Swords and Salt - the Complete Series Page 8

  “Did you do the frieze by the overseers’ offices on the first level? The one with the miners carrying their bags of salt and the lizards pulling the carts?”

  “Yup,” Lakeo said without glancing away from her work. “And the Assassin’s Test on the fourth level, and the Priest Wars of 2743 on the sixth.”

  “I haven’t seen those. I’ll look for them.”

  “Fabulous,” Lakeo said. “It’ll improve my whole life if you approve of my work.”

  Yanko frowned at the back of her head. “Are you always this crabby or am I getting special treatment?”

  “I’m always crabby, but, yeah, you’re special.” With a quick strike, a shard of salt splintered from the wall and tinked to the floor.

  “Considering you kicked me in the walnuts, shouldn’t I be the one holding a grudge?”

  “You can grudge all you want.” Lakeo picked up the parchment. “How much of your time do I have left? Can you show me the…” Her voice shifted to a flatter tone as she read from the page, “moss-draped boughs of coastal firs, with dew droplets dripping from their skirts?”

  Yanko decided the eye roll at the end had more to do with the flowery prose than him, so he merely closed his eyes and imagined the trip to the Dun Smoo Peninsula he’d gone on with Father and Grandfather. He’d only been twelve, but he distinctly remembered the damp, loamy earth and the constant drizzle as they had picked medicinal mushrooms for his grandmother’s breathing illness.

  “Here.” He spread his hands again, creating a new illusion.

  For the first time since she’d studied the vines, Lakeo faced him. Her lips parted, and awe—or maybe desire to see such a place—crept into her eyes, though she quickly masked her face with what he was coming to recognize as her typical sarcastic lip curl. “Pretty, but where are the skirts?”

  Yanko pointed to the lower boughs of the fir. “I think the passage was referring to the branches that create the drip line around the base of the tree.”

  “Oh. Guess that makes sense. I figured that carving a tree wearing a sari would get me in trouble, but I wasn’t sure what the word-loving twit that wrote that meant.”

  “Twit? That’s one of the Masi Na mythologies, isn’t it?” Yanko pointed to the parchment.

  “I guess.”

  “He wrote in the twelfth century. His works are considered classics.”

  “So, not the type to put saris on his trees, eh?”

  Yanko didn’t know how to respond to her continuing sarcasm. It was so different from the reverence he’d always been taught to display toward elders, living and dead, that he didn’t feel comfortable making jokes in return. Maybe the peasants who worked in the mines and the mountainside vineyards above all had such attitudes and they simply didn’t show them to the moksu.

  Lakeo sighed. “Never mind. Can you hold that for a few minutes? I’ll try to scribble it down so I can work from my drawing when you’re gone.”

  “Yes.” Yanko watched her pencil fly across the back of the parchment, her sketching every bit as precise as her sculpting. He could understand why she’d been chosen to undertake the work in the chapel. Perhaps, as with one talented in the sciences, her gifts bought her lenience from overseers who might otherwise punish her disrespectful tongue. “Do you work in the mines of your own choice? Or…?”

  She didn’t wear one of the collars that restrained dangerous prisoners, or those likely to flee, but many of those from work camps did not. The guards and the inhospitable scrublands outside were deterrent enough for some people.

  “My choice,” Lakeo said. “Pay’s better than in the fields, and I’m trying to get out of this dung heap of a region.”

  “If you’re a… land worker,” Yanko said, knowing peasants didn’t particularly like that term, “how did you learn swordsmanship? I can tell you weren’t self-taught. You…” He stopped talking because she’d leveled such a cold stare at him that he almost stepped back, believing his “walnuts” were in danger of being smashed again. Apparently his attempt to use a less charged word than peasant had been insulting rather than placating.

  “My mother taught me.” Lakeo snatched up her chisel and mallet—the largest mallet on the tarp—and banged at the salt with more ferocity than before.

  Shards flew everywhere, and this time Yanko did step back, his illusion wavering for a moment before he regained his concentration. He hadn’t thought his question that insulting, but he must have struck upon a sensitivity.

  “At least you’ve been selected for this work,” he said, attempting to smooth his faux pas. “It looks like you have more freedom than most of the miners, and it has to be less tedious than hacking mindlessly at the walls.”

  “Uh huh. My selection involves me doing this in my off time. I do the same twelve-hour shifts as everyone else.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Almost everyone.”

  “Oh.” Well, that might explain her crabbiness. And perhaps why she didn’t like him. Yanko thought about mentioning that Uncle Mishnal had been keeping his days completely filled, too, but doubted she’d find his plight worthy of sympathy. “I haven’t seen you in the tunnels before.”

  “Have you seen any of the women?”

  “Actually, no. Sometimes a few at the eating hall.”

  “That’s because we’re segregated and work in our own areas.” Lakeo’s lip curled up further than usual. “For our protection.”

  “Oh,” Yanko said and realized he’d been saying that word a lot. “Is that… a problem much down here?” He thought of the men who’d ganged up on Dak, intending to send him over the edge of a cliff because he came from the wrong country.

  “Not usually for the peasants—” she gave him a quick glare when she emphasized the word, “—but the work campers and prisoners get targeted for abuse sometimes. With the women all together, we can watch each other’s backs from male miners who wander down with intentions, but it’s harder to fight the overseers.”

  “The overseers?” Yanko blurted, the serene forest illusion disappearing from the air.

  Lakeo gave him a withering glare. “Don’t get your lizards tangled; Mishnal gets rid of them when someone finds the gumption to complain. He ought to have the bastards strung and quartered in front of the lift. Stupid overseers. Most of them come from the same dung pile as the rest of us. You’d think they would treat us all right, but no. Nothing like getting put in a position of power and believing you can get away with anything to turn you into a goat’s teat.”

  “It is… disheartening to learn that such injustices occur here,” Yanko said and promptly decided it’d been an understatement. But he didn’t know what else to say. He was relieved his uncle dealt with the problems, but thought there ought to be a way to keep such problems from arising in the first place.

  “You can’t be surprised. We’re a long way from civilization out here.”

  “My great uncle says that civilization isn’t a place, it’s a state of being that you carry with you.”

  “Sounds kind of pompous.”

  Yanko struggled to keep the irritation off his face. Great Uncle Lao Zun was his favorite relative—he often wondered how the man could be related to his father—but what was he to Lakeo? Nothing. She’d never met him.

  “It’s not,” Yanko said. “Not when the words are spoken by a little, bald, eighty-year-old man who’s amazingly spry and crafty when he’s waving a sword at you, yet who can’t remember where he left his spectacles the rest of the day, even when those spectacles are perched on top of his head ninety-eight percent of the time.”

  “Where are they the other two percent of the time?” Lakeo asked.

  “Uhm, once they were in the root cellar on top of a pumpkin, once in a sugar canister, and once his ferret made off with them. Three days later, we found them in the chimney. That was a rough three days, because my sword-fighting lessons turned into housecleaning lessons, as we hunted all over to find his spectacles. He tried to convince me that sweeping the floor with a broom would help
me if I ever took up the staff.”

  Lakeo snorted.

  “Ah ha,” came a call from the stairs at the top of the chapel. “I knew you’d be chitchatting instead of doing something useful.” Arayevo grinned, taking any insult from the words, though being caught doing nothing more than “chitchatting” did make Yanko want to find some heavy bags to tote around in front of her, preferably with his tunic off, so she could see that he’d put on some muscle since coming to the mines.

  Yanko almost jogged to the stairs to meet Arayevo, but he remembered Lakeo and judged that running off without a word wouldn’t be polite, even if she’d been gruff and crabby with him all morning. “Do you need anything else from me?”

  “Not right now.” She’d already returned to the frieze and waved him away with a quick chop of her hand.

  Relieved at the dismissal, Yanko charged over and met Arayevo at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s great to see you. Did you arrive this morning? What brought you here? I wasn’t expecting to see you again until I returned to the village for my entrance exams. Is everything all right back home? Nobody’s ill, are they?”

  Under the barrage of questions, Arayevo could only raise her hands in defense and say, “Everyone’s fine. I just came to see you.”

  Yanko had been opening his mouth to apologize for babbling, but he froze at this last sentence. “See me?” he squeaked. He thumped his chest and cleared his throat, then managed a more normal register, “I mean, I’m happy to assist you in whatever manner you desire.”

  Nice, Yanko, not at all awkward and stilted. You were doing better when you were squeaking at her…

  Arayevo didn’t look at all bemused by his oddly formal speech, but then he’d been adoring her from afar since he was ten, so she must expect tongue fumbling by now. “I…” she glanced down the chamber toward Lakeo, who probably couldn’t hear anything they said over the clinks and scrapes of her chisels. Regardless, Arayevo said, “I’d like to talk to you in private. Your uncle wants you to report to his office though, so it’ll have to be later. Do you think he’ll let you have some free time tonight before bed? I hear you’re bunking with a bunch of snoring miners, but he gave me a private room up on the first level.”

  Yanko had heard more than the words private, time, and bed, but he had a hard time processing the rest of them. Or keeping himself from hyperventilating. Had she truly invited him to her room? Before bedtime?

  “I’m sure I can get away for a while,” Yanko said, struggling to keep his tone nonchalant and definitely not squeaky. “It might be late though. Uncle Mishnal seems to believe a lack of sleep builds character.”

  “Late is fine. Perfect, really.”

  Yes, it is, but do we have the same reasons for believing so? He gazed into her eyes, searching for some clue. The usual mischievous twinkle was there, but there was an intensity, too, surprising and… alluring.

  “You better report to your uncle,” Arayevo said, and he realized he’d been leaning closer to her.

  “Yes, of course.” Yanko propped his arm on the stair railing. “Did he mention when? Or did he simply want me whenever you saw me?” As in, could they perhaps stroll together in that general direction while taking their time?

  “The impression I got was that whenever you arrived, you’d be too late.”

  Yanko grunted. “That sounds about right.”

  “So far, he seems a lot like your father. Given the unfriendly aloofness of your relatives, I’m somewhat amazed at the loyalty you show toward your family.”

  Yanko shifted, not wanting to be drawn into a conversation that would tempt his tongue down an insidious path. “Perhaps, but they have reason to be bitter, and I’m… a reminder.”

  Arayevo dropped a hand to his. “You can’t blame yourself for things that happened when you were a baby. It’s not your fault.”

  Yanko shrugged. He didn’t mind her sympathy—though he would have preferred to be the strong one offering her sympathy, not that she ever needed it—but was aware of the chisel clinks behind him and didn’t want to discuss his family with strangers around. Maybe tonight, when they met in private… although he could think of far more interesting things to discuss—and do—then.

  “I know. Thanks.” Reluctantly, Yanko withdrew his hand and headed up the stairs.

  At the top, as he was about to turn into the tunnel leading to the lifts, a prickly feeling tiptoed down his spine. Someone was using the Science.

  He paused, frowning. Arayevo had wandered into the chapel to study the statues. At the far end of the chapel, Lakeo was clearing the dust from her frieze with a rag. It couldn’t be Arayevo—he’d known her all of his life. She had always preferred the outdoors to studying books and had finally settled into a forestry apprenticeship.

  Lakeo shifted and rubbed her neck as she considered her work. She happened to glance in his direction and, for an instant, looked like a deer startled by the hunter’s approach. She broke eye contact immediately, picked up her chisel, and returned to chiseling. The sensation tickling Yanko’s spine broke off.

  All right, it was her, but if she’s a practitioner, what is she doing working down here as a peasant? There were schools all over the Great Land for those who showed the aptitude, and the government-run ones were free, including room and board. Not everyone who had talent wished to study the sciences, but almost anyone in the working class did, since it was a road to a better life, not only for oneself but for one’s entire family. That wasn’t an opportunity many people rejected.

  Yanko shrugged and put Lakeo out of his mind—whatever reason she had for her choices in life, they had nothing to do with him. He had other thoughts to occupy his mind. On the opposite side of the chapel from Lakeo, Arayevo drifted on to a different statue, reading the plaque at the side and admiring the work. He admired her for a moment before heading off to see what his uncle wanted.

  Part 2

  Yanko walked down the well-lit tunnel, passing oaken doors and framed diagrams and maps of the mine at various depths and extensiveness—this first level had been cleared more than five hundred years earlier. The chiseled walls had long since been worn smooth and carpet runners marched down the broad passage. This close to the surface, the air smelled faintly of dirt and pollen carried in on men’s shoes. Normally that smell called to Yanko’s heart, begging him to flee the mine for the wilds above, but this time, his thoughts were on Arayevo, and he walked past his uncle’s door twice before finding the right name plaque.

  Pathetic, boy, you’ve been here before. Many times.

  Yanko lifted a hand to knock, though he paused at the sound of voices inside. The stout door muffled the words, but he detected two distinct male speakers. His uncle, and who? And would either man be irritated by someone’s interrupting knock?

  Maybe this is someone Uncle Mishnal wanted you to meet.

  With that thought, he tapped the oak boards with two knuckles.

  The door opened. A woman about his age stood there, her hair swept up in a bun and held there by a pair of ornate ivory chopsticks. She had Arayevo’s beauty and might have passed as a younger sister, but after meeting his eyes briefly, she lowered hers demurely. That wasn’t Arayevo-like at all. Further, with her polished nails and dainty hands, she looked like someone who’d prefer life in a salon to life in a forest.

  “Please come in, Master Yanko,” she said in a lilting tone, then stepped aside, her teal and indigo robes almost brushing the floor. She winced, as if she’d twisted an ankle, but the floor was smooth.

  “Master?” Yanko mouthed. If he finished the five-year warrior-mage training, he’d have a right to that title, but considering he was still worrying about getting in to the program, the honorific was premature. “Thank you,” he said. “And you are?”

  “Teesha,” she murmured, eyes remaining downward.

  His uncle and a lean swarthy man with salt-and-pepper hair were sitting opposite each other at the desk, gesturing and speaking over a parchment held open by ink bottles a
nd letter openers. The fellow lacked the almond-shaped eyes of a Nurian, though Yanko didn’t recognize his accent.

  “Yanko,” Uncle Mishnal said. “This is Delegate Dezmet Song from Sand Palm Oasis in the Smotran Desert.”

  Oh, right. The person who planned to get married in the chapel. Teesha must be his Nurian bride.

  “There’ll be quite a few guests coming in for the wedding in the next couple of days,” Mishnal said. “You’ll act as host, showing people to lodgings and arranging private dining accommodations.”

  Not his first choice in chores, but maybe it would get him out of—

  “In addition to your regular duties, training, and studying,” Mishnal went on.

  Yanko kept his sigh inward. “Yes, honored Uncle.”

  “You’ll also assist the sculptor girl in the chapel to ensure she finishes on time.”

  Erg, his odds of finding time to spend with Arayevo were looking poorer and poorer. “Yes, Uncle,” he repeated. “Uhm, if I may ask, is Arayevo here in some capacity related to the wedding?”

  “No, she said only that she came to see you.” Mishnal’s graying eyebrows twitched upward. “You may visit with her after the wedding has gone off without mishap. Our regional chief is seeking a trade agreement with Sand Palm Oasis, so this is an important event.”

  Delegate Song smiled, looking pleased with himself. Teesha said nothing, but her shoulders slumped a fraction. So it was a political wedding. Well, it happened. Yanko supposed he could thank his family’s dubious status for at least one thing, that no one was foisting eligible daughters at him. As far as he knew, he could marry for love instead of politics. Love. He bit his lip to hide a smile. Arayevo had come all this way to see him. Only him. He had never had the courage to profess his love for her, and she had never suggested they might be more than friends, but she must have missed him in the weeks he’d been gone.

  “Yanko,” Mishnal said, his tone sharp, and Yanko looked up, having the feeling that it might not have been the first time his uncle addressed him. “The bags?”

  “Er?”