Mortal Lands

Koida marveled as they rode into Takate Iri. She had never traversed the streets of a city in the middle of the day before. There were so many people that they seemed to form a frothing ocean of exotic robes and strange dialects. The scents of spices, refuse, animals, and the sharp tang of ocean salt all competed for her nose’s attention. Merchants shouted to potential customers from the doorways of their shops or haggled just inside the brightly colored curtains of their stalls.

Wetness rained onto her cheek from a clear blue sky. Koida looked up expecting to see the demon ray dripping from a swim in the sea, but found instead a woman leaning out of a high window, hanging her washing on a rope stretched across the street between the buildings.

Pernicious grumbled and sidled beneath Koida, his burning red eyes rolling angrily. Koida kept her fist twisted in his mane and her knees pressed tight to his sides. Ever since he and that ray had killed Yoichi’s enormous demon bull, the warhorse had been twice as full of himself. She doubted Pernicious saw any of these people or their livestock as worthy of fighting, but he had been eyeing Cold Sun’s enormous war ram since they had left the Uktena encampment. The ram was larger than many of the wagons they passed, with iron horns as thick as a man curling backward around its skull like a helmet from a suit of armor. That creature, Pernicious saw as a worthy adversary.

On the ride to the city, Koida and Cold Sun had kept their demon beasts at a safe distance from one another, but riding shouting distance apart wasn’t possible on these narrow streets. She had promised to find Pernicious a sugary treat if he behaved, but she suspected he could only contain his nature for so long before the temptation to fight the war ram to the death became too much. She had no idea how Lysander thought they would keep the beasts from killing one another in the confines of a single ship.

As if sensing the danger, the crowd pushed back on either side of the street as the huge ram and bloodthirsty warhorse rode past.

The demon beasts’ riders were drawing quite a few stares themselves. A yellow-haired foreigner, a woman with cloth wrappings hiding the lower half of her face, and a half-clothed savage twice as wide as any man on the street. Koida suspected she might be the only member of their group who looked close to normal, and even she was clothed in tattered and worn riding clothes that had once been handsome black silk fit for the second princess in all the empire.

As they came to the docks, work stopped and sailors stared, gapemouthed.

“The cargo junk up there,” Lysander said, leaning around Koida to indicate the ship he meant. “With the striped sails.”

Pernicious tried to twist around and bite Lysander’s arm.

“Get gelded,” Lysander grumbled, shoving the beast’s head away.

“Both of you stop it,” Koida snapped. “You’re like children.”

“Glad to see you took my advice about wearing the glass moon serpent,” Lysander said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Takate Iri isn’t the place to show off a valuable lavaglass blade, Princess. The thieves here don’t mind getting their hands dirty for a payday like that. Get yourself under control or use the serpent.”

Koida didn’t have to glance down to know that her left forearm was darkening, the skin going as smooth and shiny as lavaglass; she could feel it melting to the surface. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, rebuilding her Stone Soul as she tried to bring back the sensation of living lavaglass surrounding her bones. Soon the prickling, melting sensation dissipated, and her arm returned to its usual pale hue.

The cargo junk Lysander had indicated was one of the largest ships at the docks, big enough to dwarf Pernicious and the demon war ram as they approached. Koida counted six huge finned sails of teal-striped maroon canvas and two smaller sails of black high on the frontmost mast, all pulled closed while in port.

Sailors of all sizes and shapes carried crates, barrels of spices, and rolls of silk from the dock and up the gangplank, though none of them had straw-yellow hair or ruddy red complexions to suggest that they were from the same mysterious faraway land as Lysander. Unlike the citizens of Takate Iri, the sailors glanced at the demon beasts in passing, then went back to work as if the creatures were nothing they hadn’t seen before.

A hairless woman with leathery brown skin kept watch over the sailors, casually swinging a glowing Ro whip tipped in pointed ruby blades. When the woman caught sight of their strange procession, she nudged a tall man with gray-streaked black hair. The tall man had a single, thick black brow that spanned the bridge of his nose. It pulled low over his eyes as he looked up. When he spotted Lysander, he nodded a greeting.

“That’s our captain, Singh,” Lysander told Koida, returning the nod. “Keep your head down and do what he says with none of that princess lip, or his quartermaster’ll strip the hide off your back with that whip of hers.”

Before Koida could respond, Lysander slid off Pernicious and stumbled a bit as if he weren’t used to riding. Shoulders hunched and legs strangely bandy, the foreigner gave the captain a rough bow. Koida didn’t know how Lysander was doing it, but he looked more like a sailor than most of the men loading cargo onto the junk.

She reined Pernicious around and dismounted while Cold Sun and Hush came to a stop nearby and climbed down from the war ram.

“These are your friends, then?” the captain said, appraising them with muddy green eyes. He nodded at the towering Uktena warrior. “Strong arms, strong back.” Then he gestured at Hush. “And that one’s got power in her aura. They’ll be good workers.”

Hush bowed graciously to the captain.

He gave her a sparse nod, then clasped his hands behind his back as his gaze fell on Koida. His thick gray-speckled brow pulled down in a frown.

“The girl’s obviously never done a day’s work in her life,” he said. “Twenty silver links for her passage.”

“I can work,” Koida protested.

The captain shook his head. “The only work I could give you would be ship’s boy, and you’d slice those pretty hands to pieces the first time you picked up a rope. Twenty links. Or, if you don’t have the money—” He glanced at the enormous war ram and inky black destrier behind them. “—we could work out a trade. The demon beasts in exchange for all four of your passages.”

Koida took a sharp breath to refuse, but from nowhere, a sudden overwhelming desire not to speak washed over her, silencing her as effectively as a gag.

Lysander stepped forward.

“Apologies, captain, but we can’t trade with our master’s demon beasts,” he said, his speech taking on the rough tone of a laborer to a superior. “He’ll kill us all if we come back without them. You’re right, the girl’s got hands as soft as yak butter, but that’ll change with a day or two of ship’s boy’s duties. And she can be a lot more of an asset than your last boy. Kid probably wasn’t quite as nice to look at, and she don’t mind it so much if somebody gets fresh.”

Koida’s eyes flew open wide at the suggestion, but the pressure to keep her mouth closed doubled. She glared at Lysander, certain that the coercion was coming from him, though she had never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

“Fine,” the captain said, waving a hand as if he had no more time for the dickering. “But the day she fails to complete her assigned duties, one of the beasts belongs to me.” He turned to the whip-wielding quartermaster. “Rila, stable the beasts and put these four to work.”

“Aye, Captain,” the hairless woman said.

Koida rounded on Lysander, but he grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her around to face the captain and hissed in her ear, “There’s a time to show no weakness and a time to embrace your weaknesses, Princess. Your pampered, pretty face can be a liability or it can be your greatest asset. Now’s the time to choose.”

Before she could throw his hands off her, they let go.

“Beasts’ handlers?” the quartermaster demanded.

It took a moment for Koida to keep up with the woman’s swift, terse speech. When she realized what was being asked, Koida raised a hand in response. By the war ram, Cold Sun’s expression hadn’t changed, but an air of confusion seemed to float around him.

“Myself and the Uktena,” Koida told the quartermaster.

A loud crack split the air. A thin moment later, a brilliant red line of pain seared across Koida’s upper arm. She sucked in a surprised breath and grabbed the red-hot streak, her palm coming away marked with a thin line of blood.

“Watch your tone, little girl,” the hairless woman said, flicking the Ro whip back down at her side. It shifted from a single precision lash back to the hide-stripping multiple bladed monstrosity. “You’ll address me as Quartermaster Rila and your captain as Captain Singh, and you’ll use a respectful common laborer to authority tone while you do it, or you’ll answer to the Demon Fox and all her nine tails.”

The flames of anger licked up Koida’s throat and the whip cut across her arm throbbed, but she pressed her fist to her thundering heartcenter and bent in an apologetic bow.

“Yes, Quartermaster Rila,” she said, switching speech tones to the groveling, servile tone the hairless woman had demanded. “Apologies. Your servant did not know the appropriate—”

“You and you,” Rila cut Koida off, pointing from Lysander to Hush. “Get in line and get this cargo loaded. Beast handlers, follow me with the demons.”

Lysander and Hush fell into the line of empty-handed sailors coming from the ship and made their way toward the stack of grain sacks.

Cold Sun glanced at Koida’s torn sleeve, the hint of a disapproving frown pulling at the corners of his lips, then the hulking Uktena chirruped at his war ram and the pair of lumbering giants followed the hairless quartermaster.

At Koida’s side, Pernicious snorted and rolled his eyes, backing up a handful of steps from the gangplank.

Koida scowled at him.

“Don’t you start,” she muttered. “This is the fastest way to get to the Great Library of Ten Thousand Nations.”

The demon destrier grumbled low in his chest and tested the wooden bridge with one enormous brimstone hoof.

“Move your feet!” Rila called from the deck of the ship. “You’ve got work to see to once that beast’s in his stall, little girl. If any of it doesn’t get done, that beast belongs to Captain Singh.”

“You heard her,” Koida grabbed Pernicious by the scruff of midnight hair at the base of his chin. “Either you put up with me, or you’ll be putting up with her from now on.”

The temperamental warhorse stamped one huge hoof, smashing through a trio of weathered dock boards, but allowed Koida to lead him up the slowly moving gangplank and onto the ship.