The Vastness Read online

  * * *

  “What else did he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are a terrible liar. Do you want me to close my eyes again?”

  He shook his head and finished reading.

  * * *

  ... and hope these sheets help you pass the days inside this prison they made for us.

  Awaiting tales of your mischief,

  Opan Bleau, Arilas in exile

  * * *

  “Prison? Exile? Explain.”

  Benjam’s threads divided from me a bit, as he considered what story to tell. “He can’t get back to Kuet.”

  “Why do you continue to lie to me, Benjam?”

  He went to the door and opened it to be sure no one was listening. He sat beside me and said, “I am not supposed to talk to you about certain things, Emi. It is not in my nature to disobey my Exaltier.”

  “If you want to stay my friend, you will have to.”

  His threads bound tight to me, and let go of Blathebed and Rahan a touch, but he looked like he was in pain.

  “I am sorry, Benjam. That was not fair of me.”

  “It is okay, Emi. I am in between, and you are right that I must choose. Opan is in trouble. We had hoped to clear the southwestern tithe road to Kuet after our victory at Alsonvale, but an army crossed far to the south in Urmand and marched up to block the road.”

  “Opan can’t get home, not even on one of our ships?”

  “Our war galleys don’t do well in the high waves of the Bergion Sea. There is also a worry that Kuet’s fleet is not loyal to Opan—nor the rest of his family, so we dared not risk the Whittle. Many think their former Arilas is still alive.”

  “Opan needed me to marry his nephew.”

  Benjam did not reply. I opened the drawer in the lap desk and found a thick stack of vellum sheets inside.

  “His family is known for their vellum. This is quite a gift,” Benjam said.

  “What did he mean, ‘our’?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Captain. Opan wrote, ‘our prison.’ What did he mean? I can leave the fortress, can’t I?”

  “Emi, he wasn’t supposed to include a note.”

  “Telling me you are preventing people from writing to me is not making me feel any better. It is a good thing I have friends who will always tell me the truth.”

  “It would cause problems if you tried to leave, yes.”

  “Problems for who?”

  “For me, to start. I have been tasked with keeping you safe and secret. The word is already out that you exist and that you can make any singers’ magic stronger. If it got out that your visions are the reason we are winning, you would be in terrific danger.”

  “So, if I asked to go with Admiral Mercanfur to Enhedu, what would Rahan say?”

  “Oh, don’t do that, Emi. We need you. Don’t you feel safe here, surrounded by men sworn to protect you?”

  “The Hemari are supposed to make me feel safer? You have sergeants out there who hate the freemen so badly, I wonder that they are not murdering them in their sleep.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Out there in Blathebed’s camp,” I pointed, and closed my eyes. “Some of the men leading the training. I can see their hatred.”

  This startled Benjam and he sat back down next to me. “Could I ask you to point them out? To myself and the general?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “No, Emi, this is very important. Could you?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. I’ll go get him and the three of us will go out and you can point out the bad apples. The training is very important. As important as anything we are doing. Rahan must have an army he can trust.”

  “We would go outside the fortress?” I asked.

  “If you wish it.”

  I didn’t, actually, but I’d left myself without a way to say no. I nodded my head, and he left me alone with my writing desk to go fetch the general.

  I’d never written or drawn anything before. But how hard could it be?

  I opened one of the ink vials, picked up one of large brushes, and dunked it inside. When I pulled it free, ink dripped all over the sheet and ran like tears toward my lap. I swore loud enough that I worried someone would come running. I dropped the brush in the middle of the ruined sheet and ran the desk across to the table. Is soon as I set it down, the ink started moving down the sheet again. I swore, and lacking any better ideas, I carried the spoiled sheet by its corners straight to the fireplace.

  As the flame took hold of it, I worried that the ink would make a tower of smoke or explode on me and I leapt back. Nothing happened but a gush of flames. The sheet came apart into shimmering curls of ash.

  I glared back at the lap desk and stomped my way toward it.

  I took out another sheet and searched the collection of brushes for the smallest one. I dabbed its tip into the ink and tapped the page as lightly as I could.

  Two black dots. Not much of a drawing.

  “Well, got some eyes, at least,” I said, and closed mine to remember what a rat looked like. All I saw was the millions of lights of the Warrens around me in the darkness.

  “Fine,” I said and started to draw what I saw when my eyes were closed. I tapped the page a number of times, but the fun of that faded. I wasn’t going to tap the page two million times, so started brushing the page where there were lots of light. It was easier I as I went, though my eyelids started to hurt from blinking so much.

  When I was finished, it was a very strange thing to look at with my eyes open.

  I was considering doing a second drawing of the people in the fortress, when Benjam knocked and poked his head around the door. I set the drawing aside and bid him to enter. General Blathebed followed him in. He was every bit as old and ugly as I remembered. His giant hands were as scary, and the sword he wore was bigger than the last. I blinked my eyes long enough to see that his soul was divided against me and everyone in the tower. His only connection was with the men upon the practice field.

  “There’s a problem, little miss?” he asked with a soft tone that was too odd. His threads had no connection at all to me.

  “Sorry, General,” I said. “You do not have to pretend to me polite to me. I am used to being yelled at.”

  “She’s a smart one, isn’t she?” he said to Benjam.

  “And capable of starting you on fire,” I said. “Can you please look me in the eye and get on with the yelling. Benjam thought it important we speak, though I am beginning to seriously doubt his judgment.”

  “Why you little gutter snipe,” he said and his voice got louder with each word. “There isn’t a man alive who would dare speak to me that way. The way we have you all fancy and comfortable up in this tower with all your fine magic is an insult to the men fighting this war, and I would rather drag your carcass behind my horse than hear one more word from you about how I am training the ill-made men the Warrens squeezed out its pimpled asshole onto my miserable fucking plate.”

  “General—” Benjam said, and tried to put himself between us.

  The general shoved him hard toward the sedan and he tumbled backward over it. “One more word out of you, Captain, and I’ll tear your head off and punt it across the river.”

  I managed to take a step back. I couldn’t speak. I must have been shaking.

  Blathebed flexed his huge hands and started toward me.

  “Don’t you dare,” Dame Franni said, but the brute kept coming.

  He was three steps away when his eyes moved to something upon the table.

  “What is this?” he asked and snatched up my drawing.

  “Bessradi.”

  “I know that, you little shit, answer me straight. Where did you get a drawing of my troop formations, I ...” his voice trailed off as he noticed the smears he’d made with his thumbs in the wet ink. He stood very quiet then. Benjam moved around the sedan and motioned Franni back out of the room.

>   “Get over here, Captain,” Blathebed said, and pointed at something on my drawing. “Do you see that?”

  The captain did as he was told. I considered making a run for the door.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Benjam said and the pair of them looked at me and smiled.

  “You’re scaring me,” I said.

  “This drawing is of right now?” Blathebed asked, but knew my answer before I could nod my head.

  Blathebed hollered down the hallway for his officers before saying to Benjam, “I am moving the division. Bring her.”

  Benjam dashed to the lap desk, reassembled its components, and grabbed my hand with his extra thick glove. Before I could ask where we were going, he tugged me down the stairs. The general was yelling orders as fast as his boots stomped the stone.

  When we got out onto the hill, men were moving in all directions. Benjam led me toward the harbor, and I had to dance my way along as we hurried down the narrow streets. The craftsmen working there cleared out of the general’s path, and all at once we were inside one of the great boat sheds and running toward one of the galleys.

  I saw Rahan for a moment upon the hill with Blathebed, as men began to pour into the boatshed from all directions. They were the freemen—the ones Blathebed was training. They moved fast and were aboard the ships before I knew what questions to ask.

  Blathebed was out of breath from his sprint down the hill when he leapt up the ramp. Drums pounded all around us and the ships started moving. I was out of breath, too. Benjam laughed and clasped my hand tight.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Blathebed asked.

  The look on his face was eager—almost a smile. I could not understand why and nodded my head. It did feel good, the sudden urgency and motion. I couldn’t find words yet to ask them what was going on.

  “Any change?” he asked and pointed at a spot upon my drawing. It was a set of lines south and west of the Warrens, out upon the road to Kuet. Was it the army from Urmand? I’d not noticed them while I was drawing. I’d looked out much farther than I’d ever done before.

  I closed my eyes to compare then and now. “They have not moved.”

  “Good. Then you keep your eyes glued to them, and you shout the moment anything changes. Understand?”

  “Yes, general.”

  The ship’s oars dashed the river to the fierce beat of drums and we were flung forward. We moved between the tall towers, the galley’s sails went up, and we turned up the west branch of the river. A blink of my eyes told me that half the fleet was hurrying to follow us—fifty-four of the big galleys carrying 20,522 men, of which, 12,242 were from the Warrens.

  Benjam was studying my drawing so intently that I startled him when I tapped his thick glove.

  “These are Yarik’s soldiers?” I asked. “The ones that are blocking the road to Kuet?”

  “Pretending to, anyway,” he said, and pointed at my map. “What you have drawn is half of what should be there. These should be squares, like these.”

  He pointed at another set of formations on the far side of the city. “These are proper camps. I can tell you exactly how many men are in each without you having to close your eyes. They are standard—the way we are trained to make them. The ones blocking the road to Kuet are incomplete. They are faking complete camps to keep us penned in. They don’t have even a third of what we thought they did, and they are in no shape to defend themselves.”

  “We are sailing behind them?”

  “Yes. Now I want to see your eyes closed. If you see even a single dot move toward or away from those camps, we need to know at once.”

  My heart was hammering away. I shut my eyes tight. “I could use a blindfold and something for the cold.”

  He found a sash to tie around my eyes and wrapped me in something warm and heavy. I sat down, folded my legs, and focused upon the distant collection of dots.

  The noises and smells of the river, ships, and men fell away. The distant groups made so much more sense as soldiers, and I tried to understand what they were doing as I watched them move this way and that in their strange, half-made camps. There was a line of cooks serving out the morning meal, and another in the next camp, and the next. Each man took his meal and they collected into groups of fourteen—the same sized groups as the Hemari.

  I looked back at the one solid camp of Rahan’s Hemari north of the fortress. It was a perfect square and the groups moved in tight unison. Always there was someone in the lead—a lieutenant in charge. I could even pick out the camp captain by the way the lieutenants’ threads tied to his.

  Not so for the men out upon the Kuetish road. The groups were loose and no one seemed in charge. Some men moved around strangely.

  “General,” I said, and pulled my blindfold off. I was shocked to see that forty men in thick armor had gathered around me with tall shields. “General?”

  The ring opened for Blathebed and he jumped up a flight of steps with Benjam in pursuit. “What stirs?”

  “They are drunk,” I said before I noticed I was wrapped in a Hemari overcoat.

  A slave girl wearing a bluecoat. My heart quivered and I had to shake my head to focus on the man in front of me.

  His face was flexing as though he was trying to decide if I was making a joke at his expense.

  “They finished their morning meal, but aren’t moving to drills like your men do. I don’t think they have any good officers, either. Maybe a sergeant or two, but I am not seeing any good captains.”

  “How many are they, all together?”

  “They number 7,642.”

  “And how many are we?”

  “The last boat is only half full, but you have 20,522 men, counting the three of us.”

  The general stepped close, knelt down in front of me, and for a moment looked as though he meant to kiss my hand. “I’ve always hated magic, little Goddess, but damn us all straight into the ice, it sure is nice to have it one our side for a change.”

  Benjam offered me the lap desk. “Can you draw us the camps and everything between here and there? Do you have to be outside to do it?”

  I shook my head, and the soldiers standing guard were happy to hear it. They went back to where they had come from, and Benjam found me a cabin with a small table. It took some time, the way the ship moved, but I was able to finish the drawing.

  The general and the captain had come in at some point and were standing there over me.

  “It’s a mess,” I said, “but accurate.”

  “Opan is too clever,” Benjam said.

  “Why do you say so?” I asked.

  “He’d tried to tell us Yarik didn’t have that many men on the road. None of us would ever have believed it without your drawing as proof. His gift to you was a quality stroke. Thank you.”

  “Bit early to be saying thank you,” the general said, and took the new drawing. “You’d best get some sleep now. We’ll be ashore soon, and there won’t be any sleep for you until the battle is won and we are back behind the city’s walls.”

  I laid myself out on the bench and closed my eyes. Benjam walked out while Blathebed lingered.

  I opened one eyes at him. “Yes?”

  “What was it you were going to say back at the fortress about my men?”

  “Some of your officers hate the men they are training, and some of the men hate everyone around them.”

  He nodded. “One bad soldier per troop and one bad officer per company, would you figure?”

  I opened my other eye and sat up. “It’s on purpose?”

  “You have to work with what you have. Best thing you can do with the bad ones is spread them out and try to keep them busy. Before they know it, they grow fond of the men around them. One good battle later, and you might have yourself a soldier—least ways, that’s one way to do it. Do you know a better way?”

  “No, general. I do not.”

  “Sleep well,” he said and turned, but paused again, this time for much longer.

  “Rahan did the
same thing to me, clever fucker. I’ll be damned.”

  He didn’t wait for a response and closed the door. I closed my eyes, and saw his threads entwine with mine, warm and strong.

  22

  General Evand Yentif

  The 44th of Autumn, 1196

  “Rahan is not available today. Await him in your quarters.”

  The door closed in my face, and I could neither swallow nor breathe. I punched my hip and forced up a belch through clenched teeth that fill my mouth with the taste of the breakfast pastries I’d been fed when I arrived. My legs and backside were numb, and the afternoon sun stabbed me in the eyes.

  I’d waited on my brother half the day. Waited on his promise to hear my concerns for his love of the Warrens and my plan for how we should proceed. He was not free to see me.

  I crossed my legs and looked for a place I could relieve myself.

  “General,” the guardsman on post said, “In the corner, sir. We use it from time to time. I’ll keep watch for you.”

  I rushed the spot, tore open my clothes, and thumped my head into the dusty corner of tan stone until I was done.

  The route along the wall from Rahan’s tower to my quarters on the far side of the plaza was long. Each man standing post barked, “General,” like a volunteer throwing his body into a breach. I managed a small salute for the first two, but by the seventh I was swearing at them preemptively. The lieutenant guarding the door to my apartment was wiser than the rest. He was the only Hemari that reported to me—no more than an aid and watchful pair of Rahan’s eyes. He said nothing as he opened the door for me, and I told him I was not to be disturbed unless Rahan called for me.

  The fire in the small foyer was well stoked, and the warmth made me shiver. A plate of cheese and bread waiting for me.

  I stood for a time in front of the fire, wishing I’d died with the rest of the 5th in Havish. My 5th.

  “Come here, my love,” Liv said from the adjoining study. I did not want her sympathy but lost my angry words when I turned. She was naked and leaning over my table full of maps. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other and looked at me over her shoulder. Her hair slid off her back and brushed the vellum sheets. She had a bit more weight in her legs and arms, and she was showing, but not from that angle.