Marco laughs at me. An ugly sound, tight and full of pain, but laughter none the less, and from a man I never once saw smile in the living world. ‘It’s not finished, prince. Not over.’ He groans, struggling to move but pinned by his extremities. ‘The tree bears what the lichkin leave behind.’
‘Lichkin?’ I’ve heard of them, monsters from the deadlands, things the Dead King brought into the world to serve his purpose.
‘What do you think rides the children taken from the womb? What moulds their potential and uses that power? It is fair exchange.’ He watches me dead-eyed. He could be talking of bargains made on the floors of Umbertide’s exchanges for all the emotion he shows. ‘Where is the crime? The child that would not have lived gets to live, and the lichkin that has never lived gets to quicken and walk in the world of men where it may feed its hunger.’
I look up into the distance above us, at the flesh-mottled trunk, tented by innumerable willow-like branches, each dangling its stolen life. Is Marco the worst man pinned there? It seems unlikely. I should hate him more fiercely. I should rush at him and hack him down. But this place burns emotion from you. In place of rage I feel hollow, sad. I turn and walk away.
‘Wait! Get me down!’
‘Get you down?’ I turn back, the flame of anger guttering somewhere deep within. ‘Why?’
‘I told you. I gave you information. You owe me.’ Marco heaves each word out over a chest being compressed by his own weight.
‘This tree will not stand long enough for me to owe you, banker. Not if it stands ten thousand years and you save my life every day.’
He coughs, black blood on his lips. ‘They’ll hunt you now – the lichkin and what parts of your sister it has taken. A brother’s death would open a door for them and let them emerge together, unborn, a new evil in the world. Your death would seal them into the lands above.’
The thought of being tracked through Hell by some monster bound about my sister’s soul scares me silly but I’m damned if I’ll let Marco see it. ‘If this … thing … seeks me out I shall just have to end it. With cold steel!’ I draw my sword for good measure – the thing has, after all, been enchanted to end dead creatures as effectively as live ones.
‘I can tell you how to save her.’ He holds my gaze, eyes dark and glittering.
‘My sister?’ Saving her hadn’t been on my list – that’s Snorri’s forte. I want to walk away but something won’t let me. ‘How?’
‘It can be done now that you’ve freed her futures from the tree.’ His pain is clear in his face for once, his desperation. ‘You’ll get me down? You promise.’
‘By my honour.’
‘When you meet them in the living world, your sister and whichever lichkin wears her skin, any sufficiently holy thing will part them.’
‘And my sister will … live?’
Marco makes that ugly sound again, his laughter. ‘She’ll die. But properly. Cleanly.’
‘Sufficiently holy?’ Snorri, rumbles the words beside me.
‘Something of importance. It’s the faith of all those believers that will make it work. A focus. Not some church cross. Not holy water from a cathedral font. Some true symbol, some—’
‘A cardinal’s seal?’ I ask.
Marco nods, face lined with the pain and the effort of it. ‘Yes. Probably.’
I turn to go again.
‘Wait!’ I hear Marco gasp as he tries to reach for me.
‘What?’ I glance back.
‘Release me! We made a bargain.’
‘Do you have the paperwork, Marco Onstantos Evenaline of the House Gold? The correct forms? Are they signed? Witnessed? Do they bear the proper marks?’
‘You promised! On your honour, Prince Jalan. Your honour.’
‘Oh.’ I turn away again. ‘That.’ And start to walk. ‘If you find it, let me know.’
In the Liban port of Al-Aran I took ship on a cog named Santa Maria, the same vessel that took most of the salt my companions had spent the best part of the previous month hauling north from Hamada. They also found room for my three camels in the hold, and I’ll admit to a certain satisfaction at the beasts’ distress, having spent so long enduring my own distress on a camel hump.
‘I warn you, captain, God crafted these creatures for three things only. Passing wind from the rear end, passing wind from the front end, and spitting. They spit stomach acid so tell your men, and don’t let anyone venture into the hold with a naked flame or you may find yourself the master of a marvellous collection of floating splinters. Also we’ll all drown.’
Captain Malturk snorted into the bushiness of his moustaches and waved me off, turning toward the masts and rigging to shout nautical nonsense at his men.
Travel by sea is a miserable business best not spoken about in polite company and nothing of any account happened for the first four days. Oh, there were waves, the wind blew, meals were eaten, but until the coast of Cag Liar appeared on the horizon it was generally distinguishable from all my other sea voyages only by the temperature, the language in which the sailors swore, and the taste of the food coming back up.
Also, never take a camel to sea. Just don’t. Especially not three of the bastards.
Port French on Cag Liar, the southern-most of the Corsair Isles, is the first stop of many ships leaving the coast of Afrique. There are two ways to sail the Middle Sea and survive the experience. Firstly armed to the teeth, secondly armed with a right-of-passage purchased from the pirate-lords. Such things can be obtained from factors in many ports, but it bodes well for a ship to put in at Port French or one of the other main centres on the Corsairs. The code flags are changed regularly and it doesn’t do to be sailing on out-of-date flags. Plus, for a merchant, once the painful business of ‘taxes’ is concluded, there are few places in the world that offer as wide a range of goods and services as the corsair ports. They trade in flesh there too, the bought-and-sold type as well as the hired type. Slaves run mainly west to east and a trickle north to south. The Broken Empire never had a big demand for slaves. We have peasants. Much the same thing, and they think they’re free so they never run off.
Coming into port it felt good to at last see the world I knew best, the headlands thick with pine and beech and oak in place of the scattered palm trees of northern Liba. And seasons too! The forest stood rust-speckled with the first crisp touch of autumn, though on a blazing day like this it felt hard to imagine the summer in terminal decline. In place of Liba’s flat roofs the houses on the slopes above the harbour boasted terracotta tiles, sloped in a tacit admission that rain actually happens.
‘Two days! Two days!’ Malturk’s first mate, a barrel of a man named Bartoli, who seemed incapable of wearing a shirt. ‘Two days!’ A booming baritone.
‘How many?’
‘Two d—’
‘I got it, thank you.’ I wiggled a finger into my half-deafened ear and proceeded down the gangplank.
The quays of Port French are like none I’ve seen. It’s as though the contents of every brothel, opium den, gambling hall, and blood-pit have been vomited up onto the sun-soaked harbour, pushing out among the quays so that the dockhands have to weave their path among this bright and varied crowd just to tie