Chapter 3: It Thickens

  “You too, then,” Moa said, raising a clay mug in Ji’an’s direction and nodding to a pitcher full of wine. He nodded back and she poured him a full cup. Ji’an took the cup and held it with both hands, feeling the warmth seeping through the sides of the clay, into his palms. He imagined that he could feel it running up his arms and down his spine, and he basked in it for a moment. The cup turned up over his mouth and he finished it in one gulp. Moa said nothing, just handed him the pitcher.

  “Do you want some, Asan?” Moa asked, walking back to the table with the cups on it. She picked one up.

  “I really shouldn’t drink on the job…” but Moa had already handed him a cup. He seemed relieved more than he was annoyed that she ignored him. Ji’an handed him the pitcher and he followed Ji’an’s example, turning the cup up and simply drinking. Like Ji’an he also opted for seconds.

  “So…” Ji’an started, but didn’t know what to say. He was just trying to hear someone speak so he didn’t have to listen to his own voice in his head, screaming at him. There had been talks for years, even from the King himself, about what would happen if his health were to deteriorate. They had seen this power vacuum coming but no one would own up to taking up the mantle of King. “All of this could’ve been avoided if we had only secured succession years ago,” Ji’an struck the table next to him with his fist. It bowed slightly under the force.

  “Yes, of course, if only a certain someone had stepped up…”

  “You know better than to think that, Moa. It’s not in him. At least he doesn’t want it to be. He’s comfortable where he is.”

  Moa just stared at him, her eyes slightly accusing. “I’m not talking about Jamma, and you know it, Ji’an. I’m talking--”

  “Do you know if this happened anywhere else, or was it just our two outposts?” Ji’an cut her off. He knew what she was going to say, but he didn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not again.

  She sighed and opened her mouth to say something, but she thought better of it, then spoke. “I have it straight from the source itself that it did in fact happen all over the Ocean. Hebin, from the Dry Waves tribe, said that every outpost in the northern Tribes had been hit in exactly the same way, with the same note left on the bodies each time.”

  “This one?” Ji’an asked, handing her the note that he had stored in his belt pouch. She took it and read it twice.

  “Yes, the very same one. Almost looks like the exact same script as well. But I don’t have mine on me at the moment. It’s with the rest of my party. Besides it would be foolish to have them written by the same person, but it is surely a practiced scribe's hand. Too clean to not be.”

  “Could be a shopkeeper or a merchant of some kind.”

  “We must have different merchants in the west than you, Ji’an,” she said flatly.

  Ji’an waved his hand, dismissing his own comment. Asan stirred and shuffled his cup from one hand to the other. “What is it Asan?” Ji’an asked. He didn’t answer, but was looking around the room. There was plenty to look at, Ji’an had to give him that. There were tapestries standing on easels by the walls around the room depicting what looked to Ji’an like the War of Blood and Sand, the war that united the Kingdom under Akka’s banner. Fires burned on each wall as well, the smoke vented out the ceiling through a small hole. There were some tables and chairs strewn about and a bed roll against the wall behind Ji’an that looked to be Moa’s own, while the bed sat neglected on the other side of the room.

  “Might I see the note?” Asan said, awkwardly running his fingers through his thinning hair, and clearing his throat.

  Moa and Ji’an looked at each other.

  “I don’t see why not,” Moa said, handing him the note.

  He took it and read it. Then he read it again and again, eyes widening. “This is not good news, I fear. You see this,” he turned the paper around and pointed to a small symbol in the top right corner. It was so small that Ji’an had missed it and by the look on her face, Moa had as well. “This is the symbol of the Bloodbrothers. Have you heard of them?”

  Moa snatched the paper back from Asan. She looked back and forth, her eyes darting, across the paper as if she was trying to erase it with her eyes. “Why would they put this here?” She passed the paper to Ji’an. He looked at the tiny shape, a tiny circle with a line through. On closer look it was an arrow, fletching stick up and the arrow head pointing down.

  “I suppose they wanted us to find it,” Ji’an said, running his thumb over it. It was less than a hair’s breadth from being covered in blood. “Though, I am a bit lost on who the Bloodbrothers are.”

  Asan stared openly at him, but Moa simply waved it away. “They haven’t operated this far north and east, at least not this much. They more than likely have been responsible for some of the raids you see around The Spire, but for the most part they stay around the south and the west. They’re separatists, they want, as the note says, to split away from the kingdom and allow the Ocean to be ruled by Tribes once more.”

  “I see. Asan, how do you know these people? You seemed shocked I didn’t know them,” Ji’an said, turning his gaze to him.

  He said nothing, only pulled up his left pant leg. Tattooed on the back of his calf was the circle and the arrow from the paper. “I haven’t been with them for years. I was all for the ending of the monarchy, but there’s no way we can. We’re too entrenched at this point. And besides, I quite like the way things are now that I’m older. Kingdom isn’t so bad. I can’t really get rid of this thing, is all. So I can’t really ever forget.” He pushed his pant leg back down and sipped some wine. “Besides, they never really had a plan. That’s what got me out in the first place. They were all for killing and stealing and high talk about no more king, enough to rile me up at nineteen, but they never had a plan besides ‘let the king die.’ It hasn’t been all that long since I was in, about ten years or so, so I doubt even now they have much of a plan.”

  Ji’an sat back in his seat. It was a foldable camp chair, the collapsible ones that they had on the Spire. Ji’an had sat in hundreds if not thousands of these chairs in his life, but this one just didn’t feel right to him. He sat forward again and rested his hands on his knees.

  He saw Moa relax slightly after Asan did nothing more than sip more wine and occasionally top himself off. They looked at each other and nodded, meaning that neither of them saw Asan as a threat, at least not right now. “So they aren’t dangerous, then?” Ji’an asked, looking around, the gold and iron bands in his hair clinking together as he looked at each person in turn.

  They looked anything but convinced.

  Asan finally scoffed. “Captain, the Bloodbrother are nothing, if not dangerous. I think it is precisely that they have no plan that makes them so dangerous. They’re bored for the most part, and that makes them loot and kill and steal far more than if they were organized. So yes, they are very dangerous.”

  “He’s right,” Moa said. “These people have no regard for life, any life. They will happily kill a toddler or grandfather with no remorse for either.” The image of the family tied down and gutted in front of him flashed in Ji’an’s mind. He simply nodded, the wine turning in his stomach. “You’ve seen what I mean, I take it,” Moa said flatly. He nodded again.

  After a long moment of silence, the only sounds were the fire crackling, and the faint sound of water that Ji’an could catch every few moments, Ji’an spoke up. “Do you think that we should leave tonight?” Moa rolled her empty cup in her hands, looking at a spot a few feet away from her on the floor, deep in thought. “The men won’t like it, but it might be best to get there and let people know what we’ve learned, rather than give them a night.”

  There was another moment before Moa decided. “No, give them their night. They’ll need all the rest they can get. Things are only going to get worse from here.”

  “This could mean war,” Moa said, sitting back in her chair.

  \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

  “You sure you don’t want anything, Hima,” the youngest one called. Micha? Was that right? Hima was sure of it… until he wasn’t again. No harm in just trying it out, Hima thought to himself.

  “Yes, I’m sure, Micha, thank you,” the lad nodded once and turned to leave, back down the hall out toward the… the… where they came in at. “Oh and Micha, what were you and Ol’ha thinking about lodging? Ji’an, Ammon and I all have places already, are you two coming back, or will you go off with the others?”

  He leaned against the rock frame of the wall, his slender fingers running around the rough and bumpy texture. “We were planning on staying with Moa’s men, but if you would feel safer if we were--”

  “No, no. No, don’t worry about me down here, lad, I’ll be fine. Enjoy your night, and don’t roll away all your coins.” He laughed.

  “Right. We’ll come get you in the morning, attendants are crawling all over this place, probably running over themselves trying to work for you, so if you need anything just yell and take your pick.” Hima nodded, and Micah left. Did he linger for just a moment too long? What was he thinking?

  He’s thinking about how unfit you are, a voice crept up on him, in the back of his mind. This voice liked to taunt him when no one else was around. He needed him now, but sometimes it took him a while to get ready and show up. He was the King after all, he was a busy man. To bide time, Hima began to take note of what was around him. He was in his own quarters, one that the people here at Little Stone set aside for the royal family, the biggest, most spacious cavern that they had found during their exploration. They had coated the walls in the substance from Asin, that colored the walls a sky blue, the same color that army’s vest was.

  There was a pitcher of wine on a lacquered wooden table in the middle of the room that was sat between two ornate chairs that did not look Ocean-made, but had rather been imported from Asin by the Traders, and, on the other side, a long lounging chair of the same make. Hima ran his hand across the wooden arm of the chair. It was so intricately carved, the pattern seemed to never end, folding in on itself over and over, never reaching a bottom. Yes, this had to be from Asin, as no one in the Ocean could’ve made this, not with the tools they had. The wood here was too hard, far too hard, for this sort of carving. This needed Magic.

  There were footsteps behind him, and he turned, reaching for his ka’pa, the very same one that he had given up more than twenty years ago. The weapon might’ve been hanging up now, but the man who held it was still out there, inside him somewhere, and he still tried to make an appearance every so often.

  It was him. The King of the Ocean of Sand, Akka, his brother, was standing there in front of him. “You going to marry that chair there?” The king asked, taking a bite of something that Hima couldn’t make out clearly. Dried meat perhaps.

  “Why do you ask?” Hima asked, wiping his hand off on his pants. He had been there feeling it so long his hand had begun to sweat.

  “No reason, I simply felt some sort of tension between you two there, I thought I might ask,” Akka said. He made his way to the lounging chair and cackled a single quick and clipped laugh, the same one that he always did when he was making a joke that he knew that only he would find funny. He sat and took another bite of something.

  “Why am I here, Hima?” He just looked, his head tilting to the side. He never seemed to know why he was where he was at any given moment, but Hima didn’t mind. The King was a young man, younger than Hima by years, his hair was jet black, and just below his hair. His face was lined from the sand, and from the stress of winning a war and running the kingdom that came after it. But not all of them were from age, some-- if not most-- were scars from years on the battlefield and in war. Most of them had faded into nothing more than white lines, but there was one that ran from just to the side above his eyebrow, down below his chin, that alway became angry and puffy from the heat.

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  “I don’t know, you tend to just show up,” Hima said, taking a seat across from him. It was a lie, Hima knew why he was there, he always knew when he showed up. But that meant telling him the truth, which always ended…poorly, for both of them. Akka shifted his weight and the massive gold chain around his neck shifted and clinked together.

  “You’re lying, but I don’t suppose I care,” Akka said, taking another bite. What was he eating? The chains sounded like a thousand tiny bells ringing, the sound unnaturally loud in the large empty room.

  “You never could part with those chains, could you,” Hima said, running both his hands over the arms of the chair. The wood curled on the end, making a spiral on each side of the pattern, adding just one more complexity to the whole thing. He suddenly reached forward to pour himself a cup of wine.

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you, Hima,” Akka said, taking another bite of his food.

  Hima froze with the pitcher raised above the cup, the wine tilted towards the lip of the picther. “Why not?”

  “Might be poisoned. Might just not taste good, but you never know.” He took another bite.

  “What are you eating?” Hima asked, sitting the wine and the cup down. The cup broke and wine splashed up over the brim of the pitcher. He sat it down harder than he meant to.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Akka said, sitting up on the lounge chair. “You tell me why I’m here, and I’ll tell you what I’m eating.”

  “I told you, I don’t know why you’re here,” Hima insisted. He felt like a child afraid to tell his parents that he had lied. His hands began to shake, and he sat back in the chair, and felt the pattern in the arm rests. He tried to steady his breathing, but it refused to come back down.

  “Hima, look at me,” Akka said, leaning forward on his knees. He was so young then, why did he have to leave? “Hima, you have to tell me why I’m here. I can help you, I always do.”

  “I’m afraid, Akka,” Hima said, almost too soft for himself to hear, a whisper whispering. Regardless of the volume, the words clawed at Hima’s throat, and he swore he tasted blood running down his throat, where the words had dug their fingernails in on the way out. They were dragged out of him by some unseen force, against his and their will.

  But it was true. That was the worst part of it all, that it was true and there was nothing that he could do about it. “I’m afraid of the future of the Ocean and for your life, and my own. Akka, I’m slipping. My mind is going down and it is going fast.” The pattern kept going downward into the nothingness at the bottom. He could feel himself falling into that nothingness, that oblivion, the destruction of everything.

  Time seemed to stop, Akka seemed frozen in time, and so did he. Was this the nothingness? Is there where the pattern ended, here in this timeless waste? They were here in the same room, Hima and Akka, the two founders of the Kingdom, they were here and they were both dying.

  But that was true either, was it? Akka wasn’t here. He was dying in his room in Clear Waters, this was nothing more than a shade, a shadow of who Akka had been, the steady rock that Hima had always looked up to.

  As the realization set in, Hima remembered. He remembered clearly all the other times that Akka had shown up as he just had.

  It wasn’t pleasant and Hima wasn’t ready.

  He sat in that timeless space far too long, watching Akka out of the corner of his eye, where nothing could happen to him. “Goodbye Akka. I will see you in Clear Waters shortly.”

  He looked at him full in the face and time resumed. Akka’s skin began to turn gray as the blood underneath seemed to dry up all at once, and he shriveled, his skin seeming to flake off and blow away on some unseen wind. The chains suddenly became far too heavy, and they crashed and clanged together, the bells replaced by nothing but noise, and he heard bones snapping under the weight. His eyes popped and he screamed a wordless scream as his teeth fell out.

  Soon he was nothing.

  Soon he was at the bottom of the pattern.

  Soon he was oblivion.

  Hima was left alone in that room, tears falling down his face, trapped in his own head.

  He found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he could follow his brother to live in that nothingness.

  ----

  Ammon walked through Little Stone after having a few drinks. If Moa was here that meant Hedeke would be here, the Humble One that was assigned to her. It took longer than he would have liked, but eventually he found himself in a room down some dank tunnel in the back of the cavern complex. The attendants had fires lit along the walls with the smoke venting out the top of the room, as with most of the rooms at the ends of these tunnels.

  He had been waiting for what felt like hours, but only could’ve been minutes. That didn’t, however, stop him from pacing round the room, like some caged animal. He stepped out of the room and spoke to the attendant that was positioned outside of the room to wait on them. “How much longer?” He asked, annoyance dripping from his voice.

  “Like I said before, Master Ammon, I cannot know. He will be here as soon as he-- Ah, here they come now,” the man said, spotting a torch bobbing down the hall.

  “What is your price, sir?” Ammon didn’t know his name and wanted to keep it that way.

  “Price for what, may I ask?” His voice was calm, but there was light in his eyes at the mention of possible money.

  “Silence,” Ammon said, whispering near the man’s ear. The gangly little man thought for a moment, but Ammon wouldn’t let him think any longer. He might find morals somewhere in that head of his if he dug too deep. So to avoid that, Ammon simply placed a loaded down purse in his hand. “That’s yours. You will hear things that you shouldn’t come out of this room, but you are not to repeat any of them, or I will kill you and pry that gold right out of your cold dead hands. Understand?” Ammon tasted bile again, and those green eyes bored holes in the back of his neck. He ignored them.

  “H-- how-- how much is this?” the attendant stuttered out at a whisper as Hedeke and his attendant were drawing nearer.

  “More than you have ever seen in your life, I can assure you of that. Don’t count it now. Simply hook it on your belt and do your job.”

  The man nodded.

  “Hedeke,” Ammon said as they drew even closer. “So good to see you once more. How have you been?”

  “I have been well, thank you. Tired of this traveling. Ready to be done with it all.”

  Ammon smiled sympathetically at him. Part of it was theater, part was sincere. Ammon hated travel as well and Hedeke had come twice as far.

  “Well, come in, come in. I have plenty of room here for one of my own to stay and rest his bones.” He waved his arm in the door and Hedeke went inside. His attendant left back down the hallway, the inky blackness fighting against his torch trying to swallow him as he left. “Remember,” Ammon said to the man left by the door. He shook slightly but nodded nonetheless.

  Hedeke was sitting in a chair filled with pillows, propping his feet up on a low table that sat in front of him. “I swear to the gods known and not, they could do a better job on those pagona saddles.” He winced and gasped as he flexed his hips and thighs.

  Ammon sighed. “Well,” he said flatly.

  “Well what?” Hedeke stopped in his stretching for a moment, looking puzzled. Ammon just stared at him and couldn’t help but take in his features. He was a short man, tan, with a very babyish face. He wasn’t all that old, early twenties, perhaps a year younger than Ji’an. He wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t a risk taker either.

  “Well, did the person you hired do their job?”

  The color left his face. “I don’t kn--know which job you could ever mean, Ammon.” He was far from the worst liar that Ammon had met.

  “You were meant to hire someone to kill people at random to send a message. Did you do such a thing?”

  “Isn’t there someone right outside this room as we speak?” Hedeke said, half whispering, half speaking.

  “Yes, but you need not worry my friend, he is taken care of. Isn’t that right, my good sir?” Ammon called without taking his eyes off Hedeke.

  “Terribly right sir. I won’t be-- be speaking a word to a soul, I’ll tell you that for sure.”

  “Doesn't sound like he was too willing to be in this position,” Hedeke said, raising his eyebrows and looking around Ammon as if to get a look at the man. “Did you pay him or threaten him?”

  “Both. The Humble One’s coffers are a bit lower now, but we can talk freely. So did you do it?”

  “Yes, I did. Got a family. Took their heads. I wouldn’t’ve believed it had I not seen the man himself, but one of the people was no older than a year. Maybe less. He strapped the poor thing’s bleeding head to his belt and wore it like a trophy, Ammon. I saw that. With my own two eyes.”

  The man outside let out a low moan, but stayed put.

  “What did you do to him out there?” Hedeke asked, standing and pouring himself a glass of wine from the pitcher on the table.

  Ammon blinked and saw those green eyes again. He had dreamed about them the whole way here, the scene playing over and over in his mind. The men that took the wagon woke him and he thought he was being attacked, the man he killed back for revenge. His stomach turned with Hedeke’s story.

  “I never meant it to be this bad, Hedeke, but I simply think that the soldiers are excited that they finally have something to rally behind.”

  “Excited? You call strapping a baby’s head to your belt and riding off with it like it was a lover’s scarf what these monsters do when they get excited?” Hedeke suddenly jumped to his feet. “Gods have mercy on the fate of the Ocean if that’s the case.” He turned up the wine and downed it in one go.

  “Hedeke, please,” Ammon tried to cut the man off, but it was no use. There was no stopping him now.

  “Gods above, Ammon, I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted to break apart the monarchy, sure, but I never meant for good innocent people to be hurt in the process. The price of change, I’m sure, but,” he cut himself off and drank more wine. “But is this really the cost? Or are we working with lunatics?”

  Ammon had no answer. This was the way it was going to have to be. He knew from the first few meetings, some two years ago when the Humble Ones and the Bloodbrothers met together and allied themselves to the same cause. The Humble Ones had always wanted to topple the throne, but they had never had the manpower until they met the Bloodbrothers. Now they had essentially an outside army that they could pull the strings of, one that was itching for its chance to finally make the change they so craved.

  But from what they had done both in Moa’s territory and at The Spire, Ammon could only imagine the carnage around the Ocean. It was more than any one of the Humble Ones had bargained for.

  They had to press on.

  “We might just be working with lunatics, Hedeke, but they are lunatics who get work done.” Ammon took a step towards Hedeke. “What they have done here in these past few days will reap innumerable benefits. Think about it, Hedeke.” He pounced, throwing his arm around Hedeke’s shoulders. “The whole Ocean is rattled. They won’t be thinking straight when they are meeting, and they will be in a scramble trying to leave. Before long they will find someone who knows about the mark of the Bloodbrothers and not long after that will someone vouch for just how deadly they are.”

  “Ammon, really this is all well and good, but--”

  Ammon didn’t let him finish. “When they leave, which, trust me, will not be that long, we will have them. We will ambush the lot of the army, cut the head off the king and parade it back to Clear Waters.”

  Ammon turned and placed his hands on both of Hedeke's shoulders, and looked directly into his eyes. “They will crumble at our feet, begging for mercy,” he concluded in a near whisper. The only sound for a long pause were the fires’ crackling.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Hedeke said, though he didn’t seem convinced. He would come around, Ammon was sure of it.

  “Of course I’m right. Now, get your rest. Tomorrow we will meet in Clear Waters and plan for the future of the Ocean.”

  The man beside the door was weeping softly.