The King's Blood

Entr’acte

Master Kit

Suddupal was at first a community of cities, their buildings and structures tall and solid, and then it was a dark and monstrous hand reaching out toward them with piers for fingers, and then it was gone, and they were alone on the wide sea. Adasa Orsun could sail the little ship by herself, moving from one line to another, lifting up the sails and shifting the angle of the rudder until everything was exactly as she wished it to be. Every now and then, she would tell Marcus to help her with some task where three hands were better than two. She never asked Kit, and honestly Kit didn’t mind.

It had been a very long time since he’d set out in a small craft over large water. He had almost forgotten the way the horizon-wide water and the open arch of sky conspired with the smallness of the boat and left him feeling overwhelmed and constrained at the same time. So much space all around him in all directions, and yet two paces this way, three in another, and a belowdecks so cramped that he couldn’t stand upright.

His life had become that as well. After his flight from the temple and the goddess and the only life he’d known, the world had unfolded before him, every new discovery egging him on to the one after. He’d learned that many of the things he’d been taught in the temple were true: the dragons were gone from the world and their slave races had made it their own, people of all races deceived each other almost constantly, wherever there were people gathered together in large groups there would be violence and death and theft. But he’d also found just as many that were wrong: that truth guaranteed justice, that the thirteen races were doomed to hate each other, that people like Adasa Orsun—Timzinae—were a separate and lesser kind of humanity. Finding his way through the mixture of myths and lies had become not only a life’s work but a joyful one.

He’d traveled widely and with men and women whose company he enjoyed. He’d listened to practical philosophers about the nature of the world. He had taken lovers and lost them. And in that wide, open sea of options and choice, his way had come down to this tiny boat on its way to a series of events both difficult and inevitable. In the face of the ocean, the tiny boat. In the face of freedom, only this: to save the world he’d discovered and come to love, or else die in the attempt.

It sounded heroic and romantic. The truth was sometimes something less.

“I ate a cockroach once,” Marcus Wester said. He was sprawled on the deck, shirtless, an arm flung across his eyes.

“You didn’t,” Kit said.

“I ate a mouse once.”

“You didn’t.”

There was a pause, and the world was only the soft wind and the lapping waves against the side of the boat.

“I ate a worm once.”

“Why did you do that?” Kit asked.

Marcus grinned.

“Lost a bet,” he said.

Adasa Orsun rose up from belowdecks, stretched her arms over her head, and yawned a wide, deep yawn.

“We’ve made good time,” she said, and she believed it. So probably they were.

“How can you tell?” Marcus asked. “It’s not like there’s a road you can follow or landmarks to see.”

“The water changes,” she said. “We’ll be to the islands in two, three more days. We have enough water and food until then.”

“We probably will,” Kit agreed.

“Was that in question?” Marcus asked. “I thought we’d intentionally packed enough to make it to the place we could get more. Did I misunderstand that?”

The Timzinae woman snorted derision.

“It’s the sea,” she said. “There’s always a question.”

What about questions?” Marcus asked three days later as they walked down the stony streets of the island waystation. Ahead of them, Adasa Orsun was haggling with a Southling.

“What about them?”

“Can you have a false question?” Marcus said. “For instance, if I said something like, Isn’t Sandr full of himself? or You can’t do that, can you? They both mean something, but it’s not something that’s true, exactly, is it?”

“You’re forgetting. It isn’t truth. It’s never truth. It’s certainty. A question is uncertain by its nature.”

“But if I say, I don’t know …”

“You can be certain that you’re ignorant,” Kit said.

The Southling held up two fingers, the Timzinae three.

“What about, I think her name is Adasa.”

“You’re certain of that, yes.”

“I think her name is Mycah.”

“You aren’t certain of that. In fact, I suspect you’re certain that it isn’t. Though I wouldn’t know that based only on what you said.”

“That’s a strange line you walk,” Marcus said as they came to a rough corner. Nothing in the waystation was straight. The roads twisted and turned, following the shape of the rock. It gave the place an inhuman feel that Kit recognized and respected. It felt like the temple from which he’d fled.

“I think we all walk it all the time. I may be a bit more aware of it. I believe this is the place we needed. Only let me tell our captain where we’ve gone.”

He walked over to her. The spiders in his blood were excited, dancing and tugging at him. Being around so many people caught their attention after so long with only the same two. And there might only be five or six dozen people on the island, so small was it. To go from a long voyage into a real port was a deeply unpleasant experience. But that was a problem for another day.

“I can’t go lower than this and make enough to buy food,” the Southling man was lying.

Kit touched Adasa Orsun’s shoulder.

“Forgive me. I’m thinking of taking Marcus to the geographer’s shop over there. When you’re done here, will you look for us there?”

“I can,” she said.

“Thank you, and he can go lower and still buy food.”

“You are a madman,” the Southling called after him. “Madman!”

Inside the shack, an old Southling woman sat on a stool. Her wide black eyes took them in without seeming to see them. Or perhaps it was only that she passed no judgments.

“You’ve come for a map?” she asked.

“I hope we have,” Kit said. “I’m looking for the reliquary of Assian Bey.”

“You and everyone else,” the woman said, amused.

“Do you have a copy of the Silas map?”

To the degree that a Southling’s eyes could narrow, hers did.

“That map doesn’t exist,” she lied.

“It does, and I am the man who is to have it,” he said. In his blood, his body, the tiny things began to stretch and flail. He felt their delight. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice. You need to show me that map.”

“I don’t …”

“I do,” Kit said. “It’s going to be all right.”

The woman scowled, but then she held up a single finger.

“Wait here,” she said. “I have to go look at something.”

Another lie, but perhaps not too far from the truth. If she didn’t have the map herself, she at least might know where it was.

“What’s a Silas map?” Marcus asked.