Beneath Ceaseless Skies #94 Read online

  Issue #94 • May 3, 2012

  “To Go Home to Leal,” by Susan Forest

  “A Marble for the Drowning River,” by Ann Chatham

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  TO GO HOME TO LEAL

  by Susan Forest

  A squall brought early dusk to the harbor at Discort. Merchant schooners and fishing boats lay at anchor within the breakwater, buffeted by the sharp gusts, rigging singing. Fish guts and salt scented the spray whipped against the docks. On the quay, warehouses and sailors’ pubs were shuttered against the rain.

  Kaul hunched his back to the wind and wound his way up a mud lane to a crisscross of alleys lined with shanties. Rain drenched his worn sweater and plastered his hair and beard to his face. A bit of warmth out of the rain would be welcome, and a bowl of gruel. Even his father to talk to, if he wasn’t too drunk. By the demons, Kaul wished there was a way to keep Dagh from counting the poor coins in his purse.

  Home. He ducked into the hovel huddled in the lee of a stone wall. Within, a fire sputtered on the grate, spilling spasms of light and warmth onto the furnishings; two straw mats, a table and two chairs, and Dagh’s old sea chest from Leal.

  His father stirred a small pot of gruel over the fire. The stump of his right hand, puckered with wrinkled white scars at the wrist, rested on his leg. “So. You’re back.” Dagh drained his tin mug of rum. “Where you been all the day?”

  Kaul turned from the cook fire to strip off his clothes and pull half-dried breeches and a shirt from a peg. He didn’t like watching Dagh drink. “Hauling. Bolts of silk. Limes. Tea.”

  “Don’t you never mind what you’re hauling as long as you get wages. You get wages this time?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Demons, I never knew a boy as stupid as you. Hauling sacks of grain last month for no wages.”

  Kaul tossed his purse on the table. “I got wages.” He dipped his finger into the hot gruel.

  Dagh rapped Kaul’s knuckle with the back of his spoon and he snatched his hand back. “That’s mine. You cook your own.”

  Kaul sucked his knuckle. With the rum, he could never tell if his father would tussle with him as if he was still a boy, or smack him like a brawler in a tavern. He reached for the purse. “I’ll put the money in the jar.”

  “Not so fast!” Dagh’s stump pinned his fingers.

  Kaul withdrew, a sick feeling creeping into his stomach.

  Deftly, Dagh opened the purse with his teeth and his left hand, and poured the coins on the table. “Four coppers?” His face flushed. “You call that wages? It doesn’t pay for the food you eat! I got more than that just for mending a broken gate, back in Leal.”

  But they weren’t in Leal. “Three lads were turned away. Didn’t get work at all.”

  Dagh slapped him across the face. “I know fair pay. You been to the tavern to give money to a wench. Haven’t you?”

  Kaul hung his head, staring at the calluses on his fingers. “Yes.”

  Dagh sighed. “Ah, get on with you.” He poked Kaul with his stump and nodded at the pot. “Have some food. Go. You’re just a thick-witted fool is all.”

  Kaul stepped through the flap they used as a door and dipped a cup into the rain barrel. He wasn’t a fool. The shells had been against him, was all.

  Dagh chuckled and shook his head. “That last one. That merchant’s daughter.” He scooped the coins into his pocket. “You’re a piece of work, aren’t you? You! Thinking that fine little filly would look at a lout like you!”

  “She liked me.” Kaul drank his water and spooned gruel into a bowl.

  “Because you grew some muscle from hauling ballast?” Dagh snorted as he pulled his gruel from the grate and sat at the table to eat. “Now, this one. Ugly, too.”

  “She’s not ugly.”

  “Is that back talk, lad?”

  Kaul ducked his head. “No.” His shoulders ached and bed beckoned.

  Dagh’s black-dyed hat and sweater lay on his pallet.

  “You working tonight?”

  Dagh grunted. “Someone’s got to bring in money.”

  Kaul shuffled to the table with his porridge and cup. “Shouldn’t work when you been drinking.”

  For an instant Dagh stared at him beneath eyes wide with surprise. “You scummy rat. Who do you think you are, to tell me what to do?”

  Kaul fixed his eyes on the table just beyond his gruel.

  “You think you’re smarter than me? Huh?” Dagh slammed his pot on the table.

  Kaul waited, motionless, knuckles white.

  “I’ll bet you wish I was dead. Do you, boy? Huh?”

  “No.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  Rain beat on the roof and dripped onto the cobbled floor.

  Dagh plopped down and poured the last of his rum into his cup. The smell of it reeked from his pores, sickly sweet.

  “I want to come.”

  “You?” Dagh spooned porridge into his mouth.

  “You let me come last time.” Someone had to watch out. Dagh didn’t run as fast, wasn’t as alert, after the rum.

  “That was a mistake.”

  “I gave you a leg-up over the wall.” Maybe Kaul could earn the money he should’ve brought home in wages.

  “Hmmmph.” Dagh drained his mug.

  “I could be a lookout.” Kaul flicked his gaze up hopefully.

  Dagh’s features softened. “You don’t want to be a thief. You see this?” He held up his stump. “That’s what you get in my line of work. You want to lose your hand?”

  “I’ve got quick hands. I’ve been playing the shell game. I win almost all my wagers.”

  “Win? Oh, that’s good. You bring home four coppers for a day’s wages. That’s what happens when you think you’re clever enough to win at shells. You’re daft, lad.”

  Kaul hunched over his supper.

  “You’re young. You should be doing something with your life. My brother, Hauken? He had sense. Stayed on the farm.”

  “I know, you told me.”

  “Didn’t go off looking for riches in the city, like me. This city was the death of your mother.” Dagh stood and pulled his dark sweater over his shirt. “But you never listen. How many times have I told you, get out of here? Huh? Go to your uncle in Leal. But do you listen?”

  “I don’t know Hauken.”

  Dagh put on his hat. “He’s got it good in Leal. Hard work. That’s what makes a man. Not these city streets full of pickpockets and rum and plague. I’d go, myself, but how do I get on a King’s ship with this?” He held up his stump. “I’m branded, now, lad. They don’t let thieves into Leal.”

  Kaul stood. “I want to stay here. With you.”

  “Ahh! You daft boy!” He grabbed Kaul around the neck and jabbed him in the gut. Kaul laughed and blocked the stump with his forearm, grappling his father around the waist. He was taller than Dagh now, but his father outweighed him and in a moment Kaul was tripped onto his back.

  Dagh helped him to his feet with his good hand. “I said you’re a stupid lad and you are. All right, you can be the lookout. But stay out of the way.”

  Kaul grabbed his wet sweater and pulled it on.

  Dagh clutched him by the shoulder and pulled him close. “And if I say run, you run, hear?” he said. “And don’t stop. Not for nothing.” He pushed him away. “You big oaf.”

  Kaul pulled on his hat and they made their way through the deserted streets. Rain, slowed now to a steady thrum, kept even the King’s Men behind shutters. They made their way by back streets up the escarpment to the district where larger houses stood looking out o
ver walls of stone, to the sea. Here, they took more care, watching for private guards as well as the King’s Men.

  Dagh led the way to a servants’ lane beneath sodden trees, to where the courtyard wall of a large house had fallen into disrepair. With Kaul’s help, Dagh scrambled over the wall. Kaul cast about for large stones from the ruin and, climbing into the garden, created a step for Dagh to use on his return. Then he scrambled over the wall and waited on the lower limb of a tree.

  He listened. There was no light. The wall and house were merely lesser darknesses in the inky night. He strained his ears, but the patter of rain on stone, on gravel, on leaves, masked any sound that might signal a guard’s approach. In his mind, he followed Dagh’s progress. Climbing to a balcony or shuttered window? Finding a room darkened and empty, or pregnant with a sleeping form? And where in such a huge house would he look for gold? Would he tread open corridors to reach a more likely room?

  Running feet caught Kaul’s attention before he saw the black bulk appear out of the gloom. He scrambled from his perch and boosted himself onto the wall, reaching a hand down to Dagh. Dagh grasped him firmly and he pulled, catapulting both of them into the bushes. Dagh shoved something long and hard into his hand and Kaul pushed it beneath the cord that held his breeches. “Run,” Dagh said. “Split up.” Dagh disappeared down the servant’s lane and Kaul ran in the opposite direction. In a moment he heard shouts and the sounds of many feet in pursuit.

  He ran up the alley. He crossed a street to another servants’ road. He dodged, twisting through the maze of streets and lanes, exhilarated with the chase. The sound of his own footsteps, soft and sure on the cobbles, gravel and hard-packed dirt, filled his ears and he ran on, unknowing if others followed.

  By a torrent of rainwater gushing from a sewer, he crawled beneath a clump of bushes. He sat in the mud, listened, tried to hear the sound of hunters over the noise of the water, the rasping of his breath, the beating of his heart.

  He imagined sudden arms pulling him roughly to his feet, his own wild struggles, grasping at—a branch—anything to use for a weapon. There was the thing Dagh had given him, digging into his belly. He pulled it from his belt and caressed its smooth surface. A candlestick. Gold, perhaps? Or silver? Even brass would fetch more than a month’s wages, if Dagh had its mate. They could eat meat, even buy one of the limes he had hauled today from the foreign schooner.

  He pushed the candlestick back beneath his drawstring of his breeches and listened. Nothing but raindrops pattering on leaves. Carefully, he withdrew himself from his hiding place and looked up the street. No sound, no motion. He made his way back down the escarpment, back to the hovel.

  The fire was out. Kaul did not need to light the candle to know that the place was empty. He wrapped the candlestick in a shirt and pushed it under the straw of his pallet. He returned to the lane. A drunken beggar was making his way up from one of the pubs by the sea. Kaul reckoned it was not yet midnight.

  He peered through the rain, up the hill toward the wealthy district, down the hill toward the harbor. The faint sounds of merrymaking drifted from the quay. Kaul turned his footsteps downhill.

  The noise of the crowd grew as he approached the docks; calls and cheering. He rounded a corner and saw a group of twenty or so gathered outside the King’s Men’s post. Onlookers from the nearby pubs drifted out of the warmth of their common rooms to see what was going on. Kaul’s stomach heaved as he made his way through the throng.

  The King’s Men had Dagh. One brandished a silver candlestick, while two others held the old man’s arms as he wrenched himself this way and that, shrieking for mercy. The pronouncements of the captain were drowned by the goading of the crowd, but his actions were clear. It took three men to hold Dagh’s left arm on the block. One soldier brought out a broad-bladed axe and Dagh’s struggles renewed. The axe-man bent over him, giving instructions, but Dagh’s eyes rolled and he screamed. The axe-man seemed to shrug; then, raising his weapon, he brought it down, once, with a sickening crunch. Dagh’s hand came free and bounced to the ground. Dagh shrieked again, then collapsed, the other two guards falling on him in surprise. Blood spurted over the onlookers.

  The men lifted Dagh and carried him into the guard post. The throng surged forward to see, blocking Kaul’s view. Kaul heard the sizzle, smelled the stench of burning flesh. The scream of pain rose over the shouts of the crowd.

  Afterward, Kaul felt a strange lightness, as though he were not standing in the street, not looking down on his father’s broken body, not the recipient of smirks and looks of pity as the others brushed past him, returning to taverns or inns or their own dry beds, relieved it was not them; not them, this time.

  As from a distance, he saw himself bend down, look at the half-closed eyes, slide his hands carefully beneath his father’s shoulders and hips, look into that terrible face for permission and, finding nothing, heave him up like a sack of grain to his shoulder, and stagger to his feet. The street flowed past him, smeared into a blur of rain. The only reality was the warmth of that great weight on his shoulder.

  Kaul brought Dagh home and laid him on his pallet. Dagh cradled his left arm, the fresh stump leaking slightly where rawness showed in cracks between patches of blackened skin. The blood and vomit on Dagh’s clothes had hardened, and he was shivering.

  Kaul built a fire. He stripped away Dagh’s clothes, cringing when a clumsy movement brought a recoil of pain from his father. He wrapped him in blankets and watched him. Dagh lay unmoving, unspeaking, unseeing.

  In the following days, Kaul lowered his head whenever he spotted a King’s Man in the street, but they seemed no more suspicious of him than any of the nameless rabble. Thieves and pickpockets sank into the shantytowns like stones in quicksand, and plunder did not resurface.

  Rather than lessening, Dagh’s pain grew. Kaul didn’t have the kind of money a wizard would charge to mend the wound, not without selling the candlestick. And, beneath his thoughts, Kaul knew the injury was not the source of his father’s pain. But Dagh’s moans pushed Kaul’s thoughts onto spiral paths. What if? What if he hadn’t asked to come that night? What if he hadn’t squandered his money? What if....

  He counted out the coppers and bought rum for the pain, and watched as his father became agitated, and ranted, and made great plans, and wept. His heart clung to his father’s grief through every change of mood, waiting for the tussling matches to return. But it was as though Dagh had forgotten. And when the rum ran out, Kaul bought more, and stayed by his father’s side through the grief again; and again.

  He worked until he was sick of the smell of fish. He brought home money to have it flung from his hands. He cleaned the vomit and the filth. Each day, Dagh sat in the street with his two stumps laid out in front of him and a hat at his feet, raving on about Leal and the good life and Hauken’s farm. The rains of winter turned cold and flurries of snow came. Dagh began to cough and become thin like so many who lived in the alleys behind the quay.

  One morning before the sun rose, Kaul lay on his mat, the incessant, circular logic of his thoughts in abeyance. His eyes rested on Dagh, asleep at last, face drawn and gray in the light of the fire. There was something different about him. A repose. A peacefulness Kaul had never seen.

  The warmth of his blankets, the silence of the snow, the languor of sleep—Kaul clung to the moment, held the chaos and belittling at bay for just a few minutes. If only Dagh could rest as other men did; as he did now, in sleep.

  Leal.

  Kaul rose to his elbow. That was it—

  Dagh needed to go home. To Leal.

  Kaul ate his breakfast, his mind racing. He’d always known that the wounded arms were not the problem; healing them would never be enough. It was his father’s spirit that sickened here, in the city. His father had been dying ever since he left Leal. Now, Kaul was drawn to that face, its frown for the time being erased. Kaul would bring his father home. There was a way.

  The arrangements did not take long. The silver candle
stick brought Kaul more money than he’d ever seen in one place, though he knew it was a scrap of the thing’s worth. It was enough. He found a wizard and booked passage on a schooner bound down the coast.

  The wizard, Gallinule, arrived at the appointed hour.

  It had been snowing for two days and flakes swirled in the dark as the wizard entered the hovel. Dagh sat at the table, having drunk enough rum to be incoherent. Kaul rose from his pallet, his hands cold now that the moment had come.

  Dagh lifted his head. “What’s he doing here?”

  Gallinule stepped beneath the lintel, his large frame filling the hovel. “Your father does not know of our contract?”

  “He knows. He just forgets.” Kaul knelt by the table. “Dagh. Remember? What you told me to do?”

  Dagh waved his arm belligerently in Kaul’s direction. “You spent money on a wizard? You idiot! He can do nothing!”

  “Remember Leal? Dagh? You wanted to go to Leal to see your brother?”

  “I can’t go to Leal!” Dagh said. He held up his arms. “You see these, boy? See them?”

  “Gallinule is going to help us.”

  “He can’t give me back my hands!” He looked at the stumps and began to weep. “Fool! Fool of a boy! Why did I ever take you with me?” His lip trembled and the tears coursed down his cheeks.

  Kaul turned to where Gallinule unpacked his sack and caught the wizard’s glance of pity. Gallinule set a black candle on the floor and lit it, then extinguished all other light from the hovel. “How will you get him to the wharf?”

  Kaul stuffed one of the pallets into Dagh’s old sea chest and took it outside. “I have a box,” he said quietly. “The harbor is down hill. I can skid it.”

  Gallinule lifted his sorrowful eyes from his work. “I have a mule and a cart. I will help you.”

  Kaul nodded his thanks.

  The wizard emptied a powder into Dagh’s mug. “Drink this,” he said to the old man. “It will keep your body safe on its journey.”

  Dagh looked as though he would protest, but the wizard’s gaze commanded him to obey and he swallowed the potion.