The Unfinished Land

The High Tent

THE JOURNEY TO the camp of the Sister Queens, set up within the woods and pastures bordering the chafing waste, took less than an hour. Reynard saw that no cultivation had been done here for many a year, nor were the woods harvested. Did the krater city’s inhabitants need to eat or build?

Daylight was bright and the sky still clear, and the smoke from the camp’s fires rose and spread gray and brown, hazing the sky ahead. The Sister Queens still fielded thousands of soldiers, and likely there were servants from the cities near as well—captives, informants, slaves.

As the Spanish and Cardoza prodded their captives along and through the camp, men and a few women emerged from the tents, all carrying swords, many wearing resin-soaked cloth plates, sheets of raw iron, armlets of bronze: a style of armor other than that worn by Cardoza’s men.

And beyond their tents and fires rose line after line of great machines, machines designed to fling rocks and fire and to erect fighting towers—to lay siege and destroy.

None appeared to have been used.

Widsith walked beside Reynard and said, “Look at their faces! This land doth not play by their rules or their tools.” His eyes seemed to seek Valdis, but could not find her. “Thy shadow plays with other shadows. What is her plan?”

“I wish she would flee and save the others,” Reynard said. “The old servant at the krater—” he began, but Widsith held up his hand and looked down as if in prayer.

“The one who laid out my life, thou mean’st? Who worked with the Crafters to spin a long and varied history, to judge our souls, and to make the worlds I would be interested in seeing?”

“The one who died,” Reynard said.

Cardoza was riding far ahead, stopping to consult with other soldiers, some dressed in colorful robes, others carrying longswords and bows, along with crossbows of Spanish design. All were weary, hoping to gather their strength as they rested.

But strength to fight what, or whom?

“If he was my story master,” Widsith said, “and I have no reason to doubt his word, then my history is soon at an end. One doth not with impunity meet one’s own smith, not on this island.”

A great gray and white tent rose into the dusk, lit from inside like a paper lantern filled with fireflies. Outside the tent, cots had been made and arranged to care for hundreds of wounded, and another stretch of ground took as many dead tied into their shrouds. Many soldiers and guards formed rings around the tent, a few fires scattered among the lines, and servants in rags, of all ages, sharing out food and water.

“Did the blunters get away with Nikolias and Calafi?” Reynard whispered to Widsith.

“I doubt they moved far,” Widsith said. “They have yet to receive their drakes. This battle is far from over.”

“These have already felt the wrath of drakes,” Kaiholo said. “They do not look ready to face more.”

As Widsith and Kaiholo and Reynard passed the dead, they felt the chill breeze of Valdis cross their path, to tell them, and only them, she was still near. Reynard wondered how she would justify spending her time here—if she ever needed to justify anything. Her presence somehow reassured him, however, but he could not say why he felt such, other of course than her being a weapon, which she could certainly be, if Calybo relieved her of other duties.

Kaiholo made several signs to the servants, but got back no response, other than veiled glances. “Those who attended the Crafter have been sent to the east, methinks,” he said.

An older man, almost as old as Widsith had once been, came up to meet them beyond the cooling ground. He looked at Reynard and scowled as if seeing a ghost. In heavily accented English, he said, “I once had fewer years than thee!” and pulled up his sleeves to show some of his many scars.

“Was that a cabin boy from the galleon?” Reynard asked Widsith.

“Yes. Not many still here, still alive. I saw fewer than twenty Spanish soldiers.”

Another group of soldiers, in the armor of the Sister Queens, and several women in ochre gowns, emerged from the tent and surrounded the captives, examining them with feverish, or perhaps drunken, interest.

The eastern soldier and four of his fellows ushered Kaiholo, Reynard, and Widsith away from the fire and into the large tent through a half-hidden, draped entrance. Inside, many layers of striped gray and white fabric separated the airy rooms, these thin and current-ruffled walls rising into the heights, where lanterns swung slowly from long chains, casting a fitful, shimmering light without shadows.

Reynard could no longer detect the presence of Valdis, and felt the lack acutely.

“This way,” the first soldier said. All had the wear and tear of battle on their clothes and armor, especially on the resin-soaked plates, cracked and chipped. One soldier had the stump of a missing arm wrapped in a bloody bandage, and seemed paler and perhaps weaker than the others, but still vigilant.

“We have no drakes,” the leader said as he walked beside them, the others on the outside. “But we still have our courage. We would face you with our bare hands when the Queens are finished.”

The one-armed man held out his stump. “The courage of the east, not the sorcery of the west!” he said, his voice hoarse.

Up a flight of wicker stairs, not unlike the stairways in the seed-cage city, and through more translucent drapes, they were led into the throne room of the Sister Queens.

The thrones were empty.