Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology Read online

  Captain Stylian stood at the rail and cupped his hands to shout to the other ship. “Where do you hail from?”

  A man in tight blue trousers and a long tunic of embroidered silk shouted back. Katin frowned and cocked her head. The wind had garbled what he said. It was almost understandable, but slid so that she could barely distinguish the breaks between words.

  The captain switched to Paku and asked again, but the other man just held up his hands in a shrug. Shaking his head, Captain Stylian said, “It was too much to hope that they spoke Markuth or Paku.”

  “I think that’s a variant of Old Fretian.”

  He cocked his head at that. “Worth a try.”

  She only ever used Old Fretian to read scripture in its original form and hardly ever spoke it. Katin took a moment to gather her thoughts, trying to martial them into a semblance of order. The declension for this would be masculine interrogative case, which meant that she would have to append the appropriate suffix to the word “land.”

  Wrapping her mind around Fretian, Katin spoke in that tongue. “What land-the you from?”

  “The Center Kingdom. You?” His next words eluded her. Then came a phrase almost straight from scripture, “. . . Sailing beyond the Moon?”

  “We from Marth.”

  The captain leaned down. “You can understand him?”

  It was a relief to switch back to Markuth. “Some. But we haven’t said anything complicated yet.” Beyond the Moon . . . did they never sail past here?

  “Ask how far behind them the land is.”

  Katin nodded and painfully stitched the question together in her mind. “Land-the, how far?”

  “Five days.”

  Katin reported this back to the captain. “May I hope that we are continuing on?”

  “That’s what you are paying us for.” He stroked his chin, staring at the sailing ship. “Ask if they have any charts they’re willing to trade.”

  The captain called Katin to his cabin. When she entered, he shut the door behind her and showed her to the map table. There, he had unrolled the chart they had traded for. “Look. We would have missed it with the course we were sailing.”

  A narrow spit of land jutted out from a landmass that filled the map. Islands dotted the coastline up and down it, but this one piece reached out into the ocean as though it were a finger pointing to the east. “How large is it?”

  “I’m only guessing, but their captain says it’s five days. If we’re here, which he indicated we are, then that length of land alone is longer than the distance from Marth through Arland and into Gavri.”

  The scale staggered her and she put a hand on the table to steady herself. If the scale was correct, then this land—her people’s homeland—was three times larger than all of the known countries assembled. The map was mostly concerned with the coasts, but even so, the towns that were shown were so numerous that she could not count them all. One city dominated, clearly, from the way it was drawn upon the map. A great river came through the continent to emerge at the base of the peninsula, and a city occupied both banks, spilling onto the narrow spit.

  The script on the map was strange, with letters more simply shaped than what she was used to, all ornamentation stripped from them. Still she recognized the Old Fretian word “remek,” which meant “center.”

  Scripture rose to her mind, “The Sisters said, ‘The center has held us together. Without it, we must create our own center and from this comes a new way of life.’”

  She had always taken it—the way she had been taught in seminary was that the center was a place of meditation within each of them, but looking at the map, the words revolved. The capital has held us together. Without it, we must create our own place of government and with this comes a new way of life. Katin touched the crescent drawn in the midst of the city, vaguely surprised that her fingers were not shaking. The Center Kingdom must revolve around the city Remek but . . . she saw no borders of the kingdom or other countries. The map was labeled as one vast empire. “This is the capital.”

  “Mm.” Captain Stylian shook his head and tapped the map, finger coming to rest on a natural harbor farther down the mainland’s coast, with a small town drawn around it. “What’s this one called?”

  “Iolokiv. It means Bardstown. Roughly.”

  “Good name. We’ll head for here.”

  “Why not the capital?” The harbor he indicated was . . . well, if they were five days from the capital, it was a full day’s sailing from Remek. The center has held us together . . .

  “Because capital cities always have the tightest regulations. I would rather go into a smaller town to find out what harbor fees are like, if there are any shipping prohibitions, and so on . . . If we dock at too small a town, they won’t know how to deal with foreign ships. So, we look for a mid-sized town.” He flashed her a grin. “Plus, their officials tend to be easier to bribe.”

  Iolokiv seemed to sparkle in the sunlight. Glass filled windows in the walls and even in the roofs of buildings. In some places the walls seemed to be nothing more than thin pieces of metal existing solely to hold glass upright. The wealth on display staggered Katin, but the people in the port paid no heed to it. They walked along as if they passed nothing more exciting than simple stucco.

  Their ship, on the other hand, attracted notice. As the crew worked to tie it up, they used a mixture of sign language and grunts to communicate with the dockworkers. Even the ships here had glass set into the cabins. Their own ship, The Maiden’s Leap, seemed dark and squat next to the ships of Iolokiv.

  The captain climbed onto the forecastle. “Listen up! You know the drill for a new port. Once we get the lay of the land, then and only then will I consider requests for leave. Expect to be aboard overnight at least. Until then, I want us to be ready to cast off at the first sign of trouble.”

  A sailor snorted. “That’s a certainty with a harbor full of nightlovers.”

  He grinned and leaned over the man. “You knew this was a possibility when we accepted the commission.”

  “Ha! I thought we’d sail in circles and then come home.”

  The other sailors hooted with laughter and the captain let them.

  Katin stood by the rail and felt her skin burn even redder with anger. If she could bring her people here, then any amount of abuse would be worth it.

  Footsteps crossed the deck to stand behind her. Captain Stylian cleared his throat. “Is it a festival day?”

  Not a word of apology. She turned from studying the dock to face him. “Festival?”

  “The banners. Every ship is flying a red banner, sometimes two or three.” He nodded toward the crowds. “And see. People with armbands in the same red. What does it mean?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” She had been so distracted by the variety of costume that she had not noticed the armbands. Despite the sailors’ comments, the harbor was not full of “nightlovers,” though they were certainly the dominant type. There were nutbrown men, women with flaming curls, and people whose pale skin had an almost green hue.

  Now that the captain had pointed it out, the scraps of red were obvious, fluttering behind people as they walked. She pointed to a man with a blue armband who walked behind two burly men that appeared to be bodyguards, clearing a path. “There. Not everyone has red bands.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be your homeland. So you ought to know, even by the calendar, if this is a festival day.”

  Katin shook her head. “We’ve been gone so long . . . Perhaps they added festivals?”

  “You sound uncertain.”

  “And how am I supposed to be certain? I have not set foot upon the land.”

  He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Fair enough. Shall we remedy that now?”

  Katin took a breath to steady herself and nodded. The captain led the way to the gangplank that stretched from their boat to the pier. The man with blue ribbons met them at the gangplank. His straight gray hair had been tied in a queue down his back
, and his cheeks were so pink they looked rouged. He held a flat plank of wood with paper affixed to it by means of flat springs on the sides.

  Katin wanted to retreat up the gangplank before the captain could look to her. She did not speak the language, for all that he thought she did. And yet, likely she was the best chance for understanding what the blue gentleman wanted.

  He spoke very rapidly, with that same sliding inflection as the ship’s captain they had met on the sea. Katin had spent the intervening three days reading scripture aloud in Old Fretian, trying to make herself more comfortable with the language. Still the torrent of words undid her.

  She held up her hands in supplication and spoke one of the sentences she’d prepared. “Please slow down. I speak very badly, but am the only translator the ship has.”

  The official snorted, but did slow down. Still, she only caught scattered words and phrases: “Where from,” then “none crew-yours,” and he finished with “official language?”

  She could answer only the beginning. “Across sea-the.”

  “Ah. South Islander . . .” His voice carried amused contempt. “What happened husband-your?”

  “Sorry?”

  He slowed even further, pausing after each phrase until she nodded. “Husband your. Husband ship’s. Examinations. Must pass. Or he would not. Command. Be given. If no one aboard speaks Setish. Then something happened. Husband ship’s your.”

  Katin stared at him while she tried to parse the separate phrases into a sentence. The meaning of the word “husband” must have shifted over the centuries. It was paired with “ship,” so maybe it meant “captain”?

  “What is he saying?” Captain Stylian’s voice was low and easy, as if this were perfectly natural. He flashed the official a smile.

  “I think . . . I think ship captains are required to know the language, which I think is called Setish, so he believes something has happened to ours. Also, I think he thinks we’re from islands to the south.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘I thinks.’”

  “Well, I don’t actually speak the language. I’m making a lot of guesses.”

  “You sound fluent.”

  “I’m mostly saying, ‘please slow down.’”

  He grunted a little and offered the official another smile. “South Islands? Don’t contradict him. Just make apologies for our stupidity and ask if we can offer him some hospitality for his trouble.” His tone as he said this was so deeply apologetic that she almost thought he was apologizing. He bowed his head, as if abashed. “Don’t look so surprised.”

  Katin bent her head in supplication and pulled some of the words of atonement from scripture. “Oh noble master, forgive us our trespasses.” It got harder from there, and Katin could feel the language breaking under her tongue. “New husband-ours offer apology-the you. Would you hospitality-ours accept?”

  At her side, Captain Stylian produced a flask and passed it to the official with a deep bow. That language seemed clearer than any Katin could produce. The official made a pleased noise. As the captain straightened, he flashed her a brief wink.

  Katin would not be exploring the city just yet.

  The negotiations with the official had not taken long. The celebrations with him, however, had eaten the better part of the morning. Still, they had permission to dock and with that accomplished, the captain had been content to let Katin go ashore—with protection.

  The sailor Lesid trailed after her through the market, one hand on the knife at his belt. She was not entirely sure if he was there to keep her safe, or because the captain wanted to make certain that his translator returned to the ship. Stalls lined the sides of a large cobbled square, set between low stone walls. Canvas awnings in blues and pinks stretched between the walls to provide a little shade to the merchants. Tables sat under the canopies, spread with unfamiliar fruits, fish, great heaping bouquets of pink flowers, and bolts of cloth. In the center of the square, a fountain burbled merrily. Around its edges, people had spread blankets on the dusty cobbles and squatted displaying cheap handiwork.

  Gazes followed them as she and Lesid walked through the market. Most of the people had ruddier skin than his. Their hair tended toward gray. There were a few with darker skin like Lesid and some with golden curls, but none with both. On the ship, he looked like any other sailor. Here he looked . . . exotic. Katin slowed and glanced back at the sailor. “Walk with me?”

  “I am.”

  “You’re walking behind me.”

  “Oh.” He frowned and took two steps to close the gap between them. “Better?”

  “Yes.” Katin resumed her stroll, feeling a little less exposed with someone beside her. She shouldn’t feel so much like a foreigner, if this were really their homeland. If. What else would it be? The land was in the right place, and they spoke a version of the sacred language. But the people here kept staring at them and . . . nothing was familiar. Katin rolled the beads of her shawl beneath her fingers. Gefen grant patience.

  “What’s that?” Lesid pointed to a stall that had pink egg-shaped fruit that seemed to be covered in green-tipped scales. At least, she thought it was fruit.

  “I don’t know.”

  Lesid furrowed his brow. “I thought this was—”

  “My homeland, yes. I know. Everyone thinks I should know all about it.” Including her. “My people have been gone from here for hundreds of years. . . . This is as new to me as it is to you.”

  “I— I hadn’t thought about that. Sorry.”

  Katin shifted her hand to her belt where her coin purse was tucked. The official had given them some copper coins in exchange for a bottle of the captain’s whiskey. She was certain they’d gotten the worse end of the deal, but the captain had seemed pleased. “Shall we buy a fruit and see what it’s like?”

  The sailor’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “Seems half a year since I had something that wasn’t salted or preserved.”

  Katin grinned and steered them toward the stall. “I don’t see how in the heavens you can stand to eat that all the time.”

  “Well, it’s not always. Usually we aren’t at sea for more than a week, maybe two. You can carry enough rindfruit to last that long.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Then, you know, you pull into port at someplace like Nil-Mazzer and they’ve got barkberries or, oh . . . in the late summer we get in sometimes in redmelon season and you can buy big slices sprinkled with spice and a tall glass of chilled juice. There’s this one place off the south canal that has a chef that grills it, right there while you wait, but he does it so fast the inside is still cool and the outside is warm. Just lights your tongue up, it does.”

  She blinked at him in surprise. “Seaman Lesid, you are quite the gourmand.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I’m not fancy. I just like food is all.”

  Katin stepped up to the booth and pointed at the fruit. She wrapped her head around Old Fretian, which was as close as she was going to come to speaking the local Setish. “How much? Two?”

  The old woman behind the fruit had her hair wrapped up in a yellow scarf, which let a puff of white hair escape out the back. “Two musan each. Four total.”

  Katin assumed that a musan was a coin and fished four of the smallest coins out of the wallet and handed them over. The woman took them without surprise or fuss, and Katin let out her breath.

  She said something very fast and Katin had to shake her head. “I speak bad Setish. Slowly?”

  The woman grunted and picked up a wicked machete, flecked with bits of pink rind, and gestured to the fruit. “Cut?”

  “Um . . . Yes?”

  The woman nodded and pulled two of the fruits off the pile. She paused before bringing the machete down, and peered at the sky. Speaking very slowly, she said, “Almost noon death. Wait? So naro-a dries not before birth-the.”

  Katin made a guess that the fruit was called naro-a. She wasn’t entirely certain what noon death had to do with the fruit drying though, or even if she’d heard the questio
n correctly. “Thank you.”

  The woman set the machete down below the table. When she stood, she had a small roll of heavy blue cloth. Woven into it were yellow quatrefoils of thread that suggested stars at night. She shuffled around the table, unrolling the cloth as she stepped out of the booth.

  Lesid eyed her and then the fruit. “She just took our money and didn’t give you anything?”

  Katin shook her head, realizing that he had not understood any of the exchange. “She will. After the . . . Well, it translates as ‘noon death,’ but I think I have it wrong.” Noon death . . . death . . . Maybe the point when the sun went behind the moon? That could be a death, couldn’t it? But why did she think the fruit would dry because of that?

  The market had stilled. Other people were pulling bundles of cloth out of bags, or from straps slung across their back. She drew her head back in surprise. It wasn’t just a few people. Everyone in the market was doing the same thing. To be sure, some were continuing to shop with the cloth held loosely in one hand, but they all had a cloth. Some of them were threadbare, and others were so fine they had tiny mirrors sewn upon them.

  The fruit vendor laid her cloth on the ground and unwrapped the scarf from her hair. Those with their hair covered were removing their hats or scarves. All of them had their heads turned down, watching the ground. What in the world were they looking for?

  Then twilight swept across the market. Bells rang, seemingly from every corner of the city. As one, the people in the marketplace dropped to their knees and placed their foreheads on the cloth they had unrolled. A caged bird clucked in the sudden stillness, its chirruping cry bouncing across the stone walls of the market.

  No one in the entire market, or down the nearby streets, had remained standing. It appeared that the entire city knelt.

  Katin grabbed Lesid’s arm and yanked him down. To his credit, he didn’t fight her or ask what she was doing. He just mimicked the posture of the woman closest to them.

  She could only hope it didn’t make a difference that they had no cloth to kneel upon. With her face pressed to the hard cobbles and the dust caked between them, her nose twitched. She wrinkled it, trying to stifle the sneeze. Pulling her attention away, she tried to distract herself by playing a guessing game with what was happening.