Liar's Island: A Novel Read online

  “All right, fair enough, but can you give us a hint?” Rodrick said. “Does this thakur want to hire us to do something unsavory? Marry me off to his ugliest granddaughter to bring some fresh blood to the family line? Give me a medal for some act of heroism that’s temporarily slipped my mind?”

  The djinni still didn’t look amused. Rodrick might give up trying soon at this rate. “I cannot say,” the creature replied. “But for a man from the barbarous lands of the Inner Sea to be granted an audience with the thakur is a great honor.”

  “Honor doesn’t fill my belly, or my purse,” Rodrick said.

  “Mmm. If you proved hesitant, I was instructed to offer this incentive.” The djinni sheathed one of the scimitars—sheathed it where, or in what, exactly, Rodrick couldn’t see, but that was supernatural creatures for you—and reached into the swirling vortex beneath its waist. Its hand reemerged holding a small leather bag, which the djinni tossed to Rodrick.

  The bag clinked endearingly, and a peek inside revealed the warm yellow glow of gold, coins stamped with multi-armed women and elephant heads and roaring tigers.

  “That is merely a taste of the wealth that awaits you,” the djinni said. “If you come to Jalmeray, and reach an accommodation with the thakur, you may well leave the island with your own weight in gold.”

  “Every time someone says that,” Rodrick said, “I wish I were a great deal fatter.” He made the coins disappear almost as neatly as the djinni had made his sword vanish. “We will consider the thakur’s kind invitation. Do convey my thanks.”

  The djinni turned to smoke and vapor, and Rodrick was briefly buffeted by a strong wind as the creature disappeared into or merged with or rode away on currents of air.

  “That was unusual,” Rodrick said once the wind had died down. “Even by our standards.”

  Hrym briefly pulsed with red light and giggled, the sound of a demented child who was also probably possessed, and Rodrick winced. A skylight overhead cracked, but fortunately didn’t fall in. He aimed the blade away from him, toward a dusty corner of the warehouse, and a few icicles shot forth from the sword, smashing into a shelf and knocking it over with a clatter.

  The sword had spent some time the previous year in close proximity to an imprisoned demon lord, and Hrym had the ability to soak up sufficiently powerful ambient magic. He’d picked up some kind of demonic taint, which so far hadn’t proven too deleterious—he didn’t seem compelled to slaughter innocents for the sheer joy of spreading chaos, at any rate—but he had these little … episodes. Fits, Rodrick might have called them, if Hrym had been human. More and more, though, Hrym giggled horribly, and pulsed with red light, and when that happened, chaos and disorder seemed to spread. Vases broke, chandeliers fell from the ceiling, food rotted, wine turned to vinegar. And those were just the atmospheric effects. Lately the giggles had been followed by outbursts of icy magic, like lethal spasms.

  One such demonic fit had ruined their attempt to break into the little lord’s vault the night before. It was such a good plan, too—look tough, get hired to do security at the ball, slip away to the basement, freeze the guards watching the vault, turn the locks to ice, smash them open, steal the wonderful relics within, get on a ship before the little lord even noticed the theft, sell the loot to a not-terribly scrupulous fence named Skiver in Almas, enjoy ill-gotten riches, etc.

  But Hrym had one of his fits just as Rodrick was creeping toward the vault, his titter and the attendant crack of a roof beam breaking neatly in two overhead alerting the guards to their presence in time to yank a cord that set an alarm bell to ringing somewhere up above. Worse, Hrym had fired off spears of ice, seemingly as involuntarily as Rodrick loosing a sneeze, blowing holes in the wall and ceiling above and calling even more attention. They’d escaped and tried to make their way to the ship bound for Almas anyway, but the little lord’s men were there, and they’d pursued Rodrick and Hrym relentlessly through streets until they ended up here in the Coins.

  The worst part—all right, one of the many bad parts—was that Hrym wasn’t even aware of his condition. He had no memory of his giggles, or the chaos, or the ill-timed bursts of ice magic. As far as Hrym was concerned, the guards had just noticed them when they were sneaking up on the vault—it was pure bad luck.

  Rodrick hadn’t yet figured out how to tell Hrym he was demon-tainted. After all, who among us doesn’t have some little quirk or another? But the fits were becoming more frequent, and violent, and Rodrick was considering the appalling prospect of finding a priest and asking for help.

  “Did you hear something?” Hrym said.

  Just your terrible giggle and aura of destruction. “A shelf fell down, or something. Everything’s busted-up and broken in here. No surprise really.”

  “Hmm,” Hrym said. “So. Do we get on the ship and travel to a faraway land?”

  “There are pluses and minuses.” He put Hrym in the sheath at his belt, ignoring the sword’s protest—walking around the Coins with a naked blade, especially that blade, would draw too much of the wrong kind of attention. “Pluses include that whole weight-in-gold thing.”

  Hrym’s voice was muffled by the sheath, but audible. “Minuses include the fact that no one gives you your weight in gold without expecting you to work for it.”

  “I do hate work. But being in close proximity to my weight in gold might provide the opportunity to steal it, thus getting the gold without doing the work.”

  “How much gold would that be, anyway?” Hrym asked. “In terms of coins, I mean. Gold is awfully heavy, so it might not be so many, and you know I like to rest on a good bed of coins. He’d better not pay you in gold bars—they’re not nearly as comfortable to sleep on. Why aren’t you fatter, anyway?”

  “However much it is, it’s certainly more gold than we have now, by quite a large margin. Also, I’ve never been to Jalmeray. Could be interesting. All djinn and monks and tigers and temples in high mountains. And, hmm—women who dance around wearing nothing but scarves, and translucent scarves, at that. Am I remembering that right?”

  “As always, you’re a keen student of cultural matters,” Hrym said.

  “I suppose I should see if I can find a map. Perhaps read a book. No, no time for that—but perhaps I should talk to someone who’s read a book.” He turned a corner and walked along the back of a warehouse, past stacks of empty crates piled up twice the height of a man—or once the height of a djinni, apparently.

  “A whole book?” Hrym said. “I don’t think we know anyone who’s gone quite that far.”

  “True.” Rodrick paused in the mouth of an alleyway. Had he heard the scrape of a boot on stone back there? He drew Hrym and whirled, blade outstretched. He was quite good at the drawing-fast-and-whirling bit, as it made quite an impressive display; it was the parts that usually came after—actually trying to kill someone with a sword—that he’d never been much good at. Luckily, Hrym’s ice magic made him lethal at a distance.

  Except against these two. That buffoon Kelso and the other guard, the old one with the disreputable mustaches, approached with blades drawn. “What now?” the old one said, and grinned. “Gonna summon your djinni again?”

  3

  Inner and Outer Seas

  “I can only do that once per day, alas,” Rodrick said. “You’ll have to settle for ice in lieu of wind.”

  “The wizard’s magic still protects us, blackguard,” Kelso said.

  “Did you just call me a blackguard?” Rodrick said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before. I’m not saying you’re wrong, exactly. I don’t know the exact definition of the term, but I get the gist, and it might be accurate enough. I’m just saying, it’s unusual.” He sighed. “So, fine. You’ve got protection from the cold. But do you have protection from gold?” Rodrick jingled the bag of coins he’d gotten from the djinni. “I’ll give you this if you go away and leave me alone.”

  “You’d better only be offering them your share,” Hrym said. “I do not approve
of this plan.”

  “You think we can be bought so easily?” Kelso’s virtuous jowls quivered in outrage.

  “You? Perhaps not. But your friend here has the look of an old veteran, and in my experience, soldiers are practical. Take the gold, and tell your little lord you couldn’t find me. Everyone wins.”

  “Better plan,” the grizzled guard said. “We beat you bloody and take the gold anyway.”

  “Damn,” Rodrick said. “Some old soldiers are entirely too practical. Another way, then.” He waved Hrym toward a stack of crates, unleashing a torrent of icy wind that knocked the whole pile down, tumbling crates smashing into Kelso and the old guard and driving them to the ground. They groaned, not badly hurt, and started to climb out from under the wreckage, but Rodrick played Hrym across the broken mass of crates until they were a fused and frozen lump of ice-locked wood, with the guards trapped underneath. The old guard had gotten his head free from the pile, and he glared at Rodrick as he struggled futilely to escape the crates pinning him down.

  “At least you won’t be too cold under there,” Rodrick said. “Until that spell you’ve got protecting you wears off, anyway. Then … brr.”

  “I’ve reconsidered your offer,” the guard said. “I’ll take the gold.”

  “I like you,” Rodrick said. Feeling cheerful about his prospects, he flipped a coin through the air, making it land an inch from the soldier’s nose.

  He sauntered away. Nobody could saunter like Rodrick. He didn’t even have to practice it anymore. It just came naturally now.

  “That coin you threw away is coming out of your half,” Hrym said.

  “I’ll be sure to make a note in the company accounts.”

  * * *

  They didn’t dare go back to the inn where they’d been staying before the job, in case the little lord sent more men looking for them, so they spent the evening loitering in shadowy alleyways with the other thugs and drinking in the sort of anonymous grog-holes down by the docks where no one would even bother to look around if they heard someone being axe-murdered at the next table. An hour before dawn Rodrick stumbled out, Hrym hidden away in a plain sheath at his belt, and went in search of the Nectar of the Gods.

  The docks of Absalom, the City at the Center of the World (depending on how you defined “the world,” admittedly), were bustling with activity even at such an inhospitable hour, all shouting sailors and grunting dockhands, crates and coils of rope and buckets of pitch, and the ever-present smells of salt and sweat and fish.

  “Is it possible to wake up with a hangover when you haven’t actually gone to sleep?” Rodrick mused aloud, but Hrym didn’t answer. He asked a harried-looking clerk of a woman if she knew where the Nectar was berthed, and got a mumbled reply and a slightly more helpful gesture in the right direction.

  The ship was medium-large, flying an unfamiliar flag that Rodrick assumed was that of Jalmeray, even though it didn’t have a monk or a tiger on it. (He really did wish he’d learned a bit more about the place. Knowledge wasn’t as good as wealth, but it was useful.) The crew seemed to be all dark-skinned men and women dressed in practical sailing clothes—billowing trousers and the like—and most were at least a head shorter than Rodrick.

  I think I’m going to stand out in Jalmeray, he mused, which made the idea of subtly strolling into the country and stealing a few things less likely. There were advantages to being a noteworthy stranger in town, too, though. There was always an angle to work, if you looked hard enough.

  He strolled toward the gangplank, and a middle-aged Vudrani woman wearing a broad red sash above her trousers came down and put a hand on his chest to stop him. She looked him up and down. “Do you need some assistance?” She wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps a helping hand back to the vat of rum you climbed out of? Or is it empty by now?”

  He yawned. “You can point me toward my stateroom. At least I assume it’s a stateroom, since I’m to be an honored guest of the thakur.”

  She stepped back, frowned, and then shouted something in a language Rodrick didn’t recognize at all, but suspected would become familiar (if not comprehensible) if he made it to Jalmeray. Rodrick’s hand moved to Hrym’s hilt, just by way of taking reasonable precautions.

  Another woman, this one ten years younger but with the swagger of authority and rather more earrings than the first, arrived and looked Rodrick up and down. He looked her up and down, too. She was lean and athletic, with short hair and dark, merry eyes. Not his usual type, which tended toward softer, more rounded women … except for her eyes. He liked those eyes. “You are Rodrick?” she said.

  He bowed as extravagantly as he could, given his continued drunkenness and the wobbliness of the gangplank under his feet. “I am.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I hope no one promised you I’d be sober. I didn’t get that part of the message.”

  “Let me see the sword,” she said. “So I know you are who you claim to be.”

  Rodrick considered objecting that such a display would prove only that he had Rodrick’s sword, not that he was Rodrick himself, but then realized he’d be arguing against his own interests, which was seldom a wise policy. He shrugged and slid out a foot of Hrym’s length, the crystalline blade glittering in the light of the lanterns and sending up streamers of vapor.

  The woman’s demeanor changed entirely. She opened her arms wide and smiled, showing off a gold tooth, which Rodrick gathered was traditional for sea captains of all nations. You probably got hit in the mouth with swinging mizzenmasts and such all the time at sea, so a certain amount of decorative dentistry was to be expected. “I am Saraswati, and this is my ship. This is my first mate, Pia.” The older woman still glared at him, but now she gave a grudging nod. “Where are your bags? I’ll have someone help carry them.”

  He had a pack full of extra clothes and a bedroll and other useful things, but it was all back at the inn, which the little lord’s men were doubtless watching. He’d stolen most of it, anyway, so the loss didn’t sting that much—he could steal most of it again easily enough. Except for a very special cloak he’d acquired during his adventures up north last year, which had both practical and sentimental value. He would be bitter about losing that when he sobered up. “No need. I thought I’d travel light. Just a man and his sword and, ah, his wits. And so on.”

  “Hmm,” Saraswati said. “A man and his sword and one set of clothes, anyway. I’ll reserve judgment on the wit until I see some evidence of it. Pia, when you have a moment, see if we can find another shirt and some trousers for him. The pants might be a bit short for you, but the voyage is warm this time of year. Welcome, Rodrick. I’ve got to make ready to sail, but Pia will show you to your berth.”

  She started to turn away, and Rodrick touched her shoulder. “Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know why the thakur wants to see me?”

  Saraswati gave him a long look, then whistled. “You’re going to see the thakur personally? I knew the summons came from his staff, but I didn’t realize … No, I don’t know why, and I wouldn’t expect to. I was told that if a man named Rodrick showed up this morning with a sword that looked like it was made of ice, I should make him comfortable, get him safely to Niswan, and then send word to the palace. We don’t have any clothes here suitable for a meeting with the thakur, but I’m sure they can take care of that at the palace, if they want you to look remotely reputable. Though perhaps you’re meant to be an object lesson on the savage disreputability of the denizens of Absalom?”

  “I’m Andoren by birth.”

  She shrugged. “You all seem much the same to me.”

  His national pride was the least of his many prides, so Rodrick just shrugged, and the captain departed. Besides, he’d barely known where Jalmeray was, so it would be hypocritical to disparage the captain’s lack of geographical distinction. Rodrick tried to only be hypocritical when there was money in it.

  The first mate beckoned and led him onto the ship, which seemed much like the other seagoing ves
sels he’d had the pleasure to board in the past, which wasn’t that many; more often he traveled on river craft, if he went aboard ships at all. The crew members ignored him with the same disinterest possessed by underpaid and overworked people everywhere. Maybe these strange and exotic Vudrani wouldn’t be so strange after all.

  The mate led him belowdecks, into space sufficiently cramped that Rodrick had to duck his head. “You’ll be staying in my quarters,” Pia said, and Rodrick winced. It was never a good idea to inconvenience someone you’d be stuck with on the small world of a ship for … how long? He had no idea how far it was to Jalmeray. He really should have tried to find that hypothetical person who’d read a book about the island, but there had been a notable shortage of reputable scholars in the grog shop, so the failure wasn’t really Rodrick’s fault.

  “I’m terribly sorry to displace you, perhaps we could share…” He trailed off when she opened a wooden door, revealing a space the size of a fat man’s coffin, with a sea chest (locked, of course, not that locks usually gave Rodrick much trouble, if it came to that), a narrow bunk that folded down from the wall, and a tiny table. The table was crowded by a two-foot high bronze idol of a many-armed woman, holding aloft various small objects of doubtless great religious significance, surrounded by seashells and small piles of salt. That’s right—the Vudrani were supposed to have hundreds or thousands of gods, weren’t they? He hoped there wouldn’t be a quiz. “Then again, I suppose sharing it would be a bit tight.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll take the second mate’s room, and his is nearly as big as mine, so I don’t care. The third mate’s the one who’ll be angry with you. He’s been bumped down to sleeping with the regular crew on deck or in a rope hammock.” She pointed at the idol, then at the chest. “Don’t meddle with my things. If you do, I’ll know. We probably can’t kill you, which is what we usually do with thieves, but if you only keelhaul someone a little bit, they usually live.”