak.

“It’s fine to imagine, isn’t it?” He pushed himself upright and walked a slow circle in front of the group. Despite his age and ill health, the man still commanded attention, even when he was just drawing a circle in the sand with his massive feet. “I know it’s fine to imagine. And you all know that I’ve a history with the platforms. I saw them once when I was young. Just sailed by them, we did, taunting like. Had an entire fleet chase us from the place and hunt us so far north we saw chunks of ice floating in the sea. Almost killed us, that little stunt. But I saw them. They’re like you imagine and even more unbelievable than that.”

He stopped walking. He looked about a moment, inadvertently seeking the walking stick he had tossed away recently. Noticing himself, he straightened and looked about, his eyes moving from one face to another. “We cannot have their treasure, though. That’s not what we’re about here. An entire army could not besiege the place, and we don’t have an army anyway. And their riches…Truth be told, I don’t want them. Slaves, you talk about? Concubines? Come on, now. I’ve never minded a bit of plunder. Never minded taking what I wanted. Raiding is honest work, right? We do it with our hands, with our guts. What the league traffics in is a whole different level of misery altogether. You don’t want that, friends. You might, however, want to wipe them from the face of the world. You want rewards? How about the love of all the children who won’t be sold across the ocean? How about the thanks their parents would heap on you? How about just knowing that you’ve changed the world for the better?”

Dovian paused a moment, searching faces for the answer. His eyes passed over Spratling’s, but he did not show him scrutiny any different from the others. “What I’m saying is that there’s only one thing we can do with this key, and it’s the thing we should do with it.”

None of the raiders, who had moments before been keen on plunder, raised a complaint. Such was Dovian’s influence among them. The planning took no time at all really, as the venture was one more of pure nerveless courage than anything else. The mission, as Dovian explained it, was fundamentally simple. They had only three hurdles to overcome: getting to the platforms undetected and using the pilot’s knowledge to find the right gate, inserting the key and hoping that the locks had not been changed, and finding a particular warehouse. He believed that each of these challenges was achievable.

For example, as they made their approach they had mainly to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Stable and massive as the platforms were, the league was unlikely to expect any sort of an attack. They had gone unchallenged for several hundred years and certainly would not fear a single small vessel. “They might notice a small ship, true. But then again they might not. They won’t be looking for it, that’s for sure. There’s no navy in the world to threaten them, and they wouldn’t dream we’d try what we’re going to.” Still, of course, they had to be careful. There was an atoll less than a day’s sail from the platforms. If they launched themselves from it, timed correctly, with the right sailing conditions, they would be able to reach their target under the cover of night.

The question of the key still being useful was another matter. “What if they’ve changed the locks?” several asked in a quick chorus. “Or placed guards on the entry points?”

Dovian did not think a few months was enough time, even if they had wanted to change the locks. The workmanship of the key was such that it could not be easily replaced or altered. Moreover, only a handful of leaguemen carried a key like this. They swore to guard them with their lives.

“Whoever was meant to protect this one didn’t do so,” Leeka said. “He didn’t accompany it, and he sent it on an unprotected ship. He was fool enough to leave the key on that ship, and I’m betting he hasn’t reported its loss. To do so would mean his death. Even men of the league cherish life, right?” The general directed this question at the prisoner.

The man answered, dejected, “More so than anyone but myself, I’d say.”

“He’s hoping we don’t know what it is,” Dovian said. “We didn’t, did we? Spratling there was wearing it about his neck as a souvenir. He could as easily have melted it down or tossed it over his shoulder without a thought about it. If you were the leagueman, would you give up your life for the vague possibility that anybody would recognize this for what it is and conceive of how to use it?”

There was, finally, the matter of what to do once they reached the platforms. This, however, Dovian seemed to feel the most confident about. Of the many different quadrants of the floating platforms, one in particular was set away from the rest, separated by a long pontoon pier. “The pitch warehouses,” he said. “The place they make the stuff and the place they store it. There’s no more combustible substance on the earth. We’ve all seen it in action. It flares with the touch of a spark and burns like holy hell, even underwater. All we have to do is get near the stuff and strike a spark to it. It’ll blow the place to pieces. It’ll throw great globs of the stuff high enough that plenty of it’ll land on other platforms. It’ll make a right mess of the place. Believe it.”

Spratling, despite finding himself sidelined in all of this discussion, felt his body tingle with the possibilities. It was an incredible idea, a scheme bold and righteous enough that they had to attempt it. But there was a flaw in it. “Somebody has to light that spark,” he said. “However, that one will not make it off the platform alive.”

Dovian looked annoyed that he had brought this up, but the others stopped to consider it. Geena suggested a fuse to delay the explosion. They could shoot a flaming arrow, a young raider put forward. Another proposed catapulting another “pill” over the walls. But all these ideas were flawed enough that they had to be rejected. Long fuses were unreliable. They might burn out themselves or be discovered as they sizzled and crackled slowly forward. If a guard came across such as that, he could squash their plans with the toe of his boot, just like that. An arrow or catapulted pill-even if they found the layout conducive to such an attack-would still mean an immediate explosion that might well take the entire crew with it. No, to survive they had to be well away. One of them had to light the pitch from up close and make sure it was going to blow. It was too harebrained a plan otherwise, too likely to fail.

“Well, how about this, then,” Dovian said. “When we get to the platform, we’ll draw lots to see who goes in. Each of us that crews the Ballan will draw. If you aren’t willing to be the one, then don’t go. Step out right now. Each of us that sails will draw, and the one with the mark will go. It may seem a strange thing to decide by chance, but we’ll plan to lose only one. That one’ll be taking more than a few leaguers with him.”

A week later the Ballan sailed north with a lean crew. They rounded the big island of Thrain and threaded the needle between the volcanic buttes know as the Thousands. They waited two days in a hidden cove at the western edge of the islands and sailed into the open ocean on the morning of the third. The winds were not ideal for the crossing, but the currents favored them. They swept up to the north and veered west. For the better part of one morning a massive school of dolphins escorted them, stretching off to either side as far as the eye could see, hundreds of bodies darting out of the water again and again, up and out and in, up and out and in. Nineas said it was a fair sign, as dolphins were roguish buggers and could tell that the raiders were about to get up to some major mischief.

Finding the atoll Dovian remembered proved difficult. They searched for it for two full days without luck and had all but decided to do without it. The next day, however, dawned with a tiny bunching of palms on the horizon. They sailed for it and spent the afternoon talking things over one final time, standing about in shady patches on the beach, drinking coconut milk mixed liberally with sugar, a bit of water, and a splash of alcohol. Not much, mind. Enough to keep up spirits but little enough that the effects of it burned away late in the afternoon, when they got back to physical work.

They drew in all their regular sails and replaced them with blue-black sailcloth. They painted the sides of Ballan a dirtlike color, took the shine off any fixtures, hung cloth over the few glass windows. Casting off, they chased the sun as it sank into the sea, and then they carried on afterward into a black night. Dovian’s voice rose out of the silence, steadying them on. He did not speak grandly or give intricate instructions. He just mentioned mundane matters, recalled adventures past, commented on things he had noted about individual crew members and felt inclined to share with them. So the hours passed.

“Lights ahead!” the sailor in the crow’s nest called down.

A moment later Spratling clung at the edge of the small platform, having scaled the pole at full speed. He wrapped himself close against the young sailor. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a city,” the sailor said, “a big city, like Bocoum.” He was quiet a moment. “No, bigger. Like Alecia.”

Even that was an understatement. It wasn’t just the number of lights, Spratling thought. It was the way they dotted the dark horizon for what must have been miles. It was hard to put scale to it yet, but for all the world he could not shake loose the feeling that he was looking at the shoreline of a great landmass. He remained aloft as Dovian ordered first one sail and then another drawn in. When the oars were called for, however, he climbed down and spoke in whispers to the men. He helped them get the oars out silently and fitted them into oarlocks padded for this purpose. He pulled one himself for a while, timing the movement to the slow rhythm Nineas called out, low and steady, like the beating heart of the ship, meant more to be felt than heard.

Later, Spratling stood next to Dovian, watching the monstrosity slide along beside them, trying to grasp the hugeness of it, to quantify its dimensions into finite terms. There was no obvious sign that the structure floated upon the waves at all. It looked as solid as if the entire thing was made of stone, as if its foundation stretched through the fathoms and anchored right to the seafloor. Its flat, featureless walls rose a hundred feet above the swells. Only there did the geometry break into balconies and terraces, towers and glowing windows. It could house…how many? a half million souls? a million? or more? It felt like a thousand pairs of eyes should be looking down upon them. They rowed along beside a monster, hushed both by stealth and awe.

They watched as they rounded the southern edge of the platforms. A large, rectangular complex sat off at a distance. It was a darker shape against the night, a geometry as of black obsidian, lit only by dim beacons at each corner. A floating pier a quarter mile long linked it to the main structure. It was as wide and even as the greatest highways in the realm, undulating slightly with a motion that, for an instant, conjured images of deep-sea leviathans.

“Tell the crew to get the small boat ready,” Dovian said. “When we get close enough, get it into the water. Give Clytus and Wren the key. Let them check the lock.”

“Clytus and Wren?”

“And six others to row for them, all well armed. They can handle it. You know that. Once you’ve sent them, come back to me. I want you here beside me to hear what I have to say.”

“We’ll need to draw the lots,” Spratling said.

“Do as I said. And then come back to me here.”

Spratling did so. He was back a few moments later, the sack of marked woodchips clenched in his fist. He looked toward the warehouses and watched the silhouette of the small boat row the distance to the pier and disappear into shadow. A few moments later he thought he saw figures moving on the pier, but they were gone in an instant. From then on, the moments stretched out, tense and nerve-racking.

From the Ballan they could only guess at what Clytus and Wren were doing based on what the pilot had told them. “There will be a few guards on the gate,” the man had claimed, “but if you’re stealthy at all you’ll catch them unawares.” He explained that the platforms had never been seriously attacked in all their years of existence. The league considered their distance from land to be a sufficient protection in and of itself. Add to that natural boundary the enormity of their walls and the reputation for vengeance of the Ishtat Inspectorate. Beyond this, the peculiarity of the keys and the fact that only the most trusted among them ever earned them and that loyalty among the sires was supposed to be complete: all these things made them confident that they were secure. The guards were a cursory measure and they knew it. “If you’re lucky you’ll find them napping.”

Spratling had been unsure if he should trust the man. He might be leading them into a trap. But once the pilot grew accustomed to his role as traitor he became incredibly forthcoming. He grew so cooperative that Nineas muttered, “I think the man fancies himself a raider now.” Indeed, he seemed to anticipate all the questions they would have and tried to answer them before he was asked.

They should avoid the main entryway, he said. It was inset at the point at which the pier connected to the pitch warehouse. Instead, they should travel along the wall to the south until they found the side entrance the sires used when they were entering the warehouse from the ocean side. It was a tall door, narrow, with a single keyhole at its center. They should insert the key completely, as if it was a child’s geometric wooden block that needed to be slotted into the right compartment. That was all there was to it. No turning involved. That was why the key did not much resemble a key. Once it was home, the door would slide open with the slightest pressure put against it. Inside they would find a confusion of storage and manufacturing and machinery that he could not possibly detail. But he did not have to. Once inside they would be looking at the single greatest stockpile of explosive material in the Known World. He left it up to them to figure out what to do with it.

Feeling the interminable minutes plod past, Spratling wished he was there with them. It should have been him at risk. He was the one who had led them here, whether he liked to admit it or not. Why hadn’t he gone with them? Dovian gave the orders, and he had followed. Why didn’t he question…

Before Spratling knew it was happening, Dovian reached out, took the bag from his hand, and tossed it into the ocean. “I’m the one going,” the raider said. “Don’t argue with me about it. Until I’m gone, I’m in charge. This is what I say. Just wanted you to know first. We’ll tell the others together. Come.”

“No!” Spratling slammed a hand to Dovian’s chest, stopping him. “No, we were to draw lots. We all agreed! You cannot-”

Dovian’s hand covered the younger man’s, hot and coarse, sweaty. “Don’t make this hard on me. I’m sick. I’m not getting any better. The truth is I’m dying. I’ve been so for a long time now. I’ve been waiting to understand how best to say good-bye to the world. Now I’ve found it.”

“You cannot die.” Spratling knew he sounded childish, but he could not help himself. “You cannot leave me-”

“You’re wrong there. I’ve given you everything I could. I’ve lived the best years of my life with you, lad. I’ve given you every bit of wisdom I have. Wasn’t much, I know, but I’ve taught you everything a father should, haven’t I? In a just world fathers would live to see their sons become men. Only then would they leave them. That’s what’s happening here.”

Spratling saw a second movement on the pier again. He watched, breathless, until he saw the boat emerge from the shadows, rowing back toward the Ballan. He wanted them to stop. He needed more time. To Dovian, he said, “We made an agreement. It’s not your place-”

The older man sighed. “You’ll sit on the throne of Acacia someday. You will, even if you don’t know it yet. If I had my way I’d be there beside you, proud as can be. But I cannot help you with that as I’d like to. I can do this, though. I can do this.” He cupped his hand over the young man’s shoulder. “Let me show you one last thing-how to die glorious like.”

They did not actually hear the words from the returning group, but the message flowed to them on fingers of whispered electricity. The key was good! The warehouse was unlocked. They had killed two guards near the front gate but no others were in sight.

“I’ll make a hell of a blaze, I promise you that. Ah, Dariel, come on now. I’m just asking you this one thing…No, not one thing. I’ve a second thing as well. You won’t deny me it. I know you won’t, ’cause I raised you better than that.”

Less than an hour later, Spratling unfurled the black sail while the others still pulled on the oars. The wind had shifted. It blew them slicing through the ocean at a steady clip. The orange stain that announced the coming dawn illumined the horizon to the east. Behind them was blackness, silence. Like in his dream, he thought. The nothingness behind him. The nameless fear he had always to flee.

They put a second hour behind them. A few whispered fears that Dovian had been caught. None of them knew what he faced upon passing through that unlocked threshold. Perhaps the mission had failed. Spratling moved away from the others and stood in the prow of the ship. No matter what, Dovian was gone. It did not seem real. Did not seem possible. He wanted to stop the motion of the boat on the sea and the passing of time and just-

Such notions were ended in the most decisive of ways. Spratling knew the very moment Dovian sent his soul in search of the Giver. The blast of light that announced it turned the night to day and made the sea into a black mirror on which the contours of the heavens rippled and danced. He did not look back. He was afraid to. He was sure, at that moment, that behind him a raging conflagration reached up into the sky, Dovian’s soul at its apex and roaring into the heavens. He felt sure the inferno would reach out and consume the world if he turned and faced it. These thoughts were as unsubstantiated as those of dream logic, which is no logic at all. He knew it, but still he set his eyes on the eastern horizon and only faced the blaze there, fleeing the one behind him in a headlong flight into the coming day.