Bone Jack

“My khan is young and ambitious,” Itzal said, “his uncle died childless and left him heir of a waning family, and he seeks to makes its name great. You’ll understand why I’m avoiding its name. There’s little honor in expressing the weakness of your house.”

The steward of Gurvan Arduu nodded.

Itzal went on. “My khan cannot hope to win any raids of note with only the warriors his house has now. They are strong, but few. So my khan has decided to barter with that dearest possession he has. He is will to sacrifice his name for now and suffer the reflected glory of another house. At least until he has accomplished enough to earn or barter for himself.”

“That is a dear treasure indeed,” said the steward. “And what goods does my khan possess that warrant so dear a treasure?”

“I understand that your house has recently come into possession of some weaponry of Alwatan,” Itzal said.

And immediately got the feeling that he ought to have been more careful. The silence prickled with ice.

The steward took a long drag at the hookah before saying anything. The smoke hissed through the tube and the water bubbled in the green glass.

“Your khan shows great ambition indeed,” the steward said. “That property came to my khan at the price of blood.”

In a later chapter of Breuer’s Tradecraft, the author emphasizes the difference between investigation and surveillance. Investigation attracts attention by virtue of being an active pursuit of something. Surveillance ought to be invisible, considering it’s a response to something else. Surveillance ought to behave no more invasively than the parting of grass across the prow of a ship, and every bit as natural.

The steward of house Gurvan Arduu did not have much negotiation to do after telling Itzal the price of the Alwatan weapons. Itzal didn’t have any need to press the subject. He had nothing to barter. He excused himself from the hookah lounge with the promise he’d pass the price—the price of blood—on to his khan.

Then he disappeared into the ether, or as close to it as he could without ceasing to exist. From his hiding place, he kept an eye on the hookah lounge so he could see when the steward of house Gurvan Arduu left. The steward didn’t leave Itzal waiting for long. Soon he began his walk through the streets of the city. He took his slow time, walking in the shady edges of the street, keeping his head bowed as if full of thoughts. He stopped once to make an order for a bushel of daikon, and another time to buy a pipe and pouch of tobacco. He smoked it while he walked. He went at such a leisurely pace, in fact, that Itzal had more trouble not overtaking him than he had evading notice.

After a time, Itzal caught sight of a gate at the end of a street. The gate led through the wall around one of the mansions. Three horses emblazoned the standards hanging around the property.

Itzal abandoned following the steward and instead approached the mansion from another angle. He found a spot high up where he could look over the property. From there he looked down into the garden. He figured it would be too much to hope that he could see Ben’s property from here, but he’d need a good idea of how the land lay before he approached the mansion.

Three or four guards patrolled the grounds. Most of them wore the furs and skins that Tal Khumuus warriors usually did on usual days—when they weren’t set up for war. One of the guards stood out from the group. He kept a tight guard on the front door, for one thing, while the others patrolled near the walls. He wasn’t wearing furs and skins. He wore black and scarlet, and every edge of him sliced like it had been sharpened enough to cut the wind. Itzal moved closer to see this different guard, suspecting he might have found some of the slandersmith’s goods. He knew that slandersmiths would make armor sometimes, or work with armor smiths who they trusted.

Sure enough, when he got close enough to see the bright whites of this last guard’s eyes, Itzal also saw the crossed-swords and mouse of Ben’s trade here and there on the lithesome armor of that guard.

The guard looked atypical too. He had the sharp nose and black-as-night eyes of the Alwatan peninsula11. He fairly seeped with high refinement. Everyone—except Ben—from that area who Itzal had ever met had the same air of high civilization.

Satisfied that he had enough information, for the moment, Itzal disappeared more thoroughly.

Itzal’s story about his espionage didn’t please Ben. Ben frowned heavier and heavier with each passing word. Itzal kept on with his story, though. He needed to get to the end of the story and take on the next problems.

“I’ve been doing some estimating,” he said. “It’s been nearly ten days since I parted company with Lilywhite. He should have gotten to Modris Khan’s keep a day or two ago. I don’t know what sort of negotiation they’d conduct, but I’d trust Lilywhite to draw it out as much as he can, and I’d trust him to be able to draw things out rather long. Leave a day for the recuperation he’d take, and another day for preliminary conversations. By today they’ll be having serious conversation about…whatever. Lilywhite will negotiate for at least a thirty day grace period to get your goods to Modris Khan, as that would allow for a voyage to the farthest relevant port on the Razorgrass Sea. Modris Khan will allow much less time than that, given his willingness to entertain the slightly overdramatic—if I can trust his biographical information in Lords of Grass and Sky and Piracy on the Open Plain. They’re both reputable texts, so I shall choose to trust them—with due skepticism, of course. They’re by academics, not pirates, and therefore they suffer a rather soft bias. I reckon that Lilywhite will succeed in negotiating for not more than another ten days. That’s…what’s funny?”

Captain Younes had started chuckling. He waved in front of his face, as if dismissing a fly. “Is that usual, then?” Captain Younes said.

“Beg pardon?” Itzal said.

“Is it always so busy between your ears?” Captain Younes asked.

“I think I’m failing to be usefully thorough, as it happens,” Itzal said. “I’ve been allowing my distress to better my thoughts.”

“Indeed?” Captain Younes said. It seemed to amuse him, but he seemed uninterested in saying anything else about it.

That suited Itzal. He turned back to Ben.

“Clearly we’re a bit pressed for time,” Itzal said. “If I’ve made an accurate estimation of sailing, then it’d take no less than eight days to get to the keep of Modris Khan from here—”

Ben interrupted with a grunt. “They’ve got you there, Blue Jay,” he said. “No one knows where Modris Khan’s keep is.”

“Katsuro Falk12 did. He had a chance to describe the view from a tower there. I read about it in the second volume of his memoir. He described various landmarks that sound similar to landmarks in other books. If I had the right chart in front of me I could show you the approximate area that I feel fairly convinced hides the keep of Modris Khan.”

“Fairly convinced?” Ben said.

“You sound like you’ve already seen the chart,” Captain Younes said.

“I did. I drew it. It used to be my hobby. I’ve got this map of the Razorgrass Sea I drew. It’s quite thorough.”

Captain Younes stared for a moment at Itzal, as if expecting something to happen. “Well?” he said, suggesting he wanted to see the map.

“I don’t know where it is,” Itzal said. “I had it in a pocket when Lilywhite and I got knocked out back in Vendi Larte. I’m guessing that Trouble—the Burner, Trouble—that he took it.”

“Pity,” Captain Younes said. He flicked the ash off his cigarette and looked out the window the carriage, again bored.

“Yes, Ben,” Itzal said. “I’m nearly convinced I know where the keep of Modris Khan is.”

“That information is dangerous to have,” Ben said. “Keep it to yourself, if you can.”

Itzal nodded.

The carriage bumped along. Ganzorig had put them into a carriage, a covered one this time, and said that the Great Khan would see them now. The carriage clattered along stone roads, raised above expanses of waving grain fields. Ahead of them, the temple-like palace grew larger.

“I just want to get your property back and take it to Modris Khan and go home again,” Itzal said, almost to himself.

“We can all dream fantastic things,” Ben said through a frown. He’d shaved, and it didn’t suit him to look tidy. He wore a long, simple robe in light green silk, which also didn’t suit his force-of-nature stance. He sat in the comfortable seat of the carriage like a man in cramped circumstances. Although, to Itzal, the clothes looked well-fitted and comfortable. They were useful in the way that other suits of Alwatan court clothes looked. They both implied lavishness and practicality. Itzal understood that no Alwatan wanted to look as if they’d risen so high that they weren’t ready for action should the need arise.

The style looked similar, in fact, to the Tal Khumuus, Itzal thought. The Tal Khumuus looked like the warrior, barbarian version of the Alwatan old civilization.

Captain Younes had also dressed up for the occasion. For him that meant putting on a fresh, white silk shirt. He’d tied a bit of black silk around his neck for a neckerchief, and he had procured a pair of fine calfskin gloves, which sat on his thigh for the ride. He lounged back in his big coat as if he visited kings daily.

Ganzorig had brought Itzal new clothes too, which Itzal had initially irked at. He had to bite his tongue to keep from pointing out that it is the wont of the Bone Jack to dress with the simple elegance that permitted him to pass through all strata of society without perturbing anyone. He remembered that Ben had suggested keeping the Bone Jack hid, and that he wasn’t wearing Bone Jack robes.

He could not say he cared for the custom of dressing better for kings than for daily living. Ben had insisted, so Itzal complied.

The clothes Ganzorig brought were in linens and silks of dark blue, with some black leather.

“I had them made for my son,” Ganzorig said. “And he grew too tall and fat for them.” He laughed. “My tailor can adjust them for you if they are still too tall. I think they might be.”

Now Itzal sat in Tal Khumuus finery, which hung heavier than clothes he was used to wearing. He noted with relief that they did not restrict his movements.

“You wear them rather better than my son,” Ganzorig said from the corner of the carriage where he lounged. “He was a lout when he was that size. Never learned the value of tidiness. It is gratifying to see them worn properly. Now if only you would learn to do something with your hair.” Ganzorig chuckled.

Itzal’s hair still hung bedraggly around his face, jangling with his trinkets. He stroked the claw of a mountain lion he had once stalked. The claw came out in the skin of a buck that the mountain lion had, in turn, been stalking.

Itzal found his gaze idling on Captain Younes. “Why are you even here?” Itzal asked Captain Younes.

The skipper’s face creased in a half smile, more cunning than happy. “It would never do to miss a chance to dust off the party frock,” Captain Younes said.

“You’re wearing the same as you’ve been wearing since I met you,” Itzal said. And he would have said more, but Ganzorig interrupted.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we are here.”

The courtiers in attendance at the court of Galzuu Khan ignored the palace around them. The high, angular building, made in pale stone, looked every bit the monument of a broken empire, left behind when the land ceased to be relevant. Swishing in their silks and fine furs, the Tal Khumuus khans moved around the crumbling ruins as if they’d built it that way.

The phrase came to Itzal like the looming halls whispered it in the echoing wind: The Squatter King.

He held court off to the side of a huge chamber lined with square and slightly canted pillars thrusting a hundred feet into the air and suspending a ceiling covered in a mosaic with half the tiles missing. Walking between the pillars led into corridors of the palace. Higher, though, the spaces between the pillars led to open air.

The huge room had a dais near one end with a broken plinth that probably used to be a throne. The Tal Khumuus used it for other things. One corner had a little market in it, smelling of spiced meats and spiced mead. Another corner, scattered with cushions and chatting khans, leaked with hookah smoke.

Ganzorig took them to the base of a wide and sturdy scaffold. It climbed without a wobble up to the openings between the columns. From there they could get out onto the wide roof of the palace. The Tal Khumuus had a camp set up here. Rugs of scarlet and green and blue and in lavish spread many yards. Standards—with hawks and fish and non-pictographic patterns—fluttered in front of pavilions. These were the pavilions of khans, and they were regal and wide and wealthy. They displayed wealth with samples of raids or hunts. Within a few feet Itzal saw the eight-foot long tusks of a mammoth and a suit of armor—badly repaired—that would have belonged to a lord of the Mutane13, far and away in the south. He touched a skene of velvet fine enough that it must have come from Sokoku14, and smelled the cold-tar smell from a bowl of blue wode dye from some Keltic land in the west. They had bounty on display from all the corners of the world, laid out like some museum made as a disorganized tour of the whole world.

An unwitting observer might have looked at it all and thought that, well, the Tal Khumuus got around, didn’t they?

No. They did not. They preyed on shipping lanes. Or on smaller ports. They conducted their raids inside the bounds of the Razorgrass Sea. As far as Itzal knew, they never went more than a few miles further from the Sea than the Foothills.

None of the pennants atop any of the pavilions stuck higher into the sky than the pennant on top of the pavilion of the Great Khan. Rugs covered the wide space in front of the open flaps of the pavilion. Khans sat around the edges of the space on low cushions. They smoked pipes or cigars or hookahs, and listened.

A table made of engraved tusks and polished wood and shined bronze sat in front of the Great Khan’s pavilion. On the table sat the Great Khan, one foot under himself and one knee up. He leaned forward a touch and stared at the man who currently stood in the middle of the group of khans.

This man didn’t wear the silks and furs of a khan. Instead he wore the linens and leathers of a steward, which is what Ganzorig said he was.

“Steward to Modris Khan,” Ganzorig said. And he said it as if that did not concern Itzal closely, which Itzal thought particularly insensitive of him, in spite of knowing no reason why Ganzorig would have known that Itzal took particular interest in Modris Khan.

“What’s he saying?” Itzal asked.

“He appeals to the Great Khan for aid,” Ganzorig said. “From the sound of his words, Modris Khan has a plan to make sail for a stronghold that he intends to break, and to take as his own,” the thought made Ganzorig chuckle. “He offers Galzuu Khan the opportunity to share the glory and share the plunder, as if Galzuu Khan has any need to participate in the raids of small khans.”

“Ah, yes,” Itzal said. He whispered to Ben. “Is Modris Khan small time, then?”

“Hush,” Ben muttered back. Ganzorig turned to listen to the proceedings. “Don’t you know what that means for Lilywhite?” Ben asked Itzal.

Itzal thought for a moment, feeling certain that he must know. Nothing occurred to him, so he gave up the effort. “Would you mind explaining?”

“It’s the timing of it…I don’t know for sure. It must be right,” Ben muttered half to himself.

“You’re driveling, old man,” Itzal said.

“Listen, Bone Jack,” Ben’s voice went harsh, though it kept quiet. “Modris Khan’s about to make a move to become a significant player in these parts. To do it he brokered a deal with the Slandersmith Guild for some of our equipment. Lilywhite acted as our intermediary—he’s one of the few people around with the special skills necessary to negotiate a deal with the Khans without bringing down ruin from any of the more licit organizations in the Great Basin.”

“Ooh, I’m going cross-eyed,” Itzal said, trying to keep up.

“You’re one to talk,” Ben said with a snort. “The timing’s right, see. Modris Khan must be set to make his move. Except he hasn’t got the goods that the Slandersmith Guild promised him. And we promised him some goods—real top shelf stuff. We went all out. And…well…you don’t negotiate with Khans without making some unsavory deals. Especially not the ambitious ones. The deal was he’d succeed in this particular raid, if it’s the one I think it is. Like I say, the timing’s right, and news would have spread around the whole Razorgrass Sea if he’d already made this attempt. It’s the sort of stronghold you don’t go against without feeling strongly about your cause. The collateral we were forced to offer on this deal could not be any less savory.”

“What sort of collateral?” Itzal asked, but suspected he knew.

“Use your imagination,” Ben said, snapping the words. “The material point is our timeline has just contracted. Can you simulate some sobriety about that?”

“I think so,” Itzal said.

“Good,” Ben said, and he muttered a few Alwatan curse words.

Itzal tried to conjure some worry about these issues, but he couldn’t quite do it. He didn’t understand the risks involved, he knew that. He predicted that, in retrospect, he’d understand the significance of the moment. It was, no doubt, an important point in the history of his life.

He found himself unable to worry about it.

He did shorten his timeline. That did the trick. His awareness heightened. He paid close attention to the next flurry of events.