Foul Tide's Turning (7 page)

Kerge indicated the oval pod-like room they sat in; the vast, deep forest beyond the sap windows. ‘To be more grateful for what is free.’

‘You would be well-advised to set
me
free,’ hissed Cassandra. ‘For if the empire ever discovers I live, they will travel here for me and make a hell of your damn precious forests.’

‘You would still be a prisoner, even if you set out today for Vandia on one of your craft. You have not yet learned to discern the bars of your cage. Now, we begin …’

Lady Cassandra groaned, but picked up the wax tablet and sharp wooden needle needed to compose answers in the tablet’s surface. It wasn’t fair. These savages were tutored from their youngest years in such convoluted mathematical bunk. How did they expect a Vandian to keep up, when her superior education to date had been in subjects that really mattered? If only Doctor Horvak was here. He’d understand this abstract nonsense backwards and forwards, and find a way to make it intelligible. But the gasks didn’t even begin to try … they wanted to humiliate her, to make her doubt her abilities. To keep her a compliant little hostage until she became an old maid, driven insane by captivity and their outlandish, contradictory slave philosophies. At least when the empire made serfs of its barbarian inferiors, the Vandians had the kindness to make it abundantly clear what was required for a slave’s survival. Work. Obedience. Loyalty to your betters in the higher castes. Well, the gasks and the dirty human savages they counted as allies wouldn’t succeed. In Lady Cassandra, these cud-chewing primitives had bitten off far more than they could handle. She had made her mind up. Escape from this dreary perdition was worth any price, up to and including her possible death. Where there was a will, there was a way. And her will was inestimable. Cassandra set her mind to following this lesson, a confusing fug of concepts and expressions she fought her way through. The class went on for hours without a break. But an interruption did finally arrive in the form of an elderly gask. Veneration of the ancestors was one small thing Vandian culture seemed to share with these tree-hugging natives, and Cassandra could tell from the tenor of the hushed conversation that something of import was passing here between Kerge and the elder. Her suspicions were confirmed when the tutorial ended early and Sheplar joined the conversation, his body stiff with a palpable tension quite unlike the gormless, happy-go-lucky mountain barbarian.

Sheplar walked over and lifted the tablet from Cassandra’s hand, placing it in a pile on the side of the room, making no comment on her progress – or lack of it – during the lesson. Of course, the clownish Rodalian could probably barely count beyond the number of fingers on his hand, and was ill-placed to sit in judgement on any work done here. He marched Cassandra towards the classroom’s exit.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I wish to accompany Kerge to his people’s council, bumo. And as it is my duty to guard you today, you shall come with us.’

Cassandra stepped outside. The other pupils scattered across a multiplicity of walkways, travelling home or to whatever tasks they had to attend. ‘What are the gasks’ concerns to you?’

A rare look of sadness creased Sheplar’s features. ‘Kerge’s father, Khow, was a fine friend. He saved my life many times on our journey to rescue the people your empire stole from Weyland. Anything that concerns his child also concerns me.’

Cassandra travelled the roped walkway, boards swaying under her feet as she and her jailor followed Kerge and the city elder. She noted the two gask guards trailing carefully behind her, the pair’s weight adding to the path’s rocking. ‘I saw the old gask die on the battlefield during the slave revolt. He died well.’

‘With honour, perhaps. But the gasks are ashamed of giving in to their killing furies. His death was not judged well by the standards of his people. For them, Khow’s end was at best a regretful necessity borne of self-preservation and the love he held for his kidnapped child.’

‘You are a fool, Sheplar Lesh. Put the gasks in a legion and beat their pacifism from them and you would have an unstoppable force with which to hammer your enemies.’

The Rodalian aviator sighed. ‘Perhaps we have fewer enemies than your empire.’

‘One enemy is all it takes. You will discover that, when Vandia arrives for me.’

‘We shall see, bumo. My country is a member of the Lancean League, as is the kingdom of Weyland. We will fight together if your imperium raids here again.’

‘Then you will fall together. Your web of petty alliances will not be enough to challenge Vandia.’

‘It is a sin to believe evil of others, but rarely a mistake. That is a quotation you can find carved in the wind temples of my country. I never understood those words until I travelled to Vandia and saw the conditions you held your workers in at the sky mines.’

‘And travelled
back
again,’ said Cassandra, hoping to elicit some information she might use to help her escape. But her jailor was not to be drawn. Perhaps Sheplar Lesh wasn’t
quite
as daft as he looked. They reached a spiral staircase winding around a tree trunk; twisting stairs leading to a series of joined pods raised high above the web of walkways. This, it seemed, was their destination. She began climbing the stairs after the aviator, her pair of native guards treading lightly behind her.

‘Keep quiet inside,’ ordered Sheplar. ‘Kerge’s fate is bound to yours … by more than the branches of his people’s fractal tree. Your generous treatment here has partly been due to Kerge’s intervention. If you were being held in a human town by the Weylanders you mistreated as slaves, your education would, I suspect, be more arduous than some classroom learning.’

‘If you and your friends ever hope to ransom me, you’d be advised to keep me well.’

‘The imperium’s gold is just one of the many things I do not require from it,’ said Sheplar.

Cassandra climbed upward with renewed interest. So, her ex-slaves weren’t holding her for money? No ransom had been sent for, then. Cassandra wasn’t sure if her inestimable mother, Princess Helrena, would have sent gold or dispatched the price in steel, in the form of a revenge fleet to burn this barbarian backwater to the ground. It was looking more and more likely that escape was the only sure way Cassandra would depart this dreary place. And her fate was somehow tied to this gask ex-slave, or at least, the clemency of her treatment was dependent on him? She was suddenly alert to the possibilities and pitfalls awaiting her. The stairs rose through the floor of one of the pods. Cassandra found herself standing inside a large oval meeting hall, its wooden walls polished to a burnished walnut shine. She felt like a squirrel inside a tree’s hollow. But there were no acorns stored here, only seating built into the wall, some kind of council chamber judging by the number of elder gasks dotted around the room. A case that resembled a wooden cabinet had been constructed slanted across the floor’s centre. As Cassandra moved closer, she noted the cabinet was fronted with a thin sheet of glass. A complex wooden labyrinth connected inside its interior, like an oversized version of a child’s ball-in-a-maze puzzle, where marbles needed to be manoeuvred towards a maze’s centre. A series of seven jars had been fixed to the case near the floor, each a different colour glass. Was this some kind of gask gambling den? Did they drop marbles in the top of the labyrinth and make wagers as to which glass the ball dropped into? If Kerge owed a betting debt to some local lord, maybe she was here to watch the gang break his fingers as an inducement to pay? Cassandra knew such punishments were common among the criminal underworld of Vandia’s overcrowded cities, but felt oddly disappointed to think matters might unfold similarly amongst her exotic captors. Cassandra kept out of the way by the edge of the hall, standing by Sheplar Lesh, watching for what was to unfold next.

Kerge took position in the centre of the hall. He bowed towards an elderly male gask who hobbled forward from his seat. Cassandra reckoned the creature would have been better off staying seated. The elder moved slowly, with all the cares of bones made brittle by the passage of time. The old councillor halted before Kerge and reached for the leather satchel dangling from his thin chest. The councillor removed a white ivory box. Flipping its lid up, the elder revealed a row of small brass ball-bearings. Given how rare metal was out here, she guessed they would be worth a fair amount of money.

‘It is time,’ said the elder, simply.

Kerge took the box and removed a ball. He turned to the case. Before he dropped the ball into the open top, he spoke. ‘Blue.’ Kerge dropped the ball in at the top of the case. He took a lever at the side and pulled it forward, causing a hidden mechanism to wobble the case left and right, a rhythmic clicking noise like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. The ball Kerge inserted began to drop through the maze, rolling through the labyrinth of slats. What were the stakes of this game? Hopefully nothing that involved Lady Cassandra’s good treatment? Kerge was out of luck. A minute later, just as the case’s movement stilled, the ball emerged at the case’s edge, tinkling into the red jar. The gask repeated the exercise for each sphere sitting in the ivory box, announcing a colour, loading a ball and then setting the case into action until each jar had been filled. Cassandra sucked her breath in. Kerge had truly appalling luck. He hadn’t got a single guess right. She didn’t know if the gask had much of a family inheritance owing him, but at this rate, he was going to end up a pauper. She could see the gask who had once worked as her slave growing unhappy at this turn of events, turning his face to stare at the chamber’s floor as if he might find coins dropped there to pay off his wager.

The gask elder didn’t seem pleased, either. He turned to the councillors sitting around the hall. ‘It is as I warned you. Kerge’s golden mean has been poisoned. I will not humiliate him further by repeating the test. We must now retire to decide his fate.’

Sheplar Lesh stepped forward. ‘I would speak.’

‘Then do so, manling,’ said the elderly gask. ‘We shall hear you address our council in respect of the millennia of friendship we have shared with the manlings of Rodal.’

‘I ask that you give Kerge another chance.’

‘Kerge’s fate is not yet decided. We are never hasty in such matters. We shall commune at length and decide where his position should be.’

‘His place is here, with his own kind. Alongside you!’

‘As an aviator of the Rodalian Skyguard, it is said that you commune with the spirits of the wind to ride the fierce cross-winds of the mountains. This is true, is it not? You studied in a temple as well as studying the mechanics of flight and the engineering that keeps your flying wings aloft.’

‘It is so,’ said Sheplar.

‘In a similar fashion to your fliers binding with the spirit of the wind, we of the gask-kind are bound to the numbers that describe and detail us. What you and your expedition did in rescuing Kerge, son of Khow from being far-called at such vast distances, that was a rare feat. Some would call it impossible.’

‘There was no part of the journey that was easy,’ agreed Sheplar.

‘You observed the testing. Before Kerge left our forest, he was possessed of a golden mean. We could have asked him to roll the ball a thousand times and call the colours, and he would have predicted their true course a thousand times without error. Now? Seven balls and he cannot call one correctly, when crude chance should have given him that blessing at least once.’

‘That is no reason to exile him.’

‘Kerge’s luck has been exhausted by being returned here alive. In surviving his impossible journey, his golden mean has been poisoned. In addition to exhausting his store of luck, Kerge’s father died in his arms. Sometimes the shock of grief can unhinge a gask’s position in fate. Doubts erode his confidence in his own talents. I fear such an illness has infected Kerge.’

‘You must reconsider—!’

‘I believe it is now dangerous to Kerge to remain in the great forest. It is dangerous for us, as well. Dark futures multiply, blocking the branches of the fractal tree that lead to life and prosperity. Kerge’s presence among us will bring no happiness to either Rodal or the gask-kind. Nor will
that
foreign womanling’s presence.’ He pointed at Cassandra and she recoiled at being involved in their nonsensical witch-doctory. The strong made their own luck. Only the weak blamed the stars and the auguries of chicken entrails. ‘Her place is no longer among us. Neither is the true path of Kerge, son of Khow.’

‘It won’t be safe to hold the Vandian girl in Northhaven,’ said Sheplar. ‘You must have heard how the affairs of Weyland turn. The country is deeply divided over who should be king.’

‘There is often violence outside the great forest. Those beyond know little serenity. This is not a new thing, is it, manling? As long as your people have lived in the mountains, you have clashed with the nomadic savages of the endless grasslands north of your country.’

‘We
defend
ourselves when we are attacked. Rodal’s mountains are the walls of the league,’ said Sheplar. ‘And those walls protect your people here in the great forest as much as we protect the entire league to the south.’

‘The trees are our protection,’ said the elder. ‘And while we offer peace to all, only fools stick spears in a gask to see what will happen.’

Cassandra had to agree with that.

‘Please,’ begged Sheplar.

Kerge reached out to lay a hand to the aviator’s shoulder. ‘I thank you for speaking for me, but the council makes its judgements based on the kindest branches of our likely futures. My vision is clouded. They must choose, not I. What they choose will be best for everyone.’

Best for everyone
? Cassandra’s eyes narrowed. Not, by the sounds of it, anywhere close to the best for her. If Cassandra was thrown on the goodwill of her ex-slaves, ending up dangling at the end of the noose after a lynching might be one of the kinder fates awaiting her. She had to escape. And soon. These barbarians had left her no choice.

Kerge and Sheplar departed down the spiral stairs. Cassandra marched behind them with her pair of native guards. She caught up with the mountain savage. ‘Perhaps now you will consider sending a ransom note to my family.’