The Harbors of the Sun

CHAPTER ONE

Bramble woke with Merit’s hand on her forehead. He whispered, “It’s all right.”

She took in a lungful of scent, nearly all unfamiliar. The only source of light was a hole in the roof. From the sense of movement and height they were no longer on the groundling sunsailer; this was a flying boat. “It is not all right,” she growled. She winced and the motion sent spikes of pain through her head; even the small amount of light was too much. She could tell it was just her and Merit in a small enclosed chamber. “Where are the others? Where’s Jade?”

Merit’s voice went raw with fear. “I don’t know.” He cleared his throat, an effort at control, then more evenly said, “I think it’s just us.”

Bramble opened her eyes, for a heartbeat frozen in terror. Leaving the court and traveling far across the Three Worlds was one thing when you were accompanied by a queen, her consort, your line-grandfather, and a clutchful of warriors. It was like a court in miniature, and therefore reassuring. But for two lone Arbora, it was a horrifying nightmare. She forced her pounding heart to calm, and managed to ask in an almost normal voice, “What happened?”

Merit wet his lips, looking up toward the opening. “We’ve been stolen.”

Arbora don’t get stolen, Bramble wanted to say, that doesn’t happen. Courts always had enough of their own Arbora to deal with, there was no reason to covet anyone else’s. And Arbora wouldn’t permit that kind of bad behavior anyway. Then she belatedly remembered who did steal Arbora, and her throat went tight. “Fell?”

“No, no,” Merit said quickly and Bramble breathed again. “There’s no Fell stench.” He shuddered and Bramble reached up and squeezed his wrist. Merit had been captured by Fell once, not so many turns ago during the attack on the old colony. “It was the Hians who came for Vendoin. That’s who brought the water. They used Fell poison on us.”

“The Hians?” That just didn’t make any sense. Bramble squinted at Merit and realized what she had thought were shadows from the dim light were actually the faint outline of his scales, showing on the brown of his groundling skin. It was the outward sign of the poison, deadly to Fell and not much better to Raksura. She lifted her arm and squinted at her own scale pattern, the darker lines on the brown so strange to see. She tried to shift, reaching for her other form; her stomach did a painful loop, but nothing else happened. “Why is it Hians? What do they want?”

Merit’s voice was bleak. “I don’t know.”

With Merit’s help, Bramble pushed herself into a sitting position. They clung to each other, both weak and shaky, the poison doing something intermittently painful to Bramble’s insides. She knew the stories that said groundlings would drink the poison and then let Fell eat them so it would kill the Fell. She had never understood it; now after personal experience with how sick it made you, she was starting to see how the idea of being eaten by a Fell might seem like a sweet relief.

“The poison was in the food they gave us on the sunsailer,” Bramble said. That part seemed obvious. Fell poison was odorless and the taste was mild, easily disguised by spices. “That means the others are poisoned too.”

“What about the Kish-Jandera?” Merit said. “They wouldn’t just let the Hians steal us.”

“No. No, they wouldn’t. They were afraid at first, but they liked us. They wouldn’t . . .” Bramble couldn’t talk anymore. The others, the Jandera, everyone else on the sunsailer might be dead. That was the only way she could see that this made sense.

The small chamber had only the one opening in the ceiling, covered by a grill of some material that was close to bone in texture, but not at all brittle. Merit had already tried to break it and demonstrated his lack of success for Bramble. Hanging from it and swinging wildly didn’t even make it creak. When Bramble could stand without her stomach trying to jump out of her body, they both tried their strength against it, but it wouldn’t budge.

The walls were of the dense moss, like Callumkal’s flying boat, though Bramble had explored every pace of it during their long trip to the sel-Selatra and found no chambers like this one. There was no light except for the dim illumination falling through the roof opening, and Merit wasn’t able to make anything glow. The poison must affect his mentor abilities as well as their shifting. It was not a reassuring thought.

At least there was a ceramic jar of water and another empty container for their latrine. After what felt like forever, a Hian came to drop a basket of fruit through the grill, while several more Hians stood around with Kishan fire weapons. Merit tried to speak to them in Altanic, but the Hians wouldn’t answer. Bramble whispered in Raksuran, “Remember, they don’t know we speak Kedaic.”

“You think that still matters?” Merit asked, staring warily up at the Hians.

“It’s the only advantage we have,” Bramble reminded him.

The fruit was dried, some kind of ground fruit they didn’t recognize, but they forced themselves to eat it. They were Arbora Raksura, not Aeriat, but they still needed meat to live. Bramble thought that would probably be the least of their problems. She asked Merit, “How long does the Fell poison last?”

“It depends on how much they gave us.” He hunched his shoulders uneasily. “They can always put more in the water and keep us like this indefinitely.”

Bramble hissed. They might die of that first, before they figured out why the Hians wanted them.

The wind rose high enough to make the boat tremble, then died away again. Bramble realized she hadn’t been able to scent the sea since waking. The air wasn’t fresh, and she and Merit now smelled badly enough that it was obscuring more subtle odors, but she thought she could detect hints of greenery. Which meant they were traveling over land and had been for some time.

“It’s been days.” She turned to Merit, shocked by the realization. “Since they took us. Days.” And no one had come flying after them. Her heart wanted to sink and she refused to let it. The others can’t be dead. They can’t be.

Merit admitted reluctantly, “Yes. Several days, maybe more. I remember being given water. I’m sure someone picked me up and carried me, at some point. I don’t think we were put in this cage until they decided to let us wake up.”

She frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?” As her nausea faded her brain was starting to work again, and she knew she needed as much information as possible.

He shook his head. “What’s the point? It’s my fault we’re here. I should have seen this.” His voice trembled and he buried his face in his hands. “My scrying was useless. If the others are dead it’s my fault.”

Bramble had to nip that bud right now. She made her voice hard, and as queen-like as it was possible for a short round Arbora hunter to sound. “Merit, we don’t have the luxury for things to be anybody’s fault. We have to be ready to act.”

Merit lifted his head and glared at her, which was the result Bramble had been going for.

Then a door must have opened somewhere because Bramble suddenly caught a confusing blend of new scents. Voices and steps sounded near, getting closer. She leapt to her feet, her shoulder slamming into Merit’s as he did the same. They stood under the grill, near the dim shaft of light from above. “It’s Delin!” he whispered harshly.

Bramble caught Delin’s scent and drew it in. There was something sour in his sweat, not unlike the Fell poison. But if he was here, the others must be too. They’re coming to rescue us, she thought, her heart pounding. She couldn’t catch any hint of Raksura but it might just be lost in her and Merit’s too-strong unwashed musk.

Bramble heard the steps of at least four groundlings. They stopped nearby and Delin said anxiously, “Bramble, Merit, you are there?” He spoke Raksuran, and his voice was hoarse and strained.

“We’re here,” Merit called back. Bramble stepped to the side, angling to see. Delin stood at the edge of the opening. He was small and slim like all Golden Islanders, his gold skin weathered and worn like an old tree. All Islanders had straight white hair, but now Delin’s was ragged and unkempt, and his long beard was in disarray. It was hard to make out details in the bad light, but she thought his cheeks and the soft flesh under his eyes were sunken, a sign of illness. She wanted to growl aloud in disappointment. This wasn’t a rescue; he was a prisoner too.

“Speak Kedaic,” an unfamiliar voice ordered.

“They don’t understand it,” Delin protested, in Kedaic.

Merit squeezed Bramble’s wrist, and she bit back a quiet hiss of triumph. When Jade had told them at the beginning of the trip that they would pretend not to understand the western trade language of Kedaic, Bramble had thought it was a lot of trouble for not much return, especially once the expedition groundlings had seemed so trustworthy. Moon had thought it necessary, but then Moon was the most suspicious person Bramble had ever met.

Now it was proving more than handy. And it didn’t escape her that Delin had just reminded them of it. Whatever was happening, Delin was still on their side.

The unfamiliar voice said, “I don’t know that I believe you. Vendoin said not to trust you.”

Bramble looked at Merit to share the outrage, and Merit rolled his eyes.

Delin was clearly thinking along the same path. He said, dryly, “Since Vendoin betrayed and poisoned me and my friends, and stole myself and Callumkal away to hold us prisoner, you will understand why I am uninterested in her opinions.”

So just Callumkal and Delin, no one else, Bramble thought. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or newly terrified. If Jade and the others weren’t here, where were they? What had happened to the sunsailer and Rorra and the rest of the Kishan crew?

There was a slight hesitation, and the voice said, “Do they understand Altanic? Speak to them in that.”

Delin switched to that trade language to say, “Are you well?”

“We’re all right,” Merit said, in careful Altanic. “They gave us Fell poison and we still can’t shift. Are the others here?” Bramble nodded approval of the question, knowing it would add veracity to the Raksura-can’t-speak-Kedaic fiction.

Delin answered, “No. Vendoin says they were left on the sunsailer. Perhaps I believe her.”

Bramble almost bit through her lip in anxiety.

“Are you all right?” Merit asked. “You smell like you don’t feel well.”

Bramble heard the Hians react to the question, as if they found it unsettling. Delin said, “Vendoin added a mixture to the supplies sent down to the sunsailer, a combination of Fell poison and some other simple that made us all unconscious. It has made me quite ill, but I recover.”

Bramble drew breath to speak, but Delin added, “I know your sister Bramble is very afraid, but you must reassure her, so she does not panic and make herself ill too, you understand.”

Bramble let the breath out, startled. Ah, I think I see. She nudged a nonplussed Merit, who said doubtfully, “I’ll try.” She nudged him again and he added, “She’s very upset. What do they want with us?”

Speaking Kedaic, the other voice interrupted, “That’s enough.”

In the same language, rapidly, Delin said, “But surely I should be allowed to tell them that we go south to another place of the foundation builders, and I have no notion yet why Vendoin has betrayed us—”

“No, that’s enough.”

Bramble barely heard the rustling, the protests as Delin was pulled away. “Why?” Merit whispered. “Why is this happening? What do they want?”

Bramble swallowed down bile and tried to remember everything Vendoin and Callumkal and the others had said about the foundation builders. “The Hians knew things about the city the Kishan didn’t.” The Hians could see in colors that eluded both the Kish-Jandera and the Raksura. Vendoin had said she was translating all the writing on the walls, but they had only had her word for it, and now they knew her word was nothing. “Maybe there was a map to this other foundation builder place. Vendoin wanted it for the Hians, and not the Kish-Jandera, and she stole Callumkal and Delin, and us, to help her get inside it.” That presupposed a lot of things, the main one being that the new city would be sealed like the sea-mount city. It also presupposed that Vendoin valued Merit and Bramble’s contribution to opening that city, which was not an impression that Bramble had had before.

Merit said, “We don’t know that the others are all right. Delin didn’t see what happened either.”

Bramble turned away. Her mind was racing and she needed to settle herself and get down to some serious thinking. “We have to get away and find them.”

Merit hissed in frustration. “How? We can’t even shift! I can’t even make light!”

“I don’t know, not yet.” Except Bramble knew she wasn’t Merit’s sister, not the way the Altanic word meant, and that she wasn’t afraid, not the way the Hians would think, not the paralyzing fear of helpless prey. Delin knew that as well as she did; he was preparing the Hians for something, the way Arbora would prepare the ground of a garden for planting. “Delin is trying to give us an opportunity. We just have to wait to see what we can do with it.”