Shadow Lost

The emptiness of the village struck Carthenne Rel.

It was more than how no one moved along the streets, or—more surprisingly—how no one greeted them when they rowed the small dinghy to the rocky shore to purchase supplies. It was even more than the way the two smaller sailing ships anchored out from shore bobbed on the waves, the only sign of life she had seen from them.

This was a feeling, as if the entirety of the village had simply vanished.

“I’m not liking this, Carth.”

Guya’s hand loosely gripped his knife, but he left it sheathed and swayed slightly, as if he were still at the helm of his ship. There was no reason for him to pull it free, but Carth wouldn’t have blamed him had he unsheathed it. She nearly pulled her own knife free of its sheath.

“Me neither,” she said.

Guya paused in what would be a tall grassy plain when the weather was warmer, now dried and trampled. The only color Carth noticed was a flash of maroon on the opposite side of the clearing. The coppery hint in the salty air was enough for her to know what it was.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Guya asked. He scanned the clearing, taking in everything around them before letting his gaze settle on Carth. There was a weight in it, and under different circumstances—and before she had come to know him—it would have been intimidating. Now, there was only a sense of concern from him as he looked upon her with his dark eyes.

“You saw the ships the same I did.”

Guya grunted. “Didn’t think you would have known what that meant.”

Carth smiled grimly. “Just because I’m not a sailor like you doesn’t mean I’m not able to pick up on what’s happening. Slashed sails, scorched hull, nothing else moving. That tells me they’d been attacked.”

“Piracy,” Guya said.

“That looked like something more than piracy.” In the months since they’d left Wesjan, just sailing blindly, letting her and Dara grow more comfortable with serving as his mates, they had seen signs of piracy more than once. Often enough that Carth knew the signs of a ship that had been claimed by others. What floated out from shore wasn’t the result of piracy. It was the result of an attack.

“Maybe.”

“Look around you, Guya. Where is everyone? There’s no one here.”

“Maybe they left.”

Carth shot Guya a look, which he ignored.

The village was isolated, located on the end of what looked to be a long peninsula. Access to the sea and the ships that now were useless would have been essential for survival. 

“They didn’t leave. Something chased them out.”

“Or worse,” Guya said.

Carth nodded. That was more likely, especially with the blood she had seen.

“Let’s see if there’s anything else we can find,” she said.

Guya nodded.

They made their way from building to building. The style here was different than in other places they had visited over the months, with most built from thick rock stacked and somehow sealed together, and long reeds used to thatch the roofs.

When they had made their way through the village—it hadn’t taken long, since the village wasn’t large—Carth and Guya stood on an outcropping of rock looking out over the sea. The water was violent here and crashed along the rock, spray filling the air. Neither of them spoke at first.

“There’s dried meat and some grain,” Guya said softly.

Carth nodded. She’d seen the same.

“No one here, was there?”

Carth shook her head. No one was here, and with the amount of their possessions the villagers had left behind, it was clear they hadn’t left on their own. This had been an attack. There was too much blood splattered through too many of the buildings for it to be anything else.

“What do you want to do now?” Guya asked.

“Load up what we can. Take whatever might be valuable so we can trade it in the next port.”

“Lonsyn,” Guya said.

Lonsyn would be a few days’ sailing from here, long enough that they would need the supplies they gathered. It didn’t feel right taking what was here, but then, they had intended to sail in for trade. Everything they had on the dinghy would end up back on the ship with them.

“What are you going to tell her?”

Carth thought about what to tell Dara. She had a sensitive heart, especially when it came to things like this, and even more so after what she’d been through before Carth had met her, and then again in the time since.

“I don’t think we tell her anything,” Carth decided.

“She’s going to ask why we have the same supplies back on board.”

Carth nodded. Dara was observant. It made her a more capable ally, but she’d been hurt often enough that she didn’t always see everything the same way she might have. Especially since the Hjan had used her, forcing her to attack, the woman had changed. Anyone would. Carth wanted to keep her from that as much as she could.

“We’ll hide them.”

“We can’t keep hiding from things, Carth. You don’t have a plan yet, do you?”

“I thought we were sailing.”

“Sailing. That’s what we’ve been doing, but it feels like you’ve been running.”

She frowned. “What would I have to run from?”

“You’re powerful, I don’t deny that, but since we finished with that business in Wesjan, you’ve been doing nothing but staying clear of what you need to face head-on.”

“And what’s that? I helped forge an alliance between two factions who’ve been warring for longer than most know. I convinced the Hjan that they couldn’t continue to attack, pulling them into the accords. And there’s peace in the north.”

Or there should be. This village was a part of the north, but that didn’t change the fact something had happened here. This might not have been the same as what she’d seen when the Hjan had attacked, and it might not have involved the A’ras, or the Reshian, but there was unrest here the same way there had been in other places.

“There’s peace, and we’ve been making certain that it holds. But we’ve seen no other sign of the Hjan, and the A’ras have returned to Nyaesh while the Reshian…”

He didn’t need to finish. The Reshian had disappeared, and with them, her father. There was nowhere for her to search for answers, no way for her to understand why he’d left her in Nyaesh, letting her think that he was dead along with her mother.

Without her telling him, Guya had known. Of course, he had known. They had traveled together long enough that even when she’d tried deceiving herself, she hadn’t deceived him.

“We could travel south…”

He’d made a similar suggestion several times, and each time, Carth had refused, her answer the same: eventually. She suspected she would need to travel south, and would need to understand where the Hjan came from, but she wouldn’t do it until she felt settled with what had happened in the north.

“Not south. Not yet. We haven’t seen any sign of the Reshian,” Carth said. “And we’ve sailed pretty much all the way around the north. There’s been nothing.”

“There’s one place we haven’t visited,” Guya said.

She nodded. “We haven’t. You told me it was empty. That there wasn’t anything left of Ih-lash since the Hjan attacked.”

“I haven’t visited Ih-lash for years, Carth. The last time I was there, they were as prosperous as ever. It was a place I loved to trade. Always good coin, and never a shady deal. No one could get away with anything, but now that I see how you use the shadows, I wonder if maybe they knew what was planned before anyone attempted it.”

“But the Hjan attacked it.”

“That’s the rumor.”

Carth smiled. “I’ve heard it often enough that I take it as more than rumor, Guya. It wasn’t only you, but also the A’ras, and they have the same ability to search out information.”

“Spies, you mean.”

Carth shrugged. “They didn’t call themselves that…”

“But they were spies.”

“I don’t know that I can visit Ih-lash,” Carth said. “I don’t have much in the way of memories, but what I do have…”

They were good memories, what she could recall of Ih-lash. It was a time when her parents had been happy, a time before they had run from city to city, when they had simply been. Carth no longer remembered what that was like. For almost as long as she could recall, she had moved. Even in Nyaesh, there had been movement. First from the docks to the palace, and then it had been the movement of trying to attain higher levels within the A’ras, always competing and never getting to where she wanted.

“Don’t you think you ought to try to find him?”

She noted that he suggested only her. Guya hadn’t shared what his plans were, but she suspected he wanted to return to the south eventually. She wasn’t ready for that. “What do you think we’re after?”

He grunted. “Not finding your father. You need a kind of closure no one else is going to give you, Carth. Not searching the seas like we’ve been, not if we were to return you to Nyaesh, not even if we brought you back to Odian.”

She smiled at that. “There’s nothing in Odian.”

“I thought you told me there was your master of Tsatsun.”

“Ras might not even be there anymore. After the Hjan took him away, he might not have returned.”

She had considered returning, though. If only to learn more about him, and to understand what he might have intended. As a master of Tsatsun, Ras would have more to what he’d planned than she had known, but what purpose would visiting him serve? She’d beaten him and no longer needed his help with understanding the game. Now he might have gone with Jhon, or with others she suspected had another agenda.

Guya nodded. “It’s your ship, I’m just the captain,” he said. It was the same thing he’d said to her several times before, even when he’d suggested they go south. “I’ll sail her where you ask, so long as you keep me entertained.”

She laughed. “Help me load the boat?”

They worked quickly, carrying meat and supplies from the empty village and loading them onto the dinghy. Neither of them spoke as they worked, both seeming to know what the other needed. In much the same way, Guya seemed to know where she would go next. She appreciated that about him.

When the boat was laden with foodstuffs and other tradable items, they rowed it out into the bay, both pulling on the oars. Carth added the shadows to it, and they reached the Goth Spald, where Guya hurried up the ladder for her to start handing things to him.

Dara came out and watched, staring at them wordlessly. She was a shorter woman with raven black hair now pulled back into a tail tied with a deep blue sash, the marker of something from her past that Carth hadn’t discovered yet. Dara carried a long-bladed knife and held it unsheathed, and with Carth instructing her, and Guya working with her, Dara had become increasingly skilled with the blade. When her gaze flicked to the village, Carth worried that she might say something, but she never did, instead turning back to the stairs leading down into the ship.

When they had unloaded, Guya looked over to Carth. “That girl… she’s still not better, is she?”

“They used her, Guya. I don’t know that she’ll ever be ‘better.’”

Guya only sighed. “You could work with her—”

“I’m not sure she’s ready for me to work with her.”

Guya watched the ship, noting where Dara had disappeared. “At least talk to her.”

Carth sighed, nodding.

“Good. First, help me get the lines drawn and then go talk to her.”

Together the two of them pulled the anchor and then they worked to get the sails unfurled. Guya moved to the helm and left Carth.

She stood in the bow, watching the sea as it parted in front of them. She could have gone to the stern and watched the village, but there was nothing for her there. The village would fade into nothingness and be forgotten, just like so many other things.

With a sigh, she turned away and headed down the stairs.

She found Dara leaning in front of a Tsatsun board, her eyes fixed on the pieces as she tried to play it by herself, reminding Carth of how she had learned to play Tsatsun while working with Ras.

Seeing her playing with the board they’d acquired months ago, Carth realized that Guya was right. She had to work with Dara, help her. Maybe she’d help herself in that way.

She pulled a chair over to the board, and Dara looked up.

“Would you like a partner?” Carth said.

The dark-haired woman smiled and nodded.