Book One Voices : Adago the Scout
OUTSIDE BURRIN, DAUMIAND
FOURTH DAY OF AUTUMN
FOURTH DAY OF CONCLAVE MILITANT
Every river has its own voice.
Years before, during a troll ambush along the wooded lip of the Great Gorge, Adago heard a dozen warriors draw blades from leather scabbards at once. He had been young then, barely past his Bathing Day. He drew his own cutlass late, more in response to that collective whoosh of steel on leather than the bird-like chirp of bone arrows punching through the breeze all around him.
That unsheathing sigh, bass and urgent, was carved into the wood of his memory, not deeply but very clearly, like the scoring on a printer’s block. The river Rhen hummed that same sound to him, low and hushed and anxious, as it rounded the broad foot of the table-mount of Burrin.
Adago sat on a broad, flat boulder over a pebbly bank lined with sharp-leaved bushes, his back to the grassy plain of Daumiand. On the far side of the river, the rock face of the mesa was bright in the autumn sun, broken here and there with shadowed fissures, a taut curtain of red and brown from the waters to the heavens. Four hundred feet above, the raw stone gave way to the painted walls of the city’s ancient buildings, bright yellows, greens, and pinks, like spring flowers against the dry blue of the autumn sky.
He had never been inside Burrin, nor inside any other Daumie city, except Siambic when he was a boy. Nor had he been inside any city at all for years, whether Daumie, Verqeño, or Hyrsian. Not since he had become a scout. Not even to visit family.
And he had no intention to. Every city is a liar. The wilderness speaks the truth, to those who know how to listen.
The Rhen before him was flat but fast-running, muddy surface marred here and there by eddies that rose and faded with the same gentle rhythm of firebugs signalling each other in the night forest. Adago rested his hands on the warm rock, watching the brown river, listening to its low and steady breathing. So unlike the nameless brook that threaded between the scrub oaks behind his family’s xaqríso when he was a boy, a wrinkled little ribbon of water that glittered like a pan of diamonds and chattered like a coop full of hens. So unlike the Great River he knew so well, roaring and thrashing like a blue-gray dragon through the Gorge.
The mesa’s naked rock was also unlike the walls of the Gorge, where trees and bushes sprang from every crack, draping life over the raw stone, every boulder and pillar mottled with lichen and moss, and veined with vines that flowered in summer and held fast through winter. The west was green in the slow pulse of the seasons, but Daumiand was a yellow land of grass and scrub and gravel. Yet the dead face of the mountain still reminded him of the Gorge, just as high and steep and rugged. As a scout he had trained his step to be sure on the lip of the Gorge, shoulders square over his weight, lest his footing slip and the chasm’s maw take him, his body crushed against the toothy boulders along its shores and swallowed by the tumbling waters.
The Rhen hummed and churned, and Adago saw a trio of paisley eddies circling each other on the surface, mottled with leaves. With a sudden swirl, they were all gone. Swallowed. You are not going to be an easy river to cross. The voice of the water responded only by persisting in its low song.
He leaned to look around the prickly branches of a nearby acacia, peering up the rough trail. Was the marshal late? He’d never known Voight to be late to a meeting or short on a debt. He glanced at the sun. There’s still time. Don’t be so impatient.
His ear was worrying him. Some sound hidden under the rush of the muddy river? He leaned back again.
There was Voight, leather boots, wool pants, leather coat, iron gorget covering his throat, and a wide-brimmed leather hat. His gloved hands were holding the horns of a long cart, its wheels grumbling quietly against the gravel behind him. In the cart was a boat, and in the boat were his pack and long gun, and a pair of oars.
Voight noticed him and lifted his head in greeting. Conspicuously, there was no edge of a birjan showing below the edge of the marshal’s hat. Despite that he was not Daumie, Adago cringed at this breach of local etiquette.
“You’d have a better time of it if you wore the headcloth,” he said, once his friend was in earshot.
“Fine talk from a man with a rat on his head,” the marshal grunted. Adago touched the furry tail of the teixós cap where it hung over his left shoulder. Not exactly a rat, but close enough for a jest.
“I’m not invited to the Conclave, so what I wear doesn’t matter.”
Voight set the cart down and pulled his hands off the horns, stretching his fingers. He pulled the leather gloves off, stuffed them in the pocket of his coat, and looked at his palms. “Neither am I, any more.”
“At least not the official one,” the scout said. He pushed himself off the rock. “Why didn’t you just hitch it to a horse?”
“Because I’m leaving it here, and the trail I’m taking into the Wood Lands won’t be fit for a horse during the winter’s first blazing.” He reached into the boat and pulled out his pack and long gun. He set them atop the rock where Adago had been. “Help me with this?” He reached in, grabbed the oars and set them beside the trail.
Together, they lifted the boat and carried it backward out of the cart. As they set it down, the stern groaned against the trail, pushing up a little moraine of dirt and gravel. It was light, Verqeño woodcraft. Adago knew Voight had selected a Verqeño boat because he would be familiar with its handling. He’d need that familiarity crossing the Rhen.
“Not that heavy after all.” Voight scanned the rocks and shrubs. “Where’s your pack?”
Adago grinned. “I hid it over there behind the Jacob’s Root.”
“Worried about getting bushwhacked?”
He shrugged.
Voight’s brow lifted. “This is Burrin, not the backwoods. I’d be surprised if you got pick-pocketed.”
“From the tone of the letter the dwarf sent me, you’d think Burrin was the most dangerous place in the world.”
Adago retrieved his pack, careful not to let his skin touch the spiny leaves of the Jacob’s Root bush. The marshal lifted his hat and rubbed his close-cropped hair. “Colonel Kettle seems sober. If he feels a little exposed up in Burrin, that’s just a dwarf for you.”
“Fair enough.”
“He’s going to invite you into the dvergan trails under Burrin and try to convince you and Captain Gærste to come to Qol Murikh. Maybe you won’t like him after you meet him, but I’ll be at the other end once you get there.”
Adago placed his pack near the center of the boat. “And we’re to go underground the whole way?”
Voight grabbed an oar and set it beside Adago’s pack.”I want you to go the underground way, because you’re the only scout I know who’s keen enough to remember the trail.”
He considered it. It wasn’t flattery. It was the cool assessment of a man whose blood Adago had scrubbed from his clothes, and who’d washed Adago’s blood from his own clothes.
“You’ve been my friend for years,” he said. “My only friend, at times. You were there for me at Darseqírow and the Glades of Helm.”
Voight glanced up from setting the other oar in the boat. “Darseqírow?” He huffed. “The hell! Everybody wants to thank me for Darseqírow. I hid up in the trees and took potshots at whatever ogre’s head was sticking out the most.”
Adago shrugged. “What I’m saying is that if you trust this Colonel Kettle, I’m sure I’ll find him acceptable.”
“I trust Gærste. Other than Marshal Proust, he’s the one ally I have at the Conclave Militant.” He grabbed his long gun from the rock. “Had.”
Adago had heard of Voight’s speech before a stunned Conclave, how the marshal had interrupted his brother Barreto. Captain Barreto Qadareiña, who inherited the family xaqríso and had wanted Adago to stay there as steward while he caroused in Sientaría and Miguen. Who had stolen the first alfan trophies Adago brought home as a scout, and wore them on a silver pin as if he had taken them himself.
Adago wasn’t fond of cities, but part of him wished he had been in Burrin to witness Voight cutting Barreto off mid-bluster. He didn’t know this Gærste, but the fact that the Hyrsian had facilitated his brother’s embarrassment recommended the man’s character.
He chose to remain diplomatic and neutral: “Proust is solid.”
“He is,” Voight said, “and he’ll meet up with us beyond Qol Murikh. He won’t reveal his trail, even to me, but that speaks to his prudence. Any other marshals who want to join us will have to be vetted through him.” He pulled the gloves from his pocket and shoved him back onto his hands.
Adago grabbed the side of the boat. “No Verqeño marshals, scouts, or cauls. If not spying for Barreto and his generals, they’ll be watched by him.”
Voight wrapped his fingers around the other side and they lifted the craft easily despite the pack and oars. “So far, no Verqeños except you and the pistoleer.”
“Qashy?” Adago said. “That hoggish old reprobate?” They carried the boat past the cart and side-stepped down the bank, boots sinking into the loose pebbles.
“That hoggish old troll-killer. I fought beside him many times when I was your age. Qaxetín is too selfish to act as an agent for Verqia’s generals, and he’s wily enough to escape the notice of their spies.”
“He’s good at not getting caught.” They set the boat down with its bow in the river.
“And,” Voight said, “good at killing jotan.”
Adago could not deny this, so he let Voight’s judgment on the matter stand. “And the dwarf?”
“Colonel Qetul is a new element. I had no notion there were dwarves who were wearying of the Long War.”
“Everyone is wearying of the Long War.”
Voight shoved the bow of the boat a bit further into the water, and looked up at the scout. “Let’s hope that includes the elves and giants.”
Adago nodded, stared into the river, sighed. There was tightness in the marshal’s words. He’d known the man long enough to measure his mood, and his voice was uneasy. Perhaps he just wanted to get on his way. Adago looked back up at him and nodded again. “So, I’ll see you at Qol Murikh?”
“If the alfan don’t kill me on the way.”
“You’re taking the trail through Mayson’s farmhold?”
Voight grunted an affirmative and gathered his pack from the rock.
“The Summer Elves will be asleep before you get there, then.” It was small talk. Giving Voight an opportunity for an easy goodbye.
The marshal eyed him. He slipped his pack over both shoulders, shrugged it into place, and set the butt of the long gun on the ground. His eyes flitted skyward, toward Burrin.
“Your cousin is in the city.”
Adago took a breath. “Pátriqa?” The name felt alien in his mouth.
“Working as Barreto’s assistant, it seemed.” He shrugged again. “Probably just a familial obligation, I suppose.”
“Probably,” Adago said. “She’d be old enough by now.”
Voight nodded, and that was it. He shouldered the long gun, turned, and walked back down the trail, his boots grumbling against the dust with each step.
∇
Adago sat backward in the boat, facing the bow, studying the far rocks for signs of the door from which this Colonel Qetul would emerge. It was futile, he knew. At this distance, even his well-trained scout’s eye could never pick out a dvergangate against the raw stone of the mesa.
He felt a pang of guilt about mispronouncing the dwarf’s name earlier when talking with Voight. This human nickname “Kettle” was a crude approximation of the dvergan clan name. Used as a given name it was completely incorrect. The man’s proper name was Hosmantel, a war-brand that meant Cloak Foe, “greencloak” being a slur the dwarves used for the elves. But, he was the only member of clan Qetul known to most humans, and the nickname stuck.
A pair of crows circled high overhead, swooping above the garishly painted buildings at the edge of Burrin. Elven spies, most likely. The Daumies would be wise to put arrows in them.
Adago leaned against his pack, watching the dark birds wheel and spin against the blue. Qetul. “Kettle” in Rhenarian. Qetul, Qetul. Why not “cattle” instead? Or Daumie “qodil” for “killer”?
Qetul. Qe tolo.
Humans were no more careful about their own languages. Even the name of the city above him was a lazy contraction of Ambu Rrin, Table-Mount of the Rhen in Old Daumie. The ancient river gave its name to Rhenaria, the land east of Daumiand that had succumbed to the rising seas over a hundred years ago, but not before the Rhenarians established their language as the medium of human diplomacy.
Since the drowning of Rhenaria, there were but a few refugee enclaves where children learned that language from the tongue of their mothers, and the hushed voice of the Rhen itself was silenced along some nameless Daumie shore where it, too, drowned in the sea.
Adago traced RR on the wool thigh of his trousers. Rrin, Rhen, and Hrÿn the river had been known along its ancient route. The voiceless rhotic was written with a double R in Daumie, RH in Rhenarian, and HR in Moarite.
Where the hell is this damned dwarf?
He took off the teixós cap and tossed it into the bottom of the boat. He was tempted to just row away, but he knew there was white water just around the bend downstream. And there was no way he could fight the current upstream. The river hummed solicitously, but it was his older brother’s words he heard in its waters. Perqé tan impasient, Guito? Why so impatient, little Adago?
He hadn’t thought about comparative phonology since he was a boy, taking classes under the priests of Sientaría. Because the Qadareiñas could pay heavy coin, the instructors would teach him at the family xaqríso instead of making him trudge into the city, and he’d had the language teacher almost to himself. The priest’s only other student had been his cousin Pátriqa, a half-Daumie beauty with smooth dark skin and coiled hair that proved a dangerous distraction from his lessons.
They had been fast friends, chasing each other barefoot among the scrub oaks between lessons, wrestling in the fallen leaves and sheep-mown grass, catching qangros in the little riverlet behind the xaqríso. She was a better hunter than him, downing and skinning a dozen hares before he could track even one. A jewel of a girl. But he had betrayed their affections, brushing aside hints of an arranged marriage, choosing instead to apprentice as a scout.
He had chosen the War over sentiment.
Pátriqa was in the city, Voight had told him. An assistant now to his brother, Captain Barreto of the Gran Exersít Verqeño, head of House Qadareiña and chief delegate to the Conclave Militant. The thought stung him, that sweet girl assigned to serve such a pompous snob, a naïf cast among the liars of the Conclave. And, if Burrin were half the arena of intrigue that Colonel Qetul’s letters implied, her innocence would be entirely out of place.
Something heavy hit the river with a crack, white water splashing outward like a porcelain dish. The thing bobbed, a small sack of some sort, before slowly sinking under the swirling brown water.
He looked up, scanned the buildings for signs of the thing’s origins. A larger sack spun downward from the city in a sharp arc and plunked into the river. Is someone dumping rubbish?
His scout’s eye tracked the arc back to its source, a stone balcony below the edge of the main buildings of the city, some three hundred feet above the river. For a long moment there was no movement. Even the crows were gone.
Then, a form tumbled over the edge of the balcony, a blond human wearing leather armor. A Hyrsian soldier. The man was silent for most of his fall, only crying out an instant before his head exploded against a rock on the far side of the river.
Adago kicked backward from the boat, landed on the bank, scrambled against the loose pebbles. From behind the flat boulder, he watched the man’s broken body slip into the Rhen and float downstream, turning and spinning in the eddies. A smear of red and pink gore painted the stone as brightly as the buildings far above.
Profetes i Anxes! Was that Gærste? It was a silly thought, he knew. There were hundreds of Hyrsians in the city. Even so, this was a clear sign of foul play. Suddenly, the shapes of those sacks took on new significance. There had been bodies inside them, probably a child in the first one.
He peeked over the rock to make sure he hadn’t kicked the boat into the stream. It was a little further in the Rhen, bobbing in the water, but the stern was still resting on the bank. He looked quickly back up to the balcony. Whoever had thrown the Hyrsian over the edge was not bothering to see what had become of him.
Voight’s cool estimation of Burrin returned to him. Murder is certainly a step up from pickpocketing. Perhaps the dwarf had been right.
For all the perils of the wilderness, civilization gave birth to subtler menace. At least, in the deep of the wild, the traps and ambushes are set by enemies divers, but known. Elves, their woken beasts and birds, and the sundry breeds of giantkind: trolls, goblins, and a thousand hybrid monsters. Here in the east, the villains were all humankind, but their treachery was complex and unpredictable.
Crouched behind the warm stone, hand on the pommel of his cutlass, Adago yearned for a simpler dynamic of war.
The river sang to him in its hushed voice and cycling eddies. No clear skies in a storm, little scout. Gerrés comfusaña.
∇
He remained behind the flat boulder until he saw the dvergangate open on the far side of the Rhen. It looked like a black egg against the red-brown stone of Ambu Rrin. Out stepped a bearded dwarf with a shaven head, holding a stone hammer. That fit Colonel Qetul’s description.
A tall, brown-mustachioed Hyrsian followed the dwarf into the daylight, ducking to clear the gate. A human underground would have to be Gærste.
This was a new moment, a new clause in the narrative of his interval along the river Rhen. He could feel a release, a smile pressing unbidden against the strain holding his face captive. The release of a puzzling ache.
Adago stood and waved at them. The dvergan lifted his hammer in recognition, but the Hyrsian was too busy staring at the bloody smudge on the rocks below them. He tugged the dwarf’s sleeve and pointed. At once, they both looked up toward the city.
They’re going to want to get back underground quick after seeing that. Adago moved swiftly to the boat and shoved it forward, stepping over the stern as it floated in the Rhen. He sat, his back to the mesa, and pulled on the oars.
The river was more forgiving than he expected. Eddies sucked gently at the oars, but the boat kept an even course across the stream. The voice of the river hummed below him, engulfed him, vibrated his entire being as if the boat were the resonating box of a qitarra. It sang a low, wild song that reminded him that near downstream was a cataract that kept this stretch of the river free of commerce, and thus civilization.
Below those falls, at the eastern heel of the mesa, the river pooled in small lake where the Daumie and dvergan had built a port to welcome ships sailing up the Rhen from the sea. Above that white water, the river was still pure and rude. The drag on his oars felt like the eager kisses of a lover, hungry yet forgiving.
The voice of the water whispered to him, no longer in his brother’s words, but the words of a seductress from some rustic fable, the mistress of the river. La Fadaría. Do not fear my appetite, little scout, for I have been fed today.
He glanced over his shoulder. The boat was aimed at the smear on the rock. In his head, he heard another voice, a fleeting voice, silenced in a startling crack.
He pulled hard on the left oar, guiding the boat toward a narrow shelter upstream. The river’s face spun the boat and he dug the left oar deep into the water to set it on course again. He tasted iron in his mouth. After a few strong pulls, the boat slipped behind a large boulder and grounded on a pile of scree.
He tossed his pack ashore, stepped out, and shoved the boat back into the river with a boot, an offering to the river’s hunger. Nés nessár, Guito, I have fed today. His mind made the voice Pátriqa’s.
He slung the pack over his shoulder and climbed up to where the dwarf and human were waiting for him.
“What the fuck is that?” Gærste asked, waving broadly at the spot where the man’s head had broken against the rock. A bloodied bit of skull and hair clung to the stone in a smudge of gore. Blond hair.
Adago shook his head. He drew his cutlass underhand and held the pommel out to Qetul, in the dwarven style. “Hái, Qulemin.” Hail, Colonel.
The colonel raised his brow as if taken aback by Adago’s dvergan etiquette. “Hái, Peräfit.” Hail, Lieutenant. He placed his hand over the pommel of the scout’s sword. They nodded at each other.
Adago held his hand out to the tall Hyrsian, who took it without lifting his eyes from the bloody smear. Their hands shook weakly.
“Hale and happy, Hovdein Gærste.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Someone fell,” Adago said. “Or was thrown. Let’s go inside?”
He and the dwarf moved past the Hyrsian, who was shaking his head and looking up the sheer face of the mesa. Once they were through the dvergangate, Gærste followed them hastily into the shelter of the tunnel.
“Seriously, scout,” Gærste blurted, “What happened? Someone fell from the city?”
Adago relived the scream, cut short by the man’s head breaking on the stone. A fate he had narrowly avoided more than a dozen times along the lip of the Gorge. He swallowed bile and studied the Hyrsian’s half-lit face. There was more confusion than fear there. “Fell or was pushed. He was dead before I could ask him which.”
Qetul looked back-and-forth between Adago and the Hyrsian, brassy eyes tight and stern. “You speak perfect Lünwil, Lieutenant.” He rubbed his shaved head with a ruddy hand. Adago watched the fingers squeeze the thick layer of skin stretched over the solid bowl of skull. “Your accent sounds northern, though. I would not have expected that from a Verqeño.”
Adago closed his eyes, reaching back in his mind, beyond the broken scream and the bloody smear, back to his boyhood. His hands were shaking. “The priest who taught me the dvergantongue was half-Hyrsian and had many friends among the dwarves of the north. They would visit and I would practice my speaking.”
“Oh!” Gærste blurted. “His father was a Hyrseman?”
Adago squinted up into the man’s face. “His mother.”
“Captain,” Qetul said. His brows were gabled. “Let’s go over the plan. I’m sure the lieutenant would like to know what he might be getting himself into.”
The words dug in, their politics growing roots in Adago’s mind. He was suddenly very present. He saw Gærste more clearly. The Hyrsian’s hair was brown, his mustache unkempt, his pale face wearing a collegial look in response to the dwarf’s comment. Adago looked back at the dwarf and realized he was the odd man out. He turned to the Hyrsian.
“You’ve already agreed to go?”
Gærste grinned wide below his mustache. “I’m ready to burst some goblin skulls in the Vale today! My boy is finishing up my affairs, and he’ll be joining General Ugræss’s staff to return to Hyrsia.”
Adago looked at the man’s boots. They were leather with a fur trim he didn’t recognize. Some kind of deer? There was a large deer that ranged only in the north. He did not remember the Hyrsian word but it was known as ren in Verqeño. Same as the Verqeño name for the river whose voice still taunted him through the open dvergangate. Rrin, Rhen, Ren.
“Won’t they miss you in the retinue?”
The man shrugged. “They’ll assume I’m staying south to whore around. That’s the only reason most of them came to the Conclave anyway.”
Qetul set the head of his stone hammer on the floor and rested a ruddy hand over the pommel. “For my cover, I have made a prominent appointment in the city of Rotewerü, which is on our way. I will keep the appointment while you wait hidden in a nearby waystation. I have also sent letters by a trusted courier to our dvergan conspirators, who will secure our path to Qol Murikh and beyond. And, ensure our path and our mission remain secret.”
Adago stared at his own boots for a moment. “I did not know there were so many dwarves seeking a—” He looked to the Colonel for a word.
“I didn’t know there were any humans at all looking for an end to this damnable war.” He put a hand on Gærste’s elbow. “Before Voight and this fellow spoke out at the Conclave Militant, I was preparing to declare the whole thing a sham and withdraw the voice of my clan.”
Xo qaray! To cut off the voice of Clan Qetul could have torn the entire alliance apart. Every sword in the city would have been swinging for his head. No wonder he thought Burrin was a dangerous place!
Adago’s face must have betrayed his surprise: the hint of a grin danced in the corners of the dwarf’s mouth. He nodded. “It probably would have been the end of my stubborn life. It certainly would have been the end of my clan’s tolerance toward my incessant grousing.”
Gærste burst out laughing, a thunderclap of joy against the grim hum of the Rhen. Adago found himself drawn to its abandon, giving over his melancholy to the Hyrsian’s raw glee.
“You’ll come out a hero of the war,” the captain said. “Who gives a fuck what they say in the meantime?”
Colonel Qetul rocked his head back and forth, weighing it silently, amused.
“So,” Adago said, “you’re ready to go now?”
The dwarf nodded. “My assistant has her instructions. I have taken a room in the undertown awaiting your decision, but I haven’t unpacked.”
Far above them in the city, Barreto too would be giving instructions to his assistant, in preparation to leave Burrin south for Verqia. But, Adago had no voice in that. He looked at the other two. The Colonel’s face was a simple calm. The Captain’s grin stretched his absurd mustache to even more absurd dimensions. None of them made a sound.
He shouldered his pack and put a hand on the pommel of his cutlass. “I have no business to delay me.”
The Hyrsian slapped him roughly on the shoulder.
“Then, we can move much sooner than I thought,” Qetul said. “We’ll beat Voight to Qol Murikh.”
With that prediction, the dwarf tapped the wall of the passage, and the dvergangate slowly and quietly closed like a bag-and-drawstring, smothering the anxious, humming voice of the Rhen moment by moment until that ancient river was utterly muffled by the stone.